Guild Wars 2

3 tiers of groups.

Tank
Dps
Healer

I love the fact they made each glass so variant that they have abilities to do each, but I don’t like the fact that there is no set goals in a group. It’s just build your dps, build your own survival, give some support, face roll a dungeon. Even in gw1 if you set enemies up, they still followed a set target. Here it changes to attack person doing highest dps, or highest toughness. But bounces around between them. I loved the three tier group make up because it made having a group seem more realistic in that they relied on each other. This is heartbreaking that it is not implemented in the game. I want my groups back to needing me to be my godly monk build :/ instead I run around and just kill targets no matter the class.

Does anyone else feel this way?

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

Can’t say I do, sorry.

I hate trinity,thanks Anet for not putting this unfair feature in game that always make certain classes welcome in groups wile others (usually assassins) are not welcomed and cant find pt entire day for a dungeon

As a mostly PVP/WvW player, can’t say I do.

Why someone would buy GW2 to whine about the lack of trinity when ARENANET ADVERTISEMENT HIS GAME FOR YEARS SAYING GW2 WOULD NOT HAVE A TRINITY?

Nope. Not outdoors. Not in dungeons. Not in WvW (RvR).

I do not miss them Sam I Am.

I used to play Tank, Healer and DPS on 3 accounts at the same time while raid leading. (Doing this manually without any keystroke copies, reaching over and hitting keys and moving manually.)

GW2 got some things rights. Lack of trinity and all that goes with it is one of them.

I’d rather have dynamic combat than the boring number crunch that is the trinity. Must have this much damage reduction/armor. Must do this much DPS. Must heal for this much per second. Must have this rotation. Must do this. Must do that.

SCREW. THAT.

No I don’t miss it, one of the reasons i play gw2 is because here are no trinity, fights are a lot more fun.

I don’t like the trinity.

Don’t miss it at all.

Sometimes I do. When I’m really tired and shouldn’t be playing I’m forever missing basic things and dying easily. Then I feel like I need someone to keep me up or to do the heavy lifting. Seriously.

But its also when I realise how nicely self-sufficient GW2 professions are so overall I don’t really miss it at all.

Don’t miss it at all. If you want a “holy trinity”, I’m sure there are a lot of churches in your area that can give you one.

I miss the point in healing. Heal just doesn’t matter in GW2, in pve anyway. I don’t want to take a step back in gamedesign and have them reimplement this trinity but GW2’s design isn’t exactly better in my opinion:
-discourages teamplay
-discourages build diversity
-makes balance harder to achieve for anet (a lot more redudance in skill purpose)
-has no effect on community elitism
-has no effect on negative PUG experience

In short: They didn’t replace trinity, they just removed it. Well, anet has a history of promoting the lack of gamemechanics to features in GW2. It’s amazing, people actually buy this.

Yes I do.

Initially it was a refreshing break, and ANets experiment has worked out well and shown that it is a viable combat mechanic (but it all boils down to funneling players into 1 gear as they become more skillful).

Missing it, and decent PvE content, is the reason many of us will defer to 2 hyped MMOs soon.

I don’t miss it. Anet did a good job throwing the holy trinity away. For me, it is one of the bigger strenghts of the game.
But they didn’t a good job replacing by something better. The idea is really good in the paper, but lacks in the execution. No sinergy, strategy or teamplay. It’s a poor system. And it hurts <SO MUCH> every gameplay mode (WvW, PvE, sPvP).

I miss it.
But: GW2 promised to go away from the trinity, and try to break out of the “box”. They’ve done that, and by doing so, they’re quite revolusionary in the standard MMO genre. We absoulutely need developers that dare taking such risk (just like D3 have decided to completely remove their high-end TP – ‘hint-hint’).
Can’t complain about stuff like this, even though I personally miss it. If I end up missing it too much, I’d just have to find another game to play. Simple as that…

Don’t miss it, don’t want it. This is not THAT game.

I definitely miss it.

I have no complaint about GW2’s system. I think it’s fine, it’s as advertised, and it’s fun for roaming around the landscape. I miss dodging in every game I play now.

I just don’t enjoy the system as much in dungeons. Too much chaos, very few interesting mechanics. I hope over time they’ll figure out more interesting strats for boss fights.

My preferred role in MMO’s is healing and support in small group content, and that itch just isn’t scratched at all by GW2. I prefer feeling like I’m helping my teammates rather than just “Hulk smash!” I like CC. I like more nuanced fights.

So, I really enjoy this game and play way more than I should, but I cannot play it exclusively. And, ya know, that’s OK.

I miss the trinity. But what I actually miss isn’t the “trinity” but the fact that people had distinctive roles when joining a party.

If I had to describe the GW2 gameplay to someone I’d say it’s practically a barbaric invasion. WvW – barbaric invasion with different builds. Open world Pve and dungeons – zerker barbaric invasion. What type of gameplay would I love? – an ancient Rome type of invasion, the archers have their role, the infantry has it’s role, that artillery has it’s role and finally the cavalry has it’s role. The sad part is trinity actually helps a Roman style type of invasion while the GW2 “meta” doesn’t.

EDIT: Actually i just realised GW2’s gamplay isn’t that of an RPG. GW2 is a FPS with RPG elements…which is sad

I do NOT miss that. Which is why I am playing this game.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Can’t say I do, sorry.

Majority feels like this ^^

if you miss the trinity so much there are a billion and one unholy trinity based games on the market, go there and get your itch scratched.

Leave this diamond in the rough to the rest of us that totally dislike the stupid, moronic, braindead, 2 cents short of a dollar unholy trinity.

I don’t miss those roles, but I do miss there being any roles.

Im Mudbone.1437:

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

Saying the trinity is teamwork based makes absolutely no sense to me. You are not even working with your teammates, you have a job and they have a job you each do completely autonomously of each other. It could be said the healer and tank are a team, they work together (more like one is dependent on the other) but other than that the only aspect in which the trinity could be considered team play is that you are all in the same place at the same time.

Escadin.9482:

I miss the point in healing. Heal just doesn’t matter in GW2, in pve anyway. I don’t want to take a step back in gamedesign and have them reimplement this trinity but GW2’s design isn’t exactly better in my opinion:
-discourages teamplay
-discourages build diversity
-makes balance harder to achieve for anet (a lot more redudance in skill purpose)
-has no effect on community elitism
-has no effect on negative PUG experience

In short: They didn’t replace trinity, they just removed it. Well, anet has a history of promoting the lack of gamemechanics to features in GW2. It’s amazing, people actually buy this.

Pretty much.

The problem is not so much the lack of trinity, but that they ham fisted the implementation of “active combat” on the PVE side. Rather than make dodge one way to survive, they have made it THE way to survive. End result is that all defensive stats are made worthless.

Fasalina.6571:

EDIT: Actually i just realised GW2’s gamplay isn’t that of an RPG. GW2 is a FPS with RPG elements…which is sad

How is something working as intended sad?

Conncept.7638:

Im Mudbone.1437:

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

Saying the trinity is teamwork based makes absolutely no sense. You are not even working with your teammates, you have a job and they have a job you each do completely autonomously of each other. The only aspect in which it could be considered team play is that you are all in the same place at the same time.

interesting point you raised there, from that point of view there is a lot more teamwork in gw2 than in trinity based combat, you’re always trying to buff your allies as much as you can while maintaining a decently high DPS, you’re always looking around for the unexpected down or whoever needs help, instead of the blindfolded rotations play of the trinity combat.

Conncept.7638:

Im Mudbone.1437:

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

Saying the trinity is teamwork based makes absolutely no sense to me. You are not even working with your teammates, you have a job and they have a job you each do completely autonomously of each other. It could be said the healer and tank are a team, but other than that the only aspect in which it could be considered team play is that you are all in the same place at the same time.

I didn’t say nor imply that teamwork was based on the trinity but it sure PROMOTED teamwork.

Latinkuro.9420:

Conncept.7638:

Im Mudbone.1437:

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

Saying the trinity is teamwork based makes absolutely no sense. You are not even working with your teammates, you have a job and they have a job you each do completely autonomously of each other. The only aspect in which it could be considered team play is that you are all in the same place at the same time.

interesting point you raised there, from that point of view there is a lot more teamwork in gw2 than in trinity based combat, you’re always trying to buff your allies as much as you can while maintaining a decently high DPS, you’re always looking around for the unexpected down or whoever needs help, instead of the blindfolded rotations play of the trinity combat.

There is ZERO teamwork in GW2 it’s a ZERG which is lemming like gameplay

maybe not so much of it in zerg content like open world PVE and WvW but….
there is teamwork in sPVP and in dungeons.

problem is people think the only teamwork is trinity style teamwork until they take off the blindfold from trinity and look at gw2 with new eyes they will never ever see it, people are to set in their old ways, if we all were like that we’d still be using dial up modems and no one would have a cell phone.

Whilst I don’t miss it per say, I feel like what we’ve got in it’s place is really imbalanced. In some regard, this system is better, but where this system fails it feels pretty cruddy.

Im Mudbone.1437:

There is ZERO teamwork in GW2 it’s a ZERG which is lemming like gameplay

I have a solution to that.

If you are not in the zerg yet, don’t join it.

If you are in the zerg, look in any direction the zerg is not headed and start walking.

You are no longer in the zerg.

The only place most games require the trinity is in dungeons, which are five man instances. PvP? Five man instance. PvE? Short of (some of) the meta-bosses and the LS I have never seen any content that requires more than five people. How do you zerg with five people?

And yes, I agree that the LS and meta-boss content could afford to be worked on, but do not make the mistake of typifying the entire game by it. WvW is really the only place where you have to join a zerg to be effective, and yeah, I think ANet should do something about that as well.

Latinkuro.9420:

interesting point you raised there, from that point of view there is a lot more teamwork in gw2 than in trinity based combat, you’re always trying to buff your allies as much as you can while maintaining a decently high DPS, you’re always looking around for the unexpected down or whoever needs help, instead of the blindfolded rotations play of the trinity combat.

That has always been the idea behind GW2, you are not a DPS, or a tank, or a healer, or even GW2s controller role. Every build is (ideally), to be a lesser or greater degree of each. Now is that system working perfectly? I would give a resound ‘Nope’ in answer to that. But hopefully it improves with time, and the trinity would not be an improvement, but a devolution of the system. This is after all a system nobody else has even tried since the birth of MMOs.

daimasei.4091:

Why someone would buy GW2 to whine about the lack of trinity when ARENANET ADVERTISEMENT HIS GAME FOR YEARS SAYING GW2 WOULD NOT HAVE A TRINITY?

also no mindless grind, a meaningful story and that the player feels that he is the hero.

It anet change all the other things, why not the trinity ?

If you think about it, it’s a contradiction in terms to provide all professions or builds with access to similar mechanics while expecting them to play in dramatically different ways. As it is, the GW2 professions look like they play differently. In reality the only real differences between professions are centered around whether those professions have access to the mechanics that are considered to be of the highest value (e.g. reflection, aegis). Different builds do play differently, but in group play there is little value to many of the possible builds because the real differences are in the skills that a profession has or doesn’t have, and in the skill of the player.

As to teamwork, the GW2 version is, “Cluster together because buffs, defensive procs and group heals all occur in a small radius and use those skills and combo fields at the right time. Oh, and you might as well cluster in melee most of the time because melee attacks do vastly greater damage.”

What I would have done, were I the developer, would have been to design the game’s group content around the idea of wolf pack tactics. I’d have:

• Used a shooter reticle rather than tab targeting
• Given mobs vulnerable areas that require some setup to get at, such as requiring the use of CC to open up a window of opportunity, or used similar mechanics to promote the use of tactics to open up burst opportunities, rather than just “Stack, buff, burn.”
• Given more aggro dump skills. Players could then trade off on who has aggro. To go along with this, I’d have made bosses more dangerous in terms of their auto-attack, making it more important to trade aggro. Some aggro dump skills could be “usable on others” in order to promote more teamwork opportunities.

This might not float everyone’s boat, and obviously would have to be fleshed out quite a bit to have been viable, but that’s where I would have started.

“Used a shooter reticle rather than tab targeting”

they considered it, and the code is still in the dev client, but it was apparently left out because it made the game too action focused for their liking (straight from Jon Peters after people found the option in the EOTM test client and posted screenshots).

Conncept.7638:

That has always been the idea behind GW2, you are not a DPS, or a tank, or a healer, or even GW2s controller role. Every build is (ideally), to be a lesser or greater degree of each. Now is that system working perfectly? I would give a resound ‘Nope’ in answer to that. But hopefully it improves with time, and the trinity would not be an improvement, but a devolution of the system. This is after all a system nobody else has even tried since the birth of MMOs.

Is the system working perfectly ?

I also agree it is not working perfectly, proven by the dominance of the Beserker play style.
But to say or suggest in any way, shape or form that the unholy trinity was better is just grose.

The 1st thing that makes it so you have to DPS down or die is the flawed defiant mechanic, negating 99% of all effective CC negates almost all control out of the player’s hands. I understand why they implemented it but it was a rushed system that needs to be addressed pronto.

The 2nd is the massive amount of one hit shots Bosses have in this game, I won’t go to deep into that one but, it makes defensive builds completely useless hence the Beserker play style is predominant.

IndigoSundown.5419:

If you think about it, it’s a contradiction in terms to provide all professions or builds with access to similar mechanics while expecting them to play in dramatically different ways. As it is, the GW2 professions look like they play differently. In reality the only real differences between professions are centered around whether those professions have access to the mechanics that are considered to be of the highest value (e.g. reflection, aegis). Different builds do play differently, but in group play there is little value to many of the possible builds because the real differences are in the skills that a profession has or doesn’t have, and in the skill of the player.

As to teamwork, the GW2 version is, “Cluster together because buffs, defensive procs and group heals all occur in a small radius and use those skills and combo fields at the right time. Oh, and you might as well cluster in melee most of the time because melee attacks do vastly greater damage.”

What I would have done, were I the developer, would have been to design the game’s group content around the idea of wolf pack tactics. I’d have:

• Used a shooter reticle rather than tab targeting
• Given mobs vulnerable areas that require some setup to get at, such as requiring the use of CC to open up a window of opportunity, or used similar mechanics to promote the use of tactics to open up burst opportunities, rather than just “Stack, buff, burn.”
• Given more aggro dump skills. Players could then trade off on who has aggro. To go along with this, I’d have made bosses more dangerous in terms of their auto-attack, making it more important to trade aggro. Some aggro dump skills could be “usable on others” in order to promote more teamwork opportunities.

This might not float everyone’s boat, and obviously would have to be fleshed out quite a bit to have been viable, but that’s where I would have started.

Would have certainly floated my boat and on top of that it’s the kind of system I was expecting based their advertisement. GW2 is not really a FPS. There is no first person view, there is no aiming, there is no “skills and spells scale with the player’s ability to land/utilize/perform them properly”. I wouldn’t even consider it actioncombat solely based on dodge (because there is nothing else that takes GW2 ahead of any non “actionMMO”).

Imo, the way to go for a really innovative MMORPG would be to either:

-“reduce” combat to a simplified, somewhat realistic balance constellation between melee, ranged and spells in a real FPS core and then build on that with professions and abilities.

-create more roles than just 3. There is sabotage, debuffing and controlling, leadership, inflitration, group organization, buffs and targeted/timed shortterm boosts, weakness cancel, sustain heal, spike heal, AoE heal, diplomacy and other pieceful solutions, P. v. Terrain., group and material supply, fortification, ambushes, siege engineering, intel gathering, hybrids and many many more.
Seperating every profession’s abilities into so many categories would make balance way easier since you don’t have ~60-80 skills competing for DPS per profession. Making any arbitrary combination of those equally likely to succeed in PvE is a challenge worthy of their manifesto.

Im Mudbone.1437:

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

So having to deal with something else during the fight is not team work. Each class is fighting something different dps is fighting the mobs hp tanks are fighting hate/agro and support is fighting the teams hp they happen to be working beside each other but that is a sad excuse for real team work. Real team work is being able to switch rolls to cover for your team as needed and to be able to communication with other ppl to work together attks on a mob this dose not mean you need to be a dps tank support this just means that your team knows what your going to do and you can tell them what going on.

In the 3 class system you do not need to communicate what your doing you just play a roll and fight for a different goals then say the other classes not to say you cant have team work in this setting but the “work” of real team work is reduced a great deal and is less likely to be real team work when you running a stander system.

Now in a system where there no roll to play every one must tell ppl what they are going to do and they are ability to switch there ability to best fit what the pt needs at that time. So now you can have real team work of communication.

The best example would be something that some what looked downed on but its needs a lot of team work to pull off the stacking on a boss and pushing it into a wall. What this needs is to have ppl move in the right spot well time there def skills to hit there team to buff there attk of there time during the right moment. All though it goes fast if done right it can go very wrong very fast if any one is simply out of places.

You just do not get this in a 3 class system because if one person messes up they are cover because of how over specialized ppl build classes in this system. If a healing over heals they make up for it by adding more mana if a dps dose too much dmg they make up for being more tankly if a tank fails to hold hate they make up for it by building more dps. THIS is not team work this is solo planing and wining by gear and classes.

Most games are moving away from a 3 class system in favor for a soft 3 class system much like you seen in GW2. You can still play a tankly hero a all in glass dps hero and a more support hero in GW2. In some format you about have a 3 class system spvp and the player made gvg / wvw over all.

Conncept.7638:

Im Mudbone.1437:

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

Saying the trinity is teamwork based makes absolutely no sense to me. You are not even working with your teammates, you have a job and they have a job you each do completely autonomously of each other. It could be said the healer and tank are a team, they work together (more like one is dependent on the other) but other than that the only aspect in which the trinity could be considered team play is that you are all in the same place at the same time.

I don’t see it like that. Also you’ve put in brakets that “more like one is dependent on the other”, you do realize that’s the rough definition of teamwork right?
I’ve played games where everyone in a party had to work as a team, not sure what games have you played.
I’ve experienced a lot of things. The tanks have to manage aggro, so the squishies don’t insta die. The healers… I don’t have to explain I guess. While the dps, usually also have a quite a few of control spells like sleep, snare, knockback helping the tank with controlling other adds, and trying to do as much damage as they can while not taking aggro from the tanks. Honestly I see more teamwork there that in GW2 at the moment. The thing is GW2 has potential in team play but since everything can be tanked and spaked in a corner you don’t see it. People can work together in removing defiant stacks and blinding/interrupt crucial monster spells. The “combo fields” are nice but they’re not game changing. I often see people use the wrong finished through a field several times. The thing is this game is carebear mode. The game doesn’t punish you if you don’t use combo fields, and the game doesn’t punish you for not interrupting skills or for staking in a corner.
Honestly, I’ll choose between waiting a few minutes in a que (most games actually allow you to do something else while in waiting, so you can actually craft/continue farming or whatever) because of trinity but gaining that pleasure of actually working as a team and bringing down that big kitten boss after 5 or 10 minutes of perfect coordination, than finishing a gw2 dungeon in 20 minutes half afk.

Poplolita.2638:

Fasalina.6571:

EDIT: Actually i just realised GW2’s gamplay isn’t that of an RPG. GW2 is a FPS with RPG elements…which is sad

How is something working as intended sad?

So you read my post and that’s all you can come up ? I’m taking you agree with everything else then. Good.
Depends on what exactly is this “intended” you’re talking about. 1 year ago, GW2 was a RPG with some FPS elements, now it’s the other way around. I doubt this was intended originally.

Do I miss the Trinity?
No.

I miss roles,
melee dps, range DPS, buffer, debuffer, crowd control, healer, tank.
if you don’t like the term tank, it can be replaced by “control” or “bunker” whatever…

each role is lacking but together they supplement each other.

we were promised ROLES not role…
i am still waiting.

I don’t miss the trinity where the classes are so role orientated that they are useless for anything except their specific role and unless you have the perfect cookie cutter build you are branded as a noob.

In GW2 while every one is expected to do some dps, it does not need to be everyones main role if players can get away from the idea that they have to be top of the dps table to be playing their character correctly, (one reason I am so glad that there is no dps meter in the game).

GW2 does not specifically tell you what your role is, it is up to the player to work it out and then to work out how it best fits with their group. As an example the other day I was playing my thief (mid 30 level) and ended up taking on the Champ in Svanir’s Dome with one other player on their guardian ( I don’t know what level they were). It took a while to work things out but eventually I realised to concentrate on control, freezing it, slowing it etc and letting my poisons do damage while the guardian could run rings around it with the staff or go in melee for short bursts. It may not have been the fasted take down but it worked and more importantly we both had fun and felt like we had achieved something. Unfortunately some players have become so use to being spoon fed their role that they find they can not cope when it isn’t set out for them.

However the one thing I think ANet could improve is the reward system, if you spend the event rezzing people and playing a more supporting role you are penilised with the reward afterwards, often only getting a silver or bronze level of success instead of a gold.

Don’t miss it at all. I do miss the mage profession type doing massive damage with great amount of cc yet very vulnerable to damage and the warrior that does massive damage if it catches his prey in close combat but are not more agile than light armor professions.

kitten the trinity

Jski.6180:

Most games are moving away from a 3 class system in favor for a soft 3 class system much like you seen in GW2. You can still play a tankly hero a all in glass dps hero and a more support hero in GW2. In some format you about have a 3 class system spvp and the player made gvg / wvw over all.

Maybe true in PVP, but anything but true in PVE because of mob design…

Jski.6180:

Im Mudbone.1437:

I miss it a lot, there was SO MUCH MORE teamwork using the trinity in GW1 compared to the zerg-fest in GW2, not to mention better optimization/utilization of many areas of the game.

So having to deal with something else during the fight is not team work. Each class is fighting something different dps is fighting the mobs hp tanks are fighting hate/agro and support is fighting the teams hp they happen to be working beside each other but that is a sad excuse for real team work. Real team work is being able to switch rolls to cover for your team as needed and to be able to communication with other ppl to work together attks on a mob this dose not mean you need to be a dps tank support this just means that your team knows what your going to do and you can tell them what going on.

In the 3 class system you do not need to communicate what your doing you just play a roll and fight for a different goals then say the other classes not to say you cant have team work in this setting but the “work” of real team work is reduced a great deal and is less likely to be real team work when you running a stander system.

Now in a system where there no roll to play every one must tell ppl what they are going to do and they are ability to switch there ability to best fit what the pt needs at that time. So now you can have real team work of communication.

The best example would be something that some what looked downed on but its needs a lot of team work to pull off the stacking on a boss and pushing it into a wall. What this needs is to have ppl move in the right spot well time there def skills to hit there team to buff there attk of there time during the right moment. All though it goes fast if done right it can go very wrong very fast if any one is simply out of places.

You just do not get this in a 3 class system because if one person messes up they are cover because of how over specialized ppl build classes in this system. If a healing over heals they make up for it by adding more mana if a dps dose too much dmg they make up for being more tankly if a tank fails to hold hate they make up for it by building more dps. THIS is not team work this is solo planing and wining by gear and classes.

Most games are moving away from a 3 class system in favor for a soft 3 class system much like you seen in GW2. You can still play a tankly hero a all in glass dps hero and a more support hero in GW2. In some format you about have a 3 class system spvp and the player made gvg / wvw over all.

Both are still a downgrade from 8+ class system in my opinion. If you want to know how real teamwork is supposed to look and play like you should check Warhammer online or Ragnarok. Their teamwork mechanics even carry through massive zergs in both PvE and PvP.

The point is self-reliant classes do not encourage teamwork at all. Nobody is ever shifting roles in GW2, we just blow out our own heals / boons / dps in order to keep ourselves running. The only reason dungeons require 5 people is because all those heals / boons / dps have to add up to a certain number because Monsters are overcharged with stats to compensate for poor ai.

Picking up people is just a low effort way to “unpunish” mistakes made by a large portion of Anets target audience. It has nothing to do with gameplay or teamplay, since it’s not even a matter of gamedesign, but of paymentmodels.

daimasei.4091:

Why someone would buy GW2 to whine about the lack of trinity when ARENANET ADVERTISEMENT HIS GAME FOR YEARS SAYING GW2 WOULD NOT HAVE A TRINITY?

And gear progression.
And grind.
Oh wait.

So… my two most active 80 are both support builds wearing Zealots gear (Power + precision/healing). One is a regen-banner Warrior with sword/warhorn and mass cleanse on the warhorn. The other is a Battle Presence Guardian with empowering might. While pretty much awful at solo roaming, I found both of them work very well in zergs where all the other DPS intensive players benefit from the steady trickle of healing/might buffs and in particular both characters rocked the Marionette where pretty much every time they were on a platform with a small group the group casually smashed the warden despite the occasional goof or failed dodge. Brilliant berserker players may not need the help, but there are a lot less of them than there are people wearing all-berserker .

My sense is you don’t need a lot of support players, but a few of them can dramatically multiply the effectiveness of the oceans of glass canons wandering about.