Guild Wars 2

Anet will NEVER implement a hard trinity system. They have advertisements condemning it. The most we can hope for is to for them to salvage what is left of their system now.

Can they succeed in it?

To be honest, I think they’re slowly getting there.

Looking at some of the more recent additions, for exmaple Subject Six, that’s kind of what a non-trinity but still well structured fight looks like. You got the main DPSers nuking down the boss and its adds, and you got CCers preventing the adds from reaching the boss. Its simple, but quite effective.

I think it’s about time a developer comes in and shares the company’s thoughts on dungeons and end-game PvE, 1.5 years after release. Why DPS/control/support never happened? Are they happy with the all-DPS/stack/dodge 1-shotter dungeon designs? Do they think they succeeded in providing interesting gameplay for monk players in GW1, or players that played tanks in other MMOs? Can we expect more dungeons or are fractals and world bosses the future of GW2 PvE?

Even since the game was released, players have been posting tons of opinions and suggestions about group mechanics, “trinity” and dungeons in general but they’re always rebutted by idiots who think they’re helping the game by answering “go back 2 wow gw2 isnt for u ololol”, and this thread is no exception.

I think that getting the developers’ thoughts about the current content, what they like, what needs to be improved, and a couple of “We want this” and “We don’t want that” would make discussions about PvE a bit more constructive than that. There is an upcoming blog post called “A Solid Foundation”. With a title like that, one can expect it to be about something core to the game, such as group mechanics and synergies between different classes and playstyles. I’m crossing my fingers…

Xae Isareth.1364:

I don’t really get the same impression as you. Even in say, CoF P1, where I can be blindfolded and still win, I feel like Im contributing in one way or the other uniquely to the party. Whether it be timing Aegis and protection right such that we can just attack the boss non-stop, portalling my team across the rolling fireballs, or just doing my (although somewhat easy) job of holding out in the braziers.

Then in stuff like a level 49 Grawl fractal, I can honestly say without boasting that my team would’ve been screwed without me. Trying to do that fight without a Guardian/Mesmer is a one way ticket to hair loss. The other classes as well, they all contribute in one way or the other, maybe apart from rangers, but that’s a different argument.

Again, I don’t really see what’s wrong with having twitch mechanics. Comparing say, Smash Bros to WoW, I can’t really say which is the better game, they’re good in different ways.

I think the core ideas of GW2 is fine as they are, just that they need to be a bit less messy (ie, the Dredge kind of frustrating messy), and more direction.

Maybe it just isn’t the game for you and our tastes are different.

I actually think TSW has some of the best dungeon content in any MMO I’ve played because some of them balances fair and hard so very well, and because they aren’t so scripted they have a lot of replayability because its incredibly fun to find different ways to tackle them (I have to explain what I’m doing to a lot of groups in BiS gear because the way I tank them is often different to what they normally see).

As for Vindictus, managing to solo some of the harder bosses on the hardest difficulty is incredibly satisfying, and I still look at the solos people do on that game and think its a work of art

GW2’s combat system isn’t inherently bad. I enjoy it a lot more than TSW / Neverwinter; there are lots of interesting skills that interact in interesting ways (combos!) and behave differently depending on build. Like I said, I really like playing my staff elementalist in wvw and openworld content (and I don’t just mean zerg events), because I can find a use for every single one of my 20+ abilities in a way that it makes a difference. One of my best GW2 memories was teaming up with another lowbie while levelling to duo a champ spider guarding a chest somewhere — needed to use every trick in the box for that one. Soloing reinforced wvw camps in green gear was fun and interesting too, as was the queen’s ’brawler’s guild’-esque tournament. But when it comes to interesting combat in dungeons, however… I got nothing. Who cares about triple blasting a water field at 10% hp while CCing/debuffing a bunch of enemies if we’re fighting a boss that only has OHKO attacks and is basically immune to blind/weaken? I may as well just stay in fire attunement and put another lava font on top of the boss/melee! Sure, there are times when I can use magnetic aura and intercept arrows aimed at a party member (if latency permits, anyway) or use various tricks to rez someone in a dangerous place without getting hit myself, but otherwise… eh, I’m just one of these five people ‘soloing’ the boss at the same time.

I agree that TSW’s dungeons are a lot more enjoyable than GW2’s… and this may not necessarily be because of the trinity, either. The content itself is just a lot more varied than dps-dps-dps-dodge. Subject Alpha is probably a good example: he’s perhaps the most commonly used boss, appearing in every COE path multiple times per path, who theoretically has a lot of interesting abilities that change each time you meet him… yet all I remember from him is to stand in his hitbox and spam dps skills, and dodge 1.5 seconds after red circles appear on the ground to evade the fire/ice/whatever attack with my trusty invulnerability frames. That’s not a dungeon boss, that’s a [boring] QTE minigame.

Bearhugger.4326:

I think it’s about time a developer comes in and shares the company’s thoughts on dungeons and end-game PvE, 1.5 years after release. Why DPS/control/support never happened? Are they happy with the all-DPS/stack/dodge 1-shotter dungeon designs? Do they think they succeeded in providing interesting gameplay for monk players in GW1, or players that played tanks in other MMOs? Can we expect more dungeons or are fractals and world bosses the future of GW2 PvE?

Even since the game was released, players have been posting tons of opinions and suggestions about group mechanics, “trinity” and dungeons in general but they’re always rebutted by idiots who think they’re helping the game by answering “go back 2 wow gw2 isnt for u ololol”, and this thread is no exception.

I think that getting the developers’ thoughts about the current content, what they like, what needs to be improved, and a couple of “We want this” and “We don’t want that” would make discussions about PvE a bit more constructive than that. There is an upcoming blog post called “A Solid Foundation”. With a title like that, one can expect it to be about something core to the game, such as group mechanics and synergies between different classes and playstyles. I’m crossing my fingers…

Cross fingers, but don’t hold your breath. A “solid foundation” could be about an expanded tutorial system, such as was planned for the China release.

Why everyone complains? The feature pack will bring ele healers into viable territory and we already have decent tanks. Trinity gameplay is so close I’m already getting excited just by thinking about it!

Rambodacious.7495:

The PvE in this game is AWFUL. In Living World events, I endure 1 FPS and spam basic attack while I LITERALLY go afk for 10 minutes.

In dungeons, I spam all my skills on the boss, dodge roll if he turns on me, then repeat my spamming through the giant health pools.

So few mechanics, so little thought required. The lack of a trinity (and this will be tough for the raging fanboi’s to grasp) is KILLING this game. Anet has been venting massive amounts of players since about 2 months after release. All servers used to be jam packed. Now, only a handful have healthy populations.

Anyways, I lost my 50 bucks two years ago and I pay nothing to come back once every 6 months and realize the game is boring as hell. Peace.

WoW is still available, thanks for being with us, bye.

I guess he was one of the people who did no research about the game before it came out. Oh well.

TBH I think a lot of people are simplifying the problem. This isn’t simply about holy trinity, or unshakable/defiance. One problem leads to another problem and it propagates.

So let me start with one comment. Players are always going to find the quickest/easiest/most time and resource efficient way of obtaining what they want. It’s just human nature. At the end of GW1 players ran VERY optimized builds that tackled end game content like DoA. You’d have absurd classes like A/E tanks (has anyone considered a hybrid ninja/spellcaster as a main tank??). Of course you can play it the ‘fun way’ and run something else but you’d just get stomped, and not get what you want.

It’s the same for GW2, people have tried control/support/dps trinity for however long. Then people realized, hey we can get away with having dps/dps/dps instead, kill enemies quicker, and get what we want faster, and thus began the meta of dps only. There’s no point of supporting because people get 1 shot, and because you can just dodge and avoid 100% of incoming dmg. There’s no point of controlling because the fuss of organizing CC through defiant/unshakable is just a waste of time. Why waste the time organizing CC if you can just kill the enemy quicker?

You don’t have to run dps, you can play the game as intended by playing support or control, no problems at all. Though I can assure you, if there was anything that resembled an equipment/trait inspect function, or a DPS meter, you would be kicked mercilessly.

Did Anet ever mention that there was supposed to be a control/DPS/support trinity?

From the way I feel from doing Fractals, the endgame was supposed to have you supporting, controlling, and DPSing at the same time, and roles were supposed to be dictated by what the encounter involves and what classes you have in your party.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Did Anet ever mention that there was supposed to be a control/DPS/support trinity?

From the way I feel from doing Fractals, the endgame was supposed to have you supporting, controlling, and DPSing at the same time, and roles were supposed to be dictated by what the encounter involves and what classes you have in your party.

“Each profession can support, control, and do damage. We believe that this creates more dynamic combat and more distinct professions because there are more play styles than roles.”

Source

Balance and encounter issues aside, I don’t think they wanted to shoehorn players into a specific builds, evidenced by:

• Weapon and Skill Swapping – You could carry a mixture of damage, control and support.
• Traits – Again, you can mix and match your traits to invest heavily in one thing, or diversify into two lines.

My first Warrior build sacrificed a bit of damage to bring some control in the form of Hammer and Leg Specialist for when situations got hairy.

Rambodacious.7495:

That being said, this upcoming “balance” patch wont solve the problems even if they are introducing a soft trinity. Why? Because PvE mobs are SO BORING.

When I ran my first dungeon, I couldn’t believe it was really me swinging my sword for 5 minutes while the bosses auto-attacked for eleventy billion.

Implementing a holy trinity is step one. A MASSIVE overhaul of AI is step two.

I fail to see how implementing the trinity is a ‘new’ idea, but maybe that’s just me.

With improved AI (i.e. giving mobs the exact same tools as players[skills, traits, runes, sigils, ect], reducing burst damage and increacing frequency of smaller hits), and implementing and actually enforcing encounter mechanics (as opposed to allowing them to be bruteforced with damage), the current system could work.

haviz.1340:

Why everyone complains? The feature pack will bring ele healers into viable territory and we already have decent tanks. Trinity gameplay is so close I’m already getting excited just by thinking about it!

Not to mention some of the mechanics involving rangers and possible updates to engineers and mesmers (although “increase their build diversity, allowing for a few more power-oriented styles and increased team support” is about as vague of a description as you can possibly have). Pets and ranger sword fixes look beautiful, I’m curious as to what kind of edits will be done to mesmer illusions – but overall I’d say it looks rather positive. Necromancer minions still haven’t got love, but the update looks like it will make d/d a little bit more manageable.

Personally, the feature patch looks like it will be a huge success if it’s not just overstated by the blog posts.