[EXPANSION SUGGESTION] Secondary profession

Hello everyone! <3

Since Guild Wars 2 launch, I've been missing these secondary professions familiar from Guild Wars 1. In my opinion Guild Wars 2 build mechanics have always been too simple, even made more and more simple over the years. You could only imagine what kind of wonders the secondary profession could do, meta would definitely change enormously.

The way I think this would work out in practice is:

1. You could only use your main profession elite skills (much like in GW1).2. You could not use secondary professions elite specialization traitlines.3. You'd have 5 utility skill slots, and you're free to fill these slots with main/secondary profession utilities. For exam. you could choose to use multiple healing utilities.4. You are able to use either professions weapons. In case both professions can utilize same weapon, you're able to choose which of these 2 skills you slot.

Secondary profession traitline implementation is pretty tricky, since every profession has their own profession mechanic (shroud etc.) and traits often improve these mechanics. This is something that needs a lot of thinking, and requires plenty of work.

And hey Anet, please. Add build templates for traits/utilities, this should have been in game since the beginning (once again much like in GW1). :s

Yay. Welcome to balance hell comrades!

I think elites fill that role in a much less cluttered manner. I assume the current system is a lot easier to balance. Here's something I learned from MtG: If you need to rework 80% of your deck to make that one card win you the game, that one card might not be that good for the deck you want to play. What I am saying is, and you also mention it, if to make secondary professions a thing everything needs to be reworked to a point where GW2 is no longer GW2, it might be easier to stick and expand what we have.

Also, GW1 is still online for everyone available to play, the game already exists so there's no need to recreate it. I get that the same person can like different games and that in most cases ppl can only play one game at any given time, so the wish arises to have the perceived best of every game in one. I like GW2 and I like GTA, but they're nothing a like, so what's the best solution? We need to make GW2 more like GTA, it's clear, should have happened from release tbh. ;)I play a game if I like it. And I like GW2 because it is GW2, if it was more like GW1, or GTA for that matter, I might not like it as much. If I want to play GTA, I play GTA.

@NoiseRen.2403 said:Yay. Welcome to balance hell comrades!

Yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, this won't work in GW2 due to said issue.

Respectfully, no.

Being able to use the traitlines of other professions will invariably allow some of the stat boosting traits to be doubled up, added to the fact that adjusting every trait for use with all professions will be like looking down a kaleidoscope.

Players would undoubtedly find combinations that were not as intended, and any balance tweaks to the offending traits/skills would have knock-on effects with how they fit with other combinations, essentially a game of whack-a-mole. It's the main reason the GW2 profession system was designed differently from GW1. Notwithstanding some niche builds, secondary professions could be used to fill a void in the skills of the primary profession. With GW2, each profession has a varied skill set, offering damage, healing and support, especially with the introduction of elite specialisations, such that the main driver behind secondary professions is near enough null and void.

Let's not repeat past mistakes. GW2 intentionally left out secondary classes due to the problems it caused for class & skill balancing in the original game. They have a hard enough time balancing stuff in GW2 as it is. Trying to incorporate and balance secondary classes in GW2 would be a nightmare.

I don't think adding another layer of complexity like this would do any good to the game. The traits of GW2 aren't simple numbers like in GW1, they offer actual benefits and translating those benefits to every other profession out there isn't possible. Plus, many skills are the way they are because they are part of the main profession mechanic.

An example: Elementalists have so many skills on their weapons due to their attunement swap mechanic. Imagine an Elementalist / Ranger using a Greatsword, what happens next? No more attunements? That's the entire mechanic of the Elementalist right there and by using a non-Elementalist weapon you killed it.

Same thing with Thief: all Thief skills use initiative. Are you saying that a Thief/Guardian using a Dagger/Torch will use cooldowns on their offhand but initiative on their main hand? That's madness.

Imagine now a Revenant, each Legend gives you a set number of skills that swap when you change Legends. Now you make a Revenant/Necromancer and you can slot wells? How would that work with the Legend mechanic of the Revenant?

Take a Ranger/Elementalist slotting the Glyph of Storms as one of their utility skills. What happens now? How do you figure which attunement you are on to select the proper storm glyph?

Fortunately, you said no Elite specs so I don't have to go over Scrapper gyros and Druid Celestial Avatar skills.Of course there are LOADS more problems this is only the tip of the iceberg.

tl;dr: Using weapons and other utility/healing skills that do not belong to your profession is an impossibility. They'd either need to block half of them to not work at all as dual profession skills, or re-work every single one of them to work as such... no thanks.