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Bring back the holy trinity.


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@Rukia.4802 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:The alternative to trinity is established in games like eso or gw2 both of which have solid pve and pvp.

Err... Wut?

Firstly, ESO uses a trinity for its PvE. You have a Tank, Healer and DPS...

Secondly, ESO having solid PvE? lul

Thirdly, GW2 having solid PvP? lul

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:Mmos need trinity - meat shield/jump out of red circles like a hole in the head, the world had moved on.

The fact that GW2 has persevered over 7+ years without the holy trinity would seem to disagree with this point.

Might want to re-read that particular quote. As it's saying that MMO's don't need trinity.

(It does however talk about meat shields and moving out of bad circles... Which is literally GW2's Raiding...)

Whats wrong with ESO pve?

Tanking is one dimensional, where you are spamming your Taunt skill once per 15 seconds because that's how aggro works in that game (Oh and you can forget about the high level of skill customization that the game prides itself on, because you're stuck with Shield because it is one of 2 lines that actually provides a Taunt but then has better blocks that is required for hard content)

Healing is one dimensional, where there's a lot of AoE heal spamming because that's all the game is set up for.

The game is pretty good if you're a DPS since you have a lot of flexibility with how you can build.

But in terms of being a Tank/Healer, it's as lame as many other MMO's. With the only upside being the blocking system is pretty cool and infinitely better than the typical "RNG chance to block incoming attacks passively" found in MMO's.

P.s. One shots are not condusive to good gameplay, since they literally invalidate healers if they land.

Nice just strawman everything and pretend mechanics don't exist..

Mechanics exist in all MMO's.

Tanking/Healing is still one dimensional.

@Rukia.4802 said:You could literally pull the same strawman for GW2 and it would sound just as dumb. "ball up, ez lol"

I literally could.

GW2's end-game PvE is also terrible.

But at least it's OW PvE is entertaining because everyone can play as a DPS with a plethora of builds that are usable, just like in ESO's OW PvE.

In fact, I could say the same about most MMO's end game PvE, because most MMO's PvE is terrible especially for Tanks and Healers. I should know, I main Tanks and off-spec to Healer in MMO's.

MMO's are still using outdated Trinity mechanics from 3 decades ago. No-one has yet actually bothered to evolve Tanking/Healing mechanics to be unique and actually meaningful. Instead it's all just Tanks play Simon Says with the boss, pressing [insert mitigation skill] when boss does [Telegraphed big attack] while Healers just spam AoE heals when anyone takes damage (If they're not one-shot because that's how "Difficult" content is designed. You do the thing or you get one shot.)

It's why I still consider one of the best MMO's to date to be Anarchy Online since, outside of literally hardest raids in the game, the vast majority of content was very flexible in terms of the "Trinity" with lots of classes able to work as a tank or prevent the need for a tank and a lot of classes able to provide healing to sustain. This included their static dungeons as well as open world PvE and instanced PvE. This lead to a lot more fun because you were less concerned with specificly "Tank/Healer/DPS" trinities and more interested in what the classes that you had with you could do.

Of course, the game is very dated now and Funcom is a terrible company but it's still a solid game in terms of having build variety and having ways to deal with group content. It also avoids the annoying thing where developers artificically gimp Tank/Healer DPS for reasons, so that even Enforcers/Soldiers/Medics can deal decent damage if built right (With Soldiers being highest DPS in the game if you manage to build them for it, though it's crazy expensive to do so)

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@Taril.8619

You oversimplify everything you talk about, you went from ESO pve sucks to every pve sucks lmao. You think tanks just stand still and taunt on cooldown, and healers just stand there and heal. Either you don't play these roles or are terrible at them, specifically in ESO. Playing those roles is so much more than that it would be massive tl;dr but you're just a troll baiting so its not worth going into detail.

No one has evolved out of trinity because it works great and nothing so far has been better outside of extremely casual content. Feel free to come up with a better solution and make an MMO with it ,or you could just reference old dead games with this so called superior design lol.

Tell me why raids were designed around trinity in GW2, I could tell you why, but I'd rather read your hilarious answer.

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@Rukia.4802 said:You think tanks just stand still and taunt on cooldown, and healers just stand there and heal.

Please show me where I said that.

Since I can show you where I pointed out that Tanks use skills to mitigate damage and I can tell you that healers also do other things (Like DPS)

Playing those roles is so much more than that it would be massive tl;dr but you're just a troll baiting so its not worth going into detail.

If the "Tl;dr" version is you just describing mechanics that exist in the game, then yeah, it's not worth doing.

All games have mechanics. Telling me about them doesn't magically make a games intrinsic combat system suddenly more interesting or engaging. Especially when it does end up just boiling down to "Sit there, spam taunt and playing simon says with defensive skills" for Tanks and "Sit there spamming AoE heals" for healers. With general mechanics like "Don't stand in the bad" and "Interrupt the bad attack"

@Rukia.4802 said:No one has evolved out of trinity because it works great and nothing so far has been better outside of extremely casual content.

No one has evolved out of this archaic design because it's easy to just copy/paste what's already been done rather than actually put in thought into designing something new.

@Rukia.4802 said:Feel free to come up with a better solution and make an MMO with it ,or you could just reference old dead games with this so called superior design lol.

Sure. You gonna loan me several million dollars to make an MMO?

I guess not. So I'll have to sit out on the "Make my own MMO" like it's a thing that anyone can do in their spare time.

As far as better solutions, I've come up with several actually. It's just, not the kind of thing that you can just put into an existing game though, it requires combat systems to be built around them.

A brief overview would be stuff like;

  • Tanking is done by way of control. You don't "Taunt" enemies or fart out aggro. Enemies are smart and focus the high priority targets such as healers and squishy DPS and it's the Tanks job to STOP them from doing that, by doing things like crippling them, chaining them down or even using themselves to physically block the enemy from walking past them. No "Sit here and spam taunt" gameplay that's so prominent. No "Simon says" where boss goes "SMASH" and you press a defensive skill (Either a CD or Block/Evade)
  • Healing is done alongside supportive duties. You heal, provide defensive boosts, chain with damaging skills and bolster allies resources (Mana/Energy/etc). You have an active role to play that contributes to overall party damage in addition to making sure people stay standing. Much less "Spam AoE healing" with simple generic gameplay outside of that and more dynamism with a plethora of tools to use in multiple situations.
  • DPS is done with a focus on capitalizing on conditional effects and situations such as positional bonuses, certain control effects (I.e. If the tank has made a boss fall down to the ground, DPS can attack its face for bonus damage) and allied skill effects (Like GW2's Combo Fields, but with more focus on needing to actually take advantage, rather than getting passive benefits for spamming fields on bosses) with add control being also part of DPS's responsibility (Since Tanks would be pre-occupied making sure the boss itself doesn't turn everyone into a fine paste). No AFK rotations while moving out of red circles or need to design every encounter to have complex and unintuitive mechanics just to give DPS something to do other than press their rotations...

But of course, this is just a rough outline. Going more in depth would be pointless since these systems are utterly meaningless in any already established video game that has already created a core combat system that follows the lazy and uninspired trend of classic Trinity mechanics.

@Rukia.4802 said:Tell me why raids were designed around trinity in GW2, I could tell you why, but I'd rather read your hilarious answer.

Because it's easier to do. That is literally why.

They couldn't think of a good way to make difficult content work with a "Play how you like" style focus on gameplay, without it being to easy to trivialize. So they opted to shoehorn in a trinity to make bosses that can require some tactics to beat given the nature of how combat in the game functions.

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@"Rukia.4802" said:It's why I still consider one of the best MMO's to date to be Anarchy Online since, outside of literally hardest raids in the game, the vast majority of content was very flexible in terms of the "Trinity" with lots of classes able to work as a tank or prevent the need for a tank and a lot of classes able to provide healing to sustain. This included their static dungeons as well as open world PvE and instanced PvE. This lead to a lot more fun because you were less concerned with specificly "Tank/Healer/DPS" trinities and more interested in what the classes that you had with you could do.

Of course, the game is very dated now and Funcom is a terrible company but it's still a solid game in terms of having build variety and having ways to deal with group content. It also avoids the annoying thing where developers artificically kitten Tank/Healer DPS for reasons, so that even Enforcers/Soldiers/Medics can deal decent damage if built right (With Soldiers being highest DPS in the game if you manage to build them for it, though it's crazy expensive to do so)

Every class could deal decent damage in AO if the build was right. But it is still one of the most complex MMOs I have played over the years: easy entry, very steep learning curve regarding character development and really nice group/raid content (mastering the Alien Commander raid on DNW server was a nice experience). And yes when played with a minimum requirement of players some classes were mandatory. Going in there without them resulted in a fail - that means everyone of the ca. 40 players had a specific role to play.

Trinity has its pros (e.g. fixed roles for everybody - no effort into micromanaging skills, etc.) and cons (e.g. longer downtime on group content, since one role is missing). If someone likes it (s)he may play like it in GW2, but should not expect others to follow her/his lead. Even with the meta builds GW2 has a lot more to offer regarding character building.Imo the Trinity can only be replaced by systems like AO and GW2 (both have their downsides and are far from perfect - if that is even possible due to a very complex balancing issues), that allow players to test and optimize their builds, if they want to. Otherwise playing the game is possible but may be restricted in some aspects due to content designed to be challenging. But that should be ok in a game that mostly tries to avoid Trinity in a classical sense from the beginning.

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TLDR; I agree with everyone who likes GW2 as it is - no trinity for most things, and a soft-ish trinity for other content. I also agree with those who believe that raiding could and should have been designed differently for GW2, instead of trying to shoehorn the trinity system into a game that was explicitly designed to work without it.

I think 1 of 2 things should have happened with raids:

(1) raids should have been instanced world boss-like encounters tuned for 10 people, scaled higher than it would in the open world and a tighter demand for control over cooldowns, strategic revives, etc. So basically open world stuff, but with much narrower margins for individual failure.

The pros: respects the game's original structure.

The cons: probably not very interesting. They might have attached some story to them, but people would figure out that they're just harder world bosses, and that hardly seems compelling. As it stands right now, the top few players carry everyone else in world boss encounters anyways, not sure what they'd find so much cooler about raids like this. I guess... no leeches?

(2) raids should have come with a new raid-specific traitline universal to all classes. Instead of unlocking on a raid boss kill (like the raid masteries currently are), I think they could have made a strike mission or proto-raid for people to clear. Clearing this would unlock a raid-specific traitline. Instead of adept, master, and grandmaster tier traits to choose from, those would respectively become tank, dps, and heals traits, each with their associated minor trait as well. The purpose of this traitline would be to help each individual player become slightly better at the tasks traditionally split among tank/dps/heals in the classic trinity.

Having each trinity role smashed into the same discipline would prevent the level of specialization that would turn people outright into any one of the three trinity roles, and having 3 of each to choose from would still allow for a bit of diversity. So for instance, there are different methods of tanking in classic trinity games. Some tanks are based on straight mitigation upon taking a hit, others are built around dodges, and still others are build around juggling invulns and other specialty cooldowns. The three traits in the "tank" tier of the raid traitline could allow you to take on some aspect of one of these types of tanking. Similar things could be done for healers, in terms of buffing cleanse, big burst single target heals, or weaker wide area heals. The possibilities for dps are truly broad and probably not worth discussing... you get the idea by now.

Note that classes already do much of this on their own. Guardians can spec deeply into a near endless chain of blocks, mesmers are skill tanks that rely on timing dodges/distortion/block abilities to survive, and necros can just soak a ton of punishment and stay standing if built to do so. The point of the raid traitline would be to allow everyone else the capacity to tap into just a piece of that tanky goodness for themselves, to account for the higher pressure the raids should bring. Same concept applies for the 3 heals traits in the raid traitline. the dps traits are a bit iffy, since literally every class brings its own version of viable dps, but I guess those traits would be there just to buff whatever form of damage you like dealing. Put more simply, it would allow you to run a specialized build that is low on 2 of the 3 trinity roles, but also allow you to fill in the gaps on those 2 roles a bit without destroying your underlying build.

I think this traitline should get its own (fourth) specialization slot that nothing else can go into (and that is only active in raid instances). Otherwise, I think all it would do is further break already brokenly good classes in competitive modes, while further trivializing other pve content that is easily doable without the assistance of this traitline.

The pros: I haven't seen a game do something like this, and I think it better respects the game's core "no trinity needed" values. I think it would allow for raids to exist as they currently do, just with everyone able to fend for themselves a bit better so perhaps needing less in the way of dedicated tanks or support.

The cons: seems like a ton of work for what was intended to be niche content, and if such traits were allowed to be active outside of raids it would further break already unbalanced specs in competitive modes. Also, it doesn't solve the underlying teamwork problem that OP pointed out. It would just enable people to do the same lame strats (stack in clusters until some mechanic forces scattering) a bit better without trinity roles.

Lol well this pipe dream post turned out a lot longer than it deserves to be. TLDR added.

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I thought I would toss this quote out from a new player who joined GW2 two weeks ago and it explains the whole reason trinity needs to stay dead"I have played WoW on and off for about 6 months but the hours and hours waiting for Dungeon Queues and £10 per month sub free has started to really tick me off."This is exactly what happens in every trinity game, i know I've been playing MMO's since 1999 and experienced it over and over again. I went back and tried Basic WoW at relaunch and nothing has changed we sat waiting over and over again for a tank or healer finally having to resort to paying for one....sure sounds like fun to me.

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I mean we already have it in PvE (raids).

Healer: Heal Scourge, Heal Tempest, Heal Druid, Heal Scrapper (lolz), Heal Renegade, Heal FirebrandSupports: Alacrity Renegade, Boon Chronomancer, Banner Warrior, Boon TheifTank: Anyone one who builds the highest toughness (though some are better than others ie Chrono, Druid, Firebrands)DPS: Everyone else

Honestly, I like the current system. Classes have the ability to adapt based on team composition. The self-preservation skills (your heal/passives) were built-in with the idea that it's your skill that will keep you alive in general pve content (story, maps, metas, fractals). However, as time went on, specializations diversified the classes to actual roles.

Based on the original poster, I feel like he's spent most of his time in general pve content and not high-end pve content based on this:

  1. this makes the game incrediblyl hard to balance.A: Name a trinity system mmo that's actually balanced

  2. I personally believe that most people are still smashing buttons because you rarely have to strategize.A: Compare a button smasher player to a player with proper rotation and look at the dps meter. Raids actually have to strategize their comps to be successful and people have to pull their weight in their role.

  3. While we do work togethr oftern in gw2 its almost too passive.A: I'm assuming the original poster is referring to Meta Map stuff. I don't know about you, but playing a heal scourge, druid, and healbrand, I can tell you most of my skills are very direct on trying to keep those red circle loving dps peeps alive.

  4. everything is too fast and it feels a bit like a mess.A. Fast is subjective. Some people like FF14's pacing. I think my microwaves spins faster then FF14's combat.

I'm hoping that with the new expansions you will get more "gasp" build diversity with more healing, support specs each class can provide. So people can easily switch builds to fit needed roles than waiting 30 minutes for a healer.

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@frareanselm.1925 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:How can GW2 bring back the holy trinity when the game was practically based on the lack thereof? No. Please enjoy your trinity in the many other MMOs where it is already well in place.

If the game was based about the lack of trinity the cration of the Druid was a incongruence.

Well, druid was released with HoT which also introduced raids, so....

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If you ever did a raid, you would realize the trinity is there. Done a fractal ever? The trinity is there. No direct healing which I am sad for, but the game does live on the trinity. They didn't come out and say it but in the beginning dungeons were a cluster fuck, same with fractals in the beginning until they realized, no way getting around it. That's why you have druid, a support firebrand, a chronomancer, etc. these were them saying, we mucked up. We are changing the game, but we don't want to say it in fear of maybe losing people to that idea that we are going to this. Can you do content without it? You betcha. Is it good to have the trinity? Darn right. They can stIll wriggle around and say they don't need it but... it's here

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@frareanselm.1925 said:If the game was based about the lack of trinity the cration of the Druid was a incongruence.Yes, it was. It (and the other healer specs introduced either then or later) are in a direct opposition to the original game design, where everyone was supposed to take care of their own survival. Which is why they still do not really fit seamlessly into the whole combat system. And why they can often be used to completely trivialize a lot of challenges.

@Kameko.8314 said:If you ever did a raid, you would realize the trinity is there. Done a fractal ever? The trinity is there. No direct healing which I am sad for, but the game does live on the trinity. They didn't come out and say it but in the beginning dungeons were a cluster kitten, same with fractals in the beginning until they realized, no way getting around it. That's why you have druid, a support firebrand, a chronomancer, etc. these were them saying, we mucked up. We are changing the game, but we don't want to say it in fear of maybe losing people to that idea that we are going to this. Can you do content without it? You betcha. Is it good to have the trinity? Darn right. They can stIll wriggle around and say they don't need it but... it's hereWell, they brought healers back, because they realized that most of the playerbase (including probably most of the raider community) is simply not good enough to deal with a true difficulty in a trinity-less game GW2 is supposed to be.Attempts to bring trinity back are there to make things easier for players in high-end encounters.

Like i said before, holy trinity is a gold standard of mmos not because it's a good design. It's there, because getting rid of it requires developers to get more creative, and getting more creative would make too many players realize they are not as good as they think they are.

Trinity makes things convenient for devs, and makes players think they are so skilled, without them noticing that the game actually bends over in order to not be too difficult for them.

It's the best design when you want to sell an illusion of difficulty, without actually being too challenging.

Which probably makes it the best choice for a mostly casual game, (instead of what we have now, which is actually a very good design for a highly niche game aimed only at extreme hardcore crowd - so, ironically, something GW2 definitely is not).

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@frareanselm.1925 said:If the game was based about the lack of trinity the cration of the Druid was a incongruence.Yes, it was. It (and the other healer specs introduced either then or later) are in a direct opposition to the original game design, where everyone was supposed to take care of their own survival. Which is why they still do not really fit seamlessly into the whole combat system. And why they can often be used to completely trivialize a lot of challenges.

@"Kameko.8314" said:If you ever did a raid, you would realize the trinity is there. Done a fractal ever? The trinity is there. No direct healing which I am sad for, but the game does live on the trinity. They didn't come out and say it but in the beginning dungeons were a cluster kitten, same with fractals in the beginning until they realized, no way getting around it. That's why you have druid, a support firebrand, a chronomancer, etc. these were them saying, we mucked up. We are changing the game, but we don't want to say it in fear of maybe losing people to that idea that we are going to this. Can you do content without it? You betcha. Is it good to have the trinity? Darn right. They can stIll wriggle around and say they don't need it but... it's hereWell, they brought healers back, because they realized that most of the playerbase (including probably most of the
raider
community) is simply not good enough to deal with a true difficulty in a trinity-less game GW2 is supposed to be.Attempts to bring trinity back are there to make things
easier
for players in high-end encounters.

Like i said before, holy trinity is a gold standard of mmos not because it's a good design. It's there, because getting rid of it requires developers to get more creative, and getting more creative would make too many players realize they are not as good as they think they are.

Trinity makes things convenient for devs, and makes players think they are so skilled, without them noticing that the game actually bends over in order to not be too difficult for them.

It's the best design when you want to sell an
illusion
of difficulty, without actually being too challenging.

Which probably makes it the best choice for a mostly casual game, (instead of what we have now, which is actually a very good design for a highly niche game aimed only at extreme hardcore crowd - so, ironically, something GW2 definitely is
not
).

if anything, i would like a skill that "everyone has" to attract the enemy or mob away from the group. Like to give the fellow gamers time to heal when downed or for others to heal them. plus, i want the bosses or mini bosses to be able to bully you... kinda like the Executioner ,lol. (i love that boss)<(_)>

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  • 2 weeks later...

first of all.. all the people who write "bring what back it wasn't ever here" b.s. YOU KNOW WHAT THE .... I'M TALKIN BOUT.

Secondly.Gw2 is fun.the combat is actually fun.the combat is shallow as fuck and kinda messy and all over the place and sure I might be a casual who spams skills. but there is nothing and i do mean nothing that really rewards you for becoming a great players.Now i'm cute with my mesmer blinking out of aoes and giving out quickeness to my friends around me, interupting and depleting boss block bars.but i think the game would be a bit more solid with more concrete systems.its all too floaty.from the high numbers of bleeds. to the shortness of boons. everything seems less impactful because it only last for a few moments.I think the trinity allows game designers the ability to create characters that feel super unique.

Gw2 is the only game i play every single proffession.Because honestly they all kind of feel the same.The gameplay is the same.they have different mechanics but they all do the same thing.

I've been playing wow and boy do the classes really feel special.Being a Druid in the game means something.Being a warrior feels like being a warrior.Mages- feel vulnerable but powerful.Paladins feel like they can fight a million mobsdemon hunters feeel like they are actually equipped to hunt.

In gw2 a mesmer and a ranger both kinda feel llike pew pew dodge doge pew pew

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@frareanselm.1925 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:How can GW2 bring back the holy trinity when the game was practically based on the lack thereof? No. Please enjoy your trinity in the many other MMOs where it is already well in place.

If the game was based about the lack of trinity the cration of the Druid was a incongruence.

Maybe ... but that doesn't change the fact that the content doesn't require it. It's simply there are a flavour and to some extent, enabling the casual experience in harder content. It by no means indicates there is some reversal of the idea we don't have holy trinity.

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@Kulvar.1239 said:There is far more strategy in doing T4/CM than any mythic+ WoW dungeon...The recent Mai Trin T4 + Hamstrung + We Bleed Fire + Mist Convergence was quite spicy to handle.

Trinity is an illusion of challenge.

Interesting. I left WoW long before mythic was a thing, but I recall the original heroic 5 man content was far more difficult in some of the tougher instances than anything GW2 offers in a fractal.

The thing with WoW is however hard they tune it, you inevitably trivialize the content by increasing your gear level.

My understanding is that mythic+ is designed to keep moving the goal posts to avoid that issue. Is that not the case?

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@Taril.8619 said:MMO's are still using outdated Trinity mechanics from 3 decades ago. No-one has yet actually bothered to evolve Tanking/Healing mechanics to be unique and actually meaningful.

I would say Warhammer (RIP) tried to switch it up a bit. Tanks had different ways of inflicting penalties for being ignored, healers were far more active in balancing healing versus damage. But, it was also an incredibly PvP-focused game and died a predictable death.

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