Changing secondary professions

I want to try some secondary professions but I don't want to lose what I got.

So through searching I have found you can change your secondary profession as many times as you want, and if you want to change back you can go back to the same trainer and change back.

Then what if you want to change it again? Do you have to do that quest again?

E.g. I want to try Warrior, so I do that warrior quest. Then I go back to the quest guy, change to warrior, play around a bit, then go back to the quest guy to change my secondary back to Mesmer.

Then I decide I want to try Ele so I do that quest. Then I decide I liked warrior better so I go back to the Warrior quest guy. Do I have to do the warrior quest again, or will the Warrior quest guy remember I already did it?

So then I change back to warrior then decide I really liked my original Mesmer secondary after all. Do I go to the warrior quest guy, the ele quest guy, or did they all forget what I was originally?


Last question: I also found through searching that the char holds all the skills you have unlocked for that char, so if I switch from warrior back to mesmer, I get all my mesmer skills back.

So what happens if I unlock a bunch of warrior skills then start a warrior? Does this new char suddenly have access to all the skills I unlocked with my other char? I believe not... because I finished the game with a necro/mes and then I started a warrior/necro, and the new char didn't have any necro skills. I assume that would be the case even if I started another necro primary.

So that means unlocked skills are tied to the char, not the account?

The unlocked skills will be tied to two things: that particular character, AND any PvP-only custom character you create.

You can change your secondary as many times as you want, you have to have done the quest though to change. When you ascended, your secondary quest would have updated. For instance, I recently ascended my N/Me. Immediately after I ascended, I got the message Quest Updated: The Mesmer's Path. Therefore I don't have to do the mesmer quest to switch back to it if I ever want to.

EDIT: If you do change your secondary, don't go purchasing skills right away. Head back to Ascalon, Sardelac, Yak's, and Serenity Temple to get the beginning skills quests.

To answer your questions:

1. No, once you have done the quest you don't have to do it again if you want to swap. The NPC who gives you the reward will swap your secondary profession for you whenever you talk to them - as long as you have finished the quest

2. You would have to visit the NPC who gives the Mesmer Path quest, although if Sofonisba is correct you won't have to do the Mesmer's Path quest to switch back to Mesmer.. but I can't confirm that.

3. As Sofonisba said - all unlocked skills are tied to the character which unlocked them as well as for use in PvP only characters. If you create a new PvE character they will have no access to those skills, while if you create a PvP character they will have access to them.

Actually this has been changed. Now you can just visit any of the trainers in the 3 areas, and they can change you to any of the proffessions you've done quests for.

Personally I think this is stupid, and takes away any credibility to "This woman is a Necromancer trainer" Now, apparently, the ghosts are all connected and can teach you anything you want.

Whoa, wait, you can go back and do all the skill quests for a changed secondary, even if you already did the quests for your original secondary the first time?

No, only quests from Skill trainers.

Yup! Im actually cleaving through ascalon with my second profession as mesmer ^.^

The only quests you can go back and do are the ones that are class-specific; I changed my W/Me to W/E a while back and found some new Elementalist-only quests back in Ascalon. They'll give you a few skills, but you'll end up buying the majority of new skills from a trainer.

And actually, I found it more important to spend your money capping Elites than worrying about the majority of the skills.

Alot of the starter skills for each class are perfect for a changed secondary.

Ah, sweet. I wanted to change my ele secondary to monk (from mes) just for restore life and healing breeze, since I have all the monk unlocked from another character. I hope I'll be able to find quests to get those

Time to switch my Warrior/Elementlist build into the good old W/Monk!

Thanks all... I can confirm this. Once you have done a second profession quest, you can go to any of the quest trainer guys to switch back to any of the second professions you have "unlocked", as often as you want. Your original 2nd profession is always one of the options.

So I switched my N/Me to N/Ele and I didn't get any of the skills from my Ele (as y'all said). I switched back to Mes and got all my Mes skills back. Switched back to Ele, no problem.

I went through some of the early Ascalon quests to get some new skills, but only the Ele-specific quests were available. All the ones that give skills to all classes I couldn't get because I already did them.

Except for one -- a loophole! The help the dwarves quest in Yak's Bend gives you your skills up front and so you don't have to complete the quest. Which I didn't. So when I went back to the dwarf in Yak's Bend, I got the Ele skills. And I still didn't do the quest. ;-)

There may be others like this. For any quests that give you skills up front, it's worthwhile not completing them.

DEFINITELY did not know that - that rocks.

Good for you, you slack off completing quests and it pays off! Who knew?

except its kind of a waste of time to play PVE for skills and not do quests... I mean, where's the fun in sitting around doing nothing?

Farming is fine, but its still fun to go out into the field with an actual reason.

Well if you did the quests the first time you can't do them again. So your only real choice is to buy skills, except for the few early quests that are profession specific. As a L20 you can solo them quickly and it saves you a few platinum, which is good if you are broke all the time like me.

I don't think I can post the link, so I'll just mention: guildwiki has an excellent list of quests with little pictures next to them telling you which are class specific.

Anet will probably close the loophole I mentioned, eventually... since letting people switch professions easily but making them buy all their skills at 1pp apiece makes an excellent gold sink. Y'all didn't think that they were doing it just to be nice, did ya? ;-)