What's the point of the secondary profession?

What I think we needed was a set of secondary proff skills that really worked only as secondary skills and more defined primary skills that were not useable by other proffessions.

Epic combo

In order to use 90% of the cards of another color, you have to have enough land cards in your hand that have that color. That's the same concept of the attribute investment in GW, IMO.

secondary professions will never be left out in gw2, but yes i agree, more focus should be developed on the primary aspect, as 7/8 skills are usually primary with a secondary used as utility etc.

the secondary profession usually only plays the role of utility and thus does not require a large investment. For example:

A deathpact hammer warrior
A glyph renewal or glyph energy gale dom mesmer
A cripshot with mending touch, or the old blackout cripshot to deny warrior adren
A glyph monk for aegis cancel spamming

However there are some builds that require more investment, or often times the primary class profession's exclusive attribute is deemed more desirable than the other primary attribute. For example:

Fast cast nuker, fast cast anything
Thumper or assassin ranger
The old N/Rt before the nerf to soul reaping, etc, etc

Then there are some that just find more of a balance between secondary and primary such as the mindblast E/D or a conjure warrior.

Me like. Though I guess all my warr typically carries is plague touch and necrosis. I'd like class combination specific armour too, but I guess that would be a bit too complicated with all the possible class combos to have armours for each type. Though the thought of deathknight armour is just drool worthy.

As far as secondaries goes, better to have the choice and choose not to than to have no choice at all. And yes there are skills which seem to make other classes 'unneeded' (though you can do duncan without swap) but I reckon that's more a case of a skill needing to be moved into into a primary profession to limit who can actually use it. I remember when critical agility first came out, my warr jumped on it like ele's jumped on to SF. Then they changed it to vary in duration with critical strikes and I haven't used it since. Though I don't reckon swap should be changed just cause of duncans.

Secondary professions are clearly not needed to make a successful character. Most of my characters only use a secondary just for a rez, my ss necro I only use arcane echo just to echo ss. Not against secondary professions at all. For example, if they gave warrior a skill to remove conditions or hexes would they really need to go w/mo ? Probably not. I even think if they did away with secondary professions less skills would be altered and people would enjoy more balanced play.

you also just compared a game that cost $40-$210 for unlimited profession and skill combinations to a card game that can cost $0-$400 for 60 cards

Indeed.

I believe there are other quotes, but that one is clear. (and ironically, wrong)

I also ROFL at the concept of MtG being more limited than Guild Wars. There's atleast 150 well-balanced cards every three months, and that's only the secondary sets...

actually, in many cases it's the secondary class that DOES provide the balance. I realize at times there are unfortunate combos that can be imbalanced, but take a warrior for example.

As a Warrior/Dervish I can pack viable enchantment removal and self healing options for myself. However by having the added bonus of enchant removal, I lose the benefit that say a W/Mo might have with self condition and hex removal. If I go Warrior/Ele, I can potentially bring more damage with conjures, but then I lose the utility I get from the other classes. As a warrior mesmer I can use ranged interrupts, and passive hex removal, but then I lose those other utilities, and so on. If you just gave warriors all that utility without having to limit themselves to just a certain amount of it, you would start to come into balance issues.

Best ever. Seriously, W/E's were leet.

As for secondaries, having them allows for a lot of imba builds, but without them most bars would be a lot more suckier.

That reminds me of how often I see Zhed using Arcane Echo on Echo.. The fool.

I hope instead of secondary professions they just concentrate on species bonus. Like different things for norn, human, asura ect. with the ability to choose a primary profession. No need for secondary as enough diversity would be provided.

Cards of your second colour in Magic take up deck slots just as much as second profession skills take up skill slots in GW.

Plenty of anti-condition monk skills that are great for warriors. [skill]Mending touch[/skill] ftw.

Don't PvP much do you.

The secondary system is great and it better be in GW2.

Don't you realize that not 99.99% of builds only use one profession and more like maybe 50% if that do.

The present skill system depends on secondary classes so we have to use those skills as they tend to make a more effective build than using one class.
This is not true for all classes some are pretty good just using their own skills.

I agree with the comments about more skills that are primary only and cannot be taken as secondary skills, so yes an expansion of the prime skill attribute where many of the best and most powerful skills use the primary attribute.
An Elementalist/* should always be far better at those skills than a */Elementalist.

Maybe the idea of free form characters mooted for GW2 where you have a free choice at the characters start then each choice limits future choices.
ie
Heavy armour would stop you using the more complicated and powerful spells or you couldn't use a bow easily in a full helm and armoured gauntlets.

Immersing yourself in death rituals might affect your ability to heal effectively and so on.

So... let me get this straight: you guys want the optional second profession removed, because it is useless and overpowered at the same time?

Frankly I don't understand what the beef is here.

True but look at it this way. Would the conjure line for elementalists ever be alterted if warriors were unable to use the conjure line ? No.

Would the inspiration line of the mesmer be altered every skills change if we did not have secondary professions ? No.

Would we ever get the soul reaping change if people in HA didnt abuse spiritway or those N/RT healing builds ? No.

Can every class still do good damage and be successful GW if we didn't have secondary professions ? Absoloutely.

I'm not against secondary classes at all but look at all the skills in the past 2 years that have been altered due to the fact classes were able to have a secondary which actually weakened classes. I think they should limit the amout of points one can put into a secondary class to be honest. This way you can still have use of a secondary and yet still not have to worry about builds/skills always needing balance changes.