You dont lose them. They become inactive. If you switch back, you regain them all back.
So if the purpose to Ascend at lvl 3 is to gain skills for PVP for different classes, it's kinda a longer route,....if you can just unlock everything with one character and simple go to the ghosts and ask to be put back to a certain class.
You can unlock all the skills and you keep them all, they just become inactive. Go back and reactivate a class and all your earned skills from that class will become available again.
I know this because my monk changed from Elem to ranger for a short time, trying it out, then went back to Elem and all my skills were back.
Seems much simpler than Ascending multiple characters for the purpose of unlocking skills from every profession. And takes away some of the argument you HAVE to grind missions to gain access to all professions.
So ArenaNet already made it so you only have to level one character. After that, you can make an instant level 20 PVP character and use all the skills and items you unlocked with your Roleplaying character.
J
