Guild Wars 2

The thing that I loved most about Guild Wars 1 was this. You had the ability to spec your character as you saw fit. For instance, I could take my Sword and Board “Tank” and spec him for Massive Damage at the sacrifice of Mitigation and Control.

Characters who saw me in PvP, would disregard me “at first”, assuming that I could not burst down the Healers that I would target. I would then burst them down. But then the enemy would make note, and at that point I was open game for being bursted down myself.

This is simply an example of how Diverse you could create your toons. This combined with the fact that you could spec for a role. IE: Tank, Ranged DPS, Healer, Controler etc.

I could get with my Guild. Wait a Guild in Guild Wars.. The heck you say.

We could then decide on 3 things before entering a VERY high level dungeon.
1) Assigned Roles for each of us. IE: Tank, Healer, RDPS
2) Chosen Synergy between our builds. IE: skills each of us have., that will work together if assigned and timed properly.
3) Establishing specific categories per player. IE: Target Caller. Protected above all else, ignore healing him untill needed etc…
This enabled us to truly work together and enjoy the comradery within our Party.

But in Guild Wars 2 we decide 3 very different thing before entering a Dungeon:
1) How many bodies do we need/have.
2) Are we all at or above the Level suggested
3) Do we all have Good Gear

There are NO “true” roles. I cannot Tank because the agro does not truly exist and here is no dedicated healer to help me mitigate, even if I could force agro on to me. I am stuck within the abilities of the weapons I choose to wield (very limited) and cannot be as Diverse or Specific as I would like to be. I am not a Warrior Melee DPS with off healing and Mitigation. I am simply the level 55 Warrior with an Axe/Sword/Hammer etc..

Guild Wars 2 is TRULY not a sequel so much as it is an entirely different game that simply shares the ideas set forth in the Original. The Classes are the same however the Rolls are not. The Skills are similar however the ability to truly be diverse/specifc is not etc…

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t HATE this game. It has been a HUGE uphill battle, learning to appreciate it for what it is. Learning to let go of all of the expectations that I had upon it’s announcement. To learn to truly see/play it for what it is. I mean it needs a bit of work, but is none the less a very solid game.

I feel that It is simply more Single Player then it is Multiplayer. I feel it should not have been called “Guild” Wars, so much as it should have been called “Solo” Wars. lol
………………………………………

So With all that said, here it is in short:

Please bring back the “Need for a Team” and the “Need for Roles” that Guild Wars 1 had perfected. The things that set Guild Wars 1 far ahead of other MMO’s. You were Fast to max level, because that was when the game started. After you unlocked all of the skills you could then spend days/months/years developing Builds with. You could create several “Key Builds”. Build designed for “Dungeons”, “Solo”, “PvP” etc… Build you LOVED. Builds that you thought “NO ONE ELSE IS DOING THIS, I am TRULY the Master, I Truly am the TINY GOD”

But Please, I am Currently level 70. I would love to believe that once again, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t start until the Max Level. I would love to believe that GW 2 it is simply a MUCH slower grind until the start of the game. And that at the Start, it takes off once again.

Sooo… all that reading of my thoughts has earned you the right to make “intelligent” comments. Comments that I hope will help me to see this game for an improvement upon Guild Wars 1, as opposed to a New Game that shares several small details with the OG of MMO’s

Comments..

Rolls? Don’t tell me what buff-food I have to bring to the dungeon..!!

I’m game. But I don’t see it happening.

I WOULD like it to, though.

Tank Butter roles, DPS garlic roles. Holy trinity roles.

Anet had decided to let us breakfast with something instead of fixed “rolls”.

roles are a bad idea. pugs should be easy to obtain. i can heal rez and do damage. so can everyone else though they do it differently. and this is an unbelievable boon when trying to do a dungeon or even an event… a no healer even isnt likely to be done by anyone. careful what you wish for.

err no. gw2 is working as intended.

anet tried hard to remove the holy trinity and i think they did a good job at it.

anyway gw2 is not a regular mmorpg. try playing it like an action game. or a first person shooter like call of duty etc.

when you play call of duty, do you stand out in the open to take enemy fire, or do you hide and take cover when the enemy is shooting at you?

I read through that to ensure that my point was made.. and Good God was that alot to read.

SHORT:
I called Guild Wars 1 “Build Wars”. It was a game where the 20 levels you had to go through until max were spent learning the mechanics. A game that started a Max and was ALL about developing clever builds to accomplish missions. A game where missions were not for fame/skill points etc. They were for Fun, Friendship, Challenge and to occasional Epic Skin for a weapon. A Game where you LOOKED the way you wanted to after years of work but could be ANYTHING do to the diversity in builds. A game that was ALL ABOUT Builds.

Bring that back.

Tinygod.7841:

I read through that to ensure that my point was made.. and Good God was that alot to read.

SHORT:
I called Guild Wars 1 “Build Wars”. It was a game where the 20 levels you had to go through until max were spent learning the mechanics. A game that started a Max and was ALL about developing clever builds to accomplish missions. A game where missions were not for fame/skill points etc. They were for Fun, Friendship, Challenge and to occasional Epic Skin for a weapon. A Game where you LOOKED the way you wanted to after years of work but could be ANYTHING do to the diversity in builds. A game that was ALL ABOUT Builds.

Bring that back.

errr no. u need to play guild wars 1 for “build wars”

guild wars 2 is here to stay.
no build wars 2.

Well, what they did is in stone now, we can’t possibly ask them to re-write the entire thing, as much as I want them to.

poe lyfe.5879:

roles are a bad idea. pugs should be easy to obtain. i can heal rez and do damage. so can everyone else though they do it differently. and this is an unbelievable boon when trying to do a dungeon or even an event… a no healer even isnt likely to be done by anyone. careful what you wish for.

If Roles, are a bad idea and Pugs should be easy to obtain. Then why call it “Guild” wars. That implies the need for a “Guild”. And a Guild, enables you to develop Parties for missions.

tiny theres nothing preventing you from doing that now. you want to see a lot of preparation and tactics pay off. i can definetly understand that and see the desire. but doing this is difficult or not worth the time investment for others.

and events wouldnt be possible if certain classes were needed. this cant be done in this game because of this.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Tinygod.7841:

I read through that to ensure that my point was made.. and Good God was that alot to read.

SHORT:
I called Guild Wars 1 “Build Wars”. It was a game where the 20 levels you had to go through until max were spent learning the mechanics. A game that started a Max and was ALL about developing clever builds to accomplish missions. A game where missions were not for fame/skill points etc. They were for Fun, Friendship, Challenge and to occasional Epic Skin for a weapon. A Game where you LOOKED the way you wanted to after years of work but could be ANYTHING do to the diversity in builds. A game that was ALL ABOUT Builds.

Bring that back.

errr no. u need to play guild wars 1 for “build wars”

guild wars 2 is here to stay.
no build wars 2.

Yeah, I’m not saying “get rid of GW 2”. Im suggesting that they re enable skill change on the fly (in towns), and perhaps stop the requirement of a skill type per button. IE: Stop making me put a healing skill in Skill Bar 5.

poe lyfe.5879:

tiny theres nothing preventing you from doing that now. you want to see a lot of preparation and tactics pay off. i can definetly understand that and see the desire. but doing this is difficult or not worth the time investment for others.

and events wouldnt be possible if certain classes were needed. this cant be done in this game because of this.

There is an intelligent comment amongst the non intelligent ones.

I had not thought about that. The thing that almost demands no longer having established Roles is the Open World Events.

Perhaps once I achieve max level, I will see many more World Events. Or they most likely will be the Major Focus on my toon. Used to develop a stock pile of “Fame”.

Thanks for this comment. It once again gives me something to think about. And helps me to solidify my comprehension of Guild Wars 2 as a truly different game. Not a Sequel or Expansion.

Perhaps I will go back and occasionally play GW 1, at times where I WANT or MISS they dynamic Role creation.

Tinygod.7841:

Yeah, I’m not saying “get rid of GW 2”. Im suggesting that they re enable skill change on the fly (in towns), and perhaps stop the requirement of a skill type per button. IE: Stop making me put a healing skill in Skill Bar 5.

hmmmm well that be also known as an “elective mode (a term from diablo 3)” then.

but i think this one is set in stone aye, not going to change.
i think anet wants everyone to be responsible for their own heals etc.

perhaps there will be more builds diversity in the future when anet rolls out more healing skills, utility skills, elite skills or even new weapon skills?

the current setup
1 – 5 weapon skills
6 – 6 healing skill
7 – 9 utility skills
0 – 0 elite skill

is not going to change for the time being. errr for balance purposes i guess.

well we could ask for the return of insignias so at least we can better customize our stats yes?

There is a need for team play and roles already. Damage, support and control. If you are not working with your team just because they are not in an original format you are doing it wrong. Game is working as intended, people just seem to be too stupid or stuck in thier ways to change.

Also, lets be frank about build diversity in the first game. In theory there was a lot of it. This stopped short at theory. In truth there was a 100% most efficient build per class to do any given content. Remember Sabway? Remember SS necros? Remember “group LF imbagon?”

Was it fun to attempt to come up with fun new diverse builds? Yeah, it totally was. However once you actually tested your new/diverse/individualistic build against hard mode, elite missions, or elite missions IN hard mode you learned very quickly why the majority of the player base gravitated toward the cookie cutter. Your build might be able to do it, but just running the standard same build as everyone else did it, easier, faster, and more efficiently.

This turned the skill system in to a massive graveyard of useless skills. I usually played a ranger, with class combos that one toon probably knew around 400+ skills. That toon over his lifespan probably regularly used about 10% of those skills. Not because I hadn’t spent tons of time coming up with fun builds, but because the fun and individual builds were usually only good for screwing about in the easier content. Once you got to the serious stuff… you ran SoS, you ran Sabway, you ran frostway, you ran whatever the most efficient build was because after a while that was what the new content coming out was designed around, difficulty and mob abilities tuned to ridiculous level so that the standard faceroll builds could actually be challenged for once.

I miss the idea of buildcrafting, but what I don’t miss is the reality that buildcrafting was more often than not a theory that ended up less than useful due to player expectations.

This sounds an awful lot like DC Universe Online… and I hated that system.

And having a dedicated healer class in PVP just brings back the problems of guildwars.
So… Im going to have to disagree with you on this.

Nooooo thank you sir. I used to love playing warrior or druid in games like wow, and i loathed the fact how if i got in a group it was tank/heal or get lost. I do not want to see that trinity ever appear in guildwars 2. Granted id like to see more healing utility across the board you also have to remember this is a game designed primarily for endgame pvp, and role free pve. another good thing would be an aggro mechanic for each class (though give a thief a taunt he will be dead in 5 seconds if he doesnt know how to use his abilities to dodge like mad.)

No change required.
The Game is perfect as it is, I don’t want a healing/tanking/ damage spec because then people start blaming both healers & tanks when they wipe because damage dealers do nothing beside doing damage nothing to pay attention to…
Beside you can still play like the trinity, keeping aggro is fairly easy, just stay close to the target and have a lot of CC. If you don’t get that you’re simply bad.

There are still technically roles you are going to need for each dungeon. Ever tried that spider boss in AC explorable mode without at least one person without a condition removal? Also a CM team without at least one person with reflect/block projectile skills is going to have a pretty bad time. Whenever we wipe to a boss, we tend to look at our builds and think of a way to customize it for the boss, like one person specializes in AoE to take out the summoned adds, while another the other three focus on heavy single target damage and evades for the boss, and the last person works as utility to boost stats and lay down protective AoE while doing damage to the boss. It’s a pretty simple example, but I’m sure you get the point. A fluid build that can adapt to many situations is going to be a lot more useful in dungeons than a rigid build that cannot.

Crusher.4708:

No change required.
The Game is perfect as it is, I don’t want a healing/tanking/ damage spec because then people start blaming both healers & tanks when they wipe because damage dealers do nothing beside doing damage nothing to pay attention to…
Beside you can still play like the trinity, keeping aggro is fairly easy, just stay close to the target and have a lot of CC. If you don’t get that you’re simply bad.

Against most dungeon bosses, that will get you killed faster than you can say “I can tank this boss, don’t worry!” Many are immune, or heavily immune to CC. Also healing alone in this game is terrible compared to the other types of support, but at least it may keep the “tank” alive for about 0.25 seconds longer.

No thanks, I prefer everyone being able to do whatever they need to. Having no healers tanks or dps is great and refreshing to see. If I want that I’ll go back to WoW.

No thanks. It’s so much better the way it is now.

Just allowing more customization on our skill slots would better allow us to fulfill a role instead of ALWAYS being some kind of MIXED role. The funny part is a lot of the skills on a lot of the classes are the same skills (like rift) everyone using every class is kind of doing the same thing with different names (kinda like rift). We are locked into certain skills (once gain kinda like rift since you specced trees and had trees giving skills similar to your weapon sets). Everyone is partial control (kinda like rift) and cannot spec out of that partial control for more damage based or more tank based, which makes there be too much control and a class playing mainly control is useless in a sense (along with other reasons to be useless along with not really being able to really play full control).

There was no real build customization there like here and everyone of every class has the same skill like a thiefs bow is very similar to other profs with a bow. Blurred frenzy is both like the adren from sword, and the two hand channelled attack, and much more, just play all classes and you will see this is like this guys this and that guys that. And we cannot customize it away from that.

Let the other MMO’s keep the roles. I like this way much more. Learn when to back off and self heal, weapon swap , avoid a hit etc… I’m not gonna say then go play this or that game instead, but I am gonna say don’t expect GW2 to turn into one of THOSE games.

GW2 supposedly has roles as well. Damage, Control, Support.

so far, the game as a whole is bland and boring because everyone can do everything.

i support specific roles. at least in pvp.

altho that would require a big improvement on supporitng skills.
because the radius of healing/curing spells is waaay too small and brief.
one can not be a support even if he wanted.
and even if he succeeded, he wouldnt get any badges.

and playing a “pusher” (tank/controller) is not an option since u
get squished in WvW even if ur “tank geared/specced”.
WvW is a ranged class game.

my suggestion: (just from the top of my head. needs tweaking)

make guardian/necro/ele’s heals/boons/cures radius a lot bigger.
120 radius is a joke. same with trying to heal/cure/buff via elixir gun.

give warriors and guardians a big passive toughness/vitality bonus at the end of their “toughness and vitality trees”
something like… when wearing a shield you get 300 bonus toughness and vitality.
followed by a XI-XII trait like… when hit by more than 4 enemies you block all attacks, 15 sec internal cooldown.

^just a thought^

in general there SHOULD be roles. and this game said it had roles. where are they?
everybody buffs/debuffs/heals/cures/dps’s. this is boring, and makes combat not require so much strategy.
_____________________________

what pvp games’ roles should be:

tank: low damage. high defense. lots of CC.
(job: push/hold the line, get dps off ppl’s backs via knockbacks, slows, and taunts-ala-war/swtor)

support: medium damage. low defense. lots of support.
(job: defensive support like healing and curing. offensive support like debuffing and purging)

damage: high damage. medium defense. low CC.
(job: depending on class and spec, aoe/cleave/single/sneaky/pets/etc.)

every one of those classes should have a dps spec though.

poe lyfe.5879:

roles are a bad idea. pugs should be easy to obtain. i can heal rez and do damage. so can everyone else though they do it differently. and this is an unbelievable boon when trying to do a dungeon or even an event… a no healer even isnt likely to be done by anyone. careful what you wish for.

I ALWAYS play a healer.—-Your argument is moot seeing as how in nearly every MMO the tanks are the ones hard to find.

Personally, I think it was a dumb idea to “get rid” of the holy trinity in favor of every hero being a dps.

This is a dps’s game. Spec tank? Oh, you still can’t take more than a couple hits in a dungeon. Spec healer? Nothing you do keeps your party alive for long.

They removed the ability to customize your character.

No thanks. There are other games (pretty near every other one out there) that support this, and if I wanted more of that, I’d be playing them. I play GW2 because I don’t want that style of game play anymore. It’s what attracted me to the game in the first place. Making it more like those other games is not the direction I would want to see this game head in.

If I sit down to a game of chess, I have no right to complain about the lack of dice. If I want a game with dice, I should have chosen to play backgammon.

VendettaDFA.9368:

Let the other MMO’s keep the roles. I like this way much more. Learn when to back off and self heal, weapon swap , avoid a hit etc… I’m not gonna say then go play this or that game instead, but I am gonna say don’t expect GW2 to turn into one of THOSE games.

So if I don’t want to summon clones on my mesmer and replace those with other skills and be more dps based then that = one of those games?

How about if I chose the more defensive option to be more tanky?

We would still ahve everyone being able to do everything (which eliminates the need for a holy trinity being one proffession is limited to one type of role) but this would allow each proffession to play each role better, rather than everyone being a mixed group.

This game isnt for you
You are pre programmed from past games and are making a post which is compleately against what their goal of this game is supposed to be

mangarrage.1062:

This game isnt for you
You are pre programmed from past games and are making a post which is compleately against what their goal of this game is supposed to be

I assume you were talking to op and not me from my last post.

Because as far as my post goes having more options per skill slot on your weapon sets doesn’t instantly mean one of those other games. If so, you know what, you couldn’t have been talking to me. However, the game really isn’t for me anyways due to stale pve (disguised as pvp) formats.

Isn’t the entire point of the game that anyone can fulfill any role they want at any time? That’s a big selling point for the game. You’re not locked into a rigid specific playstyle right at the character creation screen.

Removing the “holy trinity” is all well and good, but when you remove the ability to customize your character, there is a problem.

As it stands, there is no reason to focus on toughness/vitality—-theyre useless stats when stacked.

And healing as a stat? Useless when there is no way to successfully and consistently heal.

…why do people insist on making suggestions regarding core game mechanics? It should be pretty obvious that this late in development that there’s not going to be a major overhaul of class mechanics to bring back the dreaded trinity system. I fear many people want every MMO to be WoW with better graphics.

I completely agree with OP on this. I miss the times I could make my character a tank or a healer. There is just no specific roles in a team any more and it just feels like nobody has the upper hand in combat because everyone has a similar role.

while I agree that perhaps there could be more customization, so that any class could change to fit the role they’re needed in, I really don’t want the traditional trinity back. there are thousands of MMOs out there with those roles—go play them if you want that.

there’s no way Anet is just going to do away with the system they created and tested and balanced. can you imagine the chaos that’d cause?

but I do like the idea of further customization. minor changes and tweaks, not major overhauls, are the way to go to perfect their new ideas.

I find this request difficult to accept as playing through with different classes, with different people I have learned that each class has a way to fill different rolls a quick switch to your weapons/skills traits ahead of time same as GW1 and soon your ElE becomes a wicked support healer or your guardian becomes a protection monk for lack of a better term. Swap the weapons/skills again and both become damage dealers both in close and ranged. The roles have not truly left what they have given us is the opportunity to play how we want to play when we want to play. I keep spare weapons in my inventory to switch out skills to meet current situations even if it means taking a step back and talking with my team to decided who is doing what. Back in the Gw1 day our team monk was a primary Ele why? Because of the wicked amount of energy it could have on reserve like Gw 1 Gw2 brings in many different solutions to solving different problems and sometimes it is not the most straight forward path.

tiennen.6890:

Removing the “holy trinity” is all well and good, but when you remove the ability to customize your character, there is a problem.

As it stands, there is no reason to focus on toughness/vitality—-theyre useless stats when stacked.

And healing as a stat? Useless when there is no way to successfully and consistently heal.

I’ve come to the conclusion that healing as a stat on quite a few profs is mainly to try to get your self heal to a one hit almost full max heal for yourself.

I really like the way you started off your post, I really don’t care about holy trinity, but the customization needs to be there or we are just a mixed role 100% of the time, it’s not so much that everyone can do anything. It’s kind of like everyone is doing nothing as a role, and cannot really change it (everyones kind of doing the same thing).

(I’d also like to say all the epic stories start off with “So when I got on my healing warrior”) XD

R E F L H E X.8413:

tiennen.6890:

Removing the “holy trinity” is all well and good, but when you remove the ability to customize your character, there is a problem.

As it stands, there is no reason to focus on toughness/vitality—-theyre useless stats when stacked.

And healing as a stat? Useless when there is no way to successfully and consistently heal.

I’ve come to the conclusion that healing as a stat on quite a few profs is mainly to try to get your self heal to a one hit almost full max heal for yourself.

But when you die in 2-3 hits in a dungeon, using a different stat other than healing would be better, seeing as how those 2-3 hits take a matter of seconds, while your personal heal usually is a much longer cooldown.

And don’t get me started on toughness/vitality stacking. If a character chooses to stack those, they SHOULD be able to take hits like a pro. I’m not talking about tanking, I’m talking about just being HARD.TO.KILL.

Currently a toughness/Vitality player dies just about as fast as a glass cannon, which isn’t right.

tiennen.6890:

R E F L H E X.8413:

tiennen.6890:

Removing the “holy trinity” is all well and good, but when you remove the ability to customize your character, there is a problem.

As it stands, there is no reason to focus on toughness/vitality—-theyre useless stats when stacked.

And healing as a stat? Useless when there is no way to successfully and consistently heal.

I’ve come to the conclusion that healing as a stat on quite a few profs is mainly to try to get your self heal to a one hit almost full max heal for yourself.

But when you die in 2-3 hits in a dungeon, using a different stat other than healing would be better, seeing as how those 2-3 hits take a matter of seconds, while your personal heal usually is a much longer cooldown.

And don’t get me started on toughness/vitality stacking. If a character chooses to stack those, they SHOULD be able to take hits like a pro. I’m not talking about tanking, I’m talking about just being HARD.TO.KILL.

Currently a toughness/Vitality player dies just about as fast as a glass cannon, which isn’t right.

I did add more to my post, and I can really only speak for mesmer and thief on this toughness part. The mesmer when specced for this (and using the traits well) can get quite a bit of protection when he regens, and a few other things. While I’m not saying the actual toughness helps or the vitality helps, I’m not really that sure, I know the specs of the mesmer can really help as far as staying alive goes in those trait lines. Customization of skills would really help. Thief I don’t really remember but I do remember a glass cannon becoming very easy to kill having 17k hp in spvp is the only placed I really played it. On most classes I jsut spec them all power and stuff to glass cannon. I just know the traitlines for mesmer that deal with this area, can make the mesmer quite tanky even without stacking it on his armor. The lack of customization on his skills just kind of doesn’t really let him be as tanky like one would want. Which in a way saying everyone can do everything is kind of wrong. Everyones just kind fo bundled into being a bad mix of everything at once and can kind of only spec into one and still try to use the skills they aren’t specced for kinda deal without being able to change them.

Garenthal.1480:

I fear many people want every MMO to be WoW with better graphics.

no. more like WAR with better graphics and controls.

having roles makes the game more complex and allows for more strategizing.
everybody being able to do everything makes the game boring as a whole.

im not saying to be a cookie-cutter.
but as it is, it is impossible to spec as a front-line-fighter or as a supporter.

this game supposedly has 3 roles, control, support, damage.
dps is what everybody is.
controlling is somewhat effective.
supporting is really about luck with such tiny-radius and brief-duration support skills.
and there is no durable spec. everyone get more or less squished.

to sum up, it’s fine that everyone is able to spec for every role.
there just isnt enough difference between different specs.

Roles would be fine, if they didn’t repeat the quite frigging boring holy trinity setup which has been used in about 9 of 10 MMO’s the past 7-8 years.

EQ was much more fun. Here you had more than just 3 roles. You had specialized buffers, specialized CC’ers, specialized pullers and so on. EQ had the role system much more in place than any MMO which has surfaced since those days.

Nah. I think they’re close and just need to tweak a few things. This will allow us to choose specs that are truly useful for the core roles they’ve decided to implement. The “New Trinity” as it were.

I think the core of the problem really comes down to the MASSIVE differences between the outside PvE world and dungeon encounters and to some extent wvwvw.

Outside pve, every class is OP to some extent. My main (ranger) for example. I mean… pve is laughable on that character unless I get ganged up on by 3+ mobs. Well, I shouldn’t say laughable since it isn’t entertaining at all really, but it’s very predictable. I’m going to stand here and shoot this thing in the face for about 30 seconds, then it will die and I’ll move on. Snore.

And they know it. So what happens in Orr?

You get 3+ mobs whether you want them or not. Problem solved right?

But no, not really because now the fights aren’t challenging, they just become confusing and the only survival strategies are “pray for another player to come along” or “run away” because everyone, me and the mobs are now virtually unkillable and fight a long slow war of attrition unless one or the other of us gives up. And of course, they never give up because they don’t pay repair bills.

So you take FIVE of us that are unkillable, and put us in a dungeon.

What do you do? You send 15 mobs at once? No. That’s unmangeable. Let’s limit it to 10 or 12 (/sarcasm), but we’ll give each one so much burst damage and so many hitpoints that we reach stalemate again at the 5 on 1 scenario that a good group is going to try to establish. And we design things to remove the damage output of as many members of the group as far as possible without being blatant about it: AoE means they have to dodge, downed players take forever to rez, healing is weak compared to damage which means players little health globes are always low and that annoying “I’m dying here” voiceover will play almost continuously so you’ll really, REALLY pay attention to dodging instead of dps.

There. All balanced now.

Not. It’s a great idea and can be dramatically improved, so no need for the old trinity, but it’s not working as intended right now. At least not if relaxing, challenging, fun is the intent.

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘one hour later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘two hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘four hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!! /cry

Tank: Sure, I’ll go. It will be 10 gold for the run.

…..

No thanks…

R E F L H E X.8413:

Just allowing more customization on our skill slots would better allow us to fulfill a role instead of ALWAYS being some kind of MIXED role. The funny part is a lot of the skills on a lot of the classes are the same skills (like rift) everyone using every class is kind of doing the same thing with different names (kinda like rift). We are locked into certain skills (once gain kinda like rift since you specced trees and had trees giving skills similar to your weapon sets). Everyone is partial control (kinda like rift) and cannot spec out of that partial control for more damage based or more tank based, which makes there be too much control and a class playing mainly control is useless in a sense (along with other reasons to be useless along with not really being able to really play full control).

There was no real build customization there like here and everyone of every class has the same skill like a thiefs bow is very similar to other profs with a bow. Blurred frenzy is both like the adren from sword, and the two hand channelled attack, and much more, just play all classes and you will see this is like this guys this and that guys that. And we cannot customize it away from that.

EXACTLY.

Sure the argument could be made that each Class had 1 or 2 “best” Builds. And that specing as another was pointless. But I could then argue that: Only using an easy/powerful Build was irrelevant to the idea of diversity. The fun that it brought.

As a warrior, I could spend 80% of my game as a Great Sword wielding melee DPS. But at any given time I could change my Role & Equip one of the 5 or so sets of gear that I had grinded/quested for over the course of my Build developments. My ONE warrior gave me 10+ different characters. Heck I gave em all names.

I could change out my armor, equip my elite shield (that I seldom use) and BECOME the Tank that this party needs. That or I could equip my mage style gear & concentrate on my Necro skill Build, to drive as the RDPS/Control (if needed)

And my Guild could say “oh snap Tiny’s wearing his Necro gear. Lets squeeze that into the team dynamic”. We could say “ooh man if we had just this ONE skill that combo works be soooooooo what we need for this boss”. And then BAM “Hey guys I squeezed that into my build, let’s go clean up Guildies”.

We would literally do Skype for Hours to perfect a “Team Build”. To squeeze in all of the powers we want the team to have at the sacrifice of a few of us being made of paper. We then say “protect Gregglss at all cost” and push forward. We would miss the combo over and over until we had it down, we could say “what team we gonna use?…… FIRE Manipulate TEAM!!!!! DO IT”

Well that and we all had 5 or more toons at max. So the over all diversity was amazing. I truly feel as if it was this one fact, that kept players around. The game was never stale, never boring. The game was what we made it “ALWAYS”. Heck we could & would purposely create funky crazy Build/Teams. Just to give it a shot lol.

*typing all of this on an iPhone during a smoke break. So if it did me dirty like it did with roles vs rolls. Ummmmmmm yeah lol. It’s to bad I can’t spec myself for iPhone manipulation.

Kal.2376:

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘one hour later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘two hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘four hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!! /cry

Tank: Sure, I’ll go. It will be 10 gold for the run.

…..

No thanks…

Orrrrr wait for it…. Wait for it……. Get a wait for it……. Guild.

Woohoo woh wooh a Guild I Guild Wars. The heck you say.

That or change your spec to one of the desired roles.

Mara Gossep.2761:

Roles would be fine, if they didn’t repeat the quite frigging boring holy trinity setup which has been used in about 9 of 10 MMO’s the past 7-8 years.

EQ was much more fun. Here you had more than just 3 roles. You had specialized buffers, specialized CC’ers, specialized pullers and so on. EQ had the role system much more in place than any MMO which has surfaced since those days.

GW1 allowed you to negate the Trinity by cleverly organizing a “Team Build” that allowed you to play without a tank (controllers) or a dedicated healer (all has off healing) etc…

Tinygod.7841:

Kal.2376:

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘one hour later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘two hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘four hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!! /cry

Tank: Sure, I’ll go. It will be 10 gold for the run.

…..

No thanks…

Orrrrr wait for it…. Wait for it……. Get a wait for it……. Guild.

Woohoo woh wooh a Guild I Guild Wars. The heck you say.

That or change your spec to one of the desired roles.

Oh, you are so smart!! because a guild will suddenly make people want to play tanks instead of DPS!! or healers instead of DPS!!! Wow, I knew guilds were something, but I had no idea it could suddenly change what people enjoy playing…

/end sarcasm

Tank/healer shortage is something that affects everyone. Not just one guild, or one server, but a whole game. Unless we can somehow get people to balance out the number of tanks, or healers, then one or the other will always be in demand.

Garenthal.1480:

…why do people insist on making suggestions regarding core game mechanics? It should be pretty obvious that this late in development that there’s not going to be a major overhaul of class mechanics to bring back the dreaded trinity system. I fear many people want every MMO to be WoW with better graphics.

Explain how these suggestions would require changes to the “core mechanics”

1) Allow for cost free manipulation of skills/traits with a town.
2) Allow for skill assignment to any of the skill slots. IE: A weapon skill on slot 6, a heal on slot 1. All weapon skills with no healing etc..

In the end, that plus the addition of new skills (which are coming), would help to solidify to ability to diversify your characters/teams, which made GW1 what it was.

Tinygod.7841:

Kal.2376:

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘one hour later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘two hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘four hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!! /cry

Tank: Sure, I’ll go. It will be 10 gold for the run.

…..

No thanks…

Orrrrr wait for it…. Wait for it……. Get a wait for it……. Guild.

Woohoo woh wooh a Guild I Guild Wars. The heck you say.

That or change your spec to one of the desired roles.

Ignoring the fact that the people in the “tanky” role will most likely end up with the highest repair bills… which is the first and foremost reason why everyone likes playing the “stay back and pewpew” roles.

Heck, its the reason why I’ve seen so many fail warriors pewpew’n away on their rifles in dungeons……. or guardians using only scepter/offhands….

The problem is with the dungeon design REQUIRING you to DIE TONS before learning everything… oh sure I expect to see the L2P posts coming in, but not everyone learns as quickly as some, and consequently not everyone has the 2873981273 golds to spend on repairs before fulling learning the mechanics of a dungeon, where almost every enemy can 1~3 hit you (as a squishy-as-kitten elementalist anyway), and if you get downed by a trap they might as well have sent you to the starting waypoint by default since the chances of you getting up again is pretty much none. Heck, swarms of enemies with chain-knockdowns are pretty lame as well, considering every-other enemy is like immune to half the CCs available.

Kal.2376:

Tinygod.7841:

Kal.2376:

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘one hour later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘two hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!!

‘four hours later’

LF1M AC exp, need tank PST!!! /cry

Tank: Sure, I’ll go. It will be 10 gold for the run.

…..

No thanks…

Orrrrr wait for it…. Wait for it……. Get a wait for it……. Guild.

Woohoo woh wooh a Guild I Guild Wars. The heck you say.

That or change your spec to one of the desired roles.

Oh, you are so smart!! because a guild will suddenly make people want to play tanks instead of DPS!! or healers instead of DPS!!! Wow, I knew guilds were something, but I had no idea it could suddenly change what people enjoy playing…

/end sarcasm

Tank/healer shortage is something that affects everyone. Not just one guild, or one server, but a whole game. Unless we can somehow get people to balance out the number of tanks, or healers, then one or the other will always be in demand.

You:
“I understand that this game has a lack of tanks. But I will never fill that role. I will wait until some other noob does that for me. Or until Arena net eliminates the class based system that is a recognized staple of the MMOROG”.

Me:
Last time I checked, the server statistics for classes do not effect your Guild. Your Guild Leader can if desired, ( as my guild would) assign off Roles to each member. IE: Tiny we are short a tank. Find a way spec one of your toons, to fill that Role or level a 2ndary toon with focus on that Role. If I did that he would help me by assigning other guild members with the task of farming gear for my “Tank”. If I did not, he would give warning, and if I still refused without finding/helping another member to accomplish this tasking. He would boot me out of the guild.

I fear that mmmos are slowly beginning to transition in solo 3rd person Shooters. As a result of the newer game playing crowd having never played games that require not a “Team” but a “group of friends”. Those of us who remember Shadow Run, DnD, The 90’s lol. We loved GW1 because of its Demand for an organized guild.

And in GW1, if you wanted to Solo or PUG you would do PvP or open world but never nightmare Dungeons.

But maybe GW2 was arena nets way of selling millions of preorders to the GW1 crowd based upon their love. While targeting the GW1 haters, after release reviews, by making this game actually be the style that they wanted. You know sell expectation to one crowd while selling reality to the other.