What I'm getting at is that in GW2 there are no class roles. There's no dedicated healer, tank or DPS roles. Almost all of the classes can fulfill each of those three roles, but none of them are exceptionally good at any of them. Sure, the guardian is likely your best bet if survivability is what you're after, but he still can't just stand there and soak up damage. His survival is largely up to himself because there's no dedicated healer class who is supposed to keep his health up while he tanks the mobs.
Essentially what the GW2 classes do is when you're playing in a group, it ensures everyone is doing more or less the same thing; trying to deal as much damage while keeping yourself alive.
I'm pretty sure the intention behind class design in GW2 was that every class can do everything, but they differ in flavor and play style so you'll choose, I don't know, Warrior because you want to have the largest weapons arsenal and like to hit people with brute force instead of "oh, my party needs a tank so I better go Warrior". Not that I'm saying which approach is better, that's just my impression.
Yes, and they failed horribly at that. All it came down to was whether you wanted your attacks to be Red, Green, or Blue colored.
GW1 actually succeeded at that in a way that rewarded intelligent and creative play. Naturally consoletards hated it for being too hard on them, even though 90% of areas could be beaten by doing nothing other than aggroing enemies to your AI party in small groups.
How about you break it down to us how GW1 succeeded in making every class equal.
It didn't - which is why it didn't suck.
GW1 gave every class a hundred more skill choices, then let them take a secondary class to acquire more. GW1 skills were overall far more complex and specialized, yet with better synergy with each other and between other players. There were different damage types and protection against damage types. There were (effective) interrupts along with outright skill disablers, letting you lock down any problematic enemies (and also making positioning more important). There was armor, damage reduction/absorption, blocking, and enchantments/hexs for protection, all of which could make any class "tanky" in the right situation (and enchantments/hexes are so varied that they have categories onto themselves). GW1 both works with and subverts the "holy trinity" to make it fun so any class can participate. Need a tank but only have a caster? You can make that work. Want to deal damage? Every class can pull off some nice synergies for massive damage with a little bit of cooperation. Need to heal but don't have a monk? One of the jokes of GW1 was that the so-called "master of damage" class (ele) was actually the best healer/protter in the game, while the "master of healing" class (monk) could actually be the best nuker in some cases.
The end result was that classes were very much not equal - but they had enough overlap and synergies to let any class preform at a high level in a multitude of roles with proper usage.
GW2 can be broken down into not much more than: You click on the enemy with your damage until they die while kiting them. If you see red circles you hit dodge. If your health bar gets low you kite further until they lose aggro and heal. I've just described for you 95% of levels 1-80. There are small changes between classes, but they all boil down to these same basic principles. You might gear/skill for more or less damage, but it's always the same damage and there are no offensive contributions available beyond doing damage (no interrupts, no shutdown, no debilitation). You can boost your defense, but no matter what the vast majority of your damage reduction comes from kiting and dodging.
Well I kind of agree with most of what you say about GW1 only you paint it all a bit too good. To be honest classes weren't really all that interchangeable, monk as DPS was subpar almost everywhere and ele as tank would only work if enchantment removal was non existant or very limited, i.e. And while it's true that there were thousands of skills in GW1 over half of them just sucked so much that it was liek they were never there, other portion was just plain copy (factions-prophecies renames) and well in the end each class only had a few top tier builds. More than each GW2's class yeah, but inmenselly more than GW2, NOOOO.
But I sugest you play more GW2 before you criticise it again:
You click on the enemy with your damage until they die while kiting them.
NOOO, in open world you just spike it to death with a few skills, seriously if you kite regular mobs your character sucks. In dungeons things are different but kiting isn't a word I would use to describe what goes on, more like a team dance with CC, spikes, evades all mixed together, but certainly nothing like hit, walk away, hit, walk away... tbh if you have to do that you have plenty left to learn.
If you see red circles you hit dodge.
True enough.
If your health bar gets low you kite further until they lose aggro and heal.
Well you could do that yeah, or you could use a skill to insta kite, heal, become invulnerable, CC foe, kill foe, push foe away, blind, reduce dmg .... if runing away is all you can think about I can guarantee you don't know your class, and I don't know the class you play. Also certainly losing aggro is a defeat since foe will regen health which means no loot and wasted time.
There are small changes between classes, but they all boil down to these same basic principles.
Yes that was Anet's point to begin with, if anything they didn't trully succeed, though they get closer to that than anyone no class can truly do everything optimally ... well warior gets close.
You might gear/skill for more or less damage, but it's always the same damage and there are no offensive contributions available beyond doing damage (no interrupts, no shutdown, no debilitation).
No interrupts?? Oh brother........ though tbh interrupting isnt' critical or even important most of the time.
No shutdown?? True
No debilitation?? ROLF, yeah well I supose weakness, blind, cripple, sickness don't count as debilitation, do they?
