This post will feature speculation about the "scholar" type professions. I've included more than two (the remaining unknown ones) here as possibilities, because narrowing it down further than that is hard, though I'll try to narrow it down to two.
Known: Elementalist
To help figure out the role of the unknown professions, it helps to look at the role of the known ones. The GW2 elementalist shares the basic element effects with her GW1 predecessor, in that fire is good for AoE damage and setting things on fire, while air is good for single-target damage and inflicting blindness, water is good for slowing enemies down, and earth is good for defense. It's more flexible than the GW1 elementalist, though, as in GW1 you had to choose which element or elements you wished to spend attribute points on, limiting either your choices or your effectiveness with each choice. This led to people principally playing one element (or focussing on one, even if they took one or two skills from another), and fire-based nukers were probably used more than any other element.
In GW2, the elementalist gets to use all four elements by switching around which one they're focussed on (though it sounds like they won't be able to do this literally after every skill, but still often enough to be useful). And a couple of the devs have suggested the elementalist has a support role to play, probably via water magic (and possibly earth). So they're sort of a hybrid nuke/support style, and that means that none of the other scholar classes are likely to be the same thing. Elementalists also get a staff (2h), or a dagger or scepter for their main hand and a focus or dagger for their off hand. I'm going to guess no one else will have exactly that mix.
Speculation: Summoner
One of the other professions may be a summoner-type, possibly combining ritualist and necromancer style abilities from the first game. A lot of people believe either that or just a retool of the necromancer in general are likely, partly because of some things in the art book, and partly because they feel it's an obvious inclusion from the original professions.
I do think the merge is more likely, in part because ritualists were a bit too popular to entirely discard, in part because I like the ritualist a lot more than the necro and therefore hope it's not entirely removed, and because, having seen the changes they made to the elementalist and the warrior from GW1,it seems like expanding roles is one of their goals. So I'm going to guess this will be a support/damage over time/moderate damage hybrid, using a combination of spirits, summoning the undead, and single-target buffs to aid in all of those roles. I further will suggest that the support will be fairly varied, with a mix of heal over time, quick bursts of protective ability, using their undead to block or absorb attacks, and status effect removal. The damage will mainly come from the summons or damage-over-time spells.
Instead of having a hotswappable weaponset, I think that the way this profession might get extra skills to use by being able to swap to their summoned creatures' abilities and directly control them.
For 2h weapons: Staves only, as the standard caster weapon.
For main hand weapons: sword or axe, because bladed weapons go with that whole blood-fetishy thing necros had going on in GW1.
For off-hand items: focus or dagger. I didn't put dagger in main hand because I think the number of dual-dagger-wielding professions is going to be limited, but again, the whole blood-fetishy thing is a good reason for this. Foci, of course, are the standard caster off-hand.
Speculation: Retooled Necromancer
As a variant to the above, instead of folding some of the ritualist ideas into the necromancer, they might go with a pet (summon) using, moderate-damage or damage-over-time ranged skills, and a mix of buff/debuff area-of-effect skills version of the necromancer. This would actually make them somewhat closer to the original necro, although I would expect in this case to have fewer summons but more control (hence considering it a pet), and for more buff/debuff skills to be available. I'd keep the weapons and skill swapping mechanism the same as above.
Speculation: Protection Specialist One
Although they have said that they're going to have a dedicated support profession, they've also said they're going to make it possible for all professions to solo, and you can't do that without a way of causing damage. So this is a mostly-dedicated support profession with some moderate damage skills and a decent selection of weapons.
The support would come as a mix of single-target and party/ally-wide protection skills, ones that increase physical resistance, increase magic resistance, remove status effects (or otherwise negate their effect), and reflect damage to the enemy, with some options to damage nearby enemies when applying buffs to allies.
Weapon swapping would be the basic mechanic here, since that's likely the default way to get the extra skills in. Partially for that reason and partially because this would be a light hybrid, I'd say they'd get some irregular weapons for casters.
For 2h weapons: Longbow, shortbow, Staff. The bows could come with attack skills as well as protection ones, the staff with damage reflection or damage-on-buff.
For main hand weapons: Mace, scepter, pistol. Two of those are ranged to some degree, which makes more sense for this type, but the mace I chose for two reasons: one, sometimes it's useful for a caster to be able to bonk someone who runs up to him on the head, and two, warriors use a mace for stunning, which can be a useful defensive move.
For off-hand items: focus, warhorn. The warhorn is used by warriors for buffs already, so it might make sense to give it to this type of character as well. The focus is ye old standard spellcaster item. I don't think this particular version of the profession would have the ability to dual-wield, however.
Speculation: Protection Specialist Two
For a variant of the above, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that they're going to combine the protection-style skills with either the interrupt mechanic or other shutdown abilities from GW1 mesmers, or skills in the same vein. This is not a suggestion I've seen anyone else make (though that doesn't mean they haven't; I can only keep up with so much speculation :D), nor have I suggested it before, but I was thinking about it, and really, the interrupt/shutdown mechanics are, in their own way, active protection. By stopping an enemy from doing something damaging, you accomplish the same thing as by buffing your ally so they take less or no damage from that enemy. Of course, if it seems obvious to me, it won't seem that way to anyone else, but who knows, maybe there's some folks on the dev team who think like I do. And it does have implications for the mesmer, but I'll get to that below.
My guess would be that this would also use multiple weaponsets as the way they hot-swapped abilities, which would probably determine which way their specialization lay. But they still need to be able to do damage, so let's give them a nice assortment of weapons as I did above.
For 2h weapons: rifle, staff. Why rifle? Because in GW1, the other profession with interrupts was the ranger, who used a bow. I think rifle is more potentially startling, thus a logical choice for an interrupt, and besides, I think they want to make the weapon selections interesting. Staves, as with the above variant.
For main hand weapons: mace, scepter, pistol. Pistol is on the list for the same reason that rifle was; the other two are the same options as for the above variant on this profession.
Off-hand items: Focus, pistol, warhorn. Standard focus reason, warhorn reason as above. Pistol? Well, if one pistol startles you, presumably two would, too, and it'd also increase the ability to do damage.
Speculation: Mesmer
Last, but not least, the first possibility of where the mesmer would make an appearance.
What the mesmer would do depends in part on how likely my above suggestion is; if someone else has direct interrupts and shutdown, there's not a lot of point to putting it on the mesmer. But they could split them to some extent. Let's say they include that above profession and give it all the non-punishing interrupts (e.g., no damage or energy loss, just stopping the skill and maybe making it take a while before it can be reused) and passive shutdown (e.g., stopping adrenaline gain, stealing or otherwise removing energy, maybe things like slowing rate of attack and casting). That would still leave room to put some types of interrupt and shutdown on the Mesmer, by things such as damaging people in the act of spellcasting or attacks, disabling their elite or self-heal for a short time, or maybe making damage partially reflect on them (e.g., do damage to mesmer, take 1/2 that damage yourself).
I also think they'll keep the idea of GW1's Illusion attribute, but not precisely the content. Instead, they'll have some short-term status effects that can reverse themselves later (so, the illusion of status effects), or possibly damaging skills with a similar drawback, like a damage-over-time spell that heals the enemy when it ends. And lastly, they could make it possible to temporarily steal an entire skill and give the ability to use it effectively (including weapon skills, via a temporary illusionary weapon). This is similar to a GW1 mesmer mechanic, but, um. More useful.
Again, I'll go with the weaponset changes skill thing; it's the easiest mechanic, right? Or I'm insufficiently imaginative about how this would work.
For 2h weapons: Staff only, for the standard caster look.
For one-handed weapons: sword, dagger, scepter, pistol. The sword is almost a must at this point; they made the iconic mesmer art from GW1 a woman with a sword, and never really delivered, so this would be a good time for them to finally give me my stupid mesmer with a sword. Dagger, of course, just goes along nicely with sword, while scepter would be their standard caster-style weapon.
Off-hand: focus, dagger. Again, foci are just standard. Daggers, well, sword+dagger fits with the sword-holding mesmer thing, and also dual daggers has a similar feel.
Narrow it down to two for you? Uh....
Can I narrow it down to two with the option of their variants being available instead? I think we likely can count on either the summoner or necromancer style as one of them, and likewise, I think that the protection specialist is the most likely choice for the other one, though it's probably a lot more likely to be along the lines of the first version. (I will laugh, however, if they really did make someone a shutdown/protection hybrid. That would be awesome.) And for various reasons, I think the Mesmer might actually be over in adventurer.... which I'll get to later today.
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