10 questions from a potential player

Heya. I'm considering picking up Guild Wars and I'd like to ask a few questions.

Short introduction though. I've played several free MMO's for the past ten years or so, but I've finally reached that point where I just want something.. better. I'm still uncomfortable with the thought of monthly subscription fees and such, so after some searching I found out that Guild Wars is still pretty much the only game where you don't pay a monthly fee. So I've watched a few Youtube videos, read through some Guildwars Wiki articles and I am left with a few questions.

1. Are server-wide class statistic made available? That's an extremely eggheaded question for: 'I would love to see how popular the various classes and 2nd profession combinations are over the available servers/expansions'. The reason for this will come back again in my later questions. Simply put, I don't enjoy running into copies of myself. I want to have a sense of identity on a server. Call it a unique sense of self. To me this so much more important than playing tailored/munchin or powerhouse builds.

2. Is botting practised in this game? It's something I really don't want to see anymore of. Botting + dishevelled gamers whining on public or official forums that their account was taken from them or that their little brother did it. I spend a good eight years listening to such things and I would like to see a change there if I'm going to play a new MMORPG.

3. Is spamming / advertising practised a lot by players in this game? Money schemes, illegal advertising, but also people trying to sell game-objects in game? I would prefer not to spend 25% of my time blocking people or avoiding the world / local chat because it gets flooded all the time.

4. How hard is it to be unique in this game? I understand that there are a lot of cosmetic things that can be changed, but I really mean the question more in terms of character builds and resulting gameplay. Guild Wars has been around for years now, so I understand that everything has been tried by now. I'd just like to have.. some kind of idea of the scope of possibilities if nothing else. Do you regularly encounter surprising builds out on the field? This of course ties in with my first question.

5. In past games I have enjoyed playing characters that make use of pieces of equipment that self-cast skills or spells (that wouldn't necessarily be related to the class I was playing), either upon being hit or while dealing hits by a chance occurrence. Does Guild Wars have these types of equipments?

6. I've been looking for a set of system requirements for Guild Wars. Problematically enough, I've only found wildly varying requirements on different sites. Which is the most accurate?

6b. I lost my computer a few years ago in a fire and I've been using my.. aging laptop since. It plays older games okay. It runs a lot of stuff as long as I can turn down graphics and such. How scalable are the graphics in Guild Wars?

7. It has not escaped my attention that Guild Wars 2 is on the precipice of release. I understand that it is fundamentally a different game, but I wonder if players from the original Guild Wars will stand to gain any benefit from migrating to the sequel? Bonus items, mounts, apartments, object, quests, exp.. I understand if nothing along these lines has been made public yet. The reason for asking is that it seems to me that GW2 can't be too far of right now. I'd estimate that I'll be able to buy a new computer in maybe a year, and if GW2 is available by then there will have been very little point in bothering with the first game.

8. Ever since I first started hearing about Guild Wars, I seemed to get the impression that it is quite easy to level characters in this game. I do not know for a fact if this is true, but it raises a question. Can I take one character and take it through all content, all expansions/campaigns without it hitting a level cap somewhere quarter-through?

9. I suppose Guild Wars 2 will follow the same payment model as Guild Wars 1, right? Right. I probably don't even need to ask that.

10. PVP characters and 'Roleplay' characters appear to be a big deal here. It stands to reason that it benefits to have a Roleplay character in addition to a PVP character, so you can harvest items and equipment for it and be better at PVP combat. My question is simply if the reverse is also true in this game. Is there any way having a PVP character is beneficial to playing a Roleplay character?

Answers:

1. No
2. Yes, but the situation is under control. Kinda.
3. There is some spam but it occurs on very few specific places (in one major city mostly).
4. This is where GW shines. Apart of some cookie cutter builds (that a portion of the player base think are the only thing that works) you can come up with almost anything you can imagine. For myself, almost 6 years playing, Ive never found anyone whose build looked like mine, and both were effective. Just figure out: you have, literally, thousands of skills to choose from, but you can use only 8 at time. The possibilities are almost infinite to customize a character build wise. And you can even switch builds everytime you go back to a city.
5. There are some equipments with some random effects, like shields with 5% of chance of getting -20% damage. But its not even close of "10% of inflicting XX type of damage on hit". In short: no, you will not seeing that type of gear in GW.
6. This game is very, very light on resources. It runs even on onboard VGAs. Sys req is your last worry.
7. So far, GW1 players can unlock a few stuff on gw2, namely: weapons, armors and pets. In gw there are no apartments or mounts. AS for GW2, no word yet. BTW, as far as news go, GW2 will probably starts its beta this year and be launched in 2012.
8. The level cap in GW is extremely low comparing to other games. The point is, very early you reach the level cap, but the content increases its difficulty constantly, so there will be no lack of challenge. The only thing you lose in this process is the grind, wich many people - like me - find extremely boring.
9. Yes, the game will follow the same biz model: buy the game once and improve it tru microtransations and expansions.
10. Roleplay have easier access to elite gear (wich is the same as normal gear on stats, only looks cooler) and they can play both into pve and pvp zones. PvP chars have to stick only to PvP zones. As far as Im concercened theres absolutely no benefit a PvP char can bring to a PvE char.

I hope it helped.

1. There are no server-wide statistics because there are essentially no servers. Instead of servers, GW had "districts" and they are split by location and language. Players can switch between districts as often as they want.

2. Botting happens in every game, its just a sad fact. GW doesn't have nearly as much botting as other popular games. Players tend to complain when their accounts get banned for botting, but its pretty rare. It only seems like it happens a lot because if you don't have a problem, then theres no reason to say anything about it. It would be more annoying if everyday we had people posting "Well, I didn't get banned today!"

3. Spamming for buying/selling/guild recruitment is only done in the major port city of each game (the city where people first arrive when traveling between campaigns). You'll see maybe one person every month or so advertising an illegal website, but they leave immediately to prevent being reported for it (can only report people in the same town and district as yourself), so you won't have to worry about seeing them again.

4. It's not very had to have a unique build. There are hundreds of skills that can result in millions of possibilities as you can only use 8 at a time. There are flavor-of-the-month builds which 95% of the people will run and continue to run even after it becomes "outdated", but as far as "has everything been tried before?" goes, No, it hasn't. Most people make due with what other players find for them and don't bother trying anything new. It's very easy to find something that either people have long forgotten about or something people haven't openly tested.

5. No. You can upgrade equipment to raise your health, energy, armor, attributes (which increase effectiveness of skills), but you cannot have armor activate skills or effects.

6. If you can run most games from around 2005 on low settings, then you can most likely run GW on medium settings. GW's graphic settings can range from the lowest, most basic settings possible to still play the game all the up to so high that the environment almost looks real.
6b. See above.

7. Players will receive cosmetic bonuses. All rewards can be replicated in-game stat-wise by drops, quest rewards, etc. but players who unlock achievements in GW1 will have access to items with non-replicatable appearances. For a list of rewards, here's a link to my personal reward calculator. Highlighted items show what I have access to when the game comes out, grayed out shows what I have yet to unlock. All items will scale relative to your level to allow you to have equipment that is relative to those around you. However, you must acquire the reward again in order to scale, you cannot pick up the item once and have it level with you to the end.

8. The game begins at level 20 (max level). Unless you play GW:Prophecies, you'll likely hit the level cap anywhere from a few hours to a handful of days. Somewhere around 90%+ of the games content is designed for max level characters.

9. Yes, Guild Wars 2 will also be free to play after buying the access key (a one-time fee)

10. The only real advantage is that you can use your pvp character to unlock skills. Once skills for a game have been unlocked, they can be bought at any skill trainer (if they are not unlocked, many skill trainers will not have skills that you would acquire later in the game). Unlocking skills also allows your PvE character's heros (NPC allies) to use the skills.

Join a PuG (pickup group) and you will soon learn what "versatile" means when it comes to builds/skills.

1. Nope.

2. There are bots, they are being cracked down from time to time. Dumb sh!tters always whine about stupid crap like their "supposed" innocence, ignore them.

3. Not so much anymore, they may be seen in the main trade hub from time to time, overall the presence is greatly diminished. I do see the random loser from time to time asking for Runescape money / account trades.

4. You can beat PvE without a skill bar practically (IE: you get carried by your 7 other teammates). In terms of unique skill bars, there are cookie cutters that will always be more effective then the alternatives in the majority of situations. Most Professions don't even need their secondary prof. To put it bluntly, you can be unique in terms of skill bars, but you'll suffer for it. I do find surprising builds on pugs, and they are either a) shit, but the content is too easy to complain about it, b) decent enough with little forethought put into the build and c) (a rarity) a decent skill bar with thought put into each skill choice (brownie points if they added skills to suit the area your dealing with). There is variety, but in many instances there are skill bars that are "too" good to pass up.

5. GW has consumables, but they have no <open inventory and click this button to use a skill / complete this quest>. Your resources are pretty much tied to your skills and stat boosting consumables.

6. GW is pretty easy to run, I do not know the requirements off by heart b/c I threw away the game box ages ago. I've had guildies play GW with very old and sluggish machines (obviously YMMV) dating anywhere between 5-8 yrs ago. Take that with a grain of salt since everyone is different in computer set ups.

7. Yes, if you purchase EOTN (the Ex pac) you can unlock the Hall of Monuments for your account, its basically a time capsule, and as you fill it you gain access to GW2 bonus goodies when the game is released http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=welcome link provided.

8. Factions takes all of 5 hrs if your devoted, maybe less if its your second time through, Prophecies takes much longer and Nightfall is somewhere in between. You will hit level cap eons before completing the first campaign. Travel, assuming you have the other games on account is easy and instantaneous between the different game regions. Character development in this game was based around acquiring skills so that you can be more effective / efficient at doing your job as a pose to unlocking your potential by lvling up. It is a different monster, but much easier when alting.

9. Yes, yes and yes.

10. PvP characters have full access to making max lvl items on the spot with all the mods you want (for free). In order to access all the mods and skills as a new account, it is preferable that you participate in PvE. As you acquire new skills and weapon mods, you unlock them on your account, allowing your PvP characters to make these mods on the spot.

Your PvP character is meant for PvP and can only access PvP zones, PvE character can access both. PvP characters don't have to spend resources shuffling their stats around when making their skill sets / item sets and have full access to all skills available on account. All PvP characters start at max level.

Thanks, that was extremely helpful. Can't thank you enough.

This is a long shot, but is there anyone here playing from Scandinavia by any chance? I'm curious how steady the connections are, lag-wise. I'm from Oslo, Norway.

Not from Scandinavia but I can attest to how well your computer will run GW. I am currently playing GW on my NetBook.

As for being unique you won't have a problem finding a unique look or build but that build might not be the most efficient. As others llikely have told you since this game has been aroud for so long every mission and quest has been put through the test many many times to find the perfect build to complete them. This doesn't mean these are the only build just the ones that are preferred when you group with other live players.

If you really enjoy PvP and are good at it you can gain some benifit in PvE from it. In PvP you can aquire points that can be used to unlock skills. In PvE you normally have to find a skill trainer or complete a quest or even capture the skills from a boss to gain them, however, if you have them unlocked on your account you can use what are known as Skill Tomes to learn new skills in PvE. Buying the tomes from players might cost you some money but it could also save you a number of hours of gameplay and the skill itself might make the missions/quests your on a little easier.

A lot of former top players used to be from Norway and Sweden, you should be fine.

Yes. I can run Guild wars on my acer one netbook without problem too. Was running it on my netbook with some streaming tv actually on as well. It works fine. So you should be safe.

That's good to know about the netbooks and Scandinavia. I found out there is a Guild Wars trial, busy downloading it now. I probably won't get to play it until tomorrow though.

Of the two guilds I have been a member of both have had a large number of Scandinavian players, mostly Norwegian and Swedish and none have any lag problems which are out of the ordinary for online games, no more than the rest of the world.

In answer to question 6, the Wikipedia page for Prophecies lists the following minimum requirements:

• Intel Pentium III 800 MHz CPU
• 256MB RAM
• 2GB Hard disk space
• 32MB Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 Series GPU
• internet connection
• Windows 98/ME/2000/XP

My CD case confirms this, with recommended requirements simply being more RAM and a better video card.

I also presume you'll need more HD space if you have the other campaigns as well, since that's for Prophecies only.

If you are downloading the trial, you will start in Prohecies beginner area. Do all the quests you can find before selecting a second profession. Try to be at least level 7 before you enter the Academy as the next part of the game is harder.

To check out professions, go to our Campfire section's subforums. Each one has a stickied basics thread that covers the ups and downs of the profession and its secondaries.

Once you have the game started, use the -image command line process to download the whole thing (about 3.5GB) overnight or while you are away from home for at least four hours. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/-image#-image is the link for how to set that up.

Welcome to a great game.

To answer simply,

1. No. If you want to be unique go for something like a Dervish, Paragon or Mesmer as you're main. If you want to accepted into just about any group, go for an Assassin or Monk (monk is better)

2. Yes botting is practiced, however not to the extent of obviousness that you would have seen in Runescape (come on, I know you used to play it)

3. Spamming is complicated. If you mean senseless rubish then not too often, if you mean Spamming that you are selling something or recruiting in your guild, then yes, go to Spamadan district 1 (less commonly known as kamadan, jewel of istani).

4. It is relatively simple to be unique in terms of your build. There is over 1000 skills and you get to choose 8. Now obviously what works and what doesn't is another thing.

5. No. The way Guild Wars is set up, that would not work unless it were say, an Elementalist casting Flare. Weapons and armor only boost stats/provide bonuses (such as life stealing and energy gain on hit)

6. & 6b. I'm running GW on my laptop that's motherboard dates to 1/12/05 (basically when the game was made) so you can probably run it on anything with 1GB RAM and a half decent (by say... 2008 standards) processor. Graphics card doesn't particularly matter unless you want 60+ FPS while max graphics.

7. hom.guildwars2.com Your answer is right here. basically type in someone's character name (feel free to type in mine, X Dervashah X). There is about 30 - 40 items you can get and then a few titles. I'm aiming for 50/50 as you will see

8. No. It takes about 140k XP to hit level 20 (the level cap). You can get maybe through a few missions in (not including prophecies, this place probably has the best progression) a campaign, get to the Mainland (in Factions and Nightfall there is a respective 'Mainland') and do maybe 2 missions (not quests) there and hit 20. You gain the max cap pretty early. They say they do this because it means more focus on skill and builds rather than how much XP you have (like Runescape and WoW is). Guild Wars 2 will of course be slightly different.

9. Yes.

10. Yes, but only for the simple reasons of Titles and Zaishen Keys (an item bought with faction, which is gained from fighting, that sells for a reasonable amount per key). PvP only characters have basically no use for money, thus all the money you earn can go to your roleplaying character. some people can make at least 200k a month playing PVP, sometimes 5x that, however getting IN to the PVP that makes money is like trying to stab into a diamond with a toothpick, essentially impossible.

If you decide to play, then Welcome, and if you have further questions feel free to PM me here or in-game (IGN is X Dervashah X)

Excellent, thank you for the extra replies.

I've played the trial for about 30 minutes last night. It ran great, the fps I got during the intro and the levels while fighting/exploring left me very surprised. I don't have a fancy graphics card in this machine at all and this looked okay. I created a warrior, just to test things out without having to worry about dying too quickly. I think I might try something a *little* more exotic next.

Can I expect the newer expansions to run as smoothly as Prophecies?

For the most part the newer areas will run exactly as Proph, however they do have improved graphics so you might see a slight drop in fps as you move to the newest parts of the game. Eye of the North expantion is the only part where I notice things start to bog down a bit in the thicker vegitation maps.

Be certain to test out every profession for the simple reason that this is a team game and at some point you will have the other professions in your party. Knowing how they function will help you know how best to work with that profession in a team setting.

Ah.. and.. then I forgot my character name (why oh why did I delete the first character). Stupid, stupid. Well, I did play for an hour or two total so I think I've seen enough. I played as a Warrior and a Mesmer and I got a good feel for the game. Didn't get into any parties yet, but I can predict better how it plays now via youtube videos. This could be fun.

On a side note, I've spend many weeks looking for coop/LAN games for me and my girlfriend to play together. They are hard to find in this day and age. Guild Wars' take on instancing a world around a party is a similar approach that hadn't occured to me yet. Maybe we'll end up playing together.

Actually I believe EotN pushes the limit a bit harder.

If you mean the aspect of your characters, here's some rough numbers: as you start out you can pick from 10 professions, 10 faces, 10 hairdos, 10 hair colors, 10 skin colors, 5 height levels, 5 readily available armors, about a dozen dye colors for the armor, and of course gender. That gives about 5 million unique combinations right off the bat. And that's without taking into account that height is a free slider, dye combinations, makeover credits that let you pick up faces/hair/skin options beyond the initially available ones, combining pieces of armor from different sets, elite armor, hats, costumes, capes, glasses, bandanas etc.

Granted, in beginner areas you're more likely to run into a similarly looking character, but as you advance in the game your options diversify quite a bit. I don't think I've ever felt "looking unique" to be a problem.

Sadly, yes. But (1) it doesn't affect you directly for the most part, due to the instanced content and (2) they're being dealt with fairly swiftly in most cases. It can be a bit of a problem in certain types of PvP/PvE combinations (eg. random arenas).

Same applies to spamming/advertising. First of all, there is a separate channel for trade ads, which you can simply mute. Second, trade chat only reaches high volumes in a handful of cities. Third, the occasional gold seller who advertises/crazed teenager who starts swearing etc. get reported and booted, and you can set an ignore for them in the meantime (or simply switch district/town).


There's about 1000 skills available, and you can only put 8 on the bar. And yes, I see stuff (or come up with stuff) from time to time that makes people go, "hey, that's clever, I haven't thought of that before".

The thing is, it's more important what you think of it, not what others think of your build. Both are relevant, but you have at least several months of playing before you will start to feel you've scratched the surface and seen most of the typical builds for a profession. And you will be wrong, because there's more. And ANet likes to shake things up fairly often by changing some skills and making people re-adapt.

Not as such. You can have skill effects active (enchantments, hexes, shouts etc.) that will cause stuff to happen upon certain events. But the equipment itself cannot do that.

GW is a lot about the skill of the player, and as such pretty much the only automation you get is auto-attack. But even then you have to target somebody and initiate it, and it's limited to weapon hits, not skill activation.

I don't think you have to worry. And graphics settings are pretty flexible.

Not quite. First of all, GW2 is at least one year away from launch. The most optimistic speculations place the closed beta in Q1 2012. Second, by playing GW1 you can achieve certain perks for GW2 (google Hall of Monuments). Third, as you said, GW2 and GW1 will be quite different, so you will definitely not be sorry for having played GW1.

It is, but what you missed is that levels are mostly irrelevant. The 20 levels only serve to increase base HP and to grant attribute points. Achieving level 20 in GW is the place where training ends and the true game begins, not an end-game goal. It's the moment you start taking on the "real" game at your full potential.

Even so, a character's evolution does not end at level 20. You will always be on the search for better weapons, better armor, better weapon and armor modifiers, better skills, better heroes. Or, really, I should say "different", not "better", because there are millions of combinations of the above to explore, and there are zones and content that will require you to change the way you think about all of them in order to beat it.

PvP achievements can unlock and obtain types of items and rewards that are beneficial to the entire account, either in terms of Hall of Monuments achievements, or simply to be traded for cash.

Other than that, not so much. PvP gameplay is pretty different from PvE, and equipment requirements are also rather different.

It's true that playing PvP will teach you to play the game in a much more efficient manner; but the thing is, in PvE you deal mostly with AI, on which the efficiency you learn in PvP is largely overkill. To make an analogy, PvP is more of a guerilla type of combat, where each team member is multi-talented and self-reliant, whereas in PvE you're more like some sort of on-the-field commander who directs his troops. Both are exagerations, but I hope you get the idea.

This has already been answered quite well, but I've got some time to kill so:

No, but GW doesn't have "servers" in the same sense of other games like WoW or LOTRO. Because there is basically no persistent world, there is no need for servers or realms. This will change somewhat for GW2 though.

As far as I know, yes, but I don't spend much time noting such things.

Yes and no. Yes, it is done, but mostly in a few specific outposts where most of the trading is done.

Build-wise it's very easy to be unique. There is a broad range of workable builds, although there is a portion of the GW population that wrongly seems to think only certain builds are any good.

No.

The original equipment requirements were quite low, but as time has gone by, newer campaigns and expansions have included some newer graphics features which require newer hardware, so the equipment requirements have changed over time (evolved ).

Very scalable.

Nothing significant. I wouldn't worry about needing to play GW1 in order to prepare for GW2. Mostly there will be a lot of people running around in GW2 (in the early stages) with titles, mini-pets, and/or weapon skins which say "I played GW1", but with little other purpose.

No. Levelling is not a main feature of GW. You get to level 20 (the max) very early. Most of the game is played at level 20.

GW2 will probably follow the "current" payment model of GW1 - which is "no monthly fees", but with available extras as micro-transactions in the on-line store.
No, not really.

That's cool.

I think my short-lived experience with the trial is going to lead me to purchase. I have a single question about that though. After purchase, should I want to migrate my game to a different PC, is Guild Wars going to object due to account security or DRM issues? It doesn't seem likely since I'm really only buying an account - not a disc.

I thought I might as well ask. Hope to see you all soon.

No, there is no DRM other than having to log into the account. In fact, you can even migrate the game by just copying gw.exe and gw.dat in a new directory on the other machine - that will save you from having to download again. If you do this, it will install itself when you first run gw.exe.

Great, thanks for answering that last question. I'll be off to download the thing for the rest of the evening then. See you soon.

Make sure you remember your character name this time!

And feel free to add me to your friends list and ask for any in game help you might need;
Crom The Pale

You can install GW on as many PCs as you like. You can log into and play your GW account from any PC that has GW installed (including other player's installs). Note though, that, while most things, such as your characters, storage, progress, etc., are stored server-side, some features such as Templates and screenshots are stored locally.

Eh.. hehe. I imagine it happens to a lot of newbies.

I thought I'd just make one dummy character with a word or name I couldn't possibly forget, just to avoid that from ever happening again.

So your first character will be Happy Accident?

Nah.

Potential barrage of puns aside, I like to think that I buried that name with the trial account.

I think I will switch through several characters and correspondent names before settling on something. Then I will intensely study the wiki archives for a few weeks and restart. Rinse and repeat.

I actually found that with a lot of RPG's, not necessarily MMO's, I spend an equal if not bigger time thinking about possible builds. It started with Neverwinter Nights I think, or Baldur's Gate. Either way, I see it as form of entertainment as well. It's also another reason why I don't like to think about wasting time on monthly subscriptions fees. I will probably come to like Guild Wars to a fault.

3 comments:
Trading spam: As said it mostly happens in a few outposts. The chat system has tabs for various parts of the chat that you can easily enable or disable. With one click you can disable the trade chat and avoid like 95% of the trade spam. With this I mean the "legal"trading, about selling and buying guildwars items. There are always a few rulebreakers who advertise in wrong chat but that isnt too big a problem.

Graphics in parts of the Eye of the north expansion can be more demanding, if you experience trouble you can always adjust the graphics settings to low.

Geography: I am from Denmark, and as said there are several scandinavians in Guild Wars. I don't have more than average trouble. There is always the occational disconnect or lag spike, but most of the time it runs smoothly.

Not sure if you noticed in the trial, but you can completely respec your character anytime you are in an outpost. For free.

The only thing that can't be changed is your primary class. Everything else (attributes, skillbar, secondary class) can be respecced without limits or penalty once you unlock it. Secondary class changing needs to be unlocked on PvE characters; this happens between third and halfway in each campaign's storyline.

Also note that secondary class changing means that every character can access every skill in the game, although secondary class skills are -not- on par with the primary ones (in particular, you should probably not try spellcasting as a warrior, but there are exceptions from this rule), and skills on the secondary's primary attribute usually aren't practical (yes, there are notable exceptions here, too).

Duely noted. I did read about it years ago, but I think I sort of dismissed the notion because I (still) value that extra labour that goes into making characters in other RPG's. It comes at the cost of needing to metagame a lot though, so it will be a refreshing change not having to worry about mistakes sneaking into my build and just enjoy a game for what it is.

Anyway, I think I'll focus on unlocking all the hard modes for the time being. Just for future notice in this thread, it might be some time before I reply again.

That is good to know as I have the acer one as well that I use at school. I wonder how it would affect the bandwidth? Listening to internet radio hogs a lot.

Eh? Radio is only 65k or so.

'Tis the mark of a high quality RPG when you get to use your brain.

Indeed, I also spend a fair amount of time in GW not actually beating up stuff, but shuffling skills, reading the wiki and thinking up builds. The wiki is awesome in this regard because it gives you pages with lists of skills grouped by all kinds of criteria: not only attribute (Earth Magic skills) but also type (eg. stance, enchantment etc.) or effects (eg. skills that remove hexes, or affect attack speed). Also, in game, in your build window (K) as well as at skill vendors, you will notice you can change the view to group skills by several factors (attribute, profession, elite status, type, cost, activation, recharge).

You will also need to test your builds "live". Once you get to a port town and unlock access to the Great Temple of Balthazar, there's an instanced area near it where you can find all kinds of "crash test dummy" NPCs on which you can experiment.