Guild Wars 2

The first time I listed an item of any significant worth, it was some sword for 4g50. When I went to collect and saw 4g5s, I was so mad at myself for accidentally missing out that zero.

Heh.

Lunarpac.4631:

I see. So instead of a holy trinity, Anet went with some sort of semi-tank system with that design move?

Playing primarily as a sword/sword bleed and shout warrior, it’s less like they removed the ‘holy trinity’ and instead just removed dedicated healers. I generally do group content with a friend of mine who is a guardian, and in those situations it’s impossible to pull aggro off him at all – but he finds it funny that he can easily tank basically any enemy in the game indefinitely.

Without a good guardian, enemies stick to me like glue, and it’s such that I just don’t bother doing dungeons with pickup groups. I’ve always enjoyed playing a tank role in MMOs, but against GW2 bosses, once I run out of dodges and blocks I’m dead. Add to that what appears to be an aggro table that persists through death, and suddenly dungeons aren’t fun or rewarding.

I did Honor of the Waves story mode the other day with a group consisting of a ranged thief, an elementalist and 2 rangers. At least 30% of my participation in the Huntsman fight consisted of both the huntsman and his pet beating on me while I was downed, and allies were reviving me. I’d slowly die, run back from the waypoint, and as soon as I entered the room, the Huntsman would call birds and focus on me and I’d be downed within 20 seconds again. Switch to longbow to reduce my aggro? Now I’ve still got the boss beating me in melee range (thus not helping with aggro,) except now I do less damage and have no blocks. Not long before doing that dungeon, I took down a champion giant devourer with the assistance of a ranger and elementalist, using only my longbow (because that particular mob didn’t care to come into melee range, it just spams an aoe stone throw) and never once did the thing put down an aoe field that wasn’t centered on me.

I’ve seen a lot of people talk about how you’re not supposed to be able to stand up to a boss for any real length of time – except as a guardian or warrior it seems you really have no choice, and unless you build specifically for that, you can’t.