The character classes of Guild Wars. A player character has a primary profession, and is also able to use a secondary profession to be chosen among the others, although the latter's attributes can't be upped with runes and it lacks a special attribute that's only available to primary professions.
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Introduced in Prophecies
Warrior
The classic melee brawlers and tanks. They have the highest amount of armor points.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Putting points in Strength increases the armor penetration of the warrior's attacks.
- Badass Normal: Not counting the choice of a secondary profession, warriors simply rely on strength, weapon mastery and battlecries instead of magical powers.
- The Berserker: A good chunk of warrior skills use rage instead of energy. There's no visible rage bar, its accumulation can instead be seen on said skills, building up until they can be activated.
- Cool Helmet: The Warrior is the only profession to wear metal helms, with varying levels of coolness from ordinary mail coifs to impressively detailed plate helmets.
- Damager, Healer, Tank: Can specialize in either damage dealing or tanking. The warrior's small energy bar and energy regeneration means very limited use of monk healing skills as a secondary profession.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The dance of the female warrior is Uma Thurman's "dive" twist improvisation in Pulp Fiction.
- The male warrior's dance is John Travolta's improvisation on The Bee Gees' "You should be dancing" in Saturday Night Fever.
- Finishing Move: Final Thrust is a Sword Mastery skill that deals double damage on enemies that are below 50% of their health.
- Lightning Bruiser: Warriors have some sprinting skills, which increases their mobility.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Swords and axes are one-handed, so warriors usually carry a shield in the other hand.
- Made of Iron: They can usually take much more punishment than any other class. The high level of armor points helps them being more resilient, and so do some Strength skills.
- Magic Knight: A Warrior's secondary profession will make them able to mix their impressive weapon skills with magic. The Warrior's low energy does however put a limit on how much of a magical knight they can effectively be.
- Multi-Melee Master: Warriors can specialize in three different types of weapons (not counting a possible secondary melee profession):
- Regenerating Mana: Warriors have the lowest energy regeneration rate, with only two pips, and the smallest energy bar of all.
- Super-Scream: Warriors have access to a number of shout abilities. It typically improves the party's defense.
- Weapon Specialization: Warriors can specialize in either swords (one-handed), axes (one-handed) or maxes (two-handed). Maces don't allow to carry a shield.
Elementalist
Spell casters who fight using elemental powers.
- Boom Stick: An elementalist's wand or staff shoots blasts of energy dealing either Cold, Earth, Fire or Lightning damage.
- Elemental Powers: They're called "elementalists" for a reason.
- Dishing Out Dirt: When specializing in Earth magic.
- Kill It with Ice: When specializing in Water magic. Typically used to slow enemies down.
- Playing with Fire: When specializing in Fire magic. Deals heavy spread damage.
- Shock and Awe: When specializing in Air magic. Those spells typically have 25% of armor penetration.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- Regenerating Mana: Elementalists are among the professions with the highest energy regeneration rate — four pips. The Energy Storage attribute can give them the biggest energy bar of all and greatly helps to manage it.
- Squishy Wizard: If an elementalist doesn't equip a magical armor skill (usually in Earth magic), then he/she is very vulnerable.
Mesmer
Spell casters whose main role in battle is to confuse and interrupt the enemy.
- Anti-Magic: By virtue of being able to interrupt the enemy's spellcasting.
- Boom Stick: A mesmer's wand or staff shoots blasts of energy dealing chaos damage.
- Cool Mask: Mesmers typically dress as if they're theatre actors (some mesmer NPCs are actors in the lore actually) or going to a Masquerade Ball, with masks ranging from domino to Venice Carnival-like.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The male mesmer's dance is straight out of Irish dance shows like Riverdance or Lords of the Dance.
- The female mesmer's dance borrows to Spanish flamenco.
- Entropy and Chaos Magic: A mesmer's weapon typically inflicts chaos damage, and the profession's magic is typically meant to cause chaos in the enemy's ranks.
- Purple Is Powerful: Mesmers are associated with the purple color. Pretty much all of their skills have icons colored in various shades of purple, and chaos damage are purple.
- Regenerating Mana: Mesmers are among the professions with the highest energy regeneration rate — four pips. Many Inspiration Magic skills are meant to help manage the mesmer's energy bar.
- Squishy Wizard: Mesmers are one of the most fragile classes, having the lowest amount of armor available and little to no defensive skills.
Necromancer
Spell casters who either hex enemies or raise creatures from nearby corpses.
- Animate Dead: They can cast quite a few minion-creating spells using nearby corpses.
- Boom Stick: A necromancer's wand or staff shoots blasts of energy dealing either Cold or Dark damage.
- Cast from Hit Points: Some spells require necromancers to sacrifice life points.
- Delinquent Hair: Mohawk and punk hairstyles are available to male necromancers.
- Dem Bones: While most of the Necromancer's minions are flesh golems, the one exception is the Jagged Horror that spawns after a Shambling Horror's death. It is entirely made of bones and causes Bleeding with each of its attacks.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The male necromancer's dance is a combination of headbanging and moshing.
- The female necromancer's dance is Michael Jackson's Thriller.
- Flesh Golem: They typically invoke flesh constructs out of nearby corpses instead of more classic skeletons or zombies. The elite skill "Flesh Golem" is the biggest available and deals the highest amount of damage.
- Life Energy: Putting points in the Soul Reaping attribute allows necromancers to gain an amount of energy each time a creature dies.
- Necromancer: Obviously.
- Regenerating Mana: Necromancers are among the professions with the highest energy regeneration rate — four pips. They also have skills that temporarily grant more pips to other players.
Ranger
A range damage dealer who uses bows, traps, pets and nature spirits.
- The Beastmaster: Rangers can tame animals and use them to fight.
- Bottomless Magazines: They never run out of arrows.
- Elemental Weapon: Some bow modifications make them deal elemental damage, which is situationally useful.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The male ranger's dance incorporates moves from locking and windmill.
- The female ranger dances like a cheerleader.
- Forest Ranger: Some ranger outfits look like they were made with whatever they can find in the forests, and the profession is the most In Harmony with Nature in the lore.
- In Harmony with Nature: The class with the closest bonds to nature in the lore.
- Multishot: The elite skill Barrage shoots multiple arrows in one go to hit as many as six enemies.
- Regenerating Mana: Rangers have three pips of energy regeneration. The Expertise attribute helps them to manage their energy bar by reducing the cost of skills.
- Summon Magic: Rangers can summon nature spirits that grant bonuses to everyone in their area of effect, party and enemies alike.
- Trap Master: They set up spiked traps that inflict a variety of damage and conditions to the enemy when triggered.
- Trick Arrow: Some arrow shot skills slow down the enemy, some others deal fire damage, other interrupt the enemy's skills/spells and so on and so forth.
- Weapon Specialization: Bows, of course.
Monk
The healing and protecting spells-oriented profession.
- Bald Mystic: Male monks are usually bald. A female monk can be bald too if the player so chooses. All of them wield healing and protection magic.
- Boom Stick: A monk's wand or staff shoots blasts of energy dealing either Holy or Fire damage.
- Death Is Cheap: Prior to Factions, monks were the only profession with reusable resurrection skills.
- Deflector Shields: The Protection attribute has a wide array of damage-absorbing magical shields.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- Male monks have a dance that appears to be a mix of Tai chi and Capoeira.
- The Female monk's also incorporates Capoeira, along with Changquan
and some moves from the dance performed by Zhang Ziyi in House of Flying Daggers.
- Healing Hands: Monks are primarily healers who channel the healing powers of Dwayna. The Divine Favor primary attribute adds additional healing to their skills.
- Light 'em Up: Smiting skills deal holy damage invoking Balthazar's light. Their pretty poor damage output makes monks an unsuitable profession for that role overall, although they still inflict double damage on undead enemies.
- Magic Enhancement: Monks cast healing or protective enchants on their party.
- Regenerating Mana: Monks are among the professions with the highest energy regeneration rate — four pips.
- Tattoo as Character Type: All monks have a head tattoo as head armor. There are also whole sets of monk armor that are nothing but body tattoos.
- Warrior Monk: They're servants of Dwayna and take part to battles.
- White Magic: Their magic invokes powers from the goddess Dwayna, who's a force of good.
Introduced in Factions
Assassin
A hit-and-run profession that typically uses two one-handed slashing damage weapons.
- Casting a Shadow: Putting points into the Shadow Arts attribute improves skills that boost the Assassin's defenses and allow instantaneous shadow movement. It also keeps them alive longer, giving them some self-healing skills.
- Cool Mask: The assassin's armor headpiece is a ninja mask.
- Dual Wielding: They dual-wield daggers, kamas, sais, short swords and so on and so forth.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The dance of the male assassin includes popping, moonwalk and a dance performed by Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
- The dance of the female assassin includes tricking and skanking.
- Flash Step: The skill Shadow Step teleports the assassin to his/her target.
- Glass Cannon: Assassins can deal high amounts of damage in a small amount of time, but they're far more squishier than warriors and can't stay under fire or in the melee for long.
- Ninja: Assassins are basically ninjas in anything but name.
- Regenerating Mana: They have the highest amount of energy regeneration pips — four.
- Weapon Specialization: Assassins specialize in Dual Wielding daggers, kamas, sais, short swords etc. Unlike warrior weapons, there's no fundamental stat differences between them.
Ritualist
A support profession that uses ancient relics, weapon alterations and summoned spirits.
- Blindfolded Vision: Ritualists have their eyes covered to gain a better sense of surrounding spirits (when the player chooses to display the head armor part, that is).
- Boom Stick: A ritualist's wand or staff shoots blasts of energy dealing either Dark or Lightning damage.
- Death Is Cheap: The second profession to have reusable resurrection skills.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The male ritualist's dance is Jon Heder's dance from Napoleon Dynamite.
- Female ritualists perform an interpretive Cirque du Soleil dance.
- Regenerating Mana: Ritualists are among the professions with the highest energy regeneration rate — four pips.
- Shock and Awe: A number of Channeling skills strike the enemy with lightning.
- Summon Magic: Ritualists summon chained spirits to either attack, protect or heal the group, depending on the chosen attributes. They also summon ancient relics that grant bonuses when they're either held or dropped.
- Summoning Ritual: They kneel when invoking spirits.
- Support Party Member: Typically a support class outside the Damager, Healer, Tank box.
Introduced in Nightfall
Dervish
A scythe-wielding melee profession.
- The Berserker: Some Dervish skills use rage instead of energy. There's no visible rage bar, its accumulation can instead be seen on said skills, building up until they can be activated.
- Dance Battler: Dervishes, specially female, look like they're dancing when they fight.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The male dervish's dance emulates the dance of Christopher Walken in Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" music video.
- The female's dance is a traditional Sufi whirling dervish dance with elements of ballet.
- In the Hood: The dervish's outfit includes a hood.
- Magic Enhancement: They cast enchants on themselves to get combat bonuses. Some scythe attack skills suppress said enchants to unleash additional damage or conditions on the enemy.
- Regenerating Mana: Dervishes are among the professions with the highest energy regeneration rate — four pips, although their energy bar is among the smallest.
- Sinister Scythe: Scythes are the dervish's primary weapon.
- Super Mode: The Avatar elite skills, which turn the dervish into the humanoid avatar of one of the five gods that are worshipped in Tyria (either Balthazar, Grenth, Dwayna, Lyssa or Melandru). The bonuses depend on which god's Avatar skill is chosen by the player.
- Weapon Specialization: They specialize in wielding scythes.
- Weapon Twirling: They twirl their scythe when fighting.
Paragon
A profession that throws javelins and supports the group using chants and battle cries.
- Ancient Grome: A paragon's armor typically has a Ancient Greek/Ancient Roman look, specially the breastplate, the skirt and sandals.
- Battle Cry: Their chants grant momentary offensive or defensive/healing bonuses to the party.
- The Berserker: Some paragon skills use rage instead of energy. There's no visible rage bar, its accumulation can instead be seen on said skills, building up until they can be activated.
- Emote Animation: When typing /dance:
- The male paragon's dance is Michael Jackson's "Beat It".
- The female paragon dance resembles a traditional African tribal dance, with moves seen in the music video of "Alane" by Wes.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: The paragon is the one of only two professions to wear heavy armor, but unlike the warrior, they do not wear any form of protective headgear.
- Javelin Thrower: Their weapons of choice are throwing javelins.
- Lady Legionnaire Wear: Female paragons look like this by default with their armors typically having a battle skirt.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Since javelins are one-handed weapons, paragons use shields in the other hand.
- Power Gives You Wings: Some chants have wings briefly popping up in the paragon's back when activated.
- Regenerating Mana: Just like warriors, paragons have the lowest energy regeneration rate, with only two pips.
- Super-Scream: Empowering battle chants are the bread and butter of that profession.
- Support Party Member: A profession that primarily focuses on supporting the group with its chants.
- Weapon Specialization: They specialize in throwing javelins.
