Prophecy Skills for Factions ?

Just read in the forums that a stand-alone install of Factions will NOT have access to Prophecy skills...

Is this true, and if so, what a bummer for Factions-only players.

No, they've said that there will be acees to the core 6 professions and "core" skills. We don't know what that means. It may be all the skills, it may be some subset of them (like all the ones avaliable from quests/elites, but not the others) - but I think in future chapters it'll be obvious - if you buy chapter 3 alone you won't get the skills from expansion 2, but you will get the skills from the "core" set.

Actually, I just figured things out...Core, Prophecy and Factions Skills. Three sets, with Core Skills shared between the two Chapters. Easy. Makes sense...except what about PvP? Will there be two versions of Ascent (HoH) now?

What if a group of players with merged accounts goes up against a team of Factions-only skills? How is this gonna work? Can Factions-only players PvP against merged/Prophecies-only players?

It works no differently than magic the gathering, if you spend lots of money, you'll have more cards to pick and choose from versus the guy that only has 1 or 2 expansions. Having more cards/skills available to you doesn't mean you'll automatically win, it just means you have a wider range of options for your build. For example, factions has a new elite for rangers called Broadhead Arrow which if you hit with it, causes your target to become dazed, this doesn't mean that someone running a Cripple Shot ranger will necessarily loose to a Broadhead Arrow build.

sometimes people with more skills can be worse off then the people with less. More choices can cause some people to make bad decisions.

I imagine the skills from each chapter will balance each other out.

i don't get about this core skill thing, doesn't that mean faction players will be able to use them as well, meaning they will be able to create professions from chap 1

so that also means prophacy plays should be able to create assasins/ritualists, but only have access to their core skills?

Core means across both chapters
Prophecies means only in Prophecies
Factions means only in Factions

This is to ensure people buy both games to get access to everything!!! Marketing at its best to ensure ANet survival.

Factions only installations will be able to use all 8 (6 core and 2 Factions) professions. They will have the complete skill list for the Assissins and Ritualists but only a set of core skills for the original 6 professions. If you want to know which skills are core skills and which are Prophecies only skills go to one of the Priests of Balthazar and sort the skills by Campaign.

No, if you don't buy Factions (or any other chapter in the future) you will not be able to access any other professions other than the original 6.

The assassin and ritualists don't have any core skills. They only have a factions set, whereas the core classes have a core set, a prophecies set, and a factions set.

It would be safe to assume that when Chapter 3 comes out, if there are any new classes the core classes will get another set of new skills, while the assassin and ritualist will not. They'd remain Ch 2 only, so that if someone only bought Ch3, they wouldn't have any more access to assassin/ritualist than those with only Ch 1.