Guild Wars 2

Amadan.9451:

the healer role was far more stressfull, i had to pay attention who i had to heal, kite mobs because nobody cares to keep the healer alive or safe, be blamed if you die because the tanker never cared about you, and be blamed if anybody else died.

What game were you playing? I’ve played plenty of MMOs, and most times my healer characters were the most boring to play. Once you got any decent set of gear, it was a yawn fest in every dungeon you played short of the top-tier raids. WoW was particularly bad with this, though it was hardly the only example.

Amadan.9451:

oh and from an healer perspective i never had to wait for a dungeon run, i was begged for a dungeon run, here i can be even muted in map chat when i try to form a group

And there we have it. This is the real reason we have a vocal minority clamoring for the trinity. Healers and tanks are a pampered aristocracy in most MMOs. Play one, and the peasant DPS classes have to grovel at your feet to form a party and complete a dungeon/raid.

Lynne.8416:

I don’t miss the trinity at all.

Same here. It’s tiresome being unable to do anything for lack of a Healer/Tank. Plus I don’t like being reliant on another player to keep me alive in a mega fight.

Vayne.8563:

Oh yeah, I don’t speed run…and I suspect those that do make up a tiny percentage of the population.

Actually, by the end of the GW1 era, meaning around 2009-2011, speedrunners were one of the biggest communities in the game. Albeit not all of them were on equal footing skillwise, but there were still plenty.

colesy.8490:

Let’s see what it’s like in guild wars. You’re meleeing Lupi and mesmer doesn’t put up feedback. GG.

Or you could learn to dodge.

colesy.8490:

You run in after the bomb explodes in CoF p1 and mesmer doesn’t focus pull the two mobs so you can’t cleave. One of them starts running around, you kill one and then the group wipes because they couldn’t kill the second mob and turret fast enough.

If your group wipes on a pair of silver mobs and two turrets, you have a bad group. The best mesmer in the world couldn’t save them.

colesy.8490:

You jump down the platforms to the evolved destroyer in COE, a dragon’s tooth AOE appears and guardian doesn’t drop aegis in time. Massive damage, probably pushed in to the lava, GG.

Again, you could always dodge.

colesy.8490:

Pre-fight, elementalist doesn’t put up fire field. No might.

Elementalist puts up fire field but no blasts, no might. Stroll in to the battle, do pitiful DPS, get wiped.

Slightly less DPS does not equal a wipe. I’ve never had to stack might before a fight to prevent a wipe of any kind.

Nothing you have stated is as crucial as tanking and healing in other MMO titles. Every encounter in GW2 can be completed using any combination of classes, with any combination of weapons and utilities.

TL:DR…L2dodge

Bright.9160:

Vayne.8563:

Oh yeah, I don’t speed run…and I suspect those that do make up a tiny percentage of the population.

Actually, by the end of the GW1 era, meaning around 2009-2011, speedrunners were one of the biggest communities in the game. Albeit not all of them were on equal footing skillwise, but there were still plenty.

Certainly as far as group PvE was concerned. Those who played more casually were running around with their 3, 5 or 7 heroes doing whatever.

Amadan.9451:

marnick.4305:

Trinity is like playing soccer. One player plays by different rules (can use hand) and therefor the entire team hinges around his ability to protect. If a goal comes through, it’s almost always the goalkeeper’s fault. Such unbalanced rules lead to problems like hooliganism, extremely stale gameplay (one goal in 90 minutes is enough) and an overall appeal to the masses. It does make soccer a popular sport but it sure isn’t the best.

Next, compare to cycling or basketball. Everyone plays by the same rules which actually forces proper teamplay. Once you get into the strategy of these sports, it’s crazy how deep the rabbit hole goes on a meta level. However this forces deep understanding of the game mechanics and a bit more active intelligence to enjoy the game properly. It also leads to active and compelling gameplay throughout the game.

Guild Wars 2 does have team play, but it’s not as obvious to the naked eye. The whack-a-mole healing in trinity gameplay is like the goalkeeper. He plays a different game entirely and frankly doesn’t matter in the actual game.

i think you completely underestimate soccer which is not 10 man trying 1 goal and a keeper trying to prevent it…
there are roles and rules that apply to everybody same as baseball… but better in my opinion.

I do understand soccer, but the teamplay is not nearly what it is with baseball for 2 reasons:
- the goalie plays by different rules. That’s just stupid game design. (IMHO!!!) Unnecessary burden is played on one person without really encouraging teamplay. In the lower brackets this means goalie//healer is a liability and first to blame, in higher brackets finding a good healer//goalie is nigh impossible. By design, switching roles is not possible.

- the italian tactics in soccer seriously imply you only need one goal to win which leads to extremely boring 1-0 games dragging on for 90 minutes. This can be equated with trinity based gameplay in that once you beat the boss by having the right gear, which is the only defining factor to win, all the rest is just a boring dps race. Compare to basketball, cycling or GW2 which remains undecided until the game is finished completely. Bash all you want on GW2’s dps combat, but it’s 100 times more interesting than the trinity gear checks.

Lynne.8416:

I don’t miss the trinity at all.

Quarktastic.1027:

colesy.8490:

Let’s see what it’s like in guild wars. You’re meleeing Lupi and mesmer doesn’t put up feedback. GG.

Or you could learn to dodge.

colesy.8490:

You run in after the bomb explodes in CoF p1 and mesmer doesn’t focus pull the two mobs so you can’t cleave. One of them starts running around, you kill one and then the group wipes because they couldn’t kill the second mob and turret fast enough.

If your group wipes on a pair of silver mobs and two turrets, you have a bad group. The best mesmer in the world couldn’t save them.

colesy.8490:

You jump down the platforms to the evolved destroyer in COE, a dragon’s tooth AOE appears and guardian doesn’t drop aegis in time. Massive damage, probably pushed in to the lava, GG.

Again, you could always dodge.

colesy.8490:

Pre-fight, elementalist doesn’t put up fire field. No might.

Elementalist puts up fire field but no blasts, no might. Stroll in to the battle, do pitiful DPS, get wiped.

Slightly less DPS does not equal a wipe. I’ve never had to stack might before a fight to prevent a wipe of any kind.

Nothing you have stated is as crucial as tanking and healing in other MMO titles. Every encounter in GW2 can be completed using any combination of classes, with any combination of weapons and utilities.

TL:DR…L2dodge

1. I thought it was pretty obvious I meant that you had a mesmer in the group and were waiting for the feedback.

2. Except those two silvers and the two turrets actually hurt quite a lot if you can’t burst them down quickly. They even hurt if you pull them and they put the fire fields up on to where you’re standing. Dodging out of the fields can just screw up your positioning so you aren’t cleaving the two mobs and turret.

3. Lack of DPS causes wipes all the time. It’s what tends to happen when you run berserker in a PUG full of pvt, they can’t kill anything fast enough and you can’t sustain your evades long enough so you die. Sure, if you’re all berserker you can (…literally) clear a dungeon naked just with weapons and trinkets, but unless you’re on the top of your game, in a low DPS situation against a boss, their attacks will most likely end up killing you once you slip up, unless it’s something as faceroll as the effigy in CoF p1 where probably the only thing stopping you from killing it is the regen.

There are roles in the game, they’re just not as “if you don’t have this, you can’t do this content” as a trinity MMO, which is a good thing.

Monks on strike in Thunderhead Keep! That’s your answer. Once in GW all the monks refused to do one of the hardest challenge points in the game. GW was built around 8 man instance progress points. And Thunderhead Keep way a very big progress point you had to finish that to progress to the next area and if you did not get through there you were sunk.

So one day the Monks or Healers decides they weren’t gonna take it any more and went on strike. You see they were tired of people screaming at them to learn how to heal and basically expecting that no matter what idiotic thing they did some poor monk would heal them. Also since a monk is not hitting as much as a DPS or Tank they never got a very fair share of the loot.

So Arena in this instance with infinite wisdom has made everyone equal. Everyone Hits, Everyone Heals, Everyone helps Res or they should. The Unholy trinity sucked and I for one am glad it’s gone and never want to see it again.

I played MMOs before the Holy Trinity existed – i.e. early EQ, before people realized that you could actually cast the big super-slow efficient Cleric heal in combat, before Warriors got buffed and could hold actually reliably aggro, and so on. I remember when it started to come in, it was kind of a shocking development, as people had operated differently before that. Back then it was more Tank/Healer/CC with DPS sort of being assumed. Only later in EQ’s history did “DPS” start to come into it’s own.

In DAoC roles were more complex, with tanks, off-tanks, healers, buffers, CCs, and PBAErs in PvE (often a class filled more than one role, too), and still no real “single target DPS” per se (in a sustained rather than bursty fight, the “Rogue”-type classes and archers did less damage than the tanks, often, and magic tended to bounce off bosses).

So I am glad to see the back of the WoW-style Tank/Healer/DPS trinity. It was never very interesting, and only happened as a result of a few tweaks and buffs in a game fourteen years ago. I wouldn’t mind move away from the Zerkerzerkerzerker-type PvE we have right now, but not towards those three roles, or god help us, traditional aggro tables.

Eurhetemec.9052:

I played MMOs before the Holy Trinity existed – i.e. early EQ, before people realized that you could actually cast the big super-slow efficient Cleric heal in combat, before Warriors got buffed and could hold actually reliably aggro, and so on. I remember when it started to come in, it was kind of a shocking development, as people had operated differently before that. Back then it was more Tank/Healer/CC with DPS sort of being assumed. Only later in EQ’s history did “DPS” start to come into it’s own.

In DAoC roles were more complex, with tanks, off-tanks, healers, buffers, CCs, and PBAErs in PvE (often a class filled more than one role, too), and still no real “single target DPS” per se (in a sustained rather than bursty fight, the “Rogue”-type classes and archers did less damage than the tanks, often, and magic tended to bounce off bosses).

So I am glad to see the back of the WoW-style Tank/Healer/DPS trinity. It was never very interesting, and only happened as a result of a few tweaks and buffs in a game fourteen years ago. I wouldn’t mind move away from the Zerkerzerkerzerker-type PvE we have right now, but not towards those three roles, or god help us, traditional aggro tables.

It would be awful hard to move away from a zerker/zerker/zerker formula because in GW2 the key to winning is to kill your opponent in PvE. The only way to kill your opponent is through damage. Zerker stats kill the opponent the fastest so why choose something that would probably take twice as long?

Anet cannot nerf Berserker stats because players would start to get one shotted, and to many, that is not a challenge. There shouldn’t be skills out there that one shot, but there should be PvE mob skills out there that are highly telegraphed and if not dodged it takes out a fixed 90% of your health(no matter how much health you have it will always be 90%).

Mechanics like this one would probably get players out of that zerker stat.

Vayne.8563:

A tank, from traditional MMO terminology, is someone who grabs aggro and holds it. calling someone a tank that mitigates a parties damage, but doesn’t get attacked or aggro would probably throw a whole lot of people off.

A “tank” is the character whose primary role is to keep the enemy from dealing (its full) damage to the party, whether it be by aggro control (the most common form, usually in the form of a character who stands there taunting and absorbing damage), throwing up barriers to protect the players (eg, Defenders with the Force Fields power set in City of Heroes; man, I miss that game), debuffing the enemy so that it misses often or does drastically reduced damage, and so on.

Language, terminology, and jargon evolves over time.

JDGumby.7685:

Vayne.8563:

A tank, from traditional MMO terminology, is someone who grabs aggro and holds it. calling someone a tank that mitigates a parties damage, but doesn’t get attacked or aggro would probably throw a whole lot of people off.

A “tank” is the character whose primary role is to keep the enemy from dealing (its full) damage to the party, whether it be by aggro control (the most common form, usually in the form of a character who stands there taunting and absorbing damage), throwing up barriers to protect the players (eg, Defenders with the Force Fields power set in City of Heroes; man, I miss that game), debuffing the enemy so that it misses often or does drastically reduced damage, and so on.

Language, terminology, and jargon evolves over time.

Pshhhhhhhh. Our tanks in GW1 were kittening Assassins.

Copestetic.5174:

JDGumby.7685:

Vayne.8563:

A tank, from traditional MMO terminology, is someone who grabs aggro and holds it. calling someone a tank that mitigates a parties damage, but doesn’t get attacked or aggro would probably throw a whole lot of people off.

A “tank” is the character whose primary role is to keep the enemy from dealing (its full) damage to the party, whether it be by aggro control (the most common form, usually in the form of a character who stands there taunting and absorbing damage), throwing up barriers to protect the players (eg, Defenders with the Force Fields power set in City of Heroes; man, I miss that game), debuffing the enemy so that it misses often or does drastically reduced damage, and so on.

Language, terminology, and jargon evolves over time.

Pshhhhhhhh. Our tanks in GW1 were kittening Assassins.

chuckle Only after the shadowform change. Prior to that, they were just minion fodder, hehehehe.

Don’t miss it at all, love the way it is.

Copestetic.5174:

Pshhhhhhhh. Our tanks in GW1 were kittening Assassins.

Rangers FTW.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

There shouldn’t be skills out there that one shot, but there should be PvE mob skills out there that are highly telegraphed and if not dodged it takes out a fixed 90% of your health(no matter how much health you have it will always be 90%).

Mechanics like this one would probably get players out of that zerker stat.

How come?
If it will be fixed 90% regardless of gear, it will only promote zerk even more. Since no skill will ever 1-shot you and you’ll do more damage with zerk set.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

It would be awful hard to move away from a zerker/zerker/zerker formula because in GW2 the key to winning is to kill your opponent in PvE. The only way to kill your opponent is through damage. Zerker stats kill the opponent the fastest so why choose something that would probably take twice as long?

In other games, being able survive long enough to kill your opponent is important as well. It seems like that would be an issue here, but perhaps it is too easy to survive without gear oriented that way.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Anet cannot nerf Berserker stats because players would start to get one shotted, and to many, that is not a challenge. There shouldn’t be skills out there that one shot, but there should be PvE mob skills out there that are highly telegraphed and if not dodged it takes out a fixed 90% of your health(no matter how much health you have it will always be 90%).

Mechanics like this one would probably get players out of that zerker stat.

I agree that one-shots aren’t an interesting challenge. However, more unavoidable wear-down damage or hard-to-avoid wear-down damage would seem to move people away from Zerker. Your suggestion doesn’t make sense to move people away from Zerker, because fixed percentage would be stronger against high-Vit or high-Tou builds, particularly the former, as heals are based on healing stat, not on % health. It would merely mean Zerkers backed up by people who can heal them up.

I think the big problem is that Zerker is more multiplicative than other setups. You have effective power x precision x crit damage (I mean, not quite, but you get what I mean, I hope). With Condition Damage you just have Condition Duration, which is often irrelevant, as a potential multiplier, and Conditions are also limited by stacking, making them even less viable. On the survival end of things, you really only have Tou and Vit, without a third stat to factor in, and their values don’t seem to be scaled appropriately to account for that.

Indeed, it is really the “triple threat” deal that makes Zerker so valid. If no gear had all three stats on it, gearing would be significantly more complex.

Anyway, getting off-topic, but watch this space, within a year we’ll see some kind of big change to Zerker, I’d expect.

(Another alternative would be to add in monsters who are just REALLY strong against Power-type damage, but not against Conditions, as a fairly regular monster type)

I do not miss The Holy Trinity.

It’s one very specific and unrealistic fighting mechanic that is in close to every single mmorpg game.

There are some good examples where a few players dominate a much larger group due to good teamwork: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-919RMwyfnk

In Guild Wars 2, healing is weaker such that fights are resolved, and it’s easier to develop more complex and interesting combat, when you have to take care of all roles by yourself. It’s also alot more fun to do solo PvE with a hybrid build.

marnick.4305:

What’s the difference between this and looking for healbots/tankbots? I don’t really interact with healers during a dungeon except for the hour it takes to recruit one.

As far as the control/support trinity goes, sure that should be buffed immensely since these actually influence teamplay.

Uh… firstly.
Control/Support/Damage is the same trinity Just because they don’t call it Tank/Heal/DPS doesn’t change anything.

1. “Control is the act of manipulating enemy actions, movement, damage… Kiting while holding the aggro of an NPC enemy effectively puts you in control of all their movements. Kiting allows your character to avoid damage dealt by the enemy while forcing them to chase you, allowing your allies to survive and deal damage and perform other combat roles much more freely.
2. “Support consists of providing increased effectiveness and survivability in combat via additional healing, boons, defensive actions like blocking or cloaking as well as combos… Support also includes reviving of downed or defeated allies.”
3. “Damage is any effect from an action which results in a target losing health”

They sound exactly like “the trinity” to me… In fact sounds exactly like tanking healing and DPS. Control keeps aggro and damage off the group. Support heals, buffs, and otherwise keeps everyone from dying and damage… well yea…The only difference is you cant heal or tank well in this game.

Secondly.
As a DPS in other games you may not interact with the Healers and tanks. But I guarantee they are interacting with you. Without them you would be dead, you would not be able to complete content. You need them to keep you alive and they need you to kill things. The game makes you have to use teamwork to overcome the battle.

In GW2 this is not the case. You do not need anyone at all and not just from a trinity standpoint, you don’t even need people on your team. What would happen if I ran the content in the game solo? Well it would take a lot longer! But that’s pretty much it. Sure there are some gimmicks were you need 4 other people to open a door or 2+ people to push a button at the same time, but that is secondary to the combat content, if those gimmicks didn’t show up once per dungeon (or the NPCs that tag along could help you) we wouldn’t even need a team!

This is why when looking to fill spots teams don’t stop, need 2 more for CoF P1? well lets just get to the gate room while we wait for someone to respond. Why not? We don’t need 5 people except for the gimmick.

This is the difference. And because of this the content is trivialized. When everyone can solo everything but we still have the option of grouping together it makes the fights insanely simple. Risen giant? Well the result is the same with 2 or with 50 people. We are like locusts in the open world.

There is also the fact that lack of roles makes the essentially sole role in very good and desired. Which makes a particular set of gear very good and desired.

People can still have roles, its just no longer class dependant. People keep overlooking that fact. Any class can dps/support/control.

Trinity is thee most boring of systems in RPG games, and the fact that people bemoan its removal is a sign of those needing a crutch to play. It has in fact hampered diversity and class customisation in RPG for over a decade.

Warriors were pigeon holed in to standing around like lemons getting hit, Monks were forced to prot or heal, and other classes were forced in to DPS roles whether they liked it or not.

The fact you cannot “tank” effectively in this game is a good thing. Its stops lazy gaming, and forces others to actually pay attention to whats happening around them.

Lokki.1092:

marnick.4305:

What’s the difference between this and looking for healbots/tankbots? I don’t really interact with healers during a dungeon except for the hour it takes to recruit one.

As far as the control/support trinity goes, sure that should be buffed immensely since these actually influence teamplay.

Uh… firstly.
Control/Support/Damage is the same trinity Just because they don’t call it Tank/Heal/DPS doesn’t change anything.

1. “Control is the act of manipulating enemy actions, movement, damage… Kiting while holding the aggro of an NPC enemy effectively puts you in control of all their movements. Kiting allows your character to avoid damage dealt by the enemy while forcing them to chase you, allowing your allies to survive and deal damage and perform other combat roles much more freely.
2. “Support consists of providing increased effectiveness and survivability in combat via additional healing, boons, defensive actions like blocking or cloaking as well as combos… Support also includes reviving of downed or defeated allies.”
3. “Damage is any effect from an action which results in a target losing health”

They sound exactly like “the trinity” to me… In fact sounds exactly like tanking healing and DPS. Control keeps aggro and damage off the group. Support heals, buffs, and otherwise keeps everyone from dying and damage… well yea…The only difference is you cant heal or tank well in this game.

Secondly.
As a DPS in other games you may not interact with the Healers and tanks. But I guarantee they are interacting with you. Without them you would be dead, you would not be able to complete content. You need them to keep you alive and they need you to kill things. The game makes you have to use teamwork to overcome the battle.

In GW2 this is not the case. You do not need anyone at all and not just from a trinity standpoint, you don’t even need people on your team. What would happen if I ran the content in the game solo? Well it would take a lot longer! But that’s pretty much it. Sure there are some gimmicks were you need 4 other people to open a door or 2+ people to push a button at the same time, but that is secondary to the combat content, if those gimmicks didn’t show up once per dungeon (or the NPCs that tag along could help you) we wouldn’t even need a team!

This is why when looking to fill spots teams don’t stop, need 2 more for CoF P1? well lets just get to the gate room while we wait for someone to respond. Why not? We don’t need 5 people except for the gimmick.

This is the difference. And because of this the content is trivialized. When everyone can solo everything but we still have the option of grouping together it makes the fights insanely simple. Risen giant? Well the result is the same with 2 or with 50 people. We are like locusts in the open world.

There is also the fact that lack of roles makes the essentially sole role in very good and desired. Which makes a particular set of gear very good and desired.

Your points are valid, and yes, by the definition provided the trinity still exists within the game.

I think the key part difference is the versatility between what we have, and what is generally considered to be ‘the trinity.’ In GW2, anyone at anytime can step into any other role. Where as with the traditional trinity, the tank took the beating, no one else (unless the tank lost aggro, and then woo boy watch out for the caustic comments!), the dps did the damage, the healer kept them alive. Those were the roles they were locked into. Sure the healer might add a little bit of dps, but that wasn’t their job. If the tank went down, one of the dps might step in and attempt to fill in, but that wasn’t their job.

People feel lost without having some type of system to lock them into a role. " I am a healer" or “I am a damage dealer” They simply don’t know how to adjust to “I am a damage dealer right now, but in 5 minutes, I may need to fall back and support instead” We’ve been trapped in the mindset of roles and jobs for far too long, and now people simply lack the ability to adjust to the options they have presented with.

Lokki.1092:

Uh… firstly.
Control/Support/Damage is the same trinity Just because they don’t call it Tank/Heal/DPS doesn’t change anything.

1. “Control is the act of manipulating enemy actions, movement, damage… Kiting while holding the aggro of an NPC enemy effectively puts you in control of all their movements. Kiting allows your character to avoid damage dealt by the enemy while forcing them to chase you, allowing your allies to survive and deal damage and perform other combat roles much more freely.
2. “Support consists of providing increased effectiveness and survivability in combat via additional healing, boons, defensive actions like blocking or cloaking as well as combos… Support also includes reviving of downed or defeated allies.”
3. “Damage is any effect from an action which results in a target losing health”

They sound exactly like “the trinity” to me… In fact sounds exactly like tanking healing and DPS. Control keeps aggro and damage off the group. Support heals, buffs, and otherwise keeps everyone from dying and damage… well yea…The only difference is you cant heal or tank well in this game.

No, those are similar, not the same. It’s just dead wrong to call them “exactly” – you are abusing the word “exactly” – next perhaps you will say my post made your head literally explode or something! The problem with the Trinity is this:

1) The “Tank” magically attracts ALL of the monsters (except on rare, specialized fights), and just focuses on magically attracting them and maybe staying alive. He is not, typically, controlling them beyond making them focus on him and maybe debuffing them slightly.

2) The healer pumps DOZENS of healthbars worth of heals through the tank, and probably several through the DPS, and may sometimes not buff them in any other way.

3) The DPS (in most trinity games) do 2-3x the DPS of the tank and infinity times the DPS of the healer (which is usually zero). Which is a pretty huge difference.

THAT is the Holy Trinity.

What you are describing is something vaguely similar, but not identical. Control is NOT tanking, it is similar to tanking in it’s effect, but completely different in it’s methodology. This is particularly obvious when you recall that in the olden days, Control was it’s own part of the Trinity (Quadrity… whatever… ).

What GW2 has is what you describe in that bit with Control/Support/Damage – most of the time in PvE and all of the time in PvP.

The problem is that Control is virtually non-functional on bosses (Champions) – which means almost all serious non-PvP fights, so you’re really down to Damage and Support in most serious PvE situations, and the way that works out is that most people should be Damage-oriented with perhaps one person doing a Support-oriented role. Thus we have the issue where Zerker > all. If Control worked on bosses and was indeed more necessary and interacted with stats beyond Condition Duration, it wouldn’t work out that way.

While I don’t like specifically the trinity, I miss having some sort of role on the game.

The original idea of A-net made to appear that there will be different roles such as control and support, besides DPS, yet not a single one will be mandatory for a party!

Currently there is only DPS and DPS-hybrids.

Kite.2510:

Currently there is only DPS and DPS-hybrids.

Well that’s the point. If we have no trinity, then everyone should contribute dps. It’s only that most classes are not designed for it in pve.
Hence warrior\guard domination.

Because warrior even while dealing damage still gives the party tons of might, some fury, a lot of stats from banners and has aoe-res, not to mention vuln stacking.
Guardians also can throw around a number of healing, stability, condition removal and blinds, all while doing significant damage. And then we have WoR and SoA.

So both these classs fit in the no-trinity everyone-is-dps system quite well.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Your points are valid, and yes, by the definition provided the trinity still exists within the game.

I think the key part difference is the versatility between what we have, and what is generally considered to be ‘the trinity.’ In GW2, anyone at anytime can step into any other role. Where as with the traditional trinity, the tank took the beating, no one else (unless the tank lost aggro, and then woo boy watch out for the caustic comments!), the dps did the damage, the healer kept them alive. Those were the roles they were locked into. Sure the healer might add a little bit of dps, but that wasn’t their job. If the tank went down, one of the dps might step in and attempt to fill in, but that wasn’t their job.

People feel lost without having some type of system to lock them into a role. " I am a healer" or “I am a damage dealer” They simply don’t know how to adjust to “I am a damage dealer right now, but in 5 minutes, I may need to fall back and support instead” We’ve been trapped in the mindset of roles and jobs for far too long, and now people simply lack the ability to adjust to the options they have presented with.

I really like what you are saying. And I thought that’s what Anet was doing when they said “getting rid of trinity” Anyone of any class can be any role? (I assumed it would be a spec thing not a swap on the fly thing.) But either way, that is simply awesome! no more waiting for heals or tanks. Just swap builds. But that didn’t happen.

In fact for me the opposite happened. You say anyone can step into any role… well… I just don’t see that. I have been (thanks to Fragment farming) been doing a lot more dungeons than every before and I see one thing constantly. Stack+DPS.

That is it. Who swapped to tank roll? No one, Anyone supporting? nope… Stack + DPS. CoE… Stack + DPS, CM Stack + DPS, Arah Stack + DPS What are my allies even doing? I don’t know… Stack + DPS. Who even has aggro? Oh dodge! In HoTW now, Stack + DPS, whoa a boss you don’t Stack+DPS on!? Hey AC Gimmick fights! I’m starting to love AC now because of the gimmick fights I get to do something other than Stack + DPS. Everything else is just DPS your face off if someone misses a dodge, stack res. If they miss 2+ dodges in a boss fight, well they might get kicked, depending on rage level, the team will replace them on the way to the next boss. Not like we need them anyways.

The lack of need for the Tank/healing/dps rolls is what causes this. Do we need dedicated tank classes? Nope, but look at PvP. There are burst builds, roamers, supporters, bunkers the whole spectrum because Bunkering and supporting actually is useful there. Almost every class can build to bunker and most can build to support. The problem is that Control/bunker and support is completely ineffective in PvE. all that matters is DPS. We need roles the “trinity” is just roles. you don’t have to be locked in, but they need to be useful. It’s sad to me whenever I get in a groups with a “heal spec” why? Because I already know that nothing he can do will keep me alive better than what I can do for myself.
______
Edit

No, those are similar, not the same. It’s just dead wrong to call them “exactly” – you are abusing the word “exactly” – next perhaps you will say my post made your head literally explode or something! The problem with the Trinity is this:

I’ve played a lot of MMOs outside the fantasy Tripple A titles. in a lot of those the “tank” is just the person who holds aggro and keeps the boss off others. Doesn’t matter how they do it just that they do it.
The “healer” keeps everyone alive. My favorite “healer” of all time was a bubble defender in CoH who actually had zero healing skills. Just buffs that made the party take near zero damage.

The game was still built on the premise that you need a tank a healer and DPS. Just because that healer didn’t actually heal didn’t make the trinity any less prevalent in the game.

The Holy trinity (IMHO dating back to D&D) is the basic Idea that you need one meat shield (fighter) one backstabber(rogue) and one support (cleric/wizard) doesn’t matter how they do their jobs the tank can be a sword and board heavy armor damage soaker, or a light armored dexterous dodger. The Cleric can heal or buff allies, or both, The wizard can buff allies or make the enemy unable to attack. The point they have a role in the group of Tank/support/DPS not how they do that role.

Lokki.1092:

I really like what you are saying. And I thought that’s what Anet was doing when they said “getting rid of trinity” Anyone of any class can be any role? (I assumed it would be a spec thing not a swap on the fly thing.) But either way, that is simply awesome! no more waiting for heals or tanks. Just swap builds. But that didn’t happen.

In fact for me the opposite happened. You say anyone can step into any role… well… I just don’t see that. I have been (thanks to Fragment farming) been doing a lot more dungeons than every before and I see one thing constantly. Stack+DPS.

That is it. Who swapped to tank roll? No one, Anyone supporting? nope… Stack + DPS. CoE… Stack + DPS, CM Stack + DPS, Arah Stack + DPS What are my allies even doing? I don’t know… Stack + DPS. Who even has aggro? Oh dodge! In HoTW now, Stack DPS, whoa a boss you don’t StackDPS on! Hey AC Gimmick fights! I’m starting to love AC now because of the gimmick fights I get to do something other than Stack + DPS. Everything else is just DPS your face off if someone misses a dodge, stack res. If they miss 2+ dodges in a boss fight, well they might get kicked, depending on rage level, the team will replace them on the way to the next boss. Not like we need them anyways.

The lack of need for the Tank/healing/dps rolls is what causes this. Do we need dedicated tank classes? Nope, but look at PvP. There are burst builds, roamers, supporters, bunkers the whole spectrum because Bunkering and supporting actually is useful there. Almost every class can build to bunker and most can build to support. The problem is that Control/bunker and support is completely ineffective in PvE. all that matters is DPS. We need roles the “trinity” is just roles. you don’t have to be locked in, but they need to be useful. It’s sad to me whenever I get in a groups with a “heal spec” why? Because I already know that nothing he can do will keep me alive better than what I can do for myself.

I don’t think it’s completely ineffectual in pve, but you are right in that pve combat needs something more to make us choose to roll something other than straight dps. It’s something I’ve been saying for a while now actually, even tossed some random ideas out there a time or two. With the revamps of the world bosses, we might start getting on the right track, but it’s going to take a while to completely get there I think.

Obviously they can’t make pve too difficult, as there are plenty of people that play solo. As it is, there are complaints that mid level zones are dead and the few people doing them can’t complete the DEs on their own. We need to find a happy medium.

What to do:

1. Kill the bad guy!
2. Keep yourself alive as long as possible.
3.Buff, Aid, Res, and keep your allies alive.

If you can do that, you should be fine and doing a good job.

But buffing, aiding and res’ing isn’t support!!!!!!!10101011

I agree with OP, especially your solution. I would love to switch and progress separate roles, but we need those roles to exist first.

I would also love to see more support and control instead of pure DMG. But both types have huge disadvantegs in PVE right now.
Control:
- Ever Champ/Boss can’t be controlled, because you have to get rid of those 10 or more defiant stacks. If you remove them completely i think people will stunlock bosses with mace autoattacks witch is also a bad idea.
- CC is less efective beacuse of Unshakable on every Champ/boss making CC more useless.

Support:
- Every Class or weapon gives tones of Boons for the group why do we need one guy specialized for Support. DD Warrior i.e. have Banners, 150Power Trait, grand fury, … . The only classes that supports right now are the messmers with time warp and probably Guards with aegis and WoR.

(@LanfearShadowflame and Lokki)
Having said this, there is one very good thread for you two, and of course everyone else who likes anything else then Zerker.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Endgame-PvE-Difficulty-comes-down-to-dodging/first#post2780806
The TO covered all that problems, made some suggestions for new bosses that can be easier handled with come control. And the thread needs some more life I think

Why do you want it so there’s one guy specialised for support?

Do you get some kind of kick out of doing nothing besides looking at HP bars and boons?

colesy.8490:

Why do you want it so there’s one guy specialised for support?

Do you get some kind of kick out of doing nothing besides looking at HP bars and boons?

How is that any worse than you getting a kick out of watching monster health bars go down?

Who said, support is defined by “only watching HP-bars”? There can be so many things like buffing your allies, use aegis at the right time, keep protection/regen up all the time, cond. removes, provide combo fields, …
You also could count Control as a form of support.
At the moment you get no benefit when some one tries to support the group (with anything else then damage) It sometimes gets even harder for the group.
Why do we have all that builds/traits that we can’t use properly in PvE. Why are there any other statcombinations than Power/Preci/Crit. Dmg on ~95% of the armor?
Why can a glass canon be the egg-laying, milk-bearing woolly sow?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want that there has to be a “healer” in every group, that we can blame for every wipe. That is the last thing I want. But believe me GW2 can be more then pure DPS.

@JDGumby: I guess it has to do something with the much bigger numbers popping up?

Fomby.4295:

As someone who enjoyed being a healer/tank. Yeah I do kinda miss it. And I don’t understand the hate OP is getting…

The hate OP is getting is from the baddies who could never hold down the role of tank or healer in traditional MMO’s…

I get what they did here, you know…the “everyone is special” kinda thing…but…

PvE and PvP/WvW has got really stale here in GW2 because it’s the exact same thing…zerk or tank/zerk hybrid…that’s it.

People are hating on the “Holy Trinity” because the claim they used to have to wait for “hours” to find a group in “other” games…

…now they wait because the groups here only want “Zerk” warriors…not a good trade if you ask me..

I honestly think the “Holy Trinity” would make this game a WoW killer.

JDGumby.7685:

colesy.8490:

Why do you want it so there’s one guy specialised for support?

Do you get some kind of kick out of doing nothing besides looking at HP bars and boons?

How is that any worse than you getting a kick out of watching monster health bars go down?

I can honestly say I don’t stare at monster health bars…I glance at them periodically, but just watching them? Nope. Healers would literally just stare at party member HP. As an ex raid healer for several years I know for a fact all I had to do was stand at spot X then stare at health bars the entire fight. It didn’t matter what went on around me as long as I kept their HP up. It is a terrible way to play a game, I don’t know why I did it for so long. For the loots I suppose.

Good news in GW2 you shouldn’t stand still and you can’t really heal your team
But anyway some more “roles” would be nice for more depth in the game. I think bosses can be designed the way that you can still kill all by pure DPS-warriors (or what ever class you prefer with Zerker gear) but some will die faster or easier with special mechanics:
- kiting, holding in AoE fields, … (CC)
- Blind, Vuln. stacks, … (debuffs)
- Const. regen/protection, might, … (group Buffs)
- High toughness, low hp bosses (weak vs conditions)
- and many more

there are thousands of trinity based mmorpg’s go play one of those and leave this diamond in the rough alone to be shaped into what could be potentially the best combat system since the invention of the stupid trinity.

it’s still needs to be further developed but i will take gw2 systems over the stupid restrictive trinity any day of the year.

STOP already if you miss the trinity so much go play one of the countless BS cookie cutter games out there that use that kittenty system

Draknar.5748:

JDGumby.7685:

colesy.8490:

Why do you want it so there’s one guy specialised for support?

Do you get some kind of kick out of doing nothing besides looking at HP bars and boons?

How is that any worse than you getting a kick out of watching monster health bars go down?

I can honestly say I don’t stare at monster health bars…I glance at them periodically, but just watching them? Nope. Healers would literally just stare at party member HP. As an ex raid healer for several years I know for a fact all I had to do was stand at spot X then stare at health bars the entire fight. It didn’t matter what went on around me as long as I kept their HP up. It is a terrible way to play a game, I don’t know why I did it for so long. For the loots I suppose.

I don’t know what kind of raids you did, but as a former raid healer/tank/dps myself…I remember very few raid’s where I had the luxury of just standing in one spot watching health bars..

You see, the raids(and dugeons as well) I remember doing…healing was second to positioning. Healers had to play very actively during the fights to keep not only the team alive, but themselves as well…it was an intense, heart pounding experience…which is VASTLY lacking here in GW2!

I honestly don’t know what this talk about standing in one spot watching health bars is coming from…

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

Monks on strike in Thunderhead Keep! That’s your answer. Once in GW all the monks refused to do one of the hardest challenge points in the game. GW was built around 8 man instance progress points. And Thunderhead Keep way a very big progress point you had to finish that to progress to the next area and if you did not get through there you were sunk.

So one day the Monks or Healers decides they weren’t gonna take it any more and went on strike. You see they were tired of people screaming at them to learn how to heal and basically expecting that no matter what idiotic thing they did some poor monk would heal them. Also since a monk is not hitting as much as a DPS or Tank they never got a very fair share of the loot.

So Arena in this instance with infinite wisdom has made everyone equal. Everyone Hits, Everyone Heals, Everyone helps Res or they should. The Unholy trinity sucked and I for one am glad it’s gone and never want to see it again.

Holy Dwayna almost forgot about Monks on strike. That alone shows why healers had to go. It wasn’t an option, but rather a broken mechanic that was still used for some stupid reason, even though it had been outdated for over a decade.

Like sticking with 32 bit Unix time. Everyone knows that’s a huge problem, but no one has the guts to force a change.

I don’t miss the trinity, but I do miss depth of encounters. I wish this game had more incentive for support, control and sustained damage (conditions).

As someone posted on this thread, the game has a good concept, but the current dungeons are not allowing it to shine.

I don’t miss the trinity, I miss competently designed encounters. Tequatl is a disaster.

Amun Ra.6435:

The hate OP is getting is from the baddies who could never hold down the role of tank or healer in traditional MMO’s…

False. I Tanked, Healed and DPS’d from TBC to the beginning of Cata, back when I had no life. I’ve also done some Healing/DPS hybrid in TSW and Tanking / Healing various other games.

When it come down to it, the mechanics are samey with regards to mechanics that focused on the Trinity, that is, positioning of the boss and your positioning in relation. Not to mention the mechanic of Aggro Management it really dumbs down the AI:

Mobs – Boss, shouldn’t we attack them over there?
Boss – Why?
Mobs – Well, they’re all raining down arrows and fireballs and wiping us out, and that guy is keeping this guy alive so we can’t kill him.
Boss – Yeah, but this guy said stuff about your mothers. Especially yours, Minion #243. She’s always been nice to me. That’s why we’re attacking him.

That’s not saying what we currently have is any better or worse, for the record.

I’ve said this many a time, but I don’t feel that you need a hard requirement of Tank/DPS/Healer or Control/Damage/Support to have roles. Roles can simply be worked into the encounter mechanics by having:

• Roles built into the encounter mechanics themselves.
• Mechanics being tantamount to success and made in such a way they can’t be brute-forced through sheer damage.
• More than one mechanic happening at a time.

This way:

• Strict roles aren’t forced upon one player for the entirety of the battle
• Roles can be taken up by any player (providing they come equipped for it).

For example, if we reworked the Lovers so:

• There were no boulders in the room.
• When they were within a certain radius (say, melee) to each other, they would become Invulnerable (while still being susceptible to CC), gain 2 stacks of Defiant, regenerate health and start to stack Might and Fury.
• They would try to move closer to each other at certain points (x stack of condition / health% / time).

Then CC cycling and positioning would be a requirement as well as damage. Maybe players could approach it so 2 CC-focus builds would concentrate on keeping them both locked down while others would take their health down. Maybe more organised groups would bring some form of CC and time it in order to bring more damage. If they get close, players will need to use Pull / Push skills smartly and not waste them on removing Defiant.

Of course, things like Defiant would need to be reworked in such a way to allow CC builds to do their job.

unleashed.8679:

I would also love to see more support and control instead of pure DMG. But both types have huge disadvantegs in PVE right now.
Control:
- Ever Champ/Boss can’t be controlled, because you have to get rid of those 10 or more defiant stacks. If you remove them completely i think people will stunlock bosses with mace autoattacks witch is also a bad idea.
- CC is less efective beacuse of Unshakable on every Champ/boss making CC more useless.

Support:
- Every Class or weapon gives tones of Boons for the group why do we need one guy specialized for Support. DD Warrior i.e. have Banners, 150Power Trait, grand fury, … . The only classes that supports right now are the messmers with time warp and probably Guards with aegis and WoR.

Ding ding ding, exactly this. Control do not go anywhere because individual CC skills are tuned for SPVP duels more than PVE 1vX mob waves. In most other games, non-tanks compensate for their squishy nature by putting multiple mobs on hold for long periods.

One reason i suspect for GW2 not having this is that CC lasts the same no matter what i do. In just about any other game, if i CC a mob but do not attack it it will stay that way longer. But once i attack it there is a high chance (sometimes a guarantee) that the CC will drop.

CC in GW2 is set up with a fixed short duration because it is meant either as a set up for a spike or as a escape mechanism in a 1v1 SPVP fight.

I guess what ANet could do was make CC have a dual tier. Leave the current durations as the CC’s unbreakable duration, and once that is over it will continue but with a high to guaranteed chance of breaking on damage. This means i can use CC to keep mobs off my back, but still do not enhance its effectiveness for SPVP spiking. They could even leave the breakable portion out of the CC in SPVP completely, tho i suspect they won’t as they are hell bent on keeping the skills as similar as possible in all game modes.

As for boons and nondamaging conditions there are one stat each that count, duration. Meaning that the only difference between protection, or weakness, from a dedicated build vs a non-dedicated build is how long it lasts. And unless it is from a long duration source from the outset that will mean bupkis, so why bother?

The game didnt get rid of the trinity, they just made it more accessible so you are not forced to use very specific classes which at time were in demand because they sucked outside of their respective roles.

What GW2 has shown us though is that if developers make the roles less clear the obvious response by the player base is to pretend roles and synergy do not exist and that you should all just play like a collection of solo’ers. Why everyone needs to be spoon fed the obvious class synergies that exist in the game is beyond me, but really until ANET un-apologetically puts in tougher content that requires people actually working together to complete it, this game will remain in the low end of the skill pool.

Niim.9260:

The game didnt get rid of the trinity, they just made it more accessible so you are not forced to use very specific classes which at time were in demand because they sucked outside of their respective roles.

What GW2 has shown us though is that if developers make the roles less clear the obvious response by the player base is to pretend roles and synergy do not exist and that you should all just play like a collection of solo’ers. Why everyone needs to be spoon fed the obvious class synergies that exist in the game is beyond me, but really until ANET un-apologetically puts in tougher content that requires people actually working together to complete it, this game will remain in the low end of the skill pool.

There is nothing to be spoon fed…

4 Zerk Warrior, 1 Mesmer…

Class synergies? pssshhhh

Amun Ra.6435:

Draknar.5748:

JDGumby.7685:

colesy.8490:

Why do you want it so there’s one guy specialised for support?

Do you get some kind of kick out of doing nothing besides looking at HP bars and boons?

How is that any worse than you getting a kick out of watching monster health bars go down?

I can honestly say I don’t stare at monster health bars…I glance at them periodically, but just watching them? Nope. Healers would literally just stare at party member HP. As an ex raid healer for several years I know for a fact all I had to do was stand at spot X then stare at health bars the entire fight. It didn’t matter what went on around me as long as I kept their HP up. It is a terrible way to play a game, I don’t know why I did it for so long. For the loots I suppose.

I don’t know what kind of raids you did, but as a former raid healer/tank/dps myself…I remember very few raid’s where I had the luxury of just standing in one spot watching health bars..

You see, the raids(and dugeons as well) I remember doing…healing was second to positioning. Healers had to play very actively during the fights to keep not only the team alive, but themselves as well…it was an intense, heart pounding experience…which is VASTLY lacking here in GW2!

I honestly don’t know what this talk about standing in one spot watching health bars is coming from…

Gonna date myself here, but: most MC encounters, Karazhan encounters, SSC encounters, Gruul, Mag: I mean obviously there were times when you needed to move out of an area that would be targetted with AoE or something, but 100% of those were called out in Vent. I would just stare at HP bars, hear “OK he’s about to use X attack get into position” move to there, stare at HP bars, “Drak you are bomb!” move out a bit, stare at HP bars. “Boss is at 25%!!” Move to designated spot to avoid whatever the boss does at 25% HP, etc etc.

Without vent sure I would have had to pay attention, but everyone I know used a voice chat software and every detail was called out by the raid leader so I really only had to stare at HP bars/statuses and follow simple instructions on where to run and when. Pretty sure most people had this experience as a raid healer. Maybe I’m the odd man out who knows. Especially if you run something dozens upon dozens of times you really do end up just staring at HP bars.

Anet successfully removed the holy trinity but sadly while doing that they introduced the holy unity: DPS, DPS and MOAR DPS.
This is one of the major flaws in the game which really kills my interest in playing anymore.

To be honest the holy trinity in GW1 was FAR better than the holy unity introduced in GW1. Anet needs to indroduce viable heal and cc mechanics so that people just can’t 11111 stomp with their zerker gear through basically all content that’s available.
The current meta promotes just focusing on your own while not needing to care about anyone of your group, because you can do everything on your own.

Bring back castbars, direct targeting of allies to buff/heal, interrupt mechanics and new balanced content around these changes and the game would be just great.
This guy actually sums it up perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBxStGB6-UE

tl;dr
A disappointed GW1 veteran.

Btw. most people complaining about the holy trinity should have tried GW1 gameplay first. The GW1 “Holy Trinity” differs a lot from normal holy trinities of all the others MMOs; it was really awesome.

Lokki.1092:

Aisa.2817:

So basically, we have to keep ourselves alive and work as a team to get through dungeons. What’s wrong with that?

Work as a team? Are we playing the same (PvE) game. My teams seem to work like this.

1. Get in group
2. No need to speak to anyone unless someone doesn’t know what to do
3. Wait for cut scenes.
4. Skip what needs to be skipped
5. Kill what needs to be killed.
6. Type in /s “P2 P3?” or “Ty”

Repeat.

There is no teamwork. Those player may as well be DPS bots or NPCs. Nothing I can do will save them nothing they can do will save me. And we are all better off DPSing our faces off and just avoiding damage in the first place.

This. Exactly this.

digiowl.9620:

Ding ding ding, exactly this. Control do not go anywhere because individual CC skills are tuned for SPVP duels more than PVE 1vX mob waves. In most other games, non-tanks compensate for their squishy nature by putting multiple mobs on hold for long periods.

One reason i suspect for GW2 not having this is that CC lasts the same no matter what i do. In just about any other game, if i CC a mob but do not attack it it will stay that way longer. But once i attack it there is a high chance (sometimes a guarantee) that the CC will drop.

CC in GW2 is set up with a fixed short duration because it is meant either as a set up for a spike or as a escape mechanism in a 1v1 SPVP fight.

I guess what ANet could do was make CC have a dual tier. Leave the current durations as the CC’s unbreakable duration, and once that is over it will continue but with a high to guaranteed chance of breaking on damage. This means i can use CC to keep mobs off my back, but still do not enhance its effectiveness for SPVP spiking. They could even leave the breakable portion out of the CC in SPVP completely, tho i suspect they won’t as they are hell bent on keeping the skills as similar as possible in all game modes.

As for boons and nondamaging conditions there are one stat each that count, duration. Meaning that the only difference between protection, or weakness, from a dedicated build vs a non-dedicated build is how long it lasts. And unless it is from a long duration source from the outset that will mean bupkis, so why bother?

I don’t think there is a problem with those short CC’s you just have to refresh them more frequently. I could build a necro with 100% freeze up time. There are other builds that can cripple the whole time, etc. I think you don’t need a lot of AoE CC because most of the mobs are trashmobs that die pretty fast and then there is only one or two stronger left that “need” to be controlled.

Especially for Stuns, knockup/-down/-backs and fear you don’t need long durations, the important part should be the interrupt and not to disable the enemy the whole time (stunlock). In the thread posted above one (why_me.xxx) suggested to remove the defiant buff completely and let the boss enrage if he gets stunned to often (i.e. 5times/10sec). Which means he gets stability, 25 might and swiftness, so you cant stunlock bosses or have a big problem if you try to. Additional you have to rethink some of the weapon #1 skills mainly mace and hammer so they don’t permanently interrupt.

For the support part, to make this more important, autoattacks also need to get rid of CC’s, might and vulnerability. In my opinion these conditions/boons have to be applied with a CD (skill 2-10) or you have to pay for them (Rune, Sigil and/or Major trait).

And last but most important for a support, as you said, it doesn’t mater if you call yourself support, your Boons aren’t stronger (except of regeneration). Your team just lacks of another DD. I think it should be possible to compensate this one guy, with your stronger Conditions/Boons spread over your team.
Let’s say that every Boon and non damaging Condition would be half effective than they are right now. ~30% reduced effect and duration. But on the other hand they will get stronger on both sides, effect and duration, the more boon duration I invest. The question is what happens with non damaging Conditions? Do they increase with condition duration and Condition DD’s become new meta if stacklimit get fixed (good damage + super CC), Only downside for them, vulnerability wouldn’t bring any benefit.

FYI guys, there are healers in GW2 if you want, assuming you get 1500+ healing power.

Engineer bomb healing permaregen elixir turret.
Staff Ele Aura share cleansespam.
Mace Guardian with Virtue share/Bow/SoFaith/Protectionspam.
Even a healspec wellomancer can heal decently.

Tanking in the form of permanently luring all mobs on one guy is, however, pathetic design and gimmicky and needs to stay in the WoW tombstone.