Guild Wars 2

Something I’ve noticed after quite some time is how there is Gear that, under realistic circumstances, is only usable by healers or tanks (such as Nomad – Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power), even though there is no way to play a designated tank or healer in guild wars 2 due to the lack of proper taunting mechanics or healing skills.

Does anybody have an Idea why this gear prefix even exists in the game?

They designed a combat system with those roles, but they designed content and screwed up skill balance in a way where those roles weren’t really desirable for real play.

They’re doing huge balance passes in hoT to address this some, and the raids specifically address this further.

For instance, in AC explorable the logical “correct” design of the graveling swams is to have a “tank” bust down the hives while the rest of the party defends the NPC, but the whole game was tuned in such a way that it was just more efficient to rapid burst down everything.

I’d assume in the future fixes that tanking won’t be as much about “main tank that holds all the aggro” as it is about “tank keeps a lid on a certain mob or spawner, and healer keeps up sustain on him and the rest of the party”

But, basically, the stats exist because anet wants the roles to exist, they’ve just been extremely lazy about balance and content patches to make it useful.

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

Kite.2510:

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

Yeah, its going to be really funny watching people having to learn how to tank.

Before the last big “balance” patch, my guardian and a random warrior took out the inquest golem champ in malacors. I was quite pleased with my self concidering I was in mostly level 60 odd green trinkets, always use to forget about rings and what not, guess they just don’t drop enough to jog your memory, with only exotic gear I had was my PTV armor from AC.

Make a cleric geared mesmer and you can troll all day in WvW. The combination of sustain and mesmer’s slipperiness will let you keep multiple people chasing you around for ever.

I still have a set of cleric’s for my mesmer that I pull out once a year just to enjoy being nearly unkillable.

Kite.2510:

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

You remind me of something
Am I the only person in this entire kitten forum who realizes that they are hiding healing and tank classes, something that should have been implemented 3 years ago, behind a 50€ paywall?
Because that’s some pretty stinky pile of bullkitten if you think about it for a second.

Its bugging me quite a time, but most off the people do forget that there were always a “healer” in the game. You can build a healguard who alone will be able to uphold health quite a while. Was it mandatory? Not at all. Was it needed in a good group? Not really. But what did it do then? It makes dungeons and fraktals a huge chunk releaxter. New people have the time to learn the encounter (learning per doing) or the whole group wanted to make a chillrun. Hell its even fun in its own way.

But! and thats really important here. Its not the fastest way. And in a time were everyone only looks on the gold/hour ratio its seems like no one wants that kind of play. Maybe or maybe not, who knows. I know nothing.

What people really need to get into there heads is the fact, that all paths are possible, but only one (and this will never change) is the fastest. You can in the past and in the future always play a “healer” but its not the classical mmorpg (ala wow) healer and in the content so far, its not the fastest way to deal with stuff. But it is releaxed, if you has the time and try it, you would be surprised how nice and smooh things can go. But knowleage about the content is important too. Don´t expect never to die if a “healer” is there, but you make everything “false”. As a last sidenote

Edit: Maybe other classes are capable in healing the whole time too (ele or engi, or what not). I personaly only tested guard in this way. So do not hit me, if your classes of choise are possible “healer” too

It’s even funnier that they think they ranger class is going to play cleric.

The stats exist because there are tank builds that provide a lot of healing to other classes, even necro can pull off 8-10k AoE heals if equipped properly.

TBH I don’t see the point of the stats outside of WvW/PvP.

CHS.5160:

Kite.2510:

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

You remind me of something
Am I the only person in this entire kitten forum who realizes that they are hiding healing and tank classes, something that should have been implemented 3 years ago, behind a 50€ paywall?
Because that’s some pretty stinky pile of bullkitten if you think about it for a second.

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only person who realizes expansions aren’t paywalls and there is nothing skeevy about having content in an expansion be inaccessible to vanilla players.

CHS.5160:

Kite.2510:

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

You remind me of something
Am I the only person in this entire kitten forum who realizes that they are hiding healing and tank classes, something that should have been implemented 3 years ago, behind a 50€ paywall?
Because that’s some pretty stinky pile of bullkitten if you think about it for a second.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve played a zealot/berserker mixed healing guardian for a while now, and never ran into problems, my friend does the same with a cavalier death magic necromancer, he’s so effective at it that there were cases where he pulled aggro off bosses that I was practicing soloing with my berserker mesmer just by being close enough to watch.

Yes these prefix are pretty useless. Hopefully anet might remove them soon. You probably know it, but best thing todo in gw2 is just to use full berserker gear. With berserker you can play most efficient, because a dead enemy can’t hurt you and they die fastest with zerk^^

Cleric’s is pretty good for some builds in WvWvW or sometimes even sPvP.

Elementalists and Engineers can provide a really high amount of healing, for example.

CHS.5160:

Kite.2510:

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

You remind me of something
Am I the only person in this entire kitten forum who realizes that they are hiding healing and tank classes, something that should have been implemented 3 years ago, behind a 50€ paywall?
Because that’s some pretty stinky pile of bullkitten if you think about it for a second.

Free player… huh?!

• For starters, I can’t consider free accounts as actual free accounts. Limitations are so strict, that it would be better to call them “Trial accounts”. GW2 was meant, and still is, to be a Subscription-less game, but not a F2P game, and by that I mean that you’ll still have to buy the game at least once to play normally.
• Second, the game originally never intended to have a holly trinity. Whatever defensive and supportive skills and atribute there where, wheren’t meant to form a Tank-Healler-DPS role. However since those roles didn’t exist, those stats ended up being considered very useless on most of the Vanila game, so something had to bedone to enhance their usefulness.
• Thirdly, the content that would require these roles exist in the expansion anyway! Your Vanila game will have what it promised.
• Lastly, in a few days we’ll receive a patch that would re-balance all the core classes, so no wories.

Paid player since march ’15
kittened at how much half-baked kitten is in this game which they now demand even more money for fixing.

Kite.2510:

CHS.5160:

Kite.2510:

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

You remind me of something
Am I the only person in this entire kitten forum who realizes that they are hiding healing and tank classes, something that should have been implemented 3 years ago, behind a 50€ paywall?
Because that’s some pretty stinky pile of bullkitten if you think about it for a second.

Free player… huh?!

• For starters, I can’t consider free accounts as actual free accounts. Limitations are so strict, that it would be better to call them “Trial accounts”. GW2 was meant, and still is, to be a Subscription-less game, but not a F2P game, and by that I mean that you’ll still have to buy the game at least once to play normally.
• Second, the game originally never intended to have a holly trinity. Whatever defensive and supportive skills and atribute there where, wheren’t meant to form a Tank-Healler-DPS role. However since those roles didn’t exist, those stats ended up being considered very useless on most of the Vanila game, so something had to bedone to enhance their usefulness.
• Thirdly, the content that would require these roles exist in the expansion anyway! Your Vanila game will have what it promised.
• Lastly, in a few days we’ll receive a patch that would re-balance all the core classes, so no wories.

he meant paying for having epac (which all of us have to do to access elite specs)

tbh I don;t mind – you can already spec some current classes to be able to have similar healing output….

Since no one ever seems to be able to define a GW2 healer, how come people say with such certainty that there arent any?

Personally I would say that a GW2 “healer” is any build that is specced to heal someone else more than average heal skill without actually using their own heal, around maybe 5000hp/20s.

which means….

Pretty much anyone can be a healer with gear and traits.

Guardian for example go from 80hps (self) to 250hps (AoE) on a single passive skill. Thats 5000hp/20s alone. Add other things (dodging, elite, regen, staff, symbols) and you are probably around 20,000hp/20s to 5 peeps. Is that not a healer?

The problem isnt the heals. You can be a healer in GW2. But you will also drop to 1/8th the dps of a zerker for “only” 2x healing. That is the problem.

CHS.5160:

Something I’ve noticed after quite some time is how there is Gear that, under realistic circumstances, is only usable by healers or tanks (such as Nomad – Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power), even though there is no way to play a designated tank or healer in guild wars 2 due to the lack of proper taunting mechanics or healing skills.

Does anybody have an Idea why this gear prefix even exists in the game?

I’m always surprised when such discussions comes by the way people feel so “forced” to wear a single gear set at one time. You are not the first one to raise this question (and it is often about nomad) and every time my thoughts are : think about pieces not entire gear set (gear + trinkets).
I always see gear like self-imposed difficulty mode in PvE. It is less true now since condi revamp though.
For example, I had hard times playing berserker only gear and that is why, while playing a DPS build, among my berserker pieces I had some knight’s, to improve toughness and be a bit more resilient ( at that time there was a toughness to power conversion for engi iirc).
That’s how I see nomad stats : some pieces in your stuff can actually change your survival while you are going for a DPS build. You can even put a scholar rune in a gear set which has 2 or three nomad pieces. You lose some dps but it is balanced by survival… for some people it worth it.
I personally like those stats for micro management. When I create a new toon I always simulate its stats on gw2skill. net or into the mist to achieve the stats I want to reach and most of the times it implies mix and match but I find it cool.

In regards to gear, i don’t get the issue. What’s wrong with all stats combos debing available? If anything, they should have been available at launch. Yes, some will see more use than others, some will barely be used by anyone, but playing around is part of the fun (and in the case of jewellry, it’s relatively easy to switch around).

As for the impossibility of playing a dedicated healer, i really wonder… Did you ever see a healing-gear staff elementalist? I have a guildie that plays his Asura ele like that in wvw and even before field blasting, the constant healing output is insane.

The aggro tables in PvE punish toughness more severely than the reduction in damage it gives allows. At the same time, berserker and other high dps gear is not punished nearly enough. This means you can have more sustain using profession mechanics, boons, and conditions than if you purposely built yourself as a tank.

I tried making toughness work, off and on, since the game’s launch and it never pays off. Some of the mechanics are there for building a tank of any profession but the capability is only half-baked because PvE mob threat-assessment is badly imbalanced. Essentially, low-dps bunker builds get too much attention and high-dps builds get too little and, as far as I can tell, healing does not seem to factor into aggro tables at all.

Toughness should substantially reduce incoming damage.
Vitality should increase aggro more than it does.
Healing should increase aggro more than it does, if it even does anything right now.
Offensive stats should increase aggro more than they do, too.

actually, anyone can be a healer of some kind. some classes are more effective at it than others, but every class has a way to heal everyone else in their group.

warrior = regen banners
thief = shared healing venom
mesmer = healing shatters
ranger = healing trap/spread regen/burst fields
ele = water/spread regen/burst fields
engi = tossed elixers/spread regen/burst fields/targeted heals/med kit drops
guardian = targeted heals/healing symbols/passive regen/healing bursts
necro = syphon health/spread regen/prevent bleeding out/healing well

several classes have a way to insta-res someone as well. these are classes with specific boosts to healing and are obviously better choices over other classes (ele, necro, guardian; warrior kind of an exception)

and you don’t lose a lot of DPS with this. with zealots gear you still have a power main. all you sacrifice is ferocity for healing, which just means your crits don’t pack as much of a punch in order to make sure everyone else stays in the fight.

currently, zealots/zerker mix is plenty of healing for anyone, and in a good group you only need one person set up like this.

for HoT, it sounds like you will need more than one (raids, guessing 2 to 4 out of every 10 people), but you likely won’t still be required to go into nomads or even clerics to survive longer. Druid spec will certainly have a more healing focus for rangers, and revanent will have a lot of healing ops as well, but there’s nothing to suggest HoT is bringing a holy trinity.

the world is not ending people. relax.

CHS.5160:

Paid player since march ’15
kittened at how much half-baked kitten is in this game which they now demand even more money for fixing.

Wait a second. You’re telling me that you’re saying there’s no healing when you haven’t tried healing gear and haven’t experimented with support builds.

I can literally out support almost anything on a cleric geared mesmer, even more so now after the specialty patch. Engineer and Ele can become straight up healers.

The issue is that pve doenst need healers, but i used to run clerics on my guardian because so many noobs would fail on COE on the boss. Sometimes I would just switch out for my healway Guardian and the party would be fine from that point on.

You sure do sound confident in your opinion for somebody who knows nothing on the matter. In fact Id say 90% of gw2 players have never even tried healing gear. So maybe you should try something before you go making gross assumptions?

I love that players who have never even tried healing gear are now “experts” on the subject.