The holy trinity sucks when you can't find the roles you need or they start charging to do runs with you. My biggest gripe when I left WoW the last time was the long queues because you could never find tanks. Makes me wish they made instances for 6 people with one extra dps slot to help with the stupid queues.
I used to tank in vanilla WOW and it's too much of a job. I'd rather dps but only if I can actually get in instances rather quickly. I'm eagerly awaiting GW2 as I want to see how well their approach works.
My opinion is that the Holy Trinity is bad. Why? Because when a game (WoW) starts to give the less played class (tanks) more rewards then all the others when joined through the LFG System.
Obviously the system is flawed if they need to promote.
Thats what I'm not getting ... I thought you ( pardon if it wasn't you ) specified that the holy trinity by your definition was designated tanks, healers, and dps. The line is blured in WoW, Rift, Warhammer, etc etc. Can some classes/specs tank/heal/dps better ... why of course, but almost every "class" can hold a different role.
Breaking that down a bit ... if every class can fullfil multiple roles when simple changes, then the Trinity boils down to basically this : Someone is tanking, someone is healing, and someone is damaging. You can simplfy that even further by removing set aggro and healing spells and substitute them for smart damage rotations and regeneration out of combat. The trinity is still intact ... its just blured, you still have a tank, healer, and dps.
Thus my confusion ... the market is not making games on the "Holy Trinity" that I assumed you were explaining to me a few posts back ... it is in fact making hybrid trinitys where one can change their role mostly on the fly.
This is where I have an issue with what you're saying.
If an enemy can and will attack every player, that is no 'tank', and if you're regenning out of combat, you've just designated game mechanisms and 'nature' (Such as it is in a computer game) to be your healer.
That's like saying I'm a trinity because I could get hit with a stick, I can hit something with a stick, and if I've been hit by a stick, eventually I'll heal.
Heal/tank/dps are arbitrary divisions for dividing things into three, and are in fact not a fact of life (Not even video game life). Plenty of RPGs don't have combat healer roles (Talking P&P here). Look at fantasy books. Mid-combat healers are pretty rare...
Well, from what I'm seeing from GW2 and some of the post here I agree with the Advocate. Frankly the only thing I see happening when you give everyone the skills to do everything sooner or later it gonna get to the point where no one does anything together other than a few rare times IF the game forces them too.
Making ppl play together is an aspect of game design. Just so. The Trinity is merely ONE out of many possible ways to do it. Ppl do not complain about the neccessity for groupplay, they complain that grouplay is ENFORCED in always the same way in most games we know - and that is the Trinity. We know that Trinity works. But we do not know, if there is something that MIGHT work better, because few have ever tried. That the Trinity is the peak of game design evolution is not proven by that (that would be circular logic). It's more like a living fossile coming from the times of EQ1 (and the tzechnical restrictions of that days, e.g. no collision), having been improved and made popular in the times of WoW, so that today millions of ppl think, that this is the ONE way, MMORPGs have to be designed, along with the necessity for quests, epic purple gear and raids.
Even if everyone could do everything does not mean there is no need for cooperation. Not at all! In the most trivial way you could just throw so much opponents at the players, that a soloer would be outnumbered, thus the necessity for groupplay. Add in some abilities to aid allies (like an intercept or guard) and you have the means for coop, which do not make soloplay anymore easy, since you can not intercept on yourself. Voila - groupplay mechanics. And we wouldn't even need classes.
On a sidenote: the fact that everyone nowadays solos in WoW and similar games, doesn't have anything todo with the Trinity (since i cant remember that priest got tanking and dps abilities, etc), but merely that the difficulty of the content was tuned down to allow even antisocial and stupid ppl play on their own - and make them pay subsciptions.
I loath the trinity and the reasons are all laid out above. The best and most memorable raidfights are allways the ones, where things go wrong and the group handles the problem after a chaotic fight. Give the NPC's AI, make the dungeons more random and let players deal with things. Open up, script less!
The BIG problem with the holy trinity, raids are design so that you have specific scripts for each class to win. That is what I hated about Wow raids, they were retarded, you did the same thing over and over again with no variation. Where is the fun in that?????
I think the best times I have had in City of X were the task force where our group just dwindled and we were forced to improvise. It was exhilarating and interesting because each of us had to think on our feet.
I think the best thing about no defined roles is that feeling that your ability to think fast is valued and the ultimate feeling of pride if you do well. Doing well when a raid leader is yelling on Ventrilo about where to stand and where to go seems to not quite hit the mark .
I disagree that the market is no longer making games based on the holy trinity design. The potential for flexibility may exist, just like it does in WoW. When you're leveling, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Even WoW offers dual specs, and classes (druid in particular) that can play any role. When you get to endgame though, you must specialize. You can bring two different specs and two different sets of gear, but for any encounter attempt you can only do one role at a time.
To use another example, Rift offers even more flexibility than WoW, but I would also call it a holy trinity game due to being forced to specialize at endgame. Even classes that blur the lines, like a Chloromancer (healing as a result of damage dealt) are trying to be the best "healer as a result of damage dealt" they can be. It still requires specialization. It's true that I don't have personal endgame experience in Rift, but googling turns up this page, which lists endgame dps and tank specs that are very singleminded in their approach. http://www.awakenedonline.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6519102
As far as "trinity" goes, I can only say again and again that there is nothing universal about a trinity of damage, healing, and tanking, it all depends on the mechanics of the game and what is necessary to do a particular game's group content. In EQ1, an Enchanter was all but completely mandatory in every 6 man group. They were so incredibly valuable despite that they could go entire nights and never tank anything, never damage anything, and never heal anything. Their worth was entirely based on their crowd control (5-6 mobs at a time and you needed it), massive mana and haste buffs, and pretty strong debuffs. I can only keep throwing out example after example of why the notion of a trinity in our minds is only there because of WoW has a stranglehold on the MMO market, uses a Holy Trinity, and is so successful that a great many other MMOs are inspired by its mechanics to the point where some people believe it's the only possible way to do things.
Thats what I'm not getting ... I thought you ( pardon if it wasn't you ) specified that the holy trinity by your definition was designated tanks, healers, and dps. The line is blured in WoW, Rift, Warhammer, etc etc. Can some classes/specs tank/heal/dps better ... why of course, but almost every "class" can hold a different role.
Breaking that down a bit ... if every class can fullfil multiple roles when simple changes, then the Trinity boils down to basically this : Someone is tanking, someone is healing, and someone is damaging. You can simplfy that even further by removing set aggro and healing spells and substitute them for smart damage rotations and regeneration out of combat. The trinity is still intact ... its just blured, you still have a tank, healer, and dps.
Thus my confusion ... the market is not making games on the "Holy Trinity" that I assumed you were explaining to me a few posts back ... it is in fact making hybrid trinitys where one can change their role mostly on the fly.
By "on the fly", I was thinking of being able to switch roles mid combat. With Rift, you can swap your roles easily but only outside of combat. That's why I still call it a holy trinity game. People are specializing into either tank, healer or dps. If you fail an encounter and you want to try it again but this time with the warrior dpsing, the cleric tanking and the mage healing, each person is still locked into one particular role for an encounter.
Maybe early on in the game you can have hybrids, but they go away as you get to higher end content. Talent trees especially force this. If each talent increases your damage by 1% apiece, you're so much more efficient to have all of them focusing on increasing your damage and have someone else put all theirs towards healing than for the two of you to divide them up half and half.
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The BIG problem with the holy trinity, raids are design so that you have specific scripts for each class to win. That is what I hated about Wow raids, they were retarded, you did the same thing over and over again with no variation. Where is the fun in that?????
This was not my experience in WoW Raiding: Fight encounters would alter based on Raid make up (e.g. Hunter Ice Traps versus Mage Sheep, traditional Warr/Pali Tank vs. Ranged Tanking by Hunter/Mage in selected encounters.
What I enjoyed about WoW raiding was the rythms/timings/needs of the group, as a team,a nd the fact everyone had to be GOOD at what they were supposed to do. Very much like in real life.
The Moroes fight in Kharazan is probably a good microcosm example. When Kharazan was a relevant challenge that fight REQUIRED careful planning and execution, or the Raid got nuked by five wham-jamming mobs. In military parlance it required the execution of "divide and conquer", with no screw ups.
The Tank would coordinate with his team mates, identifying who would CC and/or off-tank each of the four attendants, while he/she tanked Moroes off to the side. Healers were assigned as appropriate. I was a Beast spec'd Hunter responsible for chain trapping one of the four attendants, and because I was Beast Spec'd, not Survival, I didn't have the benefit of trap cooldown reductions . . . so I ALWAYS coordinated with the Tank, letting him know when I was ready for his pull, because I'd drop a trap BEFORE his pull, letting the cooldown burn off some.
When the pull occurred, it was show time. All five mobs would run for the Tank on the pull, then each of the four attendants would divert as each was off-pulled by their CCrs / off tanks. Healers would be spamming the Tank trying to keep him/her up, watching EVERYONE for Moroes random applied Garrote super-bleed. I'd be dancing the chain-trapping dance iwth my mob, letting it hit the first trap, then SHIFTING position as needed dropping my next one, then standing on it's other side so when the first trap broke, the mob, if it was still aggro'd to me, would walk into the second one . . . then when my CD was up I'd drop another, rinse/repeat.
All the while, in between, I'd be laying in DPS on each designated kill target. We killed each of the four attendants, one by one, until only Moroes was left.
Very fun fight, tested healers a lot, particularly if something went wonky. Tested CC abilities a bit, tested off tanks. If something broke free, it tested everyone's ability to DANCE the dynamic BACK into CONTROL.
I never found WoW Raids to be boring. This is the Molten Core/Blackwing Lair, and into BC era, and some into Lich King / Nax 10-25 / Ulduar.
I never found WoW Raids "boring". What I do recall is they required people to KNOW their classes, but more specifically how to engage in critical thinking . . . to fulfill the assigned role in the Raid.
When I was assigned the task of controlling the Skelly spawns in Gluth's room, by myself (with a support healer as needed), well, that was some fun stuff. lol.
I never found WoW Raids "boring". What I do recall is they required people to KNOW their classes, but more specifically how to engage in critical thinking . . . to fulfill the assigned role in the Raid.
I never found WoW Raids "boring". What I do recall is they required people to KNOW their classes, but more specifically how to engage in critical thinking . . . to fulfill the assigned role in the Raid.
This is wrong on so many levels.
How so? A lot of this was basic, but, always a suprise, beyond many people:
Don't AoE near CC targets.
Silence Casters that spawn up whacking on Healers.
Fear Ward your Tank at the right time.
Pay attention to random applied effects by bosses and/or attendants and get those cleansed.
Spawns appear unexpectedly, get them peeled off the Heales and kite them back to the Tank.
As a Hunter, don't just mash the pew-pew button whilst staring fixedly at the DPS meter alone (lulz), take position near your Healers and have an Ice trap near them just in case.
Be prepared with the right mix of potions and such BEFORE showing up for the Raid.
Now, many WoW players didn't bother to think much when attempting to Raid. That's part of the problem in any MMO. /shrug But if the instance required relevantly geared raiders who knew how to perform their roles, that's who got into the Raids in the Guilds I was in.
The BIG problem with the holy trinity, raids are design so that you have specific scripts for each class to win. That is what I hated about Wow raids, they were retarded, you did the same thing over and over again with no variation. Where is the fun in that?????
This was not my experience in WoW Raiding: Fight encounters would alter based on Raid make up (e.g. Hunter Ice Traps versus Mage Sheep, traditional Warr/Pali Tank vs. Ranged Tanking by Hunter/Mage in selected encounters.
What I enjoyed about WoW raiding was the rythms/timings/needs of the group, as a team,a nd the fact everyone had to be GOOD at what they were supposed to do. Very much like in real life.
The Moroes fight in Kharazan is probably a good microcosm example. When Kharazan was a relevant challenge that fight REQUIRED careful planning and execution, or the Raid got nuked by five wham-jamming mobs. In military parlance it required the execution of "divide and conquer", with no screw ups.
The Tank would coordinate with his team mates, identifying who would CC and/or off-tank each of the four attendants, while he/she tanked Moroes off to the side. Healers were assigned as appropriate. I was a Beast spec'd Hunter responsible for chain trapping one of the four attendants, and because I was Beast Spec'd, not Survival, I didn't have the benefit of trap cooldown reductions . . . so I ALWAYS coordinated with the Tank, letting him know when I was ready for his pull, because I'd drop a trap BEFORE his pull, letting the cooldown burn off some.
When the pull occurred, it was show time. All five mobs would run for the Tank on the pull, then each of the four attendants would divert as each was off-pulled by their CCrs / off tanks. Healers would be spamming the Tank trying to keep him/her up, watching EVERYONE for Moroes random applied Garrote super-bleed. I'd be dancing the chain-trapping dance iwth my mob, letting it hit the first trap, then SHIFTING position as needed dropping my next one, then standing on it's other side so when the first trap broke, the mob, if it was still aggro'd to me, would walk into the second one . . . then when my CD was up I'd drop another, rinse/repeat.
All the while, in between, I'd be laying in DPS on each designated kill target. We killed each of the four attendants, one by one, until only Moroes was left.
Very fun fight, tested healers a lot, particularly if something went wonky. Tested CC abilities a bit, tested off tanks. If something broke free, it tested everyone's ability to DANCE the dynamic BACK into CONTROL.
I never found WoW Raids to be boring. This is the Molten Core/Blackwing Lair, and into BC era, and some into Lich King / Nax 10-25 / Ulduar.
I never found WoW Raids "boring". What I do recall is they required people to KNOW their classes, but more specifically how to engage in critical thinking . . . to fulfill the assigned role in the Raid.
When I was assigned the task of controlling the Skelly spawns in Gluth's room, by myself (with a support healer as needed), well, that was some fun stuff. lol.
Amusing how you just reinforced what I said, thanks.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It's funny how the industry itself is polarizing on this topic.
A previous poster mentioned the Moroes fight. That was Burning Crusade content. Have you played lately? Each expansion has cut down on that sort of thing. Even Cata, where they SWORE crowd control would be needed, mostly is tank and spank, with the occasional "get out of fire" or "kite the add" or such mechanic. WoW has not only cemented the Holy Trinity for us, they continue to make it a necessity while swearing to us they want to get away from it.
RIft has done somehting similar. EVERYONE can be pretty much EVERY role thanks to a robust mult-spec system that puts WoW's to shame. It STILL requires the trinity; but thanks to having so many roles/specs, any character practically can step into a role, and eliminate the "OMG we coulda started raid 4 hours ago but there's no tanks online!" BS. They ALSO tried to shift focus away with a "support" role; but by and large that just ends up being an offhealer, offtank, or a DPS in disguise.
Guild Wars 2 is homogenizing all three roles; Each player will having some healing available, and it feels like health/defensives will be similar enough between classes that EVERYONE will tank. If so, I suspect there will be a lot of range ping-ponging of bosses, which might be fun.
1- Unbalanced population or each class [guess which class will typify the population and it won't be healers].
2- Unbalanced population leads to players leveling jobs they just simply suck at.
3- Inventory. Because while you can be a tank, healer or DPS at various times the inventory is a killer.
4- Depending on others. This can be equally good and bad.No one personifies this as well as Leeroy Jenkins.
5- When someone refuses to do their "job" it leads to people dying. Frankly seeing healers trying to be DPS's is funny...
6- Strategies are repetitive and based on "tried and true" methods. Player A does this, player B does this and player C does this.
7- Players get cast-typed into certain roles for the sake of the clan, guild, shell, faction, etc. Ever know a player that complains they always come as a healer and want to be a DPS instead?
8- There is always a yearning for "optimal setups" for each class leading to lack of variety or creativity. For example, in mmo's where you have the trinity you know that for each class there is already an assumption as to what are the best items. So you don't get too much experimenting and creativity as far as setups go. You know what the best shield is for a tank, the best staff for a mage, etc.
9- The class system mostly at the mercy of the developers. Some developers may create a nice niche of balanced and different classes. Others may just fudge the whole thing up where soem classes are useless to use.
10- May be less friendly for the casual player because if your not on, your chances of getting good items, gear, etc also go down.
Reasons to like the trinity:
1- Functional. You who is what and their role. No questions to really ask or wonder.
2- Allows contribution in the way you feel most comfortable. Hate being a DPS, well you can be a support or healer.
3- Strategy (again pro and con).
4- Easier to implement teamwork, with the degree of success becoming strong with time.
5- Community building as the trinity mostly encourages player interaction to achieve goals.
6- Allows players to develop a role they feel most content with and build it up rather than trying to create a character who has to do a variety of things.
7- Easier to manage large scale; if you're the leader your not spending as much time figuring out what each individual is doing but can instead focus on the class or roles of the players during events.
8- As far as PvP(vE)vW) goes, if one class becomes overly powered or weilds huge advantages, you don't have everyone just taking that role/job/class for the sake of "advantage". You do see that as far as race selection goes in WoW. You see that to a pretty good extent in GW as well. Hell I can point at Starcraft 2 and say "hey, who would you play as in a tournament?". So basically I call this the "cookie~cutting" effect where a good majority strive toward the most powewrful setup. In a trinity setting, you allow for a bit of flexibility pending on the developers and the game. You might have 2 tanks for example, multiple DPS and multiple types of healing and support. Depending on what's available, you might be able to create "unconventional parties" that still work.
9- The experience and knowledge of the trinity works in its favor. Frankly you can go as far back as maybe an old fashioned D&D game and see the trinity in play.
Many MMOs "require" the Holy Trinity in order to complete end-game content. It's been a hot topic of discussion among players for a long time, most players calling for its banishment. In today's Devil's Advocate, MMORPG.com Community Manager Mike Bitton begs to differ and says that there's nothing wrong with the Holy Trinity and that those in opposition to it are all wet. Check it out and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
The ‘Holy Trinity’ paradigm requires that groups consist of DPS, healers, and tanks. The trinity has long been considered one of the major issues of MMO design, but it became even more prevalent with the launch of games like World of Warcraft. Since then, MMOs have taken a considerable turn towards hybridization, with what seems like every successive game emphasizing the flexibility players can have with their class choices and roles. No longer will we have to focus singularly on DPS, or tanking, or healing.
I like this post. I do believe that letting everyone tank dps heal as an option with so many hybrid types we are jsut fulfilling another dumbed down part of the genre. In the old days (EQ1, Dark Age of Camelot, etc) classes were far more specific, which, in the end, meant more player purpose and dependability. Sucks to come in with say, a warrior, in some games, and depending on the patch, expansion pack, or what have you, you find that you are cast to the side as a dps assist or OT at best (off tank).
Cash shops, classless classes, hybrid models, the ability to solo most content without engaging in the multi player portion of an mmorpg - seems to be the variables of today's genre - and in my opinion, the entire industry has been going down hill since 2004.
Well then again, in real life you have medics, snipers and all sort of specialists, all depending on eachother, I guess we cannot create the ultimate soldier yet.
So, what if the sniper is carrying the aid bag? I was number one through the door and I was also the team medic, so was I tank or a healer? My issue is that the trinity doesn't really have a parallel component. Things don't look, feel or work that way in a real fight. In real combat it's all about destroying the enemy. "Tanking" would be absurd and "Healing" is done after the fight is over. Wouldn't it be awesome if game designers spent more time studying how things really work...
Well then again, in real life you have medics, snipers and all sort of specialists, all depending on eachother, I guess we cannot create the ultimate soldier yet.
So, what if the sniper is carrying the aid bag? I was number one through the door and I was also the team medic, so was I tank or a healer? My issue is that the trinity doesn't really have a parallel component. Things don't look, feel or work that way in a real fight. In real combat it's all about destroying the enemy. "Tanking" would be absurd and "Healing" is done after the fight is over. Wouldn't it be awesome if game designers spent more time studying how things really work...
Naw, the boys in Kabul totally have one guy go "Hey insurgents, you all need to shoot me! I'm wearing the most armor, see?" Then he says bad things about their mothers and shoots them with bullets that don't do a lot of damage, but really friggin annoy you.
All the other 24 guys in his squad have to do is not stand in fire.
While I don't like having to wait long periods of time for a tank, healer, or damage, I find fights in Holy Trinity games to be much more interesting than games that try to do away with the Trinity.
In games that do away with the Trinity, I feel like you're just zerging the boss or monsters until they die. I agree with the original poster that parties in non-Trinity games are formed only because you require X amount of people for a fight.
You get X amount of people, go into a dungeon, run into monsters until they die, and don't really need any collaboration or coordination necessary. You don't get to know the people you're partying with, because everyone fulfills the same purpose. They're just there to meet the required number of people. It becomes very impersonal.
While I don't like having to wait long periods of time for a tank, healer, or damage, I find fights in Holy Trinity games to be much more interesting than games that try to do away with the Trinity.
In games that do away with the Trinity, I feel like you're just zerging the boss or monsters until they die. I agree with the original poster that parties in non-Trinity games are formed only because you require X amount of people for a fight.
You get X amount of people, go into a dungeon, run into monsters until they die, and don't really need any collaboration or coordination necessary. You don't get to know the people you're partying with, because everyone fulfills the same purpose. They're just there to meet the required number of people. It becomes very impersonal.
And you believe that you get to know the people you're partying with in say, a PUG in WoW?
Just because there isn't a tank or healer doesn't mean the fight has to be a zerg fest. In fact, if everyone has to take more responsibility, and the mobs can attack anyone, it means the whole team has to work together, and position and control skills (and hence teamwork) become more important. Compare with most recent games that are based on the trinity, where only the tank and healer need to be (relatively) aware, and the dps just need to be able to breathe while pressing a macro.
If games that use the trinity hadn't got so lazy, then maybe it would be easier to defend it. but it's lazy game design in the most part, and it really is starting to get stale.
I' not saying that the trinity is useless and should be dropped forever, but why can't more companies develop combat from the ground up, and see what develops, and how classes may work together, rather than start with "right, we need a tank and a healing class".
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There seems to be a little confusion regarding tanking in GW2.
No, you will not be able to tank. Period. Even a sword and board warrior in heavy armor will not be able to stand there and take the damage. This is by design. The days of being a meat-shield and eating all the damage for everyone else are over (regarding GW2). Instead, the idea is to help in controlling the enemies to mitigate and prevent damage from happening at all. The warrior, for example, will be knocking the enemies down, crippling them, weakening them, all things to keep them from applying damage to the party. You know what? So will the elementalist. So will the thief, the guardian, the ranger, the engineer and the necromancer. Every profession will have skills that minimize the enemies ability to harm the party. They'll also have skills to do damage to the enemy. They'll also have skills that not only damage but help control the enemy, and some that combine a variety of these things while also buffing nearby allies, either with beneficial effects or splash healing.
So no, you won't find yourself falling into any of the archaic trinity roles... you can't. The game won't allow it. You cannot set up your skill bar and weapons sets to specifically be any one thing. Instead, and this will be painful to many, you'll have to settle for watching the fight, seeing what the enemy is doing (as well as your allies) and reacting to the situation. I know, I know... it sounds horrible, this whole "independent" thinking thing, the lack of specific DPS or tanking rotations, the absense of the "watch the pretty red bars go down" paradigm... but I think we'll adapt fine.
I like this post. I do believe that letting everyone tank dps heal as an option with so many hybrid types we are jsut fulfilling another dumbed down part of the genre. In the old days (EQ1, Dark Age of Camelot, etc) classes were far more specific, which, in the end, meant more player purpose and dependability. Sucks to come in with say, a warrior, in some games, and depending on the patch, expansion pack, or what have you, you find that you are cast to the side as a dps assist or OT at best (off tank).
Cash shops, classless classes, hybrid models, the ability to solo most content without engaging in the multi player portion of an mmorpg - seems to be the variables of today's genre - and in my opinion, the entire industry has been going down hill since 2004.
How can switching functions in the middle of combat be more dumbed down than keeping the same role all the time?
I think we both agree that the difficulty of MMOs are not what it used to be and that is sad but that have nothing to do with the holy triad. The triad was just a simple way for the first MMOs (Meridian 59 was the first MMO with triad system) to handle AI.
Smarter mobs that act more human are impossible with the triad, so the triad itself keeps MMOs dumbed down, at least in PvE.
The difficulty is a very different thing, games have become easier the last 15 years, mostly because games have gone from something geeks played to something most people enjoy now. I prefered it when you actually got challenged in games and think it sucks that all games have become so much easier. I think it started around 2000, games like Diablo 2 started become easier to sell more....
Call me old fashioned but I like the Trinity. The thing is feel the trinity should be improved.
The next evolution of the trinity is the Fab Five: Heals, Tank, DPS, Bard, Chanter
Don't even try to do the content if you don't have all five. Now that is the way games should be.
Great, instead of needing a tank and a healer I will have to wait 5 times as long to get a group running.
I miss the old pen and paper RPG days when you had to have a thief (for traps and locks), a wizard (magical traps and knowledge) and a ranger (so you don't get lost or starve), anything else was optional including the healer.
Comments
The holy trinity sucks when you can't find the roles you need or they start charging to do runs with you. My biggest gripe when I left WoW the last time was the long queues because you could never find tanks. Makes me wish they made instances for 6 people with one extra dps slot to help with the stupid queues.
I used to tank in vanilla WOW and it's too much of a job. I'd rather dps but only if I can actually get in instances rather quickly. I'm eagerly awaiting GW2 as I want to see how well their approach works.
My opinion is that the Holy Trinity is bad. Why? Because when a game (WoW) starts to give the less played class (tanks) more rewards then all the others when joined through the LFG System.
Obviously the system is flawed if they need to promote.
This is where I have an issue with what you're saying.
If an enemy can and will attack every player, that is no 'tank', and if you're regenning out of combat, you've just designated game mechanisms and 'nature' (Such as it is in a computer game) to be your healer.
That's like saying I'm a trinity because I could get hit with a stick, I can hit something with a stick, and if I've been hit by a stick, eventually I'll heal.
Heal/tank/dps are arbitrary divisions for dividing things into three, and are in fact not a fact of life (Not even video game life). Plenty of RPGs don't have combat healer roles (Talking P&P here). Look at fantasy books. Mid-combat healers are pretty rare...
It works, is it essential? No.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I loath the trinity and the reasons are all laid out above. The best and most memorable raidfights are allways the ones, where things go wrong and the group handles the problem after a chaotic fight. Give the NPC's AI, make the dungeons more random and let players deal with things. Open up, script less!
Norden
The BIG problem with the holy trinity, raids are design so that you have specific scripts for each class to win. That is what I hated about Wow raids, they were retarded, you did the same thing over and over again with no variation. Where is the fun in that?????
I think the best times I have had in City of X were the task force where our group just dwindled and we were forced to improvise. It was exhilarating and interesting because each of us had to think on our feet.
I think the best thing about no defined roles is that feeling that your ability to think fast is valued and the ultimate feeling of pride if you do well. Doing well when a raid leader is yelling on Ventrilo about where to stand and where to go seems to not quite hit the mark .
By "on the fly", I was thinking of being able to switch roles mid combat. With Rift, you can swap your roles easily but only outside of combat. That's why I still call it a holy trinity game. People are specializing into either tank, healer or dps. If you fail an encounter and you want to try it again but this time with the warrior dpsing, the cleric tanking and the mage healing, each person is still locked into one particular role for an encounter.
Maybe early on in the game you can have hybrids, but they go away as you get to higher end content. Talent trees especially force this. If each talent increases your damage by 1% apiece, you're so much more efficient to have all of them focusing on increasing your damage and have someone else put all theirs towards healing than for the two of you to divide them up half and half.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
This was not my experience in WoW Raiding: Fight encounters would alter based on Raid make up (e.g. Hunter Ice Traps versus Mage Sheep, traditional Warr/Pali Tank vs. Ranged Tanking by Hunter/Mage in selected encounters.
What I enjoyed about WoW raiding was the rythms/timings/needs of the group, as a team,a nd the fact everyone had to be GOOD at what they were supposed to do. Very much like in real life.
The Moroes fight in Kharazan is probably a good microcosm example. When Kharazan was a relevant challenge that fight REQUIRED careful planning and execution, or the Raid got nuked by five wham-jamming mobs. In military parlance it required the execution of "divide and conquer", with no screw ups.
The Tank would coordinate with his team mates, identifying who would CC and/or off-tank each of the four attendants, while he/she tanked Moroes off to the side. Healers were assigned as appropriate. I was a Beast spec'd Hunter responsible for chain trapping one of the four attendants, and because I was Beast Spec'd, not Survival, I didn't have the benefit of trap cooldown reductions . . . so I ALWAYS coordinated with the Tank, letting him know when I was ready for his pull, because I'd drop a trap BEFORE his pull, letting the cooldown burn off some.
When the pull occurred, it was show time. All five mobs would run for the Tank on the pull, then each of the four attendants would divert as each was off-pulled by their CCrs / off tanks. Healers would be spamming the Tank trying to keep him/her up, watching EVERYONE for Moroes random applied Garrote super-bleed. I'd be dancing the chain-trapping dance iwth my mob, letting it hit the first trap, then SHIFTING position as needed dropping my next one, then standing on it's other side so when the first trap broke, the mob, if it was still aggro'd to me, would walk into the second one . . . then when my CD was up I'd drop another, rinse/repeat.
All the while, in between, I'd be laying in DPS on each designated kill target. We killed each of the four attendants, one by one, until only Moroes was left.
Very fun fight, tested healers a lot, particularly if something went wonky. Tested CC abilities a bit, tested off tanks. If something broke free, it tested everyone's ability to DANCE the dynamic BACK into CONTROL.
I never found WoW Raids to be boring. This is the Molten Core/Blackwing Lair, and into BC era, and some into Lich King / Nax 10-25 / Ulduar.
I never found WoW Raids "boring". What I do recall is they required people to KNOW their classes, but more specifically how to engage in critical thinking . . . to fulfill the assigned role in the Raid.
When I was assigned the task of controlling the Skelly spawns in Gluth's room, by myself (with a support healer as needed), well, that was some fun stuff. lol.
Wherever you go, there you are.
This is wrong on so many levels.
How so? A lot of this was basic, but, always a suprise, beyond many people:
Don't AoE near CC targets.
Silence Casters that spawn up whacking on Healers.
Fear Ward your Tank at the right time.
Pay attention to random applied effects by bosses and/or attendants and get those cleansed.
Spawns appear unexpectedly, get them peeled off the Heales and kite them back to the Tank.
As a Hunter, don't just mash the pew-pew button whilst staring fixedly at the DPS meter alone (lulz), take position near your Healers and have an Ice trap near them just in case.
Be prepared with the right mix of potions and such BEFORE showing up for the Raid.
Now, many WoW players didn't bother to think much when attempting to Raid. That's part of the problem in any MMO. /shrug But if the instance required relevantly geared raiders who knew how to perform their roles, that's who got into the Raids in the Guilds I was in.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Call me old fashioned but I like the Trinity. The thing is feel the trinity should be improved.
The next evolution of the trinity is the Fab Five: Heals, Tank, DPS, Bard, Chanter
Don't even try to do the content if you don't have all five. Now that is the way games should be.
Amusing how you just reinforced what I said, thanks.
Evolution? See DAOC, came out just a few years ago as I recall
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It's funny how the industry itself is polarizing on this topic.
A previous poster mentioned the Moroes fight. That was Burning Crusade content. Have you played lately? Each expansion has cut down on that sort of thing. Even Cata, where they SWORE crowd control would be needed, mostly is tank and spank, with the occasional "get out of fire" or "kite the add" or such mechanic. WoW has not only cemented the Holy Trinity for us, they continue to make it a necessity while swearing to us they want to get away from it.
RIft has done somehting similar. EVERYONE can be pretty much EVERY role thanks to a robust mult-spec system that puts WoW's to shame. It STILL requires the trinity; but thanks to having so many roles/specs, any character practically can step into a role, and eliminate the "OMG we coulda started raid 4 hours ago but there's no tanks online!" BS. They ALSO tried to shift focus away with a "support" role; but by and large that just ends up being an offhealer, offtank, or a DPS in disguise.
Guild Wars 2 is homogenizing all three roles; Each player will having some healing available, and it feels like health/defensives will be similar enough between classes that EVERYONE will tank. If so, I suspect there will be a lot of range ping-ponging of bosses, which might be fun.
Reasons to hate the trinity:
1- Unbalanced population or each class [guess which class will typify the population and it won't be healers].
2- Unbalanced population leads to players leveling jobs they just simply suck at.
3- Inventory. Because while you can be a tank, healer or DPS at various times the inventory is a killer.
4- Depending on others. This can be equally good and bad.No one personifies this as well as Leeroy Jenkins.
5- When someone refuses to do their "job" it leads to people dying. Frankly seeing healers trying to be DPS's is funny...
6- Strategies are repetitive and based on "tried and true" methods. Player A does this, player B does this and player C does this.
7- Players get cast-typed into certain roles for the sake of the clan, guild, shell, faction, etc. Ever know a player that complains they always come as a healer and want to be a DPS instead?
8- There is always a yearning for "optimal setups" for each class leading to lack of variety or creativity. For example, in mmo's where you have the trinity you know that for each class there is already an assumption as to what are the best items. So you don't get too much experimenting and creativity as far as setups go. You know what the best shield is for a tank, the best staff for a mage, etc.
9- The class system mostly at the mercy of the developers. Some developers may create a nice niche of balanced and different classes. Others may just fudge the whole thing up where soem classes are useless to use.
10- May be less friendly for the casual player because if your not on, your chances of getting good items, gear, etc also go down.
Reasons to like the trinity:
1- Functional. You who is what and their role. No questions to really ask or wonder.
2- Allows contribution in the way you feel most comfortable. Hate being a DPS, well you can be a support or healer.
3- Strategy (again pro and con).
4- Easier to implement teamwork, with the degree of success becoming strong with time.
5- Community building as the trinity mostly encourages player interaction to achieve goals.
6- Allows players to develop a role they feel most content with and build it up rather than trying to create a character who has to do a variety of things.
7- Easier to manage large scale; if you're the leader your not spending as much time figuring out what each individual is doing but can instead focus on the class or roles of the players during events.
8- As far as PvP(vE)vW) goes, if one class becomes overly powered or weilds huge advantages, you don't have everyone just taking that role/job/class for the sake of "advantage". You do see that as far as race selection goes in WoW. You see that to a pretty good extent in GW as well. Hell I can point at Starcraft 2 and say "hey, who would you play as in a tournament?". So basically I call this the "cookie~cutting" effect where a good majority strive toward the most powewrful setup. In a trinity setting, you allow for a bit of flexibility pending on the developers and the game. You might have 2 tanks for example, multiple DPS and multiple types of healing and support. Depending on what's available, you might be able to create "unconventional parties" that still work.
9- The experience and knowledge of the trinity works in its favor. Frankly you can go as far back as maybe an old fashioned D&D game and see the trinity in play.
I like this post. I do believe that letting everyone tank dps heal as an option with so many hybrid types we are jsut fulfilling another dumbed down part of the genre. In the old days (EQ1, Dark Age of Camelot, etc) classes were far more specific, which, in the end, meant more player purpose and dependability. Sucks to come in with say, a warrior, in some games, and depending on the patch, expansion pack, or what have you, you find that you are cast to the side as a dps assist or OT at best (off tank).
Cash shops, classless classes, hybrid models, the ability to solo most content without engaging in the multi player portion of an mmorpg - seems to be the variables of today's genre - and in my opinion, the entire industry has been going down hill since 2004.
So, what if the sniper is carrying the aid bag? I was number one through the door and I was also the team medic, so was I tank or a healer? My issue is that the trinity doesn't really have a parallel component. Things don't look, feel or work that way in a real fight. In real combat it's all about destroying the enemy. "Tanking" would be absurd and "Healing" is done after the fight is over. Wouldn't it be awesome if game designers spent more time studying how things really work...
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Naw, the boys in Kabul totally have one guy go "Hey insurgents, you all need to shoot me! I'm wearing the most armor, see?" Then he says bad things about their mothers and shoots them with bullets that don't do a lot of damage, but really friggin annoy you.
All the other 24 guys in his squad have to do is not stand in fire.
While I don't like having to wait long periods of time for a tank, healer, or damage, I find fights in Holy Trinity games to be much more interesting than games that try to do away with the Trinity.
In games that do away with the Trinity, I feel like you're just zerging the boss or monsters until they die. I agree with the original poster that parties in non-Trinity games are formed only because you require X amount of people for a fight.
You get X amount of people, go into a dungeon, run into monsters until they die, and don't really need any collaboration or coordination necessary. You don't get to know the people you're partying with, because everyone fulfills the same purpose. They're just there to meet the required number of people. It becomes very impersonal.
And you believe that you get to know the people you're partying with in say, a PUG in WoW?
Just because there isn't a tank or healer doesn't mean the fight has to be a zerg fest. In fact, if everyone has to take more responsibility, and the mobs can attack anyone, it means the whole team has to work together, and position and control skills (and hence teamwork) become more important. Compare with most recent games that are based on the trinity, where only the tank and healer need to be (relatively) aware, and the dps just need to be able to breathe while pressing a macro.
If games that use the trinity hadn't got so lazy, then maybe it would be easier to defend it. but it's lazy game design in the most part, and it really is starting to get stale.
I' not saying that the trinity is useless and should be dropped forever, but why can't more companies develop combat from the ground up, and see what develops, and how classes may work together, rather than start with "right, we need a tank and a healing class".
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There seems to be a little confusion regarding tanking in GW2.
No, you will not be able to tank. Period. Even a sword and board warrior in heavy armor will not be able to stand there and take the damage. This is by design. The days of being a meat-shield and eating all the damage for everyone else are over (regarding GW2). Instead, the idea is to help in controlling the enemies to mitigate and prevent damage from happening at all. The warrior, for example, will be knocking the enemies down, crippling them, weakening them, all things to keep them from applying damage to the party. You know what? So will the elementalist. So will the thief, the guardian, the ranger, the engineer and the necromancer. Every profession will have skills that minimize the enemies ability to harm the party. They'll also have skills to do damage to the enemy. They'll also have skills that not only damage but help control the enemy, and some that combine a variety of these things while also buffing nearby allies, either with beneficial effects or splash healing.
So no, you won't find yourself falling into any of the archaic trinity roles... you can't. The game won't allow it. You cannot set up your skill bar and weapons sets to specifically be any one thing. Instead, and this will be painful to many, you'll have to settle for watching the fight, seeing what the enemy is doing (as well as your allies) and reacting to the situation. I know, I know... it sounds horrible, this whole "independent" thinking thing, the lack of specific DPS or tanking rotations, the absense of the "watch the pretty red bars go down" paradigm... but I think we'll adapt fine.
Oderint, dum metuant.
How can switching functions in the middle of combat be more dumbed down than keeping the same role all the time?
I think we both agree that the difficulty of MMOs are not what it used to be and that is sad but that have nothing to do with the holy triad. The triad was just a simple way for the first MMOs (Meridian 59 was the first MMO with triad system) to handle AI.
Smarter mobs that act more human are impossible with the triad, so the triad itself keeps MMOs dumbed down, at least in PvE.
The difficulty is a very different thing, games have become easier the last 15 years, mostly because games have gone from something geeks played to something most people enjoy now. I prefered it when you actually got challenged in games and think it sucks that all games have become so much easier. I think it started around 2000, games like Diablo 2 started become easier to sell more....
Great, instead of needing a tank and a healer I will have to wait 5 times as long to get a group running.
I miss the old pen and paper RPG days when you had to have a thief (for traps and locks), a wizard (magical traps and knowledge) and a ranger (so you don't get lost or starve), anything else was optional including the healer.