Guild Wars 2

deriver.5381:

SNIP

I never said bring back the trinity. I actually said im enjoying it right now but I havnt had a good enough chance to try it out.

Also with the way the end game post by Arenanet went, they actually say the dungeons are the structured, difficult content while they say the events are just large, epic battles.

Failsociety.4569:

Hopefully they can make the dynamic events harder but id take a larger dungeon size any day of the week right now. Just so my guild and i can have something hard to do together. Again just to clarify I personally did not say the holy trinity is better.

Corian.4068:

Bigperm.7586:

I would much rather see a system in which every class is able to spec over to all 3 roles, whenever the need fits. I really don’t want to knock them for trying something different, but I’m really feeling that leveling a melee to 80 was a waste of time for pve.

Rift tried this. Three of the four archetypes (warrior, rogue, cleric) had a method of tanking, and three of the four archetypes (rogue, cleric, mage) had a method of healing.

The end result is that every single player in the game could either tank or heal, if not both.

You’d still be waiting hours for the healer and tank because only a certain kind of player wants to play those roles.

Imo, Guild Wars 2 has the superior design. Let’s be patient and hope they also give us superior execution moving forward.

A dual spec system could help I think.

I think the difference between why PvP in GW2 works so well and PvE needs some work is things like those dodge roll or get one/two shot mechanics. Other players don’t one or two shot you in PvP. You have a few chances to react appropriately to what they are doing before you die. Bosses (and also trash mob packs) should function in the same way. We can have interesting boss mechanics that allow us to use the current trinity-less class system, they just need to tune the boss encounters appropriately.

The “No Trinity Experiement” isn’t a failure just because some of you are unable to adapt to another style of gameplay.

The game mechanics are fine here….and fun even. If you can step out of the old definitions.

Leveling a melee wasn’t a waste of time, but fighting a boss in melee range is. People will just tell you to go range and no class has a specific melee or range roll, but the truth is melee is horribly bad for any type of pve content except for normal enemies and some faceroll elites. Enjoy getting one shot, or go range. Or be a thief where you can dodge constantly and get an entire 7 seconds of melee time in on the boss (then back to range)

Phy.2913:

A dual spec system could help I think.

Again, Rift was on top of that, with not two, but five different specs that you could load at any time as long as you weren’t in combat.

People just don’t want to play tanks and healers.

Corian.4068:

Phy.2913:

A dual spec system could help I think.

Again, Rift was on top of that, with not two, but five different specs that you could load at any time as long as you weren’t in combat.

People just don’t want to play tanks and healers.

I know, but it helped immensely when rift had it, and when WOW finally implemented it. Spec matters enough that it couldn’t hurt.

Without the Tank & Healer concepts, this game is an action based combat MMO. It just doesn’t work well for an MMO. Everything is too chaotic, and it feels like a game where everything can be zerged. It was good in theory though, but it wasn’t executed as good as it should have been. They threw in traditional mechanics for bosses, when in fact, they needed to re-imagine them with the Action Combat in mind. They can still save the concept of No Tank & No Healer, but trash mobs & boss mechanics, will need to be changed and adapt to this different playstyle.

It’s like trying to fly with half a wing – it might get the job done say in gliding but it’s not the best way to get the job done.

Toughness/Valor builds are in reality half tanks and half healers – not really great and in fact a team doesn’t need either all they need is to dodge and heal themselves.

I find it chaotic and kinda boring honestly. There are no real roles and no real goals…

Hahaha Melee bosses…Good one
Go do AC then tell me there’s just Melee bosses
melee bosses. hahaha

The point of this post was to point out that a melee focused character just isn’t viable with current mechanics. Saying that a warrior should just expect to pve with his rifle, to me defeats the purpose of rolling a plate wearing juggernaut.

The no trinity sytem must be tweaked to where you are not forced to stay ranged for a melee boss encounter. There must be more to a fight than shooting him in the knee if he chases you, and doing a barrel roll if he throws a rock at you.

I understand the argument that it makes more sense for a boss to run after whomever is hurting him the most, but a plate wearing, shield brandishing warrior shouldn’t be expected to run away scared whenever a mob faces his direction. I think too much passive defense has been neglected in belief that heavy armor and toughness will give more benefit than it’s currently able.

*Edited because mobile posting ftl

nexxe.7081:

Without the Tank & Healer concepts, this game is an action based combat MMO. It just doesn’t work well for an MMO. Everything is too chaotic, and it feels like a game where everything can be zerged. It was good in theory though, but it wasn’t executed as good as it should have been. They threw in traditional mechanics for bosses, when in fact, they needed to re-imagine them with the Action Combat in mind. They can still save the concept of No Tank & No Healer, but trash mobs & boss mechanics, will need to be changed and adapt to this different playstyle.

very well said.
its the current mecanics that dont gel too well with the fast paced gameplay.
the game need to help players to organize themselves before a big fight.

They just need to tweak the system and adapt it to the fast paced action combat style of GW2.

Bosses should give a small margin for error and there should be different bosses and mechanics to test melee and ranged alike.

That being said, I don’t think the plate wearing, shielding brandishing juggernaut is something you will ever see here. And I do think its a good idea. Even that said juggernaut should fear a big monster or any very powerful threat. Translating to the GW2 concept, even defensive warriors and guardians should ALWAYS dodge and try to avoid direct damage from big hitting attacks by any means necessary. Always!

The trinity = scripted boring AI that completely kills immersion

Maybe what we have now could use a little tweaking but I for one love the fast paced unpredictable feel of combat in this game. It’s what I would expect if I was in that dungeon for real. Lets keep working at it but this is a huge step forward in progress.

I do find it amusing how uncomfortable it makes people feel. Like they want to know exactly what to expect and feel uncomfortable with unexpected or the possibility that the AI may destroy them. A common theme I hear from people is they want clear “tells” that will signal them to take certain actions like dodge, move etc. Really lol? How boring and scripted can we make combat before you guys don’t feel like you’re even fighting anymore?

Proeliator.8740:

The trinity = scripted boring AI that completely kills immersion

Maybe what we have now could use a little tweaking but I for one love the fast paced unpredictable feel of combat in this game. It’s what I would expect if I was in that dungeon for real. Lets keep working at it but this is a huge step forward in progress.

I do find it amusing how uncomfortable it makes people feel. Like they want to know exactly what to expect and feel uncomfortable with unexpected or the possibility that the AI may destroy them. A common theme I hear from people is they want clear “tells” that will signal them to take certain actions like dodge, move etc. Really lol? How boring and scripted can we make combat before you guys don’t feel like you’re even fighting anymore?

Well the point about tells is a good one, though. You need to allow the player to excel if they are skilled enough and that doesn’t change just because we are playing an action combat MMO. Even in TERA bosses had tells. It was not immediately obvious and you had to do the dungeon a few times in order to learn them properly, but when you did, you could figure out by watching the boss carefully when to dodge or use other skills. That allows the player to perform better if they’re good enough. It’s not that different from PvP – if you watch your opponent carefully you’ll know how to react and counter appropriately. Mobs and bosses in dungeons should be no different.

my guard melees bosses just fine. of course i have a great group backing me to help me if i get downed.

my choice to play a pure melee, but that’s the fun in it.

If you’re a norn fighting a tiny human boss, chances are you’re wishing there were better tells for some abilities.

they deleted my asura post. lame.

anyway, i know what you mean. particle effects not scaling when you’re 4x the height of a target makes for some weirdness

The problem is that a lot of bosses are designed poorly and not to the strength of the game. Colossi bosses are excellent examples of a good boss, even if they are easy. Other good examples are bosses that do not specifically target someone and latch onto them but instead throw hazards around, like bombs or fire, and summon smaller creatures to fight.
The creature archetypes listed underneath are prime examples of good boss material.

- Giants: Undead giants in particular are well balanced. They summon adds with ranged attacks and stomp at nearby melee targets, which can be dodged.
- Abominations/Ettins: Attacks are heavy hitting, slow and televised with a wide range.
- Colossi: They do not target specific players but summon a host of minions and zone hazards, excellent material for final zone/dungeon bosses.
- Worms: Attacks are televised and can be dodged if paying attention. Same goes for range rock throws.
- Mage types with avoidable AoE: The Centaur Shaman in the world event in Hinterlands is an example, ruined only by his silly accurate flame blast which deals massive amounts of damage and is spammed at his prime target.
- Melee types with relatively weak standard attacks: The Orrian Wizard for the Cursed Shore World event does not hit very hard with his standard attack, 2-3k on my Warrior at most which is enough to survive against while your heal is cooling down. His Arcing Strike does a lot of damage but can be clearly noticed and dodged.

There are plenty more examples of good bosses but it seems most of the dungeons and several high level events do not play to these strengths, producing frustrating bosses that require cheesing by ranged spam and graveyard zerging.

Corian.4068:

Again, Rift was on top of that, with not two, but five different specs that you could load at any time as long as you weren’t in combat.

People just don’t want to play tanks and healers.

“In PvP” are the keywords.

There are plenty of tanks and healers willing to raid and I never had to “wait hours” like some of you exaggerate.

Personally, I prefer the “trinity”, you don’t have to worry about having the roles you need AND the quality of the players involved at the same time.

With GW2, you have to worry about people bringing sufficient copies of snares, condition removals or situational skills like projectile reflection, AND you have to worry about players being good enough to handle the actual combat mechanics.

Of course, the fanbois and gals will start blindly rushing in to lambaste me for those statements, ignoring the fact that I don’t hate GW2’s combat/role system, it’s just that I merely prefer the trinity.

Just a thing of note. It’s called Guild Wars because the game is made to be played in a semi coordinated fashion. That’s why guilds always dominated PvP in GW1 as opposed to pickup groups.

From my experience from going 1 to 80 and not really knowing anything about Guild Wars 2, this is what I got from most of the mechanics:

• You may play however you’d like, as there’s no real “role” other than pure damage or utility (healing is included in this, as it is too weak to be considered a role).

• Because everyone can provide utility in some way, you are expected to be able to cope with a wide variety of mechanics. One-Spec-Wonders will not survive long.

• Just because you can go pure damage does not mean you should. A lot of situations call for specific things that you, or almost anyone else can do. Don’t be greedy.

• Crowd Control is your friend, and as stated above, everyone has them. Everyone. Use them. They are a main form of damage mitigation. your healing spells are meant to be a support net.

• Death is part of the learning process, something that most people don’t get. Especially in dungeons.

I don’t understand points people are making about getting hit/aggro flying all over the place. Tank and spank (in my opinion) is a boring, dull mechanic. Without this, you are required to be both a team player and self-responsible.

I love the healing role, but I’m happy that it’s not in Guild Wars 2. I find combat to be fun and interesting. I fully support refinements to the combat mechanics (as I’m sure there will be), but do not feel they are as terrible as most are making them out to be. As others have mentioned, I hope they do widen the margin for error for a few things.

One thing that I have found nice, though, is the fact that ranged players are not safer than melee. Both carry responsibility to avoid damage when able.

For me, not liking aggro just randomly flying around is it makes combat seem like more of a chaotic mess than a well executed encounter conquered by the coordinated effort by you and your team.

I don’t mind a range spec’d class being expected to kite things, I do have an issue with encounter design expecting melee to have to also carry a ranged weapon instead of being able to carry melee support/control weapons.

I also don’t care much for people trolling my thread with nonsense like “go back to wow”. The reason this forum exists is for discussion on matters like this one. From this post on, if people can’t stop posting in this thread with a rude or hateful attitude, they’re being reported.

Pikafan.3792:

“In PvP” are the keywords.

There are plenty of tanks and healers willing to raid and I never had to “wait hours” like some of you exaggerate.

Personally, I prefer the “trinity”, you don’t have to worry about having the roles you need AND the quality of the players involved at the same time.

With GW2, you have to worry about people bringing sufficient copies of snares, condition removals or situational skills like projectile reflection, AND you have to worry about players being good enough to handle the actual combat mechanics.

Of course, the fanbois and gals will start blindly rushing in to lambaste me for those statements, ignoring the fact that I don’t hate GW2’s combat/role system, it’s just that I merely prefer the trinity.

Waiting depends on a number of factors such as the particular goal you’re working towards and the server population and the time of day. That’s annoying, but I wanted to address the next part because I think it’s interesting.

You said you prefer the trinity, then go on to state that because players are held so accountable in GW2 it’s hard to get a good group.

While I agree, I think this is an advantage for GW2. Player skill isn’t masked by effective specs and spamming single keys in this game, at least not to the point that it is in a more WoW-styled MMO.

In the long run, this is a good thing because it forces players to be better and more focused, instead of glancing over at the screen every couple of seconds while watching TV. This improves everyone’s experience of playing the game in an ideal world, because all players are fully involved in the combat, and fully dependent on themselves and each others’ skills to make it through.

Granted this isn’t an ideal world, and rather than pushing players to get better we may begin to see the compromises that every other MMO developer eventually caves to. I hope not. I hope, for once, that the players rise to the occasion on this.

I hope, with the closure of City of Heroes, that NCSoft sends some of the staff Arenanet’s way. That game had a great role design. In its later years, groups never stalled for need of a healer or tank. Sure, people would try to balance them out a bit if they had multiple alts to bring to a group, but, for the most part, they played what they enjoyed, and there were many ways you could make yourself useful to a party.

An Empathy/Sonic healer could play party frame whack a mole, sure, but they’d be playing badly. Playing right, they could increase the team’s total damage output as much as any DD, likely more, definitely more if they were Kinetics.

Likewise, a tank who simply held aggro while waiting for everyone else to kill things is a bad tank. Their arsenal included much more.

nexxe.7081:

Without the Tank & Healer concepts, this game is an action based combat MMO. It just doesn’t work well for an MMO. Everything is too chaotic, and it feels like a game where everything can be zerged. It was good in theory though, but it wasn’t executed as good as it should have been. They threw in traditional mechanics for bosses, when in fact, they needed to re-imagine them with the Action Combat in mind. They can still save the concept of No Tank & No Healer, but trash mobs & boss mechanics, will need to be changed and adapt to this different playstyle.

This right here i think is the true crux of the issue, is the dungeons are based on the old design. Once dungeons are built with this new idea in mind i think will have something.

The most unenjoyable thing of dungeons is its not mechanics its just mobs with large health pools that hit like trucks with smaller trucks inside those trucks. They dont do anything special that require you to change what your doing in short they have no mechanics behind basic moves that hit hard.

Its not just the removal of the much maligned holy trinity its the total removal of the strategic element. I knew this would happen when they announced they were getting rid of classes as roles. Certainly makes for bland gameplay when no one can specialize or we can’t even organize a battle whatsoever. Geez everything has units and specialized roles, anything with any kind of strategic depth to it at all.

Football, has line backers who hold the line, with running backs, and fast recievers, then you have the tightend who can block or run out for a pass. You have the quarterback, kickers, special teams….and a ton of plays. Without all of this football would flat out suck to watch.

Anet just removed most all of that from their MMO. I mean really? Why would you? Makes no sense.

You can melee bosses just fine – and don’t need to kite or ‘get out’ all the time. But you do need mobility – just smart mobility. And you need to not tank the boss, but melee the boss.

Its working just fine – you just don’t play it like you would WoW or EQ. Play it like you would City of Heroes. Or if you’ve ever had the misfortune of being in a RL shootout or gang fight or military engagement – its a bit like that.

It is VERY strategic and tactical, but not WoW or EQ.

Kichwas.7152:

You can melee bosses just fine – and don’t need to kite or ‘get out’ all the time. But you do need mobility – just smart mobility. And you need to not tank the boss, but melee the boss.

Its working just fine – you just don’t play it like you would WoW or EQ. Play it like you would City of Heroes.

A softcapped Brute in CoH would run up and punch bosses in the face. Try that against a good many encounters here, and you end up like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aW9-wv6gGg

Go and play WoW !!

This game is awesome, no holy trinity just adds to that. I am a thief, and I don’t have issues meleeing the bosses in dungeons , so either you learn to play or just quit.

I am truly sick of players whining about everything that don’t make them feel better than others in this game.

It is different – the whole game. Either enjoy it and let it drown you, or just go and play some static , boring mmo.

I suggest you stay

There still is a trinity in GW2 it’s just not the same trinity as most of us know it. Control, Support & Damage are very similer to Tank, Heal & Damage. Everyone is capable of doing all three roles, some better than others. In an early post somebody mentioned a group if 5 Warriors, that is quite possible. A warrior can range, heal, support, melee and control with their skillset. Healing through shouts, supporting through banners, controlling, range and melee through weapon sets.

i said it at launch and i’ll say it again…melee is not an option in current game for any serious content. Reason being that are to many mobs have massive aoe insta kills…and going to further reinterate what i have been saying as well. Instant kill mechanics are terrible idea… its one thing has me not logging in lately i really hate idea i miss a dodge and now corpse running or, i miss time a dodge and now have to rally back up… its worse for melee then any other class….

they seriously need to make all melee weapons boost defnese by a huge amount or make dodging more viable, as in can dodge 2-3x’s more then you can now because as it stands i can not imagine going melee with any class against any serious boss and not getting splatted every 3 seconds.

Thats where your wrong.
you are NOT instantly dead, but you are downed. BIG difference.
you are also provided visual queue that tell you when that attack is comming so you can dodge out of the way taking no damage or use a block skill ( again 0 damage).

There are PLENTY of options for mitigating/avoiding the damage.
Learn to use them.

Some more consistency from oneshot aoe’s wouldn’t hurt. The giants stomp attack doesn’t have a range indication, and the fire elemental’s aoe is slightly larger than the indicated zone.

Its no the no trinity thats the issue, it’s the crappy boss mechanics they have.

Honestly they need to copy CoH dungeon and mob design if they want to roll without a trinity and bring any player/build. Every mob wasn’t an inflated sack of HP, so blasters still could for the most part survive by killing before getting killed, melee was tanky enough to hold their own and not get one shotted buy hyper strong trash mobs, and boss fights worked well. I honestly thought based on many of the design choices and NCSoft’s involvement that they were borrowing ideas from CoH already, but they didn’t go far enough. Still, that game pulled off scaled dungeons and bring anyone you want very well.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s nostalgic for CoH when people on this forum are loudly drinking the “no trinity” Kool-Aid.

the reason wow has lived for so long is because trinity works, and this system does not, in a dungeon, at all. Bring 5 thiefs or 5 mesmers and see what happens.

As someone who has completed dungeons with all one class, I beg to differ Ironangel.

the problem with the “no trinity” ideal is that even in group, we’re all just soloing. The mass amount of little bits of support skills are the only thing that glues the group together; and frankly, you don’t need to be in group for that.

the good groups are the groups with competent soloers, not necessarily that they can play well together. There is no group role, no specific role or need any class fullfills. You are just a slot filled and frankly, apart from someoen ressing you from a downed state, you’re pretty much on your own.

I’m a melee player but I find my guardian using a sceptre FAR more than I really like (80% of the time). I don’t like range fighting, though in this game I do it. I like melee and I like absorbing damage. In this game, there is no such thing. Everyone is essentially soloing in group and mostly at range. you melee only when things are off cooldown for those short few seconds, then go back out and range for the remainder. And frankly, I find circle strafing to be just as dizzyingly simple as “pressing a few buttons” to control aggro.

i can see how some people would like that but let’s be honest, why even have classes and why even call it a guardian when frankly, everyone is a ranger anyway.

surely it would be more effective to just have one base toon for everyone and build from that via ability points. The classes so far as i have played really aren’t that different in the end.

Stop it with the “trinity” allready! I see so many people obvioulsy thinking that this concept was created by the big bang and is ingrained into the very texture of the universe. It is a game concept that has been around and copied for some time now, but imagine if there never had an EQ, WoW or whatever. Would you guys really think, hmm, this game is missing something, and come up with the trinity concept? It is a new game with its own design.

Do you start Super Mario World going “man, that Italian dude sure is squishy, his brother should change his abilities so he really can soak up some hits and shield Mario”? If you just cannot give up the trinity concept in your playstyle, then rejoice that there are a million games out there that are all exactly doing the same thing and play them. And for consistency´s sake, never ever touch any other type of game, no beat-em-up, no sports game, no jumper, no fps, because they are all deviating from the obviously gifted from heaven trinity concept.

Speaking of it, please complain to ALL game developers regardless of game type that their products miss a trinity concept. We are all looking forward to Resident Evil Trinity and Need for Speed Trinity. Do you guys understand that MMORPG does not mean everything has to be same?

The sooner we start asking ourselves “What did i do wrong to get myself killed” instead of opening up pointless posts, the better.