Does GW2 need healers and tanks?

I know what you're saying. "There are no healers or tanks in Guild Wars 2."

That's what the in-the-know kids are saying, eh? Folks are scorning the idea of tanking and healing because everyone's supposed to be rolling away from damage constantly like chimpanzees on crack.

ArenaNet has "softened" the trinity because each player, with each class, is supposed to cover his own ass.

Problem is, covering your ass entails using your heal skill, dodging and generally getting the fuck out of harm's way. You "yo-yo" in and out and juggle aggro, and if you're downed, you can still rally, right?

And that probably works OK in PvE and small-scale 'Structured' PvP.
I don't know how it works well in large-scale WvW.

Your warband can't just monkey-roll and kite away a force of 20, 40, 60+ players that are flanking you at a keep door, it probably doesn't work that way. I mean, I'd love to see guys try that in a chokepoint, when they're bottlenecked on a bridge or something...

Generally speaking, larger groups are going to want (probably need) to have varied and specialized roles in WvW.  You're looking at potentially 100v100v100 fights, right? Think about trying to burn down a keep door - you could have a couple dozen guys at your back, raining down hell on you and another couple dozen guys in front of you catapulting cows onto your heads.

Maybe there aren't true "tanks" and "healers" in the rest of the game, but organized WvW warbands are going to need some rough approximations of tanks and healers pushing forward as their frontlines, and the opposing side will need tanks and healers up front, pushing back.

Am I wrong? Or are there going to brilliantly co-ordinated 3-sided Monkey-Roll Dance-Offs at keep doors?

Roll War III

Anyways.

I know you're not supposed to be able to tank or heal, but, I might try to do both.

I color code things because words are boring:

~ Weapon Switch (8s)
1 Auto-Attack combos
2 AOE regen (6s) / blind
3 AOE Protection +regens (15s) / AOE + sprint + regens (15s) [both create fields that cause attacks to cleanse allies nearby]
4 Shield: AOE Protection (30s) / impassable line in the ground (45s)
5 Shield: AOE knockback + projectile block dome (40s) / cleanses allies and buffs your balls off [50s]
6 AOE heal (30s)
7 Reset Cooldowns on F1-F3 abilities (90s) (or, +healing buff that can Rez an ally)
8 AOE Protection and regen, cleanses (45s)
9 AOE regen (45s) cleansing bow w/ AOE heal (60s)
0 Switch Weapon Skills to Tome of Courage support spells (180s CD)

F1 adds fire damage to allies next attack (20s / 0s)
F2 allies block next attack (60s / 0s)
F3 AOE regen and cleanse (40s / 0s)


Will builds like that be viable in WvW? I don't know. They might wind up being the only viable builds in certain situations. We'll see. Hopefully that's part of the fun of the game.  

In the meantime, I'll be having fun speculating and building Ranger Priests in my head, just because everyone else keeps saying that I cannot.