Guild Wars 2

The communication coming out of Anet is confusing me. They build 8 classes with 5 different lines, at least 2 of those lines being support for each class.

If they clearly don’t want people actually traiting into these lines, why do they even exist?

Why not just make 5 different offensive lines? Oh wait, because that wouldn’t make any sense.

Maybe they wanted the defensive/support lines to be honeypots for bad players? No, that doesn’t make any sense either.

So what is the actual design philosophy here? I’m not trying to be offensive, and I hope no developers take it the wrong way, but we’re getting incredibly mixed signals here. The trait lines clearly have deep support and defensive capabilities if one chooses to play this way. That should be a good thing. Why ruin them? Healing power is already the worst scaling stat in the game, by an enormous margin. Why continue to nerf defense, healing and support builds even further? If anything, you should be buffing those builds, or at least buffing healing.

Or is the plan to achieve balance by juts nerfing burst builds until defense builds are good, then nerfing defense? (Old Necropotence reference there!)

Maybe I should frame this a different way:

Players can only have fun in this game while they’re alive. Therefore anything that lets players keep other players alive longer, and keep themselves alive longer, is going to make the game more fun for everyone in the long term. Obviously you can’t have everyone unable to kill each other, but you can certainly do something to give players the tools to support each other.

This also spills over into WvW. Currently it’s impossible to keep groups of players up through sustained AE damage. This makes attacking defended keeps frequently impossible, as the offense gets wiped before they can even setup. This indirectly leads to the night-capping issue, where most territory changes only happen at night when defenders are more scarce.

I know Anet is trying to remove the Healing/Tank/DPS, Trinity, but you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Give players the tools to support other players! It will make a better game in the long run.

If a group of people run up to a defended wall, or uncoordinatedly charge into a gate/wall/small area, then die, that’s their fault. Perhaps WvWvW failures are more because people think they should be able to run up and auto-attack the gate down instead of strategically setting up siege weapons and coordinating their efforts on a larger scale.

Anyway, I put some points into the defense line for a Warrior because it allows me to survive situations that would trash a glass cannon build. That goes for sPvP and WvWvW both.

1: what Kaniro said.
2: Supporting is ABSOLUTELY viable. Not completely as you stated because of the scaling of the healing stat etc but also traits not being able to be 100% supportive or atleast viable that way. The way support is currently in this game, is that its a mix of offensive ulitity with support abilities and the defensive aspect of it. Necros for example has great supportive abilities that are usable limited because going 100% supportive just isnt good enough, same goes for elementalist and guardian. If you ask the top PVP players in tournaments, there IS such a thing as support and there is such a thing as analyzing the opponent team, deciding that they just have too much of a 5v5, 4v4 synergy because of the supportive elements in their professions. In this case i mean guardians and elementalists especially. Maybe saying that youre just bluntly wrong about what youre saying isnt too helpful, but you are.

Silly topic. Bunker and support and defensive builds/traits/gear is completely viable on a number of classes.

Not to mention there’s more to this game than PVP.

red.2387:

If they clearly don’t want people actually traiting into these lines, why do they even exist?

What the hell are you talking about? What kind of delusion went through your head to even make this statement?

Bunker/tanky builds are very powerful in sPvP

Because
1) Its NOT a fps game
2) its NOT a 1 vs 1 game
its because its a mmo where teamplay is vital where both defensive abilities and offensive ability is necessary to win.
the holy trinity is gone meaning all classes can spec into as much damage/defence they need to win.

Volte.9670:

red.2387:

If they clearly don’t want people actually traiting into these lines, why do they even exist?

What the hell are you talking about? What kind of delusion went through your head to even make this statement?

Bunker/tanky builds are very powerful in sPvP

Right, but any time anyone comes up with a good one, the devs talk about nerfing them. Maybe they should make all the healing skills affect other players 1.5-2x more than they affect the caster, and nerf the self healing on the bunker builds a bit. I just think players should be able to support each other more, without completely breaking 1v1 survivability.

I think my initial question was misinterpreted. I want to know why devs put these abilities in the game if they just intend to nerf them every time someone figures out a way to put them to good use.

the traitlines are fine and the general idea behind each support skill is also fine.

the reason people dont choose support builds (even the ones that enjoy supporting)
is that in this game it is very hard to support your team mates.
and very much based on luck even for the most well coordinated teams.

its fun when theres just 2-3 people that have Voip and have built chemistry between them over time,
but other than that, supporting is very unreliable in this game, where it seems like its every man for himself.

Seems to me they’re not interested in having bunker builds that are able to hold 1v1 or 2v1 indefinitely. When I run my tank Ele, I can survive 2v1 seemingly indefinitely. I’ve gone minutes at a time before someone showed up from either team. Similar can be said of Guardian bunkers. I don’t see this as being balanced. Maybe 1v1 should be a stalemate (hence the Ret nerfs), but 2v1 I shouldn’t be able to hold them off for longer than a minute, maybe 2, and I think that’s their problem with it. Lately I’ve been seeing pre-mades with 3 bunkers, a support/tank Ele, and a DPS (usually Thief or Mesmer), and it’s amazingly powerful.

Support comes in many varieties. I can’t make any guesses on how they want this to play out, but AoE condition removal, venom share, healing, AoE boons, etc. are all forms of support, and they can be quite strong. Ask any support Ele. Even the Hydrospike Ele build brings a lot of support with AoE Might, regen, and condition removal.

red.2387:

I think my initial question was misinterpreted. I want to know why devs put these abilities in the game if they just intend to nerf them every time someone figures out a way to put them to good use.

Red, I think we are seeing a good old fashioned “wow shinney” moment. For the many of us who have played support roles in MMOs, we know, KNOW, in our heads that they are the most important players on the battlefield.

MMOs in general place too much emphasis on the healer (which by my logic is super OP in almost every game I have ever played). With this is mind, all other classes are generally played max dps, or max defense. This game takes that away as the “I am a god because I heal people so it is unfair for me to die” aspect so many people are beginning to realize that team support play dominates.

Take a crowd that did not understand that being top DPS or top damage absorbsion was a bane rather then a boon to their team, and you have a whole new breed emerging…those who work in synergy.

This synergy could not have been anticipated fully (though ANET did a good job at guessing) and as such, the swing of the game must be followed and adjusted according to player actions.

red.2387:

I think my initial question was misinterpreted. I want to know why devs put these abilities in the game if they just intend to nerf them every time someone figures out a way to put them to good use.

Or rephrase and say: Stop nerfing everything all the time.

Instead of trying to argue that supporting in general is nonviable and theres no reason to even have the abilities. If there were no supporting in any shape or form, I personally think it would be missing a huge aspect. They did say they didnt want to build a game with hardsupport roles but that doesnt make supporting in the game nonexistant.