Originally posted by gieger808

So I haven't played any of the beta, but from the footage I've seen, there IS a trinity. Lots of classes (if not all) have a healing and tanking "spec".  As I watch some of the dungeon running I see people falling into those roles. 

It really caught my attention during a run PC Gamer did. I don't have the Youtube link handy, but you could probably find it.

 

i am with OP here, and I have played the betas and I am a regular poster in this forum and have taken part in alot of the trinity topics here over the time. People fall in roles as the video clearly shows- its just wrong to call it healing and tanking specs.

Everyone that have followed GW2 and/or played the beta should know now that there is no "holy"! trinty in GW2 , thats  means that there is no forced fixed roles.That is an amazingly good thing.

But there is roles. Thesse roles can be described analayzed and improved. And they will be.

ArenaNet have described them as Support, damage and control.

This is called the new trinity, by people that don't get that this is actual the basic foundation for the holy trinity, simply because Tanks and threath is a simple primitive form of control, and heling is (whack- a-mole) the most simple form of support, and dps is what damage is reduced to when tanking and healing have nullified the opponents impackt. So nothing new about, its just what trinity really is about.

But ArenaNets unique twist on the trinity is to make it difficult , and less obvious to actual have fixed roles. This is done mainly through 2 things. By letting weaponskills actual come with options to support, damage and control. And by letting people have to take responsebility for their own constitution in battle.

This leads to builds where players are use to have build where they do all the roles of support, damage and control.

The theory is that since every one can do at least a little of everything that means there will not be roles. This is imho oppinion a wrong theory. And there is 2 reasons here.

First you can make builds that really focus alot on 1 role , and neglect the other to a degree where around 80% of what you do can be put into doing that role. (8 out of 10 skills). Unless your group is really good at communicating, specialised roles has a lot less chance og being ineffictive because of redundant uses of roles. (an exsample when a group  of 5 all controll ( cripples, blind and stun ) the same target at same time they are not nessacerry effictive, though they cleary demonstrate that they all can control. The group with specialised roles will avoid thesse situation with redundant skill use, and because of that be more efficient in many cases.

Second, for the groups  that don't have specialeze build into specific roles. to avoid the innefficent situations where every do the same role at the same time, players need to be clear about who are doing what at what time. The way to be clear is to have defined roles , even if they switch alot during an encounter.

What remains to be seen is if builds that focus on 1 role will work better in Pick up groups, than builds where everyone can do a little of everything. IMHO the group with builds specialised in trinity roles, will be the more safe way to play, where the failure rate would smaller, but the best combos harder to reach. And offcause the opposite for groups that do not build around trinity roles, they will have more chances of doing better combos, but alot harder time pull them off, because it require so much more to combine this little of everything.

my 2 cents

Originally posted by jondifool

Originally posted by gieger808

So I haven't played any of the beta, but from the footage I've seen, there IS a trinity. Lots of classes (if not all) have a healing and tanking "spec".  As I watch some of the dungeon running I see people falling into those roles. 

It really caught my attention during a run PC Gamer did. I don't have the Youtube link handy, but you could probably find it.

 

i am with OP here, and I have played the betas and I am a regular poster in this forum and have taken part in alot of the trinity topics here over the time. People fall in roles as the video clearly shows- its just wrong to call it healing and tanking specs.

Everyone that have followed GW2 and/or played the beta should know now that there is no "holy"! trinty in GW2 , thats  means that there is no forced fixed roles.That is an amazingly good thing.

But there is roles. Thesse roles can be described analayzed and improved. And they will be.

ArenaNet have described them as Support, damage and control.

This is called the new trinity, by people that don't get that this is actual the basic foundation for the holy trinity, simply because Tanks and threath is a simple primitive form of control, and heling is (whack- a-mole) the most simple form of support, and dps is what damage is reduced to when tanking and healing have nullified the opponents impackt. So nothing new about, its just what trinity really is about.

But ArenaNets unique twist on the trinity is to make it difficult , and less obvious to actual have fixed roles. This is done mainly through 2 things. By letting weaponskills actual come with options to support, damage and control. And by letting people have to take responsebility for their own constitution in battle.

This leads to builds where players are use to have build where they do all the roles of support, damage and control.

The theory is that since every one can do at least a little of everything that means there will not be roles. This is imho oppinion a wrong theory. And there is 2 reasons here.

First you can make builds that really focus alot on 1 role , and neglect the other to a degree where around 80% of what you do can be put into doing that role. (8 out of 10 skills). Unless your group is really good at communicating, specialised roles has a lot less chance og being ineffictive because of redundant uses of roles. (an exsample when a group  of 5 all controll ( cripples, blind and stun ) the same target at same time they are not nessacerry effictive, though they cleary demonstrate that they all can control. The group with specialised roles will avoid thesse situation with redundant skill use, and because of that be more efficient in many cases.

There's not a great amount of redundant skill use, however.  Check out effects and durations of stuff and how they stack.

If you have a bunch of people chilling, then that's ok, because the nature is that the stacking is still helpful.  Assuming chilling is a good idea in that particular dungeon.  Similar with other abilities.  Also, it doesn't matter who brings support or control or how it is split up in a group.  You can't specialize to make your chilling better than Bob's.  You can't specialize to make your buffs better.  They'll stack and work the same way on people.  So going with 1 person with 2 chills or 2 people with 1 chill is much the same.  Add to this the fact that everyone is going to be doing damage, and you have something where you really can't "specialize" in something that's not DPS unless you nerf your damage-dealing stats in favor of survival.  If you do that too much, you'll hurt the group because tanking doesn't work.

Tough group content, as I see it, will be a lot more about making sure you have all the bases covered, one way or another, and not at all about having one person focus on one job, etc, etc.  Heck, it will probably be a better idea to have everyone change their stuff around a little bit before heading in somewhere, because you can't make a build that doesn't buff or debuff.

Originally posted by Angier2758

Well.. a lot of people (me included) consider "tanking" any time you're getting hit.  Now that being said you have funny tanking and real tanking in most games, but that's the quality of said tanking.

The holy trinity is *not* gone from GW2 anyone who says that is getting caught up in catch phrases and hype.  You don't need to even be ina  beta to realize this... just look at a skill list.  If you have heals, abilities/items allowing to absorb tank, and some doing some sort of damage... you have a HT.  In GW2 the HT is just greatly diminished in importance.  Maybe just one strat amongst many.

I don't know if people see this as semantics or they honestly believe the HT is dead in GW2.

 

 

 Oh!  So like Halo then! :D

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by eggy08

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by eggy08

So CAN there be trinity? In lower easier instances sure, in harder ones... noone knows. But is THIS game designed around there being a trinity.. No. So what does it matter if it could be there or not? It's all just play preference.

Need to be more specific than that.  If there's one bad guy, everyone else is ranged, and the bad guy can't do much damage...then it seems like there can be tanking...though there really aren't dedicated healers.  Someone picking up some traits and using the right weapon attack to do some off-healing is limiting themselves for relatively little healing.  Note there aren't any character attributes tied directly to healing.  It isn't like WoW or the like where there is +healing gear.

This sort of thing doesn't work well if there are multiple mobs or if the current mob switches to attack someone else.  I'm not sure how physically moving out of the way of attacks affects mob behavior either, but in the video someone provided the Guardian was NOT moving out of the way of attacks.  From what I gathered, they also had a fairly gimicky build that happened to stop most damage (at least in that storymode dungeon, and storymode dungeons are easy).  I think that may be from an old build of the beta, because I heard they nerfed something like this for guardians at some point.

So I don't think attempting to do a Trinity game would actually work against most content.  Someone just did a video of a very niche application, niche even for an easy area.

Yes, but building as a certain specific role is possible is what I'm saying. And there are classes with healing skills that could be viable to heal others relatively well if given enough healing power. Is it enough that his only role is healing? no, but it's possible to build your class to fall into trinity. And that is playstyle. If you want to build your class as a tank and get in the way of ranged attacks to protect the team or stay in melee range like the guardian then you can, will it work outright, no, but it still serves the specific role that the particular person wants to fill, mitigating damage from other players by tanking it yourself or healing teammates with bonus healing power to help keep people alive. All I'm saying is taht this game is not built to be run purely by trinity standards and that if people feel they can play only one role, then it might hurt them later when that role is not really viable as it is.

From everything I've read, watched, etc, etc, you can LEAN towards a support, control, or DPS role.  However, you can't ever go 100% into anything.  Everything gets a large DPS role standard.  You can't avoid that.  Everything gets a large self-healing role standard.  You can't avoid that.

Now let's look at the weapons for say a Warrior:

Two-handed Weapons

Greatswords have a movement debuff (cripple).

Hammers stun, weaken, cripple, push back, and knock-down.

Bows blind and immoblize.

Rifles cripple, makes vunerable, and push back.

One-handed Weapons

Axes cripple.

Maces stun, weaken, daze, make vulnerable, and knock down.

Swords immoblize and cripple.

Off-hand

Shields stun

Warhorns buff and debuff.

 

Every Warrior has control abilities.  Every single one.  You can't spec completely out of control as a warrior.  You can spec more or less into it.  Every other class is similar in this respect.  Everyone is a hybrid to one degree or another.  If you ignore that, then you don't play to your potential.

 

Talking about tanking is particularly ridiculous.  As if you focus on absorbing damage, then where does that leave you?  You fight one guy and take forever while everyone else is killing the enemy.  There's no way to aggro everyone to you...that won't happen.  Similarly, you can't spec all healing and heals others provide is relatively weak.  That doesn't make it negligible, mind you, but the healing doesn't exist to support a pure tanking job (which doesn't exist because of aggro).

So there are 3 aspects to combat in a way.  Support, damage, and control.  But you can't go 100% into any one of them.  Everyone has at least self-support.  Everyone has damage.  Everyone either has control or support moves on their weapons (and those moves almost always do damage).

And running into ranged attacks is generally going to be stupid.  Because you have to respond super-quick to get in the way.  Well, wait a second, that gives LOADS of time for those people to get out of the way.  So really you are just hurting yourself for no reason.

Keep in mind that Control is NOT tanking.  Support is NOT healing (per se, though there can be a small healing element).  Trying to jam in HT roles into the game is thinking about things the wrong way.  Everyone wants to be dodging and avoiding damage.  Running into damage is the last thing you want to do.  You aren't going to be playing someone who is 10 times tougher than everyone else, with people tossing heals to keep you topped off.  That mechanic isn't there so getting yourself hurt on purpose is a bad idea on many levels, especially when you can just *gasp* avoid the damage.

Rather than roles, think of Control, Damage, and Support as combat elements.  Everyone has some mix of these elements, and using them properly is needed to play well.  I think the Devs did a bit of a disservice to themselves by talking in just these terms.  For instance, avoidance is also an element.  If you don't try to avoid damage with movement and dodging, then you'll do poorly.  It's no less important than the others, but it gets a lot less mention because people are stuck in HT-thinking mode.  Skill combos are also an element and using them is important to do well.

Anyhow, you can specialize somewhat, but there's not anything like the specializations extremes that you see in most MMOs.  The specializations are smaller and more realistic.

Which is my point exactly. You can still spec and gear towards a role, but there isn't enough skills by far to fit the role perfectly.

And I have played a elementalist. go double dagger, you have 2 healing skills, 1 aoe, 1 single target on urself. Staff has healing rain. You can't spam these, but you can be considered a healing class by using these skills, BUT that cannot be your only role.

Originally posted by eggy08

Which is my point exactly. You can still spec and gear towards a role, but there isn't enough skills by far to fit the role perfectly.

And I have played a elementalist. go double dagger, you have 2 healing skills, 1 aoe, 1 single target on urself. Staff has healing rain. You can't spam these, but you can be considered a healing class by using these skills, BUT that cannot be your only role.

Eh, by all accounts the healing is quite weak.  So no, I don't think you could be considered a "healing class" anymore than everyone is already a healing class or a guy who can leap is a "leaping class."  It's a relatively minor element.  The condition removal is more significant, I'd say.

Originally posted by BadSpock

If every profession has the tools to "tank" and "heal" for any period of time, then there is no holy trinity as holy trinity = dedicated roles.

Just about every single ability any profession has that allows you to heal other players has a damage or other support component to it as well.

Damage avoidance/mitigation is done via block and dodge as well as things like blind and stun/knockdown/cripple which every profession has.

In other MMOs like WoW there were gimmick tanking scenarios, mage tanks in Gruul or Warlock pet tanks / hunter pet tanks Shaman tanks etc. etc. but the game was DESIGNED from the ground up to have the Holy Trinity in play.

GW2 is DESIGNED from the ground up to NOT have the Holy Trinity in play.

All classes CAN be damage, support, control and often all at the same time/within a split second of each other.

Having someone spec'd into Support especially for Healing means you the party member will probably have to use your own healing skills less often, but you still can't just stand there taking a beating and expect to not go down.

 

I present to you sir:

WoW's Paladin.  Holy trinity represented as one class with the tools to do any one in any spec (with degrees of success).

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by eggy08

Which is my point exactly. You can still spec and gear towards a role, but there isn't enough skills by far to fit the role perfectly.

And I have played a elementalist. go double dagger, you have 2 healing skills, 1 aoe, 1 single target on urself. Staff has healing rain. You can't spam these, but you can be considered a healing class by using these skills, BUT that cannot be your only role.

Eh, by all accounts the healing is quite weak.  So no, I don't think you could be considered a "healing class" anymore than everyone is already a healing class or a guy who can leap is a "leaping class."  It's a relatively minor element.  The condition removal is more significant, I'd say.

Its particularly hard to know that until we get to late game with full stats and full spec. But who knows...

Originally posted by Meowhead

Originally posted by Angier2758

Well.. a lot of people (me included) consider "tanking" any time you're getting hit.  Now that being said you have funny tanking and real tanking in most games, but that's the quality of said tanking.

The holy trinity is *not* gone from GW2 anyone who says that is getting caught up in catch phrases and hype.  You don't need to even be ina  beta to realize this... just look at a skill list.  If you have heals, abilities/items allowing to absorb tank, and some doing some sort of damage... you have a HT.  In GW2 the HT is just greatly diminished in importance.  Maybe just one strat amongst many.

I don't know if people see this as semantics or they honestly believe the HT is dead in GW2.

 

 

 Oh!  So like Halo then! :D

When I was writing it I was actually thinking "damn the HT is in Halo too"

kudos to you sir.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Nanfoodle

Originally posted by Rozalla

The devs say "Play how you want to play" but I want to play as a healer.  Im not interested in doing dps.

If I spec to be a healer I will be gimping myself. Therefore you either have to be an all rounder or pure dps ?

I sugest you play a elementlis or a guardian and spec heavy into support. You will have tools to heal and also ways to stop damage happening to team mates. You can play a class heavy in support and people will love you for it. But you will be doing damage while you do this. You wil not be transfixed on peoples health bars. I love playing support and this is the most fun I have had playing a support role in any MMO. Watch the video below to get the idea. You can spec a lot of the classes to play support with many flavors of it but like I said Guardian and Elementlist have the strongest healing. Just dont expect to stand there spaming heal and watching health bars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wsbavY2Q2M&feature=plcp

 

 

another good one on this topic

I Might Be Your Bra; It's a Support Thing by Enigmius

That is a cool vid. Being a support player myself I have to say I am very excited about how support works in GW2. Thanks for sharing.

Originally posted by Aerowyn
heres a good video on the HT system not specific to GW2 it actually is about wow but shows the issues with the trinity system http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGDL6QVL-8  and from watching this you can see how GW2 solves most the issues he goes over with the HT system

If you dont get what a hard trinity/holly trinity is then watch this video. Also if you think getting hit equals tanking, then all the mages and rogues in my WoW guild tanked 5-10% of the time but always faceplanted for trying. I get the confusion. GW2 has changed the MMO market and new terms needed to be invented to label what they are doing. Terms like Soft Trinity are new to MMOs. If you dont get it, dont get fustrated. It makes more sense once you play and trust me its worth playing to get it.

Soft trinity means this: No one class has one single role. (tank/heal/dps) Every class fills more then one role in the team.

There are many advantages of going with a soft trinity and if you have MMOed for any amount of time its easy to figure out what. Couple of quick ones are. No more LF X class to tank or heal. No longer canceling an event because the guild tank or healer is sick or went to the movies to see Avengers. No more looking at just health bars, even your own. (you know when you are taking damage) IMO a soft trinity wins every time.

Originally posted by Angier2758

Originally posted by BadSpock

If every profession has the tools to "tank" and "heal" for any period of time, then there is no holy trinity as holy trinity = dedicated roles.

Just about every single ability any profession has that allows you to heal other players has a damage or other support component to it as well.

Damage avoidance/mitigation is done via block and dodge as well as things like blind and stun/knockdown/cripple which every profession has.

In other MMOs like WoW there were gimmick tanking scenarios, mage tanks in Gruul or Warlock pet tanks / hunter pet tanks Shaman tanks etc. etc. but the game was DESIGNED from the ground up to have the Holy Trinity in play.

GW2 is DESIGNED from the ground up to NOT have the Holy Trinity in play.

All classes CAN be damage, support, control and often all at the same time/within a split second of each other.

Having someone spec'd into Support especially for Healing means you the party member will probably have to use your own healing skills less often, but you still can't just stand there taking a beating and expect to not go down.

 

I present to you sir:

 

WoW's Paladin.  Holy trinity represented as one class with the tools to do any one in any spec (with degrees of success).

It can only do one of them at a time, since you'd have to equip completely different gear and change your spec to do another role.  To say nothing of how hard roles are in a Holy Trinity game, whereas everyone is inherently a hybrid in GW2 and it uses a different set of elements than the Holy Trinity, has other elements, etc, etc.  So what exactly is your point?

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Angier2758

Originally posted by BadSpock

If every profession has the tools to "tank" and "heal" for any period of time, then there is no holy trinity as holy trinity = dedicated roles.

Just about every single ability any profession has that allows you to heal other players has a damage or other support component to it as well.

Damage avoidance/mitigation is done via block and dodge as well as things like blind and stun/knockdown/cripple which every profession has.

In other MMOs like WoW there were gimmick tanking scenarios, mage tanks in Gruul or Warlock pet tanks / hunter pet tanks Shaman tanks etc. etc. but the game was DESIGNED from the ground up to have the Holy Trinity in play.

GW2 is DESIGNED from the ground up to NOT have the Holy Trinity in play.

All classes CAN be damage, support, control and often all at the same time/within a split second of each other.

Having someone spec'd into Support especially for Healing means you the party member will probably have to use your own healing skills less often, but you still can't just stand there taking a beating and expect to not go down.

 

I present to you sir:

 

WoW's Paladin.  Holy trinity represented as one class with the tools to do any one in any spec (with degrees of success).

It can only do one of them at a time, since you'd have to equip completely different gear and change your spec to do another role.  To say nothing of how hard roles are in a Holy Trinity game, whereas everyone is inherently a hybrid in GW2 and it uses a different set of elements than the Holy Trinity, has other elements, etc, etc.  So what exactly is your point?

He didn't catch the part in red. 

Originally posted by moosecatlol

Originally posted by Matheusor1

One does not simply tank dungeons in GW2.

You could have a team with 1 'tank' specced guardian and 4 'healer' specced guardians/elementalists, and they still won't be able to keep the tank alive for more than 15 seconds. Also, you guys would be dealing crap damage.

A good level 80 Guardian should be able to generate 2000 healing per second on himself  without the use of his healing skill. Throw in the extra water blasts from the Ele using arcane wave, and you should have no problem tanking with 3500 armor.

If you really need, you can even use the 20% damage reduction pots that an Artificer can make. Though you can easily get the medium version of these potions in the dungeons themselves.

 

If you still can't tank as a Guardian you should probably just reroll an Ele.

Sure thing, mate.

When you make a video of that and upload it to youtube, make sure you link it to me, maybe then I'll take your word for it.