Guild Wars 2

The one greatest flaw with GW2, is that it doesn’t support a sufficient number of different play styles, or gaming archetypes. This condemns the game to being a niche game with a much smaller market than it would have otherwise. People are different, and if you only support the tastes of a certain minority, then the rest find little reason to play.

Take myself as an example. In every game I ever played before GW2, my main was a healer archetype. I always played this healer in a very aggressive way, and my play style was centered on giving flexible support to team players – damage, control, and a little healing, in that order.

I prefer to play that way, because that’s the kind of person I am; this archetype appeals to me the most.

Unfortunately, such a class does not exist in GW2. Someone who didn’t like the healer archetype decided that it didn’t belong in the game. Which is of course a case of not seeing the bigger picture. There are gaming archetypes I don’t like too, I’d for instance never play the thief archetype – I find it boring to play, and mostly annoying to face. If I were to design a game with only my own personal satisfaction in mind, the thief would go bye-bye in a heartbeat!

But the thing is, I wouldn’t design a game to only suit ME, because that would not make for a very good game! It is a good thing to have those pesky thieves around (even though I personally hate them), because having a full compliment of gaming archetypes gives the game variety and the fights dynamism.

And different gaming archetypes are supposed to be different, not shoehorned into the same shape, as is the case with GW2. Here every class is much more similar than they are different, because the overarching design idea of having abilities tied to weapons forced it.

That was a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, many things were done right in GW2, but the mistakes must be acknowledged too. It wasn’t a mistake to tie abilities to weapons because I personally don’t like the clunky play style of switching out ability sets, it was a mistake because it forces the same clunky play style on everyone and makes the archetypes less distinctive, which lessens the appeal of the game to a lot of people.

I tell you guys this, because you’ll only end up with a little group of happy fans who praise the single play style you offer, and those who don’t find what they seek in the game are more likely to just go away, than to offer constructive feedback.

How could you fix this, without making it into GW3?

It’s going to be tough, because you have kind of painted yourselves into a corner here. As long as you stick to the idea of tying abilities to weapons for everyone, and of having no resources to manage, relying on a combination of a limited number of active abilities and looong cooldowns to throttle player output, your hands are tied. There is just not enough flexibility in the current design for a meaningful improvement.

Thus, the design must change. You must step outside of the boundaries imposed by the current system, allowing the classes to grow in different directions, letting them blossom into different archetypes over time.

A few specific things you should work towards:

1. There should exist a class that can heal and cleanse others.
2. Some classes should be throttled by different kinds of resource management.
3. Some classes should have all abilities available and not need to switch between sets.

Be creative with it, but do improve the variety of play styles offered by the game! I personally only play GW2 very sporadically, because my “Main” in GW2 has about as much emotional appeal to me as a third alt would in any other game. It goes without saying I’m not using the gem shop or buying expansions until that situation improves!

@Tom why so much anger? chill man.

@mike I bet you are quite dissapointed with current state of support classes, but from your post I can assume you have not tried all the possible options. Points you suggested are I’m afraid against the whle idea of mechanics in gw2, and I doubt any of them will ever heppen, however I think that good buff to healing professions would be increasing skill’s scaling with Healing Power.

See, if somone uses HP as one of their gear attributes, he sacreficaes a lot of his combat potential. And what he gets? going full HP makes my regeneration merely 3x stronger than full berserker’s thief.
I think good solution to lack of support classes in current meta would be grantly increasing weapon and utility skill’s scaling with HP and decreasing their base heal. I dont think such changes should be implemented to dedicated healing skills.

And simple advice if you want this kind of healer. Try D/D elementalist with 0/10/0/30/30 Magi, or 0/0/10/30/30 Apothecary. I use them and I find these build amazing
Both of them are focused around Evasive Arcana trait, to let you use Cleansing wave as much as possible (its AoE heal with AMAZING scaling and cleanse condition) and good usage is to use elemental shields as often as you can, and switch between attunments wisely. (I reccomend you taking runes carefully aswell, you can make use of additional +30% boon duration, just saing)

Both of these builds are offensive in other ways, Magi focuses in crits and sigil with on-crit effects, so you will be offensive mainly in Fire and Air, but the Apothecary build is cond dmg offensive so you will deal much bigger and sustained dmg, and you will be more offensive in Fire and Earth.

I am a bit angry because of people who wants to turn this yet another holy trinity MMO, despite the fact there are several of them out there already.

Mike.7236:

1. There should exist a class that can heal and cleanse others.

There already is, we call them guardian, warrior, elementalist, engineer, thief, necro, mesmer, and even ranger.

All I’m hearing is “make GW2 like every other MMO”

No thank you. This game has a lot to work on, what you suggested is not any of them. I agree that some flexibility would be nice, like more skill bars to easily switch between step ups. The game [at] its core has its own vision, please stop trying to change that.

Edit: Great word filter, Anet. Why don’t you work on that?

The issue isn’t that the core game doesn’t cater to different playstyles. It’s that the content doesn’t require it.

I run a Banner / FGJ! Warrior, with GS and Hammer to provide Support, Leg Specialist for a little Control in SHTF moments, and focus on steady damage with the ability to take a lot of punishment, as opposed to crit damage.

Another thing to realise is that the game doesn’t focus on reactionary support (healing when the damage has been done); it’s more preventative support (preventing damage being done). This isn’t a flaw with the game; it’s a design choice.

You can cleanse, heal and give support (support and control aren’t two separate extremes necessarily) to varying degrees of effectiveness, depending on how you spec them, and what skills you give, with some professions doing it better than others. For example:

Guardian

• Virtues – Virtue of Resolve and Virtue of Courage
• Greatsword – Leap of Faith, Symbol of Wrath, Binding Blade
• Hammer – Symbol of Protection, Banish, Ring of Warding
• Staff – Orb of Light, Symbol of Swiftness, Empower, Line of Warding
• Mace – Faithful Strike, Symbol of Faith, Protector’s Strike
• Focus – Ray of Judgement
• Shield – Shield of Judgement, Shield of Absorption
• Torch – Cleansing Flame

*Heal, Utilities + Elite – Healing Breeze, Hallowed Ground, Purging Flames, Sanctuary, Wall of Reflection, Merciful Intervention, “Hold the Line!”, “Retreat!”, “Save Yourselves!”, “Stand Your Ground!”, Bow of Truth, Tome of Courage.

• Trait Lines – Valor: Strength in Numbers. Honour: Selfless Daring, Superior Aria, Protective Reviver, Resolute Healer, Empowering Might, Writ of the Merciful, Pure of Voice, Battle Presence. Virtues: Inspired Virtue, Elite Focus, Absolute Resolution, Indomitable Courage, Shielded Mind.

Thieves are a profession that are limited by resourse.

I strongly disagree, however, that there should be professions that have access to all abilities at once. One of the core mechanics of the game is to find synergy between skills to make an effective build, and not have everything available at once.

@Aenia, the mechanics is what that turns people off this game! I am not alone in thinking so. Here’s a few reviews from metacritic:

“skills based on the weapon of choice really doesn’t work at all. It limits your choices and forces you to stick with skills you don’t enjoy using and/or don’t fit in with your playstyle.”

“Abilities are not enjoyable, and you’re far more limited than you think. One ability is just an autoattack, elite skills are next to useless, so you’re practically limited to eight abilities (with one being a mere generic heal). … no complexity equates to no enjoyability or actual ‘gameplay’.”

“the skills system is awful, basically when you get a weapon you level it up and only 5 skills are available, thats it.”

“click the button which is not on cooldown, combat is dumbed down”

“The combat overall I will say is fairly good but with the limited skills it does get boring after some time.”

“By abandoning the staple roles of RPGs in favor of some sort of a weapon-based skill system and self-healing, the game pushes itself way backward in that department.”

“no reason to bother with tactics just mash everything you have and maybe some combos will happen … you have 30-40 skills to unlock, out of which a whopping 5 (yes, FIVE) are available for use at any time … if you want situational skill A you can’t just use it anytime unless you unequip the always useful skill B beforehand.”

“since they dont use the classic tank-healer-dps system, group combat becomes confusing”

“No trainers, no weapon learning, no nothing. Around level 30 you will unlock all you skill slots and spell you will use for the rest of the game experience. You will only have 5 weapon spells and 6 buffs/cooldowns. That is it. i personally could not bare with using the same 5 or so spells over and over till lvl 80. The combat is just not fun. The weapon skills and spells are so limited. I feel brain dead right now.”

“Every class has basically the same set of skills with slight differences (for example, damage, heal, escape, CC, etc). At first the classes look different but really the differences are quite small as everyone can do a little bit of everything and you can see how similar a 99% of the skills are.”

“all classes are basically “jack of all trades” class … this lack of feature makes every class basically a boredom due to the fact that you’ll never feel unique: you’re one of the crowd … I saw just how limited it was, since you’ll just be spamming 5 skills in total, plus 5 more that can be set by yourself later on…it is just not enough to keep the game fresh"

“There are no strategies anymore, just annoying-kitten mindless spamming of 2 or 3 skills. the skill system and combat system is dead. Gone are the days when you could hunt down specific skills stretched across the world of Tyria to collect. Now, your skills are linked with your weapon. Which you then only have 5 per weapon, and are very limited in their diversity. Honestly, every weapon and skill feel almost identical per class. "

“this game is just a common button smasher, every character is the same but with a different paint coat. No “trinity” means that there is no strategy and everyone is a DPS class. Everyone looks the same, feels the same"

“Classes feel weird, too few skills to choose from and don’t feel solid whatsoever”

" The classes don’t even feel different from one another, and its entire no-trinity system has made it a dps fest with no skill involved."

“I felt just as useless at level 80 as I did at 30 because you’re limited to the number of skills that fit in your tiny action bar. … Combat is extremely limited. You’re given a set number of action bar slots for each class and are restricted to it. This pigeon holes you into the same skills, the same rotations and the same strategies for combat. Even swapping weapons seems pointless because your other set of weapons probably doesn’t match the playing style you chose.”

“in their pursuit for a perfect MMO formula, ArenaNet forgot to add one critical element to this otherwise perfect equation – fun. No argument for PvP balance can overrule the fact that restricting your class to only a handful of skillsets (as opposed to hundreds in GW1) was an absolutely horrible design choice that doomed the entire experience from the start.”

Two things are mentioned over and over by people who quit GW2 – the frustrating limitations in the core combat mechanics, and the tendency for everything to become a mindless zerg with no discernible roles for players (which boils down to the limitations of the combat system as well).

Most people do love many aspects of GW2, but stop playing anyway because of this.

You don’t get it Mike. There are also tons of people (like me) who absolutely love the demolishing of traditional roles in MMOs. No more waiting an hour for that healer to be available for a dungeon. No more tank&spank encounters where your only job is to watch your hotkey bar and hammer a certain rotation.

For every player who stops playing GW2 because of the missing holy trinity there is another who will play it exactly for that reason.

I told you already. You like holy trinity MMOs? Go play one of the dozen available ones. This is not the game you’re looking for.

@Tom Gore: I do understand that GW2 has its fans, people who think its unique take on combat is awesome!

But those fans are perhaps not as common as you think. I just cited 17 random people who feel the same way I do about the combat system. This complaint is repeated over and over, and those who do give GW2 a 10/10 score don’t usually say anything specific positive about the combat system either – it appears most who love this game do it for various other reasons.

I’ve been around a while, and I have three adult sons, two of them have played GW2 too. Note my use of past tense there, neither of them keeps playing anymore! Reason? They find the combat system limited and frustrating!

It’s lucky for Arenanet that a small part of the gaming population has no problem with their combat system, and that an even smaller part actually like it. But the game is definitely suffering from it. The rave reviews were from when it was fresh, but how many people stick around for the long haul? I myself posted a 10/10 review at metacritic during my initial honeymoon with this game, and now I’m utterly fed up with my tiny limited action bar!

I haven’t seen the numbers, but I do know that zones are more or less deserted on my server now. This is in itself a problem, because the mobs conquer territory unless players keep taking it back, and it’s not fun questing in a zone where every waypoint is offline…

It’s true GW2’s combat doesn’t cater to everyone. That’s ok though.

Mike.7236:

Most people do love many aspects of GW2, but stop playing anyway because of this.

“You can please some people all of the time, all people some of the time, but never all people all of the time”

If you implemented what you said, how many of them people would return in comparison to how many people would leave because they like the current system?

The Trinity itself has flaws, and doesn’t have the depth of strategy that people say it does. For Tanks, you’re limited to “Face the boss away from everyone, and keep its attention”, and in raids “Swap Tanks when X debuff gets to X stacks” or “This guy Tanks the boss and this guy tanks the adds”. Healers are limited to “Keep the tank alive, and heal anyone else where possible”, and in raids, you only have to focus on one; the tank or the rest of the raid. And DPS…well…the only strategy they have is “nuke the called target down”.

For the most part the strategy is governed by the actual fight mechanics, not the Trinity.

Take Sindragosa, for example. Some of them fight mechanics included:

• Running away from a 1HK attack
• Freezing two players, where timing their release and your positioning is important. Too soon, people die, too late, people die.
• A debuff that is active when you LoS it
• A debuff that deals DoT (frost damage), where tanks had to swap

How many of these mechanics require a Tank and healer? And how many could be adapted to fit into freeform grouping?

For example, the mechanic that requires tanks to swap could easily be adapted to fit into a mechanic where all players have to gather in one place and stand in a fire field.

Another point is that roles can be made by the fight mechanics, which could lead to a more interesting diversity of roles.

Take the Effigy in CoF, for example. Make it so players can’t bruteforce their way past that mechanic, and suddenly you have a role that requires players to destroy the crystals while other players attack the boss.

Yea, WoW is for you. There are no classes in this game. If you want to play damage, control and healing, play that way; but there is no class where your only way to play is damage, control, and healing. Make a guardian and play that way if you want. I think you don’t understand that guildwars didn’t want classes, and what you want is classes.

@Tom Gore: You keep telling me, and others who aren’t impressed with the combat system, to PLEASE GO AWAY.

Fair enough, that’s of course just what I’ll do, since I’m not having enough fun in GW2 to bother logging in much anymore!

I’ve been playing another game more recently, Star Wars: The Old Republic. That game is actually quite bad in many respects, I could write a book about how poorly executed it is…

But it does beat GW2 in one key area – it has a decent, bog-standard MMO combat system that doesn’t constantly annoy the crap out of me. It gives me player-managed action bars with sufficient slots to fit everything. Like every other MMO out there I can remember.

There is certainly nothing inventive about it, but if you’re going to reinvent the wheel, please make sure you don’t end up with a square one. That’s essentially what Arenanet did here, they created a new combat system that is worse than what a cheap WoW-clone would have been.

P.S Before I take the hint and GO AWAY FOREVER, I’ll point out I didn’t bother to come here to argue with fanboys like you, I did it on the off chance that the developers actually read this forum. Not likely, but you never know. You see, while you think I should just GO AWAY, that is not a good business strategy. Arenanet seems interested in growing their player base to earn more money, even if it means going to Asia to do so. If the numbers aren’t what they’d like to see, I’m sure trying to make the game more appealing to more players would be an option too, as much as you don’t want that to happen.

Mike.7236:

But it does beat GW2 in one key area – it has a decent, bog-standard MMO combat system that doesn’t constantly annoy the crap out of me. It gives me player-managed action bars with sufficient slots to fit everything. Like every other MMO out there I can remember.

There is certainly nothing inventive about it, but if you’re going to reinvent the wheel, please make sure you don’t end up with a square one. That’s essentially what Arenanet did here, they created a new combat system that is worse than what a cheap WoW-clone would have been.

You probably wouldn’t have liked GW1 then.

You only had 8 slots there for 100’s of skills.

As for the combat, it seems like it isn’t for you. That doesn’t make it flawed for the reasons you say it is. That’s just your preference.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Mike.7236:

But it does beat GW2 in one key area – it has a decent, bog-standard MMO combat system that doesn’t constantly annoy the crap out of me. It gives me player-managed action bars with sufficient slots to fit everything. Like every other MMO out there I can remember.

There is certainly nothing inventive about it, but if you’re going to reinvent the wheel, please make sure you don’t end up with a square one. That’s essentially what Arenanet did here, they created a new combat system that is worse than what a cheap WoW-clone would have been.

You probably wouldn’t have liked GW1 then.

You only had 8 slots there for 100’s of skills.

As for the combat, it seems like it isn’t for you. That doesn’t make it flawed for the reasons you say it is. That’s just your preference.

Just my preference, and my two sons’ preferences, and the preference of the 17 random folks I cited, and the preference of who knows how many more people…

In my original post, I explained what the real issue is here – lack of choice in gaming archetypes. Some of you are happy, because your preferred play style is supported. But there are other play styles that are not, and a lot of people who prefer those play styles get frustrated with the game and leave.

This may not be an issue to you, but it might be to Arenanet.

Oh well, I think I’ve spent enough time on this, I’ll end by thanking everyone for reading. Have fun in your game, I don’t wish to take that away from you, I just want you to get a more diverse player base to have fun with!

I won’t be visiting this thread again, and I won’t be playing much GW2 in the future either. Sure, I own a game account, and sometimes I might feel like logging in for an hour or two, but I won’t give a kitten about it, and that means no gem store purchases, and no more revenue to Arenanet from me.

Ok, so you’ve got 20 people that don’t like GW2. You do understand that you can’t please all the people all the time, right?

What you are stating are not flaws, they are gameplay styles that already exist in other games. You do not have to play and like every single game in the world.

Mike.7236

I’ve been playing another game more recently, Star Wars: The Old Republic. That game is actually quite bad in many respects, I could write a book about how poorly executed it is…

But it does beat GW2 in one key area – it has a decent, bog-standard MMO combat system that doesn’t constantly annoy the crap out of me. It gives me player-managed action bars with sufficient slots to fit everything. Like every other MMO out there I can remember.

Determining of current player activity in each game, it seems like SWTOR’s almighty old-fashioned combat didn’t save that game, did it?

And for the record, I played SWTOR and the combat was the same old kitten I already got ten times bored with when I played WoW.

How hard it is to understand your view is entirely subjective and perhaps, just PERHAPS GW2 is as popular as it is because of its slightly different approach to combat and classes?

That hasn’t even crossed your mind, now has it?

Mike.7236:

Just my preference, and my two sons’ preferences, and the preference of the 17 random folks I cited, and the preference of who knows how many more people…

In my original post, I explained what the real issue is here – lack of choice in gaming archetypes. Some of you are happy, because your preferred play style is supported. But there are other play styles that are not, and a lot of people who prefer those play styles get frustrated with the game and leave.

This may not be an issue to you, but it might be to Arenanet.

Oh well, I think I’ve spent enough time on this, I’ll end by thanking everyone for reading. Have fun in your game, I don’t wish to take that away from you, I just want you to get a more diverse player base to have fun with!

Just like this game has the preferred style for me, my friends, and who knows how many other people. See what I did there?

And yes, all of my preferred playing styles are catered to. As a Warrior, I can:

• Provide lots of control.
• Deal Damage
• Provide Support in the form of buffs and healing.

You said your preferred style was a hybrid of Control, Damage and Healing in that order. Please tell me how you can’t accomplish that here?

If you’re talking about limiting skills, please tell how you’d balance one class being limited in their skills choice to one class having every skill available?

Mike.7236:

I won’t be visiting this thread again, and I won’t be playing much GW2 in the future either. Sure, I own a game account, and sometimes I might feel like logging in for an hour or two, but I won’t give a kitten about it, and that means no gem store purchases, and no more revenue to Arenanet from me.

Toys and prams come to mind. One has to wonder if you did any research on the game before buying it.

I’ll ask this final question: If I went to SWTOR, and said ’ I don’t like the combat system, change X, Y and Z about it’, do you think that would be reasonable?

I played wow since shortly before BC came out until several months ago. I didnt stop playing wow because i hated it or i no longer liked it, i still like it and love it however as much as i like it, it bores me. The reason i enjoy GW2 so much is that soo much of it is completely different. The reason it is soo enjoyable is that it is sooo different to WoW and almost every single mmo out there.

My Monk was one of my mains in GW1, and while I miss her, I fully understand why Anet didn’t do a straight healer in GW2. Standing around spamming ‘glf healer’ is not a fun way to spend ones time when you would much rather be playing. This type of play is non conducive to what Anet is trying to do with this game.

A dedicated healing class is not the answer to the dilemma of GW2’s DPS only meta.

The problem originates not from a lack of holy trinity, but rather from the fact that all damage can be avoided, and is therefore EXPECTED to be avoided. This results in dps stats being the only thing viable. Because you should not be building tanky to take hits, because you are expected to avoid every single hit and never have to take a hit. The same rationale means you should not spec to heal, because every player is expected to avoid every single hit and never need to be healed. The reality is that people do get hit, people do get downed, and people do need heals, but trying to get into groups in high end content when you’re specced to be able to take hits, or heal hits, is a no go.

In games where there isn’t this expectation to avoid ALL attacks, tanks build to be able to take hits, they’re expected to get hit, and so they need to be able to survive being hit. Likewise healers are expected to heal the damage done and so they build to be able to heal well and efficiently. This paradigm shift is caused by one very important feature in GW2’s mechanics: Invincibility frames on dodging. If dodge simply quickly moved you in a direction, but did not grant invincibility frames, it would not completely avoid some attacks, a cleaving sword swing might still hit someone dodging to the side rather than backwards, subject alpha’s aoes would still do damage to people in melee range dodging at the last second, as they would still be in the circle.

Invincibility frames allow for you to completely avoid all damage during the animation, whether a sword is going right through your body or not. Invincibility frames allow you to negate damage from a targeted non projectile spell.

Invincibility frames create the the state of game where everyone is fragile, where if you do get hit by bosses, you might get one shot (though part of that is due to the downed system as well, because you CAN recover from downed, it necessitates making you fragile along with the rationale of because you CAN avoid any hit coming at you you have to be fragile)

Without invincibility frames, the game would get much harder, people would not be expected to avoid every single attack, damage would be anticipated, and builds other than max dps zerker only would be a part of the meta.

But as long as every attack is fully avoidable, all you will ever see at the top PVE content is #YOLO #SWAG #FULLZERKS #MLGPRO #DPS

Now if invincibility frames WERE removed, other steps would have to be taken on base survivability, mob outgoing damage, and healing power scaling, to make building for healing power viable

I like that several classes have the potential to be a support/healer role, it would be a bad move I feel for Arenanet to move to having a dedicated healing class, due to the fact that then content would be built with having that class in mind, which leads to that class being NECESSARY to run the content. This is not what Anet wanted, nobody wants to spend a lot of time “LF1M Monk…. please… we’ve been waiting for hours… are there ANY healers?”

But think about that.. lack of dedicated healers is not what creates the all dps only meta. It’s the expectation that you can dodge everything.

Mike.7236:

I’ve been playing another game more recently, Star Wars: The Old Republic. That game is actually quite bad in many respects, I could write a book about how poorly executed it is…

That’s coo, I left TOR because of the disappointing decisions the Devs consistently made for it. One having been that they forced it to be a Trinity game when it really didn’t need to be.

I left it for GW2 because after 6 months I’d competed all the content and just didn’t care at all about it anymore. Now in GW2 after almost a year, I’ve long since competed all the content outside PvP and I can’t get enough. I repeat level 1-15 areas because they’re fun. The game is fun. Only having to worry about keys 1-0, rather than five bars worth of powers is amazing. I’ve played all the classes and have one of everything but Mesmer plus two rangers and thieves. Every single one of them plays completely differently and It’s great.

The benefit of limiting your skills to 10 is that you can have a dozen of the same class and have them all be completely different. In TOR every instance of the same class has the same powers, and then three trees, that change the class to one of two playstyles. For every instance of a class you know what to expect, with minor differences that don’t really effect how they play. So in GW2 you can cater to a hundred different play styles, and in TOR you’ve got about 8, give or take, since imp and rep are just mirrors with textual and visual flavor as their only differences.

So, the versatility of each class is what ANet focused on. I absolutely hate being a healer, but I love the idea of a Holy Warrior/Paragon. Hence, I play a Guardian, but it means I don’t have to be confined to healing and tanking. I can still dish out the dps whenever I want to. And in a traditional mmo, my Thief would be only damage. But instead, I can play a damage control/support Thief instead. So IMO, they [ANet] don’t need to make any changes to the classes to make them more “Unique”, and by doing that, making the game less Unique, and more like WoW or SWTOR.

Why is that this kind of thread is ALWAYS and without exception about making GW2 into WoW? As soon as I read it I knew that’s what this was going to be about and I was not disappointed… though I am very disappointed about that.

Valadin.5642:

So, the versatility of each class is what ANet focused on. I absolutely hate being a healer, but I love the idea of a Holy Warrior/Paragon. Hence, I play a Guardian, but it means I don’t have to be confined to healing and tanking. I can still dish out the dps whenever I want to. And in a traditional mmo, my Thief would be only damage. But instead, I can play a damage control/support Thief instead. So IMO, they [ANet] don’t need to make any changes to the classes to make them more “Unique”, and by doing that, making the game less Unique, and more like WoW or SWTOR.

Yeah, I don’t like the idea of going to trinity designated roles, I like that classes are flexible and can do multiple things. I do however wish that healing power was more effective (since every heal but self heal is aoe, the effectiveness of healing power is very low). But still, even if they made healing power very powerful, high end content groups wouldn’t want you speccing or building for healing, even if there was a dedicated healing class, groups wouldn’t want to take it because they feel you should dodge everything and never get hit and never need heals. In fractals at high levels, being hit at all is basically fatal, you can’t heal through it. In speedruns of dungeons, a healing class slows the run down.

@Tom, i think you pretty rude to people with a different opinion then yours. for people like you i hope ==> GO AWAY PLEASE the community dont need rude people like you. @Mike i can see why you see it like that. Imo i think there is little use to spec your character anything else then DPS. why? because there is no use to do it. for PVE anyways. and in WvWvW you spec for AoE dmg. it no or little use to do close dmg while you die on the way to your target. @Tom, still with me? i hope iam not going to fast for you. Because yes those a flaws. I like the switch weapon and different skills. but i dont like you can not spec the way you want that it helps the others. like interrupts etc. see the youtube of kaboose. Then the reward system is broken. even if you do almost nothing chances are you still get beter loot then other people who work their kitten off. And wht about all those SP people in this game? its for crying out loud an MMO. There is no use to do for rewards nothing else then CoF path 1. gives the most loot and most gold. And mostly you get the people who do the most dmg. And it still hasnt anything to do with WoW but how they make those fights. you can not interrupt any skills of an boss. and how about the world bosses at this moment? they are stupidly easy to kill. no skill involved. Even WoW sucks imo, it had more tactics then GW2 today in bossfights. but there is also a little light at the end of the tunnel they seem to fix that. And i hope really the actions will effect your character since now it doesnt matter. For Mike i really can see why you feel about this game. to bad people like Tom are so rude and do not want to go into discussion about this. They ruin the game to the core and the community. Anyways if you stop playing this game i hope you wont feel like everyone in this game is like Tom. Have fun with your game. And maybe we see eachother again in this game. Good luck.

On top of Damage Avoidance, you’re also forgetting the awesome major factor they’ve introduced in GW2…
Be Responsible For Y.O.U.R.S.E.L.F!
I played WoW from Bkittenil March of this year. I was a dedicated Healer. I played all 4 Healing Classes: Druid, Priest, Shaman, & Paladin- all healing speced. It’s my preferred class. Played them through years of patches, changes to traiting systems, Dungeons, Raids (5 & 25mans) Every xpac.
I’m HERE now.
I’m here, and HAPPY now.
Never again will I have to completely stress out in a Raid because some asinine PUG Tank decided he wanted to pull a whole room and … I dunno… go get coffee. Never again will I have to deal with idiot DPS (read Hunters mostly -but not limited to!) who feel the need to kite 9k extra mobs from a /different/ room and then point the finger at Me when I couldn’t keep them alive and the tank while he was tanking a Raid Boss.
Because every single Profession in their own Skill Set is not only capable of Damage Avoidance -BUT!- Healing T.H.E.M.S.E.L.V.E.S. when Damage Avoidance is failed.
I agree w Tom.
Go back to WoW* or some other cut-rate crappy MMO, because GW2 is clearly not the game for your tastes. (*yes, this comment implies that IMO WoW is now, a cut-rate MMO)
Thank You ANet. I won’t Ever have to play WoW again. You have no idea what that’s worth to me. <3

Redbear.5910:

@Tom, i think you pretty rude to people with a different opinion then yours. for people like you i hope ==> GO AWAY PLEASE the community dont need rude people like you. @Mike i can see why you see it like that. Imo i think there is little use to spec your character anything else then DPS. why? because there is no use to do it. for PVE anyways. and in WvWvW you spec for AoE dmg. it no or little use to do close dmg while you die on the way to your target. @Tom, still with me? i hope iam not going to fast for you. Because yes those a flaws. I like the switch weapon and different skills. but i dont like you can not spec the way you want that it helps the others. like interrupts etc. see the youtube of kaboose. Then the reward system is broken. even if you do almost nothing chances are you still get beter loot then other people who work their kitten off. And wht about all those SP people in this game? its for crying out loud an MMO. There is no use to do for rewards nothing else then CoF path 1. gives the most loot and most gold. And mostly you get the people who do the most dmg. And it still hasnt anything to do with WoW but how they make those fights. you can not interrupt any skills of an boss. and how about the world bosses at this moment? they are stupidly easy to kill. no skill involved. Even WoW sucks imo, it had more tactics then GW2 today in bossfights. but there is also a little light at the end of the tunnel they seem to fix that. And i hope really the actions will effect your character since now it doesnt matter. For Mike i really can see why you feel about this game. to bad people like Tom are so rude and do not want to go into discussion about this. They ruin the game to the core and the community. Anyways if you stop playing this game i hope you wont feel like everyone in this game is like Tom. Have fun with your game. And maybe we see eachother again in this game. Good luck.

You’re very polite. Good on you for trying to have a decent discussion about a stupid topic. Nothing you said was actually relevant to what Mike’s specific issues with the game are, though. They are, in fact, flaws, and they have been addressed in better more reasonably titled threads, but they aren’t the flaws Mike sees. The flaws Mike sees are that mechanically GW2 doesn’t work like WoW and games like WoW, like SW:TOR.

Things should be done to change the state of the game, and the points you addressed, but none of them would address Mike’s issues, and the issues Mike has should not be addressed because they are issues for Mike, not the game.

Tom Gore.4035:

A bunch of full/very high pop servers with people swarming everywhere tells me you’re wrong.

And I don’t want dedicated roles. This is not WoW. Go back to WoW.

+1

Says NOT TO HOLY TRINITY!

It’s knowed by GW2 comunity how much concorrent spies come to forum just to generate dislikes and/or drops every thing of doubts thoughts about this awesome game

I’m hating all of these people that say go back to wow. I also want a profession like that. Everyone who is saying that has never played wow and sees it that if you have a healer, the game is wow. I played wow for 4 years. I like the way guild wars feels but there are some things wow did 10x better.

No build is unplayably broken, the only people who all use the same builds are the hardcore mlg Spvpers.

For who that want run healer, make an Elementaris or Guardian and build for suport.
End of Story!

1. There should exist a class that can heal and cleanse others.
2. Some classes should be throttled by different kinds of resource management.
3. Some classes should have all abilities available and not need to switch between sets.

“1. there is a class that does this already” Its called elementalist.
“2. What the heck? No clue what you mean by that but it would ulter the game mechanics I bet.
“3. So making some characters OP and others not OP makes sence to you?

Over all theres just to much good about this game to try and fix it. But I do want to see Anet to fix the view. The biggest complaint about the game when it first released was the View. Its down right awefull specialy if your in wvw and trying to AOE tower walls with 50 players standing around you. Cant see up cuz of body block kitten >.<

@OP

I respect your opinion, me, my story as being tired of the roles themselves, because of what it brought in terms of elitism and preferred class. To a degree, still happens, but without the DPS meters here as well, but 75% less often, unless your a thief. The change in combat system is actually a great change from the norm for a casual gamer like myself, although, I would definately live to see more combat skill diversity.

I don’t need the trinity for more skill diversity though. Just more custom weapon skills that allow me too specify which 5, or 2-1-2 split I choose. However, I realize the resources involved would be timely. Perhaps its even years away from happening if that.

If the worst problem Guild Wars 2 has was keeping it simplex as far as combat, I cant say I complain much. Also, understand that in most cases, you have more like 20 weapon skills. If you coun’t 3 from number 1 auto attack, 1/2 for number 2, etc, plus other weapon set on swap. Elementalist
and Engineer having the most however.

As far as weapon swapping meshing, I do believe that some lack the synergy as stated, but there are others that have great synergy. So, yes, Arena net does in fact have some focus areas to hash out, but personally, I don’t believe it’s roles.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and listening to mine

Folly

Play-style mechanic revision: Have a second skill bar set that is fully customizable with eight skills with its own pool of skills and that can be switched to much like weapons skills. This way you have your own builds (own play-style) plus a fail-safe skill-bar partial made by you and anet, if your build fails to meet combat requirements. Gw1 players like it, gw2 players like it (maybe) (skill balancing may increase somewhat, but that is the rug you weave). *Fully-customizable skill bar may or may not be affected by traits and profession mechanics may not be accessible with this bar either. Flawed fixed. Everyone is happy now. The OPs dissatisfaction may also be fixed with more skills available too also… anyways this hybrid approach would also create a 18+ almost full-time usability skill management system for players. Oh and this skill bar would be weapon specific to currently unavailable weapons also. And more to it, each weapon has 8 skills available to it, and these weapons and skills that belong with them would be available to all professions with only minor augmentations to the skills to accommodate each professions uniqueness. These I would call non-profession specific weapons and skills really… well that’s some food for thought for those interested.

Oh and this weapon could just be a stick, much like gw1 or not. If not each weapon would then have their own pool of skills then to be built on. There could also be profession specific weapons, race specific…or whatever. These are just more mixable builds….

Maybe have some modifiable weapons available to all professions and one or some available to specific professions.

If only one weapon were used, this weapon would have ideally 64 skills available to it (8 skills from each of the 8 professions), or it could start with 24 skills (a damage, control and support skill)…it’s something having secondary professions but with 8 instead.

the only thing i agree with is the resouce mangtment in more classes as that could be fun/intressting to try

Zahld.4956:

If only one weapon were used, this weapon would have ideally 64 skills available to it (8 skills from each of the 8 professions), or it could start with 24 skills (a damage, control and support skill)…it’s something having secondary professions but with 8 instead.

Learn-2-Edit

First of all, there is no one true fix to this or any other game.

To address your complaint of lacking a variety of specific, specialized play styles:

Actually, I’d be willing to bet the majority of people who play this game disagree with you. There are many things Anet has done to promote exactly what you’ve described here. The combination of varying gear/stat combinations, trait choices, utility skills, and weapon sets allows for an exponentially high variation is potential character setups, thus catering toward multiple play styles. The way Anet went about affording us with many optional play styles was to give each and every class tons of variety in everything above, so we could CHOOSE to pump everything towards offense, defense, or utility/support, or a combination of the three. Each class has unique mechanics, supporting that claim, and some intrinsically lend themselves much more to certain styles than others, which sounds like what you’re saying you don’t see, oddly enough.

As for your own preference you said of a somewhat offensive support healer, here’s my suggestion given what already exists in the game:

Try an elementalist ASAP. If you prioritize the water and arcana trait lines, you can get some serious condition removal, party boon application, and effective heals going. If you use double daggers, you will find a ton of cc at your disposal, good damage, and if you add some healing power stats, supreme heals. Switching to staff will also let you do all of the above, at a range as well. You could be an all fire/crit/might ele, or create a balance by consistently swapping elements and keeping an eye on your friends as well as foes.

Also try out a guardian. They are more damage-heavy than an ele would be, and offer even more support such as condition/cc removal and party buffs. In fact that’s what they’re ALL ABOUT. You could be an all-out damage burn guardian, or a tanky support guardian.

If you try these and it still isn’t what you were looking for, then I’d agree with some fo the others who said you’re in the wrong game. Anet intentionally has setup the build variety the way they did, to let YOU choose how a character is played, not them. They have also explicitly stated during development and beta that they DON’T want to follow the typical MMO conventions, and don’t think a dedicated healer has any place in the type of game environment THEY want. At any rate, good luck.

Guardians can cleanse every person in their party quite easily, sometimes I find myself running too much condition removal. You can also play a more aggressive healer by dropping combo fields and using those to keep the dps going while healing/cleansing your party.

For the resource management system, you might not know this since you hate Thieves, but they have a resource system called Initiative which limits how often they can use their skills and they can setup certain traits to maintain a healthy dose of initiative while in battle.

Lastly, I don’t see the reasoning behind your third point saying, Some classes should have all abilities, because that defeats the entire purpose of classes.

tovadaun.6304:

On top of Damage Avoidance, you’re also forgetting the awesome major factor they’ve introduced in GW2…
Be Responsible For Y.O.U.R.S.E.L.F!
I played WoW from Bkittenil March of this year. I was a dedicated Healer. I played all 4 Healing Classes: Druid, Priest, Shaman, & Paladin- all healing speced. It’s my preferred class. Played them through years of patches, changes to traiting systems, Dungeons, Raids (5 & 25mans) Every xpac.
I’m HERE now.
I’m here, and HAPPY now.
Never again will I have to completely stress out in a Raid because some asinine PUG Tank decided he wanted to pull a whole room and … I dunno… go get coffee. Never again will I have to deal with idiot DPS (read Hunters mostly -but not limited to!) who feel the need to kite 9k extra mobs from a /different/ room and then point the finger at Me when I couldn’t keep them alive and the tank while he was tanking a Raid Boss.
Because every single Profession in their own Skill Set is not only capable of Damage Avoidance -BUT!- Healing T.H.E.M.S.E.L.V.E.S. when Damage Avoidance is failed.
I agree w Tom.
Go back to WoW* or some other cut-rate crappy MMO, because GW2 is clearly not the game for your tastes. (*yes, this comment implies that IMO WoW is now, a cut-rate MMO)
Thank You ANet. I won’t Ever have to play WoW again. You have no idea what that’s worth to me. <3

Problem is, that leads to a lack of teamwork. There are classes that do necessary utility functions that aid the group, Guardian and Mesmer namely, in their projectile defense (wall of reflection, feedback, phantasmal warden), boons (particularly might from guardians, stability from guardians, banners from warriors, and quickness from mesmers), and boon stripping. Otherwise everyone would just run 5 warriors.

There is another core mechanic to this game that ruins the possibility of actually having diversity in end game content.

The Defiant buff on champion and legendary bosses.

Defiant means blindness is nearly completely ineffective, and interrupts have to be so redundant that nobody bothers with them, they just expect everyone to dodge, meaning that max dps is the way to go.

Defiant should not require multiple applications of CC skills to remove, only to have a pet or someone’s normal attack chain cause a cc state at an inopportune time. Sure, Anet thinks it’s great that maybe an organized group on voice coms can strip defiant in a coordinated fashion, but for the rest of us nobody bothers, because it ends up being more hassle than its worth.

Defiant needs to be changed. Instead of a stacked based buff that is depleted with additional CC applications, it should be a time based buff. Meaning you wouldn’t be able to interrupt all attacks because it’d go immune for a time after being interrupted, but you’d be able to interrupt enough that it might be worth taking an interrupt build. party member. Blindness should also be much higher than a 10% miss chance. 10% miss chance on content where getting hit once might kill you instantly means you can’t chance it. You’re never going to stand there at a blinded champion or legendary mob and not dodge a telegraphed attack confident that it will miss. Blindness should be rolled into cc effects, so that after being blinded, a boss can’t be blinded or cc’ed again until the buff wears off.

I understand the design of not just wanting bosses to be CC’ed and blinded to death, but the current solution pushes things too far the other way and makes control a completely neglected party member role.

PwnsFroggles.7561:

I’m hating all of these people that say go back to wow. I also want a profession like that. Everyone who is saying that has never played wow and sees it that if you have a healer, the game is wow. I played wow for 4 years. I like the way guild wars feels but there are some things wow did 10x better.

Your opinion. I’ve played WoW and I seriously don’t want this game to be like WoW. If I want to play a WoW-like game, I’ll just playe WoW, thanks.

Mike is the perfect example of the conservative MMO Player who’s afraid of any kind of change. Those people try to make Gw2 into one of their beloved dead and outdated MMO’s, trying to change those things that make me playing the game. I just hope that Anet won’t listen to those creatures. Yes, I called Mike a creature.

The Combat System is awesome. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s dynamic. Maybe not as multifaceted as it could be, but Anet is working on that. I have a guild with 300 people who play the game because of the fighting system. Your 20 Imaginary Examplekittens can go step on a lego.

I know I promised to go away, but since I’m still thinking about these things, I might as well think out loud here…

I’ve read all your comments, and while some are pretty defensive, I must say some people like Redbear and folly dragon are most amicable. And some make good points too. I especially enjoyed Devildoc’s input. His point that damage avoidance makes everything other than straight up DPS moot hits close to the core of WHY I feel my preferred play style (aggressive support healer) is not viable in GW2. Several have pointed out that there are classes that could do the job, and that is true. But as Devildoc said, no-one should do the job, because it’s practically always better to just be a glass cannon who survives by his dodge and expects everyone else to do the same!

I haven’t even set foot in fractals, but from what I hear, that’s pretty much how you must play them.

Having said that, what I’ve been thinking since I wrote this, is that the lack of viability for different archetypes I wrote about initially is only half of the problem that pushes me away from this game. And it might even be the least important half!

My main gripe with the game is not intellectual disagreement with its structure, it is emotional frustration that comes from an inability to “bond” with it. And this frustration is centered around that little action bar at the bottom of the screen. The truth is I have an almost irrational HATE for my action bar in GW2!

I’ve never experienced anything similar in any other game, so I started thinking why that may be. And it suddenly struck me why a “WoW-style” setup where players manage a bunch of action bars themselves is superior to the single weapon-managed bar of GW2. It is not just superior in my personal opinion, it is OBJECTIVELY superior in a way I’d volunteer to prove in a lab (given sufficient funding)!

I’ll explain why.

In a game like WoW (or SW:TOR, LotR, etc.) you set up your stuff yourself, the way you want it. You have your main attack spells here, your situational spells there, your dots sit with the buffs over there, and your potions and consumables are back in that corner. All of it has a devious key-binding setup you created for yourself.

Setting up such a playing environment and learning to manage it in combat takes time and effort. But the end result is a setup that is yours, and yours alone! Your buddy may come over and admire your setup, and how well you handle it, but he can’t sit down and play it, not even if he’s familiar with the class, because it’s all wrong to him – his own setup is completely different, tailor-made for him, by him. And then you can sit down and discuss the pros and cons of your setups, perhaps you’ll find that he did a clever thing with his key-bindings that gives you an idea on how you can improve yours.

All of this adds up to … (drum roll) … EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT IN THE GAME!

And that is what I’d volunteer to prove in a controlled experiment: that the ability to control your work space improves your emotional investment in your work, all else being equal.

As I said, I actually HATE the lack of control I have over how my playing environment looks in GW2. Take the Ranger’s shortbow for example. The ability “Poison Arrows” fires 5 spread shots. You need to stand right in your foe’s face to hit with all 5. This goes against the grain of what a Ranger is attempting to accomplish, which is … well… RANGE!

I don’t mind having an ability that goes against the grain of the class, but I want it over with my situational abilities, not hard-wired to numeric button 2!

And I especially want to be the one to make the decision, TYVM.

If you would need so much time taking care of your Action Bar environment you wouldn’t find the time to take care of the actual environment and you would end up in tons of AoE’s and get hit by everything because you aren’t dodging, and the game is all about dodging and positioning. Setting up difficult Skill Bars would take speed out of the fight as it does in the other MMO’s. You just stand there and hammer your skills down “strategically”. But If you have only 10 skills you know in a few hours, you can take care of your surroundings more efficiently, and like I said, that’s what combat is all about in this game.

Justdeifyme.9387:

If you would need so much time taking care of your Action Bar environment you wouldn’t find the time to take care of the actual environment and you would end up in tons of AoE’s and get hit by everything because you aren’t dodging, and the game is all about dodging and positioning. Setting up difficult Skill Bars would take speed out of the fight as it does in the other MMO’s. You just stand there and hammer your skills down “strategically”.

Absolutely not!

I haven’t played WoW for three years, but back when I did, I was a decent PvPer, with Discipline Priest as my favorite class. And I can tell you this – if you attempt to “just stand there and hammer your skills down strategically”, then you will be standing and reconsidering your play style at the graveyard most of the time!

A PvPer in WoW needs to be constantly on the move and aware of his surroundings, and he needs to have FAST access to all of his many skills, and know how to use them situationally. If he hasn’t internalized his keybindings, and tries to find the right ability with the mouse, he’s simply screwed. PvP in WoW is NOTHING like how you describe it, it is action-packed and takes a high level of skill!

It does not have the dodge mechanics of GW2 though. That’s about the only thing you got right.

Thats the problem. You played WoW for too long to actually enjoy the game as it is.

Justdeifyme.9387:

Thats the problem. You played WoW for too long to actually enjoy the game as it is.

That may actually be a fair assessment…

What I’ve learned from making this thread, and considering the responses, is that GW2 is, just as you stated, all about dodging! And as Devildoc stated, this has the natural consequence of turning everyone into a fragile DPS that relies on nothing but dodging to survive.

That’s how the game is, and while I do love the dodge roll mechanics, I’m not sure the positives outweigh the negatives for me in the end. If having a GW2-style dodge means that you can’t have varied gaming archetypes, and that gameplay necessarily devolves into a glass cannon zerg, then I’d rather sacrifice the dodge!

And that is of course just my personal preference, steeped by my WoW background.

As I said earlier, my initial impressions of GW2 were very good, I posted a 10/10 review online. The game felt like a whiff of fresh air, and the dodge mechanics was a big part of my enchantment, it gave the game a fast action based feel I loved.

But after a while, the lack of DEPTH to the game play started to bother me. The kind of depth that stems from having completely different roles, and lots of constantly available abilities to choose from, not to mention the complexity of having to manage your setup yourself.

I miss those things, and the coolness of dodging does not make up for it.