While underwater combat becomes a bit different than while on land, you have access to the entire Z-Axis and you’re able to use spells on the Z-Axis too, not just the X & Y. You might cast a spell that’s a giant beam of light and it will not only damage mobs right where you casted it, but above and below you as well.

If you go into the Drowned State while underwater, you’ll get access to a small skill bar that has 4 “Drowning” skills on it. Like the Downed State on the surface, if you manage to kill a mob you will rally back and be able to keep on fighting with all of your skills again. While underwater you can also try to swim to the surface to rally as well, this will give you 25% of your health and you’ll return to your normal state.

The underwater downed state bar

You’re also able to pull enemies from the land into the water and this opens up entirely new sets of attacks for them that they otherwise wouldn’t have. There’s also tons of content to be found underwater with the Dynamic Event system, not only this but you’ll find entire cities and civilizations as well.

When underwater you’ll be diving into the depths and it might become difficult to tell which way is up or down. As you descend the edges of your screen will become darker and as you ascend that darkness will fade. This makes it quite easy to tell which direction you’re headed.

Underwater Combat

Each class has 10 skills, now you must be thinking “ONLY 10?” Well it’s not as simple as “only 10”. Every class can do real time weapon switching in combat, this switches your skills based on the weapon you have equipped.

All but two classes can swap between 2 weapons at a time (read below for the exceptions).

In combat you’re going to be expected to swap your weapon sets to maximize your effectiveness. A Warrior can swap from a Rifle inflicting conditions on a single target starting out and then into a 2h Hammer for AoE damage when his foes close in. You could use a 1h Axe & Shield for quick adrenalin building and high damage attacks, drop back out of the way and switch to Longbow for massive fire AoE damage.

The weapon type you have equipped defines the skills you have in your first 5 slots. Say you’re a Warrior and you’re using a 1h sword in your main hand and a shield in your off-hand, your first 3 skills will be sword skills while your last 2 will be shield skills. This is a bit different for the Thief though, say you’re using a pistol & dagger, the first two will be pistol skills, the third will be a combination of the two weapons and the final two will be dagger skills. If you’re using a 2h weapon all 5 skills will be from that weapon.

This screenshot of the skill tool illustrates better how your skills are effected by you weapons.

The Elementalist can only use one weapon at a time and can’t swap due to the attunement mechanic, but they end up having access to more skills to make up for the lack of weapon swapping (20). The Engineer also is unable to weapon swap, but instead they can swap out backpack kits, weapon kits, and turrets.

Skill bar

The other 5 skills on the bar are all changeable to whatever you wish; this isn’t locked down at all.

6 – This is always your heal button, you can change this to whatever heal spell you currently have access to.

7-9 – Are your utility skills you can choose from, for the Elementalist this consists of things like Conjuration, ethereal Forms, Glyphs that modify your abilities, and Signets which gives you a passive and active effect once you use it. Warriors have abilities such at Banners that can be placed to buff you and your allies, while Stances buff the Warrior with boons such as Adrenaline gain. Engineers have Backpack Kits that can serve many purposes such as giving you an entire set of Grenade based skills or Med Kits that allow you to throw down bandages for you and your allies.

0 – On your skill bar is always your Elite skill, for now the only one we’ve seen of the Elementalist is the Form based ability ‘Tornado’ which turns you into a tornado that you can move around dealing massive damage and launching enemies into the air. Rangers have Elite skills such as Alpha Strike that summons three animal companions for a limited amount of time. Guardians can use Sanctuary that creates a protective dome around the player and prevents enemies and projectiles from entering, though your allies can enter it for protection.

So for a single weapon build of an Elementalist you’d generally have 44 spells to use. In total with all of the weapons accounted for, you could be managing 139 unique spells based on your second hotbar setup. Ultimately this is something you’ll need to learn because you will be expected to fill any role at any time.

Skill Acquisition

A weapon’s skills are now learned by fighting with that weapon. Because weapon skills are tied to weapon use, there is no reason to visit a trainer and make choices about which ones to unlock. Instead, it makes more sense to learn how to use the weapon by, you know, actually using it.

Once you learn all 5 skills for say a sword, all future swords you obtain will have the skills unlocked. So you just have to unlock all of the skills for each weapon type and you’re done.

Skill acquisition for your healing/utility/elite skills will work differently than your weapon skills. You’ll be undertaking something called skill challenges in which will grant you skill points. There will be 200 skill challenges in the game, though based on the info we have it doesn’t seem likely that you’ll have to obtain all of those in order to get all of your skills. With these skill points you can unlock any skill you wish as long as you have enough skill points. The cost of skills range anywhere from 1 skill point to 14 from what we can tell at the moment. So how do you obtain skill points? Well ArenaNet has described challenges as ranging anywhere from defeating difficult enemies, to solving riddles, to ingesting potent drinks.

Racial Abilities

Racial abilities can be placed on your utility bar like any of your other utility skills, the difference between racial abilities and your normal utility skills is that they’re weaker. The racials are meant to be more complimentary for your class to help round out any points where you might be lacking. They’re designed so that you wouldn’t choose one race over another just for the racial abilities. You’ll receive your racial abilities upon character creation. An example for the Charr would be Shrapnel Mine that scatters up to 3 mines that cripple and bleed enemies. An example for Humans would be Prayer to Dwayna which heals the player, an example for the Norn would be Bear Form which turns the user into a half-norn half-bear which increases the health of the user. An example for the Asura would be Golem Battlesuit which creates a battle suit that can be entered and operated. As this is an Asura racial skill only Asura can summon it, but once summoned anyone in your party may enter and operate it, even non Asura players. Finally an example for the Sylvari would be Grasping Roots which immobilizes a foe.

The Downed State & Death

When you run out of health in GW2 you will enter what is called ‘the downed state’. While you are down, you will have 4 spells that are specific to your class. If you’re able to kill a mob or help kill a mob while you’re downed you can rally back and get a reprieve so you can keep fighting. If you fail to rally and are overwhelmed you will die, but you can still wait for someone to come resurrect you if you wish, you can also be resurrected while in the downed state. If you do die you can choose to release to whatever nearby waypoint that you have unlocked.

The downed state skill bar

AoE Targeting

If you have an ability that creates an aiming reticule on the ground, you can pre-emptively place your cursor where you want the ability to fire and just hit the corresponding key twice without needing to hit it, aim, and hit it again.

Resurrection

Every single player in the game can resurrect any other player, so you’re not going to be waiting around for someone else to do it. This can be done in combat, this allows for the pace of combat to keep flowing.

Who needs a dedicated healer?

When any enemy (AI or player) attacks you, you can actively get away from the attack by double tapping in a direction or using a designated hotkey while moving in a direction, by using a spell that makes your character move like a leap or teleport, or even by simply running away. Dodging drains a “charge” from the dodge bar and currently there’s 3 charges in the bar. Once you stop dodging it will then start to recharge. Dodging is something that you’ll have to know when to use and when not to. There are also skills that when “held down” will actively block incoming projectiles from their intended target. So this will allow you to “take a bullet” for other players if the situation arises.

If you are moving in a direction, the dodge will take that into account and dodge in that direction. If you are not moving, you will dodge backward. Dodging now also evades attacks, making it a more effective and understandable way to avoid big creature attacks or to get out of AoE spells.

Every skill in the game has now been added into the animation blending system similar to how the Warrior’s Chains work. This makes it so every skill can be chain combo’d like an action game, you don’t have to wait for the animation to finish in order to use another skill.

Due to the way targeting enemies works in the game, you don’t actually have to target anything to use your skills and also if you use a skill has a wide swinging arc, it will hit any target in the trajectory much like an action game, so you’re not bound to a single target when using a weapon.

Range / Distance

There are a lot of intricate mechanics built into the game where distance plays a large role in combat. Here’s some examples:

• If a Ranger uses a Longbow, the further away from their target they are the more damage they do, similarly if they use a shortbow the closer they are they’ll deal more damage.
• The Engineer has a skill called Blunderbuss that stacks more bleed effects on an enemy the closer they are to the target and the Flamethrower skill does more damage the closer you are as well.
• A Warrior has a Burst skill on each weapon and each one does something different depending on the weapon you’re using, but the interesting part is the longer you hold down the button the more damage you do, a stun will last longer, you’ll immobilize your target longer, or even do 3 different things entirely per each “level” of adrenaline gained.

There are other combat mechanics to take into consideration as well. The Thief has a skill called Heartseeker that seems to have three tiers of damage depending on the targets health. The first tier (paired with lowest damage) when the target is above 66% health, the second when the target is between 66% and 33% (median damage between the two), the third when the target is below 33% (with the highest damage).

The Guardian has a skill called Faithful Strike where you leap at your target and if you hit them, you grant regeneration to your nearby allies.

The Elementalist has a skill called Burning Speed where it allows them to sprint and leave a wall of fire in their wake. When that happens any ally can come up to that wall of fire and use it to inflict extra damage, a Ranger could shoot arrows through it and they would catch on fire, a Warrior could swing their axe and fire would be thrown at your enemies. See the Cross Profession Combos section for more on this.

Many skills in the game all have some form of extra condition or effect associated with them, they’re not simply skills that just do damage with 1-2 skills that might stun or interrupt like most MMOs.

So there are no quests in GW2, you never go to an NPC and read a wall of text that says for you to go collect 10 bear furs. You see content as it happens, right in front of you and everyone else. Well how am I supposed to level you ask? The answer to that is Dynamic Events. They’re always happening everywhere around you, when you come across one you’ll get a notification that there are new events nearby. Dynamic Events are structured so that you might see a single one-off event all the way to 20 events within a chain. Though a chain isn’t a very accurate description, they’re more like tree branches. Events aren’t merely black & white though, it’s not as simple as Event 1 goes into Event 2 and then Event 3.

On top of all of this ArenaNet has said things aren’t going to just respawn 5 minutes later, events can take hours, days, weeks, and even months to be back in the same exact way you may have seen it originally. Also, this has to take into account player interaction, if no player does anything the enemy will still move on and conquer the world whether you’re there or not.

Events also affect other events like a chain reaction, some events can have zone wide consequences, some are triggered through player interaction with an NPC or an object in the world, weather systems, day & night cycles, etc. Nor does this take into account the different experiences you’ll have playing with different profession combos making even those experiences unique due to profession synergy.

I found these maps that I believe was labeled by ArenaNet to give people an idea of how DEs can be laid out.

Dynamic Event Map from Arenanet

Dynamic Event map layout

Dynamic Event Rewards

When you complete an event you will be awarded XP/Karma and Coin. Based on how much effort you put into an event determines your reward level. There’s Bronze, Silver, and Gold reward levels, however it’s not competitive. There’s no arbitrary numbers or roll system that determines your reward level and there’s no unique rewards to the majority of the events so people don’t try to farm the “best” event and ignore others. There will be very large server wide type events that take 100 people to do, events like The Shatterer around level 50. When you defeat this dragon, who by the way is a baby compared to the size of the Elder Dragons you’ll fight at level 80, a large chest will drop in which everyone who participated can get loot. Inside the chest we’ve seen upgrade components drop for armor/weapons.

Content Scaling

So when you arrive at an event, you might be the only one there. As you’re completing whatever the objectives are for an event, someone else might arrive, and then maybe 3 more people arrive. During this time a few things happen, the difficulty of the encounters will increase, the loot will be more plentiful, more xp will be rewarded for kills, the enemies will actually gain new attacks, and in the end you will gain larger bonuses for having completed the event with more people than if you had just done it by yourself. This is all whether you grouped up with said people or not, GW2 is built with having everyone working together in mind.

Scouts & Hearts

Scouts are NPCs you can find around the world that will point out particular areas of interest to the player, they’ll uncover areas of the map to show you areas on the map where help might be needed. Once the Scout is done pointing these areas out, it will cover the areas back up on the map so that way you still have that sense of adventure while exploring. This is meant for players who still like some form of guidance rather than not knowing exactly where to go.

Hearts can be seen in various places around any given zone; the hearts have multiple purposes. One is that they’re a static form of content that will always be available to the player, though Dynamic Events can start at or around these Heart locations. Hearts will have you helping out NPCs in the area, doing particular tasks that need doing, provides a way to get some backstory for the local area as well as provide additional lore. Just like Dynamic Events, you don’t have to talk to anyone to start helping the NPC, you just go and do whatever needs to be done and anyone who joins in won’t be a hindrance to your gameplay.

When helping these NPCs out, Dynamic Events might start nearby that affect the area where the Heart is. Say you’re helping a farmer out by watering her crops, killing nearby worms, etc. Well if a Dynamic Event starts nearby where bandits start attacking, burning bales of hay, stealing goods from the farm, etc. Anything you do in that event counts towards your objectives for the Heart since it’s in the vicinity of the Heart NPC. So putting out those fires, getting the stolen goods back, etc would count towards the Dynamic Event progress as well as your Heart progress. Once you fill a Heart, the NPC you helped becomes a Karma vendor where you can buy unique items, things such as recipes, crafting materials, consumables, etc. The Heart activities give XP/Coin, but NO Karma. Karma is only earned through Dynamic Events and Personal Story content.

Map

I’m pretty excited about Guild Wars 2. I’m gonna try and do some posts about it in the future, most of my information will come from this huge forum post.

Ultimately the authors goal is to make the public more aware that Guild Wars 2 is not the same MMO you’ve been playing. In fact, do you like MMOs? Then you need to check out GW2. Do you hate MMOs? Then you REALLY need to check out GW2.

Credit where credit is due:
Some of the info was pulled directly from the GW2 Wiki the author felt that there was no reason to rewrite some things. Some info was also pulled directly from guildwars2.com and the ArenaNet Blog.

Watch this first!

That large rock monster was a level 1 boss, the shadowy skeleton monster was a level 15 boss, the giant dragon (which is a baby compared to the Elder Dragons) is a level 50 boss and ALL of these are outdoor content that can be experienced by anyone, there’s no content gating or huge time commitments involved.

Features

• Dynamic Content – Gone are the days of looking for a symbol above an NPCs head to tell you exactly where to go just as everyone else has before you. Content in GW2 is generated by the Dynamic Event system that is completely persistent and changes how everyone in the world sees content based on your action or in-action.
• Active Combat – No more trading blows with a mob in whack-a-mole combat. Damage in the game is avoidable, if an enemy is lining up a big spell, you can dodge it and keep on fighting. Positioning relative to your enemy and your allies will be a key factor during combat, among other things.
• Underwater Combat – ArenaNet has built an entire underwater combat system, no more breath bar to manage, quick and fluid movement in water and entire weapon and skill sets to go along with it.
• The Holy Trinity – Dead. Gone. And good riddance. There are no defined class roles in GW2. It’s not fun to hope that one person logs in so that you can actually play a game. You can generally take any combination of professions that you wish into content and succeed in the same time-frame as any other as long as you communicate.
• Personal Story – At character creation you get to choose from a wide variety of biographical entries based on your race that will affect your personal story. ArenaNet aims to put the hero and identity back into the MMO genre rather than just a character sheet.
• WvWvW PvP – There’s 2 flavors of PvP, one is the Arena style combat that GW1 is currently known for, the competitive style. The second kind is World vs World vs World where 3 servers are pit against each other every 2 weeks to battle it out across 4 persistent maps filled with 2,000 people that involve capture points, resource gathering, castle sieging, etc.
• Level Scaling – You never have to worry about your friend being too high of a level for you to play with him, you can sidekick up to his level or he can sidekick down to yours so you guys can play together no matter each others level.
• Leveling Curve – There’s no exponential leveling curve in GW2, it’s linear and plateaus quickly. ANet aims to kill that “I have to grind so I can play the game” feeling you get in other MMOs.
• No Monthly Fee – It amazes me that not only is ArenaNet working to change how we view MMOs, but they’re still not including a monthly fee.
• Jumping – I nearly forgot, YES, you can jump. ArenaNet has built a fully realized 3D world for you to roam around in.

I am sure that there will be places on my site that will looked trashed while I write the backend code but I’m fine with that. I really feel like stripping off the exterior and showing everyone whats under the hood. Also, I’m going to use this as a repository/tracking for my code process. Hope you enjoy it, if you have any questions just use my contact form… er, when I build it that is, which should be soon.