Guild Wars 2

Dying as an elementalist 3-4 times in an instance where you never die on a warrior or guardian, only to sit there and wait for the stupid down state to let you back up. It’s not fun and it’s incredibly shallow. To this, i ask, why are there shreds of trinity-like class design yet no direct healer to balance the combat system around? Mob difficulty is illusionary and only numerical. You get pounded by a ridiculous number of mobs and it doesn’t matter how much you dodge. The systems design just feels incredibly wonky and inherently imbalanced in combat. It’s like, dying and down state is glorified in this game. Neither are fun mechanics and they don’t add any engagement whatsoever.

Why not give all classes the same survivability since there are no real, distinct combat roles for heavies vs lights vs mediums? Either that or put the healer class back in. It just feels wrong and busted that i can solo so easily on a heavy class in a game geared towards solo, but light classes are gimped. No healer class and self-heals are laughably bad and situational. It’s like the game is missing a paradigm. Since most of the content is geared towards solo play and doesn’t really support any deep, meaningful group combat situations, why not just give all classes the same survivability or cut the crap and put the monk back in?

You can’t seriously say this combat, minus the action-feel and dodge mechanic, is more fun than the first game. The difference is like night and day.

Even if there was a healer….you as an ele….wouldn’t be the tank so you’d still be dead compared with your warrior/guardian.

Not necessarily…we’d just not be as optimized as a full team, yet i wouldn’t be sitting there dying while the AI refuses to revive me in down state. Or when i repeatedly get smashed by tons of mobs because i lack the benefits of the guardian class. I mean, to me it’s just asinine the way the guardian is designed to be like a psuedo healer class, but in the process of removing direct healing, guardian becomes one of the most viable classes rather than a compliment to a well rounded team. It’s just imbalanced and stupid. I really don’t understand why they designed the numbers like this in this game. I don’t understand the benefit of not having a healer class outside of not having to wait for groups, but in most cases, that just makes the game shallow and boring, not better in any way in my opinion.

For now we just have to accept, that warriors are our overlords in dungeon PvE.
That’s a design decision and design flaw from ANet at the same time. I fear, the balance you are asking for will never be achieved.

because as soon as you allow a heal specialist, it opens up pandora’s box of the holy trinity.

Keep playing and at some point you will know elementalist has the best survivability in game, except for thieves that are exploiting the culling well.

Asumita.2174:

because as soon as you allow a heal specialist, it opens up pandora’s box of the holy trinity.

Which also opens up complex combat situations, more class specialization, room for developers to design more engaging mobs, and a deeper skill system that isn’t balanced around dodge and down-state. It also makes combat deeper and more team oriented rather than a zerg-dps race because AI would be more specialized in PvE and players would have to prioritize in PvP. Pressure and mitigation (heal / damage) mechanics would bust the door wide open for more strategic, tactical, and meaningful group combat as opposed to homogeneous combo fields and zergs of players playing ALONGSIDE each other rather than WITH each other. I really think they are building a castle on shifting sands. It was a big mistake to design the game like this in the long-run. If they don’t remedy the shallowness of the combat, i fear many players will just not care to play anymore, myself included.

One of the guys in my guild I run dungeons with regularly is an elementalist. He hardly ever goes down. I have guardians in my group who go down more than he does. That said, he builds for dungeons. He’s very good at it. And he doesn’t mind spending 3.5 silver to respec to do specific dungeons because he knows he’ll make more than that.

Just a thought.

i stopped reading when you said you see war and guards survive while your die as ele, yes a lot fo war guards do survive and a lot of ele die, but that is mainly due to mind set and/or different level of playing abbilty, ppl that are used to play tanks and thus spec defensively are generally drawn to stuff like war and guard and then spec them rather defensively too and play them like that too, where ppl used to play dps are drawn to among others more to ele and then spec for full glass canon yet never get how to play them properly (mind you i gave up on ele too, just cant figure them out either myself, so dont asm me the specifics on that) but i seen in fact guards go down in a few seconds of fight and at same fights i seen ele’s survive very well too, those are just the good ele’s ANY class including ele can spec both pure glass canon and pure bunker(tank) builds and a lot of stuff in between

This is mostly in solo situations…in group situations, it doesn’t really matter. Everyone just blindly DPS’s around and as long as you have half a brain, you shouldn’t ever go down in group content unless the mob spawns are way overtuned and usually they are, especially in personal story instances as an ele. I find that i have to be using the conjure elite to be on par with even a guardian or warrior in survivability / damage output.

It’s just not balanced and then when you group up, it’s just a homogenous zergfest with almost no difficulty, it’d be one thing if i were complaining solely about group content. I’m taking a design flaw, the lack of healer class to balance combat around along with the fact that some classes are more viable than others…and that’s where the conclusions are drawn.

I think if this game claims to have removed the trinity, they should just completely remove it and make every class just as viable. Otherwise, please add monks back in. It’s only fair. Balancing combat around dying and down state has to go.

I’ve played a variety of class, and they generally seem to be of similar survivability. some classes require more active defense then others

EDIT:

lothefallen.7081:

I think if this game claims to have removed the trinity, they should just completely remove it and make every class just as viable. Otherwise, please add monks back in. It’s only fair. Balancing combat around dying and down state has to go.

you do realize that having classes will cause people to claim differing viability, even if it doesn’t exist (my belief about gw2, BTW)

Using light armor needs to be better rewarded, currently, having light gives no pluses in skills or viability against heavy armor users. Even a warrior with a shout healing spec can heal as much as an ele and be as viable in a group. While surviving a lot more thanks to huge hp pools and heavy armor.

Let me just start out my saying that I ADORE guild wars 2, the graphics, the classes, everything, but this right here is the problem my best friend and I have with this game.

I main healers in all MMO’s and support/healer classes in all the MOBA games I play, where as my best friend loves to be a tank. There’s just something about healing and supporting a group (or being a meat shield in my friends case) that we love. I cannot seem to quench this thirst for healing in guild wars. Some people have recommend support roles for the different classes for me to try out but its just not fun, its just not enough for me, theres still too much of a DPS feel to it and I hate being DPS.

If this game did have a trinity system and allowed my friend and I to persue a legitimate roll as a tank or a healer we would never play anything but guild wars 2. However, as it stands there isn’t and because of this we just cant get into the game at all, and just end up going back to the other older MMO games.

peterpantyraider.5240:

Let me just start out my saying that I ADORE guild wars 2, the graphics, the classes, everything, but this right here is the problem my best friend and I have with this game.

I main healers in all MMO’s and support/healer classes in all the MOBA games I play, where as my best friend loves to be a tank. There’s just something about healing and supporting a group (or being a meat shield in my friends case) that we love. I cannot seem to quench this thirst for healing in guild wars. Some people have recommend support roles for the different classes for me to try out but its just not fun, its just not enough for me, theres still too much of a DPS feel to it and I hate being DPS.

If this game did have a trinity system and allowed my friend and I to persue a legitimate roll as a tank or a healer we would never play anything but guild wars 2. However, as it stands there isn’t and because of this we just cant get into the game at all, and just end up going back to the other older MMO games.

Assuming that you’re speaking in terms of PvE. Give SPvP a whirl. The numbers there are much lower and fights are actually able to be prolonged and dragged out for a while. Makes support/tanky builds feel a lot more useful.

Hm… Healing for 4000+ HP AoE in cleric gear every 5 second while having constant AoE regeneration around every phantasm and an additional 4000+ AoE healing/AoE regeneration every 10 second as well (and more but lets keep 2 skills for other uses).

But since there are no healers, please people – dont tell Mesmers they can do this. Grenth become so easy with a heal- errrr I mean non-heal-capabable-Mesmer-just-adding-pathetic-support.

The problem with implementing a dedicated healer is that you create a profession that is either entirely useless or entirely necessary. The former would be because people all have access to healing abilities so don’t need a healer. Gameplay would then be incredibly boring for a healer. The latter would be if they nerfed or removed everyone’s ability to heal themselves, but introduced a healer class. This would result in every party literally requiring a healer in order to do anything, which is sort of precisely against what GW2 is trying to do.

CrossedHorse.4261:

The problem with implementing a dedicated healer is that you create a profession that is either entirely useless or entirely necessary. The former would be because people all have access to healing abilities so don’t need a healer. Gameplay would then be incredibly boring for a healer. The latter would be if they nerfed or removed everyone’s ability to heal themselves, but introduced a healer class. This would result in every party literally requiring a healer in order to do anything, which is sort of precisely against what GW2 is trying to do.

The preferred dungeon group is 4 Warriors and a Mesmer atm.

How is that better than trinity?

Also, if you keep up with MMO history. In 2008, WoW came out with the DK class. It started at level 55, so was able to pretty much hit the previous Xpac’s content within a day. They couldn’t find alot of players to join in for dungeons at that level so, as classes that could either DPS or tank while healing their-selves; one went frost and the other 4 went unholy.

They got it done, but it was a larf and never really spoken of again.

GW2, depends on that gameplay style, except all are dps with no tank!

I know this forum is an echo-chamber and this 5 month old necropost will be deleted within 5 minutes but logic is logic.

Primernova.5791:

CrossedHorse.4261:

The problem with implementing a dedicated healer is that you create a profession that is either entirely useless or entirely necessary. The former would be because people all have access to healing abilities so don’t need a healer. Gameplay would then be incredibly boring for a healer. The latter would be if they nerfed or removed everyone’s ability to heal themselves, but introduced a healer class. This would result in every party literally requiring a healer in order to do anything, which is sort of precisely against what GW2 is trying to do.

The preferred dungeon group is 4 Warriors and a Mesmer atm.

How is that better than trinity?

Also, if you keep up with MMO history. In 2008, WoW came out with the DK class. It started at level 55, so was able to pretty much hit the previous Xpac’s content within a day. They couldn’t find alot of players to join in for dungeons at that level so, as classes that could either DPS or tank while healing their-selves; one went frost and the other 4 went unholy.

They got it done, but it was a larf and never really spoken of again.

GW2, depends on that gameplay style, except all are dps with no tank!

I know this forum is an echo-chamber and this 5 month old necropost will be deleted within 5 minutes but logic is logic.

I’m not saying it’s BETTER per se, I’m just saying it’s something they didn’t want to do. The decision was made at a level where I feel that they can’t change it now if they want to stay true to their original beliefs surrounding the trinity, and also because to change it now would involve re-building the entire profession system from the ground up to accommodate a dedicated healer profession, which they won’t do.

I, personally, prefer that there isn’t a dedicated healer.

Posting in a “trinity is the only way to have deep combat” thread. By the way, elementalists are pretty survivable.

Holy batman necro! Lol I got fooled.

This thread is 5 months old. The discussion on it stopped long ago. Let it die.

~Terraa

Ele, dieing? Are you zerker staff? I really don’t get it.

Unless you build to wipe you should have no issues, warrior can take far less of a beating than a good ele with how much burst heal they got. Ele can also group heal fairly well, guardian can too, and put a thief with anyone with access to a water field and you got massive healing. The need for a healer only class is absent.

Support and control builds NEED to be a necessity in this game. If they are never necessary, players will never pick them because dps ends battles faster, and monsters will never become more interesting for the sake of being doable in all-dps parties.

GW2 has a trinity: Damage, control, support. All of them sould be required in hard content, if the game ever wants to have better combat depth.

Make them necessary, and the current pve meta will have a far bigger diversity of builds. Not only support and control builds, but dps builds that require support or control to be any good.

Posting in this thread simply because I really don’t like that they took out the healer class. I do like trying to find new support builds in gw2 atm with different professions; but, I’ve got to agree with the peterpantyrider..(lol) the dedicated healer role is something I play in pretty much any game I can, and while there are various avenues to try out (still trying them out!) so far I haven’t found one to properly fill the gap left when my favorite role was taken from a game I’ve loved from the start of Prophecies.

I don’t see why they took it out, like someone else pointed out it just left room for a different meta.. everything gets monotone after a while, but that’s why it’s up to the player to really get into a char and come up with something new. Maybe not the best? but close, and fun/fitting to a personal playstyle is always a good time. If you have healers sure, you’re probably gonna see them a lot… but that’s not to say they can’t be dealt with… and since all the classes have self-heals now (they kinda had them in gw1 tbh) I don’t think having a dedicated healer would be that much of a deal. Would just kinda let people who want to play a dedicated healer class, say.. people who loved playing one in gw1.. the ability to play in this game what they loved playing in the past.

Why take out possible play-styles.. to encourage versatility?

R.I.P the healers hopefully one day you will return to us.

(the topic is 7 days old, but it was first one in a google search >_> dun hate meh)

When I first learned that heavy classes get more defence than medium and light I thought to myself “surely this will be balanced out by medium and light having more dodges or their dodges regenerating faster than heavy’s”.

Yet no such thing, I really scratch my head why heavies get so much more armour when they can also range, heal etc…….makes no sense to me.

Perhaps light classes should get 4 dodges and medium 3 or some such system to balance all this out?