Guild Wars 2 Interview

German website Gamona.de is offering up a four-page interview with Guild Wars 2 lead designer Eric Flannum about their plans to introduce unique mechanics for handling healing, death, and resurrection in the MMORPG sequel.
gamona: There is no dedicated healing class in Guild Wars 2 which makes combat unlike other MMORPGs where you have a tank, a healer and damage dealer. Maybe you can tell us how a combat situation will/can work out in Guild Wars 2?

Eric Falnnum: I can give you an example of an epic boss battle we had just a few nights ago. We were testing a dungeon which is normally supposed to be challenging for a full party of five. Well, we had an odd number of people testing and were left with only three people. Two warriors and an as yet unnamed ranged profession. I was one of the warriors and was specced out for ranged damage and was carrying a longbow and rifle. The other warrior was more of a traditional warrior with lots of health and specced for mace and shield. Our ranged companion was specced for ranged damage with a little bit of control.

We fought our way into the dungeon fairly well until we got into a fight with 5 boss golems each of whom uses a different type of elemental beam weapon. We were clearly overmatched but pressed on, determined to take some of them with us. Our more tankish warrior would call out targets and our ranged friend would immobilize them while I inflicted as much aoe damage as possible. If one of the warrior went down we'd use the downed skill (Retreat!) to give a speed buff to the others which would further enable them to kite the golems away so we could revive our fallen companion. A few times during the fight the other warrior would also use a downed skill called Vengeance which allows the warrior to get up and act normally for a short period of time before going straight to (defeated.) He'd use this skill to rez a friend or lead the golems away for a short period of time while the others healed. We defeated this encounter with no healer and nobody even playing one of the more support oriented professions in the game. We subsisted solely on self heals, solid tactics, and a little bit of luck.