by Janet Pieterse

Created on: August 23, 2010

The Guild Wars 2 skill bar has changed from the one we know and love in Guild Wars. Isaiah Cartwright, a games designer for Guild Wars 2, gave some insights during an interview at Gamescom 2010.

There are ten skill slots, 5 on the left, and 5 on the right. In the middle is a round, red ball depicting how much health your character has left. Above the skills on the right is a bar indicating energy. On the left hand side, all characters have a bar or some other link to a professional ability. This is almost certainly a nod towards the primary attributes of the original Guild Wars professions.

The professional abilities are Adrenaline for the Warrior, Attunements for the Elementalist, and Death Shroud for the Necromancer. The Ranger has a pet, and this takes the place of the professional ability. As you play, and fight, the bars fill up, giving you access to special profession-related attacks. These attacks may add power to your existing skills, or they may bring in a new set of skills to use. The elementalist, for example, can change from fire to water skill simply by changing attunement.

The pet has its own skill bar, and the Ranger can choose which skills to equip on the pet. Different pets have different skills. Once the skills are equipped, the pet attacks automatically using those skills.

The skills on the left hand side are linked to the weapon your character is using. You may change weapons while fighting, which means that you effectively change the skills available to you. So if you are a necromancer, you can change from blood to curses skills simply by equipping a curses-based staff. If you equip a hammer, you automatically get hammer skills loaded into your skill bar.So, if you're playing and a new weapon drops for you, you can try it out immediately without worrying that you have the wrong build for it.

The skills on the right hand side are for skills of your choosing. The first slot is for the healing skill of your choice; the other slots are for elite and what are broadly termed "utility" skills. Elite skills become available in a number of ways, including skill trainers, quest rewards, and drops. You will be able to create builds on the right hand side but, as yet, there is no mechanism for saving builds to a template. It is unlikely that the first release of the game will have templates, due to the amount of work involved in setting these up. The game designers do want templates, though, so they will probably be released in a game update.

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