Guild Wars 2

Anet has created its own trinity for GW2: damage, support and control. However, by not making any of them “required”, the playerbase will pick the fastest one.

More so, they have created (or negleted) mechanics that punish their own trinity design.

Defiance completely destroys control builds and wrecks the game’s balance. And yes, Anet balances GW2’s builds around control as much as they do around damage, because control actually exists in pvp and they balance it around pvp mostly. This is very inconsistent.

Meanwhile, support builds lack infratructure/ mechanics so that support is meaningful and fun. Currently, it’s all about casting aoe skills that automatically affect all party members, or ground-targeted aoe skills that can be missed by the players themselves. Thins are this way because Anet decided to remove player-targetting and defensive target skills, because “watching HP bars the whole time is not interesting”. That’s a fine chance, but instead of removing this functionality, they should have improved it.

My suggestion, is to add a “buddy/ playerbound” system, where you can bound to a player, and that player’s HP will become more visible in the UI, and create support skills that automatically target players who are bounded to you. This means you can support specific allies, without having to be clicking them all the time, or without having to re-target or lose the targetting out of your opponent. It wouldn’t break the pace of this game’s combat, but it would allow a higher diversity of support skills outside of aoe, aoe and aoe.

Finally, design content that requires support and control. It’s better to “force” teams to bring three types of builds, than have the playerbase force itself to bring GS Warriors to everything.

Good post, targeted support skills are needed badly to give structure to fights.

Master of Timespace.2548:

“watching HP bars the whole time is not interesting”.

Because it’s interesting to watch red circles and red progress bar.

I’m just quoting them. :P

DiogoSilva.7089:

Master of Timespace.2548:

“watching HP bars the whole time is not interesting”.

Because it’s interesting to watch red circles and red progress bar.

I’m just quoting them. :P

Yes I know. Just wanted to point out that currently in pve thats pretty much all you can do: hack the boss (watch it’s progress bar go down) and avoid it’s attacks (watch the red circles). Ally targeted support skills with perhaps some reflex involved (like reversal of fortune from gw1) would make these dull fights much more interesting.