What's the point of the secondary profession?

Conjure Barrager, Splinter Barrager and that's just off the top of my head. Oh, and /mo with rebirth when not either of those since I h/h a lot and am usually the last man standing.

Personally, I like the synergy when a build works well with skills from different professions. I find it adds depth to your choice of skills and makes you think. I'd be seriously disappointed if secondaries where dropped for GW2, since it's one of the few things in GW which has always worked well, imo.

lol, it's called Conjure Flame....and is, in fact, quite widely used by physical damage classes

I kinda hope they will add unique skills to GW2 that can only be used by a certain profession combo. Like life stealing arrows for R/N , sword attacks that only work with enchanted weapons (W/E) and stuff like that.

You know, personally I have a feeling that Anet isn't going to keep "secondary profession" system in GW2. And our characters will have only 1 class. Period.

I'm not saying it's a good idea. But, you see, they're removing so many stuff we like in GW1 from GW2 because they think it's too complicated. And I'd say this is one of those stuff, too.

Well I hope I'm wrong.

I'm still not a fan of races giving different benefits/specializations. I think the secondary profession system will be better for this kind of diversifying in the long run. If we're looking ahead, don't you think there will be tons of gimmicks circulating around the use of different races? Moreso, in my opinion, than the secondary profession system currently in place.

Well, I've read some of the interviews in mags and online about GW2 and one of the first things they said is that they wanted to keep to dual professions.

They also said there would be less professions than now.

There are plenty of builds that use dual professions. Necro's still make the best Rits and echo anything or mending touch for melee chars who don't want to be blinded are some of the more common examples.

However the idea of really using and mixing skills of 2 professions does tend to limit itself to ress and/or 1 other skill like echo. So it is a point that it is not as cool a thing as it could've been

If by that, they mean "Remove the non-core proffessions" Then that's a good thing.

One does not need to be IRC goon to call you noob.

Seriously, that "There are a few times that a 11/10/10 build will work, but not always." is thinking that makes people fail.

Both 12+9+9 and 11+10+10 are pretty good combinations ... dual 12+12 usually means that you have overspent half your points (and that you are likely to use superior runes and all that stuff.) and that you can do better.

As i learned to play i migrated most of my builds from 12/12 to 12/9/9 and 11/10/10. Performance improvement i saw was incredible.

Its split that DOEs allow effective secodnary usage.

Please share with me the secret mesmer elite that makes mesmers better at current PvE then something that enables them to become chaos nukers?
The only elite that could compete would be [skill]Power Block[/skill]. Others are either upgraded versions of normal skills or just skills that are worthless in PvE.
In a worlds where 1 sec cast isn't a 1 sec cast on foes that would need to get hit by PB the most - PB is a tab worthless.
But then again - there is always [skill]Spiteful Spirit[/skill].

Meh I don't need them really, but without them we would have to have much better primary skills with more depth and focus. Something I would hope would go into Guild Wars 2, but I doubt they'll change it.

mob is 2w acti cost. Works with wake due to dual lands.

Now I got your point.

It's seriously tempting though.

I actually didn't kid.
I would REALLY love to hear about that mesmer elite that seems to have eluded me and would put the mesmers on the PvE map.

Hex Eater Vortex? Worked fine throughout GWEN.

Echo is option too, double your skill depending on situation. Gets around massive problem that balanced mesmer build usually subperfroms when ecountering unbalanced group.

mm like 95% builds i make are only primary the other 5% has skill like echo or some other prof res

Just some unlinked skills are enough to make secondaries have a point.

Almost all farming builds utilize the skills of other classes. Things like Prot spirit come to mind.

This thread is losing its point, it was a bit wishy-washy to begin, but well...

Some more examples for secondaries and why we have them: Your secondary is another strategic or tatical choice.

If you go W/X, you can chose between:

W/E -> Shock e.g.
W/Mo -> Mending Touch e.g.
W/D -> Rending Touch
W/N -> Plague Touch
W/Rt -> Sight beyond Sight
Ursan -> +5 skills SCNR

(so many touches...)

The secondary adds abilities to your profession, but you cannot have them all at the same time, because you can have only one secondary.

Necros can go N/Me for Arcane Echo, but then they cannot have a hard Rez or GoLE as well for instance.


Regarding the interesting speculation of no secondary in GW2, why not. We do not know how much different the game will be from the view infos we have. We do not know if it will be a rather quick GW 1.x Upgrade to GW 2.0 or something that is so totally overhauled that it has almost only the "Guild Wars" name in common.

The move to have rather open and larger instances and removing the henchmen in favor of this sidekick already changes the game quite fundamentally, after all.

That was my point.
HEV = Shatter Hex.
Echo = Archane Echo. Unless you're echoing Blackout - which is SERIOUSLY godly but not the biggest hit among parties because you're trading one party slot to disable a foe.
E-Surge - a buffed up Burn. It's nice - but having the ability to unleash the whole bar on EACH foe that AP delivers is nicer.
Shatter Storm - nice, but not exactly something that Shatter/Drain Ench couldn't handle.
Expel - nice, but not exactly something that Shatter/hex removal on a monk couldn't do.
Ineptitude - most things will be dead before the 10 blindness ends. If you drop it on a non-primary target - you wasted a LOT of damage. Plus the fact that Clumsiness was butchered a bit - which makes Illusion less appealing.
MoR - in PvE things die. So one might as well capitalize oon having ones skills recharged and even get some energy back through AP when they do.
PD - quite sweet. Although one is sacrificing a team slot for what a Throw Dirt/BHA ranger does better.
SoI - the ability to overpower the already overpowered PvE spells. Not too shabby.

The skills aren't bad. It's just that in PvE it's much better to dish out the damage constantly - and that's what AP offers.
It's bad that it's an Assassin skill - but hey - that's why secondaries are there for!

AP is ridiculous in PvE.
I beat Nightfall with AP, Spiritual Pain and Arcane Echo on every bar. XD
I knew it was wrong, but it was just too easy. Got really sick of SP's sound effect though.
I'm glad SP got nerfed. It killed my habit. XD

And 45sec recharge?

*must remember what Shuuda said*

Yeah, AP has a long recharge, but in PvE, it never stopped me.
Mobs died every 3 seconds.
pew, pew, pew. So cheap it were.
I remember my friend commenting on how incredibly cheap I was in Nightfall.

I've even used it with Arcane Mimicry in a Vanguard build a few times. So cheap!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZAsz-Ht-a0

Zinger, some of your trolling you can get away with, but this is such a blatantly incorrect thread topic that I don't understand why it's not locked already. There are a lot of things wrong with Guild Wars, but trying to suggest that the dual-profession system is broken is completely ridiculous.

If you are using builds that do not take advantage of your secondary profession, you are probably bad at Guild Wars. Period.

EDIT: Also, it seems that a great number of people are trying to make M:TG references who have obviously never played/do not understand that game's mechanics. Please stop, you're embarrassing yourself.

My two cents worth


to be able to capture all elites for the titles

The dual profession of Guild Wars allow for much more interesting bars and variety of play instead of if you focused on one.

If it were a monoprofessional game, it would be a whole lot less interesting.

Btw, in comparison to Magic: the Gathering:

Surely you're joking. You can't pay the cost of Wrath of God using Forests. I daresay there's an even larger commitment in Magic: the Gathering, since you might have a bad draw; apart from weighing the cards in your secondary color to prospective cards in your primary color, you still have to factor in how likely you're going to get a good draw with your color spread. (Now, that isn't a problem usually, but devoting a large part of your manabase to a secondary color is a commitment imo.)

In fact, I believe GW skills are less commited to their colors, as in the case of 'no more effort' in terms of splashing. (I.e. splashing a few Disenchants, Mana Leaks or whatnot, compared to splashing skills in Guild Wars, such as using Glyph of Lesser Energy, Mending Touch, Death Pact Signet, Shock, Shield Bash, Return, and whatnot. Actually, when splashing, there is a smaller commitment in Guild Wars, as many of the abovementioned skills are used at zero-spec on a secondary, and hence having no attribute commitment.) Guild Wars has a lot more 'splash' stuff than Magic: the Gathering, that's for sure. Look at GW templates; Monk bars generally have one or two skills from their secondary that either don't require spec or have a rather low spec; Warriors only ever spec high in a secondary profession attribute for a Conjure; Dervishes and Assassins likewise. Rangers go /Mo for Mending Touch and Mending Touch alone (perhaps maybe Restful Breeze for the unorthodox). The list goes on; the only profession(s) I can think of that specs into another profession significantly with regularity is the Elementalist (and perhaps the Mesmer).

Perhaps not by coincidence, two of the three professions that commonly utilize their primary attribute to use another profession's skills is the Elementalist and Mesmer, with the Necromancer. These builds that utilize one's primary attribute to use another profession's skills can be likened to combo decks; perhaps a good analogy would be a combo deck that uses color A as a base, but requires an extensive investment in color B because card X is essential to the combo that the deck is built around.

Paragon with Warrior shouts?

You just won the thread Lyra.

AP recharges itself.

Hence AP based builds can ride on recharge wave and do some serious damage.

Hoewever, i have to note that "Air of superiority" does about same thing and does not require elite slot or /A secondary.

Not only do second classes in GW allow for interesting combos, and even just options so you dont get bored- the secondary class system in GW also keeps the balance issues between the classes in check.... without secondary classes the classes that were less than uber would get pushed to the wayside in favor of the classes that are imbalanced- even more so than it already happens.

Yes, you can have builds that do not utilize a second profession, and have them be functional.... but that doesn't make having a second profession worthless or silly, not by a long shot.

Well someone's bitter. By the way, he in no way said he wasn't using them, just was wondering why ANet wanted to add the capability in the first place.

Depends on how the game is made. I'm sure the game could be just as fun and interesting if it was tailored to be monoprofessional.

How do you kill a warlock?

Dispatch a raid group and wait for him to go AFK

I believe secondaries were prof in to stop one class being supremly imba to others, so more varietion and with a cap of 12 on a secondary itsno as effective as primary.

Hey, I used to play a warlock in WoW.
They weren't that cheap.

<_<

Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.

Or make a change to a vital skill that invalidates all of our gear >:I

The only problem is that it makes some profession combinations too powerful. I feel that it puts too much on the table for ANet to balance.

Yes, he did.

That pretty much defines fail.

Well I stand corrected.

Only if the build sucks. And Zinger doesn't suck at this game.

Yep.

The irony is that the analysis is wrong. The reason FOTM builds crop up isn't that the skills are too complex for ANet to balance, but that the environment the skills are used in is too static. Even if 90% of all skills were removed and we were reduced to using Ursan-like static skillbars (as I think we will), there will still always be one single optimal build for any given environment. It's simply the nature of the beast.

The only way to change that is to increase the complexity of the environment and add randomness. Random levels, random mobs, with random skills.

MtG has a very primitive way of attempting to level the playingfield this way, by having the cards drawn at random from a deck. If the cards were not drawn that way there'd be a single optimal deck and a single optimal order of drawing the cards.

As for GW2, personally I would prefer that individual player skill was made more important than skill selection. Ie, that a ranger skilled at aiming with the bow should always beat a ranger who was useless at aiming. Yes, I'm talking FPS style skill. That would make the whole FOTM thing completely irrelevant.

But in magic you need to have the mana played out before you can use a skill. Thats your investment. No casting a red card if all you have is black on the table

I dont use a second profession. on any charicter...and i have a lot.. all but derv, paragon and assassin. none use a second. dont even carry a rez except on my monk. (and never do I put a rez signet on a hero, those i give a second..mostly monk so they can carry a real rez.)

Second profession is there for strategic purposes... unlike wow where u have like 10000 skills on ur screen at once lol.

Comparing MTG to GW is a bit problematic because in GW you only have one way of "winning", and that is through killing the opposition. In MTG its not all about bringing life down to 0.

In respect to your post my analysis tends to the exact opposite of yours.

yes generally you have a smaller commitment to "splashing" in GW but why is that the case?

For me the answer lies in the fact that unlike MTG, if i put a few points into the healing line of my W/Mo (for a easy example) ill NEVER be able to heal myself correctly anyways, i might be able to heal myself a little but its not going to be comparable to a Mo/W speced in healing. Now thats obvious yes i know but lets look at the MTG example.

If i create a Green/White deck and the white is in there solely to gain life, then if i have the mana and the spell is in my hand the effectiveness of my "healing spell" will still give me a 100% efficiency return.

Therefore (like you said) "splashing" or using a secondary profession in GW works with very specific low requirement skills under particular conditions, they work because you don't need to invest heavily into those attribute lines to get a worthwhile return. Utility spells are the best example i guess.

The point that I'm trying to make is that secondary professions in GW have their uses, but in teamplay or in the presence of heroes it becomes disappointing in terms of comparative effectiveness.

but yes it has its uses, just not like MTG even though its inspired from it, shame really imo.