Hero Skill PvE

Are the skills that you unlock for your main characters immediately available for your hero's (PvE)? I read on the wiki that the skills you unlock still have to be purchased from the Hero Skill trainer. I can swear the skills I have unlocked with my Warrior are all available to Koss now. I have never purchased skills from a Skill Trainer.

The main reason I ask is I want to change my secondary profession to Monk and go back to do some side missions to earn those skills. I may also do it for a Mesmer and Elementalist. Before I do this, I wanted to make sure this will work.

Heroes can use all skills that are unlocked on your account. Using skill trainers is not necessary for any reason (so yes, your current understanding is correct).

You need to purchase a skill for your PLAYER to use it. The heroes can use any unlocked skill, and that's account wide.

Details:
Whenever a player character learns a skill or uses balthazar faction to unlock a skill, that skill becomes unlocked for the whole account.

Heroes can always use all unlocked skills. Your newly created Nightfall character's Koss can use all the unlocked elite skills in Chahbek village.

The same applies to PvP only characters. A player PvE character, however, can't use unlocked skills - he must actually learn them. However, unlocking the skill CAN help since it makes learning the skill easier. For example, some skills are only taught by trainers in the end game areas of a campaign. It'd take a looong time to get to the trainers to learn them, dozens of missions and hours of walking. But once the skill is unlocked, ALL the trainers in the appropriate campaign will be able to teach you the skill.

Also, a skill must be unlocked first before one can use a tome to learn the skill.

I'll double apologize. Once for hijacking the OP's topic, and once for asking a few questions without checking for answers somewhere else first.

I noticed a few days ago that Margrid the Sly has more Ranger skills that I have. I promised myself to look more into it sometime, but I keep doing something else. Is it normal? I was under the impression that whatever skills of a profession I have, those same ones my heroes have. No more no less. Am I wrong? If Margrid came with some skills that I didn't have, didn't I get them too?

@Iuris: If I intend to play a single character (Ranger), is there any point to keep any tomes that I get (including Ranger ones), or I'd better sell them because they are no use for me what so ever?

When you recruit heroes, their skills are unlocked for your account, but not learned by your character. If you buy the skills with hero skill points, it both unlocks and learn the skills, which is different. So yes Magrid is going to have more skills than you assuming she came with skills you didn't learn.

As for your 2nd question, well it's tied to the first, if you have unlocked skills that you haven't learned, you can use a tome to learn them for "free". Technically for 200-400g depending on the tome, which is still cheaper than buying them from a trainer. So you can use tomes to learn the spells Magrid came with that you don't have. Besides those few skills though, tomes are useless if you only play one character.

I think the skills get automatically unlocked, but I'm not sure. Even if they get unlocked, however, you can't use them until you actually learn the skills.

That's an economy question. To use the books, you need to unlock the skill first, so ask yourself, what do I earn faster, 1000 gold (price of the skill at the trainer) or 1000 balthazzar faction (needed for unlocking)?

Really, tomes are mostly for people to use on their later characters to catch up more quickly, or to get a skill that's otherwise a hassle to get, for example an elite skill from prophecies that spawns on a random boss and takes hours to find.