Guild Wars 2

As far as I can tell, and from what I’ve heard and read, the design intent with GW2 is that there are no healers, no tanks, no dps, etc, everyone can kinda do everything.

To a certain degree that’s true, and to a certain degree that’s patently false.

Having now run a few dungeons as a “zerker” which I presume just means purely focused on DPS, warrior, and then building a set entirely of “tanky” items and redoing all my talents to take “tanky” stats, and swapping all my abilities to be more focused on survival, and then running the same content… the difference is night and day. Even with another “tank” performing the same “role” as me, two of us with stuns and the HP/defense to stand up to a bit of a beating made all the difference in the world. When I ran with all squishies, we got pounded into the dirt and wiped repeatedly. When I ran with 2 DPS, someone who had a lot of heals, and 2 “tanks” things went faster and smoother. Content that was near impossible for 5 “dps” was trivial for a group that more closely resembled the holy trinity of other MMOs.

So for all the work to depart from that paradigm, in my personal experience and estimation of the content so far, the game has been designed to some degree require, or at least compel or endorse returning to that tired old tank, healer, and some people who do damage formula. I’m still new to the game, and I have a lot of content left to experience, but thus far those are my impressions. I still find the game extremely enjoyable, but I have many concerns and complaints despite that.

For one, I resent a bit having to buy two sets of gear, and to have to support the additional bag space burdens just to feel viable and useful in dungeons where there’s not already a tank, or not enough hard-CC with just one tank. (Go put all your points in defense and HP and buy “hearty” gear and try soloing sometime, it’s like cutting lumber with a butter knife, with one hand tied behind your back) And worse you have to constantly be swapping around your points and skills between dungeons and soloing, because there’s no “dual spec” support.

Sometimes I feel like designers refuse to implement tried and true features from games like WoW for fear of being called a “WoW clone” or accused of “ripping off” ideas.

Well, this is the suggestion forum, so, I humbly suggest getting over that concern, and adding in the appropriate features to properly facilitate the reality of the situation for players. You’re not adding any gameplay depth by making it tedious for me to perform different roles depending on my dungeon comp. Making it a chore to be competent and be a team player isn’t what should be happening, someone being willing to swap gear and stats around for group content should be celebrated and embraced, and more importantly facilitated. And while we’re talking about dungeons, just get on with it and add LFG queues for content… you shouldn’t crowdsource intentionally or by inaction an entire featureset people have come to expect to a third party website. For a game with so much polish I’m really dumbstruck by the absence of certain core functionality that’s common to pretty much every successful MMO.

Also, unrelated, but, WRT the UI … lighten up, Francis. Either let people create aesthetic mods for the UI or give players more options. I’m not suggesting UI bloat like WoW, but, I should have the freedom to resize, spin, rotate, and move, every single UI element, in addition to changing it’s alpha and/or hiding it completely.

You can spec into tanky, supporty or dpsy roles fine, and they do make things fun.

The main thing that is required is having access to boons and conditions that weaken mobs and strengthen the party.

tbh it’s not hard to be a team player, it mostly involves just being attentive and helping anyone that gets into trouble.

It’s the same mindset as in the traditional trinity, but every character has the capability to actually do it. Not just the character with the taunt.

My point wasn’t about the ability to do those things, it’s that the change in setup isn’t facilitated. If I Want to do a dungeon, then solo for a bit, then do a dungeon, I’m bogged down with unnecessary tedium that could easily be alleviated by adding features common to a lot of other games.

Bring back the trinity, long live the trinity.

Having to travel to someone to pay money to change out traits is silly. If you insist on charging for it, just take it out of the inventory.

The design in the game was to replace the traditional trinity of DPS/Tank/Heal that requires certain profs to fulfill certain roles into a dynamic trinity of DPS/Support/Control that isn’t so prof-dependent. Largely, that’s been true. While the most efficient runs have a meta the requires certain combinations of classes, anyone can go quickly through dungeons with any group, as long as the players are skilled and appropriately spec’d.

I don’t feel compelled to swap gear and builds all the time: stuff that works in dungeons works in PvE and (mostly) in WvW. If I wanted to run the most optimized possible, well, sure, I’d have multiple sets. But that’s the point: I don’t have to be the best in the game in order to PUG; I just need to be skilled.

That said, I agree that it should be easier to swap traits, swap gear (especially upgrades), and generally switch from e.g. support guardian to damage. But for now, I’m pretty happy with the setup.

“Cof LF3M Zerk war P1 Farm zerk war team only” I just read on the gw lfg site.
There sure is something wrong but is it with mentality of some people or role design?
The other day a thief just got kicked from the group for being a thief.
Really felt sorry for the old bugger.

And I ask myself whats up with all the " you have to be warrior to join" thing.They are good for some parts but certainly are not the best choice for everything.
Perhaps there should come a system that punishes groups/people that do more than 2 runs with a full group of the same profession.
Or give a profession specific buffs in dungeons ,so its more rewarding to have a somewhat diverse team;like if you have a thief in the team you get a bonus to gold dropping from mobs.or the guardian gives 5 procent chance to instant rally from down,while a mesmer could give a karma bonus,necro condition duration,…
When you then kick a profession without any nagging or nono words detected from the player your group gets a debuff to the corresponding profession that got kicked->thief is less gold during the dungeon and final reward,guardian a 5 procent chance to instant die when half of your downbar is empty

Tipsy.5802:

“Cof LF3M Zerk war P1 Farm zerk war team only” I just read on the gw lfg site.
There sure is something wrong but is it with mentality of some people or role design?
The other day a thief just got kicked from the group for being a thief.
Really felt sorry for the old bugger.

And I ask myself whats up with all the " you have to be warrior to join" thing.They are good for some parts but certainly are not the best choice for everything.
Perhaps there should come a system that punishes groups/people that do more than 2 runs with a full group of the same profession.
Or give a profession specific buffs in dungeons ,so its more rewarding to have a somewhat diverse team;like if you have a thief in the team you get a bonus to gold dropping from mobs.or the guardian gives 5 procent chance to instant rally from down,while a mesmer could give a karma bonus,necro condition duration,…
When you then kick a profession without any nagging or nono words detected from the player your group gets a debuff to the corresponding profession that got kicked->thief is less gold during the dungeon and final reward,guardian a 5 procent chance to instant die when half of your downbar is empty

ehmm no, this would make it even worse with ppl speculating into the most efficient buffs from taking certain professions only, so then some professions would truely be screwed over cause they happened to be giving the less efficient buffs

All they did is to give opportunity to play as you like. And you should appreciate it.
Teamwork is an exception. Trinity is essential, and always will be.
Its simple. You need Damage. You or someone or all of you need to take damages too, and self-heal yourself if possible.
Now you can have a team that plays as they want and has good stats on all 3 kind, or an old fashioned party, where there are players who deal more damage, or can took more, and one who don’t fights, just supports by healings/buffs/removing conditions.

The two playing style is equal. No one is better than the another.
If the people wants trinity while you won’t, then continue searching, or go with your friends/guildies, maybe switch server to a better one, where players aren’t so dumb.

Best line so far:
“LF4M Frac 19-23 ASCENDED/LEGENDARY ONLY NO NOOBS BOOHOO!”

Trendy Ideology.1034:

As far as I can tell, and from what I’ve heard and read, the design intent with GW2 is that there are no healers, no tanks, no dps, etc, everyone can kinda do everything.

Everyone can do anything if they want. This is also so players can make builds that specialize more towards, say a tank. With some variety in non tank areas too.

Anet should make changing traits free. So people can experiment with new types of builds.

Anyone who complains about no healer or tank. Needs to lean how use traits and gear armor towards those traits.

GummiBear.2756:

Tipsy.5802:

“Cof LF3M Zerk war P1 Farm zerk war team only” I just read on the gw lfg site.
There sure is something wrong but is it with mentality of some people or role design?
The other day a thief just got kicked from the group for being a thief.
Really felt sorry for the old bugger.

And I ask myself whats up with all the " you have to be warrior to join" thing.They are good for some parts but certainly are not the best choice for everything.
Perhaps there should come a system that punishes groups/people that do more than 2 runs with a full group of the same profession.
Or give a profession specific buffs in dungeons ,so its more rewarding to have a somewhat diverse team;like if you have a thief in the team you get a bonus to gold dropping from mobs.or the guardian gives 5 procent chance to instant rally from down,while a mesmer could give a karma bonus,necro condition duration,…
When you then kick a profession without any nagging or nono words detected from the player your group gets a debuff to the corresponding profession that got kicked->thief is less gold during the dungeon and final reward,guardian a 5 procent chance to instant die when half of your downbar is empty

ehmm no, this would make it even worse with ppl speculating into the most efficient buffs from taking certain professions only, so then some professions would truely be screwed over cause they happened to be giving the less efficient buffs

hmm knowing how most people are yo might have a point.well then the only thing to do is find a guild that plays just for fun I suppose and doesnt really care what profession you are.But I still think these"warrior only" people deserve a hammer in the face

The game wasn’t ready to be released but their company has been bought by another investor which had a hard word on the release date. They needed founding for the game and this was the only way they can get it.
GW2 is pretty much the first or amongst the first games who were sold to the public in the beta phase making it like a paid beta = instead of them paying beta testers, they got payed by the people who wanted to try the game at first hand
Nowadays, many games apply the same model only they call it Founder’s Pack
So, most features you don’t see in the game isn’t because they didn’t plan to do it, but because they released the game too early. The marketing got its climax and the more they have waited to release it, the less people would be interested/ So they did a compromise because of the need of sponsoring money

In this game we play healer tank and DPS at the same time, no need to limit us to only one of them.
Anet does not “fear” to go back to a limited and obsolete system, it’s more like the opposite aka other MMOs fear letting players out of the role cage.

I’ve always felt that it was that most people want to just play the game, in other games they play DPS. Then a smaller fraction of the population wants to feel more important somehow, they play the Tank and the Healers. Their jobs are more stressful but ultimately without them it couldn’t have been done. Since no one is really any more important than anyone else in GW2, they’re missing out on that feeling.

I just want to Heal, or I just want to Tank, really breaks down to I just want you to have to rely on me instead of playing the way you want.

There are a couple of aspects to this debate about roles. Please note also that this is entirely about PvE… which is arguably the most important part of the game because of the greater amount of time the collective playerbase spends on it compared to PvP or WvWvW.

1) Each class cannot perform the trinity playstyles equally. As much as everyone counters with “if only you knew how to equip and play the class” certain classes are inherently easier to spec for Tanking/DPS/Healing based upon available equipment and skills. Especially for casual players that play one or two nights a week, they are more reliant on the inherent strengths of the classes as opposed to the fully-specced possibilities. They just don’t have the time to take on the steeper learning curves of some of the classes.

2) Since the loot system is based upon damage, loot is not equally distributed between the playstyles (regardless of class). I don’t even bother trying for the mobs at Penitent anymore because during peak times there’s at least three Warriors spinning like figure skaters on speed and a few Elementalists recreating the Searing. The game is heavily dependent on loot as a source of equipment and gold, and this penalizes the playstyles that are more support based. The excessive reliance upon endgame loot pushes more players towards DPS, which gives them the resources to get the best gear, which makes them even more able to monopolize loot drops.

So, players that will only ever level 1-2 characters to 80 (which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the largest segment of the player population) will tend towards the classes that give them the best chance to enjoy the endgame by maximizing their equipment…which is why for every Necromancer you see in Cursed Shores there’s five Warriors. Players who would like to branch out and learn the lesser-used classes are less able to compete for loot.

What I would love to see is an analysis of the classes played by bots. If there was a trend towards a class or two, that would indicate a significant issue with the loot system.

Ultimately, if ANet really wants to work this out, they need to take some serious time with each class in PvE and find ways to balance damage output and survivability between the classes. Give Rangers and Necros conditions that provide a lot more damage, give the casters/ranged weapons more skills/traits to boost their defense or keep enemies at a distance (Kiting is not always an option…maybe base the number of dodges on the weight of the armor?). They kinda bit themselves in the butt by providing so much stat customization… the system is so complex (especially once you factor in PvP and WvWvW), that for every change they make they disturb so many other factors…kinda like a game of Jenga.

Trendy Ideology.1034:

As far as I can tell, and from what I’ve heard and read, the design intent with GW2 is that there are no healers, no tanks, no dps, etc, everyone can kinda do everything.

To a certain degree that’s true, and to a certain degree that’s patently false.

Having now run a few dungeons as a “zerker” which I presume just means purely focused on DPS, warrior, and then building a set entirely of “tanky” items and redoing all my talents to take “tanky” stats, and swapping all my abilities to be more focused on survival, and then running the same content… the difference is night and day. […]

The aim was to not have fixed roles in character creation time, so no healer, tanky, dps fixed role.
This they, ANet, delivered. Everyone can assume every role (some slightly worse than the others, but they can).

But going into a dungeon without a “common sense” setup may still become hard and nearly impossible. You need defense, you need healing, you need dps. But who (which class) is taking up those different roles is entirely open (but some classes may perform better in dps than others).

Tipsy.5802:

“Cof LF3M Zerk war P1 Farm zerk war team only” I just read on the gw lfg site.
There sure is something wrong but is it with mentality of some people or role design?
The other day a thief just got kicked from the group for being a thief.

^ similar to what i was going to post
the higher level dungeons are basically zerk (berserker gear) warr/guard/mesmer-fest
thieves and rangers are often refused access to parties (i cant speak for thief; as mine is still low level; but ranger has hunters shot/opening strikes(10-20% more damage for the whole party), call of the wild, healing spring (regen,con removal and water field for whole party) and a number of party useful pet skills)

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Tipsy.5802:

“Cof LF3M Zerk war P1 Farm zerk war team only” I just read on the gw lfg site.
There sure is something wrong but is it with mentality of some people or role design?
The other day a thief just got kicked from the group for being a thief.

^ similar to what i was going to post
the higher level dungeons are basically zerk (berserker gear) warr/guard/mesmer-fest
thieves and rangers are often refused access to parties (i cant speak for thief; as mine is still low level; but ranger has hunters shot/opening strikes(10-20% more damage for the whole party), call of the wild, healing spring (regen,con removal and water field for whole party) and a number of party useful pet skills)

I can’t imagine why anyone would dis a Ranger in that. I can’t count the number of times I’ve done a dungeon for the first time with a group of experience players and been the last man standing because the rest of the group couldn’t stand up to a boss.