Removing Healing Spells

[Walhalla.5473]

@reikken.4961 said:

@Faaris.8013 said:Not every class can become an effective healer, that's true, but we have 4 classes out of 9 that can be set up as dedicated healer.

5, actuallyyou missed scourge

Isn't the Scourge more like an absorb support or am I missing something?

Hmm and to OP. I think the players who like to tank and heal are gonna love this.... not. Healing others is a part of support and there are players who like to heal and part of teamwork is to make sure that making small mistakes wouldn't kill that person who is making a mistake. And there are also certain mechanics that are hitting the players and damaging them and sometimes rng can be an asshole to just one player and give them all the mechanics looking at matthias. What should that guy do then? Just die? or like it is now trusting your healer to not let you die?

You'd need to rework quite a lot of boss mechanics if you are removing healers from the game, and it would piss quite a few people off.

[reikken.4961]

@Walhalla.5473 said:

@"reikken.4961" said:5, actuallyyou missed scourge

Isn't the Scourge more like an absorb support or am I missing something?

It does both. It has both strong barriers and has like 3x as much access to Transfusion, necro's main ally heal, as necro's other specs. It's also by far the best class in the game at reviving downs.

[Neutra.6857]

Do that and you would need to entirely rework the druid specialization, because while it is not the only healer in game, it is a specialization geared towards healing. Since I like playing the druid I would say hell no. Don't like having druids in game, go with a group that does not have a druid. One of the reasons druids is brought is because in addition to healing we offer buffs. That does not mean others cannot take on the healing roles. I have seen squads bring ele's as healers instead of druids.

[Vulf.3098]

Druid is brought more for their insane utility than their healing. Same thing for chrono tank.Anet has been chipping away from this every major balance patch since PoF. First with chrono losing group distortion along with GotL being reworked so hopefully this trend continues to bring them inline with the other supports in the game.

[Eramonster.2718]

@Vulf.3098 said:Druid is brought more for their insane utility than their healing. Same thing for chrono tank.Anet has been chipping away from this every major balance patch since PoF. First with chrono losing group distortion along with GotL being reworked so hopefully this trend continues to bring them inline with the other supports in the game.

What's said. As for holy trinity, there's a 'tank role' used in a way to control raid bosses movements, otherwise the bosses are allowed to go on random rampage that will make beating the encounter relying more to RNG. As for healers, the reply Anet given is tricky. Even if it's possible to beat the encounters without supportive healing, it will require the players to perform the task with 0 margin of error(perfectly dodging & evading attack etc), a single mistake will be punished with a death sentence & hampers everyone.

There are only a few classes that can share their heal to others efficiently atm and as you know, druid is among one. It's preferable to have a ranger to provide their unique boons from spirits (diversity in raid?). Sadly, rangers are not offering any boons nor note worthy dps. This is before and altho soulbeast is viable now, a dps role can easily be filled with any 9 classes w specialization out there. Druid offers the same amt of dps(if not lower) than a ranger, therefore players decided to optimize/meta them into supportive healing role to fit into a team. In a way, there is no dedicated healer like in other mmo, where by a healers role is just on healing, just players chosed to optimize druid healing to offer support and sustain. Eg. Altho high end fractals can be done without support, it's alot easier having some one to offer help in someway when one messed up.

Healing stat is in game since the begining, just totally ignored all this while since there's nothing posing a threat to justify the need. Stack and take everything head on knowing they can't kill you or further dumb it down by overwhelming it with numbers. Altho it will make the game much more challenging by removing it, I don't think it's everyones interest to make encounters unforgivable?

[Feanor.2358]

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Hi all.

It's always confused me that a game that claims to not have a holy trinity combat system has effectively given us a dedicated tank (chrono) and a dedicated healer (druid) whether intentionally or not. To quote Jon Peters from Anet: “Our professions aren’t dedicated healers, DPS, or tanks because frankly, we built a combat system that just doesn’t allow it.”

Odd, because Druids in particular are effectively dedicated healers. Yes they do damage but the damage they do is so insignificant that it's not even worth mentioning. So now I think to myself, what would happen if you took out third party heals from the game completely. You would still have your personal healing skills, but you couldn't heal someone else in your party. Would anyone be in favour of this, and if so, what do you think we could give support specs instead of aoe healing spells?

Nah, it would eliminate part of the teamplay. The ability to specialize, to have different roles in combat, is part of what makes party play in PvE fun.

@"STIHL.2489" said:I think not being able to help other players is stupid.

There are more ways to support someone than just healing them. Enchantments are a nice alternative to healing, where you can either add an effect to an individual player's attacks, or add an effect to an enemy when they get hit by your allies. For example, how much a spell that causes your targetted ally's next weapon skill to stun the target. Or how about a spell that causes your targetted ally's next weapon skill to act as a blast finisher. Spells like these would allow support players to still support their teammates, but would also require their teammates to do their job properly, plus if the spells were targetted abilities there wouldn't be such a need to stack up in 1 area. The group could spread out and still gain the benefits of the buffs.

Yes, there are more ways, and the game has these in the form of boons and combos. However, if you remove the healing aspect, you're removing one such way, thus making the teamplay less diverse and less fun. Not to mention you'll be homogenizing part of the combat for every player because you'll be forcing them to look after their own hp bars. This feels like you're playing along, not like you're playing together. Which, again, is less fun.

"No holy trinity" makes for a good slogan, but if you want a good, exciting and fun combat your game should actually support the trinity. Mind you, you can play GW2 without it. Low-tier fractals and dungeons are often played like that. And it's fine for casual players. But the players who spent more time in the game generally want more depth in the combat, and supporting specialized combat roles is the way to give that.

[Henry.5713]

Wouldn't this idea do nothing but change the supposedly present trinity into Tank/Support/DPS without actually removing the trinity itself?People already mentioned the fact that the druids are brought for their support over their actual healing which means they would still be present. Healing usually does less to remove the need to dodge than support through blocks or boons does. The only logical step would be to remove any support by dumbing it down to personal buffs or at least completely streamline any support to make everyone equal. Which then in turn would make people stack as many top damage dealers as possible next to one support that has some sort of musthave damage buff you really need.So, basically the way it was back when people started to realize how easy it is to just burst through anything that gets in your way during the old dungeon days. Going back to this from what we currently have would be such a let down to me.

[Wandering Mist.2973]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Hi all.

It's always confused me that a game that claims to not have a holy trinity combat system has effectively given us a dedicated tank (chrono) and a dedicated healer (druid) whether intentionally or not. To quote Jon Peters from Anet: “Our professions aren’t dedicated healers, DPS, or tanks because frankly, we built a combat system that just doesn’t allow it.”

Odd, because Druids in particular are effectively dedicated healers. Yes they do damage but the damage they do is so insignificant that it's not even worth mentioning. So now I think to myself, what would happen if you took out third party heals from the game completely. You would still have your personal healing skills, but you couldn't heal someone else in your party. Would anyone be in favour of this, and if so, what do you think we could give support specs instead of aoe healing spells?

Nah, it would eliminate part of the teamplay. The ability to specialize, to have different roles in combat, is part of what makes party play in PvE fun.

@"STIHL.2489" said:I think not being able to help other players is stupid.

There are more ways to support someone than just healing them. Enchantments are a nice alternative to healing, where you can either add an effect to an individual player's attacks, or add an effect to an enemy when they get hit by your allies. For example, how much a spell that causes your targetted ally's next weapon skill to stun the target. Or how about a spell that causes your targetted ally's next weapon skill to act as a blast finisher. Spells like these would allow support players to still support their teammates, but would also require their teammates to do their job properly, plus if the spells were targetted abilities there wouldn't be such a need to stack up in 1 area. The group could spread out and still gain the benefits of the buffs.

Yes, there are more ways, and the game has these in the form of boons and combos. However, if you

remove

the healing aspect, you're

removing

one such way, thus making the teamplay less diverse and less fun. Not to mention you'll be homogenizing part of the combat for every player because you'll be forcing them to look after their own hp bars. This feels like you're playing along, not like you're playing together. Which, again, is less fun.

"No holy trinity" makes for a good slogan, but if you want a good, exciting and fun combat your game should actually support the trinity. Mind you, you

can

play GW2 without it. Low-tier fractals and dungeons are often played like that. And it's fine for casual players. But the players who spent more time in the game generally want more depth in the combat, and supporting specialized combat roles is the way to give that.

I should probably point out that I am perfectly fine with a holy trinity combat system, but GW2 doesn't have that. Instead it currently has a cross between a holy trinity and a free-form combat system that just makes things very messy. It seems to me that Anet were torn between implementing a holy trinity and keeping to the "core values" of the game regarding the class system when it came to putting raids into the game. As such the "tanks" are missing active mitigation skills and aggro skills that are the keys to the role, and the healers are missing single-target heals, all of which are staples in a holy trinity system. Because of this, everyone (including tanks and healers) more or less just follows a skills rotation with very little thought to what is actually going on. The healers don't have to make many decisions based on what is happening or who is taking damage since everyone is stacked up all the time, so they just spam aoe heals all the time. And if the group takes more damage than normal they put out a stronger aoe heal. If a single person in the raid group takes more damage than everyone else, it doesn't affect what the healers do. They don't have single-target heals so they just do exactly the same thing with no need to react to what is going on. I hate to use the term "dumbing down" but that's exactly what it feels like to me. The other issue is that healers aren't restricted much on what skills they can use. cooldowns are relatively low even for the most powerful abilities, and there are no resource costs to worry about, so healers can pretty much just spam their abilities and keep spamming throughout the entire fight. All in all, to me, it makes for pretty monotonous gameplay.

Tanks have similar issues because most damage mitigation in the game is passive in the form of the protection boon (which is usually active all the time in raids), armour stats and traits. The only active forms of damage mitigation are dodge rolls and Aegis, but the aoe healing in this game is so strong that most people don't bother with those, preferring to just take the hits and heal through them. Then of course we get aggro management, which is another big part of being a tank. In GW2 there is no aggro management since boss aggro is either completely random or dependant on whoever has the most toughness. So if you plan on tanking, all you need to do is make sure you have more toughness in your gear than anyone else. Completely passive gameplay that adds nothing to the role.

One of the reasons why I loved tanking and healing in other mmorpgs was because I loved having to think on your feet and adapt to the situation, rather than just doing the same spell rotation over and over with very little change based on what is going on. But in this game, the healers and "tanks" do pretty much the same as the dps players. My aim with taking away healing is to give people the opportunity to react more to boss fights and have them think on their feet a bit more when it comes to their skill use instead of just spamming their abilities with no real thought behind it.

[maddoctor.2738]

Your argument and your proposal fail because Druid is not the only healer in the game and is not even the best HEALER in the game.

Hint: players aren't taking Druids because of their healing.

[Feanor.2358]

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Hi all.

It's always confused me that a game that claims to not have a holy trinity combat system has effectively given us a dedicated tank (chrono) and a dedicated healer (druid) whether intentionally or not. To quote Jon Peters from Anet: “Our professions aren’t dedicated healers, DPS, or tanks because frankly, we built a combat system that just doesn’t allow it.”

Odd, because Druids in particular are effectively dedicated healers. Yes they do damage but the damage they do is so insignificant that it's not even worth mentioning. So now I think to myself, what would happen if you took out third party heals from the game completely. You would still have your personal healing skills, but you couldn't heal someone else in your party. Would anyone be in favour of this, and if so, what do you think we could give support specs instead of aoe healing spells?

Nah, it would eliminate part of the teamplay. The ability to specialize, to have different roles in combat, is part of what makes party play in PvE fun.

@"STIHL.2489" said:I think not being able to help other players is stupid.

There are more ways to support someone than just healing them. Enchantments are a nice alternative to healing, where you can either add an effect to an individual player's attacks, or add an effect to an enemy when they get hit by your allies. For example, how much a spell that causes your targetted ally's next weapon skill to stun the target. Or how about a spell that causes your targetted ally's next weapon skill to act as a blast finisher. Spells like these would allow support players to still support their teammates, but would also require their teammates to do their job properly, plus if the spells were targetted abilities there wouldn't be such a need to stack up in 1 area. The group could spread out and still gain the benefits of the buffs.

Yes, there are more ways, and the game has these in the form of boons and combos. However, if you

remove

the healing aspect, you're

removing

one such way, thus making the teamplay less diverse and less fun. Not to mention you'll be homogenizing part of the combat for every player because you'll be forcing them to look after their own hp bars. This feels like you're playing along, not like you're playing together. Which, again, is less fun.

"No holy trinity" makes for a good slogan, but if you want a good, exciting and fun combat your game should actually support the trinity. Mind you, you

can

play GW2 without it. Low-tier fractals and dungeons are often played like that. And it's fine for casual players. But the players who spent more time in the game generally want more depth in the combat, and supporting specialized combat roles is the way to give that.

I should probably point out that I am perfectly fine with a holy trinity combat system, but GW2 doesn't have that. Instead it currently has a cross between a holy trinity and a free-form combat system that just makes things very messy. It seems to me that Anet were torn between implementing a holy trinity and keeping to the "core values" of the game regarding the class system when it came to putting raids into the game. As such the "tanks" are missing active mitigation skills and aggro skills that are the keys to the role, and the healers are missing single-target heals, all of which are staples in a holy trinity system. Because of this, everyone (including tanks and healers) more or less just follows a skills rotation with very little thought to what is actually going on. The healers don't have to make many decisions based on what is happening or who is taking damage since everyone is stacked up all the time, so they just spam aoe heals all the time. And if the group takes more damage than normal they put out a stronger aoe heal. If a single person in the raid group takes more damage than everyone else, it doesn't affect what the healers do. They don't have single-target heals so they just do exactly the same thing with no need to react to what is going on. I hate to use the term "dumbing down" but that's exactly what it feels like to me. The other issue is that healers aren't restricted much on what skills they can use. cooldowns are relatively low even for the most powerful abilities, and there are no resource costs to worry about, so healers can pretty much just spam their abilities and keep spamming throughout the entire fight. All in all, to me, it makes for pretty monotonous gameplay.

Tanks have similar issues because most damage mitigation in the game is passive in the form of the protection boon (which is usually active all the time in raids), armour stats and traits. The only active forms of damage mitigation are dodge rolls and Aegis, but the aoe healing in this game is so strong that most people don't bother with those, preferring to just take the hits and heal through them. Then of course we get aggro management, which is another big part of being a tank. In GW2 there is no aggro management since boss aggro is either completely random or dependant on whoever has the most toughness. So if you plan on tanking, all you need to do is make sure you have more toughness in your gear than anyone else. Completely passive gameplay that adds nothing to the role.

One of the reasons why I loved tanking and healing in other mmorpgs was because I loved having to think on your feet and adapt to the situation, rather than just doing the same spell rotation over and over with very little change based on what is going on. But in this game, the healers and "tanks" do pretty much the same as the dps players. My aim with taking away healing is to give people the opportunity to react more to boss fights and have them think on their feet a bit more when it comes to their skill use instead of just spamming their abilities with no real thought behind it.

But then you make them do exactly the same. Boss attacks? Dodge. Boss doesn't attack? Use skills. Low on hp? Use self heal. Been there, done that, in low-tier fractals. I'd much rather have the current meta with actual teamplay, thank you very much.

[Wandering Mist.2973]

@maddoctor.2738 said:Your argument and your proposal fail because Druid is not the only healer in the game and is not even the best HEALER in the game.

Hint: players aren't taking Druids because of their healing.

You're right, they are taken for their might stacking, spotter buff and spirits, but the spirits are used on cooldown (i.e. as part of a rotation) and the might stacking is baked into the healing so as long as you are spamming your healing spells you are also spamming might stacks. Spotter is a completely passive buff that requires no effort from you at all. How many druids actually think about the buffs they are supplying during a raid encounter? I'm willing to bet not too many. Why bother? As long as they are healing constantly and using their abilities on cooldown, they will supply the buffs with no thought at all.

My proposal is to change things so that all players (not just healers) have to think a little more about what they are doing in a fight, rather than mindlessly pressing buttons in a rotation no matter what happens. By replacing aoe healing and aoe boons with single target buffs and enchantments you would force the dps to think more about their positioning and evading, and your supports would have to think more about what skills they use, who they use them on and when. Maybe I'm just going crazy but I think that would be far more interesting than the current system of stack up, spam heals and nuke the boss.

Or just switch to a proper trinity system by giving healers single-target heals, tanks aggro management skills and active damage mitigation.

[Eramonster.2718]

Before we go on further, first I need to ask the reason to "Removing Healing Spells" because.....?

[Wandering Mist.2973]

@"Eramonster.2718" said:Before we go on further, first I need to ask the reason to "Removing Healing Spells" because.....?

Because dedicated healers were not part of the core design of the game. Why give each player a dodge roll and a self-heal if they never have to use it in raids? You might as well take away dodge rolls and self-heals and turn the game into a traditional mmorpg with a full trinity class system. Going half and half on it in my opinion just doesn't work.

[Eramonster.2718]

If that's the case, I would prefer for things to stay the way it is for PvE. I know it's not perfect atm but it is better than reverting to the 'core design'. Back then, although it is said you can become anything, in the end there is only 1 role for everyone and that is DPS. The META/optimal way was to kill things quickly as possible using Berserker's stat. You don't need survival (vit / toughness / heal), there are no other optimal DPS options (condi hardly get a tick before things die). Dungeon's LFG :80 zerker or KICK.

Right now , there different options in PvE. There is no dedicated role, players can still be what they want and NOT just DPS. There is "Tank"(sorta) in raid which it's role is to keep the encounter movement in check to keep the situation controlled. Otherwise, try imagine a hectic situation where by players will be running like headless chickens as the boss pick random targets, kited around while killing it. Healing is working fine as of now, being supportive(band aid's for sticky situations) and I do hope all classes will be able to do the same in the future (especially Thief's supportive presence in Raid) to add more variety. The DPS concept is still around, but with the difference, players have the option to lean towards survival, damage or support with specializations.

A good example how an encounter would become if healing is removed will be Unbound Guardian. Similar to Raid's VG (with a slight difference) but changes the encounter totally. As a final boss for a PvE event, the mechanics are totally ignored, targets player at random (watch the targeted players runs around :lol:), and once you overwhelm it with numbers ( you don't need heals), players are even allowed to be stacked together on red orbs. What I think is instead of removing mechanics (like supportive heals which will limits the game-play), I think its better to expand, improvise and add more variety to play.

[Aplier.7829]

As it's been mentioned several times, there's other options for healers than just druids, the reason people take druids is because of all of the other buffs and utility they bring. But I haven't seen mentioned that there's other options for tanks than just chronos, and the reason people use chrono tanks is that yes, they have decent defensive abilities, but moreso because every group wants the chrono for the alacrity and quickness they bring, and since you already have them as a buff bot doing little damage then you might as well have them filling another role as well. But just about every class has the option to stack toughness and take a defensive build for that tank role if they want to. On top of that there are fights which use mechanics completely separate from toughness to determine who has to "tank", such as Slothasor picking a random tank every 30 seconds, Cairn applying its damaging effects to the farthest 4 people, Samarog fixating after each phase transition.

Additionally, you are capable of killing raid bosses without any dedicated healers or pre-determined tanks, with all 10 players building for a combination of damage and survivability. That's what Anet means when they say that GW2 doesn't inherently have the holy trinity system. In other MMOs, classes are inherently split into pre-determined specialized roles, and you NEED to have a tank-labelled specialization to survive tanking a boss and hold aggro, a healer-labelled specialization to heal the raid through constant unavoidable damage, and dps-labelled specializations in order to kill the boss before a hard enrage timer or before healers run out of resources. In GW2, there are no true specializations, and by way of traits and gear options each class is given a sliding scale between "output" and "utility".

It is the players themselves who push those scales to their extremes, finding classes with the most buffs/healing to put in the "utility" support roles, and finding the ways to push dps classes to the maximum of "output" when their utility isn't needed. The only specific thing that Anet does in direct support of the holy trinity is including mechanics that allow a raid group to control which player a boss is fixated on, which imo is a necessary part of raids. The rest is just a byproduct of Anet supplying classes that increase the overall effectiveness of a group by specializing into support roles, and then video game player's own tendencies to minmax everything for optimal performance.

[Vulf.3098]

@Eramonster.2718 said:

@Vulf.3098 said:Druid is brought more for their insane utility than their healing. Same thing for chrono tank.Anet has been chipping away from this every major balance patch since PoF. First with chrono losing group distortion along with GotL being reworked so hopefully this trend continues to bring them inline with the other supports in the game.

What's said. As for holy trinity, there's a 'tank role' used in a way to control raid bosses movements, otherwise the bosses are allowed to go on random rampage that will make beating the encounter relying more to RNG. As for healers, the reply Anet given is tricky. Even if it's possible to beat the encounters without supportive healing, it will require the players to perform the task with 0 margin of error(perfectly dodging & evading attack etc), a single mistake will be punished with a death sentence & hampers everyone.

There are only a few classes that can share their heal to others efficiently atm and as you know, druid is among one. It's preferable to have a ranger to provide their unique boons from spirits (diversity in raid?). Sadly, rangers are not offering any boons nor note worthy dps. This is before and altho soulbeast is viable now, a dps role can easily be filled with any 9 classes w specialization out there. Druid offers the same amt of dps(if not lower) than a ranger, therefore players decided to optimize/meta them into supportive healing role to fit into a team. In a way, there is no dedicated healer like in other mmo, where by a healers role is just on healing, just players chosed to optimize druid healing to offer support and sustain. Eg. Altho high end fractals can be done without support, it's alot easier having some one to offer help in someway when one messed up.

Healing stat is in game since the begining, just totally ignored all this while since there's nothing posing a threat to justify the need. Stack and take everything head on knowing they can't kill you or further dumb it down by overwhelming it with numbers. Altho it will make the game much more challenging by removing it, I don't think it's everyones interest to make encounters unforgivable?

Like I said druid is not brought for their healing. Actually druid healing is not even the best in the game when you compare it to Ele and Rev. It is their absolutely insane utility they bring that no other support outside of chrono can bring to the group without said support having to rely on another spec completely to fill the holes that druid brings.

Honestly the way raid encounters are designed 3rd party healing is broken down to about two scenarios.1 - Boss does a once per phase AoE bomb (KC) that deals moderate damage but not enough that a dedicated healer like Ventari Renegade is absolutely needed to top the group off because there is enough down time for a non focused heal spec (like druid) can easily deal with.2 - People are constantly messing mechanics up like greens on VG which will eventually one shot people so no amount of healing is going to matter after that point.

There really is nothing in this game I can think of where a dedicated healer is needed in a sense of raw healing. It is all about what utility is brought as a support.

In order to completely replace a chrono in a sub group you need a firebrand and a renegade to work together to bring quickness and alacrity. As for druid you cant really replace if you want their utility without bringing a soulbeast. You can run other supports and tanks but it is not even close to being as efficient as druid/chrono which makes me think Anet knows this which is why Firebrand and Renegade got support buffs while Druid, Warrior, and Chrono got utility nerfs last major balance patch. You only need 1 Warrior per raid comp. It looks like they tried to do something similar to druid but didn't realize how strong CA and Spirits are to where people still stack two druids for the extra utility.

Healing should not be removed from the game and if it was people would just go back to running durable builds like they did when dungeons were popular content pre - HoT which is something I do not want to see in raids because bosses would take forever to kill.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Remeber dps wars 2 the time the only role in game was dps

[CptAurellian.9537]

@Vulf.3098 said:In order to completely replace a chrono in a sub group you need a firebrand and a renegade to work together to bring quickness and alacrity. As for druid you cant really replace if you want their utility without bringing a soulbeast. You can run other supports and tanks but it is not even close to being as efficient as druid/chrono which makes me think Anet knows this which is why Firebrand and Renegade got support buffs while Druid, Warrior, and Chrono got utility nerfs last major balance patch. You only need 1 Warrior per raid comp. It looks like they tried to do something similar to druid but didn't realize how strong CA and Spirits are to where people still stack two druids for the extra utility.I don't think completely replacing chrono and druid needs to be the aim, at least not in the short term. After LN's Sab 5-man, I'd expect FB+Renegade to be a very reasonable choice for the second subsquad, since a single druid covers all relevant support of the class. In the long run, of course I'd like to see every single class/spec being replaceable.

[Azoqu.8917]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Vulf.3098 said:In order to completely replace a chrono in a sub group you need a firebrand

and

a renegade to work together to bring quickness and alacrity. As for druid you cant really replace if you want their utility without bringing a soulbeast. You can run other supports and tanks but it is not even close to being as efficient as druid/chrono which makes me think Anet knows this which is why Firebrand and Renegade got support buffs while Druid, Warrior, and Chrono got utility nerfs last major balance patch. You only need 1 Warrior per raid comp. It looks like they tried to do something similar to druid but didn't realize how strong CA and Spirits are to where people still stack two druids for the extra utility.I don't think completely replacing chrono and druid needs to be the aim, at least not in the short term. After LN's Sab 5-man, I'd expect FB+Renegade to be a very reasonable choice for the second subsquad, since a single druid covers all relevant support of the class. In the long run, of course I'd like to see every single class/spec being replaceable.

Quickfire should just give Alacrity. Then we could interchange Chronos and Firebrands how we please.

[CptAurellian.9537]

@Azoqu.8917 said:Quickfire should just give Alacrity. Then we could interchange Chronos and Firebrands how we please.Certainly that would be an interesting option. Probably the best one for full interchangeability, if other classes mirrored druid and warrior. But it's something I don't see in the near future.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Hi all.

It's always confused me that a game that claims to not have a holy trinity combat system has effectively given us a dedicated tank (chrono) and a dedicated healer (druid) whether intentionally or not. To quote Jon Peters from Anet: “Our professions aren’t dedicated healers, DPS, or tanks because frankly, we built a combat system that just doesn’t allow it.”

Well, that design goal has simply been long abandoned. Like many other things that were to make this game different and better than other MMOs.

Remember, that while the chronotank was likely an accidental effect, druid specialization (as well as the revenant's Ventari's line) was completely 100% intentional. Though you may still claim that quote is still valid: after all, neither ranger, revenant nor elementalist professions are dedicated healers. Druid is, ventari traitline is, and dedicated ele builds are, but those do not a whole profession make.

(what is untrue in that quote is that the combat system now very much allows it)

[Eramonster.2718]

@Vulf.3098 said:

Think that's what I agree on. Preferable to have a Ranger class for their unique boons. Just players optimizing them with Druid specilization to fit into a squad (by having a Druid to fill the supportive role to provide boons will allow us to fill the dmg role with a competative dps class instead of a Ranger's for optimization)

As for the main topic, Healing should not be removed because of the downsides that will happen if it did.

[Wandering Mist.2973]

@Eramonster.2718 said:@Vulf.3098 said:

Think that's what I agree on. Preferable to have a Ranger class for their unique boons. Just players optimizing them with Druid specilization to fit into a squad (by having a Druid to fill the supportive role to provide boons will allow us to fill the dmg role with a competative dps class instead of a Ranger's for optimization)

As for the main topic, Healing should not be removed because of the downsides that will happen if it did.

What (in your opinion) are the downsides of removing healing from the game?

[Wandering Mist.2973]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Hi all.

It's always confused me that a game that claims to not have a holy trinity combat system has effectively given us a dedicated tank (chrono) and a dedicated healer (druid) whether intentionally or not. To quote Jon Peters from Anet: “Our professions aren’t dedicated healers, DPS, or tanks because frankly, we built a combat system that just doesn’t allow it.”

Well, that design goal has simply been long abandoned. Like many other things that were to make this game different and better than other MMOs.

Remember, that while the chronotank was likely an accidental effect, druid specialization (as well as the revenant's Ventari's line) was completely 100% intentional. Though you may still claim that quote is still valid: after all, neither ranger, revenant nor elementalist professions are dedicated healers. Druid is, ventari traitline is, and dedicated ele builds are, but those do not a whole profession make.

(what is untrue in that quote is that the combat system now very much allows it)

Yes I think you are right, although I believe they could have made it work if they tried to stick to it. At this point though it might very well just be easier to convert to a full trinity system and acknowledge the fact that their core ideas for the game didn't work. What's sad though is that GW1 came very close to removing the trinity system and was successful at it, purely by the way AI aggro worked. For those who didn't play it, enemy mobs in GW1 didn't have traditional threat tables, but instead worked on a priority system. They would actively focus healers and casters first if they were in range, which meant that those classes had to be very careful about getting too close, or they would instantly die. Aggro management relied very much on your positioning more than anything else, as there were no true tanks. Frontline players could bodyblock mobs in small corridors but this was rare as most combat areas were open enough that mobs could run around the front line. Since there was no ability to tank the mobs, frontline players had to stack up on cc to prevent the mobs from getting close to their backline dps.

I'm honestly not sure why they didn't transfer this system into GW2, as to me it would have fitted perfectly when combined with the added mobility and self-heals that players have access to, and would fit with the core idea of the no-trinity system.

[Faaris.8013]

@Aplier.7829 said:Additionally, you are capable of killing raid bosses without any dedicated healers or pre-determined tanks, with all 10 players building for a combination of damage and survivability. That's what Anet means when they say that GW2 doesn't inherently have the holy trinity system.

I can sign that statement. Even my thief, squishy as it may appear for most players, can be set up for survival. When I use invigorating precision and food that heals me when I land crits, and switch some gear to valkyrie, I'm a 14k health tank that constantly heals itself and cleanses conditions. And if facetanking is too much, then my pistols will keep me at distance and 2 Unloads fill up my health again should I get hit. And there we go, that's how people play T3 fractals ^^