Everything You Need to Know About Specializations

The Guild Wars 2 team has unleashed a pair of blogs to give players the inside knowledge they will need about specializations when the Heart of Thorns expansion launches. A two part series is now on the site, Part I: A Primer; and Part II: Reward Tracks & Elite Specializations.

In the primer, players are told that specializations will have an impact on both new and existing skills. They are a separate entity from traits. According to the post, this allows players to specialization by traits over stats. There are nine traits available, three of which are grandmaster traits. The team also wants to make traits better, more meaningful and have streamlined the way they are unlocked. The idea is to give new players a better path to specialize and to make it simpler for players with multiple characters. In addition, the new system is 'expandable', allowing more to be added over time.

Each class will have five core specializations similar to the old trait lines. Players will need to choose three of the five for the baseline specialization track. Choosing the three cores will occur as a player levels from 1-80. Within each core players will find three minor traits and nine major traits separated into three tiers: adept, master and grandmaster.

In the second post, players get a good look at how elite specializations are unlocked that is packed with some fascinating new interface images. All profession rewards are unlocked by spending Hero Points rather than being tied to content. However, Hero Points are limited and can only be attained through skill challenges (soon to be changed to Hero Challenges) and through leveling up.

Players will also have access to Elite Specializations. As an example, the blog speaks about rangers becoming Druids and necromancers fighting with greatswords. Each Elite will come with its own weapons, skills, traits and more that will add to the existing professions.

Both posts have a lot more detail in them, so be sure to swing by the links above to check it out.

Also, check out Bill Murphy's Specializations Define Roles in Heart of Thorns.

You can also see and learn more about Specializations in tomorrow's live stream

Ready Up will air live on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel this Friday, April 24, at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7) and will last for four hours, with each profession taking a set block of time. We’ll see you then!