Whenever I hop onto a internet forum that isn't guildwarsguru and look at some topics about Guild Wars 2, I see a lot of misinformed judgements crop up in discussion. I've lived on the internet for quite a while so I'm usually impervious to this illness known as "I must let other people know of my opinion on the internet" syndrome. However, the sun must have come up on the wrong side of the earth today because I really do feel the need to try and explain this to people who are still a little confused.
Now I've played a lot of MMOs. And when I say a lot, I mean a LOT. From the big daddies like WoW, to the lesser ones like Rift, Warhammer, EVE, Guild Wars, to the trolltastic ones like Maplestory, Runescape and Mabinogi, to the "good" ones like Ace Online, Shadow Bane, to the little indie ones like Tibia. So I have a pretty good grounding when I say that the Holy Trinity is something that exists in ALL of MMOs. Every single group PvE (and PvP) aspect of any MMO will revolve around some type of tanking, dps and healing. WoW wasn't the first MMO to introduce this concept, but it certainly did popularize it immensely. And it works because of two things. One, it maximises efficiency; taking damage, dishing out damage and healing are 3 core fundamental aspects of combat, and it makes sense for classes to specialize in order to perform to maximum efficiency in group combat. Two, it forced players to work together in a online environment, and gave players clear defined roles for what they were meant to be doing.
So when Arenanet boldly stated that Guild Wars 2 was going to do away with dedicated healing classes, a lot of people raised their eyebrows, saying things like "MMOs without healers simply wouldn't work" or "non-holy trinity combat would fall apart" or "what about all the players that like to play support?" Concerns which are very reasonable, but ultimately misinformed and unfounded.
When people say that they enjoy playing a healer, no one actually meant that they enjoy the physical act of HEALING. Because nobody likes healing. Healing consists of looking at a set of health bars, clicking one when it got too low and pressing the appropriate heal button. You can only so much fun out of playing whack-a-mole. What people actually mean is that they enjoying being able to support their friends or party and help accomplish a task indirectly, whether it's killing a boss or completing a quest. This idea of 'support' is still very much present in GuildWars 2. It's just become much more flexible because of the removal of the dedicated support/healer class and the breakdown of the original holy trinity.
That isn't to say that there isn't a trinity at all. GW2 has it's own "holy trinity" of Damage/Control/Support which is actually very similar to the original. The innovation that GW2 is bringing (or rather removing), is the idea of no dedicated classes. Every class can fill every role equally well.
Example. For a very basic WoW dungeon, this is generally the 5 man setup you want to have:
1. Tank
2. DPS
3. DPS
4. DPS
5. Healer
Now take that same 5 man party and put them into Guild Wars 2:
1. Damage/Control/Support
2. Damage/Control/Support
3. Damage/Control/Support
4. Damage/Control/Support
5. Damage/Control/Support
A party of 4 warriors and 1 elementalist can complete any task just as well as a party of 3 rogues, 2 engineers and a ranger. A warrior can come forward and "control" by equipping a shield and taking a defensive posture. That same warrior can also give "support" by placing down banners to buff everyone's defense and regeneration. That same warrior could take out his greatsword for some instant spike damage. What about an elementalist? Well, an elementalist can switch to water attunement for a passive regeneration aura, while still having access to some nice AOE ice spells. He could switch to an earth attunement, gaining a massive defense boost to absorb some big hits, as well as stunning the enemy with some earth spells. If he just wanted to roast away the enemy, he would switch fire attunement for some nice damage. Thieves can't tank? Well, they can blind and cripple the enemy so that they can't get hit, hop in and out of invisibility, dodging skills and buying time for the rest of the party to get back up to full strength.
All that this does is remove the need for specialized classes. How many of you have struggled at the character creation screen because you didn't know what sort of role you wanted to play for the rest of the FREAKING game? Well now you don't HAVE to be a paladin to tank. Now you don't HAVE to be a spellcaster to do DPS.
Now I want to touch on the second point, which is the inclusion of self heals for ALL professions in place of a dedicated healing class. I play the original Guild Wars and whenever I PvP there's always this amusing situation that crops up where our team's DPS can't outdmg the other team's Monks and battles would be 10s of minutes of two health bars moving back and forth until eventually one of them reaches 0. GW2's self heals are designed to recover large amounts of health, but come with appropriate cooldowns such that you can never out heal constant damage. In a sense, there is no "tanking" in GW2 because of this. I say "tanking" in a very genre specific sense of one player with the highest def and hp drawing all the aggro while all the healers concentrate their heals on that player. You can't have that kind of "tanking" because 1. you don't have dedicated healers and 2. you can't out heal damage. "How on earth can you kill bosses if you don't have that kind of tanking then?" I hear thousands cry. Well, as the game hasn't been released yet, so my knowledge is limited, but based on demos and previews it would go something like this.
A party of a warrior, elementalist and thief encounter a boss. Warrior goes in with a shield and sword and inflicts bleeding while elementalist unleashes some lightning spells and thief unloads from dual pistols. Warrior continues hack and slash, but after taking a few hits is low on hit points. He backs off and uses a self heal which grants regeneration and adrenaline. Meanwhile, thief draws the monsters attention with a dagger slash then heals away the damage by dodging. Elementalist switches to water attunement, granting Warrior a passive regen aura while raining down an ice meteor on the boss. Thief recovers all his initiative and unloads twice onto the boss with dual pistols while the elementalist switches again to earth attunement and walks forward to take a few hits. Warrior comes again with shield and sword to repeat the process.
This idea of constantly switching roles on the fly means that in a party, there will no person who is designated as THE TANK, but at any point in battle, due to how combat mechanics work, there will always be A TANK, who then heals himself when he is no longer tanking, or perhaps moves away from the front lines once all his 'control' abilities are on cooldown, returning once they refresh. Everyone has a self heal spell, so why not let everyone take turns taking some damage to put those spells to use?
Finally, to address the concerns of people who say there is no support class in GW2, allow me to say, rest assured because there is a TON of support in GW2. It just doesn't seem that way because GW2's support isn't the conventional kind where you click an ally, press a spell and raise one of his stats by a %. GW2's support is very active, largely exemplified by the fact that it contains no auto target system. Remember that firewall you used to do damage? Hey! now you can throw one down in front of the ranger to give him a damage bonus to his arrows. Need to defend a small choke against an enemy? Throw down a healing turret for good measure, and like 50 mines. You know, just to be safe. And biggest thing that Arenanet is implementing is the idea that ANYONE of ANY CLASS can revive a "downed" character. This makes anyone, regardless of class a huge support just by being there as a safety net.
TL;DR version: To approach the idea of no dedicated healer and no holy trinity, you have to let go of this idea that XXX class fills YYY role.
Now I've played a lot of MMOs. And when I say a lot, I mean a LOT. From the big daddies like WoW, to the lesser ones like Rift, Warhammer, EVE, Guild Wars, to the trolltastic ones like Maplestory, Runescape and Mabinogi, to the "good" ones like Ace Online, Shadow Bane, to the little indie ones like Tibia. So I have a pretty good grounding when I say that the Holy Trinity is something that exists in ALL of MMOs. Every single group PvE (and PvP) aspect of any MMO will revolve around some type of tanking, dps and healing. WoW wasn't the first MMO to introduce this concept, but it certainly did popularize it immensely. And it works because of two things. One, it maximises efficiency; taking damage, dishing out damage and healing are 3 core fundamental aspects of combat, and it makes sense for classes to specialize in order to perform to maximum efficiency in group combat. Two, it forced players to work together in a online environment, and gave players clear defined roles for what they were meant to be doing.
So when Arenanet boldly stated that Guild Wars 2 was going to do away with dedicated healing classes, a lot of people raised their eyebrows, saying things like "MMOs without healers simply wouldn't work" or "non-holy trinity combat would fall apart" or "what about all the players that like to play support?" Concerns which are very reasonable, but ultimately misinformed and unfounded.
When people say that they enjoy playing a healer, no one actually meant that they enjoy the physical act of HEALING. Because nobody likes healing. Healing consists of looking at a set of health bars, clicking one when it got too low and pressing the appropriate heal button. You can only so much fun out of playing whack-a-mole. What people actually mean is that they enjoying being able to support their friends or party and help accomplish a task indirectly, whether it's killing a boss or completing a quest. This idea of 'support' is still very much present in GuildWars 2. It's just become much more flexible because of the removal of the dedicated support/healer class and the breakdown of the original holy trinity.
That isn't to say that there isn't a trinity at all. GW2 has it's own "holy trinity" of Damage/Control/Support which is actually very similar to the original. The innovation that GW2 is bringing (or rather removing), is the idea of no dedicated classes. Every class can fill every role equally well.
Example. For a very basic WoW dungeon, this is generally the 5 man setup you want to have:
1. Tank
2. DPS
3. DPS
4. DPS
5. Healer
Now take that same 5 man party and put them into Guild Wars 2:
1. Damage/Control/Support
2. Damage/Control/Support
3. Damage/Control/Support
4. Damage/Control/Support
5. Damage/Control/Support
A party of 4 warriors and 1 elementalist can complete any task just as well as a party of 3 rogues, 2 engineers and a ranger. A warrior can come forward and "control" by equipping a shield and taking a defensive posture. That same warrior can also give "support" by placing down banners to buff everyone's defense and regeneration. That same warrior could take out his greatsword for some instant spike damage. What about an elementalist? Well, an elementalist can switch to water attunement for a passive regeneration aura, while still having access to some nice AOE ice spells. He could switch to an earth attunement, gaining a massive defense boost to absorb some big hits, as well as stunning the enemy with some earth spells. If he just wanted to roast away the enemy, he would switch fire attunement for some nice damage. Thieves can't tank? Well, they can blind and cripple the enemy so that they can't get hit, hop in and out of invisibility, dodging skills and buying time for the rest of the party to get back up to full strength.
All that this does is remove the need for specialized classes. How many of you have struggled at the character creation screen because you didn't know what sort of role you wanted to play for the rest of the FREAKING game? Well now you don't HAVE to be a paladin to tank. Now you don't HAVE to be a spellcaster to do DPS.
Now I want to touch on the second point, which is the inclusion of self heals for ALL professions in place of a dedicated healing class. I play the original Guild Wars and whenever I PvP there's always this amusing situation that crops up where our team's DPS can't outdmg the other team's Monks and battles would be 10s of minutes of two health bars moving back and forth until eventually one of them reaches 0. GW2's self heals are designed to recover large amounts of health, but come with appropriate cooldowns such that you can never out heal constant damage. In a sense, there is no "tanking" in GW2 because of this. I say "tanking" in a very genre specific sense of one player with the highest def and hp drawing all the aggro while all the healers concentrate their heals on that player. You can't have that kind of "tanking" because 1. you don't have dedicated healers and 2. you can't out heal damage. "How on earth can you kill bosses if you don't have that kind of tanking then?" I hear thousands cry. Well, as the game hasn't been released yet, so my knowledge is limited, but based on demos and previews it would go something like this.
A party of a warrior, elementalist and thief encounter a boss. Warrior goes in with a shield and sword and inflicts bleeding while elementalist unleashes some lightning spells and thief unloads from dual pistols. Warrior continues hack and slash, but after taking a few hits is low on hit points. He backs off and uses a self heal which grants regeneration and adrenaline. Meanwhile, thief draws the monsters attention with a dagger slash then heals away the damage by dodging. Elementalist switches to water attunement, granting Warrior a passive regen aura while raining down an ice meteor on the boss. Thief recovers all his initiative and unloads twice onto the boss with dual pistols while the elementalist switches again to earth attunement and walks forward to take a few hits. Warrior comes again with shield and sword to repeat the process.
This idea of constantly switching roles on the fly means that in a party, there will no person who is designated as THE TANK, but at any point in battle, due to how combat mechanics work, there will always be A TANK, who then heals himself when he is no longer tanking, or perhaps moves away from the front lines once all his 'control' abilities are on cooldown, returning once they refresh. Everyone has a self heal spell, so why not let everyone take turns taking some damage to put those spells to use?
Finally, to address the concerns of people who say there is no support class in GW2, allow me to say, rest assured because there is a TON of support in GW2. It just doesn't seem that way because GW2's support isn't the conventional kind where you click an ally, press a spell and raise one of his stats by a %. GW2's support is very active, largely exemplified by the fact that it contains no auto target system. Remember that firewall you used to do damage? Hey! now you can throw one down in front of the ranger to give him a damage bonus to his arrows. Need to defend a small choke against an enemy? Throw down a healing turret for good measure, and like 50 mines. You know, just to be safe. And biggest thing that Arenanet is implementing is the idea that ANYONE of ANY CLASS can revive a "downed" character. This makes anyone, regardless of class a huge support just by being there as a safety net.
TL;DR version: To approach the idea of no dedicated healer and no holy trinity, you have to let go of this idea that XXX class fills YYY role.
