Guild Wars 2

Is just my opinion or there is a huge gap between dps skills and supportive spells?

All the dps skills have lower CD, some have 5sec, some 10s or 15s… a lot of supportive spells have 60s, 90s or 120s.
So… in 1min fight, i can use the same offensive spells from 4 to 10 times, but just 1 or 2 times the same supportive.

If a dps Skill deal from 2000 to 5000 damages, a “not self healing” restore 1000.

Power add all the points to your damage, Healing pover is 0.125 (8×1point).

Dps skills use enemy target, it means 100% aim succes.
Healing skills doesn’t… it means that a lot of time you waste your skill (look at Healing Breeze, Orb of Light and Merciful Intervention).

Bleeding can be stack x24… regeneration don’t (x3 or x6 should be ok).

Hot deal 500/800xsec but regeneration is 100/300xsec and last lesser…

Well there are some good def skills(like wall of reflaction)… but it is a single case.
The overall average is bad.

Speaking about numbers…
If i create a full dps build (just one self heal), i can deal a lot of damage in a fight. Every SECOND i can deal from 1000 to 3000.
If i create a full def/heal build, i can’t prevent or heal that amount of damage, i can heal/prevent 500 to 1000 damage every second. There is a 1 to 5 gap… and some times more.

Me and my guild tryed to make a full dps group build, every obstacle letterally get melt in 3 second… but when we create a full supportive group build, we get melted.
It means that attack have more impact in the fight than protection… it means that GW2 is a dps game… in fact in WvWvW protection is useless.

Dmg Prevent/Healing are low performance.
This is the truth.

That’s why, in several topic, lot of players are complaining that there is no healer and ask for the holy trinity…

I’m not talking about restore the holy trinity, everybody knows wich kind of problems the H3 involves… i’m just asking to balance numbers (CD, effects, stack, target, ecc…) and mechanics, and make it fair… so people who doesn’t want to be play dps can be usefull and have fun.

Right now i’m just playng pve cause pvp doesn’t reach my needs… i don’t want roaming from a capture point to another killing players… i want keep my team alive in a competitive 5v5 arena.
Why Anet is disappointing me (and a lot of players) like that?

That’s why for the pvp i’m playing Wrat of Heroes… come on Anet… Wrat of Heroes??
A free game with commodore 64 graphics?? !!
It can’t be possible… i feel shame just thinking about it!! -.-’

So please… listen my pray… create a balanced and fun pvp. T_T

I am coming round to the same conclusion, the classes are hugely weighted toward DPS (in most situations burst DPS), when you look how much a heal does (the support heals not personal ones) and the limited area of effect or the benefit of removing a condition when players are critting for thousands even with certain AOE skills, the support aspect just seems very pitiful.

Overall the classes are very simplistic to the point they are more like a MOBA, which results in a real lack of playstyles and a lack of depth to hold my interest.

It really does need to be this way. Warhammer AoR had super good healing if you set up for it and a 2 on 2 fight could last for a long time.

Quicker battles and more people dying means more honor per hour.

Just like in PvE its more about not getting hit than healing through it.

NoOneShotU.3479:

It really does need to be this way. Warhammer AoR had super good healing if you set up for it and a 2 on 2 fight could last for a long time.

Quicker battles and more people dying means more honor per hour.

Just like in PvE its more about not getting hit than healing through it.

Why would I care about more honour per hour?

It doesn’t need to be this way at all, they made the choice, what they have ended up with is a game stuck somewhere between an FPS or MOBA and a more typical MMORPG, it has however resulted in what are generally very simplistic classes that lack depth and provide less varied playstyles, having to move more (though you have to move a lot in PvP in most games) and having a dodge doesn;t make up it for the simplicity.

Agree with Sylosi… I don’t care about honor per hour… I play cause i want have fun.
For me, and for a lot of player (give a look on the guardian and ele forum), fun menas support/protection/healing and not “look at me, I can kill you”.

An mmorpg FPS is not what I want… is not what GW2 should be.

In my opinion Anet should improve healing (cd, effect, range, ecc…) and add the friendly target.
In this way they will balance the game.
The problem is that the 90% of the healing spells are useless…

Don’t agree?
Play guardian… take “Signet of Mercy”, “Bow of Truth”, “Mercifull Intervention” and “Healing Breeze” and try this skills for a couple of days.
Then come back here and let’s speak again.

Signet of mercy is completly useless. The bonus on the healing is so low that this skill is a waste of space in your UI…
Ress is useless too… 240s CD and you can ress just downed people… in sPvP people die continuosly.
When the signet is recharging (240s.) you lost the healing power boon.

Bow of Truth main ability shot an arrow random and remove a condition… one arrow every years. -.-’
Well… a lot of combo and self combo remove condition… why I should waste a skill for this??
If you “command” your spirit bow, healing arrow rain on you… theory sounds good, but the amount of heal is so low that is simply useless. And you can’t choose wher the healing raind should go… so if the bow is far away from you or your def target, you waste it… and it happens a lot of time.

Mercifull Intervention? There is a dedicatet topic in the guardian forum. Too long for explain how does it sucks.

Healing breeze heal just yourself cause all the players move away during the fight…

Shoulkittenep going on or is enough??
Do you want read me complain about the staff and traits? T_T

Just like in PvE its more about not getting hit than healing through it.

PvE is the same…
Some times is impossible not getting hit. Some times you have so mutch aggro on you that dodge twice is not enough.

support ability’s might have a longer CD, but you also don’t need to spam them. Besides the glasscannon Thief, no class can kill another class in a matter of seconds (unless one stands still , and doesn’t move the whole fight) I think support in this game is not about outhealing the damage done to your allies, but preventing damage done to your allies. You also have to use stuns/blinds/and so on besides the heals and buffs, those you should save for when one ally forgot to dodge or missed a disable skill. On my warrior, I’m 2-manning champion mobs without much effort. Using Hammer/Mace shield, you have a lot of stuns and interrupts. Combine that with good dodging (not spamming, save them for big hits/stuns) and using my heal in time, I can tank the mob without going below 80% hp. Meanwhile the other guy can keep on dishing out damage (preferably at range) So playing support is more about using your ability’s at the right time, not spamming heals.

No… you are missing the point of this topic.
I’m not speaking about support in general… I’m comparing healing/prot skills with the dps one.

CD, effect, area, combo, boons… all is low performance.

no class can kill another class in a matter of seconds (unless one stands still , and doesn’t move the whole fight)

It happen.
I saw some warrior letterally pulverize others player.
Is not common… but it happen.

I think support in this game is not about outhealing the damage done to your allies, but preventing damage done to your allies. You also have to use stuns/blinds/and so on besides the heals and buffs, those you should save for when one ally forgot to dodge or missed a disable skill.

I’m talking expecially about healing.
There are a lot of supportive skills and traits that work very well.
I can be a tank with my guardian.

The point is that healing is a part of the support, why everybody hate it?
Why Anet made it so kitten?

I repeat… why power give every single point to your damage, but healing power is 0.125 (1 point = 8!!!!)??
Do you think this is balanced?

On my warrior, I’m 2-manning champion mobs without much effort. Using Hammer/Mace shield, you have a lot of stuns and interrupts. Combine that with good dodging (not spamming, save them for big hits/stuns) and using my heal in time, I can tank the mob without going below 80% hp. Meanwhile the other guy can keep on dishing out damage (preferably at range)

Yes… cause you are a warrior. You are are dps, so stay alive and keep killing people and mobs is “the dreamcomes true”.

But… again… this is not a topic where we speak about support or self-healing.

So playing support is more about using your ability’s at the right time, not spamming heals.

Ok… so I can’t spam healing (120s. cd)… but DPS players can spam damage (5s cd)… i see…

So what is the point to create a healer build if I can’t use my skills and if I go dps I have more impact in the fight?

I don’t wan to play call of duty. :\

It’s designed this way because classes aren’t geared towards teamwork, thus having to take into account “Ok this build might want to be a pure support, this might want to be a pure DPS, etc”, it’s geared around each individual player being capable of standing on their own. To accomplish that, each player is given some attack skills, one or two self heals and maybe a few long cast support skills to help out buddies if they come across them.

It’s not so much “They did it wrong” as it is “They envisioned classes differently”.

What if the healing stat not only increased the amount of health you receive, but also decreased the cooldown of healing skills?

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Shoulkittenep going on or is enough??

I wrote “shouId l keep going on or is enough??” … why i get moderated?? O.o
English is not my language… but I can’t see nothing offensive in this phrase… o.o

What if the healing stat not only increased the amount of health you receive, but also decreased the cooldown of healing skills?

Don’t know… but is a begin.
Just try and let’s see… but right now, there is a huge gap.

Something must be done. :\

I admit that it bothers me that they want to favor offense over defense by a good deal.

There’s valid game design reasons for things as they are. You might not agree with them (there’s no right or wrong in game design, after all) but it’s a design with a purpose.

In some other games, a fully specced healing/support build might be able to match a fully specced DPS build.

Thus, if I’m full healing and you are full DPS, I can heal all of the damage that you’re doing to me. In a 1v1, that’s a stalemate (unless I have a little bit of damage and you have no healing, in which case I will wear you down gradually.)

Regardless of whether you think this is right or wrong, ANet clearly wants to reduce how common this sort of situation is. (putting aside bunker builds.)

So generally, if you are focused on healing and I am focused on damage, eventually damage will win – healing can only delay the inevitable.

BUT!
All classes in GW2 can do a mixture of damage and healing. The healing skills are on long cooldowns so that you don’t have to use them that often – you have a lot of time to do damage as well.

So in a fight (let’s assume we’re using the same class) both of us can only heal to delay our deaths, but both of us are doing damage. So the person who wins is the person who:
- Heals at the right time without wasting healing power.
- Avoids damage by dodging or other skills most effectively.
- Does damage the most efficiently.

It becomes a race, who can damage the most and receive the least damage? Both of us have to balance healing, protection and damage at the same time – whoever can do all of these things most efficiently will win.

This is a lot more multi-dimensional than focusing on pure healing or pure DPS. You have to know when it’s efficient to heal. If you heal whenever the skill is off cooldown, then you might be near full health and waste healing. If you heal less often, then you’re not getting the maximum amount of healing over the long term. You also have to worry about low health and spikes. If you take too much time dodging or healing, then you’re doing less damage, etc.

You can argue whether this takes more “skill” or is “deeper” or whatever – that’s just an opinion. But certainly it means there are a lot more different aspects of gameplay that you need to worry about, compared to a pure healer or DPS character.

This is the sort of design ANet seems to be aiming for. They might not be successful in every case (maybe bunker builds and thieves only need to worry about one thing?) but most builds have to worry about both.

And, of course, this becomes more complex in a team situation. Everyone has self-heal/support skills, and some have group heal/support skills. Everyone has damage. The team that wins is the team that can maximise their damage whilst still keeping their health up. Everyone assumes responsibility for both of these things to a certain degree.

This is one of the reasons an organised group can totally destroy larger number of PUGs in WvW – just by partying up and seeing each other’s health bars, they can support each other much more efficiently and optimise their damage too.

Rieselle.5079:

This is a lot more multi-dimensional than focusing on pure healing or pure DPS.

It isn’t a question of pure heal or pure DPS (at least for me), my favourite type of class to play in MMOs is usually hybrid / support, precisely becuase they are mutli-dimensional and I have to multitask in a way I don’t for a boring old faceroll DPS class, so I enjoy classes like Captain/Loremaster in LOTRO, Chlorodom in Rift, etc.

Hence the problem I find in GW2 is firstly the classes are very simplistic in comparision (and no, dodging does not make up for that) and secondly the balance for the most part is DPS first, support / hybrid very much second, which makes them come accross as DPS classes with a bit of support tacked on, rather than the multi-dimensional hybrids I had hoped for, hence remind me more of jumped up MOBA / ARPG classes, lacking in complexity.

Then on top of that the balance seems very much in favour of attack over defense, which again just limits playstyles.

I understand their reasoning for not having healer/tank/DPS, but I don’t really follow the reasoning as to why the classes needed to be so simple, so similar and so inflexible, especially for a game that claims a high skilled play, my Chlrodom in Rift requried far more skill and thought than my mesmer, and my thief in GW2 is absolutely faceroll compared to my gambler traited Burglar in LOTRO.

Dunno, what classes do you play? It certainly seems like some classes have much more limited support options and thus spend more of their time doing damage.

But I play an Ele (and I assume Guardians can do this too) and it’s quite interesting trying to balance the time I spend between water & support vs. fire & damage.

I have no idea whether this is as “deep” as the gameplay you describe from those other games, but I think that is a completely seperate issue from “support is weaker than damage.”

It’s probably more like, “there is not enough complexity in support gameplay” or even, “some classes don’t have enough support options to build for.”

As for “limiting playstyles”, I guess it’s one of those, “if everyone can do everything, then everyone just does the same thing – everything.” The concept that narrowing the options available to a single player at one time means that there is a greater number of distinct builds that they can choose from. As opposed to everyone having access to all options all the time, and the differences come from play style and situation rather than build.

I don’t think one style is necessarily better than the other, it’s mostly a preference thing.

Putting all of that aside, GW2 does seem to be making a conscious effort to simplify the “build wars” that GW1 had. So its less about intricately designing your build and then using its mechanics for min-max efficiency, it’s a bit more like a Tactical FPS where the roles are more fluid and physical – it’s about where you are and when you do things, rather than what you can do.

It’s perfectly valid to say, “I don’t want a MMO-FPS-RPG” – but it’s equally valid to say, “I like MMO-FPS-RPG”. So it’s a preference thing as well.

The last question is, “Did ANet succeed at their goal?” If they wanted to make an MMORPG that’s closer to a tactical shooter, where it’s less about your build and more about being in the right places at the right times, did they make a fun and successful game on that model?

I can understand what you said… but I’m talking about skills gap… not about roles.

All classes can be self-sufficient… and this is good.

The game is not designed for play a specific role build?
So, why dps have more effect in a fight than healing?
“No role” means “NO ROLE”, and not “all dps”…
GW2 is an “all dps who can survive” game.

The point is that the initial idea was different… but Anet get carried away.

Others mmorpg:
70% play dps.
20% play healer.
10% play tank.

Prolems:
Lot of queue for dungeon if you are a dps.
If you play Tank or Healer you can not even kill a cat.

Solution:
- Create all classes self-sufficent, multi-dimensional in this way you remove queue. (good)
- People can play without a dedicated tank or healer, so the 70% dps can have fun (good)
- If you are tank or healer you can easy change your weapon, skills and traits and you can kill some one. (good)
- Whit no reason, all the altruistic healing/prot skills are low performance (why?? this is bad). <— new problem

Again… check the numbers.
Why dps skills have cd 5sec and healing 40sec?
Why dps skills deal 5000 damages and healing recover 1000?
Why power add all points to your damage and healing power 0.125?
What is the point in creating a not working healing skills (and nobody use it) like merciful intervention?
Why healing can’t combo?
Why regen doesn’t stack?
And a lot of others questions… -.-’

The answer is just one… Anet hate healers. GW2 is a DPS/multi-dimensional game. :|

I’m not talking about revolutionize the whole game.
It is ok… people have the rights to play self-sufficients multi-dimensional build. No holy trinity, no queue.
Good idea, and it works.

People can be full dps (check “glass cannon” on google), so if I want to be full healer, I should have the same rights too, no?

Make healing skills balanced will not change the game.
You can still play self-sufficent build, so you can still play without queue or a specific team set…
It will make jusst happy all the others 20% players who want to play healing/prot (and we are all complaining this mechanic).

I should not be forced to play multi-dimensional, dps or others… a good game should allow me to do what I want.

ANET, I know you are reading me (moderator’s intervention prove it):
I OFFER MYSELF (FOR FREE) FOR REVIEW AND CORRECT THE HEALING MECHANICS!!
(server test like WAR did in the past?)

(p.s. yes, it is a little bit megalomaniac, I know… ahahah)

People can’t be full DPS – they always have a healing skill on their bar

When you have people complaining about bunker builds that are impossible to kill in the PvP forums, I think there are support/healing builds available in the game already if you choose to.

Ultimately you didnt seem to read my first post (or you dont agree – thats fine). You can’t have healing skills be as good as damage skills, because you dont want to get into the stalemate situation where someone can outheal all damage. Or at least, many people don’t want this, and ANet agrees.

Except the self healing, you can create a full dps build… equip, skills and traits… they call it “Glass Cannon”…
The same happen if you want a build full healing, you can still deal some damage cause some skills are support and dps in the same time.
This is good.

The difference is the CD, the area effect, the boons etc… and this gap makes healing penalized.
Again, I’m speaking about healing, not general support.

When you have people complaining about bunker builds that are impossible to kill in the PvP forums, I think there are support/healing builds available in the game already if you choose to.

Glass cannon build (pure dps), yes.
Generic Support build, yes.
Multi-dimensional build, yes.
Supp/tank build, yes. (I use it in pve)
Dps/sup build, yes.
Support/healer build tecnically yes, but is low performance.

Ultimately you didnt seem to read my first post (or you dont agree – thats fine). You can’t have healing skills be as good as damage skills, because you dont want to get into the stalemate situation where someone can outheal all damage. Or at least, many people don’t want this, and ANet agrees.

Sorry i didn’t notice it.
I read it, I agree 50%.

I can understand that Anet donse’t want to creates a game with infinite fight and bunkers build (it can be very nasty in the capture point).

But I can’t understamd why I should waste all the points in my equip for “healing Power” if the difference between a “full healing power set” and a “not healing power set” is +200 life restored… expecially when, if I take a “full Power and Precision set”, I can crit +3000 damage.

Why I should take an altruistic healing skills, if I can cast it every 60/90/120 second healing an amount of 1000hp… when if I take a DPS skills I can cast it every 5/10/15 sec dealing 3000 hp each time?

Why I should use an altruistic healing spell if I can’t have the target, so 80% of the time I waste my skill, or I get teleported randomly, healing a engi turrett or a ranger pet or a necro minnion (merciful intervention)??

All your answers are not good for my question…
The answer is only one:
No body do that. Nobody use it. Is a waste of skills and points.

Do you know what does it mean in the game?
If you want to be competitive you can’t be support/healer… you should be minimum half-DPS.
Look at the spvp. All guardian are Crithammer… :\

So… if Anet doesn’t want infinite fight, should not make healing and dps 50% and 50%… but should improve healing.

Regen stack x3 or x6 (not x24 like bleeding).
No more 120s or 240s cd!!
Healing power 0.5 and not 0.125 (power 1=1)
Friendly taget…
Etc…

Make it usefull… I’m asking just this.

It’s a hard thing to balance for sure.
The game was designed to not allow Healers, yet they included a stat called Healing Power.

The way Healing works it’s generally better the lower your Max Health and the higher your Toughness.

Given that Guardians have very low Health (same as Elementalists) but wear Heavy Armor they likely benefit the most from Healing Power what it comes to self-heals.

Meanwhile Necromancers have as much Health as Warriors do but wear Light Armor.
So um. Yeah.

I think that they really need to go skill by skill to make every stat viable for every Profession.
Arenanet has a lot of balancing and bug fixing to do, that’s for sure.

Not to mention that we don’t get contribution, no xp for support skills, only for damage.

helladoom.4317:

Not to mention that we don’t get contribution, no xp for support skills, only for damage.

That’s a good point.
On that note I don’t think that I’m getting any contribution for the 5 second AoE chills and Blinds I sometimes put on nasty mobs.

I think there are too many WoW players in this thread.

Healing a player other than yourself is an abomination to any PVP game. Imagine this; you have a player (healer) with an eraser than comes along and erases what other players have done. Healing other players forces this “healer” to stare at other player’s health bars.

Games should be moving away from this idiocy.

You don’t need someone to babysit your health bar and correct your mistakes. You don’t need a dentist following you where ever you go, picking up your teeth and surgicaly putting them back into your jaw everytime you get punched in the face. Given the correct set of tools and skill on how to use them properly you can “avoid” from getting punched in the face. Or if support is here to stay, you can provide support archtypes a set of tools to help your friends “avoid” from getting punched in the face.

@Calae
Healing people and “staring” at other peoples health bars is actually something i consider fun. Its not my fault you have had bad experiences with bad healers it sounds. CCing/Locking out the healer is an effective strategy, and if healing wasnt effective in a pvp game / esport, tell me how League of Legends does just fine with soraka, janna, etc etc…

@everyone else, You guys are just realizing this now? I figured this out before the three day headstart was over and quit. A game full of DPS doesnt require skill. just who can spam more and which class is currently FOTM OP

Mmm. My view favours what the OP suggests that there are many builds based in DPS (one of the three parts of the HT), but there are not builds based on Healing (another of the three of the HT) and it might be very good that there were some targetable healing and control skills to give meaning to the “support build” expression. At least, it would be good to have an option to show allies health bars, because I have either to go clicking each individual to know how is of health or to throw my AoE spells blindly when I suppose allies are under heavy damage. In GW1 there are professions that without being able to be dedicated healers, nevertheless, they do have healing skills -Dervish, Paragon-, so: Why not in GW2?

We do not have HT -DPS, Healer, Tank-, but we still have DPS, without Healer or Tank because both are being substituted by “Control” and reviving from Downed State, you do not heal allies because you wait for them to be downed to revive them, or -as well, in this game- you can wait for allies to be defeated to revive them, because enemies can not send them to the mists -I mean that enemies can not force one to use a way-point and one’s character’s body may remain in the field as long as one wants it to stay. I am not happy neither with the Downed S. + Finish M. nor with everlasting corpses. For example, the FM is unfair to ranged professions, because it is a melee move.

I share the view about professions being simplistic. Unchangeable skill sets attached to weapons force to play with certain weapon that one does not like or forces to play with a skill of the set that one does not find use to it. Having to have a dedicated slot to a self-heal and another dedicate slot to an elite skill do not make things better with respect having flexibility and diversity of builds. I feel “corseted” and I have not found a profession that I like in GW2 as I had in GW1, this are some of the reasons why I do not feel like playing sPvP.

Another problem -I see- in this system is that sPvP becomes more dependent on having a low latency. I remember that one reason to take out the interruption skills was their high dependency on latency, but now all combat has become highly dependent on latency. And this is another reason why I do not feel like playing sPvP yet, I will have to look for anti-latency builds as I play from Europe and my latency is always 150~300 ms. If one has an ally player with lower latency that were able to help with an individual healing or control to you it would be great.

Onedoesnotsimply.5740:

@Calae
Healing people and “staring” at other peoples health bars is actually something i consider fun. Its not my fault you have had bad experiences with bad healers it sounds. CCing/Locking out the healer is an effective strategy, and if healing wasnt effective in a pvp game / esport, tell me how League of Legends does just fine with soraka, janna, etc etc…

@everyone else, You guys are just realizing this now? I figured this out before the three day headstart was over and quit. A game full of DPS doesnt require skill. just who can spam more and which class is currently FOTM OP

Arenanet has said that they don’t want people playing whack-a-mole with health bars.
They said that way before release so if you expected to play as a Healer you bought the wrong game.

When you think that you’ve figured out something that “everyone else” hasn’t that’s usually a good sign that you are either wrong or have an opinion.

Healers or no in a game like this snares, gap closers, interrupts and positioning are all very important.
As people earn to play better and better they learn to counter what the other guy is doing.
The other guy then learns how to counter the counter… or goes for something completely different.

One good example of this is how glass-cannon Thieves were constantly complained about but now many seem to consider them easy pray.

Of course none of this will really start to roll until they fix the gazillion skill/trait bugs.

My warrior with cleric gear and heal shouts build, plus condition clear on shouts rune, heals for 2,000 and clears 1 to 2 conditions 3 times every 25 seconds. That’s to everyone around me.

That’s while being tanky enough to take direct fire and still rez people.

I have no problems with support.

support specs are very strong and very effective in gw2.

you just need to be creative and willing to take risks with them.

A lot of things have been said. Lot of differents point of view and opinions.

Summarizing…
All the people who play DD (Lwd.1264 :P) say “NO”.
All the others player say “YES”.

Some one haven’t understand the point of this topic and keep talking about “support”.
Yes… general support works.
Guardian Crithammer can support… same things for Warrior shout build…

This topic is about HEALING. :P

Please, compare altruistic HEALING skills with Damage skills and draw your own conclusions…

CD
Damage: 5-10-15-20-30 seconds.
Healing: 20-40-60-90-120-240 seconds.

Area effect
Damage: a lot of yards… a lot…
Healing: 600y

Effect
Damage: from 1000 to 5000 damage… every 5 seconds.
Healing: from 150 to 2000 life restored… every 20 seconds…

Taget
Damage: click your target and spam it!
Healing: I suppose “here” might be a good place to throw the spell… oh no! I miss it again! Let’s whait others 90s and let’s fail it again!

Bonus
Damage: 1 point in “Power” = 1 damage.
Helaing: 1 point in healing power = 0.125… it means 1=8

Contribution
Damage: Yes! You killed him! 10pvp points!
Healing: Oh, that 1000 healing was yours? Noce… good boy.

No Holy Trinity
Damage: yes… you can do it.
Tank: no taunt… but something can be done (I’m doing it, so I know it can be possible)
Healing: no you can’t.

I know where they were trying the “Let all the classes be self sufficient” (I love that), but they don’t seem to have grasped that some people like the support role. It is strange in a game that openly supports teamwork with anyone and everyone, it has weak ally heals. I still love the game, but when it comes to my skills it is obvious that the self-heals are going to be better. Ex:
Consume Conditions Self-Heal: 5326 + 733 per condition. Instant. CD-25sec > Well of Blood Self heal: 5326 + 186 (small) aoe heal. Duration 10sec. CD-40sec

I wouldnt worry too much … they haven’t even been able to balance the water attunement on the elemental staff . Its all about the DPS healing gets no drops only tagging damage does

The Anet devs have stated that DPS is first, and all other roles fall into support (and are secondary). This means that all skills are balanced in favor of dealing damage compared to negating it.

Support in GW2 means a lot of things. Support for my Guardian isn’t just “hit a button and heal,” it’s “apply stacks of Might to myself and allies whilst being able to take more hits because of passive self-healing while also focusing on burst-finishers and crowd control.”

Sure, I can heal others, but just focusing on that is not what GW2 wants you to do. There is no “healing” role, therefore you will never, ever be able to support anyone taking moderate damage.

Healing in GW2 is set up to only extend your life, but you must also be able to DPS because you cannot infinitely sustain in most situations.

To be clear, support is completely viable, but people don’t understand what this means for GW2. This means, in most cases, losing some damage to be able to help allies (and yourself) in other areas. This does not mean being able to just heal, or just buff.

This is already reinforced when choosing to focus solely on only one of these aspects: you find yourself weak or lacking. This was done on purpose, to help direct people to be more balanced in what they chose to do. You will be unhappy if you seek to simply be a buff bot

It does not mean that support-oriented builds are not viable. It’s just not one-dimensional. You can effectively be either purely DPS or a team-player DPS.

The gap in playing, skill, level between dps and heal/support is huge. Above that heal/support players focussing on heal/support aspect of their gameplay being poorly rewarded at the end of the day. Because of this most peeps are opting for a dps build and leave the healing/support for/to others. Issue here is that there are going to be less and less heal/support players left while more and more kikoolol dpsers incoming.

Heals are actually powerfull and important in GW2. The smaller the amount of ally healing, the more difficult it’s to heal allies, the more important those well timed and placed heals become. Same for any other kind of support in this game.

Healing power.
I think it’s a bit too early for a healing power buff. Last thing we need is healing becoming too easy or important, especially here in GW2 in combination with self healing slot for every toon. Later on when everything settles a bit down and Anet has a better, greater picture some heal power tuning could be done.

Regeneration stacks in duration. It’s very common for me to have 20-30s regeneration stacked. My regeneration tics between 305/330 a second. I think it would become OP if it also stacked in amount.

I don’t stare at health bars. I know very well who needs heals. It’s called being a mmorpg healer Calae.

Heal support gameplay is difficult in GW2 but there’s also a huge upside for us in this game. There’s no way to identify us “easily”. We aren’t running around in WvW with a huge sign above our heads telling everyone and his mother.
“The healer, the healer, kill the healer first.”
And after a while people on your server, you regularly run around with, recognize you and know where to stand and to go, to get those little heals. This is what’s going to make your side win fights at the end.

Yesterday I even received a couple of “TY” for those little heals.

Now hold on a minute; which is THE most complained about class by far in PvP?

The one that gets nerfs to it’s underwhelming DPS every patch and still people demand more nerfs…

Mesmer – one of the support classes.

What’s your point here Ryuujin?

Not flaming but I’m just wondering what you try to tell us, the exact meaning of your post. It’s hard to discuss when you aren’t certain what everyone means.

It’s a simple matter really. It first loomed it’s ugly head when Anet produced Nightfall. In Nightfall some of the out of town travel instances were so full of high density roaming, overlapping mob packs you had 0% chance to make it through the instance without dying 2-6 times, and in that game each death lowered your stats and damage by 15%. Anet WANTED you to experience death, it was a given and one of the reasons I did not support the company and buy the last expansion.

Fast forward. Anet wants and expects you to at least enter a downed state OFTEN. The game is geared/rigged this way. They don’t want you facerolling content. They developed a downed state with downed skills. They want you to experience this, they want you to endure this. It is part of their “vision”. There is no “trinity” so you can enjoy this.

It’s that simple.

What the hell? This is why people shouldn’t be allowed to post.

Currently defensive/supportive builds > dps builds by tons, go pvp before you talk. Support/defense is utterly overpowered and gamebreaking

If your idea of game is “I go over there and I kill him”, yes… myltyrole, CC and support can be nasty for you…
Learn how does others callsses works, and than try a better strategy than “randon damage skills spammer”.

Please, help me… I can’t remember how many times I wrote “This is not a topic about support, is a topic about altruistic healing compared with damage skills”.
Why people continue to post things about “GW2 support is…”?
Please, before post somethings not in topic , read all the conversation. T_T

The gap in playing, skill, level between dps and heal/support is huge. Above that heal/support players focussing on heal/support aspect of their gameplay being poorly rewarded at the end of the day. Because of this most peeps are opting for a dps build and leave the healing/support for/to others. Issue here is that there are going to be less and less heal/support players left while more and more kikoolol dpsers incoming.

Yes man! You got it!
The problem is that this is not an option. Circumstances and game mechanics force us.

Some healing/support build can be -potentially- very usefull in a fight, but if you try to use it in spvp you fail… and your play style is reduced to simple autoattack interspersed with 3 altruistic healing every 90 seconds… altruistic healing that, total, heals 5000hp…
In 90 second everything can happen and your team suffer 1000000000000000 damage.
Wipe.

So… why I should be so useless?
Is better inflict 10000000000000000damage like the others “wanna be a slayer”.
There is no choice.

Healing power.
I think it’s a bit too early for a healing power buff. Last thing we need is healing becoming too easy or important, especially here in GW2 in combination with self healing slot for every toon. Later on when everything settles a bit down and Anet has a better, greater picture some heal power tuning could be done.
Regeneration stacks in duration.
It’s very common for me to have 20-30s regeneration stacked. My regeneration tics between 305/330 a second. I think it would become OP if it also stacked in amount.

True….
Anet cross the line weaken some stats… if they will make some changes, they should non owepower it, otherwhise healing become too easy or important
That’s why we need balance.

Healing Power need a buff.
Now it is a joke… 0.125… 1=8
Is a waste of stats.

1=5 or 1=3 will give a sense of all the “full healing power sets” (like cleric).

Regen stack in duration… but some times you get killed so the duration loses its meaning.
There are 5 differents damage dealer conditions, and stack in duration+intensity (bleeding x24!!).

So… Regen x3 or x5 is not OP… is balanced.
OP is x24 or more.

Actually… all the boons stack just in durations (except Might , is intensity)… :\
Not fair…

I don’t stare at health bars. I know very well who needs heals. It’s called being a mmorpg healer Calae.

I can handle healing right now even without healt bars…
The problem is a balance question…
“Wanna be slayer” players can see enemy healtbar, so thay can easly go and kill the lower one.
Why healer/support can’t have this convenience for the defence?

There’s no way to identify us “easily”. We aren’t running around in WvW with a huge sign above our heads telling everyone and his mother.
“The healer, the healer, kill the healer first.”

Yeeeeeey! One point for us…

By contrast we have:

No contribution.
Too hight CD.
Low benefits from stats.
Short area effect.
No stacks.
No friendly target.
No friendly healt bars.
Wrong skills mechanics (like merciful intervention).
Low amount of HP restored.

Wow… more I talk about it, more I realize how healing/support “kittenly kitten”. T_T

of course support is bad… Anet doesn’t want a holy trinity. And what’s the point in being support if you go down in 2 hits in dungeons anyway…

I actually like this aoe healing centered on my toon or my phantasms. It’s a different healing dynamic but I can understand that not everyone’s going to feel comfortable with this kind of gameplay.

As a Mesmer I don’t suffer that much from long CD’s through mantra healing. Here too I’ve chosen my heal/support toon carefully for what I wanted to achieve with her.

Friendly health bars would be nice to have of course, for the visual aspect of our gameplay. Would be a nice bone to throw to us, support playing classes.

As I wrote above I think we have to wait before it’s confirmed that the amount of HP restored is too low. In WH AoR the normal setup for a 6-men premade is 2 healers. Here in GW2 in WvW you can already call yourself very lucky if you have one healer running around in your “Zerg”.

The game is too young to claim that a holy trinity isn’t possible. A holy trinity the way most peeps have in mind, may be not. But 2 heal/support, 2 pure DPS and one tank isn’t to be excluded for a 5-men premade. And go figure out who’s doing what out there in the borderlands.

I don’t care about HT.

No HT is good cause all players can play without restrictions.
In the others MMORPG I was healer, so for me it was easy play all dungeons (wow, WAR, rift, gw1, ecc…), I knew there where always a free spot in party for me (pvp and pve)… what about dps?

I don’t want HT…
In this way if there is no healer in adungeon, players can take care about themselves.
Solo players can have fun too.
It is ok… a good game should allow players to be free.

I complayn first of all NUMBERS (cd, area, effect, boons, stack, etc…) and than some wrong mechanics (no target, no healt bars, etc…).

Just changing this few things will be better. No need to upset all the game dynamics.

Archmagel.1350:

I know where they were trying the “Let all the classes be self sufficient”

If that’s true than why did they include many AOE & ‘nearby allies’ support skills?

Why make it possible to create a build that’s focussed on support and/or CC – and at the same time discourage using such a build by not giving xp for using those skills?

Why does reviving give xp, but not healing, nor things like aoe retribution and -damage mitigation?

Seems like the common mistake players do all the time..bring a knife to a gun fight.

Gee why isnt my supporting skills out performing that dps player?……

Agree with Helladoom.

@sixfeetunder
No… healing/support build is not like a knife in a gun fight.
Healing doesn’t kill. :P

We have to paint a wall. Me and you…
Damage is “red paint”. Healing is “blue paint”.
Why your brush is bigger than mine?
Why your can of paint is bigger than mine?
Why you can give 5 brush stroke and me just 1?

Who will chose blu paint, if this is the state?

This is an apt comparison..

The way stats are scaled is completely unbalanced… Your return on investment in an offensive stat greatly exceeds the defensive stats (in ignoring vitality).

Defense, which is determined by armor and toughness, has diminishing returns.

Power has no diminishing returns.

Precision and crit damage also have no diminishing returns, but linearly scale and are unaffected by anything… So high defense doesn’t change the opponents crit rate or effectiveness of the crit.

Power is only reduced by a target’s defense, even then it’s a ratio of power to defense multiplied by the base dmg (which is some combination of weapon dmg and skill dmg)…. The power to defense ratio is almost never less than 1 even if a player doesn’t stat power (and the opponent stats toughness). So in a way, power eventually does not linearly scale at a point because it exceeds the rate at which defense can scale.

Healing and condition only give about +10-20 points of heal/dmg per 100 points invested (conditions vary by bleed, poison, and confusion). For conditions, 10-20 maybe ok since the damage ignores defense and often plays out to more dps over time. For healing, this is almost unacceptable. Yes, it is possible to keep regen on at all times, but the ticks are so low it’s hardly worthwhile. If someone wants to make their healing truly effective, they should… after all, they’re sacrificing offense for defense.

Having played many games and having enjoyed PvP instances in many of them, I feel that GW2 PvP lacks real tangiable rewards. Rift in my opinion was one of the better models offereing both experience and rewards that are usuable outside PvP. I realize the game is still new and growing, but the PVP systems needs some love.

Agree with Bruno.
Except for this:

If someone wants to make their healing truly effective, they should… after all, they’re sacrificing offense for defense.

I do… I have full cleric, weapon signet and rune dedicated for healing… is still not enough. T_T

@Yenkin.5410
This is not a general complain topic… this is a specific complain topic dedicate to “how healing sucks”. :P

helladoom.4317:

Archmagel.1350:

I know where they were trying the “Let all the classes be self sufficient”

If that’s true than why did they include many AOE & ‘nearby allies’ support skills?

Why make it possible to create a build that’s focussed on support and/or CC – and at the same time discourage using such a build by not giving xp for using those skills?

Why does reviving give xp, but not healing, nor things like aoe retribution and -damage mitigation?

You actually ripped the thoughts out of my mind! Not only would this help those who like to support, but it would also encourage support. There are those who like to watch the white numbers, and there are those who like to watch the green numbers. Classes should be self sufficient, but only up to a point. Those who put time and effort into being the supportive types should be rewarded for doing so.

We are supposed to be able to take any class and be able to play them the style that we like. I definitely remember them saying that. That is what got me the most interested about GW2. It is supposed to allow you to play the class you want, and be able to put that class’s abilities to whatever you choose. While watching the videos about the devs explaining how the classes would be what a player chooses it to be, I heard a dev say (paraphrasing, because it has been a long time since I have seen it) “That is the thing about the classes in Guild Wars 2, you don’t know how the player has build his or her character. When we see an elementalist, we think that they can be taken down easily, but that isn’t the case. They could be speced to take alot of damage. When we see a warrior, we think that they are going to be hard to take down, but what if they speced for all damage?” It has been a while, but I know he mentioned something like that, but I don’t see much of where that is implemented. Especially in the case of support.

The other day in WvW I want up against an Engineer (1v1). I was destroyed like I was level 10. I couldn’t do jack damage to him AT ALL while he melted me like butter on a 100 degree day. Granted I run my ranger with the glass cannon build and gear so I often expect to get hit hard but I couldn’t even get his health down a tiny notch. It made me sad.

Nice thread, some good points were made. But I think nothing is going to change regarding this, it’s a decision Arenanet made during early development and the game is build around it.

In PvP, people are supposed to die. A lot. This is how it was made. In GW1, you could have 2 teams of 8 people each standing in front of each other, fighting. This could be high level play, and still nobody would die in a few minutes. When a team finally made a kill, this felt awesome. They made a succesfull spike, found a breach in the defense or interrupted a key heal and could kill a player.

In GW2, killing people can happen in 1 second from the moment the fight starts, and isn’t special at all. People die all the time, and when you see a fight start you know there is 90% chance that 10 seconds later one is either running or down/dead. Buffing ally heals to the level that it could prevent this, would change the whole game, and would require rebalancing the whole game. I would love to see it happen, but I don’t think it ever will.

There should not be Healing others since it leans towards 1 type of playstyle. Look basic explanation:

Healing boosts bunkers more then burst classes.
A bunker that can hold indefinetly 2vs2 with healer on his side, leans towards combo of heal and tank. Now while dps and tank cannon break the barrier of healing/tanking so it is at a loss. Dps and heal, Can focus down healer first, however, the second bunker alone is able to hold point solo for 20 seconds even w/o healer so healer has time to return and heal him up.
In the end healer+ bunker combo will be superior.

So what Anet decided ? All can heal themselfes, all can support to some extent.
Now it comes to this that 2 vs 2 its all about builds/skills of players not about classes.

I welcome this decision, with open arms, the only problem it might couse is that:
It might happen that Dps>bunker or Bunker>dps in meta.(the 2nd option is how it is atm)
To avoid such things where any bunker>any dps player must not be able to heal back all damage it takes indefinetly. Adding more healing might break that.