Guestimating lower ceiling for # skills from weapon associated skill slots

[Thalanor Thornhale]

The developers said it: GW2 will have fewer skills than GW1, but there will still be plenty of skills. Now that 3 professions have been released, I thought it would be interesting to look at how many skills each profession can potentially get at the least. Note these calculations do not include racial or elite skills but only weapon associated skills! Let's start with the least armored class and work ourselves up.

Elementalist:

This is relatively easy to guestimate.

(# Main-Hand Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 2 * 3 = 6
(# Off-Hand Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 2 * 2 = 4
(# Two-Handed Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 1 * 5 = 5

# Total Skill Slots: 15
# Known utility skills: 4 (4 different elemental attunements)

=> Total weapon-associated skills: 60
=> Lower limit for utility skills: 4
=> Total skills based on weapon-associated skills: 64

Next is the Ranger:

(# Main-Hand Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 2 * 3 = 6
(# Off-Hand Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 4 * 2 = 8
(# Two-Handed Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 3 * 5 = 15
(# Pets Options)*(# pet skill slots)= 12 * 4 = 48

=> Total skills based on weapon-associated or pet skills: 77

Last but not least we have the Warrior:

(# Main-Hand Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 3 * 3 = 9
(# Off-Hand Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 5 * 2 = 10
(# Two-Handed Weapons)*(# skill slots) = 4 * 5 = 20

=> Total skills based on weapon-associated or pet skills: 39

You will notice the difference in # skills between the professions. Note thought that these are rough guesses based on known information. The # of non-weapon associated skills/utility skills and elite skills are unknown. Also, the warrior in particular has skill chains. The number of skill chains is unknown.

If you consider the above to be fairly conservative estimates, and consider that we will need to add elite and racial skills, I think it is fair to say that there will be plenty of skill options to play with.

[Nemeon Lion]

All of this is considering only the gear-5 skills. Add in the utility-5 skills that will envelop profession and racial skills and you get yourself hundreds of skills per profession. That's still a lot.

[Thalanor Thornhale]

Also, taking a low ball guess, 80 skills per profession, and multiplying this by the number of professions, we get at least 400 different skills. This excludes skills for the 5 races...

[Смерть]

I think there will also be the "impression" of even more skills since some will have dual-purpose. For example:

An elementalist might cast an ice spell to freeze enemies, but that same spell might give his allies Frost Armor to protect them from incoming attacks.

[Nemeon Lion]

I always loved multi-use skills. It reduces the balance equation but still gives complexity and promotes PvP.

I call dibs on the first Sylvary Water Elementalist.

[Enenion]

Your estimate doesn't include chain skills. The sword on the warrior for example gives 5 skills instead of the 3 some other weapons get. Those are Savage Leap, Flurry, Sever Artery, Gash, and Final Thrust. The sword on the ranger also has a chain. I also think your estimate for pet skills is too high.

[seamussheridan]

You are assuming however that 1 handed weapons and two handed weapons will have skills that are all 100% different.

GW1's biggest problem is that there are far too many skills out there. I highly doubt Anet will make that same mistake again, right off the bat this time. They did smartly kill secondary professions, but they need to start off with a ton fewer skills per profession, not start with the same exact way too many for sanity number.

Im hoping at the start there are no more than 30 or 40 at the absolute most per profession. Anything else and add-ons will make it stupid and another impossible to balance game.

[Nemeon Lion]

You are assuming however that 1 handed weapons and two handed weapons will have skills that are all 100% different.

GW1's biggest problem is that there are far too many skills out there. I highly doubt Anet will make that same mistake again, right off the bat this time. They did smartly kill secondary professions, but they need to start off with a ton fewer skills per profession, not start with the same exact way too many for sanity number.

Im hoping at the start there are no more than 30 or 40 at the absolute most per profession. Anything else and add-ons will make it stupid and another impossible to balance game.

You're missing the bigger picture. While the absurd number of skills was a problem, the sheer number of combinations was the main factor why it was so hard to balance the game.

By locking 5 of the players' skills to the weapon being used, the number of combinations drops exponentially, even if the same number of skills is implemented.

That makes balance much easier to accomplish.

[Thalanor Thornhale]

You know, on a related note, with all the weapon-based skills, I do wonder how many racial skills there will be. There already seem to be a lot of weapon-based skills, we have not even counted other skills and elite skills. Then there are racial skills! Too many and it might make things super complicated, too few and one might wonder why bother...it will be interesting to find out.

[Akirai Annuvil]

Quite some speculation and misinformation in that post.