Guild Wars 2

I was talking to a non-gaming friend about this the other day and found myself describing GW2’s team play as follows: it’s like a football team where everybody is a quarterback.

Tachenon.5270:

I was talking to a non-gaming friend about this the other day and found myself describing GW2’s team play as follows: it’s like a football team where everybody is a quarterback.

More like running backs IMO. Two teams throwing themselves at each other, en masse or at a boss; only slowing down to dodge, backward pass or stiff arm.

colesy.8490:

Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.

GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.

No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?

This game rewards zerging and bursting down instanced PvE encounters before they get dangerous. That’s so shallow from a gameplay perspective. It hurts the social aspect of the game and is very exclusionary, far more than healers and tanks shunning the known bad dps on any particular server of any particular game. Which I know hurts, but that’s what causes the, “LF2M, tank healer PST!” thing. We know who you are, we avoid you if we see you’re in a questionable guild or after we have given you a chance and it was a wipefest. It’s human nature.

This is a very flat and blunt fact, from a very old school raider, healer mainly and part time dps BAMF: DPS are the 95 percentile in MMOs, good DPS are about 10% of that group, if even that. This game is 100% DPS classes.

The inmates run this asylum.

Primernova.5791:

No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?

There are two different definition of “being carried”. First one is being dependant on someone because of silly mechanics designers put in place. Second term, widely used in
competitive play, means that in order to success you had to depend on someone else’s better gameplay.

This game rewards zerging and bursting down instanced PvE encounters before they get dangerous. That’s so shallow from a gameplay perspective. It hurts the social aspect of the game and is very exclusionary, far more than healers and tanks shunning the known bad dps on any particular server of any particular game. Which I know hurts, but that’s what causes the, “LF2M, tank healer PST!” thing. We know who you are, we avoid you if we see you’re in a questionable guild or after we have given you a chance and it was a wipefest. It’s human nature.

This is a very flat and blunt fact, from a very old school raider, healer mainly and part time dps BAMF: DPS are the 95 percentile in MMOs, good DPS are about 10% of that group, if even that. This game is 100% DPS classes.

The inmates run this asylum.

You can try high level fractals, almost no boss can be burst down.

Primernova.5791:

colesy.8490:

Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.

GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.

No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?

Actually, the UA in GW1 DoASC was pretty much a rezbot that had to do a burst heal on the bonder every now and then. It was the biggest kitten role ever.

Even in FoWSC, it was a kittenrole, because if your tank was any decent, your DPS wouldn’t need to get healed.

I don’t know much about other MMO’s, but I’m pretty sure that it usually boiled down to ‘if your tanks were good, your healer could just play patience and afk’.

haviz,

“There are two different definition of “being carried”. First one is being dependant on someone because of silly mechanics designers put in place. Second term, widely used in
competitive play, means that in order to success you had to depend on someone else’s better gameplay.”

I can only speak to this point. No game I have ever played has had mechanics that a dps could not survive if they were good, on their own. Healers smooth out this imbalance between the really good and the very new or very bad.

Tanks also provide order, but in the form of keeping mobs where they need to be and not running around wildly. Mechanics can be placed anywhere, you don’t have to have the boss beating on you to avoid red circles or ‘fire’ in general.

I wasn’t talking about mmos, those are hardly a competetive environments. And you are too much fixated on that silly design of tanks and healers.

Bright.9160:

Primernova.5791:

colesy.8490:

Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.

GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.

No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?

Actually, the UA in GW1 DoASC was pretty much a rezbot that had to do a burst heal on the bonder every now and then. It was the biggest kitten role ever.

Even in FoWSC, it was a kittenrole, because if your tank was any decent, your DPS wouldn’t need to get healed.

I don’t know much about other MMO’s, but I’m pretty sure that it usually boiled down to ‘if your tanks were good, your healer could just play patience and afk’.

I never played GW1, it was far too instanced for my taste. In other MMOs, tanks and healers played a huge role in making the game much more fun and complicated.

I can tell this is a pretty common sentiment here, I really don’t mean to step on the toes of old school GW1 players, just offer a broader perspective of what a trinity can do for this game.

Primernova.5791:

I can only speak to this point. No game I have ever played has had mechanics that a dps could not survive if they were good, on their own. Healers smooth out this imbalance between the really good and the very new or very bad.

Again, pointing to GW1, because only “MMO” I ever played on a high PvE level before GW2, although I know you already posted you didn’t play GW1, I’d like to point to DoASC and FoWSC again.

If your DPS roles got aggro, especially in DoA, there was not a snowballs chance in hell they would survive on their own. The UA could use healing seed to make the party virtually immortal for 5 seconds if the tank had enough aggro, but other than that, you couldn’t survive on your own. Your DPS midline didn’t have a single heal skill, only DPS and sometimes some other skills for niche situations (like recall or something). But then again, the only reason your DPS would be in danger in DoA was either because your tank screwed something up, because the spike was too slow and the AI had time to change targets, or when someone aggro’ed something before it had time to settle on top of your tank and the AI could lock themselves.

So, basically, if you didn’t screw up your tank’s pulls, and your spikes didn’t suck, you technically didn’t even need a healer (DoA records didn’t use a healer after the record became 21 minutes).

haviz.1340:

I wasn’t talking about mmos, those are hardly a competetive environments. And you are too much fixated on that silly design of tanks and healers.

Ahh, so you are thinking of mobas… Those came from MMOs, which used to be very competitive, as GW2 wishes to be.

Mobas, came from the WoW vanilla/TBC ‘BG’ pvp scene, as the game started falling apart. Some of it came from older RTS games too, it’s kind of a weird melding of the two genres.

I play dota2 a lot, I know what a carry means there; it’s not what I was meaning above. An MMO carry, is a player that takes a support role, that helps everyone progress the best that they can. It could be pushing a fresh damage dealer through stuff, a confused tank or even another healer that just needs some advice. Or, my favorite, healing a good player through impossible PvP situations, while tanking the other half of a team…

My only point: this game can be better! It’s not bad, it’s just a husk of what it could be imo. Old school MMO PvP > MOBAS, 100% It was way more fun, tactical, immersive and social.

Primernova.5791:

Ahh, so you are thinking of mobas… Those came from MMOs, which used to be very competitive, as GW2 wishes to be.

Mobas, came from the WoW vanilla/TBC ‘BG’ pvp scene, as the game started falling apart. Some of it came from older RTS games too, it’s kind of a weird melding of the two genres.

I play dota2 a lot, I know what a carry means there; it’s not what I was meaning above. An MMO carry, is a player that takes a support role, that helps everyone progress the best that they can. It could be pushing a fresh damage dealer through stuff, a confused tank or even another healer that just needs some advice. Or, my favorite, healing a good player through impossible PvP situations, while tanking the other half of a team…

My only point: this game can be better! It’s not bad, it’s just a husk of what it could be imo. Old school MMO PvP > MOBAS, 100% It was way more fun, tactical, immersive and social.

First of all, mobas definitely didn’t come from mmos unless Warcraft 3 was an mmo. Secondly, mobas are not the only competitive games out there.

Primernova.5791:

Bright.9160:

Primernova.5791:

colesy.8490:

Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.

GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.

No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?

Actually, the UA in GW1 DoASC was pretty much a rezbot that had to do a burst heal on the bonder every now and then. It was the biggest kitten role ever.

Even in FoWSC, it was a kittenrole, because if your tank was any decent, your DPS wouldn’t need to get healed.

I don’t know much about other MMO’s, but I’m pretty sure that it usually boiled down to ‘if your tanks were good, your healer could just play patience and afk’.

I never played GW1, it was far too instanced for my taste. In other MMOs, tanks and healers played a huge role in making the game much more fun and complicated.

I can tell this is a pretty common sentiment here, I really don’t mean to step on the toes of old school GW1 players, just offer a broader perspective of what a trinity can do for this game.

Tanks and healers force you to wait in queues because not enough people want to play snoozefest classes. The tactics also will just involve tank and spank, how is this “more fun”, let alone “complicated”?

GW2 is far more satisfying when you can pull things off on your own (theoretically) without somebody carrying you which makes it possible for you to do things like solo a boss after the rest of your team wipes.

why not have two modes one for holy trinity for dungeons.

colesy.8490:

Primernova.5791:

Bright.9160:

Primernova.5791:

colesy.8490:

Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.

GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.

No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?

Actually, the UA in GW1 DoASC was pretty much a rezbot that had to do a burst heal on the bonder every now and then. It was the biggest kitten role ever.

Even in FoWSC, it was a kittenrole, because if your tank was any decent, your DPS wouldn’t need to get healed.

I don’t know much about other MMO’s, but I’m pretty sure that it usually boiled down to ‘if your tanks were good, your healer could just play patience and afk’.

I never played GW1, it was far too instanced for my taste. In other MMOs, tanks and healers played a huge role in making the game much more fun and complicated.

I can tell this is a pretty common sentiment here, I really don’t mean to step on the toes of old school GW1 players, just offer a broader perspective of what a trinity can do for this game.

Tanks and healers force you to wait in queues because not enough people want to play snoozefest classes. The tactics also will just involve tank and spank, how is this “more fun”, let alone “complicated”?

GW2 is far more satisfying when you can pull things off on your own (theoretically) without somebody carrying you which makes it possible for you to do things like solo a boss after the rest of your team wipes.

Consider for a second, that you may have a very narrow perspective on this subject.

I’ve played all three roles and ended up being ‘the guy’ that finished off a boss or trash pack and rezed everyone else so we could move on. It feels good but that’s not confined to a particular role, it just happens.

Primernova.5791:

Consider for a second, that you may have a very narrow perspective on this subject.

I’ve played all three roles and ended up being ‘the guy’ that finished off a boss or trash pack and rezed everyone else so we could move on. It feels good but that’s not confined to a particular role, it just happens.

haviz.1340:

Primernova.5791:

Ahh, so you are thinking of mobas… Those came from MMOs, which used to be very competitive, as GW2 wishes to be.

Mobas, came from the WoW vanilla/TBC ‘BG’ pvp scene, as the game started falling apart. Some of it came from older RTS games too, it’s kind of a weird melding of the two genres.

I play dota2 a lot, I know what a carry means there; it’s not what I was meaning above. An MMO carry, is a player that takes a support role, that helps everyone progress the best that they can. It could be pushing a fresh damage dealer through stuff, a confused tank or even another healer that just needs some advice. Or, my favorite, healing a good player through impossible PvP situations, while tanking the other half of a team…

My only point: this game can be better! It’s not bad, it’s just a husk of what it could be imo. Old school MMO PvP > MOBAS, 100% It was way more fun, tactical, immersive and social.

First of all, mobas definitely didn’t come from mmos unless Warcraft 3 was an mmo. Secondly, mobas are not the only competitive games out there.

Warcraft was an RTS. WoW was that playstyle, but as an MMO. All my WoW friends that loved the BG days, went to LoL or Dota/2. Dota was a WC3 mod…

It’s a de-evolution. I don’t mean just the games, but the players. They went to what they liked, PvP with tanks, dps and support. PvE was replaced by leveling in 30-50 minutes, as was gearing…

MOBAs are great games but they miss out on so much of what an MMO can offer.

I’m tired, midterms tomorrow GL to ya’all.

haviz.1340:

Primernova.5791:

Consider for a second, that you may have a very narrow perspective on this subject.

I’ve played all three roles and ended up being ‘the guy’ that finished off a boss or trash pack and rezed everyone else so we could move on. It feels good but that’s not confined to a particular role, it just happens.

That pic is exactly right. Good DPS, good tanking and good healing are all roles of carrying.

It’s like combustion: fuel, spark and air.

Primernova.5791:

colesy.8490:

Primernova.5791:

Bright.9160:

Primernova.5791:

colesy.8490:

Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.

GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.

No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?

Actually, the UA in GW1 DoASC was pretty much a rezbot that had to do a burst heal on the bonder every now and then. It was the biggest kitten role ever.

Even in FoWSC, it was a kittenrole, because if your tank was any decent, your DPS wouldn’t need to get healed.

I don’t know much about other MMO’s, but I’m pretty sure that it usually boiled down to ‘if your tanks were good, your healer could just play patience and afk’.

I never played GW1, it was far too instanced for my taste. In other MMOs, tanks and healers played a huge role in making the game much more fun and complicated.

I can tell this is a pretty common sentiment here, I really don’t mean to step on the toes of old school GW1 players, just offer a broader perspective of what a trinity can do for this game.

Tanks and healers force you to wait in queues because not enough people want to play snoozefest classes. The tactics also will just involve tank and spank, how is this “more fun”, let alone “complicated”?

GW2 is far more satisfying when you can pull things off on your own (theoretically) without somebody carrying you which makes it possible for you to do things like solo a boss after the rest of your team wipes.

Consider for a second, that you may have a very narrow perspective on this subject.

I’ve played all three roles and ended up being ‘the guy’ that finished off a boss or trash pack and rezed everyone else so we could move on. It feels good but that’s not confined to a particular role, it just happens.

Again, how do tanks and healers make a game more fun and interesting? Are queues fun? Are tank + spank any more interesting than stack buffs and vuln on boss then DPS away?

Primernova.5791:

Warcraft was an RTS. WoW was that playstyle, but as an MMO.

colesy.8490:

Again, how do tanks and healers make a game more fun and interesting? Are queues fun? Are tank + spank any more interesting than stack buffs and vuln on boss then DPS away?

I do miss tanking DoA an aweful lot…

IMO I think the way they should’ve gone about this, is making it so you can’t really focus 100% on damage. Meaning, you can’t just give up everything for pure dmg like Berserker stats.

Everyone will have the same maximum amount of dmg, but then have to choose another “specialty” of sorts, whether that’s extra tankiness, crowd control, healing, buffing, debuffing/boon stripping, etc.

Then have the content actually soft-require some of these “roles”. Soft as in, if there was a fight that favored healing/attrition, it would probably be a bit easier if you had builds that brought that, but could still be done with any other combination, albeit harder.

I don’t think anyone should really be doing significantly less dmg than each other stat wise.

You give up tankiness for healing strength, or control, or support, not for dmg.

I’ve actually thought about this for pvp as well, imagine if they killed off all the pure dps stat groups and you either had to choose a condition dmg or direct dmg stat (would require a rework of power/precision to merge them or w/e), then choose your tanky stats, healing power stat, or new stats that affects support/cc sort of like boon duration.

GW1 had attributes (like traits) that actually buffed certain functions of abilities beyond damage, so why not here?

If full berseker implies only 35%-45% crit chance and 50% crit damage top, fully equipped on ascended,… not that many people would’ve followed this trend and condition damage would’ve been more on par with it… this should’ve been from the begining… imagine the nerd rage on the forums if they do something like this now.

(Before anyone says: “but no damage means longer dungeons and that is boring!” – if this would’ve been like that since day 1, we would’ve never become this spoiled).

Mesket.5728:

If full berseker implies only 35%-45% crit chance and 50% crit damage top, fully equipped on ascended,… not that many people would’ve followed this trend and condition damage would’ve been more on par with it… this should’ve been from the begining… imagine the nerd rage on the forums if they do something like this now.

(Before anyone says: “but no damage means longer dungeons and that is boring!” – if this would’ve been like that since day 1, we would’ve never become this spoiled).

Full exotic berserker gives 37% critical chance and 69% critical damage while full ascended gives 39% critical chance and 78% critical damage.

haviz.1340:

Mesket.5728:

If full berseker implies only 35%-45% crit chance and 50% crit damage top, fully equipped on ascended,… not that many people would’ve followed this trend and condition damage would’ve been more on par with it… this should’ve been from the begining… imagine the nerd rage on the forums if they do something like this now.

(Before anyone says: “but no damage means longer dungeons and that is boring!” – if this would’ve been like that since day 1, we would’ve never become this spoiled).

Full exotic berserker gives 37% critical chance and 69% critical damage while full ascended gives 39% critical chance and 78% critical damage.

So no classes goes beyond 100% crit chance and over 120-130% crit damage?

We must be playing different games then…

(here comes the annoying kid comment: “but you said zerk gear not a full zerk build!”)

We must be.

Primernova.5791:

I never played GW1, it was far too instanced for my taste. In other MMOs, tanks and healers played a huge role in making the game much more fun and complicated.

I find this stance somewhat interesting from someone who advocates trinity play. How far back does one have to go to find open-world MMO content (i.e., not dungeon or raid content, which is instanced) that required tank/heal/dps play?

This game does not need a Holy Trinity class, why?
It would just make Looking for Groups harder. I like it the way it is now because I can go in a dungeon instantly with the LFG tool without waiting or kicking someone off for a healer. I think that this game shaved off many hours of waiting by removing the Holy Trinity.

This game has a holy trinity. It’s just not hardcoded, but it’s still there.

I don’t believe the problem is the absence of the trinity, per se, but rather the absence of meaningful combat roles. That is, a sense that the encounter would not have been possible without my contribution. And, even DPS in trinity games is meaningful beyond the damage as they often have significant, unique, necessary CC to contribute.

The main argument you hear on the forums is that it is difficult to put together a trinity group. Having played a trinity game for years, it rarely took longer than GW2 (absent a working lfg tool) to put together a group. Sure, tanks and healers were insta-queued, but playing DPS the wait was seldom over 10 minutes. Across many years, queue times simply weren’t an issue.

I would say that lack of meaningful roles violates how humans go about achieving objectives in groups in anything from scavenger hunts, to sports, to brain surgery. Defining and executing roles is simply how we do it. That is, I believe, what shows up as a lack of a satisfactory experience around group combat in GW2. What GW2 reflects is the berserker battlefield where everyone simply goes for it and does what is right in their eyes. And, simple Berserking is the most primitive and least satisfying method of combat. It’s certainly not how sophisticated IRL battle is done. That’s the model (IRL) I believe will produce the most satisfying combat, and it is role-based to the max.

Raine.1394:

I don’t believe the problem is the absence of the trinity, per se, but rather the absence of meaningful combat roles. That is, a sense that the encounter would not have been possible without my contribution. And, even DPS in trinity games is meaningful beyond the damage as they often have significant, unique, necessary CC to contribute.

The main argument you hear on the forums is that it is difficult to put together a trinity group. Having played a trinity game for years, it rarely took longer than GW2 (absent a working lfg tool) to put together a group. Sure, tanks and healers were insta-queued, but playing DPS the wait was seldom over 10 minutes. Across many years, queue times simply weren’t an issue.

1) By “a sense that the encounter would not have been possible without my contribution” you mean your profession. It would be impossible to design encounter mechanics that require the contribution of something unique to one profession while preserving the idea that all group content can be completed by any combination of professions.

2) Comparing GW2 pre-lfg tool and other MMO’s post-lfg tool seems a bit off.

3) Open world group content in GW2 is easily susceptible to being overpowered by numbers. Fixed numbers group content is only in instances. In dungeons, if you watch any of the how-to videos, you can see that players are making contributions to the success of the run. Pulling, buffing, aegis, reflection and other contributions all represent team play. The team is depending on individual members to use these skills at the right time. It’s even possible to “tank” ANet style with sufficient coordination to remove defiance and have CC available to interrupt at the right time. What’s missing is that the encounters can be completed without this level of coordination.

4) You’re mistaking berserker builds for berserker play-style. What’s actually going in is players realizing that their non-damage contributions don’t require them to forego high damage.

5) Hence, what you’re really asking for is either: a) for non-damage contributions to be ineffective without non-damage stats; b) for dungeons to be doable only if the group uses the degree of coordination practiced by speed-runners (through changes in mob stats and/or encounter mechanics); and/or c) for professions to be further differentiated from each other.

If a), you reduce the already limited skill options and potentially make soloing less friendly for unskilled players. If b), you bar a lot of players from dungeons. If c), you kill the whole “any combination of professions” thing.

Yoh.8469:

But it there where I finally figured out what missing in GW2 that prevented me from enjoying GW2 endgame all this time: Roles.
There are no roles in this game, you never have to work together in anything but the loosest of senses, and you never rely on anybody for anything.

Which leads to a incredibly dull multiplayer experience, and for a massively “multiplayer” online game, that is a colossal problem.

Great posts! A big +
Well written with deep understundig the problem(s) of this game.
I like very much the idea of your soft-trinity.
You are absolutely right with the criticims, that there is no real group play in this game. Someone posted an example of a group play here, but i have to ask “how should that work, if players do not communicate with each other?”.
Because there is no need to communicate in this game. Everybody doing dps, selfheal and sometimes a lill’ bit something for the group. Tequatl 2.0 is the very first event which need communication in this game. TA -Etherblade path is not, because in one or two month it will be the same as any other path in any other inctances.

Many times we offer for the radom(s) in our group to join us in the TS but around 80% refuse it with the argument “why? no need for it, i know the instance”.
And that is all, what you have to know in this game: knowing the inctance is more than enough to play it. there is no need for group play.

Me and most of my friends in GW2 are coming from other MMOs and/or played various MMOs before GW2. All that games had either a more or less distinct trinity or the game was a flop.
Doing everything a little bit, but nothing right is not the path that lead to win (in a sense of player experience and financial success of the game).

I can agree with the players, who say: “there is no need for an explicit trinity”. But a soft-trinity would be great.
Let me give an example why: in lotro there was a trinity yet with the possibility to change your role in your group: a guard could skill red (the dps line) and do dps and champions (warriors) could skill for tanking and so on. there was a clear trinity but in a very flexible way. You even could make very uncomon mixed skill-styles for your class.
Now with the nex update the game will change dramatically and the new system coming with a skilltree and an incredible strange separation between the roles: if you are a healer, then you can heal but absoltely nothing else. all the flexibility is gone.
And many players said allready the will quit (and it is not the usual “oh …bad change, i quit” whining).

What i want to say with that: radical changes in a system are not the best way. so it would be not a good idea to bring a clear and expicit trinity into GW2. but small changes like the idea of a soft-trinity would enrich this game and the player experience.
ANet said (here) that they are planing more/new skills for the level 80 characters (i assume they was talking about “what can i do, if i’m level 80”).
This planned changes would be the best way to add a soft-trinity into this game.

Red Falcon.8257:

Stop asking something that will never happen. Read again, never happen.
No need for it, no desire for it beyond a 0.1% of the community, 0% desire of it from Anet.
It will not, ever, happen.

Could you give us please a source for your averment?

There isn’t team-work, which is why Tequatl is so hard.

The game consists of blitzing the target, then rezzing anyone who mis-timed a dodge. If teamwork were required and designed into content, then you wouldn’t see a prevalence of Berzerker stats everywhere, with the best (and seemingly only) tactic being to kill the target as quickly as possible to minimize the potential of being defeated.

While that is a sound strategy, the problem arises when that is the ONLY strategy. One need only watch the “tactics” of people taking on the bosses in the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where an attack insta-downs multiple players, and the only strategy is to attack til you die, head to the WP and runback to continue DPSing. There’s no challenge, no cohesion, just whacking away at targets.

To be fair, some of that is the fault of players, but truth be told, many of the “mechanics” in GW2 have enemies which can 1-hit KO a player or multiple players. yes we have Dodge, and we have skills like reflects and projectile destruction, but those don’t work against melee, and there are player capped AoE, whereas the Candy Corn Viscount guy can down the entire field in one shot if lucky.

1-hit KOs make defensive gear and stats worthless, and also make healing and support useless in the long term. If ANet wants the longevity of other successful MMOs, they’re going to need to re-visit their design concepts and figure out how to make challenging content that isn’t composed of attacking til you die then re-spawn.

Mesket.5728:

But gear doesn’t support your role other than boost your dps. Being support in dps gear while other support stats are there crying in the corner with the lights off… design working as intended!

You right. unfortunately.
for example: i could boost the healing power of my guad close to or over 2K and only 300 comes from threats/skills the rest from the gear. but i never could play out this healing power really well. even if it is possible to skill for HP over 2K the mechanics of the game do not support it in a way, that it would be worth.
That’s wrong with this game: yes, there would be roles in this game, but the mechanics do not support any roles except dps in a reasonable way.

Harper.4173:

I am that kind of player – i DO NOT WANT my success to be reliant on other people. That’s why i like this game – at a final boss the other 4 guys can wipe but as long as I’m staying alive I’ve got all i need to still win it.

May i ask you, why do you play an MMO? Do you know what “MMO” stays for?
If you do not need anybody else than yourself to play, you could play any single offline game, like skyrim.

Kaleban.9834:

There isn’t team-work, which is why Tequatl is so hard.

The game consists of blitzing the target, then rezzing anyone who mis-timed a dodge. If teamwork were required and designed into content, then you wouldn’t see a prevalence of Berzerker stats everywhere, with the best (and seemingly only) tactic being to kill the target as quickly as possible to minimize the potential of being defeated.

While that is a sound strategy, the problem arises when that is the ONLY strategy. One need only watch the “tactics” of people taking on the bosses in the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where an attack insta-downs multiple players, and the only strategy is to attack til you die, head to the WP and runback to continue DPSing. There’s no challenge, no cohesion, just whacking away at targets.

To be fair, some of that is the fault of players, but truth be told, many of the “mechanics” in GW2 have enemies which can 1-hit KO a player or multiple players. yes we have Dodge, and we have skills like reflects and projectile destruction, but those don’t work against melee, and there are player capped AoE, whereas the Candy Corn Viscount guy can down the entire field in one shot if lucky.

1-hit KOs make defensive gear and stats worthless, and also make healing and support useless in the long term. If ANet wants the longevity of other successful MMOs, they’re going to need to re-visit their design concepts and figure out how to make challenging content that isn’t composed of attacking til you die then re-spawn.

I can’t think of a 1HKO move of any enemy in the game which doesn’t basically shout ‘DODGE DODGE DODGE IM GONNA HIT YOU’ then places a huge sign telling you exactly what’s it going to do before it throws the attack at you. If got hit by those, you’ve messed up and you’re supposed to die. Complaining that it makes defense useless is like complaining that falling down a hole 1-hits Mario and thus makes mushrooms/star power useless.

Regarding the Candy Corn guy. If you look carefully, he telegraphs his attacks in plain red circles on the floor before he does them, and his normal projectile attacks are so slow it gives any player enough time to react to it. When he downs the whole zerg, its either because of a million particle effects blinding everyone or everyone was asleep on the 1 button.

Tequatl is a very good example of what teamwork is like in the game (too bad it aint instanced). When you get PUGs never getting the dragon down below 90% and then you got dedicated guilds which kills it multiple times a day, there has to be SOMETHING the guilds are doing different.

Ahlen.7591:

This game has a holy trinity. It’s just not hardcoded, but it’s still there.

This. It is not spoon fed to the players in this game so they all run around soloing in groups.

haviz.1340:

Do some harder content than world bosses or cof1 and say again that cc and support don’t matter at all.

What kind of CC you need for Subject Alpha?
Path 1: stay close and do dps
The other paths: stay close and do dps → aoe flield → 1..2..dodge forth, dodge back → repeat the circle. (or for creativity: 1..2..dodge back, dodge forth)

What kind of CC you need for Giganticus Lupicus?
chill/fear/knock back the adds in the 1st phase? bad idea.

What kind of CC you need for “Dwayna” in Path 4 in Arha?
For the sparkles? The only CC you need is a body touch.

and and and.

Most of the bosses are immune agains cc (defiant) and the mechanic of defiant is as broken as it could be.

Niim.9260:

Ahlen.7591:

This game has a holy trinity. It’s just not hardcoded, but it’s still there.

This. It is not spoon fed to the players in this game so they all run around soloing in groups.

Exactly. There isn’t a trinity but there’s huge synergies between classes, each with their own role.

Sitael.4680:

haviz.1340:

Do some harder content than world bosses or cof1 and say again that cc and support don’t matter at all.

What kind of CC you need for Subject Alpha?
Path 1: stay close and do dps
The other paths: stay close and do dps -> aoe flield -> 1..2..dodge forth, dodge back -> repeat the circle. (or for creativity: 1..2..dodge back, dodge forth)

What kind of CC you need for Giganticus Lupicus?
chill/fear/knock back the adds in the 1st phase? bad idea.

What kind of CC you need for “Dwayna” in Path 4 in Arha?
For the sparkles? The only CC you need is a body touch.

and and and.

Most of the bosses are immune agains cc (defiant) and the mechanic of defiant is as broken as it could be.

Ever tried Infused Grawl Shaman on a high-level of FotM with no CC at all so all his lava eles are scattered everywhere rooting everyone in the party?

Xae Isareth.1364:

Ever tried Infused Grawl Shaman on a high-level of FotM with no CC at all so all his lava eles are scattered everywhere rooting everyone in the party?

I’v done FotM at lvl 67 allready, but you know well if you do high lvl fotm, that most of the times, groups avoid the Grawl fract at that high level)
What kind of CC you really need there?
You can use fear (necro and who else for mass fear ???) and you can use … what?
Stomp, Bolas, Line of Warding, Net Turrent, Slick Shoes, Point Blank Shot, Barrage, Muddy Terrain and and and … of course they are many many skills which do CC, but how many of them you can really yuse in a usefull manner on that place, when you need to break the Shaman’ss bubble and avoid him to reach one of the NPCs? All of the chill/immobi/slow effets are more or less useless at that point, beacuse the lava elmentals use for the root a range skill.

You need two things: first of all: condition removal and maybe the blinding blades from guardian to pull some of them to you to dps them down. but condition removal is rarely CC.

that trinity thing would be bad, My guard is zerg i already sometimes need convince ppl thats ok to take me as dps since i have a 3k to 6k auto attack with enough stacks blabla.

If that trinity thing win i only can be tank again

plz no

I agree with OP’s concerns. Roles gave players an ideal to aspire to. Be the best tank, be the best healer, be the best spiker, be the best group buffer, etc.
In GW2 you are only really efficient if you do all of that at the same time as a secondary focus subordinate to the main role that everyone shares, DPS.

But you can have both, strong roles and largely self-sufficient characters. Countless FPSes prove that.

That being said, WvW definitely comes closest to that experience. Oddly enough, in complete contrast to PvE or sPvP, player roles (like hammerstun war, heal/boon dispensing guard, combo field ele, utility mesmer, scouting/roaming thieves, etc.) really shine there, further proving that the real strength of this game is not its PvE, is not its sPvP, but its WvW component.

I wonder if that is because of the highly granular build mechanics of PVE gear (6 armor slots with individual stats and upgrade slots, 6 trinkets with same, 1-2 weapons with same), in combination with the near level starting ground of characters (916 to all Attributes before trait lines and gear, variations in health and armor within known limits). End result is that attrition is a valid alternative to spikes, depending on the number of opponents and player performance.

Sitael.4680:

What kind of CC you need for Subject Alpha?
Path 1: stay close and do dps
The other paths: stay close and do dps -> aoe flield -> 1..2..dodge forth, dodge back -> repeat the circle. (or for creativity: 1..2..dodge back, dodge forth)

What kind of CC you need for Giganticus Lupicus?
chill/fear/knock back the adds in the 1st phase? bad idea.

What kind of CC you need for “Dwayna” in Path 4 in Arha?
For the sparkles? The only CC you need is a body touch.

and and and.

Most of the bosses are immune agains cc (defiant) and the mechanic of defiant is as broken as it could be.

That’s not hard content at all.

Sitael.4680:

I’v done FotM at lvl 67 allready, but you know well if you do high lvl fotm, that most of the times, groups avoid the Grawl fract at that high level)

Why would anyone would do high level fractals that do not reward you with anything if not for challenging himself. And if you do something for challenge and reroll because certain fractal is too hard or you glitch bosses (mossman for instance) it puzzles me to great extent. Especially when volconic fractal end fight is one of the best designed boss encounter.

What kind of CC you really need there?
You can use fear (necro and who else for mass fear ???) and you can use … what?
Stomp, Bolas, Line of Warding, Net Turrent, Slick Shoes, Point Blank Shot, Barrage, Muddy Terrain and and and … of course they are many many skills which do CC, but how many of them you can really yuse in a usefull manner on that place, when you need to break the Shaman’ss bubble and avoid him to reach one of the NPCs? All of the chill/immobi/slow effets are more or less useless at that point, beacuse the lava elmentals use for the root a range skill.

You need two things: first of all: condition removal and maybe the blinding blades from guardian to pull some of them to you to dps them down. but condition removal is rarely CC.

I’d say you could use CC on the shaman’s bubble and focus on grubs. You just need to know which CC to use and how.

It doesn’t matter whether or not the trinity is objectively better for the game, because:

Josh Foreman.8250:

…anything that the vast majority of the players want, we (as players of our own game) also want.

If you want a hard trinity back, you have to make it popular with the lion share of players. Same goes for other controversial topics like open world dueling or mounts.

Sitael.4680:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Ever tried Infused Grawl Shaman on a high-level of FotM with no CC at all so all his lava eles are scattered everywhere rooting everyone in the party?

I’v done FotM at lvl 67 allready, but you know well if you do high lvl fotm, that most of the times, groups avoid the Grawl fract at that high level)
What kind of CC you really need there?
You can use fear (necro and who else for mass fear ???) and you can use … what?
Stomp, Bolas, Line of Warding, Net Turrent, Slick Shoes, Point Blank Shot, Barrage, Muddy Terrain and and and … of course they are many many skills which do CC, but how many of them you can really yuse in a usefull manner on that place, when you need to break the Shaman’ss bubble and avoid him to reach one of the NPCs? All of the chill/immobi/slow effets are more or less useless at that point, beacuse the lava elmentals use for the root a range skill.

You need two things: first of all: condition removal and maybe the blinding blades from guardian to pull some of them to you to dps them down. but condition removal is rarely CC.

What we do is the Mesmer casts into the void on the shaman to get all the elementals under him, the throws a Feedback followed by Warden at him so it hits both him and the eles. Everyone else focuses fire on them, getting rid of them and the shaman’s shield quickly.

we were promised a soft trinity, where every class can do everything i he is specced for it and have the correct gear.
for example warrior can heal (banners /shouts) rogues can tank (evades and blinds) and of"c all classes can DPS.

but in the sad reality, after the nice colorful journey to level 80 on your main and several alts, you realize that there is no soft trinity, there is only DPS with perks.
and while the “damage avoidance” perk is live and kicking (blocks, reflects, blinds, and evades ) the rest of the perks are left in a dark corner (healing, regeneration, CC, to some level condition damage).
what identify the “damage avoidance” perks is that they have no cost in spec and gearing, they are free, you can spec and gear to maximize your DPS and still take all the “damage avoidance” perks, while if you want to take the “healing” perks or the “CC” perks , not only you must spec and gear up accordingly, but you will not do any positive difference ! (aka added value) to your group.

just to rephrase what i mean:
five DPS spec warriors in DPS gear (berzerker, knight etc) will complete every dungeon -including the latest one, with more ease and less effort than a group where you have three DPS spec warriors, one healing specced and geared warrior and one tank specced and geared warrior. (you can replace the tank warrior with tank guardian and healing warrior with healing ele if you want.. the point is the same)

because damage avoidance via the “damage avoidance” perk or EVADES! (the cute elephant in the room) are the best tanking and healing utilities!

so what can we do?
a) go positive and make healing, CC and tanking perks more rewarding to fit the effort taking them
—> make traited shield increase 500 toughness and not 90.
—>GM trait converting 50% damage to +150% hate/threat/enmity…
—>make healing skills scale better with healing power on GM trait.
—> make healing power reduce incoming condition duration, and toughness reduce incoming condition damage.
—> make heals crit .

b) go negative make “damage avoidance” perk less desirable with MAX dps gear
—> reduce endurance gain by half or even more in order to save the dodges only for the "oh kitten " moment and not as a field movement skill as it used today…
—> make endurance be gain only when standing still, not running and not attacking. (so the only combat endurance gain is by vigor only)
—>make reflects and blocks not absolute but work via toughness, the more toughness you have the more damage is blocked or reflected. low toughness characters will block and reflect less percentage of damage . (for example the base line is 50% / 50% the max block/reflect is 95% in order to negate/reflect 95% of damage you need ~3500 toughness etc)
—> make the combos vice versa, instead of the current state when the guy who used the finisher stats are used to calculate the outcome, it should be the guy who put the field his stats are used to calculate the outcome.

c) both of the above together.

and the defiant/unshakable mechanic must go… it has place only on world bosses not in instances.

EDIT:
due the written above the autor of this post left GW2 and playing FF14 hoping that the wonderful game GW2 will mature above zerkers’ zerg one day …

There is a soft trinity, the only thing is that the only people that are efficiently using it are organized speedclear teams.

Timed Aegis: Support
Fire fields and blast finishers to stack might: Support/DPS
Condi removal: Support
Knocking back/pulling together enemies: control
Interrupting certain moves (the spin on the golem in CoE for example): control
Timed reflects: support/control
Stealth with blast finishers: support

But yes, you are correct that you don’t need to spec a certain way in order to be able to be effective at support and control in this game, which makes it all the greater. This differentiates average players from actually good players. If support and control become more effective if you spec into it, support roles can get carried by their stats. The way it is now, support (except for healing) and control is equally effective regardless of spec and gear, meaning that you either pull it off or you don’t.

Bright.9160:

If support and control become more effective if you spec into it, support roles can get carried by their stats. The way it is now, support (except for healing) and control is equally effective regardless of spec and gear, meaning that you either pull it off or you don’t.

You again are measuring effectiveness in terms of DPS which only applies for speed runs and I’m sorry but that is not the meta of the game. It is something players made up because there is no real challenge left and it’s a pattern that repeats in other games as well when content its over: What do we do? do it faster… But still, this is not a racing game.

You also base your opinion on how stats works now and we are discussing what if things were different:

What if you had a stat that would make your might and fury better than other player’s might and fury? Your conditions removal skills to remove more conditions or lower the cooldown of cleanse skills? A stat that increases the potency and the duration of all your buffs? Do you think support would still be under-par? If you had something like that, a player spec for support would be extremely usefull and that is a role that is not healer nor is tank and it is plain support (notice I didn’t mention his healing would be stronger). The can apply to forms of CC. A stat that improves their CC power like launch distance or improve their cooldowns or make their CC strong enough to remove one extra charge of defiant (every class could get this in one trait line). My example shows you that it is possible to have viable and wanted support spec in the game, it’s just that the designers went other direction when building the game (somehow they thought it was better to add tanking and healing stats which till today I can’t understand, it is a big inconsistency with their core design and manifesto).