Originally posted by Purutzil

I think most people who make statement like these havent ran enough of the dungeons and need to learn the mechanics before they claim them to be broken.  Evidently we are have two very different experiences.  There are rules to the holy trinity that people follow, Healer heals, Tanks tank, DPS burns down the boss.  There are gear requirements as well.  You don't have tanks wearing healing gear.  YOu don't take 5 dps into WOW dungeons yet most are trying to do it in GW2 a claiming its broken.  I don't know how many times it needs to be said.  Show me an example of a dungeon Party in GW2 that is geared and traited correctly, using the correct skills for to encounters and still failing horribly. 

There are rules to the holy trinity that people don't break for a reason.  Plus, there are not guides to describe every single fight for you like in other games.  Give it time or suck it up and deal with the trial and error to figure out.  If it will make you feel better run the Maag run in CoF.  It's easy and you can farm the crap out of it like most others are. 

Basically your saying the trinity still exists though in a different form. Still, It IS chaos. I can have CC and the likes involved, but in the end it just lessens the downed times you have, it doesn't make it a smooth run. You see players who PRIDE themselves on being hardcore raiders getting stomped in dungeons and they do adjust and they still will go down.

The system IS chaos and the only thing you can really do is calm it down. I have yet to wipe completely in a dungeon but I also have yet to go through a dungeon without seeing having people go downed several times on the way through. You can plug a leaking boat but it won't stop the fact water will eventually seap its way in and you will sink.

The trinity was always there.  ArenaNet never said they were getting rid of the trinity, just the hard-set roles of the Holy Trinity.  Again, I will repeat, you follow rules in the holy trinity, if you don't it is choas and groups wipe.  It is the same thing.  Figure out the rules and follow them.  Stop taking 5 DPS to the a dungeon and expecting it to go smoothly.  You don't have healers but  your group can help. 

For example, in the video that Master posted with the second fire golem kicking the teams butt.  The warrior in the video has all signets, Healing, Might, Fury, Stamina,  Rage.  None of those utilities skills help the team, they are all for him and they aren't that helpful for the fight he is in.  So not only is he not setup to help his team, he not setup to help himself.  Their team would have done better if he brought  banners that helped the team or shouts that apply vunlerabiltiy,  or the shake it off skill to removed conditions from himself and allies.  It is obivous that a condition removal would be handy since he was on fire almost the whole time.   Again just like the Holy Trinity, there are things that will make your run easier or harder.  It's the same thing.   

With the random nature of the aggro, the downed state allows for mistakes or missed timing.  It is a nice mechanic to have in the soft trinity based games.  

Your analogy about a leak makes no sense.  Come on don't you think you make your self look silly claiming a system that no one is used to because it is something new, is broken just because you haven't figure it out yet.  Maybe you have some leaks that need addressed. 

Good grief - people still discussing the holy trinity.

Anet got rid of the trinity composed of 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 DPS characters that would exclusively soak damage, heal damage taken by the taken and 3 people dealing damage.

There is no tank and there is no healer.

What there is, are minor effects brought by all the players that will stack and be higher than just the plain sum of the individual diffuse effects (that is a bit why DEs don't sacale very well after a certain amount of numbers, but that is another topic).

Now if one calls the holy trinity healing, taking damage and dealing damage, well that exists but that isn't what Anet was talking as trinity.

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

What there is, are minor effects brought by all the players that will stack and be higher than just the plain sum of the individual diffuse effects

People keep repeating this crap like it's a political talking point.  It's not always possible to take advantage of any such thing, and even if you can, it still doesn't work, and by work, make the combat experience enjoyable.  It's like expecting 3 people to ritual-cast a heal spell every time the tank takes damage, it's silly.

Originally posted by adam_nox

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

What there is, are minor effects brought by all the players that will stack and be higher than just the plain sum of the individual diffuse effects

People keep repeating this crap like it's a political talking point.  It's not always possible to take advantage of any such thing, and even if you can, it still doesn't work, and by work, make the combat experience enjoyable.  It's like expecting 3 people to ritual-cast a heal spell every time the tank takes damage, it's silly.

2 mesmers can easily coordinate and chain cast a bubble spell, an ele can warn the warrior he will cast a combo field so the warrior is ready to cast a banner, 2 players with blocks can coordinate with each other blocking hits from a boss, a team can coordiante CCs to keep the boss at 0 defiant charges so next CC actually works, etc.

What about classes that have traits that give boosts based on the number of boons? Myself as a warrior can generaly keep 3 up on myself, but with other dudes around I can easily have 5 or 6.

The difference is that in this system you require several players to contribute for a role while in the holy trinity a healer can do its job by itself and a tank can do its job by itself.

You have active teamwork opposed to passive teamwork.

Originally posted by voxnor

..........

 

1. How can / will ANet make complex, engaging encounters without the trinity?
2. Will they ever be able to shift the emphasis to good group play and away from good individual play without the trinity?
3. Why am I dying in story mode? I'd like to go into story mode for the, you know, story.

 

 

Far from being an expert, And I'm only half way through the game. But I'll try to asnwer based on what I have seen. And this is mostly just a theory of mine, But they are my thoughts on the matter.

1. I really don't know. No matter how you slice it, Group dynamics have to center around the individual. The game is not designed around tanking and healing. So everyone gets to be both but to a lesser degree than a dedicated role. It's that lesser degree that is the limiting factor. 

2. One thing about GW2 that is not easy is the group fights. I dare say GW2 has the highest requirement for situational awareness in any group fight as any game I've played. The drawback of course is that in groups much bigger than standard dungeon parties,the group's overall ability to coordinate breaks down. Certainly, the average casual gamer isn't used to it. Even in the WoW style theme parks, if you suck at paying attention to situational awareness, if you do heroics enough, eventually, you'll outgear the instance and you don't seem so bad. That dynamic will never happen in GW2. as the groups grow in size, players become unable to monitor all the conditions of all their teammates all at once. Thus, They become an Every Man For Himself event. I believe this problem also affects WvWvW too. This is why the large group battles are zergy

3I got nothing on this.

Ultimately, if the developers are creative enough, most issues can be worked out given time. 

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Originally posted by adam_nox

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Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter What there is, are minor effects brought by all the players that will stack and be higher than just the plain sum of the individual diffuse effects

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People keep repeating this crap like it's a political talking point.  It's not always possible to take advantage of any such thing, and even if you can, it still doesn't work, and by work, make the combat experience enjoyable.  It's like expecting 3 people to ritual-cast a heal spell every time the tank takes damage, it's silly.

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Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

Originally posted by adam_nox

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

What there is, are minor effects brought by all the players that will stack and be higher than just the plain sum of the individual diffuse effects

People keep repeating this crap like it's a political talking point.  It's not always possible to take advantage of any such thing, and even if you can, it still doesn't work, and by work, make the combat experience enjoyable.  It's like expecting 3 people to ritual-cast a heal spell every time the tank takes damage, it's silly.

2 mesmers can easily coordinate and chain cast a bubble spell, an ele can warn the warrior he will cast a combo field so the warrior is ready to cast a banner, 2 players with blocks can coordinate with each other blocking hits from a boss, a team can coordiante CCs to keep the boss at 0 defiant charges so next CC actually works, etc.

What about classes that have traits that give boosts based on the number of boons? Myself as a warrior can generaly keep 3 up on myself, but with other dudes around I can easily have 5 or 6.

The difference is that in this system you require several players to contribute for a role while in the holy trinity a healer can do its job by itself and a tank can do its job by itself.

You have active teamwork opposed to passive teamwork.

This kind of teamwork actually became truly aparrant to me yesterday, when I ran the level 70+ dungeon CoF, with a group of 4 Rangers and myself (an Elementalist). During that run I accidentally learnt a powerful combo. A Ranger used their Healing Spring skill and I used my Scepter fire skills that incidentally produced 4 burst of AOE heals. After realising how potent the heals were, I would constantly keep an eye out for those combo fields to use my blast finishers on them. It saved our asses quite a few times as well.

Originally posted by Master10K

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

Originally posted by adam_nox

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

What there is, are minor effects brought by all the players that will stack and be higher than just the plain sum of the individual diffuse effects

People keep repeating this crap like it's a political talking point.  It's not always possible to take advantage of any such thing, and even if you can, it still doesn't work, and by work, make the combat experience enjoyable.  It's like expecting 3 people to ritual-cast a heal spell every time the tank takes damage, it's silly.

2 mesmers can easily coordinate and chain cast a bubble spell, an ele can warn the warrior he will cast a combo field so the warrior is ready to cast a banner, 2 players with blocks can coordinate with each other blocking hits from a boss, a team can coordiante CCs to keep the boss at 0 defiant charges so next CC actually works, etc.

What about classes that have traits that give boosts based on the number of boons? Myself as a warrior can generaly keep 3 up on myself, but with other dudes around I can easily have 5 or 6.

The difference is that in this system you require several players to contribute for a role while in the holy trinity a healer can do its job by itself and a tank can do its job by itself.

You have active teamwork opposed to passive teamwork.

This kind of teamwork actually became truly aparrant to me yesterday, when I ran the level 70+ dungeon CoF, with a group of 4 Rangers and myself (an Elementalist). During that run I accidentally learnt a powerful combo. A Ranger used their Healing Spring skill and I used my Scepter fire skills that incidentally produced 4 burst of AOE heals. After realising how potent the heals were, I would constantly keep an eye out for those combo fields to use my blast finishers on them. It saved our asses quite a few times as well.

I also noticed a combo when I throw down my #5 Super Elixir skill on my Engineer's Elixir gun.  When standing in it an attack removes a condition.  I think it works for other healing circles as well.  It's interesting.  The coordination between players is so important.  Once everyone figures out all the different benefits to working together using combos and group related skills then they will really start to appreciate how it all works. 

There is a chart on one of the wikis which lays out all of the combos. There are some combos which do AE buffs and others single target buffs and debuffs. Some heal, some do retaliation etc.

And yes group play is vital in this game to completing a dungeon experience without having to zerg it. I did the lvl 30 dungeon story mode twice. The first time we got stuck on 3 rangers who totally kicked our groups but and no matter what we did we couuldnt get past them. Our group wasnt working very well.

The second group we went right through that spot with little problem - I think one player was downed. The only trouble we had in the dungeon was the twin boss area. We all took about 5+ deaths to finish that fight. We did hit a few other snags in tricky areas of the dungeon that we didnt know - traps and the like and it took us a while to get used to each other and fight better. In the end we did finish the dungeon. As a mesmer many times I used a variety of clones to keep aggro off me from a difficult boss and was able to stay alive while the rest of the team had died somewhere along the way. Doing that I could stay afloat long enough for my team to get back and thus not lose progress by having the mob/mobs heal back to full again.

The mechanics are simply different and its going to take people a while to get used to them.

There is no trinty in GW2, but that doesn't mean that there are no coordiantion and tasks to do. Difference and complexity(reffered as chaos, dying, zerg fest) is that everyone needs to do everything, instead just one role.

1. Support your team defensively - heals, protection, condition curing those are major deals. Good coordination makes nigh impossible fights suddenly controlable. Previously 1-2 person job. Now everyone needs to pull their weight, looking at buffs and healthabrs to buff and cure conditions aka cooperation.

2. Support your team offensively - blind, cripple, weakness again turns big scary monster that 2 shot people into slowpoke that can't hit anything. In trinity 1-2 debuffers were enough. Again everyone needs to pay attention to debuffs and chain them aka cooperation.

3. Pull mobs away, CC them, try to get their aggro, use protective bubbles to help dying member and get them up. It's not 1-2 person job anymore. Too many dead people => to few buffs, debuffs and "tanks" => you die faster. Again cooperation.

4. Keep eye on mobs/boss actions - dodge, position yourself or use protective bubbles. While this doesn't require much of cooperation, it was mostly tank job in trinity model(+some easy scripted events). Now it's everyones job. Not doing so result in often downed/dead state which makes you dead weight for team.

Anyways if I can say anything about dungeons - they are way too forgiving currently, often alowing die zerg to progress without learning a thing(cept that dungeons suck cus you die and have repair bill). The good example is a golem fight in CM story(lvl 30 dungeon). Only after duo-ing it I reckoginzed it attacks and learned how to avoid them. With 5 people we zerged it. And it has nice anti range attacks(fires a deadly rockets) as well as nasty flamethrower that makes it impossible to stay 100% melee.