Guild Wars 2

What is so challenging with trinity if your not the tank or healer ? DPS there was always the easiest, just sit behind the mob to avoid cone AoEs and go through your rotation and hope that tank doesn’t loose aggro or die because then you could also better shoot yourself a bullet into the head.

Tanking was always a question of how good your taunts and damage was in the current expansion .. Shadowknights in Rise of Kunark were shafted hard in that role since they were always more AoE-tanks and there we had not much AoE encounters.

Healing .. yeah staring on bars all the time and spam heals and cures .. stressfull but boring at the same time.

Knighthonor.4061:

If GW2 has a traditional Trinity system, what would the game be like?

Pure speculation discussion, so feel free to give your belief of what the game would be like with a traditional Tank/Healer/DPS trinity system.

(excuse the title of thread. limited character prevents title detail)

Better, would have strategy and thought process beyond stack zerker gear and stack on each other and snooze through the game PvE wise. I think it would make WvW more interesting too if you actually had tanks and healers. Either way the group queues are the same with our without trinity as we have seen, either way if you pug you wait 45 minutes in LA. If you have a guild groups are easy to come by, trinity or not.

It will be like “LF1M” healer for 1 hour wait time.

I honestly don’t know why they didn’t implement it, besides to be unique. I love the idea of the trinity and being able to fill a niche roll. IMO the reason why they are having to nerf zerk is because without the trinity DPS is all that makes sense. (Brings up the point of why they are trying to help out support builds by nerfing DPS if there is no such thing as a difference between support/DPS in this game….)

The skill would be remarkably less diverse for one thing. Right now, if you look at the skills, you’ll see most of them have varying degrees of damage, control and support with many having all three. So now, to use your skills to the best effect, you need to know what each skill does fully and recognize scenarios to maximize their effectiveness. That would be lost with an chair trinity model. Healers would be watching tanks and casting heals. Tanks would be taunting and using defensive cool downs. DPS types would be standing there focusing on their rotations for max dps. I did the letter two in WoW and had a blast at it… But that was before GW2. Now, I’m mobile about the fight, watching groups of enemies, casting things like Null Field in their paths to strip their boons, strip conditions off allies, and also add confusion and blindness to enemies covering all three aspects with a single skill. So many skills now benefit fit from situational awareness that reducing them to trinity based types of skills would remove so much versatility and really gut combat painfully.

I think Rodney Dangerfield summed up trinity based combat best…

Lately I have not seen any LFG where zerker was forced. just have to be lvl 80 these days thanks to the good nerf that dungeons needed.

A traditional trinity would be very boring and just as bad as the current situation.

1 single tank taking 0 damage and dealing 0 damage
3 dps sitting back and facerolling their keyboards or even worse using a macro
1 heal staring at the tank’s heal bar.

doesnt sound like fun to me.

At least the current gameplay mechanic lets me change my build completely and still be effective no matter what profession I am.

There really is healing there already. Not only guardians but Elementalists have really good healing capability.

gasp the ranger’s healing spirit and elite healing spirit , plus stone spirit can make a whole party invincible……………….

Aeonblade.8709:

Knighthonor.4061:

If GW2 has a traditional Trinity system, what would the game be like?

Pure speculation discussion, so feel free to give your belief of what the game would be like with a traditional Tank/Healer/DPS trinity system.

(excuse the title of thread. limited character prevents title detail)

Better, would have strategy and thought process beyond stack zerker gear and stack on each other and snooze through the game PvE wise. I think it would make WvW more interesting too if you actually had tanks and healers. Either way the group queues are the same with our without trinity as we have seen, either way if you pug you wait 45 minutes in LA. If you have a guild groups are easy to come by, trinity or not.

Hmm if they put the same effort and time in Duneon encounters with a trinity system like they did with our release dungeons now, it woulnd’t be different. There would be the same broken and unfun encounters like we have now.

The Lack of the Holy Trinity is not the problem, the broken mechanics and the poor AI are the problems. You need to nerf the absurd damage spikes, implement an AI, scale toughness better, remove over half of the HP from some bosses, give them interesting mechanics and more.

I see the potential with the new System but I can see the mistakes Anet made with them, and they have to adress all of these problems to make this System work and if it works good, we will have a combat system thats better than any Old Trinity System you’ll find. But it would be hard work for Anet, and they have to adress the problems quickly and without flaws. But GW2 is now one year old and time is running against Anet. The longer it takes the more people will lose faith in their version of MMO combat.

Walhalla.5473:

Aeonblade.8709:

Knighthonor.4061:

If GW2 has a traditional Trinity system, what would the game be like?

Pure speculation discussion, so feel free to give your belief of what the game would be like with a traditional Tank/Healer/DPS trinity system.

(excuse the title of thread. limited character prevents title detail)

Better, would have strategy and thought process beyond stack zerker gear and stack on each other and snooze through the game PvE wise. I think it would make WvW more interesting too if you actually had tanks and healers. Either way the group queues are the same with our without trinity as we have seen, either way if you pug you wait 45 minutes in LA. If you have a guild groups are easy to come by, trinity or not.

Hmm if they put the same effort and time in Duneon encounters with a trinity system like they did with our release dungeons now, it woulnd’t be different. There would be the same broken and unfun encounters like we have now.

The Lack of the Holy Trinity is not the problem, the broken mechanics and the poor AI are the problems. You need to nerf the absurd damage spikes, implement an AI, scale toughness better, remove over half of the HP from some bosses, give them interesting mechanics and more.

I see the potential with the new System but I can see the mistakes Anet made with them, and they have to adress all of these problems to make this System work and if it works good, we will have a combat system thats better than any Old Trinity System you’ll find. But it would be hard work for Anet, and they have to adress the problems quickly and without flaws. But GW2 is now one year old and time is running against Anet. The longer it takes the more people will lose faith in their version of MMO combat.

I should explain at this point of the game, I agree with you. They would have to completely overhaul mob AI to implement the Trinity system, and I don’t think that is something they should do, even if I do prefer trinity combat.

A huge AI overhaul is needed either way regardless, but I wouldn’t want them to put in the trinity and slap a “fixed” sticker on the side if you know what I mean

They way I look at it, this year is the final year they will have to fix dungeons/PvE meta, which is why you are seeing changes coming down the pipeline so fast compared to last year’s lackadaisical balance patch schedule. I look forward to whatever system they decide to implement moving forward, as long as it kills the zerker stacking meta.

How it would be different:

1. Dodge would have to go, at least as far as DPS builds are concerned. Alternatively, it could remain, but with a much longer CD.
2. The “tank” would have to have much more resistance to damage. To compensate tank damage would have to be lowered (even more than is currently the case for defensive builds).
3. Defensive options like blind, block, reflect, etc. would either be removed from DPS classes, or would be more limited in number and with much longer cooldowns. They’d also likely need longer CD’s in tank builds.
4. Healers would have to have targeted heal-other skills, with cooldown timers adjusted to allow them to be available often enough to heal the tank or a dps if used properly. Alternatively, AoE (cone, radius, etc.) heals could still be the dominant heals like in Age of C, but they’d have to be almost spammable unless overly effective.
5. Healing by other than the healer would either be removed, or made less effective and with a longer cooldown.
6. Gear would be more important. The healer’s healing power, the tank’s resistance to damage and the DPS’s damage would need to be “right” for the encounter design.
7. Queue times would get longer for DPS, though perhaps not for tanks or healers.
8. Teamwork would be more necessary, though it’s debatable whether it would be more compelling.
9. Teamwork would be more tightly defined by which role you selected, whereas in GW2, teamwork definition is more along profession lines, with significant amounts of blurring due to skill overlaps.
10. Different people would be satisfied with the game.
11. The mobs would have to be redesigned.

How it would be the same:

1. People would still exclude others.
2. People would still blame everyone but themselves for group failure.
3. There would still be a meta of which professions and builds are considered best.
4. People would still be impatient with players who have no experience and didn’t "study’ the content before joining.

There’s doubtless more, but for me those are the big ones.

I’m not personally looking for the full on trinity but this title has been proven to not even have trinity lite, or even the Arenanet trinity (due to the issues of condition damage/ support/ CC being useless in most encounters)

What I’d like to see is an improvement of skills on those who’d like to take the path of a more focused healer in the horizontal progression proposal they put in the CDI post I’m hopeful that some of the classes will have just that, a greater healing – damage ratio so that it increased the healing we do with each skill when specced that way and lowers a tiny bit the damage output.

I think they could easily pull it off as other games have this trinity lite and still function without a requirement for the trinity in each encounter/dungeon.

I could totally see dungeons probably pick back up as people would run with their friends to do things more often with the renewed sense of balance.

Knighthonor.4061:

If GW2 has a traditional Trinity system, what would the game be like?

Pure speculation discussion, so feel free to give your belief of what the game would be like with a traditional Tank/Healer/DPS trinity system.

(excuse the title of thread. limited character prevents title detail)

Probably freaking awesome.. could you imagine the boss fights?
It’s tough for people to actually put some thought into that – because we’re so limited with the current system. It’s unfortunate because I’ve never played a game with such a fluid-feeling movement and combat system.

Many complain about the “LF HEALER! LF TANK!” Issues. Well this might be news to you, but some people actually like to play those roles. Me being one. Hell, we could even incorporate a trait system that allows every class to play every role, or CLOSE, similar to the WoW system in place right now (to my understanding.. I quit long ago)

I wish we did have trinity TBH

I’m like you right now in the game I’m playing I have 4 healers 1 DPS and 1 tank.

George Steel.1804:

Probably freaking awesome.. could you imagine the boss fights?
It’s tough for people to actually put some thought into that – because we’re so limited with the current system. It’s unfortunate because I’ve never played a game with such a fluid-feeling movement and combat system.

Many complain about the “LF HEALER! LF TANK!” Issues. Well this might be news to you, but some people actually like to play those roles. Me being one. Hell, we could even incorporate a trait system that allows every class to play every role, or CLOSE, similar to the WoW system in place right now (to my understanding.. I quit long ago)

I wish we did have trinity TBH

tigirius.9014:

I’m like you right now in the game I’m playing I have 4 healers 1 DPS and 1 tank.

George Steel.1804:

Probably freaking awesome.. could you imagine the boss fights?
It’s tough for people to actually put some thought into that – because we’re so limited with the current system. It’s unfortunate because I’ve never played a game with such a fluid-feeling movement and combat system.

Many complain about the “LF HEALER! LF TANK!” Issues. Well this might be news to you, but some people actually like to play those roles. Me being one. Hell, we could even incorporate a trait system that allows every class to play every role, or CLOSE, similar to the WoW system in place right now (to my understanding.. I quit long ago)

I wish we did have trinity TBH

What it dose is makes the game a numbers game. You only need as much skill as the armor you have on. A tank will only need to hold hate and have high def the healer will only need high mana / cdr and the dps would just need dmg. All fights in the game would be beatable though gear alone because when you make these rolls a player can so find toon there builds to be a pure one way or another that skill is NO longer a factor for a win or lost.

The problem is that GW2 has taken away options how to play.

Less options less variety. Less variety less challenges. Less challenges less entertained players.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The problem is that GW2 has taken away options how to play.

Less options less variety. Less variety less challenges. Less challenges less entertained players.

Well no the trinity is the most regimented way of having an mmorpg it becomes the only way to play. You cant be with out a tank or a support or a dps. In GW2 you can play with nothing but support like if you want or nothing but more tankly or just a pure dps you cant do that in a trinity system. There a reason why trinity system where made because of the level of tech and difficultly of keeping thing even when you open up that every one is a tank dps support.

There nothing in GW2 that keeps you from playing as if it had a trinity system and most ppl do play a soft version of the trinity system even if they do not intend to do so.

All longer fights consists of following mob AI:

1. Attack anything randomly.
2. Cast AoE

In rare cases:

3. Check distance, cast AoE

The strategy for all that is:

Bunch up in melee and beat the kitten out of the mob.

I have never seen so little variety in a RPG regarding to boss fights.

Ensign.2189:

It would be way worse? The forced dependency of trinity play was always a drawback, not a benefit, and there’s nothing really compelling about sacrificing game play for ‘diversity’.

Would you also consider the forced dependency of, say, a football team to be a drawback? And, if you consider any goal-oriented human group activity you will find humans organizing around roles as a first order priority. Is that a negative? I don’t think it is; I’d describe it simply as a human way of going about it. Sure, outcomes are generally better through role standardization. And, there is also a basic human need met when you play a unique role without which things would not have gone well. It’s more satisfying.

I’m concerned that dps role only combat in GW2 is ignoring the human factor.

In Anet’s attempt to get away from the trinity, they only managed to make everyone be DPS.

Man, I’d love playing a defensive-ish warrior type, but it’s not “optimized” and “slows down everyone and is a detriment to the party.” :<

Carbisari.2716:

In Anet’s attempt to get away from the trinity, they only managed to make everyone be DPS.

Man, I’d love playing a defensive-ish warrior type, but it’s not “optimized” and “slows down everyone and is a detriment to the party.” :<

Well in other mmorpg that what every class is its a support and dps its a tank and dps its a dps and dps (lol) it just dose not work to have a class that cant do any thing when it comes to dmg. So GW2 is not doing any thing new letting all classes have a dps build what they are doing that is different is letting all thoughts class have a tank and support build with out over specialization.

In a way its odd you can only win a fight is by doing dmg in all rpgs you cant talk out of a fight like say a game of D&D it may be just the limitation of what a video game can do vs what a person imagination can do.

You can not tank in GW2. And no, being able to take more damage than the other players before going down does not equal tanking.

But you can sort of heal. Where is the consequence in that?

Hmm, how to sum this up… To me, GW2 was developed to give the player an adrenaline response from stress and frenetic pacing. That’s what the gamer is supposed to feel from playing. Not deriving meaning from having a purpose and a role in the game. Thus, the trinity wasn’t required because one isn’t supposed to get immersed in a role.

At least, that’s what I’ve come away with after thousands of hours. If the increased healing scaling and made dodging less effective, I’d go more into healing. I already run a banner/regen Warrior. Green ticks all around me make me happy

DeWolfe.2174:

Hmm, how to sum this up… To me, GW2 was developed to give the player an adrenaline response from stress and frenetic pacing. That’s what the gamer is supposed to feel from playing. Not deriving meaning from having a purpose and a role in the game. Thus, the trinity wasn’t required because one isn’t supposed to get immersed in a role.

At least, that’s what I’ve come away with after thousands of hours. If the increased healing scaling and made dodging less effective, I’d go more into healing. I already run a banner/regen Warrior. Green ticks all around me make me happy

Do you know what RPG stands for?

What would GW2 be like with trinity?

Like Guild Wars

GW2 has its own trinity of dps, support, control.. it just doesn’t work effectively in pve. You don’t have to invest anything into support or control, aside from a few traits and utility choices, and even then control is almost completely broken by Unshakable bosses. DPS is awkward for conditions, and support abilities based on healing power are completely negated by the complete punishing nature of bosses that spam 1-shot abilities.

“Even in DAoC, zerging was an issue. At least in GW2, we don’t have /follow for AFK zerging”

- zergs in DaoC were no where near as much of a problem as in GW2. DaoC encouraged grouping and fighting other people of equal numbers.

They had groups of 8, and alot of spells would only effect those 8 people. Furthermore you would only get RPs(WvW exp) for the damage your group did to the enemy. If you barely did any damage you wouldn’t get any RPs(WvW exp).

Furthermore you could beat twice or thrice your numbers much easier in DaoC. Damage is higher, heals are better, CC last longer and is more effective. You could use teamwork to beat the enemy, where as in GW2, there is barely any teamwork.

WvW should of been more like RvR. They made it to much like PvE. It is still the best game mode in GW2, but it could of been much better if the devs werent terrible.

Funny that most people talk that all in zerker is better then everything else, but, in my experience, when doing dungeons the more balanced teams are way more successful. It becomes easier to kill the bosses and everyone survives without much effort. With more inexperienced players playing all in DPS there’s at least 2 wipes per run (Depend on the Dungeon).
In WvW there is also the problem that no one knows what to expect from his allies so going just for damage just plain easier. I for one use support to help protect people during attacks on towers, but that’s just me.
Not an easy thing to fix…

Mochann.5298:

Hekdragoon.1972:

Guardians everywhere, since they can more or less do the 3 roles

Having Trinity officially in the game would force a total revamp of the entire system, so Guardian as we know it today would be different.

I think having “no trinity” is the stupidest design choice Anet made among many bad choices, but that’s just me.

And your opinion is just that – an opinion.
Why would they make their game exactly like all the trinity games out there?!

Harper.4173:

And your opinion is just that – an opinion.
Why would they make their game exactly like all the trinity games out there?!

well, ATM trinity is one of the very few things that make gw2 different than the other mmo on the market.

but i’m not so sure that the “everybody’s dps YEE HAW” is a remarkably positive feature.
i’d prefer no grind and no treadmill

The ‘traditional’ trinity is way too rigid and pigeonholing, so getting rid of it was a smart choice, and it’s likely to fade from popularity gradually. However, an MMO needs a role system of some sort to give players some identity and direction of what to do in a team. Anet really needs to work on their execution of this in GW2.

ITT: many people that have never played gw1 soft-trinity

GW2 with trinity would be yet another MMO i wouldn’t play.

A trinity could work if every class could fill any role they wanted at any time. But oh wait…isn’t that basically what we were supposed to get with GW2?

what would it be like with the trinity?

a game that I wouldn’t play

The only reason that the lack of a trinity works currently is because the ingenuity of players has allowed them to completely bypass 80% of every dungeon in the game by skipping mobs, cheesing bosses in corners with Fiery Rush and running min/maxed builds that burn bosses down faster than they can even pose a threat. Ironically, it’s often the people who ask for more challenging content who are purposefully avoiding any slight bit of difficulty the dungeons may have by using the aforementioned techniques.

If mobs didn’t reset and bosses couldn’t be pulled into corners, we’d see a tremendous drop in the success rate of people running dungeons, as a lot of the trash mobs/bosses are somewhat difficult – people just don’t realize it because they kill them in a couple of seconds against a wall, or more commonly, just skip them entirely.

The value of having dedicated roles like tank and healer would go a long way to making the game’s PvE more enjoyable, as these roles can provide a huge amount of satisfaction. For me personally, I always play tanks in MMOs, so not having the opportunity to do this in GW2 has been an interesting experience, but ultimately one that has left me looking elsewhere for my MMO gameplay fix, as I don’t really care for damage (pressing ‘2’ and doing 50k+ damage isn’t exactly riveting for me), and unfortunately running a Cleric Guardian is simply holding a group back once you’re playing with experienced players.

milo.6942:

ITT: many people that have never played gw1 soft-trinity

^

It’s kinda funny, really.

With Trinity System, I would be a different game.

You cant just change the classes, you have to change the whole game. I’d like to see a good aggro system, cause you can make some better boss mechanics with it, imo.

But maybe with less animations and a good working aggro system, you could change gw2 to a more challenging game.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

LFM healer
LFM healer
LFM healer…..

LFM Guardian or Warrior

ThanatosAngel.8024:

A trinity could work if every class could fill any role they wanted at any time. But oh wait…isn’t that basically what we were supposed to get with GW2?

Well, no, actually. In GW2, as you know, combat is broken down into the aspects of damage, control and support. The idea was never that you’d be cast as a damage, control or support character but instead you’d be able to utilize all three of those aspects, regardless of build, during a fight. This is exactly what they’ve done and done well imo. Many skills cover multiple aspects at the same time and can be further enhanced with traits which results in a system that, even though you can cast off CD if you wish, is much more effective as a whole when you know the abilities of the skills and use a little situational awareness with regards to what skills are more effective when. So no, you’re not supposed to fill ‘a’ role. You’re supposed to recognize what’s happening during the fight and respond with the best skills for the situation at the right time.

I wouldn’t know or care, because I wouldn’t be here.

GW1 combat system did require you to have a variety of classes imo and a lot of teamwork.

It wasn’t like LFhealer, a healer could help you a lot, but you could still win without a healer, because healers aren’t all powerful either.

It wasn’t sitting in a corner, but was about engaging fights, where the healer just had a split-second to save his allies, and where the allies had to do their best to keep the healer alive too.

It was as many say a soft trinity. Everyone here is giving examples of an extremely harsh trinity here, that is indeed very boring. What GW2 needs is a middleway between full-out TANK/HEAL/DPS and the system we have now.

Subclasses could bring it, if they made certain that sub-classes had special roles dedicated to something, and no class could do that job better. Warrior atm is the one class that can do everything, while with a sub-class system you would still have a lot of variety and at the same time roles that were fixed with those sub-classes, making each useful.

I am still on the fence about the no-trinity design decission. I can see good things it brought but I can also see the downsides. I would like to just point one thing. I often see here people citing the “LFM healer!” problem. And IMO that is a false claim becouse this issue can be solved be certain solutions without getting rid of the trinity. GW1 was an example where there was a trinity and you could still solo 99% of the content. As someone mentioned before, I think that if each profession had a full working pure healing trait/skill line, it would largely diminish the problem of group composition. Same could be done with tanking although I think that lack of healers is what couses most negative issues.

Meh.
http://taugrim.com/2013/10/27/threat-based-pve-is-lame-and-how-id-fix-it/

Tanking is the flawed mechanic that allows the traditional trinity, and it would require re-engineering every enemy in the game to implement, so not likely.

Awe.1096:

As someone mentioned before, I think that if each profession had a full working pure healing trait/skill line, it would largely diminish the problem of group composition.

Now that’s a good idea!

Naevius.3185:

Meh.
http://taugrim.com/2013/10/27/threat-based-pve-is-lame-and-how-id-fix-it/

Tanking is the flawed mechanic that allows the traditional trinity, and it would require re-engineering every enemy in the game to implement, so not likely.

Interesting article. Thank you for linking it.

For me GW2’s combat resembles a real world fight scene much more than any trinity fight looks like. Chaotic, full of adrenalin, people shouting running all over the place trying to not get damaged. Killing enemy closest to them.

I was allways a amazed when i obsereved “trinity” fights…. Look at that huge godlike creature with IQ so huge it’s bursting out of it’s ears but yet so stupit that it only attacks 1 person taunting it and just stands there in the corner while a crowd of his friends attack it from behind.

It’s a stupid, stupid outdated mechanic that needs to evolve and i think GW2’s way is the right first step in that direction.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

LFM healer
LFM healer
LFM healer…..

LFM Guardian or Warrior

Yet you do not need those specific classes, people are just stupid and think they are absolutely necessary.

Here’s an alternate take…what GW2 needs is not tanking, but body-blocking.

Think about it…if you could physically block enemies, you could ‘tank’ – and it would take skill rather than some artificial mechanism.

(Also, it would eliminate the silly stacking in dungeons and zergs.)

Naevius.3185:

Here’s an alternate take…what GW2 needs is not tanking, but body-blocking.

Think about it…if you could physically block enemies, you could ‘tank’ – and it would take skill rather than some artificial mechanism.

(Also, it would eliminate the silly stacking in dungeons and zergs.)

The potential for griefing would be insane.

VOLKON.1290:

The potential for griefing would be insane.

Possibly. But this is a game with jumping, teleports… and you could turn it off in towns.

Naevius.3185:

VOLKON.1290:

The potential for griefing would be insane.

Possibly. But this is a game with jumping, teleports… and you could turn it off in towns.

Not just towns. Imagine you’re Garrison is being hit on a WvW borderlands and some people body block the entrance from your own server so you can’t get in. Imagine a line of people blocking access to the Reactor when the Fire Elemental is up. Imagine a few people blocking a jumping puzzle halfway through.

Body blocking worked well in GuildWars, but this is GuildWars 2 and it really wouldn’t work here.