Wow once again people prefer to jump to conclusions then take a stand point of: hmmm that is different,  I think i will have to try that out in OB/Free trial see how it works out.  Instead people start going from point A straight to Z without bothering with B thru Y.  What I am guessing is that Anets use of Support may very well coincide with what most people consider to be the quote "Healer".  Just cause other classes or all classes can fill support  roles does not imply that all classes will be generic, hybrid basturd classes all playing the same.  Unless you know all the skill lists and how each support class will play to ASSUME that all the classes are gonna be carbon copies of each other playing the same, doing everything the same is a huge assumption.  That would be like saying all tanks play the same in all games, all DPS play the same in all games and all healers play the same in all games.  No one except those that have played the game know how any of this works or plays etc.  To be honest people are letting wording effect how they perceive this system.  Until you try it out yourself, to claim anything one way or the other is speculation at best.   But to just say " I will not try this game because i can't be a WoW healer", is nothing more being shortsighted and bit childish to not at least try it for free, then decide that is not right for you.  We all cry and clamour for someone to try something new .  Then when they do you have all these people whining, crying, and complaining how it sucks before they even try it.  Goes to show  you can't please people, and you really can't please the MMO community these days.

DOnt cry my friend! Rift will put a smile on ur face

Originally posted by colddog04

Originally posted by Hepisodic

Originally posted by colddog04

Originally posted by arenasb

There will be lots of supportive skills. I'm not sure why people get the impression that just because there won't be a dedicated healer, that there won't be support at all. You'll be able to make and tailor your character to a mostly supportive role if you choose, it just won't be purely healing. However, if you are still stuck on having rigid role definitions then perhaps this game isn't for you.

Actually, I get the impression that they are spinning that there wont be a dedicated healer. In the end, I expect that people will build characters to be dedicated healers and that groups will search hard for these players.

 

Because of how the game is supposed to be, as far as I know, this will be impossible because the encounters aren't ment for someone just to hang back and heal the whole time and not do any dps. I am sure there will be counter measures like healer aggro and if some, say just hangs back and does nothing be heal, he would be the first killed. 

 

The mechanics are ment for everyone to split the work evenly. Everyone has to pay attention and everyone has to multi-task. That's why this game won't be holding your hand saying: "hey, it's ok you don't have to do extra work, you can just do one thing."

If what you say is true, then I will likely not find the class system interesting. Which is sad because I have extremely high hopes for this game.

 

It's not that I want to be relegated to one role. It's that I want to customize my character to be what I want it to be and not have to worry about the same things using every class.

Again.... have to wait and see. :) lol

I must admit it is very funny how long this thread is. I say this because, you have millions of threads that people start that complain about everything not being different from WoW, and when someone (Anet) decides to do something different, it gets ripped to shreds for "not gunna work" before people even try it..... lol, I can't help but laugh.

Originally posted by Hepisodic

Again.... have to wait and see. :) lol

 

I must admit it is very funny how long this thread is. I say this because, you have millions of threads that people start that complain about everything not being different from WoW, and when someone (Anet) decides to do something different, it gets ripped to shreds for "not gunna work" before people even try it..... lol, I can't help but laugh.

I know right. All the time people complain about MMOs, calling most of them WoW clones for having the whole Holy Trinity dynamic. And a developer like ANet decides to shake things up by not making another WoW clone, people still bitch and whine about it. I guess you just can't please everyone.

At least there are plenty of WoW clones out there, for anyone who doesn't like the lack of the Holy Trinity.

Again, people have the holy trinity so ingrained into their head that they can't conceive of another way.

Originally posted by Master10K

Originally posted by Hepisodic

Again.... have to wait and see. :) lol

 

I must admit it is very funny how long this thread is. I say this because, you have millions of threads that people start that complain about everything not being different from WoW, and when someone (Anet) decides to do something different, it gets ripped to shreds for "not gunna work" before people even try it..... lol, I can't help but laugh.

I know right. All the time people complain about MMOs, calling most of them WoW clones for having the whole Holy Trinity dynamic. And a developer like ANet decides to shake things up by not making another WoW clone, people still bitch and whine about it. I guess you just can't please everyone.

At least there are plenty of WoW clones out there, for anyone who doesn't like the lack of the Holy Trinity.

It's not about WoW or whatever. It's about, "Is this system going to be interesting and rewarding?" 

So far it looks bland. Maybe it'll be fun. Only time will tell.

What do you mean by it looks bland. Performing one role all of the time would seem a lot more dull than being able to peform mutliple roles depending on the situation.

No modern MMORPG has a "pure" healer class. Every healing class has skills that allow them to kill mobs so they have some level of solo ability (greater or lesser by MMO). The "pure" healer concept is based on end-game raising in some games where some players do nothing but stare at heal bars and "save the day" through heals/cures/buffs/etc.

The support roles in GW2 will allow for some of this while also allowing a more involved gameplay experience. That's a win/win for me personally.

Originally posted by colddog04

Actually, I get the impression that they are spinning that there wont be a dedicated healer. In the end, I expect that people will build characters to be dedicated healers and that groups will search hard for these players.

If you're familiar with GW team combat mechanics when reading the information the dev statements, then you know the variety that can be possible in group setups. They've spread out the healing skills so that there isn't one dedicated healer class. Besides that, GW already showed that healing was just one viable group option, of the damage recovery kind, but there's also other kinds like damage protection and damage deflection that were totally viable and effective replacement builds.

In fact, GW was a great example of all kinds of different non-trinity team setups that were very effective, so that makes their talk about trying out different things with GW2's team possibilities not that hard to believe: it was already possible in GW, next to the more traditional team setups.

About GW2, a dev had commented already how he managed in his play runs to cope with a dungeon effectively with a full-elementalist team. I think the best way to describe GW2's team combat as far as we know for now, is that there'll still be all kinds of roles to fulfill in GW2, and that each class can switch versatile between different roles, but that you're not bound to traditional team setups; the mechanic that everyone has heal skills, that there's no traditional dedicated healer class and is forced to take along a heal skill and that everyone can revive anyone pretty much encourages non-tradition.

The PC Gamer hands on preview has a nice piece about it:

'The traditional model for grouping in MMOs relies on three roles for players to fill: healer, tank, and DPS (damage dealers). Players design their characters to fulfill one of these roles and rarely deviate from it while in a group. If you’re the healer, for example, you wouldn’t expect to stop healing until the dungeon is cleared. This model has been in place since the birth of grouping in MMOs, and very few games have seen success when they attempt to break away from it. Would ArenaNet dare desecrate this holy trinity—the most sacred relic of MMO-land? You bet your Charr they would.

Now, before defenders of the status quo begin screaming blasphemy and rioting in the streets, let me reassure you—ArenaNet isn’t on a crusade to destroy the healer-tank-DPS tradition entirely. Instead, it intends to transform it into something even more accessible and enjoyable. As Lead Game Designer Eric Flannum explains it, “We don’t want players to take on strict roles, but there are still roles that need to be fulfilled in combat… Every character is versatile, so it’s up to you to recognize what other players are doing, what the situation is, and react to it.” The developers still want players to tank enemies, restore health to their friends and tear through enemy flesh like tissue paper as they always have in MMOs. The big change is that they want each player to do all of those things, as the situation warrants.

Flannum describes his vision for the game’s combat as “controlled chaos fun,” adding that “in MMOs, combat gets really fun when things go wrong. When the tank goes down and you have to yell at the off-tank to grab the boss’s attention—that’s when things get exciting. Our combat makes that the constant state of things, so you’re always in an exciting situation… but we try to over-communicate visually what’s happening around you, so you always know what’s going on and it’s not just mass chaos.” It sounds good to us, but can they pull it off effectively?

I got to experience this “controlled chaos” firsthand during my playtime at ArenaNet’s HQ near Seattle, Washington. I was an Elementalist teamed up with an assortment of the four available classes as my allies. We ventured into a dark, foreboding swamp to take on The Shadow Behemoth, and let me assure you, the 12 story-tall demon certainly lived up to its name. Its health was split between its head and two massive, shadowy hands capable of rocking the earth beneath us, knocking us down.

We knew this boss would take coordination, and although none of us had chosen to be a “tank” or “healer” when making our character, it didn’t take long for the familiar shouts of “OK, I’ll tank him” and “I’ve got your back; I’ll heal you!” were shouted across the room as the warriors pulled out shields and the Elementalists switched to their water attunement, granting them healing abilities.

But I’m not the healing type, so I stuck with my dual-dagger fire setup which gave me powerful AoE skills. I had a ton of fun swapping between my attunements to fill different roles: I’d jump to my water attunement to freeze a lesser demon harassing our healers, then throw down a firewall in front of our Rangers so that their arrows caught fire en route to the boss (player abilities can combine together in hundreds of different, logical ways to produce new, unique effects), and blasted the boss’s face with a few fireballs of my own whenever I had some spare time.

It was going well—and then our healer died. In almost any other MMO, this would be a wipe; we’d all be dead. But we’re not so helpless in GW2. Our fallen healer is still casting spells at nearby enemies, Left 4 Dead-style.

Her Grasping Earth spell attacks and slows a nearby enemy. If she can kill someone within 30 seconds, she’ll pop back up to her feet and keep fighting (the time limit is drastically reduced if she’s downed repeatedly or continues to take damage).

We all pitch in to help our healer kill the nearby swamp demon and she’s revived; but now the tank has fallen. No worries—I pop Mist Form, which makes me temporarily invulnerable, sprint to the tank and revive him. He jumps to his feet, the healer caps off his health, and we’re back in business.

In GW2, anyone is able to revive another player as an innate interaction (“We wanted lots of opportunity for things to not only go wrong, but for players to reverse what went wrong,” explains Flannum), which led to some pretty miraculous daisy-chaining of resurrections that brought our team back from the brink of disaster to finally defeating the giant swamp boss after 10 minutes of intense, fast-paced action that kept us thinking on our toes the entire time.'

I just need to get my hands on the game. I'm definitely buying it. I am not excited by what I read there. Maybe it'll be more fun in practice than what I am thinking of.

Originally posted by colddog04

I just need to get my hands on the game. I'm definitely buying it. I am not excited by what I read there. Maybe it'll be more fun in practice than what I am thinking of.

 That's usually the case with games. I can't think of one game where I got really excited by watching others play. Although I will say I thought the Shatterer entrance was the coolest boss entrance I've seen in a game (by just watching).

Originally posted by Hepisodic

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by Ramonski7

I was also the designated healer for my raiding days in WoW and for my group of homies that played mmos with me. But I can honestly say that it got boring for me. Being a healer mean being more observant and sitting in the background watching bars. I for one have found more joy from being part of the action. I welcome GW2 and their no healer policy. I cannot wait to dive in.

That seems to be the route that SWTOR is taking as well.  I guess it's just a matter of "wait and see" as to how fun the support classes are without the full time healing factor.  I can't for the life of me see the appeal in hiding in the back and staring at bars, but I'm sure glad it appeals to some people!  :)

Well... not gunna lie, it appealed to me just fine. Matter of fact I loved it when I was in WoW. It felt like you were god. Especially if you were really good, you would have everyone's life's in your hands and some of the best feelings in my life still come from those TBC raids that just before we would be about to down a boss, we would start to wipe, all the healers started to die and I along with my usual druid buddy would be the last 2 healers in the raid fighting to keep everyone and ourselves alive.....

 

Was good times.... good times.

 

But anyway, I'm all for this new style Anet is bring us. I can't wait to play it and enjoy the difficulty the mechanics brings to us.

Agreed.  I loved my Monk in GW and my Priest in WoW.  There's definitely an ego factor involved in healing because your actions affect the success or failure of a run in a very immediate way, that few other classes (arguably perhaps a WoW tank) can match.  It is a little dull though because 90% of the time you just get into position and start focusing on healing bars.  But you're absolutely the center of attention.  Everybody drops everything to come to your aid when you get in trouble and nothing happens without your participtation.  Most of the time, you're the star of the show ... at least that's how it can feel.

That being said, I'm looking forward to saying goodbye to the holy trinity.  I'd prefer people to stand out for their actions on the battlefield when measured against their equals, rather than one person being more important than another based soley on their class/profession.

Healing was a nice head trip, but I doubt it will hold a candle to what GW2 has in store (fingers crossed).

Originally posted by mmonooblet

Originally posted by arenasb

I think those people who like nothing else but healing probably won't enjoy the game. However, if you enjoy other supportive activities I'm sure there is a role for you. Think of it as having more group synergy instead of having one or two group members being drastically more important then the others.

This is why i loved my Pally in Vanilla WoW... you couldn't main heal... you couldn't main tank... but you were still useful as hell to have in a group.  You backed up the tank, you stepped in to help when the main healer was falling behind... you boost everyone in the group, and you're there to save the day.  A support class designed correctly can be amazingly satisfying.

It's ashame the WoW population couldn't grasp this concept. The current version of WoW is designed for simple minded people who don't understand what a hybrid truley is.

I'm guessing the new soldier class will be a pseudo-healing class. Just minor support, I'm speculating.

I freaked myself when they said no "dedicated" healer, but looking at their stand on this genre in general I'm hopeful there still will be good support classes.

That said I would very much like them to hurry up and announce said class to allay my fears because all I'm seeing so far is DPSers...

Originally posted by NeoVeni

I freaked myself when they said no "dedicated" healer, but looking at their stand on this genre in general I'm hopeful there still will be good support classes.

That said I would very much like them to hurry up and announce said class to allay my fears because all I'm seeing so far is DPSers...

The necro actually have some support potential and so does earth ele.

It happened actually that we used necro as a healer in GW, the wells are very useful support.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by NeoVeni

I freaked myself when they said no "dedicated" healer, but looking at their stand on this genre in general I'm hopeful there still will be good support classes.

That said I would very much like them to hurry up and announce said class to allay my fears because all I'm seeing so far is DPSers...

The necro actually have some support potential and so does earth ele.

It happened actually that we used necro as a healer in GW, the wells are very useful support.

The Ritualist was also a support character in GW, and as we have already seen, many of the rit skills have become part of the GW2 necromancer.

Also, as Loke said, the ele is also great support: the earth attune provides survival buffs while the water attune provides heals; ANet has also mentioned on occasion of "being able to surround an ally with an orb of air to prevent enemy projectiles," so the air attunement my provide damage negation as well.

I've played many different healing classes over the last few years and I'm actually looking forward to the ability to hybridize my two favorite class types together.  I always said that if I could have made a resto warlock I would have loved it.  This style of combat sounds very cool.  Obviously, we'll have to wait to see it before truly passing judgement, but I am excited to have more different choices on one character, without delving into the "everyone can do everything" mode.  Of course, the real issue isn't if all classes can damage, heal, tank, etc, so long as they do them is drastically different ways.

Originally posted by Murashu

Originally posted by Volkon

Separate Tank/healer/dps = scripted combat. Execute the script or fail.

All can damage/control/support = active, changing combat. There are no roles... the situation determines the role you change in to, and that's likely to change a few times during the fight.

Stop thinking that this is the Lich King. Healers go here, tanks there and there, dps over here, when this happens do exactly this or die...

Throw away the script.

Thats kinda what turns me off about the system. Instead of each person having their defined role, everyone is just a DPSer killing the mob as fast as they can then bragging about how much more DPS they did at the end of each fight. I'm sure many will love it, just look at how many people only want to DPS in WoW.

 Instead, you get this: (From the PC Gamer write-up, a worthy read)

'To explain how blurry the lines of class distinction can become during a fight, Flannum tells a story from play testing: “Players are capable of taking care of themselves and filling different roles… For example, there was a time when one of the dungeons when we were play testing it, a couple of the other designers and I were going through and we had a group consisting of two Warriors and a Ranger, and we were going through and we were actually supposed to have five people, but we couldn’t get a group together so we ended up with three. We fought this boss encounter that was a little overbalanced at the time where it was, this is why we test things. But we ended up getting through the boss encounter when groups of five people couldn’t. We did it through really smart use of our abilities. The other two designers were very good players. I’m not going to say I’m a good player–I mostly got through by playing with them. So what we ended up doing was we had this system where I was the human specced as a Warrior to do ranged damage and had a bow and rifle, and the Ranger was speced to do range damage. And we had this one Warrior who would do things like he would get attention of the bad guys, try to kite them by hamstringing them. I would use barrage to cripple them, and then we would basically try to keep their attention, ping-ponging between the three of us, and none of us were obviously support-oriented, but we were able to use all the tools we had at our disposable in order to win the fight… We had to recognize when the Ranger, who was a little bit squishier, had gotten the attention of the boss, and we had to recognize that ‘Ok now the Ranger is going to get his attention, the Ranger might even go down, and it’s up to one of the Warriors to grab his attention away when the Ranger goes down, the other Warrior can go resurrect him.’ What ends up happening is you get these things were you don’t have these really rigid group dynamics where you go into it ‘You are the tank, I am the healer.’ What ends up happening is that the situation changes moment to moment and you have to react to how the situation is changing, and we hopefully give every player a bunch of tools in their toolbox to react to different situations.'

That article addresses my main concern with the system. 3 DPS characters can complete 5 man content without any support or healer roles. So why would anyone want to bring a support class if you can just get 5 DPS to plow thru content?