Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

It’s amazing to me that people can be so out of touch with what can actually happen in GW2 group content with good players who understand their profession and the game’s combat. Hendo gets it. Others seem embedded in the old paradigm where roles were dictated by choice of class/profession and gear. GW2 roles are flexible, change from encounter to encounter and are not bound to gear (which is why gear that increases damage is seen as superior). Do people really think that a change in paradigm could be accomplished without changing the way roles worked?

What is boring about GW2 is that the group content has been around for 19 months, with the exception of one TA path (months old now), a few additions to FotM and a revamped AC that is “only” 14 months old. That is not due to lack of trinity, it is due to ANet’s focus on herd encounters in the persistent world, which has its own problems.

this is the real truth. Battles in GW2 could be super deep, the mechanics and synergies are actually stronger than most trinity games. However the encounters are still pretty basic, and they dont fail you.

As Nike mentioned its more a matter of how long rather than can you.

And to be honest people hate can you win, they expect to always win.

The best part of the trinity was it was fairly simple for each player, but made them feel like they were awesome. At the end of the day it was really just an equation that could be predetermined by gear, but people felt like they were winners who just did something really complex.

Bryzy.2719:

Vexander.9850:

Jski.6180:

No.
Your more or less asking for ppl to play the way you want and not let them have the freedom to chose how they play.

It goes both ways you know. In games I love playing a healer. Can’t do that here.

I have to agree with Vexander here. I can’t help but feel as though Anet are really restricting their potential player base by limiting the extent to which a player can perform a given role. It really is denying a game style that a large proportion (look at WoW) of MMO players prefer to play. But then again, perhaps it’s just that Anet are deliberately looking to ignore those kind of players and I’m missing the point entirely.

Im not totally sure if everyone in WoW wants to play it the way it is or if some people just like the game enough to tolerate being forced to play a single linear role.

I mean, I tend to play a DPS tank in most games where I have to use the trinity, not because I like tanking, but simply because its more engaging than other roles and gives me a bit more freedom to choose my build.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Kit.3986:

Dusty Moon.4382:

No game can really FORCE true Team play. Forced grouping, using the Trinity, is NOT TEAM BASED-PLAYING. It is up to the INDIVIDUAL PLAYER to be TEAM based or not. I CHOOSE to be a team player, others do not. It is your choice in this game. At least you have a choice.

Games can, namely by having a complicated enough encounter where players need to communicate and decide upon actions together that will lead to survival and killing the boss in a timely fashion. WvW is a good example of forced teamplay, since if no one plays as a part of the team in that gamemode, they will all die.

I also didn’t point to using the trinity, but at least providing a reason to be any other role than zerker DPS. There are support abilities in the game, there are support builds, there are tankier builds and condition builds, but most groups don’t want to see them or deal with them because it’s simply faster if everyone goes full zerk and stacks on every encounter…. which requires no teamwork besides the occasional rezzing and just pushing out damage: no communication needed, you can even go afk during the fight and still have the boss killed in a timely manner. Putting in a little bit more challenge and getting people to wok together in the dungeon environment would… make it more fun and less like farming events.

And when you go into group content, like a dungeon, shouldn’t a player want to be a team player? What’s the point in doing group content, with a team, if you would rather do solo content?

That IS NOT TEAM PLAY. Team playing is an attitude. When I played Rift, I was forced many times into a group and the other players were not team players. Also saying, I need DPS in X build, healers in Y build and Tanks in Z build or you can’t join is not TEAM PLAY – that is a group of individuals playing together. What is the difference with what GW2 and forcing? At least in GW2, you have a choice.

GW1 GvG and HoM was TEAM play. Dungeons under a Trinity game – sorry no.

Addressing the post above yours.

If you think about it this way. To you as a player in a trinity game, even if GW2 was just all about the DPS, how is it different?

If you’re a DPS, you’ll go full DPS. If you’re a healer you’ll go full heal. If you’re a tank, you’ll mostly think about survivability and aggro management, and might be a bit sneaky and add in a bit of DPS.

It really is the same thing. Its just very one-dimensional. Plus, just looking at the proportion of DPS to tanks/healers in MMOs, I really question if most people actually likes to think about healing or tanking anyways.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Kit.3986:

Dusty Moon.4382:

No game can really FORCE true Team play. Forced grouping, using the Trinity, is NOT TEAM BASED-PLAYING. It is up to the INDIVIDUAL PLAYER to be TEAM based or not. I CHOOSE to be a team player, others do not. It is your choice in this game. At least you have a choice.

Games can, namely by having a complicated enough encounter where players need to communicate and decide upon actions together that will lead to survival and killing the boss in a timely fashion. WvW is a good example of forced teamplay, since if no one plays as a part of the team in that gamemode, they will all die.

I also didn’t point to using the trinity, but at least providing a reason to be any other role than zerker DPS. There are support abilities in the game, there are support builds, there are tankier builds and condition builds, but most groups don’t want to see them or deal with them because it’s simply faster if everyone goes full zerk and stacks on every encounter…. which requires no teamwork besides the occasional rezzing and just pushing out damage: no communication needed, you can even go afk during the fight and still have the boss killed in a timely manner. Putting in a little bit more challenge and getting people to wok together in the dungeon environment would… make it more fun and less like farming events.

And when you go into group content, like a dungeon, shouldn’t a player want to be a team player? What’s the point in doing group content, with a team, if you would rather do solo content?

That IS NOT TEAM PLAY. Team playing is an attitude. When I played Rift, I was forced many times into a group and the other players were not team players. Also saying, I need DPS in X build, healers in Y build and Tanks in Z build or you can’t join is not TEAM PLAY – that is a group of individuals playing together. What is the difference with what GW2 and forcing? At least in GW2, you have a choice.

GW1 GvG and HoM was TEAM play. Dungeons under a Trinity game – sorry no.

Addressing the post above yours.

If you think about it this way. To you as a player in a trinity game, even if GW2 was just all about the DPS, how is it different?

If you’re a DPS, you’ll go full DPS. If you’re a healer you’ll go full heal. If you’re a tank, you’ll mostly think about survivability and aggro management, and might be a bit sneaky and add in a bit of DPS.

It really is the same thing. Its just very one-dimensional. Plus, just looking at the proportion of DPS to tanks/healers in MMOs, I really question if most people actually likes to think about healing or tanking anyways.

Sorry the Trinity is one dimensional as you have set roles – done. In GW2, depending on the mob, a Mesmer can tank, as can any other profession. It is the mix of skills and synergy in the build that is important.

Things in MMOs have to be hard enough to give you satisfaction when you succeed and easy enough that you don’t get frustrated or feel like its a job you do when your real job is over for the day. I know the pain of waiting an hour for a healer so the squad can start from other games. But there has to be a little challenge in everything to get satisfaction from it. Getting a good squad together, getting a good friends list, getting into a good helpful guild that can help you finish your quests, these can all be satisfying challenges if the difficulty is at the right level.

There is also the issue of choosing a class that gives you an identity. If having an identity is not important than why have so many races and professions. Lots of ppl like being the helpful healer, others like being the tough guy tank who protects everyone. And teenage boys want to be glassy DDers. The trinity helps with having an identity in the game. With GW2 your only choice of identity is furry vs human.

Not once in this game have I heard someone say something like “OMG your such a Mesmer!”. People in other games will remark about how your perfect for a class or how they could tell you play that class from your personality. No one in GW2 says that. No one associates personality with any of the classes. No one talks about certain classes having ppl in them that are different from the ppl playing other classes.

I understand the benefits of not having a trinity. GW2 is also my favorite game. But I honestly think I would like it more with a moderate trinity.

MotherKitten.6795:

Things in MMOs have to be hard enough to give you satisfaction when you succeed and easy enough that you don’t get frustrated or feel like its a job you do when your real job is over for the day. I know the pain of waiting an hour for a healer so the squad can start from other games. But there has to be a little challenge in everything to get satisfaction from it. Getting a good squad together, getting a good friends list, getting into a good helpful guild that can help you finish your quests, these can all be satisfying challenges if the difficulty is at the right level.

There is also the issue of choosing a class that gives you an identity. If having an identity is not important than why have so many races and professions. Lots of ppl like being the helpful healer, others like being the tough guy tank who protects everyone. And teenage boys want to be glassy DDers. The trinity helps with having an identity in the game. With GW2 your only choice of identity is furry vs human.

Not once in this game have I heard someone say something like “OMG your such a Mesmer!”. People in other games will remark about how your perfect for a class or how they could tell you play that class from your personality. No one in GW2 says that. No one associates personality with any of the classes. No one talks about certain classes having ppl in them that are different from the ppl playing other classes.

I understand the benefits of not having a trinity. GW2 is also my favorite game. But I honestly think I would like it more with a moderate trinity.

I seen people like that in fractals
Front line tank getting in peoples way
ele running across the room to remove condi or heal someone
peoples personalities come out if they are strongly associated with certain roles. But you know in this game when you see that its because its really who they are, not because its what the game told them to be to get into parties.

also, the ways you go about doing it well, feel a little more interesting. like running for the person to throw a water field, or in WvW jumping into your theif friends shadow refuge. The Dps warrior who uses GS to dodge while doing damage instead of just rolling.

I dunno at its highest levels it feels a lot more interesting. I still think the biggest issue is the game doesnt really require any of that to succeed, so people dont learn it

Its every man for himself dodge+damage the end.
If you have to rely on support from other players to stay alive then you are poor player.
There is nothing in this game i haven’t done with berserker in a group at least.
People make things seem more complicated than it is when they say you need to run full bunker else you are just dead weight for the team.
Ok if you want to make things take 10 times longer increasing the risk of getting 1 shot by a boss or take more aggro because you have more armor then by all means.
Healing power is useless with 1000 healing power you only heal for abysmal amount depending on heal skill but 100 more healing wont save you.
CC is useless. Whats the point if you can just stack in a corner so everything stack up and you can kill them fast. And whats the point when all the hard bosses is immune to cc. Conditions is useless bosses have reduced condition duration and the cap is 25 which is still nowhere close to dps on direct damage.
Full berserker is not only best for dps its best for defense as you will take less aggro and things die before they have a chance to hit you.
I enjoy it but i cant play only 1 class or i get bored really fast.

One thing they could fix is bosses where you are immune as long as you are autoattacking with ranged because he is moving so slow with melee range that he will never hit you. The ones that are just around in open world is fine but at least in dungeons that is just lazy design.

Examples of bosses they did right , Lupicus, Liadri, Tequatl and holographic scarlet where all really good.

The Holy Trinity is a ridiculous and archaic concept in MMO’s. However, if you’re hell bent on the idea feel free to play practically every other MMO ever made. They’re there, waiting for you.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Kit.3986:

Dusty Moon.4382:

No game can really FORCE true Team play. Forced grouping, using the Trinity, is NOT TEAM BASED-PLAYING. It is up to the INDIVIDUAL PLAYER to be TEAM based or not. I CHOOSE to be a team player, others do not. It is your choice in this game. At least you have a choice.

Games can, namely by having a complicated enough encounter where players need to communicate and decide upon actions together that will lead to survival and killing the boss in a timely fashion. WvW is a good example of forced teamplay, since if no one plays as a part of the team in that gamemode, they will all die.

I also didn’t point to using the trinity, but at least providing a reason to be any other role than zerker DPS. There are support abilities in the game, there are support builds, there are tankier builds and condition builds, but most groups don’t want to see them or deal with them because it’s simply faster if everyone goes full zerk and stacks on every encounter…. which requires no teamwork besides the occasional rezzing and just pushing out damage: no communication needed, you can even go afk during the fight and still have the boss killed in a timely manner. Putting in a little bit more challenge and getting people to wok together in the dungeon environment would… make it more fun and less like farming events.

And when you go into group content, like a dungeon, shouldn’t a player want to be a team player? What’s the point in doing group content, with a team, if you would rather do solo content?

That IS NOT TEAM PLAY. Team playing is an attitude. When I played Rift, I was forced many times into a group and the other players were not team players. Also saying, I need DPS in X build, healers in Y build and Tanks in Z build or you can’t join is not TEAM PLAY – that is a group of individuals playing together. What is the difference with what GW2 and forcing? At least in GW2, you have a choice.

GW1 GvG and HoM was TEAM play. Dungeons under a Trinity game – sorry no.

Addressing the post above yours.

If you think about it this way. To you as a player in a trinity game, even if GW2 was just all about the DPS, how is it different?

If you’re a DPS, you’ll go full DPS. If you’re a healer you’ll go full heal. If you’re a tank, you’ll mostly think about survivability and aggro management, and might be a bit sneaky and add in a bit of DPS.

It really is the same thing. Its just very one-dimensional. Plus, just looking at the proportion of DPS to tanks/healers in MMOs, I really question if most people actually likes to think about healing or tanking anyways.

Sorry the Trinity is one dimensional as you have set roles – done. In GW2, depending on the mob, a Mesmer can tank, as can any other profession. It is the mix of skills and synergy in the build that is important.

The trinity gives the game a basis for building teamwork and cooperative play. Does it guarantee it? No, of course not.

The truth of these threads, that talk about the trinity or suggest the game needs it, isn’t so much that we need ‘tanks’ or ‘healers’ so much as they’re trying to get at the underlying issue that all we really have in this game is dps.

What I mean is that this isn’t a game that’s ‘free’ from the holy trinity, it’s a game that’s struck in the holy trinity and lopped off two of the three roles that make it up. Guild Wars 2’s problem is that it’s limited the gameplay dramatically, not increased it or allowed people greater freedom.

You say your mesmer can tank, but I highly doubt that (unless you’re referring to some sort of ‘face tanking’ or surviving a battle with npcs focused on you… which again, isn’t really tanking) because this is a game where there are no taunts—and more importantly, there’s also no control. Keeping in mind that tanking is, and has always been, a form of control, this game has next to no control abilities what so ever. What controls we have are incredibly weak—appropriate for the sort of controls you’d expect on a dps in a game with a holy trinity, but in no way comparable to true controlling that you’d find in any other game. In fact, most champions are semi-immune (and get more immune as more players join in) and some critters are completely immune.

This dramatically reduces the number of gameplay options that are open to players.

And that’s ultimately the problem, not the fact that Guild wars 2 doesn’t have a trinity, it’s the fact that we don’t have a trinity and gameplay options are incredibly narrow. I don’t see why, for example, we couldn’t have stats that increased our ability to control, or powers that allowed healing or other forms of support.

Xomic.5792:

[…]as they’re trying to get at the underlying issue that all we really have in this game is dps.

False.

What I mean is that this isn’t a game that’s ‘free’ from the holy trinity, it’s a game that’s struck in the holy trinity and lopped off two of the three roles that make it up.

Just changed the other two roles.

Guild Wars 2’s problem is that it’s limited the gameplay dramatically, not increased it or allowed people greater freedom.

Use anything else beside #1 or play PvE.

You say your mesmer can tank, but I highly doubt that (unless you’re referring to some sort of ‘face tanking’ or surviving a battle with npcs focused on you… which again, isn’t really tanking) because this is a game where there are no taunts

Holding the attention of the boss and not die, tanking.

and more importantly, there’s also no control.

False again. Read this.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

Keeping in mind that tanking is, and has always been, a form of control, this game has next to no control abilities what so ever. What controls we have are incredibly weak—appropriate for the sort of controls you’d expect on a dps in a game with a holy trinity, but in no way comparable to true controlling that you’d find in any other game. In fact, most champions are semi-immune (and get more immune as more players join in) and some critters are completely immune.

So you want perma CC to afk dps down bosses? How engaging that would be. Not even WoW has this.

This dramatically reduces the number of gameplay options that are open to players.

Not using said options only limits you, speak for yourself.

And that’s ultimately the problem, not the fact that Guild wars 2 doesn’t have a trinity, it’s the fact that we don’t have a trinity and gameplay options are incredibly narrow. I don’t see why, for example, we couldn’t have stats that increased our ability to control, or powers that allowed healing or other forms of support.

Use your traits, that affects a lot of your abilities, such as when Mesmers can trait for CD reduction and longer duration for their Feedback for example or when Elementalists apply aoe fury to team mates when blasting in fire fields as support.

SkiTz.4590:

lol @ anyone who said with a straight face that trinity = boring.

What we have currently is ridiculously boring.

You are completely wrong. Trinity = boring for anyone but the healer and maybe the tank. And they just click a single button that has all their amazing macros. The dps just faceroll their optimal dps watching the “agro” slider so it doesn’t go beyond the tank agro. Spreadsheet gameplay! Watching bars go up and down!

The two pics say it all: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/02/05/penny-arcade-the-wow-appocalypse/ We don’t have iHeal yet, but maybe in the near future we will have! Take a look at the amazing mods people create to make the game a 1-button game. How is that NOT boring?

You are playing the UI not the game.

On the other hand, as many’ve said already, in GW2 you use buffs all the time, you support AND control. Blast finishers, might stacking, the proper interrupts and blinds when fighting trash mobs etc are important and you can’t say nobody uses those in the game because if you want any vid of a good team dungeon running you will realise that they do.

Just because there are not distinct roles to change from doesn’t mean you don’t buff and heal others

communist style gameplay

I’m sorry, but.. Communist style gameplay? That made me laugh. Do not mix political ideas with your vocabulary. It just doesn’t go together too well.

I wish the soft trinity GW2 was trying to do was more pronounced.

To be completely honest GW2 is all about DPS, but as a player who likes to solo a lot I’m ok with that for now. It does get a little old sometimes but I wouldn’t have a clue on what they could do to fix it without bringing back the trinity.

I tried to play GW1 for the HoM achievements but I have a hard time not dozing. I played ritualist and I’m playing like if I was executing a boring macro by myself. Maybe not my type of game.
And what to say about the “healer complex”, people who want to feel like saviors or useful or somehow important…

Funny, I thought ‘trinity’ designs generally had really awful, one dimensional gameplay.

Balance concerns, yes. A.Net puts remarkably little effort into balancing their game, it shows, and things get stale as a result. But that has little to do with trinity.

When has trinity actually improved gameplay?

Ensign.2189:

When has trinity actually improved gameplay?

When it’s an option, and not a requirement.

Not easy to pull off, but it’s been done before.

Problem with gw2 isn’t the lack of trinity it’s the stale gameplay bosses being able to one hit ko you regardless of gear making the tanky stats (toughness/vitality) less than ideal in pve. The same to be said about healing power which offers no offensive capability what so ever other than to keep you alive (which you’ll probably only ever need to use a heal skill against trash mobs while soloing). The obvious traits being superior in pretty much 99.999999% of situations. The sad state of affairs of sPvP of some classes being higher on a rung that’s not reachable on other classes (looking at eles and rangers compared to a warrior right now) because of the trait issues and pet issues (pets are pretty terrible and more often than not they die to aoe/splash damage and deal little to no damage). Then there is the issue of condition based builds being well let’s face it horrid for pve compared to pure raw damage.

The problems with gw2 can be solved by more rapid balance changes. Not saying to go all out and make major changes every month but small number changes here and there. Small changes can shift a meta harder than a flat out massive patch can. The warrior being total trash in pvp at release (other than the flavor of the month crap) caused me to pretty much give up spvp. Even as a warrior player I feel the change to crit damage will just make healing signet even stronger than it is now. So yeah….

Vexander.9850:

Jski.6180:

No.
Your more or less asking for ppl to play the way you want and not let them have the freedom to chose how they play.

It goes both ways you know. In games I love playing a healer. Can’t do that here.

roll a cleric guardian and you can heal very well in wvw

Travis the Terrible.4739:

Problem with gw2 isn’t the lack of trinity it’s the stale gameplay bosses being able to one hit ko you regardless of gear making the tanky stats (toughness/vitality) less than ideal in pve. The same to be said about healing power which offers no offensive capability what so ever other than to keep you alive (which you’ll probably only ever need to use a heal skill against trash mobs while soloing). The obvious traits being superior in pretty much 99.999999% of situations. The sad state of affairs of sPvP of some classes being higher on a rung that’s not reachable on other classes (looking at eles and rangers compared to a warrior right now) because of the trait issues and pet issues (pets are pretty terrible and more often than not they die to aoe/splash damage and deal little to no damage). Then there is the issue of condition based builds being well let’s face it horrid for pve compared to pure raw damage.

The problems with gw2 can be solved by more rapid balance changes. Not saying to go all out and make major changes every month but small number changes here and there. Small changes can shift a meta harder than a flat out massive patch can.

That is not an issue. Then you need to be wary of that and dodge. If it was easy, like you say, then it would even make the ‘zerker’ meta even easier.

I disagree with all of your points.

Ultimately all they’ve really made is the shallow version of Guild Wars 1.

It’s weird because Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a super complex game to begin with. It was entertaining though, which Guild Wars 2 sort of misses the mark on by pushing garbage like “let’s zerg together.”

It’s sort of like GW2 is aimed at people who want to play the game without even looking at the screen so they don’t have to keep track of position, activation usage, teammate status, enemy phases, etc… It’s all stand and spam and occasionally dodge which is pretty repetitive and unimpressive.

Also what I really miss about GW1 is you could make a build that YOU LIKED. Not just some popular crap, but one you found FUN or UNIQUE.

GW2 is like playing through GW1 locked into bland build someone else made, that you can’t really customize. It’s a slog. And I bet the amount of accounts that even have an 80 isn’t all that vast a number, because people get bored with a slog.

TurtleofPower.5641:

Ultimately all they’ve really made is the shallow version of Guild Wars 1.

It’s weird because Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a super complex game to begin with. It was entertaining though, which Guild Wars 2 sort of misses the mark on by pushing garbage like “let’s zerg together.”

It’s sort of like GW2 is aimed at people who want to play the game without even looking at the screen so they don’t have to keep track of position, activation usage, teammate status, enemy phases, etc… It’s all stand and spam and occasionally dodge which is pretty repetitive and unimpressive.

Also what I really miss about GW1 is you could make a build that YOU LIKED. Not just some popular crap, but one you found FUN or UNIQUE.

GW2 is like playing through GW1 locked into bland build someone else made, that you can’t really customize. It’s a slog. And I bet the amount of accounts that even have an 80 isn’t all that vast a number, because people get bored with a slog.

Not complex, just a balance kittenfest with the dual class system. Put down your rose-tinted glasses.
And don’t mix GW1 pvp/pve with GW2 open world zerging.
Seriously, i start to hate GW1 players more than WoW ones.

I find that the combat here is really, really, shallow. There’s no point in releasing more dungeons, because given the current combat mechanics, it’ll just be the same old thing with different scenery slapped onto it.

There’s no strategy or tactics here, other than stack in a corner, go zerker, and press dodge once in a while. The mechanics don’t allow for that, so they resort to one shot mechanics, defiant, etc. And you want to know why the current meta is zerker or die? Because it’s the most efficient. If I’m doing one of a handful of dungeons for the 50th time, I want to be in and out as fast as possible. Special snowflake builds just hold that entire process up.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

I find that the combat here is really, really, shallow. There’s no point in releasing more dungeons, because given the current combat mechanics, it’ll just be the same old thing with different scenery slapped onto it.

There’s no strategy or tactics here, other than stack in a corner, go zerker, and press dodge once in a while. The mechanics don’t allow for that, so they resort to one shot mechanics, defiant, etc. And you want to know why the current meta is zerker or die? Because it’s the most efficient. If I’m doing one of a handful of dungeons for the 50th time, I want to be in and out as fast as possible. Special snowflake builds just hold that entire process up.

what you are talking about is due to encounter design, not battle mechanics.
enemies swing once every like 4 seconds
Enemies stay in the same place
Unshakable defiant requires 5 CCs for one CC effect.

The combat mechanics are extremely deep, there are 10 ways to skin a cat, and multiple possible ways to deal with any situation.

Encounters are just designed in a way that people exploit simple AI scripts

and lets be honest, as much as people complain, thats essentially what they are asking for with a return to trinity.

Stacking is used as a way to make defense versus damage versus recovery back into a simple equation that people can solve by following optimal rotations and stats.

heres why people stack
Stacking first of all is a control mechanic, like taunting it keeps the enemy in a single controllable place, It makes his damage predictable and consistent, yes you dodge, but you will still take some dmg.

Now that we can control the enemies movements we can once again use recovery
Stacking allows people to “heal” aka ressurect players, and make better use of AOE buffs which reduce dmg on the tank(which is now the whole party)

and DPS, the goal is to kill it before it can overcome your defense/mitigation and recovery.

Stacking is the way in which the trinity is reintroduced. The only difference between stacking and trinity play currently, is that DPS is stronger in the equation. Its still about tanking and recovery, but less so. HOWEVER the lowered max burst DPS drastically, while increasing effecitiveness of healing, which means healing goes up in the stacking formula.

Basically if you want trinity, celebrate stacking because its game style brings the old trinity back to the forefront, at that point they just have to slightly tweak numbers and your trinity will be back.

I will not celebrate it though, because its boring and stupid gameplay. I miss the times before stacking when people would actually move in and out of combat, actively avoid bad techniques. have to adapt to who the enemy was targeting. I hope for bosses to start reacting differently when they are being stacked, react differently to line of sight situations, and use minions to pressure players and force more interesting fights.

But yeah, trinity? crap, just like its bastid child, stacking

No Holy Trinity = Fun and more practical. I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than being able to play without the Holy Trinity being chained around my ankles and pummeling me with long wait times that bruise and abuse all the joy I could of experienced otherwise.

Imagine that mobs move out from aoe. Staff ele would be op. Just lay down a Lava font and keep the mobs moving. Glad that didn’t happen in this game. Oh wait …

No I don’t find in boring. If you play dungeons without stacking you experience the beauty of them and are anything but bored. Bosses one hitting you? L2P, stop being a keyboard turner and get some hotkeys. Perhaps bored on your 50th run but who wouldn’t be? In that case I stack as well. Seriously questioning even making this reply as its entirely pointless. I guess the forums are still slightly entertaining. I should just push that little x …. nah

Having a trinity makes soloplay bad as a bieffect. thats why we shuld have no trinity atm.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

There’s no strategy or tactics here, other than stack in a corner, go zerker, and press dodge once in a while. The mechanics don’t allow for that, so they resort to one shot mechanics, defiant, etc. And you want to know why the current meta is zerker or die? Because it’s the most efficient. If I’m doing one of a handful of dungeons for the 50th time, I want to be in and out as fast as possible. Special snowflake builds just hold that entire process up.

And yet the good teams use things like Feedback, Wall of Reflection, Fire Fields and Blast Finishers. Blinds, Aoe Stability, Warrior banners and the like are also used a lot, aren’t those.. tactics? What more would you get with Trinity? One person would be doing the reflecting/buffing, one person would be tough enough not to get 1-shot and the others will be DPSing, how is that more enganging than having the entire team do it?

OP, you’re attacking the wrong part of the game to be honest. While I still love the trinity in some games, ANet wanted to approach things differently, and that’s good.

And to answer your original question.
It’s not the lack of trinity that makes the game boring. It’s the LACK OF ANY SORT OF BOSS MECHANICS. So far to be honest, I’ve encountered only a few fights that actually pushed me to the limit.
Alpha at release when he wasn’t nerfed and people didn’t know how to stack. That fight always gave me an adrenaline rush every time I did it.
Lupi was somewhat of a challenge.
The Liandry part was a challenge
The Marionette was fun
The last boss in grawl fractal is always fun, especially when it was new and people failed it a lot.
And suprise, suprise that’s it.
How many interesting mechanics are there? 5? 6? Half of them aren’t a challenge anymore because you can stack and kill it in seconds…

Edit: Actually all the fractal bosses have some sort of mechanics where you don’t just have to stack and kill it in seconds. I only with they added more mechanics to normal dungeon bosses too.

phys.7689:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

I find that the combat here is really, really, shallow. There’s no point in releasing more dungeons, because given the current combat mechanics, it’ll just be the same old thing with different scenery slapped onto it.

There’s no strategy or tactics here, other than stack in a corner, go zerker, and press dodge once in a while. The mechanics don’t allow for that, so they resort to one shot mechanics, defiant, etc. And you want to know why the current meta is zerker or die? Because it’s the most efficient. If I’m doing one of a handful of dungeons for the 50th time, I want to be in and out as fast as possible. Special snowflake builds just hold that entire process up.

what you are talking about is due to encounter design, not battle mechanics.
enemies swing once every like 4 seconds
Enemies stay in the same place
Unshakable defiant requires 5 CCs for one CC effect.

The combat mechanics are extremely deep, there are 10 ways to skin a cat, and multiple possible ways to deal with any situation.

Encounters are just designed in a way that people exploit simple AI scripts

To add to this, the encounters that do have fairly decent mechanics, the encounter mechanics are not enforced nearly enough, making players able to brute-force them with sheer damage.

I dont like this idea at all, your only real argument for the ‘’holy trinity’’ is getting people adicted to GW2. and infact, not having the holy trinity is why i play GW2.

Perhaps if they created 3 more classes who are just devoted to those rolls, but as it stands , no. I disagree.

Which rolls around to Zerker LFG.
There will never be a hard trinity in GW2 and thats fine but Anet really needs to implement some mechanics that make the game interesting. Hitting Shatterer’s toes is a god aweful event but I like Tequatl. They need to make dungeon, world meta and even regular baddies have better ai and mechanics.

Neumonics.4603:

Perhaps if they created 3 more classes who are just devoted to those rolls, but as it stands , no. I disagree.

This would be a Bad Idea.

Back in CoH, there were four ATs with access to “Buff” power sets. Two of them, Defenders and Controllers, could get the actual “Healing” power set. For Defenders it would be a primary set, for Controllers it was secondary.

Now, you didn’t NEED a “healer” in a team. Lots of the buff sets could prevent the damage rather than healing it away, or crowd control could keep the fights at a level where the damage being taken was minimal.

And yet, you would sometimes encounter a group made by people from trinity style games that knew there were “healers” out there, and would refuse to get a group going until they had one. I even heard stories of them kicking out more useful people to make room for one.

Even worse was when they would make a “pure healer”, skipping over useful non-healing powers to pick up optional secondary healing skills that were redundant to their character, because they wanted to be “the best healer they could be” and show us how it was done. Or they’d make a Scrapper (melee fighter) and skip a lot of their own defensive powers because they were DPS and expected someone else to keep them on their feet if they got hit.

TL;DR: If you make a “Tank” or “Healer” class, people will think they NEED them, even if they don’t.

Palador.2170:

TL;DR: If you make a “Tank” or “Healer” class, people will think they NEED them, even if they don’t.

There isn’t any “tank” or “healer” class, yet people still think they need it.

Dalanor.5387:

There isn’t any “tank” or “healer” class, yet people still think they need it.

You don’t need it, but gearing P/V/T and being immortal (especially in huge events where the servers start to lag out, like Tequatl (I seriously can not even see its most of the time waves)) is really fun. Same goes for keeping your team alive while they just stand in one spot and don’t move (hell was on the asura fractal on level 30 and one of us was healing specked. For the lolz we decided to see if we can ignore the charges mechanic and just burst the boss mid way. At the end 3 out of 5 of us were down, but it died. That was like really fun and without the extra heals we wouldn’t have been able to do that). You don’t need it, but it’s fun. It’s fun to have more variety than just zerker. Plus nobody forces you to run with people like me – that’s why the LFG tool allows you to customize your message

Dalanor.5387:

Palador.2170:

TL;DR: If you make a “Tank” or “Healer” class, people will think they NEED them, even if they don’t.

There isn’t any “tank” or “healer” class, yet people still think they need it.

True, but without anyone to fill that role, they move on. It would be one thing if anyone could change to fill one of those roles with a few clicks, but if you make one class that’s The Best at it, then they’ll start to demand that class. Worse, they’ll demand that class, geared and built to play that role and only that role.

Dalanor.5387:

Just changed the other two roles.

Changed them to what, exactly?

Use anything else beside #1 or play PvE.

I do. And it’s still painfully limited compared to other games.

False again. Read this.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

And yet, the very second paragraph of that article:

Crowd control is essentially the same group of effects, notably used in-game in effect descriptions of Unshakable and Defiant tooltips. Some enemies possess the Unstoppable ability which makes them totally immune to control effects as well as movement-restricting conditions like crippled or immobilized.

Defiance, at it’s most basic and minimum level means you have to hit the target with some form of crowd control three times before you get any sort of effect to stick. Everytime a new player jumps into the fray, that’s another three stacks. A group of three players, for example, has to remove nine stacks of it. And so on.

And that ignores the fact that giant bosses, in general, are completely immune to crowd control all together.

So you want perma CC to afk dps down bosses? How engaging that would be. Not even WoW has this.

WoW has tanks, a literal form of ‘perma CC’. Except for when the bosses break free of that or you have to engage offtanks for whatever reason.

I have no interest in ‘perma cc’ of bosses, it would, as you say, be dull. But you’re making the fallacious assumption that there are only two options; the pointless, weak, ineffectual CC we have now, or perma-CC. There isn’t. Most mmos have found some sort of balance between the two extremes.

It’s possible, even likely, that if every class had some sort of ‘control’ weapon that allowed them to strip defiance off relatively quickly to get a crowd control effect in (in much the same way that multiple controllers in CoH could CC anything; it just wasn’t always easy or for long) then perhaps it would be less of an issue, but right now it’s very chaotic and zergish.

Use your traits, that affects a lot of your abilities, such as when Mesmers can trait for CD reduction and longer duration for their Feedback for example or when Elementalists apply aoe fury to team mates when blasting in fire fields as support.

I do use traits. But traits often feel like a DPS who’s specialized their spec in such a way that they can provide minor support or minor whatever else.

Palador.2170:

Neumonics.4603:

Perhaps if they created 3 more classes who are just devoted to those rolls, but as it stands , no. I disagree.

This would be a Bad Idea.

Back in CoH, there were four ATs with access to “Buff” power sets. Two of them, Defenders and Controllers, could get the actual “Healing” power set. For Defenders it would be a primary set, for Controllers it was secondary.

Now, you didn’t NEED a “healer” in a team. Lots of the buff sets could prevent the damage rather than healing it away, or crowd control could keep the fights at a level where the damage being taken was minimal.

And yet, you would sometimes encounter a group made by people from trinity style games that knew there were “healers” out there, and would refuse to get a group going until they had one. I even heard stories of them kicking out more useful people to make room for one.

Even worse was when they would make a “pure healer”, skipping over useful non-healing powers to pick up optional secondary healing skills that were redundant to their character, because they wanted to be “the best healer they could be” and show us how it was done. Or they’d make a Scrapper (melee fighter) and skip a lot of their own defensive powers because they were DPS and expected someone else to keep them on their feet if they got hit.

TL;DR: If you make a “Tank” or “Healer” class, people will think they NEED them, even if they don’t.

There’s bad players in every game, including CoH; but I don’t think that’s good enough of a reason to avoid the trinity like this game has done (or, for that matter, Champions Online) CoH had a good system, it’s a shame it’s no longer with us.

I think the problem lies in the ratio of importance is (for PvE)

50% (DPS)
25% – 33% (Support)
25% – 17% (Control)

DPS is constantly higher priority because the timeframe for errors is decreased as DPS increases.

Support helps relieve unavoidable damage or simply allow for more DPS.

Control is powerful but loses effectiveness against Defiance or enemies with Unshakable.

So you basically wind up with a Damage-orientated character with support and control add-ons. Rarely do you feel that Support and Control is the main focus of a character.

This is, of course, for PvE only.

For all its shortcomings what GW2 doesn’t need is the trinity.
This is not an issue since there are only a FEW players that might want a trinity set-up currently active in the GW 2 community.
The majority don’t want it – and if it is introduced I can see a lot of players leaving.

@Mirta
Main reason to wear PVT on Teq is that he can’t be critted, so zerker has a lot of wasted stat. Wearing PVT or clerics there actually is great, when poison projectiles land at the zerg.
And using projectile absorb or reflect at the asura is more efficient and independent from gear (6/8 class has acces to it and warriors are able to trait their blocks for reflect too), but it’s great to know, that these gearsets help there. =)

@Palador
Soooo you talk about Guardians? ;D

@Xomic
1. Support and control in various forms.
2. What games did you played? I’m seriously curious.
3. Don’t mix open world zerg content with instanced dungeon content please. I tought we talk about the later. And unstopable is a very rare ability on monsters actually.
4. Yeah, actually is kinda weird to treat tanking as CC, but it’s true. CC here isn’t meaningless, only if you just spam it and don’t prevent the dangerous attack with it.
Classes has various CC-s in their repertoir, but due to their mechanics thieves are the best for this.
That way if you just zerg & spam, you will screw up. Or not actually, it depends on.
Open world is well … it’s easy. It supposed to be easy and cater to the casual crowd with the Gem Story.
5. If you are a Necro mainer, that’s true that you can’t really do anything with it, but Necromancers have a ton of other issues that makes them the underdog of PvE. 7/8 classes are fine there more or less.

“Skill” is not something that takes place in MMO’s.
If you based “Skill” from the current class design or other game design with set roles.
All these are often based on “So what did the dev missed and what i can abuse to get the advantage”
As for these type of roles, they are in GW2.
The fact that every class has some healing ability and some CC’s doesn’t means there are no roles, so this very fact is 100% set by its class design.

This is why in some area of the game so classes that were promised to be “play however you like” are pretty much the most not worth playing since other classes are design X times better for that role.

Take every element of the game.
Think about the about of CC, DPS, Healing, CDs, Armor etc.

Plus some classes are design to be press 2 buttons and deal more dmg + have way better survive ability.

So what is this “Skill” if you compare classes 1vs1 in spvp , or DPS/healing in dungeons etc.. that were designed “play as you would like” in every area and most of the time don’t come close to each other in each area.

That is all just before stuff like “how close you live to server” “did you farmed the right gear” and hopefully the dev not going to nerf it after you spent 2month of RND looting to feel like you made progress.

TL’DR pressing 2 buttons doesn’t counts as “Skill”.

Xomic.5792:

Defiance, at it’s most basic and minimum level means you have to hit the target with some form of crowd control three times before you get any sort of effect to stick. Everytime a new player jumps into the fray, that’s another three stacks. A group of three players, for example, has to remove nine stacks of it. And so on.

And that ignores the fact that giant bosses, in general, are completely immune to crowd control all together.

Sorry to disappoint you but the number of defiance stack is

max(number of players, 3)

It’s possible, even likely, that if every class had some sort of ‘control’ weapon that allowed them to strip defiance off relatively quickly to get a crowd control effect in (in much the same way that multiple controllers in CoH could CC anything; it just wasn’t always easy or for long) then perhaps it would be less of an issue, but right now it’s very chaotic and zergish.

It’s almost as if GW2 rewards you for intelligently using CC skills and not just spamming them. Defiant doesn’t need to be changed, people need to learn to co-ordinate their CC if they actually want to use control in this game, instead whenever I try doing it in PUG groups you get the ranger point blanking, the engi using big ’ol bomb, the necro just spamming fears over and over again and the guardian using binding blade and pulling for no good reason.

I do use traits. But traits often feel like a DPS who’s specialized their spec in such a way that they can provide minor support or minor whatever else.

It’s not minor support at all. The 10/25/0/5/25 + 5 guardian build isn’t maximum DPS, it’s close to maximum DPS while taking advantage of the spades and spades of support from the virtues line. You get faster cooldown on consecrations, remove three conditions on using your second virtue, longer spirit weapon duration (relevant vs. imbued shaman + alphard), unscathed contender, 3 seconds of stability on using your third virtue and you get 3x might for using f1, regeneration for f2 and protection for f3. Then you’ve got the empowered allies warrior build which takes rending strikes and empowered allies for basically passive buffing and debuffing.

So you basically wind up with a Damage-orientated character with support and control add-ons. Rarely do you feel that Support and Control is the main focus of a character.

Classes like mesmers and guardians are basically taken exclusively for their utility (as in, support and control). If you don’t need them, speed clear groups don’t take them because if you wanted damage you’d just take a thief or ele. So no, I do feel for some classes that support and control are the main features. Mesmer DPS is abysmal but the sheer strength of their reflect skills is why they’re so solid in Arah.

TL’DR pressing 2 buttons doesn’t counts as “Skill”.

Now lets see your solos? I mean all I’m doing is pressing two buttons, it should be easy to show us yours.

hendo.1940:

It’s possible, even likely, that if every class had some sort of ‘control’ weapon that allowed them to strip defiance off relatively quickly to get a crowd control effect in (in much the same way that multiple controllers in CoH could CC anything; it just wasn’t always easy or for long) then perhaps it would be less of an issue, but right now it’s very chaotic and zergish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwyRh95-oLA

It’s almost as if GW2 rewards you for intelligently using CC skills and not just spamming them. Defiant doesn’t need to be changed, people need to learn to co-ordinate their CC if they actually want to use control in this game, instead whenever I try doing it in PUG groups you get the ranger point blanking, the engi using big ’ol bomb, the necro just spamming fears over and over again and the guardian using binding blade and pulling for no good reason.

I do use traits. But traits often feel like a DPS who’s specialized their spec in such a way that they can provide minor support or minor whatever else.

It’s not minor support at all. The 10/25/0/5/25 + 5 guardian build isn’t maximum DPS, it’s close to maximum DPS while taking advantage of the spades and spades of support from the virtues line. You get faster cooldown on consecrations, remove three conditions on using your second virtue, longer spirit weapon duration (relevant vs. imbued shaman + alphard), unscathed contender, 3 seconds of stability on using your third virtue and you get 3x might for using f1, regeneration for f2 and protection for f3. Then you’ve got the empowered allies warrior build which takes rending strikes and empowered allies for basically passive buffing and debuffing.

So you basically wind up with a Damage-orientated character with support and control add-ons. Rarely do you feel that Support and Control is the main focus of a character.

Classes like mesmers and guardians are basically taken exclusively for their utility (as in, support and control). If you don’t need them, speed clear groups don’t take them because if you wanted damage you’d just take a thief or ele. So no, I do feel for some classes that support and control are the main features. Mesmer DPS is abysmal but the sheer strength of their reflect skills is why they’re so solid in Arah.

TL’DR pressing 2 buttons doesn’t counts as “Skill”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwyRh95-oLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8th4zIVGo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeXr0S3Cdfo

Now lets see your solos? I mean all I’m doing is pressing two buttons, it should be easy to show us yours.

its still a pretty lame concept that treats all CC as equal.
For example, thief can remove more stacks than anyone else, because the game treats a .25 second daze the same as a 3 second daze.

also, anet combined CC and DPS skills, which makes many classes use CC or makes them lower DPS to allow some CC. Its just not a really good adaptive system. Its something they came up with fairly close to release to deal with CC locking of bosses. Its not deep, it doesnt consider class mechanics that well. And its not balanced.

King of Boss CC would be thief, with an ability to remove one stack per 3-4 seconds on demand. And in doing so, every other player has to sit on some of his few skills.

Its not that i dont understand the current CC, its that i realize that in its current incarnation, its benefits are outweighed by its limitations for 95% of boss fights. And even when it is beneficial, a random pistol offhand thief is better at dealing with it than people with full trait lines, runes, and 4 interupt skills on their bar.

also, while i agree there is depth in GW2, i dont think showing solo videos shows how the trinity isnt needed for teamwork.

its still a pretty lame concept that treats all CC as equal.
For example, thief can remove more stacks than anyone else, because the game treats a .25 second daze the same as a 3 second daze.

And this is why if you need CC you take CC specialists. This means mesmer or thief. Don’t people complain about lack of roles? Well there you go, a control role because thieves can head shot repeatedly so that you can score an actual CC at a relevant time.

Its not that i dont understand the current CC, its that i realize that in its current incarnation, its benefits are outweighed by its limitations for 95% of boss fights. And even when it is beneficial, a random pistol offhand thief is better at dealing with it than people with full trait lines, runes, and 4 interupt skills on their bar.

So I guess thief has the role of CC then in situations where interrupts can be pretty solid. It seems we’re getting somewhere. There are roles in the game, people are just purposely ignoring them for the sake of argument.

also, while i agree there is depth in GW2, i dont think showing solo videos shows how the trinity isnt needed for teamwork.

(6:20 – 7:15, 10:50 – 12:20)

Control! Support! It’s everywhere!

And yet people constantly deny it exists in this game.

phys.7689:

also, anet combined CC and DPS skills, which makes many classes use CC or makes them lower DPS to allow some CC.

Can you help me out what do you mean? Only ability came to my mind is Pistol whip, due to the daze it cause, which is actually isn’t bad dps.

Dalanor.5387:

phys.7689:

also, anet combined CC and DPS skills, which makes many classes use CC or makes them lower DPS to allow some CC.

Can you help me out what do you mean? Only ability came to my mind is Pistol whip, due to the daze it cause, which is actually isn’t bad dps.

What I think he means is is that all CC skills also has a damage component. Since that skill has a damage component too, it’s a DPS loss if you don’t use it.

NO Holy Trinity = Fun.

hendo.1940:

It’s almost as if GW2 rewards you for intelligently using CC skills and not just spamming them.

Quote of the week.

I’ve come to have a greater appreciation for the Defiant mechanic and how it calls for skillful play as time has gone on and I’ve seen players CCing Dungeon bosses. Random players doing their own thing in a massive herd are not going to effectively use CC — but such groups would likely kitten up CC with any mechanic that provides immunity, be it an immunity timer or triggered stun-break and stability.

yes its boring and yes it leaves opening for zerk gear only and dps builds