leet skillz

I went capping a few days ago and again today.  Did Warrior a few days ago, and both Necromancer and Mesmer today.  Today I started at 74k and after spending 20k on cap sigs, money from selling drops (and the gold drops themselves) left me at 61k.  So basically I have enough left to do the remaining 5 professions.  Those profits exclude dye drops, materials salvaged from salvage armors, and runes/insignias on salvage armors, which I haven't taken care of yet because I typically do them in batches.

I've watched two of Arenanet's live broadcasts from Gamescom, and I don't know if I'll watch any more.  The major barrier is language, it's all in German.  Which is to be expected being that Gamescom is in Germany, but still... even watching the gameplay by itself just isn't satisfying enough without being able to understand the guy who's explaining what's happening.

Apparently at Gamescom they announced the Necromancer profession.  The official site hasn't been updated to reflect this at all, so hopefully when Gamescom ends that'll happen.  Also, hopefully after Gamescom they'll put up screenshots of the user interface and detailed explanations of the traits and so forth.  It all looks really interesting, but the videos only show but so much.  I especially want to know what the user interface for a Ranger is going to look like with pet controls and the pet's skill bar.

Of course, I expect that the user interface will be fully customizable like in GW1 where you could move everything around and resize things so it worked for you.  I had to do that so I could heal people.   The default interface is fine for playing most classes with the keyboard or the mouse, but is absolutely horrible for a mouse-oriented player playing a Monk.  The amount you have to move your mouse to heal people is just retarded.  So, if you've seen my screenshots, I've changed it around.  The main point is that the skill bar is vertical, right next to the party window.  This way I can click a health bar, click a heal, click a health bar, click a heal, etc. with minimal mouse movement.  Of course, there won't be a dedicated healing class in GW2, so the point is kind of moot, but I still expect that the interface will be customizable.

I'm wondering about parties in GW2, though.  All the emphasis so far has been on the awesome things you can do with other players without ever forming a party.  To my knowledge, I've never seen people actually partied up.  I'd like to see that interface too.  It'd be necessary for the dungeons anyway, so it's got to have an interface accessible outside of the dungeons.

So, knowing that the game will have 8 classes, and four have been revealed so far (in order: Elementalist, Warrior, Ranger, and Necromancer), speculation is flying around as to what the other four will be.  We already know there probably won't be Assassins, Dervishes, or Paragons, just because the official list of weapon types has been announced for some time now and doesn't contain daggers, scythes, or spears.

However, it does contain firearms.  No class has been announced yet that deals primarily with the firearms, whereas we've got a melee weapon class (that can use bows and firearms), a bow class (that can use melee weapons), and two staff classes (that are probably stuck with their staves).  I feel reasonably safe predicting that one of the classes will be a gunner or a rifleman or something like that.  As for the other three...  it's anyone's guess.  Part 2 of the Combat Developer Notes article says, and I quote:

Choice of profession will of course have a huge impact on how the game plays. There are eight professions in Guild Wars 2, many of which will be familiar to fans of Guild Wars, as well as a few professions new to the Guild Wars world. Each of these professions is roughly categorized by the type of armor they wear: scholars wear light armor, adventurers wear medium armor, and soldiers wear heavy armor. Currently there are three scholar professions, three adventurer professions and two soldier professions.

If I interpret that correctly, then so far we know of one soldier profession (Warrior), one adventurer profession (Ranger), and two scholar professions (Elementalist, Necromancer). This correlates exactly with the three different max armor levels in GW1.  I will infer that the gunner/rifleman will probably be the other soldier profession.  Also, take note that it says there will be "professions new to the Guild Wars world." Given that the four we know of now were all in GW1, it would make sense that the other four are the new ones.  Or will the fifth be Mesmer?  Mesmer was a really neat, though underplayed and undervalued profession, it'd be a shame if they were just forgotten about in the 250 years since GW1 ended.

Hopefully they don't nerf AoE, because that's the one thing I've consistently hated in GW: that enemies move out of AoE and do it so quickly that it's not really worth it to bring AoE.  Meanwhile, I'll be yelling at the henchmen and heroes "move out of the AoE, idiots!"

Also, a huge gripe I have playing as a Ranger in GW1: I use a flatbow.  Typically either Drago's Flatbow or the Forgotten Flatbow, though I have an Elswyth's Recurve Bow and a custom-made Vampiric Shortbow of Fortitude available for different situations.  Flatbows have the best range with the fastest fire rate, but aren't terribly accurate unless you bring Favorable Winds, which has been stapled to my skill bar for years.  If you're on top of a hill and the enemy is at the bottom, you get even more range.  So, quite often, I will find myself a mile or so away from an enemy filling it with arrows.  With all the heroes and henchmen just standing around not doing anything until the enemies get close.  Why should I have to sacrifice the superior range of my weapon just to get them to attack?