Guild Wars 2

So a few days ago I got the urge to tank again, so I polish off the old Rift account and roll a brand new Warrior to tank my way to 65 with dreams of end game tanking; I finally queue up and immediately want to start killing every one in my group, all the common BS that makes all tanks want to drink happens within the first 5 minutes.

Thank the 6 that GW2 doesn’t have tanks, I much prefer offering spot protection with my reflects, shouts, and base damage reduction with my Hammer.

Leave tanking for the masochists.

Completely concur, I love that you ‘can’ tank, you ‘can’ heal, you ‘can’ debuff, but you are never forced into a role (that said, some classes do it better than others, but you can build so you can be superior than the average build for the ‘main’ class)

This is so true. Not having the trinity removes a lot of player issues from the game.

I’m in with that, I’m always the solo player anyway, no matter whether I’m actually running solo or in a group – it’s nice that I can be all I want with only one character.

did you know trinity force is jax’s best item

But GW2 does have a trinity, it just isn’t what you think it is…

Reflects, blinds, blocks and protection is GW2’s version of tanking. As a guardian you’re still a tank, but you’re also a healer and a DPSer.

In GW2’s trinity, you can be multiple roles of even all 3 of them at the same time and good players in dungeon meta-runs are expected to do that, especially if you’re a guardian.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

But GW2 does have a trinity, it just isn’t what you think it is…

In GW2’s trinity, you can be multiple roles of even all 3 of them at the same time.

I think… I think it’s not what you think it is.

Shinoobi.1259:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

But GW2 does have a trinity, it just isn’t what you think it is…

In GW2’s trinity, you can be multiple roles of even all 3 of them at the same time.

I think… I think it’s not what you think it is.

Or is it?

In GW2 you still have a trinity and you still need all 3 roles of the trinity in your party. The only difference is that these roles aren’t restricted to characters and are in fact shared by multiple characters.

A party with no heals or no defensive support will die before you can even blink with your eyes. This is something I see happen so often in “zerg only” LFG pugs. People think all you need to do is DPS DPS DPS and that is just not true. While your gear will be the main source your DPS in most cases, you still need to bring active defenses and heals/cleanses to the table in order to survive any major encounter in PvE dungeons.

Because of the nature of the guardian, he will most often be the “tank” in a party even when you put your guardian in full Berserker gear (which you are expected to do in meta runs).

The funny thing about Guild Wars 2’s system is that it actually would have worked better if there had been no attributes whatsoever and all gear customization was through passives (such as runes and sigils). Especially in trait lines – tying attributes to those was a horrible mistake.

The main beef people have had with the game’s class system is that (in PvE), everything but Power, Precision and Critical Damage effectively constitutes a tertiary stat – ranging from mediocre to worthless. The result is that most of the game’s stat combos are worthless in PvE, wasting gold and limiting build customization.

Support in this game works well. Defensive mechanics work well. Damage mechanics work well.

CC mechanics work poorly, but this is entirely independent of the attribute system to begin with – and it may be, in part, fixed with the Defiance rework.

And with the over-prevalence of conditions in PvP, I can’t help but think the game would have been better off without stat-scaling conditions. Conditions worked well in Guild Wars 1 because they were dedicated to over-time pressure and they did a set amount of damage, making them easy to balance. They were still a crucial part of both PvE and PvP, and they were still valuable – they simply happened to be easy to balance because of their set damage.