Sorry mate but now you are talking about aggro,you are saying about ppl healing without getting killed or players not getting attacked. Well that is the holy trinity,if you have a good tank type and not an over zealous healer then it should go well everytime,what you seem to be asking is the target automatically spots the priest and runs and kills him 1st then moves onto the next "weakest" guy,basically leaving the tank to last. Well that would bring us back to the game that you want were everyone multi tasks,by your reasoning as soon as someone heals he should be killed 1st as he stops the others from being killed and so on and so forth. I mean who would want to heal in that sort of game,even as a support class I wouldnt heal.
*sigh* When I was talking about how you can one-shot healers, I was referring to existing games. Take WoW, for instance, any raid boss can kill a healer in one blow. EASY. I don't want a game like that. I want a game where IF someone that can heal gets targetted, then they can take a good amount of punishment. Sure you'd have guys who can take more (and probably have some abilities they let them intercept a blow here and there on others, and other guys who can provide magical shields or the like), but everyone can take a beating. You'd have some heals, but not a lot, so as combat went on people would get worn down (but not killed if done right).
Obviously no one would want to take a Tank/Healer/DPS game, keep the same level of survivability, and then change the aggro rules so everyone gets one-shotted before the tank gets attacked.
Vanguard healers were great DPS/Healer hybrids.
Yes I had a shammy there but we all had rolls to play in groups,that was the OP's question,we couldnt all tank/heal,VG is very much a holy trinity game,for solo play yes the healers could solo well but that is hardly relevant to this topic.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
There are quite a few that don't have the Tank+Healer+DPS trinity; but the problem with the them (at least in my experience) is that they lack structure to the point of group-combat just being mindless zergs filled with homogenised classes with identical capabilities. No, the answer isn't to remove the trinity; it's to make all three roles equally enjoyable.
That pretty much sums it up.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Tabula rasa did it very right. Shame it was released unfinished like almost every mmo >_<
Someone said earlier about a 25man raid with everyone able to tank being unchallenging, but you are thinking about it the wrong way.
for example if it was a single boss sure it would be pretty pathetic since there was nothing to split attention, a more likely boss would be 1 leader and 30 adds, relying on controlling enemies rather than just tanking them else you'd be overwhelmed, the leader would be able to dispel certain effects etc.
No need to keep inside the box, change of system means change of perspective.
Age of conan was like this when i played it, since healing was very weak in pve so all roles had to work together with knockdowns and stuns/stacking heals etc to defeat encounters. It required a high level of coordination.
On the topic of roles, people are getting a bit confused, a tank is someone that stops the party taking damage, a healer is someone that mitigates incoming damage, dps does damage and support debuffs/buffs
These 4 roles get combined and mixed up all the time, but there is more than one way to do each.
If you take away the roles completely i'd wager you couldn't make a truly challenging pve encounter.
The reason for the holy trinity is pretty simple. They are roles that NEED to exist in order to play the types of MMOs most people enjoy. For example, look at Guild Wars. Almost any class can be a tank, dps, or healer at some point in the game, and do it well. However, in order to get things done, people will always ask for tanks (people to absorb the damage), healers (people to support / keep everyone alive), and dps (people to take down the mobs as fast as possible, leading to less damage recieved).
The only games that can get away with avoiding the 'trinity', are games in which these roles are not needed. This means an entirely different type of MMO. An example of this would be games such as Second Life, the spy game Sony is developing, etc. in which there either isn't any A) healing, or heavy damage absorption. Typically, this leaves room for only realistic / semi-realistic combat sims, or games in which combat consistly mostly of a few hacks / shots and it's over. It's very difficult to have a fun & interesting MMO with such a limitation put on the gameplay.
As said before, the question is whether not a game makes them equally enjoyable; or whether or not a game finds a way to allow you to experience the 'same ol trinity' in a new and engaging way.
CoH/CoV has the classic roles, CoH even has a class called tank. But they make it a bit more interesting by adding pure CC and debuffer/buffer classes. And CoV classes are a bit different then CoH.
Because of all the CC and debuffing you can get by with different combinations. Enough CC and you don't need healing. So all the roles are there but you don't need the same configuration all the time. Until you are doing end game farming, then specific roles are used. Two of them being tank and healing.
Saying trinity is required is illogical- the same way mobs are not logical. If they had any sense, they would act like Players and kill the healers first, then proceed to murder the squishies, and then lastly, they murder the Tanks
This is how PVP works. Trinity fails there completely. And I would like to assume this is because players are smarter then the scripted AI we see in mmorpgs
Isn't this sad? Our mobs are mindless victims purely. If they had an ounce of intelligence Trinity would fall apart (like it does in PVP).
And sadly mmorpgs have degraded to the point now where mmorpgs try to make 'Taunt' work in PVP. Taunt was always a crutch for poor game design and now it has crawled into pvp encounters in some titles.
The Chronicles of Spellborn doesn't use that dynamic. Every class has spells to heal themselves. They can all deal DPS or buff their party. There is no system that forces any player to fulfill any role in a party. In fact, there are only about 3 direct heal spells in the game and you couldn't spam them even if you wanted to. You basically have to fight, not just heal. Also, there is no threat system in place where players get taunts and things like that. Mobs will go after whoever poses the most threat to them. That doesn't mean whoever does the most damage. It can mean the person keeping their party alive. The AI is very smart. The system basically prevents anyone from playing the tank role. Also it uses active aiming/dodging in combat so it's all skill based. The game is a lot of fun, I think.
Originally posted by daylight01 Well when I played wow as a holy priest I could maybe take 2 or 3 hits from a boss type,ofc not the main boss 1 or 2 and I was down,though what you are asking is say 25 ppl in a raid can all basically tank a boss/take alot of damage from a boss as well as heal,I am starting to wonder were the challenge would be? I mean it would be an easy encounter everytime "ok guys whoever gets the aggro just heal yourself and hit him,if he needs help on healing the other 24 of us will heal you till he switches aggro" Sorry no game like that excists and I very much doubt it every will,even darkfall that is supposed to be the hardcore game doesnt have this dynamic.
I don't think you are understanding what I am talking about at all.
I'm not saying I don't want roles. I am not saying I wany everyone to do everything. Please my posts if you aren't getting this.
I AM saying I want everyone able to take damage. I am saying I hate the Aggro system that Tank-Healer-DPS implies. A system where the monsters always attack one guy (the tank), even though that doesn't make any sense. I dislike the reality break there.
Think of a fantasy movie or novel. You might have one guy position to take the initial brunt of the attacks, but everyone can defend themselves if they are attacked. Some people can heal, not everyone, but they don't churn out big heals constantly on one person. If one person gets into a tight spot, then a friend lends them a hand either with magic or steel so they aren't take down. A big dragon might breathe fire down on the heros, but one or two people have the capability of putting up a shield in response to that fire which will protect people. I want a game that does THAT, where the monsters act in a fairly realistic manner and the people can handle themselves to a degree but are even stronger as a group.
I AM saying I want everyone able to take damage. I am saying I hate the Aggro system that Tank-Healer-DPS implies. A system where the monsters always attack one guy (the tank), even though that doesn't make any sense. I dislike the reality break there.
Mass Effect as an MMO would break from this. So perhaps the Bioware's starwars MMO will as well.
In Mass Effect you don't tank and heal. You hit and run. Everyone does range damage. You move away from Tank and heal, and move towards, using cover, sniping, crowd control.
The big difference is there's a lot of movement. It's not just standing in once place. Once games move away from auto aim and start using cover we can move away from tank and heal.
I AM saying I want everyone able to take damage. I am saying I hate the Aggro system that Tank-Healer-DPS implies. A system where the monsters always attack one guy (the tank), even though that doesn't make any sense. I dislike the reality break there.
Mass Effect as an MMO would break from this. So perhaps the Bioware's starwars MMO will as well.
In Mass Effect you don't tank and heal. You hit and run. Everyone does range damage. You move away from Tank and heal, and move towards, using cover, sniping, crowd control.
The big difference is there's a lot of movement. It's not just standing in once place. Once games move away from auto aim and start using cover we can move ways from tank and heal.
That works for a Sci-Fi game. It makes sense too. So I like that. I guess I was more specifically going over what I'd want from a fantasy MMORPG. I just want the combat system to be more realistic than "Big Bad bashes against the hardest to kill guy who is constantly healed by people the Big Bad could kill just by looking at them."
I don't think you are understanding what I am talking about at all. I'm not saying I don't want roles. I am not saying I wany everyone to do everything. Please my posts if you aren't getting this. I AM saying I want everyone able to take damage. I am saying I hate the Aggro system that Tank-Healer-DPS implies. A system where the monsters always attack one guy (the tank), even though that doesn't make any sense. I dislike the reality break there. Think of a fantasy movie or novel. You might have one guy position to take the initial brunt of the attacks, but everyone can defend themselves if they are attacked. Some people can heal, not everyone, but they don't churn out big heals constantly on one person. If one person gets into a tight spot, then a friend lends them a hand either with magic or steel so they aren't take down. A big dragon might breathe fire down on the heros, but one or two people have the capability of putting up a shield in response to that fire which will protect people. I want a game that does THAT, where the monsters act in a fairly realistic manner and the people can handle themselves to a degree but are even stronger as a group.
I'm completely with this philosophy, but I'm afraid there are a great number of people who can't get out of the rut, and developers seem happy to make things easy on them.
IMO, the most horribly overpowered feature in just about any MMO is the healing - whether on mobs or players. Mobs with self-healing are always the tougher ones to take down, and healing classes that are played skillfully are usually the most powerful player classes.
The part that is really quite strange about all this is that healing is a rather boring aspect of MMOs if that is all you get to do.
That works for a Sci-Fi game. It makes sense too. So I like that. I guess I was more specifically going over what I'd want from a fantasy MMORPG. I just want the combat system to be more realistic than "Big Bad bashes against the hardest to kill guy who is constantly healed by people the Big Bad could kill just by looking at them."
I agree with you. It is getting old. It's one of the reasons I don't play WoW.
CoV is nice because although there is a tank class (brute) most of them don't even take the taunt skill. Things are much more chaotic. You've get master minds with pets all over the place, lots of crowd control, all sorts of buffing and debuffing. So basically everyone ends up taking damage. Or your crowd control is so good no one does and you don't even need the brute.
I have a L50 Brute that skipped Taunt because 'Taunt is an inherit to Brutes'. So even though one may lack the Taunt skill- you still are 'Taunting'. This is why Brutes still hold aggro in parties. It's even easier if you are an /ELEC secondary because that allows you to aggro the 'herd' around you
So to be clear CoH/CoV is a holy trinity title and I would not recommend it to someone trying to escape that design pattern. Chronicles of Spellborn would be a much more wiser choice
There are so many absurdly wrong assertions here that it will be hard to dispel them all. I'll try anyway:
Ilvaldyr: "There are quite a few that don't have the Tank+Healer+DPS trinity; but the problem with the them (at least in my experience) is that they lack structure to the point of group-combat just being mindless zergs filled with homogenised classes with identical capabilities."
In Guild Wars, try to do Dzagonur Bastion master's reward in hard mode without the usual PvE-only cheats. It's doable if you know how, and will look quite chaotic to watch someone else who knows how, but if you try the mindless zerg approach, you will fail, badly.
merv808: "Play a game where the "trinity" doesn't exist, and you will quickly find out why specific combat roles are needed. It will always be a part of every successful game."
Are you asserting that Guild Wars is unsuccessful, or that it has conventional tanks even without an aggro system?
daylight01: "though what you are asking is say 25 ppl in a raid can all basically tank a boss/take alot of damage from a boss as well as heal,I am starting to wonder were the challenge would be?"
If you're fighting against 40 mobs, any of which would slaughter anyone in your raid 1 on 1, there's your challenge. And if 40 isn't enough to make it a challenge, there's no reason not to make it 60 or 100 or whatever.
But who says you have to have a 25 man raid, and that there can never be any challenge apart from raids? That a lot of MMORPGs don't care to put in any challenge other than not being high enough level or having good enough gear hardly means it can't be done. Was Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? easy because it wasn't a raid?
Vynt: "Generic hybrids where people are a jack of all trades works fine for every day grind. It does not work for any possible epic encounters though."
As implemented in some particular games, it doesn't work. That doesn't mean it can't be made to work. And what makes fighting a big boss who is a complete moron and ignores the healers "epic"? That's more stupid than epic.
Vynt: "My point is, as was mentioned by another previously, games will always be reduced to their roles of damage, healing/support, and defense (tank)."
You want some other roles besides those? Without looking beyond the base hero builds that I used pretty extensively in Guild Wars:
*A curse necromancer with enfeebling blood, shadow of fear, and some wells, among other skills. Weaken mobs so they do far less damage when they hit, cut their attack speed by half, and make them more likely to miss when they do attack. This is something of a debuffer role.
*An earth elementalist with unsteady ground, eruption, ward of weakness, ward against melee, and some other skills. Mobs usually miss while blind, can't hit while knocked down, don't do as much damage while weakened, and it gives your party members 50% chance to block. Also more of a buffer/debuffer role.
*A water/earth elementalist wtih ward against harm, blurred vision, maelstrom, ward against melee, and some energy management skills. Increased armor for the group, increased block chance, miss chance for mobs, and the occasional area interrupt when you have to interrupt a lot at once. More of a buffer than a debuffer, but there are some of both.
*A protection monk with shield of regeneration, aegis, remove hex, dismiss condition, and some other skills. Increased block chance for your party, much higher armor for a selected target, clear enemy debuffs off, and a bit of healing. This does heal some, but mainly it's about buffing the party members and clearing off enemy debuffs.
*A domination mesmer with a bunch of interrupts. Basically, whatever mobs try to cast, interrupt it. The purpose isn't to deal damage directly, but to prevent mobs from finishing whatever skills they try to cast.
That's only the general use things that I'd use a lot, and doesn't include the many more specialized uses. It also doesn't include the minion master necromancer that a lot of players are fond of, but I'm not.
Vynt: "Even if everyone is hybrid, they still have those roles and people will assign accordingly. That is what combat is."
People will assign roles, but not necessarily tank, healer, and damage dealer roles. In Puzzle Pirates, people have roles of sailing, carpentry, bilging, gunnery, and navigation.
Vynt: "Oh, if everyone can do everything, basically it negates the reason for grouping."
Everyone can, theoretically, do everything in A Tale in the Desert. But no single player can do everything because no one knows how to do everything, for reasons of player skill, not character skill. Until people figure out how to make good endurance food, some activities like digging, cement, and barrel grinder simply can't be done solo.
asperus: "For example, look at Guild Wars. Almost any class can be a tank, dps, or healer at some point in the game, and do it well. However, in order to get things done, people will always ask for tanks (people to absorb the damage), healers (people to support / keep everyone alive), and dps (people to take down the mobs as fast as possible, leading to less damage recieved)."
Um, yikes, that is so wrong as to be painful. For starters, only three classes (out of ten) have the capability to heal other party members. One of those is the paragon, which has some nice group healing, but very little in the way of single-target healing.
Next, a competent group will virtually never base its plans around, we want these party members to take the damage and not those ones. You can't choose like that. If a party member is fragile, then mobs will go after him solely because he is fragile. If your plan relies on him not getting hit, then he'll be killed quickly and repeatedly, racking up a lot of death penalty and therefore being a lot more fragile. The only real way to avoid that is to keep him out of combat entirely, in which case, you're shorthanded.
Finally, DPS isn't a role. Everyone does damage. Healers perhaps do less damage, but other than that, most classes are fairly comparable in how much damage they do. If the question is what a character's role is, then the question is, what else does he do? Anyone who doesn't do anything else other than damage is a dead weight. In most missions, having a party member who does damage and nothing else isn't that much different from simply going shorthanded, at least as far as being able to complete the mission goes. Some players are incompetent and can put together groups (especially with henchmen/heroes) where the player does damage only and relies on henchmen and heroes to do all of the work. That will work all right in some areas, especially in easy mode, but usually it falls apart if you try anything difficult.
PatchDay: "Isn't this sad? Our mobs are mindless victims purely. If they had an ounce of intelligence Trinity would fall apart (like it does in PVP).
That's kind of how it works in Guild Wars. And yes, that's why Guild Wars doesn't have the traditional trinity of class roles.
There are so many absurdly wrong assertions here that it will be hard to dispel them all. I'll try anyway: Ilvaldyr: "There are quite a few that don't have the Tank+Healer+DPS trinity; but the problem with the them (at least in my experience) is that they lack structure to the point of group-combat just being mindless zergs filled with homogenised classes with identical capabilities." In Guild Wars, try to do Dzagonur Bastion master's reward in hard mode without the usual PvE-only cheats. It's doable if you know how, and will look quite chaotic to watch someone else who knows how, but if you try the mindless zerg approach, you will fail, badly.
merv808: "Play a game where the "trinity" doesn't exist, and you will quickly find out why specific combat roles are needed. It will always be a part of every successful game." Are you asserting that Guild Wars is unsuccessful, or that it has conventional tanks even without an aggro system? daylight01: "though what you are asking is say 25 ppl in a raid can all basically tank a boss/take alot of damage from a boss as well as heal,I am starting to wonder were the challenge would be?" If you're fighting against 40 mobs, any of which would slaughter anyone in your raid 1 on 1, there's your challenge. And if 40 isn't enough to make it a challenge, there's no reason not to make it 60 or 100 or whatever. But who says you have to have a 25 man raid, and that there can never be any challenge apart from raids? That a lot of MMORPGs don't care to put in any challenge other than not being high enough level or having good enough gear hardly means it can't be done. Was Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? easy because it wasn't a raid? Vynt: "Generic hybrids where people are a jack of all trades works fine for every day grind. It does not work for any possible epic encounters though." As implemented in some particular games, it doesn't work. That doesn't mean it can't be made to work. And what makes fighting a big boss who is a complete moron and ignores the healers "epic"? That's more stupid than epic. Vynt: "My point is, as was mentioned by another previously, games will always be reduced to their roles of damage, healing/support, and defense (tank)." You want some other roles besides those? Without looking beyond the base hero builds that I used pretty extensively in Guild Wars: *A curse necromancer with enfeebling blood, shadow of fear, and some wells, among other skills. Weaken mobs so they do far less damage when they hit, cut their attack speed by half, and make them more likely to miss when they do attack. This is something of a debuffer role. *An earth elementalist with unsteady ground, eruption, ward of weakness, ward against melee, and some other skills. Mobs usually miss while blind, can't hit while knocked down, don't do as much damage while weakened, and it gives your party members 50% chance to block. Also more of a buffer/debuffer role. *A water/earth elementalist wtih ward against harm, blurred vision, maelstrom, ward against melee, and some energy management skills. Increased armor for the group, increased block chance, miss chance for mobs, and the occasional area interrupt when you have to interrupt a lot at once. More of a buffer than a debuffer, but there are some of both. *A protection monk with shield of regeneration, aegis, remove hex, dismiss condition, and some other skills. Increased block chance for your party, much higher armor for a selected target, clear enemy debuffs off, and a bit of healing. This does heal some, but mainly it's about buffing the party members and clearing off enemy debuffs. *A domination mesmer with a bunch of interrupts. Basically, whatever mobs try to cast, interrupt it. The purpose isn't to deal damage directly, but to prevent mobs from finishing whatever skills they try to cast. That's only the general use things that I'd use a lot, and doesn't include the many more specialized uses. It also doesn't include the minion master necromancer that a lot of players are fond of, but I'm not. Vynt: "Even if everyone is hybrid, they still have those roles and people will assign accordingly. That is what combat is." People will assign roles, but not necessarily tank, healer, and damage dealer roles. In Puzzle Pirates, people have roles of sailing, carpentry, bilging, gunnery, and navigation. Vynt: "Oh, if everyone can do everything, basically it negates the reason for grouping." Everyone can, theoretically, do everything in A Tale in the Desert. But no single player can do everything because no one knows how to do everything, for reasons of player skill, not character skill. Until people figure out how to make good endurance food, some activities like digging, cement, and barrel grinder simply can't be done solo. asperus: "For example, look at Guild Wars. Almost any class can be a tank, dps, or healer at some point in the game, and do it well. However, in order to get things done, people will always ask for tanks (people to absorb the damage), healers (people to support / keep everyone alive), and dps (people to take down the mobs as fast as possible, leading to less damage recieved)."
Um, yikes, that is so wrong as to be painful. For starters, only three classes (out of ten) have the capability to heal other party members. One of those is the paragon, which has some nice group healing, but very little in the way of single-target healing. Next, a competent group will virtually never base its plans around, we want these party members to take the damage and not those ones. You can't choose like that. If a party member is fragile, then mobs will go after him solely because he is fragile. If your plan relies on him not getting hit, then he'll be killed quickly and repeatedly, racking up a lot of death penalty and therefore being a lot more fragile. The only real way to avoid that is to keep him out of combat entirely, in which case, you're shorthanded. Finally, DPS isn't a role. Everyone does damage. Healers perhaps do less damage, but other than that, most classes are fairly comparable in how much damage they do. If the question is what a character's role is, then the question is, what else does he do? Anyone who doesn't do anything else other than damage is a dead weight. In most missions, having a party member who does damage and nothing else isn't that much different from simply going shorthanded, at least as far as being able to complete the mission goes. Some players are incompetent and can put together groups (especially with henchmen/heroes) where the player does damage only and relies on henchmen and heroes to do all of the work. That will work all right in some areas, especially in easy mode, but usually it falls apart if you try anything difficult. PatchDay: "Isn't this sad? Our mobs are mindless victims purely. If they had an ounce of intelligence Trinity would fall apart (like it does in PVP). That's kind of how it works in Guild Wars. And yes, that's why Guild Wars doesn't have the traditional trinity of class roles.
in guild wars, combat is a Warrior to "control" the mob, ele's for dps, and monks to heal...same dynamic
There are so many absurdly wrong assertions here that it will be hard to dispel them all. I'll try anyway: Ilvaldyr: "There are quite a few that don't have the Tank+Healer+DPS trinity; but the problem with the them (at least in my experience) is that they lack structure to the point of group-combat just being mindless zergs filled with homogenised classes with identical capabilities." In Guild Wars, try to do Dzagonur Bastion master's reward in hard mode without the usual PvE-only cheats. It's doable if you know how, and will look quite chaotic to watch someone else who knows how, but if you try the mindless zerg approach, you will fail, badly.
Not being a Guild Wars player, that's a pretty meaningless example to me.
From what I remember about Guild Wars, there were classes with higher damage mitigation abilities than others and agro/threat did exist albeit in a somewhat more complex manner than the typical MMO. There were also classes that could heal and others that could do high amounts of damage. Tanks, healers and DPSers.
Sure, some encounters may be built around other mechanics, but the same can be said of most MMOs .. WoW has a boat-load of encounters that are way more complex than your basic tank-and-spank. Earlier tonight I was in a group killing a huge blue dragon; that ONE fight involved me running between shield-bubbles, dodging torrents of fire, flying around on a magical disc and riding a red dragon. All in one battle that lasted ~6 minutes.
The trinity gives you an ideal baseline around which you can build more complex encounters. It's a proven system and it works far better than anything else that I've ever seen.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Originally posted by merv808 in guild wars, combat is a Warrior to "control" the mob, ele's for dps, and monks to heal...same dynamic
You wouldn't say that if you were familiar with the game.
It's common for a group to not include a warrior at all. Even if there are warriors, they can't "control" mobs in any meaningful sense. If a warrior manages to keep one mob on him while the other five run off and attack other group members, that's doing pretty well in some cases. In some places (e.g., Tahnnakai Temple or Unwaking Waters), the optimal strategy is to avoid melee entirely. When a group does bring a warrior, that different classes attack from different ranges naturally spreads out the group to avoid all getting nuked by area attacks at once is a bigger consideration than the warrior tanking in any traditional sense.
There are elementalists and they can do damage, but that's not the point of the class. Depending on which element you go with, elementalists get knockdowns, weakness, blocking (for all party members in an area), +armor (also for all party members in an area), blinding, and miss chance skills, among others. If you want to argue that they're damage dealers on the basis that they also deal damage, you'll have to argue that every class is a damage dealer.
Yes, monks are mainly healers, though protection monks "heal" in a rather different manner from the usual MMORPG healers. Ritualists are also primarily healers, though like monks, they can spec for other things, too. But the only clear delineation here is healers and not healers, and there is no meaningful distinction between tanks and damage dealers. Indeed, one could argue that tanking is just as much something that healers do as something that non-healers do.
Armies have heavy infantry, light infantry, support, medics, etc. Please explain to me how you think the MMO genre has created this "silly tank-healer-dps dynamic". Its just the way battles are fought.
Yes, even the beloved EVE has classes(ships). You can just switch classes anytime you want.
I think what the OP is saying is he wants to solo everything, since he won't have to depend on anyone.
Armies have heavy infantry, light infantry, support, medics, etc. Please explain to me how you think the MMO genre has created this "silly tank-healer-dps dynamic". Its just the way battles are fought.
Yes, even the beloved EVE has classes(ships). You can just switch classes anytime you want.
I think what the OP is saying is he wants to solo everything, since he won't have to depend on anyone.
Oh, really? So when two armies fight, ALL the people on one side get aggroed by the other side's tank, then they continually fire on the tank while engineers and mechanics heal it up. While this is going on, the tank, which isn't capable of being a real threat, soaks this damage while everyone else in the field takes out the enemy? Of course the enemy never fights the infantry or artillery or anything like that.
In case you didn't follow the meaning of that paragraph. That Is NOT how battles are fought. Heck, in real warfare the less you engage the main force of the enemy, the better it is. (Of course MMOs focus on more local engagements and the tactics of that engagement, so it is a bit of a different thing, but even in that you don't have everyone firing on one target and completely ignore all the others, particular if some other target has the magical ability to keep your main target alive). Believe it or not "different roles" is not the same thing as tank-healer-dps.
Originally posted by Ilvaldyr Not being a Guild Wars player, that's a pretty meaningless example to me. From what I remember about Guild Wars, there were classes with higher damage mitigation abilities than others and agro/threat did exist albeit in a somewhat more complex manner than the typical MMO. There were also classes that could heal and others that could do high amounts of damage. Tanks, healers and DPSers.
If by damage mitigation, you mean intrinsic to the class armor, then yes, some do have higher than others. Warrior is the highest, and paragon is second highest--and much closer to warriors than to third highest. Paragons are mainly for defensive and healing skills. Some will insist that they do excellent damage, but I think that's exaggerated. Mobs generally ignore paragons precisely because of their high armor. And for what it's worth, paragons aren't even melee. Are you going to claim that a class that doesn't get hit much and doesn't get in mobs way is really a tank? You're pretty much forced to if you want to claim that Guild Wars has the traditional notion of tanking.
Damage mitigation isn't primarily from armor, however. It's mainly from skills. An assassin is normally pretty fragile. An assassin who uses flashing blades against melee mobs has a 75% chance to block, and that's almost permanently maintainable. That means an assassin will take less damage from melee mobs than a warrior would. Is an assassin a tank? You might as well argue that a rogue in WoW is really a tank class. Indeed, assassins tend to die the most, because none of their defensive skills are completely reliable, and their melee range makes them easy targets for mobs to gang up upon.
Or how about an elementalist. At 14 earth magic, kinetic armor is +76 armor. That can easily push an elementalist to higher armor than a warrior can get to except by relying on a secondary profession or PvE-only skills. That reduces all armor-respecting damage by more than 72%. It's also permanently maintainable, at least if mobs don't strip enchantments. Is an elementalist a tank? You might as well argue that a mage in WoW is a tank. Merv808 seems to think they're a damage dealer. Consider that an elementalist usually isn't trying to get hit, and often stays at full spell range, even with their strong armor.
But the real main source of damage mitigation is applying conditions and hexes to mobs that greatly reduce their damage output, or interrupting them. Against an air spike elementalist boss, high armor can make it so you take three hits to die, instead of two. A ranger with broad head arrow that dazes the boss can make it so that it doesn't get any cast off for the duration of the battle, hence not doing any damage to anyone. Is a ranger a tank?
Necromancers have a lot of damage mitigation skills. Enfeebling blood is an area weakness skill, and extremely powerful. Shadow of fear and meekness are area hexes that slow melee attacks by 50%, and are also very powerful. These and some other skills make curse necros incredibly useful for mitigating damage from melee mobs. Are necromancers tanks?
And then there are mesmers, the counter everything class. Basically, if a mesmer knows what you're going to do and is prepared for it, he can shut you down. What you're going to do only changes how a mesmer has to do it. A mesmer has fast interrupts with full spell range, skill disabling, making whatever you do deal more damage to yourself than your target, blindness, and a lot of other tools. Hit certain bosses with power block at the right time and you reduce a powerful elementalist to meager wanding until it dies. Is a mesmer a tank? With physical resistance or elemental resistance, they can have tank grade armor against most attacks.
If you want to claim that all of those are tanks, then you're reduced to claiming that every class in the game except for healers is really a tank class, even non-melee intrinsically squishy classes that normally don't like to get hit. But if you want to argue that they aren't, then you kind of have to concede that warriors aren't tanks either, at least if damage mitigation is the criterion. Elementalists, necromancers, and mesmers can all do far more to reduce the damage output of mobs than a warrior can. If a warrior manages to bunch up the mobs, that leaves them vulnerable to area shutdown attacks from other group members, so that the warrior's high armor doesn't matter. Even apart from that, if a "squishy" class managed to shove mobs into a corner and a protection monk then casts shield of regeneration on him, that instantly makes him a better tank than the warrior would have been without the same enchantment.
It sounds like you're reduced to arguing that if some classes have higher armor than others, then the high armor classes are tanks. But that is demonstrable nonsense, even in games that do have canonical tanks, healers, and damage dealers. That would force you to classify a cleric in Vanguard as a tank rather than a healer, which is its official designation. It's not a hybrid; it's a healer.
And no, Guild Wars doesn't have an aggro system. Basically, mobs try to figure out who they can kill the fastest, and then that's who they'll target. Each mob does this independently, so it's not automatic that they'll all target the same character. They prefer targets that are in range over targets that are out of range, because if it takes a while to get to a target that is out of range, that's time not spent dealing damage, which makes the target take longer to kill. The prefer low armor targets to high armor targets. They prefer targets that don't have that much health left over those that have a lot of health. Perhaps the only real exception is that they'll favor a target that is attacking them right that second over one that isn't if the other factors are close, but that can't overcome the discrepancy if it's obvious that they can kill a target that isn't attacking quickly but it would take a long time against a target that attacking them ferociously. They don't remember who was attacking them ten seconds ago.
Armies have heavy infantry, light infantry, support, medics, etc. Please explain to me how you think the MMO genre has created this "silly tank-healer-dps dynamic". Its just the way battles are fought.
Err, yikes. For starters, wars are PvP. The other side feels no compulsion to target whoever has been doing the most aggro.
Second, people generally try not to get hit in wars. There have been very few occasions in the history of human warfare when one side had strong enough armor as to stand there, take whatever punishment the other side could dish out, and survive. Those never lasted long, as the other side quickly developed strong enough weapons to penetrate the armor, and the only reason they were even able to happen for brief instances (e.g., the first ironclads) is that the armor was specifically designed to withstand the weapons that the other side had at the time, and not what the other side could have built if so inclined (but saw no need to because weaker weapons worked just as well) or maybe even already had in a different area. If a surface to air missile hits a plane, it will blow it up, no matter what type of plane it is. If an anti-tank weapon hits a ground vehicle, it will blow it up, no matter what sort of vehicle it hits. If a 2000 pound bomb is dropped on a building, it will blow it up, no matter what building it hits; at most, a large enough building may have only part of the building collapse from the bomb.
Third, as amazing as modern medical technology is, it's completely destroys your analogy to call medics "healers" in the MMORPG sense. Someone who is severely wounded is out of the war for good. Even milder injuries aren't healed in time to send a soldier back out there in the middle of a firefight, though broken bones may heal and allow a soldier to return later in the war. Indeed, there isn't any meaningful healing while you're under fire. One may try to stop or slow bleeding as an immediate measure, but evacuating the wounded for medical care means taking them out of a battle for the duration of it.
I think I am really started to get fed up with how every MMORPG seems to be focused on having Tanks who draw all agro, healers who just heal others, and then DPS. It just stretched believability to a breaking point, imho, and it also always causes problems when the tank or healer role isn't a lot of fun for most people (though I do have fun playing a tank at times, the whole thing seems crazy even when I do it). Are there any MMORPGs that have broken with this convention? I'd imagine everyone would be able to take some abuse and there'd probably still be healing of some sort (without pigeon-holing anyone into the role of always healing). Probably have an interesting system for determining who attacks what.
Edit: A lot of people seem to be completely misunderstanding what I am talking or about or unable to really conceive of a game that isn't married to the mechanics of theTank-Healer-DPS system (so they try to envision a game with the same threat mechanics or the like). From my latest post (as of this edit) here is what I am talking about:
I'm not saying I don't want roles. I am not saying I wany everyone to do everything. Please my posts if you aren't getting this. I AM saying I want everyone able to take damage. Well, than that means you DO want all roles to include the tank aspects. That's what makes a tank, they take damage. So if a healer can take damage just as well as a tank, then they become overpowered, because they also have healing. Or if a caster could take damage, they'd be unstoppable too, because you'd be dead by their dd's and dot's before you could get their hp's down, etc. etc. It could work, but it the 'trinity' of mmo's is like a house of cards, you cannot retain interdependence by adding more independence to each class, thus the cards fall. You can have a game where everyone has strong defensive abilities, but it would be a more solo oriented game, because you simply wouldn't need tanks at all period. If you think about those same fantasy novels and movies, you always see a plate wearing, non magic warrior type. What role would they have? Why would I pick a non-magic, non-holy plate wearing fighter, if the guy next to him has the same defenses but could also heal, and on the other side was magic weilding caster who also had equal defenses. Your idea has made a standard archetype role in the fantasy genre, obsolete. I am saying I hate the Aggro system that Tank-Healer-DPS implies. A system where the monsters always attack one guy (the tank), even though that doesn't make any sense. I dislike the reality break there. But this ISN"T how mmo's aggro system work. The aggro always goes to the healer and dps. The tanks role is to draw the aggro away from the vulnerable classes. The tank MUST use his skills to gain the aggro. You imply it is automatic and removes challenge. Haven't you ever played the tank and had a bitch of a time because of weaker classes stealing aggro? The monster's don't always attack one guy, but rather, the monster wants to attack everyone but the ONE guy you want him to attack. Think of a fantasy movie or novel. You might have one guy position to take the initial brunt of the attacks, but everyone can defend themselves if they are attacked. Some people can heal, not everyone, but they don't churn out big heals constantly on one person. If one person gets into a tight spot, then a friend lends them a hand either with magic or steel so they aren't take down. But how would a healer or caster ever get in a tight spot? They defend as well as traditional tanks. So if you are a healer, simply heal yourself. If you are a caster, you'd have enough hp to blast the mob before you could get the damage. And what if that caster or healer had a root ability. Where is the vulnerability? How do you take down a healer who has the defenses and hps of a tank? How do you ensure group interdependancy? Why would a healer need dps? Why would a caster need a healer? Why would you need a warrior or fighter at all?
A big dragon might breathe fire down on the heros, but one or two people have the capability of putting up a shield in response to that fire which will protect people. I don't know one mmo that doesn't have this exact scenario already. Example: fire breathing dragon, caster 1 uses a fire mitigation spell, caster 2 uses an temp hp increase, while a priest uses a temp defense bonus spell. This is so common, I'm not sure how you've missed it. I want a game that does THAT, where the monsters act in a fairly realistic manner and the people can handle themselves to a degree but are even stronger as a group. Well first, to say that you want 'realistic monsters' isn't really the right phrasing, in that monsters are magical, mythical beings that cannot be 'realistic' since they are not 'real' - hence the term 'fantasy game' not 'reality game'. I think what you are really saying is that you want 'believable' monsters. But to say that it isn't realistic for a healer to be weak and a tank to be strong is also ludicrous. Tell you what, go grab a buddhist monk and put him in a death match with a marine and tell me that the healer is just as strong at defense as a tank, in reality.
All that said......
The Diablo series maybe closer to what you are thinking because they eliminated healers almost all together. Potions for mana and health are the primary 'powering' up methods,so you don't have the need of a dedicated healer. But guess what, it also makes grouping in Diablo unecessary. People can solo the content just as well, the groups are not interdependent.People group in diablo because the loot is better in a group or just because they are hanging out with friends. It isn't necessary to survive the dungeon.
Your idea would work, but it would be a very different kind of game than an mmo.
Comments
*sigh* When I was talking about how you can one-shot healers, I was referring to existing games. Take WoW, for instance, any raid boss can kill a healer in one blow. EASY. I don't want a game like that. I want a game where IF someone that can heal gets targetted, then they can take a good amount of punishment. Sure you'd have guys who can take more (and probably have some abilities they let them intercept a blow here and there on others, and other guys who can provide magical shields or the like), but everyone can take a beating. You'd have some heals, but not a lot, so as combat went on people would get worn down (but not killed if done right).
Obviously no one would want to take a Tank/Healer/DPS game, keep the same level of survivability, and then change the aggro rules so everyone gets one-shotted before the tank gets attacked.
Vanguard healers were great DPS/Healer hybrids.
Yes I had a shammy there but we all had rolls to play in groups,that was the OP's question,we couldnt all tank/heal,VG is very much a holy trinity game,for solo play yes the healers could solo well but that is hardly relevant to this topic.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
I agree with your statement here.
Tabula rasa did it very right. Shame it was released unfinished like almost every mmo >_<
Someone said earlier about a 25man raid with everyone able to tank being unchallenging, but you are thinking about it the wrong way.
for example if it was a single boss sure it would be pretty pathetic since there was nothing to split attention, a more likely boss would be 1 leader and 30 adds, relying on controlling enemies rather than just tanking them else you'd be overwhelmed, the leader would be able to dispel certain effects etc.
No need to keep inside the box, change of system means change of perspective.
Age of conan was like this when i played it, since healing was very weak in pve so all roles had to work together with knockdowns and stuns/stacking heals etc to defeat encounters. It required a high level of coordination.
On the topic of roles, people are getting a bit confused, a tank is someone that stops the party taking damage, a healer is someone that mitigates incoming damage, dps does damage and support debuffs/buffs
These 4 roles get combined and mixed up all the time, but there is more than one way to do each.
If you take away the roles completely i'd wager you couldn't make a truly challenging pve encounter.
<Welcome to my world>
The reason for the holy trinity is pretty simple. They are roles that NEED to exist in order to play the types of MMOs most people enjoy. For example, look at Guild Wars. Almost any class can be a tank, dps, or healer at some point in the game, and do it well. However, in order to get things done, people will always ask for tanks (people to absorb the damage), healers (people to support / keep everyone alive), and dps (people to take down the mobs as fast as possible, leading to less damage recieved).
The only games that can get away with avoiding the 'trinity', are games in which these roles are not needed. This means an entirely different type of MMO. An example of this would be games such as Second Life, the spy game Sony is developing, etc. in which there either isn't any A) healing, or
heavy damage absorption. Typically, this leaves room for only realistic / semi-realistic combat sims, or games in which combat consistly mostly of a few hacks / shots and it's over. It's very difficult to have a fun & interesting MMO with such a limitation put on the gameplay.
As said before, the question is whether not a game makes them equally enjoyable; or whether or not a game finds a way to allow you to experience the 'same ol trinity' in a new and engaging way.
CoH/CoV has the classic roles, CoH even has a class called tank. But they make it a bit more interesting by adding pure CC and debuffer/buffer classes. And CoV classes are a bit different then CoH.
Because of all the CC and debuffing you can get by with different combinations. Enough CC and you don't need healing. So all the roles are there but you don't need the same configuration all the time. Until you are doing end game farming, then specific roles are used. Two of them being tank and healing.
I love the classes in Mass Effect, truly a great RPG (minus the mindless planet driving).
And I could see this becoming a MMO.
The classes they use are:
Soldier: Tank but also does the most damage.
Adept: Crowd Control
Engineer: Healer, sniping, area damage with explosives.
Then you have various combinations of those. And all classes can heal, engineer just gives you better healing.
Saying trinity is required is illogical- the same way mobs are not logical. If they had any sense, they would act like Players and kill the healers first, then proceed to murder the squishies, and then lastly, they murder the Tanks
This is how PVP works. Trinity fails there completely. And I would like to assume this is because players are smarter then the scripted AI we see in mmorpgs
Isn't this sad? Our mobs are mindless victims purely. If they had an ounce of intelligence Trinity would fall apart (like it does in PVP).
And sadly mmorpgs have degraded to the point now where mmorpgs try to make 'Taunt' work in PVP. Taunt was always a crutch for poor game design and now it has crawled into pvp encounters in some titles.
The Chronicles of Spellborn doesn't use that dynamic. Every class has spells to heal themselves. They can all deal DPS or buff their party. There is no system that forces any player to fulfill any role in a party. In fact, there are only about 3 direct heal spells in the game and you couldn't spam them even if you wanted to. You basically have to fight, not just heal. Also, there is no threat system in place where players get taunts and things like that. Mobs will go after whoever poses the most threat to them. That doesn't mean whoever does the most damage. It can mean the person keeping their party alive. The AI is very smart. The system basically prevents anyone from playing the tank role. Also it uses active aiming/dodging in combat so it's all skill based. The game is a lot of fun, I think.
I don't think you are understanding what I am talking about at all.
I'm not saying I don't want roles. I am not saying I wany everyone to do everything. Please my posts if you aren't getting this.
I AM saying I want everyone able to take damage. I am saying I hate the Aggro system that Tank-Healer-DPS implies. A system where the monsters always attack one guy (the tank), even though that doesn't make any sense. I dislike the reality break there.
Think of a fantasy movie or novel. You might have one guy position to take the initial brunt of the attacks, but everyone can defend themselves if they are attacked. Some people can heal, not everyone, but they don't churn out big heals constantly on one person. If one person gets into a tight spot, then a friend lends them a hand either with magic or steel so they aren't take down. A big dragon might breathe fire down on the heros, but one or two people have the capability of putting up a shield in response to that fire which will protect people. I want a game that does THAT, where the monsters act in a fairly realistic manner and the people can handle themselves to a degree but are even stronger as a group.
Mass Effect as an MMO would break from this. So perhaps the Bioware's starwars MMO will as well.
In Mass Effect you don't tank and heal. You hit and run. Everyone does range damage. You move away from Tank and heal, and move towards, using cover, sniping, crowd control.
The big difference is there's a lot of movement. It's not just standing in once place. Once games move away from auto aim and start using cover we can move away from tank and heal.
Mass Effect as an MMO would break from this. So perhaps the Bioware's starwars MMO will as well.
In Mass Effect you don't tank and heal. You hit and run. Everyone does range damage. You move away from Tank and heal, and move towards, using cover, sniping, crowd control.
The big difference is there's a lot of movement. It's not just standing in once place. Once games move away from auto aim and start using cover we can move ways from tank and heal.
That works for a Sci-Fi game. It makes sense too. So I like that. I guess I was more specifically going over what I'd want from a fantasy MMORPG. I just want the combat system to be more realistic than "Big Bad bashes against the hardest to kill guy who is constantly healed by people the Big Bad could kill just by looking at them."
I'm completely with this philosophy, but I'm afraid there are a great number of people who can't get out of the rut, and developers seem happy to make things easy on them.
IMO, the most horribly overpowered feature in just about any MMO is the healing - whether on mobs or players. Mobs with self-healing are always the tougher ones to take down, and healing classes that are played skillfully are usually the most powerful player classes.
The part that is really quite strange about all this is that healing is a rather boring aspect of MMOs if that is all you get to do.
That works for a Sci-Fi game. It makes sense too. So I like that. I guess I was more specifically going over what I'd want from a fantasy MMORPG. I just want the combat system to be more realistic than "Big Bad bashes against the hardest to kill guy who is constantly healed by people the Big Bad could kill just by looking at them."
I agree with you. It is getting old. It's one of the reasons I don't play WoW.
CoV is nice because although there is a tank class (brute) most of them don't even take the taunt skill. Things are much more chaotic. You've get master minds with pets all over the place, lots of crowd control, all sorts of buffing and debuffing. So basically everyone ends up taking damage. Or your crowd control is so good no one does and you don't even need the brute.
I have a L50 Brute that skipped Taunt because 'Taunt is an inherit to Brutes'. So even though one may lack the Taunt skill- you still are 'Taunting'. This is why Brutes still hold aggro in parties. It's even easier if you are an /ELEC secondary because that allows you to aggro the 'herd' around you
So to be clear CoH/CoV is a holy trinity title and I would not recommend it to someone trying to escape that design pattern. Chronicles of Spellborn would be a much more wiser choice
There are so many absurdly wrong assertions here that it will be hard to dispel them all. I'll try anyway:
Ilvaldyr: "There are quite a few that don't have the Tank+Healer+DPS trinity; but the problem with the them (at least in my experience) is that they lack structure to the point of group-combat just being mindless zergs filled with homogenised classes with identical capabilities."
In Guild Wars, try to do Dzagonur Bastion master's reward in hard mode without the usual PvE-only cheats. It's doable if you know how, and will look quite chaotic to watch someone else who knows how, but if you try the mindless zerg approach, you will fail, badly.
merv808: "Play a game where the "trinity" doesn't exist, and you will quickly find out why specific combat roles are needed. It will always be a part of every successful game."
Are you asserting that Guild Wars is unsuccessful, or that it has conventional tanks even without an aggro system?
daylight01: "though what you are asking is say 25 ppl in a raid can all basically tank a boss/take alot of damage from a boss as well as heal,I am starting to wonder were the challenge would be?"
If you're fighting against 40 mobs, any of which would slaughter anyone in your raid 1 on 1, there's your challenge. And if 40 isn't enough to make it a challenge, there's no reason not to make it 60 or 100 or whatever.
But who says you have to have a 25 man raid, and that there can never be any challenge apart from raids? That a lot of MMORPGs don't care to put in any challenge other than not being high enough level or having good enough gear hardly means it can't be done. Was Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? easy because it wasn't a raid?
Vynt: "Generic hybrids where people are a jack of all trades works fine for every day grind. It does not work for any possible epic encounters though."
As implemented in some particular games, it doesn't work. That doesn't mean it can't be made to work. And what makes fighting a big boss who is a complete moron and ignores the healers "epic"? That's more stupid than epic.
Vynt: "My point is, as was mentioned by another previously, games will always be reduced to their roles of damage, healing/support, and defense (tank)."
You want some other roles besides those? Without looking beyond the base hero builds that I used pretty extensively in Guild Wars:
*A curse necromancer with enfeebling blood, shadow of fear, and some wells, among other skills. Weaken mobs so they do far less damage when they hit, cut their attack speed by half, and make them more likely to miss when they do attack. This is something of a debuffer role.
*An earth elementalist with unsteady ground, eruption, ward of weakness, ward against melee, and some other skills. Mobs usually miss while blind, can't hit while knocked down, don't do as much damage while weakened, and it gives your party members 50% chance to block. Also more of a buffer/debuffer role.
*A water/earth elementalist wtih ward against harm, blurred vision, maelstrom, ward against melee, and some energy management skills. Increased armor for the group, increased block chance, miss chance for mobs, and the occasional area interrupt when you have to interrupt a lot at once. More of a buffer than a debuffer, but there are some of both.
*A protection monk with shield of regeneration, aegis, remove hex, dismiss condition, and some other skills. Increased block chance for your party, much higher armor for a selected target, clear enemy debuffs off, and a bit of healing. This does heal some, but mainly it's about buffing the party members and clearing off enemy debuffs.
*A domination mesmer with a bunch of interrupts. Basically, whatever mobs try to cast, interrupt it. The purpose isn't to deal damage directly, but to prevent mobs from finishing whatever skills they try to cast.
That's only the general use things that I'd use a lot, and doesn't include the many more specialized uses. It also doesn't include the minion master necromancer that a lot of players are fond of, but I'm not.
Vynt: "Even if everyone is hybrid, they still have those roles and people will assign accordingly. That is what combat is."
People will assign roles, but not necessarily tank, healer, and damage dealer roles. In Puzzle Pirates, people have roles of sailing, carpentry, bilging, gunnery, and navigation.
Vynt: "Oh, if everyone can do everything, basically it negates the reason for grouping."
Everyone can, theoretically, do everything in A Tale in the Desert. But no single player can do everything because no one knows how to do everything, for reasons of player skill, not character skill. Until people figure out how to make good endurance food, some activities like digging, cement, and barrel grinder simply can't be done solo.
asperus: "For example, look at Guild Wars. Almost any class can be a tank, dps, or healer at some point in the game, and do it well. However, in order to get things done, people will always ask for tanks (people to absorb the damage), healers (people to support / keep everyone alive), and dps (people to take down the mobs as fast as possible, leading to less damage recieved)."
Um, yikes, that is so wrong as to be painful. For starters, only three classes (out of ten) have the capability to heal other party members. One of those is the paragon, which has some nice group healing, but very little in the way of single-target healing.
Next, a competent group will virtually never base its plans around, we want these party members to take the damage and not those ones. You can't choose like that. If a party member is fragile, then mobs will go after him solely because he is fragile. If your plan relies on him not getting hit, then he'll be killed quickly and repeatedly, racking up a lot of death penalty and therefore being a lot more fragile. The only real way to avoid that is to keep him out of combat entirely, in which case, you're shorthanded.
Finally, DPS isn't a role. Everyone does damage. Healers perhaps do less damage, but other than that, most classes are fairly comparable in how much damage they do. If the question is what a character's role is, then the question is, what else does he do? Anyone who doesn't do anything else other than damage is a dead weight. In most missions, having a party member who does damage and nothing else isn't that much different from simply going shorthanded, at least as far as being able to complete the mission goes. Some players are incompetent and can put together groups (especially with henchmen/heroes) where the player does damage only and relies on henchmen and heroes to do all of the work. That will work all right in some areas, especially in easy mode, but usually it falls apart if you try anything difficult.
PatchDay: "Isn't this sad? Our mobs are mindless victims purely. If they had an ounce of intelligence Trinity would fall apart (like it does in PVP).
That's kind of how it works in Guild Wars. And yes, that's why Guild Wars doesn't have the traditional trinity of class roles.
Play Eve online. It's a lot more complicated than the system you talked about.
in guild wars, combat is a Warrior to "control" the mob, ele's for dps, and monks to heal...same dynamic
Not being a Guild Wars player, that's a pretty meaningless example to me.
From what I remember about Guild Wars, there were classes with higher damage mitigation abilities than others and agro/threat did exist albeit in a somewhat more complex manner than the typical MMO. There were also classes that could heal and others that could do high amounts of damage. Tanks, healers and DPSers.
Sure, some encounters may be built around other mechanics, but the same can be said of most MMOs .. WoW has a boat-load of encounters that are way more complex than your basic tank-and-spank. Earlier tonight I was in a group killing a huge blue dragon; that ONE fight involved me running between shield-bubbles, dodging torrents of fire, flying around on a magical disc and riding a red dragon. All in one battle that lasted ~6 minutes.
The trinity gives you an ideal baseline around which you can build more complex encounters. It's a proven system and it works far better than anything else that I've ever seen.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
You wouldn't say that if you were familiar with the game.
It's common for a group to not include a warrior at all. Even if there are warriors, they can't "control" mobs in any meaningful sense. If a warrior manages to keep one mob on him while the other five run off and attack other group members, that's doing pretty well in some cases. In some places (e.g., Tahnnakai Temple or Unwaking Waters), the optimal strategy is to avoid melee entirely. When a group does bring a warrior, that different classes attack from different ranges naturally spreads out the group to avoid all getting nuked by area attacks at once is a bigger consideration than the warrior tanking in any traditional sense.
There are elementalists and they can do damage, but that's not the point of the class. Depending on which element you go with, elementalists get knockdowns, weakness, blocking (for all party members in an area), +armor (also for all party members in an area), blinding, and miss chance skills, among others. If you want to argue that they're damage dealers on the basis that they also deal damage, you'll have to argue that every class is a damage dealer.
Yes, monks are mainly healers, though protection monks "heal" in a rather different manner from the usual MMORPG healers. Ritualists are also primarily healers, though like monks, they can spec for other things, too. But the only clear delineation here is healers and not healers, and there is no meaningful distinction between tanks and damage dealers. Indeed, one could argue that tanking is just as much something that healers do as something that non-healers do.
Armies have heavy infantry, light infantry, support, medics, etc. Please explain to me how you think the MMO genre has created this "silly tank-healer-dps dynamic". Its just the way battles are fought.
Yes, even the beloved EVE has classes(ships). You can just switch classes anytime you want.
I think what the OP is saying is he wants to solo everything, since he won't have to depend on anyone.
Oh, really? So when two armies fight, ALL the people on one side get aggroed by the other side's tank, then they continually fire on the tank while engineers and mechanics heal it up. While this is going on, the tank, which isn't capable of being a real threat, soaks this damage while everyone else in the field takes out the enemy? Of course the enemy never fights the infantry or artillery or anything like that.
In case you didn't follow the meaning of that paragraph. That Is NOT how battles are fought. Heck, in real warfare the less you engage the main force of the enemy, the better it is. (Of course MMOs focus on more local engagements and the tactics of that engagement, so it is a bit of a different thing, but even in that you don't have everyone firing on one target and completely ignore all the others, particular if some other target has the magical ability to keep your main target alive). Believe it or not "different roles" is not the same thing as tank-healer-dps.
If by damage mitigation, you mean intrinsic to the class armor, then yes, some do have higher than others. Warrior is the highest, and paragon is second highest--and much closer to warriors than to third highest. Paragons are mainly for defensive and healing skills. Some will insist that they do excellent damage, but I think that's exaggerated. Mobs generally ignore paragons precisely because of their high armor. And for what it's worth, paragons aren't even melee. Are you going to claim that a class that doesn't get hit much and doesn't get in mobs way is really a tank? You're pretty much forced to if you want to claim that Guild Wars has the traditional notion of tanking.
Damage mitigation isn't primarily from armor, however. It's mainly from skills. An assassin is normally pretty fragile. An assassin who uses flashing blades against melee mobs has a 75% chance to block, and that's almost permanently maintainable. That means an assassin will take less damage from melee mobs than a warrior would. Is an assassin a tank? You might as well argue that a rogue in WoW is really a tank class. Indeed, assassins tend to die the most, because none of their defensive skills are completely reliable, and their melee range makes them easy targets for mobs to gang up upon.
Or how about an elementalist. At 14 earth magic, kinetic armor is +76 armor. That can easily push an elementalist to higher armor than a warrior can get to except by relying on a secondary profession or PvE-only skills. That reduces all armor-respecting damage by more than 72%. It's also permanently maintainable, at least if mobs don't strip enchantments. Is an elementalist a tank? You might as well argue that a mage in WoW is a tank. Merv808 seems to think they're a damage dealer. Consider that an elementalist usually isn't trying to get hit, and often stays at full spell range, even with their strong armor.
But the real main source of damage mitigation is applying conditions and hexes to mobs that greatly reduce their damage output, or interrupting them. Against an air spike elementalist boss, high armor can make it so you take three hits to die, instead of two. A ranger with broad head arrow that dazes the boss can make it so that it doesn't get any cast off for the duration of the battle, hence not doing any damage to anyone. Is a ranger a tank?
Necromancers have a lot of damage mitigation skills. Enfeebling blood is an area weakness skill, and extremely powerful. Shadow of fear and meekness are area hexes that slow melee attacks by 50%, and are also very powerful. These and some other skills make curse necros incredibly useful for mitigating damage from melee mobs. Are necromancers tanks?
And then there are mesmers, the counter everything class. Basically, if a mesmer knows what you're going to do and is prepared for it, he can shut you down. What you're going to do only changes how a mesmer has to do it. A mesmer has fast interrupts with full spell range, skill disabling, making whatever you do deal more damage to yourself than your target, blindness, and a lot of other tools. Hit certain bosses with power block at the right time and you reduce a powerful elementalist to meager wanding until it dies. Is a mesmer a tank? With physical resistance or elemental resistance, they can have tank grade armor against most attacks.
If you want to claim that all of those are tanks, then you're reduced to claiming that every class in the game except for healers is really a tank class, even non-melee intrinsically squishy classes that normally don't like to get hit. But if you want to argue that they aren't, then you kind of have to concede that warriors aren't tanks either, at least if damage mitigation is the criterion. Elementalists, necromancers, and mesmers can all do far more to reduce the damage output of mobs than a warrior can. If a warrior manages to bunch up the mobs, that leaves them vulnerable to area shutdown attacks from other group members, so that the warrior's high armor doesn't matter. Even apart from that, if a "squishy" class managed to shove mobs into a corner and a protection monk then casts shield of regeneration on him, that instantly makes him a better tank than the warrior would have been without the same enchantment.
It sounds like you're reduced to arguing that if some classes have higher armor than others, then the high armor classes are tanks. But that is demonstrable nonsense, even in games that do have canonical tanks, healers, and damage dealers. That would force you to classify a cleric in Vanguard as a tank rather than a healer, which is its official designation. It's not a hybrid; it's a healer.
And no, Guild Wars doesn't have an aggro system. Basically, mobs try to figure out who they can kill the fastest, and then that's who they'll target. Each mob does this independently, so it's not automatic that they'll all target the same character. They prefer targets that are in range over targets that are out of range, because if it takes a while to get to a target that is out of range, that's time not spent dealing damage, which makes the target take longer to kill. The prefer low armor targets to high armor targets. They prefer targets that don't have that much health left over those that have a lot of health. Perhaps the only real exception is that they'll favor a target that is attacking them right that second over one that isn't if the other factors are close, but that can't overcome the discrepancy if it's obvious that they can kill a target that isn't attacking quickly but it would take a long time against a target that attacking them ferociously. They don't remember who was attacking them ten seconds ago.
Err, yikes. For starters, wars are PvP. The other side feels no compulsion to target whoever has been doing the most aggro.
Second, people generally try not to get hit in wars. There have been very few occasions in the history of human warfare when one side had strong enough armor as to stand there, take whatever punishment the other side could dish out, and survive. Those never lasted long, as the other side quickly developed strong enough weapons to penetrate the armor, and the only reason they were even able to happen for brief instances (e.g., the first ironclads) is that the armor was specifically designed to withstand the weapons that the other side had at the time, and not what the other side could have built if so inclined (but saw no need to because weaker weapons worked just as well) or maybe even already had in a different area. If a surface to air missile hits a plane, it will blow it up, no matter what type of plane it is. If an anti-tank weapon hits a ground vehicle, it will blow it up, no matter what sort of vehicle it hits. If a 2000 pound bomb is dropped on a building, it will blow it up, no matter what building it hits; at most, a large enough building may have only part of the building collapse from the bomb.
Third, as amazing as modern medical technology is, it's completely destroys your analogy to call medics "healers" in the MMORPG sense. Someone who is severely wounded is out of the war for good. Even milder injuries aren't healed in time to send a soldier back out there in the middle of a firefight, though broken bones may heal and allow a soldier to return later in the war. Indeed, there isn't any meaningful healing while you're under fire. One may try to stop or slow bleeding as an immediate measure, but evacuating the wounded for medical care means taking them out of a battle for the duration of it.
All that said......
The Diablo series maybe closer to what you are thinking because they eliminated healers almost all together. Potions for mana and health are the primary 'powering' up methods,so you don't have the need of a dedicated healer. But guess what, it also makes grouping in Diablo unecessary. People can solo the content just as well, the groups are not interdependent.People group in diablo because the loot is better in a group or just because they are hanging out with friends. It isn't necessary to survive the dungeon.
Your idea would work, but it would be a very different kind of game than an mmo.