There is always ways to give healers a roll while also making them do damage and other tasks that go beyond spamming the heal button. I'm sure players would enjoy healing even if it wasn't a 'fail saver' if it meant they can suppliment a group a bit from heals that do hold some meaning (even if they might have some lengthy cool down or break between use) and they got supportive methods to aid allies when damage might not be taken to make up for not being that dedicated damage they otherwise would miss.
When talking about abolishing the trinity ANet said nearly the same thing you are saying. They are not denouncing a group of players, they are giving them another way to support their team. Many people who like to play healers do so because they like to think they are contributing to the group and allowing the group to function better than the sum of it's parts. Support does the same thing now, just in another way than whack-a-mole. Anet said they designed a way to help the team but not be watching heatlth bars the entire time.
That is their goal in theory, now in practice if it plays out to be just as fun or more fun we will see. But to say they just turned their backs on a group of players is just incorrect.
They said they shun the holy trinity... which kind of sucks. Sure, I can see not needing a 'tank' or anything, but not letting people heal is a bit... eh... people enjoy the roll of healing. Sure, you don't NEED to have it as a 'healbot' deal from other games, but you shouldn't denounce a group of players who enjoy the idea of bringing aid to others in a game. There is always ways to give healers a roll while also making them do damage and other tasks that go beyond spamming the heal button. I'm sure players would enjoy healing even if it wasn't a 'fail saver' if it meant they can suppliment a group a bit from heals that do hold some meaning (even if they might have some lengthy cool down or break between use) and they got supportive methods to aid allies when damage might not be taken to make up for not being that dedicated damage they otherwise would miss.
If you read the wealth of information out there, there are builds that can major in support. Which includes healing areas and removing buffs.
The way gs2 works is, you will always major in Support, Damage or control, but you will always at least minor in one of the other 2.
I find it neccessary to explain that MMOs are a derivative of table top rpgs. There is no such thing as "healer" or "tank" in dungeons and dragons (4th edtition aside). YOu may be a priest, but maybe 2 rounds is dedicated to healing whjile the other is dedicated to intangibles .
They said they shun the holy trinity... which kind of sucks. Sure, I can see not needing a 'tank' or anything, but not letting people heal is a bit... eh... people enjoy the roll of healing. Sure, you don't NEED to have it as a 'healbot' deal from other games, but you shouldn't denounce a group of players who enjoy the idea of bringing aid to others in a game. There is always ways to give healers a roll while also making them do damage and other tasks that go beyond spamming the heal button. I'm sure players would enjoy healing even if it wasn't a 'fail saver' if it meant they can suppliment a group a bit from heals that do hold some meaning (even if they might have some lengthy cool down or break between use) and they got supportive methods to aid allies when damage might not be taken to make up for not being that dedicated damage they otherwise would miss.
Why does it suck? I think it is nice - for a change you dont have to say, 'HEALER LFG'. I guess you never played GW1 at the beginning. In the forst month, there was a healer protest at one particular mission because it was so hard and people didn't understand. So it will be nice not having to go through and say, OH we need 2 healers, 2 DPS, 2 mage, 1-2 warriors, etc.
I suggest playing around with the character builders out there.
I built three types of GW2 characters, all support. 1 specialized in reviving foes. He could instantly revive 2 foes every couple of minutes and provide healing and boosts to them on revivie. 2. specialized in area healing using staff and sceptor he was able to raise regeneration and boost effectiveness of party heals. 3 specialized in removing buffs, could take all buffs away and then had abilities to loose 2 buffs every 10 seconds and turn them into boons for the party.
The key to this game is, people will have to :gasp: learn how to play it. This is not going to be the game where you pick up the keyboard and things are going to be like the ohter games. I used to think this was cool, i can play wow, or i can play runes of magic and the buttons are all the same. And i realized how sad this is. I've been tricked into playing the same game with different graphical changes and different expansion packs. But am i playing a completely different game?
They said they shun the holy trinity... which kind of sucks. Sure, I can see not needing a 'tank' or anything, but not letting people heal is a bit... eh... people enjoy the roll of healing. Sure, you don't NEED to have it as a 'healbot' deal from other games, but you shouldn't denounce a group of players who enjoy the idea of bringing aid to others in a game. There is always ways to give healers a roll while also making them do damage and other tasks that go beyond spamming the heal button. I'm sure players would enjoy healing even if it wasn't a 'fail saver' if it meant they can suppliment a group a bit from heals that do hold some meaning (even if they might have some lengthy cool down or break between use) and they got supportive methods to aid allies when damage might not be taken to make up for not being that dedicated damage they otherwise would miss.
I do think that certain classes have the ability to provide more "party" support than others. For example, guardians have a number of damage reducing/healing abilities that benefit the entire party, and you can further buff these abilities by putting points into specific traits. Engineers can use their "med kit" to drop bandages, antidotes and the like. But I guess for people looking for a dedicated role this game might not work for them.
"Loading screens" are not "instances". Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
Well they did say that the Guardian will be the class that monk players in GW should look at for that support niche. Granted, it's not the healing part of the monk but the Prot part of the monk (which is more interesting anyway). Those that are used to a healer playstyle need to look at other ways of providing support in GW2. If you just can't over being just a healer then I don't know what to tell you.
I have read that all classes are able to heal themselves and all of that stuff, but does that mean that all groups wont have a designated healer?
In gw1 I really liked healing for GVG and HoH with my spiker group guild, and looking at the skills on characters and stuff it seems like you could build just a pure healer/support class.
I wonder how good that would be to have 4 people go complete damage and one person go complete heal/support. it seems like that would be pretty good to not have to worry about healing yourself and having one person to heal in the pvp group.
Anyone who has done more research than me have any insight on this? Or is it all unknown at this time?
95% of healing will be done by yourself. That doesnt mean that you wont want to arrange for someone in the group to adopt more of a support role - crowd control, snares, light ae heals.
If you think someone else will save you from heavy incoming damage you will be in for a shock. Even specced for 'complete support' you will still account for a very very very very minor proportion of healing. Its everyones own job to keep themselves alive by paying attention and using defensive skills / dodging wisely.
I don't mind not playing a dedicated full healer, but I do like playing support roles more when I do pvp and stuff. But what I don't understand from reading this thread is why do certain classes have heal spells if they are pretty much worthless? Doesn't really make much sense to me.
I have read that all classes are able to heal themselves and all of that stuff, but does that mean that all groups wont have a designated healer?
In gw1 I really liked healing for GVG and HoH with my spiker group guild, and looking at the skills on characters and stuff it seems like you could build just a pure healer/support class.
I wonder how good that would be to have 4 people go complete damage and one person go complete heal/support. it seems like that would be pretty good to not have to worry about healing yourself and having one person to heal in the pvp group.
Anyone who has done more research than me have any insight on this? Or is it all unknown at this time?
The tactics of GW2 won't allow for this in Dungeons and dynamic events. This is because there is no "agro" to keep a creature off of a healer. If a creature is coming for you, they are there is little a person to do but divert them using some type of control. Still, with only ah andful of heals, and them on atimer, you'll be ineffective to your party.
What you can do is create a character that adds to their heal or improves party heals. You still need to figure out your strategy when it comes to supporting and damaging. Every class has a way to improve or heal other classes. It's just area effected instead of direct.
I don't mind not playing a dedicated full healer, but I do like playing support roles more when I do pvp and stuff. But what I don't understand from reading this thread is why do certain classes have heal spells if they are pretty much worthless? Doesn't really make much sense to me.
Healing is combined into support. It's a fraction of support. If you're going to major in support you'll need to also either provide boons, revive or remove conditions or some type of combination of the 4. I guarantee you, a support heavy character in GW will provide you the same if not more of a satisfying feeling. Because you will not just be watching the tanks bar and casting a heal , youll be making sure that your party is alive and positioning yourself so you can use those timely heal spells at the right time.
Remember, everyone has a heal, but their on timer. So a heal bubble bursting in the right spot can be life or death. A nice boost to HP after a revive can mean victory or death,.
I don't mind not playing a dedicated full healer, but I do like playing support roles more when I do pvp and stuff. But what I don't understand from reading this thread is why do certain classes have heal spells if they are pretty much worthless? Doesn't really make much sense to me.
Every single class can access AE heals. The heal it gives is generally in the form of a boon called 'regeneration' which only stacks in duration, not power.
Some other classes like Elementalists in the water attunement do splash heals, that are very minor.
The point is that you would really have to go out of your way to make a class entirely specced into support, in fact the weapon skills alone mean that you will always have damage dealing abilities, and every class is forced to choose 1 of 3 self heals that will do the vast majority of healing for themselves.
Minor healing is still healing, it all adds up, but they dont want it to get to the point where you need someone else to heal you.
I have read that all classes are able to heal themselves and all of that stuff, but does that mean that all groups wont have a designated healer?
In gw1 I really liked healing for GVG and HoH with my spiker group guild, and looking at the skills on characters and stuff it seems like you could build just a pure healer/support class.
I wonder how good that would be to have 4 people go complete damage and one person go complete heal/support. it seems like that would be pretty good to not have to worry about healing yourself and having one person to heal in the pvp group.
Anyone who has done more research than me have any insight on this? Or is it all unknown at this time?
Waht do you mean by "designated healer"?. Elementalists can put out an AOE heal and Ithink a smaller area heal.
But I don't think they can do it often enough to be a designated healer.
Healing exists. And I am certain that a smart combination of a Guardian forc field and some people throwing out some heals can cause a recovery from the brink of defeat.
But that is not the same as "designated healer". There are a number of combinations involving multiple people could be consider "disaster recovery" that will involve various support action including healing.
I don't mind not playing a dedicated full healer, but I do like playing support roles more when I do pvp and stuff. But what I don't understand from reading this thread is why do certain classes have heal spells if they are pretty much worthless? Doesn't really make much sense to me.
Every single class can access AE heals. The heal it gives is generally in the form of a boon called 'regeneration' which only stacks in duration, not power.
Some other classes like Elementalists in the water attunement do splash heals, that are very minor.
The point is that you would really have to go out of your way to make a class entirely specced into support, in fact the weapon skills alone mean that you will always have damage dealing abilities, and every class is forced to choose 1 of 3 self heals that will do the vast majority of healing for themselves.
Minor healing is still healing, it all adds up, but they dont want it to get to the point where you need someone else to heal you.
Heals are not worthless. They are however not sufficient alone to make you unkillable.
There are a few general premises:
1) Everyone is expected to and able to contribute to the offense in significant ways. You always have a weapon set.
2) Everyone has some ability to take care of themselves.
3) Most single support spells are not radically high power.
4) Overlapping support is extremely powerful.
So what does this mean? One dude throwing out some AoE heals is not gonna turn the tide of battle. One skilled player does not just die boom headshot or get "out lasted" by a healer spec. Any character could fight forever against someone with crap for damage.
But 2 elementalists throwing heals and some stuns working in tight conjunction with two guardians throwing out heals and some forcefields blocking attack will be incredily hard to kill. They will also do good damage and should do good damage but not be the absolute best at damage since they are devoting significant time to support. However they could always switch on the fly to damage instead of support.
Alone support not so amazing. Overlapping support and cooridnating your efforts will probably be pretty strong. Some of this is accomplished via cooldowns, some by effects and some by a combination of the two. You may need a forcefield to save + that regen heal to save someone on the brink of death so that you give the heal enough time to work. Similarly you may want multiple guardian with shields due to CDs to defend against multiple spikes or feints.
So would it be safe to say that gw2 pvp is more focused on individual skill rather than team strategy? Not saying that team strategy isn't important but from looking at the skills it seems like its more about how you can play your character than how a group of characters can play together?
So would it be safe to say that gw2 pvp is more focused on individual skill rather than team strategy? Not saying that team strategy isn't important but from looking at the skills it seems like its more about how you can play your character than how a group of characters can play together?
I would say the exact opposite. Being able to take care of yourself is ALWAYS part of good team play. People who run out ahead of a group like a chicken with their head cut off tend to due. Period end of story.
The absolute key to understanding Guild Wars 2 is their philosphy of support (ie. controls, heals, buffs and debuff) and their entirely, absolute and inarguably correct conclusion that overlapping support is by far the most powerful thing that has ever existed in RPGs.
Overlapping support tends to be multiplicative NOT additive. Thus what you see is support abilties are not that amazing solo. Thus solo people focus on the idea that everyone is given some ability to help themselves out.
But when a team is using AOE heals + stuns + cripples + AOE forcefield AND concentraitng their fire they would abolsutely kill and uncoordinated group and probably not even come clsoe to losing one person.
Edit:
In other words we, the MMORPG community, are conditioned to see big heals numbers and when we don't we think "Oh that heal is crap". In a team composed of 8 Elementalists they can ALL throw out a heal that will only do things in a modest way alone AND not be in any position to penalize their overall damage output. But when all 8 throw out their mediocre heal together you suddenly have all 8 of them healed to full in seconds.
Now throw in something damage resistance buff and your effeective amount has been multiplied.
Anet can't give out support abilities that are that impressive alone. Because in a group they become ridiculously overpowered when people work together.
So what you have is alot of people dismissing things because the numbers are lower than we expect. Anet has purposely made them low because they understand how teams work together not the other way around.
Why do you think so many games have instituted crowd control immunities to prevent chain stuns and chain cripples? Because in group context is becomes too powerful. Anet does not want to insitute artificialy mechanics like this.
...it seems like you could build just a pure healer/support class.
Support role, yes.
Healer... no. (you can't target 1 person and drop an Infuse on them)
The best you could do for healing would be comparative to running Divine-Healing & Ballad of Resto ... IE: crappy shout-range heals with longer recharges. ...you might as well echo mending.
For real support though, there's all kinds of great stuff you can do. Tons of boons and "props" to summon and combine with other player's abilities. Tons of different traits to run that CC or proc in supportive ways. The only thing you CAN'T do really in GW2 PvP is drag out a fight by "clicking on red-bars". The entire balance of spiking and pressure in combat is now completely DEPENDENT on someone else eventually dying. If they allowed the kind of Retro-Active Damage-mitigation that dedicated healers in GW1 provided, then the entire combat system would break down again and we'd be seeing the same exact MB-split & Distortion bullshit that has always plagued Gw1.
So yes you can drag out lots of fights by playing Dedicated Support.
NO you can not drag out a fight FOREVER simply by clicking on the UI instead of actually being part of the fight.
...it seems like you could build just a pure healer/support class.
Support role, yes.
Healer... no. (you can't target 1 person and drop an Infuse on them)
The best you could do for healing would be comparative to running Divine-Healing & Ballad of Resto ... IE: crappy shout-range heals with longer recharges. ...you might as well echo mending.
For real support though, there's all kinds of great stuff you can do. Tons of boons and "props" to summon and combine with other player's abilities. Tons of different traits to run that CC or proc in supportive ways. The only thing you CAN'T do really in GW2 PvP is drag out a fight by "clicking on red-bars". The entire balance of spiking and pressure in combat is now completely DEPENDENT on someone else eventually dying. If they allowed the kind of Retro-Active Damage-mitigation that dedicated healers in GW1 provided, then the entire combat system would break down again and we'd be seeing the same exact MB-split & Distortion bullshit that has always plagued Gw1.
So yes you can't drag out lots of fights by playing Dedicated Support.
NO you can not drag out a fight FOREVER simply by clicking on the UI instead of actually being part of the fight.
The only way to have comprehensive support is by having multiple people with support abiltiies.
This is the design of the game. You want to do support you run with a team of people that has designated a set of people in the team to provide support.
There is no single "designated healer". There will most likely be a "designated support sub-team". There may be somethign eqivalent to what GW1 called the "backline" which is a set of 3-4 or so people who have been designated to perform certain coordinated maneuvers to provide defense.
I personally am excited as all get out to be able as an engineer to run around AOE spraying my friends, throwing AOE potions, and dropping crates of bandages and healing kits for friends to run through. It's going to be awesome.
Never thought as an engineer i would have a support role, every time i've thought about engineering it's always been bombs, mines, turrets, and flame throwers! Love these Devs!
So would it be safe to say that gw2 pvp is more focused on individual skill rather than team strategy? Not saying that team strategy isn't important but from looking at the skills it seems like its more about how you can play your character than how a group of characters can play together?
I would say the exact opposite. Being able to take care of yourself is ALWAYS part of good team play. People who run out ahead of a group like a chicken with their head cut off tend to due. Period end of story.
The absolute key to understanding Guild Wars 2 is their philosphy of support (ie. controls, heals, buffs and debuff) and their entirely, absolute and inarguably correct conclusion that overlapping support is by far the most powerful thing that has ever existed in RPGs.
Overlapping support tends to be multiplicative NOT additive. Thus what you see is support abilties are not that amazing solo. Thus solo people focus on the idea that everyone is given some ability to help themselves out.
But when a team is using AOE heals + stuns + cripples + AOE forcefield AND concentraitng their fire they would abolsutely kill and uncoordinated group and probably not even come clsoe to losing one person.
Edit:
In other words we, the MMORPG community, are conditioned to see big heals numbers and when we don't we think "Oh that heal is crap". In a team composed of 8 Elementalists they can ALL throw out a heal that will only do things in a modest way alone AND not be in any position to penalize their overall damage output. But when all 8 throw out their mediocre heal together you suddenly have all 8 of them healed to full in seconds.
Now throw in something damage resistance buff and your effeective amount has been multiplied.
Anet can't give out support abilities that are that impressive alone. Because in a group they become ridiculously overpowered when people work together.
So what you have is alot of people dismissing things because the numbers are lower than we expect. Anet has purposely made them low because they understand how teams work together not the other way around.
Why do you think so many games have instituted crowd control immunities to prevent chain stuns and chain cripples? Because in group context is becomes too powerful. Anet does not want to insitute artificialy mechanics like this.
Yea I get what you're saying, in gw1 it was really hard to kill someone because the damage was so low, but when you coordinated together and had everyone attack with high damage spells at the same time you could kill people much easier. Thats why it was always my favorite pvp game to play. Healing was still pretty high in gw1 so the games lasted a lot longer in most compositions.
So would it be safe to say that gw2 pvp is more focused on individual skill rather than team strategy? Not saying that team strategy isn't important but from looking at the skills it seems like its more about how you can play your character than how a group of characters can play together?
I would say the exact opposite. Being able to take care of yourself is ALWAYS part of good team play. People who run out ahead of a group like a chicken with their head cut off tend to due. Period end of story.
The absolute key to understanding Guild Wars 2 is their philosphy of support (ie. controls, heals, buffs and debuff) and their entirely, absolute and inarguably correct conclusion that overlapping support is by far the most powerful thing that has ever existed in RPGs.
Overlapping support tends to be multiplicative NOT additive. Thus what you see is support abilties are not that amazing solo. Thus solo people focus on the idea that everyone is given some ability to help themselves out.
But when a team is using AOE heals + stuns + cripples + AOE forcefield AND concentraitng their fire they would abolsutely kill and uncoordinated group and probably not even come clsoe to losing one person.
Edit:
In other words we, the MMORPG community, are conditioned to see big heals numbers and when we don't we think "Oh that heal is crap". In a team composed of 8 Elementalists they can ALL throw out a heal that will only do things in a modest way alone AND not be in any position to penalize their overall damage output. But when all 8 throw out their mediocre heal together you suddenly have all 8 of them healed to full in seconds.
Now throw in something damage resistance buff and your effeective amount has been multiplied.
Anet can't give out support abilities that are that impressive alone. Because in a group they become ridiculously overpowered when people work together.
So what you have is alot of people dismissing things because the numbers are lower than we expect. Anet has purposely made them low because they understand how teams work together not the other way around.
Why do you think so many games have instituted crowd control immunities to prevent chain stuns and chain cripples? Because in group context is becomes too powerful. Anet does not want to insitute artificialy mechanics like this.
Yea I get what you're saying, in gw1 it was really hard to kill someone because the damage was so low, but when you coordinated together and had everyone attack with high damage spells at the same time you could kill people much easier. Thats why it was always my favorite pvp game to play. Healing was still pretty high in gw1 so the games lasted a lot longer in most compositions.
It is true that Monks in GW1 could prevent or heal tons of damage even alone. So Anets previous game is a good bit different than Gw2.
Or is it? In general the backline in GW1 still gets split into one guy healing, one or two guys tdoing spike protection of some sort, and a few other bits and pieces.
I can't say without the actual list of all skills of course. But many of these things seem possible, but the key difference is that you do not have a key specialist who is your spike preventer/seconary healer or a key specialist who is primary healer.
Instead they have spread things out some and alleivated some jobs. Now you don't need a secondary healer because people take care of that themselves to some degree. Now everyone needs to think about defense to some extent in addition to positioning.
I think the experience of GW1 monks when put into the context of larger fights (ie. WvWvW ) has lead them to evolve to some extent their idea of how to make the team synergize.
If we had GW1 style monks a large zerg may become close to invulnerable. However from what i have seen their current system, while less specialized, does provide a similar feeling of a need to apply pressure to crack the nut so to speak. A good team can coordinate a formidable defense and a good team can run a formidable offesne/spike. But they expect a larger precentage of the team to contribute to both.
Because if you had a Zerg of something like GW1 Monks (or probably worse Rits) I mean that would get silly. The overlap would jsut get out of hand.
Will this work out right? We will see, but I suspect it will be fine. There will always be people who realy want to specialize hardcore and we will see if they can.
I suspect you will never see a single specialzied person who has a multiple abilities all stacking together and constantly refreshing. You may see something like an elementalist that does not attack much but instead throws only support abilities like heals and stuns and cripples but is lacking say some of the enhancers (spike protection and damage resistance). And you may a see a guardian that only does support with some heal, but not enough to spam it, and some enhancers but not control. I would assume an elementalist would accomplish pure support by constantly switching elements to do so. I am not sure if a guardian has enough different abilities to do constant support.
I believe the GW2 devs have actually purposely made having individuals able to spamming non-attacks really hard to accomplish so that there are breaks and gaps in things.
Their refined vision of support is based on the idea that in a group other people can fill in these gaps. GW1 had very very powerful individual syngeries AND group synergies. GW2 should still have probably fairly similar group synergies you just won't have such huge individual synergies.
Essentially they limiting indivdual synergies by power choice and also breaking up the constant cylce of a syngery chain. Most GW1 synergy chains were things formed a cycle that could be done ad nauseum and fairly often.
They have eseentially enforced breaks into these cycles because having many people able to do them gets out of control. And I think also they want to prioritize so that stuff that is this powerful is limited to really good group coordination.
By having an entire syngery cycle executed by one person you only one good player to make that mediocre team unkillable rather than the whole team being good.
In GW1 there were definitely cases where the 1 or 2 monks in that team made a good team great rather them simply being a great team. Sometimes a really good mesmer could do this too. I think Anet wants to limit this kind of dominance to things that take the whole or a decent % of the group to execute. Also this will most likely make mistakes more frequent and make fights have a more dramatic and peaks and valleys.
So would it be safe to say that gw2 pvp is more focused on individual skill rather than team strategy? Not saying that team strategy isn't important but from looking at the skills it seems like its more about how you can play your character than how a group of characters can play together?
I would say the exact opposite. Being able to take care of yourself is ALWAYS part of good team play. People who run out ahead of a group like a chicken with their head cut off tend to due. Period end of story.
The absolute key to understanding Guild Wars 2 is their philosphy of support (ie. controls, heals, buffs and debuff) and their entirely, absolute and inarguably correct conclusion that overlapping support is by far the most powerful thing that has ever existed in RPGs.
Overlapping support tends to be multiplicative NOT additive. Thus what you see is support abilties are not that amazing solo. Thus solo people focus on the idea that everyone is given some ability to help themselves out.
But when a team is using AOE heals + stuns + cripples + AOE forcefield AND concentraitng their fire they would abolsutely kill and uncoordinated group and probably not even come clsoe to losing one person.
Edit:
In other words we, the MMORPG community, are conditioned to see big heals numbers and when we don't we think "Oh that heal is crap". In a team composed of 8 Elementalists they can ALL throw out a heal that will only do things in a modest way alone AND not be in any position to penalize their overall damage output. But when all 8 throw out their mediocre heal together you suddenly have all 8 of them healed to full in seconds.
Now throw in something damage resistance buff and your effeective amount has been multiplied.
Anet can't give out support abilities that are that impressive alone. Because in a group they become ridiculously overpowered when people work together.
So what you have is alot of people dismissing things because the numbers are lower than we expect. Anet has purposely made them low because they understand how teams work together not the other way around.
Why do you think so many games have instituted crowd control immunities to prevent chain stuns and chain cripples? Because in group context is becomes too powerful. Anet does not want to insitute artificialy mechanics like this.
Yea I get what you're saying, in gw1 it was really hard to kill someone because the damage was so low, but when you coordinated together and had everyone attack with high damage spells at the same time you could kill people much easier. Thats why it was always my favorite pvp game to play. Healing was still pretty high in gw1 so the games lasted a lot longer in most compositions.
It is true that Monks in GW1 could prevent or heal tons of damage even alone. So Anets previous game is a good bit different than Gw2.
Or is it? In general the backline in GW1 still gets split into one guy healing, one or two guys tdoing spike protection of some sort, and a few other bits and pieces.
I can't say without the actual list of all skills of course. But many of these things seem possible, but the key difference is that you do not have a key specialist who is your spike preventer/seconary healer or a key specialist who is primary healer.
Instead they have spread things out some and alleivated some jobs. Now you don't need a secondary healer because people take care of that themselves to some degree. Now everyone needs to think about defense to some extent in addition to positioning.
I think the experience of GW1 monks when put into the context of larger fights (ie. WvWvW ) has lead them to evolve to some extent their idea of how to make the team synergize.
If we had GW1 style monks a large zerg may become close to invulnerable. However from what i have seen their current system, while less specialized, does provide a similar feeling of a need to apply pressure to crack the nut so to speak. A good team can coordinate a formidable defense and a good team can run a formidable offesne/spike. But they expect a larger precentage of the team to contribute to both.
Because if you had a Zerg of something like GW1 Monks (or probably worse Rits) I mean that would get silly. The overlap would jsut get out of hand.
Will this work out right? We will see, but I suspect it will be fine. There will always be people who realy want to specialize hardcore and we will see if they can.
I suspect you will never see a single specialzied person who has a multiple abilities all stacking together and constantly refreshing. You may see something like an elementalist that does not attack much but instead throws only support abilities like heals and stuns and cripples but is lacking say some of the enhancers (spike protection and damage resistance). And you may a see a guardian that only does support with some heal, but not enough to spam it, and some enhancers but not control. I would assume an elementalist would accomplish pure support by constantly switching elements to do so. I am not sure if a guardian has enough different abilities to do constant support.
I believe the GW2 devs have actually purposely made having individuals able to spamming non-attacks really hard to accomplish so that there are breaks and gaps in things.
Their refined vision of support is based on the idea that in a group other people can fill in these gaps. GW1 had very very powerful individual syngeries AND group synergies. GW2 should still have probably fairly similar group synergies you just won't have such huge individual synergies.
Essentially they limiting indivdual synergies by power choice and also breaking up the constant cylce of a syngery chain. Most GW1 synergy chains were things formed a cycle that could be done ad nauseum and fairly often.
They have eseentially enforced breaks into these cycles because having many people able to do them gets out of control. And I think also they want to prioritize so that stuff that is this powerful is limited to really good group coordination.
By having an entire syngery cycle executed by one person you only one good player to make that mediocre team unkillable rather than the whole team being good.
In GW1 there were definitely cases where the 1 or 2 monks in that team made a good team great rather them simply being a great team. Sometimes a really good mesmer could do this too. I think Anet wants to limit this kind of dominance to things that take the whole or a decent % of the group to execute. Also this will most likely make mistakes more frequent and make fights have a more dramatic and peaks and valleys.
Good read. I'm all for team-based pvp, it was what made gw1 so fun to me. I think there will be quite the combination of strategies you can do as far as compositions go and it wll be fun to try to figure out what will work. As for me personally ill probably play a water elementalist with a staff because I really like their skills, some nice spiking abilities and some good heal/support spells. They have that glyph where you have 10 seconds to do critical damage. I wonder how good it would be to have a lot of elemental spikers using ice spike+glyph of elemental power and then all coordinadting it at the same time, would be pretty insane. Can't wait to try out that build.
After reading most replys in this topic conclusion is, many still on denial and try be healer class omg i see already people nerd raging and maybe even quiting becouse they can't be support role they want:)
Good luck to all who still think they can stand in the background and play the healer or playing pure dps or think they can pure tank the mobs haha.
First weeks we will see frustration, nerdrage quiting and leerooys pulling mobs or bosses and be whiped constantly hehe
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77 CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now)) MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB PSU:Corsair AX1200i OS:Windows 10 64bit
Spot on. Most people dont realise how incredibly small AE / splash heals are. They help, but they literally account for less than 5% of incoming heals compared to 95% self heals.
The lack of strong "heal other" skills makes it a lot easier to balance encounters for a wide variety of character and team builds. Healing skills aren't useless, they can still extend the life span of yourself or your team, but there are other ways to do that as well, by making your enemies less efficient in dealing damage, either directly with conditons or idirectly via boons and mitigation.
Healing skills you can use to heal others are meant to be balanced vs. the other methods of extending the lives of your team mates.
Here is a versatile Engineer support build. You can see there is some healing ability, but it also relies on control, conditions, boons and condition removal to provide support. (You can see the skills associated with each kit by selecting that kit as your weapon).
Here is an Elementalist build with good support versatility. Much more healing than the engineer, but you won't be sitting back spamming heals all day, you'll need to be more active than that to provide the maximum benefit of the build:
Here is a minionless Necromancer Build that uses marks and wells to control the battlefield, while also having traits that maximize use of death shroud. The Build also significantly boosts healing, directly and indirectly through the trait that converts power into healing. Well of blood becomes a decent area of effect heal and the trait that heals nearby allies when ever you leave Death Shroud provides additional healing. You clearly are not a healer, in the traditional sense, but you are extending the life span of your team while bringing additional utility and self-survivability.
Those are just three support builds I've been tinkering with. The differences between support in GW2 vs. other games and especially vs. dedicated healers in other games, should be apparent. I'd add that each build also looks like it would be a lot of fun!
Comments
When talking about abolishing the trinity ANet said nearly the same thing you are saying. They are not denouncing a group of players, they are giving them another way to support their team. Many people who like to play healers do so because they like to think they are contributing to the group and allowing the group to function better than the sum of it's parts. Support does the same thing now, just in another way than whack-a-mole. Anet said they designed a way to help the team but not be watching heatlth bars the entire time.
That is their goal in theory, now in practice if it plays out to be just as fun or more fun we will see. But to say they just turned their backs on a group of players is just incorrect.
If you read the wealth of information out there, there are builds that can major in support. Which includes healing areas and removing buffs.
The way gs2 works is, you will always major in Support, Damage or control, but you will always at least minor in one of the other 2.
I find it neccessary to explain that MMOs are a derivative of table top rpgs. There is no such thing as "healer" or "tank" in dungeons and dragons (4th edtition aside). YOu may be a priest, but maybe 2 rounds is dedicated to healing whjile the other is dedicated to intangibles .
Why does it suck? I think it is nice - for a change you dont have to say, 'HEALER LFG'. I guess you never played GW1 at the beginning. In the forst month, there was a healer protest at one particular mission because it was so hard and people didn't understand. So it will be nice not having to go through and say, OH we need 2 healers, 2 DPS, 2 mage, 1-2 warriors, etc.
It is nice to break the 'traditions' of MMO's.
I suggest playing around with the character builders out there.
I built three types of GW2 characters, all support. 1 specialized in reviving foes. He could instantly revive 2 foes every couple of minutes and provide healing and boosts to them on revivie. 2. specialized in area healing using staff and sceptor he was able to raise regeneration and boost effectiveness of party heals. 3 specialized in removing buffs, could take all buffs away and then had abilities to loose 2 buffs every 10 seconds and turn them into boons for the party.
The key to this game is, people will have to :gasp: learn how to play it. This is not going to be the game where you pick up the keyboard and things are going to be like the ohter games. I used to think this was cool, i can play wow, or i can play runes of magic and the buttons are all the same. And i realized how sad this is. I've been tricked into playing the same game with different graphical changes and different expansion packs. But am i playing a completely different game?
I do think that certain classes have the ability to provide more "party" support than others. For example, guardians have a number of damage reducing/healing abilities that benefit the entire party, and you can further buff these abilities by putting points into specific traits. Engineers can use their "med kit" to drop bandages, antidotes and the like. But I guess for people looking for a dedicated role this game might not work for them.
"Loading screens" are not "instances".
Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
Well they did say that the Guardian will be the class that monk players in GW should look at for that support niche. Granted, it's not the healing part of the monk but the Prot part of the monk (which is more interesting anyway). Those that are used to a healer playstyle need to look at other ways of providing support in GW2. If you just can't over being just a healer then I don't know what to tell you.
95% of healing will be done by yourself. That doesnt mean that you wont want to arrange for someone in the group to adopt more of a support role - crowd control, snares, light ae heals.
If you think someone else will save you from heavy incoming damage you will be in for a shock. Even specced for 'complete support' you will still account for a very very very very minor proportion of healing. Its everyones own job to keep themselves alive by paying attention and using defensive skills / dodging wisely.
I don't mind not playing a dedicated full healer, but I do like playing support roles more when I do pvp and stuff. But what I don't understand from reading this thread is why do certain classes have heal spells if they are pretty much worthless? Doesn't really make much sense to me.
The tactics of GW2 won't allow for this in Dungeons and dynamic events. This is because there is no "agro" to keep a creature off of a healer. If a creature is coming for you, they are there is little a person to do but divert them using some type of control. Still, with only ah andful of heals, and them on atimer, you'll be ineffective to your party.
What you can do is create a character that adds to their heal or improves party heals. You still need to figure out your strategy when it comes to supporting and damaging. Every class has a way to improve or heal other classes. It's just area effected instead of direct.
Healing is combined into support. It's a fraction of support. If you're going to major in support you'll need to also either provide boons, revive or remove conditions or some type of combination of the 4. I guarantee you, a support heavy character in GW will provide you the same if not more of a satisfying feeling. Because you will not just be watching the tanks bar and casting a heal , youll be making sure that your party is alive and positioning yourself so you can use those timely heal spells at the right time.
Remember, everyone has a heal, but their on timer. So a heal bubble bursting in the right spot can be life or death. A nice boost to HP after a revive can mean victory or death,.
Every single class can access AE heals. The heal it gives is generally in the form of a boon called 'regeneration' which only stacks in duration, not power.
Some other classes like Elementalists in the water attunement do splash heals, that are very minor.
The point is that you would really have to go out of your way to make a class entirely specced into support, in fact the weapon skills alone mean that you will always have damage dealing abilities, and every class is forced to choose 1 of 3 self heals that will do the vast majority of healing for themselves.
Minor healing is still healing, it all adds up, but they dont want it to get to the point where you need someone else to heal you.
Waht do you mean by "designated healer"?. Elementalists can put out an AOE heal and Ithink a smaller area heal.
But I don't think they can do it often enough to be a designated healer.
Healing exists. And I am certain that a smart combination of a Guardian forc field and some people throwing out some heals can cause a recovery from the brink of defeat.
But that is not the same as "designated healer". There are a number of combinations involving multiple people could be consider "disaster recovery" that will involve various support action including healing.
Heals are not worthless. They are however not sufficient alone to make you unkillable.
There are a few general premises:
1) Everyone is expected to and able to contribute to the offense in significant ways. You always have a weapon set.
2) Everyone has some ability to take care of themselves.
3) Most single support spells are not radically high power.
4) Overlapping support is extremely powerful.
So what does this mean? One dude throwing out some AoE heals is not gonna turn the tide of battle. One skilled player does not just die boom headshot or get "out lasted" by a healer spec. Any character could fight forever against someone with crap for damage.
But 2 elementalists throwing heals and some stuns working in tight conjunction with two guardians throwing out heals and some forcefields blocking attack will be incredily hard to kill. They will also do good damage and should do good damage but not be the absolute best at damage since they are devoting significant time to support. However they could always switch on the fly to damage instead of support.
Alone support not so amazing. Overlapping support and cooridnating your efforts will probably be pretty strong. Some of this is accomplished via cooldowns, some by effects and some by a combination of the two. You may need a forcefield to save + that regen heal to save someone on the brink of death so that you give the heal enough time to work. Similarly you may want multiple guardian with shields due to CDs to defend against multiple spikes or feints.
So would it be safe to say that gw2 pvp is more focused on individual skill rather than team strategy? Not saying that team strategy isn't important but from looking at the skills it seems like its more about how you can play your character than how a group of characters can play together?
I would say the exact opposite. Being able to take care of yourself is ALWAYS part of good team play. People who run out ahead of a group like a chicken with their head cut off tend to due. Period end of story.
The absolute key to understanding Guild Wars 2 is their philosphy of support (ie. controls, heals, buffs and debuff) and their entirely, absolute and inarguably correct conclusion that overlapping support is by far the most powerful thing that has ever existed in RPGs.
Overlapping support tends to be multiplicative NOT additive. Thus what you see is support abilties are not that amazing solo. Thus solo people focus on the idea that everyone is given some ability to help themselves out.
But when a team is using AOE heals + stuns + cripples + AOE forcefield AND concentraitng their fire they would abolsutely kill and uncoordinated group and probably not even come clsoe to losing one person.
Edit:
In other words we, the MMORPG community, are conditioned to see big heals numbers and when we don't we think "Oh that heal is crap". In a team composed of 8 Elementalists they can ALL throw out a heal that will only do things in a modest way alone AND not be in any position to penalize their overall damage output. But when all 8 throw out their mediocre heal together you suddenly have all 8 of them healed to full in seconds.
Now throw in something damage resistance buff and your effeective amount has been multiplied.
Anet can't give out support abilities that are that impressive alone. Because in a group they become ridiculously overpowered when people work together.
So what you have is alot of people dismissing things because the numbers are lower than we expect. Anet has purposely made them low because they understand how teams work together not the other way around.
Why do you think so many games have instituted crowd control immunities to prevent chain stuns and chain cripples? Because in group context is becomes too powerful. Anet does not want to insitute artificialy mechanics like this.
Support role, yes.
Healer... no. (you can't target 1 person and drop an Infuse on them)
The best you could do for healing would be comparative to running Divine-Healing & Ballad of Resto ... IE: crappy shout-range heals with longer recharges. ...you might as well echo mending.
For real support though, there's all kinds of great stuff you can do. Tons of boons and "props" to summon and combine with other player's abilities. Tons of different traits to run that CC or proc in supportive ways. The only thing you CAN'T do really in GW2 PvP is drag out a fight by "clicking on red-bars". The entire balance of spiking and pressure in combat is now completely DEPENDENT on someone else eventually dying. If they allowed the kind of Retro-Active Damage-mitigation that dedicated healers in GW1 provided, then the entire combat system would break down again and we'd be seeing the same exact MB-split & Distortion bullshit that has always plagued Gw1.
So yes you can drag out lots of fights by playing Dedicated Support.
NO you can not drag out a fight FOREVER simply by clicking on the UI instead of actually being part of the fight.
The only way to have comprehensive support is by having multiple people with support abiltiies.
This is the design of the game. You want to do support you run with a team of people that has designated a set of people in the team to provide support.
There is no single "designated healer". There will most likely be a "designated support sub-team". There may be somethign eqivalent to what GW1 called the "backline" which is a set of 3-4 or so people who have been designated to perform certain coordinated maneuvers to provide defense.
I personally am excited as all get out to be able as an engineer to run around AOE spraying my friends, throwing AOE potions, and dropping crates of bandages and healing kits for friends to run through. It's going to be awesome.
Never thought as an engineer i would have a support role, every time i've thought about engineering it's always been bombs, mines, turrets, and flame throwers! Love these Devs!
Yea I get what you're saying, in gw1 it was really hard to kill someone because the damage was so low, but when you coordinated together and had everyone attack with high damage spells at the same time you could kill people much easier. Thats why it was always my favorite pvp game to play. Healing was still pretty high in gw1 so the games lasted a lot longer in most compositions.
It is true that Monks in GW1 could prevent or heal tons of damage even alone. So Anets previous game is a good bit different than Gw2.
Or is it? In general the backline in GW1 still gets split into one guy healing, one or two guys tdoing spike protection of some sort, and a few other bits and pieces.
I can't say without the actual list of all skills of course. But many of these things seem possible, but the key difference is that you do not have a key specialist who is your spike preventer/seconary healer or a key specialist who is primary healer.
Instead they have spread things out some and alleivated some jobs. Now you don't need a secondary healer because people take care of that themselves to some degree. Now everyone needs to think about defense to some extent in addition to positioning.
I think the experience of GW1 monks when put into the context of larger fights (ie. WvWvW ) has lead them to evolve to some extent their idea of how to make the team synergize.
If we had GW1 style monks a large zerg may become close to invulnerable. However from what i have seen their current system, while less specialized, does provide a similar feeling of a need to apply pressure to crack the nut so to speak. A good team can coordinate a formidable defense and a good team can run a formidable offesne/spike. But they expect a larger precentage of the team to contribute to both.
Because if you had a Zerg of something like GW1 Monks (or probably worse Rits) I mean that would get silly. The overlap would jsut get out of hand.
Will this work out right? We will see, but I suspect it will be fine. There will always be people who realy want to specialize hardcore and we will see if they can.
I suspect you will never see a single specialzied person who has a multiple abilities all stacking together and constantly refreshing. You may see something like an elementalist that does not attack much but instead throws only support abilities like heals and stuns and cripples but is lacking say some of the enhancers (spike protection and damage resistance). And you may a see a guardian that only does support with some heal, but not enough to spam it, and some enhancers but not control. I would assume an elementalist would accomplish pure support by constantly switching elements to do so. I am not sure if a guardian has enough different abilities to do constant support.
I believe the GW2 devs have actually purposely made having individuals able to spamming non-attacks really hard to accomplish so that there are breaks and gaps in things.
Their refined vision of support is based on the idea that in a group other people can fill in these gaps. GW1 had very very powerful individual syngeries AND group synergies. GW2 should still have probably fairly similar group synergies you just won't have such huge individual synergies.
Essentially they limiting indivdual synergies by power choice and also breaking up the constant cylce of a syngery chain. Most GW1 synergy chains were things formed a cycle that could be done ad nauseum and fairly often.
They have eseentially enforced breaks into these cycles because having many people able to do them gets out of control. And I think also they want to prioritize so that stuff that is this powerful is limited to really good group coordination.
By having an entire syngery cycle executed by one person you only one good player to make that mediocre team unkillable rather than the whole team being good.
In GW1 there were definitely cases where the 1 or 2 monks in that team made a good team great rather them simply being a great team. Sometimes a really good mesmer could do this too. I think Anet wants to limit this kind of dominance to things that take the whole or a decent % of the group to execute. Also this will most likely make mistakes more frequent and make fights have a more dramatic and peaks and valleys.
Good read. I'm all for team-based pvp, it was what made gw1 so fun to me. I think there will be quite the combination of strategies you can do as far as compositions go and it wll be fun to try to figure out what will work. As for me personally ill probably play a water elementalist with a staff because I really like their skills, some nice spiking abilities and some good heal/support spells. They have that glyph where you have 10 seconds to do critical damage. I wonder how good it would be to have a lot of elemental spikers using ice spike+glyph of elemental power and then all coordinadting it at the same time, would be pretty insane. Can't wait to try out that build.
After reading most replys in this topic conclusion is, many still on denial and try be healer class omg i see already people nerd raging and maybe even quiting becouse they can't be support role they want:)
Good luck to all who still think they can stand in the background and play the healer or playing pure dps or think they can pure tank the mobs haha.
First weeks we will see frustration, nerdrage quiting and leerooys pulling mobs or bosses and be whiped constantly hehe
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/guild-wars-2-attempting-healer-build/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3sowfNMAeA
Spot on. Most people dont realise how incredibly small AE / splash heals are. They help, but they literally account for less than 5% of incoming heals compared to 95% self heals.
The lack of strong "heal other" skills makes it a lot easier to balance encounters for a wide variety of character and team builds. Healing skills aren't useless, they can still extend the life span of yourself or your team, but there are other ways to do that as well, by making your enemies less efficient in dealing damage, either directly with conditons or idirectly via boons and mitigation.
Healing skills you can use to heal others are meant to be balanced vs. the other methods of extending the lives of your team mates.
Here is a versatile Engineer support build. You can see there is some healing ability, but it also relies on control, conditions, boons and condition removal to provide support. (You can see the skills associated with each kit by selecting that kit as your weapon).
http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3e9000dre0e1e3hfv00afkpafb4bebikdkh
Here is an Elementalist build with good support versatility. Much more healing than the engineer, but you won't be sitting back spamming heals all day, you'll need to be more active than that to provide the maximum benefit of the build:
http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=321080232aaprslm00a0auk0c0m0v131318emevf0f0
Here is a minionless Necromancer Build that uses marks and wells to control the battlefield, while also having traits that maximize use of death shroud. The Build also significantly boosts healing, directly and indirectly through the trait that converts power into healing. Well of blood becomes a decent area of effect heal and the trait that heals nearby allies when ever you leave Death Shroud provides additional healing. You clearly are not a healer, in the traditional sense, but you are extending the life span of your team while bringing additional utility and self-survivability.
http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3810004n88h8lsh934f00up5n5u5u676bh6h7hmhq
Those are just three support builds I've been tinkering with. The differences between support in GW2 vs. other games and especially vs. dedicated healers in other games, should be apparent. I'd add that each build also looks like it would be a lot of fun!
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
