Guild Wars 2

Dungeons so far have been the only things in the game that I have scratched my head at so far. After finally finishing Arah last night with a few guildies I’ve come to the conclusion that ANet might be tied with Riot Games (Creator’s of LoL) in creating that one idea that screws everything. When the 5 of us were getting tossed around by Krait, poisoned by Hylek and the dragon’s AOE (Which covers the whole ship’s deck btw), I thought to myself: This is the equivalent to the release of Darius on LoL. End dungeon rant, now to my question that may help me get passed my frustrations with dungeons.

Can you think of any classes that are best for dungeon? I’m talking classes that you’ve grouped with and were able to blow through dungeons like it’s nothing. So far what I’ve noticed (And it’s mind boggling because this was supposed to not exist) is that classes that have the tanking/aggro abilities work best in the group. Every instance I’ve done with a Guardian has been a cake walk. A Necro I did AC with provided the rest of the group the chance to dps the Ascalonians down pretty easy with pet aggro. A few thiefs I’ve played with have done a lot of kiting/dodging to pull aggro and allow our group to dps the mobs down. So all of these support/tank roles were not intended to be in the game, yet from what I’ve noticed they are the best to have in a group. I’ve also done a dungeon with a 3 warrior 1 thief 1 engi setup and it was incredibly difficult.

If I wanted to role another character (I’m currently a warrior) what class would you suggest I role solely to support my guildies in PvE situations like dungeons and big events.

In my most recent run, we had a Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist, Mesmer, and Engineer (me). I only do guild runs, so that probably has something to do with it, but we got through it pretty easily.

I’m sorry, I haven’t noticed this.

Any profession can spec in a way that the Necromancer that you mentioned did, it’s just that most don’t go into a dungeon environment with the idea that they might have to play differently than they usually do or trait different skills. Ie for tanking specifcally — Rogues/Mesmer/Engineer = evasion tanking, Necromancer/Ranger = pet tanking, Elementalist/Warrior/Guardian = More traditional get smacked in the face tanking (as long as they’ve got both vit+toughness and not just one or the other)

The point of ‘getting rid of the trinity’ wasn’t that people wouldn’t be in supportive roles, it was that ANY profession could take on the various supportive roles throughout the encounter and that one profession wouldn’t be the only profession that could take on those roles. You could go into AC with 5 mesmers and as long as they traited differently each could take on the role of supporting the party to make a highly successful run.

Are some combinations more obvious — such as Healing support being a Guardian or Elementalist? Sure. But does that make it impossible for a Mesmer to cast themselves into a supportive healing role? No, but they could never be a dedicated healer or even a dedicated healer/condition remover – they should adjusting their playstyle to what the group needs right then. And that is how ArenaNet detroyed the trinity.

No profession can be a dedicated Tank, Healer, DPS without sacrificing the entire group’s overal performance for their own preferred playstyle. It sounds like none of you were willing to take on a supportive role (other than “tank”) in the run with the 3 warrior/1theif/1engineer set up.

Were you changing out your abilites and weapons to be better prepared for the fights? Were you planning out your pulls if you didn’t — because since none of you were willing (or able) to go support you were making it about 50 times more difficult for yourselves. Did you discuss how you could change things around to complete the fights within the group? Dungeons are intended to be hard content that challenges you to be a better player – one more able to react to a changing environment.

Will the community will be able to come up with ideal profession/skill/trait combos at some point for speed runs of all of the dungeons? Sure — but does that make one profession a “tank” or “healer” no, it really doesn’t since 1) most players don’t play at that level & 2) It will be just as easy (if not as fast) to do it with a different combination of professions.

Pretty much what Thellena said. Every class is viable in dungeon runs. Not every player is. Especially this early in the game.
In that 3 warrior/1engi/1thief run you said was exceptionally hard were all of those warriors and the thief focused on DPS and basically glass cannons?
People need to realise that almost every utility skill you can purchase has a use somewhere and you should be willing to swap to them when they are called for despite the lack in ‘lol dps’ when in a group situation. You want abilities that blind/weaken you want cripple/chill even in melee. You want the ability that may benefit you less but also gives that benefit to your group. You want the abilities that may appear weaker but can feed off of allies fields or provide fields for them.
Taking my own necro for example, I’d never touch wells while out and about soloing as the cooldown is prohibitively long. In a hard group though wells + ground target trait can save lives making everyone effectively condition immune for 10s, or blinding entire packs for 10s . Plague signet is relatively lackluster soloing… is godly in groups. Taking plague as my elite and spamming the blinding attack with the chilling darkness trait, its not much damage but its an entire pack blinded and chilled for 20s….

This early in the game with the ‘WoW’ generation of gamers its going to take more than the 2 weeks the games been out for people to get out of the loldps mode and into the different structure that GW2 promotes