Guild Wars 2

TheDaiBish.9735:

Think for a moment. Could it possibly be people are approaching it this way BECAUSE they’ve always had the safety net of a Healer and Tank?

As for ‘giving the community what they want’, I’m pretty sure that not EVERYONE wants a Healer class.

This is usually the issue, yes.

“I played this way in the past, and it doesn’t work in your game, so please make it work this way, because I don’t want to have to do anything different.”

I’m sorry, I couldn’t disagree more OP.

I love that there is no healing class, and the boss fights are challenging for me and my guild, perhaps we are just not very good players, but the encounters currently present us with a very fun and enjoyable experience. Challenging enough to feel like we’ve accomplished something, but not so difficult that we’re bashing our heads into a wall.

I enjoy the current system greatly.

I’ve seen some posts where people complain about this system and the lack of a healer class, specially in dungeons. Seems to me that you are looking at this game from the wrong perspective. GW2 system is much more similar to dungeon action games than classic mmorpgs. Why? Because you can dodge, interrupt your foe, hide behind structures ( this might be essencial in some boss fights), and sometimes block. You don’t get the huge 247 combos or the jump attacks and stuff but the ways things work is really similar. You don’t have a healing class in GW2 because there’s no place for it in this tipe of game. You don’t see people who are just spamming heals in Vindictus or Dragon Nest. Every class is dps so there are no classes that depend on the team to work. Try to see it this way and you’ll see that healing classes are not really necessary.

About the dungeons being just dps runs, have you ever played the Cruscible of Eternity? Every single boss in that dungeon(exept for alpha, just dodge and hit that thing) has a different strategy. and trust me if you try to simply dps the giant in the first path you’ll spend a really nice time(1h 40min) hitting him for 30 or 50.

Unfortunately but I kinda agree witht he OP. Some boss fights are jsut dumb (dragons for example). You jsut stand there and bash em until they are dead, dodging from time to time or reviving fallen dudes.

i think that the GW2 system is actually superior and smarter than the old trinity style. People should be looking at this system as an infant with lots of room to grow rather than writing it off as a failure.

give them a chance to work on it and add to it.

i would like to see the following added:

active block for a 66% damage reduction (66% endurrance cost) and 2 sec stability (uses the same pool at dodge and active parry (for those without sheilds) with a 33% damage reduction ( with 33% endurance cost).

Temporary stat shunts for 30 seconds with 60 second cooldown (ability focus): Ability to shunt stats at a net loss ( 60% of original to support 40% of original for dps) to or from power/precision to vitality/toughness and to or from condition damage/crit damage to healing/ condition duration (CC). So if you shunted 500 power/precision you get a temporary bonus to vitaility/toughness of 60% of that or 300 for 30 seconds. The opposite transaction would give you 500 vitaility/toughness for 40% or 200.

The funny thing about this is I’ve had instances where we have killed -every- boss we’ve come across without a single person dying. Downed, maybe, dying, no.

No healer was required. You just had to be light on your feet.

Other instances, we completely wipe.

But it’s definitely doable without a healer class. I enjoy it.

I’m still on the fence about PVE. I think that the no forced trinity idea is potentially great (and I definately don’t want holy trinity), but I also have my doubts about how certain parts have been implemented.

- Events with large amount of players take a wrong turn imo. They become silly dps-crazy zerg events. Especially because of the way loot works with mobs. Everyone is trying to shoot as many mobs as possible at the same time. And there is no downside to playing like that, because you won’t die unless you get blinded by the particle spam and because of that can’t see the mobs anymore.

In my experience so far I had the most fun with smaller amounts of ppl in events. Just enough to scale it up, but without too many players to cause stupid AOE particle spam all the time.

- Gold participation medals for failing an event. This is not an incentive players to pay attention and to learn how to play. When you are supposed to protect a bridge against bombs and fail because the bomb carrier happily walks through every time, mainly because no one notices him (or not enough players do anyway) due to the particle spam and the promoted zerg and die mentality in events, players still can earn gold participation medals. This is just silly imo.
- How come most players ignore downed players during boss fights ? I see more frequently ressurects in the starting areas then in higher lvl areas. Somehow players lack the incentive at that point. Maybe it has to do with how participation is calculated?

The only problem is mob damage is set far too high, really makes acquiring new gear pointless because in dungeons, especially exploration modes – simply put, your going to die the question is how many times and what your repair bill is going to be at the end to make the trip actually worth while.

Basically alot of the boss fights need some data sets collected so Anet can adjust the damage so the fights are a challenge but not so your being constantly one shotted, this is one of the reasons why people are searching for exploits to avoid this.

Take a look at all the other MMo’s that have existed, no boss fights have ever had the abilities to insta-kill/one shot everyone unless there was some mechanic in place that the player messed up on (looks at WoW and the famous red circles etc) There isn’t enough ways for the player to mitigate the damage bosses can readily put out not without constantly reviving members, essentially a boss fight revolves around DPS…Revive…Heal…DPS..Revive…Revive…DPS…Heal…Revive and hope that your DPS is high enough so you can down it – basically its a horrible system and a real let down fo GW2, lets not even talk about the loot…thats a whole different problem.

phooka.4295:

If you need a healer, you’re doing it wrong.

The game was designed to be played without a healer. several million play it without a healer. Many thousands run the dungeons without the healer. If you need a healer while all those other’s don’t, you’re doing it wrong.

Why healers ruin MMOs:

If you have a healing class, the damage output of the enemies of a group (bosses…) has to be raised or the group can’t die. Basically, every boss in WoW will deal (Mainhealer-HPS * duration) + Tank HP – X in damage to the tank over the cause of the fight, as well as (Grouphealer-HPS * duration) + combined group HP – X in AoE-damage. “Duration” is an estimate of boss-HP / group-DPS for a adequately geared group (see tiered equipment for what adequately geared means).

GW2 has no tanks, so the part about Mainhealer and Tank-HP is irrelevant.

GW2 also has no healers. However, GW2 has healing abilities. So the formula has to be adjusted:
(Group-HPS * duration) + combined group HP – X in damage.
If a boss deals this amount of damage to a group of y people, eevry one of them will be left with thei HP-(X/y) at the end of the fight.

You see, mathematically, adding healers into the equation will change only a few things:
- Bosses will have to deal more damage; they will deal as much additional DPS as average healers have HPS.
- You’ll introduce a class without wich nothing goes, you’ll introduce “LF1M healer, then go” to map chat.
- You’ll train players to rely on healers and simply soak damage. unless Healer HPS is astronomic, this will fail, Healers will be blamed.
- If healers can rescue players that don’t dodge, they will be expected to and thus the game will be dumbed down immensely; if dodging is no longer required to succeed, it’s one less skill players have to acquire.

TL;DR: If you bring healers to the game, you are automatically dumbing it down, whether you want to or not. Don’t.

Very good points.

Everyone in the old systems complained about one thing:
There were scrubs who could sit there in fire, window-lick, pad damage meters without regard to group utility, and get their loot.

This game’s entire dungeon encounter system is designed to make situational-awareness and group-support THE PARAMOUNT FACTOR in overcoming encounters.

Granted, it still needs tuning (I think aoes need to be either damage-nerfed or made smaller so you can gtfo faster), but I like the system thus far, even though I’m also taking my knocks getting used to it.

Again, I think ANet has some issues to work through in terms of providing greater opportunity and “wiggle room” for people to exercise their ability to avoid area damage, and I also think there’s still an issue with bosses “playing favorites” on who to pound relentlessly, but other than that, I find most encounters engaging, challenging, rewarding of group-contribution, and punishing of glass-cannoned stupidity.

i think one of the biggest problems with the dungeons is the effect spam and viewpoint. Many times you just cant see the “hint” you need to “dodge”. It is a major problem if dodging is the only way to survive. The feild of view also does not help because the camera is centered around the waist when it should be just over the head. How are you supposed to see an animation when your either in the way or your zoomed out so far you cant see the animaltions properly.

both of these are easy fixes. Allow the effects to be turned off or massively reduced, and put in a verticle slider in the options to put the camera pointing above your head so you can use some of the closer views to see the animations.

You’d take a non-heal warrior for the DPS to get through the dungeon faster, or a warrior with just enough heal power to take care of himself.

If you are having trouble keeping up dodges, then as a warrior, you should switch to your rifle and spend some time ranged before getting back in there. Maybe look around for recognizable healing skills or just wait for your own cooldown.

Rungard.3762:

i think one of the biggest problems with the dungeons is the effect spam and viewpoint. Many times you just cant see the “hint” you need to “dodge”. It is a major problem if dodging is the only way to survive. The feild of view also does not help because the camera is centered around the waist when it should be just over the head. How are you supposed to see an animation when your either in the way or your zoomed out so far you cant see the animaltions properly.

both of these are easy fixes. Allow the effects to be turned off or massively reduced, and put in a verticle slider in the options to put the camera pointing above your head so you can use some of the closer views to see the animations.

The particle spam is my biggest issue with anything group related currently. At times it’s completely impossible to see the red circle or even the enemy in the worst cases, making dodging to avoid damage utterly useless.
Considering how dodging is supposed to be the main way of avoiding the hard-hitting attacks, that is extremely problematic.

For anyone looking for a healing class in GW2, here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWXrDAs3dcA

Note that this is only one among many of the healing classes available.