Guild Wars 2

In Guild Wars 2, the Trinity was supposed to be
Control/Support/Damage

Each part working together to win the PvE encounter.
Problem was the Overpowered way Control skills work, as well as the limited usefulness of Support skills, developed Damage into becoming the ultimate role in the game.

Well I have developed a solution to this. My goal is to make ALL THREE ROLES equally useful in the PvE encounters. So of course some changes would need to be made if this solution were to be used. I will try to explain them each.
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~GENERAL~

Gauged Ultimate skills:
this is a timer , that once depleted will make the Defiant NPC more powerful, and unleashing powerful skills that can do lot more harm to players. There are different levels of Gauged Ultimates. As the timer depletes, if the mob’s HP isnt past a certain percentage, the Defiant unleashes an Ultimate.

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~CONTROL~

Control, or CC as some call it, is a skill that disables or reduces/controls movement in some way.
Examples from the wiki
Daze
Fear
Float
Chilled
Knockback (Push)
Immobilized
Launch (Blowout)
Pull
Blind
Sink
Crippled
Stun
Petrified

The overpowerness of this comes when players make control builds in numbers. It risk NPC being locked out and becoming just a training dummy with large HP pool.

Unshakeable and Defiant was added to counter this, while the side-effect of this was the elimination of the Control role from the trinity.

My solution to this:

Add a new stat-line to the game called “AUTHORITY”. this stat would be found a new gear set made for Control role.

Defiant: (NPC Boon)
Defiant is a bit different now. Unshakeable is gone. Defiant doesnt make NPC immune to Control effects. But what it does do now is reduce all Control effect’s duration to 0. this is different from Immunity, since it still effects the target mob.

Authority: (New Stat)
this stat increases the duration of all Control skills on Defiant mobs by a Percentage of a second. More Authority equipped, the longer the duration of your CC will last on Defiant mobs.

Fortitude: (New Stat)
Reduces damage from Gauged Ultimate skills, as well as reduce damage from Defiant NPC by percentage.

Toughness:( stat)
Increase Armor, as well as reducing the duration of Control effects used against you.

Players that want to play a control role in the group, need to stack some Authority in their gear/trait build. This will allow their CC skills to have a duration on Defiant mobs, at the sacrifice of a bit of damage stats / damage skills.
Defiant NPC now have a Gauged Ultimate skills that they can use once timer goes down, that has some powerful effects. So group still needs to balance around both Control and Damage. Kill the Defiant NPC before the Gauged Ultimate goes off, while controlling the fight well before the Gauged Ultimate goes off, otherwise NPC will do major damage to players and groups. Players can build up a more defensive control build that is a hybrid of Fortitude and Authority to control the fight as well as resist against mobs of power.

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~DAMAGE~

Damage role is vital for the group, when it comes beating down a Defiant before Gauged Ultimate timer depletes. But Damage dealers will rely on Control players and Support players to to stay up and max effectiveness during the fight and between Gauged Ultimates.

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~SUPPORT~

Deals with maintaining a healthy, and powerful group. Specializes in:
Healing, Rezzing, Booning, Cleansing, weakening.

Some changes made.

Healing Power: (stat)
Effects all sources of healing similar to current system.

Rejuvenation: (New Stat)
Increase the healing effect of Regeneration, and reduces the revival time of down and defeated allies by a percentage.

Wisdom: (New Stat)
Increases the duration of Boons by a percentage of a second.

Support players will be a major part of a group, and helps enhance both damage and control players in the group.

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(continued)

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~HYBRID~

Since these new stat changes are built around players making builds and gear to fit their build.
Players can also spec into hybrid gear/build roles, to apply their effect to the needed role.

example. a Player may want to be a combo of Control/Support. They can stack Fortitude/Authority/Rejuvenation and help prevent Defiant from getting to their group for shorter durations than Full Control build players, but can also toss some good regenerations on allies when they need it. Or they could have stacked some
Fortitude/Authority/Power/Wisdom/Toughness, and make a control build that would be all about doing damage to the target while keeping Defiant mobs away from allies, with more defense, at the sacrifice of better damage or better healing.

There are so many ways to combine stat builds, as well as skill builds using this system to keep things unique and interesting.

but Damage would no longer be a role that is most important. Other Stats and other roles are more important in this system to make it so that everybody has a role in the battle. This could lead to some interesting battle fights.

Should my team take 3 control players 1 Damage player, and 1 Support player at the risk of less damage (more Gauged Ultimates in the fight) but less damage in between Ulitimates.

Or should we bring 1 Control player, 3 damage, 1 Support player, in which the control player helps control the Defiant, with Damage players bursting down NPC HP before Ultimate goes off, with the Support player keeping the Damage players up and active as they will be taking more damage.

Or we can make a 2 support player, 2 damage player, 1 control player, into the fight, less CC, but with 2 support players we should be able to negate the Ultimate a bit from the less damage.

Or 2 support players and 3 Damage players, damage down the Defiant, before Ultimates go off, while two support help keep the party up and active, while enhancing boons to improve the damage players.

so many ways to form a party. Risk and Reward.

Why replace one trinity with another, where is the gain in doing so?

Your idea is to replace the trinity from other games that works, with a trinity that might not work, in a game that has no trinity.

What’s the point?

I think you’re roughly on the right lines of how to fix defiance so as to not make control completely useless. How you suggest defiance and authority stat to function is imo the solution but i think you’re making it needlessly complex. There doesn’t need to be a new stat or anything, just a rework in how defiance functions.

There is an NPC in game we can use as a model: Capitan Mai Trin. This boss possesses Captain’s Shield which reduces incoming dmg by 10% per stack which the player has to strip.

Defiance could be reworked to follow a similar logic: each stack reducing the effectiveness of CC by 20% to a max of 5 stacks. These stacks should have a timer on them so they disappear on their own but long enough so as to render a CC spam ineffective with each additional hit while defiance is up putting on a new stack and resetting the timer.

I don’t however think this solves the problem of the focus being on zerker, instead that can only come about through AI improvements.

IMO, the problem is twofold.

1. defiant allows one guy to hurt the rest, intentionally or not, by making the big bad immune to control at a bad time. This is pretty much contrary to the rest of GW2’s design, where there is no fights over mobs or farmable resources.

2. there is little to no way to gear for anything but DPS or defense. And the tradeoff is lopsided towards DPS (meaning you get very little additional defense for a big cost in DPS).

First off, lets move the control cost from the mob to the character. Lets say you spam your control skills without thinking, this should reduce your effective control ability vs trying to use them when they count the most.

Second, change the math on boons and non-damaging conditions. So that building for them makes a viable option vs going DPS and relying on the default numbers.

I don’t know about this. I agree with digiowl though about a big problem being with lopsided trade between DPS and defense. Realistically, players should be able to go after tankiness and support. When ANet said they didn’t want a trinity I don’t think they meant they were going to pull away from support and tank roles entirely. People who specialize in vitality and toughness should be able to have insanely high damage reduction but without the critical chance or critical damage bonus, they won’t deal anywhere near as much damage – less than half. A player using Soldier’s gear, however, often finds themselves to be only mildly more survivable and are better off swapping Soldiers or Knight’s gear for Berserker until they find the base minimum of survivability they want/need. After all, best defense is a good offense in this game.

I think a much more reasonable solution is to improve the scaling of toughness and healing power – while also nerfing some of the skills/builds that could exploit them (warrior’s Healing Signet, for example), thus making it a decision: DPS on warrior with greatsword and axes or spec into some vitality and toughness and maintain insane regen and survivability. Instead, however, people can get both because toughness or healing power doesn’t do much regardless of if they wanted to use it or not.

digiowl.9620:

IMO, the problem is twofold.

1. defiant allows one guy to hurt the rest, intentionally or not, by making the big bad immune to control at a bad time. This is pretty much contrary to the rest of GW2’s design, where there is no fights over mobs or farmable resources.

2. there is little to no way to gear for anything but DPS or defense. And the tradeoff is lopsided towards DPS (meaning you get very little additional defense for a big cost in DPS).

First off, lets move the control cost from the mob to the character. Lets say you spam your control skills without thinking, this should reduce your effective control ability vs trying to use them when they count the most.

Second, change the math on boons and non-damaging conditions. So that building for them makes a viable option vs going DPS and relying on the default numbers.

My suggestion in the OP fixed both of those. read the part under control.

The trinity from other games needs to stay there. GW2 works just fine as it is. You just have to learn to be responsible for yourself and give the other player a hand when he needs it. Simple and effective.

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

The trinity from other games needs to stay there. GW2 works just fine as it is. You just have to learn to be responsible for yourself and give the other player a hand when he needs it. Simple and effective.

this isnt trinity from other game.

its Control/Damage/Support just like Anet advertised.

Dont understand your complaint.

This game is a duality at most, and even then the support does damage too, and the dps can be responsible enough to remove their own conditions or help out a little.

The best fix would be just to simply defind the treat lines more. What GW2 is trying to use is the pentagram class system where you have 5 class types tank dps healing buff and debuff. Right now the lines do a bit too much so its a bit harder to chose a defind roll in this 5 class system but that may be a good thing. Its best to let players play the way they want to and try to remove all adages from playing just one way or another.

Jski.6180:

The best fix would be just to simply defind the treat lines more. What GW2 is trying to use is the pentagram class system where you have 5 class types tank dps healing buff and debuff. Right now the lines do a bit too much so its a bit harder to chose a defind roll in this 5 class system but that may be a good thing. Its best to let players play the way they want to and try to remove all adages from playing just one way or another.

thats what my suggestion does in the OP. defines the roles. People have to spec for the role. each role compliments the other.

I think the new unlocked trait system and ferocity cahnges are the start of a path that will provide for more meaningful role-based combat.

The reason behind abandoning the trinity was to avoid needing to wait for “key classes” and “key builds” right?

Well, lets assume that as we move forward we can have traits, skills, and weapon sets (preferably with a template save option like GW1) that will allow each class to fulfill each critical group role.

Currently, there’s a little of this in the system, but certain classes are just so far over the top in one specific role that others can’t fill it (ex, guard support)

I think, where we’re headed, is that you’re going to need a support and dedicated control to succeed in new content, but that the traits and utilities and weaponsets are being tweaked and given new abilities so that anyone can easily swap a few points and fill that role.

I like to think of it the way that my ranger played in GW1. Rangers were excellent toons because they had working builds to fill just about any spot. Tank? pet build. AoE? Shatter barrage, Single target? take your pick in the bow tree? Melee? Bunny thumper. CC? Broadhead shutdown. Heals? Spring/Echo/spirit.

I played these builds and a lot more, but unless the group I was with was some form of elite build snob (and those groups will always exist, no matter what, even if it’s only a 1% mechanical advantage) I could take that toon and fill any hole in the group, and do it well enough to finish the instance.

I think, in the future, we’re going to see a GW2 in which 5x DPS simply won’t work any more, but in which those DPS players can easily hot-swap to another role in stead of waiting for another toon.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Why replace one trinity with another, where is the gain in doing so?

Your idea is to replace the trinity from other games that works, with a trinity that might not work, in a game that has no trinity.

What’s the point?

Actually, I do believe that originally that was going to be the case where we had Control, Support and DPS, because those roles were much more flexible and inter-productive than say the traditional trinity which is much more rigid.

The problem was that when defiant and unshakable were made, control became redundant so you never really saw anyone doing that for the major part, support was also kind of pointless because most classes could passively support themselves more than enough to out do active support from other people, and DPS.. Well, look where we are now.

The trinity system got as many flaws as the current GW2 one and people got bored from both. It is more about updating combat and boss mechanics to reward other builds and introduce diverity.

Just let GW2 grow, it’s not perfect yet.
Making the GW2 trinity to work, takes time.

Not even the MMORPGs with the Holy Trinity, they also have their balance issues, they also took time to become balanced in all aspects…

I don’t know how many times I’ve said this but…

ArenaNet traded the trinity for the… Singularity.

The singularity means that any spec, any class, in any group makeup can clear any content.

So what does this mean for the meta?

Well lets take CoF p1. Certainly 5 toughness speced staff mesmers could clear the dungeon without a problem, but it would take them around 40 minutes to do so.

Now lets do CoF with 5 zerker GS warriors…. just like the mesmers they cleared the dungeon, but wait! They did it in FIVE minutes.

Why on earth would you want anything else besides the highest DPS spec/class for any PvE content?

For competive players the meta is and always will be “How can we get X instnace done the fastest?”, and as long as GW2 keeps their class system and encounters like they are now… that will NEVER change.

You need healer/support classes, you need tank/damage mitigation classes/specs and fights tailored around having a group with those things in them, but that will never happen in GW2.

Zerks, and maybe condition specs if the cap is removed from PvE will dominate always.

just introduce Better AI that cast CC before the big hit or one that actually bothers to get out of AOE and one that use positioning, i.e. all the opponents in the same spot? time for huge unblock-able cleave hit…

this will sort the real skilled players who can run 5 zerkers ( only oranic teams with TS will be able to pull that out) and the zerkur wannabies that stack behind walls and drop dead on the troll….

nGumball.1283:

The trinity system got as many flaws as the current GW2 one and people got bored from both. It is more about updating combat and boss mechanics to reward other builds and introduce diverity.

Unless they completely overhaul the AI system in this game which I don’t see anytime soon – we have what we have.

Anet’s direction is plain as day and I’m very curious why you don’t see it.

The last Living Story content for example. The Knights encounter as well as scarlet – were nothing more then ultra DPS checks with at best rudimentary entry level raid mechanics.

Many have said this time and time again – The game is designed with one ideal from the ground up – and that is dps.

In saying that – Diversity is going to be very tough to pull off when they keep releasing content like the above.