One thing that drives me insane about this game is how invalid or unnecessary support builds or classes are in this game from a PvE / Dungeon point of view.
Whenever I go into Lion’s Arch and people are asking about builds, all I see is people saying “full zerker gear.” They never talk about support classes, healers, etc. because these are obsolete or unnecessary unless you’re into PvP or WvW.
I prefer to do PvE and Dungeons, but the sad reality of these two preferences is that I will always be found to be useless by others around me. In Guild Wars 1 if you were a Monk, people would invite you to their party in an instant because they knew they needed someone to be healing them. They had personal heals in Guild Wars 1, just like they do in Guild Wars 2, but they weren’t quite as strong in comparison to the healing skills that actual Healers would use.
I’ve been trying to get Arah leggings for nearly six months. Six. Six freaking months trying to get 330 Arah tokens. Why? Because nobody will take me along to do the dungeon because I use a support / healer Guardian instead of some kind of zerker Mesmer.
Kudos for trying to do away with the trinity system, Arena Net… but where you let yourselves down is that without the trinity system and everyone being allowed to do whatever they want in terms of trait choices, it seems like it’s all about DPS. Self heals are sufficient enough to help you stay alive long enough to dish out some serious DPS and if you don’t have said self heals in place, you have dodging, blindness, etc. abilities you can use to make sure you never really need to have a healer – that you can do everything by yourself or with an army of DPS users. And then if people go down, there’s nobody who is a dedicated ‘resurrection’ person – everybody can revive somebody once they die, thus even further reducing the usefulness of support / healer players.
Basically what I’m saying is: Make the self heal less powerful. Make people rely on Healers more than they do and give people a desire to play Healers.
People take me along in dungeons now because my Guardian can remove their conditions, heal, res faster (runes of mercy) and tank, so I’m overall a decent person to bring along… but I can’t dish out DPS. I do horrid DPS and it takes me nearly four times longer than other players to kill the most basic of mobs because I prefer to heal and tank instead of go pure DPS.
And please don’t tell me that this is all about me; I know there are others out there who enjoy the satisfaction of getting their allies through a tough scenario by being the healer – the person people could rely on to get them through hell.