All this talk about balancing professions but finally people are starting to see that in PvE it takes two to tango, other half being the monsters we face, from trash mobs to world bosses.
And it’s on this side that there’s a lot of fixing to do, so we don’t have to read every now and then that “no trinity sucks, this game failed” etc complaning, that annoying as it is, is grounded in it’s belief. As i LOVE the no trinity approach here’s few of my ideas how to make the idea work, instead of shooting your own leg with almost every boss encounter and dungeon:
1. Bosses supporting build diversity - so far it’s zerker meta that feeds majority of game’s critics. And it’s a pretty good fodder too.
Bosses should reward presence of multiple roles in the fight, and punish lack of diversity on player’s side. I’m not talking enforced hard “healer or wipe” penalties, but certain softer, yet effective means can be used. It’s not breaking no trinity rule, as everyone can fill every role. You don’t wait for healer, you just can respec yourself into one.
Tequatl fight is a huge step in the right direction. A world boss requiring mass group coordination, killing zerker meta with immunity to crits, and rewarding healer/resser builds with numerous corpses (my inner necro took over) that unhelped will be huge loss to dps and the clock is ticking.
How to achieve this
Ofc not every boss fight should require turrents, vigil megalasers, few commanders on map and totally killing crit damage vs main boss, but a similar yet softer approach can do a lot of good for lesser bosses. For example consider following scenario on a smaller world boss.
1. Dpsers are doing their job, but the boss goes into defensive mode, reducing direct damage taken by huge amount, and regenerating health. Both of those are done with boss specific mechanics, as well as known, and rippable boons (that get refreshed on him every tick of his defensive stance, let’s say 3 every secs).
2. This is where condition appliers and boon rippers move in. Poison weakens the heal, protection gets ripped off, dps-ers are still doing their work, albeit less effective, it still has it’s merit, and much bigger with that poison on and protection/regeneration getting taken off constantly.
3. The healers won’t be sitting there twiddling their thumbs either. The boss has ability to launch huge hard to dodge aoe attack that deals all the conditions dealt to him to those who step in it, as well as powerful and fast aoe stump around himself for those dpsers who don’t know when to back off. Skilled will avoid both, rest will need a healer and fast, because aoe circles do damage asides conditions, and the melee stump is followed few secs later by an even more powerful one (though better telegraphed) , that will kill all players in range, unless they dodge out. So the downed guys either get a ress by then or been nice knowing you.
4. limit of stacks for damaging conditions that stack in intensity is 25 per player, so condi builds aren’t a joke no more. Ofc the boss can still have periodlical condi clense and major condition duration decrease, during certain phases, so the direct damage dpsers aren’t out of business too).
5. From time to time a boss might run to a nearby environment object giving itself a massive heal. It’s up to both dpsers to destroy it, and condition and cc appliers to slow boss down long enough to pull it off. if failed, then you can still try to minimize the damage done by trying to interrupt his meal (lets say he takes 5 bites, 10% health each), and poison him to reduce health restored. To make the latter a challenge and not a single button solution, he can be in a state when he can have only 2-3 conditions on him, each new one pushing out the oldest one, or maybe even locking himself from receiving any new ones a for short durations. So all those traits that do condition on crits or runes will bite ppl in the rear unless they think what they use and coordinate.
All that above does not force anyone into anything. If all go zerk they can, they’ll just have to bear with having periods of their dps getting destroyed by defensive stance and be really good dodgers for lethal aoe. Condition and/or cc appliers won’t have it bad either. What they lack in raw power they can fix with condition damage and putting a stop to bosses advances when he tries to heal up.
Healers might be the most optional role, but we all know that at a challenging boss no one needs to die, yet many undertake this unthankful task despite the rule;) And a bad dpser is still better then no dpser at all.
And ofc game’s judging system needs to take into account the achievements of guys that don’t do much damage but do plenty of support with buffing, cc-ing the boss, or ressing and healing the rest.
This was long. Anyway no trinity system is good. It just needs the challenging boss encounters that will make it shine.
