Guild Wars 2

the trinity in mmo games is both a blessing and a curse. when done right, it’s an absolute blessing. but there’s always this one healer, who will try and out-dps the damage dealers, or one tank that can’t keep aggro, or a damage dealer that thinks it can tank. just last night in TOR, i ran an instance that would normally be smooth sailing, save for the healer. he responded to nothing the party was saying(and i didn’t want to kick him because he was the minimum level requirement for the instance out of politeness) so i assumed it was his first run. but after repeated attempts to get him to pull his weight(upscaling in TOR is at least twice as effective as it is here), i got nothing. we were forced to use healing stations.
QED, we all have horror stories about the trinity such as this. at least GW2’s system places the responsibility on every player. However, this is not to say that there are total airheads in this system too. I also have horror stories about GW2’s system too, mostly with eles using daggers who adamantly refuse to switch sets when a certain boss one hits in melee range.
Point in Fact, i like being able to heal myself and not wait for someone else to get a clue, and the lack of a holy trinity means that bosses are constantly switching to different player targets(usually with the most toughness or damage)

I don’t like random aggro drops though, for something like harpy fractal where I’m trying to keep the ettin on one side of the room (which is why I want taunt atleast on my guard, bosses don’t focus toughness)

I miss WoW healing because if you’re really good at it, you can carry extremely well. Restro druid pvp? the enemy team may as well surrender.

The fact is, this game is a DPS only game, so all these support/healing/tanking builds are useless, so I don’t get all the hate on Zerking.

I love that I am not completely realiable on another person here.
That means so much to me, and it’s the biggest reason why I love GW2.

Gone with the days where an instance would take 3 hours instead of 30 minutes because your tank doesn’t know how to aggro, or because your healer doesn’t know how to position, or your dps does no damage per second.

I love that agro tends to move around to different people. In the grand scheme of things, it makes perfect sense to shift your attention to everything, not just that shiny warrior that is screaming “Look at me and attack only me! Never mind the army that’s attacking you from behind! I am the real threat even though all I’m doing is shouting and holding up a shield!”

I dont like class discrimination that i felt playing as assassin in many games where people though of me as “useless assassin” and i been pushed away to wait for hours to find pt.Also i dont like to wait for healers for 30 min.In short if they add trinity to this game then some classes like rangers will have many problems to find pt since some hate to have them in pt already.

Thank the Six that GW2 does NOT have the trinity. If it did I’d be out of here like a bat out of hell. Being a tank is a pita – getting aggro away from some classes, unless you’ve run a dungeon several times, healing is alot of responsibility and DPS are pretty much ignored. I appreciate being responsible for my own viability, and I love bringing buffs as well as other things for a party.

I agree that the removal of the forced trinity is a great step forward for MMOs in general.
I disagree on the removal of the trinity.

The key word here is ‘forced’. I loved the fact that in MMOs of old you could pick a job, get experienced with it and then use your abilities to help others. Be it healing, tanking, tagging, buffing….everyone found a place for themselves. What I didnt like is that you picked a job and had to stick with it, whether you were good, bad, could get a party or not.

In GW2 I feel that no one has a job to do anymore and as such my place in the party isnt needed. Anyone could do what im doing and I feel somewhat less important. I personally would have liked every class to be able to forfill every roll, but there to have still been roles. Certain classes better than others at certain things, the choices you make in stats actually making a difference to whether or not the party succeeds or fails. But the chances of this being introduced are slim because, as it stands, we have no need for any role but DPS specialist.

eekzie.5640:

I love that I am not completely realiable on another person here.
That means so much to me, and it’s the biggest reason why I love GW2.

Gone with the days where an instance would take 3 hours instead of 30 minutes because your tank doesn’t know how to aggro, or because your healer doesn’t know how to position, or your dps does no damage per second.

for many people, myself included, it’s why i’m still here. many of the game modes would not be possible with a trinity.

Thereon.3495:

I agree that the removal of the forced trinity is a great step forward for MMOs in general.
I disagree on the removal of the trinity.

The key word here is ‘forced’. I loved the fact that in MMOs of old you could pick a job, get experienced with it and then use your abilities to help others. Be it healing, tanking, tagging, buffing….everyone found a place for themselves. What I didnt like is that you picked a job and had to stick with it, whether you were good, bad, could get a party or not.

In GW2 I feel that no one has a job to do anymore and as such my place in the party isnt needed. Anyone could do what im doing and I feel somewhat less important. I personally would have liked every class to be able to forfill every roll, but there to have still been roles. Certain classes better than others at certain things, the choices you make in stats actually making a difference to whether or not the party succeeds or fails. But the chances of this being introduced are slim because, as it stands, we have no need for any role but DPS specialist.

But this already happens?

There are HUGE differences in class styles depending on how you spec, between bunker/heal specs and glass specs. A pure healing/defensive guardian, engineer or ele does a much better job of it than its opposite and vice versa.

Some classes are slightly less flexible (thief, mesmer, etc) but for the most part you can adopt a “role”. If some groups or people always choose DPS over anything else, that’s another story.

I remember having to have a monk present for pretty much any story progression quest in GW1… as in most cases, the GW2 system is a vast improvement over its predecessor.

Why would we need a ‘Trinity’ to stack in a corner and spam 1?

DelusionsOfGrandeur.9287:

I remember having to have a monk present for pretty much any story progression quest in GW1… as in most cases, the GW2 system is a vast improvement over its predecessor.

You gotta admit though, everyone having to be able to take care of themselves is limiting. Whereas in GW1, where monks and ritualists were usually dedicated healers, allowing other classes to specialize more heavily, GW2 insists that everybody must slot a healing skill, taking up space you could otherwise use for another utility skill.

Of course, that way is better for the way GW2 works; in GW1 you could always bring along AI heroes to back you up, and GW2 is a lot more lone-wolf style, so having a healing skill is a must anyway.

It has its pro’s and con’s.

Mian.1945:

But this already happens?

I disagree. Sure you can choose to be more tanky, more supportive and more of a healer but can you actually say that those are roles in GW2 PvE? Even in the harder content ive never heard of a party living or dying by the addition/lack of a tank/heal/support.

Nothing wrong with trinity.
Actually you mistake trinity with roles to fill.

A heavy armored Warrior has same dodge skills than a light armored person just hurts my eyes.
Close combat eles is far beyond ridiculous and ranger with axes in close combat makes me speechless. Maybe people should think why a ranger is called “RANGER” it comes from range.

I would love to bring back roles to fill without being depending on a single person.

One step toward it would be bringing the death penalty from GW1 back.
On top don’t allow all races to rezz people. Guardian and Mesmer would be enough.
Bringing back Necros from GW1 who rezz minion off dead bodys would make it very difficult to remain just zerker. You would have to survive somehow or facing millions of minions

This kills 2 birds with one stone.
A) Zerker groups wouldn’t exist anymore because they would drop like flies
B) To prevent from mass death people would create different build instead just zerker.
Actually defense build would pop up mixed with pure supporting builds.

Easy solution

Without trinity, people is less dependent on each other, and place more responsibility on individual. Trinity let you cover each other weakness and carry harder.

Saylu.8271:

Without trinity, people is less dependent on each other, and place more responsibility on individual. Trinity let you cover each other weakness and carry harder.

Of course having roles is covering weaknesses…… this is the whole point of teamplay.
In GW2 all classes are the same. Nobody needs teamplay.

Kurrilino.2706:

Close combat eles is far beyond ridiculous and ranger with axes in close combat makes me speechless. Maybe people should think why a ranger is called “RANGER” it comes from range.

You are just used to your old, favorite games. That’s fine, but be aware that Ranger has zero% to do with ranged combat-hopefully you know its origins predate the Archer Ranger Archetype seen in way too many games (at least in this game you can theoretically choose to play ranged and/or melee if you so wish-I dislike when I am forced to play as a “ranged character” because that’s the way “it’s supposed to be”; the same for Elementalist, etc.)

Kurrilino.2706:

Saylu.8271:

Without trinity, people is less dependent on each other, and place more responsibility on individual. Trinity let you cover each other weakness and carry harder.

---

Of course having roles is covering weaknesses…… this is the whole point of teamplay.
In GW2 all classes are the same. Nobody needs teamplay.

Perhaps you don’t “need” teamplay for many encounters, but you will always be rewarded whenever you do employ teamplay strategies. This game has so many more team opportunities than what you are giving it credit for, just because you seem to prefer the old “trinity” and are perhaps being blind to GW2’s own sort of teamplay.

Liking other games is totally fine, but it doesn’t mean GW2 must be like those games in order to be good to all other players.

The trinity in my eyes has produced better fights overall so far. This system has produced only really one fight tactic…stacking.

I don’t know if that has more to do with how ground combo melee distance boons spread or melee just doing more damage in general.

I think overall I prefer the concept of having actual roles and party targeting skills. That sort of system doesn’t actually have to be a trinity. GW1 kind of showed me back then that you didn’t need to have one. Essentially there were no tanks.
Each class had numerous ways to add to a party through endless builds.

GW1 did have healers though. Conditions meant more. Skill chains carried more weight. Interrupting was a playstyle and carried weight.

Something about having roles matter in pve gives depth to my experiences in most games. That to me is what makes this game shallow. I find ways to have fun in this system, but deep down I know something is missing.

The team concept in most games pve wise is just the better route I think. Here, with everyone basically filling the “dps as fast as you can” role, it feels like the depth just isn’t there. CC is meaningless. You can support just fine with zerker gear. Makes having all those sets be meaningless for pve.

Pvp is a little different as you will run into multiple different aspects of each class, some good, some bad. Players have carved out there own roles there. Spvp that is. WvW is a big cluster kitten imo. Gets better the smaller the battles are. Zerg clashes are just press one battles booned by stability. My god if AOE wasn’t so prevalent in this game and there was collision, you would never see what we see now. Even as bad as Ilum was back when I was playing TOR, the large scale raid vs raid battles felt like just larger battlegrounds.

Pve here won’t be like pvp though. AI here just doesn’t play like a player would. At least in GW1, your team faced groups of mobs that were built like player teams.

I think GW1 had a decent model. Each class could carry heals just like here if they wanted and they still had healers. Skill choice meant so much for many years until Anet stopped supporting the game, then all of those hero+speed team builds started showing up that trivialized everything. Heroes imo made it good to solo, but killed the group aspect of the game except for the few elite areas that sponsored speed clears…couldn’t do that with a hero/henchie party.

In my opinion, before anything else, anet needs to reduce burst damage and burst healing.

The game needs to be more about damage overtime and less about 1 hit shots, to start balancing group healing and self healing

because buying stuff for gems doesn’t require a role. you can buy gems as a bunker, you can buy gems as a condi, you can buy gems as a controller , you can also buy gems as a support.

no need to have a party, no need to do dungeons, no need to have any kind of team- work, strategy, planning, just press “O” and buy gems.

After playing WS for a bit, I can honestly say I miss the trinity. It’s nice not having to rely on anyone in gw2, however I believe the trinity will get you better fights both in PvE and WvW. I like gw2 attempt at something new, but it’s far from prefect.

Lalangamena.3694:

because buying stuff for gems doesn’t require a role. you can buy gems as a bunker, you can buy gems as a condi, you can buy gems as a controller , you can also buy gems as a support.

no need to have a party, no need to do dungeons, no need to have any kind of team- work, strategy, planning, just press “O” and buy gems.

Buying gems won’t make up for playing the game and having fun. You are making it sound as if players buy gems, they aren’t playing the game as if somehow that was mutually exclusive. Some people play the game and don’t buy gems, others do both, and I imagine there may be be very few players who only buy gems without actually playing (what’s the point, really?)

(If people can get stuff with gems, that’s fine. It’s their choice, and they are supporting the game. What good does it to begrudge them for spending money in gems? Just play and have fun, and forget about what other people do-it’s not as if they are gaining any practical advantage over you for doing this.)

And again, if you can’t see that there’s strategy in this game, then that’s your own choice. Perhaps it’s just not the kind you like, and that’s fine-but that doesn’t mean it’s non-existent.

I suppose the greatest advantage to a lack of trinity is agency.

The reason why I say “I suppose” is because I’ve never actually played a game that had a hard trinity like this. For my full MMO playing history:

PSO: Had spellcasters that also had heals/buffs/debuffs. No tanks: you were supposed to get out of the way when attacked.
PSU: Same as PSO. These were action games more than anything else.
RS: This game had a paper/rock/scissors mode of combat, where attack types were defended against by particular defense types, and “heals” consisted of consumables with limited inventory space.
MHT: This game didn’t have classes. You just ran around attacking monsters, and survival was your own responsibility.
City of Heroes: This game had 4 roles (tank, damage, support, control) and healing was one form of support. However, this game had intrinsically adjustable difficulty, and was balanced at base on generic character speccing, so using expensive enhancement sets and responsible building tactics, the 4 roles basically dissolved, and you would get support/control/tank doing high damage, and damage not needing support or control anymore. Also, buffs/debuffs/control were far more powerful than the need to tank or have innate high damage.
GW2: What we are playing now.
DCUO: Has 4 hard roles, which consist of tank/cc, damage/misc/ heals/buffs, and mana management/debuffs. Closest to an actual trinity.

So, to that end, my experience with the trinity is limited.

That said, there’s little out there that would encourage me to play a trinity game. The trinity is ultimately a system of deficiencies and negatives. It is a series of weaknesses that forces cooperation:

DPS: You do damage but nothing else.
Tank: You don’t do damage. Enemies chase you around and try to kill you, but you take less damage.
Healer: You don’t do damage. You heal the guy who gets chased around, and the
errant DPS that gets hit sometimes. Everyone blames you for failure.

None of this sounds appealing to me. I like to actually, you know, do stuff in the game, and so do most people. This is why DPS is several times more popular than the other two roles. I prefer systems that are designed around giving players strengths, and not deficiencies. I want to be a class that does damage and also debuffs, or does damage and also heals, or does damage and is also really durable, or does damage and also has movement/control effects.

This is agency. I get to play what I want, and group how I want, and am capable of engaging content in different ways as I see fit. I want to be the last survivor, soloing the boss that just killed all those before me, capable of winning because I am not dependent on others to function on the most basic level.

But in the trinity system, I feel so frail or impotent.

Kurrilino.2706:

Close combat eles is far beyond ridiculous and ranger with axes in close combat makes me speechless. Maybe people should think why a ranger is called “RANGER” it comes from range.

Why is a close-combat Ele ridiculous? I quite like the fact that I can be a magic user and not need to be forced to play at range.

As for Rangers, it doesn’t come from range. Ranger as an archetype comes from someone who has wisdom of nature. Also, Aragorn says hi.

Kurrilino.2706:

I would love to bring back roles to fill without being depending on a single person.

This could be done through encounter design and mechanics.

For example, Baddy McBoss has:

• A stacking damage buff the more boons he has. Decays over time.
• A stacking damage reduction buff the longer he stands still. Decays over time.
• Auto-attack that steal boons.
• Lots of condition damage.

You’d need:

• Someone with boon-stripping. Optional: someone that can exploit the boons he has.
• Someone that can apply boons frequently.
• (Preferably) someone with blind.
• Someone with a lot of condition removal / condition to boons.
• Know when it’s appropriate to keep the boss rooted.

Alternatively, a highly co-ordinated group could bring a little of each (or some more than others) and co-ordinate it’s use.

Pow. Roles without pre-defining the roles for every encounter.

Since encounters of this nature also allow people to choose their approach (do I strip, corrupt or steal the boons? This will vary depending on your party composition. For example, if a Warrior has Destruction of the Empowered, it might be worth holding back the boon removal until he’s used a high-damaging attack, meaning that damage reduction would be needed because of the stacking buff) as opposed to telling the player you have to have this setup otherwise you’ll fail, it also adds more depth than the Trinity.

In trinity system, each classes has their unique strength and individual weakness. It require more cooperation but because of this, they are able demonstrate their unique strength and perform tasks that others can’t. Trinity system make you feel important, it make you feel like you are playing as a team.

In GW2 where everyone similar, it show how everyone is fragile and weak. You are the only one responsible for your survival. If you failed to dodge, you failed to dodge, there isn’t anyone covering for you. No tank face tanking for you or off tank cc or pulling aggro for you, no healer bringing your health back to full. Sure. They will pick you up, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think you are bad.

Saylu.8271:

In trinity system, each classes has their unique strength and individual weakness. It require more cooperation but because of this, they are able demonstrate their unique strength and perform tasks that others can’t. Trinity system make you feel important, it make you feel like you are playing as a team.

In GW2 where everyone similar, it show how everyone is fragile and weak. You are the only one responsible for your survival. If you failed to dodge, you failed to dodge, there isn’t anyone covering for you. No tank face tanking for you or off tank cc or pulling aggro for you, no healer bringing your health back to full. Sure. They will pick you up, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think you are bad.

Actually, there is a lot of teamplay options in GW2, but most people dont realize it because most people solo most of the time.
lets take a look at a thief.
Some ones in danger?
*they can invisible the area/also loses agro
general defense for the team?
*access to multiple AOE blinds
*strong access to weakness
enemy chasing a glass charchter (if they werent stacking)
*access to chain immobilize
enemy using a strong skill
*access to chain stuns

You really arent alone in this game, and by working together you actually increase your strength/abilities greatly. Its just most people never learn these skills, and many other party members dont make it easy to use them.

Really i think it all comes down to having generally weak encounter design, the only way to make people play better is to make them fail if they dont.

What we have now is a system that is pretty deep, but the fights dont give any benefit to that depth. So people focus on DPS

phys.7689:

Saylu.8271:

In trinity system, each classes has their unique strength and individual weakness. It require more cooperation but because of this, they are able demonstrate their unique strength and perform tasks that others can’t. Trinity system make you feel important, it make you feel like you are playing as a team.

In GW2 where everyone similar, it show how everyone is fragile and weak. You are the only one responsible for your survival. If you failed to dodge, you failed to dodge, there isn’t anyone covering for you. No tank face tanking for you or off tank cc or pulling aggro for you, no healer bringing your health back to full. Sure. They will pick you up, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think you are bad.

Actually, there is a lot of teamplay options in GW2, but most people dont realize it because most people solo most of the time.
lets take a look at a thief.
Some ones in danger?
*they can invisible the area/also loses agro
general defense for the team?
*access to multiple AOE blinds
*strong access to weakness
enemy chasing a glass charchter (if they werent stacking)
*access to chain immobilize
enemy using a strong skill
*access to chain stuns

You really arent alone in this game, and by working together you actually increase your strength/abilities greatly. Its just most people never learn these skills, and many other party members dont make it easy to use them.

Really i think it all comes down to having generally weak encounter design, the only way to make people play better is to make them fail if they dont.

What we have now is a system that is pretty deep, but the fights dont give any benefit to that depth. So people focus on DPS

Not saying that there isn’t any team skill. Skills in trinity system are often much more powerful and forgiving. People in GW2 seem to avoid this “engaging” gameplay by stacking in a corner.

Stacking is a result of a lack of mechanics that prevents you from doing so, not because of the actual combat mechanics of the game.

You don’t find people stacking in Vindictus.

As mentioned by others, the trinity gives a sort of self worth, if you will, to characters in MMOs. When in groups, a difference is made, for better or worse, by that character being there.

On other MMOs, I made characters to fill those roles. Each had their strengths, so I chose depending on what we were doing at the time and what was needed. A lot of contacts were made due to those roles and how well performance was.

On GW2, that huge blob is off spamming 1 or our group of 5 is doing the same for 90% of the encounter and unless I know them, at the end, it’s very likely that everyone just goes their different way. Of course we could have talked or something along the way and “add me to FL, we’ll keep in touch” which results in a hi and small talk for a week before communication stops.

It doesn’t feel like group work. The character is just another “person” in the blob or group that can be replaced easily. That’s what’s missing from a trinity system.

To be honest, I’ve very rarely seen anyone make strong connections in PUGs in other games.

Having extreme reliance on group work is nice and all, but it has it’s own problems. There’s the old LFM Healer problem, it’s frustrating to have a tank who can’t do his job and it often results in a lot of hate.

Also, group work is possible without a trinity as well. The guy who does the slime in TA Aether and the guy who keeps the adds busy on the molten miniboss ate all examples of this.

I think a trinity should be something optional in GW2: either you have a normal trinity with people playing a Tank, a Healer, and a Dps or succeeding in a dungeon, or 5 allrounders that manage to care for themselves. Both options should deal the same amount of Damage (3 Dps doing the same dmg kitten Allrounders). Right now Healer (bad Healingpower scaling) and tanks (no taunt) are weak, while the game is easy enough to allow 5 zerks to run a dungeon without investing in defensive.

I like the lack of a Trinity, because it doesn’t force DPS people to not pull a boss or try to help a struggling teammate, and allows tougher characters to still put out appreciable hurt, instead of delegating them to do nothing but get dogpiled.

Stacking is a problem caused by issues with enemy design completely divorced from a lack of a trinity.

In a trinity game, you don’t always “Work Together” – You have everyone do a predefined job to the exclusion of all else, each person playing a completely different game. The tank’s sole job is to keep hitting badguys if Threat Management is a part of the job, or simply round up all the mobs and keep Shield Block (Or its equivalent) on cooldown until everything else falls over, which might as well be on a timer for all the engagement coordination used with other players – If his health is dropping too fast and he’s got his damage mitigation rotation nailed, there’s nothing he can do because the problem’s with his healer. All DPS have to do is lock on one target and hit it until it dies – the Tank can be replaced with a wooden log with a magnet for how much their gameplay intersects. The healer merely has to keep walking around, and watch health bars go up and down until the encounter ends – you could replace the other players with NPCs and he wouldn’t care.

In GW2, unless you exploit stacking, everyone has to pay attention to what everyone else is doing, figure out when to switch priorities, and coordinate abilities like combos and boosts. Everything is everyone’s job, but nobody can do it alone.

People dismiss condition damage… but I find it invaluable on tough opponents because of how it exponentially scales with condition stacking (At least until it hits cap).

Skan.5301:

As mentioned by others, the trinity gives a sort of self worth, if you will, to characters in MMOs. When in groups, a difference is made, for better or worse, by that character being there.

It gives a sense of self worth to the main tank and the 5 clerics chain healing him. Everyone else is just a DPS drone.

Most off you never played EQ which showed EXACTLY where trinity goes. It results in standing at raid entrances for 4 hours waiting for enough clerics to log in. It results in half the classes being not wanted because they either aren’t 1) a cleric, 2) a warrior, or 3) the highest other DPS class FOTM.

DPS classes just press 1212121212 and clerics spend the whole raid staring at the wall/ground/UI autobutton. The only one having any fun is the main tank.

Trinity is suck.

The problem with the trinity is the trinity.

City of Heroes had the right of it. Roles are good. Required roles are bad. In City of Heroes, you could play a tank, a damage dealer, a healer, a buffer, a debuffer, a locker, a positioner (what I liked to call my storm/power defender), and several other roles/playstyles.

But you didn’t NEED any of those except for the hardest TFs in the game (and even then I’m not convinced you couldn’t knock it out with some creative team compositions). Want to field a team consisting of any combination of the above? Knock yourselves out. Sure, some combinations were more effective, but to be honest being on a team with a straight traditional trinity setup didn’t really happen. Tanks were always well appreciated and sought after, but in a pinch you could do without, especially if you had a good mix of archetypes. Controllers could lock down entire herds of mobs, debuffers could debuff them into complete ineffectiveness, buffers could send your team’s stats through the roof.

But the point of all the above is that it’s a good system when utilized effectively. In other words, not the model that most use.

Saylu.8271:

In trinity system, each classes has their unique strength and individual weakness. It require more cooperation but because of this, they are able demonstrate their unique strength and perform tasks that others can’t. Trinity system make you feel important, it make you feel like you are playing as a team.

I never really felt important as a DD in Trinity Systems where when the tank or healer died all i wanted was a gun to shoot myself in the head, because there was mostly nothing you could do then waiting for your incoming death.

The only roles that feel important are tanks or healers, but they are also the ones that get all the blame if something wents wrong.

Hybrid classes exist in the Trinity, they can often perform multiple roles, they are just less effective than a class that focus on a single attribute.

In GW2, people in zerker are dps class with the ability to heal themselves and variable other abilities. In trinity people do have the ability to heal with potions, it just isn’t economic to do so.

Saylu.8271:

Hybrid classes exist in the Trinity, they can often perform multiple roles, they are just less effective than a class that focus on a single attribute.

Thats why i loved Shadowknight for a long time in EQ2, a tank that could do nice damage ,in AoE fights at least, and had quite some self-healing abilities.

In the end i always preferred hybrid characters in trinity based games.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I suppose the greatest advantage to a lack of trinity is agency.

Interesting, because it’s the other way round for me. With the trinity, I know I have a clear choice of how I want to play — and no matter which role I pick, I know that it will be needed and important. That feels good and reassuring. In this game all classes feel kind of the same on a fundamental level. Plus, thanks to the toxic community you get insults and hatespeech for exercising your “agency” to play in any way that does not march in perfect lockstep with what the leetpro dudes have decreed the One True Way (i.e. the “meta”). Yeah, every game has its share of terrible people, but in GW2 the meta-or-die mentality is far worse than anything I’ve ever seen in ToR or WoW.

DPS: You do damage but nothing else.
Tank: You don’t do damage. Enemies chase you around and try to kill you, but you take less damage.
Healer: You don’t do damage. You heal the guy who gets chased around, and the
errant DPS that gets hit sometimes. Everyone blames you for failure.

None of this sounds appealing to me. I like to actually, you know, do stuff in the game, and so do most people.

Eh, you make it sound as if stuff just happens automatically without player input. Also, beside making red or green numbers go up, any class role can also have both hard and soft CC, buffs and debuffs. Aggro control requires active attention from everyone. Healing isn’t my thing (I’m a tank at heart and healing goes against all my “instincts”), but I know that good healing involves quick decisions based on who’s at how much health now, who might take how much damage in the next moments, and how much mana one has left.

I always felt I was “doing” a lot more in a trinity game than in GW2, and I also found it a lot easier to tell whether or not I was doing well.

This is why DPS is several times more popular than the other two roles.

Actually (based on my experiences) DPS is more popular partly because it requires less in terms of “doing” than either tanking or healing — or more precisely, because going DPS carries less immediate responsibility and less obvious consequences. Plus, big damage numbers are better “bragging material” — people rarely thank tanks or healers (and many are in fact quick to blame these two for every problem), but “wow great DPS there dude” is a lot more common.

If the tank can’t juggle six enemies at a time while both friendly and hostile AoE is flying around and nasty spells need interrupting, brown stuff will hit the fan in short order. Same for the healer. A DPSer pulling low numbers will drag the fight out but not get anyone killed directly.

I prefer systems that are designed around giving players strengths, and not deficiencies. I want to be a class that does damage and also debuffs, or does damage and also heals, or does damage and is also really durable, or does damage and also has movement/control effects.

I agree. And a well-designed trinity game will let you do (most of) that, within reason of course. Trinity or no, there always need to be trade-offs. If a game has crappy balance, it has crappy balance whether or not it also has class roles.

This is agency. I get to play what I want, and group how I want, and am capable of engaging content in different ways as I see fit.

Funny, that is why I want and love class roles. :p

Granted, I’ve never played a no-trinity game other than GW2, and my problems with this game cannot all be blamed on the lack of class roles, but when I compare my feeling of “agency” and “doing” and having a real effect in this game with good-old-days-WoW … the disparity is just huge.

Rynn.1324:

The problem with the trinity is the trinity.

City of Heroes had the right of it. Roles are good. Required roles are bad. In City of Heroes, you could play a tank, a damage dealer, a healer, a buffer, a debuffer, a locker, a positioner (what I liked to call my storm/power defender), and several other roles/playstyles.

But you didn’t NEED any of those except for the hardest TFs in the game (and even then I’m not convinced you couldn’t knock it out with some creative team compositions). Want to field a team consisting of any combination of the above? Knock yourselves out. Sure, some combinations were more effective, but to be honest being on a team with a straight traditional trinity setup didn’t really happen. Tanks were always well appreciated and sought after, but in a pinch you could do without, especially if you had a good mix of archetypes. Controllers could lock down entire herds of mobs, debuffers could debuff them into complete ineffectiveness, buffers could send your team’s stats through the roof.

But the point of all the above is that it’s a good system when utilized effectively. In other words, not the model that most use.

City of Heroes was the greatest designed MMO ever… or would have been, if its content hadn’t been so stale and repetitive, and world design constrained by the tech of the time it was introduced.

The way the gear and boost system played to comic book superhero conventions while still standing on its own was great. The way it handled costumes was great. The combat system and its lack of a simple “Autoattack” made rotations tight and interesting while allowing focus to stay on the screen instead of cooldowns (Something I love about Guild Wars 2), the class design was perfect, and the Sidekick/Mentor system, while not perfect, was awesome for allowing friends to play together (Something Guild Wars 2 does similarly well, albeit lacking on the Sidekick angle outside of PvP/WvW).

The only problems were its outdated combat engine (The principals behind it were solid when not confined to the limitations of the day), lack of variety in level design (Abandoned Warehouses, Office Buildings, and the occasional cave), lack of variety in mission types, and MMO Lemmings.