Guild Wars 2

Healers in Guild Wars 2 are in a bad spot. They aren’t useful, and any attempt to make them useful gets negative reactions because people don’t want them to be required.

The problem is not with the healers however, it’s with the way the hitpoint system works.

Hitpoints currently only have one function:

• If you have hitpoints you are alive.
• If you don’t have hitpoints you are dead.

This is the root of the problem.

You cannot benefit from gaining more hitpoints unless you would die without them!

Guild Wars 2 does not want to make healers mandatory, but because of the primitive way hitpoints work healers cannot possibly be useful without being mandatory.

If hitpoints had more different effects than just being alive or dead a healer could be useful even if people wouldn’t die without the heals.

• Maybe you could spend a portion of your hitpoints to reduce your cooldowns.
• Maybe you could gain boon duration when you stay topped off on health.
• Maybe you could receive a buff for being healed past 100%.

There are hundreds of possible ways hitpoints could have other effects than just life/death that would make getting more hitpoints desirable without killing you if you don’t have them.

The hitpoint system as it currently exists is just as old and outdated as the trinity. In fact, hitpoints governing nothing but when characters die is the whole reason why the trinity exists in games. It’s time to change that!

That’s actually a pretty cool idea, but wouldn’t be feasible for all classes. Perhaps an elite specialization that plays with its hp pool like that.

Since there is no trinity, there are no healers.

There are traits and runes that work when your health is above a certain threshold, for example Scholar Runes provide +10% damage when your health is above 90%. It’s not uncommon to have a member of the group provide some consistent healing (for example a Guardian with a Mace) to keep the party at >90% health so they can benefit from the Scholar Rune (and other trait) bonus

And about the whole “healer” idea, there will never be healers in this game. Not now and not ever, watching red bars go left and right is rarely exciting, engaging or fun.

Iavra.8510:

Since there is no trinity, there are no healers.

Then why is there a whole stat devoted to healing that massively taxes your gear, and why do multiple classes have whole spec trees devoted to healing, and even specific weapon/element choices that are specialized in healing?

Healers definitely exist in the game, they just aren’t useful to the way the game is currently played because the hitpoint system is so primitive that a healer cannot possibly be useful to you unless you would die if there wasn’t one.

This whole “there are no healers” attitude is simply ignorant of the facts. There are way too many abilities and gear choices that exist purely to provide healing to simply dismiss it as nonexistent.

maddoctor.2738:

watching red bars go left and right is rarely exciting, engaging or fun.

By that logic everyone should simply be invulnerable. After all, not needing a healer doesn’t stop you from having to mind your health.

For that matter, is putting little rectangles over peoples ability bar more engaging?

Aetrion.8295:

Iavra.8510:

Since there is no trinity, there are no healers.

Then why is there a whole stat devoted to healing that massively taxes your gear, and why do multiple classes have whole spec trees devoted to healing, and even specific weapon/element choices that are specialized in healing?

Healers definitely exist in the game, they just aren’t useful to the way the game is currently played because the hitpoint system is so primitive that a healer cannot possibly be useful to you unless you would also die if there wasn’t one.

You are missing the point. The healing stat and healing traits exist to augment your healing abilities and allow you to stay alive longer, not to be pure healers. There is no pure healer in the game and will never be.

Did I say that there are, or that there should be pure healers in the game? There haven’t been any pure healers in games since Dark Ages of Camelot. I think you’re the one who’s missing the point of this topic.

It’s about how the mechanics of the hitpoint system are still the exact same thing that games with pure healers used, and as a result it doesn’t provide a matching range of benefit to the possible range of healing ability in the game.

I’m only talking pve here. I think the problem is rewarding healing is like rewarding people to play bad.

I watched a solo video of fotm49 bloomhunger, and the person is playing with 0 ar. I also remember some other videos of people doing fotm with 0 ar. The thing is those people don’t even get hit once.

Which bring back to the problem, the only reason you require healing is when you play bad and miss a dodge. So your saying healing should be buffed because the person play bad already. Besides I think the reason why healing isn’t needed is you can already heal yourself really well with no point in healing power.

and back to your original topic. You’re saying healing power should give more benefits “ontop” of helping people survive better? Which I think is wrong, because you aren’t suppose to reward people playing bad.

Aetrion.8295:

…….There haven’t been any pure healers in games since Dark Ages of Camelot…..

played Lord of the Rings Online ?

laokoko.7403:

You’re saying healing power should give more benefits “ontop” of helping people survive better? Which I think is wrong, because you aren’t suppose to reward people playing bad.

No, I’m saying having high hitpoints should give more benefits, so losing them by playing badly is in no way beneficial to you. If you are good enough to not lose any HP to enemies you should IMO be allowed to spend the HP to get bonuses. That way a healer provides just as much benefit to a good player as a bad one.

azizul.8469:

played Lord of the Rings Online ?

Warrior-Skald?
Cleansing Flame?
Solitary Thunder?

In old MMOs if you were a healer you literally could not kill any enemies by yourself, or switch to a DPS spec, or do much of anything else. Classes like that haven’t existed in MMOs for over a decade now.

Aetrion.8295:

laokoko.7403:

You’re saying healing power should give more benefits “ontop” of helping people survive better? Which I think is wrong, because you aren’t suppose to reward people playing bad.

No, I’m saying having high hitpoints should give more benefits, so losing them by playing badly is in no way beneficial to you. If you are good enough to not lose any HP to enemies you should IMO be allowed to spend the HP to get bonuses. That way a healer provides just as much benefit to a good player as a bad one.

The reality is healing power helps you survive much much better. So anyone with high healing power is really hard to die. Dont’ you understand?

So unless you remove healing power and don’t make it heal better and call it special benefits. It’s always like rewarding people to play bad.

Hmm…

Good idea but I think it is flawed anyway… What you do is that you put the “need” at another place. If they would just add a healer class and good healing and content that needed a healer we would end up with the old Trinity look a like. If they did OP’s suggestion then content would probably need to be remade to fit this new type and Healers would be needed again and we are back at the trinity stuff…

I dunno but healing is in a pretty good spot, it could be a little better at some skills and places. Base healing should be less and Healing Power should have more impact in my opinion. I play cleric Guardian and Necro and it is really neat builds I got. It is not the best but I actually do alot of good for the groups I play in. I also have a Zerker gear for my guardian and I see the difference I do when I switch sets.

Aetrion.8295:

Did I say that there are, or that there should be pure healers in the game? There haven’t been any pure healers in games since Dark Ages of Camelot. I think you’re the one who’s missing the point of this topic.

It’s about how the mechanics of the hitpoint system are still the exact same thing that games with pure healers used, and as a result it doesn’t provide a matching range of benefit to the possible range of healing ability in the game.

Although healing in PVE isn’t very powerful, it still has uses, but in PVP healing power is used a lot, together with vitality and toughness (and condition damage) in other words if all the stats in the game have some use in one aspect of the game, is it a problem with the stats that they aren’t used in another aspect of the game OR a problem with how encounters are designed? Why fix what isn’t broken (Healing Power)? And it isn’t broken because in other parts of the games it works very well (PVP)

A lot of people in this thread seem to have missed some of the HoT suggestions by the devs. You can’t say there are no healers and never will be since the devs have stated that in HoT the mobs will have been designed in such a way to not REQUIRE a healer or tank, but to make them desirable in order to complete the missions. This means although there wouldn’t be a specific holy trinity idea going on there is likely to be a soft trinity. Which was in fact that idea at the start of the game. There was never not supposed to be any healers or tanks, but it was supposed to be that ANY class could play any role. But exactly this is why we have the mind-numbing DPS meta which the devs are trying to sort out with the expac

Iavra.8510:

Since there is no trinity, there are no healers.

Wrong IMHO, since there is no trinity we are ALL healers. Though we do not spec anything in HEALING as attribute as it isn’t rewarding in the first place,

You can sacrifice 931 or 1381 points from your build into helaing gaining
a maximum of 1200-1750 added health on each heal.
provided it is maxed out and the healing scaler is at 1.25
(only 1 skill has a higher scaling…1.33)

50 %+ of the healings are below 0.50 (50 pts/100)

465 healing (931 healing powr) and 690 healing (1381 healing)

some heals are as low as 0.04 – 0.033 (4/pt/100, 3 pt /100) ~35 , 50 healing…

So you’re talking about stuff like traits that gives you a bonus when HP is above/below thresholds. Or rather traits or stats that trigger on certain amounts of your total HP pool.

Perhaps also similar to the Guardian “Force of Will” trait, which increases outgoing healing by 1% for every 100 vitality stat points.

Aetrion.8295:

Hitpoints currently only have one function:

• If you have hitpoints you are alive.
• If you don’t have hitpoints you are dead.

This is the root of the problem.

What? That it’s immediately understandable to anyone including new players is a problem now?

So the thing with healing in this game, is that by they made it so every class has ways to mitigate damage that work far better than healing. Reflect/Aegis/Protection/EVADE!!! are all far better ways to mitigate damage than healing in shorter fights (99% of gw2 content).

However in some fights… namely Tequatl, a few healers are very helpful. The problem with building a “full” healing build is that healing scales poorly. A Guardian with full dps build will only heal slightly less than a guardian in cleric’s gear with healing traits.

So TLDR.. the root of the problem is that the game is too EASY, which allows for full dps builds without needing healing in any way.

RIP fun tequatl (that short time after they fixed SA and before they “fixed” crit spots) pours one out

Aetrion.8295:

Warrior-Skald?

https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/The_Watcher_of_Resolve

Aetrion.8295:

Healers in Guild Wars 2 are in a bad spot. They aren’t useful, and any attempt to make them useful gets negative reactions because people don’t want them to be required.

The problem is not with the healers however, it’s with the way the hitpoint system works.

Hitpoints currently only have one function:

• If you have hitpoints you are alive.
• If you don’t have hitpoints you are dead.

This is the root of the problem.

You cannot benefit from gaining more hitpoints unless you would die without them!

Guild Wars 2 does not want to make healers mandatory, but because of the primitive way hitpoints work healers cannot possibly be useful without being mandatory.

If hitpoints had more different effects than just being alive or dead a healer could be useful even if people wouldn’t die without the heals.

• Maybe you could spend a portion of your hitpoints to reduce your cooldowns.
• Maybe you could gain boon duration when you stay topped off on health.
• Maybe you could receive a buff for being healed past 100%.

There are hundreds of possible ways hitpoints could have other effects than just life/death that would make getting more hitpoints desirable without killing you if you don’t have them.

The hitpoint system as it currently exists is just as old and outdated as the trinity. In fact, hitpoints governing nothing but when characters die is the whole reason why the trinity exists in games. It’s time to change that!

No it isn’t. The game is fine as it is. Trying to revamp it every time you feel there’s something wrong will only hurt the game in the long run.
A game needs stability – otherwise it will lose a lot of players. You can’t reinvent the game 3 years after launch – and there’s no reason to do it.

You take big risks before you launch – you have no player base and can chance this sort of thing. 3 years after release you’ve got a player base that is invested – you can’t really make this sort of absurd change one day.

Oh yes they can and they did several times already

In mind come:

• statcombo introductions (apothecary,celestial, sinister, nomad, and so on)
• condition rework
• trait rework(s)
• the ferocity nerf
• ascended
• changing ascended statcombo’s

Loking at this: condition dmg has been reworked from useless to usefull , now it’s time for healing, and I personally still prefer a nerf of al base healing (60-65% of original and a factor 3(,4?, 5 even?) to healing scaling… including vampirics and siphons.) it would still allow all combat based upon dodges aegis, blind and other control and reflects, it would just reduce base healing by 35%

It will not make healers mandatory but it will improve the value of healing as a attibute.

Your suggestion reminds me of a trait in the beast mastery line for rangers. We have a minor that increases our pets dps by 10% if were above 90%. Theres also a minor in the WS line that reduces the damage we take if were above that threshold. So some things like that exist. But having it be a comeon theme across classes may indeed encourage builds that can keep people above a health threshold.

There is a flaw in the premise.

Hitpoints currently only have one function:
If you have hitpoints you are alive.
If you don’t have hitpoints you are dead.
This is the root of the problem.

Healing, and hitpoint retention, has diminished importance thanks to the Downed State.

Shadelang.3012:

Your suggestion reminds me of a trait in the beast mastery line for rangers. We have a minor that increases our pets dps by 10% if were above 90%. Theres also a minor in the WS line that reduces the damage we take if were above that threshold. So some things like that exist. But having it be a comeon theme across classes may indeed encourage builds that can keep people above a health threshold.

For as zealous at the OP is about the suggestion, there’s a point to it.

For exceptional players, a trait like that being common to every class would mean that builds would get a damage boost by having it and not taking damage. Those that use dodges/blinds/aegis would get a raw performance boost.

For those not so tuned, it provides incentive to have a dedicated healer without requiring it.

Though, I’ll be honest, I’d rather just see Healing Power scrapped, merged into Vitality and be done with it. The defense trifecta is too spread out, and Toughness is the only useful stat.

Shadelang.3012:

Your suggestion reminds me of a trait in the beast mastery line for rangers. We have a minor that increases our pets dps by 10% if were above 90%. Theres also a minor in the WS line that reduces the damage we take if were above that threshold. So some things like that exist. But having it be a comeon theme across classes may indeed encourage builds that can keep people above a health threshold.

Yea… however, to make it viable to have a class that’s dedicated to this idea you shouldn’t make it only work with some other classes if they have a certain build or trait. It would be much better if the affects were determined by the person doing the healing, not the person receiving.

Great idea overall, as long as the person doing the healing has traits that allow him to buff others if they stay above certain thresholds through boons, or effects that grant increased damage to make up for their lack of damage, then I can see myself making a character with that kind of build.

This prevents creating a reliance on a healer but still allows a healing playstyle that contributes to the group. Very very cool. I hope to see this someday.. please :’(

Yea, the >90% traits are a good start to this, but they aren’t quite enough, because not everyone has them, and it only takes a tiny trickle of healing to keep people topped off most of the time. You run into the overheal problem, where when someone hits 100% of their health any additional healing leveled at them becomes meaningless. So you rarely need a lot of healing power to keep someone hovering above 90% unless they are taking an absolute wallop.

Maybe people could also have a counter for overheal, where if they receive healing beyond their natural health pool it counts up somewhere and every 5000 points or so give you something nice. That way you would have a way to benefit from receiving heals even if you manage not to get hit, because if you were getting hit all the heals would do is restore your health, but since you did a good job surviving they are charging your overheal instead.

Healing can work just fine with all the sensibilities of GW2, as long as we can get away from the idea that the only reason to have more HP is because not having enough kills you.

dace.8019:

There is a flaw in the premise.

Hitpoints currently only have one function:
If you have hitpoints you are alive.
If you don’t have hitpoints you are dead.
This is the root of the problem.

Healing, and hitpoint retention, has diminished importance thanks to the Downed State.

Making resurrection quick and easy does contribute to the fact that people are even less afraid of running out of health than they are in other games, that’s true. However I don’t think that is a flaw with my premise, quite on the contrary, it shows that the GW2 devs really want to create a game that has a softer line between being up and fighting and being dead. Adding more ways to benefit from getting extra health even when you aren’t getting pummeled by enemies would be a positive addition to that spectrum.

The only things stopping healing from being a thing is its poor interaction with vitality, and that most content has only slow attacks which can be avoided entirely/reflected/etc.

The last thing really isn’t even an issue as that is support working as intended. The first is a built in limitation to actively discourage giving people high base healing and heal scaling so that they don’t trivialize content via Heal sponging.

And realistically, there’s no problem with vitality in this game either. It works as intended. You either have it and you live, or you don’t and you die. Using vitality to work around boons and cooldowns is a bad idea as most cooldowns are balanced for the raw power that skill provides. Last thing you want to see is a warrior using rampage plus your cooldown reduction idea to perma CC you. Or is it….Maybe you’re into that.

The ideas I put down are just examples of how the HP system could be expanded, they have nothing to do with the central point. ANets designers would come up with balanced ways to give extra HP a use if they wanted to implement a system in the spirit of what I’m suggesting.

Faster attacks wouldn’t solve the problem. Unless you lose so much health that you die without healing there is still no need to bring a healer, and getting killed unless you have a healer would get us right back to the trinity, so that can’t be the answer.

Aetrion.8295:

Faster attacks wouldn’t solve the problem. Unless you lose so much health that you die without healing there is still no need to bring a healer, and getting killed unless you have a healer would get us right back to the trinity, so that can’t be the answer.

The entire point of faster attacks is just that, to make it so players either have to spread damage out so their own self heals are relevant or have a meaningful source of outside healing. But that leads to another issue entirely like….why should anyone be forced into bringing a healer ? Let alone having to play around having a heal forced specialist in a game designed around active mitigation of damage.

We the players have tools to avoid damage and in some cases tools that allow us to take 1 more hit (vitality, stances, aegies etc…). It is ultimately down to the players to use their skills accordingly to live. Is that such a bad thing ?

I’d much rather move far and away from stat crunching the game to a game where i as a player see rewarding combat on screen regardless of stats. I should be rewarded for avoiding that 1 shot, reflecting that big damage nuke etc and so far the game does just that.

BeckaPL.2670:

A lot of people in this thread seem to have missed some of the HoT suggestions by the devs. You can’t say there are no healers and never will be since the devs have stated that in HoT the mobs will have been designed in such a way to not REQUIRE a healer or tank, but to make them desirable in order to complete the missions. This means although there wouldn’t be a specific holy trinity idea going on there is likely to be a soft trinity. Which was in fact that idea at the start of the game. There was never not supposed to be any healers or tanks, but it was supposed to be that ANY class could play any role. But exactly this is why we have the mind-numbing DPS meta which the devs are trying to sort out with the expac

Devs have said many things over the years. At best that is a “we’ll see”.

Hopefully it won’t involve either of these. Especially 2.
1) Add in some undodgeable and unblockable attacks.
2) Add in a useless suicidal NPC made of tissue paper that you must keep alive or fail the mission.

Khisanth.2948:

BeckaPL.2670:

A lot of people in this thread seem to have missed some of the HoT suggestions by the devs. You can’t say there are no healers and never will be since the devs have stated that in HoT the mobs will have been designed in such a way to not REQUIRE a healer or tank, but to make them desirable in order to complete the missions. This means although there wouldn’t be a specific holy trinity idea going on there is likely to be a soft trinity. Which was in fact that idea at the start of the game. There was never not supposed to be any healers or tanks, but it was supposed to be that ANY class could play any role. But exactly this is why we have the mind-numbing DPS meta which the devs are trying to sort out with the expac

Devs have said many things over the years. At best that is a “we’ll see”.

Hopefully it won’t involve either of these. Especially 2.
1) Add in some undodgeable and unblockable attacks.
2) Add in a useless suicidal NPC made of tissue paper that you must keep alive or fail the mission.

If they are smart about it they will simply have content where you can’t feasibly survive by dodging or using active damage mitigation skills while still in glass gear.

A great way to do it is to make some boss fights have a constant stream of adds that hurt you enough to matter but you can’t dodge because you need to save them for the big boss hits.

Tanks can easily be used in fights where there is an add that needs to be preoccupied for some reason but hits insanely hard and fast requiring tank stats to keep locked down in combat. They could also make some content require a person to stand in a specific spot for most of the fight forcing them to tank up as they won’t be able to avoid all aoe.

My main worry is that they will try this and it will be just hard enough to force pugs to tank/heal up but hardcore players will learn and exploit the content to the point that they will go back to zerk with a side of zerk and there will be an even bigger pve issue than we have now.

Content that makes you take damage you can’t avoid is simply absurd. There’s no reason to do it.

Why force people to wear gear just to get through something? why not make it skill-based instead of gear based?

Why shouldn’t it by feasible to survive by dodging or active mitigation? that’s what this game is built around – active combat that rewards you for playing SMART and timing your abilities and dodges not passive " load up on knight’s gear and eat that damage".

Harper.4173:

Content that makes you take damage you can’t avoid is simply absurd. There’s no reason to do it.

There’s plenty of reason to do it. It makes things like healing and defensive stats something people think about and rely on as much as dodges, not things reserved for bad players unversed in the latest exploit/cheese tactic. It also opens up new methods of play beyond dps with a side of dps.

If WvW and sPvP can be hard enough to force people to consider defense beyond the scope of dodge rolls and side stepping red rings, then so can pve.

Substance E.4852:

Khisanth.2948:

BeckaPL.2670:

A lot of people in this thread seem to have missed some of the HoT suggestions by the devs. You can’t say there are no healers and never will be since the devs have stated that in HoT the mobs will have been designed in such a way to not REQUIRE a healer or tank, but to make them desirable in order to complete the missions. This means although there wouldn’t be a specific holy trinity idea going on there is likely to be a soft trinity. Which was in fact that idea at the start of the game. There was never not supposed to be any healers or tanks, but it was supposed to be that ANY class could play any role. But exactly this is why we have the mind-numbing DPS meta which the devs are trying to sort out with the expac

Devs have said many things over the years. At best that is a “we’ll see”.

Hopefully it won’t involve either of these. Especially 2.
1) Add in some undodgeable and unblockable attacks.
2) Add in a useless suicidal NPC made of tissue paper that you must keep alive or fail the mission.

If they are smart about it they will simply have content where you can’t feasibly survive by dodging or using active damage mitigation skills while still in glass gear.

3) deadly Venn diagrams?
That is not especially smart. It does mean anyone who can’t do both will fail. Won’t provide much challenge for people who can breeze through current content. Maybe a speed bump to get a new gear set. On the other hand the people who want(need?) more passive defense will just fail.

A great way to do it is to make some boss fights have a constant stream of adds that hurt you enough to matter but you can’t dodge because you need to save them for the big boss hits.

Sigil of Restoration? You could take the easy way out and make it so none of the adds trigger on kill effects but that also disables other on kill effects as well. Not an especially great design but it’s an option.

Tanks can easily be used in fights where there is an add that needs to be preoccupied for some reason but hits insanely hard and fast requiring tank stats to keep locked down in combat.

The Hunter&Crusher fight in Arah p3 is like that but it doesn’t require a tank.

They could also make some content require a person to stand in a specific spot for most of the fight forcing them to tank up as they won’t be able to avoid all aoe.

Dredge fractal.

Also very long duration stealth.

Substance E.4852:

Harper.4173:

Content that makes you take damage you can’t avoid is simply absurd. There’s no reason to do it.

There’s plenty of reason to do it. It makes things like healing and defensive stats something people think about and rely on as much as dodges, not things reserved for bad players unversed in the latest exploit/cheese tactic. It also opens up new methods of play beyond dps with a side of dps.

If WvW and sPvP can be hard enough to force people to consider defense beyond the scope of dodge rolls and side stepping red rings, then so can pve.

The people who follow the meta and go glass cannon because they understand it, think about healing and defensive stats. They go: I’m skilled enough to not need it, therefore I will wear more offensive stat gear.

Khisanth.2948:

Devs have said many things over the years. At best that is a “we’ll see”.

Hopefully it won’t involve either of these. Especially 2.
1) Add in some undodgeable and unblockable attacks.
2) Add in a useless suicidal NPC made of tissue paper that you must keep alive or fail the mission.

Both of those are awful ways to make healing heavy characters more useful. The whole point of my suggestion is to make people happy to have healers along because healers make good things happen, rather than merely stopping bad things from happening.

Any kind of system that makes more bad things happen when you don’t have a healer doesn’t make the game more fun, it just takes us back to the kind of mandatory class comp you get with trinity.

Or what if there were simply something like the Scholar rune bonus but for everyone and spread out across your health bar? What if you got an extra 1% damage for every 10% of your health bar that was full?

Iavra.8510:

Since there is no trinity, there are no healers.

“Since there is no trinity, there are no DPS characters.”

That’s how silly you sound. A healer is one who heals. You can heal in Guild Wars 2, therefore you can be a healer. You can’t just heal, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a healer.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Or what if there were simply something like the Scholar rune bonus but for everyone and spread out across your health bar? What if you got an extra 1% damage for every 10% of your health bar that was full?

Not a bad premise, but since a healing geared character does only about 20% of the damage as a DPS geared character you need a much bigger bonus to the party to justify having a healer.

That also doesn’t increase the actual demand for healing. Unless you can do something to spend any extra health your party can generate the demand for heals will always be extremely low for skilled players.

It would have to work both ways. Right now, 10 foes with 10% health left do 10x as much damage as a identical for at 100%, even though the total health is the same in both cases. Changing that would change a lot of dynamics and make damage-over-time builds more interesting.

However, it’s difficult to create the mechanics that take health into account and are fun to play.

• Breakpoint systems are mechanically easier (changes at e.g. 75%, 50%, 25%) would just split the problem in to smaller chunks. And unfortunately, it’s often less fun to play, especially using coordinated teams.
• Continuous functions would be more consistent with the idea and are much harder to balance properly. If foes deal 10% damage at 10% health or stop being able to generate conditions, then players would often feel safe to ignore them, which is usually balanced by throwing more foes into the mix. More foes means more potential interactions (requiring more processing power) and more loot (requiring rebalancing that, too).

tl;dr the idea is really intriguing and I wish there were games that use it. However, it isn’t just tradition that keeps damage|living as a binary function of health — it’s actually really hard to get it right.

Yea, it isn’t easy to get this right, but it’s not a premise that can simply be ignored if they want to actually move RPGs past the trinity without losing half the archetypes in the process.

Right now this game amputates the right arm and left leg of the genre in an attempt to cure the trinity. I say it can be done without cutting anything off.

Aetrion.8295:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Or what if there were simply something like the Scholar rune bonus but for everyone and spread out across your health bar? What if you got an extra 1% damage for every 10% of your health bar that was full?

Not a bad premise, but since a healing geared character does only about 20% of the damage as a DPS geared character you need a much bigger bonus to the party to justify having a healer.

“Healers” will still be doing more than healing, namely throwing defensive boons on their party. Making red bars go up shouldn’t be the extent of what the support character’s trying to do and this wouldn’t change that. It would, however, attach a very real benefit to keeping your party healthy rather than just alive, so even if the support character is only doing 20% the damage of someone else, he’s also helping his teammates keep their 10% bonuses, so really he’s more like 60% of a zerker build.

And that’s fine! We don’t want the party with the support necessarily dealing more damage than the party without one because that would pretty much just result in a Trinity-type situation. Having a support should make your dungeon or fractal run safer and smoother, at the cost of some speed compared to optimally-played zerkers. Currently, the speed cost is a bit too stark. This change would mitigate a bit of the speed advantage without removing it.

Aetrion.8295:

That also doesn’t increase the actual demand for healing. Unless you can do something to spend any extra health your party can generate the demand for heals will always be extremely low for skilled players.

Well, that’s just how things are gonna have to be, since the alternative is to make healers essentially required, which severely bottlenecks group creation since far fewer players have historically been interested in healing. It’d be cool if Anet could calibrate some new, intentionally difficult content so that even experienced groups might be interested in bringing along a supportive healer-type, but even then they shouldn’t make that mandatory.

Yea, but remember, the whole point of this topic is that if hitpoints do more than kill you you can increase the demand for healing without forcing you to have a healer to survive.

For example, if you could spend half your hitpoints to activate a powerful ability then you would have a constant demand for hitpoints that a healer can fill even from people who never take damage from monsters, but nobody loses anything when they don’t have a healer.

Aetrion.8295:

Yea, but remember, the whole point of this topic is that if hitpoints do more than kill you you can increase the demand for healing without forcing you to have a healer to survive.

For example, if you could spend half your hitpoints to activate a powerful ability then you would have a constant demand for hitpoints that a healer can fill even from people who never take damage from monsters, but nobody loses anything when they don’t have a healer.

That’s the thing, enemies have to be designed to be balanced around player abilities. And your hit point suggestion would be something enemies would have to be balanced around.

Balancing around your suggestion would likely make it required to have healers because the enemies will start hitting harder or more often in an attempt to get players below the HP threshold.

So no, I can’t support your solution. The game does not require you to go full out DPS only and you can form groups with other players who have the same mindset as you for group related content, so that’s not even an issue.

Somehow nothing you just said makes any sense to me. How exactly does being able to spend excess HP require enemies to hit harder?

Lots of people use Scholar Runes in full zerker groups, this gives a strong buff when you’re topped off – healers are not required to maintain this effect.

The only way you will get healers to be useful is with encounters that require healing, benefits for being at full health are already part of the system and healers aren’t used to get them. Even if you added traits that say “buffs and good things when you heal a friend” and they were worth taking, you would still just see a zerker taking those traits and using whatever skill gave healing to the group.

I played a healer in WoW for a few years and I loved it but the only way you’ll need them in GW2 is with a VERY different approach on encounter design (which I would support and be excited to try but I’m not sure if it would be the direction anet would ever take).

The benefits have to be tied to heal amount, not just putting a single point of health on someone.

If you needed to put 5000 HP on someone who already has full health to kick them into overheal mode or whatever then it simply wouldn’t be effective trying to do that to a whole group without being geared for it.

the inherent problem with the trinity system is that for people who don’t enjoy tanking or healing, a tank and/or healer is required for them to have fun. So they must find someone who would rather perform one of those roles or who is willing to sacrifice their own enjoyment to enable others to enjoy playing.

Aetrion.8295:

Somehow nothing you just said makes any sense to me. How exactly does being able to spend excess HP require enemies to hit harder?

So players are supposed to become overpowered?

It’s this thing called balance. You don’t want to make the game so easy that players who use the mechanism can just steamroll over everything.

And if it isn’t high enough to not have something put in place to counter it, then it won’t affect the meta because it’s not worth the choice. Players will choose a trait or skill that doesn’t require health to be above a certain threshold, because it will hit with the same strength if he’s at 100% or at 5% health. And if it’s not a choice, then things would have to be balanced because the good players out in PvE will stay above any threshold given and will steamroll over everything if there isn’t anything put in to balance it out. And even average players will complain about most of the game being too easy.

Narrrz.7532:

the inherent problem with the trinity system is that for people who don’t enjoy tanking or healing, a tank and/or healer is required for them to have fun. So they must find someone who would rather perform one of those roles or who is willing to sacrifice their own enjoyment to enable others to enjoy playing.

Yea, I want them to change the system so that you can do all the content without a tank or healer, but people who enjoy playing tanks or healers still get to enjoy the game too by changing their function from simply being mandatory to avoid death to helping people who like DPSing do more damage.

Simple example: If you had a support character in the party that did no damage, but raised everyone else’s damage by 25% then that person can play support and enjoy it without having to build the whole game around making you need that person.

Seera.5916:

So players are supposed to become overpowered?

It’s this thing called balance. You don’t want to make the game so easy that players who use the mechanism can just steamroll over everything.

How could you possibly know how the devs are going to balance it?

First you claim that somehow enemies have to do more damage if a new type of ability is added to the game, then you claim that this completely unspecified ability that hasn’t even been designed yet, but was merely discussed as a possibility is overpowered.

It sounds like you’re trying to argue against a general design idea by just making wild unfounded assertions about how it will be implemented.

Aetrion.8295:

Narrrz.7532:

the inherent problem with the trinity system is that for people who don’t enjoy tanking or healing, a tank and/or healer is required for them to have fun. So they must find someone who would rather perform one of those roles or who is willing to sacrifice their own enjoyment to enable others to enjoy playing.

Yea, I want them to change the system so that you can do all the content without a tank or healer, but people who enjoy playing tanks or healers still get to enjoy the game too by changing their function from simply being mandatory to avoid death to helping people who like DPSing do more damage.

Simple example: If you had a support character in the party that did no damage, but raised everyone else’s damage by 25% then that person can play support and enjoy it without having to build the whole game around making you need that person.

But then they aren’t “healing” they are just a buff bot which kinda defeats the purpose because you aren’t giving people who enjoy healing a job (because they aren’t healing – they are just seeing green numbers instead of red). Healers like feeling like they saved someone or are critical to keeping the group up, your method of making it viable is based around them not needing to heal but just giving buffs.