What's the point of the secondary profession?

Secondary profession is for GoLE. L33t need for speccing there.

Dervish + wild blow is win imo
Also, I love use dervish earth prayers skills on my ele in pvp and the arcane echo, echo for pve.

Secondary professions are great imo, it makes it possible to come up with all sorts of weird, yet effective, builds.

Notice how you prefer to use skills that are not "less effective/more difficult to spec-up" when used by non-primary profession?

You don't, for example, feel like using Avatar of Grenth when you're a primary elemenalist. In Magic, you can use whatever cards in your not-main color (the color you have the most lands of) as long as you can keep up with mana-management (which is one of the biggest challenge, imo, in MtG and the one that usually relies on luck).

They don't. It's a joke build highlighting a series of skills that are completely useless in the combination suggested.

Similar joke builds are frenzysig (using a heal sig while frenzying - which leads to taking quadruple damage and usually the death of the character) and hamstorm (combining hamstring with firestorm - a combination that the back of the original Guild Wars box suggested was a good combination of skills.)

Regarding the original post: A large part of the point of secondaries is to reduce the number of professions that need to be created to cover certain archetypes that combine certain areas of expertise. For instance, you don't need a specific Paladin class when that archetype could be covered by going W/Mo or W/D. As people have said - some professions could certainly do with having more skills that are based on the primary attribute, but the idea itself isn't a bad one - it just currently has a few shortcomings that need to be fixed.

A warrior isn't going to run Meteor Shower, just like a black deck isn't going to run Mobilization.

If GW didn't have secondary professions, I wouldn't have played it for more than a week. XD
It would have gotten boring so fast for me.

A warrior won't feel like using Meteor Shower because of his limited energy pool. And even if he manages to use it, it won't be as effective as when it's used by primary elementalist.

Mobilization won't be used in a deck that play mainly with black cards NOT BECAUSE IT'S NOT BLACK (it's white), but because it MOSTLY BENEFITS WHITE-aligned creature type (soldier). If, for example, black has cards with "soldier" creature type, Mobilization would be totally usable and as effective as it is now (the activation cost of its ability is easily splash-able, too).

Anyway, you of all people should know better than to use a "tribal theme" card in this discussion, no?

Secondary professions just give more options and exponentially increase the flexibility available to you. Just because most players use the same combinations and builds doesn't detract from the original idea which I think is great.

I would however remove the limitation of having just a single secondary profession. Let a character have any skills they've learnt from the primary profession, and any combinations of skills they've learnt from other professions.

I think its silly that a character has to temporarily forget everything they know from one secondary profession because they're using a skill from another.

I don't think it would overpower things too much because you're still limited to the 200 attribute points and the 1 elite skill. It would of course mean you could finally have the frenzy-echo-mending holy trinity on the same bar.

As far as I commonly see secondarys are either for the one or two extra skills a build needs that are commonly not really attribute based. Or farming builds.

A warrior won't use Meteor Shower because of how much he has to spec to make it worth his while.

Similarly, Mobilization (which is used to excellent effect with Wake) worked best with white because it required 1W per soldier, not because of the creature type.

Attribute points can be roughly akin to Lands/acceleration.
Gale costs 4 air? Spec 4 air.
You need a Mountain for Haste to give that Avatar of Woe insta-kill on cast? Spec several bloodstained mires and 4-6 mountains to get the job done.

Oh, and by the way.

Sligh (you know, that red deck that easy kills turn 2?) is mono red, rarely speccing blue or black if you're particularly innovative.

The whole primary/secondary thing was more than half the reason that I bought GW in the first place. When you play you're essentially building your own class... It's just that some people make better choices than others. On top of that some skills see little use because they need some revamping. But even with the bad there are still SOOOO many great combinations of skills that help add substance and uniqueness to the game.

No shock axe Warriors or critical barrage Assassins, no touch Rangers(I could do without that one..) Every profession would probably have 2-3 optimized builds (pigeon hole much?) and that would be that. It would be like the talent system in WoW, 3 trees to choose from. Sure you can mix and match different talents but you won't be very effective.

All around the game would be less interesting and a lot more predictable without the potential for a secondary profession.

And no matter how hard he tries, he'll never get up to the same level of power as primary elementalist, which is my point.



Then it goes back to the mana issue I describe earlier.

In this case, if you can provide "enough" white mana (from whatever means), you can use Mobilization in ANY deck.

But of course, mono-white deck would give you the ability to produce white mana effortlessly (duh). But that's the strenght of monoclor deck, which is also my point.

I try to describe things in a broader sense, you see. I don't think it's a good idea to describe things in a "Look, this card fits my argument perfectly so let's assume every other cards work the same way" kind of sense.

I think people are getting away from the aspect of a secondary profession as increasing your options, while not increasing the complexity of having to add that many more skills to each profession.

By simply being able to have a secondary profession, you now have a whole other level of possible combinations.

My issue is that those options are rarely used, and even less frequently preferred. If dual classes are to be a part of GW2, then they need to add up to more than the sum of their parts. A GW1 w/e is basically a, "warrior who can throw fireballs", but it's lacking the synergy of the 2 professions. Where the warrior who can enchant his sword to [temporarily] do fire damage, or to make the next enemy striking him get set on fire? GW1 lacks skills that take advantage of the combination of professions.

Think outside the box; where is the w/r who can charm some great beast and ride it into battle as his steed? Where is the n/rt that can truly summon, then reap the soul of a defeated foe? Where is the e/me who can really make your mind burn?

I'm also not a fan of primary attributes restrictions. Then again, I'm a huge fan of character customization.

So much nonsense about MtG in this thread...

The secondary profession is very similar to adding colors to a Magic deck. However, the format you are playing drastically affects what is acceptable (quite like what form of PvP you are playing affects what skills are acceptable). Now, I haven't played Magic in about a year, but right at the end multi-color decks were some of the best (at least in Vintage).

In Standard, Block, or possibly even Extended the colorwheel is fairly balanced so that one color doesn't necessarily have an edge over another. However, IMO GW is more like Vintage, and in Vintage, you aren't going to see much green in a competitive deck (believe me, I tried, try searching my name with R/G beats) because green is very weak. You've got fastbond, crop rotation, and thats about it. However, in blue you get FoW (heh, not fissure of woe), 3 of the p9, tinker, gifts, fof, mana drain and a bunch of other broken stuff that green can't compete with. In black you've got yawgwin, duress, necro, bargain, etc. Strong cards get played, and the strong cards are in certain colors. Strong skills get used, and those strong skills are in certain professions (hence why you don't see a lot of necros in GvG, or a lot of mesmers in PvE). That's what I think the parallel is in Magic.

As far as the secondary profession goes, it is to shore up on weaknesses or to provide a win condition. Two examples in Magic: R/G Beats and Gifts.

Red by itself has very little defense against enchantments, so adding green for things like Naturalize or Emerald Charm help strengthen that weakness. Parallel would be a resto ritualist using a mesmer or a monk secondary for some hex removal.

Gifts, pre-restriction (not sure about now), splashed red for empty the warrens as a win condition. Parallel would be something like a A/E sliver farmer. Or maybe even a Shock Axe.

Secondary professions definitely add depth to the game, and I think they work exactly as designed. However, just like in Magic, things can get broken and need to be fixed, hence the nerfbat or the banhammer (Magic equivalent). Nothing usually to cry about.

My $0.02

[skill]Assassin's Promise[/skill]
One of the best mesmer PvE elites. (I'd actually say it's THE best but people sure love their SoI ...)

...You can't be serious.

I think he is, but then again, he's .... well.... (continuing this would result in mass flamefests)