Guild Wars 2

Bigbeef.7354:

There are 8 dungeons. 8 Story mode runs, and 25 exp mode paths over 8 dungeons. I am a pure melee character specced about 40% defense and 60% offense between gear/traits/utilities. I have successfully completed, multiple times, every story mode and 21 exp paths at this point. I ALWAYS melee. Never range.

So to say you’re FORCED to range dungeons is a huge lie. If you understand fields, spec yourself correctly with the proper tools/traits, you can melee with extreme effectiveness.

As far as complaints about “no trinity”…. seriously? 1000 other MMORPGs out there that have the trinity combat model. Why are you upset that GW2 isn’t another 1 in the crowd? If you don’t like it, go play one of the other MMORPGs that are trinity based. Don’t want to? Then learn to play GW2. All dungeons are extremely doable once you learn how to play.

All melee huh? Video links, cause every melee I’ve spoken to in the game has been forced to go ranged for many boss fights.

The trinity lives but in a different way. Instead of just letting everyone in the group come with whatever they want if you try to actually have designated roles for the members.

2 support, 1 control, 2 damage. This seems standard to me but variations as needed should work too. When I say two support members I mean players who are traited and geared for support(stacking healing power and boon duration). Same for the damage members they should be full damage and for control they need to be able to prevent the most damage possible, to me the best example of this is the control member uses an aoe slow and the other members can kite better.

This is a team and all parts should work to support each other. Coordinate buffs from the support characters and have the damage members monitoring condition stack upkeep. Teamwork makes the “non-trinity” work beautifully.

“Yo Mama so fat” never seemed like a good enough reason for a mob or boss to focus the tank. Seemed pretty lame and weak to me. It broke my immersion that the mob who was also the boss of the entire dungeon could be that…. stupid to fall for and die to such a gimmick. mmm but you just said the lack of trinity was lessening your pve experience… a true statement that nobody can really argue with. Good luck.

You seem to be knee deep in unprecedented bigotry but I’ll try my hand regardless for kitten and giggles.

1) There is a trinity. Damage, control and support. If you’re not specced for a certain roll or otherwise fuffilling it there’s no wonder why you’re having trouble.
2) You have a plethora of options once you’ve aggroed the boss as a melee. You can soak the damage through regen and protection, block the hits with aegis/shields/maces, cc them and interrupt their attacks, pull off combos to cover the boss in conditions, kite etc etc.
3)PvE was never built up to be something you can survive by yourself. You’re with people because they’re there to aid you. The dungeons are designed to trash you if you try and handle things solo.
4)Dungeons aren’t pug friendly. From what it sounds like you’re walking in there without strategy, which is more than likely why you’re getting stomped.
5)You’re coining the terms ‘melee’ and ‘ranged’ as seperate classes but that isn’t the case. Weapons are situation-driven, not a preference. There are things you simply can’t melee and can’t range, your setup should adapt to reflect these scenarios.

The impression I’m getting from the OP is that you’re abstaining to adapting to GW2’s mechanics and remain reliant on old MMO combat devices such as target information and whatnot. You argue that the fights only ‘work’ once the aggro patterns become predictable but that’s not how they’re supposed to function in practice. You should be outfitted for handling aggro at any point and be able to adapt to a sudden change, if you continue to be ignorant to surroundings then sorry you’re going to get stomped.

Sorry you’re having pve growing pains. Maybe this’ll help.

Bigbeef.7354:

As far as complaints about “no trinity”…. seriously? 1000 other MMORPGs out there that have the trinity combat model. Why are you upset that GW2 isn’t another 1 in the crowd? If you don’t like it, go play one of the other MMORPGs that are trinity based. Don’t want to? Then learn to play GW2. All dungeons are extremely doable once you learn how to play.

Lets be real… this isn’t “hard” like vanilla Naxx, M’uru, C’thun… this isn’t even complicated, its just a matter of staying out of the red and trying your best not to get one shot. The lack of definitive classes facilitates WEAK design, and requires very little from the player other than the ability to execute combos, and dodge/evade. This does NOT equal FUN, it equals boring, unforgiving, haphazard gameplay.

This frustration is exacerbated by:

- Trash that causes high repeated direct damage.
- AOE spam that covers areas beyond your evasion range.
- Crowd control mechanics that are spammed, giving the player no chance.
- Short, ineffective tells on high damage abilities from bosses and trash (worse when you have aggro from more than one)
- The need to constantly highlight their “downed mechanic”…this just sucks IMO
- FX spam, general visual overload.
- The inability to position your camera where you need it.
- Geo doesn’t ghost when the camera collides
- Zero training on whatever strategies they HAVE developed for bosses/trash.
- No communication to the player, or encouragement to change gear/specs for different aspects of the game (some people need this).
- Instant ramping of difficulty through dungeons and encounters in the world, there is no curve here.

I can go on and on…

Remove the trinity, remove classes, do whatever you want to make things different. but it still needs to be fun at the end of the day. Many people are NOT happy and do not find this fun, and that should be considered by Anet… Maybe they are ok with the loss of that section of gamers.

I hate the trinity cause it pigeon holes people into specific roles. groups always have x y and z classes. I do think that the water elementlist should get better AE heals. When i goto a dungeon I always use water spec to give the group the most healing and my elite pet skill also heals.

“Working in a team” =/= “Teamwork”

Teamwork implies mutual support.

There is very little of that in GW2

After having done a few stories and quite a few explorables, I have to say I think the model has merit, and it could be a lot of fun, but the liberty and autonomy of each member has made it so that everybody plays for themselves, and team mechanics are almost completely ignored.

When you see some good plays and timing, they are always individual plays. Things that require explicit teamwork are hardly ever seen in PUGs, and even in organised runs.

The classic roles trinity isn’t superior or inferior to GW2’s IMO, BUT the old one was explicitly split, and gave everybody a specific task to do, and something you could “train” for and become better at. In this game I still have to see people shouting something “LFG whatever exp path2, good support build”.
It’s always every man for himself and everybody tries to dps and does nothing else.

There’s still a triplet of skills in this game, but everybody has to bring a chunk of each to the dungeon. Right now it’s like if in another MMO you were trying to run an instance with 5 hybrids but all specced and playing dps. Of course it’d play horrible and feel like the design is wrong, your play would be missing a fundamental part of the requisites run that sub-game.

Groups wipe like mad on knights in TA, but when you really look at it there’s only two things to it: Their channelled slam, and the blossoms.
If you have one person that can effectively cleanse himself in charge of staying at a distance and clearing blossoms (God forbid you have a rifle though, on account of the impenetrable grass surrounding half of them), and people routinely use interrupts, immobilizes, snares and push backs on the knights, you can EASILY roll the three knights pull. But people don’t, and as soon as a knight starts handing you your behind because you ran out of dodge, everybody gets the heck out quick, when all it’d take would be someone blinding or using a daze or a pushback and you could comfortably survive those slams, and move on to being the one negating the next.

Every time I swap kits and traits around to do these things on the pulls I’ve found how to counter, I notice my groups always get at least one or two of the mobs down instead of multiple full resets. If only another person does the same thing, those pulls always go well. But because nobody else usually does, the game feels more random and frustrating than it really is, when in actuality the design is quite good, simple, and at times even clever.

When you get ONE run with everybody on teamspeak and people who play alts of each other’s class, and you see good synergy, then you understand what this game is really about IMO. Then you go back to uncoordinated PUGged runs, and you want to just off yourself.

TL;DR: the model is good, the dungeons are fun with a good group, but it really doesn’t seem to be catching on how it’s played to effectively, and I have no hope that it will get any better in the future given that you can still painfully crawl your way through it with multiple WP zergs and much pain, and everybody playing for themselves.

Some more mechanics where it’d be mandatory to use skills of a certain type well wouldn’t go amiss though. It’s all kite and spank right now.

The problem is with not having anything educating people on how to coordinate. There’s hardly any need for it, the whole game almost rewards zerging for the sake of not introducing complete skill/coordination walls, when it should teach and promote finesse, and punish zerging.

I definitely don’t want to see the encounters shutting doors behind the player and removing WPs, in fact I want more WPs (one per boss) through the dungeons, and bosses that can be taken to any room with their mechanics changing or still working, so that different strats all present variety and challenge, and not exploits.

I am enjoying the dungeons ALOT though not everyone has the brain

go back to mindless wow spamming 1button heal for 50minutes til someone gets a stroke

Kuruptz.4782:

I am enjoying the dungeons ALOT though not everyone has the brain

go back to mindless wow spamming 1button heal for 50minutes til someone gets a stroke

Apologies, we don’t “has the brain”. Only you “has the brain”.
We will go back to playing pandas now and leave you and all your “has the brain” friends here.

If I may, I wrote an article about why the “Holy Trinity” of MMOs was important, in lieu of the release of Guild Wars 2. It’s an intriguing idea, to be sure, and leads toward a more action-oriented RPG (as Guild Wars 2 is…). And, I would posit, if you hate it so much, complaining about it endlessly on the forums is going to do nothing…go pick up WoW, or I heard Lord of the Rings: Online is free now, it had some great Trinity-based combat.

To firmly iterate my position, I believe the holy trinity has played a very important role in group dynamics through the past 15 years of MMOs. It has inspired people to actively work into a specific “role” to fullfill in group content, and that specific role can be a lot of fun to work with when the encounters are well designed to challenge each member of that trinity. I am not saying that it’s the only way to do things, but after playing through a number of dungeons, I don’t feel that the holy trinity should be so easily discarded as “so like everyone else”

When humans overran the primate population of the Earth, did humans think “I’m tired of everyone being humans…I’d rather be an alligator! Let’s go try being alligators!” Of course not, because humans were the pinnacle of evolution thusfar. One could argue that the next evolution is coming in the future (akin to defeating the holy trinity) but let’s be honest, it’s pretty good to be human right now. The holy trinity isn’t so bad either. Maybe evolution should sort itself out a bit more…

For those of you on this thread that are commenting that “you hit one button heal for the whole fight” or “stack millions of aggro on the tank” etc, clearly you’ve either not really played enough content to have an informed opinion, or you’re just not very good at playing your chosen role. The most fun I’ve had in MMO gaming were in Lord of the Rings: Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Dedicated tank and loving it, probably having to do with my weird need to spare others from pain. The challenge of positioning and dictating the flow of the combat, ironing out the random variables, maintaining aggro against those kitten huntards (heh), etc, was joy for me. It was challenging and it was fun and it was varied, especially with some of the newer LOTRO content.

SWTOR was a slap in the face! The aggro tables were so evenly matched between heals, DPS, and tank that it was a true minigame just to juggle aggro around, not to mention positioning, stacking mitigations on your teammates, timing vulnerability, etc. I was supremely annoyed when everyone seemed to pull off me as my taunts still had 3 seconds cooldown left (gaaah!). But, you learn, and there is satisfaction in learning.

The aggro tables in GW2 are truly odd, just ran AC Story today and went through one trash pull where, literally, they all wanted to hug me. I went down so fast I couldn’t mitigate (okay, it happens…) I got rezzed, didn’t even fire off a round, they rushed me and mugged me again. I got up, dodged backward, AGAIN, they mugged me to the ground. Mind you, I have approximately .5 to 1 second between rally to being mugged. I was very annoyed, lol. We made it through the fight, but it definitely made me question the aggro mechanic in this game and leads me to believe I just got “unlucky”.

But through it all, as people have stated above, it comes down to playing it “the right way”. It isn’t for everyone, and boss fights DO generally consist of dodging at the right time and then just slamming the DPS home in a flurry of cooldowns There IS a support game to be played, and as a Guardian, I know mine is fairly robust. I’ve been working on when to use my utilities and such to assist the team dynamic. It’s different, I can’t say I truly prefer it over the “traditional” holy trinity…but I am having fun most of the time.

And whoever said that melee professions have to swap to range for boss fights…I completely feel you hugs scepter Just about every boss fight turns into scepter, lol. Hard to see red circles and telegraphs when you’re eye to eye with em and your buddies around you are blowing their combo fields

Now, that whole knockdown mechanic, you screw up once and it knocks you down for a freakin’ eternity and you get hopelessly zerged all the way to defeated in seconds…that is quite annoying and I could do without that, ANet

Sojou.2067:

aleiro.8521:

But it works as advertised…you are twisting your own post. You don’t have a trinity cos u don’t need it. And you basically are saying that when your group wipes your pve experience is miserable…that means you need to shape up and learn what you did wrong in order not to die.

No I didn’t. I said when bosses/mobs fixate on someone the entire course of a fight, forcing that individual to have to run around and be rendered useless except for trying to heal and run – it’s no longer fun or enjoyable.

Whether I’m doing the running or standing there casting while someone else is running from broken AI mechanics, it’s not what was advertised. Mobs were supposed to be more random. They weren’t supposed to randomly glitch out and pick 1 person and tunnel them, and if that person happens to die, they pick a new target until that person returns to the fight, then they fixate right back on them. It’s not fun.

If you enjoy the game then play it and get better at it don’t waste time on silly posts. If you don’t enjoy the game find a new one that you do enjoy and don’t waste time on these posts…The problem is that you have to adapt to the game…..the game does not have to adapt to you.

Without having ever seen you in a dungeon, I can promise you, I would run circles around you and whatever group you have around you. Don’t come into my thread when I’m discussing specific mechanics that aren’t working properly and try to tell me to get better, or adapt.

Work hard to have a deathless run and feel its reward. Much more satisfying than any loot.

We have tons of deathless runs through all varieties of explorable paths – that doesn’t change the fact that when bosses/mobs fixate on someone instead of bouncing around keeping everyone on their toes, it takes all the fun out of the encounters.

The AI is not broken, bosses tend to bounce around a lot, until they down someone. Once they down someone they tend to focus him more because it’s probably the weakest link. So they will focus on him until he is dead. Same goes for trash mobs. Once someone is downed the mobs focus that person until he dies. Same goes for ppl with low health. That’s actually good AI.
The moral is, don’t get downed

This is how I am interpreting the majority of this whining, “I used to be DPS in the old trinity system, I used to be able to just stand there spamming my attacks while the tank and healer did all the actual hard work and I could rage about bad tanks and heal fails when things go wrong!”

Like seriously, the majority of the whiners never comes across as people who ever played a healer or a tank. They were DPS and only thing they had to worry about was watching big numbers pop on the screen. Preciously why the majority of players are running around in +power and +precision specs and wondering why they hell they aren’t surviving long enough to do something.

You want to have fun in dungeons and PvE in-general – go for +toughness, +vitality and see what that simple change does for you. The other thing to do is maybe, just maybe, switch your build around given your group and the dungeon you are going into. You can change your build on the fly, so even if it is your first time in a dungeon, you can change things between encounters until you find something that works.

I mean, I don’t use the same build inside dungeons that I use when I am PvEing solo. On my guardian I have a lot of shouts in dungeons that give boons to my allies or spirit weapons that remove conditions and defend not just me but also my teammates. Hell I even put on the shield of absorption trait that procs when I am trying to res. However, if my group is heavy with rangers with search and rescue and the healing spring, I don’t have to worry so much about protecting and giving buffs to my allies and I can be more damage.

The game is only as good as how you play it. If you make yourself into a glass cannon, do not try to synergies and adapt, it’s not the game’s fault for you having a sucky time.

Sincerely,

A Former Healer

PS. It is possible to melee all dungeon bosses and mobs but it is harder to melee a lot of bosses, even some mobs, because you have to watch carefully for telegraphs and dodge. So if you are tired/not feeling very alert or just suck at dodging (I am not the best) ranged is the safest option. But do not for a minute thing that every melee out there has to switch to ranged. Some players are good enough to melee 100%. But the key word there is “players” -> in GW you bring the player not the class.

Given the game is partially predicated on the downed state not being the end of it, but a state you ARE supposed to occasionally enter and recover from as part of the game mechanics, the fact that you pull MORE aggro (seemingly) when downed might mean the mobs are “being smart”, yes,but it doesn’t make it good AI or good design.

If the mobs were really smart, then they would just all wait for you at the entrance and maul you stupid the instant you enter chaining THEIR cooldowns. But it’s a game, you don’t want the odds to be impossible, you want the whole extent of the playing experience to be challenging and enjoyable.

Good AI coupled with good design is AI that provides a varying challenge without feeling monotonous or exploitable, but can still be overcome in such a way you get a kick out of playing.
When the AI is clearly dumb as a brick 90% of the time, but the one time it can be frustratingly stubborn it suddenly switches to inflicting you a fatality, that’s not a smart AI, it’s bad design.

If the downed state was something you weren’t supposed to get out of except one random 1% of the time, and something that is just random and frustrating, then they might as well replace it with a roll of the dice to see if you got a fatal hit or not.

As it is, aggro often has some serious issues in the game, and no clear mechanics that you can play to and skillfully exploit within the rules. Saying it’s not broken (it’s not, but it’s flawed) because you’re not supposed to go down at all is flying in the face of every official statement ever made by AN, so spare it, please

Honestly, different paths don’t feel like a different experience/different dungeon at all. It feels just the same, and it’s monotonous.

I ran Sorrow’s Embrace Explorable today with a group of 4 friends. Two of us were on Ventrilo and the other two were not, so we didn’t have the best communication in the world but it was alright. We all know how the other plays and we adapt to situations quickly.

The final boss in the dungeon path we chose consisted of two golems, one melee with the spinning/knockdown attack that is standard for that variety of golem and one ranged that shoots balls of electricity which explode into AoE circles of electricity upon hitting a player.

The way this fight played out had me, as an engineer fighting with pistol and shield for the added survivability, by about thirty-seconds in with the full and undivided attention of both golems. I spent the remainder of the fight – approximately five minutes or so – strafe-running around the room with the melee golem trucking along behind me and the ranged golem playing a very one-sided game of dodgeball with me.

I, unlike as you are describing, actually found this to be a lot of fun as well as somewhat funny that they were both so fixated upon myself. Dodging ball-lightnings, dodging AoE lightning circles from ball-lightnings that had hit someone and keeping ahead of the mechanical machine of death while continuing my attack on the golems was a challenge and a challenge is exactly what the dungeons – not to mention the explorable mode dungeons – are supposed to be.

And the added bonus to the way the entire boss-fight the golems fixated upon me was the fact that it allowed my friends to open up and unleash pain upon them without having to worry too much about retaliation.

Also to note, this was the first time through for every one of us and we don’t bother reading up on boss fights ahead of time. We actually burned down the ranged golem once before it healed to full and we realized they both needed to be defeated at the same time. It was like we had to fight the whole thing twice consecutively without a break. I loved it!

I think one of the biggest problems with dungeoneering right now is the lack of visual communication the game gives when combo opportunities are available. Let’s face it: not everyone is going to be in a voicecomm’d guild run every time they do a dungeon. That’s just not a realistic expectation in this day and age. People that aren’t in voice comm can still strategize before a fight through text chat, and they can still work together through combos and such, but the simple fact is that there is too much going on on the screen. There are too many flashy whiz-bang effects being thrown around, and important information such as “Fire field over here” or “Water field over here” gets lost in all the visual spam. It makes things tougher than they should be.

That said, dungeoneering in general just requires a shift from the old trinity of of tank-heal-damage to the new trinity of support-control-damage. Often a player will overlap somewhere in the middle of two of those roles, but the idea remains the same; you need some people to crank out the damage, some people to keep the party buffed up to maximize that damage as well as survivability, and some people to keep the mobs under control so that they’re not just spamming high-damage attacks constantly and overwhelming the party’s ability to heal/evade.

As an elementalist, I cover the control/support side of that. I run with Scepter/Dagger and spec 10/30/30 air/earth/arcana. My traits and utility skills are based around stacking up might on friendlies, vulnerability on enemies, and reducing mob output via blinds and knockdowns. Now elementalists are squishy, and when I get focused I have no choice but to start running for my life and try to evade — but even in those situations I can still be doing my part for the party, using Scepter 2 in water attunement to drop the ice crystal ahead of my path of travel so that when it goes off, the mob or boss chasing me is in the area and takes the 4 stacks of vulnerability.

There are things you can do even when you’re running, you just have to know what your class can do on the move and multitask it.

I love the fact that there is no trinity and I can make a character any way I want. However, I do agree that mobs tend to go after one person, even if they are not attacking. However, this game is VERY young. AI adjustments WILL happen at some point.

PP

=D I remembered this in a certain game
best moment: I was an archer, joined with a guild dungeon run
Boss fight: target on boss, leave the computer, go grab food, turn on tv, time xx mins later, come back… moving on!

I just vented in another thread so I’ll keep this short & sweet.

I have tried very, very hard to like this game in spite of all the core aspects that are either really badly handled or simply just not there. No trinity seems like a nice idea on paper, but in reality: it really does do more bad than good. Less flexibility in terms of encounter design, less choice in character builds (because everyone is essentially a DPS with a gimmick heal & some gimmick utility) and the whole thing is just a zergfest.

one thing i want to add
people refuse to learn new thing but fixate on something that’s benefit them
GW2 dungeons can be a frustration, but they are doable
in the end, either this game isn’t for you, or you’re just bad.

I consider myself an above average gamer and I’m certainly not reluctant to learn, but let’s go over what I could’ve learned from this experience:

1) Don’t do too much damage or the mob will oneshot you

2) Always run away and do 0 dmg doing so if the mob targets you anyway

Anything else I’m missing here? I’d honestly like to know where the “skill” comes into play here.

I guess the game “isn’t for me”, which gets said alot around on these forums. Makes me wonder what the community will end up looking like if so many people are saying the same things I’ve said.

I can only speak from my experiences running TA many times and AC and CM but I’ve noticed mobs usually go for the person who positions himself in a certain way. It’s often the newest person to the group who gets a little too close, dodges a little less and doesn’t use as many of his clutch control skills when he needs them. It’s a little bit more complicated than that but I’ve found dropping aggro becomes intuitive after a while and you’ll notice the newer people in the group are the ones who pick it up and hold it the longest.

I do agree that melee get jipped in this game. It seems some serious work is needed to make dungeons a little more melee friendly (at least so they aren’t either told to run ranged most boss fights and the skill cap for melee isn’t far higher than ranged).

@OP: Fortunately for you EVERY other MMO on the market has a trinity system. Enjoy the myriad other games out there for you with that system. You have a TON to choose from.

Iason Evan.3806:

@OP: Fortunately for you EVERY other MMO on the market has a trinity system. Enjoy the myriad other games out there for you with that system. You have a TON to choose from.

Thank you! This is pretty much what it comes down to. If you miss the holy trinity, well every other MMO on the market has the holy trinity. But in those MMOs your experience is limited by the holy trinity too. No healer or tank → can’t do dungeon.

So you basically you have two choices, either forget everything you have ever learnt. Go back to basics, read tips and tricks from people who have mastered GW 2 dungeon, watch youtube video guides etc, etc and try again. Otherwise, go play an MMO that does has the trinity.

I love being able to just search for people instead of roles when forming a dungeon group. I hated waiting hours just to find a healer/tank in most other MMOs. More time spent doing/mastering a dungeon is better than time spent trying to make a group.

Okay, maybe this isn’t ideal for some PuG groups, but I like how I can just ask my friends to bring the profession they like to play. I honestly don’t think I can go back to that trinity system or any other system where a specific profession/class is pretty much required to do an instance run.

I can see both sides of the arguments being valid here. I think what would tremendously help the people needing trinity to function would be better in game teaching mechanics. I have played just about every MMO including the first non-trinity launch Horizons (later changed to trinity). If people were taught from the beginning the importance of rotating your skills to the ones needed, given a bit more guidance for their class to see what can become of it without the mindless deaths in AC Story that people have. I myself like to learn the class but many people will not put that time into rotating their utility skills around to see the difference they can make in a dungeon run if they have to die 10+ times to learn from their mistakes.

As a Ranger, here’s my experience with the lack of a trinity.

If I’m using longbow, I can stand back at 1500 and do nothing for most of the fight. Pet management is the most excitement I get, because I outrange most abilities, and the ones that I don’t take so long to get to me that they’re easy to dodge/LOS. My utility is completely out the window because of how few of my abilities are functional at this range, but it’s not like the rest of the group is going to suffer as a result, right? Oh wait…

If I’m using shortbow, the NPCs decide that I am the tank – NO EXCEPTIONS. Last night, I did a HotW run. The ice troll had aggro on me from 90% hp to dead while the rest of the party chased it around in a circle. This is not hyperbole – I was the thing’s sole focus for the majority of the fight, and that kind of thing happens to me all too often.

It used to be amusing, then I started to build for it to benefit my group, then it got stale, and now I don’t even want to play a Ranger anymore because I know how every fight is going to go down. I’ll be running for my life while the rest of the party has to chase whatever monster has decided that it wants to violently destroy me.

So yeah. Enjoyable? Not so much. Beneficial to the group? I suppose. I don’t really want the trinity, but I would like NPCs to realize after a certain length of time that there’s no catching a properly-built Ranger and move on to something they might actually be capable of hurting.

Bloodtau.4672:

Kromica.2831:

No trinity is one of the best things this game has.

False.

Wrong.

Such a statement is subject to opinion/preference and therefore cannot be true or false.

Trinity is still in game because Aegis and Regeneration stack duration. Making a three tier group configuration optimal, if not required for all the “non-bads”.

I’m not gonna get into difficulty and tanking/healers being able to pull groups thru or teamwork. I’m not gonna figure out how to fix the game mechanics no do I trust NCSoft to do so given there record with “fixes” so far.

Simple solution NERF STORY MODE for us casuals who want to run dungeons with whatever bads we want and leave Explore alone. Just look the numbers for story modes before and after the “fix” either you are dropping players like crazy or you messed something up badly with the fix.

If your concerned about easy loot and xp farming reducing the number of people using the cash shop maybe you should take a look at the camps in cursed shore and the world bosses and crafting in general for quick XP. Maybe you need to implement some DR on crafting and salvaging. Besides you already “fixed” the xp and loot on story modes.

ELTopo.1506:

Trinity is still in game because Aegis and Regeneration stack duration. Making a three tier group configuration optimal, if not required for all the “non-bads”.

I’m not gonna get into difficulty and tanking/healers being able to pull groups thru or teamwork. I’m not gonna figure out how to fix the game mechanics no do I trust NCSoft to do so given there record with “fixes” so far.

Simple solution NERF STORY MODE for us casuals who want to run dungeons with whatever bads we want and leave Explore alone. Just look the numbers for story modes before and after the “fix” either you are dropping players like crazy or you messed something up badly with the fix.

If your concerned about easy loot and xp farming reducing the number of people using the cash shop maybe you should take a look at the camps in cursed shore and the world bosses and crafting in general for quick XP. Maybe you need to implement some DR on crafting and salvaging. Besides you already “fixed” the xp and loot on story modes.

They did nerf story mode…

aleiro.8521:

The moral is, don’t get downed

The truth is, it’s impossible when mobs/bosses train 1 person the entire course of a fight. NOBODY has enough defensive and healing abilities to sustain minutes of constant attacking before they run out of endurance, get hooked on glitchy terrain, have their camera spazz out because it touched a wall, or simply have a boss chasing them that has mechanics built into the fight that cause you to take damage regardless.

Either way, you cannot avoid everything, all the time, especially when you’re being trained.

But thanks for the education in boss aggro and tendancies from your point of view in the game – even though it’s not real world accurate, it’s great that it’s the way you see it. Definitely helps mask some of the AI flaws and broken fight mechanics.

Tinni.4351:

Iason Evan.3806:

@OP: Fortunately for you EVERY other MMO on the market has a trinity system. Enjoy the myriad other games out there for you with that system. You have a TON to choose from.

Thank you! This is pretty much what it comes down to. If you miss the holy trinity, well every other MMO on the market has the holy trinity. But in those MMOs your experience is limited by the holy trinity too. No healer or tank -> can’t do dungeon.

So you basically you have two choices, either forget everything you have ever learnt. Go back to basics, read tips and tricks from people who have mastered GW 2 dungeon, watch youtube video guides etc, etc and try again. Otherwise, go play an MMO that does has the trinity.

I don’t miss the trinity – some silly moderator decided to change the name of my thread because they didn’t agree with its original wording and opted to instead change the focus of the thread to what they wanted to convey.

Basically, ignore the title, read the body of work inside and you’ll understand what I’m displeased about.

Wizardauz.3761:

ELTopo.1506:

Trinity is still in game because Aegis and Regeneration stack duration. Making a three tier group configuration optimal, if not required for all the “non-bads”.

I’m not gonna get into difficulty and tanking/healers being able to pull groups thru or teamwork. I’m not gonna figure out how to fix the game mechanics no do I trust NCSoft to do so given there record with “fixes” so far.

Simple solution NERF STORY MODE for us casuals who want to run dungeons with whatever bads we want and leave Explore alone. Just look the numbers for story modes before and after the “fix” either you are dropping players like crazy or you messed something up badly with the fix.

If your concerned about easy loot and xp farming reducing the number of people using the cash shop maybe you should take a look at the camps in cursed shore and the world bosses and crafting in general for quick XP. Maybe you need to implement some DR on crafting and salvaging. Besides you already “fixed” the xp and loot on story modes.

They did nerf story mode…

Semantics, you get the point.

BlackToof.8710:

The tank had many other tasks such as:
- Positioning the boss (Back towards group),
- Kiting the boss (Away from AoE for example),
- Switching aggro to different tanks,
- Keeping aggro (Which used to be an issue in PUGs but not now it seems).

To be honest those are done in GW2 dungeons too. Especially the position part.

You don’t need a tank to Position a mob, nor kite, nor swtich agro (which isn’t possible atm because we aren’t aware of all agro mechanics), or keep agro.

For example: You can “Keep agro” with a clothie → Kite the boss away → Have rangers shoot from safe distances. No tank needed for that.

What’s surprising is that so many people still complain about the lack of the “trinity” system, yet they knew VERY WELL, and has been said countless times prior to release that Guild Wars 2 will be a different game. Yes, I absolutely agree that dungeon bosses need some more work. I’m sure devs will be able to come up with something that will introduce strategy and tactics, without having to resort to the trinity system. Asking them to introduce the concept of a tank, a healer, and a DPS setup in groups will just make this game like every other MMO out there, and completely defeats the purpose of this game being different.

you bought the wrong game , GW2 its fine as it is

Totally agree with the OP and others that echo his sentiments and facts. And as I love playing dungeons GW2 is simply not for me. Its OK to dabble in for pvp purposes but thats about it.

This game actually taught me to eat my own words and showed me why the Trinity is the concept and mechanic I prefer for my playstyle. The GW 2 concept of each playing their own is like communisim: sounds great on paper but sucks when you actually have to live it. The idea of not having to stand around looking for a tank or healer (and I usually play healers) sounded sexy, innovative and cutting edge. Then I went and did a dungeon. Aggro all over the place, people dying and having to “run back”, mobs with no intelligence at all other than to fixate on some poor fool till their dead. This is hardly what I’d call quality game design. Also let’s not forget a billion Hit Points for trash and boss mobs with poorly written mechanics (other than 2 Billion hit points).

GW2 is a great game, but I’m not playing because when it comes to the aspect of MMOs I love (dungeon running), it fails miserably, imo. Now I’m off to play my healer in another MMO and enjoy my role of caring for my party, protecting our tank and giving support where needed. THAT to me is what an MMO is about.

Zindel.8673:

I don’t misunderstand anything. I’ve played over 2 dozen MMOs since ’96 all with various types of mechanics… I GET why they said they removed the trinity, and I believe it is possible to have a fun, compelling, engaging game without the trinity. What I am saying is, they failed… plain and simple. The classes are homogeneous (aside from effects and animations they basically all do the same crap, and the combat in dungeons, (especially dealing with boss fights) reflects this…..

Anyone with two eyeballs and half a brain can see that dungeon and boss fights are boring compared to games with well thought out encounters where class dependency and strategies can be constructed…… NOT because it can’t be done, but because they haven’t figured out how to design these encounters without the trinity.

Really well said , I dont have anything against “no tank, no healer” but it shouldn’t be like this in dungeons. There is still aggro but instead of wow where its based on threat here its based on damage/positioning from what i have seen (have around 1600 badges from different instances, not much but enough to get a feel of the game). In half of the trash fights im running away as elem (full exotic) trying not to die instead of damaging (which im supposed to do with my build) while meele tank(with rare equips in best case scenario) just run around holding half of the pack (in best case scenario). Does this mean that im playing the game wrong ? From my view its bull from the side of the devs, we have no agro meter , we have no damage meter. Like the guy in this thread said There is no plan of attack, there are no roles, there is no strategy. This is just poor and mostly lazy design. Feels like AOC dungeons did… several monkeys and one football…

That said gw2 is much better than the kitten “king mmo”.

@Stobor
Because of the lack of trinity, everyone should expect to either tank for a few hits or kite for a bit.

A glass cannon build is just NOT suitable for dungeons.

@evilcherry
1st. I dont get hit, im wielding a staff and 2 escape skills which means mobs just dont come close to hit me.
2nd. We are not talking about few hits, we are talking about the mob pursuing the person till its dead.
3rd. They way to pass dungeon faster is to have more damage.

And kiting can be done with glass canon build which you contradict in your own statement. If AN suggests that i take toughness/vitality items on my ELEMENTALIST i suggest them to fix this bull.

My previous statment stands still.

I don’t think the problem is the lack of the trinity, I think dungeon balance is just hugely out of whack because of the ability to run back from waypoints and the downed state.

Right now, encounters and trash have to be designed around the idea that once someone reaches zero health, they aren’t necessarily dead, and have multiple options for getting back into the fight, so they have to make unforgiving mechanics to compensate, or else nobody would ever die.

If death was final (as in, once your health drops you are dead and cannot run back from a waypoint until the encounter resets) they could properly balance encounter mechanics/damage to whatever difficulty level they deem fit for a group with finite health pools.

For example: a group of 5 characters with health pools of 18k on average engages a boss, and they can not recover from being killed until the encounter ends. The encounter designers have relatively solid numbers to work with and a simple goal: to have the boss do more than 18k + X amount of damage, where X is the amount of health gained through healing over the course of the fight.
So if the party is not playing well, the damage done to them will kill them easily. If they are playing at an average level (maybe a 50-75% success rate on dodges), the amount of damage done to them will be very close to what they are capable of dealing with through pure healing, to the point where about half the party will die while the remainder might live long enough to take down the boss, so they have some room for error but not a whole lot. And if they play exceptionally well (know the boss’s abilities, have close to a 100% dodge rate, and use teamwork for mechanics that may require it), they should take relatively little damage and can burn down the boss more easily.

Obviously that’s just a generic example, but I think it gets the point across in terms of the design hurdles the downed state and mid-fight waypoint rezzing put into play for the PvE design team.

Redamz.5038:

I’m tired of those “MMO players” trying to change the game to be one more of thousands.
If you can’t play on your own, survive on your own, and be a contribution to your team without depending exclusively on them, then this game isn’t for you.
Just accept it and leave, there are thousands other MMOs that fulfill what you are looking for.

And no, I don’t think the game is perfect and I do want to see it improve, but it has to be done on the “guild wars way” and no appealing to wow fans and becoming just another MMO.

GW1 had a trinity system and deeply synergistic team dynamics…so i fail to see your point. I think a direct healer class and complete re-design of the guardian class would do nothing but help the combat and dungeon experience. The gameplay is just lackluster. It’s not soild, it’s inconsistent. The lack of roles and tangible effectiveness of those roles is what is lacking in this game. Also, no one ever groups up outside of dungeons because of it, which is another thing that a more trinity-like system could aid. All classes are very similar…i think all but a few can spawn adds or pets to aid in battle, all have weak heals compared to the damage output numbers, why would i take condition removal and forsake something better, especially when enemies do so much damage in one hit? They’ve built a combat system that’s too simplistic, but has complicated mechanics thrown in. I can’t afford to take dedicated condition removal on a 30 second cooldown at the expense of damage mitigation or tactical skill usage. The skill design is just not cohesive. There’s just no real synergy, it’s all superficial. They need to add a healer class to this game or at the very least design more solid elements to team synergy, making healing more generally effective, or reducing the arbitrary number difficulty of mob health. Something needs to be done.

Eurosdown.6072:

I don’t think the problem is the lack of the trinity, I think dungeon balance is just hugely out of whack because of the ability to run back from waypoints and the downed state.

Right now, encounters and trash have to be designed around the idea that once someone reaches zero health, they aren’t necessarily dead, and have multiple options for getting back into the fight, so they have to make unforgiving mechanics to compensate, or else nobody would ever die.

If death was final (as in, once your health drops you are dead and cannot run back from a waypoint until the encounter resets) they could properly balance encounter mechanics/damage to whatever difficulty level they deem fit for a group with finite health pools.

For example: a group of 5 characters with health pools of 18k on average engages a boss, and they can not recover from being killed until the encounter ends. The encounter designers have relatively solid numbers to work with and a simple goal: to have the boss do more than 18k + X amount of damage, where X is the amount of health gained through healing over the course of the fight.
So if the party is not playing well, the damage done to them will kill them easily. If they are playing at an average level (maybe a 50-75% success rate on dodges), the amount of damage done to them will be very close to what they are capable of dealing with through pure healing, to the point where about half the party will die while the remainder might live long enough to take down the boss, so they have some room for error but not a whole lot. And if they play exceptionally well (know the boss’s abilities, have close to a 100% dodge rate, and use teamwork for mechanics that may require it), they should take relatively little damage and can burn down the boss more easily.

Obviously that’s just a generic example, but I think it gets the point across in terms of the design hurdles the downed state and mid-fight waypoint rezzing put into play for the PvE design team.

The setup you’re encouraging balance around…heal over time plus health minus boss damage…fits really well into trinity. That’s basically how trinity games balance encounters..death is final and there is no downstate.

They need to gut downstate, make heals more efficient and effective, take off the ability for every class to have a homogeneous heal and design some classes (Necromancers, Elementalists, Guardians, Engineers, Monks, etc) to be able to specialize into direct healer roles if so desired. There’s more depth to be had in a trinity system.

If people haven’t realized already, the Trinity exists in GW2.

It’s called… wait for it…

Warrior
Guardian
Elementalist
+2 Randoms

Warrior for dps + tank via double EP.
Guardian + Elementalist for constant 2k hp/second regen (via water finishers) and condition removal, retaliation, ~50% protection uptime

The last 2 slots really don’t matter once you have these 3. Any group that deviates from the above is generally going to run a lot less smooth.

The lack of a trinity obviously translates to there being absolutely no synergy between any classes or builds in this game. I know this because I have tried several instances and sometimes had a bad experience. I completely focus on doing damage instead of providing buffs to my team and applying conditions to the boss. These are all instances I have only run a few times, but somehow I have not mastered them yet. I don’t understand what I could possibly be doing wrong.