So, how do you start doing fractals?

Hey,

I started playing last month. Boosted a mesmer to 80, got the mount then played a guardian to 80. Elite specs are fully unlocked and both heroes have berserker exotics from TP because I heard they can use it in PvE and do well. No runes or sigils yet, though. Finances are tight right now.

After watching a a few You Tube videos about fractals as a whole, I wonder about 2 things.

First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it. However, It seems this game still have dedicated tanks and supports which kind of contradicts this philosophy. Basically, if I join a fractal group, will the people assume that I'll be tanking or supporting just because I play a mesmer, which I hear are quite desirable profession for this kind of thing? I understand that professions are not dedicated to a simple role like in WoW and no matter what they are assigned to do, they should still also dps, but someone has to take damage, buff and heal in the group, right? Or everyone just does his rotation and that is all there is to it?

My guardian is DH because I've been told that FB relies more on condi damage with harder to acquire gear. However, it has the longbow from its elite spec and I've read longbows are inferior to scepters for dps. Should I switch to exotic scepter+torch to make myself useful?

Lastly, from what I've seen in world events, it can be quite difficult for melees to stay in range without dying too much. A few seconds too long in the red zone and you are more of a liability instead of an asset. As a DH, should I switch from ranged to melee to optimize dps or is it to ok to just chill in the back and spam arrows from a safe distance? Can't find anything about dps rotation when it comes to DH and everyone claims they are piss easy to play. Do they even have a rotation?

At tier 1, you'll have nothing to worry about except learning the most basic aspects of each fractal. The damage and mechanics are all extremely forgiving. And 90% of the people you group with won't know any more than you do. Nobody is crunching numbers, or kicking people, or getting bent out of shape about what others do in T1. So don't worry about HOW to start doing fractals. Just jump in and start doing them.;)

Lets do this in order.

First and foremost, your title. You just start. Worry not about team comp till t3 fractals. by then you absolutely must have good runes/sigils, and a decent (But not necessarily meta, lets be clear. Just something with ok damage) build. Failsafe is totally correct about t1 and 2.

second, the trinity... I hate that this is so unclear, but it is anets fault. The holy trinity is a good thing. It adds clarity and allows people to do things they like, and every problem people had with it in gw1 is solved with LFD style systems and quite frankly aren't problems in any modern mmo... but I digress. This half in, half out behavior is so annoying, but necessary, because trinity is a good thing, but their game wasn't designed for it.

to your question: People do not tank in fractals. It isn't a thing, so don't worry. Healers are never needed, and are basically not helpful till tier 3 at least, and into tier 4, so don't worry about it till then.

and the last one... switch to melee and expect death. It will be hard, but it is easier then world bosses. It just requiers learning what stuff does, which is what t1 and 2 is for

Most of the people playing tier 1 fractal is new comer like yourself, so no need to worry too much, but still, it better to learn to play the "proper/meta" way so you will have a better time when you move to next tiers.

I don't play other game that have Holy Trinity so i don't know, for this game (at least for t4 fractal), you don't NEED Trinity because a team full of damage dealer that have no healer/buffer will get the job done if most of them know how to play, it just that have Holy Trinity will make thing much more smoother and have more room for mistake if the group is not good enough.

For fractal, there is no tanker, there only healer and buffer and damage dealer; If you are a Druid or a Tempest then most ppl will think you are a healer, they expect you to heal and buff; If you are a Chronomancer, ppl will expect you to buff; For most of all other classes they are damage dealer.

You only play the game for ~1 month, i recommend you to focus on DH, because proper Mesmer gears is hard to get for newbie, and gameplay is harder than DH also. From what i know, DH do not use Longbow, it have low damage, most DH use Greatsword and Scepter+Torch/Shield. For maximum damage output, you need to use your hard hitting skills for 1 weapon set, then switch to other weapon then use skills then switch back ... Of course you are new so don't worry too much about minmax damage, just stay in Greatsword for melee and if things get tough, stay Scepter for range until you feel safe enough.

https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/guardian/fractal-dh-quick-guide/This site is mostly are guide for raid, some ... things is not suitable for fractal, but with some tweak it will serve you nicely, you can look at the rotation, how to gear, ... there are other site call snowcrows that are more up to date but right now you can't use it (bug or something)

@EpicName.4523 said:First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it.You don't need to worry about this outside of raids. In raid the "tank" role is mainly to move/position the boss instead of letting it run rampage to allow coordinated plays. There's no agro like in WoW, any class profession can be tank with toughness. Players just prefer the tank to have other use aside moving the boss to behave the way they wanted. Hence the mesmer tank for utility or class profession that could heal others etc.@EpicName.4523 said:However, it has the longbow from its elite spec and I've read longbows are inferior to scepters for dps. Should I switch to exotic scepter+torch to make myself useful?Since scepter skill #2 can hit multiple times.(extremely effective on target with large hit box)Melee usually deals more damage compared to being range. You will get the hang of it after a while on how to dodge.

As for fractal, will probably be walk in the park in T1 & T2 (dumbed down bosses). There will be a gear gap requirement somewhere in T3 (the need for ascended armor crafted/lucky drops for agony infusions). T4 is slightly similar to T3, just different mistlocks instability and higher damage scale.

Let's talk about the trinity a sec. Someone here said it's a good thing. I can't stand the trinity. I've always hated it. I continue to hate it. If Lord if the Rings was written by an MMO developer, Gandalf would have been healing Boromir and the hobbits would have never been in danger. It's a contrived, outmoded game thing that makes it easier for developers to make content, but that doesn't make content better in my opinion.

In fractals and dungeons in this game there is often no tank at all, because most of the time you don't need one. There are plenty of passive damage buffs, plenty of heals, condition removal,. ways of avoiding damage that make having to have a tank unnecessary. Even in raids, where tanks are common, the class that does the most tank is a light armor class, the mesmer.

No one is going to expect a tank in any fractal. I've played quite a few fractals and it's all about technique and situational awareness. Knowing what is happening and how to beat a boss is how you learn fractals and that's what you do in Tier 1. You learn the encounters. They're relatively easy.

As you go up in the ranks, people will have more expectations of you, but if someone has expectations in tier 1, they're not worth bothering with anyway.

Hi. There is no trinity in fractals. For everithing aside from challange mode you dont need to play those support classes. Just play your DH (if you can swap to gs/sc+torch) and try to learn the mechanics.

@EpicName.4523 said:Hey,

I started playing last month. Boosted a mesmer to 80, got the mount then played a guardian to 80. Elite specs are fully unlocked and both heroes have berserker exotics from TP because I heard they can use it in PvE and do well. No runes or sigils yet, though. Finances are tight right now.

After watching a a few You Tube videos about fractals as a whole, I wonder about 2 things.

First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it. However, It seems this game still have dedicated tanks and supports which kind of contradicts this philosophy. Basically, if I join a fractal group, will the people assume that I'll be tanking or supporting just because I play a mesmer, which I hear are quite desirable profession for this kind of thing? I understand that professions are not dedicated to a simple role like in WoW and no matter what they are assigned to do, they should still also dps, but someone has to take damage, buff and heal in the group, right? Or everyone just does his rotation and that is all there is to it?

My guardian is DH because I've been told that FB relies more on condi damage with harder to acquire gear. However, it has the longbow from its elite spec and I've read longbows are inferior to scepters for dps. Should I switch to exotic scepter+torch to make myself useful?

Lastly, from what I've seen in world events, it can be quite difficult for melees to stay in range without dying too much. A few seconds too long in the red zone and you are more of a liability instead of an asset. As a DH, should I switch from ranged to melee to optimize dps or is it to ok to just chill in the back and spam arrows from a safe distance? Can't find anything about dps rotation when it comes to DH and everyone claims they are kitten easy to play. Do they even have a rotation?

I would start worrying now, you don't want to start making your first ascended set and then realise you want to play a different class. Right now the LFG meta is power chrono, boonspam build, which is more or less the raid build you will find on snowcrows. Next is harrier heal druid, which is designed to upkeep 25 stacks of might so the warrior can go full dps. Next is warrior which in fractals berserker spellbreaker is better in most if not all encounters now, this class is bringing the banners so that the meta builds can run slightly more dps gear but still reach 100% crit rate after banners buffs from warrior and spotter buffs from druid. Lastly for the last two slots you have your DPS classes, these in my opinion are best filled by berserker weaver>berserker guardian. Weaver brings much higher DPS, while guardian brings excellent DPS but can provide aegis to be copied for allies by chrono, also guardian has better CC. Holosmith is also a good option, I wouldn't recommend looking at any other classes if you want to take fractals seriously, get in the best groups and finish them fast.

Warrior is easiest to play because it has high healthpool, you will be keeping the same weapons on at all times. D/A with A/D or GS. DH and Weaver are slightly more difficult because when geared in berserker exotic gear you have a low health pool. This is why we have a chrono and a druid, so the DPS classes can go ham while getting perma healed, perma protection, perma quickness and sometimes aegis and distortion e.t.c. Chrono and Weaver have complicated rotations that require some intuition to play, chrono is a little easier to survive because of blocks and evasion. Druid is the easiest beside warrior, but you have an important job to keep your team mates alive. Chrono weapons will only change to focus sometimes. Weaver keeps the same weapons throughout all encounters along with guardian. Druid will also keep the same weapons on.

So chrono & druid are the most difficult to gear out optimally, as their stats are some commanders for chrono and all harriers for druid. Because of this it is worth skipping exotic gear completely and going straight for ascended gear, unless you can farm exotic armour box chests with commanders/harrier from the relevant maps or from spvp. Chrono is also marginally harder to play, druid is easier to play but when played well it really does show. Warrior, guardian and weaver are easier to gear out because it's all berserker gear, very easily obtainable in dungeons/spvp tracks e.t.c. also the trinkets are easily obtainable because they are mostly berserker stats.

To start of you want to grab all your ascended trinkets you need, both rings, earrings and backpack will have agony infusion slots. Eventually you will want +9 infusions in mostly all of your slots. Your rings can be infused and attuned to provide an extra 2 slots each, so thats 3 slots on each ring. Your backpack can be infused to give one extra slot. So that is providing you with 10 slots without any ascended armour/weapons. This will get you to +90 AR, you want to focus on doing this as quickly as possible. Buy the infusions on TP or buy them from vendor with whatever +1 infusions you have. You will get ascended chest drops from fractals eventually and when you get to T3-T4 they will drop more regularly. Do all the daily fractals you can and you'll be at T4's in no time, I think it took me a few weeks to get one character geared for T4's.

You can find all the optimal fractal builds on metabattle.com

Though I would recommend using the raid builds from snowcrows.com, so you can raid in the same gear.

Iirc Anet never said "the game cant have supports, healers, and tanks". As for the title, look around fir quides on how yhe 2 classes u play work if you feel like it look for good builds to use (even tho in the early tiers this isnt a must. And try to have fun while playing.

I would suggest tho that u pick up a good build that fits your needs/team's needs for higher tiers tho as things tent to get hadder and ppl like the security "meta builds" can provide.

@Itz Jay.8941 said:

@EpicName.4523 said:Hey,

I started playing last month. Boosted a mesmer to 80, got the mount then played a guardian to 80. Elite specs are fully unlocked and both heroes have berserker exotics from TP because I heard they can use it in PvE and do well. No runes or sigils yet, though. Finances are tight right now.

After watching a a few You Tube videos about fractals as a whole, I wonder about 2 things.

First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it. However, It seems this game still have dedicated tanks and supports which kind of contradicts this philosophy. Basically, if I join a fractal group, will the people assume that I'll be tanking or supporting just because I play a mesmer, which I hear are quite desirable profession for this kind of thing? I understand that professions are not dedicated to a simple role like in WoW and no matter what they are assigned to do, they should still also dps, but someone has to take damage, buff and heal in the group, right? Or everyone just does his rotation and that is all there is to it?

My guardian is DH because I've been told that FB relies more on condi damage with harder to acquire gear. However, it has the longbow from its elite spec and I've read longbows are inferior to scepters for dps. Should I switch to exotic scepter+torch to make myself useful?

Lastly, from what I've seen in world events, it can be quite difficult for melees to stay in range without dying too much. A few seconds too long in the red zone and you are more of a liability instead of an asset. As a DH, should I switch from ranged to melee to optimize dps or is it to ok to just chill in the back and spam arrows from a safe distance? Can't find anything about dps rotation when it comes to DH and everyone claims they are kitten easy to play. Do they even have a rotation?

Isnt fractal meta power druid?

I woild suggest to stick with guardian. He has great dps that is power based so you dont need time to stack your conditions -> better at killing mobs what is desired in most fractals. Also you bring some cc that is needed in fractals and also reflects might be handy.

General tip is to learn what is break bar and how does it work. I know i was carring very hard lower tier fractals with my revenant once i discoverd breakbars

If you want to gear chronomancer its bery expensive and doesnt work in exotics at all so i would go for dh and once you get gold from fractals you can try to make chrono.

Dragonhunter is very good for fractals as a dps option as he/she provide decent burst, dps, cc and ultility. He/she is not the best at any of the things but the flexibility is what makes him/her great at fractals, especialy lower tiers.

Hi! I am also somewhat new player, and haven't yet run fractals much. For me, it has been helpful to run some fractals with guildies to have voice guidance to tell what we are supposed to do there. It helps a lot if you have some idea about the mechanics :)

@"EpicName.4523" said:First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it. However, It seems this game still have dedicated tanks and supports which kind of contradicts this philosophy. Basically, if I join a fractal group, will the people assume that I'll be tanking or supporting just because I play a mesmer, which I hear are quite desirable profession for this kind of thing? I understand that professions are not dedicated to a simple role like in WoW and no matter what they are assigned to do, they should still also dps, but someone has to take damage, buff and heal in the group, right? Or everyone just does his rotation and that is all there is to it?

You don't need tanks in fractals. All party members are taking damage in various amounts. Even thought said above, it helps to have a healing class even in low tier fractals: it would not be needed, if players would be experienced, but as said above, teams in T1 fractals are composed mostly from us noobies and we tend to take lots of unnecessary damage from various sources (and lack skills to use our own heals correctly). I have been running mostly on my druid-ranger, and it has been very forgiving to all sorts of accidents :)

No-one will not expect you to "tank" in fractals, as it is something you can't even do. At lower tiers everyone is mostly expecting you just DPS and stay alive. From that matter, DH guard is certainly a good choice.

Offtopic:

@Ultimatepwr.9562 said:second, the trinity... I hate that this is so unclear, but it is anets fault. The holy trinity is a good thing. It adds clarity and allows people to do things they like, and every problem people had with it in gw1 is solved with LFD style systems and quite frankly aren't problems in any modern mmo... but I digress. This half in, half out behavior is so annoying, but necessary, because trinity is a good thing, but their game wasn't designed for it.

@"Vayne.8563" said:Let's talk about the trinity a sec. Someone here said it's a good thing. I can't stand the trinity. I've always hated it. I continue to hate it. If Lord if the Rings was written by an MMO developer, Gandalf would have been healing Boromir and the hobbits would have never been in danger. It's a contrived, outmoded game thing that makes it easier for developers to make content, but that doesn't make content better in my opinion.

IMO, a concept of a tank in MMOs is lazy design. Both DPS and support/heals have "concrete" effects they do, but tank exists only because of the choices in mob AI design. Tanks are lazy solution for positioning the fight, and to remove the need of survivability of other team members. So, as you can guess, no, I don't like PvE trinity concept.

But even more lazy is toughness tanking. Why would mobs hit the one that is best prepared for that? But even worse, toughness tanking forces you to have different gear sets even to fulfill same role: you'd need Minstrel set as healer for WvW and such, and Harrier as healer for raids. I really hope they figure out a bit better concept to implement mob positioning.

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@Itz Jay.8941 said:

@EpicName.4523 said:Hey,

I started playing last month. Boosted a mesmer to 80, got the mount then played a guardian to 80. Elite specs are fully unlocked and both heroes have berserker exotics from TP because I heard they can use it in PvE and do well. No runes or sigils yet, though. Finances are tight right now.

After watching a a few You Tube videos about fractals as a whole, I wonder about 2 things.

First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it. However, It seems this game still have dedicated tanks and supports which kind of contradicts this philosophy. Basically, if I join a fractal group, will the people assume that I'll be tanking or supporting just because I play a mesmer, which I hear are quite desirable profession for this kind of thing? I understand that professions are not dedicated to a simple role like in WoW and no matter what they are assigned to do, they should still also dps, but someone has to take damage, buff and heal in the group, right? Or everyone just does his rotation and that is all there is to it?

My guardian is DH because I've been told that FB relies more on condi damage with harder to acquire gear. However, it has the longbow from its elite spec and I've read longbows are inferior to scepters for dps. Should I switch to exotic scepter+torch to make myself useful?

Lastly, from what I've seen in world events, it can be quite difficult for melees to stay in range without dying too much. A few seconds too long in the red zone and you are more of a liability instead of an asset. As a DH, should I switch from ranged to melee to optimize dps or is it to ok to just chill in the back and spam arrows from a safe distance? Can't find anything about dps rotation when it comes to DH and everyone claims they are kitten easy to play. Do they even have a rotation?

Yeah in a pre-made group where you can guarantee players know the mechanics off the top then yes power druid is absolutely going to be a slightly quicker run. I was talking about random pug LFG groups, where you can almost guarantee that DH with 11k hp or the Weaver is going to need some healing to make sure they can focus their DPS rotation. DH can easily reach upwards of 30k dps, Weaver can spike at least 40k dps and beyond. Warrior can do upwards of 20k dps. So in my opinion running harrier druid over power druid in a random pug situation is a much better idea, and if you play T4 fractals like me in pugs you will know that most groups are actually expecting harrier druid and most druids are running harriers stats. Its a choice between an extra 10k dps power druid can bring, or the far superior healing harrier druid brings, in a pug situation harrier is the obvious choice to me. It's the same in raids too, harrier druid is almost always expected in the pug situation.

@TamX.1870 said:Hi! I am also somewhat new player, and haven't yet run fractals much. For me, it has been helpful to run some fractals with guildies to have voice guidance to tell what we are supposed to do there. It helps a lot if you have some idea about the mechanics :)

@"EpicName.4523" said:First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it. However, It seems this game still have dedicated tanks and supports which kind of contradicts this philosophy. Basically, if I join a fractal group, will the people assume that I'll be tanking or supporting just because I play a mesmer, which I hear are quite desirable profession for this kind of thing? I understand that professions are not dedicated to a simple role like in WoW and no matter what they are assigned to do, they should still also dps, but someone has to take damage, buff and heal in the group, right? Or everyone just does his rotation and that is all there is to it?

@Ultimatepwr.9562 said:second, the trinity... I hate that this is so unclear, but it is anets fault. The holy trinity is a good thing. It adds clarity and allows people to do things they like, and every problem people had with it in gw1 is solved with LFD style systems and quite frankly aren't problems in any modern mmo... but I digress. This half in, half out behavior is so annoying, but necessary, because trinity is a good thing, but their game wasn't designed for it.

@"Vayne.8563" said:Let's talk about the trinity a sec. Someone here said it's a good thing. I can't stand the trinity. I've always hated it. I continue to hate it. If Lord if the Rings was written by an MMO developer, Gandalf would have been healing Boromir and the hobbits would have never been in danger. It's a contrived, outmoded game thing that makes it easier for developers to make content, but that doesn't make content better in my opinion.

So you don't like the tank concept in raids? So what happens when deimos focuses the hand kiter or smth?

Toughness tanking is lazy? So everyone should run toughness gear is what you are saying, because if the boss focuses a berserker weaver they are gonna get no-scoped.

There are other raid encounters where there is no tank and where a different person is picked to tank on intervals so I really don't understand why you are so upset with the tanking concept.

@Itz Jay.8941 said:Toughness tanking is lazy? So everyone should run toughness gear is what you are saying, because if the boss focuses a berserker weaver they are gonna get no-scoped.

Toughness tanking is even lazier than the aggro management with aggro management skills in trinity games. But more preferably, I'd like that even at PvE side you should think hard how much survivability you need from gears, traits and skills, force you to make suitable compromises based on your and your team skills, instead of just go glass cannon.

So you don't like the tank concept in raids? So what happens when deimos focuses the hand kiter or smth?

No, I don't like that. PvP does not have a concept of tanking - except maybe here where you can body block projectiles, and some builds have taunt skills to force targeting - and it does not need that. You really can't force the opposite side to choose to shoot the target that is best prepared to that, instead you are concentrating your fire to people who you think die fastest or which you think are crucial to take the entire party down(*). PvE tank concept is very artificial, it is based to deliberate limitations in NPC AI.

EDIT: (*) Think if mobs would evaluate the target to hit this way: they make an AoE skill, and the choose the target that took most damage. They would combine it with information how much DPS and how much heals players dealed out. It would make PvE encounters much more interesting, as you'd need to protect your weakest members.

There are other raid encounters where there is no tank and where a different person is picked to tank on intervals so I really don't understand why you are so upset with the tanking concept.

Well, well... I would not say I am upset. I would just say that toughness tanking makes artificial barrier between raids and WvW. Not only in raids you can go glass cannon, but you need also to avoid stats to compete with the one filling the tank spot. It would be better if it would be done in different way. Just some wild ideas, for example, you might have a prop you'd activate, and that would make you a mob-magnet. People could choose who activates that.

But you don't need to tell that getting rid from toughness tanking would ruin raids. Of course it would, because the encounters have designed to that. And at the same time, it really does not mean that I couldn't dislike that.

@TamX.1870 said:Toughness tanking is even lazier than the aggro management with aggro management skills in trinity games. But more preferably, I'd like that even at PvE side you should think hard how much survivability you need from gears, traits and skills, force you to make suitable compromises based on your and your team skills, instead of just go glass cannon.

No, I don't like that. PvP does not have a concept of tanking - except maybe here where you can body block projectiles, and some builds have taunt skills to force targeting - and it does not need that. You really can't force the opposite side to choose to shoot the target that is best prepared to that, instead you are concentrating your fire to people who you think die fastest or which you think are crucial to take the entire party down(*). PvE tank concept is very artificial, it is based to deliberate limitations in NPC AI.

Complete disagreement. First of all, one of the major reasons why tanking and the trinity is a good thing is that people like to play the game in different ways. Some people like to focus on survivability, others like to focus more on execution of damage. Some people like to care about their own positioning, others like to control the whole fight. I refuse to do fractals without a healer because I find that focusing on the defensive stuff less fun. A well designed fight still puts some defensive emphasis on the dps, but it entirely about avoiding damage, which is a good thing. You seem to be making the mistake of thinking that everyone likes to play the game in the same way.

And pvp does have the concept of tanking, but more importantly pvp different from pve. You can't have force-attack tanking in pvp, because players are not AI, which is why both things exist. But the general idea of making yourself dangerous but hard to kill, and using cc to protect people, is literally the backbone of both pve and pvp tanking, and is super important to do right.

EDIT: (*) Think if mobs would evaluate the target to hit this way: they make an AoE skill, and the choose the target that took most damage. They would combine it with information how much DPS and how much heals players dealed out. It would make PvE encounters much more interesting, as you'd need to protect your weakest members.

This sounds terrible to me. Either you'd play it like vanilla wow tanking, which sucked for everyone. or you'd just swap people around by ceasing to attack whenyou get targeted, which again, sucks hard for people who enjoy tanking.

I'd say: Don't rush througth the fractal tiers, learn carefully each encounter before going to the upper tiers.

As a side note, it's not that guild wars 2 don't have an holy trinity, and it has never been the point. What gw2 was supposed to not have was professions strictly dedicated to the roles that are associated to the holy trinity. The idea was that you could tank, support, heal or dps with any of the core professions.

@Itz Jay.8941 said:

@TamX.1870 said:Hi! I am also somewhat new player, and haven't yet run fractals much. For me, it has been helpful to run some fractals with guildies to have voice guidance to tell what we are supposed to do there. It helps a lot if you have some idea about the mechanics :)

@"EpicName.4523" said:First, GW2 lacks the holy trinity, I get it. However, It seems this game still have dedicated tanks and supports which kind of contradicts this philosophy. Basically, if I join a fractal group, will the people assume that I'll be tanking or supporting just because I play a mesmer, which I hear are quite desirable profession for this kind of thing? I understand that professions are not dedicated to a simple role like in WoW and no matter what they are assigned to do, they should still also dps, but someone has to take damage, buff and heal in the group, right? Or everyone just does his rotation and that is all there is to it?

@Ultimatepwr.9562 said:second, the trinity... I hate that this is so unclear, but it is anets fault. The holy trinity is a good thing. It adds clarity and allows people to do things they like, and every problem people had with it in gw1 is solved with LFD style systems and quite frankly aren't problems in any modern mmo... but I digress. This half in, half out behavior is so annoying, but necessary, because trinity is a good thing, but their game wasn't designed for it.

@"Vayne.8563" said:Let's talk about the trinity a sec. Someone here said it's a good thing. I can't stand the trinity. I've always hated it. I continue to hate it. If Lord if the Rings was written by an MMO developer, Gandalf would have been healing Boromir and the hobbits would have never been in danger. It's a contrived, outmoded game thing that makes it easier for developers to make content, but that doesn't make content better in my opinion.

I don't like the tank concept period. I understand that some people like the trinity and thus like raids. I don't like raids at least in part because I see Anet moving toward a system I never liked. So they designed an encounter for which you need a tank. Doesn't mean I'll like tanks or the encounter. Specific encounters designed for tanks and healers are part of the reason I don't want to raid. It feels to me like it goes against stuff what was said before launch.

@Ultimatepwr.9562 said:Complete disagreement. First of all, one of the major reasons why tanking and the trinity is a good thing is that people like to play the game in different ways. Some people like to focus on survivability, others like to focus more on execution of damage. Some people like to care about their own positioning, others like to control the whole fight.

Yes, but trinity is not (IMO) answer to that, neither is "toughness tanking". I come from a trinity game, and I have always liked to play defensively (tank or healer, although also DPS, but that's not my favorite). I care lots more about my dying teammates than living enemies. I care my dying teammates even too much, it has been a really rough path in sPvP to allow someone to die because you can't save her/him without dying yourself, too...

I said above, that I'd like that even PvE side you'd make choices between outgoing performance (DPS, heal efficiency, condi & boon durations) and your survivability (HP, toughness, survival skills), based on your and your team's skills: if you and your team are skilled and you have good setup, you might go full glass cannon; if not, you'd put some defences from traits, skills, weapon choices and gear stats.

Trinity system might give a band aid to certain problems, when it comes to positioning the fight, and to balance the mob damage. But it would introduce hard difficultiess in other fronts. Many of the trinity games struggle when balancing tank class/build DPS/heals (real output): as they are sturdy by their nature, if you give them enough real output, they will obsolete every other build/class. If you don't, they don't have any spot in PvP and they really suck in open world soloing. Would I be a game developer, I really would not take tank class to solve the problem of instance balancing, because it would cause lots of problems elsewhere.

@Ultimatepwr.9562 said:I refuse to do fractals without a healer because I find that focusing on the defensive stuff less fun. A well designed fight still puts some defensive emphasis on the dps, but it entirely about avoiding damage, which is a good thing. You seem to be making the mistake of thinking that everyone likes to play the game in the same way.

I fully agree with this! I really would like to have room to support classes, which frees other people to focus on killing. If there is no room for support, there is no roles in teams, and then teams are not teams but a bunch of bandits raiding a cave with a principle 'everyone on its own'. It is much better that if you have team, you have roles you can assign to members: some will be a lookout when others raid the cave, some may be assigned to lock the backdoor to prevent reinforcements to come, and so on.

But healer is not a tank. Tank concept is entirely up to choices made when implementing NPC AI.

@Ultimatepwr.9562 said:And pvp does have the concept of tanking, but more importantly pvp different from pve. You can't have force-attack tanking in pvp, because players are not AI, which is why both things exist. But the general idea of making yourself dangerous but hard to kill, and using cc to protect people, is literally the backbone of both pve and pvp tanking, and is super important to do right.

Yes. In PvE, the main difference is having a boss, that has health enough to stand against whole team concentrating fire on her/him, and being able to dispatch lethal damage to that entire group. Would you give such an entity to a player to control in PvP, you'd get something that would ruin entire PvP experience. But all that big health and big damage is there just to make it practise dummy for teams. Give the boss and its minions bit more intelligence in targeting, and you could lower their health and damage and keep the fight still challenging.

@Ultimatepwr.9562 said:

EDIT: (*) Think if mobs would evaluate the target to hit this way: they make an AoE skill, and the choose the target that took most damage. They would combine it with information how much DPS and how much heals players dealed out. It would make PvE encounters much more interesting, as you'd need to protect your weakest members.

It is up to implementation and preferences. As I am more inclined to PvP direction, of course I would want mobs to choose their targets bit more intelligently.

EDIT: This is a late edit, so it does not necessarily show in possible replies. What I mean when saying tank concept is artificial, is that in PvE environment we could create many other artificial roles. We could attach PvE boss fights with a red button, and there would be only certain classes/builds able to push that red button, and if it is not pressed frequently, the team would wipe. We could add a mechanic so, that boss would require people to /dance, and there would be classes that would be better /dancers than others: if your team is not good enough with /dancing, your party would wipe. So, in addition to tank concept, there are infinite amount of possible artificial roles to put in PvE content. It might make good instances, sure, but those dedicated red button pushers and /dancers classes/builds would have no role outside of those specific instance fights (e.g. solo open world roaming or PvP). That's why I call certain concepts artificial.

EDIT2: Even more late edit. In trinity games, tanks are like those red button pushers. With "toughness tanking", it is even more brain damaged - imo - because it is not even your traits and build and skills, but just one of your attribute which makes you "push the button". In trinity games, tank can go in whatever gears she or he or the team chooses to be sufficient, and push the red button because s/he traited for that. Here you will push the button only because of your passive stat. Here, we just have a common consensus that it's the chrono, who suffers the least from toughness build, and will automatically push the red button if anyone else has lower numbers in that specific stat... I don't know if I made myself clear, but red button pushers (trinity game tanks), /dancers (you have output that is only meaningful against instance bosses) and this auto-red-button-pushers-from-their-gears are all IMO pretty artificial and unnecessary things.

@TamX.1870 said:

@Itz Jay.8941 said:Toughness tanking is lazy? So everyone should run toughness gear is what you are saying, because if the boss focuses a berserker weaver they are gonna get no-scoped.

So you don't like the tank concept in raids? So what happens when deimos focuses the hand kiter or smth?

There are other raid encounters where there is no tank and where a different person is picked to tank on intervals so I really don't understand why you are so upset with the tanking concept.

So you don't like the tank concept or the holy trinity. You've never raided either... Now you're complaining about aggro mechanics....

There are plenty of raids where other players take aggro of bombs, additional spawns, other mechanics e.t.c. some players have to use CC skills to push add's away, some players can use pulls to take care of add's, you have hand kiter at deimos e.t.c.

Go to snowcrows.com, check out their benchmarks. They only recommend that you take a tank on 3 of their 14 listed encounters. They only recommend a healer on 5 of the encounters. That's the top raid guild in gw2, and that's only their recommendation. They also do challenge motes, low man kills e.t.c.

As for people running glass cannon, well that's essential to getting the kill done under the enrage timer especially in challenge motes..

Really tanking or the healing is not as big as you are making it out to be, sounds to me like you've got something stuck in your head which is preventing you from raiding.

@Dadnir.5038 said:I'd say: Don't rush througth the fractal tiers, learn carefully each encounter before going to the upper tiers.

As a side note, it's not that guild wars 2 don't have an holy trinity, and it has never been the point. What gw2 was supposed to not have was professions strictly dedicated to the roles that are associated to the holy trinity. The idea was that you could tank, support, heal or dps with any of the core professions.

You can do this though. But this game is an MMORPG. It's the same in every game, the best players figure out the best comps for finishing the fractal/raids/pvp faster, better ,whatever. So these players are going to share what they found works best, then that composition becomes the meta. That is an MMORPG, you can't stop that from happening.

Really I don't see what the issue is anyway. Any class can tank, we only let the mesmer do it because they have lower dps with tank gear and can provide the most support while having tank gear. Warrior is giving banners and traits for support and CC. Guardian is giving aegis and retaliation for support, stability, cc. Druid can heal,give might, CC, fast ress, kite, do damage. Mesmer can provide loads of utility, can also be DPS, could heal if it wanted to. Revenant can heal, give quickness, alacrity, do damage. Engineer could do pretty much everything. Scourge can offer support, tank, teleport, cc, massive cleave. Elementalist can heal, support, do damage. Theif is really the only selfish class, outside of giving stealth for dungeons. Every class has it's place and you don't need to run the meta compositions, but that doesn't stop there being a meta and people using it because they want fast runs. You can't stop something more effective, you can't balance an MMO, especially one as unique as GW2. You're asking for every class to have the same access to every damn heal, utility, cc, stealth, teleport, aegis, quickness, alacrity, the list goes on. That is a boring game to me.

As I said I don't have experience with fractals, but I'll throw my 2 cents with what I know...WoW.I played mostly Burning Crusade and I felt this was the expansion that provided the best raiding experience as well as the best class mechanics.

As a tank in 5 man instances it felt good when I did things right and hold aggro properly on my druid. It took certain amount of awareness and it felt satisfying.I enjoyed healing as well. Managing your mana, timing your heals, throwing the right heal at the right time and preventing wipes...awesome.As a mage or rogue I provided polymorph/sap and keeping certain enemies CC-ed felt important. One more hard hitting mob could wipe your entire team in seconds in heroic 5 mans.Most dps classes had boring, but relaxing rotations in raids. You could chill in the back with your warlock and spam shadowbolts while minimizing the game window and watching adult content.

In GW 2 seems that everyone can do everything, but some simply do it better so you still have professions stuck in a certain role. But you don't have proper aggro mechanics, taunts, mana management and certain other things which made PvE feel rewarding. Overall, from what I've seen in world events, GW 2 PvE seems like a massive zerg fest where a select few professions/players carry the others to complete the content. The others just run around and mash buttons randomly.

@Itz Jay.8941 said:So you don't like the tank concept or the holy trinity. You've never raided either... Now you're complaining about aggro mechanics....

I have not yet raided here, I have raided in a trinity game. Just like EpicName tells her/his experiences above, also I practically love tanking. Maybe because I'm so fond of playing tank classes, I am painfully aware the problems they have, when tanking capabilities are baked inside classes.

In that Trinity game, if raid encounter needed only one tank, it was considered simple and straight-forward, and it was usually pretty regular DPS war. Most encounters needed 2 or 3 tanks for different roles. They were used to control bosses (keep them separated or together or at certain spot), most encounters involved all sorts of aggro swapping (switching mobs between tanks), things like those. I can't deny that those fights were satisfying, after a lot of practise your team managed to work together and you took the boss/es down.

Many encounters had enrage counter to give a soft time limit for completition and force members to maximize their DPS output. Some encounters were endurance fights with precision DPS. Some newer encounters had "gear checks", unavoidable damage casted on all team members; I think they were meant to put pressure on healers, but in practise they acted as gear-gate because without enough protection & health you were one-shotted.

If I found trinity raid encounters that satisfying, why in heck I am then against trinity? Because just in my humble opinion, it is an instance mechanism, and it does not lead to good results if it is baked to classes. Instead of having tank classes/traits here, I would implement tanking concept differently, if it is seen that managing mob positioning and targets make more interesting fights. Some quick ideas to implement that could be:

1) You could have device like Mistlock Singularity before the encounter. One player would activate it to get a buff/debuff that makes her/him a mob-magnet (tank).

2) You could have special action skill in encounter, that would taunt your target mob(s) to attack you. A special skill would be better than first option, when you would design the encounter so that you would need several players to position different bosses/mobs.

3) A hybrid: there would be three devices, and three players could activate them to get a special action skill for mob aggro management.

Before implementing things like that, as a encounter designer I would first examine the other, existing possibilities to control the mobs (that is, CC). I would also examine the skills that classes have to protect each other (as one of the tank's jobs is to protect other members by taking damage on their behalf). EDIT: I know that in this game most skills are casted on hostile targets, even heals. But it could be one possibility that you would have a skill casted on friendly target, and you would transfer all damage taken by that target to you. This kinds of skills could be used as an alternative to have taunts to force mobs hitting a specific target.

@EpicName.4523 said:As a tank in 5 man instances it felt good when I did things right and hold aggro properly on my druid. It took certain amount of awareness and it felt satisfying.I enjoyed healing as well. Managing your mana, timing your heals, throwing the right heal at the right time and preventing wipes...awesome.

I agree with you, even thought I didn't play WoW, but another trinity game. Tanking is very satisfying role. I went to raids on DPS mainly if I was needed on DPS toon, or if I felt lazy and wanted to take more relaxed.

@EpicName.4523 said:In GW 2 seems that everyone can do everything, but some simply do it better so you still have professions stuck in a certain role. But you don't have proper aggro mechanics, taunts, mana management and certain other things which made PvE feel rewarding. Overall, from what I've seen in world events, GW 2 PvE seems like a massive zerg fest where a select few professions/players carry the others to complete the content. The others just run around and mash buttons randomly.

You played druid in WoW, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that a hybrid class? One that can be traited to tank, healer or DPS? If so, then maybe if you think that all classes in GW2 are sort of different flavors of WoW druids might help? @Itz Jay.8941 lists above some of the specialties of different classes, so they are not clones, even thought they don't have that strict specification areas.

World bosses are indeed zerg fests :D That was same in the game I played previously with those world bosses. Content where you have restrictions in team sizes work bit differently, but I think that the original idea behind at least fractals was that their mechanics would not force players to choose specific team setups to complete them.

@TamX.1870 said:

@Itz Jay.8941 said:So you don't like the tank concept or the holy trinity. You've never raided either... Now you're complaining about aggro mechanics....

@EpicName.4523 said:As a tank in 5 man instances it felt good when I did things right and hold aggro properly on my druid. It took certain amount of awareness and it felt satisfying.I enjoyed healing as well. Managing your mana, timing your heals, throwing the right heal at the right time and preventing wipes...awesome.

@EpicName.4523 said:In GW 2 seems that everyone can do everything, but some simply do it better so you still have professions stuck in a certain role. But you don't have proper aggro mechanics, taunts, mana management and certain other things which made PvE feel rewarding. Overall, from what I've seen in world events, GW 2 PvE seems like a massive zerg fest where a select few professions/players carry the others to complete the content. The others just run around and mash buttons randomly.

Isnt ranger in gw2 hybrid class too then? He can be healer, dps and tank. He is not as good tank as sone other options here but i am sure when raids came in some groups druid was tanking.

Also in gw2 anyone can be tank. It might be lazy design but to be fair its only few bosses. And your tank would still be tbe guy with mist toughness.

Also in raids tank is pulling both mobs and boss so dps have easier job, control them with cc and blocks atacks for his subgroup. I am not saying that it is on same level as was your game but there is a diference between new tank and great one :D