Guild Wars 2

I don’t think the presence or lack of presence of a trinity system really makes this game better/worse… the majority of PvE encounters are lackluster regardless.

I played Monk primarily in GW and i was definitely at a loss in my role as a guardian to be a healer/protector. But as i progressed through the class, learned the dynamics and trait system better, i’ve found that i’m quite an effective healer/protector and without a giant sacrifice as a damage dealer either. You absolutely can play guardian as a full on support class and be effective.

I for sure (now that i understand the dynamics) enjoy playing the support role more in GW2 that i ever did in GW. In GW the stationary casting and lack of ability to move made being a healer/prot monk a full time job and also made people be lazy or less than willing to kite, since the healer could keep them up as they spammed skills. Now the pressure on me is off when i run with people that know how to move, mitigate damage and self heal, I’m only needed to buffer, which is a nice change. There are plenty of times i’ve pulled group conditions or tossed up a shield to save someone from certain death, then got right back into the action. I definitely don’t miss watching health bars.

While I don’t want the game to evolve into people sitting in the mists screaming “lf1m healer ele”, I do feel that if a player decides to make a significant investment into healing stats, the impact should be greater than it is currently.

As an example, on my engineer….my toolbelt regen skill from the healing turret without any healing gear, heals for about 750 over 3 seconds on a 60s CD. Fully traited and decked out in healing gear increases that to about 1100 over 3 seconds. In a game where everyone consistantly hits for thousands of damage, this skill is hardly worth casting.

..no they replaced healing with Death. quite literally. It’s probably the most ridiculous thing, the more and more I get into it I realize how lazy this design is. It’s impossible to not go down 2-3 times in a group, especially cloth wearers, forget it.

Give it another month and there will be only Guardians and the rest ranged. What’s the point of playing the rest? That’s right. none.

I suppose one problem with the typical healer is that most players, even among those playing the class in question, never gets any good at it, and for them it’s a boring watch over health bars and relatively thoughtless spamming of some heals. There’s a reason why ~80% (random number based on my own observation) of healers in a typical MMO tend to perform at less than half the efficiency of the top 10% (it’s not the only role where skill makes a difference, but I believe it’s the only classical role where the experience differs so dramatically between the tiers). But I’m sure there’s some way to implement the playstyle without its deficiencies. Well, at least I hope there is.

It’s a pretty big leap in dynamics to go from gauging resources (i.e. mana, energy, action points, etc.) to managing CD’s and actually watching the battle. One of the major things about GW2 is the sever lack of paying attention to health bars and the UI and paying far more attention to the battle and what skill you have available. I personally find it far more enjoyable.

I agree (and i think ANet does too) that certain classes need some serious love “cough cough -engineer” but overall staying alive really comes down to actively participating in the battle. To look away in sPVP for even a second might literally get you killed, as you actively need to manage your CD’s and when to use certain utilities. It really is a far cry from most MMO’s or even most genres in games as a whole.

You miss staring at 2 dimensional boxes on the corner of your screen with green bars moving left and right?

I don’t.

Calae.1738:

You miss staring at 2 dimensional boxes on the corner of your screen with green bars moving left and right?

I don’t.

Good healers have never been doing that. That’s one of the things i was talking about with the experience being so dramatically different between really good healers, and those that are less so.

Daiva.2394:

Calae.1738:

You miss staring at 2 dimensional boxes on the corner of your screen with green bars moving left and right?

I don’t.

Good healers have never been doing that. That’s one of the things i was talking about with the experience being so dramatically different between really good healers, and those that are less so.

Just by going with GW, as a healer you really did a lot of that over watching what’s actually happening on screen. GW HoH was pretty much all about the spike and that is definitely something you can’t easily predict (every time) without watching health bars most of the time. I did a lot of prot/infuse and there was a big issue with being required to watch bars and predict a spike. I guess i’m much happier not have to watch bars very much at all.

Then play a healer.

Re-spec that Guardian or Engineer…the 2 best classes, I think for making a healer / support class. It will have to be a hybrid though since both classes are pretty heavy on boons and debuffs.

I use my Engineer for this purpose…switching between med packs and an elixir gun. Quite fun actually…trying to shoehorn a GW2 class into healer mode.

I’ve always played healers too, but that doesn’t mean I want this game to change to that mode of play.

There are lots of other MMORPGs if you miss playing those certain roles or classes. /shrug Obviously this is not the game for that thing.

I’ve been messing with RaiderZ which is like Tera light, and I really like how those 2 games do combat. It would be sexy to have an MMORPG with that style of combat mixed with GW2’s crazy content setup (events and leveling at least). Some day.

I really like my water specced staff Ele for healing with Dwayna runes and evasive arcana (0/0/10/30/30 traits). Anytime I attune to water it heals, casts regen, and condition cleanses nearby allies. My dodge roll (in water) gives an AOE heal and condition cleanse. I can drop geyser or healing rain (which also cleanses) and dodge roll into them for AOE healing, and because of my runes i cast an AOE regen everytime I use my own healing skill. Attuning to earth gives AOE protection to the group as well, useful for avoiding big damage spikes.

Sure, it’s not the Disc Priest I played back in WoW days, but I pump out a good amount of regen (renew), cleansing (dispell), and direct AOE healing to feel pretty close….

munkiman.3068
It’s a pretty big leap in dynamics to go from gauging resources (i.e. mana, energy, action points, etc.) to managing CD’s and actually watching the battle. One of the major things about GW2 is the sever lack of paying attention to health bars and the UI and paying far more attention to the battle and what skill you have available. I personally find it far more enjoyable.

Really? Last game I played was Rift (and this is from a strictly PvP point of view, as PVE bores me in every game) and it took far more skill / thought / mangaing of cooldowns / watching the battle than GW2 does, especially on hybrid (e.g – chlorodom) or as a healer.

Even many DPS orentated classes are more challenging in other games, my thief in GW2 only has 5 cooldowns and is one of the easiest classes I have ever played in any MMO, compared to my gambler traited burglar in LOTRO it is a piece of cake.

Overall the classes in GW2 are pretty samey, they are more DPS + a little bit of heals / CC / utlility (with minor variation depending on how you trait / gear / select weapons / util skills).

Overall I’ve found nothing to match the skillcap / awareness / multitasking required to play say my chlorodom in Rift, which is pretty disappointing for a game that partly sold itself on high skilled PvP.

And yes before someone tells me to play a different a MMO I will, I get that, and I knew before I bought the game that there were no healers/tanks/DPS, but what I actually was expecting were more hybrid like classes, but what I actually got was DPS classes with a bit of support / healing / CC, tacked on.

Try an Engineer and instead of thinking in a “Healing mode” think in a “Prevent/Remove damage and heal mode”. There are some really good build for this. I think it would give you what your looking for.

I don’t miss EQ/WoW style healing, at all. That’s just a whack-a-mole (heal-a-mole?) snoozefest.

I do miss Guild Wars 1 style healing, where you needed to manage several short-cooldown skills, a couple with mid-range cooldowns, and then the odd clutch skill that would pull you out of a real mess, and you needed to do that while getting as far as possible from the train of guys trying to kill you, and you needed to deal with a couple other guys constantly trying to steal your Energy out from under you or interrupt your casts, and you had to deal with the fact that most of the truly effective skills needed to be used proactively rather than reactively, which required keeping track of where every single enemy and every single ally was and what they were doing, at all times.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anything quite like that in Guild Wars 2 – and more unfortunate still, I don’t know if the gameplay style would really support it. Guild Wars 2 has a fantastic combat system, and it works wonderfully, but it does seem to be very predicated on the idea that there are very few skills that you’re going to be able to use twice in short succession (and being able to do so, to a limited degree, is the signature trait of the Thief). As much fun as I had with healing in GW1, I find it hard to imagine something similar working in GW2 without throwing everything off-balance.

The closest that I’ve found in GW2 is a Staff Elementalist. The majority of their weapon skills have some serious utility elements to them, managing all four attunements gives you access to enough skills that you’re never stuck waiting for something you can do to support your team, and then layers over top of that is a pretty huge number of combo fields, and just as many ways to self-finish those combos, including some that are totally independent of your skills/cooldowns (ie: Evasive Arcana). That’s the way it works in party-based PvE, anyway – I don’t know if or how well it would translate to PvP.

A lot to read here, so forgive me if this was mentioned:

The Engineer has an almost complete support spec. Elixir Gun with Elixir spec is a great way to go. Sure it’s nothing like targeted heals like you would get from a fully dedicated healer, but between Elixir R (gets people back on their feet from a downed state), and a lot of the other elixirs, you can be a serious team player.

Sylosi.6503:

munkiman.3068
It’s a pretty big leap in dynamics to go from gauging resources (i.e. mana, energy, action points, etc.) to managing CD’s and actually watching the battle. One of the major things about GW2 is the sever lack of paying attention to health bars and the UI and paying far more attention to the battle and what skill you have available. I personally find it far more enjoyable.

Really? Last game I played was Rift (and this is from a strictly PvP point of view, as PVE bores me in every game) and it took far more skill / thought / mangaing of cooldowns / watching the battle than GW2 does, especially on hybrid (e.g – chlorodom) or as a healer.

Even many DPS orentated classes are more challenging in other games, my thief in GW2 only has 5 cooldowns and is one of the easiest classes I have ever played in any MMO, compared to my gambler traited burglar in LOTRO it is a piece of cake.

Overall the classes in GW2 are pretty samey, they are more DPS + a little bit of heals / CC / utlility (with minor variation depending on how you trait / gear / select weapons / util skills).

Overall I’ve found nothing to match the skillcap / awareness / multitasking required to play say my chlorodom in Rift, which is pretty disappointing for a game that partly sold itself on high skilled PvP.

And yes before someone tells me to play a different a MMO I will, I get that, and I knew before I bought the game that there were no healers/tanks/DPS, but what I actually was expecting were more hybrid like classes, but what I actually got was DPS classes with a bit of support / healing / CC, tacked on.

I can’t comment on Rift, but i can say that Thief is an exception in GW2 as to being a resource class over that of managing CD’s. Which is exactly my point, at least considering i come mostly from GW’s resource management. In the Guardian sense the entire process of managing CD’s is much more prevalent than any other resource. In GW most everything was on very short CD’s or none at all, it was really more energy dependent and more direct. Many builds that were effective were based around short CD’s bars with a skill or 2 that might have 5 second CD’s. I’m not strictly talking about dealing damage either, but in the area of being an effective healer and not wasting resources on heals that weren’t needed. It definitely takes some getting used to.

As far as “samey”. Between the 2 classes i’ve played most (Ele and Guardian), i feel they play far differently and definitely have better defined roles depending on your play style. You can easily be a healer/prot spec in both and still be effective. It certainly doesn’t feel as though (based on what i know about the class) that thief has as much diversity.

Don’t miss it at all. I played a healer class in WOW and it burned me out.

I APPRECIATE that I can still help downed players because I do not miss people barking orders at me.

I too miss being a healer. I love this game and am just playing my 2nd and 3rd favourite class types (sorcerer/rogue, or elementalist/thief in this case)

I have played a healer as my main for every RPG dating back to text-based games, and nothing in GW2 compares to what I enjoy about playing a healer.

I read an article that mentioned they asked around and the consensus was people who play healer just want to help their team and play support, so they came up with ways to do that which are not healing. This is just not the case for me. I mean yes, I want to be a support for my team, but the aspect of healing I like are: 1) quick reaction times on using a fast heal cast spell right before death 2) math (yes I said it!) 3) prioritizing/making tough choices.

In GW2 I throw down my water spring on someone who is near death, and guess what? He dodge rolled away from the enemy mid-cast. Yay waste of a spell. (This has happened to me approximately 95% of the time I have used the spell). I am not mad that they dodge rolled, they were definitely in the right. I am just annoyed because the spell is inherently useless. I’d like a direct heal spell instead.

I understand the removal of the class though, it was always tough for finding a group whenever I was not a healer, and impeccably easy whenever I was. I do appreciate that any class is a viable addition to your team.

I just wanted to add, another thing I miss about being a healer is my attention to the battle. As a DPS-centered class, I focus entirely on the enemy and much less on my team. As a healer, I am constantly watching both the enemy and the healer. That way I can start casting my slower heal on the non-tank guy that the boss is about to hit, because when he get’s hit – he definitely will need the heal.

I imagine playing a guardian would help a bit with this aspect though? I haven’t played guardian much to know.

Yep loved being a healer in many mmo’s the heals in this game does not save anyone. Dps is far greater so the tiny heals that players can give out is useless. Everyone in my guild (30ish) has quit due to no support, no team play, broken wvw, the downed system so many many more issues but everyone said no proper support like healers killed it for them. Having a “healer” could mean the zerg in WvW would be killable but without heals the zerg is the advantage.

We even tried me playing a full water Ele but the area heals still healed for a tiny amount compared to the amount of DPS ppl can put out and as soon as the 2 area healing spells were used water Ele’s are just useless.

This game feels like a solo game even when grouped. It’s up to you to keep yourself alive and that takes away all the team gameplay that all the other mmo’s had including Guild Wars 1.

Want to play a healer?

Get healing power equipment, get a warrior, put shouts traits, heal the shout of your party, enjoy.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mzMzz9Mz0ovoNMMgoNMG0xG0zRzsqMa

Engineer ‘support’ build; there you go. Yes, it’s more frenetic than wow’s or swtor or rift’s style, and yes there’s more aiming than green bar clicking, but c’mon. Different games are different. In a game like guild wars 2, you have to think even of the chill of the ice bomb as a form of reducing incoming damage, or healing in reverse.

And yes, it’s totally possible to be in a situation where half a second’s timing off can mean catastrophe.

What classes have you tried? My Elementalist can be an extremely fast paced, fun and effective support character.

In you typical Ele support build you are using heals, laying down combo fields for your group mates, buffing your party, clearing their conditions, and applying crowd control, lots of conditions and some damage to the enemy.

You won’t like it if you want to just focus on healing (which is impossible due to the cool downs), but if you change your mindset to being a supporter rather than a healer you have some really powerful support tools with this class, including some great heals.

Here you could play an ele with 30 points in earth and water and 10 in arcane for a support build, and spec for toughness/healing power/vitality. Water tanks I imagine are high in demand for running high end dungeons.

I would just like to add is that when GW1 came out, the monk class wasn’t a class that jumped out at ppl and said play me, infact like any other mmo’s at the time the healer class was the least played class. It wasn’t til when guild groups became a thing, then healers became a popular class to play. If anyone had played Rift when it first came out, you’d probably see a good 50-60% of players were healers. I understand why Anet took out healers because of GW1 groups were standing around for ages looking for one but if they had looked at any new game they would of seen that healers were now a common class. In my experience, if ppl came to a game on their own they would pick either a healer or a tank type then find a guild and make new friends, if ppl came to a game with a guild from another game or friends they would choose within themselves who plays what. Healers would not be short if they had them in this game.

fefner.5729:

I would just like to add is that when GW1 came out, the monk class wasn’t a class that jumped out at ppl and said play me, infact like any other mmo’s at the time the healer class was the least played class. It wasn’t til when guild groups became a thing, then healers became a popular class to play. If anyone had played Rift when it first came out, you’d probably see a good 50-60% of players were healers. I understand why Anet took out healers because of GW1 groups were standing around for ages looking for one but if they had looked at any new game they would of seen that healers were now a common class. In my experience, if ppl came to a game on their own they would pick either a healer or a tank type then find a guild and make new friends, if ppl came to a game with a guild from another game or friends they would choose within themselves who plays what. Healers would not be short if they had them in this game.

yeah that is a bad example, Rift had that many healers because two of the healer trees were the best farming bots in the game, capable of sololing elite rifts while healing via fighting..so yeah..bad example. There were NOT many true healers, because just like any other game you had to put so many resources into healing it made you useless for anything but spelunking into dungeons.

I used to play healers in every other game, even in hack’n’slashes and usually I’ve been one of the best healers around. I was running with trait/talent spec for pure healer and hybrid gear, so I could deal damage. From what I’ve seen, every single person playing healer can’t spam heals quickly enough, also they’re having problems to manage rapid target switches. Add to this fail timed AoE and emergency heals, and inability to use attacks between heals – you’re getting pretty frustating party. Many times I tried to play any hybrid class, but noobish healers were pissing me too much, watching them being so slow and ineffective, dealing no dmg, it was taking all joy away from the game

In GW2 I’m usually getting pissed as well. I’m playing hybrid engineer, daling some decent dmg and having healing power high enough to heal for 50-60% of my health. I can manage to survive the most of encounters, using all my healing skills whenever it’s possible/needed. But watching the others is just… They’re going below 50% health and never using heals, doing it when they’re nearly dead, tho their heals can only restore up to 30% of their total health. I’m roaming in the middle of battlefield, trying to catch everyone in my tiny AoE heals, but I can heal for 5-10% only, also people are often dodging heals much better than attacks. They’re going out of super elixir area, even if there is no danger in this specific zone. They’re ignoring bandages. They’re blocking potential water fields casting other fields exactly where I’m standing. All those things are making playing healer so hopeless… Many players can’t be really responsible for their own survivability and no matter how hard I’m trying, I can never make up for them

Miss it too. But I can’t go back to those other MMOs since most are either old and crummy looking or simply terrible (ie swtor). So have to wait and pray for a new MMO with good healing (and does not suck). Guess that might be years.

It’s very interesting to see what happens when you make people responsible for their own healing, either by staying in areas that provide it or by activating their own healing skills.

All I can say so far? Most people I’ve seen so far suck at it, or just can’t understand the system. This is probably why shoving it off to someone else (a healer class) is so preferable, and why the trinity has been so successful.

This is coming from someone who plays healers, BTW.

As others have suggested, so too shall I echo: try elementalist specced for support. Not only can they provide a lot of healing, damage mitigation, condition cleansing, and buffs, but in order to be in that top 10% you have to balance your endurance use, attunement cooldowns, skill cooldowns, positioning, knowledge of the fight, of boons and conditions, and of your party members and their capabilities.

Because all classes are designed to be self sufficient, you’re probably feeling less pressure to keep others alive. Have you ran any of the dungeons? Enemies are much stronger and there’s a much greater reliance on teammates performing well. The hair-trigger combat style you’re referring to isn’t uncommon in dungeons where getting one-shot just might be the norm. Some dynamic events, like the area quest in Metrica Province, may also satisfy your needs for having near-instantaneous responses.

Really, though, try the Elementalist with a Staff, the Evasive Arcana trait, and some (or lots of) points in the Water trait line. If that doesn’t satisfy your need for well timed skills and dynamic combat… you may just need to party with players who are less self sufficient.

I think better healer to try is shout warrior who heals unlimited targets in a large area.

Way way better than ele if you want to ‘heal’.

Not that ele healin/support spec is not fun since that’s what I play….but….I expect major nerfs one day soon to healin on a whole.

Raided as a priest in WoW for years and I have to tell you. Don’t miss it at all.

Though I must say that I did a bit of WvW yesterday and there were some great AOE heals being laid down by guardians, engineers, and elementalists. They really made a huge difference too. So healing is still around maybe just not the way you liked it.

I miss stuff like Disc priest and GW1 healings, but I like Mesmer enough to deal with it.

As others have said, making people self-reliant is a big part of the game and is fine, not every game can be everything.

No, guardian isn’t an option, I played it for 35 levels and would rather be chased than do the chasing.

The OP said “I want the hectic feeling where your reaction time is tested because reacting half a second too slow means you kittened up, and where you’re managing multiple heals (or similar abilities) on short cooldowns across multiple targets, and all the while have to pay attention to the fight to read what’s going to be needed where etc.”

I’ve been there with a healer in an MMO. Cursing when you see those little bars going down or groaning when some idiot doesn’t realize they’re getting aggro.

To put it frankly, isn’t this ‘hectic feeling’ simply created from watching health bars? In the end, all the tension in the gameplay is really about a bunch of green lines and keeping them from moving to the left. Sure there might have been a sense of accomplishment when getting those green bars back up, but looking back, they were just green bars.

And the other half of the difficulty is all caused because one’s attention is divided from a single corner of the UI to the actual fight where the action is really happening.

The tension is the result of an intelligent human trying to cope with a bad game mechanic and even worse UI. That’s usually why healer add-ons/UI mods are the first things typically produced by the community.

I suppose there is some entertainment at becoming skilled in coping with a bad game mechanic/UI but in the end, MMO healing always felt like babysitting to me.

There are plenty of other MMOs that still provide this style of healing gameplay. I don’t see any reason to bring it into Guild Wars 2.

It’s strange how MMO players so quickly jump down the throat of any developer who copies what was done before but when they’re actually given something new they then want to go back to what was done in the past.

Guild Wars 2 is something new. And I play it because of that. If I wanted to the experience that I had in past MMOs, I go to the ones that are still copying that style of gameplay.

I played pretty much exclusively monk in gw1 and loved it. I miss it too, but I also love the new combat system.
You can play a pretty effective healing spec as ele, guard, or enig tho if you spec right.

i would play a resurrect monk. with the amount of xp you get from ressing, i could get to 80 without combat!

My wife misses healing, I miss tanking. I think it’s because we like to feel useful or vital. In GW2 I always feel a bit interchangeable. I suppose that’s good in some ways. They have said they want to move away from dependency to cooperation. I kind of liked the feeling of being depended on though. The frantic feeling is what my wife loved about healing, too.

I sometimes enjoy switching to Water on my Ele and tossing out healing spells, coupled with Blast effects for burst healing here and there. It won’t be able to negate all the damage, sure, but if your allies are halfway decent players it can take a lot of pressure off them and enable them to stay in the fight instead of having to constantly kite or retreat from combat entirely to recover.

I whole heartedly agree. I loved healing in past mmos and loved healing in GW1. Healing was one of my favorite types of support and while support builds are effective in this game, its far less easy to see the actual impact that you have made to a person or group. Before with healing you could see their health bar jump to full or see the icons that you specifically cast on them instead of a global set of icons that all buffs share. I really love the game the way it is now but I surely wouldnt mind if they added more healing or even a healer specific type support role. The only other major gripe id have is aggro management. It would be nice to have tools to hold aggro to a person or individual even if everyone mitigates the damage in different ways, as it stands now many mobs/bosses just run around erratically target to target and it can get annoying having to chase them all over the place all of the time. I would rather have them be more stationary but have fun tricks to have to learn / overcome to defeat them

I think a lot of people dont like the trinity cause they played really bad games. If i was playing any of the main healing classes in daoc i sure as hell just wasnt watching health bars. Youre running around positioning trying to keep people in range while staying out of range. You should be ccing or curing it or shearing buffs or buffing or interrupting someone. I dont know how it works in WoW or any of its clones because I dont play pve games but if all your doing is watching a health bar then your game sucks.

I miss healing too and i knew they were doing away with the trinity but i thought they were going to do it in a way where everyone could spec into heals if they wanted and be weak offensively or vice versa or hybrid. Instead youre forced to dps. Pressing 1 and waiting for cooldowns is way more boring than “watching health bars” imo.

But you know whats awesome?? When your mostly ineffective heals cant save someone and then you get to res them.. Weeeeee. Terrible.

You do less dps if you spec in healing, and you can do good healing with full healing spec. But it is just like what the Mages complaint about they are not doing the nuke damage in 1 skill but rather have to use multiple skills and even attune dance to get the job done. Same if you want healing, you need to do it with a lot more effort. The increase difficulty on healing makes everyone got to have a trick or 2 in their sleeve when their support is not able to save them. Otherwise it will turns into everyone just stack dps build and use their lazy mode, stand still and smash skill as fast as possible… totally ignore the red circle around them.

Players got to dodge because nobody is able to outheal his hp without his own intention to minimize their damage taken. Thats the story behind why melee class got more damage than ranged class, because they need to dodge more or use more defensive skill.

Gw2 support is about boons and removing debuffs if you can pull off these 2 things you will do for your team so much more then just simply keep them alive you will become a dmg buffer and control buffer and a def buffer. In some ways a support in Gw2 can do so much more for there team then in any other mmorpg becuse you can see every thing that happens. Debuffs in this game are very strong to the point of near death if you have one on you too long and there are a lot of these debuff that will hit your team over and over to the point they will no longer be able to self fix.
As for putting boons these effects help your team become more find tuned for what is needed if they need to out put high dmg then you can buff there dmg out put if they need to last longer you can make EVERYONE tankly.

Get out of the dam healing box there so much more that a supporter can do for your team.

It would be nice to have assigned roles in this game, I agree.

At this point for me the game feels like a random zerg fest a lot of the time. Dungeons are so clunky and boring that it’s getting to me.

Cezton.2415:

It would be nice to have assigned roles in this game, I agree.

At this point for me the game feels like a random zerg fest a lot of the time. Dungeons are so clunky and boring that it’s getting to me.

It is the reason I suggested in other post about the new trinity idea for GW2

Not the traditional trinity one that forced into one designated role. But instead, it encourage players to use a way of communication to mix and match their build more and assigning role before or during the heat of the the combat. But somehow some trinity lover kidnapped my threads and suddenly all the trinity hater thought i am trying to fix the game by introducing the another kind of trinity to fix the roles again.

What i am suggesting is what the game already is made into, which is just a way of communication method.

Jski.6180:

Gw2 support is about boons and removing debuffs if you can pull off these 2 things you will do for your team so much more then just simply keep them alive you will become a dmg buffer and control buffer and a def buffer. In some ways a support in Gw2 can do so much more for there team then in any other mmorpg becuse you can see every thing that happens. Debuffs in this game are very strong to the point of near death if you have one on you too long and there are a lot of these debuff that will hit your team over and over to the point they will no longer be able to self fix.
As for putting boons these effects help your team become more find tuned for what is needed if they need to out put high dmg then you can buff there dmg out put if they need to last longer you can make EVERYONE tankly.

Get out of the dam healing box there so much more that a supporter can do for your team.

There is very little you actually do, if I’m on my necro for example doing a bit of WvW, I can stick on the signet that removes everyones conditions and puts them on me (assuming it actually works), I can also transfer conditions, from teammates to enemys with one of my staff skills, put out a crappy AOE heal through regen on one staff skill, if I trait for it put a small AOE heal on using the number 4 skill in death shroud and I have a couple of AOE chills & very short duration fears to support. Oh and the healing well, which again is largly useless, as people move about all the time, and even if they aren;t moving the amount it heals for is so pitiful, it is not worth staying in if they are taking damage.

However in terms of playstyle it is virtually no different, most necros use the staff in every build, in terms of impact much of it is negligable out side of very small group fights. (And exactly the same applies to my mesmer, my thief and so on)

It also (like most of the support in this game) requires very little awareness or multitasking, it is all AOE, in other games I specifically have to target people (especially healers or CC classes, who get continually focus fired).

Removing debuffs/ adding buffs is not unique to this game, nor is it any more important, in fact it is usually less so, in part because there are no crucial classes, in some other games it is absolutely crucial to remove healing debuffs, slosws, stuns, etc off healers, then after healers you usually have to look out for support / CC / off healers as they have far more impact than in GW2, which again makes it a bit more involved than the very simplistic and low impact support you get in GW2.

All GW2 has done is keep DPS, and hugely weaken support/healing, which leads to a lack of variation in playstyles.

I don’t miss it and I have been playing healer exclusively since almost 7 years and I still play a healer if I am bothered to log into the game which I have been playing. Healing has become considerably easier over the years and more forgiving. It feels a lot more like support now than previously where it was the 2D mini-game with bars – don’t say good healers didn’t need to watch them, they certainly had to in earlier years. It was because of this changes had been made.

I think the GW2 system needs some tweaks to encourage support and some sort of structure. A lot people don’t care. Things like combo fields are under-used. It’s generally a mess. I like playing support and you do notice the difference when you actually don’t just hulksmash around but actually try to balance support and offense.

Theik’s amazing water elementalist healer:
Traits:
10 air magic (Soothing Winds)
30 water magic (Cleansing Wave / Aquamancer’s Alacrity / Cleansing Water)
30 Arcana (Final Shielding / Elemental Attunement / Arcane Resurrection)

Runes / Sigils:
6 Superior Runes of Dwayna
Superior Sigil of Water

Gameplay:
Cycle between mostly water (you should be in this form the most), fire (quick switch there for might to all allies) and earth (quick switch there for protection to all allies).

I’d suggest a staff, keep dropping ice spikes onto the enemies for a 10% bonus damage for everybody in your party, while occasionally swapping around elements to quickly give some buffs to everybody. Keep your water healing spells up as much as possible and use your own heal combined with dwayna runes to quickly give everybody regen. (Especially useful if everybody gets feared, cause this will also remove fear from everybody instantly because of Cleansing Water)

Glyph of Renewal is going to be your go-to guy for quickly helping people. In large scale events, use it with earth attunement to quickly get several people up at once. Use it with air to get somebody up and out of a tricky situation. Use it with water to remind yourself that the devs still haven’t fixed the full heal it’s supposed to do. Stone attune revive can also be useful for the magnetic shield it gives in ranged-heavy fights.

You’re not going to be able to keep people up if they don’t take good care of themselves like you would be able to in other MMOs, but you are offering a lot of healing over time as well as buff/debuff utility. If your team isn’t standing in aoe damage all day long, you should have no trouble keeping everybody topped off and decently alive.

I see some people still don’t get it, but there are a lot of good posts here too. The most common suggestions being engi and ele, and I can see where both are coming from. I haven’t tried engi at all, and while I have tried an ele, since my ele is only lvl 21, I can’t say I have had the full experience — the ele might (possibly) work if it becomes tanky enough to stay near the front line, since any form of burst healing is PBAoE (I know a healing ele is tanky in SPvP, but the question is if it’s tanky enough in WvW, where there’s a lot more potential damage flying around). The engi seems more similar to my necro, which isn’t a bad thing — as I’ve said, my condition necro is definitely closer to what I want than both my guardian and a shout warrior.

@Ravenblade
You do have to pay attention to the health bars in other games, but it’s more like having them in the back of your mind than actually staring at them. If they take priority over watching the actual battle, you were doing something wrong, at least in PvP (I can’t speak of PvE).

@Daiva

Give the Mesmer a go. It’s the most dynamic of all the possible heal/support toons out there. But you won’t be able to heal before level 60-70 although.