How about us Tankers and Healers? :(
I think once you get more experience in dungeons and fractals and try to run them quicker you’ll realise that classes do have roles although they are subtle. The idea behind support is to either improve damage directly by providing vulnerability/might/fury/unique buffs or letting your team get higher uptime on a boss by using the appropriate skill.
An example would be the flame effigy in Citadel of Flame path 1 where guardians can give stability or pop a wall to stop the knockdown or cleanse burn immediately so people can keep dpsing without losing scholar buffs. I would argue that everyone has to support in addition to dps to make full use of their profession even if its out of combat ones like stealthing past mobs in speed runs.
You can play the game in many ways and tanking is also viable but takes much longer. Personally I prefer lack of tanking and healing since it makes bosses take too long and if sustain was mandatory by making bosses with undodgeable sustained damage most people would go nomads to guarantee a successful run which would make runs 3 hour long snoozefests. If you want to support in PvE try guardian or elementalist but you’ll need to understand that it is possible to support and be high dps at the same time which is why berserker is the meta build. Support in GW2 is about active mitigation and buffing rather than stat based passive support.
(edited by Quartz.3462)
I certainly want tanking to be more viable. I am not talking about just adding more toughness.
I want mobs to attack me, to focus on me while I try to survive and my party members attack them.
My solution? Superior Rune of Taunting.
Also, I want warriors to have a GM trait that is similar to the rune.
4x Necromancer, 3x Mesmer, 4x Guardian, 4x Thief, 4 Revenant
- Revenant beta included exclusively a tank and healer skills/traits.
- all classes are getting more support
- Anet can’t shut up about “challenging instanced content”
The day of the tank and healer is coming, don’t worry.
Blue Dorito-S/Re|Transitor-S/En |Tina Feyspirit-N/M|
Bmoe-A/T|Peter Whatsherface-H/G|Acolyte Rin-H/N
TL;DR: Support and Control were never meant to be limited to one class. Every class brings their own form of support, which is why in the current PvE Meta every class brings in a little bit instead of having one tank or healer. However I would consider every build viable as long as you complete the content.
There is a very interesting Blog Post (http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death) from back when Guild Wars was announced concerning the combat system. Here are the parts concerning Healing and Tanking specifically:
Heal: Don’t belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations.
Tank: This is where Guild Wars 2 makes the biggest break from the traditional MMO setup. Tanking is the most rudimentary form of the most important combat fundamental, CONTROL. Every game has it, yet it always seems to get a bad name. In Guild Wars there was Knockdown, Interrupt, Weakness, Blind, and Cripple, to name a few. We wanted to build upon what we think makes control such an important part of dynamic combat.
In my Personal Opinion I think that
1. This creates one of the most interesting combat systems i have seen in an mmo so far. The Problem is, that none of these mechanics have been implemented in a way, that makes an encounter truly challenging, meaning that you won’t succeed unless you take advantage of all of them correctly. But then again those would be encounters you could not beat in a casual group, which is considered a bad thing by a huge part of the playerbase.
2. The current PvE meta is incorporating both systems. Have you ever wondered, why there are other classes besides elementalists in the meta comp, even thought the ele has the best personal dps? The current PvE meta is first and foremost based around the idea of support which makes it possible to run glassy setups and achieve times that are that good.
As others have suggested, there are a lot of people who have a similar mindset like you and don’t think about efficiency. If you can beat content with your build it’s viable. Open up a group and you will find someone. When I run with friends and we need a 5th for an easy dungeon path, we often try different role descriptions, just to see if we find someone. We have had healing warriors, tanking guardians and condition damage focused thieves. Main point: they are out there.
I don’t really get what your trying to achieve OP … working against the system making tanks/healers in a system designed to work without them will always mean you’re going to be left out and sub optimal. That’s not likely to change so …
On the other hand a support character can be quite helpful at least for party compositions that need help or at the very least allows me to be be lazier while playing. If the only thing being done is healing then that basically being a lousy support unless it happens to be a situation where that is the best option … like when standing in the fiery Venn diagram while doing the Cliffside fractal.