Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

I did not touch the the holy trinity but I do have an opinion about that as well (no surprise there). The idea of taking away the holy trininty is not bad in my opinion. I don’t think the holy trininty is bad but trying something else is also not bad.

…

Personally I would love to have seen that when taking the holy trininty away they would make sure that all professions where still very useful and all had there own necessary task. So you need for example at least 4 (maybe even 5) different classes and different builds to successfully complete a dungeon or complete a mission where every profession had it’s own task.

…

This was the point I was trying to make as well. I’m not for or against the so-called “Holy Trinity”, but (IMO) to have a sense of teamwork you need some sort of specialisation. Teams are built on the reliance and trust that everyone will do their particular job. If everyone has the same job (DPS/Self-buff/Self-heal) and, even worse, the system is predicated on every player only looking after themselves , then there’s no teamwork and no team. Just a mob.

I’m not saying the Tank/Heal/DPS is the best or even only way to go. It’s just one method for introducing specialisation. Personally I think Rift did a better job of removing at least the static nature of this specialisation in its idea of souls, which really allows for dynamic specialisation.

The lack of a “holy trinity” was one of the major reasons I left GW2. Well, more accurately the lack of role specialisation. I’ll try to explain…

One of the major reasons I enjoy MMO’s (and table-top roleplaying and LARP) is the fun had working as a team. Seeing one of your team-mates being chased by the Big Bad Gnarly Beast while heavily injured and dropping that large heal to keep him up or taunting the BBGB off are two conspicuous MMO team activities. Oh there’s combo attacks, but when it comes down to that heroic save of a team mate, well there’s nothing you can do apart from keep pew-pewing away.

In GW2 groups of players aren’t teams, they’re mobs in which everyone has to look out for themselves. There are even posts that basically explain that outlook and how to optimise different classes to achieve self-reliance. Which also means that every character is essentially the same Self-Buff/Self-Heal/DPS archetype, with minor tweaks.

For some that’s fine. If you want to play as a group of individuals, then GW2 is your thing. But if you want to work in a team with the individual specialisations and responsibilities that entails, then GW2 is not the game for you.