Guild Wars keeps the punches coming with their latest reveal about the traits system. It's a system that's going to allow you to slot certain traits into your build to help buff up skills and attributes to allow you a little bit more customization in your build.

At a basic level, traits make you better at what you choose to do. You slot traits in order to modify skills and attributes. Once you have mastered a handful of traits they become a key component in creating your overall build.

You'll obtain traits by completing challenges that will be scattered across the land and there will be about 100 for each profession. The challenges will match your class, like Warriors will eat, bash things, etc. in order to gain their traits while Elementalists will seek out knowledge and arcane tomes.

The traits themselves will modify certain attributes, skills, or just make something easier. An example given that catches my attention is the "Weapon Master" trait which allows you to switch weapons faster by lowering the cooldown. That's a really nifty thing to bring with you if you're going to anticipate weapon switching a lot during a fight and it's something that's more than "+1 Tactics." Not that pure attribute/skill boosts aren't available, but there is also some fun and intuitive things that will be included.

Whether it’s adventuring around Tyria trying to stop dragons or fighting other players in World PvP – the trait system is there to experiment with, to have fun with, and to allow you to feel like you are actively mastering the profession you have chosen. Like Guild Wars, there are countless unique and clever combinations to be found.

So it looks like it'll be something in place that allows you to say follow a cookie cutter build but also customize it for your play style (or so it looks like to me). If you find weapon switching bothersome then taking the weapon switching trait would be useless, but if you weapon switch a lot then it'd be extremely handy.

You can read more about the trait system over at the official Guild Wars 2 website. Of course, you can also come to our Ten Ton Hammer community forums and talk about the trait system with other fellow GW2 fans.