Guild Wars 2

I’ve been through a few dungeons now and I see the pattern that dps is usually better than anything. Subject Alpha for instance. Do you want to go through this fight for 15 minutes? It’s exhausting, not fun and a mistake ruins your progress. A ‘zerker group brings him down in no time, but a bunch of supporting, tanky characters will need an eternity. The longer the fight, the more likely you will make a mistake. Now that you can’t waypoint back into the battle, you now when your group isn’t going to make it.

I’m quite certain there won’t be a change, but I want to bring up my resentment on this. Why should I skill for healing power and support? There is a little argument about this in my guild.

Bravo Dusk, well said.

I also run a support guardian for fractals, where I bring either a utility mesmer or a ’zerker warrior to most other dungeons.

A good support / healing character can be the glue that keeps a marginal PUG moving past things like the Legendary Grawl Shaman. I tend to pop my party wide heals, or heal on dodge far more often because 2-3 other people have low health than as a method of saving my own sorry hide.

If you have a good group, you can run with less support. If you PUG frequently, you start to find more value in the well run support character.

I will admit that the damage output on my guardian is laughable when compared to my warrior…. but, I’ll take a party that doesn’t have to stop to res, doesn’t have to reset a failed encounter after a wipe, and in general takes a a minute or so longer per encounter over one that has to achieve perfection in personal damage mitigation by all 5 team members any day of the week.

Yea, the big problem is that the heart of support (healing) is pretty worthless in PvE where you can simply avoid so much of the damage with well timed dodges. Until dungeons are balanced to deal a steady amount of damage in addition to the avoidable burst damage, there’s not much need to bring anyone who heals the party.

Right now, support does best when it stacks might, reflects projectiles, and drops combo fields, but this can all pretty much be done with DPS classes. This is why a dungeon group with warriors, 1 mesmer, and maybe 1 guardian do so much better than any group with any other class.

Until either player dps is toned down (looking at you, warriors) or damage taken from dungeons is toned up, there’s no point in taking something like an engineer who uses the elixir gun.

Honestly, the only point to building primarily defensive/supportive (in my experience) is if you have a specific dungeon group that always runs together. In that situation, you know what everyone runs and have it planned out, so it wouldn’t hurt to have one player that is extremely efficient at healing/blowing off damage in order to res people more safely/etc because you know you can have the other four spec as needed.

Sad, but true right now as far as I can see.

Dahkeus.8243:

Until either player dps is toned down (looking at you, warriors) or damage taken from dungeons is toned up, there’s no point in taking something like an engineer who uses the elixir gun.

Warriors get a bad rap for this, and I think that’s unfair. Warrior’s are largely considered less-desirable in PvP, and you know why? They have poor sustainability. They have arguably the least damage mitigation of any class in the game, and they are optimal in melee range, the most dangerous range to be in for any end-game content. This is counterbalanced by their incredible melee dps if the enemy sits in their attacks. The reason warriors are so good, though, isn’t because they are overpowered or something, it’s because the content that players frequently call for berserker warriors in is so easy that you don’t even really have to mitigate damage. The enemies are so easy that you just take the hits, damage them, and win.

I suspect that class diversity in dungeons, CoF in particular, will see a huge boon once CoF gets revamped and the bosses are no longer pathetically easy. Warriors will still be good, don’t get me wrong (because they should be at that high risk position), but there will be a lot less “warrior only” groups looking for more if ANet handles the revamp properly.

Nikaido.3457:

Well, in my groups I had quite a few who weren’t experienced with 30+ yet and didn’t know about the 30+ culture, and they went immediately for the safe spot and stacked up there before the last seal part. We.. didn’t wipe. To my surprise, we didn’t wipe. The few times I’ve seen something like that happen in my pug dailies, we wiped at 30+ because the group couldn’t kill the cultists quickly enough and the damage killed us one at a time. My warrior/thief/guardian group killed all those before they could do any sort of damage and had no need for this cheesy “pull vet” thing.

I would like to emphasize, Nikaido, that one thief is actually optimal for that cliffside chest seal event. They can spam blind and essentially mitigate all damage from the enemies while the rest of the players burn down the enemies. A thief is actually a better support class in that event than a guardian.

Nikaido.3457:

I already had a really, really strong distaste for full tank groups because of the wipes they have during the grawl frac, not at the end boss, but the veteran shamans spawning in high numbers because those tank group can’t kill them quickly enough. But now I just won’t be able to group up with anything but a well balanced group. It’s just no fun. It’s fine to have one anchor in the group, like a good guardian, but a full tank group has absolutely no place whatsoever in any dungeon, not even FOTM.

I think you hit on the most important part here…. Full Tank is a problem, but having a balanced team is very smooth.

I’ve had people drop out of FotM Daily groups when they said ‘too many guardians, I don’t think there’s enough damage here,’ and I definately get that. Too much of any one thing (damage or support) can be a problem.

Likewase, a group full of glass cannons works until Something Goes Wrong. And whatever it is (lag spike, missed dodge roll, or other oops) things tend to go from fine to very bad very quickly.

Nikaido.3457:

I wouldn’t want to stack there and spam blinds unless I had a heavy dps group, you can be pretty sure of that.

I wouldn’t want to play FotM at all with a group if I had a single-minded tank or dps group! That’s my point. Your group wasn’t 100% dps, and it had support, even if you don’t necessarily think of it as support. I am willing to bet that a group of 5 warriors using Frenzy and 100 Blades wouldn’t have been so fortunate! The balance between the two (support and DPS) is what makes a team successful. Sometimes one character is full-on support, so you only need that 1 dedicated player, but sometimes many players have varying degrees of support (Healing Shouts warrior, for instance, coupled with a blind spam thief) and that is ‘enough’ too. The key is team structure, and keeping things balanced therein. That’s really all I’m trying to say.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Dahkeus.8243:

Until either player dps is toned down (looking at you, warriors) or damage taken from dungeons is toned up, there’s no point in taking something like an engineer who uses the elixir gun.

Warriors get a bad rap for this, and I think that’s unfair. Warrior’s are largely considered less-desirable in PvP, and you know why? They have poor sustainability. They have arguably the least damage mitigation of any class in the game, and they are optimal in melee range, the most dangerous range to be in for any end-game content. This is counterbalanced by their incredible melee dps if the enemy sits in their attacks. The reason warriors are so good, though, isn’t because they are overpowered or something, it’s because the content that players frequently call for berserker warriors in is so easy that you don’t even really have to mitigate damage. The enemies are so easy that you just take the hits, damage them, and win.

I suspect that class diversity in dungeons, CoF in particular, will see a huge boon once CoF gets revamped and the bosses are no longer pathetically easy. Warriors will still be good, don’t get me wrong (because they should be at that high risk position), but there will be a lot less “warrior only” groups looking for more if ANet handles the revamp properly.

It’s a double-edged problem, yes. Damage taken by the group is low, which encourages the glass cannon approach from dps and allows warriors to berserk through content, but that’s not the only issue.

Warriors still blow all other classes out of the water in terms of raw dps, even when those other classes go full melee glass cannon. Ever try a full glass cannon build on a ranger while using the 1h sword?

I’m not saying that the lack of warrior’s defense and PvP viability isn’t a problem, but that’s a separate issue entirely. Yes, warriors in general suck pretty bad for PvP and that should be fixed too, but making them dps kings in PvE doesn’t help the situation.

If it were up to me, I’d give warriors more stun and knockdown abilities for PvP to make them the linebackers that they should be. In PvE, even if you tone down their dps, they’re still worth bringing because of the utility and buffs that their shouts/banners provide.

bring cake…….<15char>

Give the bosses the ability to dodge. 100 blades is quite useful to quickly down a boss when combined with time warp it becomes the best combo in the game for pure DPS. If you gave bosses the ability to mitigate damage in the same way that players can it opens up a whole new experience. If bosses were given the ability to get out of the way of the pummeling it would make many classes and support ability in general much more desired in dungeons as well as PvE If you wonder why warriors are less that the stellar killing machines they are in PvE it is due to this simple fact.

My views on team composition:

• The only class that should consider support over DPS is Guardian; other classes should focus on DPS for PVE. Don’t gear for a support/tank role, you’ll just be very mediocre at best that way, just pick a few good weapon skills/utilities/traits after building for DPS.

• My ideal all-purpose party would probably be Guardian/Thief/3x DPS Warrior. Thief+Guardian would give you very strong defense against both trash and bosses while still doing decent DPS, then 3 warriors for offensive buffs/killing stuff.

Contrary to this, I’ve specced my necro towards toughness and tankyness, while bringing support skills. It has saved our behinds a few times already, because sometimes you need someone that can hang in there and take a ton of damage, but keep standing. Of course this means I dish out less DPS than a fully DPS specced character, but in return you have a character that is very versatile, and not so squishy. I prefer to outlive my opponents, rather than try and kill them before they kill me. So what if they die a bit slower, as long as I don’t die with them.

The party wide heals and condition removal is incredibly helpful, but of course your team should be coordinated enough to make use of it. Necros rely mostly on wells for support, so it helps if your team knows to stick together, and stand in the wells when you place them. Through Team Speak you can of course make sure they are aware of your support powers. But with a good group you might not need to explain it at all. If you have a group you often play with, you’ll eventually get into a rhythm where everyone will be ready for your support skills when you want to use them.

This is a very interesting point – Running 3 guardians in fractals is indeed rough at grawl shamen vets.

The idea that a “perfect” team doesn’t actually need defensive support is something I’ve never considered – I just thought alot of hits were supposed to happen and that you can’t mitigate most of them. It might have to do with having higher ping and running fractals with mates who frequently rubberband and lag like heck – which is why the guys I play with may not be doing alot of dodging as other groups(I also have the horrible wrong direction dodge from time to time).

I’m just surprised that it took me this long to realize we should be teetering on the edge of chaos to push the bounds of adjusting to having less and less support (until you get a minimum amount of it).

the worst problem for who run support speced like me is we waste most of our time for ressing zerker ppl!!

Fotm over 30 esclused

Yes I do wish to go through CoE in 15 min. Thats why I always bring my 30k HP/2100 toughness Warrior into dungeons.

So much dps lost when a glass cannon goes down while subject alpha tickles me, sigh.

Glass cannons work great when its highly optimized guild group, otherwise no thanks.

My regular FOTM group is 1 support guard, 1 warrior, me(mesmer), 1 Engi, and 1 anything else we can find.

No matter who that 5th person is we generally plow through everything at 30+

I believe in balance as it has made my 30,32,34,36,38 dailies a breeze

Dawdler.8521:

Glass cannons work great when its highly optimized guild group, otherwise no thanks.

Or when you press magical button whenever it needs to be pressed.

I’m a little on the fence for this idea. Partly because I play a guardian, and on partly because I play a warrior. I think having mostly, or all, dps is only good for structured groups that you regularly dungeon with. I have done way too many PuGs where dps characters are relying way too much on randoms they pick up to keep them alive. Luckily, I tend to lean a bit more towards the support on my guardian, so I do my best. Sometimes I have to work so hard though, and they probably don’t even notice.
That’s the other thing with support, is that most of the time, people don’t even notice it’s there. You can assume that you’re doing so great because your group is all dps, but you might not have even seen the fact that your health just jumped, or you blocked a big attack thanks to someone giving out aegis, or now you have regen because the ele through out a water field.
My guild CoF group tends to be all dps, and it’s amazing, and even when I PuG CoF, I’ll keep my dps gear on me in case we get a good make up, but when it comes to Arah, TA, or even AC, I like to have at least a half support char around.

Support contributions aren’t just limited to defensive options, so viewing the situation as a 1:1 group survivability for group killspeed tradeoff is a flawed premise to begin with. There’s also a hidden offense in defense, just like there’s hidden defense in offense. Support-wise insomuch that the defensive options extend the time people can apply pressure before they start to fallback and delicately flitter around. Tank-wise, insomuch that a tank spec sporting the same dodge mastery as a glass cannon results in survivability that’s so many orders of magnitudes greater it can be traded as currency for immobilizing the boss. (Mind, that’s not a consistently viable tactic across all boss fights, which is why you’ll often see people split their spec between tanking and something else).

None of combat is happening in a vacuum, as much as we’d like it to be for easy comparison. It’s all an indistinct blob of cause and effect that loops back ’round again and blurs lines between our carefully crafted definitions.

Mostly the problem with specs like these and efficient grouping is that the spec overlaps with what we commonly consider a safety net for the DPS skill curve. Meaning, players stack varying degrees of defensive stats as a safety net while they learn content and become more skilled at the game, with the ultimate goal being able to survive as a Glass Cannon, because defensive stats are so tailor-fittable they just so happen to make an awesome progression system for a DPS character.

So you’ve got baby DPS guy sitting there just barely holding his own, and then you have Tanky/Support guy whose holding everyone else’s own, and the community has a bad habit of mashing them together conceptually because of all the surface similarities.

I was just in a COF P1 run with 4 guardians (and I was the Mesmer). They must have been all tanks/knights armor guardians cuz it was hella slow compared to other groups ive been in.

It seemed worse than the average pug in path 1 cuz their dps was low. Path 2 though it was nice to have them protect Magg against the assassins.

Dawdler.8521:

Yes I do wish to go through CoE in 15 min. Thats why I always bring my 30k HP/2100 toughness Warrior into dungeons.

So much dps lost when a glass cannon goes down while subject alpha tickles me, sigh.

Glass cannons work great when its highly optimized guild group, otherwise no thanks.

You have no idea what your talking about.

yeah…try being full of glass in a high FOTM grp…

I’m gonna agree with the OP on the main point here, no reason to take people dedicated to support / tanking when better players can go full glass, do the content in half the time, and come out unscathed.

You know what it takes to become a good support? Not cleric stats or suddenly devoting yourself trait-wise to helping others, but simply slotting a few good utility skills. Engineers can bring elixir gun and kit refinement for double super elixirs, on top of blinds via flashbang and smoke vent. Guardian has wall of reflection, F3, “Retreat!”, empowering might, etcetera – entirely capable of going full glass cannon (although some vitality isn’t bad, given the low base health pool) and being very survivable thanks to permavigor and aegis spam. Warrior can bring a banner and FGJ, but their support is somewhat limited to that without going 30 deep into tactics. Necros and rangers are in a bad spot right now, given they don’t really excel at any damage department while also bringing good support (hopefully spirits have their icd lowered or somesuch to be brought on par, or necros get.. any good support option that isn’t HAY GUIZ I USED WELL OF BLOOD). Mesmers have [insert skill here] to help with, and a sword/x mesmer can do very solid damage in the process while essentially getting another dodge on their 2. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

tl;dr – DPS + smart play is the best style, support + tanky play is the safe, but unlearned style. Only time I might argue otherwise are things like the dredge fractal at higher levels (where you get one-shotted), where blind is unreliable and your only bet is to DPS them from a safe distance.

voidwater.2064:

My views on team composition:

• The only class that should consider support over DPS is Guardian; other classes should focus on DPS for PVE. Don’t gear for a support/tank role, you’ll just be very mediocre at best that way, just pick a few good weapon skills/utilities/traits after building for DPS.

• My ideal all-purpose party would probably be Guardian/Thief/3x DPS Warrior. Thief+Guardian would give you very strong defense against both trash and bosses while still doing decent DPS, then 3 warriors for offensive buffs/killing stuff.

I am of the same view. My Guard is mostly support/tank with some DPS. Rest of my alts are full zerks. Also, when there is a second guard in the group, I will switch my guard’s gear set to DPS.

haviz.1340:

Dawdler.8521:

Glass cannons work great when its highly optimized guild group, otherwise no thanks.

Or when you press magical button whenever it needs to be pressed.

Aye, only problem is when it needs to be pressed 3x faster than you can press it.

I can honestly say that I have never seen a good glass cannon pug in any dungeon I have gone through, that can deal damage and survive at the same time. Its always one or the other. Do they even exist? Surely they must. Maybe its a US server thing, I dont know.

Dawdler.8521:

Yes I do wish to go through CoE in 15 min. Thats why I always bring my 30k HP/2100 toughness Warrior into dungeons.

So much dps lost when a glass cannon goes down while subject alpha tickles me, sigh.

Well, I suppose you’re doing better than the dead glass cannons, but bringing a defensive build is pretty non-optimal against Alpha:

• Path1: just stand right on top of him and mash buttons, no defense needed at all
• Path2: Defensive stats in this game aren’t strong enough to save you from Alpha’s stacked AOEs, you’ll have to move away, dodge, or use some other form of invincibility, same as you would if you played glass cannon
• Path3: Pull Alpha against a wall and just dodge into him when avoiding AOE so his frontal wave attack never hits, no other defense needed

Rising Dusk.2408:

Just make sure you understand how to make support good, ignore those who cry havoc, and run the end-game like a boss.

Take a mesmer and 4 warriors, and rush end-game like a boss. Why should we break our brains trying to do something complicated when we can brainlessly spam 2 and wait to click “Collect” ?

Zuldar.5093:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Just make sure you understand how to make support good, ignore those who cry havoc, and run the end-game like a boss.

Take a mesmer and 4 warriors, and rush end-game like a boss. Why should we break our brains trying to do something complicated when we can brainlessly spam 2 and wait to click “Collect” ?

I’ve got a question for the forums in general about this. Doesn’t the typical 4 warriors & mesmer run rely on warrior shouts to stack up AoE might, coupled with the mesmer’s signet of inspiration to double it?

I ask because wouldn’t that mean they’re all running support and damage simultaneously?

Softspoken.2410:

Zuldar.5093:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Just make sure you understand how to make support good, ignore those who cry havoc, and run the end-game like a boss.

Take a mesmer and 4 warriors, and rush end-game like a boss. Why should we break our brains trying to do something complicated when we can brainlessly spam 2 and wait to click “Collect” ?

I’ve got a question for the forums in general about this. Doesn’t the typical 4 warriors & mesmer run rely on warrior shouts to stack up AoE might, coupled with the mesmer’s signet of inspiration to double it?

I ask because wouldn’t that mean they’re all running support and damage simultaneously?

Might has no intrinsic support value outside of boosting DPS. There’s also no strategic depth in its application. You just shout and BAM, extra dps. No need to stop attacking or anything.

The underlying problem is that all classes can support and dps simultaneously, and because they can do this, DPS becomes the means and the ends. You support only to DPS because DPS is all that really matters in the end. This is reflected in how support skills rarely break the pace of DPS skills, and in some cases (as with the engineer grenades) both support and DPS happen concurrently.