Guild Wars 2

I keep thinking if they had just canned the downed state and added a healing line to each profession and balanced around that this game would be 1000x better. Am I alone?

Probably. The whole getting rid of the holy trinity thing never really panned out anyway. Look at any ideal group in virtually any situation, and I guarantee you it’ll have something like 1-2 supports, 1-2 tanks, rest dps. There may be less restrictions as to who can be what, but the trinity remains as strongly as ever.

You are alone.
/15chars

I am not a fan of games with dedicated healers, but I’m not a fan of downed states either (at least not in their current form, ie. many professions do more damage and have more utility once they are on the ground lol).

Wish I had the solution for it, I personally just don’t think what we currently have is it. /shrug

Right now it is more the Holy Singularity of guardians, both in dungeons and tPvP

I really love the down state! It brings so much depth into the game!

Yes, the down state is not funny in 1v1, but when do you have a 1v1?
You don’t have a lot of diversity nor varieties, but i don’t think, thats necessary. Bacause you have your teammates.

atm i’m playing free tournaments (need to practice more for paid), and it is such a fun and diversified element, with a lot of depth, when you try to stomp / revive your teammate.

I haven’t seen every dungeon yet, but in the few i visited, the down state was also fun, because the fight is not over, when you get downed.

Enemy players getting rallied from stomps is what I hate about down state.

I am fine with the downed state in general, but tweaks need to be made. The ele downstate went from worthless to OP overnight, and theif/mesmer need some work too. The other classes downed states are fine IMO. And no healers is great, leave it.

Sprawl.3891:

I keep thinking if they had just canned the downed state and added a healing line to each profession and balanced around that this game would be 1000x better. Am I alone?

Well I don’t mind the down state (at least in sPvP, can’t stand it in WvW), but I agree on the healing. The no trinity thing apparently means – dumb classes down and keep the DPS role, but greatly weaken everything else (classes seem a sort of halfway house between an ARPG and a normal MMORPG), which just results in a lack of variety and the removal of the two highest skill cap types of play – healing & support (certain support classes (loremaster in LOTRO, chlorodom in Rift etc), others (normally buffbot types) are admittedly on the easy end of the spectrum).

There is really no class in this game that comes close to the awareness, multitasking or decision making you need to play a healer / complex support in PvP in many other games, I actually miss the challenge of being constantly focus fired…

Firstly, I don’t mind down state in the slightest, I personally feel it adds another level of depth to the game, in regards to how your team and you handle when a player drops into downed state, and vice versa. Also, it limits the ability of extremely glass cannon builds, even if some guy bursts you in a few seconds, he probably can’t pull that stomp himself, and your teamates can bail you out. On the healing thing, I really don’t think that would help the state of pvp in this game… imagine a bunker guardian with a dedicated healer on a point. Even if (most likely when) they add other game modes I don’t believe healing is a way to go for a succesful, interesting, pvp game. I’ve seen too many examples of games with dedicated healers where pvp turns into 20-30 minute heal fests until someone dies, which I don’t feel is interesting for the players, or in the case of GW2’s aim, the audience of an Esport.

In regards to the removal of the holy trinity “dumbing down” classes, I don’t believe that. In all honesty, I believe it does the exact opposite. It forces you to tune your builds to have more versitility, you can’t just build for max damage while having a tank and healer to bail you out, you have to find ways to mix damage into a build that can survive some hits. Also, the role of support changed in GW2 from what I’ve seen, no longer is a class just being a buffbot; a support player is adding boons, yes, but also contributing damage, dropping and detonating combo fields, and controlling the enemy. That’s what I love about the system of GW2, instead of my class being stuck in one role for hours on end, I’m able to control my enemy in pvp as well as pve, dropping and detonating combos that can help my teamates, adding damage, and all the while not being scared of a single stray aoe that’ll kill me.

Also, when refering to a lack of support, I can point you to an arcana/water & valk amulet ele build that puts out amazing levels of aoe support, from large might stacks to aoe healing…

tldr: I think healing would slow down the game too much in pvp, down state functions to add new levels of strategy to pvp (for example, if to carry, and when to use, the stability buffs that classes can get) and the holy trinity wasn’t so much as removed as it was altered to function differently, and in a much more flexible manner.

disclaimer Seeing as this is the internet, I’ll state here that all of this is just my opinion.

+1 and some more words because filter

thejoshknight.4697:

…which I don’t feel is interesting for the players, or in the case of GW2’s aim, the audience of an Esport.

I’m not sure their audience exists, they’ve homogenized everything, removed complexity (less skills, everyone is basically DPS), no healer, no real support or real CC classes to add to things, etc , so in a way made it more like e-sport games like MOBAs or FPS, which for me and many other MMORPGs players I know is just too simple, lacks variety, but on the other hand is it really going to appeal to LOL/DOTA 2 players or FPSers? Judging by the viewing figures on Twitch, or the number of people still playing sPvP, the answer would be no.

thejoshknight.4697:

In regards to the removal of the holy trinity “dumbing down” classes, I don’t believe that. In all honesty, I believe it does the exact opposite. It forces you to tune your builds to have more versitility, you can’t just build for max damage while having a tank and healer to bail you out, you have to find ways to mix damage into a build that can survive some hits. Also, the role of support changed in GW2 from what I’ve seen, no longer is a class just being a buffbot; a support player is adding boons, yes, but also contributing damage, dropping and detonating combo fields, and controlling the enemy. That’s what I love about the system of GW2, instead of my class being stuck in one role for hours on end, I’m able to control my enemy in pvp as well as pve, dropping and detonating combos that can help my teamates, adding damage, and all the while not being scared of a single stray aoe that’ll kill me.

The builds have minimal versitility in this game, sure there are a couple of classes that get nearer to offering proper support (Ele, Guard), but on most you are basically DPS + self heals + a bit of CC + a bit of utlity and all gear/traits let you do is alter the levels of support/CC/utlity to a relatively minor extent, generally you are still DPS first and foremost, there is a distinct lack of variety.

If I switch from a DPS class to a healer in other MMORPGS, it is a total change in playstyle, there is nothing to compare to that level of contrast in GW2, everything is a bit samey,.

Even things like water Ele are pretty unimpressive when it comes to supporting others most of teh time in PvP, there is usually simply too much movement / too much damage for the tiny area the AOE heals affect and the small amount they put out to be of much use.

Support is not just a buffbot, in many games support along wth healers are the highest skillcap in the game, take LOTRO and loremaster, you have to off-heal, drain power from opponents, feed power to teammates, cleanse, provide stun immunity, do damage, buff, debuff, lots of CC all whislt managing a pet.

Furthermore it generally requires much more awareness / multitasking to carry these things out in other games than GW2 where they have been simplified by makign them automatic/semi-automatic, for example in other games I have to specifically target a player to cleanse them, in this most of the time it is done automatically by me firing a DPS skill or an AOE effect from f1-f4. It is then made simpler still by the lack of need to priortise, in other games in PvP if I am on support/healer I have to keep a constant watch on other healers / key support classes, in GW2 PvP it barely matters.

There is really no class in GW2 that compares in terms of multitasking, awareness and decision making that you have to do for healing or certain support classes in other games, all the while being constantly focus fired.

I think the only step up in terms of complexity, awareness, etc in GW2 is for people that played the very easiest of DPS classes in other MMORPGs (and probably not played much PvP, where you end up doing a bit of CC, the odd self heal, the odd cleanse, even on many bog standard DPS classes in many MMORPGs).

Meh downed state is fine, I like the idea.
Having people be able to heal others to a degree though would have been wonderful

Rant:
This game has a nifty concept for healing but doesn’t pull it off in any way better than any other MMO.

I’m feeling a bit bold so I’ll take it broader than that for the hell of it.
So look at healing, they tossed the trinity which had the whole idea of ‘dedicated healers’ and instead gave everyone a bit of healing. It gives a new playstyle, paths uncharted, yada yada… but in this whole ‘recreating a system’ Anet neglected to touch on the point why people choose to play an MMO… the brilliance of the idea of no trinity would have extended to bringing people to work together more with less hassle, not less with more… everyone would be, to a degree, a healer so have to allocate their heals between themself and others, everyone would be in part a dps so be to some degree an offensive threat, everyone would have their ways of mitigating dmg done to themself and others...
But Anet didn’t do that… they made everyone strikingly standalone, they turned everyone into their own trinity and to boot SPvP into a game of splitting up instead of sticking together…

This is an MMO, and at very least I play MMOs to fight with other people, bond with them threw combat, exc. and the combat Anet setup doesn’t promote that short of the top few percent of players, at best.
Making a game really friendly to those 10~ quality teams in the entire NA server set is great but it should be something to do in addition to or at very least focused on after a solid pug base for the game is setup or else few to no one would care about that Esport quality play…

I couldent agree more with the above post. One of the interesting things about pvp in mmo settings is how the classes work together to achieve more than they could independently.

Support in this game in general is very weak and it turns the combat into more of a self focused undertaking than in my opinion it should be.

I think this is a reason that group vs group death matches wouldent be so hot even though that is my preferred game type.

Even if they dont touch healing increasing the damage mitigation and enhancement abilities of people working in tandem would make the combat much deeper.