Guild Wars 2

Raids in GW2 seems like a really interesting idea, but can it really function in a game that so heavily de-emphasizes preset class roles? GW2 Has already challenged the so called holy trinity of tank/healer/dps, but this breaking of the mold has come at a heavy cost: the homogenization of class roles.

‘Optimal’ dungeon set ups nothing but damage focused gear and high powered offensive buffs for YEARS and no one class has a defined role in any fights. Bosses, even fractal bosses, are all about simpily executing the damage routines and specific mechanics of the fight with whatever skills your class/build has to offer. Because this style of play is so core to GW2, there is little to no room for a-net to include class specific challenges. If there was a boss that REQUIRED a stealth effect, for example, a thief/mesmerizing would be mandatory. in a 5 man, that might be too restricting. In a 10 man, however, it would be easier to fill a requirement such as “have someone capable of stealth” or “have someone capable of inflicting heavy bleeds”. This would pose a potentially interesting challenge for one player in the group, but flies in the face of the ‘pick up and play’ style GW has cultivated.

So what about raids? I can say that, from past raid experiences, a lot of the interesting moments in large scale raids come from players all attempting to accomplish their own mini-objectives simultaneously. The main/off tanks have specific jobs which are different than the challanges faced by the healers and the dps. Because you’re no longer as tightly restrained by the typical 1 tank, one healer, 3 dps format, interesting party compositions and strategies based around these unique comps begin to emerge.

Take this cross class interplay away, and I fear GW2 raids will be nothing special; merely 5 man bosses with twice the HP. This problem can already be seen in world bosses. Yes, there are multiple things happening in a fight like tequatil’s battle, but ultimately it boils down to "everyone hit teq while 6 people out of the ~100 there opperate turrets.

This is unfortunately the natural way fights scale up in gw2. With no roles to compartmentalize players into different aspects of the fight a 10 man raid boss either becomes not meaningly different from a 5 man dungeon boss or just a smaller version of a world boss where everyone is using bundles/environmental weapons and their class doesn’t matter anyhow.

How could this be avoided in GW2? What does everyone else think?

At the announcement of raids the president talked about 3 roles – damage,support,control. ANet is trying to make all classes equal in the way that everyone can fill one of the 3 roles. The difference is in the way they do it. So when you want to do raids you don’t have to look for 2 thiefs,2 warr,2 rangers,3eles,1 guard(just random proffs), you just need tp find 9 friends and you can swap around the traits to get what you need.