Skill
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Skills are the basic game-play units in Guild Wars. There are a large number of skills in Guild Wars, and each campaign brings hundreds more. Each player may equip a maximum of 8 skills (including up to one elite skill) at a time. Skill icons represents skills in the User interface.
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[edit] Properties
Most skills in Guild Wars have the following four properties:
- Skill type
- The skill's category. Certain effects are only triggered by specific skill types. Skills of the same type share mechanics.
- Activation time
- How long the skill takes, in seconds, to activate. Most skills other than Shouts and Stances have activation times. Certain skills can reduce or increase a skill's activation time, while some Weapons and Off-Handed items can also reduce a skill's activation time.
- Recharge time
- The time it takes for a skill to become ready to use again once it has been used, interrupted, or disrupted by a knock down effect. There are many skills that can increase or decrease a skill's recharge time. Upgrade components and staves can also be used to decrease recharge times of spells. Note that a skill that fails is immediately ready and does not need to recharge. Most skills have recharge times, however some skills, including most Adrenal skills, have no recharge times.
- Energy cost
- The amount of Energy that is required to activate a certain skill. All skills that have an Energy requirement will expend that energy before the activation time begins. Energy costs are generally 5, 10, 15 or 25, a few skills have an Energy cost of 1, however these skills always have a Sacrifice cost. Signets and Adrenal skills have no energy cost, as do many holiday arena skills and some temporary skills, NPC skills and monster skills.
Additionally, a number of skills have these additional properties:
- Adrenaline cost
- An alternate cost used by some Warrior and Paragon skills in place of Energy. Unlike Energy, each adrenal skill has its' own adrenaline pool. Adrenaline is gained primarily by hitting with attacks or taking damage, and lost primarily by using adrenal skills, and by spending 25 seconds without gaining adrenaline.
- Elite status
- Some skills are elite. You can only equip a single elite skill at a time. It should be noted that if one has a Signet of Capture, they may have 2 or even more elite skills equipped by capturing another elite skill. Once a player reaches a town or change zones however, all elite skills except the rightmost one will be removed from the player's skill bar.
- PvE
- Some skills cannot be used in PvP. You can only equip three PvE-only skills at a time.
- Upkeep
- Enchantments with upkeep cost 1 pip of Energy regeneration to maintain.
- Sacrifice
- An additional cost in health, measured as a percentage of maximum health.
[edit] Skill cost detail
All player skills except for signets and certain temporary skills have an activation cost measured in either energy or adrenaline. Some skills also require a health sacrifice as part of their cost, while others cause exhaustion in tandem with cost. Unlike adrenaline, health and exhaustion costs are in addition to energy costs.
Additionally, some enchantments need to be maintained, and require additional constant energy costs to sustain them. This cost is usually 1 pip of energy regeneration.
[edit] Learning and unlocking skills
When a Player initially uses their account, there will be no skills available for the characters they wish to create. Making a skill available to the account is known as learning and unlocking them. The difference between locked/unlocked and known/unknown is that the former applies to the account, and the latter applies to a PvE character on that account. Any PvP character or Hero can access any unlocked (non-PvE specific) skill, subject to profession restrictions.
A skill can be both learned and unlocked by:
- Completing certain quests which reward the player with a skill (except for PvE-only skills).
- Purchasing a skill from a skill trainer (except for PvE-only skills).
- Capturing a skill from a boss.
- Switching secondary professions, which can add default skills for that profession.
- Purchasing a skill from a Hero skill trainer (except for PvE-only skills).
Skills can be unlocked without being learned by:
- Purchasing a skill from a Priest of Balthazar.
- Recruiting a Hero who has the skill as part of their default skill bar.
- Switching to new secondary profession of Hero, which adds default skill set for that profession.
- From the purchasing of PvP unlock packages through the online store.
- Receiving a skill temporarily during certain quests prior to choosing a secondary profession.
PvE-only skills can be learned, but cannot be unlocked.
A skill might be:
- Locked on the account (i.e. the skill is unknown to all characters on the account).
- Unlocked on the account but unknown to the current character.
- Unlocked on the account and known to the current character.
- Locked on the account, but known to the current character. This applies to PvE-only skills such as Signet of Capture, as well as skills given to PvP characters upon their first creation.
When a skill is known to a character, that skill can be added to the character's Skill Bar. When a non-elite skill is unlocked but unknown to a character, the character can purchase that skill from a skill trainer (it will be marked as "Unlocked") or learn it by using a skill tome, while unlocked elite skills can be learned from elite skill tomes. A player may also add any unlocked skills to a Hero's skill bar, even if the skill is not known to the character that owns the hero. Finally, a player may use any unlocked skills on the skill bars of any PvP character on that account.
When a skill is unlocked through any means other than the purchasing of PvP Unlock Packages, a small dialog box will appear to indicate the unlocking occurred. Note that certain actions, such as unlocking through the addition of a Hero or secondary profession, may cause multiple dialog boxes to appear, sequentially.
[edit] Skill classification
[edit] By type
- See skill type for details
[edit] By cost
- Adrenal skills
- Energy skills
- Skills which cause self-inflicted Exhaustion
- Skills with Sacrifice costs
- Signets
- Skills with Upkeep
[edit] By profession and attribute
- Common skills
- <Profession> skills
- <Attribute> skills
[edit] By range
- PBAoE skills
- Half-ranged skills
- Touch skills
[edit] Other
- Core / <Campaign> skills
- Easily interrupted skills
- Elite skills / non-elite skills
- Quest reward skills
- Projectile spells
- Resurrection skills
- Title-based skills
[edit] Skill quantity
| Profession | Core | Prophecies | Factions | Nightfall | Eye of the North | Total1 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| non-elite | elite | non-elite | elite | non-elite | elite | non-elite | elite | non-elite | elite | non-elite | elite | all | |
 Warrior | 35 | 5 | 24 | 11 | 20 (2)1 | 10 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 104 (3) | 36 | 140 (3) |
 Ranger | 35 | 5 | 25 | 10 | 20 (2)1 | 10 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 105 (3) | 35 | 140 (3) |
 Monk | 35 | 5 | 26 | 10 | 20 (2)1 | 10 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 106 (3) | 35 | 141 (3) |
 Necromancer | 35 | 5 | 27 | 10 | 20 (2)1 | 10 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 107 (3) | 35 | 142 (3) |
 Mesmer | 35 | 5 | 23 | 9 | 20 (2)1 | 10 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 103 (3) | 34 | 137 (3) |
 Elementalist | 35 | 5 | 29 | 10 | 20 (2)1 | 10 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 109 (3) | 35 | 144 (3) |
 Assassin | - | - | - | - | 60 (2)1 | 15 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 85 (3) | 25 | 110 (3) |
 Ritualist | - | - | - | - | 60 (2)1 | 15 | 15 (1) | 10 | 10 | 0 | 85 (3) | 25 | 110 (3) |
 Paragon | - | - | - | - | 0 (2)1 | 0 | 60 (1) | 15 | 10 | 0 | 70 (3) | 15 | 85 (3) |
 Dervish | - | - | - | - | 0 (2)1 | 0 | 60 (1) | 15 | 10 | 0 | 70 (3) | 15 | 85 (3) |
 Common | 1 (1) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 (3) | 0 (0) | 0 (47) | 0(3) | 1 (51) | 0 (3) | 1 (54) |
| Total - PvE Only | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 1 | 0 | 13 | 0 | 47 | 3 | 80 | 3 | 84 |
| Total - PvP | 211 | 30 | 154 | 60 | 240 | 90 | 240 | 110 | 100 | 0 | 945 | 290 | 1235 |
| Sum Total | 212 | 30 | 154 | 60 | 260 | 90 | 253 | 110 | 147 | 3 | 1026 | 294 | 1319 |
- The 20 Factions PvE-only skills are made up of 10 pairs of identical skills: one linked to the Friend of the Kurzicks title track and one linked to the Friend of the Luxons title track. It is not possible to equip on the same single build any of the skills of one allegiance along with any of the skills of the other one (for example, you can't equip Luxon's Necromancer skill with Kurzick's Mesmer skill), but all 20 can still be learned by a single character.
- Numbers in brackets indicate PvE-only skills. These have been tallied for convenience.
- Resurrection Signet is the only common skill available for PvP characters.
- This list does not include special skills or title effects.
- To quickly check how many skills a character has, just open the Skills and Attributes panel; sort by profession, write down the numbers in parenthesis for each profession plus the common skills (that makes up to 11 numbers if all professions are unlocked), and finally add them. If the sum is 1319, the character has learned all available skills. Careful - multiple Signets of Capture are counted multiple times.
[edit] Notes
- Skill names tend to follow certain patterns, and it is thus often possible to discern something of the skill from the name alone. See Skill nomenclature for details.
