There's a solution to that: teach clueless people how to specc for group. There's bunch of skill points lying about in the game, and thanks to Tiered utility a player will inevitably pick up a AOE heal or buff, or support skill. It takes time to educate the masses, but it's not impossible.
In a Holy Trinity game there's no soultion to the issue presented. You're stuck waiting for the right class to fill the role, or you're stuck looking for a group who needs your class.
Still, the system is not fool proof, like Rift's or TSW's, where you can switch roles on the fly. If you (and is very likely) end up in a group of 5 glass cannons, how much of a right do you have to ask them to go back to a trainer and buy a skill reset to put more points into utility skills? And even if you have the audacity to do so, there is no way of telling whether they are skilled right for dungeon running instead of WvW or being properly geared.
The only thing you can tell is how many times you had to raise them from down state. Even that is not much of an indication, since, say me as a guardian, can play it safe and put on a scepter and tickle the boss from a safe distance while being semi useless (as far as damage mitigation and dps goes).
As for teaching others, good luck with that. Generally people are receptive to instructions about how to approach an encounter but extremely defensive on anything that has to do on how they play their class/role. So you can generally explain the general rules of engagement and people will thank you, but the moment you start commenting on how people can improve their gameplay, you're labelled a jerk and a meddler.
Great post OP. It is definitely an interesting question whether having removed the holy trinity is better/funner than keeping it in. I don't miss holy trinity because I am still playing WoW along side playing GW2.
However, there are still healer/tank functions in GW2 so I don't necessarily agree that it is completely gone. The abilities are more spread out between classes.
I admit I am still learning the game so I only have some knowledge of Engineers, Rangers, and Elies, but it seems to me that each of these three classes have a bit of healing and a bit of defensive capabilities tossed in with some status effects. The Engineer and the Elie seem to have more ease healing people though with certain builds than the Ranger does, whereas the Ranger has a lot of status effects that cripple targets, etc.
So, if it seems that there isn't enough healing, why not equip the right weapon, switch skills and heal? That is one of the things I really like with the Elementalist: it is so incredibly flexible! I have been soloing with an earth build using a sceptre and focus, but when I have to heal I switch to a staff and water build. If dps is needed, I switch again to a fire build.
I don't like how one is pigeonholed with the abilities, you are not free to swap them out without visiting a trainer first. I do find that annoying.
My server is really young and I noticed that a lot of people opt for dps no matter what the encounter, and then run around like headless chickens and die in the more difficult DEs. I have taken to choosing the water spec most times just for that reason. I don't particularly like healing, but I will do it if it furthers the DE along.
Still, the system is not fool proof, like Rift's or TSW's, where you can switch roles on the fly. If you (and is very likely) end up in a group of 5 glass cannons, how much of a right do you have to ask them to go back to a trainer and buy a skill reset to put more points into utility skills? And even if you have the audacity to do so, there is no way of telling whether they are skilled right for dungeon running instead of WvW or being properly geared.
The only thing you can tell is how many times you had to raise them from down state. Even that is not much of an indication, since, say me as a guardian, can play it safe and put on a scepter and tickle the boss from a safe distance while being semi useless (as far as damage mitigation and dps goes).
As for teaching others, good luck with that. Generally people are receptive to instructions about how to approach an encounter but extremely defensive on anything that has to do on how they play their class/role. So you can generally explain the general rules of engagement and people will thank you, but the moment you start commenting on how people can improve their gameplay, you're labelled a jerk and a meddler.
Underlined part: yes, that is a real drag. I think ANet should allow people to have two ability templates they can swap between, a bit like dual spec in WoW. Rift is excellent for flexibility too and I think they really have the right idea.
I think with advising people how to play their role, there are two ways to go about it: be condescending and get labelled a jerk/meddler or be constructive by providing advice and get labelled a friend. I am open to learning how to play better, unless someone is in my face shouting newb at me and telling me I suck.
imo the trinity needs to be expanded, not consolidated.
Rift tried that with Support role. Yes you can actually choose 4 roles when queing up on LFG. However, often support people end up being dps in 5mans. However, in 25 man raids, there's always someone running Bard and/or Archon, simply because the buffs they provide far outweight their loss of dps/healing if they were in those roles.
Trinity system while not something bad is less complex in general, as you need to pay attention just for one thing. Green bars as healer, big boss/mobs as tank, rotation as dps. While simplicity isn't necessairly flaw, it wasn't the source of your fun. It was fitting the puzzle(heal, dps, tank) into dungeon design. So yeah I agree first clear of dungeon in trinity modle was darn satysfying. But after that, you got stuck in one old boring scheme, tank stays here, dps/healer here and off we go. It's shallow and it's BORING!
Not to mention biggest trinity flaw - blaming each other. Bad healer, bad tank, bad dps. While you can be still a bad player in GW2 it's harder to be ignorant and just put a blame on someone. You know when someone is not pulling their weight because they should do same things as you. Also this forces more cooperation and more friendliness then "L2P n00b" or "LFG XYZ dungeon, 56421+ GS , link achiev pls".
In GW2 everyone needs to pay attention to everything. You heal, buff, debuff, dps and tank mobs. To lesser degree of course than dedicated class. This requires darn good cooperation and participation in battle, rather than "I stand here and pew pew cuz I'm dps".
It will take time to get used to new system however, which will change encouters from death zerg into cooperate to progress.
I agree, if someone dies 20 times in a Wow dungeon they blame the healer or possibly the tank. When the same thing happen in GW2 they complain that the game is too hard.
I love the lack of a trinity. That being said, on my server anyway, it is not a "come as you are" dungeon setting. LFG spam is still full of groups looking for specific specs.
So, while the tank/healer/dps trinity might be gone, on our server people still do look for specifically tailors toons for different roles.
Yeah, I miss it. I have rolled 3 different characters, and they all feel more or less the same. It's as if they made one class, then reskinned it 8 times. Sure, there is some slight variation, but they all play about the same.
I love the lack of a trinity. That being said, on my server anyway, it is not a "come as you are" dungeon setting. LFG spam is still full of groups looking for specific specs.
So, while the tank/healer/dps trinity might be gone, on our server people still do look for specifically tailors toons for different roles.
Yeah, but you cant really restrict that without restricting the game too much. Some people like having a guardian in the group, or an ele and if they would limit that in any way you would get the same problem as in other game.
Join a smaller guild, they usually are not so picky and there you have the advantage that you can tune yourself together with the other players for maximum use of your group. PUGing have always been varied in any game anyways.
Yeah, I miss it. I have rolled 3 different characters, and they all feel more or less the same. It's as if they made one class, then reskinned it 8 times. Sure, there is some slight variation, but they all play about the same.
try engineer if you havent
as an engineer
try using the kits you have to skill unlock and replaces your weapon
both the mesmer and engineer feel very different to me
Yeah, I miss it. I have rolled 3 different characters, and they all feel more or less the same. It's as if they made one class, then reskinned it 8 times. Sure, there is some slight variation, but they all play about the same.
Try playing a thief, they are very different and rather twitch based if you play them the right way. Or an elementalist, the way the switch between their 4 specializations are rather different.
If you play the classes the same you are either playing all of them wrong or all besides one. Ok, warrior and Guardian seems pretty like to me but then i never played a guardian so that might just be me generalizing.
Never was a fan of the trinity. Most of the MMOs that I enjoyed didn't have it, so I don't miss it at all.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I didn't really thought a lot about the trinity during my time with GW2. It works with most games, and i won't argue about that. I absolutely love the fact that most people choose to play ranged during instances. It's so much easier to play melee speceed guardian when you actually see, what is happening on the screen for a change and fights aren't a cluster@%$k of guys/gals bashing on eachother.
Please stay with me for a second and read my opinion before ranting solely because of the title.
First a quick history of what I played in the past. I was playing Holy Priest for most of my 'hardcore' raiding career in WoW from Vanilla till Lich King, later causally pugged as Paladin Tank for Cataclysm. I played Warrior Priest and Zelot on the Warhammer Online battlefields and cleared dungeons as Mitra Priest and later Guardian in Age of Conan. Lately I came to play The Secret World and mainly tanked during my dungeon runs, while occasionally going DPS.
Now Guild Wars 2 is my first MMO not using the Tank/Healer/DPS split as basis for it's dungeon play and honestly I am having a hard time getting used to it. Maybe that’s the wrong term, having a hard time liking or appreciating the benefits is more accurate. As others have stated in other threats, a lack of trinity does not mean you can randomly throw together any 5 players without taking their build into consideration and have a chance on success. Big problem here, most players don't seem to be aware of this, with the result that dungeon runs in pick-up groups tend to be very chaotic and unorganized
The trinity, gave players a baseline tactic to approach every situation, the players of each role knew what their job was upon entering the dungeon, send the tank to catch the mobs, make sure no one dies, kill everything, simple but yet you could build tons of fun encounters around that baseline. Now people don’t have an initial understanding what they are supposed to do. Everybody seems to fight for himself and only looks out for other to raise them up after they have been downed. Mob Aggro, while following some rules, seems to be a bit of a mystery and it doesn’t really let you prepare your skill deck before an encounter, since it is making a huge difference if all the adds and the boss are chasing you, or someone else (aggro depending on player health is a very very annoying mechanic).
There are other things to be found in the dungeons that I would consider problematic from a design perspective, trash heavy, long walks after wipes, graveyard zerging, very high health-pools for bosses and trash and barely telegraphed one-shot mechanics are the most obvious. I love the game, I love exploring, doing events and the WvW, but the dungeons so far have been more frustrating than anything else. I am not saying they are to hard, the difficulty is okay for the most part, but the gameplay is hectic and random, that makes it frustrating on failure, since it is very hard to analyse what went wrong and how to do better.
This lead to a series of questions that I answered myself:
Does the lack of trinity make looking for groups easier? - YES, definitely
Did I have more or less fun playing GW 5 man dungeons than 5 man dungeons in games with a trinity model? - LESS FUN, this is an subjective statement.
Am I having less fun because there is no trinity? - TO A LARGE DEGREE YES, the trinity enforced collaboration, while without, it is more everyone for himself, which goes against the idea of an team effort required to overcome a dungeon challenge.
Will it be more fun in a fixed group? - MOST LIKELY, my experience is based on PUG's, I am perfectly aware that a well build team will have an completely different experience.
What’s your take on this, do you miss the trinity in the 5 player dungeons of Guild Wars 2?
As I have said to others before. You can still use the Trinity in GW2. But, if you want to you need to find people with the right builds to represent the parts. You can have a water ele for a healer. Many warrior/gaurdian builds can tank or DPS. For DPS you can use just about any class. If you want CC mesmers can help. It's about strategy and planning. If you go in blind with a group chances are they won't be built to trinity. That doesn't mean your group can't come up with a working strategy though. Just talk to each other about your builds first. Figure out strengths and weaknesses.
Originally posted by Zeus.CM No more LFG for healer, DPS or tank for 30 minutes. Thank you Arenanet.
Instead you can have your instant gratifcation corpsezerg with groups that are most of the time undergeared, solo based specced and clueless about synergies. Not much of an improvement. Sometimes waiting a while to get a quality experience surpasses instant gratification mixed with frustration.
And please don't try to defend him by mentioning guild or friend runs. LFG obviously imply random people and the majority of random people have learned to work solely for themselves on every other aspect of GW2. In contrast, pure tanks and healers have to live through a frustrating experience on every other aspect of gameplay (in other games obviously) in order to have a great experience in groups.
There's a solution to that: teach clueless people how to specc for group. There's bunch of skill points lying about in the game, and thanks to Tiered utility a player will inevitably pick up a AOE heal or buff, or support skill. It takes time to educate the masses, but it's not impossible.
In a Holy Trinity game there's no soultion to the issue presented. You're stuck waiting for the right class to fill the role, or you're stuck looking for a group who needs your class.
Difference is that in a trinity game the roles are clearly defined and known where as the "education of masses" you suggest in GW 2 is not very clear. Also, I have to spend my gaming time educating others how to play when I barely know it myself?
No, for PUGs and specially Zerg PUGs, what you are suggesting is not viable
I think the non-trinity approach is simply a sign of a lack of confidence on the developers....let me explain please.
Group strategy should always be based on the encounter...this is why the trinity system works so well.
In order to facilitate for poor encounter design, a lack of trinity could spice things up....
So far, all encounters I have had have not required too much thought/strategy on what to watch out for from a mob (cept 1 shot skills that are ridiculous), but rather how does the group stay alive long enough to kill the mob.
The focus of strategy has now switched from the encounter to the "motley crew" of members in the group.
So basically, in my opinion, the makes it easier for the devs to create dungeons/bosses/world bosses..etc. They don't have to focus as much on the encounter as other mmo's because no trinity makes any mob with hard hits and lots of HP's a difficult battle.
Again, I'd consider this to be very lazy of the devs. But Ive seen lazyness through the game. DE's that are less interesting than Korean FTP game quests (but they are "dynamic")...imbalance in mobs throughout the game world, imbalance in mob density, optional content (non-main story content) that is nothing more than copied and pasted in different spots on the map over and over again.
When jumping quests are the most exciting part of the optional content, there is a problem.
I digress though....the trinity system is there so that each encounter can be tooled and mastered to be as difficult as possible. Without a trinity system, there is no way a dev can construct an encounter properly to give the best or worst challenge, because in order to build an encounter, there must be rules in which to build off of....a foundation....which is the trinity system. Otherwise, there can be no strategy for encounters.
If you play TSW dungeons, you'll see that it's much more than stand there and and tank'n'spank....although there are those encounters...they are few and far between...
I think the non-trinity approach is simply a sign of a lack of confidence on the developers....let me explain please.
Group strategy should always be based on the encounter...this is why the trinity system works so well.
In order to facilitate for poor encounter design, a lack of trinity could spice things up....
So far, all encounters I have had have not required too much thought/strategy on what to watch out for from a mob (cept 1 shot skills that are ridiculous), but rather how does the group stay alive long enough to kill the mob.
The focus of strategy has now switched from the encounter to the "motley crew" of members in the group.
So basically, in my opinion, the makes it easier for the devs to create dungeons/bosses/world bosses..etc. They don't have to focus as much on the encounter as other mmo's because no trinity makes any mob with hard hits and lots of HP's a difficult battle.
Again, I'd consider this to be very lazy of the devs. But Ive seen lazyness through the game. DE's that are less interesting than Korean FTP game quests (but they are "dynamic")...imbalance in mobs throughout the game world, imbalance in mob density, optional content (non-main story content) that is nothing more than copied and pasted in different spots on the map over and over again.
When jumping quests are the most exciting part of the optional content, there is a problem.
I digress though....the trinity system is there so that each encounter can be tooled and mastered to be as difficult as possible. Without a trinity system, there is no way a dev can construct an encounter properly to give the best or worst challenge, because in order to build an encounter, there must be rules in which to build off of....a foundation....which is the trinity system. Otherwise, there can be no strategy for encounters.
If you play TSW dungeons, you'll see that it's much more than stand there and and tank'n'spank....although there are those encounters...they are few and far between...
Being a fan of Monster Hunter where there is no trinity and survival is all based on your ability to avoid taking damage no I do not miss the trinity. Also the trinity didn't go anywhere. There are a lot of mmorpgs to play that have it.
I think the non-trinity approach is simply a sign of a lack of confidence on the developers....let me explain please.
Group strategy should always be based on the encounter...this is why the trinity system works so well.
In order to facilitate for poor encounter design, a lack of trinity could spice things up....
So far, all encounters I have had have not required too much thought/strategy on what to watch out for from a mob (cept 1 shot skills that are ridiculous), but rather how does the group stay alive long enough to kill the mob.
The focus of strategy has now switched from the encounter to the "motley crew" of members in the group.
So basically, in my opinion, the makes it easier for the devs to create dungeons/bosses/world bosses..etc. They don't have to focus as much on the encounter as other mmo's because no trinity makes any mob with hard hits and lots of HP's a difficult battle.
Again, I'd consider this to be very lazy of the devs. But Ive seen lazyness through the game. DE's that are less interesting than Korean FTP game quests (but they are "dynamic")...imbalance in mobs throughout the game world, imbalance in mob density, optional content (non-main story content) that is nothing more than copied and pasted in different spots on the map over and over again.
When jumping quests are the most exciting part of the optional content, there is a problem.
I digress though....the trinity system is there so that each encounter can be tooled and mastered to be as difficult as possible. Without a trinity system, there is no way a dev can construct an encounter properly to give the best or worst challenge, because in order to build an encounter, there must be rules in which to build off of....a foundation....which is the trinity system. Otherwise, there can be no strategy for encounters.
If you play TSW dungeons, you'll see that it's much more than stand there and and tank'n'spank....although there are those encounters...they are few and far between...
I really don't miss it at all. Ever since hybrid classes came into prominence, the popular classes in many MMO's can do all three jobs anyway. It just makes sense to allow it on the fly.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
My main issue with GW2's approach is that some classes are tanks + dps, while others are just dps. Playing a dps-only class (*cough* Elementalist *cough*) is pretty lame when almost everything can one or two shot you at end game.
And sure an Elementalist can go full defense, but then they suck at everything.
Another issue with GW2 is that there aren't many cool spells. Meteor Shower is the only "oh yeah" spell that the Elementalist gets. The rest are pretty boring.
Tera and Dragon Nest had my favorite systems. Not necessarily my favorite games, but their approach to classes seemed to work pretty well.
Originally posted by bubaluba If no trinity is good be sure that Blizzard would adopt this idea. They tried to create something new in gw2 but only what they did is simplification of everything.
I can't see how Guild Wars 2 is a simplified system. If anything it's more complicated due to the fact that each class must adopt the trinity mechanics. All classes are responsible for control, healing and damage. Furthermore, I would say the trend in WoW classes has been one of dilution.
ArenaNet haven't removed the holy trinity of tanking damage, healing damage, and dealing damage in Guild Wars 2. They consolidated it. Everyone can tank, everyone can heal, and everyone can nuke.
Nope,the holy trinity dispite ArenaNets claims is alive and kicking in GW2.
(TL/DR = I do not miss the Trinity and if I did, I'd go play the countless games that have that system. I do not want that system in Guild Wars 2 and if they changed to that system I'd rip the game out of my computer and move on!)
Since you said "the holy trinity is alive and kicking in GW2" I feel like something needs clarification. In a dungeon within Guild Wars 2, There is No specific class that can only be a healer? Nobody can only Tank and all classes can, if they so choose only be dps? Your blanket over exaggerated statement and definition is NOT what the standard meaning of "Trinity" is. Every game before Guild Wars 2 that defined the term does not fit your overexaggerated blanket consolidation term. Infact the "Trinity" when it refers to MMORPG's usually =
1 specific class is a TANK the entire battle.
1 specific class is a HEALER the entire encounter.
1 specific class is a DPS the entire battle.
This is why so many people have had to sit around LFG 1 Specific Role and wait for the specific class to come around and heal or tank an instance.... The major flaw in your statement is "everyone can heal" WRONG, nobody can traditionaly heal, and if you played any character like a traditional tank, your characters self heal would do you absolutely no good. So no, flat out no. Now I suppose if you wanted to change the definition along with the twisted delusional consolidation of roles, then okay I guess yep lets all change the meaning and move on... Sorry doesn't work that way, we don't just make up our own definitions for the hell of it and then expect everyone to take anything we have to say seriously.
There are no specific classes for specific roles in Guild Wars 2 and NONE fit the traditional "HEALER" or even "TANK" categories, saying so is over simplifying and over exaggerating the terms. Each class has the ability to Support, DPS, and Mitigate damage as well as coordinate all of that with each other via Combo Fields. The key is to switch roles accordingly depending on the situation in the battle. Just because each class has the ability to do all the things needed in a given battle doesn't mean there isn't need for coordination and job assignments. Seems like simple logic to me but I guess its not. But if you tell someone who is use to the Trinity system from WoW or any other game, to try and impliment that same exact traditional system into Guild Wars 2, you get what we have here. Crying about missing the traditional Trinity...
Now to the OP's Question. "Do I miss the Trinity?"
Being a former Raid and Dungeon group leader for hundreds and hudreds of countless hours in over a variety of different games for more then a decade, I am extremely comfortable with the "Trinity" system. Unlike some other naive individuals, I'm not confused as to what the definition is. I've done it, I've taught it, I've practice it for an extremely long time. It is a crude system needed to be in place in previous games to help people fit roles specifically so they didn't have to think for themselves. All anyone needed to do was pick the role they wanted to fit and level to max, practice that role and there you have it. No thinking needed because you knew the specific limited role you were going to fill. How ever the class system in RIFT pleased me, it was still limiting and still caused encounters to rely on specific roles.
I DO NOT MISS this limiting and old system. I hated waiting around for a worthwhile healer, or a tank that didn't have some kind of complex... Or the blame game, "Tank didn't hold agro", "Healer didn't get out of red circles" "DPS Pulled more mobs" Now that I've played Guild Wars 2 it has made me DESPISE the trinity, absolutely despise it...
Guild Wars 2 current system needs a bit of fine tuning to make sure each member of a group can clearly distinguish the combo fields. I don't think there is an issue with Guild Wars 2's system I think the players who are so engrained with "gaming muscle memory" are having a hard time learning, adapting and using this system and then crying for their old "baby blanket and bottle" trinity system.
It is hard to think for yourself, it is hard to coordinate a group and expect the people you are grouping with to fit specific roles you need. That is part of being a Raid Leader / Dungeon Group Leader. You sit down find the people who are the best at certain roles and you build your team with them. In Guild Wars 2 you need people who are quick at CC, people who are quick at responding to bleeds / poisons with cleanses, people who are extremely aware of their surroundings and much more. I find Guild Wars 2 system far more comlpex and that is causing even some of my closest friends to cry about no trinity, which when a group leader worth his salt comes in and orginizes the party, they stopped crying and enjoyed themselves.
Here is the problem group leaders will face. They will need to know the capabilities of each class to determine which roles from each class they will need to fit the desired jobs within his team.
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Originally posted by Zeus.CM No more LFG for healer, DPS or tank for 30 minutes. Thank you Arenanet.
Instead you can have your instant gratifcation corpsezerg with groups that are most of the time undergeared, solo based specced and clueless about synergies. Not much of an improvement. Sometimes waiting a while to get a quality experience surpasses instant gratification mixed with frustration.
And please don't try to defend him by mentioning guild or friend runs. LFG obviously imply random people and the majority of random people have learned to work solely for themselves on every other aspect of GW2. In contrast, pure tanks and healers have to live through a frustrating experience on every other aspect of gameplay (in other games obviously) in order to have a great experience in groups.
There's a solution to that: teach clueless people how to specc for group. There's bunch of skill points lying about in the game, and thanks to Tiered utility a player will inevitably pick up a AOE heal or buff, or support skill. It takes time to educate the masses, but it's not impossible.
In a Holy Trinity game there's no soultion to the issue presented. You're stuck waiting for the right class to fill the role, or you're stuck looking for a group who needs your class.
Difference is that in a trinity game the roles are clearly defined and known where as the "education of masses" you suggest in GW 2 is not very clear. Also, I have to spend my gaming time educating others how to play when I barely know it myself?
No, for PUGs and specially Zerg PUGs, what you are suggesting is not viable
When I started WoW I built a "jack-of-all-trades" hunter. My gear was all over the place. I have Stamina, Intelligence, Strength, etc. I was wearing cloth too because I liked the "Intelligence". It was not until doing dungeons I learned that as a Hunter I should only concentrate on specific stats. This was in a PuG. I didn't join any guild.
The point is I came from a point of ignorance to the point of being educated. In GW2, it's still the same. It doesn't matter if there are no defined roles. Yes, it is much harder to "educate" other people especially those who are so set in their Holy Trinity ways, but unless none of us have EVER played single player action games (Darksiders, TES) before, I don't think there would be a problem at all to adapt to an environment where you can be the tank, healer, and dps on the fly. You just have to spec to be self reliant, but supportive at the same time since this is a multiplayer game.
I'm idealizing things. This theory will only work if the dungeon encounters support the concept. I have not that much experience with dungeons under my belt to get into deeper arguments and tell which works and not.
I do. Feels like there's more synergy between classes with the trinity. In GW2 it feels like everyone is doing their own thing while occupying the same space.
Comments
Still, the system is not fool proof, like Rift's or TSW's, where you can switch roles on the fly. If you (and is very likely) end up in a group of 5 glass cannons, how much of a right do you have to ask them to go back to a trainer and buy a skill reset to put more points into utility skills? And even if you have the audacity to do so, there is no way of telling whether they are skilled right for dungeon running instead of WvW or being properly geared.
The only thing you can tell is how many times you had to raise them from down state. Even that is not much of an indication, since, say me as a guardian, can play it safe and put on a scepter and tickle the boss from a safe distance while being semi useless (as far as damage mitigation and dps goes).
As for teaching others, good luck with that. Generally people are receptive to instructions about how to approach an encounter but extremely defensive on anything that has to do on how they play their class/role. So you can generally explain the general rules of engagement and people will thank you, but the moment you start commenting on how people can improve their gameplay, you're labelled a jerk and a meddler.
Great post OP. It is definitely an interesting question whether having removed the holy trinity is better/funner than keeping it in. I don't miss holy trinity because I am still playing WoW along side playing GW2.
However, there are still healer/tank functions in GW2 so I don't necessarily agree that it is completely gone. The abilities are more spread out between classes.
I admit I am still learning the game so I only have some knowledge of Engineers, Rangers, and Elies, but it seems to me that each of these three classes have a bit of healing and a bit of defensive capabilities tossed in with some status effects. The Engineer and the Elie seem to have more ease healing people though with certain builds than the Ranger does, whereas the Ranger has a lot of status effects that cripple targets, etc.
So, if it seems that there isn't enough healing, why not equip the right weapon, switch skills and heal? That is one of the things I really like with the Elementalist: it is so incredibly flexible! I have been soloing with an earth build using a sceptre and focus, but when I have to heal I switch to a staff and water build. If dps is needed, I switch again to a fire build.
I don't like how one is pigeonholed with the abilities, you are not free to swap them out without visiting a trainer first. I do find that annoying.
My server is really young and I noticed that a lot of people opt for dps no matter what the encounter, and then run around like headless chickens and die in the more difficult DEs. I have taken to choosing the water spec most times just for that reason. I don't particularly like healing, but I will do it if it furthers the DE along.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Underlined part: yes, that is a real drag. I think ANet should allow people to have two ability templates they can swap between, a bit like dual spec in WoW. Rift is excellent for flexibility too and I think they really have the right idea.
I think with advising people how to play their role, there are two ways to go about it: be condescending and get labelled a jerk/meddler or be constructive by providing advice and get labelled a friend. I am open to learning how to play better, unless someone is in my face shouting newb at me and telling me I suck.
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Rift tried that with Support role. Yes you can actually choose 4 roles when queing up on LFG. However, often support people end up being dps in 5mans. However, in 25 man raids, there's always someone running Bard and/or Archon, simply because the buffs they provide far outweight their loss of dps/healing if they were in those roles.
You get my vote for best reply of the week.
That's a great way of looking at it
I love the lack of a trinity. That being said, on my server anyway, it is not a "come as you are" dungeon setting. LFG spam is still full of groups looking for specific specs.
So, while the tank/healer/dps trinity might be gone, on our server people still do look for specifically tailors toons for different roles.
Yeah, I miss it. I have rolled 3 different characters, and they all feel more or less the same. It's as if they made one class, then reskinned it 8 times. Sure, there is some slight variation, but they all play about the same.
Yeah, but you cant really restrict that without restricting the game too much. Some people like having a guardian in the group, or an ele and if they would limit that in any way you would get the same problem as in other game.
Join a smaller guild, they usually are not so picky and there you have the advantage that you can tune yourself together with the other players for maximum use of your group. PUGing have always been varied in any game anyways.
try engineer if you havent
as an engineer
try using the kits you have to skill unlock and replaces your weapon
both the mesmer and engineer feel very different to me
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Try playing a thief, they are very different and rather twitch based if you play them the right way. Or an elementalist, the way the switch between their 4 specializations are rather different.
If you play the classes the same you are either playing all of them wrong or all besides one. Ok, warrior and Guardian seems pretty like to me but then i never played a guardian so that might just be me generalizing.
Miss the trinity? Me?
Dude... I AM the freakin' trinity!
Oderint, dum metuant.
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I didn't really thought a lot about the trinity during my time with GW2. It works with most games, and i won't argue about that. I absolutely love the fact that most people choose to play ranged during instances. It's so much easier to play melee speceed guardian when you actually see, what is happening on the screen for a change and fights aren't a cluster@%$k of guys/gals bashing on eachother.
As I have said to others before. You can still use the Trinity in GW2. But, if you want to you need to find people with the right builds to represent the parts. You can have a water ele for a healer. Many warrior/gaurdian builds can tank or DPS. For DPS you can use just about any class. If you want CC mesmers can help. It's about strategy and planning. If you go in blind with a group chances are they won't be built to trinity. That doesn't mean your group can't come up with a working strategy though. Just talk to each other about your builds first. Figure out strengths and weaknesses.
Difference is that in a trinity game the roles are clearly defined and known where as the "education of masses" you suggest in GW 2 is not very clear. Also, I have to spend my gaming time educating others how to play when I barely know it myself?
No, for PUGs and specially Zerg PUGs, what you are suggesting is not viable
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I think the non-trinity approach is simply a sign of a lack of confidence on the developers....let me explain please.
Group strategy should always be based on the encounter...this is why the trinity system works so well.
In order to facilitate for poor encounter design, a lack of trinity could spice things up....
So far, all encounters I have had have not required too much thought/strategy on what to watch out for from a mob (cept 1 shot skills that are ridiculous), but rather how does the group stay alive long enough to kill the mob.
The focus of strategy has now switched from the encounter to the "motley crew" of members in the group.
So basically, in my opinion, the makes it easier for the devs to create dungeons/bosses/world bosses..etc. They don't have to focus as much on the encounter as other mmo's because no trinity makes any mob with hard hits and lots of HP's a difficult battle.
Again, I'd consider this to be very lazy of the devs. But Ive seen lazyness through the game. DE's that are less interesting than Korean FTP game quests (but they are "dynamic")...imbalance in mobs throughout the game world, imbalance in mob density, optional content (non-main story content) that is nothing more than copied and pasted in different spots on the map over and over again.
When jumping quests are the most exciting part of the optional content, there is a problem.
I digress though....the trinity system is there so that each encounter can be tooled and mastered to be as difficult as possible. Without a trinity system, there is no way a dev can construct an encounter properly to give the best or worst challenge, because in order to build an encounter, there must be rules in which to build off of....a foundation....which is the trinity system. Otherwise, there can be no strategy for encounters.
If you play TSW dungeons, you'll see that it's much more than stand there and and tank'n'spank....although there are those encounters...they are few and far between...
but Im wasting my breathe...
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Agreed!
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
My main issue with GW2's approach is that some classes are tanks + dps, while others are just dps. Playing a dps-only class (*cough* Elementalist *cough*) is pretty lame when almost everything can one or two shot you at end game.
And sure an Elementalist can go full defense, but then they suck at everything.
Another issue with GW2 is that there aren't many cool spells. Meteor Shower is the only "oh yeah" spell that the Elementalist gets. The rest are pretty boring.
Tera and Dragon Nest had my favorite systems. Not necessarily my favorite games, but their approach to classes seemed to work pretty well.
I can't see how Guild Wars 2 is a simplified system. If anything it's more complicated due to the fact that each class must adopt the trinity mechanics. All classes are responsible for control, healing and damage. Furthermore, I would say the trend in WoW classes has been one of dilution.
(TL/DR = I do not miss the Trinity and if I did, I'd go play the countless games that have that system. I do not want that system in Guild Wars 2 and if they changed to that system I'd rip the game out of my computer and move on!)
Since you said "the holy trinity is alive and kicking in GW2" I feel like something needs clarification. In a dungeon within Guild Wars 2, There is No specific class that can only be a healer? Nobody can only Tank and all classes can, if they so choose only be dps? Your blanket over exaggerated statement and definition is NOT what the standard meaning of "Trinity" is. Every game before Guild Wars 2 that defined the term does not fit your overexaggerated blanket consolidation term. Infact the "Trinity" when it refers to MMORPG's usually =
1 specific class is a TANK the entire battle.
1 specific class is a HEALER the entire encounter.
1 specific class is a DPS the entire battle.
This is why so many people have had to sit around LFG 1 Specific Role and wait for the specific class to come around and heal or tank an instance.... The major flaw in your statement is "everyone can heal" WRONG, nobody can traditionaly heal, and if you played any character like a traditional tank, your characters self heal would do you absolutely no good. So no, flat out no. Now I suppose if you wanted to change the definition along with the twisted delusional consolidation of roles, then okay I guess yep lets all change the meaning and move on... Sorry doesn't work that way, we don't just make up our own definitions for the hell of it and then expect everyone to take anything we have to say seriously.
There are no specific classes for specific roles in Guild Wars 2 and NONE fit the traditional "HEALER" or even "TANK" categories, saying so is over simplifying and over exaggerating the terms. Each class has the ability to Support, DPS, and Mitigate damage as well as coordinate all of that with each other via Combo Fields. The key is to switch roles accordingly depending on the situation in the battle. Just because each class has the ability to do all the things needed in a given battle doesn't mean there isn't need for coordination and job assignments. Seems like simple logic to me but I guess its not. But if you tell someone who is use to the Trinity system from WoW or any other game, to try and impliment that same exact traditional system into Guild Wars 2, you get what we have here. Crying about missing the traditional Trinity...
Now to the OP's Question. "Do I miss the Trinity?"
Being a former Raid and Dungeon group leader for hundreds and hudreds of countless hours in over a variety of different games for more then a decade, I am extremely comfortable with the "Trinity" system. Unlike some other naive individuals, I'm not confused as to what the definition is. I've done it, I've taught it, I've practice it for an extremely long time. It is a crude system needed to be in place in previous games to help people fit roles specifically so they didn't have to think for themselves. All anyone needed to do was pick the role they wanted to fit and level to max, practice that role and there you have it. No thinking needed because you knew the specific limited role you were going to fill. How ever the class system in RIFT pleased me, it was still limiting and still caused encounters to rely on specific roles.
I DO NOT MISS this limiting and old system. I hated waiting around for a worthwhile healer, or a tank that didn't have some kind of complex... Or the blame game, "Tank didn't hold agro", "Healer didn't get out of red circles" "DPS Pulled more mobs" Now that I've played Guild Wars 2 it has made me DESPISE the trinity, absolutely despise it...
Guild Wars 2 current system needs a bit of fine tuning to make sure each member of a group can clearly distinguish the combo fields. I don't think there is an issue with Guild Wars 2's system I think the players who are so engrained with "gaming muscle memory" are having a hard time learning, adapting and using this system and then crying for their old "baby blanket and bottle" trinity system.
It is hard to think for yourself, it is hard to coordinate a group and expect the people you are grouping with to fit specific roles you need. That is part of being a Raid Leader / Dungeon Group Leader. You sit down find the people who are the best at certain roles and you build your team with them. In Guild Wars 2 you need people who are quick at CC, people who are quick at responding to bleeds / poisons with cleanses, people who are extremely aware of their surroundings and much more. I find Guild Wars 2 system far more comlpex and that is causing even some of my closest friends to cry about no trinity, which when a group leader worth his salt comes in and orginizes the party, they stopped crying and enjoyed themselves.
Here is the problem group leaders will face. They will need to know the capabilities of each class to determine which roles from each class they will need to fit the desired jobs within his team.
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When I started WoW I built a "jack-of-all-trades" hunter. My gear was all over the place. I have Stamina, Intelligence, Strength, etc. I was wearing cloth too because I liked the "Intelligence". It was not until doing dungeons I learned that as a Hunter I should only concentrate on specific stats. This was in a PuG. I didn't join any guild.
The point is I came from a point of ignorance to the point of being educated. In GW2, it's still the same. It doesn't matter if there are no defined roles. Yes, it is much harder to "educate" other people especially those who are so set in their Holy Trinity ways, but unless none of us have EVER played single player action games (Darksiders, TES) before, I don't think there would be a problem at all to adapt to an environment where you can be the tank, healer, and dps on the fly. You just have to spec to be self reliant, but supportive at the same time since this is a multiplayer game.
I'm idealizing things. This theory will only work if the dungeon encounters support the concept. I have not that much experience with dungeons under my belt to get into deeper arguments and tell which works and not.