Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to bring up this age old but important discussion.

Guildwars 2 is ambitious in its attempts to get rid of the holy trinity of tank/dps/heal roles. However, roles are still important. Everyone in a party has to have a purpose or something that they can bring to the table that no one else can do.

I think this is where the major weaknesses of the Guildwars 2 class dynamics start to rear their ugly heads.

When you have a system in which everyone can do everything. Everyone can support, everyone can self heal, everyone can deal damage… the party dynamic has shifted from the team being reliant on each other to individual performance.

In a party composition where DPS can only deal damage, the tank can only absorb damage, and the healer can only heal damage and conditions; the team becomes glued together because of interdependence.

In Gw2 there is no interdependence. I don’t need another class supporting me to be effective. I can dodge out of damage, I can heal myself, I can do my own damage.

So what classes are important? Obviously the classes that do everything the best with the least effort.

The warrior deals much more damage than any other class. No tank is needed, everyone can dodge. Why pick anything else other than a warrior to deal damage?

A guardian brings the most support, reflects, and healing with the least amount of effort and gives the group every boon except one (quickness) in the game reliably. Why use any other support other than a guardian?

The mesmer brings the one thing a guardian does not to the table. Quickness through timewarp. This is the only reason you bring them, otherwise you put another guardian in that spot. Why bring anything else?

A thief lets us skip stuff. So we swap to one temporarily, but then swap back to our guardian/mez/wars for the rest of the dungeon.

So where does that leave all the other classes? Where are their purposes?

So let me ask some simple questions:

Does an engineer offer as much healing and support as a guardian? Does an engineer out damage a warrior? Does an engineer bring group reflects and long term quickness to or a comparable means of damage amplification to the group?

Ask the same for rangers, for eles, for necromancers.

Then we have control. Who needs to control mobs when they are dead? Why bother trying to CC when defiance ruins it?

So what are the purpose of the other classes? What metrics make them important? What do they bring to the table that should make me choose any other class other than the new trinity that the game meta has defined?

Necro and Engi can spread teh plague.

Ele can feel important via attunement dance.

Rangers feed loot bags.

Warrior, Mesmer and Guardian is all you need.

But when you get bored of these becoming too repetitive, and want to have some fun, you play the weaker classes.

That’s why the only classes I bothered leveling to 80 again are warrior, guardian and mesmer. The second generation 80s are for living story crap and low-bie dungeons when I feel like it. The first generation are for fractals and high-end dungeons. Oh, and I run completely different builds on the 2nd generation to keep it interesting.

first of all, you say swiftness but I think you mean quickness, better correct that so you don`t sound like a noob (btw, guardian can also give 10 secs of quickness)

second, you`re talking like pve dungeons are the only thing in the game, there are many more parts of this game where classes do different things

but talking about dungeons: you don`t need just warr,guard,mesm

what you actually need is:
- 25 might
- 25 vulnerability on bosses
- fury
- quickness
- (sometimes) reflects, stability, boon stealing

talking about the classes u said are useless:
- ele can bring the 25 might + fury (+ other buffs + dmg)
- engi, necro can bring the 25 vulnerability (+ other buffs + dmg)
- ranger, thief can bring massive dps on bosses only if the rest of the roles are covered (+ other buffs)

now, if ppl playing these classes don`t know how to do their job, it`s another thing

and talking about warrior dps, a good one does more than DOUBLE the damage a noob warrior does, so when a dungeon run is bad, blame the ppl, not the classes

KICKER.3874:

first of all, you say swiftness but I think you mean quickness, better correct that so you don`t sound like a noob (btw, guardian can also give 10 secs of quickness)

second, you`re talking like pve dungeons are the only thing in the game, there are many more parts of this game where classes do different things

but talking about dungeons: you don`t need just warr,guard,mesm

what you actually need is:
- 25 might
- 25 vulnerability on bosses
- fury
- quickness
- (sometimes) reflects, stability, boon stealing

talking about the classes u said are useless:
- ele can bring the 25 might + fury (+ other buffs + dmg)
- engi, necro can bring the 25 vulnerability (+ other buffs + dmg)
- ranger, thief can bring massive dps on bosses only if the rest of the roles are covered (+ other buffs)

now, if ppl playing these classes don`t know how to do their job, it`s another thing

and talking about warrior dps, a good one does more than DOUBLE the damage a noob warrior does, so when a dungeon run is bad, blame the ppl, not the classes

Except for the part warrior and guardian alone already stack 25 might and vuln and do more damage than the other classes anyways.

The actual setup is 1 conjure ele, 1-2 warriors, 1 guardian, 1 mesmer or thief. Ranger>Engineer>Necro in the order of weaker classes. Put ele at the bottom with necro if he’s not running conjure because ele do garbage damage without conjure weapons.

Warrior DPS > stacks of vulnerability/might anyway… just bring another GS warrior and it’s curtains.

Sure other classes can be useful, but people don’t care about useful… people want the dungeon finished ASAP.

Unshakeable and Defiant are stupid mechanics.

Remove these and increase the difficulty to compensate – this doesn’t mean add an extra 500,000 hit points.

If ANet had stuck with their plan to make dungeons hard enough to actually require the teamwork that speed runners use, there would be a lot less of these “no roles” posts. However, there would likely be a lot more dungeons are too hard posts.

Zenith.7301:

KICKER.3874:

first of all, you say swiftness but I think you mean quickness, better correct that so you don`t sound like a noob (btw, guardian can also give 10 secs of quickness)

second, you`re talking like pve dungeons are the only thing in the game, there are many more parts of this game where classes do different things

but talking about dungeons: you don`t need just warr,guard,mesm

what you actually need is:
- 25 might
- 25 vulnerability on bosses
- fury
- quickness
- (sometimes) reflects, stability, boon stealing

talking about the classes u said are useless:
- ele can bring the 25 might + fury (+ other buffs + dmg)
- engi, necro can bring the 25 vulnerability (+ other buffs + dmg)
- ranger, thief can bring massive dps on bosses only if the rest of the roles are covered (+ other buffs)

now, if ppl playing these classes don`t know how to do their job, it`s another thing

and talking about warrior dps, a good one does more than DOUBLE the damage a noob warrior does, so when a dungeon run is bad, blame the ppl, not the classes

Except for the part warrior and guardian alone already stack 25 might and vuln and do more damage than the other classes anyways.

The actual setup is 1 conjure ele, 1-2 warriors, 1 guardian, 1 mesmer or thief. Ranger>Engineer>Necro in the order of weaker classes. Put ele at the bottom with necro if he’s not running conjure because ele do garbage damage without conjure weapons.

as usual, ppl quoting me without having a kittening clue what they`re talking about

blasting might + fury on ele has nothing to do with what utility skills u pick, u can put down fiery gs and still do your might + fury job (scepter/dagger)

warriors don`t do more dmg than other classes ANYWAY, a noob GS auto-attacking warrior will do less dmg than a minion necro

and putting mesmer as a “maybe” in an “actual setup” ? you`re just bad

Avigrus.2871:

Warrior DPS > stacks of vulnerability/might anyway… just bring another GS warrior and it’s curtains.

Sure other classes can be useful, but people don’t care about useful… people want the dungeon finished ASAP.

Unshakeable and Defiant are stupid mechanics.

Remove these and increase the difficulty to compensate – this doesn’t mean add an extra 500,000 hit points.

man, u absolutely need 25 might and 25 vuln to finish the dungeon fast

defiant is needed so you don`t just stunlock bosses; do you know you take away 1 stack of it when u cc ? good groups peel those off early and leave him with no defiant to interrupt a big attack, that`s the whole point of it; dungeon bosses have like 5 defiant stacks, not hard to do

lordhelmos.7623:

The warrior deals much more damage than any other class. No tank is needed, everyone can dodge. Why pick anything else other than a warrior to deal damage?

This is not really true. When soloing, maybe true since we can self-stack might/fury so quickly and sustain it for a long time. But in group settings we just provide boons so that others can DPS better. This includes banners and of course our measly 3 stacks of might (thats really all it is). Guards and eles stack more might than us tbh. It is simply because we are able to stack more personal might/fury (SoR) that our dps is higher. In an ideal setting where all classes in the group had access to 25 might/fury, they’d all do roughly the same dmg. Heres a well-thought out post to support this claim (its from the dude I used to get my build advice from, so u can trust him):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Arah-is-easy-Do-not-be-afraid-to-do-them/first#post3331966

lordhelmos.7623:

A guardian brings the most support, reflects, and healing with the least amount of effort and gives the group every boon except one (swiftness) in the game reliably. Why use any other support other than a guardian?

The mesmer brings the one thing a guardian does not to the table. Swiftness through timewarp. This is the only reason you bring them, otherwise you put another guardian in that spot. Why bring anything else?

I think you meant partywise quickness, cause both wars/guards can provide partywide swiftness. And both wars/thieves are capable of self-induced quickness. But yes, well-timed TW+Feedback are two of the hallmarks of a good mesmer. Though it does suck when you see so many of them misuse it or dont use them at all, when it could be useful.

lordhelmos.7623:

A thief lets us skip stuff. So we swap to one temporarily, but then swap back to our guardian/mez/wars for the rest of the dungeon.

Thieves have their uses. I used to hate hate fighting a thief one-on-one in WvW when I was starting out but thats another story. Specifically for CM, their SR is probably most useful in that dung, as well as Arah/TA where trash runs are prominent. There not bad for COF P1 either. When I used to farm it with a zerk group (mes/war/thief) we had a thief with a literally half-second gate time. She used to output more dmg than any of the 3 wars in our group.

lordhelmos.7623:

So where does that leave all the other classes? Where are their purposes?

Eles are quite useful for there conjured weps, especially itheir FGS and ice bows for AC burrows. They are also useful for staff clearing blossom fields in TA and generally their DPS is top-notch from what I’ve heard. Their mobility is also on-par or succeeds that of warriors.

Anybody that thinks Necromancers can’t bring anything unique and helpful to a party haven’t done a fractal with me.

Some necromancers just aren’t aware of how to use an effective build. But that can apply to any class. I’m sure there are rubbish warrior builds too.

As a condition/bursting hybrid Necromancer I can keep over 20 stacks of vulnerability active on one target, have over 20 stacks of bleeds on that target ticking for 2000 bleed damage per tick, chill and cripple the boss if I need to slow it down and burst over 15,000 damage in a matter of seconds, excluding the condition damage with axe 2 and stay alive with death shroud using AOE life transfer, healing my allies and damaging 5 mobs and then putting torment on 5 mobs.

Also I think that hybrid necromancers are one of the only class builds that can fully benefit from full celestial gear. Using condition damage, power, precision, critical damage, toughness, vitality and even healing power to strengthen life transfer to heal more for your team.

IndigoSundown.5419:

If ANet had stuck with their plan to make dungeons hard enough to actually require the teamwork that speed runners use, there would be a lot less of these “no roles” posts. However, there would likely be a lot more dungeons are too hard posts.

True, I also find it ironic. If they made the dungeons harder, require more teamwork and varied builds, the elite dungeon community would just go about their usual business of speed running. But then we’ll get an influx of “too hard” threads from the casual runners.

I will get flamed to Death but….

MOST speedrunners can t even complete a dungeon with 2-3 pugs…..

Speedruns are about rewards or grinding.

It has nothing to do with skill.
If a player wants a challenge there are plenty way…..but they are often unrewarding.

And currently most speedrun parties varies along:
WWWWW
or
WWWWG

For difficult content

WWWGG with at least one alt thief.

Mesmer became obsolete (expecially due to iwarden bug)….and with the 10 dec war will have more invul uptime with less need of other professions

NB nowaday 90% dungeon players got a warrior and do speedruns…..you can say every profession is good, but LFG tool will disagree.
And yet we see warrior PVE buffs.

Try to run lvl41 dregde fractals with all rangers then you’ll know what’s the importance of each and every class. And let’s see if you can out heal dmg or dodge all attacks by your own… if you know how to play your profession then you should know what your profession can or can’t do and that you need other profession to support you…

Mistlock instabilities are just a poor example.

They are poorly balanced they just make some profession/equip mandatory and other useless depending on the level.

Try level 49-50 and you get back to the WWWGG ubereasy setup

You forgot wvw. I find ele very useful there, for providing swiftness to an entire zerg (blast guys blast!), fire fields for might, cc and heals on the zerg, and destroying siege that others can’t get to. Dungeon-wise, ele stacks might and conjured weapons.

There’s a question of do you really need class-specific roles? There’s a lot of games which are a lot of fun to play which doesn’t have roles, Monster Hunter being my prime example. That sense of independence feels great sometimes, because you’re just having fun with your friends, not relying on them.

There’s a certain joy in having a role but it also comes with a lot of pain from the dependence it causes. In a traditional MMO, if the healer or tank dies, it’s party wipe. No matter how well you did your role, if someone else screwed their’s up, tough luck. It’s like how it is in the real world but it’s frustrating.

Also, do you need class-specific roles to have roles? Anet has introduced a lot of content which gives out roles which are not class or even player specific. Take Clockheart for example. There’s a guy who positions and ‘tanks’ the boss, and someone else who lures the holos, most classes can do either.

It can also gives fights an element of chaos which makes things unpredictable and exciting. For example, when you fight Lupi, and most of the party wipes. He suddenly turns on you. Your role now is to kite and lure him as far as possible away from the person resing so the party doesn’t wipe. A traditional trinity can’t provide that because fights are scripted and roles are set in stone.

Furthermore, there’s just a lot of concepts which can’t be realised in a trinity setup. Take the Thermanova boss for example. That fight would have never been possible in a trinity set up because then there’s no point in having a healer or a tank.

By getting rid of class specificness, you open a lot of new doors.

I think the OP pretty much nailed the problems that the game’s PVE currently suffers from. That is why you’re seeing so many warrior/guardian/mesmer groups. The lack of dependence between the classes, has split the game into individuals, where in some abilities are better than others. If Anet really wanted to go in this direction, they should have given all classes equal access to these things…. but that kind of defeats the purpose of having different classes.

And yes Defiant is stupid.

CC is pretty broken in PVE, that is correct. Maybe the devs think it is only intended as an interrupt, but I always thought it was meant to be a defensive skill to keep the enemy at bay. If it really is meant to be just an interrupt, then the bosses would first need to have clearer tells, and attacks that require this mechanic. At least in GW1 there were bosses where you absolutely needed to interrupt certain skills, or you would lose the fight. Not so in GW2. If it is intended as a defensive skill, then we should be able to use it on bosses when we need it, and it should last longer than 1 second. Because 1 second of fear is not going to put any noteworthy distance between me and the boss with his permanent speed boost.

Debuffing is also pretty broken in PVE. If at any time I encounter an enemy in PVE that uses buffs (or boons, what ever you want to call them) removing them is usually a waste of time, since the effects are hardly noticeable, and he instantly replenishes the boons the moment you remove them. The one boon that you’d actually want to remove, Defiant, can’t be removed (unless you slowly peel down all the stacks with CC skills).

Xae Isareth.1364:

By getting rid of class specificness, you open a lot of new doors.

Not really. By removing roles you close all doors that do not carry the highest relative advantage. You certainly could do any of those tasks listed with nearly any class. But there is always one class that is better than any others. So by not using that class, you are only hurting the team in terms of making things more difficult or more time consuming than they need to be.

The idea of removing class roles was an interesting one. But at the end of the day, every option needs to have a relative advantage in some crucial field to justify it’s existence. If you consider the game as a whole, I would say that this is working fairly well in general. But if you are only looking at PvE dungeons/FotM, then not going with a fairly strictly defined optimal lineup means that you are running at a significant disadvantage. And this is a very bad situation for a game to be in.

RedShipRaider.9560:

Xae Isareth.1364:

By getting rid of class specificness, you open a lot of new doors.

Not really. By removing roles you close all doors that do not carry the highest relative advantage. You certainly could do any of those tasks listed with nearly any class. But there is always one class that is better than any others. So by not using that class, you are only hurting the team in terms of making things more difficult or more time consuming than they need to be.

The idea of removing class roles was an interesting one. But at the end of the day, every option needs to have a relative advantage in some crucial field to justify it’s existence. If you consider the game as a whole, I would say that this is working fairly well in general. But if you are only looking at PvE dungeons/FotM, then not going with a fairly strictly defined optimal lineup means that you are running at a significant disadvantage. And this is a very bad situation for a game to be in.

Imbalance between classes has always existed in games. By having more than one class designed for a certain purpose in a MMO, you will eventually have imbalance unless you place huge amounts of restrictions on each class and watch them very, very carefully, and thus reducing the depth of the game (like FF14, which still ended up being very imbalanced).

The perfect extreme example of this is TSW. You got 525 abilities between 9 weapon types which you can use in any way you want. What resulted was some weapons are just better at others and there are some very overpowered builds because simply the devs can’t balance everything when it gets that complex. But you want that complexity, it keeps the game interesting.

Imbalance isn’t a problem solved by having roles.

Also, I don’t really see why something needs an advantage. That restricts options. Why can’t I DPS as a paladin or heal as a necromancer? What’s wrong with that?

RedShipRaider.9560:

Xae Isareth.1364:

By getting rid of class specificness, you open a lot of new doors.

Not really. By removing roles you close all doors that do not carry the highest relative advantage. You certainly could do any of those tasks listed with nearly any class. But there is always one class that is better than any others. So by not using that class, you are only hurting the team in terms of making things more difficult or more time consuming than they need to be.

The idea of removing class roles was an interesting one. But at the end of the day, every option needs to have a relative advantage in some crucial field to justify it’s existence. If you consider the game as a whole, I would say that this is working fairly well in general. But if you are only looking at PvE dungeons/FotM, then not going with a fairly strictly defined optimal lineup means that you are running at a significant disadvantage. And this is a very bad situation for a game to be in.

This is what I was trying to convey. Red hit the nail right on the head.

The purpose of having “classes” is to promote uniqueness. While roles do not have to be tank/dps/healing, roles of some type DO need to exist to justify the existence of having different classes. Being a different class means that that “class” should bring something totally unique and valuable to the group or it is not worth playing.

The problem with Guildwars may not be necessarily roles but instead the following, which I will put in bold so everyone can see:

Certain classes in Guildwars do multiple functions in a party too well that they force other classes to live in their shadow. The perfect example is a guardian, which brings huge amounts of damage mitigation, damage increase support, and healing to a group. The guardian is so superior at all these roles, they absorb the usefulness and utility of other classes to the point of saying why bring anything else other than a guardian to do these things?

Isn’t the above the very definition of game imbalance? The question is, why has this allowed to go on for so long? Why are these important functions being spread out among multiple classes or why are shunned classes at least not brought up to this level of functionality?

^ I don’t get this.

Why can’t every class do every role if they’ve built for it? Why can’t I just choose my class as a playstyle rather than what the game will dictate that I do? I know that’s how a job works irl, but isn’t the whole point of fantasy to create a world that’s different to the real one?

Except warriors do not deal the highest damage in a group. They come after Eles and thieves and according to some even guardians.

Also – if you feel some classes are underplayed – some suggestions how to make them more popular would be good. But the bottom line is this :

No matter how you balance things – there will always be those classes that give the most reward ( bring a lot to the party ) for the least amount of effort ( are easy to play and even inexperienced players can do right with them) . They will ALWAYS be the go-to popular choice.

That’s why we have the warrior misconception – warrior is highest DPS in a dungeon. He is not. A perfectly played dps warrior will never outmatch a perfectly played DPS thief. But the problem is that players want something fun and easy to play. You rarely see perfectly played dps thieves because in order to play one effectively you need to be much more agile and micro-oriented.
So people prefer to deal LESS damage but have an easier time.

This will happen regardless of what classes are buffed or nerfed. Just take the statement above and replace " warrior " with x class and " thief " with another. It is unchangeable.

Also – personally I feel guardians are the go-to PVE class now. There’s no content in the game that cannot be EASILY completed by a 5 x guardian party. That cannot be said to be true by any other class.
Any other 5x class combo will eventually have trouble somewhere. Not so with the guards. Some can support – some can DPS – and overall they’ll have a supporty might-stacking projectile reflecting boon bombing party of awesome and death that will raze all content.

Mesmer: 1 mesmer for group stealth, or time warp in pve.
Warrior: As many warriors as possible. Knocksdown everything in the pile.
Guardian: As many guardians as possible. Stacks might and Save Yourself on the warriors.
Elementalist: Kills everything in the pile for the warriors and guardians using meteor+tornado. Avoid stacking too many of these lest 1 die and rally the entire zerg they basically just killed by themselves anyway.

There are other classes in the game, but theyre pointless and bad in terms of group play.

lordhelmos.7623:

The problem with Guildwars may not be necessarily roles but instead the following, which I will put in bold so everyone can see:

Certain classes in Guildwars do multiple functions in a party too well that they force other classes to live in their shadow. The perfect example is a guardian, which brings huge amounts of damage mitigation, damage increase support, and healing to a group. The guardian is so superior at all these roles, they absorb the usefulness and utility of other classes to the point of saying why bring anything else other than a guardian to do these things?

Quoted because it needs to be quoted.

Other games address group roles by making sure every class brings something unique and powerful to a group. Anet addresses group roles by giving all support functions to one class rendering most other classes irrelevant. The sooner Save Yourself is gutted, the better for GW2.

How the heck is Save Yourselves the ultimate group support skill? All it does for other members is take away their condis and gives them to you. Only you get all the buffs and I’d trade it for Warrior’s Signet of Rage anyday.

How would you gut that further anyways? Make it not give boons anymore?

Imagine a game where buffs were limited to people in your party to encourage grouping and disincentivize zerging. a game without commander tags.

where ele’s brought speed, rangers brought regen, guardians brought protection, engineers brought a wild card.
imagine a game where thieves could perma stealth and scout like bosses, ninja keeps, but couldnt restealth more than once in combat.
imagine a game where warriors did less damage because they had the most hp and armor.

There would be a reason to have every class in the group, and itd be a better place.
#lookingforward2camelotunchained.

My perfect game would be I can do anything as any class.

I can have a guardian that deals crazy damage.
I can be a necro that heals and buffs the party.
I can be a greatsword-wielding elementalist.
I can be anything I want to be.

Sounds better than ‘you are a white mage, and you shall only heal’ to me.

Xae Isareth.1364:

How the heck is Save Yourselves the ultimate group support skill? All it does for other members is take away their condis and gives them to you. Only you get all the buffs and I’d trade it for Warrior’s Signet of Rage anyday.

How would you gut that further anyways? Make it not give boons anymore?

If you have a group thats heavy on guardians, you basically have a group that has every single boon up on the melee line. That means other classes add nothing (in terms of boons), because the guardians (who make up the majority of the group) dont need them.

Raven.9603:

Xae Isareth.1364:

How the heck is Save Yourselves the ultimate group support skill? All it does for other members is take away their condis and gives them to you. Only you get all the buffs and I’d trade it for Warrior’s Signet of Rage anyday.

How would you gut that further anyways? Make it not give boons anymore?

If you have a group thats heavy on guardians, you basically have a group that has every single boon up on the melee line. That means other classes add nothing (in terms of boons), because the guardians (who make up the majority of the group) dont need them.

Umm, SY can only be used every 48 seconds even if you trait shouts. That’s those boons having only 1/5 uptime. Not mentioning that a lot of the boons like Retaliation are useless in PvE or are only very situational. You can tell that this isn’t exactly broken by the fact that you don’t have many 4-5 guardian groups.

Heck, why aren’t you complaining about Warrior’s Rage Signet? Thats Fury, Swiftness, and Might, the game’s 3 best offensive boons, on 1/2 uptime.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Umm, SY can only be used every 48 seconds even if you trait shouts. That’s those boons having only 1/5 uptime. .

many guardians run a large amount of boon duration specifically for synergy with this trait, putting them at about 40% uptime. my comments are largely related to wvw group composition, as is apparent by the language.

Raven.9603:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Umm, SY can only be used every 48 seconds even if you trait shouts. That’s those boons having only 1/5 uptime. .

many guardians run a large amount of boon duration specifically for synergy with this trait, putting them at about 40% uptime. my comments are largely related to wvw group composition, as is apparent by the language.

I was talking about PvE, because when would you have a group composed almost entirely of Guardians in WvW normally? Even in organised guild runs, I’ve never seen one because simply not everyone plays Guardians.

Running boon duration loses you a lot of damage/defence/HP. I’ve very rarely found many Guardians these days running boon duration runes in PvE. I don’t run it anymore because there’s always better choices for what you want to do.

Also, you nee dot mind that, especially in large-scale combat, using SY has a good chance of screwing you over.

Just looking at the amount of misinformation in the OP, his opinion is completely null.

Warrior absolutely does not bring the highest DPS as several people have already correctly stated. In situations where a fiery greatsword can be used, and elementalist will deal the highest single target and aoe damage. In situations where it cannot, an elementalist will still deal the highest aoe damage, while a thief will bring the highest single target damage. Then even after that every class is extremely close to warrior or slightly better than warrior. To say a warrior deals much more damage than anything is completely wrong.

On top of that there is one more very, very important fact that needs to be known. The difference between an optimized berserker/scholar rune/ruby orb build and a build that uses knights or soldiers or some other garbage is massive. I can absolutely guarantee beyond any doubt that my DPS based necromancer will far outdamage a knight wearing warrior by a significant margin. It’s not even close. Also before anyone goes “hurr durr”, yes I will live longer too because unlike most people that use garbage builds, I can dodge.

Guardian is not the best at reflects, traited mesmer is.

Before passing judgement on classes you need to learn how to play them, or actually play them first.

Every single class has a use somewhere in PvE where they offer something better than another class. I used to say the only class that was useless was necromnacer, but then I found out how incredibly awesome weakness is in upper level fractals. Doing fractals at high levels with a necromancer is so much easier than doing it without one.

Rangers, aside from having high damage themselves, also provide spotter and frost spirit for a significant boost to the party’s DPS. 1 ranger and 1 warrior is way better than 2 warriors.

Elementalists have the highest DPS in the game, they are the best might stackers in the game and have extreme versatility for every situation.

Engineers provide the best vulnerability stacking for berserker based builds (I know a condi based necro can stack more, but condi builds are not good), have by far the highest ranged damage, can provide might stacking and can even provide more healing to the party than you probably think.

If they hadn’t used Defiant on every single threatening creature in the game, and allowed for any form of crowd control to be useful in PvE, there might be some more variety. Had they made encounters that REQUIRE proper crowd control, there would certainly be more variety, and it would likely be more fun as well.

Right now, the entire game is just a DPS race. Unfortunately, in PvE, the “berserker or nothing” people are right. They shouldn’t be, and this is a immense flaw in the game design, but they are.

Xae Isareth.1364:

RedShipRaider.9560:

Xae Isareth.1364:

By getting rid of class specificness, you open a lot of new doors.

Not really. By removing roles you close all doors that do not carry the highest relative advantage. You certainly could do any of those tasks listed with nearly any class. But there is always one class that is better than any others. So by not using that class, you are only hurting the team in terms of making things more difficult or more time consuming than they need to be.

The idea of removing class roles was an interesting one. But at the end of the day, every option needs to have a relative advantage in some crucial field to justify it’s existence. If you consider the game as a whole, I would say that this is working fairly well in general. But if you are only looking at PvE dungeons/FotM, then not going with a fairly strictly defined optimal lineup means that you are running at a significant disadvantage. And this is a very bad situation for a game to be in.

Imbalance between classes has always existed in games. By having more than one class designed for a certain purpose in a MMO, you will eventually have imbalance unless you place huge amounts of restrictions on each class and watch them very, very carefully, and thus reducing the depth of the game (like FF14, which still ended up being very imbalanced).

The perfect extreme example of this is TSW. You got 525 abilities between 9 weapon types which you can use in any way you want. What resulted was some weapons are just better at others and there are some very overpowered builds because simply the devs can’t balance everything when it gets that complex. But you want that complexity, it keeps the game interesting.

Imbalance isn’t a problem solved by having roles.

Also, I don’t really see why something needs an advantage. That restricts options. Why can’t I DPS as a paladin or heal as a necromancer? What’s wrong with that?

Agree. I remember when in WoW there were times when healing wave shamans were the best healers, hunters got kitten jokes about their pets doing more dmg than them in raids, the LK world first raid group included a single rogue( remember this cuz of the grenade bug) and overall classes being excluded in world first races for simply not being optimal. Haven’t kept up on WoW development so sorry if I’m wrong but point is that these things exist(ed?) for years after the game came out and gw2 is just starting to explore a combat model without trinity, which as it seems has the same problems as the trinity.

Still have no clue why people think Warrior are best DPS. They are mid-tier. Ele is the highest, followed by a Thief. I’m fairly confident a Ranger and Engi slightly out DPS Warriors too.

A Warrior is there for Disc & Strength banners. Once those are taken by one Warrior, a second is a slot of lost potential.

Raven.9603:

Imagine a game where buffs were limited to people in your party to encourage grouping and disincentivize zerging. a game without commander tags.

where ele’s brought speed, rangers brought regen, guardians brought protection, engineers brought a wild card.
imagine a game where thieves could perma stealth and scout like bosses, ninja keeps, but couldnt restealth more than once in combat.
imagine a game where warriors did less damage because they had the most hp and armor.

There would be a reason to have every class in the group, and itd be a better place.
#lookingforward2camelotunchained.

1. Terrible idea limiting certain boons to certain professions.
2. Make the most gimmicky mechanic in the game even more gimmicky. Because at least now we can counter stealth with the fact that they’re not able to have 100% uptime.
3.Your warrior suggestion is either a joke OR a failed troll attempt. Warriors have the highest HP in the game. Guardians SHARE the same armor. And warriors need both these things because : they do not have a gimmick mechanic ( teleports/ stealth/ clones) or access to protection and whatnot.
In a fight a warrior cannot mitigate damage as well as other classes do. We can’t stealth up and avoid it, drop prot or retaliation , we can’t blind others. All we can do is eat up that damage.
Please next time before you post take a minute to think about what you’re actually posting.

stale.9785:

If they hadn’t used Defiant on every single threatening creature in the game, and allowed for any form of crowd control to be useful in PvE, there might be some more variety. Had they made encounters that REQUIRE proper crowd control, there would certainly be more variety, and it would likely be more fun as well.

Right now, the entire game is just a DPS race. Unfortunately, in PvE, the “berserker or nothing” people are right. They shouldn’t be, and this is a immense flaw in the game design, but they are.

Except what you fail to see is that the majority of people do NOT wear beserker.
Most pugs don’t run it – open world people don’t run it. A very small portion of the player base uses full zerker. Why? Because it isn’t easy. It requires skill and coordination – which is something you would know if you ran it.
You can’t zerker if you’re bad. You can’t zerker if the people around you are bad ( which is most pugs) so no. The game is not flawed.

Zerker gear rewards the upper tier of players by offering rewards faster. In exchange these players have developed better in-game skills and are actually playing on a different level than their cleric or giver wearing peers.

Also – as a fun fact – i’ve done HUNDREDS of dungeon runs and I’ll encounter another full zerker in maybe 20 people or so. I just ask what they wear . Every 20 people ( give or take ) you have someone going all out zerker. They are usually high AP players that know what they are doing.

Harper – I do run with full zerker. There’s literally no reason not to, in dungeons or world boss/general PvE.

Once you’ve done the encounter a time or two, and know what to dodge – that becomes it – your strategy. DPS, dodge when needed. It works, and it works well. It’s incredibly boring though.

I’d LOVE to see an encounter where we NEEDED eles or rangers for snares, plus some condition damage in addition to the DPS race that exists now. It doesn’t exist in-game. Even fractals, so far as I’ve bothered, doesn’t require anything else (could be wrong about this post 20, but I don’t enjoy them, and can’t be bothered running them to get gear to survive agony to be able to do.. fractals.)

The limiting factor isn’t just that going full berserker is faster – it’s only faster because there is absolutely nothing else required. You don’t need massive area control, nor large amounts of poison. The enemies are HP bags with 1-shot mechanics. Attack-attack-attack-dodge-attack-attack-dodge – repeat. Every encounter.

It always drives me nuts, the sheer potential of the combat system, and how very little has been done with it.

stale.9785:

Harper – I do run with full zerker. There’s literally no reason not to, in dungeons or world boss/general PvE.

Once you’ve done the encounter a time or two, and know what to dodge – that becomes it – your strategy. DPS, dodge when needed. It works, and it works well. It’s incredibly boring though.

You are sadly misinformed.
1)The majority of world bosses as treated as objects in game and thus do not take critical damage. So – since you can’t crit them PVT gear is optimal for world bosses and Tetquatl.

2)The majority of dungeons that are actually played. Because besides COF P1/P2 + AC 1/3 and SE 1/3 there are other dungeons out there. Some of them break zerker groups in half because of the way they play out. And that’s why people don’t do them.

It isn’t that the content that doesn’t favor zerker isn’t there – it is – but nobody will play it.

stale.9785:

I’d LOVE to see an encounter where we NEEDED eles or rangers for snares, plus some condition damage in addition to the DPS race that exists now. It doesn’t exist in-game. Even fractals, so far as I’ve bothered, doesn’t require anything else (could be wrong about this post 20, but I don’t enjoy them, and can’t be bothered running them to get gear to survive agony to be able to do.. fractals.)

You have those. You have encounters in fractals and dungeons that require reflects and ports and stealth and whatnot. Condition damage is and will always be good as long as you don’t have more than 1 person doing it. A necro is always welcome.
Run high level fractals – you’ll see that every class has a place where it is really useful.
-1500 range for rangers and engis ; pulls and ports for mesmer ; blocks and reflects for guard ; skips with invis for thief – almost every class brings something really useful for that.

stale.9785:

the limiting factor isn’t just that going full berserker is faster – it’s only faster because there is absolutely nothing else required. You don’t need massive area control, nor large amounts of poison. The enemies are HP bags with 1-shot mechanics. Attack-attack-attack-dodge-attack-attack-dodge – repeat. Every encounter.
It always drives me nuts, the sheer potential of the combat system, and how very little has been done with it.

You haven’t done much FOTM – so you don’t know about the new bosses – which require more than PURE DPS. Look up the new fractal bonus rounds. You will be surprised.

Harper.4173:

2)The majority of dungeons that are actually played. Because besides COF P1/P2 + AC 1/3 and SE 1/3 there are other dungeons out there. Some of them break zerker groups in half because of the way they play out. And that’s why people don’t do them.

It isn’t that the content that doesn’t favor zerker isn’t there – it is – but nobody will play it.

There is no dungeon in wich full zerk is not optimal…..

You have those. You have encounters in fractals and dungeons that require reflects and ports and stealth and whatnot.

2 guardians 3W instead of 1 guard and 4 warriors or 5 warriors……..
You don t really need stealth….and when you need you just log in your low level alt thief for those 10 seconds…and then switch back.

Condition damage is and will always be good as long as you don’t have more than 1 person doing it. A necro is always welcome.

Its good only in few situations.

You haven’t done much FOTM – so you don’t know about the new bosses – which require more than PURE DPS. Look up the new fractal bonus rounds. You will be surprised.

I have 400+ pristine relics and spent 100 i have a 1,5 bank slots of fotm skins..
3wars 2 guards are still the BEST team
As said you may need an alt low level thief to save some time….

People uses other profession only to replace the vest team comp or if they are bored just to try something new.

You don t really need anything else.
Don t know instabilities because they are so random and unbalanced that i don t consider them part of the game but just an experiment anet is doing…..

People will still play 49 or 50 all the time being the easiest.

I think that this game is great just because we have no roles to play on a party.
I’m tired of waiting for a cleric, as a mage, or for a Spiritmaster, as a Cleric, in AION to do an instance, just for someone ragequit later because the Tank cant do their job, or the cleric cant heal, or whatever.

In GW2, every class can be a part of a group, since you don’t need an specific role to be covered, you just need to know what you are doing, or in case you are new to the instance, to ask what to do and try to understand. Of course there are sometimes where a class can be usefull than another one (maybe because of stealth, port, amazing damage…) but, if you don’t have that class with you the dungeon still can be finished, still can be played, is not the same that try to kill a boss without a healer in your party, you will just maybe need to spend more time in the dungeon, but, who cares, is a game, and if u are playing it and trying to go to a dungeon that means you have some free time to play.

I personally don’t like when people start to choose the classes that will join a party, and leave some AC ones when the party “leader” started to kick persons who join the lfg group (this happend a lot with rangers). Specially when there weren’t something specific written down in the LFG party note.

So, i like the current status of the game, with no trinity and that kind of stuff, and i hope they will never change it. What i really want to be changed about dungeons are speed runs, yes they are good, i made a lot of gold with them but they are not funny at all, and sometimes people that is not full zerker can’t join (just like COF, where i need to look after or create an “all welcome” party to go since i have no legion atm)
To make dungeons a bit more interesting, for me, a good idea can be add some keys or lock events inside them, it can make dungeons more enjoyable and harder, than just stack, and run, and skip. But is just an idea.

In GW2 in most istances you NEED 1 guardian, and you ’d better have 1 warrior or 2

you still wait for your “cleric”.

Try fractal without guardians…doable sure but its way more challenging if not almost impossible with pugs.

with 2 decent guardians any istance can be won almost with the monitor turned off.

LordByron.8369:

In GW2 in most istances you NEED 1 guardian, and you ’d better have 1 warrior or 2

you still wait for your “cleric”.

Try fractal without guardians…doable sure but its way more challenging if not almost impossible with pugs.

with 2 decent guardians any istance can be won almost with the monitor turned off.

And somehow the general consensus still is that warriors are the " OP " PVE class.
You’ve just made a very valid point.

Also – instabilities are exactly what I was trying to explain earlier – people will avoid content that is too hard to zerk through.
And yes – all dungeons can be zerked BY AN ORGANIZED SPEEDCLEAR PARTY but not by pugs.
However the dungeons I pointed out can and will be zerkered through by pugs. The rest require more zerker skill that pugs just don’t have – so they don’t do them.
Same with the instabilities – too hard ? nobody does it.

Also if you’ve done fractals so much you should know that before the " Fractured " patch a mesmer was a MUST have if you wanted your run to go as fast as it could go.

Small disclaimer: ele was my first character, so I’m most comfortable with the ele mechanics. Mine is currently built for AoE condi damage and mobility. No conjures.

Ok, that said, mesmer is sooooo boring to play I’m considering deleting my l55 character and create either a necro or thief instead. the warrior is so slow I can make a cup of coffee and drink it before anything happens. Though when it does happen and I remembered to wield a hammer, everyone’s dead which can be satisfactory.

I can solo most PvE with my ele shrug

Harper.4173:

Also if you’ve done fractals so much you should know that before the " Fractured " patch a mesmer was a MUST have if you wanted your run to go as fast as it could go.

My main fotm character is a mesmer
mesmer never have been a must….

Its just better to have another guardian….luckily there are few skilled guardians and many more skilled mesmers (no idea why)….

People wanted mesmers for the mimic swamp trick (legit), for dredge and for uncategorized glitch.

Now uncategorized is gone, dredge have been modified so mesmer portal/stealth is no more sufficient…thus people just go for guardians.

In PVE 2 classes do everything.
ANY others is viable but subpar.
Guard is still the mandatory “cleric” (but full zerk dps).

The problem I see is that we as gamers have been trained to desire roles. To desire some way of saying “My character does x.” The “this is my role, this is what I do” mentality.

“I am ele, therefore I am a nuker”
“I am a warrior, therefore I am a tank”
“I am a monk, therefore I heal”

It was this mentality that GW2 was attempting to break away from by breaking the ‘roles’ barrier. Any class could do any role, in theory.

However, the classes do not do all roles effectively, so we end up with a lot of these threads where the complaints arise the ‘x’ class does more dps, or ‘y’ class does more whatever. Thus we end up with the divide between those that feel certain classes are better, and preferred over others.

For people like me, who pretty much ignore ‘speed’ runs, and for whom the game is not all about efficiency, any class is perfectly fine. Everything can be done with any class, and we freely take any class on a dungeon trip. I regularly take my ele, my husband likes to take his ranger, I have a guildie that takes either her warrior or her necro, another that takes a guardian, and a 5th that typically takes a thief or an engineer. For the paths we tend to do, it takes us 15 to 20 minutes to complete (and that’s with massacring everything in our path. We don’t skip stuff). Considering speed runs of the same paths tend to take (on average) 10-15 minutes, from my understanding and observation, I don’t think we’re doing too badly for our motley, non-efficiency, group.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The problem I see is that we as gamers have been trained to desire roles. To desire some way of saying “My character does x.” The “this is my role, this is what I do” mentality.

“I am ele, therefore I am a nuker”
“I am a warrior, there I am a tank”
“I am a monk, therefore I heal”

It was this mentality that GW2 was attempting to break away from by breaking the ‘roles’ barrier. Any class could do any role, in theory.

However, the classes do not do all roles effectively, so we end up with a lot of these threads where the complaints arise the ‘x’ class does more dps, or ‘y’ class does more whatever. Thus we end up with the divide between those that feel certain classes are better, and preferred over others.

For people like me, who pretty much ignore ‘speed’ runs, and for whom the game is not all about efficiency, any class is perfectly fine. Everything can be done with any class, and we freely take any class on a dungeon trip. I regularly take my ele, my husband likes to take his ranger, I have a guildie that takes either her warrior or her necro, another that takes a guardian, and a 5th that typically takes a thief or an engineer. For the paths we tend to do, it takes us 15 to 20 minutes to complete (and that’s with massacring everything in our path. We don’t skip stuff). Considering speed runs of the same paths tend to take (on average) 10-15 minutes, from my understanding and observation, I don’t think we’re doing too badly for our motley, non-efficiency, group.

Pretty much this.

I like playing warrior wholeheartedly. But most MMO i am not able to make an ideal warrior. Why? because like you said, warrior in most game are made into tank which i always avoid being one. Not saying i want dps warrior. My warrior in GW is shout heal warrior, balance is what i always wanted. Unfortunately, any balanced build is most worthless in trinity MMO.

I never join a speed run, and if i am in one, i will kick myself off the party. I love playing dungeon with PUG, with newbies. Some one may get hurt, may down, or party wipe, whatever, this is more fun than a speed run.

Here in GW2, i found my perfect balance MMO.

Class interdependency is so important in an MMO, and here it’s really lacking.

I’d love to see a content patch or expansion that brings true group roles back into the picture. I think it would give the game an amazing shot in the arm.

Zeldain.5710:

Class interdependency is so important in an MMO, and here it’s really lacking.

I’d love to see a content patch or expansion that brings true group roles back into the picture. I think it would give the game an amazing shot in the arm.

But I think the point was to get away from so much class inter-dependency . That’s the whole issue here. Class inter-dependency is what makes us sit around shouting “lf healer to go” or “glf tank” for hours on end. We are trained to desire this, but we don’t need it.

Without the required inter-dependency we’re discussing, you can in theory simply take anyone and just play. However, we’re so rigidly trained in our required roles that this is a wall we seem to have an issue getting over.

You can heal yourself, so you don’t have to depend on someone else to keep you alive. How many times haves you been in a group with a subpar monk that just couldn’t manage their role? How many times did you wipe and have to start over, seeking a different healer in order to get through?

You can ‘tank’ and mitigate you own damage, letting another party member take the tank role when you need a breather. How many teams have you been in where the tank could not play his assigned role? Could not hold aggro? Could not sustain the dmg?

You can contribute effectively to the damage pool, you don’t have to completely rely on someone else to do it. How many groups have you ran in where the dps did not have enough punch to make it through because there wasn’t enough of them? Or they simply had the wrong build? Or where the fight took 4 times as long because they kept ‘messing up the rotation’?

You can do everything you need to do, be any ‘role’ to help your team as needed, while not being locked into one thing specifically (necessarily). We are not just “healers” or “tanks” or “dps” anymore. We are all of them, helping each other out, and fluidly switching from role to role as is needed in any particular battle. Inter-dependency is there, but its on the player not on the class anymore. We just don’t see it…