Support/healer PVE?? only druid and chronomance?

Hello there

After 1month of the expansion.

Are still being the best and useful PVE support the druid and chronomance or there are other useful options!

I used to run a support guardian in dungeons. Only stopped 'cause I didn't feel like doing it anymore. It made some boss attacks trivial, 'cause I could go down to like 5% health and then pop a few skills and be back up to 100%. And the guardian's passive healing and stuff really helped keep everyone alive.

And doesn't revenant have healing/support too?

@lagrimabendita.8763 said:Hello there

After 1month of the expansion.

Are still being the best and useful PVE support the druid and chronomance or there are other useful options!

druid/chrono/cps is holy trinity of GW2

Anet balancing seems to focus on 'make it difficult to learn but amazing once you do'. The balance is attempted on the idea that "but hey, nobody will ever figure it out all the way... only about halfway..." which never works...

In GW1, this broke things with Assassin - basically pack the DPS of a Champion mob onto a glass-jaw class, with the "limit" that it only does the DPS of a Skritt unless you can execute the moves in perfect order... so of course, players figured out the rotation and you suddenly have stacks of players that can melt everything around them.

Guild Wars 2 dungeons - faceplanted groups like crazy during beta... but shortly into launch people had figured out that "if you just stand over there, and hit 'auto-attack', the thing is easy... Basically they built it to be 'hard to figure out, but easy once you do...' and presumed for some reason that among 3 million+ players, nobody would figure it out...

Druid seems to have had the same design strat. More 'tricky' to play than your typical choice... but if you figure it out you get a healer more solid than even the GW1 Monk. Yet for everyone who 'can't' figure it out, it's not much better than a warrior with a rifle as healer... But the gimmick to figuring it out was just "hit the abilities in the right order and aimed properly while your group agrees to be in range of you..." And then they just assume folks won't figure it out... except they do...

So... you now have an amazingly powerful healer... that a growing number of players know how to play... and the ones that don't have youtube'd the basics well enough to match even a GW1 Monk...

And the only way they can top that, is to make the situation even worse... until the admit that they need to add in tanks and "traditional MMO design"... it will be what it is...

I presume Chronomancer is the same... I just only started playing mine very recently so I don't know...

There's no good reason to 'experiment' and replace your Druid and Chrono with say... a Firebrand and Scourge... if the Druid and Chrono can make any existing content beatable and the other options are unproven and still in the "hey guys, the math doesn't look right on this" stage...

@lagrimabendita.8763 said:Hello there

After 1month of the expansion.

Are still being the best and useful PVE support the druid and chronomance or there are other useful options!

There are other useful options, they are not better than those two, but there are options. Firebrand/revenent for quickness alacrity, scourges and a few other professions can stack might. None of those options are the "best" choices available, but are choices none the less.

I really want to see more healing and tanking specs for raids and open pve.

Tempest can be reasonable passive heal support to those around it with aura sharing, even if on a full DPS stat set like Viper or Berserker, plus the support of Arcane Power/Elemental Surge and its ability to easily stack might to max on nearby players. Other professions can also do support well, depending on your definition of support, such as reliable quickness sharing from firebrand or high protection uptime from dragonhunter. Certain classes, as pointed out by the "cPS" comment above also apply unique buffs like Warrior banners and mindless might stack. Revenant, in particular Herald, and Guardian in general both have a good deal of boons sharing, while thieves have some support via shared venoms. It really depends what you are looking for, but many classes provide at least some support options (thief is the worst if you consider support = healer, but deadeye can might stack, mass boon share and still of course use shared venoms from core thief which can still be classified as support for general pve...)

The cPS/Druid/Chrono is the RAID meta, but if you're just looking to have fun in general pve with a group, or even have a relaxed fractal group to run with, your options open up. Your options also open a lot when you realize that the "Meta" is only for absolute optimum raiding, and the DPS checks for bosses are forgiving enough to allow about a ~15k average per person in the Raid (meaning some can afford to be much lower if some are much higher) as long as you can reliably hit the mechanics.

Hi

I hate the metas in gw2. They're stronger than in other MMORPG even than in GW1.

I remember one thing about GW2,Arena net said before gw2 launching . "you will be able to play as you want and with the class you want" and it is not true at the moment if you want to do raids and high fractals as support the only optimal option is the druid/chronomance/warrior.

I think would be amazing if we have a variety of roles as for example in Wakfu (video game)(it is just an example) where every classes have their DPS role also you can swap to other two roles between (healer, support, tank,offtank,map-manipulation,invocation...)

Anyway I keep giving support with my druid :( till the next expansion I guess

@lagrimabendita.8763 said:Hi

I hate the metas in gw2. They're stronger than in other MMORPG even than in GW1.

I remember one thing about GW2,Arena net said before gw2 launching . "you will be able to play as you want and with the class you want" and it is not true at the moment if you want to do raids and high fractals as support the only optimal option is the druid/chronomance/warrior.

I think would be amazing if we have a variety of roles as for example in Wakfu (video game)(it is just an example) where every classes have their DPS role also you can swap to other two roles between (healer, support, tank,offtank,map-manipulation,invocation...)

Anyway I keep giving support with my druid :( till the next expansion I guess

I think the solution is to drastically nerf all 3 support kings. Druid, chrono and cps simply do too much at once.

Quite funny but not accurate.

The best healer currently is actually tempest, with Rev and Druid pretty close to each other.The only reason people take druid over Tempest is that the offensive bonuses provided(spotter/spirits). Ele's current auramancer support is niche and tends to heal for more than whats needed so people cut down on excess healing for more raw offensive support.

As for tanks, most things can... But again it's a matter of role consolidation. Who can do it the easiest without giving up much and being mostly self reliant. That's why we have chrono tanks. They used to give up very little when it comes to personal dps and still do to provide excellent group support, plus in being the tank they seldom have to worry about phantasm loss/generation.

As far as condi PS well... Sure what can you really do about them brining nearly 75% uptime without much alacrity of 320 power and 170 Condition damage, and 170 precision and ferocity. Because at the end of the day the damage isn't something to be complaining about.

I think the real issue isn't their high strength in their roles, but the fact that you need two of them due to an outdated 5-man effect limit. > @Kheldorn.5123 said:

@lagrimabendita.8763 said:Hi

I hate the metas in gw2. They're stronger than in other MMORPG even than in GW1.

I remember one thing about GW2,Arena net said before gw2 launching . "you will be able to play as you want and with the class you want" and it is not true at the moment if you want to do raids and high fractals as support the only optimal option is the druid/chronomance/warrior.

I think would be amazing if we have a variety of roles as for example in Wakfu (video game)(it is just an example) where every classes have their DPS role also you can swap to other two roles between (healer, support, tank,offtank,map-manipulation,invocation...)

Anyway I keep giving support with my druid :( till the next expansion I guess

I think the real issue isn't their high strength in their roles, but the fact that you need two of them due to an outdated 5-man effect limit. Nerfing them would accomplish shit-all besides making raids a far more miserable experience unless you plan on buffing the alternatives, at which point the meta would just shift to the new best-in-class and we'd have the same issue all over again in a slightly different flavor. The real issue is needing two of each of the big support roles simply due to the fact that their buffs can't cover the whole party otherwise. Buff the maximum number of people to 10, then you only need one chrono/druid/cps in many scenarios, opening up 3 extra slots open to either more dps or more creative hybrid support dps classes. The only real issue that arises from this solution is whether or not doubling up on buffs would be more optimal than having 3 more DPS slots, as well as not having secondaries of the support classes to cover gaps or mistakes in the other's rotation.

@lagrimabendita.8763 said:Hi

I hate the metas in gw2. They're stronger than in other MMORPG even than in GW1.

I remember one thing about GW2,Arena net said before gw2 launching . "you will be able to play as you want and with the class you want" and it is not true at the moment if you want to do raids and high fractals as support the only optimal option is the druid/chronomance/warrior.

Basically this meta is to give us the "role based MMO" trinity or duality concept that GW2 said it would never have...

The problem is that they found they couldn't make challenging content when there were no roles. Maybe some future MMO can, but so far this one couldn't.

So when they made raids and high level fractals they made them on the assumption of a trinity: tank, healer, DPS... and then because we don't have more structured roles... only specific classes on specific builds can fill the non-DPS side of things, forcing an even tighter restriction than a role-based "trinity" MMO usually has.

They should just give every class a 'tank mode' elite skill. Slot that and your threat doubles, toughness and vitality doubles, and damages halves. Then give every class a 'healer role' elite - slot that and your bonus healing doubles, all heals and condition removals effect 2 additional allies, and your damage halves.

• Put special icons on the party or squad bar for anyone with either skill slotted. And an icon over their heads. A bit like Commander icons are now.
• Activating this elite would have assorted effects allowing them to make more such elites in future for different kinds of tanks or healers.
• Then make actual trinity based Dungeon and Raid content... people will fill in lots of different builds if it becomes easier to make a tank or healer - and they could make the content challenging enough to one shot any non-tank with aggro, and make things less 'dodgeable' for whoever has aggro or is within a certain 'arc' of the aggro holder (like bosses frontal cleaving a lot).

Basically just give up on this "no-trinity" thing. It didn't work in instanced group content - they already admitted that with raids and high level fractals. So build for what is known to work.

AND IF I'M WRONG... If the content isn't broken because of a lack of a trinity. PROVE IT:Give us more Dungeons.

@lagrimabendita.8763 said:Hello there

After 1month of the expansion.

Are still being the best and useful PVE support the druid and chronomance or there are other useful options!

Are we talking raids only? Or all game modes?

Support guardians work, healing tempest outheal druids and can be quite useful in fractals, healing revenants are also a thing. Scourge is an offensive support, so is Firebrand.

The only class lacking real support builds are thiefs. Every other class has one or more builds which can be run as support build.

The 3 main support builds for raids are not picked for their "best at their job" ability but because of their flexibility and amount of things they add (as well as unique things they add). Since raids are a limited group size, competative enviroment, the class which offeres the most utility get taken.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

@lagrimabendita.8763 said:Hi

I hate the metas in gw2. They're stronger than in other MMORPG even than in GW1.

I remember one thing about GW2,Arena net said before gw2 launching . "you will be able to play as you want and with the class you want" and it is not true at the moment if you want to do raids and high fractals as support the only optimal option is the druid/chronomance/warrior.

I think would be amazing if we have a variety of roles as for example in Wakfu (video game)(it is just an example) where every classes have their DPS role also you can swap to other two roles between (healer, support, tank,offtank,map-manipulation,invocation...)

Anyway I keep giving support with my druid :( till the next expansion I guess

Excellent idea. While we are at it, we will then take 8 support classes along instead of 6 to make up for the loss of utility and support required. The last 2 dps spots will be even more competative than they are now, forcing even more dps out of the meta. /sarcasm

Here's an interesting thought experiment, what if we were to buff chrono, druid and cps so they affected 10 people instead of 5, removing the necessity of taking 2 of each along. We would then be left with 7 spots for other classes.