Professions

To start this off and avoid confusion, I need to point out that "professions" in Guild Wars 2 are the equivalent of "classes" in some other games you may have played. Your profession choice will determine the abilities available to your character, the type of armor they can wear, and the types of weapons available to them. Professions are not limited by your choice of race or gender. Each profession has a very unique and different set of skills, and you are not able to change the profession for your character once decided, so a lot of thought is required in choosing a profession. All of the professions in Guild Wars 2 were designed in a way that doesn't limit them to a playing a certain role in groups. There are no specific professions that fill the role of healer, tank, melee damage, or ranged damage; every profession has access to skill sets that fit all of these roles.

Another design in GW2 that sets it apart from other games is in weapon swapping. When you swap out your weapons, you are granted a different set of skills - equip a ranged weapon and you'll gain more ranged skills, equip a melee weapon and you'll have more melee-oriented skills, some weapons are based on higher area-of-effect damage while others may give you higher direct damage or utility. Every profession is free to equip different types of weapons outside of combat, and every profession except for elementalists and engineers can setup two sets of weapons that can be swapped out while in combat. This means that you can plan ahead and equip the weapon sets you will need for a battle before entering combat, but once in combat you'll only have access to those two sets of weapons that you setup ahead of time. Pressing the tilde key (~) will swap out weapon sets, granting you the set of skills associated with that weapon. While elementalists and engineers don't possess the ability to swap weapons while in combat, they have access to profession specific abilities that act the same way. Elementalists have four elemental attunements that they can rotate through to grant different skills. Engineers have kits that essentially allow them to use different weapons without actually using the weapon swap. Click the links below for a more in-depth description of each profession!

Elementalist

Engineer

Guardian

Mesmer

Necromancer

Ranger

Thief

Warrior