[PvE Group] What Primary should I play if I want to Heal / Support?

Hey guys I haven't played GW1 in a long time, and on one of my usual random whims I've decided to play it again from the start on a new account just cuz.

The last time I played this game, class roles in PvE were a little counter-intuitive — for example, Monks were mostly a DPS class used for Ray of Judge and Elementalists were considered the actual healers due to EStorage & gimmicky builds. :/ And of course, the Meta was changing all the time.

But from what I understand, the game isn't being patched / updated any more, so the PvE Meta is basically frozen in its final form. Given that, I'm curious what class I should play nowadays if I want to be a Healing / Support role in groups.

Basically... in any co-op/group game, my favorite thing to do is focus on my allies. Keep everyone alive / boosted / protected / buffed / etc. I don't mind being aggressive and contributing damage/control (in fact I like doing that), as long as my first priority is understood to be the care & feeding of my group members.

Which Primary profession should I make my character? (I have all 3 campaigns)

Skill updates, at least the post-EotN PvE based ones, never usually nerfed things, just buffed the crap out of whatever seemed weakest at the time. As such, all of the 'old' backliner builds like WoH monk are still perfectly functional, so if that's what you're interested in, go for that. ER eles, though powerful, don't make the more traditional monking styles redundant anyway. There are plenty of people who still use heal/prot monks in their hero teams. Similarly, Ritualists are also as good for this as they've always been, and you can build a Necro for this as well (and I've seen Mesmer builds based around Tease to fuel heals/prots too, though I haven't tried any). You've got a bunch of slots so you might as well make a few chars and then decide which you like the most. Furthermore, there's no need to be concerned about wanting to play a profession in a certain way due to fear that it's fallen out of the meta. With seven hero teams there's more than enough room to pack in grossly overpowered stuff to cover for you even if what you were looking for was a sub-par playstyle.

Thanks

I admit I don't remember much details about the game's high-end anymore so a lot of that is going over my head, but I appreciate your reply.

One thing — you mention Heroes a lot, and 7? I guess they took the limit off in PvE? :X

Do people not like, group with other people any more? Is it basically just single player + Heroes for PvE stuff?

yes, they updated it so you can now have 7 heroes in 8 man areas. And yes, many people are playing with just their heroes, however, there are also still a lot of guilds out there and if you like to play hard mode (HM), the zaishen quests are usually busy (especially on weekends).
So if you want to group with others, find a guild, if you want to just explore on your own--kit out your heroes and go for it, either way, welcome back!

Ahhhh, okay, wow that's quite a change. Although, I guess GW1 was always kind of independence-friendly with Henchmen parties so it's just a cleaner evolution of that.

Well, hm. Back to my OP — I forgot how flexible this game can be.

Let me try this from another angle (sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm just a little overwhelmed atm )

Are there any Professions I should not choose as my Primary if I enjoy playing a Healer / Group Support role in games?

warrior or assassin and probably not ranger.

good choices are monk (obviously), rit, necro/rit, paragon, (ele was already mentioned)....

Understood, TY.

Oh, Paragon, now that's something I never paid any attention to. But since you mentioned it, I checked out its skill lists / builds and it looks very interesting.

Only one thing I'm still not sure about — I'm reading some mixed signals about Dervishes. Can they spec into a 'real' Heal / Support role, or is that a gimmick vs. their primary design of melee damage?

Dervishes are first and foremost melee attackers. Their skill set simply doesn't allow them to lockdown a backliner spot. That said, they can provide some benefits to the party and can be built towards a support type role. This is generally done semi-passively through skills like Avatar of Dwayna (sample build here). They're very much exceptions to the general playstyle though, and builds like the one I just linked tend to be relegated to heroes because of how passive (read: dull) they can be. As you're looking to play in a dedicated support role, I probably wouldn't recommend Dervishes, but they're certainly your best option if you're looking to have a solid melee presence.

Ah, okay. Understood. I will let the Dervishes stick to using their class properly, then.

Based on your feedback, and since I can't remember anything about the plot anyway, I think I'll start out by doing the 3 campaigns again with a different class each: Monk in Prophecies, Ritualist in Factions, and Paragon in Nightfall. See which one feels best by the end of the stories.

TY both for the quick and detailed replies. See you in-game! ♥

You will probably love the Monk and the Ritu. I for one do. They both have so many variety in supporting capability and are very different from each other. I love supporting and they are my favourite classes together with the mesmer (after that there is a huge gap). Paragon is sadly pretty limited. It's fun for a while but you will learn that for yourself.

I think you can modify a dervish to a solid "backliner". Saw some RA builds and you can certainly adapt that for PvE to abuse KI behavior etc.

Ah, I'd love to hear any insight you have as a fellow Supporter-type about Paragon playstyle.

I almost forgot the class even existed until it was mentioned here. My naïve interpretation of the style after skimming over its skill lists is a Bard-type support — 'party glue', not really doing any primary role but instead holding everything together and switching stuff around to fill in gaps as needed.

But that may not be reality

The most effective part of being a paragon is to give out prots + some offensive support while being a target for splinter weapon.

I played my paragon almost exclusively with an interpretion of the imbagon. You will lose some dmg to other team combos but it's not that much. The dmg reduction is insane but you need Kurzick or Luxon title on 6 for it (which is not much work anymore to be honest). It's actually a fun way to support imho. Template: OQGkUllp5gyUMIQIPxVR6mJm72OG

I also experimented a bit with other forms of support for a hero build. It was just for fun because I wanted to build a hero team for one of my chars with all the heroes I like the most as characters and Morgan happened to be one of them. My premise was to use shouts and adrenaline in some way. But everything is really medicre. I ended up with "The Power is Yours!" as elite which is a cool skill imho because you can easily sustain it 100% of the time. I havn't had much time/motivation to test it since then but I don't think it's a good choice for heroes. Heroes tend to use low cd skills rather rarely/not on cd even if it costs nothing (same reason why playing with discord heroes is retarded imho). But for players it might be quite ok. Template: OQGkUmm65hqk9WoYPmFm72VRN2OG

Test it for yourself. The problem about the paragon is not that the option aren't there but more that most options are so weak that it doesn't even matter that you are there or not and that's where the fun ending for me. It's limited in the sense that you try to pull of a build that is at least somewhat capable of doing something.

Ahhh, okay, I think I get it. You're not saying Paragon is bad or ineffective, just that it's kind of cornered into 1 very specific build type.

It sounds sort of like the devs had a vision for the class which didn't work out, so they just sledge-hammered it into 1 OP role, forgot about the rest, threw their hands up and moved on.

I think you're right tho, I'll still try it since it's still support and I can't resist trying a new support type