Guild Wars 2

Now this is something of a mystery to me. Guild Wars 2 focuses on not having the trinity(tanks/dps/healers), as such we have no healer or tank classes.

But what people have done through builds, is basically make that exact equivalent of healers + tanks in one build:

The Bunker
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Now most people who have played WoW or most other mmorpg’s know that tanks don’t survive on their own.(usually even 1v1) They NEED a healer otherwise they die without doing significant damage. Same can be said for healers, they can heal other people, but they need a tank/dps to peel off aggro so they can stay alive and do their job.(Of course dps does the damage).
-Basically explaining the trinity here.
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What guildwars gives us, are builds that can indeffinitely hold off a person if not traited/built specifically for anti-bunker.(in some proffessions this is almost impossible in implementation).

They do their job well, they sit on the point, they don’t die, or they die very very slowly gaining as much points as possible.

But……why do they exist?

What is the point of taking out the trinity if you still allow tanks/healers to exist albeit in a different form?
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I"m not saying there shouldn’t be defensive builds, but bunkers are overkill in most scenarios. I’ve fought many a time and played bunker quite a bit to know: Its boring, its uninteresting, and it makes the game less of what it could be. Even if I do kill the bunker, all i feel is annoyance because I know if one other point is capped, he will just repeat the process over and over as much as possible.

I for one got tired of the bunker scene. Constantly sitting on one point, just taking attacks? It was BORING. I wasn’t even fighting the enemy player, i was fighting the clock. I was dragging out the fight that I would either win(by not being able to be killed) or slowly (VERY slowly) die until i squeezed every last bit of my sitting on that point.(although in my d/d ele’s case i could always just escape to another point) In most 2v1 cases, i would die…….eventually. It takes a long time for a bunker to be downed regardless though, much longer than a normal player.
————————————————————-

Point is, Guild Wars sacrificed tanks and healers so that we have a build that incorporates the point of both on one proffession.

I mean the point of a healer/tank composition is to stay alive(in spvp on the objective), don’t bunkers fit that exactly?

Why not just make them tanks without aggro skills? That would solve all the spvp problems instead of them being able to hold off people 1v1 forever.

It never was about “no roles here”. Its about playing one or multiple roles with every class you choose without role dedication.

What kind of bunkers are you talking about? Eles, or any kind of bunker? Atm Eles are the best bunkers, and quite strong in any situation.

Tanks in wow don’t survive on their own ? Oh in PvP they do for very long ;p

They removed trinity: every class can be each of 3 role in this game. So they say, but evryone here knows that some classes are better of others in doing some jobs. So they removed nothing. Sure everyone can try to be tank or a healr but must sacrifice all of offensive abilites when some other classes do not. They haven’t same skills and this means that they have no same efficiency. It’s not whine. You only have to go in some premades, you’ll always find guardain bunker or ele bunker and thief roamer.

Tanks and healers in other mmo survive but in wow you must not stay alive forever to take points like gw2. Thats the problem, this match mechanic promotes to have at least 2 but better 3 bunker builds in your premade. Boring. Sometimes i fell doing a dungeon instead or pvp, really.

Rozbuska.5263:

It never was about “no roles here”. Its about playing one or multiple roles with every class you choose without role dedication.

yes it was

they really pushed role-less mmo in the marketing, they didn’t deliver

regardless the only thing keeping bunkers viable is the conquest gamemode

Empiren.6401:

most people who have played WoW know that tanks don’t survive on their own.
without doing significant damage.

highlight of my time on wow was pvping as a max geared blood DK with twice everyones hp, constant health gains and topping the damage meter every BG
that being said, it was very cheap and required 0 skill, just like any of the copy/paste builds in Buildwars 2’s meta whether its dagger ele, backstab thief, bunker guard, trap ranger, s/p mesmer, they’re all the same copy/paste EZmode.

Liewec.2896:

Empiren.6401:

most people who have played WoW know that tanks don’t survive on their own.
without doing significant damage.

highlight of my time on wow was pvping as a max geared blood DK with twice everyones hp, constant health gains and topping the damage meter every BG
that being said, it was very cheap and required 0 skill, just like any of the copy/paste builds in Buildwars 2’s meta whether its dagger ele, backstab thief, bunker guard, trap ranger, s/p mesmer, they’re all the same copy/paste EZmode.

ele atleast requires some APM and CD timing, since they manage 29 skills while most classes only manage 16 to 20

im not sure if its a testament to how over-designed eles (and engineers depending on how you build) are or how under designed everything else is, warriors are particularly kitten in this sense, absurdly braindead to the point where i feel nothing for people complaining about warrior issues

ele best bunker?
lol

xtra.3968:

ele best bunker?
lol

have you played any tPvP?

its pretty ridiculous

i have played pvp xD
and ele is not the Best bunker, that s why all teams send a guardian mid and not ele

i dont Know why in forums everyone think they are the Best ones… irse funny

madatom.5218:

Liewec.2896:

Empiren.6401:

most people who have played WoW know that tanks don’t survive on their own.
without doing significant damage.

highlight of my time on wow was pvping as a max geared blood DK with twice everyones hp, constant health gains and topping the damage meter every BG
that being said, it was very cheap and required 0 skill, just like any of the copy/paste builds in Buildwars 2’s meta whether its dagger ele, backstab thief, bunker guard, trap ranger, s/p mesmer, they’re all the same copy/paste EZmode.

ele atleast requires some APM and CD timing, since they manage 29 skills while most classes only manage 16 to 20

im not sure if its a testament to how over-designed eles (and engineers depending on how you build) are or how under designed everything else is, warriors are particularly kitten in this sense, absurdly braindead to the point where i feel nothing for people complaining about warrior issues

Don’t pretend any class in GW2 requires any reasonable level of APM, or any MMO for that matter.

Sorry OP, but for the most part you just sound like the DPS guys that whine about healers in trinty type games, because they really want to play something super simplisitc that is just KILL MOAR like CoD and they can’t cope having to focus fire, use CC, debuffs, prioritising targets, etc in order to be effective.

Jax.5261:

madatom.5218:

Liewec.2896:

Empiren.6401:

most people who have played WoW know that tanks don’t survive on their own.
without doing significant damage.

highlight of my time on wow was pvping as a max geared blood DK with twice everyones hp, constant health gains and topping the damage meter every BG
that being said, it was very cheap and required 0 skill, just like any of the copy/paste builds in Buildwars 2’s meta whether its dagger ele, backstab thief, bunker guard, trap ranger, s/p mesmer, they’re all the same copy/paste EZmode.

ele atleast requires some APM and CD timing, since they manage 29 skills while most classes only manage 16 to 20

im not sure if its a testament to how over-designed eles (and engineers depending on how you build) are or how under designed everything else is, warriors are particularly kitten in this sense, absurdly braindead to the point where i feel nothing for people complaining about warrior issues

Don’t pretend any class in GW2 requires any reasonable level of APM, or any MMO for that matter.

That’s why mmo combat is ideally more like chess and less like a fps. Removing the need for people to rely on others and making everyone self sufficient killed that though

holy trinity … holy kitten :X

Sylosi.6503:

Sorry OP, but for the most part you just sound like the DPS guys that whine about healers in trinty type games, because they really want to play something super simplisitc that is just KILL MOAR like CoD and they can’t cope having to focus fire, use CC, debuffs, prioritising targets, etc in order to be effective.

^
This.

In other MMO’s Tanks/Healers added the only worthwhile depth to be found in those games. Without them it’s just loldps rolling face on keyboards and trying not to drool between the keys like they do.

OP has a good point. In most games, support builds are squishy but important. It’s kind of weird to have your healing/tanking/rezzing/etc profession be very difficult to kill.

In other words, the good thing about the trinity was that there was a third option besides offense/defense.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the decision to remove the trinity made the game what it is. Asking for something else is like asking for a different game. But there are certain disadvantages to basically having only offensive or defensive builds, sometimes with a tanky dps thrown in for good measure. The vision of “support/control/damage” would have worked a lot better if all professions couldn’t do 2-3 of those at the same time.

Dancing Face.4695:

They removed trinity: every class can be each of 3 role in this game. So they say, but evryone here knows that some classes are better of others in doing some jobs. So they removed nothing. Sure everyone can try to be tank or a healr but must sacrifice all of offensive abilites when some other classes do not. They haven’t same skills and this means that they have no same efficiency. It’s not whine. You only have to go in some premades, you’ll always find guardain bunker or ele bunker and thief roamer.

Tanks and healers in other mmo survive but in wow you must not stay alive forever to take points like gw2. Thats the problem, this match mechanic promotes to have at least 2 but better 3 bunker builds in your premade. Boring. Sometimes i fell doing a dungeon instead or pvp, really.

Well that IS how it feels, You are sitting there using every attack to down a guy running away in circles, wow that sure is fun. Oh and you might not be able to kill him because regen is a bit broken. I mean we have 1 heal for every class, but if specced and traited, you have like 3-4!(and usually they are on low c/d’s).

Its just ridiculous, bunkers I wouldn’t mind if they required teamwork to aid them. Most bunkers 1v1, don’t. That, in its entirety makes the match feel soo boring, even from the bunker perspective.
-I can’t tell you how many times on my ele someone came up who wasn’t glass cannon and all I had to do was roll around and laugh because the damage vs my regen for auto attacking was just silly.

I find it strange Anet went with the whole no healers in their sequel. I found monks iconic to that game, being the best designed healer of any game I had played. Having classes being more self-sufficient does help with smaller fights but I don’t think a more support/healing oriented class and self-sufficiency are mutually exclusive depending on their relative contributions.

Bunkers however are definitely not a good replacement, I don’t understand how bunkers are supposed to be a teams anchor. Now a monk is an anchor, if the monk falls you need to play safe. Bunker falls? Sucks but ok? Just not enough team interaction there, sure there is ressing but compared to the interaction of a dedicated healer ressing just seems like a sideshow (an impactful but bland one). Personally I see them as the product of having too high of build extremes, whereby to balance the extreme offense there must be extreme defense. I however don’t see bunkers as necessary to good gameplay, actually the opposite. Tighten the extremes, get rid of bunkers. Maybe add some more true support options for flavor. Much better.

xtra.3968:

ele best bunker?
lol

Guardian can usually survive a bit more than ele…but for sure ele has an indecent mobility for being a bunker…so for a tpvp situation ele is probably the best since the other team can just ignore the point with you guardian and they can fight 4vs5 on the other 2…ele can still cover another point if needed (Or go contest even 1vs2 and usually decap far side) and come back in no time. Let’s say if i have to run with one bunker and have to chose between ele or guardian i would probably take an ele..

The concept of the tank build, too vague. Engineer can be. But due to its control. sorry for copy-paste from translator.

Archaon.6245:

xtra.3968:

ele best bunker?
lol

Guardian can usually survive a bit more than ele…but for sure ele has an indecent mobility for being a bunker…so for a tpvp situation ele is probably the best since the other team can just ignore the point with you guardian and they can fight 4vs5 on the other 2…ele can still cover another point if needed (Or go contest even 1vs2 and usually decap far side) and come back in no time. Let’s say if i have to run with one bunker and have to chose between ele or guardian i would probably take an ele..

In the aspect of bunkering (ignore rtl) guardian is obviously better. He can constantly stay on the node, which ele can’t that hard due to no blocks. Another op thing is rezzing with guard (knockback if traited). No other class can rezz that good. Also a guard has more often acess to stability and blocks which makes it easier to stay on the point against knockbacks etc.
In the whole view considering also mobility and dmg, the ele shines out.

Archaon.6245:

xtra.3968:

ele best bunker?
lol

Guardian can usually survive a bit more than ele…but for sure ele has an indecent mobility for being a bunker…so for a tpvp situation ele is probably the best since the other team can just ignore the point with you guardian and they can fight 4vs5 on the other 2…ele can still cover another point if needed (Or go contest even 1vs2 and usually decap far side) and come back in no time. Let’s say if i have to run with one bunker and have to chose between ele or guardian i would probably take an ele..

I guess you’d be right if you were correct about the usage of the Guardian. Purely holding a point is the playstyle of a new or an inexperienced player.
The current Guardian Bunker meta is a control/support Bunker which follows around in team fights to give your allies the buffs they need to win quickly (and snares etc.) but can still hold a point solo and control most players off the point to gain control of it.
The reason Guardians don’t always seem like better bunkers than eles is because they’re built to do massive amounts of support too so they actually drop a lot of self defence, ie. Sanct Ground Target, using a Staff, etc.
I’d always take a Bunker Guardian over a Bunker Ele and so would everybody else, there are however a few builds which play with no bunkers but in that case you’d take neither anyway.

xtra.3968:

i have played pvp xD
and ele is not the Best bunker, that s why all teams send a guardian mid and not ele

i dont Know why in forums everyone think they are the Best ones… irse funny

An Elementalist is the best bunker, it is however also the best at a lot of other things and can easily adapt to any situation with current specs like the popular D/D 0/10/0/30/30 spec.

It would be an utter waste for a team to send an Ele mid and have him sit there doing nothing when the fight moved on, however sending a Guardian to sit alone isn’t as much of a sacrifice to the team, your Ele can now roam and support where you need him while the Guardian immobilises and banishes anyone that comes near while asking for support from the team (because unlike the Ele he can’t really kill much as a bunker spec).

Guardian is not the best bunker, it’s just less of a sacrifice to team potential to leave him out of fights vs leaving the Ele out of fights.

Please stop posting here when you have no idea what bunkering means. You think ele bunkers are better because he rtl away heals up and go on the node again? But that’s NOT bunkering.
E.G. a thieves trys to burst you, a good ele will mistform instantly. ERGO: 3 seconds of decapping. A guardian on the otherside will just stunbreak and shelter without even loosing cap-points.
Another example is blocking. Ele’s have no ability to block if played on cantrips. Ele’s can only dodge (and rarely blind). Guardians can dodge the same amount, but have lots of blocks. And to dps specced classes a block is worth at least 2k-5k health.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Archaon.6245:

xtra.3968:

ele best bunker?
lol

Guardian can usually survive a bit more than ele…but for sure ele has an indecent mobility for being a bunker…so for a tpvp situation ele is probably the best since the other team can just ignore the point with you guardian and they can fight 4vs5 on the other 2…ele can still cover another point if needed (Or go contest even 1vs2 and usually decap far side) and come back in no time. Let’s say if i have to run with one bunker and have to chose between ele or guardian i would probably take an ele..

In the aspect of bunkering (ignore rtl) guardian is obviously better. He can constantly stay on the node, which ele can’t that hard due to no blocks. Another op thing is rezzing with guard (knockback if traited). No other class can rezz that good. Also a guard has more often acess to stability and blocks which makes it easier to stay on the point against knockbacks etc.
In the whole view considering also mobility and dmg, the ele shines out.

I think guardians are better bunkers than ele’s as well. When I solo queue, especially in Kylo, if the opposing team has a guardian and we dont, I know we are going to have to work harder. Work harder to keep home points instead of mid, work harder to stay on treb, etc.etc. Those blocks and knockbacks in clocktower are killer and time consuming to fight against. It is an uphill battle for mid, unless you have a necro or cordinated cc and burst.

since its fotm… and you can reroll to that fotm too… its ok ! thats what i learned in this game.

Srsly… bunkers are the most pathetic thing ever.
They exploit the gamemmode – point cap/defense – they are the best…
They exploit the non existant trinity by being healer and tank in one…
They exploit the huge margin of error on any bunker specc, paired with heal spamm so even a dead moneky could faceroll to win…
But after all cant be really blamed coz OP/fotm burst was what brought em on us in the first place.

i remember a dev post back in november announcing they are aware of the bunker meta/problem and are going to balance… almost 5 month after this, nothing happened.

dead game is…. dead game.

It’s a problem A-Net can’t solve. Without dedicated healers/protts the burst is OP. You need bunkers as a replacement for the missing support.

GanJoe.5374:

since its fotm… and you can reroll to that fotm too… its ok ! thats what i learned in this game.

Srsly… bunkers are the most pathetic thing ever.
They exploit the gamemmode – point cap/defense – they are the best…
They exploit the non existant trinity by being healer and tank in one…
They exploit the huge margin of error on any bunker specc, paired with heal spamm so even a dead moneky could faceroll to win…
But after all cant be really blamed coz OP/fotm burst was what brought em on us in the first place.

i remember a dev post back in november announcing they are aware of the bunker meta/problem and are going to balance… almost 5 month after this, nothing happened.

dead game is…. dead game.

You are beating on a dead horse. As players, should we be held accountable for using a meta, Anet provided for us, because of THEIR “balance” changes and beliefs?

The community simply created a solution(s) around the spvp the devs handed us. There sprouted bunkers of any form within multiple classes to handle the one map mode people play on competitively.

Why should I feel bad for playing a bunker class? It is, but yet isnt an “exploit”. A catch 22. Yes people use bunkers, but no it isnt our fault. It is just how the game is played and has to be played.

Empiren.6401:

Its boring, its uninteresting, and it makes the game less of what it could be.

No, no, and no.
Thank you for your opinion, dont come back.
/thread

Sure, but then we should remove burst classes, if you don’t want GW2 pvp to be turned into a horrible frag-movie.

Well, you know, when a kitten thief can come and 1-shoot you while you are fighting another enemy, that sucks too. No skill involved, nothing: you can protect yourself from a thief only if you see him coming. If you don’t, you are gonna take damage. At least the backstab one.

And I don’t think Guild Wars 2 should all become about reflexes and few copy-paste builds for each class: from what I know, this is a mmoRPG, not a mmoFPS. So also the knowledge of game mechanics and the ability to build a character should be taken into account.

I actually like the fact that we tanking in PvP, instead of plain “kill or be killed in seconds”. It SHOULD make people think about what they are doing.

And that’s what they should try to do when fighting a bunker.

I have made a bunker build for engineer, and decided to play tournies with it.
I have to be extremely careful about the enemy, because I can get knocked off point, and zoning out groups of people with engi is not so simple. I can use Big ol’Bomb, but thanks to that fancy red circle anyone can avoid it. I can’t use flamethrower, because my build doesn’t allow it. Net Turret is nice, but I don’t trust it when I’m outnumbered.

Now: in a tournament, some time ago, I held a point against two guys, from half to the end of the match (we won). No big effort, one was an elementalist, and I think was a bunker, so the damage wasn’t extremely high.

Well, at the and of the fight, the guy with the elementalist asked me why was I playing bunker, because It doesn’t take any skills.

I don’t agree, but let’s say it’s true.

But it comes from someone who tought it was a brilliant idea to try to kill that bunker for 2 minutes, in a 2v1. So not only I held my point, but I also managed to make sure my 4 team members had to fight against 3 enemies for the remaining points.

So yeah: I did a double favor to my team, thanks to that guy who was too skilled to play bunker.

A thing I realized: most of the times I was in a team that lost, I have almost never seen an enemy. I was standing in one point, like an idiot, not feeling like leaving the point unchecked, but also thinking my teammates could use some help.

I don’t think I’m too good, but I think I realized at least one thing about bunkering: the best way to fight a bunker is to ignore him (unless you have anti-bunker builds).

The best way to play a bunker is to make sure you can’t be ignored. You also have to foresee which points will be the most contested. If you stand in one point where no one will ever come, you will just be wasting yourself. If you stand in one point excessively swarmed by the enemy forces, you could risk to die too early. If you can find a sweet spot, when you drag enemy forces but you don’t get killed too quickly, you’ll do a great favor to your team, IMHO.

One can still argue that the job a bunker has to do may be a bit easier than the job his enemies have to do, but playing a bunker is still a challenge.

And again, if I find any bunker that can whitstand 3 people at once without dying, I don’t think he is just a noob that spams buttons to win. I think he is a kitten good bunker. And that is not easy to achieve it.