Guild Wars 2

So now that this game has effectively 18 classes (counting the elite specs as separate since they do add enough of an aspect to play a different role than the base class) I think its time we had a hard division between play-style roles of damage/tank and healer.

With the addition of certain specs like Druid as the IMO worst offender of non traditional stance of holy trinity mainly because of their ability to build a full berserker build and heal more than cleric guardians. This shouldn’t be possible at all.

In order to make balance happen in PvP and WvW besides having all the skills split between PvE and PvP like in GW1 there needs to be a change in how characters are built, and thats with roles and the way stats affect the character, mainly Healing Power.

Healing power has never been looked on in GW2 as a main way to play because the original “selling” point I guess you’d say is that every class can heal and take care of themselves and do damage to win fights. But as we can see today with certain specs they can really exploit what the class has given them and be extremely tanky (take minimal damage) while dealing heavy damage, or be an extremely heavy healer while also dealing epic damage.

So what I’m proposing is none of the personal healing skills of classes be changed except in how they affect allies. So you’re healing turret will still heal you the same but if you have no healing power an ally near you will get negligible healing (like around 20% of what you get out of the heal). BUT if you spec for healing power with Cleric’s gear for example then your outgoing healing will be about what is it now if you were do do the same. This way players dedicated to playing support can do a phenomenal role in supporting while pesky berserker classes can’t be healing their allies for the same as your Cleric Guard/Rev/Engi/Etc are healing you for.

Same goes for being a Tank. If you are a full berserker class there shouldn’t be a reason why another heavy hitting damage dealer is barely doing any damage unless you’re ACTIVELY using a skill to negate it (like blocks/dodge/evades). None of this 50% damage reduction or traits that take less damage nonsense that makes this entire niche of role useless because why play tank when you can do just as well with a berserker with PASSIVE nonsense like those skills and traits.

Also now with the changes to conditions that were meant for PvE and plaguing PvP/WvW make Toughness reduce damage from conditions just like it does power, and boost its effectiveness to before power creep, because playing a tank now is almost silly. Example before power creep I had an Engi with about 3.2k armor, I was a full on tank pretty much and was mainly the CC guy of the group so others could do damage, The highest hitting single target attack at the time being Thieves Backstab maybe hit me for 5k but never more than that ever, which was okay because I would never be able to kill the thief unless he just stood there. But now running the same build I’ve been hit by 16k Gunflames or Thieves Backstabs for 11k and so on and its ridiculous considering how that specific builds damage output has gone up minimally but the tankiness has gone down signifigantly.

So to end this is just my opinion because I’ve been playing this game since beta 3+ years ago and watched it evolve, and now with the elite specs and (soon and hopefully) more of them coming for every class with expansions I don’t see how this game is going to have competitive PvP while maintaining the “no holy trinity” aspect of balancing the classes.

TL;DR: Nerf base healing to allies HARD (but don’t touch player self heal skills)/Remove nonsensical passive damage reduction buffs because it makes being a tank useless if a zerk can do it better/Make healing power scale better/Make Toughness stat as strong as it used to be before power creep and make it reduce condition damage as well.

Since when have their been tanks and healers in gw2? I jest, but that is the truth. GW2 identifies Damage/CC/Support as its trinity, not Damage/Tank/Healer.

First, there are only 2 possible bosses in the game where having a tankier player makes any bit of sense. In any case, tankier toons in gw2 primarily survive through a combination of evades and blocks. So your suggestion for “remove nonsensical passive damage reduction buffs” would not help tanks at all.

Second, Druid are support/damage boosters, not healers. Healing just happens to be one of their primary ways of distributing out grace of the land (3% damage and condi damge per stack). The other main “healer” at the moment is auramancer ele and auaramancer ele is also still a support/ boon bot that heals as a side effect of a single trait.

As for your suggestions, most of them are inappropriate for Gw2. Gw2 is a game of playing together and helping your allies. So “nerf base healing to allies HARD” would remove a lot of interactions of players in groups. I have already explained why “nerf nonsensical damage reductions” would not all of a sudden add tanks to the game. Toughness should never affect Condition Damage. Condition Damage’s hallmark is being unreducable, but not being instant and every condition skill is balanced around that currently. Your suggestion would absolutely destroy all condi class balance in WvW and SPvP. I am a fan of making Healing Power scale better, but that has been a long standing gripe of the game.

Can people drop this bs already? The idea of roles is stupid.

“Holy trinity” has no place in gw2 and never will. If you’re looking for such a thing, you’re playing the wrong game. Most of the healing comes from yourself, whatever your allies do is just supportive maintenance in keeping health stay higher. In gw2 it is utterly selfish and useless to become a primary healer. Sure you can pretend that the heal numbers you see on your allies is enough but when the encounter doesn’t die because YOU refuse to attack it, it really doesn’t matter if everyone is alive. Every class (9, elite specs are NOT new classes) has their pros and cons, some are better at “healing”, some are better at tanking, some good on dps and some horrible at it. If you want to “heal” allies, you aim for a combination of dps/support depending on your class.

Please no defined roles >_< One of gw 2 main points is that their are no roles, what they need to do is balance out the new specs so that they are more in line with everything else and more of an option than an must have if you want to do well in the game.

Since when have their been tanks and healers in gw2?

Since the beginning. They were just ineffective until recently. Anet seems to want to change that with the raids and the druid.

GW2 identifies Damage/CC/Support as its trinity, not Damage/Tank/Healer.

This isnt a counter argument. People who want to “tank” will be satisfied with the “control” role, same with healing and support.

If you want to “heal” allies, you aim for a combination of dps/support depending on your class.

I think a “gw2 trinity” should be that, but it isnt enough developped for now. A “gw2 healer” (which is actually a dps/support hybrid as you said) shouldnt wear beserker for example. And not just druid and auramancer should be able to do that. I created a guardian to … well … to guard people, not to be a berserker DPS.
I thought I could be a dps/support hybrid that would be truly recognized for that.

In my opinion GW2 need more defined roles, but not like WoW and other games. I think you should have to choose 2 roles between 4 : power, condi, tanky, support. It is already like that in the game, but it isnt enough clear and not accessible for all classes.

Edit for some proofs for what I said :
All classes have a power spec, a condi spec, a support spec, a tanky spec and a general spec (which sould be an alternative elite spec in my opinion). i.e for guardian :
Zeal = power
Radiance = condi
Honor = support
Valor = tanky
Virtues = general
I think that when I choose Zeal and Honor, I should be truly recognized as a dps/support hybrid. Or with Zeal and Radiance a pure DPS. But it isnt enough defined in the game, for now.

Gw2 has two class roles, buffed and whineing. They change every 3 months.
Seriously though, we have a looser class role system than other games, that happens to be the reason why people enjoy this game. Oh and ofcourse there are people disliking it, but maybe its just the wrong game then…

I will agree that in WvW Druid needs nerfing. The amount of healing, evading, and CC is way too high together. Druid needs to give up something to have the rest at the level it is at right now.

Arimas.3492:

So now that this game has effectively 18 classes (counting the elite specs as separate since they do add enough of an aspect to play a different role than the base class) I think its time we had a hard division between play-style roles of damage/tank and healer.

With the addition of certain specs like Druid as the IMO worst offender of non traditional stance of holy trinity mainly because of their ability to build a full berserker build and heal more than cleric guardians. This shouldn’t be possible at all.

In order to make balance happen in PvP and WvW besides having all the skills split between PvE and PvP like in GW1 there needs to be a change in how characters are built, and thats with roles and the way stats affect the character, mainly Healing Power.

Healing power has never been looked on in GW2 as a main way to play because the original “selling” point I guess you’d say is that every class can heal and take care of themselves and do damage to win fights. But as we can see today with certain specs they can really exploit what the class has given them and be extremely tanky (take minimal damage) while dealing heavy damage, or be an extremely heavy healer while also dealing epic damage.

So what I’m proposing is none of the personal healing skills of classes be changed except in how they affect allies. So you’re healing turret will still heal you the same but if you have no healing power an ally near you will get negligible healing (like around 20% of what you get out of the heal). BUT if you spec for healing power with Cleric’s gear for example then your outgoing healing will be about what is it now if you were do do the same. This way players dedicated to playing support can do a phenomenal role in supporting while pesky berserker classes can’t be healing their allies for the same as your Cleric Guard/Rev/Engi/Etc are healing you for.

Same goes for being a Tank. If you are a full berserker class there shouldn’t be a reason why another heavy hitting damage dealer is barely doing any damage unless you’re ACTIVELY using a skill to negate it (like blocks/dodge/evades). None of this 50% damage reduction or traits that take less damage nonsense that makes this entire niche of role useless because why play tank when you can do just as well with a berserker with PASSIVE nonsense like those skills and traits.

Also now with the changes to conditions that were meant for PvE and plaguing PvP/WvW make Toughness reduce damage from conditions just like it does power, and boost its effectiveness to before power creep, because playing a tank now is almost silly. Example before power creep I had an Engi with about 3.2k armor, I was a full on tank pretty much and was mainly the CC guy of the group so others could do damage, The highest hitting single target attack at the time being Thieves Backstab maybe hit me for 5k but never more than that ever, which was okay because I would never be able to kill the thief unless he just stood there. But now running the same build I’ve been hit by 16k Gunflames or Thieves Backstabs for 11k and so on and its ridiculous considering how that specific builds damage output has gone up minimally but the tankiness has gone down signifigantly.

So to end this is just my opinion because I’ve been playing this game since beta 3+ years ago and watched it evolve, and now with the elite specs and (soon and hopefully) more of them coming for every class with expansions I don’t see how this game is going to have competitive PvP while maintaining the “no holy trinity” aspect of balancing the classes.

TL;DR: Nerf base healing to allies HARD (but don’t touch player self heal skills)/Remove nonsensical passive damage reduction buffs because it makes being a tank useless if a zerk can do it better/Make healing power scale better/Make Toughness stat as strong as it used to be before power creep and make it reduce condition damage as well.

No, just no. I like GW2 because I don’t have to spend ages waiting for a Tank/healer. if you want all this that badly, GW2 is not the game you are looking for. There are many games out there that do this. If this is truly what you crave, go play them and stop asking GW2 to be something it was never meant to be.

Scipion.7548:

Edit for some proofs for what I said :
All classes have a power spec, a condi spec, a support spec, a tanky spec and a general spec (which sould be an alternative elite spec in my opinion). i.e for guardian :
Zeal = power
Radiance = condi
Honor = support
Valor = tanky
Virtues = general
I think that when I choose Zeal and Honor, I should be truly recognized as a dps/support hybrid. Or with Zeal and Radiance a pure DPS. But it isnt enough defined in the game, for now.

Why then does Zeal have the primarily Condi traits like Kindled Zeal and Expeditious Spirit, or Control based traits like Binding Jeopardy?
Why Does Radiance have primarily power traits like Right Hand Strength and Retribution or Control based traits like Wrath of Justice and Justice is Blind?
Why does Valor have support based traits like Communal Defenses or Monk’s Focus or Power based traits like Retributive Armor?
Why does Honor have Power Enhancing traits like Writ of Persistence or surival Based Traits like Purity of Body and Force of Will?

I could go line by line down those trait lines to show that those specific labels you have attached are false. Trait lines typically enhance certain aspects of a profession like how Zeal does with Symbols, Valor does with meditations, or Virtues does with Virtues. In fact, trait lines are actually proof of how Classes in GW2 have no specific role.

DrEckers.2039:

First, there are only 2 possible bosses in the game where having a tankier player makes any bit of sense.

This isn’t true at all. For example, recently I was able to stack some heavy damage reduction on my elementalist and sit on top of scale 100 Mai Trin and generally prevent her from moving so the rest of the party could lay on the dps in peace. You can do similar for many other bosses.

Why then does Zeal have the primarily Condi traits like Kindled Zeal and Expeditious Spirit, or Control based traits like Binding Jeopardy?
Why Does Radiance have primarily power traits like Right Hand Strength and Retribution or Control based traits like Wrath of Justice and Justice is Blind?
Why does Valor have support based traits like Communal Defenses or Monk’s Focus or Power based traits like Retributive Armor?
Why does Honor have Power Enhancing traits like Writ of Persistence or surival Based Traits like Purity of Body and Force of Will?

Because of synergy. And in fact, what are you saying is exactly what I wanted to say by (auto quote) :

But it isnt enough defined in the game, for now.

You dont contradict me, on the contrary.

Well there is two different subject here. Build diversity and holy trinity. The holy trinity bit is just annoying. There is simply no tanks in GW2. They are just some temporary mechanics in 2 raid boss which is perfect. They are nice in small dose, but I will never want them to be a core principal of in the whole game. And tbh honest, the diversity for tank in those 2 fight is great. You have DH hammer tank, Necro with minions tank, chronotank, etc. It’s fine as it is.

As for healer, you kind of have a point. I mean, you really only need a healer in raid, but it’s a nice optional quality of life choice for high level fractal and in open world. And right Druid and Tempest have pretty much the absolute monopoly on it. There is just nothing on par with those two. I think they could do some balance to give more healer option. I would like to see some Ventari/Herald Healer or some Guardian Healer, etc that can hold their own versus, Druid.

Also, I don’t really buy into the ‘’zerker healer shouldn’t a thing’’ mentality. Why? Because not only gear exist. A zerker or viper Druid do between 16 and 20k dps full buffs compare to 28-36k for true dps build. These healer already sacrifice dps with trait, weapons and skill, why should they be force to also sacrifice gear? They have the choice right now. They can bring magi gear, zerker gear, viper gear, they can go full support in trait, they can camp staff or use sword or axe/torch for me dps and have less celestial avatar, etc. Why destroy that diversity?

reikken.4961:

DrEckers.2039:

First, there are only 2 possible bosses in the game where having a tankier player makes any bit of sense.

This isn’t true at all. For example, recently I was able to stack some heavy damage reduction on my elementalist and sit on top of scale 100 Mai Trin and generally prevent her from moving so the rest of the party could lay on the dps in peace. You can do similar for many other bosses.

True, but that’s only reliable in 2 raid boss. For all other boss toughness is only 1 of the factor that create agro. You can be full toughness and still lose agro. Not only that, in those raid boss you need to control the movement of the boss in a precise movement, which you don’t need in all other boss. For exemple at Mai Trin, you can just stack on her when the electric AoE is about to go down and CC her. You don’t have alternate way of moving VG or Gorseval in raid.

Nobody wants defined roles – if you want that there’s probably another MMO out there for you.