Dedicated roles?

I thought Arena Net didnt want to have dedicated roles such as tank/healer.Yet we see this clearly in raids and in fractals.

In raids, almost every group will ask for chrono tank, chrono supp, druid healer, warrior banners. You only have 6 flex spots.In fractals, almost all groups ask for firebrigade. Only 3 flex spots.

I remember years ago before GW2 launched, Arena Net spoke about how they want to step away from dedicated roles, meaning everyone can play whatever roles they want.

Either my memory serves me wrong or Arena Net made dedicated roles.

Time passes; things change.

@wefal.8426 said:I thought Arena Net didnt want to have dedicated roles such as tank/healer.Yet we see this clearly in raids and in fractals.

In raids, almost every group will ask for chrono tank, chrono supp, druid healer, warrior banners. You only have 6 flex spots.In fractals, almost all groups ask for firebrigade. Only 3 flex spots.

I remember years ago before GW2 launched, Arena Net spoke about how they want to step away from dedicated roles, meaning everyone can play whatever roles they want.

Either my memory serves me wrong or Arena Net made dedicated roles.

They wanted to step away from holy trinity (dps, heal and tank) and they did.In raids, there is a tank spot and heal spot but those are not roles. They are filled by some class that is already taken for something else.

We have 2 roles in raids. Dps and support. Support provide boons and buffs. If you need something specific for the fight (such as heals or tanking) it is better to let supports do it so dpses dont lose that much damage.

Several classes have elite-specializations which can be adjusted to the dedicated roles. The regular content can be done by every class/build. Whether this is enjoyable or not is finally yours to decide. Certain content requires certain preparations though. Raiding is a bit more restrictive, but still manageable.

@"wefal.8426" said:I thought Arena Net didnt want to have dedicated roles such as tank/healer.Yet we see this clearly in raids and in fractals.

In raids, almost every group will ask for chrono tank, chrono supp, druid healer, warrior banners. You only have 6 flex spots.In fractals, almost all groups ask for firebrigade. Only 3 flex spots.

I remember years ago before GW2 launched, Arena Net spoke about how they want to step away from dedicated roles, meaning everyone can play whatever roles they want.

Either my memory serves me wrong or Arena Net made dedicated roles.

They dismantled the Trinity at a class level. But, ultimately, designing Raids around classic raid/dungeon structure (which is what the Holy Trinity is built specifically to be a part of) demanded those roles be filled by players.

If it isn't clear at this point, the Holy Trinity itself is a support framework to protect DPS builds in an Attrition war. Because the system is unstable by nature, the group comp only builds in what is the minimal required safety net, and pours its remaining resources into whatever makes the fight as short as possible.

In GW2's Dungeons, damage could bypass the need for any other type of build..... and was so effective, it was (and still is) the optimal strategy. There no shortage in irony in how this effectively eliminated the roles of Healer and Tank, yet shut out even more classes then a Hard trinity does.

And for Bonus Irony: The Chrono is not even a Tank Spec. Its just that Mesmer is so strong in 1v1 Scenarios, its conventional defenses heavily loaded into Weapons and Shatters, Chrono outgoing boons being mostly loaded on Utility skills, and most Bosses falling for the "Tank" strategy, made the Chrono a perfect storm for role compression. I'm pretty sure the Devs hadn't intended it to work this way when they concepted it, but has been forced to roll with it ever since. We then took that idea, and built shaped the meta of every other game mode around this game breaking approach.

@wefal.8426 said:

I remember years ago before GW2 launched, Arena Net spoke about how they want to step away from dedicated roles, meaning everyone can play whatever roles they want.

Either my memory serves me wrong or Arena Net made dedicated roles.

you don't remember the zerker role only?

Other builds weren't wanted. As far as I know, people wanted build diversity and Anet gave a reason to have different builds.

Most classes can play multiple roles so they still have much of the play how you want.

@Taygus.4571 said:

@wefal.8426 said:

I remember years ago before GW2 launched, Arena Net spoke about how they want to step away from dedicated roles, meaning everyone can play whatever roles they want.

Either my memory serves me wrong or Arena Net made dedicated roles.

This.

Basically some endgame content was adapted to encourage more than just berserker damage dealer. Both support roles as well as condition damage were reworked.

Here's the article, from before launch, where they talked about roles in GW2: http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/

They weren't trying to avoid having roles in groups, just trying to move away from the traditional DPS/Tank/Healer set-up and most importantly avoid the situation where only certain professions could fill some of those roles and often they weren't any good at anything else so if you played one you were going to be stuck as the tank/healer/whatever throughout the game. (Which often lead to fewer people playing them and groups having a harder time filling those roles.)

With raids they did put more emphasis on needing a mix of professions, but even then Anet aren't the ones saying you must have a chrono and a druid and whatever else and they've sometimes made changes to try and discourage players from fixating on having specific professions in certain roles. But players like simple, direct answers. If someone decides groups need a healer and the best healer is a druid build that's going to lead to a lot of groups insisting they need a druid, even if another profession could do it just as well.

@"Danikat.8537" said:But players like simple, direct answers. If someone decides groups need a healer and the best healer is a druid build that's going to lead to a lot of groups insisting they need a druid, even if another profession could do it just as well.Actually that's not even a GW2 exclusive phenomenon. I remember back when I played a heavily trinity-oriented MMO before GW2 was even a thing. The game had two dedicated tank classes and two dedicated healer classes. In both cases, the classes were fine for any kind of content, but were working with very different class mechanics, which lead to the rest of the party/raid having to adjust what kind of tank and/or healer they brought along. The majority of pugs would shun one of the two classes simply because they were unable to adjust their group compostiting (if necessary, most of the time it wasn't) and strategy to work with the less favored class.

Many players, today as well as back then, just go on the internet and look for a build/guide, then try to copy it without really understanding what makes it work. GW2 gives a ton of options for viable character builds and group composition, way more than any other MMO I've played, but I still encounter players regularly that just copy meta builds and insist of those being the best even though they aren't able to make them work. Berserker stats with scholar runes on players that can't handle their personal defenses and thus rarely if ever get the bonus the scholar runes provide is the most prominent example, but there are many more. Often those are also the players that insist that you need this or that class with this or that build or else you won't be able to clear the content.

GW2 is built with a lot of diversity in its class setup, but also built so your personal skill and understanding of the game has a lot more impact on your performance than the equipment you use and the traits and utilities you've selected. Unfortunately, human beings being what they are, many players prefer to take the path of least resistance, copy a setup they've seen suggested by others, and think that's the one and only truth. If you look around you will find that chrono and druid are nowhere near mandatory for raids as other classes/builds can fill those roles just fine. It does require people to accept that other classes work differently and might need an adjustment in strategy though, and many players are just not prepared to (or interested in) invest thinking into how to make it work with different setups than what some community-proclaimed pro raiders have put out as "the one and only" strategy and group composition.

Well gw2 always was a game designed around three facets ( damage, control and support).

Chrono is not taken because they are a good tank. They are taken because of how good they supported while taking agro.

The reason people look for healers etc is because they are stuck in trinity based thinking. Vg has been done without healers for example. And lots of bosses have been done with only healers.

That is the players dictating what they want - not Arenanet's fault. They really don't have standard classes, like some other games. In some games, when you play a healer, that is about all you are. Good to have on a team, no good by yourself. We don't really have classes, like that.

thought crhrono bunker is meh , instead take clara renegade

Because raiders are uncreative, net-decking slaves to an imaginary "meta".

@"Danikat.8537" said:Here's the article, from before launch, where they talked about roles in GW2: http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/

They weren't trying to avoid having roles in groups, just trying to move away from the traditional DPS/Tank/Healer set-up and most importantly avoid the situation where only certain professions could fill some of those roles and often they weren't any good at anything else so if you played one you were going to be stuck as the tank/healer/whatever throughout the game. (Which often lead to fewer people playing them and groups having a harder time filling those roles.)

With raids they did put more emphasis on needing a mix of professions, but even then Anet aren't the ones saying you must have a chrono and a druid and whatever else and they've sometimes made changes to try and discourage players from fixating on having specific professions in certain roles. But players like simple, direct answers. If someone decides groups need a healer and the best healer is a druid build that's going to lead to a lot of groups insisting they need a druid, even if another profession could do it just as well.

Except they failed to actually solve any of the issues you mention. The fact is that "trinity" games don't force tanks/healers to play as tanks/healers throughout the game. They can easily swap on the fly, playing damage dealers in other game modes and swapping into tank/healer specs as needed. They didn't need to reinvent the wheel to make this happen. Trinity games like WoW have been doing it for probably longer than GW2 has even been around!

They also didn't solve the issue of only certain classes being optimal to fill a required role. If anything, you see MORE complaints in fractals about class role requirements in GW2 than you see in trinity games like WoW. I can only guess it's because 1) The solution doesn't address the problem in any way, and 2) Player expectations are higher because we say we have a solution and it isn't supposed to be like this!

You can't stop the meta. It will always be a thing. Change something and it will change along with it, but you aren't going to get rid of certain classes being hands-down better in specific scenarios. Going non-trinity was never going to be the answer because there is no answer. Unfortunately, while non-trinity didn't solve anything, in my opinion it did have the unintended side-effect of making group gameplay less interesting. They basically removed 2 roles and replaced them with more of the same so that instead of tank/heals/dps with support spread across all three, you now basically just have DPS and DPS-lite with a support focus. Not better and our raids/dungeons really just aren't as good as what WoW offers as a result.

@"Trise.2865" said:Because raiders are uncreative, net-decking slaves to an imaginary "meta".

First part is true but meta is certainly not imaginary :D

On saturday i pugged a group with 10 revenants, we did pretty well in wing 1. So we had revenant filling all 3 roles. Some bosses can be tanked by boon thief (adina). Firebrand is also viable tank. Heal scourge, ele, scrapper, druid, rev all viable healers

When it comes to winning, you need to do two things (individual or as a team). 11: stay alive2: deal damage.The issue is that for the first it is a goal that you can reach and then it is done. The second is that you never deal enough damage as faster killing means more efficiency. So it is always good to have as less heal/support/tank as is needed to survive and the rest focusses on dps. This is how it goes in any game. It is nearly impossible to break with this without changing the goal of the fight. One way to so this is with damage avoidance techniques. Dodge/rolling certain red circles and making this more challenging is one way to do it, but with a risk to turn the fight in a sort of jumping puzzle concept.So in short, trinity in itself exist due to effectiveness in a fight and is unavoidable. It can be dimmed, but outcancelling is not possible.

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:When it comes to winning, you need to do two things (individual or as a team). 11: stay alive2: deal damage.The issue is that for the first it is a goal that you can reach and then it is done. The second is that you never deal enough damage as faster killing means more efficiency. So it is always good to have as less heal/support/tank as is needed to survive and the rest focusses on dps. This is how it goes in any game. It is nearly impossible to break with this without changing the goal of the fight. One way to so this is with damage avoidance techniques. Dodge/rolling certain red circles and making this more challenging is one way to do it, but with a risk to turn the fight in a sort of jumping puzzle concept.So in short, trinity in itself exist due to effectiveness in a fight and is unavoidable. It can be dimmed, but outcancelling is not possible.

There's no reason they can't change the goals of the fight, though, or kinda-sorta do it through encounter design.

For example, you could theoretically make a boss invulnerable to players, and players have to trigger phases where an NPC pounds the boss while increasing waves of adds try to kill the NPC -- the longer it holds out, and the more offensive boons on it, the more damage done to the boss.

Or, as a non-boss encounter, just have a "hold out until the cavalry arrives" scenario.

In either case, DPS helps relieve the pressure, but it doesn't actually win the day. Of course, those fights will still have a meta, but it might at least be a different one.

They never figured out how to make encounters without a monolith, and the raid sect demands tank/heal/dps.And now the meta is super stale because only one class with all the boons can be tank, no matter how badly ANet nerfs it.

I am a proponent for more tank/support/heal spaces for players in general, but there are some issues.

Let's consider this in the variety of situations. Some have mode specific problems and terminology, so if there's something people don't understand just bear with me.

PvE.

Tanking: There is presently no way except for the Taunt condition to force something to attack you. And that only works on General mobs, anything with a break bar is immune to that effect except for its damage done to the break bar itself. Few people roll around in the open world as a party, even in guilds. Most of the things in the game typically prompt you to kill them before they can kill you. There are very few encounters where you need to protect an NPC or otherwise divert the attention of a mob with any real sense of danger or alarm.

Aggro: It does actually exist in open world PvE, but aggro goes to the highest dps player currently targetting the mob. In raids, unless a specific mechanic dictates an aggro change, the one with the highest toughness will be the focus of the bosses attention. So, even if you're built for tanking in the open world, there's no real use to it since you can't consistently grab one or several mobs attention for any period of time without Taunt.

Personally I don't actually mind tanking concepts in GW2, I just wish that they were made a little bit more important so people could feel that they could make those types of characters if they wanted to do so. As it stands there's not much reason to run that in open world PVE since nothing can do it well and there's not a lot of incentive to do so.

Healing: Frankly, if you're going to try to do tanking or healing in open-world just do healing. People run such glassy builds most of the time that they will actually benefit more from this than anything else. Plus if you spec well for it you can do some pretty neat healing numbers and feel really good about helping people out.

Wacky 3rd Option, Support: typically this can be considered part of a healing class' identity, but off-supports are extremely common in GW2. Firebrands, Druids, scourges, Mesmers and even warriors, can do a good amount of this. Frankly nearly every class can do this to some capacity, it's just a question of how popular the bills are or how easy they are to run as a solo player. Even poisonshare theives could be considered offensive support.

PvP:

Arenanet has really focused on making structured player-vs-player feel more deadly and less tank-oriented, specifically because they want to promote Conquest as the premier game mode for structure player-vs-player. Due to this, many changes to the amulets available in PvP over the years saw the removal and or nerfing of many defensively oriented amulets, for example cannot use Minstrel stats anywhere in player-versus-player to my immediate recollection. Why? Bunker gameplay may be [too] effective and it's boring to fight against.

WvW:

In my opinion, World versus World is the king of build diversity as the game currently stands. While there will always be meta compositions groups and builds, it's possible to make an entirely unique set of builds to run as an individual player, or part as a group.

Also, due to its similarity to actual combat, World versus World is one of the places where battle lines are a thing. Tankiness on the front line, healing, support, DPS, in various locations behind... all of that is a very necessary part of a healthy and prepared group of combatants. In my opinion, the only reason it's not more significant is because there's no collision between players. I know this is an old topic, but it was mostly to reduce rubber-banding lag by the players.

TL:DR: I think it would be a good thing for the game to show more variety in the direction of tankiness, support, and healing. As the game stands there's just not much of a reason or message to play those roles in any sort of meaningful way in many game modes.

@wefal.8426 said:I thought Arena Net didnt want to have dedicated roles such as tank/healer.Yet we see this clearly in raids and in fractals.

In raids, almost every group will ask for chrono tank, chrono supp, druid healer, warrior banners. You only have 6 flex spots.In fractals, almost all groups ask for firebrigade. Only 3 flex spots.

I remember years ago before GW2 launched, Arena Net spoke about how they want to step away from dedicated roles, meaning everyone can play whatever roles they want.

Either my memory serves me wrong or Arena Net made dedicated roles.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Time passes; things change.

Yes and no, in part the players themselves created those roles...and ArenaNet aided but did not directly do so with the introduction of some of the Elite specs...it's a 50/50 split in essence, some of the Elite specs can do good percentage of those roles, but the player base itself actually came up with the builds and everything to get them even more defined. In essence though all classes can still do all things, just like at launch...some just do slightly better at some of them than others. No real change, just adjustments.

Well, yes, a lot of the old values original GW2 was supposed to have went out of the window the moment raids arrived (although some went out of the window even before that - sometimes even as far as within first months after launch)

I liked playing vanila Healers and support. Nice and refreshing and a challenge at times, although the grief you got was incredible and I'm sure they said that's the reason we haven't got that here. Moving forward, nothing changed in the grief aspect and I'd welcome a Cleric/monk which also could 'smite' .
I miss my 55.

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@"Trise.2865" said:Because raiders are uncreative, net-decking slaves to an imaginary "meta".

Meta does exist. That meta, the one they think they need, does not.

@Trise.2865 said:

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@Trise.2865 said:Because raiders are uncreative, net-decking slaves to an imaginary "meta".

True that