Guild Wars 2

I think there should be a healing class such as a mage. If you know anything about a good mmo it is that there is a healer in a group. Dont get me wrong i am very impressed with Guild wars 2 but i believe a mage healing class will make all the difference. I came into the game expecting to be a healer but to my surprise there was none. This is the first mmo i have seen without a healing class. If it is possible to add a mage healing class with light attacks but mostly healing i will be very glad.Thanks

every class can heal. Pretty much any class can be an aoe healer. If you spec for all heals then warrior, ele, guard, and engi can be pretty much called your main healers.

If you pick any class, progress down its support trait line (usually has Vitality and/or Boon Duration), equip Cleric’s gear or something similar, and pick their utility/weapon sets for it, you can be a passable healer.

You’ll also do not-so-great damage.

…And get shunned by every LFG dungeon group.

Maybe a healing stat combo would be cool. Something where you have to split it with one of the other soft trinity aspects.

But just a pure healer is probably something GW2 will never do. They were pretty set in their comments to avoid those very solid class roles.

ok..its just i have allways enjoyed healing

Raygasher.3946:

ok..its just i have allways enjoyed healing

A lot of us did. Monk was one of my primary classes in GW1.

However, we knew well before launch that GW2 would not have a monk class ( a lot of reviews actually threw a fit about it ). It would have taken very little effort to find out before purchase that this game does not offer the trinity (no hard defined heal, tank roles) as it is defined in other games and the devs’ reasonings for going that route.

The support in gw2 not so much about healing but giving ppl the ability to self heal and to give them boons / means of blokes (walls etc..) to both up ppl dmg out put and there ability to take dmg. So you can support in GW2 its just not a pure healing support. Its a lot better to think of GW2 as the 5 class system and not the 3 class system. As in you have a debuff tree a dmg tree a tank tree a healing tree and a boon support tree. Its an older system a pentagram system not a trendily system.

jheryn.8390:

This game was designed with the express intent of NOT having a healer class.

If you ever stood in an outpost in GW1 spamming “LF monk” for 15 minutes, you would get WHY……

Brother Grimm.5176:

jheryn.8390:

This game was designed with the express intent of NOT having a healer class.

If you ever stood in an outpost in GW1 spamming “LF monk” for 15 minutes, you would get WHY……

A 45 minute queue in any MMO will make you understand why GW2 moved away from tanks and healers…

Remember the Great Monk Strike of ’06?

As I recall, it was some sort of protest against Heroes?

They did greatly diminish a monk’s “power” in the game.

Raygasher.3946:

ok..its just i have allways enjoyed healing

You can still be a healer/support without being a “healing class,” per se. For example warriors have traits that allow their shouts to heal and then another one that gives their shouts reduced cooldown. Guardians have stuff that grant regeneration to allies and remove conditions and all that good stuff. I think almost every class has a way to trait into a healing/support role.

tofumon.5924:

Raygasher.3946:

ok..its just i have allways enjoyed healing

You can still be a healer/support without being a “healing class,” per se. For example warriors have traits that allow their shouts to heal and then another one that gives their shouts reduced cooldown. Guardians have stuff that grant regeneration to allies and remove conditions and all that good stuff. I think almost every class has a way to trait into a healing/support role.

Yes and they’re generally considered terrible builds outside of sPvP.

Brother Grimm.5176:

As I recall, it was some sort of protest against Heroes?

They did greatly diminish a monk’s “power” in the game.

This was before even Factions was out. Monks felt unappreciated and were tired of taking the blame for everything so Thunderhead Keep filled with dancing monks (almost 2 full districts of monks). Went on for a few hours.

Well, there aren’t any tanks. And everybody in the game can heal themselves, dodge, CC, or otherwise deal with enemy aggro sufficiently enough as it is. Who exactly would you be healing?

Rauderi.8706:

Brother Grimm.5176:

jheryn.8390:

This game was designed with the express intent of NOT having a healer class.

If you ever stood in an outpost in GW1 spamming “LF monk” for 15 minutes, you would get WHY……

A 45 minute queue in any MMO will make you understand why GW2 moved away from tanks and healers…

While moving away from the concrete roles of healer/tank/dps is a good move, they went too far with it and ultimately gameplay is now much shallower because of it. The balancing point should have been that all classes could heal/tank/dps in some fashion without dedicating one person to a single role. If you wanted to spec more into healing and be good at it, it should be possible. If you wanted to be a tankier that too should be possible. However they left out TONS of fun mechanics that would add tons of depth and complexity to the game without turning one class into tank or healer and skewed everything heavily towards damage.

I mean just something off the top of my head but imagine a necro linking his DS pool with another player in his party. It could give berserkers a much needed survivability boost while the necro just needs to keep dpsing. The necro isn’t a healer and the berserker isn’t a tank, but it adds much more depth to combat. Guardians being able to guard a target and when that target takes hits it lowers the cooldowns of virtues by 1-2 seconds. Mesmers that could clone the lowest health ally and give the “aggro” to the clone and when the clone dies it heals the ally. There are lots of fun mechanics that could have been included, but alas we got a stripped down system that favors generic DPS mechanics.

Distaste.4801:

The balancing point should have been that all classes could heal/tank/dps in some fashion without dedicating one person to a single role. If you wanted to spec more into healing and be good at it, it should be possible.

That would solve nothing; look at other MMO’s that have hybrids. People still trait/specialize in what they want to play and most of the time that’s as a damage dealer. You’d still be stuck with queue’s of 45 minutes because the amount of people that want to play a healer is significantly less than DPS.

Well, Mage would be Elementalist…

First thing about being support:

• Deal damage, you don’t get contributions othervise, a design choice to make dedicated healers who don’t attack impossible to use.

If you want Support character, they would be:

• Guardian (Master of support, boon based mostly. Increases armor and heals when supporting, some skills apply boons on each second.)
• Elementalist (Their jack of all trades design allows them to be the most powerful healers, though loses on boons when compared to Guardian.)
• Ranger (Best mobilility based support, since they can spam Regeneration and Swiftness, even give Vigor to nearby allies)
• Warrior (Best Offensive Support, capable of quickly apply offensive boons, has very weak healing capabilities, can buff and revive allies with Battle Standard)
• Necromancer (Condition and Boon manipulation support, not quite potent healer, but seems to cover it with inflicting conditions and converting boons to conditions on the enemy. Can also bring in small army of minions to soak up damage.)
• Mesmer (Aggro/Combat support, brings in additional assist with clones and phantasms, which then give allies opportunities to attack and pull out when needed.)
• Thief (Aggro/Combat support, can give nearby allies stealth to break aggro and apply venoms to allies’ weapons)
• Engineer (Bunker Down support, offers good variety of defense turrets, can also buff, remove conditions and boons with elixirs, can also inflict a quick burst of conditions)

Rangersix.1754:

tofumon.5924:

Raygasher.3946:

ok..its just i have allways enjoyed healing

You can still be a healer/support without being a “healing class,” per se. For example warriors have traits that allow their shouts to heal and then another one that gives their shouts reduced cooldown. Guardians have stuff that grant regeneration to allies and remove conditions and all that good stuff. I think almost every class has a way to trait into a healing/support role.

Yes and they’re generally considered terrible builds outside of sPvP.

Well I guess it depends on how serious he wants to get with the game then.

Dont worry OP, altough they are not needed technically you can still play a healer with my awesome guardian build!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWn0ARhQ2JEOCBBimIeQqKA2J3296Y7uB-TRSDABO8AAMUJ4xHBgfV/BjLAQWK/A4QA0rugU2fIAwBwv/mv/GY5lXe5lXul/d5fX+5BB8N-e
And the best you are not only a healer but a tank too, just like in other MMOs but IN ONE
Dont worry, its not overly complicated to play either, i explain how it goes:
1: Go very close to your enemy
2: Look them closely in the face and do a scary stare
3. Press 1 and mesh them with your hammer
4. Do 3 until the fight is won
And if groups dont want you because they call you are a useless healer, dont worry again, you can do most dungeons solo just fine, the npcs that are actually able to kill you are like countable on two hands in the whole game. It just takes a little while longer, go make a coffee or something in the meantine.
But i should clarify you only tank and heal for yourself not for anyone else!

If they add this they’ll have to completely restructure the game. If you feel like you need a healer, then you aren’t doing something right. If they don’t restructure the game and still add a healer, they’d be the new kick-on-sight class from PUGs, and that’s the first time I’d support kicking-on-sight.

As everyone already said, support mechanics work differently in GW2. Everyone supports each other while dishing out the DPS. One role isn’t specified to one class.

I have my guardian as a full-on tank/support, but I will never take that setup into dungeons. I bring her to EOTM or Orr for lazy farming, or WvW zergfest, and that’s it. She’s unkillable and can protect glass cannons, but she’s heavily reliant on a good DPS party. It’s fun, but just not viable in anything not lazy.

I have to admit, coming back to the game after a long (1 year) hiatus, I kind of wish the game did have the capacity for “support”, “crowd control” and “DPS” roles in the game. The game is fun the way it is, but it’s just repetitive.

FrostSpectre.4198:

If you want Support character, they would be:

Not that I think any of this will ever transpire but it’s fun to think about and a lot of good ideas here!

• Guardian (Master of support, boon based mostly. Increases armor and heals when supporting, some skills apply boons on each second.)

Pretty much how she works now. I would also consider a unique type of mechanic for the class, like a skill that covers an ally within a specific range and limited duration where the Guardian takes a large % of the damage in the ally’s stead. Since Guardian has a good ability to heal themselves, taking damage for teammates and healing themselves would be their version of ‘healing’ (ontop of their other AoE healing abilities).

• Elementalist (Their jack of all trades design allows them to be the most powerful healers, though loses on boons when compared to Guardian.)

Elementalist is good at giving all kinds of boons and conditions. Honestly, I would keep Ele, as a support, to be the ultimate of jack-of-all-trade, able to finely adjust how much support they want to balance with DPS. I’d try to limit them by making boons ‘line-specific’ so if you wanted to be good at giving might boon, you need fire-line traits, regen needs water to be ‘support worthy’, etc. They can still be unique by having lots of options for AoE healing.

• Ranger (Best mobilility based support, since they can spam Regeneration and Swiftness, even give Vigor to nearby allies)

I still like my Ranger in PvE, for the purpose that I can do damage while doing other stuff. I feel their shouts should be more available so you can have better control of just how that balance could work, like Sic-Em, combined with a support build, allows your pet to deal a huge amount more damage with the cost of the Ranger being unable to do damage at the same time or Search and Rescue rallying/healing allies puts the Ranger in a berserk status and do additional damage at the cost of the pet doing nothing but heal.

• Warrior (Best Offensive Support, capable of quickly apply offensive boons, has very weak healing capabilities, can buff and revive allies with Battle Standard)

If War is best at offensive support then it will be the only PvE support (unless the PvE is rebalanced). I would almost separate the two, providing might and fury being the DPS build, while the support build is something else.

• Necromancer (Condition and Boon manipulation support, not quite potent healer, but seems to cover it with inflicting conditions and converting boons to conditions on the enemy. Can also bring in small army of minions to soak up damage.)

Yup, corrupting boons, absorbing conditions off of allies and infecting foes with them would be its support. I like the idea of sharing its Death Shroud idea above too.

• Mesmer (Aggro/Combat support, brings in additional assist with clones and phantasms, which then give allies opportunities to attack and pull out when needed.)

Aggro, to me, seems to be a form of control, not directly support. For support, there’s a lot of possible things; converting conditions to boons, stripping boons, stealing boons, sharing boons, they could even have something like “boon lock” that stops targets from getting certain boons.

• Thief (Aggro/Combat support, can give nearby allies stealth to break aggro and apply venoms to allies’ weapons)

Sounds sweet. I’m not a big thief player but again, aggro seems a control type of support.

• Engineer (Bunker Down support, offers good variety of defense turrets, can also buff, remove conditions and boons with elixirs, can also inflict a quick burst of conditions)

I think Eng should be in the same boat as Ele, being able to fine-adjust their level of support and other capabilities by their traits and bundles.

I tip my hat to you good sir, your trolling abilities are quite impressive.

It’s understandable why they did away with the Trinity, but taking away healers/tanks really just left us with a DPS only game. There’s people out there who find healing/tanking immensely enjoyable. I don’t play zerker in this game because is so stinking boring. I play a hybrid Fire/Water Elementalist. Damage and healing are both good.

Leo G.4501:

• Mesmer (Aggro/Combat support, brings in additional assist with clones and phantasms, which then give allies opportunities to attack and pull out when needed.)

Aggro, to me, seems to be a form of control, not directly support. For support, there’s a lot of possible things; converting conditions to boons, stripping boons, stealing boons, sharing boons, they could even have something like “boon lock” that stops targets from getting certain boons.

• Thief (Aggro/Combat support, can give nearby allies stealth to break aggro and apply venoms to allies’ weapons)

Sounds sweet. I’m not a big thief player but again, aggro seems a control type of support.

• Engineer (Bunker Down support, offers good variety of defense turrets, can also buff, remove conditions and boons with elixirs, can also inflict a quick burst of conditions)

I think Eng should be in the same boat as Ele, being able to fine-adjust their level of support and other capabilities by their traits and bundles.

Yeah, I did rush with thief and Mesmer, didn’t remember the boon manipulation skills…

Thief can also steal boons and give them along with long duration Vigor (10 seconds, you could say that 5 seconds is worth of 1 dodge) to allies. Even give allies first strike boost with certain trait that gives might, fury and swiftness to nearby allies on steal.

Engineer forgot that they too share same design of being Jack of All trades, like elementalist…

Rangersix.1754:

Distaste.4801:

The balancing point should have been that all classes could heal/tank/dps in some fashion without dedicating one person to a single role. If you wanted to spec more into healing and be good at it, it should be possible.

That would solve nothing; look at other MMO’s that have hybrids. People still trait/specialize in what they want to play and most of the time that’s as a damage dealer. You’d still be stuck with queue’s of 45 minutes because the amount of people that want to play a healer is significantly less than DPS.

They reason they specialize is because the content is designed around specialized roles. Take WoW which originally had druids as the jack of all trades hybrid. The content literally required that you have healers and tanks. If you didn’t have healers there was zero chance you could tank enough damage or kill the boss before it wiped everyone. The content was not balanced towards allowing a hybrid to exist. When balancing for a damage/tank/heals all being equal you should be able to complete the content with the entire party/raid being one class/role. Tanks could tank enough damage that the boss dies before they do. Healers could heal enough damage and do enough damage to kill the boss. Damage of course could kill the boss. damage = heals+damage = damage mitigation+damage. The problem is that this a lot of time and effort to balance properly, ArenaNet can’t even handle the simplistic system it already has.

Another thing is healing mechanics. A lot of people hate playing a healer because it is a tedious playstyle of staring at health bars instead of basically everything else and the blame if anyone dies. As long as you stay away from short cooldown targeted heals you can avoid the boring healing gameplay that so many other MMO’s. provide. Instead using things like AOE heals, splash healing, and lowest health ally help take away that burden of watching health bars. Of course there are cooldowns to consider as well. You don’t want them so short that someone can be constantly healing and nothing else. ArenaNet already has this implemented in the game for the most part. They just need to take it one step further and allow most classes to do more healing as well as flesh out healing power more.

Tanking is simple, people hated tanking because they rely on other people to not only keep them alive but to also not steal aggro. A dumb dps takes aggro the tank gets blamed. Since everyone would have a heal and survivability options this really wouldn’t be an issue here. Tank until you’re close to dying them disengage and allow someone else to deal with it until you’re able to go again. It’s basically how it currently is but actually being able to take a bunch of hits instead of the 1-2 shots most bosses kill people in.

Distaste.4801:

Rauderi.8706:

Brother Grimm.5176:

jheryn.8390:

This game was designed with the express intent of NOT having a healer class.

If you ever stood in an outpost in GW1 spamming “LF monk” for 15 minutes, you would get WHY……

A 45 minute queue in any MMO will make you understand why GW2 moved away from tanks and healers…

While moving away from the concrete roles of healer/tank/dps is a good move, they went too far with it and ultimately gameplay is now much shallower because of it. The balancing point should have been that all classes could heal/tank/dps in some fashion without dedicating one person to a single role. If you wanted to spec more into healing and be good at it, it should be possible. If you wanted to be a tankier that too should be possible. However they left out TONS of fun mechanics that would add tons of depth and complexity to the game without turning one class into tank or healer and skewed everything heavily towards damage.

I mean just something off the top of my head but imagine a necro linking his DS pool with another player in his party. It could give berserkers a much needed survivability boost while the necro just needs to keep dpsing. The necro isn’t a healer and the berserker isn’t a tank, but it adds much more depth to combat. Guardians being able to guard a target and when that target takes hits it lowers the cooldowns of virtues by 1-2 seconds. Mesmers that could clone the lowest health ally and give the “aggro” to the clone and when the clone dies it heals the ally. There are lots of fun mechanics that could have been included, but alas we got a stripped down system that favors generic DPS mechanics.

You should go work for Anet. I feel like this type of gameplay would really help take combat to the next level. Your post reminds me alot of GW1 gameplay, where the builds run by different professions intertwined with each other, emphasizing teamwork. I mean for a simple example, look at the basic hammer war and the SoS blood necro of GW1 (these two builds were not strictly limited with their interactions to each other, but you could play them effectively to work with other members of your team as well. This particular combo is just very easy to see.) Also, you mentioned watching health bars in your second post, but I didn’t feel like quoting it. Once again, I have to throwback to gw1 mechanics. If you were “Red Barring” (health watching) in GW1 as a monk, you were doing it wrong. You had to be aware of your own team’s positioning as well as the positioning of enemy players to heal and especially PROT effectively. I feel like this is where anet was trying to go with the guardian profession, but they fell short.

Sadly, due to the way the classes were designed and the game designed, a healing class would likely completely trivialize most of this game’s challenges.

I mained monk throughout GW1, and I really like playing healing/support/ranged, I would really enjoy a healing class, but I can’t see this happening without a major game overhaul and that would likely require years.