Guild Wars 2: No Healers, No Death Penalties, No Problem

NCSoft has been quietly working on Guild Wars 2 for a long time now, but we're just starting to see a trickle of a real (and very interesting) details on the game. Not content with sticking to the established norm for MMO design, developer ArenaNet has revealed on its website today that the company has some pretty revolutionary changes in mind when it comes to healing and death in its new game.

Guild Wars 2 designer Jon Peters wrote the post announcing several surprising design choices. First off, borrowing a note from Borderlands' "second wind," when a character's HP is lowered to 0, they enter "downed mode." In this mode, they have access to a special set of skills to give them a last chance to take down the enemy and survive the encounter.

In addition to the expected resurrection-type spells and skills, every single player will be able to walk up to a downed ally and revive them. Peters assures us, "Everyone, regardless of profession, can do this starting at Level 1." If you're downed multiple times in a row, of course, you'll take longer to revive each time.

If you are not revived or resurrected, you can choose to "release" and respawn at any waypoint you've discovered. The death penalty? A small amount of gold to revive at the waypoint...and that's it. Peters explains why ArenaNet isn't interested in the heavier death penalties that are common in other MMOs:

"Why should we debuff you, take away experience, or make you run around for five minutes as a ghost instead of letting you actually play the game? We couldn’t think of a reason. Well, we did actually think of a reason -- it just wasn’t a good one. Death penalties make death in-game a more tense experience. It just isn’t fun. We want to get you back into the action (fun) as quickly as possible. Defeat is the penalty; we don’t have to penalize you a second time."

The lack of death penalties isn't even the biggest shocker in this post, though. Peters also announces that Guild Wars 2 will not have a healing class. Rather than employ the MMORPG standard class triangle of healers, tanks, and DPS, ArenaNet has created its own similar but slightly different trio: damage, support, and control.

Damage is pretty self-explanatory, but support might require a bit more information. Peters is adamant that you not confuse it with traditional healing roles:

"Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations."

Meanwhile, the control role seems like an even bigger break from the tanking role that it replaces. Rather than just having a huge health/armor pool and taking lots of damage, players who fall under the control category will actually mitigate enemy power by doing knockdowns, casting debuffs, stunning, and more.

ArenaNet's hope is that these tweaked class types will provide "a diverse and dynamic combat system that gives each player a toolbox to work with to solve any encounter we might throw their way."

For more details direct from Jon Peters, check out the full post on the Guild Wars 2 website.