Old Class, Original Skills.

This has crossed my mind several times since Factions came out, and the declaration of exclusive classes for each, or at least many coming chapters.

They will continue to come out with new skills for all the exsisting classes, and wile the probably more pressing matter will be making new skills for classes that you can get out of the next chapter, I wanted to focus on making new kinds of skills, and original additions to all of the classes, old and new.

I realy like the idea of Dual Wielding, but I think this is a good part of a new class rather than an exsisting one, and I'm not talking about dual daggers, although if no addition for true dual wielding is added, I would like for them to make daggers with Full length sword skins, so you can at least masqurade as a dual sword wielder.

But using a 2 handed sword and Axe isn't realy original enough to make a new class with, maybe a samurai with a katana, but as for most juggernaut swords and Axes for 2 handed use, I think this would be a better addition to Warrior. Because the damage of current sword/axe skills and the type of skills corolate with the attack damage and speed of current swords/axes, I think you should only be able to use skills which are made for 2 handed swords and axes accordingly, but they can share the same attribute as normal sword and axe, saving the need for new attributes. Thus Sword Mastery would increase your attack damage with Swords and 2 handed swords (all swords), and increase the effectiveness of all sword skills, but you would only be able to use 2 handed sword skills with a 2 handed sword, and likewise for normal swords. This would allow for a new kind of weapon, or rather a variation, and new skills. Best part, they could make it so in a certain chapter, all the sword skills learned are for 2 handed swords, so Warriors made in that chapter are unique from other chapters, wile old warriors can join this chapter and learn to use 2 handed swords as well. This also promotes begining players who have bought one new chapter to get other chapters, to unlock the full diversity of skills that even the original classes have.

Anet could split this and put 2handed sword addition in one chapter, and 2 handed axe in another, =D developer trick to spread out their content so it lasts longer. And they could also add a simular aspect for Assassin, allowing them to use a new kind of weapon with their dual wielding, like a Swallow (doulbe ended spear, or staff weapon with blades on both ends).

Along the lines of new weapons for all the casters, some 2 handed weapons with higher damage and slower attack rate would be good, along with a new look, like an Orb, or better, spectral/elemental essence which glows in your hands, that would be awsome for elementist, carrying a 2 handed... spectral essence, so it simply looked like mini fire shots were shooting directly out of his hand when he attacks. But more importantly, melee caster weapons of many designs for caster classes, they would damage and and use/have mods the same as staffs or wands, but they would have slightly higher damage and work at melee range, allowing for more effective touch based spell use.

OK, my next original skill type would be Channeling, not channeling attribute, but channelling skill type. This is a primary addition for Elementist, but it could be use in skills for other classes, or maybe a primary feature in a new class. Channeling skills would be a skill that is continuous, like a maintained enchantment, but it would cause an effect like a ward or DoT damage. Wile channeling, you cannot move, or cast other spells, you are devoting all of your action to maintaining an effect, so the combination of all of your action, ability to move, and some energy cost/maintenance would cause stronger effects than a normal maintained enchantment or DoT. Also, Channelling would have a much wider area of effect, between a location effect and an area effect (same radius as a spirits effect).

These would actually be better as a skill type for a new class, which would be able to maintain a party support, or deal a weakenning effect or damage on enemies from a vast range, but either way elementist should have a hand in this. Channeling can cost large amounts of energy, and even 2 or 3 maintenance cost, or have some weaker effects, but overall, they should be rather expensive, since they effect a massive radius. Channelling skills can be interrupted wile casting, and have very long cast times, ranging from at least 3 seconds to even 10 seconds, but after it has begun, the only way to stop them is to knock the player down, or kill him, and there are ways to avoid knockdown

For Elementist, skills like Rain of Fire, dealing Firestorm damage in an medium area(about 50% wider than location). I would suggest a 20-25 energy cost, exhaustion, and 2 point mantenance. An Air skill that causes healing winds to blow in an area(same as spirit), giving all teammates in the area 1 health regeneration, and knocking down enemies in the area once every 10 seconds, simular costs. A necromancer skill which Automaticly raises any corpses into a standard minion after 4 seconds in an area, and granting no degen on all allied minions in your effected area, costing 25 energy, and 33% health, plus degen of 2 or 3 health and mantenance of 1. There can be monk and ritualist skills which grant continous regen, or repetative healing, or defensive boosts. A ritualist channeling skill, Summon an ancestoral spirit upon yourself, granting 25% chance to evade attacks to all teammates in a vast area of effect(50% wider than a spirit), but doubling the damage you take on yourself, only costing 10 energy and 1 maintenance.

They could also make strong location effects, like an elementist skill which turns the ground in to magma at his location, dealing firestorm level damage per second, and causing crippling and burning to anyone who is in the location around him, 20-25 energy, exhaustion, and 3 maintenance. That is enough examples, either you like it or you don't, but I think it would be a great tool to many caster classes, and it would make Elementist alot more fun. If they made a new class around these skills, I think some kind of Singing Priest would be cool, if anyone here has watched Record of Lodoss War, and knows what the Priests of Myree are, then you would get the picture, better name hopefully though.

The next skill type would be Sacrificing, a new kind of sacrificing for necromancer, sacrifice your life. I got this inspiration from the monument to the Ancestoral Necromancer in Factions, he found his family and village slain, so he raised them all into minions, and then sacrificed his own life to set them on a war path into the enemy line. They can make Death sacrifice skills which use all corpses in your area and turn them into minions, including your own, special minions which are 4 levels stronger than normal bone horrors, and dont degen. Or you could sacrifice your life to raise a level 24 bone dragon, but it wouldn't just be a minion, you would be in control of it, it would have 8 preset skills and you would control it until it dies, if you are raised it also dies. They can also have Ritualist skills that sacrifice his life to raise an ancestoral spirit to fight for him, controled by you. If they make a Summoner class, I think this would be a good cost for a true summoned beast, although it is a bit extreme for a primary function.

Oh wait, I just remembered the other skill type I came up with, Skill robbery, for Mesmer, it is a new kind of interrupt, which stops the enemy from casting a spell, and automaticly makes the mesmer use the skill against them. One spell which interrupts only offensive spells, and automaticly throws it back at the caster, one which robs support skills and automaticly cast it on himself, or perhaps it will steal the support skill and allow him to use it once for free on his allies. And one elite which robs any skill for up to 15 seconds, when the mesmer robs the skill the enemy can't use it until the mesmer uses the skill, so the mesmer can wait til the time is up to hold the spell for the longest period of time, and the enemies skill doesn't start recharging til he gives it up. Lets say the mesmer accidentally robs a sword skill, he can't use it, but he can sure hold on to it til the time is up

Added.
A good alternate weapon for Ranger would be a arm mounted bow/crossbow, I'm not interested in mechanical crossbows because they actually have longer firing rates, but rather, a mini bow that is mounted to one arm, which allows for faster, short ranged vollies. Anyone Seen vampire hunter D, the eldest Marcs brother had one, it was mini bow attached to the right for arm, it is basicly a non mechanical crossbow. This would be a weapon for Ranger to exploit damage per hit enchantments and preperations, since it is faster then the fastest current bows, at about 60% more attack speed than short bow, but half the range of most bows, it would provide a close range "Blast Em" effect, basicly trading the majority of rangers attack range for pure ApS (attacks per second).

Another good addition to ranger would be to change the mods on the bow so the shaft determines the bow type, wile the string determines special effects (armor, enchantment, energy). Then make Quivers of arrows, which will determine the damage type, longer bleeding or poison, elemental damage, life or energy stealing. This way players can find a great bow and make it the type of bow they want with mods, and allow for a visible quiver. If the player doesn't equipt a quiver, the arrows are simply normal.

That's all the ideas I could come up with for now, If you can come up with some other original skill types, or if you have some good ideas for skills using these new skill types, make mention.

I redesigned the AoE range of the Channelling skills, the area was a bit to wide, but the basic idea is a skill that can hit enemies beyond the average range of attack since you can't chase them or run away when they attack without discontinuing. And I think I forgot to mention, but Channelling effects can be deactivated by the caster just like any maintained enchantment.

P.S. Thanks to anyone who had and tolk the time to read up.

I really like your ideas, just to add some ideas to it:

2 handed weapons should be added, there need not be any added attribute, as 2 handed weapons can go in thier already created attributes, just add new skills spacific to 1 handed or 2 handed weapons. 2 handed swords, 2 handed axes, giving them higher dmg and slower attacks like hammers now and...on the other side, one handed hammers. Also with dual weild the same idea could be added for all 3 of those weapon types, dmg would need to be adjusted as well for these weapons.

I would like to see the reposte skill on warrior changed to melee weapons instead of just swords, though, deadly reposte could stay with sword, as it causes bleeding...bleeding just doesn't seem right on a hammer.

I think Monks smiting attribute should give them a melee weapon, a bo staff preferably.

finally I would like to see an elemental form or conjured elemental being like a pet that does it's type of elemental dmg and an inate skill at a high level, for example, conjure fire elemental would be a lvl 1-15 (based on 1-12 attribute points), and lvl 18 for 16 attributes, at lvl 15+ the fire elemental has a 22% chance to set target on fire. Skills for water, air and earth would be something like a 66% slow for water, chain lighting attack for air, and knock down for earth, all being a 22% chance. They don't have to be very powerful creatures, or last very long, making them similar to undead minions, but only allowing 1 at a time. I would say they would also have other inate attributes, like a Fire ele does an amount of return dmg, water has a 50% chance to evade attacks, air moves 33% faster than normal, and earth has 130 AL. This same idea would be for elemental form, making the caster these beings for a short time, instead of the pet elemental skill.

That is my 2 cents to add to your idea.

WTS Shiros Swords 20K ok

I'm gonna save myself the trouble of reading the entire post. They could add dual wielding if they added a bonus+penalty for it. Faster attack speed, less damage or something like that.

I like the ideas, improve on current classes rather than constantly making more

In pvp, I'm not sure there'd be much incentive to stay with 1 handed weapons much at all, unless you're in RA. The channeling idea sounds ok. I don't think they'll change bow mechanics at this point in time but.. well, I wouldn't be against it.

*casts Animate Thread Horror*

On dual weapons: You'd have to be very careful about balancing, unless you just make them daggers with a different skin. You could play the damage/attack speed game, but since daggers have the same attack rate as swords and axes before you consider the chance of double-striking, you don't really have much leeway there.

On two-handed swords and axes: I like this idea, and you'll probably find that a lot of skills could work for both (for one quick and easy example, I don't see anything unbalancing about Hamstring being usable by both one- and two-handed swords). One thing that is both boon and bane to this idea is weapon-switching. On the one hand, it allows some flexibility in tactics (for instance, you could wield sword and shield when required to tank, then pull out the big sword when you want to take down a caster quickly), but on the other hand, you could end up having situations where, for example, a Warrior uses one weapon type to build up adrenaline and the other to deliver the adrenaline spike (especially likely if, for example, the one-handed sword had a faster attack rate while the two-handed sword had a slower attack rate and its skills had lower adrenaline requirements and/or larger added damage to compensate for the slower rate of adrenaline gain).

One thing I find amusingly ironic here, however, is introducing two-handed swords would make it a lot easier to make a "proper" samurai out of the Warrior, with the right skills and a decent armour style.

On new caster weapons: I'm not sure as to whether 'greater damage versus slower attack speed' caster weapons are really worth the effort. On the whole, dealing damage with wand/staff/whatever isn't really intended to be the primary focus of the class, so introducing a new class of caster weapon with slightly different behaviour doesn't seem to be worth the effort. Melee caster weapons are a whole new kettle of fish - as you said, they would make touch and PBAOE builds a lot more convenient to use.

On channeling-type spells: Sounds like you're essentially asking PCs to do what Ritualists normally call spirits in to do...

It could work, but one concern I'd have is that it could lead to certain professions being expected to simply spend all their time channeling a given effect, which doesn't really sound like a lot of fun. You'd probably want to be looking to find a balance - where channeling provides some tactical flexibility rather than being the major focus of a build. For instance, one thing I'd be looking at is a Breath of Fire effect that costs 5 energy and 1 second cast time initially, then costs an additional point of energy for each second you maintain it - meaning that you can control how much investment you can choose to put into the spell, but not something you'd necassarily want to keep up permanently. (Other options could be something like a Meteor Shower that costs an additional 5 energy for each meteor you bring down after the first, and so on.) The suggestions you've made sound mostly like the sort of thing you'd be wanting, from a tactical perspective, to be maintaining for as long as is reasonable after you put them up, during which time you might as well go to the toilet if it wasn't for the risk of being jumped or interrupted while channeling.

On sacrifices: We may be reading too much into what the Necromancer hero did - maybe instead of some special sacrifice, maybe all he did was chose to pop off a Verata's before he was going to die anyway and that was enough to turn the tide. Or maybe we're reading too little - maybe his sacrifice was something more fundamental that made it impossible for resurrection magic to work on him, something we wouldn't want to do with our PCs.

That aside, we do have something similar presently in the Death Pact Signet - that one doesn't require sacrifice initially, but someone who's died once may well die again, and this time they'll take you with them. They would be hard to balance, however - it would need to be something that would be worth the sacrifice without necassarily being an "I win" card - I'd be looking to put them in the 'meaningful last resort' category. (Ie not something you'd use normally, but something that could make the difference when things are going downhill, especially if you're about to be killed anyway). One consequence of their introduction, though, would be to make Lively Was Naomei a lot more popular.

Skill robbery: Your elite already exists in several forms - Arcane Thievery, Arcane Larceny, Simple Thievery... It would be fun to have it in interrupt form, however - either as you describe (spell is hijacked by the Mesmer to work on a different target) or simply by being an interrupt form of Arcane Thievery where you steal the spell being cast instead of a random spell on their bar.

Mini bow: I have both realism and balance objections to this. First, you're talking potentially a lot of damage with a lot of preparations with such a high attack speed. Ever seen what a competent Needling Shot ranger can do to someone with the right preparations? Part of that is because Needling ignores armour (although the preparations attached to Needling generally don't, with Read the Wind being one exception), but with your suggested attack speed boost, people would be able to do something similar without the need to spend 2-3 energy every second, invest in a skill slot, or wait for the target to drop below 50% health. Realism-wise, I don't see how an 'arm bow' is going to result in a significant attack speed bonus - of five or so steps in firing a bow (draw arrow, notch arrow to string, draw string, aim, fire), having a smaller bow only helps with one of them. Maybe two, if the arrows are reduced in size enough so that they're easier to draw. To have this effect, you'd probably be looking at something like the Chinese repeating crossbow, which actually eliminates two of these steps resulting in a fire rate of around one shot every 1.5 seconds or so.

The idea for a different system of bow mods looks interesting, but at this point I'm not sure it could be implemented without a significant reworking of the system. That said, it could be done in a way similar to inscriptions - have the new bows in a given chapter work one way while those in previous chapters work the other way. "In (insert continent name here), we use a different method for enchanting our bows. It isn't compatible with what you backward foreigners use, but we think it's much more elegant!"