Guild Wars 2

I’ve always built my characters like Guild Wars 2 was a dungeon crawler. That is, all of my characters are built with two primary functions in mind: kill stuff, and don’t die. Each character is built to fit a different play style, but all are built as if I were the only player in the game. With the mechanics of the game being what they are, I feel that’s just the best way to approach character builds.

I’ve no doubt some of you want to or enjoy playing support characters, though. I’m primarily a PvEer, so things like +Healing and +Boon Duration gear just don’t have the impact they might in PvP or WvW. I particularly see how important crowd control, a specialized type of support, can be valuable in PvP and WvW; but for the purposes of this conversation I’m talking more about healing and boons than I am crowd control.

So I’m wondering how many of you willingly sacrifice your ability to deal and withstand damage so that you can better support other players with heals, boons, and crowd control? By whatever measure you deem it worthwhile to play support, does the game allow you to achieve that mark? If not, how would you change things to make support a more worthwhile endeavor?

PS – This is not a call for return of healing classes or the Holy Trinity, so please try to keep the discussion relevant to Guild Wars 2’s current design philosophy. Thanks.

10x the healing power “co-efficient” on skills, 10x the duration of CC effects on mobs.

Whilst you can’t go full support there are ways you can support other players without sacrificing damage and defence.

For example the rangers best personal heal skill is Healing Spring, which is also an AoE heal. So any time you’re healing yourself you’re also healing everyone around you (and if there are other players around I usually try to position myself so that several players taking damage are in the area). They also have various AoE condition removal skills.

Elementalists and guardians of course have a lot of AoE support skills.

I’ve tried to make support characters but I’ve been a little disappointed by my efforts. One of my favourite rangers was going Healing until it became it obvious he couldn’t hurt anything either (don’t you people start!).

Healing ele was deleted. I had to remake her though since my daughter kept asking where she was.

Healing guardian seems to be doing alright but I don’t know if that’s just incidental or I’m actually doing something right. She hits like a ton of bricks as well.

Support engineer is moving along but it’s early days. He’s fun though.

I came to the conclusion months ago that kill or be killed comes first and then support a far second but I keep on trying to see if I can get it to work.

Danikat.8537:

Whilst you can’t go full support there are ways you can support other players without sacrificing damage and defence.

For example the rangers best personal heal skill is Healing Spring, which is also an AoE heal. So any time you’re healing yourself you’re also healing everyone around you (and if there are other players around I usually try to position myself so that several players taking damage are in the area). They also have various AoE condition removal skills.

Elementalists and guardians of course have a lot of AoE support skills.

I get a buzz when I see people actually making a beeline to a healing spring at events since it means those players have knowledge of the game. A lot of players seem to ignore that potential though.

zenleto.6179:

Danikat.8537:

Whilst you can’t go full support there are ways you can support other players without sacrificing damage and defence.

For example the rangers best personal heal skill is Healing Spring, which is also an AoE heal. So any time you’re healing yourself you’re also healing everyone around you (and if there are other players around I usually try to position myself so that several players taking damage are in the area). They also have various AoE condition removal skills.

Elementalists and guardians of course have a lot of AoE support skills.

I get a buzz when I see people actually making a beeline to a healing spring at events since it means those players have knowledge of the game. A lot of players seem to ignore that potential though.

Isnt the AoE limit capped at 5?

Maybe but that makes no difference when you put a spring down for two other people and they don’t use it and die.

Healing necro is a lot of fun and can do a decent amount of damage with dagger 1 if you are at all interested

zenleto.6179:

I came to the conclusion months ago that kill or be killed comes first and then support a far second but I keep on trying to see if I can get it to work.

I came to that conclusion very early when I realized my crowd control Engineer was what amounted to a cat playing with a mouse before killing it. I asked myself “why am I slapping all these crowd control conditions on my enemies when I could just kill them outright instead?”

zenleto.6179:

I came to the conclusion months ago that kill or be killed comes first and then support a far second but I keep on trying to see if I can get it to work.

This. I’ve always played tanks and support characters in other games, and I really miss it. I built my guardian for support in GW2, but in most situations I’ve found my zerker warrior to be more beneficial to any group I play in.

The best support one can offer in this game is to kill stuff really fast. Dead foes don’t do much damage.

I started out making a regen banner warrior before they capped healing at 5 people. I still think that build has potential now because you can give regen to more than 5 people in a short period by simply by taking the banner with you. However, I did start feeling underpowered in my ability to help people so I went DPS and stuck with it for a while. I then got bored with just killing stuff and switched to to healing shouts with missile deflection. I find I just get more personal satisfaction from helping people attack and stay alive just a little bit longer. GW2 lets me stay in the fray and fight while helping you stay alive instead of devoting my mana pool to just support. So, yeah, I sacrifice some combat potential to support but my build is a hybrid of berserker and clerics.

I don’t know how to make it more meaningful to be honest. From a design standpoint, previous games weighted healing the most over other forms of damage mitigation but right now the dodge mechanic holds that position. If you give people serious healing, you wouldn’t really need to dodge and right now, the opposite is kinda true. One idea that just popped into my head, is give stronger healing to players but give enemies skills that consistently try to mitigate your healing so that the meta becomes weighing healing against a need to dodge because your cleansing skills aren’t up.

I too like the feeling of support. The problem I run into here, and some classes have it worse, is that support was built into the dps. Lots of times you are actively supporting, you are just dpsing and the rest comes.

Playing a guardian as support is pick some traits dps, and jump in the healing circles! Doesn’t feel real supporty.