Guild Wars 2

Ok, I’ve been playing this game since the early beta’s and now. I know Anet said they didn’t want to have the traditional role of "healer/Tank/DPS’ and that’s fine and dandy..but some people actually enjoy tanking, or me I love playing healer and I’ve been going through the classes trying to figure out which could actually help me keep people alive.

So far, everything is subpar and the more I play and the more I have to deal with frustrating mechanics and bugs..the more I want to go back to WoW..the game is not fun for people who like to play support. Now I will admit alot more people love to see damage numbers than those that enjoy healing people or allowing others to do the damage. So is there any way to play a viable support character and be that healer or tank…because so far, haven’t found it

i’m replying based on what i’ve experienced so far…

yes,you can be full support,control or damage..BUT,as the devs says,you will be missing a lot of chances or opportunity to even more "support your friends..especially in dungeons..

example,i’m a warrior with a full control playstyle and i put a mace/mace and hammer + 3 control skills on utility.that gives you a total of 10 skills that have a control functions and faced with a numbers of mobs at a times and sometimes we need to focus on an enemy and sometimes we need to control the whole mobs or even do that at the same time…

this leaves you with an options to use all of this control skills at your disposal which is good,but at some point,you can’t use the skills because of the cooldown and your only options to contribute to the team is to help them make a dent on the mobs while on the other hand,yours will probably not enough to do the job well and this may leads to a certain demise…depending on situations and trusts

on the opposite, you can be flexible on the build and be everything you may need for the team survival.

personally i always rolled with the second options…my main build is to focus on the damage,but that doesn’t mean i always use GS or axes..instead i use ALL of the weapons that my profession can use and i like to experiment on how to do a run best whenever i’m with a friend or a PuG..

because with a friend i trusts i can be a total damage if i wanted too if i so wishes it and change my playstle or even traits and gears if i’m with PuGs..

so my advice is,be flexible..focusing on a major trait lines is good,but having a little a bit of everything on the way could make a big difference too..

good luck and happy hunting

you can yes but nothing in the current dungeons calls for anything more than 1 guy to take the brunt of the beating and 4 guys dealing damage.

for example Mesmers have alot of Boon Removal yet i havent had a single boss fight where i’ve thought ye Boon Removal would be handy here.

I have over 1300 Healing power on my Guardian. Staff is awesome for support lots of heals and then I can switch to my Greatsword for dmg plus heals on my symbol. It helps alot but if I don’t switch to my Greatsword during the fight I only get silver at best for events.

I’m a great addition to my group with lots of regens to soak up small bits of damage but I get no credit for doing so. I like that I have to fight as well as support but support spells need to add to your participation as it is now it encourages people to just do glass cannon builds.

^ Null field for both boon removal on enemies and condition removal on allies is very strong. Plenty of situations arise where boon stripping helps ALOT. Graveling Howlers (AC), Risen Hunters (Arah), Dredge Disaggregators (SE) all apply a ton of boons to nearby enemies, and in each case your group will suffer much less damage if remove their might and fury stacks, AND you will kill them much more quickly if you manage to remove other boons such as regeneration and protection. A few bosses such as the Butcher in HotW and the turret golem in CoE will also go much quicker with consistent boon removal.

Best part about running 20 trait points in Inspiration as a Mesmer for support purposes is that your still deliver great DPS, because feedback is also amazing. Sometimes Feedback alone will out-dps all 4 of your other group members combined AND protect them from damage. For a few examples try it on Aldus in HotW path 1 or any of the Risen Elementalists in Arah.

I also run dungeons quite a bit with a guardian who runs 0/0/30/30/10 traits (Full Tank/Heal) with Cleric’s accessories, Soldier’s armor, and full set of soldier runes and he does very well in every path we’ve done together thus far. With condition-removing shouts, Line/Ring of Warding, and Wall of Reflection, he can protect the party extremely well, and with Empower & Altruistic Healing he has virtually no trouble keeping himself alive in the thick of things. Despite having 0 trait points in Zeal and Radiance, all his gear has power somewhere in it so even his damage isn’t as terrible as you might expect. In fact, given his 12 might stack from Empower, additional 3 might stacks from Sigil of Battle (swaps between Staff & Hammer/GS constantly), and +30% boon duration (50% if he’s using omnomberry cream for MF) and he ends up doing more damage overall than some of the “DPS” pugs we get by virtue of always being in the middle AoE-ing everything with hundreds of bonus power from might.

In short, support can and will be absolutely successful and just about every path of every dungeon. It’s up to you to figure out what builds will work best for your group and profession. If you’re not having success with it, then, well, for lack of better words, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s fun to see big green numbers but the thing with support is, you shouldn’t really ‘spec’ for it. Healing power to heal ratios on things are pretty terrible and the lost damage compared to the healing gained is just absurd. Your support from non-healing skills/boons that mitigate damage far outweighs the healing ones too.

This is worsened in dungeons where the trash mob HP are high and doing 50% less damage replacing a damage attribute for healing power just draws out the misery of taking longer to do things and risks your party from wiping even more once their defensive cooldowns/dodges are exhausted and your healing power can’t compensate.

There is a breakpoint though where enough healing power in the group would let you sustain yourselves infinite but again, you’re gonna do bad at DPS checks if everyone does little damage.

tl;dr Support is fine skillwise and traitwise. But don’t waste gold speccing for Healing Power through suit/jewels since Healing Power is weak, you’re better off with just the base healing from skills/traits.

We run me warrior with traited banners for regeneration and buffs a water ele for heals/regen and a mace shield gaurdian for prot and buffs and heals,most fights we boast 20 stacks of might multipul regeneration boons and we have got to the point where we can outheal most damage allowing me to really take on a tank role . This doesn’t truly apply to bosses though but it is still very effective

You can play support.

But for the most part, you really don’t want to skimp on the damage. That makes runs take forever. A group of five damage-oriented players that know their class and how to dodge will clear the instance far faster than five support-oriented players.

Eles can somewhat heal, remove conds and buff, guardians and somewhat tank. It’s not like in most other MMOs, you don’t have one person constantly healing and one person just keeping aggro on, but it’s there – as long as you’re fine with also dropping the big hits and dodging properly.

I played healer on a lot of the MMOs I played before GW2, and I will say I feel like the best way to be support, yet not decrease usefulness to the party is just to be more flexible in what you particularly see as support-role. Heals aren’t the only useful way to be more supportive, skills that make resurrecting someone more safely/easier is a tremendous way to be supportive. Boon stripping, which was so helpfully mentioned by Rathore as well as which situations that’s useful. Skills that give your own boons to others or outright grant books to the whole group (like Engineer’s F1). The dungeons in this game are so teamwork oriented at times that I love it, or, at least that’s how my groups usually roll. But I do think that Engineer/Elementalist with staff and water attunement, and Guardian can be great help and healers in crisis situations.

Stack 10x might on everyone with an ele that can also heal and dish out loads of Aoe dmg and control.

I agree refer to my post above and yes stacking might and other buffs works well you do not have as much damage as glass cannon groups however I found it to be on par but mostly quiker due to a lot less downing/zerging so imo it is very comparable time wise to a glass cannon group

I think Nicolatte already nailed it, but I’ll chime in too…

MorceluLebeau.5109:

..the more I want to go back to WoW

Not meant as an insult here…. but that’s probably for the best if you still haven’t found a way to play pure support like I did only 1 week in. I spent 5 years Monking in GW1 and can’t remember anything I ran that was as versatile as my Guardian is here. I’ve also seen video of this Engineer in WvWvW who held off a small Zerg almost completely by himself with Heals and Buffs. (It was on Guru, it would take me a while to locate it again). He just couldn’t die apparently…

Point being, it just requires a lot more effort & multi-task reaction playstyle than it’s frankly worth to most ppl. Gamers who are used to a much more closed system will probably not be able to make the transition to this style of support since it’s mostly only the Playstyle itself that’s the reward as opposed to the actual results being the main reward.

.

PS: if you require specifics in End Game… I could probably record a few fights (mostly in Orr Path2) where my “Uber Heals” or Boons/wards are the main difference maker.

Dungeons without 1-2 supports are freakin painful. Everything stacks conditions until you can’t do anything. Personally I like playing a warrior with soldier runes (remove conditions with shouts), have 3 shouts, offhand horn with the trait that makes horn convert condition into boons, and the trait to make shouts heal. You never have conditions, and quickly end up stacked with 6-8 boons on the entire party, as well as spamming thousands of healing points on everyone. Since in several dungeons, conditions are the only dangerous thing, it makes things way easier.

Engineers with bombs traited to heal and elixirs to remove conditions is great too. Go in melee range, get everyone else to do the same, and spam heals on them while removing their conditions. Teamed up with the above warrior, and with Knight gear (for a nice balance of damage and defense), you can virtually straight up tank anything in the game, and so can the rest of your party.

Bonus point if you have a thief with smoke or an elementalist with lightning hammer spamming blinds on everything.

No, you cannot be a tank or healer like in WoW.

Yes, some builds do have a lot more support or tankability than others. However, the main role of everyone is still damage.

At the moment, support specs can make a pretty big difference by providing constant buffs. It’s not really worth gearing for, but it is definitely worth traiting for. Tanks are good at increasing your survivability, but a very good group won’t benefit from them.

If you are looking for a good support class, Ele is considered by many the best overall. If you are strictly talking about PvE though, speed clearers tend to prefer Guardians. They can provide great support without sacrificing too much damage.

You’re playing the wrong game. Most players will go full berserker because monsters go down faster as long as you can dodge red circles. I’ve done arah path 4 with a group with full berserkers so please don’t reply it doesn’t work

@RoRo:
This means using support/survival traits and utility skills, aka not utilising your glass cannon to its full potential. A glass elementalist running Armor of Earth, Mist Form and Lightning Flash, traiting cantrips and slotting traits for endurance regeneration is not a full glass cannon. A tanky elementalist can use offensive traits and utilities.
It all levels out. The difference is that you sacrifice offensive EFFECTS to get offensive STATS.

If you have done Lupicus or the Melandru priest with a truly fully glass team – video or didn’t happen, sorry.

drkn.3429:

@RoRo:
This means using support/survival traits and utility skills, aka not utilising your glass cannon to its full potential. A glass elementalist running Armor of Earth, Mist Form and Lightning Flash, traiting cantrips and slotting traits for endurance regeneration is not a full glass cannon. A tanky elementalist can use offensive traits and utilities.
It all levels out. The difference is that you sacrifice offensive EFFECTS to get offensive STATS.

If you have done Lupicus or the Melandru priest with a truly fully glass team – video or didn’t happen, sorry.

Melandru is a joke you can literally stand in a spot at 1.2k range and not be hit nextime I do a run I guess i’ll record a video since you think its not possible to kill giganticus with a full berserker team. Also where exactly did I mention anything about utility slots/glass cannon? Seems you enjoy making assumptions

EDIT: Ahh bummer… when ya get back to NA I guess then….

@RoRo:
Could you write your build then, please? In details. Could be a pm.

ilr.9675:

Could I tag along for one of your glass cannon Lupi’s? Don’t want to do Path4 so… just anytime you’re speedrunning one of the other ones. I just want to see how viable it could be for an Alt
:)

I transferred to a EU server to help a player with path 4 out(You can’t do dungeons with other players from another continent) so I won’t be able to transfer back to US until the 18th unless you’re already on a EU server

My guardian is a crit hammer altruistic healing build in mostly knights while my buddy is a 100b warrior in full berserkers. I take the damage and dish out some of my own while he obliterates everything. Both kinds of builds have their place.

This thread makes me cry. Your character isn’t supposed to be a munchkin. You don’t build glass cannons, healers, or tanks in this game. A well rounded character goes a LONG way. My ele for instance, runs staff with pow > tough/vit gear and a glyph build of my own design. I don’t get slaughtered, I don’t deal bad damage, I can help my friends with my skills (thank you elemental atunement), and overall the most important thing you can do to support your friends is be REALLY good at resing them in bad situations.

NO MORE MUNCHKINS! I can’t stress this enough.

I run with power, vit and tough, usually a mace and shield with healing banners. Well someone’s gotta revive the glass canons who get nicked by ONE AoE attack <__< actually who am I kidding, if they’re stupid enough to die when the boss is going for me, they’re on their own.

@Max:
The main issue is that glass cannon builds are just that, glass – you CAN build your character to have bare minimum of vit/tough. However going the other way around, building like us for pow/tough/vit, aka being as tanky as possible in the game right now, yields a lot of power as well.
Taking the extremes into consideration, extreme tank has loads of power, while extreme crit build has no survivability. It may be a loophole in design, it may be something’s overlooked – or meant to be – but it’s there to use.
When more people actually understand it, pugging will become so much easier.

I feel like too many people are trying to play this game like GW1 which turned into build wars… killed the whole guild battles from vanilla gw1. If everyone creates balanced characters then you just worry about keeping yourself alive and providing the rest of the team with boons. I do miss my monk A LOT but I have gotten over it w/ my guardian because I can still help everyone out with shields, buffs, aoe heals that I would be using to heal my self anyways.

I have a healing shout warrior and I have fun playing it

Lorana.2468:

you can yes but nothing in the current dungeons calls for anything more than 1 guy to take the brunt of the beating and 4 guys dealing damage.

for example Mesmers have alot of Boon Removal yet i havent had a single boss fight where i’ve thought ye Boon Removal would be handy here.

The two guys I’ve seen that use totems help.

MorceluLebeau.5109:

Ok, I’ve been playing this game since the early beta’s and now. I know Anet said they didn’t want to have the traditional role of "healer/Tank/DPS’ and that’s fine and dandy..but some people actually enjoy tanking, or me I love playing healer and I’ve been going through the classes trying to figure out which could actually help me keep people alive.

So far, everything is subpar and the more I play and the more I have to deal with frustrating mechanics and bugs..the more I want to go back to WoW..the game is not fun for people who like to play support. Now I will admit alot more people love to see damage numbers than those that enjoy healing people or allowing others to do the damage. So is there any way to play a viable support character and be that healer or tank…because so far, haven’t found it

Absolutely feel you. Sorry (to those who poo poo the idea that condition damage and healing are working as intended) but they definitely ARE NOT. They have serious issues keeping up with any of the pow/pre/%dam builds. and you know what that means..it means pigeonholing. That’s right everyone has to absolutely follow the same build with the same gear and the same runes etc etc ad nauseum.

If i wanted to play a game like that I would have continued to pay a subscription fee.

To answer your question OP, no no you can’t play one. Because they have been nerfed to oblivion due to balance issues with PVP even tho we were promised that the pvp and pve skills behavior and damage would be separate coding so this wouldn’t happen.

I hope they fix it come nov 16th because as it stands I might as well not play an engineer at all, I should roll a warrior for all the good all those kits do me since the only viable dps comes from firearms in the engi right now.

Gorge Express.7163:

No, you cannot be a tank or healer like in WoW.

Yes, some builds do have a lot more support or tankability than others. However, the main role of everyone is still damage.

No you can’t play tank healer but playing support CC was supposed to be the choices, and when they nerf the heck out of healing and cond until it no longer works IE giving players who have healing gear on the same trouble that healers had in WoW in BC not being able to solo anything because it takes literally ALL day to kill a regular mob, then there is an issue and it does need resolving it needs better math.

Not having support or CC means we are being pushed into a specific cookie cutter builds so that we have to play in a certain way and if the dungeoneers get their way with this patch we have even more discrimination to look forward to as people checkyourgear and dpsmeters while running dungeons or doing open world events.
Just wait it’s coming.