774 replies to this topic

[evyo]

A DAoC Reaver type of class. Essentially a warrior that uses dark magic and weaponry such as flails, whips, morning stars in addition to life leech spells. I know that the necro offers the same vibe, but the Reaver was basically the most enjoyable class ever for me.

[Erenod]

The Confuser - taking skills up and above common mechanics :
example :
- lose your target - makes you immediately without a target *you need to select him again to srike"
- demand weapon - swap opponents weapons/kits/elements
- command endurance - make opponent dodge 2 times in a row instead of normal action
- purify - make opponent press f1/f2/f3/f4 to empty his/her class mechanic
- true blind - screen of the opponent goes black for some time
- confuse - switches opponents skills in random orders (1 goes into 5, heal goes into 2, utility goes into 4 elite goes into ulitity 3 etc).
- sick movement - switches the foe mouse axis's
and many more - break the 4th wall class .

Edited by Erenod, 24 August 2012 - 07:11 PM.

[Afyael]

Erenod, on 24 August 2012 - 07:10 PM, said:

The Confuser - taking skills up and above common mechanics :
example :
- lose your target - makes you immediately without a target *you need to select him again to srike"
- demand weapon - swap opponents weapons/kits/elements
- command endurance - make opponent dodge 2 times in a row instead of normal action
- purify - make opponent press f1/f2/f3/f4 to empty his/her class mechanic
- true blind - screen of the opponent goes black for some time
- confuse - switches opponents skills in random orders (1 goes into 5, heal goes into 2, utility goes into 4 elite goes into ulitity 3 etc).
- sick movement - switches the foe mouse axis's
and many more - break the 4th wall class .

Be pretty cool if they actually added some of that stuff to the mesmer.

[Nox_Aeterna]

I bet this was already posted 1000 times , but i will add my vote to it:

[Thaddeuz]

I saw a ''Confuser'' kind of profession in another forum. Personnally i would make it a Heavy armor profession with a name like Chaos Knight. Since the Guardian is heavy armor that give boons to his ally, the Chaos Knight would focus on condition, control and manipulation with attack giving fear, switching target, etc. His focus would be to restrain his ennemy abilities. I not sure what would be his profession mechanic but something like : the more chaos he create around him the faster his (F1 to F4 abilities) would recharge.

Another profession idea we can see often in the forum its the Martial Art Monk. I would like a light armor combattant that focus of evasive movement and speed to stay alive while fighting in melee range. His profession mechanic could be called Focus. Focus would be a stance giving powerful boons to the Monk for a short period of time. The monk idea woulb be to use evasive skill to evade and turn around his target to deal dmg to it and wait for his focus to return giving him the ability to deal high burst dmg. To make things equal the Focus could make the monk vulnerable for a short period of time at the end of his Focus. The monk in my opinion would have little condition dmg and focusing more on Power and Critical dmg.

[Radix]

I had an idea that future implemented professions would also act as the new playable races. So in character creation, for example, say the Skritt are implemented into the race selection; once you select skritt you go straight to your story questions. So, every skritt player would have the same skills apart from traits and weapon selection. This seems odd but their has to be a distinction from our races we have today and future implemented ones. The races we have today I would consider to be our "prime races", anything further implemented would be spotlighted as a distinctly "underdog" race and would act differently in game play.

For instance, the new Skritt have distinctly skritt abilities as they are sort of underdogs but also have unique skritt abilities--for example, have the ability to use combo skills between three skritt players. Such as three skritt players can join together in a whirling attack against enemies, or stack ability damage in threes. Or have dredge be able to hide underground like our in game worms and then pop up and attack.

In this way, their is a new dynamique added to the game which is these sort of underdeveloped races with their own sets of unique abilities and purposes and act differently from our current model of character creation.

[ShezuTsukai]

The problem with fixed racial skills/professions is you see a skritt coming you know what they are and what they can do. This is the same reason Anet did not give racial bonuses to existing classes. ie Charr +5 Engineer, Sylvari +5 Ranger, etc.

Instead all can be anything. In fact Asura warriors and giant Charr or Norn mesmers make me laugh because of the odd dichotomy. But they are playable and balanced.

[FoxBat]

ShezuTsukai, on 30 November 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

The problem with fixed racial skills/professions is you see a skritt coming you know what they are and what they can do. This is the same reason Anet did not give racial bonuses to existing classes. ie Charr +5 Engineer, Sylvari +5 Ranger, etc.

In their own words, they didn't give racial abilities because they wanted race to be an aesthetic/story choice and profession to be a mechanics choice. Its not like it's hard to see an ele or ranger from miles away anyway.

Still, that bodes even worse for this idea.

[Radix]

ShezuTsukai, on 30 November 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

The problem with fixed racial skills/professions is you see a skritt coming you know what they are and what they can do. This is the same reason Anet did not give racial bonuses to existing classes. ie Charr +5 Engineer, Sylvari +5 Ranger, etc.

Instead all can be anything. In fact Asura warriors and giant Charr or Norn mesmers make me laugh because of the odd dichotomy. But they are playable and balanced.

I disagree with that reasoning, mainly with the importance of that reasoning--people can see any profession coming. That though, doesn't matter much as weapon selection and traits become very important and will change the way a fight goes. So seeing the skritt coming is just as telling as seeing a norn guardian coming--the skills easily give away any profession anyway.

Also, I think the aesthetic and role playing aspect of this kind of implementation would be embraced by many. Look at all the quagan fans--if this was implemented and quagan was choice I could see many people roling quagan and loving it.

Another idea I was thinking is with the skritt--what if you could actually BE three skritt? Set up some sort of UI that is strategy based on positing or something. So the proffession actually has merit as it is entirely different--you play three skritt and can move them all in different ways; sort of like a group mentality. Would have all sorts of dynamique implications on gameplay.

[Radix]

I honestly don't think they should implement anything else, or, be very careful about it. If anything, I would rather see new weapons added and also see new rare weapons with rare elite skills. So you could get legendary elite skills if you found the weapon.

[SirGamesalot]

I havent bothered reading through most of this, but Battle Mage for sure!

[Radix]

Nox_Aeterna, on 24 August 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

I bet this was already posted 1000 times , but i will add my vote to it:

Nox_Aeterna, on 24 August 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

I bet this was already posted 1000 times , but i will add my vote to it:

Nox_Aeterna, on 24 August 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

I bet this was already posted 1000 times , but i will add my vote to it:

Nox_Aeterna, on 24 August 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

I bet this was already posted 1000 times , but i will add my vote to it:

actually, you gave me an idea. Expanding on an earlier idea for another pet class--Dragon Lord!

So earlier I had an idea for a pet class that would be dragon lord! And since many people are yelling for another heavy armor soldier class this could fit the bill. We have light, medium pet class but not really a heavy pet classes--which are sort of rare for role playing games but it could work. Basically you have sort of barbaric dragon armor and can summon different pet dragons which are ruffly the size of summonable minions--such as the ele fire minion. But basically the dragons are all small compact companions that fly at your side and you can summon different ones with different skills or utilities. The new weapon introduced would be the whip--sort of like the ele thunder whip--and would be featured as such. So you have a new heavy armor class that uses a whip and summons collectable mini dragons that have abilities and such. Anyone?

[Nox_Aeterna]

Radix, on 30 November 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

actually, you gave me an idea. Expanding on an earlier idea for another pet class--Dragon Lord!

So earlier I had an idea for a pet class that would be dragon lord! And since many people are yelling for another heavy armor soldier class this could fit the bill. We have light, medium pet class but not really a heavy pet classes--which are sort of rare for role playing games but it could work. Basically you have sort of barbaric dragon armor and can summon different pet dragons which are ruffly the size of summonable minions--such as the ele fire minion. But basically the dragons are all small compact companions that fly at your side and you can summon different ones with different skills or utilities. The new weapon introduced would be the whip--sort of like the ele thunder whip--and would be featured as such. So you have a new heavy armor class that uses a whip and summons collectable mini dragons that have abilities and such. Anyone?

The problem with this idea is that , it would be so awesome , everyone would make one and the game would lack people on the other classes.

Really dragon master? sign me in.

Edited by Nox_Aeterna, 01 December 2012 - 05:04 AM.

[Slirith]

Bard...I can see them stealing enemy stats to buff themselves/allies

[Radix]

How about some sort of shaman profession that can shapeshift into lesser races? Like you can shift into different animals and monsters with different skills or uses. Perhaps as you progress you sort of collect monsters or races. It could be where at lower levels you can turn into monsters such as Wurms or Karka or something but as you progress you are able to become skritt, quagan or hylek or something--all with different skills and uses once you transform. Perhaps an elite would be a giant kodan, or a troll or something.

[Xunlai Agent]

I want the Ritualist to come back for the Cantha expansion!

[Red J]

A Ritualist in heavy armour with stealth and confusions. Now, that's something I'd play.

[Ninja Ataris]

I would personally much rather see new weapons and utilities for existing professions than new ones. I don't really think any niche is unfilled at the moment. I'd rather have distinct and unique but few professions than a ton of metaclasses.

[Briar]

kaldak, on 18 December 2011 - 04:50 AM, said:

The way I see it there are sort of 2 separate niches to every profession.  The first is theme.  You have your martial fighter, you have your mage, you have your rogue, etc.  Some are a bit less traditional, but every profession has a distinct theme.  There are a lot of other fantasy themes out there, and many of them could work in Tyria.

The second part is play style.  In theory every profession should feel quite distinct when you play it regardless of the theme.  Even when you're filling the same role as another profession, it should feel different.  This is not something every MMO does.  Often those differences are only superficial, but in GW2 they seem to run quite deep.  Part of this is that each profession has one or more unique mechanics.  I'm not sure there's really much room for additional play styles considering how flexible the exiting ones are.

If they choose to make more professions, they'll probably have to be ones that are distinct from the existing professions in both theme and play style.  If you can describe a new profession pretty accurately in a single sentence as "It's like the _____, except _____." then it's probably not distinct enough.

This has it right to a T

and in responce

"Themes" that could be expanded on:

-Musical "Bard" like profession
-Martial Arts "Monk" like profession
Edit: - Spellblade like profession (although a stretch and seeping into mesmer territory)

"Play Styles" that could be expanded on:

-85% indirect damage profession (through party buffs pets or both)
-"Sniper" profession specializing at doing damage beyond the 1200 distance and otherwise raining hell on you from atop a cliff where you cannot hit them (aka ranger without the stupid pet)


... Thats all I got

Edited by Briar, 04 December 2012 - 09:51 PM.

[Thaddeuz]

You say : ''sniper a profession specializing at doint damage beyond the 1200 distance and otherwise raining hell on you from a top a cliff where you cannot hit them''

Sound pretty much like a Grenadier Engineer. It got a 1500 range and litterally create a rain of grenade. In WvW i often go on top of cliff and drop my grenade on invader below with my engi.

[Radix]

We have two soldier classes, three adventurer classes and three scholars--so if we balance that out (which we don't have to) I see a couple options:

future soldier professions:

1. A Dark Guardian theme, basically an anti guardian similiar but nothing to do with the death knight. He is a dark guardian and wears heavy armor but instead of healing and protection skills he uses darker magic. He would be spotlighted with black color and his gear is somewhat demonic rather than gold and shiny.

2. A Dragon Knight theme, a heavy armor wearing pet summoner. Summoning minions in the form of a variety of dragons for different utilities and skills.

3. A samurai type theme, heavy armor wearing class that are slightly weaker but faster than warriors, using fists as well as samurai swords for fighting.

If we ignore these the only other thing i can see is maybe the bard type class.

[wolfpaq777]

Can we stop pretending that every class has to be "FULLY ORIGINAL LOL".  I mean come on, 3/4ths of the current classes were taken directly from Guild Wars 1.  It's ok if they borrow from other sources as well.  

The biggest archetype that is missing is _____.  Just kidding, it's nothing.  Every major archetype that can be covered has been.  The one big missing element is the light armor healer because, surprise, guild wars 2 doesn't have healers.  I fully expect any new classes that get added will be consistent with the theme of whatever new content is released (similar to how assassins/ritualists fit perfectly in the asian theme of cantha and dervish/paragons fit well in the desert theme of elona).

I have 3 hopes.

- we get 2 new classes per xpac (let's face it, new classes are fun)
- we get 1-2 new character slots per xpac (don't force us to use your gem store)
- we get one end game armor set for each class with unique & cool artwork.

Edited by wolfpaq777, 05 December 2012 - 12:41 AM.

[Bottoms_Up]

I want to be a Dredge disaggregator so I can burrow through the ground and pull people into my mole holes. I'd happily be a comrade ratnik as well if they had a 'Dredge wave' elite.

[Radix]

Bottoms_Up, on 05 December 2012 - 12:54 AM, said:

I want to be a Dredge disaggregator so I can burrow through the ground and pull people into my mole holes. I'd happily be a comrade ratnik as well if they had a 'Dredge wave' elite.

I agree. Being a dredge would be awesome. I mean we already have the burrowing animations from the wurms in game so that wouldn't be hard. Then give us an expansion with a huge underground world.

[draxynnic]

A new profession doesn't need to be super-original in terms of general fantasy, but it does have to be sufficiently different in playstyle to the existing professions. There are so many different concepts for characters that you could go on forever if you tried to cover them all, but before long you'll find them doing the same things.

ArenaNet recognised, in interviews between GW2's announcement and when they really started ramping up the hype a couple of years ago, that the old model of two new professions per campaign was just not sustainable in the long term. They didn't rule out new ones - in fact, I think they said that if it turned out there was a gap that would be best filled by a new profession they would - but what they've aimed to do is cover every playstyle on release. They certainly aren't deliberately holding professions back for future expansions (races, on the other hand...)

With that in mind...

Radix, on 04 December 2012 - 10:52 PM, said:

We have two soldier classes, three adventurer classes and three scholars--so if we balance that out (which we don't have to) I see a couple options:

future soldier professions:

1. A Dark Guardian theme, basically an anti guardian similiar but nothing to do with the death knight. He is a dark guardian and wears heavy armor but instead of healing and protection skills he uses darker magic. He would be spotlighted with black color and his gear is somewhat demonic rather than gold and shiny.

2. A Dragon Knight theme, a heavy armor wearing pet summoner. Summoning minions in the form of a variety of dragons for different utilities and skills.

3. A samurai type theme, heavy armor wearing class that are slightly weaker but faster than warriors, using fists as well as samurai swords for fighting.

If we ignore these the only other thing i can see is maybe the bard type class.

In ascending order of plausibility:

Samurai, to me, are both too culture-specific and not sufficiently different to existing soldier professions. Culture-specificity is a problem partially because Cantha is quite definitely generically Asian rather than any specific culture - introducing samurai would push the mishmash a little too far in the Japanese direction. Tengu can probably get away with it, because they came from Japanese mythology initially, but I think ANet will shy away from saying that, say, a samurai culture was imported from Cantha to explain humans being samurai, and other races such as norn, charr and asura would find the concept of bushido completely alien to them.

Mechanically, samurai were really just the Japanese equivalent of knights, and are represented by the same professions - warriors for the purely martial, guardians for the more mystical. Swords already represent fairly mobile combat styles, and soldier armour is universal among soldiers, so if they introduced a samurai-esque armour skin for soldiers, weapon skins to back it up, and possibly a back banner back-slot item, you'd have the samurai look right there - and can choose for yourself whether your samurai is purely martial or a bit mystical.

Dragon knights have the problem, as I've mentioned above, that dragon energies in GW2 are inherently corrupting - every instance we've seen so far of someone willingly tapping into draconic energies has been a neon sign announcing to all that This Is A Bad Guy. PCs being dragon-powered characters while still interacting normally with the rest of their societies would be like death knights in Warcraft being welcomed back with open arms... and I don't expect ANet to be as callous with their lore as Blizzard.

Mechanically, you talk about the dragon knight as having draconic minions. Personally, when I hear the term, I don't think about minions, but do think about a combination of heavy melee with breath attacks - which, mechanically speaking, are cone shaped attacks. To make it harder for myself, I'm going to fill both specifications:

Ranger. Greatsword and shortbow or axe/whatever as their weapons, and they already have draconic pets (drakes) as an option. Put them in drakescale and they even have the look. Now, their cone attacks are instantaneous rather than being sustained like a typical breath attack, but that's getting pretty specific - the overall theme of pet, melee, and cone attacks is there.

You could also do it with a norn guardian - Frost Wurm gives you a pet that behaves somewhat draconic for a lot of the time, Call Owl is a reskin away from being a tiny dragonling swooping on your foe. Sword/Torch gives two cone attacks, one of which is actually a breath weapon, and a staff as your alternate gives you an at-will cone attack. You can even have a healing breath as your slot-6 skill if you choose, and like rangers, the top crafted armour has a draconic theme.

If you're willing to compromise on being big and tough, an elementalist can also fit the bill - many of their skills are already named for dragons, there are several cone attacks, and they have two 'call a friend' abilities before we consider the possibility of, once again, being a norn for the purpose of calling wurms. If you find yourself wanting to smash face in close, that's what Lightning Whip and Lightning Hammer are for - just make sure you have a tanky build if you go with the former.

Those are just the three closest matches - I could make a case for engineer as well, although I'd admit they're getting increasingly tenuous. Point being, the dragon knight concept is questionable lore-wise and covers too much ground that's already covered by other professions.

The 'dark knight' concept is probably the most viable by a long shot. It'd be powered by the same magic as the necromancer, and the kneejerk reaction could be that it would cross over too much with the necromancer, especially since the necromancer is already supposed to be pretty much as tough as you can get while still wearing light armour. However, even the most melee-oriented weapon set - dagger/warhorn - seems oriented more towards skirmishing and likely isn't a satisfying substitute for a dark-magic-using heavy. Now, filling that gap could be as simple as giving the necromancer an additional, more melee-oriented weapon like a scythe, but I could see it being done as a new profession, especially if associated with an Elonian expansion (the Mordant Crescent sound like they'd definitely fit the bill, you'd just need an explanation for how playable characters may have developed those skills).

[Br0th3r6r1m]

<sub>I like the idea of some sort of summoner/demonologist.  Where you control the summoner UNTIL you cast the spell... then your viewpoint skills switch to the demon/creature that was brought forth (like a shadow step), leaving the "orginal" race rooted & vunerable in a channeling trance.  Certain utilities could increase the distance between summoner and creature, speed of channel, amount of damage the summoner takes before the bond is broken, how strong summoner is without a summons on the field.

I like the concept of having to be tactically aware of what your position is before summoning, and the rooting vunerable-ness of your body as a result.</sub>

Edited by Br0th3r6r1m, 08 December 2012 - 07:17 PM.

[Faelun]

I wish they would bring the dervish back!

[Radix]

@ drax, you have many good points. Me and some guildies were talking about possible future proffs and came up with a really kind of cool one. I kind of just call it a "Mimic" as of now. Basically it's sort of a druid class (i know norn have some similarities) that can shape shift or transform--the difference is, not into animals specifically, but two other possibilities:

1. A sort of proffession that can "mimic" or transform into certain lesser races such as: quaggan, skritt, cr dredge etc. The races implemented would also have their own action bar with their own set of abilities that you could transform into. You would learn new races as you progressed.This also opens up a lot of specialization as the mimicable races would have their own specialties, so trait lines could be balanced out accordingly. Elites could perhaps be a special race such as a very powerful race--perhaps a Giant race, or maybe even Kodan. This sort of profession is very different from anything currently implemented and also has some good practical reasons to be implemented. Everyone talks about new races but their is reluctance to implement new races, so perhaps this profession gives us an option to explore other races with out actually implementing all of them but by creating this type of class. It would probably be better to simply have three or four mimicable races, but who knows, just like rangers can tame many animals perhaps mimics could mimic many other races? I forgot centaur, hylek, and grawl as possible candidates as well. . .

2. A sort of mimic that is primarily monster related. This gets us away from the worn out druid transforming and takes into account a more monstery feel. As monsters this Mimic would be able to transform into different Tyrian monsters such as wurms, griffons, minotaurs, harpees, trolls, or any other "monster" found in the world as well as any new monsters they can dream up. The mechanics would be basically the same as above; your mimic could trait towards your favorite monster or a balance of many, but while you are transformed your action bar is themed out to your monster. So say you turn into a minotaur, your skills are very warrior based and tanky, but if you transform into a harpee or something your damage may go up. The elites would be awesome and I could think of many--such as turning into a giant wurm where you become immobile but turn into a living trebuchet of sorts. It could even be called Monsterologist or something lol.

thoughts? ideas?

Edited by Radix, 12 December 2012 - 04:05 PM.

[Radix]

This.


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[draxynnic]

Shapehifter is a concept I toyed with a bit when speculating about possible new professions in GW1 until they stopped doing new professions.

In the GW2 context, though, there's really two main ways in which you can achieve transformations: You can do it through the profession special mechanic, or through utility skills. This means that, mechanically, elementalists and engineers are already acting as shapeshifters - elementalists have the 'change your action bar through the special mechanic' bit, while engineers do the same through utility skills. One could imagine, for instance, reflavouring many engineer kits as tranformations. A transformation profession, then, would thus be likely to end up having a similar playstyle to one of those.

With a relatively limited list and if kept to humanoids, I could see it being done elementalist-style, as there's more to the elementalist style than changing attunements - a shapeshifter would presumably be less focused on support and area effects and more on melee or single-target ranged, for instance. However, this does raise the question of where weapons fit in, and unless the answer to that question is 'it determines what forms you have available' (which would be even more of a mechanics-over-lore than skills being set by weapon already represents - if you pay attention to both friendly and enemy NPCs, you'll see them using skills that aren't available with the weapons they're wielding) then you'd be limited to four or five forms, including your natural one.

A more elegant solution would be through utility slot skills, as this would allow for a wider range of possible transformations. However, this would likely end up with a playstyle like the engineer - a shapeshifter would, again, presumably be more melee-focused than the engineer is, but the engineer already has kits that make them at least melee-curious, and mechanistically anything a shapeshifter could do, you could probably come up with a new kit or weapon for the engineer that would allow them to achieve a similar result. In fact, when you get down to it, Elixirs S and X already allow transformations of a kind, and transformation potions in general are a common trope - one could imagine engineers developing a line of transformation elixirs that allow them to be the transformation profession directly.

The big issue here is that it's a lot easier to come up with a new concept then it is to come up with a new playstyle and set of mechanics for it. Here, for instance, elementalist, engineer, and shapeshifter are all fighting over the same general playstyle - that of a character who has a wide range of options at their disposal and can adjust on the fly to whatever seems appropriate for the situation. Since ArenaNet found two mechanics to cover this and provided the two Es with different flavours of supporting skills, they managed to get two distinct professions out of it... although engineer and elementalist are still pretty close to the boundary of how close two professions can be while retaining their distinctiveness once you look past the magic/technology difference. There isn't a simple third mechanic I can see for the shapeshifter to use instead of stealing the mechanic of one of the existing professions, and the end result seems likely to end up feeling like an engineer with different graphics and more of a melee focus.

Hrrrrmn.

What might work is putting the shapeshifts on the utility slots and have them change up your entire bar and last for a set amount of time before going into recharge - kind of like mini-elites, except the profession is able to have more than one loaded at the same time. This would create a style that's less focussed around switching smoothly between options, but having something you can jump into for a short burst of power or a quick dip into another role, then back to normal play. This probably wouldn't be enough to form the basis of a profession - we'd still need to establish what the profession would do when not transformed - but it would be a way to distinguish between elementalists (profession mechanic attunement switching) and engineers (which can switch between kits whenever they feel like it.