Guild Wars 2

This’ll be a bit of a long read, and may come of as “complainey” but I assure you I type this up with the fullest intention of helping better this game. Granted the harsh nature of this feedback, I feel I must clarify that in no way to I find “Guild Wars 2” a bad game. I’ve had more enjoyment with this game then I’ve with many others.

I’ve been playing for some weeks now, while trying to figure something out. Something was off-putting. I didn’t quite know what it was. Then suddenly one day I noticed that someone next to me just gathered from the same node I did. I thought about it “Oh, so gathering is individual player instance-based” Not actually a bad thing, It meant fields weren’t devoid of all resources for newer players because of farming. I kind of liked it, in fact!

This is where I started to notice something, though. Dropped gear was instance too! Huh, Okay. That sort of made me draw back and think for a bit. That kind of defeated the purpose of classes using different gear, and working as a team to get eachother gear. The gear grabbing was more “self-serve” This could, however, be forgiven.

Next stop, events! I started doing a bunch of events, as I went I noticed a theme. Nobody really helped anybody else do any objectives, in most cases. No cool team puzzles or the like. Mostly just smash the hell out of a boss, or everyone collect loot individually. Notice the use of the word “Individually” Nobody was “really” working together. It was just a big zerg, you follow it around, you do whatever, you get loot.

I thought surely pvp would be different, right? It has to be! The whole point is teamwork, right? Well yes, and also. . . no. I noticed a theme, and I tried out every role in PvP and PvE to try to clarify this theme and pattern. The pattern is thus; “Do whatever it is you do, and your teammates will get buffs and such as you go.” There are some exceptions, but allow me to make some examples below.

Supporting with my engineer: I build runes around boons and healing, Used all my heals in succession, and kept all conditions off my allies, yet they still died at about the same speed. I have a couple healing abilities, and after using every single one of them, doing a little math, all the healing I did amounts to about 6 smacks from an enemy warrior, or one “2” from a warriors greatsword. Maybe less. This is with 3 monk runes and 3 water runes, and +300 healing from traits, as well as traits specifically to help my healing and buffing. Naturally I did other things to help, too, but the effect of boons can be quite minimal in a lot of cases, and I sacrificed so much of my damage and power to do the garbage amount of healing I was doing, that I wasn’t useful at all.

Why is the above important? Self heals are extremely powerful, and almost every buff you give to allies you also give to yourself. The game is just too self-reliant. I find that regardless of how useful I try to be, the end result is me having to smack the hell out of the enemies to do so. Class not mattering. PvP boils down to whoever gets the jump on the enemies and zergs better. There’s no reason to even try to help your team, everyone helps themselves.

The same is evident in dungeons. Everyone has just about the same job. You hit it until it dies while dodging and healing yourself.

I’m sure I did a bad job of illustrating my point, in at least a few cases. If you’d all kindly do some critical thinking to understand what I mean, I’m sure you’ll all see it. Take off your Guild Wars 1 Nostalgia goggles, turn off your Troll Radar. Sit down, and have a good think.

TL;DR I’m trying to have a serious discussion, here. Come back when you feel like reading.

If you think about it, the same was true in GW1 (albeit to a lesser extent). If you make a PUG for a mission, you don’t really care what class they are, or what skills they have, you just invite them and then go and play. There doesn’t have to be any communication between each other.

Despite this, obviously if you communicate and try to play with each other, and by that I mean try to co-ordinate the skills you are bringing to the mission, then use them properly in the mission, the whole thing becomes more effective.

The difference in GW2 is that it is an MMO, so the same thing is happening in dynamic events, but because there are 50 people the issue becomes more obvious, it doesn’t matter what class or skills anyone has.

And I think that’s fine for DEs. It should be like that. Anyone should be able to just join and play.

The game gets more serious in sPvP (and by that I only mean tournaments), WvW (when you have a small group of 5, not zerg vs zerg) and in dungeons.

It still doesn’t matter what class and skills people have, but if you get together and co-ordinate, you can make the whole thing so much more effective. Cross combo skills are extremely useful. I was in a dungeon in a group with 3 rangers. I just took all the light fields I have, plonked them down next to them and then they would fire condition removing arrows everywhere. Of course you could say that they don’t need to communicate with me, but they should. I think dungeons are too easy at the moment though (in explore mode). But in tournaments or WvW, it is completely necessary to communicate, as you are playing against real people this time.

Try dungeons on explorer mode and you’ll see you either are a team player or you won’t be able to do it at all.

And by team means actually resapeccing to be able to support, actually coordinating and actually L2P

Reihert.1509:

Try dungeons on explorer mode and you’ll see you either are a team player or you won’t be able to do it at all.

And by team means actually resapeccing to be able to support, actually coordinating and actually L2P

The only class I’ve seen actually support well is guardian, only because they have a lot of shields boons and blocking capability.

As I said in my previous post, I completely specced my engineer out in sPvP to be a good healer, Giving boons, doing over-time heal, big heals…

With all that work, I had a heal that would hit for an initial…400, then heal like 80 a second for a couple seconds. thats…what…a single attack from a warrior? Then I had a skill that would regen for about 2k….Oh…good…whats that? 1/4th a thief backstab? about 2 hits from a warrior? Super! First aid kits that heal for 1.1k each on a pretty heavy cooldown….

Mind you all these healing abilities and boons I have are complete garbage AFTER dumping just about all my points and resources into making them powerful. So, now I forewent a ton of power and traits I could be using to simply do good damage. My choice is heal about half of my teammates hp, or in the same amount of time that takes me down 2 enemies.

All my healing abilities which I would use to the fullest of my ability would amount to about 10k healing spread out over time….My warrior with no points into health has about 27k hp. He can also heal himself for about that much by simply hitting 6.

You see where this is a problem? Supportive build choices are completely null. Its pathetic. Now, if health didn’t regenerate outside of combat, and I was needed to actually patch people up to run in and fight, that’d be one thing….I’d be a lot better off just helping my team deal damage in a fight, then everyone can auto-heal after the fight is over.

There’s also a HUGE problem with supporting being passive to a disgusting level. For example, I’ve got a skill that launches a projectile that slows enemies and speeds up allies. Why am I unable to shoot this projectile at an ally to start the bouncing? Why am I forced to shoot it at an enemy? This basically solidifies the point that the game DOES NOT want anybody directly helping anybody. You simply attack enemies, and thats supposed to passively help your team…Ha…great.

There’s also only one single sense of “Wow dude, you really saved my buns!” its when you down an enemy to revive an ally. Thats it, the only time. There’s rarely clutch healing. Downed state also completely ruins the flow of the game. Having to stop and deal with an enemy you already killed can very easily get YOU killed, making it extremely hard to deal with multiple enemies as a single player. The main problem with this is, Say you just downed someone and are going to finish him off, but his teammate shows up and knocks you back. As cool as this factor of teamwork is, You just deprived this guy of his ENTIRE HEALTH BAR doing a lot of work in the process. Yet there goes all sense of satisfaction.

Reviving said teammate is equally as bad. Sure it sort of feels like you’re helping, but you now have to completely stop what you’re doing, and sit completely still for some seconds doing nothing instead of fighting.

Zetoe.1327:

Reihert.1509:

Try dungeons on explorer mode and you’ll see you either are a team player or you won’t be able to do it at all.

And by team means actually resapeccing to be able to support, actually coordinating and actually L2P

The only class I’ve seen actually support well is guardian, only because they have a lot of shields boons and blocking capability.

As I said in my previous post, I completely specced my engineer out in sPvP to be a good healer, Giving boons, doing over-time heal, big heals…

With all that work, I had a heal that would hit for an initial…400, then heal like 80 a second for a couple seconds. thats…what…a single attack from a warrior? Then I had a skill that would regen for about 2k….Oh…good…whats that? 1/4th a thief backstab? about 2 hits from a warrior? Super! First aid kits that heal for 1.1k each on a pretty heavy cooldown….

Mind you all these healing abilities and boons I have are complete garbage AFTER dumping just about all my points and resources into making them powerful. So, now I forewent a ton of power and traits I could be using to simply do good damage. My choice is heal about half of my teammates hp, or in the same amount of time that takes me down 2 enemies.

All my healing abilities which I would use to the fullest of my ability would amount to about 10k healing spread out over time….My warrior with no points into health has about 27k hp. He can also heal himself for about that much by simply hitting 6.

You see where this is a problem? Supportive build choices are completely null. Its pathetic. Now, if health didn’t regenerate outside of combat, and I was needed to actually patch people up to run in and fight, that’d be one thing….I’d be a lot better off just helping my team deal damage in a fight, then everyone can auto-heal after the fight is over.

There’s also a HUGE problem with supporting being passive to a disgusting level. For example, I’ve got a skill that launches a projectile that slows enemies and speeds up allies. Why am I unable to shoot this projectile at an ally to start the bouncing? Why am I forced to shoot it at an enemy? This basically solidifies the point that the game DOES NOT want anybody directly helping anybody. You simply attack enemies, and thats supposed to passively help your team…Ha…great.

There’s also only one single sense of “Wow dude, you really saved my buns!” its when you down an enemy to revive an ally. Thats it, the only time. There’s rarely clutch healing. Downed state also completely ruins the flow of the game. Having to stop and deal with an enemy you already killed can very easily get YOU killed, making it extremely hard to deal with multiple enemies as a single player. The main problem with this is, Say you just downed someone and are going to finish him off, but his teammate shows up and knocks you back. As cool as this factor of teamwork is, You just deprived this guy of his ENTIRE HEALTH BAR doing a lot of work in the process. Yet there goes all sense of satisfaction.

Reviving said teammate is equally as bad. Sure it sort of feels like you’re helping, but you now have to completely stop what you’re doing, and sit completely still for some seconds doing nothing instead of fighting.

It’s not about healing. If you are losing health that much you are already losing. Control your enemies before they get a chance to do any damage.

I use a hammer/staff as a guardian in some dungeons, ling/ring of warding (using judges intervention to teleport to them, then use the ring) to keep them in 1 place, the hammer root is good. Using save yourselves and the meditation that converts all cons to boons is effective against mobs that do condition damage. Interrupting them in the middle of their attacks. Shields (sanctuary, shield of absoprtion, that 3rd mace skill). Stuff like that.

So what you’re suggesting is a supports role is to be a huge ball of CC? That is extremely lame, and sort of shoehorning the role.

The game specifically allows the player to build into healing, it also has a multitude of skills specifically for that purpose, yet all of them blow. Its sort of a low blow “There’s healing skills, they’re all just really bad to keep you from using them”

Zetoe.1327:

So what you’re suggesting is a supports role is to be a huge ball of CC? That is extremely lame, and sort of shoehorning the role.

The game specifically allows the player to build into healing, it also has a multitude of skills specifically for that purpose, yet all of them blow. Its sort of a low blow “There’s healing skills, they’re all just really bad to keep you from using them”

No, I am saying it is a combination of a lot of things. You can’t play effectively by just healing or just using CC, you have to do both. That’s why healing is not as powerful as other games.

Apart from tome of courage.

Your cc is fully dependent on your weapon, I use rifle because it gives me a cc move and an escape. Aside from that, I have the use of…3 slots with which I can use to heal teammates or CC. This is a false choice.

I can take 1 healing skill and heal for….about 1-3k damage total (oh boy) and then get 2 cc skills, so now my cc is far less effective, and I heal for garbage. Or I can go with healing well or CCing well.

Trying to go for both ends badly. Healing yourself is great, mind you. All the self healing is huge, too huge, in fact. The moment you try to heal others, though, its a huge no-no all of a sudden.

My problem isn’t specifically with how weak healing is, and isn’t evwn my main argument. My point is more that there’s no actual sense of teamwork. all your “teamwork” is passive. There’s no cohesive unit.

As for how weak healing is, though, There’s 2 options here, Buff it, or remove it from the game. As it stands I’d be better of just filling my slots with 3 cc skills, so I can prevent the damage entirely instead of trying to heal it up in the middle of a fight. WHICH by the way is the only time TO try to heal it, because autoheal kicks in after they get out of combat, making any healing you attempt to do moot.

Oh right, this fails to mention that the Healing will be even weaker because you won’t be specced into it, so it’d actually be far less. Why even give traits for healing if its still going to be garbage? The problem isn’t that healing is bad, the problem is that its completely and utterly worthless. Just about every other option is a better one. So why not just remove it from the game entirely?

It sounds like you’re missing the point of (or just not enjoying) casual pve, wvw, and spvp.
The idea is that you can jump in and out, play how and when you want, all while being self reliant and able to help other players.
You can’t just do one thing, like heal or tank, and expect to be a beast in that role. It’s all adaptive and situational. It sounds to me like the part you’re not enjoying is how easy it is to zerg through everything when there are a lot of good players doing the same task.
But that’s the casual side. Maybe you’ve been in some overgeared PUGs in the explorable dungeons or with some really skilled players in pvp , but I can guarantee it will absolutely be easier, faster, and more fun in a cohesive, organized group. The game does its part by bringing people together with common tasks (events, pvp tourneys, dungeons), but it’s ultimately up to the players themselves to form a stronger force by coordinating. There’s so many things that work toward this goal. Combo fields, area buffs for your allies, traits that focus on reviving and teamwork, adaptive difficulty… not to mention the guild system and squad system.
I’ve very rarely seen players literally NOT help each other out when they’re nearby. On my warrior, I’ve swapped out a skill for my banner of discipline, and I can’t tell you how many random players follow me around after seeing I can give them swiftness and fury while we do the local events/exploration. Playing in dungeons, I find myself always preferring to, if not downright NEEDING to, stand in a AOE heal/condition remove circle. I can’t put one down as a warrior, so I’d say that’s a combined effort.
Join a guild that does group events and tourneys, or has a squad in wvw. You’ll see the coordination.

Zetoe.1327:

Your cc is fully dependent on your weapon, I use rifle because it gives me a cc move and an escape. Aside from that, I have the use of…3 slots with which I can use to heal teammates or CC. This is a false choice.

I can take 1 healing skill and heal for….about 1-3k damage total (oh boy) and then get 2 cc skills, so now my cc is far less effective, and I heal for garbage. Or I can go with healing well or CCing well.

Trying to go for both ends badly. Healing yourself is great, mind you. All the self healing is huge, too huge, in fact. The moment you try to heal others, though, its a huge no-no all of a sudden.

My problem isn’t specifically with how weak healing is, and isn’t evwn my main argument. My point is more that there’s no actual sense of teamwork. all your “teamwork” is passive. There’s no cohesive unit.

As for how weak healing is, though, There’s 2 options here, Buff it, or remove it from the game. As it stands I’d be better of just filling my slots with 3 cc skills, so I can prevent the damage entirely instead of trying to heal it up in the middle of a fight. WHICH by the way is the only time TO try to heal it, because autoheal kicks in after they get out of combat, making any healing you attempt to do moot.

Oh right, this fails to mention that the Healing will be even weaker because you won’t be specced into it, so it’d actually be far less. Why even give traits for healing if its still going to be garbage? The problem isn’t that healing is bad, the problem is that its completely and utterly worthless. Just about every other option is a better one. So why not just remove it from the game entirely?

healing is working pretty well for me, I don’t know what you are doing wrong.

Zetoe.1327:

My problem isn’t specifically with how weak healing is, and isn’t evwn my main argument. My point is more that there’s no actual sense of teamwork. all your “teamwork” is passive. There’s no cohesive unit.

I never played GW1 and came from a mostly WoW background. When I first started playing this game I had the same types of thoughts about support that you do. I was so used to a game that put each person in specific roles that GW2 was culture shock. I was used to each person having a different role and as long as each person filled that role correctly, you would succeed. That became how I viewed teamwork. Out of a group of 5 people you would need some defensive guys, some offensive guys and some support guys.

In GW2 they basically stopped having unique roles. Instead they made it so that everyone is responsible for all of the roles. Each player has to have some way to do damage, stay alive and support others. Teamwork in GW2 is everyone being on their game in all of those roles.

I just completed a dungeon with my guild yesterday and we are getting a lot better at them. At the start we discuss who is bringing what to the table so we can ensure that we have ways to cleanse conditions, heal, apply boons, control the mobs, stay alive, and bring people up from the downed state.

Teamwork in GW2 isn’t player 1 being the damage guy, player 2 being the defensive guy and player 3 supporting everyone. Teamwork is putting down that light field at the right time so everyone’s projectiles cure conditions. It’s saving that aegis buff so the team can withstand an early onslaught of damage from a big group. It’s throwing out that blind at the right time to cause the boss to miss a big attack. Each person needs to bring all of that to the table. When everyone is doing as much as possible, the fights go smoother and get easier.

I know some people that prefer the WoW style of teamwork with separate roles. It’s possible you just like that style of gameplay better and that’s fine. I actually like both and have fun in either style. But the GW2 style isn’t a lack of teamwork….it’s just a different kind.

Community is something mainly done by players.

I get some VOIP program, connect with some guild members, do things together…
Or talk with random strangers, help them around, fight together for a while, give them advice…

One can still share and give away drops between friends. You can ping them in the chat, offering them if they want to use them, and you can still give them the drops.

You can yell in the chat when you find a Rich vein, for all to come and enjoy the extra gathering.

You can build a team that covers most eventualities with synergy, having as much effects, boons and skill combos as possible give your professions.

It’s a little more complex having all these roles at the same time, but as with any game, you get used to it and ends up coming naturally, fluently, without having to waste too much time over-thinking things.

You guys seem to be missing my point, entirely. I think its because I got on a wierd tangent on “roles”

If you build your character right, everything you do passively helps your team, the only thing that helps your team that is specifically not passive is the downed system, which ironically, takes away from the flow of battle.

Since there’s no Tank Support DPS variation roles, the game has 2 ways to fight bosses. Kite like mad(woo hoo) or its a big stationary boss. Thats it, there’s your variety. However, my problem AGAIN isn’t about there not being roles, its about there not being any community building teamwork.

This is it, you’re all going “Oh, dude get on a voice chat!” Yeah…Okay, thats not really a community builder, to be quite honest. That normally happens after you join a guild. I’m talking about the massive about of passivity, and self dependence.

My point with healing being weak was simple. Self heals are enormous half-your-hp bar filling moves with fairly short channels, or an immunity, etc. Yet if you go to heal a teammate you heal for about 1k total, which is a single attack from anyone built for damage. That completely defeats the purpose of the whole role. The makes DO NOT want you healing AT ALL. Apparently this type of direct supporting is against their design. Same with skills that “bounce between allies and enemies” The ally bounce is if after-thought. This is evident with the fact that you can’t target an ally to start the bounce.

The only direct supporting I’ve been able to do is CC, and CC is a huge factor in this game. Too big, in fact. Its kind of disheartening. Its so hard to kill other players while they’re dodging around and constantly sustaining themselves, the game has to heavily rely on CC in order to make them stop so they can be killed. Are you a good player? Now, Have you ever tried to have a 1v1 fight with another good player? If neither of you has a huge whopping mountain of cc the fight WILL go on indefinitely. I’ve proven this on multiple occasions.

I think that because everyone can do everything to extent is the reason for your concerns. Sure, to get through a dungeon effectivly if everyone relys on supporting everyone else and communication it can go alot better.

But in regular pve outside of dungeons anyone can pretty much conquer almost anything. If they can`t, passer bys will join in and help with the quest or event but since everyone is self sufficient, there really isn`t a need to communicate unless you want to. Then half the time nobody responds at all. It almost feels like an online single player game.

Okay, after reading through this thread I have to say I couldn’t disagree more. The tank, support, dps roles still exist, they just blur the line enough that classes aren’t bottlenecked into a single role because that’s the only role they’re good at.

The other side of that is though, that no class is at it’s best or strongest when alone. Every class is reliant on other people performing well in their own role to bring you to your maximum potential. This means that if you are playing a healer, the person you are healing has to also be doing their part.

For example, lets say you’re in a dungeon. You’re playing healer. If the person you are trying to heal is ‘tanking’ but they are not spec’d properly for it and are not using skills, movement, dodge, etc to counter damage guess what’s going to happen? You guessed it! SPLAT!

If you have a guardian who is full on spec’d for tanking, in gear appropriate for the level of content you are doing, and you are the same I can guarantee you your heals will keep them up through the content if they know their class and are effectively using their skills. But guess what? It’s not all on you two. There are 3 other people who need to be using buffs and support to make the whole team more effective.

The M.O. here is teamwork. What you are suggesting would have the opposite effect. You want to be able to outheal incoming damage on your own without being reliant on other players to perform their role, use their heals, and counter damage intelligently. That’s not possible, nor should it be.

Sondergaard.8469:

Okay, after reading through this thread I have to say I couldn’t disagree more. The tank, support, dps roles still exist, they just blur the line enough that classes aren’t bottlenecked into a single role because that’s the only role they’re good at.

The other side of that is though, that no class is at it’s best or strongest when alone. Every class is reliant on other people performing well in their own role to bring you to your maximum potential. This means that if you are playing a healer, the person you are healing has to also be doing their part.

For example, lets say you’re in a dungeon. You’re playing healer. If the person you are trying to heal is ‘tanking’ but they are not spec’d properly for it and are not using skills, movement, dodge, etc to counter damage guess what’s going to happen? You guessed it! SPLAT!

If you have a guardian who is full on spec’d for tanking, in gear appropriate for the level of content you are doing, and you are the same I can guarantee you your heals will keep them up through the content if they know their class and are effectively using their skills. But guess what? It’s not all on you two. There are 3 other people who need to be using buffs and support to make the whole team more effective.

The M.O. here is teamwork. What you are suggesting would have the opposite effect. You want to be able to outheal incoming damage on your own without being reliant on other players to perform their role, use their heals, and counter damage intelligently. That’s not possible, nor should it be.

Way to once again miss the point entirely. Self healing is so effective that there is no reason to heal them, but there are traits and builds specifically allowing you to be “better” at healing, which is still garbage. The effect of said build is that you can heal for poor amounts, while doing poor amounts of damage. The game would be exactly the same without this build option. Healing is barely stronger with a build based around it. You may as well just build straight damage and just shoot enemies with your gun. You’ll be more useful that way. By building to be a support all you do is heavily hinder yourself, when you SHOULD be using all your resources to help others.

Instead the game forces you to build like a fighter, and just fight, while your friends get supported passively while you fight.

There is “no roles”? Wrong, there’s only 1 role, now. Fighter. That is it, everything else is a waste.

Wait… what do you mean when you say ‘community’?

Looks like it doesn’t mean what you think it means.