But how does it translate to the game being easier? Doesn't it depend on how the game is structured? The devs have mentioned on a few occasions that they've been overwhelmed by enemies and found it difficult to defeat some bosses (one of them being that dragon in the recent trailer). With that said, you can't really determine whether a game will be easy or not by someone just explaining the structure to you.
Meh and there i was hoping GW2 might become perfect lol
Oh well i still will give the game a try that's for sure and even tho i do not appreciate the way they r going with eliminating healing classes could it still be fun i suppose but 1 thing is for sure eliminating classes does not help in the way of bringing ppls to group up.
I do see why they choose the road tho u normally always have too many DPS and they r looking forever to find a healer (or tank) now they dont have to anymore and many will like this i am sure....as for myself well i think MMORPGs r getting too easy anyway now u take away the need to build a pt in a certain way and before we know it we dont even need to pt anymore at all and we r playing RPGs with a chat window.
LoL ok maybe that's not really gonna happen but u know what i mean surely will make lots of stuff easier but do we really need MMORPGS to be even easier??
It's not really about what is difficult or easy as much as what is most fun in general.
Whose to say this is going to make anything easier though? If anything, I'd think it would make it harder for everyone except the type of player who normally plays dedicated healers. People will actually have to CC, pay attention to positioning, time their cooldowns, etc.
Remember, they aren't just plopping this new system into a standard mmo world on it's own - the game will be designed around it, so it will have it's own challenges. Also, the nature of the dynamic event system and all forms of pvp naturally give incentive to group (in fact you don't even have to technically "join" a group in the dynamic events, just start helping the players you see). People will also want to group to see the dungeons if they are interested in them. They may add other incentives, but I don't think everyone soloing is going to be a problem until much later in the game's lifespan atleast.
Oh and I love how people are complaining about something new. Most people don't take change very well. But I welcome change. Everyone whines about WoW clones but when someone actually does something very different... OMGZ QQ.. and yet none of us now how it's going to actually play out.
There is really nothing innovative about no healers or a downplay of speced healers. Hell no one give Runescape credit on having no healer.
And personally I like the EQ trinity, and thousands if not millions do to, people don't want these things to go away they just want some options on what to do.
Ex. In WoW a paladin could be a healer tank or DPS, a priest could be DPS or Healer. How ever in EQ1 and 2 the classes were clear, priest were healers, mages where ranged dps, and so on so forth.
I say keep the trinity, just give the options to do what I want in terms of playstyle and I'll pay for you'r game.
Well they just made up my mind to skip this one...Sure its not fun for people to wait for healers, but as someone who plays and will continue to play a dedicated healer hearing they simply won't have such a class is a large disappointment.
Having everyone able to do the role just seems like a horrid idea on the road to homogonization...I don't want to be a healing mage or what have you thanks.
Well they just made up my mind to skip this one...Sure its not fun for people to wait for healers, but as someone who plays and will continue to play a dedicated healer hearing they simply won't have such a class is a large disappointment.
Having everyone able to do the role just seems like a horrid idea on the road to homogonization...I don't want to be a healing mage or what have you thanks.
Everyone can't "do" the role, what everyone can do is "their" role; A warrior can plunk down banners to boost allies damage or defences, a ranger can cripple enemies to slow them, an ele can heal allies while attacking and we haven't even heard about what the other professions can do to perform "their" role.
If you don't like the no healer idea that's fine but take a closer look at it because this article only scratches the surface of how each character plays "their" role.
Well they just made up my mind to skip this one...Sure its not fun for people to wait for healers, but as someone who plays and will continue to play a dedicated healer hearing they simply won't have such a class is a large disappointment.
Having everyone able to do the role just seems like a horrid idea on the road to homogonization...I don't want to be a healing mage or what have you thanks.
Everyone can't "do" the role, what everyone can do is "their" role; A warrior can plunk down banners to boost allies damage or defences, a ranger can cripple enemies to slow them, an ele can heal allies while attacking and we haven't even heard about what the other professions can do to perform "their" role.
If you don't like the no healer idea that's fine but take a closer look at it because this article only scratches the surface of how each character plays "their" role.
And thats fine for people who like to do those things, but I find it funny for a game that seems to be doing its best to cater to all playstyles that my own perferred style of only healing will simply be unsupported. Also from an aesthetic standpoint it seems there will be no "priest" class of any kind.
If they can manage to deliver on all the interesting gameplay mechanics they've harped on about in all their PR material why is it they couldn't have taken a crack at delivering a new spin on a dedicated healers gameplay as well? And no that does not mean "Cut the priest class". Some of us genuinely enjoy not having attack roles and focusing soley on "the green bars"...Its not a punishment as some like to portray it as its the way in which myself and many I know enjoy playing MMO's.
For a company to just say "Oh well we don't like that" and completely do away with it is like throwing the baby out with the bath water...
Everyone can't "do" the role, what everyone can do is "their" role; A warrior can plunk down banners to boost allies damage or defences, a ranger can cripple enemies to slow them, an ele can heal allies while attacking and we haven't even heard about what the other professions can do to perform "their" role.
If you don't like the no healer idea that's fine but take a closer look at it because this article only scratches the surface of how each character plays "their" role.
And thats fine for people who like to do those things, but I find it funny for a game that seems to be doing its best to cater to all playstyles that my own perferred style of only healing will simply be unsupported. Also from an aesthetic standpoint it seems there will be no "priest" class of any kind.
If they can manage to deliver on all the interesting gameplay mechanics they've harped on about in all their PR material why is it they couldn't have taken a crack at delivering a new spin on a dedicated healers gameplay as well? And no that does not mean "Cut the priest class". Some of us genuinely enjoy not having attack roles and focusing soley on "the green bars"...Its not a punishment as some like to portray it as its the way in which myself and many I know enjoy playing MMO's.
For a company to just say "Oh well we don't like that" and completely do away with it is like throwing the baby out with the bath water...
Like I said we haven't seen all the classes yet, you may find that their spin on the dedicated support class is to your liking. Who knows, we shall see.
Well they just made up my mind to skip this one...Sure its not fun for people to wait for healers, but as someone who plays and will continue to play a dedicated healer hearing they simply won't have such a class is a large disappointment.
Having everyone able to do the role just seems like a horrid idea on the road to homogonization...I don't want to be a healing mage or what have you thanks.
Everyone can't "do" the role, what everyone can do is "their" role; A warrior can plunk down banners to boost allies damage or defences, a ranger can cripple enemies to slow them, an ele can heal allies while attacking and we haven't even heard about what the other professions can do to perform "their" role.
If you don't like the no healer idea that's fine but take a closer look at it because this article only scratches the surface of how each character plays "their" role.
And thats fine for people who like to do those things, but I find it funny for a game that seems to be doing its best to cater to all playstyles that my own perferred style of only healing will simply be unsupported. Also from an aesthetic standpoint it seems there will be no "priest" class of any kind.
If they can manage to deliver on all the interesting gameplay mechanics they've harped on about in all their PR material why is it they couldn't have taken a crack at delivering a new spin on a dedicated healers gameplay as well? And no that does not mean "Cut the priest class". Some of us genuinely enjoy not having attack roles and focusing soley on "the green bars"...Its not a punishment as some like to portray it as its the way in which myself and many I know enjoy playing MMO's.
For a company to just say "Oh well we don't like that" and completely do away with it is like throwing the baby out with the bath water...
No worries, you are right, they are trying to cater for accessibility for all sorts of players, and some builds will lean towards "rock-paper-scissors" easily enough if you decide, I'm sure that is not untrue, but the idea is that the mechanics moves on to something supposedly more like a "deck of cards". I think this analogy might be helpful, so plenty of people have a stack of cards with "heal" already assigned, and buff/debuff options. You can choose more of these as you see fit but so too any given player will not have exclusive healing for themselves is more the emphasis than "no healers".
It's also more about avoiding taking damage, a much more proactive approach. Gamescon should reveal a lot more.
Well they just made up my mind to skip this one...Sure its not fun for people to wait for healers, but as someone who plays and will continue to play a dedicated healer hearing they simply won't have such a class is a large disappointment.
Having everyone able to do the role just seems like a horrid idea on the road to homogonization...I don't want to be a healing mage or what have you thanks.
Everyone can't "do" the role, what everyone can do is "their" role; A warrior can plunk down banners to boost allies damage or defences, a ranger can cripple enemies to slow them, an ele can heal allies while attacking and we haven't even heard about what the other professions can do to perform "their" role.
If you don't like the no healer idea that's fine but take a closer look at it because this article only scratches the surface of how each character plays "their" role.
And thats fine for people who like to do those things, but I find it funny for a game that seems to be doing its best to cater to all playstyles that my own perferred style of only healing will simply be unsupported. Also from an aesthetic standpoint it seems there will be no "priest" class of any kind.
If they can manage to deliver on all the interesting gameplay mechanics they've harped on about in all their PR material why is it they couldn't have taken a crack at delivering a new spin on a dedicated healers gameplay as well? And no that does not mean "Cut the priest class". Some of us genuinely enjoy not having attack roles and focusing soley on "the green bars"...Its not a punishment as some like to portray it as its the way in which myself and many I know enjoy playing MMO's.
For a company to just say "Oh well we don't like that" and completely do away with it is like throwing the baby out with the bath water...
I don't think people understand what A-Net is trying to do with healing or gameplay as a whole. They're just looking at specific parts and saying how it doesn't work in their past experiences of mmo's. mmo's that have gameplay completely different to gw2, and even completely different to gw1 of which gw2 evolves many of it's concepts.
Let me try and draw a picture. In your usual mmo you have a few dedicated healers responsible for the entire team, pushing up health bars whenever someone gets damaged. it's a very process, any attempts at damage reduction are normally done for the battle even starts and just stays in the background.
This is what I imagine A-Net is going for in gw2, instead of healers mostly being reactive they've made them mostly proactive, if you see a team of mostly elementalists it's very likely they'll try to spike your team with high damage attacks that have long recharge times. You as one of the support characters see this and cast an AoE shield over the party members closest to the enemy that limits the maximum amount of damage to only 10% of their total health negating most of damage. If you see a party member that's low on health and is about to get spiked ypu cast reversal of fortune which heals the party member by the amount they were going to get damaged by. All the proactive spells will likely have short 10s durations so these decisions must be made in the heat of battle but before the enemy makes the attack.
Everything is proactive you to be one step ahead of your enemy in order to survive. They're trying to make combat into something closer to a game of chess, simply performing your role perfectly is not enough you must predict and outsmart your enemy in order to suceed. Of course this predicting isn't left purely to one or two "healers" this is spread throught the entire team but they're will be support characters that will do more proactive healing than others. This stops it from being a few party members actively predicting enemy movements to the entire party having to actively predict enemy movements and working as a team.
If you gather and organise team much like in high level gw1 pvp each team member will have his specific roles as well as their healing situations. A caster could take a singular or AoE prot spell that heals by small increments within a certain area to reduce the amount of damage they recieve when harassed by melee. A melee characters could take some condition protection banners to prevent them from being crippled, blinded when confronted by a team that heavily uses conitions etc. Then you bring into the equation that teams can pretty much change their team build and tactics mid battle through the change of weapons/attuning and in PvE completely change their skills once out of battle in order to combat an enemy that uses totally different tactics.
Every party member plays an equally important part in the success of the team.
I don't think people understand what A-Net is trying to do with healing or gameplay as a whole. They're just looking at specific parts and saying how it doesn't work in their past experiences of mmo's. mmo's that have gameplay completely different to gw2, and even completely different to gw1 of which gw2 evolves many of it's concepts.
Let me try and draw a picture. In your usual mmo you have a few dedicated healers responsible for the entire team, pushing up health bars whenever someone gets damaged. it's a very process, any attempts at damage reduction are normally done for the battle even starts and just stays in the background.
This is what I imagine A-Net is going for in gw2, instead of healers mostly being reactive they've made them mostly proactive, if you see a team of mostly elementalists it's very likely they'll try to spike your team with high damage attacks that have long recharge times. You as one of the support characters see this and cast an AoE shield over the party members closest to the enemy that limits the maximum amount of damage to only 10% of their total health negating most of damage. If you see a party member that's low on health and is about to get spiked ypu cast reversal of fortune which heals the party member by the amount they were going to get damaged by. All the proactive spells will likely have short 10s durations so these decisions must be made in the heat of battle but before the enemy makes the attack.
Everything is proactive you to be one step ahead of your enemy in order to survive. They're trying to make combat into something closer to a game of chess, simply performing your role perfectly is not enough you must predict and outsmart your enemy in order to suceed. Of course this predicting isn't left purely to one or two "healers" this is spread throught the entire team but they're will be support characters that will do more proactive healing than others. This stops it from being a few party members actively predicting enemy movements to the entire party having to actively predict enemy movements and working as a team.
If you gather and organise team much like in high level gw1 pvp each team member will have his specific roles as well as their healing situations. A caster could take a singular or AoE prot spell that heals by small increments within a certain area to reduce the amount of damage they recieve when harassed by melee. A melee characters could take some condition protection banners to prevent them from being crippled, blinded when confronted by a team that heavily uses conitions etc. Then you bring into the equation that teams can pretty much change their team build and tactics mid battle through the change of weapons/attuning and in PvE completely change their skills once out of battle in order to combat an enemy that uses totally different tactics.
Every party member plays an equally important part in the success of the team.
Interesting explination...I hope it pans out that way.
Still worried about the lack of a dedicated healing class...The classic meathead warriors, flashy mages, and archers all seem to be represented so far why can't the traditional healer by as well? I'm hoping that the line about no healing class was a poor choice of words to describe what you wrote above.
In a game that seems to be pushing character choice, aesthetics, and story I was very much looking forward to playing my perferred role of supportive healer...It'd feel like such a wasted oppurtunity for A-net to remove that possibility.
I don't think people understand what A-Net is trying to do with healing or gameplay as a whole. They're just looking at specific parts and saying how it doesn't work in their past experiences of mmo's. mmo's that have gameplay completely different to gw2, and even completely different to gw1 of which gw2 evolves many of it's concepts.
Let me try and draw a picture. In your usual mmo you have a few dedicated healers responsible for the entire team, pushing up health bars whenever someone gets damaged. it's a very process, any attempts at damage reduction are normally done for the battle even starts and just stays in the background.
This is what I imagine A-Net is going for in gw2, instead of healers mostly being reactive they've made them mostly proactive, if you see a team of mostly elementalists it's very likely they'll try to spike your team with high damage attacks that have long recharge times. You as one of the support characters see this and cast an AoE shield over the party members closest to the enemy that limits the maximum amount of damage to only 10% of their total health negating most of damage. If you see a party member that's low on health and is about to get spiked ypu cast reversal of fortune which heals the party member by the amount they were going to get damaged by. All the proactive spells will likely have short 10s durations so these decisions must be made in the heat of battle but before the enemy makes the attack.
Everything is proactive you to be one step ahead of your enemy in order to survive. They're trying to make combat into something closer to a game of chess, simply performing your role perfectly is not enough you must predict and outsmart your enemy in order to suceed. Of course this predicting isn't left purely to one or two "healers" this is spread throught the entire team but they're will be support characters that will do more proactive healing than others. This stops it from being a few party members actively predicting enemy movements to the entire party having to actively predict enemy movements and working as a team.
If you gather and organise team much like in high level gw1 pvp each team member will have his specific roles as well as their healing situations. A caster could take a singular or AoE prot spell that heals by small increments within a certain area to reduce the amount of damage they recieve when harassed by melee. A melee characters could take some condition protection banners to prevent them from being crippled, blinded when confronted by a team that heavily uses conitions etc. Then you bring into the equation that teams can pretty much change their team build and tactics mid battle through the change of weapons/attuning and in PvE completely change their skills once out of battle in order to combat an enemy that uses totally different tactics.
Every party member plays an equally important part in the success of the team.
Interesting explination...I hope it pans out that way.
Still worried about the lack of a dedicated healing class...The classic meathead warriors, flashy mages, and archers all seem to be represented so far why can't the traditional healer by as well? I'm hoping that the line about no healing class was a poor choice of words to describe what you wrote above.
In a game that seems to be pushing character choice, aesthetics, and story I was very much looking forward to playing my perferred role of supportive healer...It'd feel like such a wasted oppurtunity for A-net to remove that possibility.
I always play healers as well but am interested to see how this pans out.
I also agree with the previous poster who said that having a dedicated healer all the time let's people play like dumb dumbs who then just point fingers when things go south.
NeoVeni, I also usually play a dedicated healer, or a priest class of some kind. I will be very disappointed is there is no class that is "of the cloth," so to speak. They have said there will be support roles, just not healer only roles.
My thinking is that a priest-type class will have relatively good heals, but will also have protection spells and damage spells as well, much like the idea behind the GW1 monk. You will be calling down holy wrath, but you can also offer divine protection when it is needed. Proactive enchantments would be an interested support role.
Remember, just because there is no "only heal" class, does not mean there will not be people whose main objective is to protect the group and keep people safe. That just will not be all you are doing.
I hear you when you say you like to maintain a non-combat stance when healing, in that you do not directly engage the enemy. This is a small number of players, but I hope they find a way to cater to them. Please do not assume they will not have a class that you would enjoy. They may not have a class you will enjoy, but do not forsake the game before you know. We have too few promising options on the horizon to ignore one when we do not have all the information.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I think GW2 is just trying to relieve 1 person of the burden of responsibility for heals & make every player in a group somewhat more responsible for keeping the group, as a functioning team, alive.
In this way I think GW2 appeals to me more than before, of course this will depend a lot on how the combat is but overall an approach whereby it takes all of the group to keep everyone alive rather than just 1 guy is an interesting move that will call on each player to now be more aware & engaged.
If you die it wont be the healer class's fault, it will be the other guys in your group that collectively let you down, & they'll each know it.
I don't think people understand what A-Net is trying to do with healing or gameplay as a whole. They're just looking at specific parts and saying how it doesn't work in their past experiences of mmo's. mmo's that have gameplay completely different to gw2, and even completely different to gw1 of which gw2 evolves many of it's concepts.
Let me try and draw a picture. In your usual mmo you have a few dedicated healers responsible for the entire team, pushing up health bars whenever someone gets damaged. it's a very process, any attempts at damage reduction are normally done for the battle even starts and just stays in the background.
This is what I imagine A-Net is going for in gw2, instead of healers mostly being reactive they've made them mostly proactive, if you see a team of mostly elementalists it's very likely they'll try to spike your team with high damage attacks that have long recharge times. You as one of the support characters see this and cast an AoE shield over the party members closest to the enemy that limits the maximum amount of damage to only 10% of their total health negating most of damage. If you see a party member that's low on health and is about to get spiked ypu cast reversal of fortune which heals the party member by the amount they were going to get damaged by. All the proactive spells will likely have short 10s durations so these decisions must be made in the heat of battle but before the enemy makes the attack.
Everything is proactive you to be one step ahead of your enemy in order to survive. They're trying to make combat into something closer to a game of chess, simply performing your role perfectly is not enough you must predict and outsmart your enemy in order to suceed. Of course this predicting isn't left purely to one or two "healers" this is spread throught the entire team but they're will be support characters that will do more proactive healing than others. This stops it from being a few party members actively predicting enemy movements to the entire party having to actively predict enemy movements and working as a team.
If you gather and organise team much like in high level gw1 pvp each team member will have his specific roles as well as their healing situations. A caster could take a singular or AoE prot spell that heals by small increments within a certain area to reduce the amount of damage they recieve when harassed by melee. A melee characters could take some condition protection banners to prevent them from being crippled, blinded when confronted by a team that heavily uses conitions etc. Then you bring into the equation that teams can pretty much change their team build and tactics mid battle through the change of weapons/attuning and in PvE completely change their skills once out of battle in order to combat an enemy that uses totally different tactics.
Every party member plays an equally important part in the success of the team.
That's one of the best descriptions I've seen. Can't wait to see demo footage of groups healing.
Only the lame people who think they are so good at dps that they shouldn't need to heal.
I think this is a great idea because its allows for more versatile play and doesn't require that people play certain classes if the don't want to. They said if you wanted to focus on healing there would be classes more in line with that work than others, but you aren't limited by it, and that will make it more fun.
I don't think people understand what A-Net is trying to do with healing or gameplay as a whole. They're just looking at specific parts and saying how it doesn't work in their past experiences of mmo's. mmo's that have gameplay completely different to gw2, and even completely different to gw1 of which gw2 evolves many of it's concepts.
Let me try and draw a picture. In your usual mmo you have a few dedicated healers responsible for the entire team, pushing up health bars whenever someone gets damaged. it's a very process, any attempts at damage reduction are normally done for the battle even starts and just stays in the background.
This is what I imagine A-Net is going for in gw2, instead of healers mostly being reactive they've made them mostly proactive, if you see a team of mostly elementalists it's very likely they'll try to spike your team with high damage attacks that have long recharge times. You as one of the support characters see this and cast an AoE shield over the party members closest to the enemy that limits the maximum amount of damage to only 10% of their total health negating most of damage. If you see a party member that's low on health and is about to get spiked ypu cast reversal of fortune which heals the party member by the amount they were going to get damaged by. All the proactive spells will likely have short 10s durations so these decisions must be made in the heat of battle but before the enemy makes the attack.
Everything is proactive you to be one step ahead of your enemy in order to survive. They're trying to make combat into something closer to a game of chess, simply performing your role perfectly is not enough you must predict and outsmart your enemy in order to suceed. Of course this predicting isn't left purely to one or two "healers" this is spread throught the entire team but they're will be support characters that will do more proactive healing than others. This stops it from being a few party members actively predicting enemy movements to the entire party having to actively predict enemy movements and working as a team.
If you gather and organise team much like in high level gw1 pvp each team member will have his specific roles as well as their healing situations. A caster could take a singular or AoE prot spell that heals by small increments within a certain area to reduce the amount of damage they recieve when harassed by melee. A melee characters could take some condition protection banners to prevent them from being crippled, blinded when confronted by a team that heavily uses conitions etc. Then you bring into the equation that teams can pretty much change their team build and tactics mid battle through the change of weapons/attuning and in PvE completely change their skills once out of battle in order to combat an enemy that uses totally different tactics.
Every party member plays an equally important part in the success of the team.
Interesting explination...I hope it pans out that way.
Still worried about the lack of a dedicated healing class...The classic meathead warriors, flashy mages, and archers all seem to be represented so far why can't the traditional healer by as well? I'm hoping that the line about no healing class was a poor choice of words to describe what you wrote above.
In a game that seems to be pushing character choice, aesthetics, and story I was very much looking forward to playing my perferred role of supportive healer...It'd feel like such a wasted oppurtunity for A-net to remove that possibility.
What Warband describes, the casting protection shields and trying to predict the moves of your opponents, is already happening and present in GW. That's what made team combat so diverse and varied. ANet merely took that kind of gameplay of their first game and started building further upon it.
What is definitely new though is the last part, the switching weapons that can change a team's tactics on the fly.
Even if the dedicated healing class won't be there in GW2, I expect the protection monk- line of skills as Warband described it to be ingame as a role, one way or the other. So, more proactive damage prevention and reduction instead of reactive healing.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Aslong as their is a semi-healer role to be filled I will be happy. Not having any healer role at all would be boring because everyone would then be about DPS or tanking and that is too simplistic imo.
Aslong as their is a semi-healer role to be filled I will be happy. Not having any healer role at all would be boring because everyone would then be about DPS or tanking and that is too simplistic imo.
Well we really have to wait and see how it works. But I really think there will be plenty of support skills and playstyles for former healers to utilize. There will be plenty of stuff for support players to do to help their teammates, it just won't be strictly healing.
Well we really have to wait and see how it works. But I really think there will be plenty of support skills and playstyles for former healers to utilize. There will be plenty of stuff for support players to do to help their teammates, it just won't be strictly healing.
/agree
Anet is not in the business to exclude a large portion of their potential player base by eliminating the support role altogether. The game will suit someone who likes to play a support role; they just won't be staring at health bars and bumping them up all the time.
On a side note, by providing some healing skill to each class, I like the fact that responsibility for healing will be spread across the party rather than on a single person's shoulders. All to frequently during a wipe it's a game of blame the healer/tank rather than taking the time to reassess and learn from mistakes that other group members might have made.
So there will be heals, just not a designated healing class. Makes sense to me. Heal when you feel like it, have another person spec support when you don't. And the freedom to switch on the go is very nice. And I've always enjoyed support and damage prevention more than reactionary damage clean-up. I see no problem here personally, but I suppose some people enjoy healing?
Yeah I agree completely with you post.
Honestly, I do feel for the ppl who truly love to heal but they got to realize that Anet is implementing support. Imo this is far more proactive and dynamic.
They mentioned in some interview that player will b who want to do support will have access to skills such as creating a giant wind shield that prevents projectiles from getting thru... Something like that. So the healers will probably enjoy doing stuff like that.
Imo It sounds pretty cool but if it's still not good enough for them then just play another game.
"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet." -Bob Marley
I'm probably one of those people who just get wet.
I have read almost everything that everyone has written and I have just a few thoughts/worries.
It seems like healing will be defocused and damage mitigation/avoidance is going to take a larger role. Will that mean that the classes that can buff/debuff become the new “healer” class that every group needs? If so it kind of defeats the purpose of freeing up groups.
If the developers think groups will be able to work with coordinated healing rotations they are wrong. Healing rotations is one of the hardest things to set up, even for top raiding guilds. Groups are not going to pug if they have to set up healing rotations.
Lastly, I kind of worry that GW2 is moving towards an everyman/woman for themselves game. It will be interesting to see how this develops and how it is implemented. I hope it works but I am very skeptical. I have seen a lot more poorly designed new ideas than I have seen well designed ones.
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I don't see much difference, honestly. Control and support aren't new roles, and while they can be more emphasized in GW2 than past MMO's, it's not going to change the underlying dominant strategy for taking down an AI opponent. As long as damage is dished out in increments that can be slowed and repaired - as long as the AI will predictably attack opponents - then the dominant strategy remains that of tank, spank and heal. GW2 can call it support, control and damage, or banana, fudge and cherry, or hotwater, window and cowbell - but what they name it is irrelevant. The class design is not what defines the holy trinity; it's the underlying mechanics of combat. An area of which GW2 has yet to show us anything to suggest an impending revolution.
So while it's nice that nobody will have to wait around for specific classes in order to participate in PvE, just renaming the classes and spreading the heals out won't change the basic strategies of combat. Other games have made similiar attempts by trying to de-emphasize support and crowd control roles, spreading them into other classes, but it just means the same role is shared by multiple teammates. Spreading out and de-emphasize heals will ultimately be met with the same result; new classes certainly, but still the same old combat.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
I don't see much difference, honestly. Control and support aren't new roles, and while they can be more emphasized in GW2 than past MMO's, it's not going to change the underlying dominant strategy for taking down an AI opponent. As long as damage is dished out in increments that can be slowed and repaired - as long as the AI will predictably attack opponents - then the dominant strategy remains that of tank, spank and heal. GW2 can call it support, control and damage, or banana, fudge and cherry, or hotwater, window and cowbell - but what they name it is irrelevant. The class design is not what defines the holy trinity; it's the underlying mechanics of combat. An area of which GW2 has yet to show us anything to suggest an impending revolution.
So while it's nice that nobody will have to wait around for specific classes in order to participate in PvE, just renaming the classes and spreading the heals out won't change the basic strategies of combat. Other games have made similiar attempts by trying to de-emphasize support and crowd control roles, spreading them into other classes, but it just means the same role is shared by multiple teammates. Spreading out and de-emphasize heals will ultimately be met with the same result; new classes certainly, but still the same old combat.
Take some time to read interviews instead of expecting full explanations from each new press release.
It has been said before, players will be able to spec full support, so with that in mind it is not that far-fetched to think of actually building your own healer.
In the majority of games that include dedicated healer classes, you will find all of your skills, proficiencies, and possible builds, given to you on a proverbial silver platter. However due to combat mechanics, healers will be prone to various pitfalls, such as over-aggression or lack of dps. These healers are seldomly perfectly suited, usually lacking dynamic structure, and generally very dependant.
This as I said once before all depends on the game being played.
In Guild Wars 2, you will not only be able to spec support, but also effectively create your own personal class, in which you can play the healer more suited to your style.
The truth is everyone has their own class preference, one that cannot be covered by one classname in any one game.
I will not elaborate this point, however if you have played more than one mmo, you will fully understand, one healer is not the same as another.
The choice is now yours, be the healer you have always wanted to be...
I'm clutching at straws trying to think how those who want to play as pure heal will be able to enjoy the game, they definitely won't be able to play pure heal but I'm sure there will be numerous ways to be effective with your one heal and provide support regardless of your profession. All professions are said to be able to play any of the three major roles (damage, control and support), although I'm sure specific profession/race combinations will be more successful than others for each.
If the weapons and armour have upgrades (as an example from GW1; the sword had separate modifiers for pommel and hilt) there's a chance you can improve your healing amount or length of healing over time. Damage mitigation is going to be the key, as already mentioned something along the lines of the protection prayer set of skills for the monk in GW1 are one of the likely sources of inspiration for GW2 support skills.
I really liked using a simple quick fire heal build for my monk (if anyone played the game it's likely they know the early WoH builds for ToPK) and always veered more towards heal than prot', I'll miss playing a dedicated healer, however that's not enough to put me off playing the game, that's because experience tells me I'm still going to enjoy playing support in other roles
The beauty of GW1 was that a lot of classes could focus on support, my Necro loved playing 1hp BiP with hex removal in Urgoz's Warren as much as he enjoyed providing damage with a Spiteful Spirit build in other encounters.
Playing support in GW1 has always been fun and without a dedicated healer I'm sure they'll be focusing on making sure that's even more so in GW2. Dedicated pure healers who aren't willing to try other support roles aren't going to find what they are looking for in GW2, that's a real shame considering what GW2 has to offer BUT you can't win 'em all
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But how does it translate to the game being easier? Doesn't it depend on how the game is structured? The devs have mentioned on a few occasions that they've been overwhelmed by enemies and found it difficult to defeat some bosses (one of them being that dragon in the recent trailer). With that said, you can't really determine whether a game will be easy or not by someone just explaining the structure to you.
This is not a game.
It's not really about what is difficult or easy as much as what is most fun in general.
Whose to say this is going to make anything easier though? If anything, I'd think it would make it harder for everyone except the type of player who normally plays dedicated healers. People will actually have to CC, pay attention to positioning, time their cooldowns, etc.
Remember, they aren't just plopping this new system into a standard mmo world on it's own - the game will be designed around it, so it will have it's own challenges. Also, the nature of the dynamic event system and all forms of pvp naturally give incentive to group (in fact you don't even have to technically "join" a group in the dynamic events, just start helping the players you see). People will also want to group to see the dungeons if they are interested in them. They may add other incentives, but I don't think everyone soloing is going to be a problem until much later in the game's lifespan atleast.
There is really nothing innovative about no healers or a downplay of speced healers. Hell no one give Runescape credit on having no healer.
And personally I like the EQ trinity, and thousands if not millions do to, people don't want these things to go away they just want some options on what to do.
Ex. In WoW a paladin could be a healer tank or DPS, a priest could be DPS or Healer. How ever in EQ1 and 2 the classes were clear, priest were healers, mages where ranged dps, and so on so forth.
I say keep the trinity, just give the options to do what I want in terms of playstyle and I'll pay for you'r game.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
Well they just made up my mind to skip this one...Sure its not fun for people to wait for healers, but as someone who plays and will continue to play a dedicated healer hearing they simply won't have such a class is a large disappointment.
Having everyone able to do the role just seems like a horrid idea on the road to homogonization...I don't want to be a healing mage or what have you thanks.
Everyone can't "do" the role, what everyone can do is "their" role; A warrior can plunk down banners to boost allies damage or defences, a ranger can cripple enemies to slow them, an ele can heal allies while attacking and we haven't even heard about what the other professions can do to perform "their" role.
If you don't like the no healer idea that's fine but take a closer look at it because this article only scratches the surface of how each character plays "their" role.
This is not a game.
And thats fine for people who like to do those things, but I find it funny for a game that seems to be doing its best to cater to all playstyles that my own perferred style of only healing will simply be unsupported. Also from an aesthetic standpoint it seems there will be no "priest" class of any kind.
If they can manage to deliver on all the interesting gameplay mechanics they've harped on about in all their PR material why is it they couldn't have taken a crack at delivering a new spin on a dedicated healers gameplay as well? And no that does not mean "Cut the priest class". Some of us genuinely enjoy not having attack roles and focusing soley on "the green bars"...Its not a punishment as some like to portray it as its the way in which myself and many I know enjoy playing MMO's.
For a company to just say "Oh well we don't like that" and completely do away with it is like throwing the baby out with the bath water...
Like I said we haven't seen all the classes yet, you may find that their spin on the dedicated support class is to your liking. Who knows, we shall see.
This is not a game.
No worries, you are right, they are trying to cater for accessibility for all sorts of players, and some builds will lean towards "rock-paper-scissors" easily enough if you decide, I'm sure that is not untrue, but the idea is that the mechanics moves on to something supposedly more like a "deck of cards". I think this analogy might be helpful, so plenty of people have a stack of cards with "heal" already assigned, and buff/debuff options. You can choose more of these as you see fit but so too any given player will not have exclusive healing for themselves is more the emphasis than "no healers".
It's also more about avoiding taking damage, a much more proactive approach. Gamescon should reveal a lot more.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I don't think people understand what A-Net is trying to do with healing or gameplay as a whole. They're just looking at specific parts and saying how it doesn't work in their past experiences of mmo's. mmo's that have gameplay completely different to gw2, and even completely different to gw1 of which gw2 evolves many of it's concepts.
Let me try and draw a picture. In your usual mmo you have a few dedicated healers responsible for the entire team, pushing up health bars whenever someone gets damaged. it's a very process, any attempts at damage reduction are normally done for the battle even starts and just stays in the background.
This is what I imagine A-Net is going for in gw2, instead of healers mostly being reactive they've made them mostly proactive, if you see a team of mostly elementalists it's very likely they'll try to spike your team with high damage attacks that have long recharge times. You as one of the support characters see this and cast an AoE shield over the party members closest to the enemy that limits the maximum amount of damage to only 10% of their total health negating most of damage. If you see a party member that's low on health and is about to get spiked ypu cast reversal of fortune which heals the party member by the amount they were going to get damaged by. All the proactive spells will likely have short 10s durations so these decisions must be made in the heat of battle but before the enemy makes the attack.
Everything is proactive you to be one step ahead of your enemy in order to survive. They're trying to make combat into something closer to a game of chess, simply performing your role perfectly is not enough you must predict and outsmart your enemy in order to suceed. Of course this predicting isn't left purely to one or two "healers" this is spread throught the entire team but they're will be support characters that will do more proactive healing than others. This stops it from being a few party members actively predicting enemy movements to the entire party having to actively predict enemy movements and working as a team.
If you gather and organise team much like in high level gw1 pvp each team member will have his specific roles as well as their healing situations. A caster could take a singular or AoE prot spell that heals by small increments within a certain area to reduce the amount of damage they recieve when harassed by melee. A melee characters could take some condition protection banners to prevent them from being crippled, blinded when confronted by a team that heavily uses conitions etc. Then you bring into the equation that teams can pretty much change their team build and tactics mid battle through the change of weapons/attuning and in PvE completely change their skills once out of battle in order to combat an enemy that uses totally different tactics.
Every party member plays an equally important part in the success of the team.
Interesting explination...I hope it pans out that way.
Still worried about the lack of a dedicated healing class...The classic meathead warriors, flashy mages, and archers all seem to be represented so far why can't the traditional healer by as well? I'm hoping that the line about no healing class was a poor choice of words to describe what you wrote above.
In a game that seems to be pushing character choice, aesthetics, and story I was very much looking forward to playing my perferred role of supportive healer...It'd feel like such a wasted oppurtunity for A-net to remove that possibility.
I always play healers as well but am interested to see how this pans out.
I also agree with the previous poster who said that having a dedicated healer all the time let's people play like dumb dumbs who then just point fingers when things go south.
Won't miss being FF that's for sure.
NeoVeni, I also usually play a dedicated healer, or a priest class of some kind. I will be very disappointed is there is no class that is "of the cloth," so to speak. They have said there will be support roles, just not healer only roles.
My thinking is that a priest-type class will have relatively good heals, but will also have protection spells and damage spells as well, much like the idea behind the GW1 monk. You will be calling down holy wrath, but you can also offer divine protection when it is needed. Proactive enchantments would be an interested support role.
Remember, just because there is no "only heal" class, does not mean there will not be people whose main objective is to protect the group and keep people safe. That just will not be all you are doing.
I hear you when you say you like to maintain a non-combat stance when healing, in that you do not directly engage the enemy. This is a small number of players, but I hope they find a way to cater to them. Please do not assume they will not have a class that you would enjoy. They may not have a class you will enjoy, but do not forsake the game before you know. We have too few promising options on the horizon to ignore one when we do not have all the information.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
I think GW2 is just trying to relieve 1 person of the burden of responsibility for heals & make every player in a group somewhat more responsible for keeping the group, as a functioning team, alive.
In this way I think GW2 appeals to me more than before, of course this will depend a lot on how the combat is but overall an approach whereby it takes all of the group to keep everyone alive rather than just 1 guy is an interesting move that will call on each player to now be more aware & engaged.
If you die it wont be the healer class's fault, it will be the other guys in your group that collectively let you down, & they'll each know it.
That's one of the best descriptions I've seen. Can't wait to see demo footage of groups healing.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Only the lame people who think they are so good at dps that they shouldn't need to heal.
I think this is a great idea because its allows for more versatile play and doesn't require that people play certain classes if the don't want to. They said if you wanted to focus on healing there would be classes more in line with that work than others, but you aren't limited by it, and that will make it more fun.
What Warband describes, the casting protection shields and trying to predict the moves of your opponents, is already happening and present in GW. That's what made team combat so diverse and varied. ANet merely took that kind of gameplay of their first game and started building further upon it.
What is definitely new though is the last part, the switching weapons that can change a team's tactics on the fly.
Even if the dedicated healing class won't be there in GW2, I expect the protection monk- line of skills as Warband described it to be ingame as a role, one way or the other. So, more proactive damage prevention and reduction instead of reactive healing.
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Aslong as their is a semi-healer role to be filled I will be happy. Not having any healer role at all would be boring because everyone would then be about DPS or tanking and that is too simplistic imo.
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Well we really have to wait and see how it works. But I really think there will be plenty of support skills and playstyles for former healers to utilize. There will be plenty of stuff for support players to do to help their teammates, it just won't be strictly healing.
/agree
Anet is not in the business to exclude a large portion of their potential player base by eliminating the support role altogether. The game will suit someone who likes to play a support role; they just won't be staring at health bars and bumping them up all the time.
On a side note, by providing some healing skill to each class, I like the fact that responsibility for healing will be spread across the party rather than on a single person's shoulders. All to frequently during a wipe it's a game of blame the healer/tank rather than taking the time to reassess and learn from mistakes that other group members might have made.
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Yeah I agree completely with you post.
Honestly, I do feel for the ppl who truly love to heal but they got to realize that Anet is implementing support. Imo this is far more proactive and dynamic.
They mentioned in some interview that player will b who want to do support will have access to skills such as creating a giant wind shield that prevents projectiles from getting thru... Something like that. So the healers will probably enjoy doing stuff like that.
Imo It sounds pretty cool but if it's still not good enough for them then just play another game.
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I have read almost everything that everyone has written and I have just a few thoughts/worries.
It seems like healing will be defocused and damage mitigation/avoidance is going to take a larger role. Will that mean that the classes that can buff/debuff become the new “healer” class that every group needs? If so it kind of defeats the purpose of freeing up groups.
If the developers think groups will be able to work with coordinated healing rotations they are wrong. Healing rotations is one of the hardest things to set up, even for top raiding guilds. Groups are not going to pug if they have to set up healing rotations.
Lastly, I kind of worry that GW2 is moving towards an everyman/woman for themselves game. It will be interesting to see how this develops and how it is implemented. I hope it works but I am very skeptical. I have seen a lot more poorly designed new ideas than I have seen well designed ones.
--John Ruskin
I don't see much difference, honestly. Control and support aren't new roles, and while they can be more emphasized in GW2 than past MMO's, it's not going to change the underlying dominant strategy for taking down an AI opponent. As long as damage is dished out in increments that can be slowed and repaired - as long as the AI will predictably attack opponents - then the dominant strategy remains that of tank, spank and heal. GW2 can call it support, control and damage, or banana, fudge and cherry, or hotwater, window and cowbell - but what they name it is irrelevant. The class design is not what defines the holy trinity; it's the underlying mechanics of combat. An area of which GW2 has yet to show us anything to suggest an impending revolution.
So while it's nice that nobody will have to wait around for specific classes in order to participate in PvE, just renaming the classes and spreading the heals out won't change the basic strategies of combat. Other games have made similiar attempts by trying to de-emphasize support and crowd control roles, spreading them into other classes, but it just means the same role is shared by multiple teammates. Spreading out and de-emphasize heals will ultimately be met with the same result; new classes certainly, but still the same old combat.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
What is your definition of Tank, Spank and Heal?
This is not a game.
Take some time to read interviews instead of expecting full explanations from each new press release.
It has been said before, players will be able to spec full support, so with that in mind it is not that far-fetched to think of actually building your own healer.
In the majority of games that include dedicated healer classes, you will find all of your skills, proficiencies, and possible builds, given to you on a proverbial silver platter. However due to combat mechanics, healers will be prone to various pitfalls, such as over-aggression or lack of dps. These healers are seldomly perfectly suited, usually lacking dynamic structure, and generally very dependant.
This as I said once before all depends on the game being played.
In Guild Wars 2, you will not only be able to spec support, but also effectively create your own personal class, in which you can play the healer more suited to your style.
The truth is everyone has their own class preference, one that cannot be covered by one classname in any one game.
I will not elaborate this point, however if you have played more than one mmo, you will fully understand, one healer is not the same as another.
The choice is now yours, be the healer you have always wanted to be...
I Once was Dead...Now am Reborn
I'm clutching at straws trying to think how those who want to play as pure heal will be able to enjoy the game, they definitely won't be able to play pure heal but I'm sure there will be numerous ways to be effective with your one heal and provide support regardless of your profession. All professions are said to be able to play any of the three major roles (damage, control and support), although I'm sure specific profession/race combinations will be more successful than others for each.
If the weapons and armour have upgrades (as an example from GW1; the sword had separate modifiers for pommel and hilt) there's a chance you can improve your healing amount or length of healing over time. Damage mitigation is going to be the key, as already mentioned something along the lines of the protection prayer set of skills for the monk in GW1 are one of the likely sources of inspiration for GW2 support skills.
I really liked using a simple quick fire heal build for my monk (if anyone played the game it's likely they know the early WoH builds for ToPK) and always veered more towards heal than prot', I'll miss playing a dedicated healer, however that's not enough to put me off playing the game, that's because experience tells me I'm still going to enjoy playing support in other roles
The beauty of GW1 was that a lot of classes could focus on support, my Necro loved playing 1hp BiP with hex removal in Urgoz's Warren as much as he enjoyed providing damage with a Spiteful Spirit build in other encounters.
Playing support in GW1 has always been fun and without a dedicated healer I'm sure they'll be focusing on making sure that's even more so in GW2. Dedicated pure healers who aren't willing to try other support roles aren't going to find what they are looking for in GW2, that's a real shame considering what GW2 has to offer BUT you can't win 'em all