Tyrian Chronicle: Predicting Guild Wars 2 Masteries

The Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion brought us the mastery system and with it the Elite Specializations. These Elite Specs did help round out some classes and brought weapons across the various divides.

In the grand tradition of people desperate for information ahead of time, let’s review what the Elites brought us and what might come next with the Guild Wars 2 Masteries.

Current Elite Specs

Warrior

Warriors got their hands on a new offhand weapon, specifically torches, and grew into Berserkers. Berserkers retooled the burst skills with new primal bursts and got a new class of utilities called Rage.

Guardian

Guardians took up both the longbow, becoming Dragonhunters, but also tried their hands at traps. The longbow added some nice ranged abilities for Guardians but the traps have always confused me as they seemed best suited for Rangers.

Revenant

Revenants morphed into the Heralds of Glint and took up Shields to survive even more trouble and pain. It’s my personal suspicion that the Facet of Elements, which lets Glint using Revenants apply swiftness to themselves and everyone around, is a sort of apology from the developers for Revenants otherwise being so very very slow.

Thief

Thieves stole staves from somewhere and did what any sort of semi ninja would do, they went full ninja. Daredevils bounced and spun their way into staff melee along with physical skills and an extra bit of stamina for dodging.

Engineer

Engineers went native in the jungle becoming Scrappers. Scrappers took up the hammer and retooled turrets into short lived and incredibly handy Gyros. One of the most frustrating people I have ever come across in structured PvP was a clever Scrapper who between the various gyros was equal parts invisible and invincible.

Ranger

Rangers naturally (no I won’t apologize for the pun) went back to their roots and became Druids. Druids tapped into a Celestial form as well as getting magical glyph utilities with taking up the staff.

Mesmer

Mesmers got my favorite Elite with the Chronomancer. The Shield by itself is nice but not nearly as fun as the Continuum Split or the various Wells. Slow time, rend time, screw with gravity. I adore Chronomancer.

Necromancer

Necromancers got their hint early when Marjory Delaqua took up her fallen sister’s sword. The Greatsword by itself is great fun but the change from Death Shroud into Reaper Shroud brought a huge amount of hitting power to Reapers. Coupled with shouts, they got what is probably my second favorite Elite.

Elementalist

Elementalists became the Tempest and took up Warhorns. These horns brought with them even more noise making in the shout utilities and attunement overloads.

Warriors, Revenants and Engineers are the only classes who ended up with entirely new classes of Utility skills. Gyros are uniquely Engineer, Revenants have their own particular mechanic and Rage was new and integral to the Berserker idea.

So what can we expect to see next? Naturally it’s all speculation. Best guesses if you will. The theme that I can see behind the previous Elite specializations was filling in where other classes may have suffered. Rangers suffered some complaints in group play scenarios, so they became healers. Engineers suffered in melee, so they took up the hammer to mush things. With that in mind we’ll look at what we could in theory see next.

Here are my predictions

Warriors will take up pistols. They have rifles and longbows sure, but there is still some room to improve on range for Warriors. Of course this also opens up the possibility of Warriors copying the Thief Dual Wield skill type, which changes the 3 skill depending on what you carry. Think lunatic cowboys.

Guardians will take up Warhorns. Along with the horns, keeping the idea going that other skill types have been copied, I could see Guardians getting a version of the Warrior Banners. Instead of marking an area for bonuses, these new Guardians lead the charge into battle against Tyria knows what.

Revenants are short of many ranged options and to be honest I always found hammer to be an odd choice. Still I would say that they can look forward to taking up a bow along with maybe embracing the legend of Pyre Fierceshot. Revenants being the odd ducks that they are, the utility/legend skills are anyone’s guess.

Thief. I was shocked when Thieves got staves; I would have put money on them taking up the rifle and turning into Snipers. As such, because I am stubborn, I’ll say that’s where they’ll go again. Not only that but of the two unique skill types mentioned before, I could see a case made for Thieves getting their own versions of gyros that do clever things at a distance.

Engineers are perfect in every way and clearly the true saviors of Tyria. If they had to “improve” in any way, I would say we’ll see a scepter option coming to Engineers while they take on the next challenges. Rename the Glyph skill type to Schematics and you have a case for those as well. I’d say scepter because it works for whichever dragon you want to tackle next, either being a weapon for dealing with the Eternal Alchemy from Rata Novan research or just straight up magnetic magic.

Rangers have already dipped into the Necromancer side of things with the Celestial Avatar form from Druid. I fully expect the next elite to jump in the other direction and embrace the physical skill type while also giving the beast masters of Tyria access to pistols for a little gun-fu.

Mesmers have messed with minds and learned to manipulate time all from taking up a shield. My prediction for them is a slight crossover with Guardians. Mesmers will take up Spirit Weapons (or illusory ones in their case) along with the axe.

Finally we come to the last unfounded crazy prediction, what could they give Elementalists? That’s easy. We’ll see swords in their future as well as access to Mesmer mantras. I’m not sure what a sword wielding, warhorn carrying, pre-prepared spell holding Elementalist would be called…. But I think calling an entire specialization “Trouble” is a little on the nose.

How about you, what crazy ideas do you have for an elite specialization for the future of Guild Wars 2? Or do you think we’ll be waiting longer for more additions to the game and instead see something completely different? Or better yet, what would you name the predictions I’ve made?