Guild Wars 2

What I want simply is a game with monks like gw1 had where fights can actually last longer than a couple of minutes. But apparently Arenanet decided that healers are boring and everyone should just kill each other with dps. Healing and Damage Mitigation needs a real buff if this game wants to have any chance at being a competitive #ESPORT

Guild Wars 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWvdyCk1Uo

“Monks…with their unparalleled gift for keeping their allies alive”
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_monk_skills

Main skills used by monks to mitigate spike burst damage were Aegis, Protective Spririt, Guardian, Infuse Health, Spirit Bond, Restore Condition and Word of Healing. But nearly all the skills had a use.

I think GW2 can use a Demon Hunter:

1. High burst capability
2. High active defence and mobility
3. Spammable skills and stealth
4. Ability to guarantee critical damage

Oh wait…

Haha I think that’s jatt as is riotjatt from league of legends

Eloquence.5207:

I think GW2 can use a Demon Hunter:

1. High burst capability
2. High active defence and mobility
3. Spammable skills and stealth
4. Ability to guarantee critical damage

Oh wait…

http://youtu.be/6zXDo4dL7SU

Sooo… what would happen if your side has no Monk, then? Or what happens to the Monk in those apparently all-so-important 1v1 encounters?

Carighan.6758:

Sooo… what would happen if your side has no Monk, then? Or what happens to the Monk in those apparently all-so-important 1v1 encounters?

Even Monks can die and be pressured from burst damage as seen in the video but most importantly it gives a real counter to spamming of dps (either conditions or power damage). Right now it’s just a race to see who can spam and avoid the most damage to win hence we have all these “passive” condition builds and burst spikes that rely on being invulnerable.

Evades/dodges, condition removal, block and invulnerable skills all have cooldowns, meanwhile the thief’s initative is constantly refilling and they can hide in stealth and just wait then teleport and unload burst. It’s like an assassin in gw1 on steroids with teleports, daze, stun (interupts and disables skill use) and evasion, but it also has stealth if all that wasn’t enough.

This is why I think this game would benefit from having a monk, to counter the insane burst damage capable from thieves which seems to be forcing everybody else into condition builds and bunker.

Oh, I wasn’t meaning it in a “Monks are going to be so overpowered”-way. They’d be healers. As a result, they should not be able to win solo, ever. That’s the whole point. But, that’d go against basic underlying combat design in GW2.

So either they’re not actually healers (as a RPG-role, and in that case, what’s the point?), or they are and the whole combat mechanic falls apart as all classes have to be shoehorned into RPG-roles.

Also, the underlying approach is wrong, IMO. You’re effectively trying to promote an arms’ race. Have 8 classes which do too much damage? Add 1 new which counters it.

Why not simply reduce damage dealt and increase combat duration, while reducing the delta between maximum-DPS and maximum-lifetime greatly? In other words, nerf the extremes. Keeps the overall level of power, but removes the problematic parts, also makes balancing traits/skills easier as classes balance more around what class they are, not what traits + skills + gear they equipped.

I mean don’t get me wrong, 9th class would be fun, but not if their design is diametrically opposed to the other 8 classes and they’d use it to move game balance away from the existent 8 classes.

Thank you Carighan for having some logic it is so hard to find on these forums. Yes I certainly agree the extremes do need toning down.

A full zerker amulet player will die in a couple of hits yet can 1shot other players, while a full on bunker such as engineer or guardian can tank hits from multiple players. Also the condition guys in the middle cant really be blamed either since he needs to tank and do some dps through the toughness of the bunkers.

ricky.2679:

What I want simply is a game with monks like gw1 had where fights can actually last longer than a couple of minutes. …

Or hours. If I remember correctly they got rid of healers because (GvG) fights typically lasted the full duration and tended to end in stalemates, or the VoD type of escalations to force an outcome.

Is that even such a bad thing? Fights lasting longer hones skills and teamwork with players. The best example I can use in gw2 is wvw where there is enough support and the aoe limit of 5 prevents players being bursted down instantly if they make a mistake. The stacking zerg meta is there for a reason and all zerker damage does is make it even more needed.

It was, in a way, a bad thing, at least it’s one reason they gave for not having dedicated healers in GW2.

GW1 is still up and running and still on the shelves of retailers, you can dive right in and find out.

I played gw1 had fun but this combat system is more dynamic being able to actively dodge and every class having their own heals. I don’t know man I just get bored of the whole dps wins everything while damage mitigation and healing is not even considered. I think gw2 lacks depth and with a monk it could easily have it.

Maybe I’m just the type of player that likes when I’m needed such as Shadow Form tanks in gw1. There are many other players that I think want to be able to feel like they can help the party and be useful instead of just another player. This is why I love healing and damage mitigation and tanking is so fun.

It’s Just my opinion though and thanks for reading.

But you are needed, just not for making red bars go up.

I think AI targeting the best defended opponent, which is what is required for tanking, is a boring design, though GW1 thankfully did not do that.

Very good point Frans. The ability to actively mitigate damage yourself is what makes this game good. I still think the extremes such as full zerker, conditions and bunker need to be brought closer together though. But this thread’s main purpose really is saying to the players that are complaining in this forum to try bunker or support builds. Maybe you might like it?

God that looked aweful.

20% hp -> 100% hp -> 20% hp -> 100% hp. Nothing but burst and healing everywhere, its like WoW all over again.

I think ill pass, that just looked terrible. Besides, dont we have Guardians already?

I tough Anet divided monk trough guardian and water elementalist, as prot and healing.

is this a l2healing?

No.

This game is built on an entirely different premise. We don’t need healers here.
GW1 is a great game, I played the heck out of it but adding healers in GW2 will not make it better or more like GW1 – it will just break it.

In gw1 if the enemy was good monks they cant lose. Gw2s best decision to remove them.

I agree that adding monks to GW2 would not work. That said I think GW1’s combat had more depth and this was in part due to monks.

Interrupts were a big deal in GW1, putting skills on long cooldown and would regularly turn the tide of battle. There was counterplay however, you could cancel skills to bait out interrupts. Players usually had a 40/40 weapon set and would try to get a faster cast if they needed to get some critical skill off when they had an interruptor focusing them.

Most classes had energy in GW1 (a bit like initiative) and there were various e-denial skills and to counter this players would switch wesponsets to negative energy ones to ‘hide’ energy from those pesky mesmer.

There were hexes as well as conditions, and some of these were very powerful, punishing players for mindlessly spamming skills. There were various counters to hexes and conditions. Some monk heals got more potent when somebody was loaded up with hexes or conditions
Some mesmer skills removed hexes and gave an energy boost.

Positioning felt like it was more important in GvG. There was a distinct front line, mid line and back line. In gw2 wvw there’s just the hammer train mindlessly following the commander.

GW1 did have its own problems, monks were too needed in pve, certain skills were OP such as IWAY, but overall it was a deep an engaging game.

Healing is handled in other fashion than in other games.

Notice that almost every heal outside of utility set one also affects 4 allies around you. That’s the balance around 5-man party everywhere.

Now if everyone in the party would take some healing gear, healing traits and other supportive things, the party would put out similar amount of healing as dedicated one healer together.
The fact that Guardian is just superior here when compared to other classes I just take as a design flaw.

Another thing to notice – if you check new game changes, you can see that slow float towards stronger group healing.
Things like Monk runes, Benevloence sigils, Aquatic Benevolence trait or Renewing Blast/Unholy Martyr – They all don’t do anything to you or help self-sustain but boost your outgoing party healing and party sustain by a lot.

Healing Power could scale a little bit better and content should force players to take some party healing or sustain in cost of pure damage. But that’s ANet’s fault.

Anet decided a lot of things. And didnt think them trough.

I still say they : TAKEN, away trinity to GIVE us less wait time in lfg, and generally for others.
Did they achive this? NO . I wait 3 hours or a lot more for party.
AS GENERAL GAMEPLAY YOU DONT EVEN NEED COMBAT ROLES, THEN WHY TAKE IT AWAY?
It would have been like this : Nah we dont need a healer or tank to take this champion down, but i want to support the others, so i go healer. 100% more fun (whispers) . I CAN BE WHAT I WANT TO BE BAM ITS RPG…no you CANT. because Anet decided to take all combat roles from you instead of making all classes be able to be any of them.

To me all classes are general all araund bs that is boring to play. SO YES I SUPPORT THIS.

Side note : Anet you think wait time in LFG problems root was Trinity…kittening SHAME that you call yourself developers.

Good points Neurophen and Rym. Arenanet are buffing support healing and I am glad for it. Problem is most of the full zerker burst spike damage just cannot be outhealed. There’s not much you can do to mitigate the damage either apart from your main heal, dodges, blocks, invulns and evades. Problem is when that’s all on cooldown and thief is just sitting around in stealth you’re dead.

I have played thief (only in hotjoins) and it was very easy to farm new players for rank. It’s kind of sad actually how thief can so easily turn any group fight easily just by simply pistolwhipping. Here’s an example of a build I have used with great success perhaps I’m just farming noobs but it feels wrong:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl8MpypFOxzJ0PNBNhsdlOR8O83yaFA-TZBFwACOCAPOFAl2foaZAAPAAA

Only a few fights so not enough data to support a full conclusion.

My brother and I run roaming in World vs World. D/P thief and a support Guardian. With the changes and him focusing on support we actually got ambused by a thief & warrior and were able to recover due to his buffs and healing. It didn’t erase the opening dmg but I was able to play more aggressively knowing I was getting some outside heals.

Not saying we are amazing roamers or the other two were anything to write home about but as others have stated I think Anet is working towards a healing/protection support build to be valid in WvW/PvP. PvE dungeons need a revamp before we can have that conversation.

If the merged thread about thieves with 500+ posts and 11k views isn’t enough reason for a monk or better healing power scaling then I don’t know what is.

The burst is problematic. They tried to buff support, but they didn’t realise that the current support doesn’t work with the amount of burst that is ingame.

Not just damage burst, but condi burst aswell.

The time it takes an Ele to cast geysir beneath his ally is enough for a berserker to outright kill that target.

And if that isn’t enough, you don’t burst in heal, but rather apply heal over 3s during which your ally is heavily limited in his action radius.
What you get is enough heal to outheal like 1 hit of a balanced build and half a hit of a burst build.

Same goes for condition removal. You can fully go for condi removal on an ele, and an engineer or necro can probably just throw autoattacks on you and still keep you on a bunch of conditions.

A GW1 style monk wouldn’t be needed for his healing. Protection prayers is what is needed in GW2. Just some of those skills. Guardian, Protective Spirit (that would be really amazing), RoF and condition cleanse(2 of them). Game would take a 180° turn in terms of complexity.

ricky.2679:

What I want simply is a game with monks like gw1 had where fights can actually last longer than a couple of minutes. But apparently Arenanet decided that healers are boring and everyone should just kill each other with dps. Healing and Damage Mitigation needs a real buff if this game wants to have any chance at being a competitive #ESPORT

Guild Wars 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWvdyCk1Uo

“Monks…with their unparalleled gift for keeping their allies alive”
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_monk_skills

Main skills used by monks to mitigate spike burst damage were Aegis, Protective Spririt, Guardian, Infuse Health, Spirit Bond, Restore Condition and Word of Healing. But nearly all the skills had a use.

if they do add the monk, let’s just hope that their “unparalleled gift” doesn’t turn out similar to our “unparalleled archers”.

Kungkittenand GW2 sounds like a bad mix. Why not add jedi to the roster..

Varonth.5830:

The burst is problematic. They tried to buff support, but they didn’t realise that the current support doesn’t work with the amount of burst that is ingame.

Not just damage burst, but condi burst aswell.

The time it takes an Ele to cast geysir beneath his ally is enough for a berserker to outright kill that target.

And if that isn’t enough, you don’t burst in heal, but rather apply heal over 3s during which your ally is heavily limited in his action radius.
What you get is enough heal to outheal like 1 hit of a balanced build and half a hit of a burst build.

Same goes for condition removal. You can fully go for condi removal on an ele, and an engineer or necro can probably just throw autoattacks on you and still keep you on a bunch of conditions.

A GW1 style monk wouldn’t be needed for his healing. Protection prayers is what is needed in GW2. Just some of those skills. Guardian, Protective Spirit (that would be really amazing), RoF and condition cleanse(2 of them). Game would take a 180° turn in terms of complexity.

Good post and understanding of the real problem which is lack of damage mitigation.
Protection prayers are definitely the answer and it wouldn’t even be that complicated to add such skills. But the problem is if you added them to the Guardian then it would become overpowered and players would just want it nerfed.

It seems the only real solution to this problem is to add a whole new (old) profession called monks. I don’t know how Arenanet can solve the overwhelming damage bursts in pvp and maybe that’s part of the game. It seems that the zerker pve meta perhaps had a bigger effect on the balance of this game than we thought.

I don’t think spikes are extreme enough in GW2 to warrent prot monk spells. Prot spirit / RoF / WoH or ZB were enough to stop most spikes dead if the monk was any good at reading the battle.

I could see something like infuse having a place, and without WoH it’ll be a (rightly) risky proposition.

Edit: because there is no targeting of friendly players it would have to be more like defending martyr from daoc (take a load of damage to radiate a strong aoe heal on a long CD)

@ricky
Rather than throwing bunch of new support/healing skills/traits adapted from GW1 on one profession (especialy the one overpowered in terms of support compared to 7 others), just split them among all professions, changing the names.

Give Protective Spirit to Necromancer maybe, using their spare Life Force (currently serving as a meat shield) as a resource, Aegis renamed to something like “Critical Awarness” and given to Thief etc.

Also, quick link for interested:
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Monk_skills_quick_reference

Keep in mind that Ritualists had very interesting and powerful heals too and since their re-incarnation in GW2 are Engineers and Necromancers up to some point, it could be considered.

I find the burst prevalence unfortunate because for quite a while now it pushed people to condition burst/tank meta. I don’t see that trend reversing any time soon now since burst and winning is all that matters, still.

Bunker and condition builds will continue to proliferate everywhere until we’re back to square one with these changes.

Well if we can’t stop it then perhaps just make everyone else just as overpowered as zerker or conditions then. Bunker and support do very little damage unless they’re a hybrid to do conditions but you generally need some healing power to be a good support player.

Can a monk not be added and new skills or traits to all professions to be able to mitigate damage? Then I simply ask why not let healing power scale a little better. All these complaints on the forum I see are either to do with conditions or power burst. If players could support each other better with their healing then it might be better.

Edited Topic Name. I think it suits the topic of this thread better since it’s a quick easy solution.

ricky.2679:

Bunker and support do very little damage unless they’re a hybrid to do conditions

This is flat out false. My ptv/clerics d/d Ele can do scary burst damage, not a single drop of condition damage in my build.

ricky.2679:

Can a monk not be added and new skills or traits to all professions to be able to mitigate damage? Then I simply ask why not let healing power scale a little better.

The scaling change is a much better idea, IMO:

1. It affects all classes.
2. It re-uses an existent and underpowered mechanic.
3. It diversifies gear.
4. It can be re-used for PvE rebalancing to further devaluate the zerker-meta.

The first thing would be meh. It’s an arms race, if you got traits to mitigate burst, and someone else has burst, you need those traits. Everyone does. At that point, why even have it be an optional trait?

Agreed Carighan it’s the first thing I thought to balance the meta since healing power seems to scale so poorly in my opinion. And yes Terrahero eles can have some good damage while in pvt/clerics, but so can most classes. It’s the full zerker or condition builds I’m worried about mostly. Their damage increases exponentially while bunker’s damage decreases the more support based you become.

Clear.8512:

… I think Anet is working towards a healing/protection support build to be valid in WvW/PvP. PvE dungeons need a revamp before we can have that conversation.

I see exactly this happening as well. I guess the next balance patch will reduce damage everywhere or increase defenses like toughness. Maybe implement a defense stat against condi damage than simply just curing.

But it has be made sure that it is not ending in 5 bunker against 5 bunker stalemate.

sternenstaub.8763:

Clear.8512:

… I think Anet is working towards a healing/protection support build to be valid in WvW/PvP. PvE dungeons need a revamp before we can have that conversation.

I see exactly this happening as well. I guess the next balance patch will reduce damage everywhere or increase defenses like toughness. Maybe implement a defense stat against condi damage than simply just curing.

But it has be made sure that it is not ending in 5 bunker against 5 bunker stalemate.

Lol a guardian fight vs guardian is a endelss battle if both know well the class, about bunkers i imagine the same result unless condi bunkers, wins who can spam more.

ever since this patch came out i have been playing two characters: my necro and my ele. necro is just your average bursty power nec but the real fun is on my ele. i have full clerics gear with magi trinkets for the vitality and i use two staves: one with sigil of life + sigil of water, adn the other with sigil of renewal + sigil of water. my soothing mist heals for 200 a tick and my regen heals for >400 a tick with just over 2k healing power. i’m using runes of water so i aoe heal when using a healing skill, aoe heal on weapon swap, heal on swapping to water, heal on dodge, staff 3 and staff 5, staff auto atk aoe heals for 1k per attack, aquatic benevolence, etc. it’s just great. can still drop meteor aoe if necessary to get kills but overall it is fun to play in groups. i would love a dedicated healer class but at the same time i would hate to not be able to do any damage.

I have given up guys it seems there will never be true monks of protection and healing in this game. Everyone has their own damage mitigation already in some form or another. Even if they did make healing power scale better it would still not fix the focus on dps for all of the game modes.

People like to zerg and win and a monk has no place here because they can tank and heal damage themselves. People want easymode not challenging pvp or wvw. I have deleted my guardian and only have pvp characters now. I just cannot enjoy this game without monks.

I might just reroll to a more dps oriented class. Because it seems no matter how hard I try to be an actual monk in this game it just doesn’t work. Support is not strong enough and people die too quickly. It’s also sad when you’re a guardian who actually cares about support and not just dps and facetanking.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia from my days of playing monks in Guildwars 1. I just can’t enjoy trying to mitigate damage for players anymore. Players just go zerker damage and don’t care if they die because the zerg will just revive them. What’s the point when wvw and seasons is just zerging against siege capped structures with arrow carts?

I don’t know the direction this game is heading, but I’m sick of trying to support players who really couldn’t care less about me because I’m not full zerker in pve for example. DPS is killing this game’s depth and strategy but whatever I am over it. Thanks for all the contributions in this thread and I wish you all good luck and have fun in gw2.

sternenstaub.8763:

Clear.8512:

… I think Anet is working towards a healing/protection support build to be valid in WvW/PvP. PvE dungeons need a revamp before we can have that conversation.

I see exactly this happening as well. I guess the next balance patch will reduce damage everywhere or increase defenses like toughness. Maybe implement a defense stat against condi damage than simply just curing.

But it has be made sure that it is not ending in 5 bunker against 5 bunker stalemate.

Agreed. It seems they have found what the public views as the extremes of burst/bunker. Now just need to find that middle ground that give you the ability in the middle but also still alone for a bit of customization with runes/traits.

The problem in essence is that ANet is heavy handedly promoting “active combat” (dodge the spike attack) in PVE. Never mind that they seem to have mistaken tanking for standing there and taking a beating.

digiowl.9620:

The problem in essence is that ANet is heavy handedly promoting “active combat” (dodge the spike attack) in PVE. Never mind that they seem to have mistaken tanking for standing there and taking a beating.

Agreed but I feel something needs to be adressed. Elitism in the pvp, pve and wvw or gvg communities is literally killing this game. There is no way but their way and if you don’t like it then you don’t get to play. If you don’t run the meta builds you basically don’t stand a chance in pvp and wvw. Especially in gvg if you’re not an experienced player with the right profession and gear then you will never be invited to join.

In pve dps is king and I’ve seen players demand gear checks before dungeons. I was even kicked a couple of times for not having full ascended armor. Fractals require agony resistance which is yet another gear grind which we were promised would not happen in gw2.

All these things combined is what annoys me about gw2 and compared to gw1 this game’s balance is just sad. Gw1 must of had 1000s of skills yet still was balanced and now they can’t even balance a fraction of that. Arenanet need to stop with the pve player favouritism and develop some complexity and depth to pvp in this game.

ricky.2679:

… I was even kicked a couple of times for not having full ascended armor.

You had that in GW1. On top of that you had spots in groups that were basically reserved for specific classes. Your suggestion would bring that all back. Worse, to enable it you would have to take away self-sufficiency from every class (escept your support) which would in turn make solo-exploration impossible.

I am sorry if I have offended any players in this thread. I am only trying to think of solutions to the zerker and conditions meta in all aspects of the game. In my opinion the best way to solve it would be to add new skills on all professions so that we can heal and protect against burst damage. But I welcome all discussion and debate in this thread.

Also if Arenanet sees this thread it would be nice to consider some of these ideas to make fights last longer. They don’t need to last half an hour but 5 minutes minimum would be nice. The idea of lowering the extremes of zerker damage or conditions vs bunker and support could work.

zerker is fine, but imo there should be the exremes is all roles, guardian already looses alot if full spec for healing anyways.

Aeolus.3615:

zerker is fine, but imo there should be the exremes is all roles, guardian already looses alot if full spec for healing anyways.

There shouldn’t be such extremes in any roles. It just makes balance impossible because you’re not looking at 8 classes, but 50+ once you include all the super-specializations.

Carighan.6758:

Aeolus.3615:

zerker is fine, but imo there should be the exremes is all roles, guardian already looses alot if full spec for healing anyways.

There shouldn’t be such extremes in any roles. It just makes balance impossible because you’re not looking at 8 classes, but 50+ once you include all the super-specializations.

More roles, more specializations IMO would be nice, but each one to his own, at least would make better sense since most runes are useless

They don’t need to add a new class or anything but toning down base heals when you have 0 healing power and increasing the scaling of the stat would be a welcome change. On most classes I barely notice the difference in healing when going full zerk or using cleric gear. It feels like a waste of a stat at the moment.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgMF_rVdN7ZJdG5xVFpXSjJydEJYYmN6Tnh5Y2J0QUE&usp=drive_web#gid=2

Shows up some days ago on Reddit.