How are skills acquired in GW2?

[Deleted]

I haven't been following the game during its development so this may seems like a stupid question. Anyway, in the first guild wars I thought that it was really cool how I had to defeat specific bosses to get their elite skills, and I was wondering if there will be something similar in GW2 or you will simply learn them from some npc in a town?

[rhandric]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...tiated-READ-ME!

But, I'm feeling nice, so I'll briefly summarize, even though there's a sticky that covers it.

2 types of skills, weapon and utility (classifying heals and elites under utility, since same system).
Weapon skills you learn by killing a mob with that weapon/attunement equipped/active. Utility skills you buy with skill points. There are skill challenges in the world, and you get skill points every level (including after hitting 80)

[Valeron]

You earn skill points by leveling and through certain skill point challenges. You use those skill points to purchase new skills. No npc trainer is involved.

[terrahero]

You continue to gain skillpoints after lv80 (max level) because some items require skillpoints to purchase.

Honestly, it is a friendlier system then Gw1 where you had to "steal" the skill from specific mobs. But to be honest, even tough Gw1 never took to me for very long, i did like that system more then the current. It felt more involved and rewarding, and gave you a "mission" to get those specific skills you wanted.
But the Gw2 system is decent too. Except that utility skills are tiered, that was dumb.

[Valeron]

I loved GW's capture system. I'm rather sad they didn't carry over that to GW2. I suppose with it being non-instanced then it would have been problematic to implement it.

[rhandric]

You continue to gain skillpoints after lv80 (max level) because some items require skillpoints to purchase.

Honestly, it is a friendlier system then Gw1 where you had to "steal" the skill from specific mobs. But to be honest, even tough Gw1 never took to me for very long, i did like that system more then the current. It felt more involved and rewarding, and gave you a "mission" to get those specific skills you wanted.
But the Gw2 system is decent too. Except that utility skills are tiered, that was dumb.

I remember the days when you had to skill cap while they were using the ability...almost impossible for some abilities

[nalle]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...tiated-READ-ME!

But, I'm feeling nice, so I'll briefly summarize, even though there's a sticky that covers it.

2 types of skills, weapon and utility (classifying heals and elites under utility, since same system).
Weapon skills you learn by killing a mob with that weapon/attunement equipped/active. Utility skills you buy with skill points. There are skill challenges in the world, and you get skill points every level (including after hitting 80)

Another thing to note is the latest change to the acquirement of the utility skills. It is now a tiered system where you first must buy a set amount of skills in the first tier to unlock and be able to buy skills for the next tier. The cost in terms of skillpoints seems to rise a bit each tier as well.

[Deleted]

I loved GW's capture system. I'm rather sad they didn't carry over that to GW2. I suppose with it being non-instanced then it would have been problematic to implement it.

That's why there are skill challenges which reward skill points. That's like hunting for (elite) skills in GW1. They tried to carry it over to GW2 as best as they could. You just unlock all your important skills (1-5) by using them regularly, because otherwise it would be annoying to have only your skill 1 when you find a new weapon.

[Deleted]

I think the tiered system is good, as it encourages people to more than cherry pick, opening up more room for experimentation.

It's still a fairly open system, only forcing you to pick up 5/15 possible skills before moving onto the next tier.

[Vlad Morbius]

There are pros and cons; I’ll need to delve further into it before I make up my mind. It is one of the reasons I’m anxious for this next beta.

[Spl4sh3r]

Feels like alot of confusing answers here so will try to give my best.

As mentioned the skills are based in two cathegories; One is the Weapon skills and the other is the Utility skills, each having their own subcathegory which works the same. For weapon skills you are required to kill enemies to gain experience with that weapons that in turn will unlock the rest of the skills. A two-handed weapon always have five skills, mainhand weapons have three skills and offhand has two skills. There are some special rules for some classes but it is still the same overall. The biggest thing here is that each weapon type has its own Weapon skills and they need to be unlocked seperately, the hand it goes in also determines what skills it is. Worth noting is that your first skill in each weapon is automatically unlocked because otherwise you would have no way of killing anything with them, however this only counts for weapon that are two-handed or used in mainhand. Offhand weapons are never unlocked until you unlock them yourself. Mainhand skills are always unlocked before it starts on offhand skills aswell, so try not switching mainhand until you unlock offhand skills.

For Utilities you have the Heal skills, standard Utility skills and Elite skills that all share the same resource to gain access to. All of them spends Skill Points to unlock and some of them are even tiered so that you are required to unlock some to get to the rest. You have your first Heal skill unlocked from the beginning, but you can choose to change it as soon as you can afford another Heal skill. You get your first Utility slot at level 5 and can from then on unlock most of the Utility skills assuming you can afford it. The Elite slot is unlocked at level 30, which is the point you should unlock your first Elite so might be worth saving atleast 10 Skill Points for this level. The Skill Points themselves you gain each level and also from special Skill Challenges which are placed around the map, there are around 190 in the world at any given time which you can complete only once. Some special rule is on the 13 of them which are available in WvW, they will reset on each new WvW match and are therefore infinite.

[terrahero]

I think the tiered system is good, as it encourages people to more than cherry pick, opening up more room for experimentation.

It's still a fairly open system, only forcing you to pick up 5/15 possible skills before moving onto the next tier.

There is already room for experimentation. Its called the Mist, instant lv80 with all your utility skills unlocked and golems to pummel. And its not very open at all because skills you might like more are locked untill a certain point, especially if you want to play an Engineer. As your weaponkits (weaponkits are essentially your weapons) are also tiered. Its like locking away a Warriors ability to wield a Greatsword untill he gets to lv20.

[Deleted]

I remember the days when you had to skill cap while they were using the ability...almost impossible for some abilities

Surely that wasn't in the live game? Since release it has always been like this: kill mob, use capture signet while in range of the corpse, select skill and poof your capture signet turns into the selected skill.

[rhandric]

Surely that wasn't in the live game? Since release it has always been like this: kill mob, use capture signet while in range of the corpse, select skill and poof your capture signet turns into the selected skill.

It was definitely in the live game until June 8th (so, around 6 weeks) when they changed it to the current functionality.

[Merendel]

It was definitely in the live game until June 8th (so, around 6 weeks) when they changed it to the current functionality.

eliet shouts, stances or 1/4 cast spells were pretty much impossible to cap before that update. I remember a few times where i was with a group trying to cap an eliet where we just sat there healing with the boss wailing on us while everybody that wanted the skill was spaming sig capture on CD trying to get lucky and hit the spell in the narrow window of opportunity.

[rhandric]

eliet shouts, stances or 1/4 cast spells were pretty much impossible to cap before that update. I remember a few times where i was with a group trying to cap an eliet where we just sat there healing with the boss wailing on us while everybody that wanted the skill was spaming sig capture on CD trying to get lucky and hit the spell in the narrow window of opportunity.

Yep. That was why they changed it, so a) you could actually cap it, and b) you didn't have to stand around for hours with the boss beating on you to do so, hoping he uses it and you can cap it in time.

Most people don't remember that because 6 weeks into the game, there weren't a huge number of players far enough to be capping, especially capping elites, the earliest being in Crystal Desert (at that time, and more or less still true).