Talk:Specialization

Source?

"Professions have multiple professions and can only have one specialization at a time. A specialization provide access to a new weapon, elite skill, healing skill, and set of utility skills."
Where is it stated that: a profession will have multiple professions, one specialization at a time, and have specifically only one new weapon? – Valento ^msg 20:13, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

They certainly never said that during the HoT announcement or on the guildwars2.com page. - Felix Omni 23:43, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

It's still unknown if they're limited to only one weapon per specialization. My guess is that it's limited to 5 weapon skills, obtainable through a two-handed weapon or mainhand+offhand. The other two information were confirmed (one specialization in HoT launch but more to come), and one active at a time. – Valento ^msg 10:55, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Mesmer + Shield = Chronomancer

It seems the profession to be introduced in the cancelled GW1 expansion Utopia is pulling the ideas into this combination. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pathaugen (talk • contribs).

Please, do not speculate on names. Mesmer's specialization may or may not be a "chronomancer", add only trustworthy information. – Valento ^msg 04:05, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Unfair

If the Ranger (confirmed by ArenaNet) gets to use a staff, they get 5 nice new shiny skills. The necromancer gets to use a great sword (confirmed) they get 5 new skills, the Engineer can use a hammer (unconfirmed so far) is 5 new shiny skills for them too, and the mesmer gets a shield (unconfirmed), and only gets 2 new skills! :( that's not fair. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sir Grockalot (talk • contribs).

It's far too soon to say what all the mesmer will get, or that other classes will be getting more than two. For all we know, all of the weapon skills might change after specialization. Just be patient until we know a little more about how dramatic the changes o a profession will be. --Rognik (talk) 15:34, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

As far as we know, warrior, guardian, thief, and elementalist aren't get ANY new skills! OMGWTF! ...srsly, calm down, like Rognik said we don't know everything yet. —Dr Ishmael 15:45, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I am extremely upset about this and want to express my feelings. Elementalists should get a flail as their new weapon and a whole set of skills where I can run around flinging ice balls at people.--Relyk ~ talk < 16:03, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

As I main an ele, I fully support the statement above. Also -> Geomancer and Arcanist specializations. – Valento ^msg 16:09, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Same, I'd kill for a sword on my ele. Anywho, mesmers could end up dual-wielding shields for all we know, it's simply too early to rage about it. Ventriloquist 22:44, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I believe a dev said that professions who only get an off-hand will get something in compensation. What this "compensation" is, I have no idea. --KirbyGotenksabsorbed (talk) 09:31, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Necromancer Specialization Spotted!

Around 02:54 in WvW's new borderlands fight preview video, a necromancer was spotted near the door. I've added a brief description of their spells. This screenshot shows the two-chained attack during motion:

Three facts:

1. Uses light armor
2. Channeling a skill during first animation much like Spatial Surge (could be mesmer, but...)
3. Two-chained attack, and green effect while swinging the sword.

– Valento ^msg 19:12, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Elementalist Specialization Rumours

That_shaman data-mined skill tooltips that suggests elementalists will get swords as their weapons. In-game codes are: [&Bw5rAAA=][&B8VsAAA=][&B5FvAAA=][&B6ZvAAA=][&B8ZoAAA=][&B2NrAAA=] [&B1lpAAA=][&BxBqAAA=][&BwltAAA=][&BzJpAAA=][&B+JuAAA=][&B2RtAAA=][&BzdsAAA=][&B41tAAA=][&B7JpAAA=][&B6FvAAA=][&B29rAAA=][&B7tqAAA=][&B5JqAAA=][&B15oAAA=]

For easy viewing, here's a screenshot (I've greyed out which seem to be placeholders, ie. same name as dagger skills):

Source. – Valento ^msg 13:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Time to rename the article

Now we know "specializations" are what replaces trait lines. And what this article describes are "elite specializations". MithTalk 14:02, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Specialization would act as a single page for "Core specialization" and "Elite specialization". The content suggests treating specialization as its own entity apart for traits, we don't want to simply stick core specialization on the trait article.--Relyk ~ talk < 14:17, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I guess we could tweak this article and create a separate Elite specialization page, since there are core differences between what a spec is and what an elite spec is. Specialization is a general term to describe a build's focuses, while Elite specialization describes a specific type of specialization that changes your profession mechanics along with a specific trait line. On a related note, every reference to "trait line" should be more appropriately renamed to "specialization", since this is an official term to each of those lines, regardless if they're elite or not. – Valento ^msg 12:49, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Creating an elite specialization page is silly, stick it on specialization. Give a brief note on core specialization being the representation of trait lines, then commit the rest of the article to elite specialization. Create a minor section on Trait detailing how core and elite specializations relate to traits.--Relyk ~ talk < 19:59, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

That works. – Valento ^msg 23:35, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Notice template

Is the "Heart of Thorns content" template really appropriate, since the system will be rolled into the game before the expansion and only the Elite specialization will be HoT-exclusive? -Alarielle- (talk) 10:28, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree. These things are fundamentally different too. – Valento ^msg 12:52, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Source? —Dr Ishmael 13:20, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

From the stream, apparently. I didn't watch it, but it looks like its release was confirmed there. —Ventriloquist 13:37, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

guesses

dibs on Hitman, Trollslayer, Ritualist... -Chieftain Alex 14:21, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Warrior elite spec is mostly accurate. – Valento ^msg 14:32, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Interesting choice for the guesses there Alex and think you will be spot on with Ritualist. My guesses would have to be Assassin and Berserker. I also noticed that there was a thief pic in the .dat file that seemed to show part of a staff. Lady Elyssa (talk) 23:30, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

About tables

I think it would look better if we don't use them here. See, I love tables @_@, but I think it looks better as you've left them now. – Valento ^msg 19:59, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Really? I liked the tables much better because the color coding and saving space makes navigation easier.--Relyk ~ talk < 20:42, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I liked the space-saving, but not the loss of quick info about elite specs, which is more important than space. —Dr Ishmael 21:25, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

My Theory, Elite Specializations seem to be modeled after Diablo 1-3 classes

This not a far fetched theory, since Arena Net originated from the staff that created Diablo 2 and Early World of Warcraft(pre 2004)..

So there is a legit connection there. They fans of their own work I would assume.

So makes the most sense for this theory.

• Thief Staff = Diablo Monk

---

• Guardian Longbow = Demon Hunter

---

• Ranger staff = Druid

---

• Warrior (assume torch) = Barbarian

---

• Elementalist Warhorn = Wizard

---

• Necromancer Greatsword = Necromancer

---

• Engineer Hammer = Warrior

---

• Revenant Shield = Witch Doctor

---

• Mesmer Shield = I say this comes from GW1 utopia instead

But what's your thoughts on this theory?--Knighthonor (talk) 13:04, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

The guild wars and diablo classes are pretty much based on existing archetypes that have been around forever in games and media.--Relyk ~ talk < 05:08, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Page's Layout

It's been almost a week since specialization came out, so why does Specialization page looks like something to come out yet? I have to say, I tried to change (My version), but I guess someone has to point out what is coming for each elite spec, since by clicking on that elite spec detailing all about that specific spec is not enough... or perhaps "we" like to stay stuck in the past. – Keltz – talk 03:51, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Tables are probably ok, I toyed with the formatting a bit + cobbled User:Chieftain Alex/sandbox together. It was probably primarily reverted for the removal of the references/descriptions as you say - but the elite spec pages give the details. -Chieftain Alex 09:03, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Tables! Tables everywhere! – Valento ^msg 11:54, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Tables aren't necessary because the data is not tabular - there's only 1 column of data, which means it's simply a list. —Dr Ishmael 12:27, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

While I agree that tables aren't necessary, I think it would be awesome to have the spec icons! – Valento ^msg 13:03, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Specializations

Are they functionally similar or identical to gw1's Attributes? --100.32.136.225 23:03, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

No. GW1 skills were each linked to a single attribute, and putting points into that attribute would improve the stats of the skill. GW2 specializations are nothing like that. —Dr Ishmael 00:24, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Berserker and Forge

According to the Reddit thread, Warrior elite is the Berserker and Engineer elite is the Forge. --69.249.29.124 18:39, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I avoided that thread purposefully. 108.167.12.188 00:37, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Speculation doesn't belong in the wiki. ;p – Valento ^msg 00:38, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Tango Icons

Per the latest beta, there are new tango icons for each profession once they take on the elite spec. Should those be added somewhere? Lysander (talk) 15:24, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

"Tango" refers to a set of style guidelines. The in-game icons are definitely not tango. —Dr Ishmael 15:29, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Ah sorry. Working off the terminology on the icon page. At any rate, should the new icons be added somewhere? Lysander (talk) 18:21, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Ugh, sorry about that page. It needs a bit more editorial oversight. —Dr Ishmael 19:20, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh yeah, Guild_Wars_2_Wiki_talk:Community_portal#Elite_specialization_icons —Dr Ishmael 19:27, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

We need a fix to the EOD icons. The rest broke when spectre and catalyst were added Turbo404 (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't really make any sense to keep them I guess, with the 20px getting replaced and no larger equivalent of those new icons, we could probably remove them anyways. --Tolkyria (talk) 21:55, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what is apparently broken, it looks fine to me, or I'm misunderstanding something (in which case ignore the rest of this paragraph). However, I disagree with removing those profession/specialization icons completely. There's a ton of these icons for people to learn, and while Profession has a better overview of those, it still makes sense to me to include those icons here as well. This being said, they probably don't need to be this big (same goes to the expansion icons, to be honest), and since we're detangofying the wiki, I'd be fine with replacing them with the icons we use now, but I wouldn't want to remove them altogether. 23:27, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

"only one elite specialization"

There is only one elite specialization for each profession. Unless I missed something---- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ruine Eternelle (talk • contribs).

That's the plan for the future when there are more elite specs per profession, but you're right that it doesn't really make much sense to mention it yet so I removed it for now. 14:03, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Honor's icon not showing up.

The icon for  Honor isn't showing up, instead displaying the default icon. I can't figure out where the issue is stemming from. --Lamarius (talk) 17:53, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I think it's because it's the wrong template. Honor is a Trait Line, not a Trait. This template looks to see which line the trait is from, and the line is not a member of itself. Someone with some experience will have to verify. SarielV 20:04, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

That shouldn't be the issue. The other specializations listed use the same template as honor, and their icons show up properly. From what I gather, the template only uses the trait's trait line to generate the alt text for the icon. Lamarius (talk) 00:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Most of the properties for Honor aren't generating (compared to Zeal) including Property:Has game icon, which is what the template is looking for. —Mora 00:37, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Ah didn't know about those pages. Whenever I go to edit honor and hit preview, it shows all the missing properties. I just re-saved the page and the specializations page without making any edits and it's all fixed. Thanks for your help Mora. Lamarius (talk) 04:53, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Recent merge with trait

I don't think I like merging the two, they are distinctly different. Anyone else wish to offer an opinion one way or the other? -Chieftain Alex 22:24, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Against it as well. To me, traits are parts of specializations, not trait = specialization. —Ventriloquist 22:32, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Usage of the word trait is almost fully deprecated ingame, you only see it used still in two places. In addition it causes a lot of duplicate information on the wiki, eg. the trait page had information about hero points, the trait page explains how to equip a specialization but the specialization page does not, and more. Keeping it in one place helps the wiki get fully up to date again, a lot of pages have old info but on a duplicate page it has been updated already. It's impossible to have traits without a specialization anyway, so at most Traits should be a glossary page. Keeping it together also helps new users who may not know which of the pages has what information. Furthermore there also were significant rewrites of information that should be on this page either way that now have been fully reverted.Neok (talk) 12:58, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Even if the trait page is kept which is fine by me, I'd like to keep the improvements to this page. But I can't seem to revert to those (intermediate edit) and then make that page just link to Traits as normal instead of giving the definition here. Neok (talk) 13:47, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Future in-game lore

Responding to this RfC: Formats and conforming to them is really only important for things like templates, where if you don't format properly, they can break. There are no strict rules about where or how to put information onto the wiki, nor should there be. We have practices and processes, which purposefully speaks in generalities rather than specifics. If one contributor thinks information should be in one location, and another contributor disagrees, they start a conversation.

tl;dr: Put the information where you feel it can best help the readers and document the game. ; ) G R E E N E R 16:12, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Feedback 2018/04/02

Warrior 'Tactics' no longer deals with Banners. --97.104.193.206 06:31, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Good catch, removed. Thanks for the feedback! —Ventriloquist 09:32, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Specialization Revealed

I noticed a thing.

Subjects of specializations are same between professions. Like that in order; direct damage, critical chance, defense, health, mechanism, first elite, second elite. If condition damage, it is in second row mostly.

Should write to the page.

Bug: Ordering of specializations has written mistake for revenant in those places; big table in bottom of page of specialization, and small tables in bottoms of pages of professions.

Thingist (talk) 10:56, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

In game descriptions

As much as I’ve enjoyed making my own elite spec descriptions, I’m happy to give them up for the in game descriptions. They don’t capture quite everything but if someone knows how they might turn these into related tables or enters the descriptions before me, no hard feelings here. Turbo404 (talk) 16:44, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Tango icons (2022)

We need a fix to the EOD icons. The rest broke when spectre and catalyst were added Turbo404 (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't really make any sense to keep them I guess, with the 20px getting replaced and no larger equivalent of those new icons, we could probably remove them anyways. --Tolkyria (talk) 21:55, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what is apparently broken, it looks fine to me, or I'm misunderstanding something (in which case ignore the rest of this paragraph). However, I disagree with removing those profession/specialization icons completely. There's a ton of these icons for people to learn, and while Profession has a better overview of those, it still makes sense to me to include those icons here as well. This being said, they probably don't need to be this big (same goes to the expansion icons, to be honest), and since we're detangofying the wiki, I'd be fine with replacing them with the icons we use now, but I wouldn't want to remove them altogether. 23:27, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Certain smaller icons had not been uploaded and the template code that choose the higher resolution icon instead has been removed.

Regarding the icons, it was agreed by the community to use more realistic, in-game matching icons, see Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Community portal#Tango icons (regarding 20px), it was agreed by the community to remove the profession tango icons from the top of profession/specialization pages Talk:Necromancer#Skill type "icons".

It doesn't make sense at all to introduce two different art styles of tango icons. Also prominently placing a tango icon that is almost never used again onto the top is just bad design. See this this edit listing File:Dragonhunter tango icon 48px.png which is used on exactly two mainspace pages, while the icon File:Dragonhunter icon small.png is on ~400 pages with probably several thousands occurences.

Frankly, in terms of consistency there is no justification to use the 48px icons here at the specialization page and no justification at all to use the 48px in the intro of the specialization pages. --Tolkyria (talk) 08:20, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

For completeness, I preformed two edits:

• I reverted the usage of the old 48px elite specialization tango icons in the intro section of the individual elite specialization pages (e.g. see this edit). The community decided to get rid of those icons in mainspace and replaced them with new specialization icons. Readding the old retired icons in such a prominent position as a page intro is just undermining the decision made by the community, especially since this was one of the reasons that started this discussion.
• I changed the old elite specialization icons to the new ones on this page as this was the last mainspace occurence of this specialization icon art style (in order to have a consistent profession/elite specialization icon usage on the wiki).

--Tolkyria (talk) 11:53, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I just want to say that I am for having the profession icon at the top in some form, people shouldn't have to scroll to the very bottom to see it. ~Sime 16:00, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I removed them during this edits. My changes, especially the removal of the tango icon, were based on a bunch of edits which happened in September 2021. They followed this discussion which resulted in that non-in-game-icons should not be placed in the intro at the start of the text.

The highres profession icons were moved to the right, but for elite specialization this isn't possible as for some releases these simply don't exist.

So now we should add back a tango icon into the intro text when we even removed the official icon on the profession pages from the intro text? Feels wierd, but okay. --Tolkyria (talk) 16:12, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Scrolling down to see the icon is even weirder in my opinion. And that dragonhunter page has no icon anywhere except in the nav. ~Sime 16:23, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

We just need a bigger version of the new icons. Perhaps this was put on hold to see the reaction of wiki users to the new icons, which so far seems mostly positive. I'd say now it's a good time to make them. Warming Hearth (talk) 16:39, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Ye ye, I am not saying we should again add the tango icons since it's been decided we are not using them anymore, only that we should somehow include the profesion/elite icons at the top for easy access, even if it has to wait till someone creates them from the official mini icons. ~Sime 17:37, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Sime, the profession/spec icons should be at the top of those pages, displayed very prominently, because that's the main icons people will see in-game and want to be able to recognize. And I can't say I understand your point here, Tolkyria... I know we're removing tango icons from the wiki, and I do agree with that change, I never said otherwise. But the choice shouldn't be "tango icons or no icons at all", we should just use the icons we, well, use everywhere else... Really, I'm not sure what the confusion is about.

If the problem is that we need a bigger icon, then sure, it would be nice, but a small icon is still better than no icon. And if the problem is that those icons are still not official enough and that "non-in-game-icons should not be placed in the intro at the start of the text", then maybe we should have swapped to completely in-game icons? But the coloring is very helpful (I so wish they were colored in-game too...), and I don't think that it would be in any way confusing to just use these there. 22:31, 9 March 2022 (UTC)