Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet wanted to try to learn from the pains of Guild Wars 1. They wanted to avoid 2 basic downfalls:

-Groups waiting in limbo because they are dependent upon a healing class.
-Classes being obligated into a healing role.

From a generalized perspective ArenaNet had a good idea “lets just make everyone a dps class each of which can off heal.”

“That way, groups are not twiddling their thumbs waiting on healers and certain classes don’t get stereotyped into healer roles when sometimes they might want to dps.”

The biggest misconception is that its an “either or” issue where you only can have it one way or the other, but not both.

This is a misconception.

I will state my premise and then proceed to address the very specific issues with very specific answers to prove that indeed this is a misconception.

My Premise:

It is absolutely feasible to allow for the possibility of dedicated healers:

1.) Without particular classes being obligated into healing roles.
2.) Without groups stuck waiting for healers
3.) Without diluting PvE, primarily such as dungeons
4.) Without diluting PvP

Issue #1) Every class needs to be equally viable as DPS and also equally viable as support to ensure that no class gets stereotyped as a healer class.

Issue #2) Upon addressing Issue #1 where all classes are created equal everyone in the group is a potential dedicated healer or support healer. No one class will find themselves always being obligated to heal the group.

The only left over inconvenience and deterrent I observe then is the overhead required to change your build before entering a dungeon or event. Traveling to town (which costs gold), and spending 2 gold on a Grandmaster book.

Heart of the Mists has the “Refund Traits” option which if were available prior to entering a dungeon or event would solve this problem.

-Continued on next Post-

Issue #3) In concern to PvE there are two types to address. Structured PvE such as dungeons and Unstructured PvE such as events.

Concerning Structured PvE such as dungeons:

-“If there are dedicated healers, dungeons will become too easy.”

Logically then usually a designer might make the dungeon harder, then the argument changes to:

-“Now the dungeon is so hard we HAVE to have a dedicated healer and now were back to the problems of Guild Wars 1 where we were always waiting on monks or ritualists just to do anything.”

This problem is solved by the combination and balance of 2 important factors:

-The effectiveness of all 5 players off healing (not dedicated healing) needs to be just enough to weather all encounters of the dungeon under the assumption that all the fights are being properly executed.

-Enrage Timers. World Of Warcraft and Diablo III demonstrate that enrage timers are an effective and reasonable way to balance the trade off between DPS and Healing thereby ensuring that 5 man super healing teams that do little damage do not undermine the intended difficulty of the dungeon.

Under these constraints a team of 5 DPS off healers is mutually viable with a team who decides to do 4 dedicated DPS and 1 dedicated healer.

Concerning Unstructured PvE such as Events:

Unstructured PvE such as Events is a different issue because the amount of players changes from a constant to a variable and secondly because players can not account for the builds of other players and when they come and go.

What this means is that for Unstructured PvE enrage timers are automatically not a good idea. So what should we do instead?

The first rule of thumb to remember is that events should be moderately challenging at most due to that fact that there are often times when one player wanders into an event and ends up completing it by themselves because no one else “happened” to show up. So lets remember to put some emphasis, but not too much on ensuring the difficulty of events for that reason.

We should partially follow the Diablo II & Diablo III model of what happens when players join/leave a game and apply it to when players enter/exit an event in progress.

In Diablo II & III when a player joins your game, the monsters gain more HP and just a little bit more damage. HP is not the issue so ignore that part, our focus is on the balance of damage versus healing.

Allowing the possibility for dedicated healers allows for there to be the potential for overall more healing, therefore damage needs to scale a bit to offset this.

The issue of events then simply becomes a mathematical issue of “in an event, how much more damage should a monster do for every additional player present? How much is too much? How much is not enough?”

Issue #4) First let me point out that other games out there prove that there is nothing wrong with having a dedicated healer in any form of PvP.

So as to maintain true to my premise I will remain specific.

The biggest concern when you introduce dedicated healing of any kind in concern to PvP is to ensure that the mechanics do not allow for an “all they do is heal” build.

There are 2 general factors that a game designer should always shoot for to ensure this does not occur.

-First that mathematically the theoretical damage output of any damage oriented class (in this case all of them) is always greater than the theoretical healing output of any healing oriented class (if my suggestion were accepted, all of them).

-Secondly, with the mathematics in favor of the DPS, you then add additional anti-healer mechanics such that of harassment and shutdown to further ensure that “all they do is heal” builds are not viable.

Then the issue simply becomes a balance of damage, healing, and anti-healer mechanics.

The only concern left to address about PvP would be again relevant to the prior statements and a good example is capture points.

We simply would want to ensure that DPS output is superior enough to healing output and that while combined with anti-healer mechanics ensures that “all they do is heal” builds can not cause stalemates in which they hold 2 points, never die, and win because of it.

The answer is simply to ensure DPS has enough of a mathematical advantage over healing and that anti-healer mechanics is sufficient enough such that an “all they do is heal” build will not work.

Conclusion:

It is absolutely possible to have a balanced PvE and PvP game with the potential for dedicated healing without requiring it or obligating a class into a role.

Please be constructive if you choose to reply by targeting specific issues, not speaking in generalizations as it is the targeting of specific issues that is necessary to solve problems.