Guild Wars 2

Trinity? What happened to tank, heal, dps, CC, support? Youngin’s forgettin bout bards, druids, chanters, etc.

I understand your desire, Bradley, but I respectfully disagree.

Necromancers, Elementalists and Guardians can all be very strong healers. They just aren’t exclusively healers — they are “support”, which is much more than just healing.

My wife plays a healer in many other MMOs, but will quickly admit that it can be really boring during easy battles since she has nothing to do when things are going smoothly. Here, she plays an elementalist. When things are going smooth, she attunes to fire or air and has fun blasting away at our enemies. When I (as a warrior) start to get overwhelmed, she attunes to water, freezes the enemies to slow them down while I back off, throws down some healing spells to help me recover, attunes to earth or air to blind our target while I move back into position, then attunes back to fire to blast away at them again. Healing is one type of support, but support is much more powerful than just healing. It’s healing when you need it, debuffing or crowd control when you need it, and damage when you need it.

An exclusive healer just wouldn’t fit into GW2’s combat system. It would also fly in the face of the current group dymanic where any combination of professions can work great together. If you introduce a dedicated healer, then every dungeon group is going to be spamming “LFG healer” rather than just taking a group of any 5 professions and being ready to roll.

OP read this one. imagine sitting outside a dungeon.

“gotta wait for a healer”
“glf monk 2 go” x10
“spam your guild/alliance see if any healers can come”

no no no no and no. im at a dungeon the only thing i want to worry about is getting people not classes. dont get me wrong classes are a lot of fun and tactical but waiting around isnt. the trade off is well worth it imo.

Player Character.9467:

Trinity? What happened to tank, heal, dps, CC, support? Youngin’s forgettin bout bards, druids, chanters, etc.

A man after my own heart! 85 Paladin 2k AA

It would make the game a lot better, but it would also raise the skill cap more than I think Anet wants.

This is also true for removing the downed state from PvP settings, allowing AoE to hit more than 5 players at once, making maps open field and not only objective after objective etc

Its designed to appeal to casuals.

Water field
Entire team uses blast finisher
…
…
Heals!

I don`t think a monk would be so overly healing based it would be just restricted to that. I would imagine a monk in gw2 being a smiter type in cloth with heals that are better theen any other classes. People are allready doing dungeons and events without healers. A monk would just be another supportive character added to the mix. You wouldn`t need to have a monk in your group to be able to do the content but it sure wouldn`t hurt to have one along.

How many people have done dungoens or events without warriors or guardians around? You don`t have to absolutely need to have one or not be able to do it. Same would apply with a monk. An extra pair of hands with more supportive skills to add to the situation.

As a man who really enjoys being a support class in any game, add me to the list of players who would like a healing/support class added to the game in the near future.

no matter if your for or against this, in the end it is game breaking and will be the number one reason in 6 months the servers will be very scarce on players. no matter how you look at it. without a successful teamwork involved party system. if every man is just out for himself and screw you. you have a single player console game. and once you hit lvl 80 and get full exotics and 100% the world on 2 or 3 chars, it will be time to move on.

me personally once i get 100% world one one guy. im done. there is no reason to stay once youve done everything. there is no social aspect or anything to bring the players together. there is no building of friendships or closeness that causes people to stay together. we are all just looking out for number one. and then its time to go play borderlands 2 or something else.

the only way gw2 will stay around will be if they come out with new content and higher lvl caps every 6 months. and that will get very expensive on their end with limited returns on capital. good luck gw, it was fun for a little while.

no to healer profession.
learn to heal yourselves.
dodge, avoid damage more.

Elementalist can work as support with healing power (Water magic traits and almost all water magic related skills),
Guardian can work as support with healing power (Has loads of skills that can heal allies)
Warrior can work as support with healing power (Tactics traits, especially with vigorous shouts),
Necromancer can work as support with healing power (Blood magic traits),
Engineer can work as support with healing powers (Medic kit, healing turret, etc.).

aaron.4317:

…it would also raise the skill cap…

Were I interested in your answer (I’m not, so don’t bother) I would ask how forcing players to use a one make up team (aka a trinity based team) raises the skill cap.

My answer is “It doesn’t, and it can’t”. Taking tactical choices away from the players lowers the skill cap if it does anything at all.

Ender.3508:

Water field
Entire team uses blast finisher
…
…
Heals!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

no to healer profession.
learn to heal yourselves.
dodge, avoid damage more.

LOL, maybe that’s too complex. I see many responses here asking for trinity roles and I just can’t help feeling like they do not understand the professions, the system or how it all works together.

Instead of learning the game mechanics or how to play with others, they want things simplified back to the trinity roles.

I was also pretty worried about not having healers in a game, since it’s my most favorite class, but the system was pretty well thought out tbh. You can play support as ele, while switching to DPS when possible. At least you’ll be on the tip of your toes all of the time..

Not having a pure healer-profession was a basic design decision of GW2 – so it is unlikely that you’ll get one
Personally, I really like it that way – people have to look out for themselves.
You can still play a support heavy build (and, yes, there are some professions that lend themselves to healing support more than others) which hepls to keep your team alive – just not with direct healing

No, nay, never! No, nay, never, no more! Will I play the old healer, no never, no more!

Or something like that. I prefer the system as it currently works. There are PLENTY of support healing roles in this game that can be fullfilled by a wide selection of professions. Just like every class can tank if they are specced right and the player knows how their class works.

Stats in conjunction with traits make up for alot of what trinity brings to a game, you just need to have that knowledge to do the right thing with the profession you are playing. There is no need for a trinity.

If you get into a bad group you are SoL, but with a good or even decent group you need not worry much. But when you get people that blast away like a maniac while having no clue what dodge is and yelling at the guardian/warrior for not holding aggro there isnt much you can do.

As for healing support classes you have.

Elementalist (with most weapons while in water attunement)
Engineer (turret, kit or the underrated elixir gun which brings alot of support)
Necromancer (wells and such)
Mesmer (to a certain degree, some specs bring party regen)
Guardian (staff, scepter, mace, utility skills, elite skills and so on)

Ranger’s also good for healing with Healing Spring and various condition removers as well as pet abilities. Heck, a bear has the Warrior’s “Shake it off!” ability, but can use it more often!

Roll a warrior.

Trait shout heals. Trait full defense for healing power bonuses and survivability (self regen). Trait 10 pts into discipline for signet fast recharge.

Equip 6 runes of dwayna and all healing power gear. Dwayna runes will make your now 16 second recharge signet of health give an AoE regen.

Now, perma summon a banner of tactics and forget that you even have weapons (maybe throw runes of water on them just in case you have to use them). Pick up the banner.

Run around using the banner #2 ability for an AoE heal + regen. Use your self heal signet for additional AoE regen whenever it is up. Shout whenever you can for additional condition removal and AoE heals. When nothing is available, use banner swiftness ability for AoE swiftness. REVIVE people whenever you can

This is a pure healer and does a pretty good job of it. I’m pretty sure at least half the professions in the game can do something like this.

The ‘Holy Trinity’ of tank, dps and heals is deeply ingrained in MMO players and can be a comfortably familiar play style.

That said, I like that GW2 has decided to use a different framework. Each class having a healing ability makes soloing safer and dynamic events smoother with everyone able to help revive and heal. Gone are the days of “Group LF <insert role here> for <dungeon name here.” I don’t miss that.

I don’t think you necessarily need a class for multiple reasons…. but you could use a buff on certain healing mechanics.

+ In general, + healing contributes hardly any bonus to direct heals and HoTs
+ In general, HoTs are much weaker than direct heals simply in terms of how much they heal once the full duration is over.
+ Base amount of regen from sources (like turrets, ground target, regenerate boon) are kinda low… around a 100 or so health per tick at level 80?
+ Base amount of regen from 6/6 rune of doylak (especially the superior version) is super weak… 30 health per tick? At least make it close to say backpack regenerator, which itself is a like around 100 health per tick.

I know we need to focus more on flawless execution rather than healing through an encounter, but it doesn’t mean the healing stat and HoTs should be almost completely trivialized.

There’s already a super OP healing class in PVE game.

Look at the guardian’s tools, it is clearly the most efficient healing and support class in the game no questions asked ! Oh and they can chop you into pieces to, so asking for a healing class is ludicrous play a guardian and you’d be fine.

I’m now leveling a guardian and to be honest guardian are way OP in everything they do, I was doing lv11 personal story at lv6 and winning that’s crazy !

I could never do that with a warrior or any other class at all I’d get 2 hit massacred for sure.

At one point I was dealing with 4 to 5 enemies plus an elite and still they couldn’t kill me, sure they can get me down but the down state guardian abilities are so OP compared to other classes I’d be up again in no time bashing their heads in again.

Don’t get me wrong I was having a blast
mostly because of how easy and ridiculous it was when I knew any other class would be massacred in such a situation.

Guardians are easy play and clearly they are Paladins they can tank better than a warrior can and their health regen ticks every second compared to the warrior’s adrenaline based health regen that ticks once every 2 or 3 seconds, oh and you could still add even more healing using virtues and utility skills.

So, IMO Anet didn’t do enough to remove the trinity if you really wanna clear content fast and easy get at least 2 guardians in your party and you’re set to go it’s as easy as that. I’ve been around lv50 zones with 2 guardians, me a warrior and we take down same lv world boss champions with just the three of us, that is also insane !

Now that I’ve played a guardian I totally understand why all the LFG Guardian for AC EXP mode.

A.net if you really want to get rid of this ^ behavior the guardian class needs a total redesign, re-balance and restructuring, as it stands now you’d be insane not to take advantage of the guardians super awesome OP PVE abilities.

You can spec for healing in this game but they are never going to make enough abilities to keep someone constantly healed if they can not watch over their own health. You can heal others as much as you like but if they stand where they shouldn’t, do not dodge when they should, and so on you can only do so much. If anything worry more about protection skills in the game instead of healing, stop and mitigate damage, everyone can repair themselves.

Yeah…not gonna happen. They’ve said their view is tank and healers make the game too easy. They don’t want that. Tanks make is so DPS don’t have to work hard at anything but pushing buttons in a certain order. Healers make it so if you screw up you have a reset button.

That’s their view….if you want to heal, there are a number of games that allow it. This one isn’t going to.

Asking for it is like saying I want European football (soccer) to allow all players to catch the ball because I like American football.

The problem with a healing class is that people will forget to strategize in the game. As someone else mentioned, it’s true that when you have a monk in your group, you tend to blame them when things go wrong. People can’t take responsibility for their own actions when a monk is in the group, and the current set up forces people to learn how to create effective builds, specs, etc. which is great!

The only way I think I would be okay with this is if the “weapon” skills of the class were actual attacks, light-based or smiting probably. And then the slot skills could be healing type skills that aren’t too over powering, such that it would force everyone to still use their own healing skills on themselves. But even then, I’m not too sure.

I roll with a water ele when I want to heal, because I’ve been playing ranger and/or healer in all my mmos.

The only issue right now is it’s hard to see somebody’s health. It would be nice to have an option to turn on allie health bars so you can know when to pop healing rain instead of just saying… well, it’s been about 30 seconds, their health might be low.

lookitsandrea.8531:

The problem with a healing class is that people will forget to strategize in the game.

In other words the trinity tends to breed complacency. This is where GW2 shines, you better be actively mitigating and avoiding damage and self healing when you can’t avoid it.

Not just soaking up damage so some wet nurse can wipe it away.

Monk from GW1

There are 856402750 games out there have have specific tank/healer/DPS role. Do we really want GW2 to follow the same steps of those games?

It’s is actually refreshing to have a game with no trinity. Please keep it that way. If I want to play a trinity based game, there are a bunch of other games I can pick.

If you want to play a healer run a Water Elementalist and use a staff, almost every ability on that weapon is a heal. However the reason we don’t need a dedicated healer is now everyone can not only heal, we can DODGE and most classes have weapon skills to block /evade/become invincible for a few seconds. When you have all these tools at your disposal we don’t need healing on the same level as we would in WoW or GW1

We still could have a support class, giving some heal party, buffs, debuffs on enemies.

It could make the WvW more interesting.

It has been stated that they did not want a dedicated healer class because everyone going into a dungeon would want at least one healer, and if your not a healer well tough kitten you can’t join our raid. They wanted every player to feel like they can contribute with their preferred class.

I would have to disagree with this suggestion. If taken to its full conclusion, if ANet adds a healer class, then someone will suggest that there be a full tank class, and then you’re back to the trinity system.

I love not having a healer because it makes me pay attention to what I’m doing. I can’t rely on someone else to save me. That is awesome; it forces people to be accountable for their own actions.

Bradley.4075:

My biggest dissapointment with GW2 is the fact that there is no healing-based class! I know it is thought to be that not having one will somehow benefit gameplay, but, the truth is, it doesn’t. Not. At. All.

Are you telling me that there were all of these magnificent professions in the world of Guild Wars 2, but, yet, not a single adventurer decided to devote them selves to healing and light magic? Come on!

You can build classes however you want. I think certain classes are more prominent in the role than others.

For example – (and I see NO ONE is suggesting this or any information on it) but my level 80 Engineer is spec’d into Toughness, Power, but mostly – HEAVY HEALS. I utilize a Healing Turret and grab the 30-point trait that allows for Bombs to Heal Allies.

With my bonus healing the bombs are pushing over 200-300 per Bomb, on top of the renew and the supply kit and you’re looking at about 500-600 healing per tick.

While this is not a ‘direct’ heal, it has been amazing at how much this helps our group… and to top it off, I can still do damage and have fun playing the game, while keeping bombs near friends for heals.

However a direct ‘healing’ class – no thank you, not in gw2.

The only thing I have learned from reading this thread is if I am the OP and don’t want to really discuss the merits/demerits of my idea, I just need to call someone “ignorant” and/or “biased”, then I can take the high moral ground and self-justifiably refuse to take the time to write a counter argument.

Sinsko.9342:

For example – (and I see NO ONE is suggesting this or any information on it) but my level 80 Engineer is spec’d into Toughness, Power, but mostly – HEAVY HEALS. I utilize a Healing Turret and grab the 30-point trait that allows for Bombs to Heal Allies.

This sounds like a lot of fun. Have you done any experimenting with Med Kit, or is it just not worth the bother?

Bradley.4075:

@Signet of Forums
So in other words, not having a healer takes away from diversity in professions. Healers means more diversity!

Actually it means quite the opposite.
When you introduce a specialized profession into the game you decrease “diversity”.
As it is, all the professions are very diverse in that they are able to provide, to varying degrees, healing, DPS, and tanking.

I won’t go into detail here with regards to who can do what and how, but when you reduce a single profession to a SINGLE job you severely limit options for everyone.

Besides, the DPS aspect hasn’t totally vanished.

However, I do think that Guardians, Warriors and summoned creatures should be able to hold aggro better than they do.

Cinder.4865:

Sinsko.9342:

For example – (and I see NO ONE is suggesting this or any information on it) but my level 80 Engineer is spec’d into Toughness, Power, but mostly – HEAVY HEALS. I utilize a Healing Turret and grab the 30-point trait that allows for Bombs to Heal Allies.

This sounds like a lot of fun. Have you done any experimenting with Med Kit, or is it just not worth the bother?

The Med kit is pretty cool, but I found the cooldown to be kind of long. There may be a trait to make it more reliable, but I’m not sure about that yet.

For the bomb healing spec, I can pretty much survive dungeons in melee without many issues – of course i do have to run out from time to time in heated situations.

As a Guardian I can say that there are plenty of healing options, none of which will enable you to keep somebody alive while a giant knocks his head with a rock, which does seem unbelievable.
the staff works quite well actually if you don’t try to stand still and spam heal. You have the ability to invulnerability/dodge quite often, many classes can use shields or more evasive skills to keep them alive as well as their healing skills and combined with a “healing traited” (don’t kill me?) guardian there should be plenty green numbers on the screen.
however, the guardian still has to keep up other roles, be it cc or damage.

The whole combat gameplay also focuses heavily on not having a dedicated healer (might have been mentioned before..) or at least no_stationary_healer. That’s just how the combat is imagined.

In moments where you zerg protect a certain guy that is trying to install a bomb, is one of the many examples where one wishes for a healer because it just doesn’t work in the current state. I don’t want to say the system works well in all cases, many of the dungeons have zerging parts.

anyways.

So rather find ways to improve the current system to a point where it works as promised instead of taking a huge risk with reinventing a running game into xy generic MMO.

There are other gameplay issues but I think the need/wish of a dedicated healing class is a symptom, not the root of the problem.

So yeah…
keep sending them suggestions on how to improve the system and it should all work out well in a little while.

Honestly, I don’t expect a polished game before 2 months, which is really sad, I kind of hoped for more from the gw developers but on the other hand it’s already a pretty good rpg. and which is getting updates over time. for the same prize of a regular rpg. well, there are mods for rpgs…

my point is, it’s alright, not perfect, sure getting better, not really a problem.

Priest/Priestess
Uses Light magic to deal damage, most spells have a secondary effect that heal the people nearby, like a Water (Staff) Elementalist.
I don’t see why this wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t be a healing class specifically but it would bring more splash healing to the table than an Elementalist.

We already see Priest NPC’s.

Ranger’s AoE heal is pretty good, as is the stuff Elementalist have. A Warrior’s banner can heal eventually quite effectively, and the Warrior can slow+snare in various ways; note that immobilized, blind and cripple works on bosses regardless of the anti-cc buff. Other types of hard cc such as knockback, stun, daze work against his minions and often affect a small AoE.

I am really suprised most of the comments think that a monk would somehow change the way the game currently works. It would really be no different then any other class except his heals would be a little better then everyone elses and he would probably benefit the most from healing power. I`m pretty sure it would have weapons that had healing skills and would also have some for pure damage. How would this be any different then what we have now except adding another class with a different name?

Banewrath.5107:

I am really suprised most of the comments think that a monk would somehow change the way the game currently works. It would really be no different then any other class except his heals would be a little better then everyone elses and he would probably benefit the most from healing power. I`m pretty sure it would have weapons that had healing skills and would also have some for pure damage. How would this be any different then what we have now except adding another class with a different name?

If it isn’t any different, then what is the point of it?

Well, more variety and playstles for starters. I like playing a guardian as a knight in shing armor type. I `m sure there are people who like the holy monk type. With your way of thinking we allready have every class we will ever need so why bother adding more in the future. We won`t need assasins, ritualists, paragons, dervishes, or any other class that could make the game more fun to play. You are probably right though. keep it as it is for the duration of game. I can`t imagine why anyone would want to play anything different then what we allready have.

My guess is they wrote the monk out essentially do to the gods pretty much sitting back and eating popcorn at this point . Also if you look at a lot of the Guardian skills they are named after many of the monk skills which pretty much tells ya that monks decided to take a more aggressive role and formed the Guardian class .

I just want to say that I disagree with the OP about healing based classes, what I would suggest rather is more AoE heals and buffs for ALL classes.

At this time I am really enjoying not having class roles.

The whole, you cant do a dungeon or quest because you NEED a designated healer was aweful. Not many people liked being the dull healer in back just tossing hp onto the idiots who can’t avoid a spell or spinning attack or w/e. The old system had its time but GW2 did much better job by giving everyone the ability to play any role in varying qualities. Thief can aoe heal, ranger can aoe heal and far range revive, guardian has multiple heals. If you need more heals maybe you forgot there is a dodge button?

Healing based class, you mean like Elm with water element selected lol!

If they did add a monk, it would have to healing skills when equipping wand/focus, fast attack and DOT when equipping knuckles/claws, and both healing and attack when equipping staves.

Is this what you meant, or do you not understand the current class/skill system. You CAN NOT add a dedicated healing character to the game. The whole game would be thrown off balance and we would fall back into the dreaded holy trio.

-Guardians offer a wide variety of healing.
-Healing shout warrior or Banner warrior.
-Water attunement elementalists
-Ranger with healing spring is one of the best team healing skill.
-Necromancer with Well of Blood.
-Engineer with healing turret or bandage kit.
-You can stealth allies and they will get regen under stealth as thief if traited.
-There are Mesmer traits that allows you to shatter clones to heal allies.

Every single profession can be a healing based profession if you create your build correctly. If you play correctly, you can save your teammates from death using those healing skills.

runeblade.7514:

-Guardians offer a wide variety of healing.
-Healing shout warrior or Banner warrior.
-Water attunement elementalists
-Ranger with healing spring is one of the best team healing skill.
-Necromancer with Well of Blood.
-Engineer with healing turret or bandage kit.
-You can stealth allies and they will get regen under stealth as thief if traited.
-There are Mesmer traits that allows you to shatter clones to heal allies.

Every single profession can be a healing based profession if you create your build correctly. If you play correctly, you can save your teammates from death using those healing skills.

LMAO one problem, this requires you to actually think rather then spam healing skills!