Building your skill bar in the first Guild Wars was sort of like building a deck of Magic cards. All skills had a function, but unless you invested the time to learn every skill and test out its functionality, it was entirely possible to put together an inefficient combination. So ArenaNet changed things up in Guild Wars 2 , standardizing part of the limited-slot skill bar system by tying skills to weapons. All Rangers who equip a bow have the same five bow skills, all Warriors who equip a two-handed sword have the same five sword skills, and so on.

Despite that standardization, there’s still room to customize. Weapon skills take up half the skill bar. The other half is fully customizable with skills purchased with points earned by progressing through the game, which let you do everything from heal to receive passive bonuses to, if you’re an Elementalist, turn into a tornado. According to systems designer Jonathan Sharp, some of the more hardcore fans of the original Guild Wars think that means the sequel is meant to be simpler. He says that’s not the case, and that the skill gap between a beginning Guild Wars 2 player and a veteran is “pretty massive.”With that in mind, to try and limit the amount of player confusion throughout, especially for players new to MMOs, ArenaNet forces you to unlock the skills on each weapon type. So if you’re playing a Warrior and equip a one-handed sword, you’ll only have one skill to use initially. It won’t be long until a second opens up, then a third, and while you’re waiting for the unlock you’re practicing with the skills already available, so by the time everything’s open, it’s all familiar. “We want you to learn them one at a time, build your knowledge up and then you get to another weapon, build your knowledge and be able to get comfortable. We don’t want to overwhelm you like they do in other games where they just throw everything at you and it’s just option shock. So we tried to meter out how much stuff we give them and how fast we give it to you.”So how does ArenaNet actually design the skills for a system like that? “It’s a very long process,” said Sharp, “and it involves a lot of calculators and spreadsheets and stopwatches and things like that as you can imagine, but the biggest thing is basically setting down what a typical skill can do. So for instance, what is the average melee skill? What is the average range skill? So we have different ranges. So you have like a six hundred, nine hundred, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred range and this is in-game inches and units. So then it’s just a question of how hard should a melee hit across the board for all classes? And then maybe the Warrior’s like five percent higher than that but he doesn’t have a defense that a Guardian might, so the Guardian gets five percent less but he has a lot of defense to go with that.”It seems like juggling all those numbers might make it easy to get overwhelmed, but according to Sharp, “mathematically those things are actually pretty easy to do.” It’s really the finer, situational details that create challenges for making sure everything feels right, taking into account dazes, heals, blinds and knockdowns. Movement is also a huge factor, since dodging away from attacks has a huge impact on combat effectiveness while fighting computer-controlled enemies and in player-versus-player situations. Dodging is tied to an endurance bar that refills slowly once used, which can fuel two dodges back-to-back without a need to wait for it to regenerate.“That means if you see a really big hit coming and you need to move to avoid that,” said Sharp, “and what’s going to happen is you need to pick when you’re moving and how you’re moving because I could dodge all the way back and if I’m a melee guy, I’m out of range and so now I’m not doing damage. I’m safe, but I’m not doing damage. So maybe I should dodge to the side. Maybe I should have tried to flank him with my dodge to get behind, and while he’s swinging I’d get some free hits in the back. So the movement plus the dodging really becomes important in the game.”There’s more to consider than the skill sets of individual professions as well. Some skills you use activate combo fields on the ground that other professions can take advantage of. Depending on the combo field type and type of skill activated within it, the effects will differ, meaning a comprehensive knowledge of combo fields and effects as well as a coordinated team effort and sharp situational awareness can make a big difference, part of why there's a wide skill gap. If you’re a new player, the effect of gaining extra burning damage by inadvertently firing arrows through an Elementalist’s fire field is a cool bonus, but setting up combos like this could be much more important for challenging Explorable mode dungeons and to excel at PvP contests in Guild Wars 2’s World versus World mode.By combining all these different mechanics, status effects and numerous possible skill bar setups, ArenaNet hopes to keep the feel of the classes distinct. This may seem obvious, but in a game that gives every class a heal and tries to move away from the standard tank, healer, damage-per-second style of roles, the lines that separate classes aren’t always as clear. “A lot of classes will have a couple of things that they do and only they do. The symbol is a great example. For the Guardian, he can put down this symbol. He just says don’t stand on this unless you want to get messed up. The Warrior doesn’t really have that, right? He’s got his stomps, he can do a lot of damage, [area of effect], he doesn’t have to go and just put this down and say don’t stand here, because it’s going to hurt you. So they can both kind of support and do damage in different ways, but the Warrior versus the Guardian is very different in how they play out because they both have skills that only they get.”Sharp specified how ArenaNet limits and modifies the use of poison by its classes. “So everybody kind of has their own little schtick that they have and then they all have this common pool, this common toolbox sort of that they can all pull out of. But then not everybody can pull every tool out of the box. Poison is an example. The Warrior just can’t pull that one out but the Thief can. And the Mesmer can get it randomly but not control it. The Engineer can get it, the [Necromancer] can get it. [Elementalists] can’t do poison so even this kind of school where they can’t both get to that. But then you want to have really strong AoE, that’s where you go to your Elementalist.”Based on impressions from the beta weekend play sessions throughout 2012, it seems as though this approach successfully gives each class a characteristic feel and play style. A more definitive assessment will have to wait until after launch for the opportunity to check out some of the more challenging content while grouped up, to see if combat with less rigidly defined class roles stays fun and doesn’t turn into total chaos.Not only will you gradually acquire more weapon sets, heals and elite skills, but later on you’ll gain trait points that, according to Sharp, serves as another way to dramatically alter your class’ functionality. “It completely changes the character. You can do a wells Necromancer or you could have a minion Necromancer. The wells guys is going to say, 'Okay, every time I put out my wells they last longer and they’re bigger and they’re more effective and I get a protection buff, which is going to reduce incoming damage.' He’s not very mobile but he’s extremely tanky at standing in one spot. He could also get a trait that’s going to allow him every time when a well hits if there’s somebody inside of it, he gets life. Now you can just take all that out, wipe his entire trait bar. You then can put in the minions instead. If you tried to take the minion build without all the traits to back it up it might be pretty weak, actually. If you take the wells build and you don’t trait into it at all, it’s going to be pretty weak and not going to get nearly as much efficiency out of those skills. So learning how to make those different builds is really important. That’s where the skill is, knowing how to make a build, how to adjust for the build. Sometimes you’ll just see somebody across the field, like a Guardian. He’ll have out just spirit weapons and you’re like oh, it’s a spirit Guardian. You know that’s going to be very, very different from if you were just fighting what we call a smite Guardian, who just runs around supporting his allies, ripping off conditions, that kind of thing.”You can get a sense of how the classes play by watching the embedded videos, and can play the live game very soon to see it for yourself in case you missed the beta testing sessions. Guild Wars 2 officially launches on August 28. IGN will be playing for review starting with the early access period on the 25th and providing review-in-progress updates until a full review is ready.