Guild Wars 2 really have roles?

[Ezic.8325]

After a long time playing Guild Wars 2, I decided to invite my friends to play with me, so after some time, we decided which roles each one would have, being one Tank, two DPS and two supports. But after a while looking at builds and skills we realized that the game doesn't seem to have the famous "Holy Trinity", since everyone can heal and tank equally, and most recommended builds focus on Power, making players who focus on Vitality/Toughness or Healing Power are very weak, and don't really have a superior resistance/healing than people who focused on Power/Precision/Ferocity.

That's why I decided to come here on the forum to ask if there are "Roles" in the game, or the class doesn't change the playstyle, like Rogue doing a lots of damage and Guardian mitigating tons of.

.

And if it have the roles, can anyone recommend support builds for Necromancer and Ranger and a tank build for Warrior plz.

[DeanBB.4268]

Roles are only used in instances,  like raids. There is really no need for it in open world stuff.

If you look on sites like metabattle, you should see builds divided according to their designed purposes, which should illustrate where roles are used. 

[Warscythes.9307]

As a follow up to Dean, Necromancer has 2 "support" builds. One being a heal scourge and the other is quickness dps harbinger.

 

Heal scourge is very often seen as a very extreme crutch for most of the content where it really doesn't do much beyond just constantly rezzing people. So if you guys play on doing any sort of raids/strikes as completely new players, is ok to have one but its value gets lower and lower as you play better as you will just be dying less naturally. 

 

Quickness dps harbinger is a harbinger that provide permanent quickness buff to their 5 men group. It is one of the lower tier options for a quickness dps but is completely serviceable.

 

Warrior does not have a meta tank build. While it "can" tank and be good at it. It doesn't do that much beyond not dying. You are better off playing a dps or quickness dps warrior instead.

 

This does change a bit in PvP and WvW where roles are a lot more different.

Edited November 19, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Smurfiness.3714]

Don't worry about what sites say are "Meta" builds.

Unless you're very skilled you'll die very often using the glass cannon "Meta" builds recommended.

Modify builds to suit your style.

Edited November 19, 2022 by Smurfiness.3714

[Warscythes.9307]

Forgot to add for ranger

 

Ranger can play as a healer alacrity druid where it is a healer that grant alacrity.

 

In GW2 instance roles, the general build comp need to fulfill the following roles.

 

1 Healer, 1 quickness provider, 1 alacrity provider, rest is dps. The quickness or alacrity provider can be either a healer or a dps.

 

So in your example, I would have a healer alacrity druid, quickness dps warrior, dps necromancer and the rest 2 can be any sort of dps. In the current stage of the game most classes can fulfill those roles in someway or another. So don't worry too much about roles, pick a class that you like. Tanking is for the most part relatively rare. For the most part everyone tanks as in you are not suppose to get hit in the first place. This is more action than tab rpg after all. 

 

Keep in mind this is all for instance content. For open world you want more self sufficiency than anything else. In that case don't worry too much about roles. Just pick a class and look up an open world guide. It is perfectly fine to play full glass cannon in OW once you are good enough, but chances are you need a bit of time to adjust.

Edited November 19, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Danikat.8537]

The game was originally designed to avoid the traditional roles, and the complications that can come with them (like being unable to do a dungeon because you can't find anyone willing to heal). That's why everyone always has a healing skill, among other things.

Raids do fall back into the old fashioned 'trinity' roles a bit, but even there it tends to be more complicated, you'll almost never play a healer who literally just heals other players and your group won't be able to ignore incoming damage just because you're there spamming healing skills on them, so you need to use other types of support as well (usually boons) and they need to use active defenses like dodging.

The good news for you and your friends is you don't have to make sure you have the same party composition as in other games and even for raids the roles aren't defined by the profession you choose so everyone can pick something they actually enjoy instead of being pressured into taking what the group needs because they were last to pick. The bad news is it makes choosing a bit more complicated.

But unless you're planning to focus on raiding together I recommend having a look through guides or experimenting in-game and picking professions you all like, any composition can work in the vast majority of the game and you can change you build whenever you need to so you don't have to lock yourself into a choice right away.

[Cuks.8241]

Lot's of people just throwing some random information out there that is just confusing.

GW2 has roles but not as you are used to it.

First of all you need to distinguish what type of content you want to play; open world, instanced PVE (5 man or 10 man - e.g., raids, strikes), WvW (roaming or group play) or sPVP. You NEED this context to think about a build. There are big differences between modes so the best build for one mode might be really bad for another. Every build should have clearly stated for which content it is meant for. 

Now if we go to open world (OW) which is what I think you are asking for and should ask yourself as a new player. Open world has a lot of different content packed in it but its not generally demanding unless you are trying to take down monsters meant for groups solo. In general you can build whatever you like in open world. And vitality, toughness, healing power definitely make a difference. Open world is also really good to get to know your class and what it can do.

If you will play a lot of time solo in OW, you might want to think about having a good mix between able to survive and deal dmg. The better you are, more you can invest in pure dmg. For this reason raid builds often suck in OW because those are highly specialised and fall flat when you dont have support from other players. But if you will play with friends a lot you can think more about having some support synergies between you.

WHen we move to instanced PVE (fractals, raids, strikes), we start seeing roles more. There are definitely always dps players and healers. There are fights that require tanks but those are only in raids and not all of them. Now gw2 gets a bit complicated here. Boons or buffs are really strong. You want to have all of them in instanced content. So on top of healers and dps and sometimes tanks you have boon supports. These are builds that sacrifice a bit of dps or healing to provide boons. You will often see quickness (quick) or alacrity (alac) boon supports (again either dps/boon support or healing boon/support). Those 2 boons are harder to get but very strong. So a typical group that doesnt need a tank will often look like this: 6 pure dps, 2 healers/boon supports, 2 dps/boon supports with 2 of the boon supports giving quick and 2 alac.

While GW2 is very flexible with builds and almost requires you to change them between content it also can get very complicated due to its flexibility. 

 

[Fueki.4753]

On a technical level, the game does not have roles in the same way other games like WoW or FF14 have. As far as I am aware, the game can't even distinguish between whether you have set your character up to be support or not. This game wasn't originally even designed around having specific different roles (again unlike WoW and FF14, which were created around enforcing the unholy trinity).

However, the game has formal roles that Arenanet designed elite specializations around. Effectively, what role you have depends on the traits and utilities you choose. For example, playing a Renegade Revenant doesn't automatically make you an Alacrity support (unlike Restoration Shamans in WoW that automatically are healers), but you can choose the traits to become one.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[AliamRationem.5172]

14 hours ago, Pitt.7920 said:

After a long time playing Guild Wars 2, I decided to invite my friends to play with me, so after some time, we decided which roles each one would have, being one Tank, two DPS and two supports. But after a while looking at builds and skills we realized that the game doesn't seem to have the famous "Holy Trinity", since everyone can heal and tank equally, and most recommended builds focus on Power, making players who focus on Vitality/Toughness or Healing Power are very weak, and don't really have a superior resistance/healing than people who focused on Power/Precision/Ferocity.

That's why I decided to come here on the forum to ask if there are "Roles" in the game, or the class doesn't change the playstyle, like Rogue doing a lots of damage and Guardian mitigating tons of.

.

And if it have the roles, can anyone recommend support builds for Necromancer and Ranger and a tank build for Warrior plz.

The purpose of the tank is to control enemy positioning.  That it tends to need to be able to mitigate damage in order to function as the focus target for enemy attention is secondary.  There are no tanks in this game in that sense (i.e. no way to reliably control enemy positioning).  The only tanking we have are some raid encounters where the boss fixates on the target with the most toughness.

The healing situation is a bit better.  There are specs which are designed to be played as healers (e.g. druid) and several specs which are capable of being played as dedicated healers (e.g. firebrand, mechanist).  They deal low damage and instead focus on providing healing and boon support to allies.  The vast majority of instanced group PvE content (raids/strikes/fractals) will have dedicated healers.

Personal sustain stats like vitality and toughness are generally not taken in organized group PvE because you have healers.  However, in solo play and competitive modes the story is a bit different.  There are plenty of scenarios where toughness/vitality are useful there.  For example, these two videos of an open world boss solo: Trailblazer vs. Viper.  

The viper build ends up taking slightly longer despite having higher maximum potential damage output because I'm forced to play more defensively.  In a scenario where I can kill the enemy before it kills me without the necessity of defending myself the Viper build deals more damage and sees a faster time.  For example, the same comparison but with jade tech protocol masteries providing all those juicy boons I don't normally have access to in solo play: Trailblazer vs. Viper.

This comes into play in competitive modes as well, where a build with strong sustain may be able to outlast a bursty DPS build.  Bunker builds designed to survive and hold capture points in PvP are an example of this.  Also many solo roaming builds take at least some sustain stats because unless the purpose of your build is to quickly overwhelm opponents before they can fight back, you're likely to lose a lot of fights if you're too flimsy to take a hit. 

For example, this clip of a 1v2 during no-downstate week in WvW.  My opponents are playing high damage builds with the idea of taking enemies out of the fight quickly (you can see at the beginning of the clip my poor friend gets deleted instantly before she even saw the enemy coming!).  But because I have a lot of evasion, healing, and sustain I'm able to survive and eventually win the fight.

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by AliamRationem.5172

[LONGA.1652]

Only harder content need roles (Tier4 Fractals, Raid, Strike, Dragon's end). Because they are time limited and mechanic can wipe party. People going down can go into domino really fast when there no healer unless they don't make mistake twice in a row.

Currently  There are 3 role that general population  recognized . DPS , Boon support, Healer. Some build can do 2 of these roles.

And group will look for 2 boon Alacrity  , Quickness to maximize the to group damage.

Edited November 20, 2022 by LONGA.1652

[Kozumi.5816]

15 hours ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

There is really no need for it in open world stuff.

DE meta is very difficult to impossible without raid comp roles.

This game is now a holy trinity game with a worse trinity, worse combat relating to the trinity(stack on everyone) and no role queue functions for LFG.

Really wants to be FF14 but is just a MUCH worse FF14.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

15 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

DE meta is very difficult to impossible without raid comp roles.

This game is now a holy trinity game with a worse trinity, worse combat relating to the trinity(stack on everyone) and no role queue functions for LFG.

Really wants to be FF14 but is just a MUCH worse FF14.

Yup, its all weird now. No solid direction.

[Jimbru.6014]

Most games have a "holy trinity" of tank, DPS and healer, and classes are designed specifically to fill those roles.

In GW2, the "trinity" is boons, DPS and healer; "tanks" only exist in a few specific raids. Also, almost any class can fill almost any role depending on gear and build. GW2 is much more wide open than other games in that regard.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Jimbru.6014

[Kozumi.5816]

1 hour ago, Jimbru.6014 said:

Also, almost any class can fill almost any role depending on gear and build. GW2 is much more wide open than other games in that regard.

They can in theory but not execution. Some classes can basically fart out quickness/alac while others have to play perfectly and if you miss a single tick of their boon application you can reduce your boon uptime to <50%.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 11/19/2022 at 6:02 PM, Pitt.7920 said:

After a long time playing Guild Wars 2, I decided to invite my friends to play with me, so after some time, we decided which roles each one would have, being one Tank, two DPS and two supports. But after a while looking at builds and skills we realized that the game doesn't seem to have the famous "Holy Trinity", since everyone can heal and tank equally, and most recommended builds focus on Power, making players who focus on Vitality/Toughness or Healing Power are very weak, and don't really have a superior resistance/healing than people who focused on Power/Precision/Ferocity.

That's why I decided to come here on the forum to ask if there are "Roles" in the game, or the class doesn't change the playstyle, like Rogue doing a lots of damage and Guardian mitigating tons of.

.

And if it have the roles, can anyone recommend support builds for Necromancer and Ranger and a tank build for Warrior plz.

 

The game doesn't have roles. Roles are a human construction or abstraction of the games ruleset...and in fact that's the beauty of guild wars...is that you can choose your own skills, your own build to fill whatever role you think some task dictates.

 

Course that's how the game is supposed to be but guild wars has had many balance philosophies that have gone back and forth on this for a long time, skills, builds and roles all caught in the crossfire.

 

it's easy for us humans to generically design or divide a world into DPS/Tank/Healer because these are ideas we are us-to...but these aren't the only roles that can exist. There are plenty of things you can specialize in and focus on as the core of your build. In spvp there is a "decap" role that is occupied by a variety of different kinds of builds. perma knockback engi (decap scrapper i believe it was called) was really good at just taking a node and denying it despite being slow and doing no damage. Conversely the same decap role can be done by very fast thieves that can be killed real quick but because they move so fast they can take away nodes while players aren't looking and return to the fight faster then they can.

[Xenesis.6389]

Gw2 is more hybrid rather than straight traditional trinity, although there's stats and elite specs to perform those roles now, they're not really fully needed other than specific end game content, pve raids/fractals/strikes and wvw zergs, other than that everyone tries to squeeze as much dps and boon spam as they can in their builds.

As mentioned..

Support Necro = Scourge, Harbinger

Support Ranger = Druid

Tank Warrior = Core, Spellbreaker, but really any since you can use toughness heavy stats and two support/defensive trait lines from core with the elite.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

ZeIf you are trying to group up with your friends for instanced group content i'd mostly focus on getting 1 person with a heal Alacrity or heal quickness build and 1 dps with access to Alacrity or quickness (depending on eachother). These team compositions should be fine for most endgame PvE content. 

Some raids require very specific/roles that can only be executed by a single/few Especs. If possible you'll want to have some role/profession flexibility, so that you can properly change roles/professions to something thats optimal for the fight. 

For the roles you've mentioned, all 3 professions are able to provide decent dps. On top of that the ranger can fill up the role as healing Alacrity on druid. The warrior and necro both got excellent access to a quickness support dps build. You can check hardstuck.gg for any of the currently available instanced PvE 

[Mell.4873]

The trinity kind of exists

1. Tank/Support: For all intents and purposes a support does fill a tanking role, and in a Raid they normally provide boons as well as tanking, furthering my point. The goal of supports is to provide Unique boons at the right time. If played correctly they create situations were entire mechanics can be avoided. Most of these Tank/Support classes are used in WvW to lead groups.
   Examples: Quickness Firebrand, Alacrity Chronomancer, Quickness Scrapper, Quickness Herald, Aura-share Elementalist.
2. Healer: This is different to a normal Support because you want your gear to reflect the extra need to boost not only healing power but overall HPS with runes/sigils. Rather than just providing a boon you are there to offset the consistent ticks of damage and resurrect other players.
   Examples: Glyph Druid, Barrier/Heal Mechanist, Revive Scourge, Healbrand, Barrier Specter (probably more I don't know)
3. DPS: This is where most Elites fall under but there are two different styles Condition and Power. Condition damage is normally the higher DPS of the two but suffers from a slow build up to peak damage.
   Examples are not really needed

Edited November 23, 2022 by Mell.4873

[JTGuevara.9018]

On 11/19/2022 at 6:02 PM, Pitt.7920 said:

After a long time playing Guild Wars 2, I decided to invite my friends to play with me, so after some time, we decided which roles each one would have, being one Tank, two DPS and two supports. But after a while looking at builds and skills we realized that the game doesn't seem to have the famous "Holy Trinity", since everyone can heal and tank equally, and most recommended builds focus on Power, making players who focus on Vitality/Toughness or Healing Power are very weak, and don't really have a superior resistance/healing than people who focused on Power/Precision/Ferocity.

That's why I decided to come here on the forum to ask if there are "Roles" in the game, or the class doesn't change the playstyle, like Rogue doing a lots of damage and Guardian mitigating tons of.

.

And if it have the roles, can anyone recommend support builds for Necromancer and Ranger and a tank build for Warrior plz.

No.

gw2 currently has 2 out of 3: DPS and supports. However, these are not dedicated roles associated with particular classes. Instead, they are spread out amongst all of them. Every class can do both. Some better than others. "Tanking" does not really exist in gw2 since there is no reliable way to control and manage enemy aggro.

[draxynnic.3719]

On 11/22/2022 at 11:18 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

ZeIf you are trying to group up with your friends for instanced group content i'd mostly focus on getting 1 person with a heal Alacrity or heal quickness build and 1 dps with access to Alacrity or quickness (depending on eachother). These team compositions should be fine for most endgame PvE content. 

Some raids require very specific/roles that can only be executed by a single/few Especs. If possible you'll want to have some role/profession flexibility, so that you can properly change roles/professions to something thats optimal for the fight. 

For the roles you've mentioned, all 3 professions are able to provide decent dps. On top of that the ranger can fill up the role as healing Alacrity on druid. The warrior and necro both got excellent access to a quickness support dps build. You can check hardstuck.gg for any of the currently available instanced PvE 

Pretty much this. For running around in open world, having one person granting alacrity and the other granting quickness, while otherwise being set up for DPS, is probably the optimal setup for two players. You don't need to do this to succeed, but having those boons will help you do better than running DPS builds that don't have those boons.

For five-man content like dungeons and fractals, it becomes a lot easier to form groups if one of you can switch to a healer build and you then have healing, quickness, and alacrity covered between you, and then all you need from the lfg is more DPS players.

As stated above, ranger can give alacrity (alongside healing with druid, or alongside damage with any other ranger specialisation), while quickness can be granted by warrior with banners, and/or necromancer with harbinger.

If you want to branch out further in the future, engineer and revenant are both capable of filling any role depending on build and elite specialisation. Technically elementalist as well, but it's a lot more complicated to run.

Edited November 27, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[eXruina.4956]

On 11/20/2022 at 7:24 AM, Smurfiness.3714 said:

Don't worry about what sites say are "Meta" builds.

Unless you're very skilled you'll die very often using the glass cannon "Meta" builds recommended.

Modify builds to suit your style.

it has little to do with skill actually, those builds are designed having a dedicated healer/support in the group. so for most cases when you run those builds without a healer you'll get blown up sooner or later.

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, eXruina.4956 said:

it has little to do with skill actually, those builds are designed having a dedicated healer/support in the group. so for most cases when you run those builds without a healer you'll get blown up sooner or later.

The vast majority of content in this game can be cleared with glass cannon builds without dedicated healer. Tankier builds and/or healers just make stuff much easier and safer and there is no reason to not go that route. But it still is a lot about player skill and not an actual requirement for most content (with some exceptions ofc).

[eXruina.4956]

3 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

The vast majority of content in this game can be cleared with glass cannon builds without dedicated healer. Tankier builds and/or healers just make stuff much easier and safer and there is no reason to not go that route. But it still is a lot about player skill and not an actual requirement for most content (with some exceptions ofc).

i was referring to the meta builds, and those are mostly designed for instanced pve with a focus of squeezing out as much damage as possible foregoing survivability for more damage, relying on your support for healing and boons.

 

i know vast majority of content can be overcome without a healer, but at one point or another you will need to run some personal sustain and survivability to get by too like when soloing a champ or legendary, or even a hoard of vets. you won't get by running a fulll glass meta build in those instances.

[Zyreva.1078]

47 minutes ago, eXruina.4956 said:

i was referring to the meta builds, and those are mostly designed for instanced pve with a focus of squeezing out as much damage as possible foregoing survivability for more damage, relying on your support for healing and boons.

Doesn't mean they can't work elsewhere. Also adjusting a build for better self buffing/solo dps doesn't neccessarily mean more defense, so good solo builds can still be glass cannons.

47 minutes ago, eXruina.4956 said:

 

i know vast majority of content can be overcome without a healer, but at one point or another you will need to run some personal sustain and survivability to get by too like when soloing a champ or legendary, or even a hoard of vets. you won't get by running a fulll glass meta build in those instances.

The instances that can't be overcome with glass builds are very few. "Champs or hords of vets "certainly do don't fall into that category. You are underestimating what a good player on a good (glass) build can do. Dungeons and T4 fractals have been solo'd on glass builds. Not sure about legendary bosses, but let's be honest - how many players attempt to solo those (or other grp content) anyway? Regular open world, story, 5-player content and non cm strikes (with the exception of bs i guess) do not require a healer or sustain builds (even some raids and strike cms might be doable without healer, idk), tho it is ofc recommended to bring those for most players . But it still is a lot about player skill and not a given content requirement in most instances.

Edited November 27, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[eXruina.4956]

@UmbraNoctis.1907  i don't really disagree with some of the things you're saying, but i think you're misinterpreting what i wrote. 🤣

 

anyway back on topic, good luck to op and his friends, my advice, play how you want, you don't really need to focus too much on roles.

 

and yes there are roles to fill, but only in endgame instanced content, right now its:

- dps

- support dps (alac/quick dps)

- support healer (alac/quick healer)

 

all classes have a dps option and a support option available to them, so you and your friends can switch as you prefer, since gearing up in this game is quite easy.

Edited November 27, 2022 by eXruina.4956