Guild Wars 2

I’m kinda curious why gw1 worked so much better. We had a healer, warriors could tank very well. Paragon had amazing support. Other classes had great dps/support.

Some people would call that the holy trinity.

Truth though is in gw1 never once did I run into a party while doing a mission or pvp were monk or tank was required. That’s what made it different from other games. The was no “you must have one tank, 1 healer, 2 dps to run this” requirements.

Many people say the holy trinity shouldn’t be in this game and I do 10000% agree with that. BUT gw1 didn’t have one either while making the standard tank/healer/dps system. It just wasn’t noticed as strongly because it was never required to have them all in a party.

Why was gw2 not designed with this same method? A game were basically if your not going full out dps your not very helpful. They stated they wanted it to be kinda like gw1 in the aspects were everyone could do everything but they actually went the opposite direction and made it worse then a regular trinity system because everyone needs full zerker and dps.

Thoughts?

GW1 didn’t have a Trinity requirement? You couldn’t find a Mission group in Prophecies without a tank and a healer(even the 4-man Missions). Granted once Nightfall introduced Heroes, you could bring a descent Healer or Tank Hero and get through a mission, but you still had a tank and a healer in the group.

Sylent:

You don’t NEED full dps beserker gear to do ANY of the content. Thats the difference. You can successfully complete all content with full Nomads or Clerics if you wanted to. The “zerker” requirement is established by players, and players only. Its faster yes, but not a requirement at all. Don’t want to use it? Dont join a zerger only speed run. Its that simple. The content is designed to be able to do it without having being forced to have certian roles. That’s what a trinity system is. You need to have X,Y and Z or you WILL fail. However even with a full DPS group in gw2, there are VERY few events that will fail if you don’t have enough DPS and dungeons aren’t one of them.

Galphar.3901:

GW1 didn’t have a Trinity requirement? You couldn’t find a Mission group in Prophecies without a tank and a healer(even the 4-man Missions). Granted once Nightfall introduced Heroes, you could bring a descent Healer or Tank Hero and get through a mission, but you still had a tank and a healer in the group.

Right, but you could still very easily complete things without a tank or a healer. But it was nice to have options

With small groups (max 12, mostly 4-8), GW had body blocking. MMO’s in general do not seem to have collision. To this day I still move into melee and expect advancing mobs to stop when they get to me, not run right through me. Collision allowed all sorts of tactical play, including body-block tanking.

The AI in GW was smarter in some respects and dumber in others. Some would kite, or move out of AoE, but others just continue to shoot projectile attacks at targets behind hard cover. The AI also presented players with tactical options.

GW no more had taunts than does GW2. It was possible to manipulate the AI to attack the target of the the party’s choice, but not everyone did this. Healing, though, or at least protection, was used an awful lot. Sure, you could put together a group of solo builds in certain instances if you wanted to, but it was usually more efficient to go with a monk/rit/necro or two.

As nostalgic as remembering that game’s play makes me, it was a far cry from the tank/heal/dps I saw in other MMO’s, like the big one. Tactics in trinity MMO’s boil down to: the tank holds aggro, the dps run through their rotations, and the healer keeps the tank up and helps the DPS if they oops. That gets leavened with various amounts of specialized mechanics which involve single players, sub-groups or even the whole group doing everything from kiting/killing adds to elaborate positioning dances.

GW, on the other hand, featured many situations where bringing a single skill spelled the difference between success and failure. Notably, there were bosses where failure to interrupt a specific attack meant almost certain failure. Judicious use of KD, application of Aegis, and many other skills made an enormous difference in fights. You might find that two groups did the same content in vastly different ways.

That brings us to GW2. The pieces are there to have a similar type of play as was common in GW, in the utility skills, weapon skills and choices. There are fewer choices, to be sure. However, timely use of specific abilities, like Aegis, Reflection, Cleansing, Might and Fury, etc. all make significant differences in group success.

Still, when I compare GW to GW2, it feels like GW2 lacks something. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t lack of trinity. I’ve played games with both hard and soft trinity, and I found all of them lacking in comparison to GW as well.

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are two completely different genres of games. You couldn’t shove a trinity system in the latter because the game is designed around allowing anyone to play both alone and with anyone else.

In the original Guild Wars, you can’t play alone. The game is built around always having a party at your side. If it’s not players, it’s henchmen. Running around without a healer is asking for punishment, and without a tank to get in the way, mobs will take out the healers first.

In Guild Wars 2, you’re rewarded for dealing damage only. You can specialize your character to become a pure healer, or a pure tank, and you can be very efficient at it, but in a group, you will get no loot whatsoever. Furthermore, trying to do some exploring on your own without being able to deal a descent amount of damage is going to get tedious, and fast.

And no, going “full out DPS” is not very helpful. Most people don’t understand that you need to be able to survive, and the “zerker meta” is far from ideal in most cases. After all, you don’t deal any damage when you’re dead.

pdavis.8031:

Sylent:

You don’t NEED full dps beserker gear to do ANY of the content. Thats the difference. You can successfully complete all content with full Nomads or Clerics if you wanted to. The “zerker” requirement is established by players, and players only. Its faster yes, but not a requirement at all. Don’t want to use it? Dont join a zerger only speed run. Its that simple. The content is designed to be able to do it without having being forced to have certian roles. That’s what a trinity system is. You need to have X,Y and Z or you WILL fail. However even with a full DPS group in gw2, there are VERY few events that will fail if you don’t have enough DPS and dungeons aren’t one of them.

What this guy said is absolutely correct.

Nice post pdavis.

Purple Miku.7032:

pdavis.8031:

Sylent:

You don’t NEED full dps beserker gear to do ANY of the content. Thats the difference. You can successfully complete all content with full Nomads or Clerics if you wanted to. The “zerker” requirement is established by players, and players only. Its faster yes, but not a requirement at all. Don’t want to use it? Dont join a zerger only speed run. Its that simple. The content is designed to be able to do it without having being forced to have certian roles. That’s what a trinity system is. You need to have X,Y and Z or you WILL fail. However even with a full DPS group in gw2, there are VERY few events that will fail if you don’t have enough DPS and dungeons aren’t one of them.

What this guy said is absolutely correct.

Nice post pdavis.

High praise!!

Although we don’t always agree on things, I do respect your opinions on certain matters.

Rangelost.4857:

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are two completely different genres of games. You couldn’t shove a trinity system in the latter because the game is designed around allowing anyone to play both alone and with anyone else.

In the original Guild Wars, you can’t play alone. The game is built around always having a party at your side. If it’s not players, it’s henchmen. Running around without a healer is asking for punishment, and without a tank to get in the way, mobs will take out the healers first.

In Guild Wars 2, you’re rewarded for dealing damage only. You can specialize your character to become a pure healer, or a pure tank, and you can be very efficient at it, but in a group, you will get no loot whatsoever. Furthermore, trying to do some exploring on your own without being able to deal a descent amount of damage is going to get tedious, and fast.

And no, going “full out DPS” is not very helpful. Most people don’t understand that you need to be able to survive, and the “zerker meta” is far from ideal in most cases. After all, you don’t deal any damage when you’re dead.

Your sentiments might be valid if this was the first few weeks of release. I’m sure when people were discovering dungeons s for the first time they went with all sorts of set ups. After 2 years, full zerk dps is the best option because the game relies almost exclusively on active defense to stay alive and when you know the boss or the party knows and explain to you when to dodge/block/blind what use have you of stats like healing/vitality/toughness.

If you cannot survive in the zerk meta, it’s a simple situation of Learn 2 Play. Also even when you are zerk you can add a kitten ton of survivability by simply switching a few traits while you L2P.

Also, if you want to play a healer might I suggest engie or ele. Even in full zerk you can provide excellent healing Burts to teammates if you see they are about to down.

For tank, you can go with guardian or mesmer as they both provide excellent defense e utility in the forms of reflects and condition removal.

For dps, you can go warrior/ranger to provide things like banners, frost spirit, spotter…etc.

There’s your trinity, you have classes that use defensive/healing/offensive utilities while still putting out damage. The trinity hasn’t died but simply evolved.

Damage, control and support. Trinity right here.

Vert.5041:

Rangelost.4857:

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are two completely different genres of games. You couldn’t shove a trinity system in the latter because the game is designed around allowing anyone to play both alone and with anyone else.

In the original Guild Wars, you can’t play alone. The game is built around always having a party at your side. If it’s not players, it’s henchmen. Running around without a healer is asking for punishment, and without a tank to get in the way, mobs will take out the healers first.

In Guild Wars 2, you’re rewarded for dealing damage only. You can specialize your character to become a pure healer, or a pure tank, and you can be very efficient at it, but in a group, you will get no loot whatsoever. Furthermore, trying to do some exploring on your own without being able to deal a descent amount of damage is going to get tedious, and fast.

And no, going “full out DPS” is not very helpful. Most people don’t understand that you need to be able to survive, and the “zerker meta” is far from ideal in most cases. After all, you don’t deal any damage when you’re dead.

Your sentiments might be valid if this was the first few weeks of release. I’m sure when people were discovering dungeons s for the first time they went with all sorts of set ups. After 2 years, full zerk dps is the best option because the game relies almost exclusively on active defense to stay alive and when you know the boss or the party knows and explain to you when to dodge/block/blind what use have you of stats like healing/vitality/toughness.

If you cannot survive in the zerk meta, it’s a simple situation of Learn 2 Play. Also even when you are zerk you can add a kitten ton of survivability by simply switching a few traits while you L2P.

Also, if you want to play a healer might I suggest engie or ele. Even in full zerk you can provide excellent healing Burts to teammates if you see they are about to down.

For tank, you can go with guardian or mesmer as they both provide excellent defense e utility in the forms of reflects and condition removal.

For dps, you can go warrior/ranger to provide things like banners, frost spirit, spotter…etc.

There’s your trinity, you have classes that use defensive/healing/offensive utilities while still putting out damage. The trinity hasn’t died but simply evolved.

I like most of this post, but the end kind of ignores the problem that all this presents: other stats are kind of useless. You said it yourself, if you can’t do it in zerker gear, it’s a l2p problem, and not even very kittene at that. and once you’ve got it down, zerker stats are the way to go. I just think it’s kind of sad that we have all these other stats and they end up being almost completely useless once you know what you’re doing. Why does nobody have a problem with that?

Vert.5041:

After 2 years, full zerk dps is the best option because the game relies almost exclusively on active defense to stay alive and when you know the boss or the party knows and explain to you when to dodge/block/blind what use have you of stats like healing/vitality/toughness.

If you cannot survive in the zerk meta, it’s a simple situation of Learn 2 Play.

On a technical level, this could be true because of how useless condition damage is in PvE. On a realistic level however, after almost 3 years, I’ve yet to find a group in which no one ever makes a deadly mistake.

I understand that a lot of people are all about making the game as much of a chore as possible, but there’s still people out there who play to have fun — who don’t skip all the trash mobs because they want the experience points, or who don’t want to only play the most optimized direct damage build.

I’m just speaking from experience when I say that berserker isn’t very helpful. Every time I joined a “zerker only” group, I ended up having to switch to my cleric to keep the group alive. You can argue that they sucked, but if you ask me, this whole “meta” mentality is far worse.

I think it is your opinion.

i have always wondered why GW2 combat is so much better. Because we dont require tank and healer that makes the combat flow more like action game.

its my opinion anyway, my opinion don’t make it a truth, so is yours OP.

In my opinion, elements of trinity (read: not full trinity) make an MMO much better and more fulfilling to play.

Having the option to fulfill a certain role in some team-based content appeals greatly to me – it’s that sense of “I’m an important part of this challenge – I need to perform this role well”. I don’t feel that there is currently quite enough of that in GW2 because of the lack of disparity between professions, and the lack of challenging content that requires more players to focus on supporting roles for example.

This new HoT update, I am hoping, will add some disparity with the new profession specialisations. I do not think Anet are leaning towards trinity with this expansion, however I do believe they want to create more viable build options for each profession. Anet have also said that there will be more challenging PvE content with this expansion, which might suggest that they are going to tie in profession specialisation abilities with new tactics for tackling this content – i.e. a greater sense of playing a role. But that’s just speculation.

The combat and profession build system in GW2 is excellent. The fact that you can swap around traits, equipment and utilities so easily means you can play any style you want to play. I think this excellence would be made more excellent given a little more sense of “playing-a-role” for each build.

This thread has gone in two directions again:
1) PHIW being excluded from zerk only groups – they are not good enough, cannot use active defenses (can’t recognise and don’t want to that zerker groups use these) , don’t want to trait up in an optimal way (weapons,food,utils,traits) don’t understand there professions full potential and will protest until they are blue in the face.
OR
Just want to have good runs and be carried by others (eg zerkers)- and can’t be asked to form a PHIW group running what the hell you want and will protest until they are blue in the face.
OR
Don’t want to be told what to run and don’t want to learn from others – and will protest until they are blue in the face.
2) I cannot understand GW2 trinity (damage,support and control)- which all professions can do and want the (heal,DPS and tank)- cause that is all I understand from years of playing other MMOs. They will protest that GW2 is all wrong and needs to be changed until they are blue in the face.
If you fit any of the above- I hear that the smurfs 3 are looking for more actors.

As you’re blue in the face already you could land the star role !

Smurfs 3 – Release date Aug 2016 !

Please merge this thread with:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bring-Back-Holy-Trinity/page/3#post4738998

Wait what?

I had to do a double take. I thought this was the other thread on the exact same topic (with title change) IN THE FIRST PAGE.

As poster above me said: pls merge.

Sylent.3165:

Truth though is in gw1 never once did I run into a party while doing a mission or pvp were monk or tank was required. That’s what made it different from other games. The was no “you must have one tank, 1 healer, 2 dps to run this” requirements.

You haven’t done any real PVP in GW1 right? And I mean real PVP, like GvG not just Random Arena. But even in RA, a single Healer on one team would give an obvious advantage to their team (99.9% chance of winning against a team that didn’t have a Healer)

Same with Missions and Hard Mode Elite Instances. There was no way to do any of those without a healer of sorts. For your information, N/Mo and N/Rt were actually healers, so even though Monks weren’t required, remember they weren’t the only Healers in GW1.

As for tanks yes, they weren’t needed in GW1 because there was no aggro management in that game (thank god)

It’s extremely situational and as such, rather hard to pin down the exact percentage, but the chances of winning vs a no-mo team are somewhere between 80 and 90%, depending on the skill level and setup of your enemy team as well as your own.

On topic, GW has a soft trinity where the roles aren’t set in stone, and where a single character often needs to perform various different styles of play***, but a player cannot be completely self-sufficient because the game is build on the concept of team-play.
However that shouldn’t stop you from rolling a solo build and just have fun roaming about in pve for a while. I really love(d) making specially designed farm builds to farm specific bosses as a 55hp/600hp mo tank, for instance.

There two issues GW2 has in my eyes. The game removed the strict and rigid trinity where roles are bound to certain classes. But in many encounters any roles were extinguished at the same time except of one: kill the target as quickly as possible. There are some fights were players (not classes) have to fulfill certain roles or tasks like luring the Boss to a certain location or transport charged crystals to certain locations. The devs need to design more roles and tasks for the encounters especially if they want to introduce GW2-raids with a high variety of mechanics.

Each class in GW2 can fulfill each role. A new subset of roles was defined: Damage; Control and Support. If we analyse the encounters in the game we see that all of them are dominated by damage. We need encounters that are predominated by control or support with only a minor role for damage. The absence of a trinity opens up so many new possibilities to design encounters – much more than a trinity system could ever provide. But the developers do not use the possibilities so far. I hope that they have found their courage with HoT.

Belenwyn.8674:

Each class in GW2 can fulfill each role. A new subset of roles was defined: Damage; Control and Support. If we analyse the encounters in the game we see that all of them are dominated by damage.

Really? Dominated by damage? Then I guess the simple fact that good parties have:

~25 Stacks of Vulnerability, there are builds who can do this on their own, or the party can focus on going this route.
~25 Stacks of Might, same as the above, there are builds who can reach this on their own, but it’s better sometimes to have multiple party members to do it
~perma Fury, this is harder to achieve with one person, but a couple of players can keep it up forever
~Blinds, useful in some encounters, having blind fields is important
~Stealth, useful to save team mates and for runs
~Fire Fields, to stack might mostly
~Water Fields, for AoE healing and condi cleanse
~Blast finishers, to blast those fields for a variety of abilities
~Poison Fields, Whirl / Blast finishers turn these into AoE Weakness, very useful to lower the damage pressure on the party
~Aegis, Stability, Protection, useful boons for any party
~AoE Condi cleanse, important to remove conditions from party members during a run
~Projectile Reflection, self explanatory

is all about Damage right? No support mentioned up there at all, just mindless DPS rotations like in DPS roles in other MMORPGs.

maddoctor.2738:

Belenwyn.8674:

Each class in GW2 can fulfill each role. A new subset of roles was defined: Damage; Control and Support. If we analyse the encounters in the game we see that all of them are dominated by damage.

Really? Dominated by damage? Then I guess the simple fact that good parties have:

~25 Stacks of Vulnerability, there are builds who can do this on their own, or the party can focus on going this route.
~25 Stacks of Might, same as the above, there are builds who can reach this on their own, but it’s better sometimes to have multiple party members to do it
~perma Fury, this is harder to achieve with one person, but a couple of players can keep it up forever
~Blinds, useful in some encounters, having blind fields is important
~Stealth, useful to save team mates and for runs
~Fire Fields, to stack might mostly
~Water Fields, for AoE healing and condi cleanse
~Blast finishers, to blast those fields for a variety of abilities
~Poison Fields, Whirl / Blast finishers turn these into AoE Weakness, very useful to lower the damage pressure on the party
~Aegis, Stability, Protection, useful boons for any party
~AoE Condi cleanse, important to remove conditions from party members during a run
~Projectile Reflection, self explanatory

is all about Damage right? No support mentioned up there at all, just mindless DPS rotations like in DPS roles in other MMORPGs.

Stacking might and vulnerability is done to increase damage. It is all about damage since the goal is all about damage: kill the target. In such a scenario the role “Damage” will play the dominant role. All the support and control you have listed are there to maintain the damage on a high level.

Let us make a gedankenexperiment (English has stolen the German word, lol). Let us replace the goal “Kill the target” by “Heal the target from 1 to 100%”. The dominant role would be support. How would this influence your build (skills/Traits/weapon type)? Would it be influenced at all? Would you modify your gear? Or would you stick to berserker?

Belenwyn.8674:

maddoctor.2738:

Belenwyn.8674:

Each class in GW2 can fulfill each role. A new subset of roles was defined: Damage; Control and Support. If we analyse the encounters in the game we see that all of them are dominated by damage.

Really? Dominated by damage? Then I guess the simple fact that good parties have:

~25 Stacks of Vulnerability, there are builds who can do this on their own, or the party can focus on going this route.
~25 Stacks of Might, same as the above, there are builds who can reach this on their own, but it’s better sometimes to have multiple party members to do it
~perma Fury, this is harder to achieve with one person, but a couple of players can keep it up forever
~Blinds, useful in some encounters, having blind fields is important
~Stealth, useful to save team mates and for runs
~Fire Fields, to stack might mostly
~Water Fields, for AoE healing and condi cleanse
~Blast finishers, to blast those fields for a variety of abilities
~Poison Fields, Whirl / Blast finishers turn these into AoE Weakness, very useful to lower the damage pressure on the party
~Aegis, Stability, Protection, useful boons for any party
~AoE Condi cleanse, important to remove conditions from party members during a run
~Projectile Reflection, self explanatory

is all about Damage right? No support mentioned up there at all, just mindless DPS rotations like in DPS roles in other MMORPGs.

Stacking might and vulnerability is done to increase damage. It is all about damage since the goal is all about damage: kill the target. In such a scenario the role “Damage” will play the dominant role. All the support and control you have listed are there to maintain the damage on a high level.

Then we have a clear problem with what Support means. To you Support is only Healing, to me it’s anything that boosts characters beyond raw DPS. You only stayed on the 2 first points I posted ignoring the rest, I guess blinds, reflects, weakness are also Damage by your standards because you are not watching red bars moving to the right. The goal is to defeat your enemies, while providing enough survivability to your group to survive (that’s Support). A group without Support is weak, even if they are full DPS, the possibility of wipe skyrockets, their DPS won’t be optimal without buffs either, so in this game Support is the dominant role and not DPS.

By your definition it’s not, but I don’t understand why you equate Support only with Healing….

Let us make a gedankenexperiment (English has stolen the German word, lol). Let us replace the goal “Kill the target” by “Heal the target from 1 to 100%”. The dominant role would be support. How would this influence your build (skills/Traits/weapon type)? Would it be influenced at all? Would you modify your gear? Or would you stick to berserker?

And once again, what’s the point of playing the red bar game?

maddoctor.2738:

Then we have a clear problem with what Support means. To you Support is only Healing, to me it’s anything that boosts characters beyond raw DPS. You only stayed on the 2 first points I posted ignoring the rest, I guess blinds, reflects, weakness are also Damage by your standards because you are not watching red bars moving to the right. The goal is to defeat your enemies, while providing enough survivability to your group to survive (that’s Support). A group without Support is weak, even if they are full DPS, the possibility of wipe skyrockets, their DPS won’t be optimal without buffs either, so in this game Support is the dominant role and not DPS.

By your definition it’s not, but I don’t understand why you equate Support only with Healing….

Let us make a gedankenexperiment (English has stolen the German word, lol). Let us replace the goal “Kill the target” by “Heal the target from 1 to 100%”. The dominant role would be support. How would this influence your build (skills/Traits/weapon type)? Would it be influenced at all? Would you modify your gear? Or would you stick to berserker?

And once again, what’s the point of playing the red bar game?

We are playing a read bar game all the time. If we fill it or empty it, it doesn’t matter.

For me support is not only healing. I used this aspect only for the gedankenexperiment you dodged. Support can contain much more like boons or condition remove. Even damage can be very supportive.

If support as you stated would play the dominant role then people would maximise it to the highest level possible. You would maximise the boon duration, the available boons via weapons, skills and runes/sigils. Support plays is some encounters (too less in my eyes) an important role but never the dominant one.

An encounter with dominant support would encourage other builds. Damage would be useful only to a certain degree – enough to maintain the support. Everything higher than this would be better invested to support like an additional utility for condition remove or a weapon providing more/longer boons.

No OP. Just No.

If you remember GW1 you also remember than when assassin become the best tank in the game warriors weren’t even wanted in groups anymore.

A trinity system means the class that does the role the best gets the job and the rest of them get nothing.

Belenwyn.8674:

We are playing a read bar game all the time. If we fill it or empty it, it doesn’t matter.

It DOES matter. And that’s by design, there is reason we don’t have targeted heals / buffs in the game. So nobody ends up standing still raising red bars instead of focusing on the enemy. Applying Support and Control through action on the enemy and good positioning.

For me support is not only healing. I used this aspect only for the gedankenexperiment you dodged. Support can contain much more like boons or condition remove. Even damage can be very supportive.

If support as you stated would play the dominant role then people would maximise it to the highest level possible. You would maximise the boon duration, the available boons via weapons, skills and runes/sigils. Support plays is some encounters (too less in my eyes) an important role but never the dominant one.

Actually Support plays the most important role in encounters. Players who follow the “meta” and the actually good builds are indeed maximizing boons via weapons / skills and runes / sigils. Check the list again for some of the options.

You don’t need to maximize boon duration and healing power to provide support, you are messing two separate things, gear stats and actual builds.

Your build is NOT your gear, gear plays a far lesser role in the game than in other games, you can Support Control and Damage using Berserker gear just fine, that’s not a problem with Support, Control or builds in general, that’s a problem with specific attributes. And the problem with those attributes is that they make the game way too easy, but it also makes runs take longer. Gear stats make the difference between fast and hard or slow and easy.

Gear stats =! Build. Having a build that provides good support is actually crucial in this game. There is no issue with Support, maybe you haven’t been in good parties and that’s why you haven’t felt the difference support makes. Support gear stats is another issue altogether and has nearly nothing to do with the trinity.

An encounter with dominant support would encourage other builds. Damage would be useful only to a certain degree – enough to maintain the support. Everything higher than this would be better invested to support like an additional utility for condition remove or a weapon providing more/longer boons.

Yet that’s exactly what is happening, condition removals and better boon stacking is always important in runs. There are even builds like Phalanx Warrior who trade quite a bit of their personal DPS to provide more boons to the party, for an overall better and smoother run.

Sylent.3165:

I’m kinda curious why gw1 worked so much better. We had a healer, warriors could tank very well. Paragon had amazing support. Other classes had great dps/support.

Some people would call that the holy trinity.

Truth though is in gw1 never once did I run into a party while doing a mission or pvp were monk or tank was required. That’s what made it different from other games. The was no “you must have one tank, 1 healer, 2 dps to run this” requirements.

Many people say the holy trinity shouldn’t be in this game and I do 10000% agree with that. BUT gw1 didn’t have one either while making the standard tank/healer/dps system. It just wasn’t noticed as strongly because it was never required to have them all in a party.

Why was gw2 not designed with this same method? A game were basically if your not going full out dps your not very helpful. They stated they wanted it to be kinda like gw1 in the aspects were everyone could do everything but they actually went the opposite direction and made it worse then a regular trinity system because everyone needs full zerker and dps.

Thoughts?

Gw2 is a great game but its 2 main problems are the lack of trinity and no real gear progression.

Some people will try to repeat the lie that we have “cc” dps and support but the reallity is that cc is reduced to icebow #4 and support most of the time is offensive support. Games with tank and dps also had cc and support….

The first step would be create a aggro generating mechanic that is control by the player. Could be a sigil or rune set that increases aggro, maybe a trait or signet. With no aggro there is no tank.

xDudisx.5914:

Gw2 is a great game but its 2 main problems are the lack of trinity and no real gear progression.

Some people will try to repeat the lie that we have “cc” dps and support but the reallity is that cc is reduced to icebow #4 and support most of the time is offensive support. Games with tank and dps also had cc and support….

The first step would be create a aggro generating mechanic that is control by the player. Could be a sigil or rune set that increases aggro, maybe a trait or signet. With no aggro there is no tank.

OR maybe its just another type of game. There is different type of shooter, well now there is different kind of mmo. Its a type of mmo that some ppl love, there is plenty of Trinity mmo out there, stop trying to change this game, its a DIFFERENT GAME"

2015, ppl still “don’t get it”.
At this point in time there nothing more to be said other than, “Go back to <many other games with this option on the market>”

xDudisx.5914:

Sylent.3165:

I’m kinda curious why gw1 worked so much better. We had a healer, warriors could tank very well. Paragon had amazing support. Other classes had great dps/support.

Some people would call that the holy trinity.

Truth though is in gw1 never once did I run into a party while doing a mission or pvp were monk or tank was required. That’s what made it different from other games. The was no “you must have one tank, 1 healer, 2 dps to run this” requirements.

Many people say the holy trinity shouldn’t be in this game and I do 10000% agree with that. BUT gw1 didn’t have one either while making the standard tank/healer/dps system. It just wasn’t noticed as strongly because it was never required to have them all in a party.

Why was gw2 not designed with this same method? A game were basically if your not going full out dps your not very helpful. They stated they wanted it to be kinda like gw1 in the aspects were everyone could do everything but they actually went the opposite direction and made it worse then a regular trinity system because everyone needs full zerker and dps.

Thoughts?

Gw2 is a great game but its 2 main problems are the lack of trinity and no real gear progression.

Some people will try to repeat the lie that we have “cc” dps and support but the reallity is that cc is reduced to icebow #4 and support most of the time is offensive support. Games with tank and dps also had cc and support….

The first step would be create a aggro generating mechanic that is control by the player. Could be a sigil or rune set that increases aggro, maybe a trait or signet. With no aggro there is no tank.

Without trinity is obviously a feature rather than an issue. It is an issue ONLY when someone loved to be the player that being needed, being loved and able to endure the terribly boring gameplay, stand still watching red bar or threat matter instead of the enemy.

Yes tanks and healers are the hero of the party, that is no Doubt about it. It is the game made these classes and the one who behind the keyboard a hero. What is a hero in GW2? Someone who got good skill without stacking. They have good dps and also able to watchout for the teammates. Res, reflect, condition removal, aegis, boon these are support and they are not tie to any gear stat.

Anyone any class.can be a hero as long as they act like one, not a hero class made to be a hero.

That is just my through after all.

xDudisx.5914:

Some people will try to repeat the lie that we have “cc” dps and support but the reallity is that cc is reduced to icebow #4 and support most of the time is offensive support. Games with tank and dps also had cc and support….

But hey, don’t let any evidence to the contrary change your mind. Keep crying for 1997 trinity style gameplay.

xDudisx.5914:

Gw2 is a great game but its 2 main problems are the lack of trinity and no real gear progression.

“GW2 would be a better game if it wasn’t GW2.”

Tinity does not make for a better game. It enforces role’s and limits diversity.

How you could possibly think gear progression is a good thing is beyond me. A gear treadmill is a farce, a lie. It’s just a grind and nothing else.
You do not get 10% stronger with better gear because the whole word also gets 10% tougher. You’d be just as strong, the difference is that if you didn’t grind you are now weaker.
And content that didn’t get scaled up to be tougher will end up becoming obsolete.

All the examples above are just proving that control is almost insignificant in the game. The first video was used 1 time in the entire fight because the hp sponge bosses die too fast and after the first hit and 5 stacks of deffience you wont even be able to use it again.
The second is in a trash mob. The only thing those videos prove is that cc is almost insignificant in the game outside of pvp. I did’t waste my time watching the rest.

Having no specific role is why get have oversimplified content that consists in melee stack in the boss and kill it in a few seconds. The “epic fights” like teq are just a few guys in a turret and all the others just stack and dps…. Wurm is: do some small mechanic to open the dps windown and stack and dps…..

I don’t get it xDudisx. You obviously hate everything about this game. I understand if you just got into the game, but you are here for a long time, keep playing it and keep crying about it. Its not like there is this specific thing that you dislike, we all have that. No you want the gameplay to completely change. That’s beyond me.

Dungeon is boring, world boss are boring, cc and support is not enough for you, you don’t want to stack, dps is stupid, etcc. EVERYTHING about this game seem to burst your nuts.

Thaddeus.4891:

I don’t get it xDudisx. You obviously hate everything about this game. I understand if you just got into the game, but you are here for a long time, keep playing it and keep crying about it. Its not like there is this specific thing that you dislike, we all have that. No you want the gameplay to completely change. That’s beyond me.

I like a lot of the stuff in the game. I just post to complain about stuff I think should be changed. Let’s not go to personal atack and let’s keep discussing the topic that OP posted.

What an entertaining discussion. I’ve never read such a meaningful thread for more than two years. Please tell us more.

Also, Trinity…

#NoDPSQueues

I’m going to lead off with that. As such, I’m against hard roles for GW2. I get that some people need that crutch, but I find most of the real battles more interesting because of GW2’s active combat. It’s not the “sit still as much as possible and maximize DPS” I get in WoW.

And now, the character-assumption portion of the argument. If you want Trinity, you are:
A tank that wants to feel special and get dungeon queues in an instant.
A healer who can’t be bothered to DPS and wants to play whack a mole with a stroke limit.
A dps who can’t be bothered to do more than spam a rotation and not stand in the fire.

I say this because it’s not the GW2 system that has been the problem. It is the encounter design that hasn’t successfully worked with a legion of 5 shock troops or a 70-man zerg. It can, it just hasn’t.
I consider it a learning point for the developers, since this notion of self-managing players spreading out damage, control, and support is still new. And I’ve said it before, designing single, monolithic bosses doesn’t work as well with GW2.

hybrid.5027:

xDudisx.5914:

Some people will try to repeat the lie that we have “cc” dps and support but the reallity is that cc is reduced to icebow #4 and support most of the time is offensive support. Games with tank and dps also had cc and support….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHKQtrOVR7w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1-rF2Q3uw

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1r1bfmoI4E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5OVFXH059M

But hey, don’t let any evidence to the contrary change your mind. Keep crying for 1997 trinity style gameplay.

Happen to have a video of a solo/duo of the Abom in arah2 without using any rifles? I think it’d be a nice demonstration. Just because it’s a bit longer and all.

Also Dudis, watch the other videos, Immob chains and knocking back Tar to prevent him from burrowing again. Bjarl, Abom, yeah there are fights that CC really matters.

I post the evidence of CC being hugely important and he says “those are isolated examples and prove nothing.” Alright dude. Continue to live in your fantasy world. Actually, continue to live in reality and keep crying about your fantasy world.

Trinity will just make GW2 another MMORPG with a stale system. Holy trinity has many flaws and some of them aren’t better at all than what we have at the moment.

I assume that Anet could make the system more diverse and I do believe that they can. The problem here is, will the players accept that? It may seem like a bad question since most people will comment ‘’Ofc, everyone likes diversity’‘. Well, to make this possible, Anet has to create new content that forces you, the player, to choose your stats and make them optimal to that specific encounter. This will add complex to the game but also a punishing factor to the casuals. Casuals don’t want to be forced to get more than one gear set and I want to also point out, that I am quite confident that you will see alot of complaints, if Anet made their encounters more complex.

LS2 which can hardly be considered challenging and most of the encounters are solo-able, awakened alot of complaints that the content is too hard/annoying and that it should be easier. Imagine now a complex system where you would need to optimize your build to be able to play the more challenging content.

Belenwyn.8674:

Stacking might and vulnerability is done to increase damage. It is all about damage since the goal is all about damage: kill the target. In such a scenario the role “Damage” will play the dominant role. All the support and control you have listed are there to maintain the damage on a high level.

In a 5-person group in a trinity game, the goal of the entire party is also to maximize damage. The only reason 2 of the players are allowed to do less damage than the three others (or no damage) are that the game requires that in order for the party as a whole to reach their damage potential. Two players (have to/get to) play specialized roles. Gear is central to build.

In GW2, players sacrifice personal max damage all the time to bring traits and utilities that benefit the party both offensively and defensively. Maximizing party damage requires a complex dance involving offensive or defensive buffs, situational awareness and optimized timing and rotations (notice that’s maximizing damage, not doing enough to get a PuG through an easy path). All five players have the opportunity to play specialized builds. Gear is an adjunct to build.

The two systems are different. They present different opportunities for players to make a difference in party play. Neither system is superior,, well, except that in GW2 you can play tank, healer and DPS. You might have to tickle things a bit for the tank to hold aggro, but it can be done for the most part. And, hey, if a DPS gets aggro he actually has tools to prevent the sure death that would be waiting for him if he pulls boss aggro off the tank in a trinity game. In a hard trinity game, there is no option to try alternative party comps.

Sure, GW2 has some simple encounters, but trinity games have tank n’ spank.

IndigoSundown.5419:

In a 5-person group in a trinity game, the goal of the entire party is also to maximize damage. The only reason 2 of the players are allowed to do less damage than the three others (or no damage) are that the game requires that in order for the party as a whole to reach their damage potential. Two players (have to/get to) play specialized roles. Gear is central to build.

In GW2, players sacrifice personal max damage all the time to bring traits and utilities that benefit the party both offensively and defensively. Maximizing party damage requires a complex dance involving offensive or defensive buffs, situational awareness and optimized timing and rotations (notice that’s maximizing damage, not doing enough to get a PuG through an easy path). All five players have the opportunity to play specialized builds. Gear is an adjunct to build.

The two systems are different. They present different opportunities for players to make a difference in party play. Neither system is superior,, well, except that in GW2 you can play tank, healer and DPS. You might have to tickle things a bit for the tank to hold aggro, but it can be done for the most part. And, hey, if a DPS gets aggro he actually has tools to prevent the sure death that would be waiting for him if he pulls boss aggro off the tank in a trinity game. In a hard trinity game, there is no option to try alternative party comps.

Sure, GW2 has some simple encounters, but trinity games have tank n’ spank.

Every word of this. Every. Word.

The game doesn’t stop a party from trying the trinity method, it just requires more forethought and build massaging. It’s also not the fastest way to get through the content, but if you’re doing it with friends and guildies and having fun, go for it.

maddoctor.2738:

Then we have a clear problem with what Support means. To you Support is only Healing, to me it’s anything that boosts characters beyond raw DPS. You only stayed on the 2 first points I posted ignoring the rest, I guess blinds, reflects, weakness are also Damage by your standards because you are not watching red bars moving to the right. The goal is to defeat your enemies, while providing enough survivability to your group to survive (that’s Support). A group without Support is weak, even if they are full DPS, the possibility of wipe skyrockets, their DPS won’t be optimal without buffs either, so in this game Support is the dominant role and not DPS.
….
And once again, what’s the point of playing the red bar game?

I think for some, the goal is for other players in the party to defeat enemies while they provide enough support to the group to survive (that’s Support).

In another game I played support roles for most group encounters, and I know killing was almost never a consideration. My entire focus was almost always on keeping my party alive while they killed stuff. When I wasn’t playing a healer, I’d spend the fight doing things like keeping a mini-boss permanently locked down and out of the fight until the rest of the group was ready to kill it, stripping debuffs from group members, debuffing bosses, etc., but directly damaging anything was about the last priority before just standing around watching.

Support certainly exists, but it doesn’t seem to be the singular or exclusive role that some people miss.

hybrid.5027:

I post the evidence of CC being hugely important and he says “those are isolated examples and prove nothing.” Alright dude. Continue to live in your fantasy world. Actually, continue to live in reality and keep crying about your fantasy world.

When will you understand that solo dungeon is not an intended mechanic nor it is considered when balancing. It is just a side effect of 2.5 years of not carying about old dungeons. CoF p1 is a explicit proff that they never intended to let people solo a dungeon.

Continue to live in your fantasy world where gw2 has ’’cc’’ and ‘’build diversity’’. Repeating lies wont make them truth.

This thread made me realise… I never once saw a call or need for a tank in GW1. Ever.

Healers, yes. Batteries, yes. Various things were sought after… but I never saw a call for a tank and never needed to run with one. How odd.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

This thread made me realise… I never once saw a call or need for a tank in GW1. Ever.

Healers, yes. Batteries, yes. Various things were sought after… but I never saw a call for a tank and never needed to run with one. How odd.

After 2.5 years of non trinity game play. The system has been greatly adopted and accepted by most GW2 players. There are still players that complain no tank or no healer, how odd.

It is a prove that GW2 is such a successful game that even trinity lover still wanna hang around and convince other about their trinity love. For other games, they probably already left.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

This thread made me realise… I never once saw a call or need for a tank in GW1. Ever.

Healers, yes. Batteries, yes. Various things were sought after… but I never saw a call for a tank and never needed to run with one. How odd.

Exactly! You didn’t need a tank. But you could still tank in a sense with skill combos. It’s just the fact in gw1 you still had the options you just don’t have in gw2.

Well you do have a choice in gw2 but it’s generally frowned upon.

Capitol City.4856:

I like most of this post, but the end kind of ignores the problem that all this presents: other stats are kind of useless. You said it yourself, if you can’t do it in zerker gear, it’s a l2p problem, and not even very kittene at that. and once you’ve got it down, zerker stats are the way to go. I just think it’s kind of sad that we have all these other stats and they end up being almost completely useless once you know what you’re doing. Why does nobody have a problem with that?

This is present in most games though. At endgame every class has an optimized setup skills and armor wise. In every game all groups take the least amount of def/healing and stack dps after, it just so happens that in this game the def/healing comes out of builds or skills like when I swap to warhorn in CoE against alpha to give everyone vigor after every dodge.

All I see it as is a point of view change. In other games where you’d swap armor and a few skills, here you swap weapons/skills based on your needs.

Rangelost.4857:

On a technical level, this could be true because of how useless condition damage is in PvE. On a realistic level however, after almost 3 years, I’ve yet to find a group in which no one ever makes a deadly mistake.

I understand that a lot of people are all about making the game as much of a chore as possible, but there’s still people out there who play to have fun — who don’t skip all the trash mobs because they want the experience points, or who don’t want to only play the most optimized direct damage build.

I’m just speaking from experience when I say that berserker isn’t very helpful. Every time I joined a “zerker only” group, I ended up having to switch to my cleric to keep the group alive. You can argue that they sucked, but if you ask me, this whole “meta” mentality is far worse.

Zerker only pugs are at times bad experiences, sometimes people want to carried or want to fill party cast so they just put zerker only. What you have to do is find like minded people, look for the ones asking about might/cc mmanagement etc in pugs and friend them.

I know when I do a dungeon train with every good person I’ve met in the bad pugs it’s actually a competition to see who was the least carried in the dungeon or who downed the least and if everyone is zerker and the group composition is decent…well its CLEAR that at least 1 or 2 people in a lot of zerk only groups are nitwits, or just someone so tired of dungeon and wants to be carried.

merge this thread please, theres another thread thats literally about this same topic on the FIRST PAGE.

Also these threads always end the same, getting locked by a moderator because they turn into flame wars and troll threads.

another thing, this game does not need a trinity, after 2.5 years of playing without it, id say this games system is working just fine. i got sick and tired of waiting for a kitten monk in GW1 for 7 years, constantly waiting for a monk or a tank. im so glad i dont have to do that here.

maddoctor.2738:

It DOES matter. And that’s by design, there is reason we don’t have targeted heals / buffs in the game. So nobody ends up standing still raising red bars instead of focusing on the enemy. Applying Support and Control through action on the enemy and good positioning.

That’s a logical fallacy, as one does not preclude the other. Why should applying defensive/offensive buffs and ccing be done better without heal/prot support? The latter actually adds to the overall depth, because people would no longer be able to simply unload their bars on a target and watch it go 100-0 if its defense skills happened to be on recharge, but would instead have to shutdown the source of healing first, or adjust their play to overload the enemy’s defenses.

Moreover, it is as important for healers/prot classes to focus on the enemy as it is for the dmg/cc classes, because not seeing the damage/shutdown coming usually spells defeat.

maddoctor.2738:

Actually Support plays the most important role in encounters. Players who follow the “meta” and the actually good builds are indeed maximizing boons via weapons / skills and runes / sigils. Check the list again for some of the options.

That’s just normal, not good.

maddoctor.2738:

You don’t need to maximize boon duration and healing power to provide support

And that is a pretty large design flaw, as it makes (dedicated) support obsolete. Having everyone function as a one-man army makes for a rather flat game experience, because in a place where damage is king, providing effective support without having to spec in it one bit in effect makes other play styles obsolete. Sure you can bring your full cleric guardian or ele, or even a necro, but then again, you can also fight naked and without a weapon.

maddoctor.2738:

Yet that’s exactly what is happening, condition removals and better boon stacking is always important in runs. There are even builds like Phalanx Warrior who trade quite a bit of their personal DPS to provide more boons to the party, for an overall better and smoother run.

No one is saying it’s not important. We’re saying that genuine support has a side role compared to dmg and even to cc, and that goes far beyond mere field blasting and boon stacking. I am convinced that targetted support encompassing everything from heal to prot and buffing/debuffing could have been far more potent than the current shout-range aoe/party-wide support, and would have opened up new roles around which more challenging pve encounters could be designed, while also substantially increasing the depth of pvp.

Vert.5041:

Rangelost.4857:

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are two completely different genres of games. You couldn’t shove a trinity system in the latter because the game is designed around allowing anyone to play both alone and with anyone else.

In the original Guild Wars, you can’t play alone. The game is built around always having a party at your side. If it’s not players, it’s henchmen. Running around without a healer is asking for punishment, and without a tank to get in the way, mobs will take out the healers first.

In Guild Wars 2, you’re rewarded for dealing damage only. You can specialize your character to become a pure healer, or a pure tank, and you can be very efficient at it, but in a group, you will get no loot whatsoever. Furthermore, trying to do some exploring on your own without being able to deal a descent amount of damage is going to get tedious, and fast.

And no, going “full out DPS” is not very helpful. Most people don’t understand that you need to be able to survive, and the “zerker meta” is far from ideal in most cases. After all, you don’t deal any damage when you’re dead.

Your sentiments might be valid if this was the first few weeks of release. I’m sure when people were discovering dungeons s for the first time they went with all sorts of set ups. After 2 years, full zerk dps is the best option because the game relies almost exclusively on active defense to stay alive and when you know the boss or the party knows and explain to you when to dodge/block/blind what use have you of stats like healing/vitality/toughness.

If you cannot survive in the zerk meta, it’s a simple situation of Learn 2 Play. Also even when you are zerk you can add a kitten ton of survivability by simply switching a few traits while you L2P.

Also, if you want to play a healer might I suggest engie or ele. Even in full zerk you can provide excellent healing Burts to teammates if you see they are about to down.

For tank, you can go with guardian or mesmer as they both provide excellent defense e utility in the forms of reflects and condition removal.

For dps, you can go warrior/ranger to provide things like banners, frost spirit, spotter…etc.

There’s your trinity, you have classes that use defensive/healing/offensive utilities while still putting out damage. The trinity hasn’t died but simply evolved.

That being said, ranger might be the only class, at this moment, that can fill all trinity roles at once.

Slap full nomads on the ranger with monk runes, boon duration food, 02066, regen shout + heal on F2, axe axe + sword wh.
Pet has its own stas, so aslong as you stack might eith axe and move pet out of harms way (can use guard shout for that) you can still bring frost spirit + regen + sotw and you will tank, you will heal and you will do dps, albeit terrible dps, it will still be higher then any other class tryin to do the same.