http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/
Death
Basic idea is that they went about trying to make dying a more enjoyable experience.
When you lose all health, you go into a "downed" mode which changes your skills. These skills are less powerful, but give you an opportunity to fight back even after you have been "killed". If you kill an enemy, you will rally, coming back to life.
Some professions have skills that can revive fallen allies. Warriors, for example, have "I Will Avenge You!" which will revive fallen allies if you manage to kill an enemy.
They don't "punish" you for Death, because Death is a penalty enough, they don't need to throw some arbitrary penalty in on top of that.
Healing
There is no dedicated healing c-lass in Guild Wars 2( :( ), but they examined what made that c-lass fun to begin with and have designed other professions around those elements. What made playing a monk fun for some players was being there and saving your friends.
It's not about clicking on a health bar and watching it go up, it's about being there for your friends when they need you.
ArenaNet
They give an example of surrounding allies with a swirling dome of air that blocks projectile attacks.
They also speak about the problems that the monk c-lass presented in PvP arena's like the Random Arena where going up against a team with 2 monks was essentially guaranteeing the outcome of the match... Rather than trivializing the combat into "kill the monk first," they want players to think about who to kill, where to position themselves and what support skills they want to use and when to use those skills. They want combat in GW2 to be more tactical and less formulaic.
Roles
They want to move away from the "holy trinity" of tank/damage/heal that other MMO developers talk about as if it is the greatest thing ever. They don't like having to sit around spamming forever waiting to get a group together with the "right" composition of players.
Every c-lass in GW2 is self-reliant.
Damage: Lots of ways to damage within each profession. They have skills that are AoE, AoE Projectiles, AoE Projectiles that do Damage over Time, etc...
DPS is versatile and they don't trivialize it.
Support: Rather than just turning it into their "healing" role, they expanded it. Healing is reactive rather than proactive, and they want their support role to be more about stopping damage before it happens rather than healing it after it has happened.
Every profession can do some sort of support, whether it is an elementalist dropping an AoE healing rain, or a warrior using shouts to buff his team.
There are also cross-profession combinations that can work, like an elementalist throwing down a Firewall that arrows can be shot through, setting them on fire allowing them to do more damage.
Control: Their replacement for tanking. More than just simply being able to endure damage extensively, they want this to be more about controlling the battlefield with snares, conditions, and movement.
This allows players to have a more dynamic and active way of tanking that encourages greater tactical thinking and variety.
In general, they seem to have taken a long, hard look at MMOs and tried to address all of the issues that plague the current MMO gameplay structure. They are focusing on making the minute-to-minute gameplay fun and meaningful.
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