Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I created a ticket about this issue that has been around for a while now. What is your stance on this situation:

“I am currently playing this game as a support role in scenarios such as fractals/ dungeons, and I plan to do the same in raids. I’m having an issue with health bar visibility, and was wondering if there is any way to enable the bars of my party members in 5 man content? It is a real problem that a lot of people are having and they have brought it up on the official Guild Wars 2 Reddit page and the official forums throughout the years. However, there has not been any word regarding this issue from any GM or developer. From what I have seen, they are enabled by default in squads, but I would like for there to be a way to enable them for groups of 5. With the new specializations from Heart of Thorns, and the ones soon to be released in Path of Fire, there will be various builds that people will be able to choose from including the support roles. This game allows us players to play however we want, with different play-styles, and playing a support role should allow us to see the health bars of our team in order to tell where they are which will cause us to perform at that role more successfully. Support roles outside of raids are slightly looked down on, but in reality it is a great thing to have and can prove to be really useful. Things tend to get really hectic in the heat of battle and when we have to battle with the UI as well, it’s not really a fun time for the person playing that role. I am sending this ticket hoping that this gets read by the right person, who will understand this request, to make this happen. Thank you for taking the time to read this ticket and thanks for creating such an awesome game!”

I remember reading a developer statement at some point. Something along the lines of healthbars not fitting the minimalistic UI style they are aiming for.
Sounds pretty outdated nowadays with dedicated healers and their need to place a big number of ground targeted healing skills.

Either way, following options would be nice if we are ever going to see proper health bars outside non-compliant 3rd party tools. The latter two seem even more unlikely considering how we are yet to see proper customization options for any part of the UI.

Disabled
Enabled for:
– Party
– Squad
– Allies closest to you
% Transperancy
Size

Henry.5713:

I remember reading a developer statement at some point. Something along the lines of healthbars not fitting the minimalistic UI style they are aiming for.
Sounds pretty outdated nowadays with dedicated healers and their need to place a big number of ground targeted healing skills.

Either way, following options would be nice if we are ever going to see proper health bars outside non-compliant 3rd party tools. The latter two seem even more unlikely considering how we are yet to see proper customization options for any part of the UI.

Disabled
Enabled for:
– Party
– Squad
– Allies closest to you
% Transperancy
Size

That is actually an amazing idea. UI is a big part of a game, and I’ve learned that through my game dev courses. I understand about staying true to the minimalist UI design(I actually prefer simple design), but there should be options for people that do want more from the UI. The support classes have to deal with game mechanics + an extra difficulty of not knowing where party members are, because of the lack of health bars. UI should not be a part of the difficulty/ challenges in the game >.<

Yeah, mine have even been bugged for like three patches now and just show incorrect values above the person’s head. You can always use the little raid icons as a guide, but that doesn’t let you know exactly who needs the love, but it’s sort of useful in fights like gorse or sloth cuz you can see somebody missed the distort or is going hamm on the retaliation.

Luckily, almost every fight comes down to “stack for heals” and as a druid you don’t have to worry about overhealing or wasting your heals cuz stacking Grace of the Land is always justified… If someone’s out of the stack, they probably need a spike heal the most since they just ate a teleport/knockback/some huge damage mechanic they should have avoided.

I miss the floating bars from bhagawan’s meter.