Guild Wars 2

When I first started playing GW2 I liked the idea of every class being able to ‘do everything’ no matter which class you played.

However, the more I play the more I miss the synergy of the different classes in the open world (pve). Did you ever see a tanky guardian taking the damage of a boss in order to protect other players? And give them the opportunity to show their strengh while being more vulnerable – to finally defeat the boss.
It seems like everyone’s running around with berserker or condi stats no matter what – because it’s the most efficient and fastest way to kill enemies. And you’ll survive anyway as a berserker, so there’s no place for variety. The mechanics of foes simply don’t require different roles, it’s all about full damage.

There’s another thing that’s hard to describe: classes tend to be too similar. In GW1 mesmers could interrupt enemies and do some damage accordingly (Interrupts a skill, deals 50 damage to foes in the area, gain 4 energy,…). There were also hex skills and corresponding hex removal skills. You had to think of strategies on how to defeat your enemies – (also think of the different roles of enemies – which one to kill first?).
Now your mesmer grabs a sword and goes melee just like every other class.
The abilities and playstyles which made the classes truly unique are missing completely.

It’s different with regards to raids and I know that GW2 is not a traditional MMORPG (holy trinity). But GW1 did a great job on giving each class their place in the game, having their very own feeling to it. Anyways it’s just a shower thought that hit me, I don’t expect them to change the foundation of the game.

Something to keep in mind: Since Elite Specs are so far above traditional specializations, that means that they factor the heaviest (i.e. the primary limiting function) into player choices for builds. Secondly, since there is only one Elite Spec per profession so far, that limits choice simply by being there.

When the next expansion comes out and round 2 of Elite Specs are released, I’m betting we will see a ton more variety as the new Elite Specs are highly likely to fill roles that 1st round Elite Specs do not, in the same way that 1st round Elite Specs dramatically altered how most classes worked in comparison to traditional specializations.

Example: Traditional Mesmers could NEVER have tanked as they are simply too squishy and their abilities would not allow them to mitigate damage effectively. Chronomancer addressed that by allowing them to become incredibly effective at mitigation and holding aggro while remaining a staple for boonsharing.

The other reason for the mediocre variety is that some classes simply synergize with others better. Guardians may have permanent protection uptime as tanks, but protection can be provided by everyone whereas Alacrity can only be provided by Mesmers. Combining an alacrity boonshare into the tank using the Chronomancer is simply more efficient as a strategy.

Same with why everyone is in condi and zerker builds; if you are skillful enough you can go through most of the ingame content without needing tanky stats, and being able to kill things fastest is a large part of that. The introduction of raid mechanics into the open world PvE and the increased difficulty level of enemies overall starting in HoT has been fantastic, but not to the point where generic content requires alternate builds to succeed. I think making room for tanky builds and healer builds is great, but by design both are group-centric and work best with group content rather than the solo content that open-world stuff is focused on.

How would you solve the issue at hand?

UnbentMars.9126:

Something to keep in mind: Since Elite Specs are so far above traditional specializations, that means that they factor the heaviest (i.e. the primary limiting function) into player choices for builds. Secondly, since there is only one Elite Spec per profession so far, that limits choice simply by being there.

When the next expansion comes out and round 2 of Elite Specs are released, I’m betting we will see a ton more variety as the new Elite Specs are highly likely to fill roles that 1st round Elite Specs do not, in the same way that 1st round Elite Specs dramatically altered how most classes worked in comparison to traditional specializations.

Maybe a second elite specialization will change something, I’m already curious about the next ones.

UnbentMars.9126:

Same with why everyone is in condi and zerker builds; if you are skillful enough you can go through most of the ingame content without needing tanky stats, and being able to kill things fastest is a large part of that. The introduction of raid mechanics into the open world PvE and the increased difficulty level of enemies overall starting in HoT has been fantastic, but not to the point where generic content requires alternate builds to succeed. I think making room for tanky builds and healer builds is great, but by design both are group-centric and work best with group content rather than the solo content that open-world stuff is focused on.

How would you solve the issue at hand?

I don’t know how we could handle this, nothing came to my mind as I thought of it. But I completely agree with the last part of your post, as you say with HoT the difficulty was increased but it didn’t change anything at all with regards to berserker and condi builds.
In addition to that, the new map Ember Bay is the complete opposite in terms of difficulty. The sloth boss takes less than a minute to kill and isn’t challenging at all, same with the Molten Dominator and the giant lava wurm is a common defense event without having any mechanics to it.
You’re right, it would work best with group content, so if we got some new dungeons, they could implement mechanics where different roles had a greater importance again, but that won’t happen. I think that raids will be the only place where roles are important..