Guild Wars 2

First, I’d like to apologize if there is a similar thread on this topic elsewhere. I was unable to find anything, so…here is mine. I recently started playing engineer, and since I love playing a healing type role in other games, I’m taking skills and traits that help me be supportive. During a recent bout with the fire elemental in the group event in Metrica Province, I was not focused on attacking. I simply ran around like mad, dropping med kits, tossing elixirs, and getting people back on their feet. When the event ended, everyone cheered, ‘good job’ to all involved, medals, karma, silver, and a loot chest hooray! Except for me…apparently, if you don’t attack a boss, and just heal people, revive them, and toss various elixirs, you’re not counted as having been a part of the event. No medal, not even a thumbs up. I’ve tried it in various other events…simply healing and tossing elixirs and reviving downed players, and it’s always the same. No medal or reward unless I spend more time attacking. I am just curious, if that is an intentional thing, to keep people who aren’t really contributing to an event, from getting something, or an oversight? (Although you can run through an area during an event and get a bronze at least; it’s happened to me many times.) Has anyone else had this experience; filling a supportive/healing type role and not getting included in the rewards when the event finishes? Now that I have my elixir gun it’s less of a problem, but I could see myself using the medic kit again…except of course if it’s an event, I won’t be counted as having taken part if I just try to heal players instead of deal damage. However, I do intend to stay in my supportive role, I enjoy it immensely, and since I found a big hat with a feather in it, my Asura looks fabulous doing it. Thanks for the awesome hats Arena Net.

In before the “no trinity!” shouters.

Sadly, the only support effort the game directly recognize is helping people back up when downed or defeated. And even then the only recognition is a bit of XP (and perhaps a laurel now that it can show up as a daily).

You don’t even get loot in dungeons if you try to play the healer role. You may heal as much as you want, run around in the battle of the heat all the time and yet the re/arded reward system won’t give you anything.

It’s not only that the trinity is not existent in the game design, you are actually being punished if you take any role except for damage dealer.

Exterminans.9723:

You don’t even get loot in dungeons if you try to play the healer role. You may heal as much as you want, run around in the battle of the heat all the time and yet the re/arded reward system won’t give you anything.

It’s not only that the trinity is not existent in the game design, you are actually being punished if you take any role except for damage dealer.

Not true at all. You can heal, you can buff, you can support, but you have to tag mobs with dmg in order to loot them.

Monk.6752:

I am just curious, if that is an intentional thing, to keep people who aren’t really contributing to an event, from getting something, or an oversight?

The poorly thought out reward system extends throughout the entire game, support is simply not rewarded at all (other than rallying adf that is only a minor reward), but it is worse than just that, for anything that dies quickly, be it a player in zerg v zerg in WvW or a mob at an event in Orr, then high burst damage is all that counts, because the target will be dead before your condi damage or moderate direct damage is even noticed).

It is just really poor design, again…

kRiza krimos.1637:

Exterminans.9723:

You don’t even get loot in dungeons if you try to play the healer role. You may heal as much as you want, run around in the battle of the heat all the time and yet the re/arded reward system won’t give you anything.

It’s not only that the trinity is not existent in the game design, you are actually being punished if you take any role except for damage dealer.

Not true at all. You can heal, you can buff, you can support, but you have to tag mobs with dmg in order to loot them.

You are actually validating what i said. You have to attack every mob at least once if you want to get rewarded for your participation. Especially with larger groups of mobs, you are forced to use AoE skills or time consuming single target attacks, both hinders you from fulfilling your role as supporter. The game still punishes you for taking support as your primary role.

People have to realize that playing support in GW2 means doing both healing/buffing AND damage at the same time. There is no reason to do only one thing when you can do them both.

Gaudrath.6725:

People have to realize that playing support in GW2 means doing both healing/buffing AND damage at the same time. There is no reason to do only one thing when you can do them both.

Yea sure, except most buffs make zero difference from self-applied buffs (except might, as it is intensity stacking) outside of lasting longer. And healing gives so poor a bang for the buck that you basically have to either go all in not bother at all. I think there about maybe 3 skills that give a 1/1 payout between healing power in and actual healing out. 2 of them are found on a single elementalist weapon. The rest are 1/10 or worse.

I understand that ANet wanted to avoid forcing people into the Trinity roles, but if someone WANTS to play mainly as a healer they shouldn’t be penalized.

I can understand the frustration this can cause, but there is 1 place where supportive roles can get rewarded (not 100% of the time).

I play an elementalist in WvW, often running with the mob doing what I can to help the mob. This often includes switching to my staff, attuning to water and do a little group healing, or switching to focus offhand, attuning to air and hitting #4 to block trebs/catapults. Now while these do not earn me drops, if they trigger an event within WvW, I get the reward for the event.

Now while elementalist might not be your cup of tea, support roles can play a big part, and be rewarded, within WvW.

P.S. Just to clarify, yes elementalist does not have weapon swap, so what ever weapon I chose before combat, I am committed to until I am out of combat.

I am playing a healing and support build on my mesmer and I do not tend to have this problem because I make sure to pitch in damage wise. It just takes careful planning of your traits and abilities. I can heal and buff with mantra of pain, yet still deal consistent damage.

Gaudrath.6725:

People have to realize that playing support in GW2 means doing both healing/buffing AND damage at the same time. There is no reason to do only one thing when you can do them both.

This is what I was thinking, because of cool downs, he was literally doing nothing for a lot of the time. He could have been attacking while running to the next body and or waiting on his cool downs.

With my elementalist i focused healing/support but at lvl 80 im to weak to play alone and i take ages to kill mobs, now i respeced and make more balanced i few support skills and 80% attack and critical…. is the better way. Do you want help your friends in gw2 the best way is do alot of dmg to kill mobs very faster….. XD you got no rewards for heal…
Now i m offencive got better rewards on events, WvWvW and very easy farm mobs

Altariel.4610:

With my elementalist i focused healing/support but at lvl 80 im to weak to play alone and i take ages to kill mobs, now i respeced and make more balanced i few support skills and 80% attack and critical…. is the better way. Do you want help your friends in gw2 the best way is do alot of dmg to kill mobs very faster….. XD you got no rewards for heal…
Now i m offencive got better rewards on events, WvWvW and very easy farm mobs

I would not mind that it took longer, except that you feel just as much at risk as if you go heavy on the DPS. As such you are only switching between longer time or shorter time at risk, not more or less at risk.

See this raises a viable point. I’m in the midst of an experiment actually. I’m making a support Guardian. A sylvari named Naolse. Staff/mace+shield, Stacking pwr/heal/ConDmg/toughness, traits of 0/0/20/30/20.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUUQNApeWlcgKD3FSPEm4ESmCRCBxeYRZ0GdpwhkIA;T4AZXCukcp6SxFFQGgEAZByBkEoVDDHmPA

I’m determined to prove this is a viable build. You still have to deal some damage but then that’s not hard to do and it’s even easier in a party. Not to poopoo the argument here as a PURELY support role should be viable but then even I don’t have any ideas in that vein. I’m just sharing my way of getting around it at the moment.

It’s already been discussed.

In GW2 you are not supposed to pidgeon-hole yourself into a role, you’re meant to do both DPS, heal, support, control, tanking.
Any decent team would actually boot you if you jumped in and said “I just sit back and spam healz!”, because that way you’re being carried.
There is no such thing as playing a single role, you’re gimping yourself and the team you’r ein.

I was spec’d for ‘pure’ healing/support as an Ele and I tried and tried and tried but finally I just gave up on it and spec’d dmg live everyone else…

I have 3 Support 80s I leveled and geared with Exotics/Ascended.

• Support Necro (My least favorite, but awesome in Dungeons)
• Support Guardian (Everyone loves a Support Guardian) – I find it easy to “tag mobs” or players with a Guardian because of my Symbols and Virtues in PVE. It’s more difficult to tag people in WvW though (with my play style, I’m not saying they’re bad, they’re actually really good), which is my biggest peeve about Guardians and why it’s my “go-to” Dungeon character.
• Support Elementalist (My favorite to play!) – I love this type of play style in WvW. I run with a small group of 5+ friends and I’ve saved many, many lives. It’s super easy to tag people on Keeps and such too. In PVE, I like to avoid anything Solo on this character because of my poor damage, so I really prefer this character in PVP only. She still works great in Dungeons though, but my Guardian is better at it in Dungeons.

Basically, I agree that if I’m healing people, reviving people, buffing people, reflecting damage, stopping damage and so forth, I should get credit. I don’t find it difficult to tag people/mobs, but it’s the simple principle of if I’m helping someone, I should get credit for what that person “tags”.

Supports are a really important role in this game and should be given more credit. I don’t want to hear that “No Trinity, No Heals, No Supports, ALL DEEPS” shenanigans because your groups lives will be made 100% easier if you have a Support in your group (whether it be Dungeons, WvW, Spvp or PVE).

The best news I can give you OP, is just play your character as a jack of all. Get your event, get your loot and continue on. There isn’t this big public outcry for anyone doing anything more and quite frankly for DE’s, 99% of them, nothing else is even needed anyway. So in your good will, it wasn’t even really needed. So just do your thing, send out a nice say after, revive a downed player… All good. That is what is expected.

@OP: The support role is very important in this game. Don’t believe the people that will tell you that the game is all about DPS and there is no use brining support.

However, you need to find a way to mix support and damage. On my support Necro, I build around using AoE damage spells to provide AoE Protection and healing to allies, along with other benefits such as boon stripping or condition cleansing.

For the Engineer, there is a trait that makes all of your bombs (bomb kit) heal. This is a great trait to blend support via constant AoE heals with damaging attacks. So, long story short, don’t try to run a 100% support build. GW2 is not designed to reward this behavior. Instead, try to find a healthy mix between support and offensive power

The game is not all about DPS, but the game is all about versatility. Take healing, for example. A traditional MMO warrior has very few, if any, means of healing themselves, therefore they need a dedicated healer to do it for them.

In GW2, everyone can support themselves in the traditional sense of making sure they don’t die, through active gameplay (dodging, self-buffing and self-healing).

What GW2 support is, is a force multiplier. This means everything from laying down group combo fields, AoE heals and debuff stripping, AoE buffing, projectile reflection, etc.
Instead of making sure your party stays alive, the support’s job is much more exciting – they make sure their party stays at peak efficiency. Instead of being reduced to the role of a healbot, you now can actually contribute to the fight in more ways than just healing.

This also includes damage. You have weapons, use them. Use everything you got, and then you and your party will all benefit from it.

kRiza krimos.1637:

Exterminans.9723:

You don’t even get loot in dungeons if you try to play the healer role. You may heal as much as you want, run around in the battle of the heat all the time and yet the re/arded reward system won’t give you anything.

It’s not only that the trinity is not existent in the game design, you are actually being punished if you take any role except for damage dealer.

Not true at all. You can heal, you can buff, you can support, but you have to tag mobs with dmg in order to loot them.

It’s a little worse than that.

Example: The reason I stopped being condition damage on my Engineer was because, in full exotics, when I would karma farm in Orr I would run into large groups of 20+ people (Plinx farm). Even if I started shooting the mob first, before anyone else, I still would not deal enough damage compared to the power/crit toons to be able to register as a participant, and thus got no xp and no loot. This, of course, also meant I was considered to have “participated” less in the actual event, and thus got less karma too.

After a few hours of that, I ran to the broker and bought a full set of power rare gear, a tier below my exotic condition gear. I tried again- 100% participated rate on every mob I killed. And this was even using my condition skill/trait build, which I had forgotten to change out when buying the power build. But even running p/p with a condition trait setup, I still got more participation than my condition build.

That said, a healer is going to have to do more than just tag. They are going to have to do comparable damage, at least to the point of being able to be registered as a participant.

Tolmos.8395:

kRiza krimos.1637:

Exterminans.9723:

You don’t even get loot in dungeons if you try to play the healer role. You may heal as much as you want, run around in the battle of the heat all the time and yet the re/arded reward system won’t give you anything.

It’s not only that the trinity is not existent in the game design, you are actually being punished if you take any role except for damage dealer.

Not true at all. You can heal, you can buff, you can support, but you have to tag mobs with dmg in order to loot them.

It’s a little worse than that.

Example: The reason I stopped being condition damage on my Engineer was because, in full exotics, when I would karma farm in Orr I would run into large groups of 20+ people (Plinx farm). Even if I started shooting the mob first, before anyone else, I still would not deal enough damage compared to the power/crit toons to be able to register as a participant, and thus got no xp and no loot. This, of course, also meant I was considered to have “participated” less in the actual event, and thus got less karma too.

After a few hours of that, I ran to the broker and bought a full set of power rare gear, a tier below my exotic condition gear. I tried again- 100% participated rate on every mob I killed. And this was even using my condition skill/trait build, which I had forgotten to change out when buying the power build. But even running p/p with a condition trait setup, I still got more participation than my condition build.

That said, a healer is going to have to do more than just tag. They are going to have to do comparable damage, at least to the point of being able to be registered as a participant.

You must deal at least 10% of the damage to that mob in order to tag it. That might be easy if you run the typical greatsword bezerk warrior as even a single whirlwind attack will be sufficient, but you have no chance at all if you run slow condition or even non-aggressive support builds. The game simply PUNISHES you for playing anything except for almost pure burst damage builds.

Exterminans.9723:

Tolmos.8395:

kRiza krimos.1637:

Exterminans.9723:

You don’t even get loot in dungeons if you try to play the healer role. You may heal as much as you want, run around in the battle of the heat all the time and yet the re/arded reward system won’t give you anything.

It’s not only that the trinity is not existent in the game design, you are actually being punished if you take any role except for damage dealer.

Not true at all. You can heal, you can buff, you can support, but you have to tag mobs with dmg in order to loot them.

It’s a little worse than that.

Example: The reason I stopped being condition damage on my Engineer was because, in full exotics, when I would karma farm in Orr I would run into large groups of 20+ people (Plinx farm). Even if I started shooting the mob first, before anyone else, I still would not deal enough damage compared to the power/crit toons to be able to register as a participant, and thus got no xp and no loot. This, of course, also meant I was considered to have “participated” less in the actual event, and thus got less karma too.

After a few hours of that, I ran to the broker and bought a full set of power rare gear, a tier below my exotic condition gear. I tried again- 100% participated rate on every mob I killed. And this was even using my condition skill/trait build, which I had forgotten to change out when buying the power build. But even running p/p with a condition trait setup, I still got more participation than my condition build.

That said, a healer is going to have to do more than just tag. They are going to have to do comparable damage, at least to the point of being able to be registered as a participant.

You must deal at least 10% of the damage to that mob in order to tag it. That might be easy if you run the typical greatsword bezerk warrior as even a single whirlwind attack will be sufficient, but you have no chance at all if you run slow condition or even non-aggressive support builds. The game simply PUNISHES you for playing anything except for almost pure burst damage builds.

Will have to disagree with this. On my guardian, I can easily run support/healing and still do enough damage to a mob/boss to get credit for it. You just need to do damage and then heal/buff when needed. I do the same on my ele and eng. It’s all about prioritizing and figuring out when you need to do one over the other.

Wait, bosses have a different (lower) treshold so it is actually much easier to tag them (this goes for veterans and champions). You won’t be so lucky on regular mobs though.

Zookeeper.2513:

Exterminans.9723:

Tolmos.8395:

kRiza krimos.1637:

Exterminans.9723:

You don’t even get loot in dungeons if you try to play the healer role. You may heal as much as you want, run around in the battle of the heat all the time and yet the re/arded reward system won’t give you anything.

It’s not only that the trinity is not existent in the game design, you are actually being punished if you take any role except for damage dealer.

Not true at all. You can heal, you can buff, you can support, but you have to tag mobs with dmg in order to loot them.

It’s a little worse than that.

Example: The reason I stopped being condition damage on my Engineer was because, in full exotics, when I would karma farm in Orr I would run into large groups of 20+ people (Plinx farm). Even if I started shooting the mob first, before anyone else, I still would not deal enough damage compared to the power/crit toons to be able to register as a participant, and thus got no xp and no loot. This, of course, also meant I was considered to have “participated” less in the actual event, and thus got less karma too.

After a few hours of that, I ran to the broker and bought a full set of power rare gear, a tier below my exotic condition gear. I tried again- 100% participated rate on every mob I killed. And this was even using my condition skill/trait build, which I had forgotten to change out when buying the power build. But even running p/p with a condition trait setup, I still got more participation than my condition build.

That said, a healer is going to have to do more than just tag. They are going to have to do comparable damage, at least to the point of being able to be registered as a participant.

You must deal at least 10% of the damage to that mob in order to tag it. That might be easy if you run the typical greatsword bezerk warrior as even a single whirlwind attack will be sufficient, but you have no chance at all if you run slow condition or even non-aggressive support builds. The game simply PUNISHES you for playing anything except for almost pure burst damage builds.

Will have to disagree with this. On my guardian, I can easily run support/healing and still do enough damage to a mob/boss to get credit for it. You just need to do damage and then heal/buff when needed. I do the same on my ele and eng. It’s all about prioritizing and figuring out when you need to do one over the other.

For a condition build, that’s difficult. There was no prioritizing needed- as a condition build my entire goal was to deal damage. Still wasn’t enough

Gaudrath.6725:

People have to realize that playing support in GW2 means doing both healing/buffing AND damage at the same time. There is no reason to do only one thing when you can do them both.

say that to the 20 pointer talent restorative mantras.

The heal happens on charge, not on release, which means you ONLY heal if you choose that.

Then ANET wonders why nobody does mantra healing builds.

plasmacutter.2709:

Gaudrath.6725:

People have to realize that playing support in GW2 means doing both healing/buffing AND damage at the same time. There is no reason to do only one thing when you can do them both.

say that to the 20 pointer talent restorative mantras.

The heal happens on charge, not on release, which means you ONLY heal if you choose that.

Then ANET wonders why nobody does mantra healing builds.

The reason nobody does it is because healing others in this game is a “top-it-off” thing, not “heal-me-kittenmit” issue. Everyone can heal themselves, and the most effective heals are self-heals.

Condition removal is far more important if we talk about support.

Heya all pro healers. If in classic trinity MMOs you were only healing/buffing and never dealing damage, then you simply suck

Even classic healers always had some damaging spells, both single target cc and AoE, ofc dealing minor to average damage. So, if your character has such spells, then you’re supposed to take advantage of those, aren’t you?

Now look at GW2 classes. No dedicated healer, healing/buffing spells are minority. We’ve got many kinds of soft and hard cc, some classes are good at spamming it. Your squishy mesmer/elem is in trouble? Don’t heal him, simply blind, stun or knock monsters back and give him a sec to escape and use his own heal. In this game supporting is cooperating in survival, even someone specialized in DPSing might be a lifesaver

In Orr especially, events are completely overrun by 5 signet GS warriors and other AOE’ers hellbent on tagging every mob and preventing you from doing so by moving further and further out from the event hub and decimating mobs before they even get a glimpse of the walls of the settlement they are supposedly attacking. I have seen bots who appear to have Penitent Path timed perfectly. Anyway, that is the behavior this game rewards. I suggest becoming a troglodyte chainsaw wielding 5 signet warrior. I wish I saw more people like you out there. I have been downed trying to get to an event to have an entire zerg run over me, no one daring to lose mob-tagging time to rez a player. I love the Orr changes, but more than the zone is changing.

As much as I am not for the trinity, this game seems perfectly designed to reward the wrong kinds of behaviors.

Djinn.9245:

I understand that ANet wanted to avoid forcing people into the Trinity roles, but if someone WANTS to play mainly as a healer they shouldn’t be penalized.

I agree. it seem like a bad decision.

Your problem is that in GW playing support is not the same as playing a dedicated healer / buff bot.

In a support role your main job should be to act as a force multiplier. This means many things beyond throwing heals. You should be healing, but you should also be buffing your allies, removing debuffs on your allies, debuffing your enemies (which often involves damaging them), throwing down combo fields for your allies (many of which will also damage enemies), and interrupting/CC’ing enemies to give you allies room to heal themselves with the many powerful heals that every class has. The classes are designed so that you should also be contributing damage while you do most of this.

I do agree that it loot drops for supporting characters might need some more investigation, but you really should be contributing enough damage to tag enemies in the majority of cases. If you choose to play a dedicated healer / buffing role you’re missing out on a lot of the abilities that your class has to offer, and you’re objectively contributing less to your group than someone who plays their support role to its fullest potential. In many cases multiplying your allies’ damage is more valuable than healing them (especially since many players let their health run low before popping their own heals).

Sylosi.6503:

Monk.6752:

I am just curious, if that is an intentional thing, to keep people who aren’t really contributing to an event, from getting something, or an oversight?

The poorly thought out reward system extends throughout the entire game, support is simply not rewarded at all (other than rallying adf that is only a minor reward), but it is worse than just that, for anything that dies quickly, be it a player in zerg v zerg in WvW or a mob at an event in Orr, then high burst damage is all that counts, because the target will be dead before your condi damage or moderate direct damage is even noticed).

It is just really poor design, again…

That’s why I stopped wasting time with condition builds or single target specialties. POW/PRE plus AoE. It’s the only way fly. Learned that the hard way with my first character to hit Orr.

Other builds are still viable while soloing or in a small group where mobs aren’t being erased in a second or two. In a zerg though, big damage in a wide spread gets you the drops.

Healing really is handled pretty poorly though. It should be counted equally with damage output for purposes of determining participation rewards. But even then, you need to tag mobs for drops so you would still need to putting out some DPS. Which is how it should be.

Basically, if you are doing nothing but healing and support, you aren’t doing it right. You have attack skills for a reason. If you aren’t using them, you’re being carried. The amount of support and healing you can provide will never keep up with the contribution you can make with DPS. That’s by design. If you don’t want to play within that design and insist on being a Healer (with a capital “H”), then you’re choosing to gimp yourself.

Have you heard about paragraphs?
I don’t read such wall of texts

To anyone that says that support should be doing dmg.
Try to tag something with a guardian or a necro on cleric/shaman gear while fulfiling the support role before a zerker warrior/thief tears it to shreds and hogs the badges/loot.
And let me know how well your altroyism paid for.