Future Profession Ideas

That's what I just said! There should be more then one proffession added each exspansion.

Sorry if I confused you, what I meant by that was: If they added stealth, it would fit Ranger perfectly.

--Ginko

You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals so let's do it like they do on the discovering-channel.......
Anyways I don't think a Metamorph would be a nice idea...I mean if all his skills were about morphing into some kind of animal this class would be a class you cant combine with anything else, can't really imagine a wolf or a bear using vampiric touch or casting healings...
The Martial Artist is a sweet idea tho, maybe some kind of engineer too, using some gun-like weapons, being able to construct traps like little turrets and even some mechanic pet?? Alchemist would be nice too, using onehanded weapons + self-made "granades" => Posion, Flashbang, Gasgranades etc....well not really granades, more like a bottle with different mixtures in it having the same effect like the granade-types I mentioned...

That is completely not my point. It is irrelevant actually. The point of Spooky's concern, or what I thought his concern was, is that adding eventually takes its toll on balance. Just like Magic: The Gathering, or any card game, the original set and the first couple of expansions might have been decently balanced with minor kinks, but look at Magic now? Half the cards back then don't have a use anymore in the higher-up meta-game. Magic though, is limited by the cost of cards itself, Guild Wars isn't.

No matter how you do it, eventually "new job" type classes that add a completely new element to the game will run out, and therefore must be rehashed. At best, they add 1 character per game to milk it out, but even then, just 1 character can completely mess up the balance of the metagame as it is. Even now, with 6 classes, 30 possible cross classes, it is still not close to Starcraft balance. Spooky I believe suggested to make the balance at least stable before trying something new in those expansions. I simply said that Anet doesn't have a choice.

An expansion without a new class would not be popular with a majority of people, and this forces Anet to somehow miraculously balance out and add a new element into the game without upsetting the metagame. Add to the fact that these expansions most likely won't be beta tested as long, and you'll see that the whole stand-point of skill > time is crushed. In every near-balanced game, the elements have rarely changed. Starcraft was barely touched, only tweaked. Infantry has tweaked maybe five times in it's whole lifespan. Etc etc.

Arena Net has dug itself a hole in terms of market strategy, and only through hardwork, ingenius ideas, and a lot of luck will they ever make it far if they intend to keep the picture they wanted from the beginning. I see GW being just like magic, later on, skills that are already pretty crappy like penetrating shot or dodge probably won't even be touched since there are rehashed versions.

Of course, they can easily ditch by then.

My guess is the first change we will see (along the lines of what this thread is about) will be new skills, which is a given. I highly doubt in a new profession. Think of what it would do to the game. Each character we have right now is completely different from the next. As it's been mensioned about 4560793456 times already, there would be too much overlap. Anything that has been mensioned so far can be accomplished by the professions already available, some would need some new skills, others some new armor. The term 'warrior' for example encompasses a heck of a lot of 'professions' including your ninjas/martial artists/bards/and even some of the 'monk' classed from other games. So add some skills that fit with these types to the warrior, and *poof* you've created a new class. This isn't to say I wouldn't want to see a new profession offered....I just don't believe in it quite yet.

Before a new profession comes (and I really doubt it, considering we've already got the bases covered, and can work up to anything from there) I would assume we would get different races. In fact, based on what I've read, It's almost a sure thing (I think it says 'maybe' in that book you get with the pre-order). Even Spooky made a reference to it:

And I back that up 100%. It just makes sense to work with what we have already.

Did someone already mention the concept class for the Conservative Business man? Well... it was a funny joke thread at TGH.

A go for Assain/Ninja like profession. They have the abilty to have use stealth wich make the to a shadow or gives them a predator like shimmer. Then they sneak behind the enemy group and attack from there wich means that they mainly is used to take out the support group.
They have diffrent skillz like "Backstabber" wich give a lot of damage but if you miss you will lose hp and maybe get knocked down. Many of their skills is used to disable thier target so they can kick **** They can use unarmed combat wich means that thier gloces would give more than just AL.
I´ve invented many skills for this build and i don´t have time to show them.

Sorry, but that class is overpowered.

I think the shifter class is the best, and most obvious idea. Just to flesh out the idea a little more: think of the DnD shifter class. The shifter is an inherently situational class. When the shifter morphs, he gains several permanent bonuses and weaknesses. For example, if he morphed into a fire elemental, he would gain a 50% fire damage reduction, but also gain a -50% water damage reduction. This type of permanent effect cannot be dispelled or removed until the shifter decides to morph back into human form. It is also something not currently existing in GW. And it seems like it would be relatively simple to balance.
Someone in this thread said something about the skill bar being too limited for this class to work effectively - if you had to mem up every skill that you could use in shifted form, this would be true. But again, in DnD, you would lose all your human form skills and gain different shifted form skills instead. I think this type of implementation would work nicely in GW. Although, of course not limited to - being able to take one or two skills from human to shifted form would be interesting.

If the case were, as you put it, to have your human skills change into the skills of whatever you shifted into...then that would be a little broken don't you think? Even if you could only shift into one thing, that's already 8 skills more than the other players. That doesn't sound fair to me.

On the other side of things, this shifter class doesn't seem to be the most unique and least overlapping. Again, however, I highly doubt it's implementation. Having just one other class would be very difficult to incorporate when you try to balance all the combos it will create with the other classes. What would a shifter do as a secondary? How would the secondary effect the shifter when it shifts? Things like these are possibilities, and would be fun, but they are probably at the bottom of the devs 'to do' list. This doesn't go to say that I'm not all for new professions...

Craftsman/enchanter - some days I just like to build something....

D&D style Ninja class - no armor, makes his own weapons, stealth is his ally, and skilled in the art of hand to hand or weapons combat. Makes a good poison and traps, too.

Undead - death knight, wraith, and scout - or just allow undead character models as most of the classes are dupes of warrior, necro, and ranger.

Rogue/theif - backstabbing is cool but so is taking the monster's weapon before he can use it. Why fight what you can just sneak past?

Elemetalist - can morph into a fire/earth/air/water elemental based on what sign the elementalist chooses to beef up. A strong fire/earth elementalist can morph into a magma elemental which causes bash and fire damage, etc.

Undertaker - cleans up after PCs clean out.

Moore - of mid-eastern decent, a light armor warrior skilled in twin blades or long weapons (spears, halbred), horseback riding, and wind/earth arts. Special buffs are Sandstorm (blind enemy), Charm (enemy won't attack for x seconds), and Beserk (x% more damage, increased speed, but most hits critical). Passive skills are read/speak language and slow heal.

Time travel would be a bit hard to do on as despite being an instance based game, everyone is still in the same time frame, so to speak. A cool idea for a SP only game, but very hard to implement in a SP/MPORPG.

Stealth was planned to be rangers primary, but it got replaced with Expertise,
ok a review of my suggestions

Knight (riding a horse or a Wyvern, small dragon type)

Attributes
Chilvary{P}- Making hits have a percentage to interupt target adjacent foes because of ur might

Ride Control- spells like (wyvern) breath fire, trample,......

Lordship- Boost your men....And control their attacks by making them more skilled and accurate

Lance mastery/Jousting - Charging lance, Shield Pierce, Splinterd Lance....


Builder/Carpenter

Concentration{P}- decreases chance of being interupted because builder's spells take qutie a long time

Building- build towers, walls for archers to shoot behind or basically a tower would be extra defense

Metalwork- Build temporary armour and weapon boost or maybe make a Forge which automatically does that

Gunpowder mastery- *BANG*


Hunter/Slayer
(throws weapons)

Precision {P} increases accuracy and decreases enemy chance of blocking dodgin etc

Throwing mastery- throwing javelins and Axes

Slaying- Knowing enemies weaknesses and strike with speed and precision..
Example: Spot weakness{E},Target unit and all of the same species will suffer Increased damage by X and attacks have a X% less chacne to dodge or block for X seconds

Spear Mastery- Using a spear *poke* *poke*

the one thing i really miss in this game is the ability to play an elf or a dwarf or something like a centaur

dark elves above all i would love to play as. as for new character classes something like a jack-of- all trades, or a rouge so he could use like 3 different classes from a current build but be limited to a certain cap on skills like 8 on all skills that are not his own and this class could not have a second profession because that would make him way to powerful.

heres an example


rouge(some skill that he could come with)
thievery- this skill would "up" the chances that you get a better drop instead of a standard drop.

hide in shadows- if you are near death or just dont want to be seen you could select this command and move around freely unless you try and use a skill or attack soemone, and dureing this time you only recive half your health and energy back at normal rate. and it might not always work, the higher your skill the higer the chances it will, lower the skil the less.

sword/dagger- since rouges are usualy to small to use full weapons like axes or hammers

and then you can choose 3 more skills from any group such as mes/nec/ele/monk

but once you did you would be stuck with those skills permenatly i think it would be a nice addition without becomeing to powerful

Rouge has been mentioned a lot and it may seem slightly overpowered but still these are suggestions.

Running freely invisible will sorta cheap since every1 will respawn in 2 mins but still always room for suggestions

youre right about it being that in PvP or even in mission it might be a lil to overpowered , so give it a time limit, 3 sec's for every point you have in it at a cap of 25-30?

i think the rouge could work out well and not be too powerfull. I mean what would a rouge have in battle? a knife and some traps or somthin?

Hmm...wonder why everyone is spelling Rouge instead of Rogue Far as I know rouge is cosmetic makeup
I've played rogues in other games.It just bothers me a lil when someone says rouge instead of rogue.Call it a pet peave of mine

/rant on (just a warning)

Stealth: The implementation of stealth in guild wars would be quite troublesome. First off GW in my opinion leans towards a skill based game (literally dodging projectiles for example). However, GW still uses a “targeting” system. So, you have to have the person targeted to attack him/her. Thus a skill based stealth similar to that which Planetside uses (for those of you who have not played it stealth is implemented by a Predator like light distortion so your hard to see but not impossible) would be impossible, since you have to target the person to attack. For example, lets say “the assassin” cloaks with a PlanetSide like distortion. I would either know exactly where he is and be able to target him, or if I notice he was cloaked I could do nothing because I’m not allowed to target him since he is cloaked. Thus, a skilled based cloak would be difficult to implement, which leads to the easier toggle cloak (ie. Makes you un-targetable while in cloak). I believe that a toggle cloak has no place in a game like Guild Wars; it just seems counter to everything else in the game. However, our ingenuitive development team may just be able to implement a skill based cloak (but I am not intelligent enough to devise a way to do it).

Unarmed Combat: Ok, I am not an expert on martial arts so please correct me if I am wrong. Have you ever seen two martial artists fight each other with just fists wearing leather hide or metal plate? I sure have not, and I believe it is for a good reason. Have you ever punched a car door? It is going to hurt because metal is much harder than your hand. Now if you punched the car door did you manage to do any real damage? Now I know your going to argue that martial artists break bricks and boards, but the way those demonstrations are set up the board or brick has two supports on either end producing a great deal of torque about the center of the block. People do not have opposing supports, people give and move, and armor disperses forces. I just do not see an unarmed man have much chance against an armed and more importantly armored opponent, when the unarmed man uses punches. Now if your unarmed combat user were to grapple and throw, maybe he would have a better chance.

Daggers/short weapons : Yes it is true that a well placed blow can kill no matter how big the blade is. But, I doubt there has ever been a person alive who would take a dagger to war instead of a sword or spear. Range is power, when it comes combat. The evolution of weaponry has gone for longer and longer range. Clubs, short swords and spears, to long swords (many adopted for range and as can openers for heavy armor), pikes and lance, to more advance projectile weaponry (slings to bows, to mechanical launchers, to black powder, to today’s GPS guided button missiles). Again, a similar argument for daggers as with unarmed. Against an armored opponent with longer reach you will be hard pressed to get close enough to utilize a dagger, but if you do the man with the sword will no longer be able to attack you effectively, and you can place a very pointy object between his armor gaps.
I would not mind seeing daggers as a back up weapon that anyone can use (ie sword and dagger), and a class that specializes in the use of such a combination (has skills that by pass armor or something with the dagger blow). However, a full blown duel wielding dagger user, has never really had a place on the battle field unless he is assassinating someone before the real fighting begins.

Pole Arms: in general pole arms weapons are used in a unit formation since they weapon itself is slow as dirt and not easy to move to protect your flank. So, you have buddies on both your sides that also carry these long and nearly unreachable weapons when attacked from the front. GW is more of a skirmish, last time I looked we did not have blocks of units to help defend my weak pole arms using flank. So, it does not seem likely that pole arms would be of much use in the GW environment. However, the quarter staff was designed to be a long reach weapon specifically for defeating swordsmen in skirmish situations. So, if you really wanted a long reach weapon for GW I would recommend the quarter staff or a short spear.

/rant off (sorry about that)

all valid points, but if yopu see from my above post"stealth" or hide in shadows would be limited and probably very costly, sort of a lasst resort from dieing. also to the rtest of your comments about the dagger/sword/polearm/unarmed

is this real life? no. this is fantasy. of course your goin to be hurt if you punch something, whether it be metal,armor, or just someone elses face, but this jsut a game, so we can say well our guys are just that tough, that they can take a ferw scrapes on the knuckles and be ok. besides that UA combat dosent just have to mean useing your fist, ever heard of something cxalled a katar? or a cestus? im not trying to sound rude or anything but you put way to much real life occurences into a game. besides these are just suggestrions, the people at Anet will not release something if they know it's going to be to overpowered. when they do release a new race/class it will be no better give or take the first 6, just different to keep the game from getting stale. JMO

Well you could possibly have some races, such as Charr, Undead, Centaur, and dwarves, who feel compassion for the humans and have joined their cause.

This way if you picked Charr: +1 to strenght; Undead: +1 blood magic; Centaur: +1 Marksmanship; etc...


You get that bonus for picking that race. Just a thought. That way the race isnt really "uber".

When you think about stealth, you have to think about "detection" as well.

Think of single player stealth games. Most of these games have "sight cones" with limited ranges for enemies. A stealthed player would only be visible to another player if he stayed in the boundaries of the said cone for a certain amount of time. The "next target" button would ignore the rogue unless he is visible in this manner.
A rogue's primary attribute could be Stealth, and by spending points on this attribute the "grace period" I mentioned above would be increased.

Rogue players would have to find a way around player sentries, and these sentries would have to actually look for sneaking rogues. Primary rogues would be always better than secondary rogues at stealth, but a ranger/rogue could dual wield swords and have access to melee attacks & more evasive maneuvers and so on.

Implementation of rogues & stealth could also give rangers another role. Expertise could work as a negative modifier to the rogue's grace period boosted by stealth. This way, a ranger with high Expertise would need less time to detect a rogue in his sight cone. Since rangers naturally prefer hilltops etc doubling as sentries would mesh in with their gameplay style & role nicely.

I think stealth-classes, be it Thief, Rogue or even Ninja, are hard to imagine in Guild Wars. This because teamwork, even if it's with henchmen, is the key element in the game, and stealth simply doesn't work in numbers - it isolates people from their team in order to be effective. As romantic as slitting a throat behind enemy lines may seem, the practical side of it is still that people who run off on their own to be lone heroes will remain a threat on missions, not contributors. I believe stealth requires a different game setup, or at least a different mission design, before it can be of any use.

i do think more professios need to be added later on, but id honestly rather see new races before all these new professions.

this isnt a new build or profession, but i think a neat skill would be: for x period of time, when youre hit a skill you only recice x% of the effect, and now have that skill at whatever level it was for x seconds

Silmor, you are indeed right about that. GW isn't built around stealth. Adding a new class with a focus on stealth would definitely introduce new gameplay mechanics & possibilities. I think taking a step forward is a good thing.

It may be great to see different races like Charr and Undead maybe make it like Horde vs Alliance in World of Warcraft. And as someone mentioned before Rogue is the correct spelling and rouge.. well its in Moulin Rouge or something........

Who cares about realism of Martial arts, spring a dragon out with the tips of your fingers and anyway you should see bruce lee against a samurai (with katana) and bruce lee killed him in seconds..... For example make a spell like backfire instead it works on attacks not spells, kinda cheap though.....

Trogdor- He was a man wait...he was a....dragon-man...no...he was a dragon.

Burninate-oh my god!!! the peasants!!!! nooooo not the countryside!
Majesty-Ohhh pretty!
Beefy Arm-HULK SMASH!!

Just want to add another example.

New 'proffessions' could be created not by expanding on what we have, but by limiting them. A ranger/xnewproffesionx limited to beast mastery (or replaces the primary with said attribute line) + enhance said attribute line with new skills or a passive effect = profession more dedicated and more effective at something a little different. Add the skill to 'summon' a temporary pet from thin air with these limitations, and you've got yourself a 'summoner'. Or, add the ability to play as your pet, and have AI take hold of you temporarily....a 'shapeshifter'.

More evidence to support the fact that almost any character type you want can be created based on what we have already...and I predict so will be the case long before any solid new profession is added.

We've got the red, yellow and blue, so if you want purple, make it.

How about the almight Nagging Girlfriend class? All the other classes can forget about PvP forever.

but if more and more professions come along the more complicated balancing issues will get for the GW team so it maybe some builds are way overpowered, so maybe limit some profession combos like not allow (e.g Rogue/mesmer)........and so on.... but of course Guildwars wants you to make your very own characters, (i think) their is currently more than 1 million combos because of the different 8 skill lists and different choices of professions, attributes and weaponry so Guildwars wants to make you different from each other not every1 getting the similiar characters.......

You are indeed right, taking steps forward is a good thing.

Something that changes the nature of the game is a departure to something new however, and whether that can be considered a step forward or backward is rather subjective, since the game will lose mechanics and possibilities to make way for the new mechanics and possibilities. If you happen to like the new game you end up with, you'll call it a step forward. If not, your favourite game may suddenly lose its appeal.

I personally hope ArenaNet will find ways of moving the game forward on this issue without changing the nature of the game. More possibilities are fine, but a game can't cater to every type of gamer at once.

Stealth can be implemented via skill that takes adrenalin or energy of some sort to use, lasts until the user attacks, runs, or/and a counter detect skill available to all classes passes a check to see if the stealthing user was detected. A user with a higher stealth would be harder to detect by a PC with a lower detection rating. Rangers could get a natural bonus to detect stealthing players. Night time/shadows/fog would give stealthers a bonus towards being stealth. Unless there is an uber weapon a stealthing player couldn't possibly toast a unsuspecting character so asside from the first attack, stealth would only be useful for flanking, evading, or ambushes.

I don't see how large of a bonus stealth would give anyone. First attack bonus or evasion would be about all the benefit a stealth player would receive. The detriment would a first level stealth player would be wasting his time until he PvE enough to get his/her skills up. Also stealth is sort of a single use battle thing. Putting skill points in stealth is pretty much only useful to PvE combat given that monsters are easier to fool than PCs.

In regards to armor and fists, a trained martial artist has virtually no pain sensing in his hands due to the "toughening" undergone to hands during training (whacking wood things, stone things, and people). What? You never saw Iron Dragon where the dude busts through a wall with his fist? Also this will be rise to the use of tiger claws, iron gauntlets, and of course grapling devices like chain bound daggers, blades, balls, and of course, other spears. Perhaps a samarai or a roden class would suit things just as well. Skilled at hand to hand combat but equally skilled at short and long weapons, weapon manufacturing, and silent attacks. Roden, BTW are those samrai whose masters have died and thus have no honor.

Pole-arms and halbreds are great for formations of soldiers. I do see guilds learning more tactics than bum-rushing. A block of foot soldiers holding ground will be deadly to the average joe bum-rusher. Besides, look at the range a pole arm gives you over a sword. They are great for meeting attacks after which the first attack the pole-arm dude switches to his secondary long sword.

Short swords and daggers would be cool for two handed fighters (two heavy long swords? now way!), stealth players (no long sword poking out of bushes to give away positions), and speed fighters - people who like the speed they can get from short-light weapons. Daggers can also be great thrown weapons (hmmm Rune like throwing weapons hmmmm).

Along the lines of undead and other "evil" critters, who says guild war players have to be goodie two shoe kingdom savers? Why can't the be evil two shoes kingdom slayers?

And why not? It's implemented this way in D&D, and shifter is hardly a powergaming class - (in fact, in NWN, it pretty much sucks). Shifting would obviously have at least a moderate casting time and probably a hefty energy cost, so you couldn't just cast one thing in one form, and then shift into something else and cast something completely different.
Again, most of a shifter's skills would be likely weaker than its human class counterpart. I.e., transforming into a dire tiger or something would make you a strong in melee, but not so much as a warrior. Shifting into a rakshasa would allow you to cast strong direct damage spells, but not so much as an elementalist.
So what would be the point of using a shifter, if its human class counterpart would generally always be stronger? First, Adaptability - if your team desperately needs a role to be filled, you would be in many cases, able to fill it. Second, innate bonuses - that dire tiger form I mentioned would have running speed %33 percent faster ALL the time. The rakshasa would have a resistence to harmful spells of casting cost 5 or less (or something like that..)

Anyway, this is just my vision of what a shifter class would look like, but I think it could work.

Wouldn't a shapeshifter profession require a different skill for each shape he or she could take? That'd help balance it a little. Max 8 changes, probably less if they're going to use any other primary or secondary skills.

I also don't think invisibility would quite work the way some are indicating for the Rogue. You'd still be able to see their footprints, animals would still be able to sniff them out, and you should be able to target them by mouseover, even if it's tougher to spot them. I'd still make it a difficult skill to maintain at length.

I'd like to see something more stealth-based too (it's what I prefer to play), but as was mentioned, there really isn't a lot in the game yet that calls for steathing. If a Rogue or similar were to be introduced, it'd also be nice to see a new arc of missions and some integration in the current map to make it more worthwhile.

I made this over at The Guild Hall a while ago. It's still a work in progress, but the basic idea is there. I tried to fit a lot of different ideas into one profession while also borrowing as little as possible from the existing professions in terms of gameplay mechanics.

WONDERFUL REAL DECOY UR PROFESSION ROCKS!!!!
Maybe change the attribute names a bit, because DEMON body, DEMON mind so basically only have one of the attribute name have DEMON in it

GREAT JOB!

I say a ranger should have the skill to transform into the same thing as there pet
instead odf a whole new class called druid

Martial Artist rely on evasion and quick reflexes so the armed part isnt too offset. the point with hitting the armor is, who is gonna hit a person in the armored chest if there is a nice face poking out of the helm? and the heavily armored person not being able to move very quickly gives the martial artist a distinct advantage.

dont forget about brass knuckles

i beleive that the Martial Artist have a very good chance to survive in a world of swords and warriors. it has for decades in D&D.

for those who want Guild Wars to be "unique" how is using swords and armor unique? that has been around for 1000+ years...

Oh! How about a Robo-Pirate-Ninja ? It'd be so against what Guild Wars is, it'll be fantastic. And it can go to level 80000 and kill everything and tame bunnies.

Sorry, could help myself. I've seen some good class ideas here too, like the one that can turn into an animal. It reminded me of Mortal Kombat's glory days...ANIMALITY!

I too would like to see a rogue/assassin/ninja stealthy class... if it was implemented well.

And Martial Artists... but not just normal martial artists, but supernatural martial artists (like in Hong Kong Wuxia movies or Exalted, as opposed to real world martial arts feats.)

ninja/assassin would be very cool but heres few other ive been thinking

Dark Knight (maybe armors that are huge,dark and they need to have spikes and cool helm (my opinion is cool helm is very important) and maybe some big 2handed swords as weapons maybe since huge swords look great... i cant think much of skills so ill leave those for game dev's

Dragoon yea these would own also they need big armors too but their armors have to have something to do with dragons naturally maybe somekinda big axes as weapons (gigantic axe would look awesome with some cool armor) and as skills maybe some breath attacks and stuff like that

Martial Artist yea some kung fu would own maybe they could have higher dodge and nice hp but quit low def (armors something that suit martial artists)

thats all for now...