There is no simple answer, but basically there won't be traditional skill trees/paths that railroad you into a particular specialization. Joppa wants to prevent role creep, or allowing one class to do too many roles. So while all classes have a degree of utility in their ability arsenal that may allow some situational secondary roles, they probably won't be able to completely change their primary role. Specialization in Pantheon will be done more fluidly and organically, in that you will be acquiring a lot of rare and unique abilities from mob drops, quests, etc. There will also be ways to have these abilities "grow" via the colored mana system, the living codex, etc. So essentially the way that you specialize and make your character unique is by finding these different abilities and empowering them in a way that fits your style.
BamBam said: I thought they planned back in the kickstarter, to have 2 branches of specialition for each class. Maybe we have moved away from this since then. Summoner could become a Prime mage or an Elementalist. Shaman could decide between Spirit Warden and Ritualist and so on for each class.
They have moved away from that in order to preserve the true identity of each of the classes. It's pretty much safe to assume that almost all info from the Kickstarter is outdated.
There has been a lot of talk in other threads about how specialization/subclasses/AA trees or the like could work without breaking the boundaries between roles - for example giving a mage an option to focus a bit more on fire than on ice or vice versa or allowing a healer to focus a bit more on direct heals than on heals-over-time or vice versa. This would leave the mage just as pure a dps as before and the healer just as pure a healer - just introduce a few choices and give a reason for someone that really likes the class to have 2 of them.
I believe Bazgrim is saying that to the extent this happens it will be done by way of world drops, quests, the codex etc. rather than the system many other games use where you get some form of specialization option or AA points as you level or from activities you do at level-cap. I do not believe he is saying it won't happen at all.
If I am right the other threads remain relevant even though most of the people posting there hypothesize a different mechanism. Precisely *how* two characters of the same class are allowed to differentiate themselves is of no great importance - what is important is *whether* they can.
Notice I said "to the extent this happens". The drop, codex and quest abilities in theory can be either cumulative or exclusive. By cumulative I mean that any mage could have each and every special mage ability given enough work and luck. By exclusive I mean that some abilities would exclude others e.g. a quest to improve fire abilities would disqualify the mage from doing a quest to improve ice abilities.
I hope nothing I said contradicts anything Bazgrim said because if so it means I am wrong - at least insofar as VR's current thinking goes. We still have alpha and beta ahead of us and current thinking can change on any issue - that is what testing is for.
I have no problem with being able to customize your class, in fact, I hope there is some ability to do this.
Where I draw the line is when you allow classes to be customized so much to a point where you are gimped and require "rerolling". I do not like "rerolling" and hope I don't see it in the game. Therefore, any amount of major customization should be limited, and if you make a mistake you should be able to dig your way out of it by continued leveling or horizontal progression.
I'd like some mild spec ability just for the sake of replayability and to appease my love of meddling with gear and abilities. Rift went way overboard with spec options, as did many modern mmos (imo).
I would love to see a Summoner that can spec for an element and be slightly better at whatever that element entails. As long as a player can't redefine their class' role through speccing, I'm onboard. When a Monk can spec into a tank or a Necro can burst dps like a wizard, we've gone too far. My opinion.
In the most recent interview on May 19th, Joppa explained that they were moving away from specializations. As the Monk was the only one previously mentioned, and significant time (about a year) passed between that and the 3 "melee-ish" class reveals, I suspect their current direction will be no hard specializations for launch. (and all references to specializations are now gone from the Monk Class page, although they're still there on the Monk reveal newsletter)