last i checked you cant do a dungeon in WoW with 5 rogues in gw2 you can do a dungeon with 5 thiefs since they can all do dmg, heal themselves, and evade/kite the mobs
I'll be very interested to see if the reality matches the promise in situations like this.
I've often wondered if this really ever could be possible. We'll soon find out
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"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
Everyone talks about this being new, or different. I can list a half dozen if not more games that have done this previously that were either good or bad.
In no paticular order.
-Fallen Earth
-Mortal Online
-Darkfall Online
-Anarchy Online
-Roma Victor
-Xsyon Online
-Star Trek Online
-Star Wars Galaxies
And thats just a few that come to mind. I am sure there are others if I looked for five minutes on Google.
All in all every game that comes out now, is the same crap rehashed for a ever simpler gaming population. Gone are the days of Ultima Online.
So much crap, so little quality.
OzzallosRunes of Magic CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 35
Healers are broken in every other MMO because developers allow them to be broken. The trinity is broken because devs allow healers to cast 3 second heals on a one second cooldown over and over and over until you run out of mana. Players expect you to be a healing vending machine because the devs have allowed it to happen. You don't need to "break" the trinity. You just have to actually do it right.
On the topic of this article, dodge tanking is nothing new. Movement is nothing new. I will admit its nice to de-emphasis healers and purist tanks, but you don't need zomgrevolutionarygameplay! to do it. You don't need to completely banish the healer. You just need to construct one correctly and eliminate heal spam and the over reliance on priest classes in the first place. On that note, some suggestions.
Contrary to GW2 popular belief, you don't need to burn the village to save it.
Guild Wars 2 does have a trinity, but with two main differences differences.
First one is that instead of tank-heal-DPS we have damage-support-control. While some classes have heavier armor than others, or more health, there's no class that will be able to continously get hit by a boss and survive, nor any class that will be able to keep it alive for too long. So basically there won't be any class devoted to tanking or healing, but people that do everything at some point, either damage (DPS), support (healing, providing protections and the like) and control (a bit like crowd control, like the guardian barriers or the ranger traps, to name a few).
The other one, and the biggest one IMHO, is that it isn't a "hard" trinity. I remember them saying somewhere that they wanted to really be a "bring the player, not the class" game, so while there is a trinity of sorts, every single class in the game can perform any of those roles, and will have to perform them at some point to really be effective. So there's no "oh, sorry, you're a mage and we need a tank here, you can't go". Also, if they achieve their goals as they've been stated, people won't say things like "oh, sorry, we need a healing specced elementalist for this one", and more "ok, for this fight when the boss does X we need you to attune yourself to water to help keeping us alive". They specifically said that it would be perfectly feasible to do a dungeon with, for example, 5 thieves.
And, at least to me, after watching several videos, doesn't seem they're too far off that goal. We'll see for ourselves when the game goes live (or, for those of us that pre-purchased, in the next beta.. )
This guy gets it.
Yes there is a soft-trinity of sorts with DPS, support and control. But the thing is that while you can spec into one aspect more than the others, there are no builds that will allow you to completely neglect the others.
Every weapon has damage skills, every weapon has control skills and every person has to bring their own heals.
Go look at the Warrior weapon skills, every single weapon has a control effect in the form of a cripple, daze, immobilise or knockdown (except for the underwater spear, but you'll always have both a spear and a harpoon).
Its pretty much impossible to make a character that is unable to do damage, support and control all at the same time. The extent you focus on each of them depends on your weapon setups and traits, but noone can completely neglect the other two in favour of one aspect.
Everyone talks about this being new, or different. I can list a half dozen if not more games that have done this previously that were either good or bad.
In no paticular order.
-Fallen Earth
-Mortal Online
-Darkfall Online
-Anarchy Online
-Roma Victor
-Xsyon Online
-Star Trek Online
-Star Wars Galaxies
And thats just a few that come to mind. I am sure there are others if I looked for five minutes on Google.
All in all every game that comes out now, is the same crap rehashed for a ever simpler gaming population. Gone are the days of Ultima Online.
Sorry bud, but Star Trek Online definitely suffered from the trinity. Cruisers = Tanks, Science Vessels = Healers / Controllers, Escorts = DPS. AO and SWG blended the roles a bit more, but it was still alive and present.
Thank goodness is right. The trinity has to be the most artificial thing every made in tactics. It was all just an easy button for game designers to control the script on fights. I still remember the first time I learned about it, my reaction was "your joking right?".
Although I am excited to try Guild Wars 2 and the new type of combat system in order to give my opinion.... I don't agree with your statement here. The tank, dps, healer roles have been around (at least in my personal experience) since D&D - I don't think it's fair to call it an "articial thing" in terms of tatics. Have you ever been in the miliarty? I only ask because of your mention of tatics. There have always been light armored units, heavy armoued units, medical units, assult units, etc. Different units with very specific goals in combat, some able to take larger amounts of damage, others that are specifically for damage and can't take a hit.
Specific roles in combat such as this have been around since combat itself. The use of the "holy trinity" was just natural when it came to role playing games to give players a specific role, and thus a feeling of being needed. This may have felt necessary when being applied in gaming just so it didn't feel like 5 guys just unloading on a mob in blitzkrieg fashion.
I am very interested to see how the new system pans out, and I will not give my opinion of it until I try it. Who knows, I may like it better. I may not, only time will tell. However, I know a lot of players who do enjoy having a specific role, we'll have to see how that translates to GW2 where you can have somewhat of a role, just not in the traditional sense.
But like I said, often when I speak to gamers, specifically MMO'ers, the first thing they mention is what role they like to play... "i always play healers" or "' I always play tanks" etc. Just saying, perhaps not everyone will enjoy this new method.
From my perspective D&D was definately NOT based on the Holy Trinity to that significant a degree. The Holy Triinity, as far as I'm concerned, is a VERY SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION of specialization. It's the specific implimentation, not the fact the game features Specialization that defines it as using the Trinity. Many games feature Specialization without implimenting the Trinity. Both chess and baseball have specialization...they don't have the Trinity, however.
If we look at D&D, at least the versions I'm familiar with......
Yes you had Front Line Fighters in Heavy Armor....but those characters didn't just have good defensive abilities...they also had very good offensive abilities as well.... moreover they provided protection through positional interception and engagement (i.e. collision detection)..... which was a limited and tactical method of protection.
This is very different from the classical Trinity version of a Tank.....Which is a character specialized in damage absorption/mitigation with limited offensive capabilities and a pervasive abillity to attract attacks to himself through the use of an aggro mechanic.
Yes you had Wizards that could cast damaging spells like Fireball and Lightning...but Wizards were AT LEAST as usefull, if not more for thier utility spells like Fly, Invisability, Feather Fall, Wall of Iron and Hold Portal as they were for doing damage. These sort of utility spells touch upon several important dimensions/roles of combat/adventuring that aren't even present in most Trinity based MMO's...such as recon/combat intelligence, manuver, area denial, etc.
The same holds true for Rogues.... they weren't really the "DPS" guys...they were the guys you went to for Stealth/Recon... They were the guys you went to get valuable intelligence about what hazards lay ahead of the party without alerting the enemy to the parties presence....and the guys you went to to find ways to circumvent those hazards (disarming traps, unlocking doors, discovering secret passages) and to enrich the rewards for the party (i.e. finding the secret treasury and opening the locked strongbox). Again these are a dynamic/role that doesn't even exist in typical Trinity MMO's.
Yes, you had Clerics who could heal...but they too had entirely different dimensions beyond that...from holding undead at bay to casting auguries that would advise the party upon the wisdom of following a specific course of action.
Alot of peoples objections (certainly mine) to the Trinity is NOT that it pushes players into specialized roles, it's that the SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION makes for such a shallow and oversimplistic combat/adventuring gameplay dynamic that it is largely unsatisfying for us. It doesn't address/allow for alot of the gameplay aspects that made something like a PnP RPG adventure fun and tacticaly interesting. YMMV.
Look at the big mess that Cataclysm created when it was launched and people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana.
I don't play WoW, so I'm guessing a bit here, but it sounds like the new mechanics you describe, "people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana" were introduced after people had been playing WoW for years the same way, and probably the mechanics showed up mostly in the endgame content? Content only people how had been playing WoW for years the same way could even reach?
GW2 will at least have the advantage that everyone starts at lvl1 and has to go water 10 melons. *goes and reserves URL*. While leveling to 80 they will have plenty of time to learn the mechanics. I'm sure some people will end up standing in the fire, spamming their skills and dying really fast, and they might complain about that. But I hope most people will figure out how and when to dodge and block and move out of the fire over the course of dozens of hours of game time.
Something else that will immensely help the new GW2 style of play is the use of vent, TS, etc. If the player currently tanking can just call for help, instead of having to type in chat or hope that the next player in line to tank will pay enough attention. Maybe ANet is the first to recognize that the use of voice has spread enough to support this play style in general and in PUGs, and not just in guilds and the odd operation.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a built-in voice client...
Look at the big mess that Cataclysm created when it was launched and people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana.
I don't play WoW, so I'm guessing a bit here, but it sounds like the new mechanics you describe, "people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana" were introduced after people had been playing WoW for years the same way, and probably the mechanics showed up mostly in the endgame content? Content only people how had been playing WoW for years the same way could even reach?
No, basically at the start of Cataclysm they nerfed healers. Everyone already had crowd control skills, its just you didnt have to use them until healers got nerfed (heals were made less potent and mana consumption became an issue). So Cataclysm was a bit of a culture shock for players.
I don't think many post-WoW players will understand that the trinity system was basically a shortcut for developers to handle combat. It's easier to program & balance around a hate table, than to have a truly dynamic content in which players are getting targetted based on what they are doing, rather than what class they are / whether or not they taunted. There were also a lot more technical limitations around the time of everquest than they are now. So nowadays there is really no good reason for developers to still be basing games around that system, other than the fact that people have gotten used to it.
Hell, look at single-player RPGs. Many of them didn't have a trinity, but now more & more of them are building the system in. It's something we've grown to accept, and thus assume it's a necessity.
Everyone talks about this being new, or different. I can list a half dozen if not more games that have done this previously that were either good or bad.
In no paticular order.
-Fallen Earth
-Mortal Online
-Darkfall Online
-Anarchy Online
-Roma Victor
-Xsyon Online
-Star Trek Online
-Star Wars Galaxies
And thats just a few that come to mind. I am sure there are others if I looked for five minutes on Google.
All in all every game that comes out now, is the same crap rehashed for a ever simpler gaming population. Gone are the days of Ultima Online.
Sorry bud, but Star Trek Online definitely suffered from the trinity. Cruisers = Tanks, Science Vessels = Healers / Controllers, Escorts = DPS. AO and SWG blended the roles a bit more, but it was still alive and present.
And just to set the facts straight, Good, bad or indifferent, Anarchy Online was as trinity as it gets
Maybe WoW has made me cynical but I hate having to trust the success/failure of the group on others ability to play. Hell in WoW it's bad enough and you see pleny of people who can't do one job let alone all 3 and ALSO be able to switch dynamically between them. I have a feeling random pugs will just not be doable, at all.
I think that's a valid concern and one I share as well.
Look at the big mess that Cataclysm created when it was launched and people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana. Dungeon crawls slowed to a... well... crawl. The forums were on fire with people who did not enjoy this new level of difficulty. PUGs were a mess and some people had to resort to guild runs only. The thing is, there's only so much I can do in a group. I can play my role to perfection, but if the rest of the group doesn't know how to play, it matters not. We all die. I frankly decided not to subject myself to that by quitting WoW shortly after I reached 85. I just couldn't find the motivation to crawl through dungeons and dealing with all that when I knew I could just go play something else for a while and come back a couple of patches later when things had settled down.
And there are games tailored specifically for the both of you. They're called single player RPGs. EA just released two: Mass Effect 3 and SWTOR. Play those.
So, because I'm concerned about the average MMO Joe not being able to live up to the challenge that GW2 is going to provide (if what we've heard/seen so far is correct), I should limit myself to singleplayer games? Nah mate, I'll just have to find a decent guild and stay far far away from PUGs if that turns out to be the case.
Funny thing is, I don't even consider myself that great a player, but I know enough to not stand in the fire, CC when needed and toss some off-heals if in a tight spot. I'm looking forward to the challenge. What I'm not looking forward to is all the drama this could potentially result in when the PUG I'm in wipes and everybody starts blaming everybody. Drama kills the fun for me instantly. That's where my concern lies. But hopefully I'll be able to find some people who are up for that challenge while being down to earth.
Yeah same here. The game looks awesome, and I look forward to the challenge, but that will be a challenge likely seen only be people in guilds. If the game is awesome as it appears to be, you will get a ton of people from WoW. And a ton of those people will suck. I think some people underestimate the stubborness of sucky players to continue to suck. Like I said I may be cynical but I have a feeling with that much individual responsibility I will not want to be in a group with people unless I know they can pull their weight, and I don't think I will be the only one. And this will really go against the otherwise drop in and play nature of the rest of the game.
I love every single bit of the GW2 concept so far. It is close in the spirit to the basic idea of classes in early RPGs as the different skill sets essentially complementing to the party's success, but not limited to a certain role. Actually the holly trinity was initially Fighter-Mage-Thief (no priest and healing classes)... All 3 had both close combat and ranged combat potential (no ranged/close combat classes)! It was rather the difference in approach to solving the problems, rather than ability to solve certain problems and inability to solve the others - for example a fighter would bash the door to open it, a thief would pick a lock, while mage would either destroy it with fireball or ... say.... teleport on the other side...
BTW - I hate you people who cite the posts longer than my screen! I hope the forum administration bans your asses permanently.
Thank goodness is right. The trinity has to be the most artificial thing every made in tactics. It was all just an easy button for game designers to control the script on fights. I still remember the first time I learned about it, my reaction was "your joking right?".
Although I am excited to try Guild Wars 2 and the new type of combat system in order to give my opinion.... I don't agree with your statement here. The tank, dps, healer roles have been around (at least in my personal experience) since D&D - I don't think it's fair to call it an "articial thing" in terms of tatics. Have you ever been in the miliarty? I only ask because of your mention of tatics. There have always been light armored units, heavy armoued units, medical units, assult units, etc. Different units with very specific goals in combat, some able to take larger amounts of damage, others that are specifically for damage and can't take a hit.
Specific roles in combat such as this have been around since combat itself. The use of the "holy trinity" was just natural when it came to role playing games to give players a specific role, and thus a feeling of being needed. This may have felt necessary when being applied in gaming just so it didn't feel like 5 guys just unloading on a mob in blitzkrieg fashion.
I am very interested to see how the new system pans out, and I will not give my opinion of it until I try it. Who knows, I may like it better. I may not, only time will tell. However, I know a lot of players who do enjoy having a specific role, we'll have to see how that translates to GW2 where you can have somewhat of a role, just not in the traditional sense.
But like I said, often when I speak to gamers, specifically MMO'ers, the first thing they mention is what role they like to play... "i always play healers" or "' I always play tanks" etc. Just saying, perhaps not everyone will enjoy this new method.
From my perspective D&D was definately NOT based on the Holy Trinity to that significant a degree. The Holy Triinity, as far as I'm concerned, is a VERY SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION of specialization. It's the specific implimentation, not the fact the game features Specialization that defines it as using the Trinity. Many games feature Specialization without implimenting the Trinity. Both chess and baseball have specialization...they don't have the Trinity, however.
If we look at D&D, at least the versions I'm familiar with......
Yes you had Front Line Fighters in Heavy Armor....but those characters didn't just have good defensive abilities...they also had very good offensive abilities as well.... moreover they provided protection through positional interception and engagement (i.e. collision detection)..... which was a limited and tactical method of protection.
This is very different from the classical Trinity version of a Tank.....Which is a character specialized in damage absorption/mitigation with limited offensive capabilities and a pervasive abillity to attract attacks to himself through the use of an aggro mechanic.
Yes you had Wizards that could cast damaging spells like Fireball and Lightning...but Wizards were AT LEAST as usefull, if not more for thier utility spells like Fly, Invisability, Feather Fall, Wall of Iron and Hold Portal as they were for doing damage. These sort of utility spells touch upon several important dimensions/roles of combat/adventuring that aren't even present in most Trinity based MMO's...such as recon/combat intelligence, manuver, area denial, etc.
The same holds true for Rogues.... they weren't really the "DPS" guys...they were the guys you went to for Stealth/Recon... They were the guys you went to get valuable intelligence about what hazards lay ahead of the party without alerting the enemy to the parties presence....and the guys you went to to find ways to circumvent those hazards (disarming traps, unlocking doors, discovering secret passages) and to enrich the rewards for the party (i.e. finding the secret treasury and opening the locked strongbox). Again these are a dynamic/role that doesn't even exist in typical Trinity MMO's.
Yes, you had Clerics who could heal...but they too had entirely different dimensions beyond that...from holding undead at bay to casting auguries that would advise the party upon the wisdom of following a specific course of action.
Alot of peoples objections (certainly mine) to the Trinity is NOT that it pushes players into specialized roles, it's that the SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION makes for such a shallow and oversimplistic combat/adventuring gameplay dynamic that it is largely unsatisfying for us. It doesn't address/allow for alot of the gameplay aspects that made something like a PnP RPG adventure fun and tacticaly interesting. YMMV.
D&D was completely based on the trinity when it came to combat. Sure characters could do other things and had other odd specialties, but at it's core, it was based on the trinity. The whole idea of a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric party came from D&D. And to say rogues weren't DPS guys, did you ever really play the game? Backstab?
D&D was completely based on the trinity when it came to combat. Sure characters could do other things and had other odd specialties, but at it's core, it was based on the trinity. The whole idea of a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric party came from D&D. And to say rogues weren't DPS guys, did you ever really play the game? Backstab?
I respectfully disagree. Dunno about you, but I did a lot of 2nd ed D&D (which came out long before EQ et al.) with various groups both as player and DM.
Thief did have backstab, obviously, but it was never a source of significant overall DPS. It was often used as an opening attack only. When that wasn't the case, it usually required a couple of rounds of maneuvering and several skill rolls, which had a high probability of failure unless the thief was high level or the battlefield had lots of places to hide (forest at night was just about the perfect place for a low level thief). Overall, that significantly reduced his DPS contribution and it was very situational.
Magic-user DPS was also very situational. We had plenty of fights where he would contribute almost nothing DPS wise, only to have his DPS spike through the roof when he tossed a fireball into a company of orcs. Because he had limited spell use, especially at low levels, he would always try to save them for the big fight. He was extremely useful out of combat though, sometimes using spells to completely bypass fights that would have resulted in a total party kill.
As for clerics, they did heal, but usually not in-combat unless it was a tough fight where healing was needed right now. There was always a fear that some foe would try to interrupt his healing spell. Why? Because he was usually up front bashing in skulls, thus being vulnerable to interruption. Being able to wear heavy armor while having good HP and THACO meant that he was well suited for combat. He could tank when needed, heal at the same time and did OK DPS. Against undeads he was outright crazy.
The best overall DPSer though, was the fighter. He could attack all day long and could do so more often than any of the other classes with big damage bonuses on top of that and access to pretty much all weapons. Sure, there were fights where the thief, magic-user or cleric (turn/destroy undead) would shine, but when those situations were not present, it was always the fighter who did the big damage. Because of his high HP and low AC, he was generally also the best tank.
So basically, in 2nd ed D&D the classes were nothing like their MMO counterparts in terms of playstyle. You could argue that there was a type of quadrinity between the four archetypes, but it was nothing like The Holy Trinity that we see in MMOs today and unlike MMOs, you could break it without breaking the game in the process. It just meant the DM would have to make encounters that took in mind that this particular party had 2 thieves and 2 magic-users with no cleric and fighter backup.
Now, if you're talking 4th ed D&D, then it's a completely different picture, but that came out long after the holy trinity had been established.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I find the whole idea that AN has eliminated the holy trinity amusing. How have they done so?
1. Giving every class nearly instant combat rez
2. Giving every class self heal
3. Dumb down the bosses
Hey, you can do the same thing in any other mmo and eliminate the trinity as well.
Personally I don't care much. i won't be doing any boss fights. I play a healer in other mmos and there is no healer class in GW2. I will enjoy the "action oriented combat" (re: console game type fighting) for a while (already ordered the digital deluxe edition) but then move on - just as I have from every other fps game that I have played.
Trinity is very much alive in this game. Its just dressed differently. I have to say I like the way its dressed in GW2 but fact is someone in the team will damage mitigate (everyone), someone will cast heal (everyone) and someone will focus on DPS (everyone). Some will lean to some rolls more then others. I know my wife really wants to spec deeply into water just to be the helping hand in fights. GJ ANet but this game did not kill the Trinity.
So what game in the last 6 years has used the holy trinity anyway??? Everything lately has just been "the game is so easy you dont need anyone else or to play any role"......IF there is little or no heals then that tells me either A) the players are overpowered or the content is too easy......We will see how it plays out but Im guessing the game is easy.
Alright, presuming the game plays the way Anet says it will, and thus far all video evidence I've seen seems to support it...There will be 5 heals in every party. There will be 5 dps in every party. There will be 5 controllers in every party. There will be 5 tanks in every party. There will be five people in every party. And they will fill ALL roles.
Your role as a member in a GW2 Party is:
1) Provide sufficient damage to kill all enemies in the most efficient way possible
2) Stay alive using a combination of movement, delf heals, and defensive skills.
3) Use debuffs/lockdowns to reduce all incoming enemy damage in any worthwhile way you can
4) Provide any healing to other members when needed
5) Attract enemy attention to draw off from a wounded team mate
6) Revive fallen team members
And the most important one of all:
7) Think of the fly, adapt to the changing battlefield, and know when to apply the first 6. Then DO IT.
Originally posted by terrant
Exactly, Roles loose there meaning when everyone needs to be on the ball and be dynamic!
This will work fine if everyone is totally selfish and just plays "solo" in a group or event (OMG this may be a reason to have it work this way :P )
Do damage when you can, dodge and heal when you have to, help others when you want. Given the current model if everyone plays like this they will do OK.
But, if they start working as a team and start overlapping area heals to help restore people that just got bashed, taking on and handing off mobs when needed to help others recover, getting your licks in and setting up combos for extra effect, changing weapons and aspects constantly as needed to maximize the attack/defense. . . . the group being a team will function better. But as a team of equals with some cool extra talents ( Not a tank, Healer and DPS )
* As no one can tank in the traditional sense (no aggro control and no real staying power)
* As no one can just heal as there is no single target-able heals and the AOE heals are low power dots (best used overlapped or as a bonus) completely not useful in keeping a character alive in a sustained attack.
* As no one can just DPS as they Will be attacked directly for doing so.
From people playing in the Beta's over and over, if you do not adapt dynamically and use your skills creatively you will be dieing allot.
It takes a good team to keep the boss de-buffed and controlled as much as possible and rotate damaging, getting smashed for doing so, getting the heck out of there, and healing up for another go.
You have to change weapons/aspect you have to use your skills and you have to move around.
The Trinity as commonly defined, requires Aggro control, a damage sink, healing for the damage sink (normally dedicated and massive), and DPS to burn the mob down.
Yes, you can have off tanks, yes secondary healers or hybrids filling secondary roles (or very very specialized hybrids - almost a oxymoron that may be good enough for the main roles ) But these are all variants on a theme. And it all comes down to aggro control! Without aggro control you can't have the Trinity as commonly defined.
Also being able to heal does not make you a healer (in GW you really can't be by design the most you can do is AID)
Being able to take a few hits does not make you into a tank, as no one in GW2 can take sustained damage and since there is no real massive heals . . and for the main reason there is no Aggro control, as soon as you go all defensive the mob may just move on to someone else.
Able to do massive damage? well expect the mob to be coming to you! you may need to do defensive and get out of there quick.
While doing all of this your teammates can be aiding with some needed but minor healing since you just blew yours . . they may slow or bind the Mob to help you escape. and most importantly do some good damage on there own and get the Mob off your back, or res you when they can't.
Below is what Eric Flannum (Lead Designer, ArenaNet) had to say about the trinity in GW2. Sorry if it was already posted, just skimmed through the second half of the thread. Sorry badSpock, you could have used this earlier to try an get across what you were saying.
“Players could make a build that resemblesthe trinity but it could never truly be the trinity. You cannot for example make adedicated healer no matter how much you pump into your support trait lines. When you start getting to tougher encounters no matter how much armor and health you have you will never be able to stand toe to toe for long against most of the foes you’ll face. Because of this even a 5 person group that has 3 dps focused characters, a support focused character, and a damage soaking character (which is a standard trinity setup) will not play anything like a standard trinity group. If those players insisted on playing like a standard trinity group they could succeed against the easier content in the game but probably couldn’t finish a story mode dungeon let alone an explorable dungeon or some of the tougher events in the game. “
He then went on to make a more lengthy second post which read -
“To go a little bit more in depth with the answer I gave, it doesn’t really matter which professions you bring. Over the beta weekend I played through the dungeon with several different journalists and getting through was never a matter of bringing particular professions or even changing the builds that people were using. When we hit a tough patch people would change which weapons or utilities they were using but nobody ever had to go respec their traits. I was in groups that wiped multiple times in story mode but I was also in groups that did not wipe at all in story mode and was in one group that made it through explorable mode (we wiped a lot in that one). It all came down to how well we coordinated and how well we responded to the situations we encountered.
For example, in the explorable run through I think it was two journalists who were both warriors (one may have been a guardian, I’m having trouble recalling), our producer Chris Whiteside with a ranger, Izzy playing an elementalist, and myself playing an engineer. At different times Izzy was our condition removal guy, our debuffer, and our “tank” (bait is a more appropriate term actually). He was our most important player because he was our best player but he was actually very support/healing specced. The important thing about that group was that we were all talking and coordinating our efforts and coming up with strategies together. Those strategies never really revolvedaround specific skills but rather things like “We need condition removal” or “we need to stack as much vulnerability on this guy as possible” or even “we need Izzy to run around attracting attention while the rest of us activate the traps built into the area to kill the hordes of incoming mobs”. I hope that helps shed some light on how the game plays.”
D&D was completely based on the trinity when it came to combat. Sure characters could do other things and had other odd specialties, but at it's core, it was based on the trinity. The whole idea of a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric party came from D&D. And to say rogues weren't DPS guys, did you ever really play the game? Backstab?
I respectfully disagree. Dunno about you, but I did a lot of 2nd ed D&D (which came out long before EQ et al.) with various groups both as player and DM.
Thief did have backstab, obviously, but it was never a source of significant overall DPS. It was often used as an opening attack only. When that wasn't the case, it usually required a couple of rounds of maneuvering and several skill rolls, which had a high probability of failure unless the thief was high level or the battlefield had lots of places to hide (forest at night was just about the perfect place for a low level thief). Overall, that significantly reduced his DPS contribution and it was very situational.
Magic-user DPS was also very situational. We had plenty of fights where he would contribute almost nothing DPS wise, only to have his DPS spike through the roof when he tossed a fireball into a company of orcs. Because he had limited spell use, especially at low levels, he would always try to save them for the big fight. He was extremely useful out of combat though, sometimes using spells to completely bypass fights that would have resulted in a total party kill.
As for clerics, they did heal, but usually not in-combat unless it was a tough fight where healing was needed right now. There was always a fear that some foe would try to interrupt his healing spell. Why? Because he was usually up front bashing in skulls, thus being vulnerable to interruption. Being able to wear heavy armor while having good HP and THACO meant that he was well suited for combat. He could tank when needed, heal at the same time and did OK DPS. Against undeads he was outright crazy.
The best overall DPSer though, was the fighter. He could attack all day long and could do so more often than any of the other classes with big damage bonuses on top of that and access to pretty much all weapons. Sure, there were fights where the thief, magic-user or cleric (turn/destroy undead) would shine, but when those situations were not present, it was always the fighter who did the big damage. Because of his high HP and low AC, he was generally also the best tank.
So basically, in 2nd ed D&D the classes were nothing like their MMO counterparts in terms of playstyle. You could argue that there was a type of quadrinity between the four archetypes, but it was nothing like The Holy Trinity that we see in MMOs today and unlike MMOs, you could break it without breaking the game in the process. It just meant the DM would have to make encounters that took in mind that this particular party had 2 thieves and 2 magic-users with no cleric and fighter backup.
Now, if you're talking 4th ed D&D, then it's a completely different picture, but that came out long after the holy trinity had been established.
Did you even play second edition AD&D? A backstabbing rogue was a DPS machine.... 4x at level 10. Sure things were situational...but comparing what you can do in a PnP game and a scripted MMO is like comparing apples and oranges. When it came down to it, combat was still pretty much healer, ranged dps, melee dps, and a tank of sorts.
The simple matter is that the holy trinity has been used in other WoW style mmorpgs that set its meaning to - DEDICATED HEAL/TANK/DPS roles...
By dedicated I mean you can play a druid that can be dps/healer/tank but you can't play all of the roles at the same time, hence you only play one role
Sure GW2 has Heals and protection(not tanking though) but they are so alien to other games that you can not simply say its a Holy Trinity.
How about we all settle in on a new name? Active Trinity sounds way better to me
D&D was completely based on the trinity when it came to combat. Sure characters could do other things and had other odd specialties, but at it's core, it was based on the trinity. The whole idea of a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric party came from D&D. And to say rogues weren't DPS guys, did you ever really play the game? Backstab?
I respectfully disagree. Dunno about you, but I did a lot of 2nd ed D&D (which came out long before EQ et al.) with various groups both as player and DM.
Did you even play second edition AD&D? A backstabbing rogue was a DPS machine.... 4x at level 10. Sure things were situational...but comparing what you can do in a PnP game and a scripted MMO is like comparing apples and oranges. When it came down to it, combat was still pretty much healer, ranged dps, melee dps, and a tank of sorts.
Did you since you're constantly asking other people if they did? Notice that I've already stated that I did a lot of 2nd ed AD&D back in the day. Did you even read my post?
So, I went back and looked at the rules to see if I/we interpreted something wrong back in the day that could justify your claim (haven't been playing 2nd AD&D for 12 years). What I found there just confirmed my conclusion that the thief is not a DPS machine in 2nd ed AD&D. His backstab simply doesn't support that compared to the fighter. The rules clearly state that backstab bonus only applies on his first attack, only when target is unaware of the thief and only from behind, only against humanoids and the backstab modifier (x4 at 10th level as you correctly state) only applies to the base damage of the weapon which is something like 1D6 with a shortsword (most popular thief weapon when I was playing), not magical plusses, STR bonus and what else. So if he rolls 4 with the die, that's some 12 points of extra damage due to a backstab over normal attack damage if using a x4 damage multiplier. Meanwhile, the 10th level fighter gets an extra attack per round due to weapon specialization which can easily dish out 12 points or more due to bigger weapon, more STR modifiers and weapon spec bonus. Furthermore, he can do this every round whereas it's silly to assume the thief can pull off a backstab every round unless the player managed to bribe the DM into ignoring both the rules and common sense with enough slices of free pizza. Heck, a lot of the time you're not even fighting humanoids, so you're left with no backstab and regular thief THAC0/weapon damage isn't exactly all that great and certainly not better than the fighter. So unless you're willing to come up with some concrete combat examples, either by yourself or somewhere on the net, that supports your opinion of the thief being a DPS machine in general, not just some very specific special cases, I'm going to call BS on this one. Feel free to disagree.
As for the whole apples and oranges. That's the same conclusion I came to, which is why it's safe to say that the holy trinity wasn't invented by pen and paper. Again, did you read my post? The individual roles as you state, sure, no argument there, but they were not combined in the strict way we see it in MMOs. There were no aggro or taunt mechanics in AD&D, which is crucial in making the holy trinity work. All the tank could do was get in the way and hope that the monsters wouldn't ignore him and go for the squishy targets first. Often, that was not the case. At least not in the countless games that I had the chance to play in or DM myself. Orcs may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they know the guy in a robe with a staff or dagger means trouble and that you shouldn't turn your back to a guy in leather armor wielding one or two light stabby weapons.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I think you are missing the point! Agruing over AD&D rules?!? OMG
Gary Gygax style D&D computer games (starting text based / character graphics) Where simple (even rudimentary) approximations of the table top game that COULD be as complex as you wanted to make it. Computers really did not have the capability to do anything else. The beginning framework STARTED then! Hit-points, mana, Armor, gold, dungeons, ever looking for better weapons and loot etc.
Hell Diablo is effectively this same model given some graphics.
Then comes meridian 59 the first real MMO (yes I QA'ed that game ;P) It did not have the "trinity" because it did not have classes per say or any real structure to group and do hard dungeons. (very simple game all in all)
The convention did not start till enmity, "aggro" was developed and developers started trying to force players to play in a group and not as solo units running around, stealing kills/loot and really being a unruly mob of gankers.
When this worked it became the gold standred.
Since games where (and really ARE) still VERY VERY simplistic this was easy to implement. This fixed game play, and some social problems and there was really NO need to do anything else. Remember these games are just simple databases, mobs attack within a radius or when attacked, aggro is generated (the only factor that may change the simple attack perimeter) each mob normally had only one attack. etc etc . (and only the bosses had scripts to make the game play more complex)
Meanwhile single player games have gone way past that (even multilayer FPS games) Mobs can see and hear and will act accordingly, they may take cover or run away and get help, They may try to out flank you, change weapons, even work as a team.
MMOs started to be rather lame so allot of the work went into Endgame scripted bosses that required a group (no soloing could happen) of players that worked together. On top of this they made roles to insure everyone had something to do that was "important". Then this "trinity" became REQUIRED to do any end game content . . . and on to the current day.
Because of this any real interesting content was forced to be Endgame, you where required to be in a group that had to have the "trinity" to even have a chance. Attacking non boss mobs became a chore, and time waster. Healers got the thankless job of healing the tank or the group would wipe, tanks had to keep aggro or the same would happen. Raiding became its own game within a game.
GUILDWARS 2 is attempting to break out of this overused mold! And good for them the old trend and expectation was getting toxic. (though I think most new MMO's have seen this and where very very slowly adding elements to enhance there games (a bit of too little too late in most cases)
So did AD&D make the "trinity"? directly? no but definitely indirectly, but the greatest factor is limitation in computers and networking/internet at the time and the conventions and shortcuts used to mitigate them. We should not be ruled by obsolete limitations from a bygone decade. Be creative and have fun.
Comments
I'll be very interested to see if the reality matches the promise in situations like this.I've often wondered if this really ever could be possible. We'll soon find out
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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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
Everyone talks about this being new, or different. I can list a half dozen if not more games that have done this previously that were either good or bad.
In no paticular order.
-Fallen Earth
-Mortal Online
-Darkfall Online
-Anarchy Online
-Roma Victor
-Xsyon Online
-Star Trek Online
-Star Wars Galaxies
And thats just a few that come to mind. I am sure there are others if I looked for five minutes on Google.
All in all every game that comes out now, is the same crap rehashed for a ever simpler gaming population. Gone are the days of Ultima Online.
So much crap, so little quality.
On the topic of this article, dodge tanking is nothing new. Movement is nothing new. I will admit its nice to de-emphasis healers and purist tanks, but you don't need zomgrevolutionarygameplay! to do it. You don't need to completely banish the healer. You just need to construct one correctly and eliminate heal spam and the over reliance on priest classes in the first place. On that note, some suggestions.
Contrary to GW2 popular belief, you don't need to burn the village to save it.
This guy gets it.
Yes there is a soft-trinity of sorts with DPS, support and control. But the thing is that while you can spec into one aspect more than the others, there are no builds that will allow you to completely neglect the others.
Every weapon has damage skills, every weapon has control skills and every person has to bring their own heals.
Go look at the Warrior weapon skills, every single weapon has a control effect in the form of a cripple, daze, immobilise or knockdown (except for the underwater spear, but you'll always have both a spear and a harpoon).
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warrior_skills
Its pretty much impossible to make a character that is unable to do damage, support and control all at the same time. The extent you focus on each of them depends on your weapon setups and traits, but noone can completely neglect the other two in favour of one aspect.
Sorry bud, but Star Trek Online definitely suffered from the trinity. Cruisers = Tanks, Science Vessels = Healers / Controllers, Escorts = DPS. AO and SWG blended the roles a bit more, but it was still alive and present.
From my perspective D&D was definately NOT based on the Holy Trinity to that significant a degree. The Holy Triinity, as far as I'm concerned, is a VERY SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION of specialization. It's the specific implimentation, not the fact the game features Specialization that defines it as using the Trinity. Many games feature Specialization without implimenting the Trinity. Both chess and baseball have specialization...they don't have the Trinity, however.
If we look at D&D, at least the versions I'm familiar with......
Yes you had Front Line Fighters in Heavy Armor....but those characters didn't just have good defensive abilities...they also had very good offensive abilities as well.... moreover they provided protection through positional interception and engagement (i.e. collision detection)..... which was a limited and tactical method of protection.
This is very different from the classical Trinity version of a Tank.....Which is a character specialized in damage absorption/mitigation with limited offensive capabilities and a pervasive abillity to attract attacks to himself through the use of an aggro mechanic.
Yes you had Wizards that could cast damaging spells like Fireball and Lightning...but Wizards were AT LEAST as usefull, if not more for thier utility spells like Fly, Invisability, Feather Fall, Wall of Iron and Hold Portal as they were for doing damage. These sort of utility spells touch upon several important dimensions/roles of combat/adventuring that aren't even present in most Trinity based MMO's...such as recon/combat intelligence, manuver, area denial, etc.
The same holds true for Rogues.... they weren't really the "DPS" guys...they were the guys you went to for Stealth/Recon... They were the guys you went to get valuable intelligence about what hazards lay ahead of the party without alerting the enemy to the parties presence....and the guys you went to to find ways to circumvent those hazards (disarming traps, unlocking doors, discovering secret passages) and to enrich the rewards for the party (i.e. finding the secret treasury and opening the locked strongbox). Again these are a dynamic/role that doesn't even exist in typical Trinity MMO's.
Yes, you had Clerics who could heal...but they too had entirely different dimensions beyond that...from holding undead at bay to casting auguries that would advise the party upon the wisdom of following a specific course of action.
Alot of peoples objections (certainly mine) to the Trinity is NOT that it pushes players into specialized roles, it's that the SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION makes for such a shallow and oversimplistic combat/adventuring gameplay dynamic that it is largely unsatisfying for us. It doesn't address/allow for alot of the gameplay aspects that made something like a PnP RPG adventure fun and tacticaly interesting. YMMV.
I don't play WoW, so I'm guessing a bit here, but it sounds like the new mechanics you describe, "people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana" were introduced after people had been playing WoW for years the same way, and probably the mechanics showed up mostly in the endgame content? Content only people how had been playing WoW for years the same way could even reach?
GW2 will at least have the advantage that everyone starts at lvl1 and has to go water 10 melons. *goes and reserves URL*. While leveling to 80 they will have plenty of time to learn the mechanics. I'm sure some people will end up standing in the fire, spamming their skills and dying really fast, and they might complain about that. But I hope most people will figure out how and when to dodge and block and move out of the fire over the course of dozens of hours of game time.
Something else that will immensely help the new GW2 style of play is the use of vent, TS, etc. If the player currently tanking can just call for help, instead of having to type in chat or hope that the next player in line to tank will pay enough attention. Maybe ANet is the first to recognize that the use of voice has spread enough to support this play style in general and in PUGs, and not just in guilds and the odd operation.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a built-in voice client...
No, basically at the start of Cataclysm they nerfed healers. Everyone already had crowd control skills, its just you didnt have to use them until healers got nerfed (heals were made less potent and mana consumption became an issue). So Cataclysm was a bit of a culture shock for players.
I don't think many post-WoW players will understand that the trinity system was basically a shortcut for developers to handle combat. It's easier to program & balance around a hate table, than to have a truly dynamic content in which players are getting targetted based on what they are doing, rather than what class they are / whether or not they taunted. There were also a lot more technical limitations around the time of everquest than they are now. So nowadays there is really no good reason for developers to still be basing games around that system, other than the fact that people have gotten used to it.
Hell, look at single-player RPGs. Many of them didn't have a trinity, but now more & more of them are building the system in. It's something we've grown to accept, and thus assume it's a necessity.
And just to set the facts straight, Good, bad or indifferent, Anarchy Online was as trinity as it gets
Yeah same here. The game looks awesome, and I look forward to the challenge, but that will be a challenge likely seen only be people in guilds. If the game is awesome as it appears to be, you will get a ton of people from WoW. And a ton of those people will suck. I think some people underestimate the stubborness of sucky players to continue to suck. Like I said I may be cynical but I have a feeling with that much individual responsibility I will not want to be in a group with people unless I know they can pull their weight, and I don't think I will be the only one. And this will really go against the otherwise drop in and play nature of the rest of the game.
I love every single bit of the GW2 concept so far. It is close in the spirit to the basic idea of classes in early RPGs as the different skill sets essentially complementing to the party's success, but not limited to a certain role. Actually the holly trinity was initially Fighter-Mage-Thief (no priest and healing classes)... All 3 had both close combat and ranged combat potential (no ranged/close combat classes)! It was rather the difference in approach to solving the problems, rather than ability to solve certain problems and inability to solve the others - for example a fighter would bash the door to open it, a thief would pick a lock, while mage would either destroy it with fireball or ... say.... teleport on the other side...
BTW - I hate you people who cite the posts longer than my screen! I hope the forum administration bans your asses permanently.
D&D was completely based on the trinity when it came to combat. Sure characters could do other things and had other odd specialties, but at it's core, it was based on the trinity. The whole idea of a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric party came from D&D. And to say rogues weren't DPS guys, did you ever really play the game? Backstab?
I respectfully disagree. Dunno about you, but I did a lot of 2nd ed D&D (which came out long before EQ et al.) with various groups both as player and DM.
Thief did have backstab, obviously, but it was never a source of significant overall DPS. It was often used as an opening attack only. When that wasn't the case, it usually required a couple of rounds of maneuvering and several skill rolls, which had a high probability of failure unless the thief was high level or the battlefield had lots of places to hide (forest at night was just about the perfect place for a low level thief). Overall, that significantly reduced his DPS contribution and it was very situational.
Magic-user DPS was also very situational. We had plenty of fights where he would contribute almost nothing DPS wise, only to have his DPS spike through the roof when he tossed a fireball into a company of orcs. Because he had limited spell use, especially at low levels, he would always try to save them for the big fight. He was extremely useful out of combat though, sometimes using spells to completely bypass fights that would have resulted in a total party kill.
As for clerics, they did heal, but usually not in-combat unless it was a tough fight where healing was needed right now. There was always a fear that some foe would try to interrupt his healing spell. Why? Because he was usually up front bashing in skulls, thus being vulnerable to interruption. Being able to wear heavy armor while having good HP and THACO meant that he was well suited for combat. He could tank when needed, heal at the same time and did OK DPS. Against undeads he was outright crazy.
The best overall DPSer though, was the fighter. He could attack all day long and could do so more often than any of the other classes with big damage bonuses on top of that and access to pretty much all weapons. Sure, there were fights where the thief, magic-user or cleric (turn/destroy undead) would shine, but when those situations were not present, it was always the fighter who did the big damage. Because of his high HP and low AC, he was generally also the best tank.
So basically, in 2nd ed D&D the classes were nothing like their MMO counterparts in terms of playstyle. You could argue that there was a type of quadrinity between the four archetypes, but it was nothing like The Holy Trinity that we see in MMOs today and unlike MMOs, you could break it without breaking the game in the process. It just meant the DM would have to make encounters that took in mind that this particular party had 2 thieves and 2 magic-users with no cleric and fighter backup.
Now, if you're talking 4th ed D&D, then it's a completely different picture, but that came out long after the holy trinity had been established.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I find the whole idea that AN has eliminated the holy trinity amusing. How have they done so?
1. Giving every class nearly instant combat rez
2. Giving every class self heal
3. Dumb down the bosses
Hey, you can do the same thing in any other mmo and eliminate the trinity as well.
Personally I don't care much. i won't be doing any boss fights. I play a healer in other mmos and there is no healer class in GW2. I will enjoy the "action oriented combat" (re: console game type fighting) for a while (already ordered the digital deluxe edition) but then move on - just as I have from every other fps game that I have played.
This made me laugh. You will be in for a rude shock.
Trinity is very much alive in this game. Its just dressed differently. I have to say I like the way its dressed in GW2 but fact is someone in the team will damage mitigate (everyone), someone will cast heal (everyone) and someone will focus on DPS (everyone). Some will lean to some rolls more then others. I know my wife really wants to spec deeply into water just to be the helping hand in fights. GJ ANet but this game did not kill the Trinity.
So what game in the last 6 years has used the holy trinity anyway??? Everything lately has just been "the game is so easy you dont need anyone else or to play any role"......IF there is little or no heals then that tells me either A) the players are overpowered or
the content is too easy......We will see how it plays out but Im guessing the game is easy.
Originally posted by terrant
Alright, presuming the game plays the way Anet says it will, and thus far all video evidence I've seen seems to support it...There will be 5 heals in every party. There will be 5 dps in every party. There will be 5 controllers in every party. There will be 5 tanks in every party. There will be five people in every party. And they will fill ALL roles.
Your role as a member in a GW2 Party is:
1) Provide sufficient damage to kill all enemies in the most efficient way possible
2) Stay alive using a combination of movement, delf heals, and defensive skills.
3) Use debuffs/lockdowns to reduce all incoming enemy damage in any worthwhile way you can
4) Provide any healing to other members when needed
5) Attract enemy attention to draw off from a wounded team mate
6) Revive fallen team members
And the most important one of all:
7) Think of the fly, adapt to the changing battlefield, and know when to apply the first 6. Then DO IT.
Originally posted by terrant
Exactly, Roles loose there meaning when everyone needs to be on the ball and be dynamic!
This will work fine if everyone is totally selfish and just plays "solo" in a group or event (OMG this may be a reason to have it work this way :P )
Do damage when you can, dodge and heal when you have to, help others when you want. Given the current model if everyone plays like this they will do OK.
But, if they start working as a team and start overlapping area heals to help restore people that just got bashed, taking on and handing off mobs when needed to help others recover, getting your licks in and setting up combos for extra effect, changing weapons and aspects constantly as needed to maximize the attack/defense. . . . the group being a team will function better. But as a team of equals with some cool extra talents ( Not a tank, Healer and DPS )
* As no one can tank in the traditional sense (no aggro control and no real staying power)
* As no one can just heal as there is no single target-able heals and the AOE heals are low power dots (best used overlapped or as a bonus) completely not useful in keeping a character alive in a sustained attack.
* As no one can just DPS as they Will be attacked directly for doing so.
From people playing in the Beta's over and over, if you do not adapt dynamically and use your skills creatively you will be dieing allot.
It takes a good team to keep the boss de-buffed and controlled as much as possible and rotate damaging, getting smashed for doing so, getting the heck out of there, and healing up for another go.
You have to change weapons/aspect you have to use your skills and you have to move around.
The Trinity as commonly defined, requires Aggro control, a damage sink, healing for the damage sink (normally dedicated and massive), and DPS to burn the mob down.
Yes, you can have off tanks, yes secondary healers or hybrids filling secondary roles (or very very specialized hybrids - almost a oxymoron that may be good enough for the main roles ) But these are all variants on a theme. And it all comes down to aggro control! Without aggro control you can't have the Trinity as commonly defined.
Also being able to heal does not make you a healer (in GW you really can't be by design the most you can do is AID)
Being able to take a few hits does not make you into a tank, as no one in GW2 can take sustained damage and since there is no real massive heals . . and for the main reason there is no Aggro control, as soon as you go all defensive the mob may just move on to someone else.
Able to do massive damage? well expect the mob to be coming to you! you may need to do defensive and get out of there quick.
While doing all of this your teammates can be aiding with some needed but minor healing since you just blew yours . . they may slow or bind the Mob to help you escape. and most importantly do some good damage on there own and get the Mob off your back, or res you when they can't.
Below is what Eric Flannum (Lead Designer, ArenaNet) had to say about the trinity in GW2. Sorry if it was already posted, just skimmed through the second half of the thread. Sorry badSpock, you could have used this earlier to try an get across what you were saying.
“Players could make a build that resembles the trinity but it could never truly be the trinity. You cannot for example make a dedicated healer no matter how much you pump into your support trait lines. When you start getting to tougher encounters no matter how much armor and health you have you will never be able to stand toe to toe for long against most of the foes you’ll face. Because of this even a 5 person group that has 3 dps focused characters, a support focused character, and a damage soaking character (which is a standard trinity setup) will not play anything like a standard trinity group. If those players insisted on playing like a standard trinity group they could succeed against the easier content in the game but probably couldn’t finish a story mode dungeon let alone an explorable dungeon or some of the tougher events in the game. “
He then went on to make a more lengthy second post which read -
“To go a little bit more in depth with the answer I gave, it doesn’t really matter which professions you bring. Over the beta weekend I played through the dungeon with several different journalists and getting through was never a matter of bringing particular professions or even changing the builds that people were using. When we hit a tough patch people would change which weapons or utilities they were using but nobody ever had to go respec their traits. I was in groups that wiped multiple times in story mode but I was also in groups that did not wipe at all in story mode and was in one group that made it through explorable mode (we wiped a lot in that one). It all came down to how well we coordinated and how well we responded to the situations we encountered.
For example, in the explorable run through I think it was two journalists who were both warriors (one may have been a guardian, I’m having trouble recalling), our producer Chris Whiteside with a ranger, Izzy playing an elementalist, and myself playing an engineer. At different times Izzy was our condition removal guy, our debuffer, and our “tank” (bait is a more appropriate term actually). He was our most important player because he was our best player but he was actually very support/healing specced. The important thing about that group was that we were all talking and coordinating our efforts and coming up with strategies together. Those strategies never really revolved around specific skills but rather things like “We need condition removal” or “we need to stack as much vulnerability on this guy as possible” or even “we need Izzy to run around attracting attention while the rest of us activate the traps built into the area to kill the hordes of incoming mobs”. I hope that helps shed some light on how the game plays.”
Did you even play second edition AD&D? A backstabbing rogue was a DPS machine.... 4x at level 10. Sure things were situational...but comparing what you can do in a PnP game and a scripted MMO is like comparing apples and oranges. When it came down to it, combat was still pretty much healer, ranged dps, melee dps, and a tank of sorts.
The simple matter is that the holy trinity has been used in other WoW style mmorpgs that set its meaning to - DEDICATED HEAL/TANK/DPS roles...
By dedicated I mean you can play a druid that can be dps/healer/tank but you can't play all of the roles at the same time, hence you only play one role
Sure GW2 has Heals and protection(not tanking though) but they are so alien to other games that you can not simply say its a Holy Trinity.
How about we all settle in on a new name? Active Trinity sounds way better to me
Did you since you're constantly asking other people if they did? Notice that I've already stated that I did a lot of 2nd ed AD&D back in the day. Did you even read my post?
So, I went back and looked at the rules to see if I/we interpreted something wrong back in the day that could justify your claim (haven't been playing 2nd AD&D for 12 years). What I found there just confirmed my conclusion that the thief is not a DPS machine in 2nd ed AD&D. His backstab simply doesn't support that compared to the fighter. The rules clearly state that backstab bonus only applies on his first attack, only when target is unaware of the thief and only from behind, only against humanoids and the backstab modifier (x4 at 10th level as you correctly state) only applies to the base damage of the weapon which is something like 1D6 with a shortsword (most popular thief weapon when I was playing), not magical plusses, STR bonus and what else. So if he rolls 4 with the die, that's some 12 points of extra damage due to a backstab over normal attack damage if using a x4 damage multiplier. Meanwhile, the 10th level fighter gets an extra attack per round due to weapon specialization which can easily dish out 12 points or more due to bigger weapon, more STR modifiers and weapon spec bonus. Furthermore, he can do this every round whereas it's silly to assume the thief can pull off a backstab every round unless the player managed to bribe the DM into ignoring both the rules and common sense with enough slices of free pizza. Heck, a lot of the time you're not even fighting humanoids, so you're left with no backstab and regular thief THAC0/weapon damage isn't exactly all that great and certainly not better than the fighter. So unless you're willing to come up with some concrete combat examples, either by yourself or somewhere on the net, that supports your opinion of the thief being a DPS machine in general, not just some very specific special cases, I'm going to call BS on this one. Feel free to disagree.
As for the whole apples and oranges. That's the same conclusion I came to, which is why it's safe to say that the holy trinity wasn't invented by pen and paper. Again, did you read my post? The individual roles as you state, sure, no argument there, but they were not combined in the strict way we see it in MMOs. There were no aggro or taunt mechanics in AD&D, which is crucial in making the holy trinity work. All the tank could do was get in the way and hope that the monsters wouldn't ignore him and go for the squishy targets first. Often, that was not the case. At least not in the countless games that I had the chance to play in or DM myself. Orcs may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they know the guy in a robe with a staff or dagger means trouble and that you shouldn't turn your back to a guy in leather armor wielding one or two light stabby weapons.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I think you are missing the point! Agruing over AD&D rules?!? OMG
Gary Gygax style D&D computer games (starting text based / character graphics) Where simple (even rudimentary) approximations of the table top game that COULD be as complex as you wanted to make it. Computers really did not have the capability to do anything else. The beginning framework STARTED then! Hit-points, mana, Armor, gold, dungeons, ever looking for better weapons and loot etc.
Hell Diablo is effectively this same model given some graphics.
Then comes meridian 59 the first real MMO (yes I QA'ed that game ;P) It did not have the "trinity" because it did not have classes per say or any real structure to group and do hard dungeons. (very simple game all in all)
The convention did not start till enmity, "aggro" was developed and developers started trying to force players to play in a group and not as solo units running around, stealing kills/loot and really being a unruly mob of gankers.
When this worked it became the gold standred.
Since games where (and really ARE) still VERY VERY simplistic this was easy to implement. This fixed game play, and some social problems and there was really NO need to do anything else. Remember these games are just simple databases, mobs attack within a radius or when attacked, aggro is generated (the only factor that may change the simple attack perimeter) each mob normally had only one attack. etc etc . (and only the bosses had scripts to make the game play more complex)
Meanwhile single player games have gone way past that (even multilayer FPS games) Mobs can see and hear and will act accordingly, they may take cover or run away and get help, They may try to out flank you, change weapons, even work as a team.
MMOs started to be rather lame so allot of the work went into Endgame scripted bosses that required a group (no soloing could happen) of players that worked together. On top of this they made roles to insure everyone had something to do that was "important". Then this "trinity" became REQUIRED to do any end game content . . . and on to the current day.
Because of this any real interesting content was forced to be Endgame, you where required to be in a group that had to have the "trinity" to even have a chance. Attacking non boss mobs became a chore, and time waster. Healers got the thankless job of healing the tank or the group would wipe, tanks had to keep aggro or the same would happen. Raiding became its own game within a game.
GUILDWARS 2 is attempting to break out of this overused mold! And good for them the old trend and expectation was getting toxic. (though I think most new MMO's have seen this and where very very slowly adding elements to enhance there games (a bit of too little too late in most cases)
So did AD&D make the "trinity"? directly? no but definitely indirectly, but the greatest factor is limitation in computers and networking/internet at the time and the conventions and shortcuts used to mitigate them. We should not be ruled by obsolete limitations from a bygone decade. Be creative and have fun.