Originally posted by Zinzan

No trinity so everyone is equal right? Wait and see, some classes will soon emerge as being more "equal" than others and certain builds will inevitably be fotm. It's unavoidable in any game like this. The only way to avoid this is to have a completely skilless system for everyone to be truly equal, there really is no other way.

Perfect example of asking the wrong question.

Has nothing to do with equal.  Its about being sufficient.  No one person is sufficient in GW2 to pull off a "roles".

In WoW/LOTRO/etc etc a tank class is purely standalone sufficient to keep mobs off of other people in the team. 

No one person in GW2 is sufficient for this.  Maybe 2 or 3 people working various controls can do something that is functionally the same, thus the role is filled.  But in GW2 the role is filled by a synergy between multiple people, not by one person running a particular class.  And yes some classes are going to be much better at one strategy than others.

And on the other hand the limited nature of each individual also means that having everyone able to fill that role is a waste.  You want to minimize the number of people you need for a particular function.  If you can get it so that you only need two people with controls rather than 3 then you can have that other person do DPS or a group venom buff and kill faster. 

You can only choose so many skills.  Everyone does not do everything. FAR FAR FAR from it.  You have serious contraints.  Not only can no one person really fill any role.  But you need to be smart an economical to get enough skills between all your members to fill the roles you need for your strategy.

 STOP!

Before you reply any further ,  go read Gestalt's post , please.

** To slow, it's on Page 4 now.

Originally posted by Jimmydean

In a perfect world, it would be " Group LF2M players". 

In reality, there will be OP classes / specs, so we will see " Group LF4M Melee Mesmers" or w/e is OP at the moment. 

Honestly, we're going to see a lot of variations of the 2.

We'll have some groups that will just roll w/ anything, and don't care.

We'll have some groups that are trying to organize a specific class combination, and they are going to be a lot more picky.

We'll have some groups that tends to play best with certain classes, and they will be a little picky.

And we'll have some players who are soo used to uber skill X that they will refuse to play w/ anything else, and they will be the most annoying / picky.

You can't really fight human nature, no matter how hard a game tries to compensate. The good thing is that you aren't forced to follow these people if you don't want to, and if there's people being 'tards in chat, it doesn't really effect you all that much.

The tradeoff is that you may have to show more initiative when these sorts of situations happen, and may need to form your own groups as a result. Not a huge deal, but I'm sure people will complain about it.

Originally posted by aesperus

Originally posted by Jimmydean

In a perfect world, it would be " Group LF2M players". 

In reality, there will be OP classes / specs, so we will see " Group LF4M Melee Mesmers" or w/e is OP at the moment. 

Honestly, we're going to see a lot of variations of the 2.

We'll have some groups that will just roll w/ anything, and don't care.

We'll have some groups that are trying to organize a specific class combination, and they are going to be a lot more picky.

We'll have some groups that tends to play best with certain classes, and they will be a little picky.

And we'll have some players who are soo used to uber skill X that they will refuse to play w/ anything else, and they will be the most annoying / picky.

You can't really fight human nature, no matter how hard a game tries to compensate. The good thing is that you aren't forced to follow these people if you don't want to, and if there's people being 'tards in chat, it doesn't really effect you all that much.

The tradeoff is that you may have to show more initiative when these sorts of situations happen, and may need to form your own groups as a result. Not a huge deal, but I'm sure people will complain about it.

MMORPGs have been about min/maxing for a very long time. As long as GW2 provides challenging content, players will do what they need to to win. Your only hope to circumvent this is to play within your guild, but the same can be said for any other game.  GW2 is no different.

There can't be LF control/damage/support because they're not roles. You are not a control class, you are not a damage class. In battle you do all three, it's inevitable, there is no net, no healer or tank to save you, so if the control or support guy dies, it's over pretty quickly (and since he can't maintain his control or support all the time he will die quickly to begin with). People will need to attune their builds, especially in dungeon.

But that being said, it doesn't mean you will just go after getting 5 players... don't dream.

It's going to be : LF players.

Then the real fun begins. People will need to synergize their builds, and it's not going to be that easy for some players. The main problem is going to be the teambuild wall, some players just won't let you suggest them to take a weapon or a skill (because it just helps the team), they will want to run their build (like we saw in GW1, but worse since there is not healer so there is no net, if the guy doesn't work with the team it's gonna be wipe fest...).

I'm not to sure what skills each class gets. I like support so im guessing guardian would posses the ability to load up those skills.I was also wandering who gets the aoe heal?

Originally posted by gestalt11

This is in fact the best question to ask rather some trinity BS.

 

And the answer is a qualfied "No".  The reason its "No" is that no one person can really provided enough support/CC for a dungeon.

So maybe a good guardian can provide all the healing you would need, but without a mesmer to Moa or a thief to stun, or whatever other solution, the elementalist in Ascalonian Catacombs it won't matter because you will never out heal that nasty nasty attack they have.

 

But its a qualified "No" for exactly the same reason.  People will need to make sure you are able to do SOMETHING. 

 

Bottom line is this Anet want you to work together to "win" an encounter.  This means you will need multiple people with various sorts of support.  If a group already has three people with disables they will probably recruit the last person with a particular support thing in mind, might be healing, might be missile deflection. 

 

So you want see constant spam for "LF1M, need tank then good to go".  But you may see "LF1M, make sure you have an interrupt and can use it" among a whole host of other variations.

 

You as an individual who is part of a team are not stuck in one role.  Instead you need to be able to apply certain support stuff at key times in conjunction with the rest of your team.  Thus people will be looking for things to mesh with the team.

You don't get your ticket into a team by having a 2 second daze.  You get your ticket by being able to use that 2 second daze well.  Almost every class has some variation on a 2 second interrupt.  Some classes can do a bit more than others.  But no class is gonna be the "shutdown" role filler.  You need at least two people for most dungeons to do that.  Same thing with aggro managment.  No one tank is the aggro manager, you need to do it as a team and may need to throw in things like cripples or teleports to manage it right or get the boss off someone.

 

The thing people miss is their are roles yes.  But no one person fills those roles.  That is the main design divergence. 

 

That does not mean everyone is the "support", you may have 2 mostly DPS and 3 people with a variety of support. 

For example one person with some defense healing/bubbles, and the other two are interrupts/snares for nullifying nasty attacks/bad aggro.  The DPS are for burning stuff down and have one utility to get out of trouble(some kind of CC break).

When a boss gets on one the DPSers and does a knock down, the DPSer is responsible for popping his CC break.  One of the interrupters make sure he is not hit by a super hard hit and the other lays down the snare so that the DPSer can get away and recover.  If its really bad the third person bubbles or walls to keep boss off and lays down a regen area for the DPSer.

 

This is different than a game where you see "LF1M need tank then good to go".  Usually that scenario is the sole responsibility of the tank, the healer may help to try and make sure he does not go down.  But the "get the boss off and DPS away"  portion is the job of the tank.  That is what they usually save a forced attack taunt move for.  Instead in Guild Wars 2 rather than making the mob act stupid you must counter its dangerous attack or combination of attacks and then recover tactically.

Performing such a counter generally always takes at least a combination of 2 people and may take more.  At the same time there are multiple ways to interweave support to achieve the same funcional result.

 

Decent teams will have some idea of what type of support they would need if they already have 4 people.  A guardian or ele or necro can generally put out more healing than a mesmer.  If you are going to go for a turtle type strategy you opt for one of those classes and ask for it.  On the other hand there is no real reason you need healing at all.  You could go for every single person using controls/interrupts.  Five mesmers with Moa can make the multiple mob encounters that slaughtered many people in Catacombs much easier.  Elementalists don't cast their huge devastating AOE's when they are a Moa bird and you can Moa all three mobs and Moa the ele 3 times with 5 mesmers.

 

You will most likely start seeing particular team setups get advertised in GW2 rather than the need tank or need healer spam.  As strategies become known you will see stuff like "Recruting for IWAY team"  or "Need 2 mesmers with time warp for spike team".  They will be particular but only in the context of the team build they believe has been proven to work.  In some ways this can get more elitist than typical trinity games.

In some ways this type of recruiting can be just as narrow minded and tiresome as the typical trinity system.  People will adhere to their pet strategies against all reason and are often complete weenies about it.  But the nature of the teams themselves throughout the game as a whole will vary quite a bit.

 

How can I say this with a decent amount of confidence?  Because I have played GW1 and GW2.  I can tell from playing GW2 the nature of what is possible and that is leans towards a team build dynamic rather than a role filling dynamic.  You can see in GW1 PvP and PvE that this sort of dynamic leads to certain social behaviors and recruitment.

 

It not all roses and its not always as open as people claim because people are often closeminded and more variation can actuall make people more conservative but there is much more variation on the macro scale when it comes to teams "winning" a dungeon. 

 

This post is worthy of being bumped directly.

   Also, I wanted to say the first time that I get level 30 I'm going to /map "LF4M Elementalists Ascalonian Catacombs for an All Elementalist run" .   I'm just going to see if we can do it or not.  It's going to be insane.

you are going to see a lot of spam for guardians and water elementalists , even though you can do a dungeon with all 5 dps classes just spamming dps and dodging smaller aoe hits will still need to get support heals and absorbs. No one runs  a perfect game all the time so you will still need a good support team.

If you been following Guild Wars 2 closely the only different between a healer in say wow or a healer in guild wars 2 is in GW2 all classes are held accountable for their own actions in dodging and messing up. In other games healers were held accountable for not healing enough when dps classes did entirely stupid crap or tanks bit off more then they could chew. If you learn your classes and play correctly and use the dodge mechanic and other tools to avoid damage then the game will be a breeze for your groups. If not you still have some guardian absorbs and ele healing to help keep you alive when you couldnt avoid something by chance.

Originally posted by Redemp

 

 

 STOP!

 

 

 

 

Before you reply any further ,  go read Gestalt's post , please.

** To slow, it's on Page 4 now.

You´re death wrong, it was still on page 1... different settings give people a different ammount of posts/page, its 40 in my case.

But you´re right too, everyone should read Gestalts post. I do not totally agree with it, but it very much describes very much what is required.

Still thinking that the tools in the group decide what tactics will be used.  So people may need to switch out skills before certain fights.  But every combination of classes can survive and beat a dungeon, as long as the players are willing to addapt their class to the attack plan. Ans tactics are willing to addapt their tactics to the players abbilities.

I'm sure some people will "LFG, looking for tank" "LFG Looking for heals", etc..., out of habit and not knowing the game.

The combination of professions that make up a party don't really mean much in this game. The most important thing is to have smart, adaptable team mates who work well with others. I don't know how you advertise that? "LFG, two more, smart team players only"?

I don't know. Since everything but trait point allocation can be changed outside of combat, and traits with in each line offer versatility for different build types, a player who knows there profession can fill a number of roles tailored to an individiual situation.

If a Dungeon is known to have encounters that need a particular function, you might see something like "LFG, Need another player willing to spec for knock downs", or "Looking for someone able to spec for condition removal", etc... It's not as cut and dry as "Looking for support", or "Looking for Control".

Five smart, adaptable players could all be of the same profession and still do well in a Dungeon run, if they can work well together and adjust their strategies and builds on the fly.

There is going to be a learning curve on how best to approach Dungeons in the game and how best to recruit team mates. I think, in the end, people who do a lot of Dungeon runs will build a friend's list around people they've been comfortable doing runs with in the past and a "black list" of people who just don't seem to be able to find a way to fit in. More casual Dungeoneers will probably just open up a call for "LFG, have two, need three more", assemble a pug and see what they can do with it. If there is a specific need, people may ask for someone who can fulfill that need, but there may be a number of professions able to spec skills and traits needed to fill that need.

Basically haha. Many classes do get some sort of control/support mixed in though which helps out.  In the end, not having support/control of some sort will make it much harder to do stuff. Its less that there is not 'trinity' in this game, and more so its balanced to make people stand more of a chance on their own and clutch on the 'downed' aspect to make up for it a bit. 

If your not doing support/control at all, your just making things very difficult, everyone should be providing it to some degree.

Originally posted by Purutzil

Basically haha. Many classes do get some sort of control/support mixed in though which helps out.  In the end, not having support/control of some sort will make it much harder to do stuff. Its less that there is not 'trinity' in this game, and more so its balanced to make people stand more of a chance on their own and clutch on the 'downed' aspect to make up for it a bit. 

 

If your not doing support/control at all, your just making things very difficult, everyone should be providing it to some degree.

Aye, and even when specced for DPS, you should have some abbillities to help with controll and support, so use them

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

Originally posted by Purutzil

Basically haha. Many classes do get some sort of control/support mixed in though which helps out.  In the end, not having support/control of some sort will make it much harder to do stuff. Its less that there is not 'trinity' in this game, and more so its balanced to make people stand more of a chance on their own and clutch on the 'downed' aspect to make up for it a bit. 

 

If your not doing support/control at all, your just making things very difficult, everyone should be providing it to some degree.

Aye, and even when specced for DPS, you should have some abbillities to help with controll and support, so use them

Not should, will. The weapons skills all come with some mix of damage, control and support and you'd be a fool not to use utilities (and even traits) to make up the difference. Ultimately, this is a game where balanced builds will reign supreme and versatility will shine so brightly that the archaic concept of "roles" will be driven deep into the shadows of the nether to be forgotten, forever.

Originally posted by jaybird50

If you have not played it yet just wait and see... there really is no LFG... Its pretty amazing imo. I havent grouped so much in any game while at the same time never being officially "grouped".  Its fluidity just ...works

I think that pretty much nails it

This thread demonstrates how fully a single game can brainwash its playerbase.

Originally posted by Fendel84M

Just wondering, they say they got rid of the trinity. And now they use a dps/control/support system. So does that just mean most people will still spec DPS and no one will wanna be support or control?

DAFUQ?

are you kidding me?

You don't even have to utter the words "LFG need X/Y/Z"

You just get 5 people random people start playing. People can change up their playstyle there and then to suit the group play etc. But honestly I dont think you need to fill out all those roles in a party.

Here is the FACT! Some classes do some roles better then others. Top passive HOT time is a guardian speced to do so. Top AoE damage is a Elementlist speced to do so. Each dungeon will have parts that are easier if you have the right tools. So people will look for the tools for an easy win and some may require it as we have seen in every MMO we have played. Only way to stop this is if ANet balances the classes so everyone does each job equally. I dont see this happening so get ready for players asking for X class thats speced for Y role.

Originally posted by Nanfoodle

Here is the FACT! Some classes do some roles better then others. Top passive HOT time is a guardian speced to do so. Top AoE damage is a Elementlist speced to do so. Each dungeon will have parts that are easier if you have the right tools. So people will look for the tools for an easy win and some may require it as we have seen in every MMO we have played. Only way to stop this is if ANet balances the classes so everyone does each job equally. I dont see this happening so get ready for players asking for X class thats speced for Y role.

You're not looking at the big picture, you're just comparing some numbers between professions and saying "that one is bigger that this one". Well doesn't work like that in a fight in GW2.   Let's take the example of the guardian healing (because some people are still thinking it's going to be the healer-ish class), first, regeneration doesn't depend on the class it depends on the level and the healing power (which scales the same between classes since it comes from stuff and trait line stat).</br>

Second is raw healing, guardian has a higher base with some skills, sure, but there is a problem, either there is a freaking long cooldown (30s is freaking long, 10s is already freaking long) or it's just way to small. It doesn't matter if you "spam" heal on someone, giving him 2k HP every 5s when he can loose 10K in 6 isn't just efficient, you don't heal a spike with that, they might have the best  numbers, but those numbers are useless if you just look at them like that, it like telling someone you can fill a watertank in one day and he can only do it in 2 days, but the tank need to be full within the hour, faster doesn't mean useful.</br></br>

So what is that healing for ? it's to buy time, like any other support, buy time till the guy's selfheal is up, buy time till the condition removal (if he was suffering from a damage condition) is up or the condition gone etc. The main goal is never to refill entirely the HP bar, it's to keep it managable, but it's not the only way to do it, you are not a healer, for instance if you have a heavy protection+weakness teambuild, you don't need that must healing, because you won't loose that much HP to begin with when you're hit.</br></br>

It's the same with everything, the orientation your build takes is complemented by your party members, but it's not black & white, like you're support, you're control and you only do that, it's a mix between all builds giving you equal damage, support control in the end. So the only thing people will do is copy a wiki teambuild that works, but it's not going to be the best, because there is no best, there is only balanced.

Originally posted by sajah

Originally posted by Nanfoodle

Here is the FACT! Some classes do some roles better then others. Top passive HOT time is a guardian speced to do so. Top AoE damage is a Elementlist speced to do so. Each dungeon will have parts that are easier if you have the right tools. So people will look for the tools for an easy win and some may require it as we have seen in every MMO we have played. Only way to stop this is if ANet balances the classes so everyone does each job equally. I dont see this happening so get ready for players asking for X class thats speced for Y role.

You're not looking at the big picture, you're just comparing some numbers between professions and saying "that one is bigger that this one". Well doesn't work like that in a fight in GW2.   Let's take the example of the guardian healing (because some people are still thinking it's going to be the healer-ish class), first, regeneration doesn't depend on the class it depends on the level and the healing power (which scales the same between classes since it comes from stuff and trait line stat).

Second is raw healing, guardian has a higher base with some skills, sure, but there is a problem, either there is a freaking long cooldown (30s is freaking long, 10s is already freaking long) or it's just way to small. It doesn't matter if you "spam" heal on someone, giving him 2k HP every 5s when he can loose 10K in 6 isn't just efficient, you don't heal a spike with that, they might have the best  numbers, but those numbers are useless if you just look at them like that, it like telling someone you can fill a watertank in one day and he can only do it in 2 days, but the tank need to be full within the hour, faster doesn't mean useful.
 

So what is that healing for ? it's to buy time, like any other support, buy time till the guy's selfheal is up, buy time till the condition removal (if he was suffering from a damage condition) is up or the condition gone etc. The main goal is never to refill entirely the HP bar, it's to keep it managable, but it's not the only way to do it, you are not a healer, for instance if you have a heavy protection+weakness teambuild, you don't need that must healing, because you won't loose that much HP to begin with when you're hit.
 

It's the same with everything, the orientation your build takes is complemented by your party members, but it's not black & white, like you're support, you're control and you only do that, it's a mix between all builds giving you equal damage, support control in the end. So the only thing people will do is copy a wiki teambuild that works, but it's not going to be the best, because there is no best, there is only balanced.

 

Im not talking pigeonhole someone into a Hard Trinity role, like making the Guardian the classic team healer or the Warrior the tank. I am talking about guilds asking people to spec their classes to their strengths. So lets take a Elementlist using a staff in water. Thats their support/healing role being put to use. Now lets take a Guardian with a 1h mace and off hand, thats the guardians biggest support/healing weapon set. Now get both classes spec everything into healing so they end up being playing heavey support and just a medium ranged DPS class. As it stands now the Guardian between the two classes would heal more by the end of the dungeon run then the Elementalist. But if the Elemnetlist was speced heavey into AoE (what they do better then any other class) You would get more bang for your buck in the team. 

Because the classes are not balanced equal doing any part of any role, DPS, Healing and Damage Mitigation/Control. Means that guilds and players in general will ask for players to play what their class is AWESOME at over just good at. Take a team of 5 random classes that are speced for what they are just good at vs a team of 5 that spec their classes what they are AWESOME at, what team has the edge? Because of this a guild in WvW of 40 players running with everyone in their classes best spec means they have a 5-10-20% advantage over a guild thats just specing willy nilly. This will force other guilds to follow suit if they want to play on the same level or ANet will have to make all classes do all roles equal. Follow me?

As it stands now with all classes not being equal at all roles we will see builds come out that are not only considered optimum but required by most of the community. So as the OP said, Looking for Guardian speced for support, Looking for Elementlist speced for AoE. Its gona happen as the game is designed now. Will Anet change that? Who knows!!!!