Thoughts on where the Guardian fits without a "Holy Trinity"

[GrimShade]

GW had tanking but it was different than other games. I loved tanking in GW because it made me think rather than making me hit a skill to get some stupid things attention. I had to analyze the environment, find choke holds and points where I can body block and control the flow on the enemy. Done well I was balling entire mobs up on my position and the healers didn’t have to do anything but worry about me and the rest of the party just sat back and killed…oh the good old days. This I could accomplish because I took the GW system of agro and controlled it. Tanking was about Agro Management rather than a class, skills and build.

GW2 will have some way for me to do this as well, I think I remember that body blocking doesn’t exist, but I will still find some way to control their movements and keep everyone else around me from getting harassed. The Agro Management from GW is turning into crowd control and area protects for GW2.

I would say the guy wrote the article for the WoW players rather than the GW players. Good move in my opinion, the GW players don’t need any marketing to persuade us to buy GW2, pulling players from the titan to buy GW2 should be the goal.

[Xilisys]

GW2 will have some way for me to do this as well, I think I remember that body blocking doesn’t exist, but I will still find some way to control their movements and keep everyone else around me from getting harassed. The Agro Management from GW is turning into crowd control and area protects for GW2.

I believe aggro/tanking will work in GW2 in a way such that whoever is closest and dealing damage will be the enemy's target. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[raspberry jam]

3) support is support as usual, except buffs are mostly cast on self or on the ground

4) heal / cond removal is also present, except the bulk of healing comes from the self, with many professions acting as healers to reduce team pressure or save someone

That is, the trinity is still there, but in the GW2 world, everyone is a hybrid. Some are more one role than the other two roles (depending on build), but they are usually all three (four) roles to at least some degree.

Well if you mean that everyone will have a couple of AoE buffs that they'll use on recharge to keep the team going, then yeah. But that's like GW1 paragon. I'm not saying paragon isn't fun to play. It's just that it is, well, yeah, stand so that as many people as possible are covered, then spam skills on recharge. Doesn't change the fact that one/two guy/s will be up front making sure that incoming damage is handled somehow, and the rest will hang back and bomb the targets until dead. Sure, that won't be the only form of gameplay, but it wasn't the only form of gameplay in GW1 either.

[Alaris]

I think they moved away from paragon-like support and towards monk/rit support... except that you target the ground instead of others.

I think the support in GW2 will be more tactical (long recharge, so use it well; also affects a place rather than a person, so place it well) and more proactive (more ways to stop damage from happening, fewer ways to redbar up).

[GrimShade]

For GW2 I’d tend to say that depends on class. The Guardian and Warrior seem to be more paragon style where you give a ‘bubble’ around your area or a battle standard which help people in that area. This is like the shouts except we get a somewhat visual signal of where this buff is, very much like ‘never surrender’ or Watch yourself. Elly’s on the other hand can target the ground where they want to spout up a geyser and cast it to that area. Engineers can set up their spirits to heal the area. We just don’t get strait target healing anymore, thankfully. I never liked Monk play, but I love my Paragon.

These type of heals or prots work with the class and what their natural range looks to be. Ellys can heal you while sitting on the back like by putting a guyser under your feet. The Guardian being a heavy class can quite easily run up next to you and put in his protection.

[Alaris]

I did like monk gameplay, but I preferred ritualist. Having prot & heal & party-wides in the same line was fun.

I see bubbles and standards as targeting your location, whereas most casters can target a different location than their own to cast their buff. And instead of casting on an ally in the interface, you cast on his location in the world.

Different implementation of the same thing, really.

[shawn]

GW had tanking but it was different than other games. [...] I had to analyze the environment, find choke holds and points where I can body block and control the flow on the enemy. [...] This I could accomplish because I took the GW system of agro and controlled it. Tanking was about Agro Management rather than a class, skills and build.

That isn't tanking. That's exploiting the moronic AI, and that can be done with any normal warrior, you don't have to specifically spec for it with a bunch of useless defensive skills.

True tanking is where you stock up on armor and defensive skills, charge into a group of enemies, and have a group of 10 of them all stuck to you like glue in melee range, without any concern about them attacking anyone else, and if they do, you can hit them with Avenger's Shield or Righteous Defense and they will immediately drop everything and walk back to you and attack.

So once again:
Guild Wars does not have tanking.

[GrimShade]

That isn't tanking. That's exploiting the moronic AI, and that can be done with any normal warrior, you don't have to specifically spec for it with a bunch of useless defensive skills.

True tanking is where you stock up on armor and defensive skills, charge into a group of enemies, and have a group of 10 of them all stuck to you like glue in melee range, without any concern about them attacking anyone else, and if they do, you can hit them with Avenger's Shield or Righteous Defense and they will immediately drop everything and walk back to you and attack.

So once again:
Guild Wars does not have tanking.

So now I am wondering which is more moronic AI...as no real warrior would do either of those things. Thus there is no such thing as tanking?

So basically it's as I said, agro management.

[Bilbo Baggins]

Ok, maybe it wasn't as easy as other games that have gain/lose aggro skills, but I remember using health buffs and earth skills on my W/E back in the day. I would aggro them all, out of range of the rest of the party, have them all concentrate on me, slowly back up to pull casters closer to each other (all without monk heals). When I had good grouping I'd call in the rest of the group to lay down AoE hell on top of them. I'd call that tanking.

Oh and, yes, that was WAY before they taught mobs to get out of AoE damage.

[Tru Reptile]

Apparently the definition of tanking changes only for GW. As I said, taking hits =/= tanking. Aggro management would imply that you can keep aggro and get it back if you lose it. There's no way of regaining aggro in GW and no, spamming "Save Yourselves!" doesn't turn you into an aggro magnet.