GW2 Character Traits

Guild Wars 2 game designer, Ben Miller, dished up some tasty information regarding GW2 Character "Traits" and how they are used to improve a character's abilities and effectiveness.

Traits will combine with your skills and attributes, becoming part of your overall "build" in order to make you even more powerful.

Each profession has its own set of trait lines, with roughly 100 traits for each profession, resulting in countless variations to allow players to build a really unique character based on the choices they make during their gameplay.

Traits are acquired by completing profession-based challenges which will be scattered throughout the Guild Wars 2 world. Each profession has its own set of trait lines, similar to the profession specific attribute lines in the original Guild Wars. Two examples Ben gives are for the Elementalist and the Warrior.

Elementalists seek ancient knowledge locked in tomes or particularly powerful elemental locations. For instance, you may walk into an inn and persuade a shadowy stranger to tell you about a mysterious tome full of arcane knowledge. If you are successful at aquiring the tome it will unlock the secrets of magical energy.

The less intellectually-blessed Warriors train physically, bash stuff, drink stuff and eat stuff. A Warrior's challenge may be to duel a legendary swordmaster and, if victorious, the swordmaster will teach you his skills, allowing you to select the Sword Mastery trait.

Each trait line in Guild Wars 2 has a number of major and minor slots. Warriors have two general trait lines called Power and Tactics as well as trait lines for each of the weapons they can wield. As your character masters traits, you slot them into these lines, affecting your character and the abilities they have. You may choose to stack traits that increase your Warrior's strength attribute so your individual melee attacks do more damage.

The rules for changing traits are extremely flexible. You can respec your character at will, any time you are outside of combat, without having to go back to a town or outpost.

There are countless unique trait combinations to experiment with, which will let actively master the profession you've chosen.

In Guild Wars 2 YOU get to pick the character traits that suit YOUR playing style! How much fun is THAT going to be?!