Remove healing from the game

I suggest that healing (as a primary role) needs to be removed from the game or severely tweaked. Monks (and to a lesser extent Ritualists) are the one class that every 8 player team requires 2 of. The reason for this is healing (and protection, even), is such a powerful force that this makes monks the most powerful profession in all of Guild Wars. This is not readily obvious, because obviously more monks does not mean more pwnage. However, to state that a team can perform well in many situations without 2 monks (or two primary healers) is absurd, which cannot be said of any other class. Warriors are not necessary, as there are ele tanks, mass melee shutdown, protection, etc. Necros are not necessary. Ele are often considered part of the holy trinity, but a glance at the "Why Nuking sucks" article shows otherwise. Mesmers are practically only required to kill hard mode monk bosses. Rangers often get left out of groups already. All of the new classes? Well, only Ritualist can secure a position in a group as easily as a monk.

Many GvG matches are a bore to watch and take a long time to play out. This is because the healing/protection output of two to three people, combined with self heals/protects is enough to negate the damage of an entire team. Monks can undo anything everyone else can do, and can undo this better than the other classes can do it. This puts them in a position of power greater than any other class. The only trick is that their power suffers from diminishing returns. A fourth monk does not make a team more powerful, but sometimes a third monk can make a team practically invincible.

For a more interesting game and not one where a team can use any combination of classes and not absolutely require the 2 monk approach, healing/protection needs to be more in lines with the damage output of existing classes. It might not make much sense to bring a healer if he can only bring a person back from near death once, but sometimes being able to choose which person to keep alive a few moments longer while your opponent does not get to choose can make the difference between a loss and a victory. As it stands, monks are required over any other class, and this should obviously point to imbalance.

This very imbalance was witnessed in HeroVsHero battles before they were changed, as since the objectives supported surviving, using the 2 monk and a ritualist build to make an unkillable team was obviously the way to go. The rest of PvP is similarly stagnant, only in a more subtle way because healers, even though overpowered, still have a point of no additional return when added.

So to reiterate, healing needs to be changed to remove the stagnation from the game and keep things moving.

I think that Mylon's arguments are very strong, 2 monks CAN negate the damage of an entire team. But even so, if u make healing less strong, u get parties with 3+ monk. So even though uve got a solid point, your solution is not very good. I'd buff the damage of other classes a bit or higher the recharges for the monk spells

...no?

Healing is needed, 2 healers can't always negate the damage from a whole team, I've seen, and had, many situations where an experienced monk did not manage to heal someone, just because it went too fast. It's called a spike. Without healing, you know you're dead as soon as you get in a battle. Sure, warriors and elementalists can tank, but in PvE tanking is not effective, and not needed, and in PvP players won't beat up a tank, unless they're really dumb. If that happens, they focus on your monk, he can't heal himself, and he's dead. Over and over again.

Simply put, healing is part of a game. Without it, a game wouldn't be half as fun.

Hi
That's a really bad idea.

Healing, or protecting, or anything else that turns energy into health either reactive or proactive is what makes battles exiting. Imagine for one second a GvG with eight offensive players: The players would all be dead within the 2 minute mark. Now this could be fun for a few hours, maybe even days, but in the end monks (not ritualists, no serious group uses restoration ritualists) give the game so much extra strategic depth that frankly, it would suck without them.

And two monks alone can't keep up a team versus six damage dealers. This might seem so at first glance, but it is not. Of those six characters, the majority probably has a defensive role as well. In the form of a self heal or anything else. Warriors can have a healing signet and Mending Touch, they can use Shock and Bull's Strike on the opposing damage dealers if their team takes too much pressure, rangers have interrupts which can be used to either disrupt their opponent's offense or defense. The same with Mesmer shutdown. Diversion works on warriors too you know? Necromancers are often pure defense with a bit of degen (Price of Failure, Spirit of Failure and Reckless Haste pretty much takes a warrior out of the game), Elememtalist's snares can be used either on their opponent's monks to let your warriors score kills on them, or on their warriors to avoid them scoring kills on your team, much like the warrior's bull's strike. Blinding Flash is pure defense, and a lot of ele's still carry heal party, even without Ether Prodigy. Paragons are obviously defensive as well with shouts like 'Stand Your Ground', Dervishes can attack a warrior, who in turn is unable to use Frenzy (that's pretty much suicide with a Dervish on your neck), reducing his damage output by 50%. Dervishes often carry Disrupting Dagger, which can be used defensively again to disrupt their offense. Sins can do the same as Dervishes, and the most common Rit template carries Vengeful Weapon and Weapon of Remedy and water snares (see: ele).
So, it's not the team's backline keeping the team alive. It's the backline plus the utitlity from all the other players. Utitlity being 'stuff that you can use either defensively or offensively'. In a way a warrior's auto-attacks are utility.

Also, I'd like to bring to your attention that 'why nuking sucks' is severely outdated. It was an illuminating article back when it was posted, truly revolutionary, but a ton of skill nerfs and buffs have defeated it's original message. Matter of fact, if you watched the Celestial Tournament, you could've seen the author of the article, Ensign, playing a fire ele. It's still full of good stuff ('forcing your opponent to use counters is pressure as well') and still worth a read, but the original comparison bewteen warriors and eles is outdated.
Your statement that healing needs to be changed to remove the stagnation of the game and keep it moving is incorrect, because the game isn't that stagnant in the first place, and removing healing would only make it worse. After all, how could removing a huge tactical layer of the game improve it?

Hold on a moment.

This is actually a suggestion that is not as daft as it sounds.

If you removed the Monk from the game what would the game be like? What adjustments in the skills would need to be made (more self heals for each profession)?

It's an interesting thing to consider. It might not be practical, but then it could make the game more fun to play.

The Monk has always been a staple of groups and is considered (by some) a requirement for some areas. What would the game look like if there were no Monks?

IMO I don't think it is even a consideration for GW1, monking is part of the game. However, in GW2?

PS.

I think Monking is probably one of the hardest jobs in the game and requires great skill. A good monk does not make the team unbeatable, but it does make their job easier.

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Don't dismiss things out of hand.

First you argue that one cannot nerf monks, then you continue to argue that one can nerf monks. You just contradicted yourself. Making healing any worse, will just result in more monks on the teams.

Yeah I don't really know what I was thinking either
This idea sounds good at first glance, but it actually isn't.
Self heals work against steady, undirected pressure, such as the pure degen teams you used to have. Their pressure was equally divided accross the entire team, so the damage on one character wasn't particularily high. You could offset it by using, say, healing signet or ether feast. In a situation like that, eight offensive characters with a self heal would work.
Against spike, or any form of focussed pressure (warrior train for instance) this doesn't work anymore. The self heal would either have to be really, really strong (lkind of like taste of death, but without the huge drawback), or they don't work. Really strong self heals on all characters will force you to focus all your damage on one enemy, either in the form of a spike or a train, in order to score kills at all. Forcing people to adopt one strategy is not good for the game. If you make the self heals weaker, people would be dying all over the place without a chance of survival. Those are two situations you do not want.
The way to escape single-target pressure is to give characters the ability to heal others, not just themselves. Now you could give all characters ways to heal others, but in the end that would just lead to having a few characters taking all of those heals, and the rest focussing on damage, for two reasons. a)multi-tasking is quite hard to do in Guild Wars. Try running infuse on a warrior for instance. You're not going to catch many spikes. b) It would be more effective, because you could run a tighter attribute split.

If that's going to happen, what did we remove monks for in the first place?
dammit I'm doing it again

Right folks, try to give a valid argument of why you think this suggestion is good or bad instead of just flaming the OP. This is a discussion forum. Thanks.

Had to delete quite a few posts.

-Anarion

Truly a revolutionary idea! But as much as I like a good shake, there should be room for common sense also.

For better or worse, healing skills are useful to everyone. It's just the way the game is. Improving a game is not the same as nerfing entire core concepts.

Question yourself if the game needs such a drastic 'solution' or if other professions could have better 'tools' to counter monks?

Maybe you should be focusing your creative energies in thinking about skills or ways to make monks less overpowering - which is true to a certain degree -; to remove healing skills or nerf them to the point of uselessness is IMO the wrong approach.

Many GvG matches are a bore to watch and take a long time to play out. This is because the healing/protection output of two to three people, combined with self heals/protects is enough to negate the damage of an entire team.

So why do teams get rolled in under 5 mins?

I think the spike argument is the killer one here. I can't see a way round it, without a healing class.

The only way out of it (I can think of) would be to make skills like spell breaker etc. more common. Of course then you get into a rather boring game.

IMHO the OP is not practical and would have undesirable results. But it is an interesting thought. I always like ideas that fly in the face of common sense, I like playing devils advocate.

/signed because it's brilliant

Give us red potions to self heal and blue one to restore our energy have the monsters scale to the number of players in the game. Oops that seems to be like Diablo (great game but not GW) - It is an interesting idea and I must agree that monks are really needed in this game and that is why the hero monks are a boon. I for one do not have the skill to play a good monk so I have left monking to the heroes and the minority of players. I do play a Ritualist but only an attacking one.

Clearly the OP is not watching the same game I am. 2-3 monks don't nullify an entire offense - try it and get creamed. 2-3 monks with a water snare spammer and necro hexing, maybe. It's the support defense that's cutting damage to a manageable amount for 2 monks to handle.

Without healing the game becomes wammo standoffs, with blocking, AL and damage the only things that matter. No thanks, it's like reducing Chess to Checkers because a few simpletons can't remember en passant or how to castle. Learn to play.

From a game design perspective - healing HAS to be more powerful than offense, or there would be no point to healing.

This idea is horrible

Healing is needed in the game, without healing no one would stay alive. Everyone would die and then you would keep getting 60% DP. Not everyone uses a monk, and if you have the right skills you can kill a monk by yourself (assassin, ele, others). Without healing, no one would be playing this game, you would die to often to kill anything, to farm anything, to get any drops, to do anything! Without healing, what would monks do? Protect is it? Er...no this would definitely make NO ONE make a monk..and if someone worked hard with their monk and healing goes out bam..they would probably quit this game.

/Notsigned

You would basially reduce the entire game to hit n run. GvG, HA, PvE. Its beyond a stupid idea.

I agree with Evilsod...stupid idea..
The reason why many GvG matches don't seem to "go" anywhere imo is when you have a reasonable matchup....it then comes down to tactics. Sure monks are an important part of a team, but I don't believe they are the sole reason why some may consider GvG boring. Some teams get pwnd even if they have 2 or 3 monks. With a well co-coordinated offence you could devastate an unprepared team (regardless of the amount of monks they have)

Without Healing everything thing would be a struggle over who can do the most dps. No, no, no.

Title says remove healing so does this also mean that all other professions healing skills/spells should also be removed, or perhaps damage spells that allow you to gain health?

This would turn the game into a whoever hits first wins slash fest.

/unsigned

Yipeeee! Slash fest! Warriors rule!!!!!

But seriously, in PvP an arena COULD be added where only offensive skills would be allowed. Let's give a chance to smiting monks!