Guild Wars 2

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

The gameplay style doesn’t need to change, it just needs to grow and get harder.

And instead we get raids ><

That’s just growth and scale. We already had the large scale events which they’ve been slowly pushing towards smaller numbers, and we have fractals. I don’t really see much as far as a change in gameplay when I have 9 organized teammates instead of the 4 in fractals, or the ~10-15 disorganized ones in SW Breach bosses.

The gameplay will be determined by how the content works and how the enemies act.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

The gameplay style doesn’t need to change, it just needs to grow and get harder.

And instead we get raids ><

That’s just growth and scale. We already had the large scale events which they’ve been slowly pushing towards smaller numbers, and we have fractals. I don’t really see much as far as a change in gameplay when I have 9 organized teammates instead of the 4 in fractals, or the ~10-15 disorganized ones in SW Breach bosses.

The gameplay will be determined by how the content works and how the enemies act.

I just want hard content. Not gimmicked content – This does apply to the OP too, trinity is gimmicked content in the place of execution skill.

One of the reasons which made me buy Gw2 and i’m still happy to spend so much money on this game is the lack of Trinity, no one needs to wait for class A or B etc to run a dungeon.

I can also play any role I want on my favourite class when I feel like it.

I can see why some players like the trinity play style, however that is not the game I paid for and if I wanted to play that type of game I would be playing something else.

no one needs to wait for class A or B

Don’t understand that. If all classes can be tank, dps and healer, no specific class is required even in a trinity game.

Leo G.4501:

~Snip~
But I think since the focus of content tend to fall on the reward rather than how you complete it, Anet must focus on making the act of getting to the reward non-exploitable. So players will moan if you make their content take longer to accomplish or require more clearage or enforce more task be completed to get the best reward. I hope they take their attitude toward content rewards away from speed clearing and more toward being rewarded for engaging all the content of a particular instanced situation (talking raids not current dungeons).

There’s one thing you may not be aware of; at one time, A.Net considered making the trash mobs in the current dungeons so that you could NOT skip them, but that was shot down because they didn’t want to negate the play style of those that like to do speed clears(they learned that there was a set of players that enjoy that from GW1). Hence, when dungeons were finalized, it wasn’t necessary to kill every single mob in them, even though some of us would have preferred they do that…but they wanted to make the game accessible to all. Personally, I think people would have found a way to speed clear dungeons even with having to kill everything within the dungeon.

Scipion.7548:

no one needs to wait for class A or B

Don’t understand that. If all classes can be tank, dps and healer, no specific class is required even in a trinity game.

Think of it as a role-requirement then. If someone is not geared to tank or heal, then they will be unwilling to play those roles. This game is every bit as unfriendly to changing specs on the fly as other games, as long as those specs require gear to make them work. Changing from CC to support to all-out damage with the same gear is easy, changing from one gear to another is a pain.

Also, there are have and have-not professions as far as healing and tanking goes. Should these roles be necessary for raids, expect lots of complaints about the gearing issues and about “needing” to wait for a given profession geared appropriately.

Rin.1046:

In my mind, if a team is specced full dps they should be able to clear mobs faster but be at a higher risk of being wiped, and the opposite should be true of a full team of tanks. Both groups should be able to tackle the content, but in different ways. I really like the boons system, but there needs to be more reason to spec into defensive stats, which currently there isn’t. That’s not to say defesive or supportive stats are not effective, they can be, but like you say, when dps stats can do the job just as/more effectively than defensive stats what is the point in speccing into them?

I really like Anet’s combat system, I just hope they can improve their content to utilize it more.

I honestly don’t think much will change and I do like the combat system and flow (as I mentioned before) but yeah, still doesn’t mean it’s perfect or even great…there’s lots of things they could do, or just think about and discuss, to improve the game and system. But I echo what you’re saying, content should be completable with much more variety and some approaches should be easier (or rather more rewarding) so it encourages variety.

And yeah, a team full specced for DPS should be able to clear things faster but it should be much harder to accomplish, requiring even extremes such as kiting from range or even outright death even if you’re extremely skilled.

Dromina.5023:

maybe change the functioning of boons into something like protection does no longer reduce incoming damage by 33% but instead increases armor by 50%? So defensive boons are stronger with defensive stats and weaker with offensive stats.

you would still have to bring sufficient offensive stats to circumvent a possible boss enrage.

I’d actually consider the opposite approach and give defensive geared approaches ways to benefit offensively to bridge the gap in some fashion, like having protection somehow grant you a % boost to damage on your next hit depending on how much damage you negated or something like boosted effect combos that assist more greatly outside of just blasting for boons and heals.

Zaklex.6308:

There’s one thing you may not be aware of; at one time, A.Net considered making the trash mobs in the current dungeons so that you could NOT skip them, but that was shot down because they didn’t want to negate the play style of those that like to do speed clears(they learned that there was a set of players that enjoy that from GW1). Hence, when dungeons were finalized, it wasn’t necessary to kill every single mob in them, even though some of us would have preferred they do that…but they wanted to make the game accessible to all. Personally, I think people would have found a way to speed clear dungeons even with having to kill everything within the dungeon.

Right, I enjoy skipping too but then I also enjoy times were taking down lots of stuff for the lolz. It’s just far too common that the stuff is skipped. Now people that likely would respond to someone bringing such facts to light would presume said poster is trying to enforce non-skipping and trash clearing. No, just more opportunity, purpose and reward for doing so.

That Anet would take the thought of forcing you to fight all mobs then flip to the other extreme and allow you to practically skip all makes me think that isn’t the whole story. There had to be some kind of discussion of content implementation inbetween those extremes that involved more revisiting of areas to complete multiple objectives or just plain more broadly involved areas of the map instead of hopping from boss locations until the reward chest pops.

Even the idea of reward chests sort of encourages you to tunnel vision your way to it, ignoring all else. Having some sort of varied grading system in the game might encourage players to play differently. Even if ultimately, an efficient strategy is determined, so long as there is still enough variety, reward and purpose, even the most meta-gamer will eventually just try other crap and strategies when they really get bored.

What the game needs is for the content and enemies to make better use of the amazing combat system we have.

to those saying there are no roles, you clearly haven’t been playing long or worse, have been playing a long time but never got skilled enough to get passed the trinity blindness to notice the roles in the combat.

The day a.net implements holy trinity is the day I quit this game !

Leo G.4501:

Rin.1046:

In my mind, if a team is specced full dps they should be able to clear mobs faster but be at a higher risk of being wiped, and the opposite should be true of a full team of tanks. Both groups should be able to tackle the content, but in different ways. I really like the boons system, but there needs to be more reason to spec into defensive stats, which currently there isn’t. That’s not to say defesive or supportive stats are not effective, they can be, but like you say, when dps stats can do the job just as/more effectively than defensive stats what is the point in speccing into them?

I really like Anet’s combat system, I just hope they can improve their content to utilize it more.

I honestly don’t think much will change and I do like the combat system and flow (as I mentioned before) but yeah, still doesn’t mean it’s perfect or even great…there’s lots of things they could do, or just think about and discuss, to improve the game and system. But I echo what you’re saying, content should be completable with much more variety and some approaches should be easier (or rather more rewarding) so it encourages variety.

And yeah, a team full specced for DPS should be able to clear things faster but it should be much harder to accomplish, requiring even extremes such as kiting from range or even outright death even if you’re extremely skilled.

Dromina.5023:

maybe change the functioning of boons into something like protection does no longer reduce incoming damage by 33% but instead increases armor by 50%? So defensive boons are stronger with defensive stats and weaker with offensive stats.

you would still have to bring sufficient offensive stats to circumvent a possible boss enrage.

I’d actually consider the opposite approach and give defensive geared approaches ways to benefit offensively to bridge the gap in some fashion, like having protection somehow grant you a % boost to damage on your next hit depending on how much damage you negated or something like boosted effect combos that assist more greatly outside of just blasting for boons and heals.

Zaklex.6308:

There’s one thing you may not be aware of; at one time, A.Net considered making the trash mobs in the current dungeons so that you could NOT skip them, but that was shot down because they didn’t want to negate the play style of those that like to do speed clears(they learned that there was a set of players that enjoy that from GW1). Hence, when dungeons were finalized, it wasn’t necessary to kill every single mob in them, even though some of us would have preferred they do that…but they wanted to make the game accessible to all. Personally, I think people would have found a way to speed clear dungeons even with having to kill everything within the dungeon.

Right, I enjoy skipping too but then I also enjoy times were taking down lots of stuff for the lolz. It’s just far too common that the stuff is skipped. Now people that likely would respond to someone bringing such facts to light would presume said poster is trying to enforce non-skipping and trash clearing. No, just more opportunity, purpose and reward for doing so.

That Anet would take the thought of forcing you to fight all mobs then flip to the other extreme and allow you to practically skip all makes me think that isn’t the whole story. There had to be some kind of discussion of content implementation inbetween those extremes that involved more revisiting of areas to complete multiple objectives or just plain more broadly involved areas of the map instead of hopping from boss locations until the reward chest pops.

Even the idea of reward chests sort of encourages you to tunnel vision your way to it, ignoring all else. Having some sort of varied grading system in the game might encourage players to play differently. Even if ultimately, an efficient strategy is determined, so long as there is still enough variety, reward and purpose, even the most meta-gamer will eventually just try other crap and strategies when they really get bored.

This is why I love how sega handled rewards and loot in Phantasy Star Online 2.

You have a grading system. Which goes from S to C ranks, based on kill counts and number of deaths and contributions to random emergency trials (similiar to our DE system here).

If you try to speed clear a exploreable area on a planet to the boss room, you will get less drops as a group for the boss crystal that forms from its corpse; which can only give money at worst and in 4 possible drops, to a whopping 20 or more drops for really putting an effort and getting an S rank. And you don’t see the rank you had for the mission until you clear it. Which makes it risky to speed clear a map at all unless you try to kill everything that appears and don’t stray too far from the main paths.

Also each random event boss spawns also individually gauge effort in this way leading up to their deaths. and the grading doesn’t just take plain DPSing it down into effect, it also takes account of teamwork, # of minion kills, support, time taken, etc. After all, you only have the 4 of you (boss rooms are individual party instances) or 11 other people on the exploreable maps (up to 3 groups of 4).

I hate skipping as in games like mentioned above where skipping=less loot/rewards, I rather kill everything and even take the crappiest stuff from them. also its more exp for me to get more spirit shards, etc, I “use every part of the animal” so to speak. Also i have over 300% MF with food and boosters so I’m bound to get good stuff from so called “trash”.

I find skipping boring too and there is no challenge or heroism to it to “run from all your problems”. Are we Heroes of Tyria or actually cowards?

latinkuro.7304:

The day a.net implements holy trinity is the day I quit this game !

I doubt that Anet would ever put trinity into GW2. If they did they would lose a lot of their main player base that enjoy their current style.

Been playing another MMORPG recently while waiting for HoT and this game has the Trinity.

What I noticed was this:

In this game, you have Tank, Damage, Healer and Support (So not really a trinity, lol) and what you do in the game/dungeon is different depending on your role.

For Damage it’s basically spam your damage abilities as much as possible while keeping an eye on Adds and any telegraphed big shot move from boss. Most of the time it’s sitting spamming buttons.

For Tank it’s basically pulling Boss to safe spot (generally with back to other players) and building threat/agro. Keeping an eye on Boss timing so you can pop Def. cooldowns and tank the big hits to make it easier on healer. Overall, it’s just about building threat/agro and keeping boss locked on you.

For Healer it’s basically constantly casting heals on Tank to make sure (s)he survives, while maintaining awareness of Mana, Team Health (AoE Healing needed?) and Threat.

Support is basically like all those rolled into one. Debuffs and Buffs to enhance team Damage, Defense, Healing, etc.

But everyone has their role and depending on what role you play, how you experience the content will be different.

Contrast that to GW2 and you quickly realize – GW2 doesn’t have a Trinity, no, it simply has the Damage Role.

In GW2 you stack on Boss, do as much damage as possible while dodging his/her/it’s big attacks and healing yourself if you get hit. What your teammates do is inconsequential.

You don’t have a Tank who is responsible for keeping the Boss in check.
You don’t have a Healer who is responsible for keeping the Team in health.
You don’t have a Support who is responsible for keeping Buffs and Debuffs on boss.
Everyone does as much Damage as possible.

It’s very much an individual experience.

If you run a Dungeon Or Fract as a Mesmer it’s the same as running it as Ele, or Necro or Ranger, etc. Everyone does Damage. Everyone has a Self-Heal. Everyone has Conditions. Everyone has Buffs. And so on.

So while the Trinity might be boring, lame, look stupid (and it really does) is GW2 any better, honestly? No.

Run a Dungeon in a Trinity game and watch how the DPS role plays. That’s GW2.

GW2 didn’t kill the Trinity – it just dumped the Tank and Healer roles and made everything uniform.

Which has resulted in problems making hard content and engaging encounters.

This uniformity of role only gets worse when you add in the lack of variety in builds. Pretty much 90% of the playerbase is running the same exact build from traits to gear (Zerker).

Azumi… You say lack of variety in builds, but there’s no one holding a gun to anyone’s head telling them to run zerker builds… as far as I know anyway.

Also, where’d you pull that 90% figure from? Thin air or do you have access to Anet’s metric data system?? HMMM? Oh, you don’t. You made it up. Got it. So, just going to disregard the rest of your comment since you pulled all that from the same place you made up some random number about the builds the “playerbase” is using.

Azumi.9572:

Contrast that to GW2 and you quickly realize – GW2 doesn’t have a Trinity, no, it simply has the Damage Role.

it actually has one trinity but its not so called “holy trinity of mmo”:
damage, control and support

Azumi.9572:

In GW2 you stack on Boss, do as much damage as possible while dodging his/her/it’s big attacks and healing yourself if you get hit. What your teammates do is inconsequential.

as I agree that currently its meta it is not the only way of running dungeons
[while by “meta” I mean most popular solution to a problem used among playerbase]

Azumi.9572:

You don’t have a Tank who is responsible for keeping the Boss in check.

Instead you have control to keep enemies from hitting you – blinds, stund, daze, launch knockback, fear, immobilise, cripple – the amounts of stuff one can put on enemy to control their movement on teh battlefield is long – its just not so commonly used because metazerg is still a thing and requires a lot less thinking – not mentioning actuall skill

You don’t have a Healer who is responsible for keeping the Team in health.
You don’t have a Support who is responsible for keeping Buffs and Debuffs on boss.

for both of these – you actually have support in here – if you don;t believe me then check out banner warior, anchor guardian, to name most popular support builds. there is a big chunk of boons that you can apply to your ally that saying that there is no support in this game is plainly wrong – but then its not as that visible in the first glimpse because support SPECIALISED builds are rare and many people forgets that that warrior or that guardian – while signing up for dps are in fact – damage-support hybrid (if you have noticed even metazerg is taking advantage of it – warriors with banner of dyscipline and banner of strengh, literaly any guadian with staff/gs loadout stacking might from the staff) – actually metazerg would not be as effective as it is WITHOUT those damage-support hybrids – and I’ve seen a way too much of dungeon teams running mostly metazerg wiped only because some guys forgot that they need to use more skills than smash autochain to keep up needed level of dps

Azumi.9572:

Everyone does as much Damage as possible.

and if all of team were doing just that – metazerg would not be a thing because without mentioned above damage-support hybrids – namely – banner warrior and a way to stack up decent amount of might (by decent I mean at least that half of the stack :P)

Azumi.9572:

It’s very much an individual experience.

yup vry much personal experience without giving deepr though of why it is working

Azumi.9572:

If you run a Dungeon Or Fract as a Mesmer it’s the same as running it as Ele, or Necro or Ranger, etc. Everyone does Damage. Everyone has a Self-Heal. Everyone has Conditions. Everyone has Buffs. And so on.

that statement is plainly stupid – the ways to play them – depending on team build and dungeon may be extremely different – f.e. in CoF P1 there is a point where presence of mesmer really shortens said phase of dungeon (from like 30-60 seconds of skilled team without mesmer to like 5 seconds with mesmer that knows his thing)

not mentioning that untill recently ranger had not yet build that would be “officially” in community be labeled a a part of metazerg you are referign to.

also not mentioning that the way you play those professions is totally different – even if after all you can sum it up to dealing damage….
[aaand nope – not everyone has conditions – at least to viable levels :P – same with buffs]

So while the Trinity might be boring, lame, look stupid (and it really does) is GW2 any better, honestly? No.

actually it is – issue is that one certain familly of build in current state can greatly outperform all the others and thats why the really big amounts of possibilities are not considered by most of community at all

Azumi.9572:

Run a Dungeon in a Trinity game and watch how the DPS role plays. That’s GW2.

GW2 didn’t kill the Trinity – it just dumped the Tank and Healer roles and made everything uniform.

thats very untrue statements first if you really believe that all how players plays in gw2 is like people played dps role in mmos with trinity – you haven’t ever seriously play dps in trinity mmo – at least not on the level even close to serious

on the other one – GW2 replaced old boring trinity with its own “trinity” of damage, support, and control while giving ALL classes their own tools to try to fill these roles

Azumi.9572:

Which has resulted in problems making hard content and engaging encounters.

This uniformity of role only gets worse when you add in the lack of variety in builds. Pretty much 90% of the playerbase is running the same exact build from traits to gear (Zerker).

you see there is a huge fallacy in here – there is a huge differnece between existnce of variety of good builds and “what biggest part of playerbase is actually using”

Metazerg while used correctly is just extremely effective and not requiring much skill to pull it out succesfully – but there are out there team build that also are effective, either on similar level to metazerg or not falling really much behind – issue with them is though that they require huge amounts of both skill and coordination to pull out – and thats not something you can count for when grouping up with randoms for daily dungeon…..

Azumi.9572:

You don’t have a Tank who is responsible for keeping the Boss in check.
You don’t have a Healer who is responsible for keeping the Team in health.
You don’t have a Support who is responsible for keeping Buffs and Debuffs on boss.
Everyone does as much Damage as possible.

You’ve unintentionally illustrated my earlier point about the trinity system only having illusionary teamwork.

If the tank plays his threat rotation correctly and uses his defensive cooldowns correctly nobody has to think about what he’s doing or interact with him as a player.
If the healer manages his mana correctly and doesn’t overheal nobody has to think about what he’s doing or interact with him as a player.
If the dps do their damage rotations correctly and don’t stand in the fire the boss dies on time and everyone gets to rage over loot drops.

In a 5 player party it’s essentially 5 single player games where you win if all 5 players get a high enough score. Any teamwork that exists is the natural result of it being a team game. The trinity adds nothing to this.

Also, damage is not the only thing that matters here because if it was the meta party would be 5x ele.

Azumi.9572:

Contrast that to GW2 and you quickly realize – GW2 doesn’t have a Trinity, no, it simply has the Damage Role.

In GW2 you stack on Boss, do as much damage as possible while dodging his/her/it’s big attacks and healing yourself if you get hit. What your teammates do is inconsequential.

You don’t have a Tank who is responsible for keeping the Boss in check.
You don’t have a Healer who is responsible for keeping the Team in health.
You don’t have a Support who is responsible for keeping Buffs and Debuffs on boss.
Everyone does as much Damage as possible.

It’s very much an individual experience.

If you run a Dungeon Or Fract as a Mesmer it’s the same as running it as Ele, or Necro or Ranger, etc. Everyone does Damage. Everyone has a Self-Heal. Everyone has Conditions. Everyone has Buffs. And so on.

So while the Trinity might be boring, lame, look stupid (and it really does) is GW2 any better, honestly? No.

Run a Dungeon in a Trinity game and watch how the DPS role plays. That’s GW2.

GW2 didn’t kill the Trinity – it just dumped the Tank and Healer roles and made everything uniform.

Which has resulted in problems making hard content and engaging encounters.

This uniformity of role only gets worse when you add in the lack of variety in builds. Pretty much 90% of the playerbase is running the same exact build from traits to gear (Zerker).

This simply is not true. While I think GW2 can improve, what you say only describes part of how you can play the game. Once you learn more about an encounter, you can start predicting what to do and which skills to bring to aid your team. Sure, you can think only of yourself and worry about just keeping yourself alive while you DPS, or you can bring some utility skills or weapons that have some strong CC effects and work them into a rotation when you know said boss is about to use a telegraphed attacks that will ruin someone’s day (I do this all the time with my thief. So easy to just give everyone basalisk venom and sure-CC if no coordination exists). Or you can just passive heal people to make it easier for them to live. Or you can bring more blinds and stuff to protect against strong attacks.

You might even have to sacrifice some DPS in the form of a trait or utility skill to accomplish this but all in all, when you know more about what’s ahead, you can be less selfish and provide it.

I only wish there was more emphasis on this plus greater effect if you specialized in something as well as content that made these things needed.

Tirien.1326:

I will always miss a healer, that’s what i always play, and the games that i think got them right was Archmage in WAR och Priest in WoW. But archmage was way more fun playing as a healer. While Priest (shadow) was more fun DPS wise and pretty much everything else.

Right now it’s only and all about DPS, if you don’t dps and focus on something else like support you are doing it wrong. DPS outshines anything and everything else.

Maybe there are ways to go support for something, havent seen the need for it yet tho.

Zealot’s gear has a reasonable healing stat, while maintaining max power and good precision. It’s probably not a giant DPS loss to use a few pieces of that, especially since, even with fury, ferocity is the least valuable of the three direct damage attributes, though that does alter somewhat based on the numbers, but you should generally always have more precision than ferocity.

portedGoblin.7413:

To me it is very boring that all the game content is best done in Berserker gear.

How exactly does changing your gear make the content more exciting? You don’t perform different actions because your gear has different stats.

I think the games needs to be rebalanced so that it would be very difficult to play any content solo in Berserker gear. Most mobs today only attack once every 10s or so, to make sure you can doge most of the attacks. I think we should keep these, but also to add some constant damage in between.

This has to be the single most selfish thought to have ever graced these gaming forums…and the sad thing is that you are not the first person to say it. Essentially you want ANET to force others to carry you along. Because they don’t want to play with you in your nomad gear, you want ANET to make them die unless you are brought along.

A dungeon group could be 1 support + 4 DPS. Not trinity but at least some more opportunity to play some other builds once in while.

A dungeon group can already be exactly what you are describing…you just need to play with people that actually want to play that way instead of trying to get ANET to force people to play your way.

ITT: People only want damage-focused roles.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Azumi.9572:

Contrast that to GW2 and you quickly realize – GW2 doesn’t have a Trinity, no, it simply has the Damage Role.

it actually has one trinity but its not so called “holy trinity of mmo”:
damage, control and support

The only part of that “trinity” that’s upheld in GW2 is damage. The roles of control and support are merely added on as a bit of spice to the primary role of damage that everyone has in PvE.

The functions are still present, but whether they are concentrated between players or spread out between them is now optional.

You can build a guardian that’s all about support, all about burning stuff to death, or you can go 50/50.

Your elementalist can focus on fire, or it can focus on water, or it can blend them for some steamy fun.

If you have one DPS, one Tank, and one Healer, or three characters with equal parts DPS, Tanking, and Healing, you’re still working with the same amount of each, just with less laser focus and more flexibility.

You can absolutely form a team where people specialize heavily. I just made some Cleric/Dwayna gear for use with my Staff on my elementalist – I’m not going to be outshining the DPS builds when I’m using that, but you better believe people are going to have hit points for days.

Fashion Mage.3712:

ITT: People only want damage-focused roles.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Azumi.9572:

Contrast that to GW2 and you quickly realize – GW2 doesn’t have a Trinity, no, it simply has the Damage Role.

it actually has one trinity but its not so called “holy trinity of mmo”:
damage, control and support

The only part of that “trinity” that’s upheld in GW2 is damage. The roles of control and support are merely added on as a bit of spice to the primary role of damage that everyone has in PvE.

as I said in the long post above – all three of them actually exists in the game – but control builds are just really rare to see, while most of support met in corrent meta are damage-support hybrids. also iirc back in then ANet also claimed that hybrids of these roles will be perfectly playable so….

we (as a community) have to learn to tell the difference between current meta (that can always change) and what possibilities there are actually in-game – I’ve seen alot of good purely support builds and phew good purely control builds – and I’ve seen teams where there was one pure support, with added control guy and 3 pure damage specced guys – and that team was doing their job on same level – if not even better than metazerk team would, while employing a way more interesting tactics in combat – but then agan that team required alot of skill and actuall teamwork to make it – as in oposition to metazerk.

I am just trying to analyze this (wall of text incoming):

The way you can dodge almost all of the damage, burst any boss down before your few defensive cooldowns run out and simply LOS pull most of the enemies in this game is the main reason (as people already mentioned) why we only ever see dps meta builds.

I wouldn’t say a holy trinity is as foreign to GW 2 as people seem to think, though:

Imagine there was content that actually required a high HP/toughness melee tank to take very powerful auto attacks for a longer time and the supportive healer to heal, buff (protection, regen, aegis, etc) and reflect for that tank.
Now imagine this boss would have a time limit. Forcing you to DPS race him down for about 5-10 minutes. It would require you to bring as much damage as possible, yet enough healing/tanking to be able to tank him.
We could even add some other mechanics like adds or forcing players to split up during the fight to take on smaller bosses in groups of 2-3 players.

Suddenly people would want a Soldier warrior and a Cleric guardian in every (let’s say) raid and of course many damage dealers like elementalists, thieves, rangers, mesmers and so on. You’d be forced to take the classes that simply outshine others at some tasks if you wanted to be able to conquer this hard boss.

Doesn’t that sound like pretty much any other holy trinity game to you?

Now imagine what might happen over time as people mastered this content.
They might figure out that they can take less healing and less tanking and a bit more dps once they completely master this encounter. They might even realize that some classes can still manage to do certain tasks successfully while putting out more damage than the predefined tank or healer.

It has happened in all of the trinity games I know!

The only difference between the trinity games and GW 2 is that here we are able to include 100% dps classes in our party compared to the 80-90% we’d use in other games. The support/healing/tanking that 20% of those parties will have is just split between everyone (well almost) in any given GW2 dungeon party.
If they made boss fights so hard and last so long that this little bit of support that the entire party brings together is no longer enough then suddenly we would have to use the parties I mentioned above. It is mainly a matter of balancing the duration and the difficulty of any given encounter.

Don’t forget that it might actually be exactly what ArenaNet was trying to avoid all along.

We used to think dodging and avoiding damage was a lot more skillful than the good old Tank and Spank.
Opinions change once the players get quite used to and later completely bored of something, it seems.

Azumi.9572:

Contrast that to GW2 and you quickly realize – GW2 doesn’t have a Trinity, no, it simply has the Damage Role.

In GW2 you stack on Boss, do as much damage as possible while dodging his/her/it’s big attacks and healing yourself if you get hit. What your teammates do is inconsequential.

Weird. On my thief I’m busy blind foes and removing defiant stack, while I’m stealth between specific fight.

On my Guardian I keep up Reflection, remove condition and time my blind and aegis

On my Elementalist I nuke mobs out with big AoE attack.

My three main PvE character feel a lot different and I need to play differently when we don’t have blind, Icebow or Reflect. We all do DPS, but each of them have something else to do that is often crucial to the survival and efficiency of the team.

I prefer the City of Heroes model. It uses the same aspects GW2: Mitigation, Control, and Damage. Everyone has damage to some degree and everyone has healing to some degree because there is in combat regen. To a lesser degree everyone has some minor control and buffing. Then take those aspects and specialize into two sub categories of them.

Blasters, Scrappers, Defenders and Tankers specialize in damage. Blasters and Defenders in ranged damage, Scrappers and Tankers in melee. Blaster and Scrappers have primary specialization, Defenders and Tankers have secondary Specialization.

Defenders, Tankers, Scrappers and Controllers specialize in Mitigation which is buffing, debuffing or healing. Defenders and Controllers in area mitigation, Tankers and Scrappers in personal mitigation. Defenders and Tankers have primary specialization, Controllers and Scrapper have secondary specialization.

Controllers specialize primarily in Control.

Blasters are more free form in their secondary taking a bit from everything.

Because everyone has some combination of trinity elements you don’t have to have a strict trinity group in order to complete content. If you make a group of just controllers it will potentially take a while because damage isn’t a primary attribute, but you can easily stop a room from acting and even if something could act you’ve mitigated the damage to the point that everything is easy, just slow. A group of all scrappers is going to move fast through content because they have high damage, but they have to be more careful because they’re more susceptible to control and have less mitigation.

It inspires cooperation, working together, and knowing your role, while also allowing everyone to play their way and doesn’t force them to act a specific way as strictly.

The absolute weakest aspect of GW2 is the organized group content. It simply isn’t fun without a trinity in my personal opinion. When everyone runs pure glass cannon dps builds because everything dies in ten seconds, then we have a problem. We’ve had this problem for a while now.

I understand this was a selling point for the game for many, including myself. Unfortunately, after a while, i came to the conclusion that i missed the organized nature of the trinity and was willing to put up with the headaches associated with finding healers and tanks, rather than continue with GW2 despite loving everything else about it.

On the other hand – GW2’s combat system is by far the best of any MMO as far as PVP goes.

Henry.5713:

Now imagine what might happen over time as people mastered this content.
They might figure out that they can take less healing and less tanking and a bit more dps once they completely master this encounter. They might even realize that some classes can still manage to do certain tasks successfully while putting out more damage than the predefined tank or healer.

It has happened in all of the trinity games I know!

The only difference between the trinity games and GW 2 is that here we are able to include 100% dps classes in our party compared to the 80-90% we’d use in other games. The support/healing/tanking that 20% of those parties will have is just split between everyone (well almost) in any given GW2 dungeon party.
If they made boss fights so hard and last so long that this little bit of support that the entire party brings together is no longer enough then suddenly we would have to use the parties I mentioned above. It is mainly a matter of balancing the duration and the difficulty of any given encounter.

The problem with no fixed roles is BALANCING. GW2 does the same thing as you said: Max your damage and fails at balancing. I don’t want to know how bad that will be if they add actually super hard content.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Azumi… You say lack of variety in builds, but there’s no one holding a gun to anyone’s head telling them to run zerker builds… as far as I know anyway.

Also, where’d you pull that 90% figure from? Thin air or do you have access to Anet’s metric data system?? HMMM? Oh, you don’t. You made it up. Got it. So, just going to disregard the rest of your comment since you pulled all that from the same place you made up some random number about the builds the “playerbase” is using.

In Trinity games, each role is important, so the player builds around that role which they plan to play in the group.

In GW2 since the only role is DPS, there is no benefit to building around anything other than The Most DPS aka Berserker.

There is currently no reason to stack Healing Power or Toughness in Dungeons and group PvE. Players build around the roles they play. Simple as that. And when your game has only one group role, dont act surprised when everybody builds around that one single role.

Ald.9418:

When everyone runs pure glass cannon dps builds because everything dies in ten seconds, then we have a problem.

That perception is actually part of the problem…

There are NO glass cannons in this game.

Every. Single. Character. has 2 stacks of on demand immortality and every boss’ primary (one-shot) hits have a tempo set to never fire more often than the player’s immortality stacks recharge.

There’s a reason people can overcome high end 5-man encounters solo, NOT wearing tank gear. The way encounters are designed with slow tempo massive hits all the defensive stat stacking in the world isn’t worth as much as dodging to the beat.

DPS reigns supreme, because its faster to rally x3 via kills than to raise the downed manually

Now if you DIED the instant your HP hit zero…then yeah I’d definitely want a tank taking all the hits for me

Ald.9418:

The absolute weakest aspect of GW2 is the organized group content. It simply isn’t fun without a trinity in my personal opinion. When everyone runs pure glass cannon dps builds because everything dies in ten seconds, then we have a problem. We’ve had this problem for a while now.

I understand this was a selling point for the game for many, including myself. Unfortunately, after a while, i came to the conclusion that i missed the organized nature of the trinity and was willing to put up with the headaches associated with finding healers and tanks, rather than continue with GW2 despite loving everything else about it.

On the other hand – GW2’s combat system is by far the best of any MMO as far as PVP goes.

You have your cause and effect backwards. People don’t run glass cannons because everything dies fast. Everything dies fast because everyone runs glass cannons. And because they can get away with it without any down side, they do so.

Knighthonor.4061:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Azumi… You say lack of variety in builds, but there’s no one holding a gun to anyone’s head telling them to run zerker builds… as far as I know anyway.

Also, where’d you pull that 90% figure from? Thin air or do you have access to Anet’s metric data system?? HMMM? Oh, you don’t. You made it up. Got it. So, just going to disregard the rest of your comment since you pulled all that from the same place you made up some random number about the builds the “playerbase” is using.

In Trinity games, each role is important, so the player builds around that role which they plan to play in the group.

In GW2 since the only role is DPS, there is no benefit to building around anything other than The Most DPS aka Berserker.

There is currently no reason to stack Healing Power or Toughness in Dungeons and group PvE. Players build around the roles they play. Simple as that. And when your game has only one group role, dont act surprised when everybody builds around that one single role.

and then that single freak that decided to not follow current meta saves the run when all the paper canons died because one of them forgot to use one skill he was supposed to use at this specific moment….

the point you are ignoring by all your will atm is that damage is not the ONLY role – it’s just the role that requires LEAST amount of player skill to play EFFICIENTLY

This game has a soft trinity, its called Damage, Support, Control. Everybody can do it. If you want a hard trinity game go play one of the dozens of games with a hard trinity on the market. I am tired of people trying to break this game and turn it into 4 hour queue to play any content.

I never understood the laziness that you must have to be a tank or a healer. If you just want to stand semi-afk and let things hit you or cast a heal every once in a while why do you even bother playing games?

There’s nothing unskillful about trinity-style play, DPS-only play, or any of the other usual variations of play. They’re all just fine and dandy.

Guild Wars 2 is designed for a mixed, non-focused type of play that appeals to a range of players, and it does it fairly well.

This type of play is neither better nor worse than hard role-based gameplay. It’s different.

They’re all good.

GW2 is just a different good than EQ.

Knighthonor.4061:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Azumi… You say lack of variety in builds, but there’s no one holding a gun to anyone’s head telling them to run zerker builds… as far as I know anyway.

Also, where’d you pull that 90% figure from? Thin air or do you have access to Anet’s metric data system?? HMMM? Oh, you don’t. You made it up. Got it. So, just going to disregard the rest of your comment since you pulled all that from the same place you made up some random number about the builds the “playerbase” is using.

In Trinity games, each role is important, so the player builds around that role which they plan to play in the group.

In GW2 since the only role is DPS, there is no benefit to building around anything other than The Most DPS aka Berserker.

There is currently no reason to stack Healing Power or Toughness in Dungeons and group PvE. Players build around the roles they play. Simple as that. And when your game has only one group role, dont act surprised when everybody builds around that one single role.

I play with Nomad Gear in PvE. As far as I know, it isn’t a DPS gear. Yet, I can complete every dungeon with it.

runeblade.7514:

Knighthonor.4061:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Azumi… You say lack of variety in builds, but there’s no one holding a gun to anyone’s head telling them to run zerker builds… as far as I know anyway.

Also, where’d you pull that 90% figure from? Thin air or do you have access to Anet’s metric data system?? HMMM? Oh, you don’t. You made it up. Got it. So, just going to disregard the rest of your comment since you pulled all that from the same place you made up some random number about the builds the “playerbase” is using.

In Trinity games, each role is important, so the player builds around that role which they plan to play in the group.

In GW2 since the only role is DPS, there is no benefit to building around anything other than The Most DPS aka Berserker.

There is currently no reason to stack Healing Power or Toughness in Dungeons and group PvE. Players build around the roles they play. Simple as that. And when your game has only one group role, dont act surprised when everybody builds around that one single role.

I play with Nomad Gear in PvE. As far as I know, it isn’t a DPS gear. Yet, I can complete every dungeon with it.

Nomad pushes it into a little /too/ long a battle for my tastes, but celestial’s worked well for me, assuming I’m not soloing something like the catacombs, where I need to switch to berserker gear to destroy burrows quickly.