Heh talking out our arses about a game that isn't even live and most or none of us have actually played, certainly not in it's final state. If you read a little about the classes you'll find there are no strong heals in this game either, and every class has (minor) forms of self-healing. So I agree, it's a boon that there are no insta kills for 3v1 or even 5v1, because that would put far too great a reward on simple DPSing people down. Look at DAoC it's all about DPS or reverse-DPS, and debuffs, DoTs, and thus many hybrids play no significant role in even 8v8, much less RvR.

AoC had a very similar position on healing, but they kinda ended up screwing the pooch on DPS and had various insta kill combos early on (not sure about now), and you could still often kill people during the duration of a stun despite the fact that stuns didn't tend to last as long as DAoC stuns.

I don't mind a new approach that avoids both insta death and huge instant heals. I saw mostly HoTs that don't stack or other highly timered forms of healing, and obviously --and I LOVE this part-- no true healer/support classes.

I love hybrids as I find non-hybrids to be boring and too one dimensional, and while some lament that hybrids in other games were too powerful, I will say that for pure classes to be viable they basically have to be OPd in order to coexist with hybrids. So you either should make a full team-work oriented game in which all classes are pure and only have one primary duty that no other class in the game can perform nearly as well, or you need to have a game full of hybrid classes that can do a variety of things.

DAoC tried to mix them both and generally favored keeping hybrids a little gimped in order to make pure classes more viable, so personally I welcome a game that takes a different approach by making pretty much all classes hybrid in some way. (On the "pure" looking classes they just hide their hybrid abilities a little better in order to appease the purists. ;-) )

 

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All I am reporting is what I am seeing in all the PvP videos. Watch them. The pvp looks quite boring when it takes so damn long to kill anyone but this looks like a design decision where the emphasis is on the battleground objectives rather than killing the enemy which is fine... but I doesn't sound all that exciting. But I am sure its a different story when you are actually playing.

 

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Not sure what videos you're watching, but I don't interpret the ones I've seen that way at all. Never mind that it's a beta and many things are unknown anyway, but the pace of combat actually seems nice to me. I don't think there is any MMO in which combat doesn't look a little bland to a newbies eyes, and we're all newbies on this one. (And so are probably all the people playing!) All I know is that when I show people DAoC vids they always wonder how on earth I can play such a seemingly boring game, because they can't see the strategy behind it either...only a trained eye knows what makes one video better then another.

If anything, the IMO comfortably slower pace allows for much more strategy and not less! It allows various abilities to actually have an impact, rather then the only meaningful impact being that of raw spike DPS and healing.

In GW2 you can see huge HP pools, but just as I said above you don't see much (repetitive) big healing going on either, so there is plenty of strategy it just takes a bit longer for it to unfold. You see damage ranging from lower double digits all the way up to ~2500 on a critical hit....nice spread if you ask me on HP pools ranging from 16-25k. You'll still glee at a nice crit taking 10-15% off your opponents HPs, but it also makes seemingly low value DoTs have a subtle but very meaningful impact over the course of a fight. In DAoC group battles for example, most DoTs are completely ineffective because healing is so powerful and ample...in GW2 it looks like they work much more effectively as a way of whittling down your opponent, without it just being OPd cheeze where you apply a ranged DoT and perma kite someone to death.

Lastly, the caster-oriented classes seemed to go down pretty fast and had about 40% less HPs then the tanks from the looks of it. So in 3v1 they went down pretty fast actually...not insta gib w/o any chance to even have made a meaningful impact in the fight mind you (as is pretty common in DAoC), but still fast enough for it to be a fundamentally different experience from playing a tank.

I dunno, to each his own, but I wouldn't discount the GW2 PvP so quickly without having played it myself extensively.

 

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i like the fact that there are no major heals so you will generally see the targets health bar going down and not bouncing up and down. I always hated fighting someone then, just when i almost had them they got 2 giant heals and were back at full health.


another thing i hated was in (other games) the healers being OP'd 1v1. like watching a defensive tank lose to a healer because he coulnt out damage the heals and the healer picked away at the tank for 5 minute and won.


I think with no major healer, defensive abilitys will be much more apreciated for survival, unlike in daoc where it was spec for max damage and just rely on heals to stay alive.


I can see GW2 fights being very fun where everyone runs in and fights, then when you see a friend get hurt you back off and toss um a heal or support spell then go right back to fighting. I also see alot of people being on teh ground in the Down State so it will be interesting to see how it goes trying to get them back up or keep fighting to finish off teh enemy. I also see being one of the people still standing after a fight bing more of an accomplishment.


I also like the fact that anyone can get you up from the Down State or rez so the winning side will always be able to continue without releasng.

 

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