Guild Wars 2

@LanfearShadowflame

Thanks for the response!

I understand the goals, I think, of making classes less dependent on each other, but it would be neat if the also COULD be, if that’s how they chose to play.

Why not offer pure healing or taking abilities, but put the “skill” spin on them, sort of like WildStar is doing. No whack-a-mole healing there.

For players that don’t want to engage that way, the current/standard builds would still be available. But for those who want to try approaching content that way, they could work with these new builds.

Taking and healing also offer unique gameplay and there are players that enjoy that. Sometimes the “kill all the things and stay alive” strategy wears thin, because it’s very chaotic and not so tactical.

Obviously this has been discussed ad nauseum over the past year, but I really think that if ArenaNet could work on adding this depth and dimension to the game, you’d see a huge swath of player come back to check it out, and likely stick around.

lol no trinity, no roles

BIG DAMAGE rules.

The way aggro works in the game, I don’t think a pure tank would truly be possible. Even though you could spec pure tank in GW1, it didn’t fair well there either (and really wasn’t necessary).

As for a pure healer, considering the rigidity of most players, think about how that would play out. I don’t think there is any possible implementation (skill based or otherwise) that could be implemented that would not result in the whole ‘glf monk’ scenario again.

Additionally, offering these ‘pure’ builds allows the ability to fall back on the same old trinity mentality, and you know people would do it, because that’s what we’ve been trained to. Anet has instead used the cold turkey approach, to ween us away from it. Those that can accept it will stay, those that cannot adapt will move on. Just how it works with games. Having no true trinity is too far outside some players’ comfort zones, and that’s understandable. I make no judgments.

Yes, tanking and healing offer distinct types of game play, in their rigid roles; however they are also extremely limiting in the bigger scope. Technically you can achieve similar ‘roles’ (perhaps not as effectively as a holy priest or a heal monk necessarily) in GW2, while still having the ability to swap to another role as needed by your team. Sure, you could swap from heal to smite in GW1….as long as you went back to town and started over. Sure, you could swap from holy to shadow in WoW….with some significant down time to regen… but not on the fly like you can here. Battle in GW2 is a much more fluid dance, where partners change lead without missing a step, unlike other games where the dance must pause for the change and then be resumed.

You are not locked into a healer role, when they need additional dps. You are not locked into dps, if you need to step in and tank. However, you can still spec specifically for those things if you want….

I know a thing or two about PvE so I thought I would interject…

1. Warriors are used in multiples because they require less coordination. Using your FGJ on cool down and spamming Axe 2 and Mace 4 on cool down with 3+ warriors will do a reasonably good job of maintaining Might and Vuln stacks for the party. It won’t be perfectly optimal, but it’s easy. Sure it may only be 80% as much dps as the ideal party comp, but it requires zero coordination and is thus way easier for pugs or for organized groups trying to go really quickly.

2. Rangers are one change to their sword auto attack chain away from being one of the best and most sought after dungeon classes. Spotter and Frost Spirit are OP, and the only limiting factor to their inclusion in every group is the fact that even good players die a lot trying to melee bosses with sword on Ranger.

3. Engineers have the best vuln stacking of any profession and are necessary in any party composition not predicated upon 4 warriors. Sure a 1w/2e/1t/1guardian party sounds high DPS, but they won’t be able to stack 25 vuln for very long and their actual dps isn’t so good. Change the second ele to an engineer and total team dps will skyrocket.

4. Necros are useless for dungeons because they don’t have a Spotter/Banner/Empower Allies/aoe vuln stacking benefit like other classes. They provide almost nothing in dungeons besides their own middling DPS. In fractals they are useful in that most of the challenge of fractals is from powerful trash mobs, and the AOE Weakness stacking of the necro is very valuable in that regard. But even then, 2-3 warriors with warhorns do the same thing and provide better dps so I wouldn’t call them an auto-include. Necros are in bad shape.

5. If we are talking ideal party composition for max dps, the core is Warrior/Ranger/Engineer. The two open slots are probably ele for might stacking, and an switch spot that is Guardian or Mesmer if you need reflects or Thief if you don’t. It’s rare to see anyone run a comp like this because it requires a level of organization that pugs don’t possess and that speed run groups don’t need or want to bother with.

6. I see people saying 3w/2g is an ideal party comp for fractals. I disagree. 2w/1g/1m/1* is superior. There is no time, especially now that we are hardcapped at 50, where a second guardian is more useful than anything else. I would rather have a Thief or Ele in that last slot over a second Guard in any circumstance.

7. Someone said that people ignore certain dungeon paths because they aren’t zerker friendly. Wrong. People ignore TAAP, SE2, CoF3, HotW2/3 because they are way too long and boring with rewards that don’t justify the time. All of those dungeon paths are completely full melee zerker friendly, like everything else.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

6. I see people saying 3w/2g is an ideal party comp for fractals. I disagree. 2w/1g/1m/1* is superior. There is no time, especially now that we are hardcapped at 50, where a second guardian is more useful than anything else. I would rather have a Thief or Ele in that last slot over a second Guard in any circumstance.

What can do an ele that a guardian can t do better?
Guard has
-burst healing
-AEGIS <(total lifesaver when a single player get focused)
-DPS
-offensive buffs
-the best CROWD CONTROL for PVE (binding blade, immobilize, line of warding and lot more)
-reflect uptime with 0 risk (mesmer is way more Tricky and risky to achieve)
-might if needed

Can you tell me what an ele is supposed to play to achieve HALF of that?
You want DPS? nice….0 survivability and in fotm you really die to a sneeze (do you remember the lvl 80 archdiviner melee Group? XD with the ele downed 6 times and the Others meleeing with no problems).

You want support? nice, still worse than guardian AND paired with awful dps.

Ele is good for easy content in zerk or to carry bad pugs in stages like mai trinn, molten, aetherblade or volcanic….you can t keep them alive or do any damage but you won t die and if you are good you can ress them all.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You are not locked into a healer role, when they need additional dps. You are not locked into dps, if you need to step in and tank. However, you can still spec specifically for those things if you want….

what are you smoking
since when can you change your traits mid fight?
you talk as if gw2 system is some kind of super-flexible amazing thing, but it’s the same as all others. you can spec to be “flexible” but that has its own price, and you could do that with any other mmo like gw1 anyway.

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.

There’s two things different about GW2 which gets rid of the wait for cleric problem:

1. Guardians aren’t clerics like in traditional MMOs. The reaosn why the wait for cleric/tank queue exists in trinity games is that dps, tanks and clerics are face-shoved into a very particular way of playing the game, and it happens that almost no one likes playing the way healers are forced to play as.

You can build your Guardian to play however you want whilst still providing the support the party needs, and the fact that everyone is responsible in doing some DPS means that there’s a fair number of Guardians around. The longest wait I had for a Guardian in 40+ fotm is about 5mins, average being about a minute, the longest wait I had for a healer in FF14 was 4 hours, averaging 30mins.

2. Like you said, you don’t need a guardian. It makes things harder but still doable, whereas in other games you can’t do the content without a healer or a tank. So if you really can’t find a Guardian for some reason, you can just take the plunge and try to do without.

milo.6942:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You are not locked into a healer role, when they need additional dps. You are not locked into dps, if you need to step in and tank. However, you can still spec specifically for those things if you want….

what are you smoking
since when can you change your traits mid fight?
you talk as if gw2 system is some kind of super-flexible amazing thing, but it’s the same as all others. you can spec to be “flexible” but that has its own price, and you could do that with any other mmo like gw1 anyway.

No you can’t change your traits mid fight, but you don’t always need to…

Yes, there are pro’s and con’s no matter how you trait.

LordByron.8369:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

6. I see people saying 3w/2g is an ideal party comp for fractals. I disagree. 2w/1g/1m/1* is superior. There is no time, especially now that we are hardcapped at 50, where a second guardian is more useful than anything else. I would rather have a Thief or Ele in that last slot over a second Guard in any circumstance.

What can do an ele that a guardian can t do better?
Guard has
-burst healing
-AEGIS <(total lifesaver when a single player get focused)
-DPS
-offensive buffs
-the best CROWD CONTROL for PVE (binding blade, immobilize, line of warding and lot more)
-reflect uptime with 0 risk (mesmer is way more Tricky and risky to achieve)
-might if needed

Can you tell me what an ele is supposed to play to achieve HALF of that?
You want DPS? nice….0 survivability and in fotm you really die to a sneeze (do you remember the lvl 80 archdiviner melee Group? XD with the ele downed 6 times and the Others meleeing with no problems).

You want support? nice, still worse than guardian AND paired with awful dps.

Ele is good for easy content in zerk or to carry bad pugs in stages like mai trinn, molten, aetherblade or volcanic….you can t keep them alive or do any damage but you won t die and if you are good you can ress them all.

I could respond to all of that with well reasoned responses, but you would still disagree and think your 2 Guardian parties are good. I guess I just don’t play at the same high level that you do, so why argue?

FWIW, a thief is the best for that empty slot.

Ele is really good in fractals, better than guardians imo. Its just hard to play well. You dont need any guardians and 1 is definately enough.

To be honest with you, a lot of attacks which should be Aegis-able will shoot straight through your Aegis. examples being Alpha’s Teeth of Jormag, Molten Berserker’s waves, and basically any attack which hits multiple times in one go.

i did pug at 67 with 2 thieves 1 mesmer 1 necro and 1 war ._. we got the worst fractals possible at that time…..

does it count?

If you don t want to explain tdon t use excuses…..just keep this in mind:

Discussion:
This is good because…..

Statement
This is good.

P.S. for Aegis ….sometimes you get focused and run out of evasions OR stunbreak…that is when Aegis will save your party or even saves you preemptively saving your evades.

LordByron.8369:

i did pug at 67 with 2 thieves 1 mesmer 1 necro and 1 war ._. we got the worst fractals possible at that time…..

does it count?

If you don t want to explain tdon t use excuses…..just keep this in mind:

Discussion:
This is good because…..

Statement
This is good.

P.S. for Aegis ….sometimes you get focused and run out of evasions OR stunbreak…that is when Aegis will save your party or even saves you preemptively saving your evades.

I don’t want to explain because your responses are often irrational and there is no point in arguing with a brick wall. Guardians are vastly dimishing returns after the 1st and you would be better served with literally any class before adding a second Guardian.

Nike, what build do you recommend for an engi?

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I don’t want to explain because your responses are often irrational and there is no point in arguing with a brick wall. Guardians are vastly dimishing returns after the 1st and you would be better served with literally any class before adding a second Guardian.

To tell the truth is more the fact you totally refuse ANY counterargument to whatever you say…

Possibly to preserve and promote your fame on the forum…situation that makes the dungeon forum and some profession forum just the land of 3-4 players.

That is the reason why dungeon section is just about 4-5 posters suggesting newbies to pug fotm in full melee with a mesmer…..