I’ve played my fair share of MMOs, it’s safe to say, and then some. And a recurring theme in all of them is making sure you’re putting out the absolute most amount of damage/healing/survivability possible, or you’re just not as effective as you should be and are holding your group down when it comes to dungeons/PvP/insert-thing-I-did-wrong-today. And considering how many MMOs I’ve participated in, I understandably carried this mentality into Guild Wars 2 with me, as well.
My character, Chief Engineer Elyn (you’ll see a blog post describing her in full detail in the near future), hit level 30 not too long ago, which opened up the first dungeon to which players have access: the Ascalonian Catacombs, or AC as I’ll be calling it. And I jumped at the opportunity to give it a shot with my amazing guild, Serenity of the Night (better known as [Moon] or Moonies). I won’t go into too much detail as to what happened, as I want to dedicate a whole article to the group synergy present in Guild Wars 2, but I will say that the experience was incredible and extremely rewarding. And since hitting level 35, I haven’t leveled a single level outside of dungeons, 90% of which have been AC Explorable.
My various escapades in AC Explorable with the Chief had me realize something that I somewhat knew, or was at least aware of, but didn’t fully understand until now: every single person in the group is responsible for themselves, as well as the survival of the group. There are no dedicated roles; there is no dedicated healer, there is no dedicated tank (though a well-fit Guardian will often unintentionally fill this role), and there is no dedicated Damage Dealers. Everyone does everything at once.
It took me a little while to grasp that, however. When I started, I looked at all my available traits and skills, and figured out what I felt had the best combination of fun and damage. And then did a different build after that one. And another after that one. I was having so much fun putting builds together that I ended up spending a large chunk of my accumulated money just rebuying gear! But as I continued to run and continued to theorize, I began to see where I was going wrong; I was thinking like a DPS in World of Warcraft, rather than like an Engineer in Guild Wars 2. And, at the suggestion of one of our fabulous Moonies, I built my gear for straight Divinity, which is +x to all stats. That’s right, I was going as best as I could for straight balanced.
The concept in the dungeon that every player is contributing not just as much damage as possible, but also keeping themselves and their allies alive as long as possible is something that’s taken a short time to get used to, but has become a preferred playstyle for me. My build is constantly in flux, but I’ve found that the stable, balanced stats has allowed me to do a very wide variety of things through the entirety of the dungeon run, ranging from getting into short range to draw some attention with my Tool Kit, laying down the AoE hurt with my Grenade Kit, and running away in the most explosive way possible with my Bomb Kit, all while keeping myself alive with my pistol and shield. Will that build be the same tomorrow? Unlikely. But that’s half the fun: finding that perfect balance.