“The warrior is a master of weapons who relies on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive in battle. A warrior can shrug off blow after blow to stay in the fight, all the while building up adrenaline to fuel his offense.” - Guild Wars 2 Official Website
Warriors make use of the adrenaline mechanic, where one builds up adrenaline to release in burst damage skills. While weapon variety is important to all the professions (as it guides what skills are available), warriors are truly weapon specialists. With access to swords, axes, hammers, maces, longswords, rifles, and longbows (each focusing on a different style of warfare), warriors truly have a myriad of choices on ways to bring the pain. With special access to skill chains, one skill slot can be transformed into multiple skills where one attack causes the slot to transform into another attack, suitable to followup the previous attack. They also get support skills in way of banners (which they can plant on a battlefield, or pick up and carry around) and shouts (buffs that effect friendlies within ear-shot).
“The ranger is a jack-of-all-trades and a master of them all as well, relying on his keen eye, steady hand, or the power of nature itself. A master of ranged combat, the ranger is capable of striking unwitting foes from a distance with his bow. With a stable of pets at his command, a ranger can adapt to his opponents' strengths and weaknesses.” - Guild Wars 2 Official Website
A ranger’s speciality lies in ranged weaponry; however, like the warrior, rangers have access to both melee and ranged weapons. Not only relying on weapons, they also make use of traps to hinder and damage their enemies and spirits to benefit their allies. Rangers can often be found with a loyal pet at their side, an animal companion that follows them around and fights for them. These pets have different strengths based on what type of animal they are, as well as different skills the ranger can pick for their pet to use via evolution points.
“A necromancer is a practitioner of the dark arts who summons the dead, wields the power of lost souls, and literally sucks the lifeblood of the enemy. A necromancer feeds on life force, which he can use to cheat death or bring allies back from the brink.” - Guild Wars 2 Official Website
Necromancers glorify in the death and slow, fatal pain of their enemies, utilizing both to their gain. Their specialities include access to minions: ghostly or shambling figures that go forth to wreck havoc for their master. Once a minion skill has been used, it will be replaced with another skill that is minion-related (e.g. Summon Bone Fiend is replaced with Taste of Death after use; Taste of Death can then be used on a minion for the Necromancer to regain a large chunk of health). Since necromancers are more intimate with death, when they become incapacitated they enter Death Shroud state unlike the normal downed state of other professions. In this state they get access to special skills which they can use to get a kill to rally themselves back to the realm of the living. Necros also get access to ground-targeted skills called marks, self-radiating skills called wells, and the unique ability to use the powerful fear condition.
What’s the Same and What’s Different in Guild Wars 2?
When a developer makes a sequel to a successful game, one of the most important questions players ask is "what's staying the same and what's changing?" This usually details more loaded questions, such as "is X staying the same? It was my favorite part of the game!" or "I really hope they're changing Y... I think the game would have been a lot better if they did!" Sequels give developers a chance to really streamline the things that they, and the community, really liked about the original game and to change the things they weren't 100% happy about. Guild Wars 2 is no exception, as there both radical departures away from the original as well as fine-tuning or simply not changing the things that both developers and players felt were the heart of Guild Wars.
Of Healing and Healers:
There will be no dedicated healers in Guild Wars 2. Yup, that’s right - ArenaNet has said there will be no healbots. While they assure the community that there will still be support skills (and perhaps support roles as well), there will not be anyone standing in the back healing up their allies. Their reasoning for this is because they want each character to be more self-reliant, and they don’t want to have people waiting around when they could be doing stuff just because they can’t find a monk. Every profession has a dedicated healing slot on their skill bar. This naturally brings us to our next point.