One thing I've noticed about the raid encounters recently in WoW is an attempt to diverge from the "Tank - DPS - Healer" group composition that has been so evident up to this point. I read somewhere that Blizzard wanted to remove some of the reliance of this Trinity on dungeons, to make encounters more interesting and unexpected. The Mage-Tank in the High King fight, for example, or the Instructor fight in Naxx.
However, there doesn't seem to be any way for this to be applied other than a gimmick in one or two fights. So: Should the Trinity be broken for more interesting and complicated encounters, and even then, should it be implimented in 5-mans?
As much as switching roles are fun, it should be the exception - not the norm - in encounters. People play this game because they love their class. I love to heal. Tanks loves to tank.
I do agree well designed encounters with twists to the normal roles can be interesting enough though.
In the Teron Gorefiend fight in Black Temple, chances are you get to control a ghost - that's fun! Make sure to check out the quest about Teron Gorefiend in Shadowmoon Valley as well by the way. In the last step you are granted control over his character. He's got some fun spells. A very nice quest chain.
Also, just came to think of it. Omor the Unscarred in Hellfire Ramparts can be tanked by any ranged class with a fair amount of stamina.
Maybe a bit OT but here goes, I had a really crazy idea the other day which I hope blizzard will do some day.
Imagine a boss with the gimick that it casts a non-dispellable spell on you that turns you into another class for the duration of the encounter. Either everyone are shuffled around in the raid, so I play X's char and he plays Y's, who plays Z's etc... Or all classes can become 2-3 predefined classes, say all mages this week become druids and the next they will become rogues.
I think that would be one hell of a fun fight, probably have to be a really easy fight as the confusion would be... interesting and practical things like spells and such would be a nightmare.
Another fun thing would be if you was transported (as a whole raid) to a new zone and everyone was lvl 1, in this new zone there were a few optional bosses and generally just a lvl 1-5 zone with all the hazards and rewards. Depending on what and how much you complete your real character will get rewarded when you zone out / die.
Edit: Also, back on topic, I agree with Lila above. Tanks likes to tank, healers like to heal etc.. so it should be the norm that you do that in fights, but I've always had a soft spot for the few fights that totally change the way you play.
You can't break up the holy trinity consistently, all you can do is make sure that there are no 3 classes that are the sole exemplars of the trinity.
War/priest/mage can be dissuaded. Tank/heal/DPS can't be, except via "gimmicks", and if every single fight is a gimmick fight, things get silly pretty quickly.
It comes down to:
Stuff needs to die. (DPS)
Your players need to not die. (Healing and tanking)
The things you're killing need to have non-trivial damage output or you run into balance issues. As a result of non-trivial damage output, you need someone to hold their attention so the more fragile classes don't die. (Tanking)
Those 3 roles are just inherent in the way this sort of game is designed; to a greater or lesser extent, they'll always be there, and trying to "break the trinity" is a silly goal. Instead, try to make sure that the trinity isn't so narrow that multiple classes can't successfully (and equally) hold up their leg of the bargain.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
Yeah, basically Kalman is correct. The "trinity" itself is more of a result of some quantification of core game mechanics than it is a design decision. Basically everything revolves around the flow of damage--doing damage, controlling damage, reversing damage.
Of course, I think the "holy trinity" idea has come to imply more than it really means--in that, having pre-defined "roles" for specific classes, with those classes being more or less required. Certainly, there is a lot that can be done from a creative perspective to play with these elements, though. The Maulgar example is a good one, where multiple people who normally would not "tank" get to take that role in the flow of the battle.
I think breaking up class roles can be interesting, especially as it makes the game less mundane and a bit refreshing at times. I had to laugh myself at the irony of me going from MT Warrior as my main to Mage with TBC, only to find myself "tanking" the first 25-man raid encounter we did... that said, like Lila said, you probably won't want to do it too often simply due to the fact that people typically enjoy their normal role and don't like being denied access to it too often.
Certainly, Blizzard has been pushing the viability of hybrids and multi-class roles recently though...which has a dramatic impact on the typically static nature of raiding roles. Having 3 viable tank classes, 4 viable healing classes, and many DPS classes certainly does add a lot more variety than what was found pre-TBC. That's probably more of a practical way to break a static "trinity" than anything else.
Stuff needs to die. (DPS)
Your players need to not die. (Healing and tanking)
The things you're killing need to have non-trivial damage output or you run into balance issues. As a result of non-trivial damage output, you need someone to hold their attention so the more fragile classes don't die. (Tanking)
Well, there's a couple of unspoken assumptions there.
Take line 2, "players need to not die". It would in theory be possible not to require specialist healing classes at all. If a mob outputs consistently low damage, but you can't heal much or any of it, you could tune for much the same effect as having it deal lots of damage that then gets counteracted by healing. See: rogue/mage/warrior solo play for an example. If raid mobs were tuned so that they dealt only the amount of damage that could be healed by bandages and potions, there would be no need for healing classes.
Take also the third factor - "you need someone to hold the mob's attention". There are ways to do this other than simply soaking damage (and thus requiring to heal it back again).
Say you had a specialised kiting class - extra movement speed, blink abilities, and so on, and aggro-gaining abilities. A "tank" of sorts, but not one that requires massive healing and stamina.
Or you could change the whole model - say that when you band together into a party or a raid, you share a single health pool. At a stroke, the reason for a tank is gone. Once again, you could either tune the mob to do low damage (and have no healing classes), or high damage (and thus require healing).
In some cases, taking these options would reduce player choice - in the latter case, with no such thing as a tank, then a whole style of gameplay is gone. Same for if you tune mob damage to not require healing. In some cases, it could improve player choice (allow different types of "tank" - kiters or evasion tanks). But there's certainly room for models that aren't the standard trinity. Whether these can be fitted into WoW as it stands is a very different question.
I'm a big fan of the proposed method for the pally-lookalike in Warhammer.
To heal, they have to do damage to gain their mana-equivalent. So the more dps they do, the more ability to heal they have.
(very very rough explanation)
Seems like a really neat way to take away from the frustration healers get. How often to healers get to crow "lawl 7k heal look at that! bam!". My warlock friends constantly get to say "bam, 11k soulfire crit!" or "haha, did you see that? I just crit SB 5x in a row!".
Meanwhile, I'm spamming GH:1 for 2500 healing over and over and over, with a crit every 11 casts, give or take. Weeeeee. Whack-a-mole.
I like the idea of giving priests (and other healers) interesting jobs to do in a gimmick fight, but they need to be careful not to make it annoying. Razuvious was a PoS to tank; even with full hit gear, you'd still get a resist, guaranteed, about every 5 or 6 Mind Controls. Either it was a range check, or it was that 1%, but we didn't have a single fight go by where we didn't get at least one resist each. Cool idea, absolute crap implementation. All they had to do was make those mobs unable to resist Mind Control except for a range checker, so that you couldn't cheese the fight. Easy. Enjoyable. Still a challenge, with tank swaps, taunts, and positioning. But the resists just made it annoying.
Faerlina was even worse. There, a resist meant the raid was likely going to wipe. There *was* no backup. I once had a resist on the last mob of the 4, 1 second before I hit the silence effect. ONE FREAKIN' SECOND. And it was the last mob, so there was no backup ... and the debuff went up, so I couldn't re-mind control ... /wipe. She rapidly enraged and spammed poison volleys at the raid until we died.
/curse
So implement gimmick fights with care so the emphasis is on using an ability in an interesting way, instead of having random crap like resists get in the way. More of a Razorgore style MC than a priest-core-ability-with-resists MC.
I'm a big fan of the proposed method for the pally-lookalike in Warhammer.
To heal, they have to do damage to gain their mana-equivalent. So the more dps they do, the more ability to heal they have.
(very very rough explanation)
And then you get "Just one more crit and I will heal... Oooh, pretty numbers, one more. And again. Oops, right, resing". I guess it could be nice as an option, but not as necessity, one and only "healing style".
If "gimmick fights" were to become more popular, it would kill differences between classes. If a healer couldn't be sure he will even get a fight where he will be healing, or if dps'ers would have to tank half of fights and kite/heal/click cubes the other half, instead of dps'ing, they wouldn't be doing what they rolled their class for. Meaning - why exactly I got to level70+ with this class, if its unique skills are not needed anymore? Could have rolled anything else, since they all do everything in raids.
Doing more than one role, that's what hybrids are supposed to be - well, in theory, practice shows (often) otherwise. (not to mention, the concept of Hybrid nowadays is pretty messed up, just to point out priests)
Most of your ideas have pretty much been done in the game already (to some degree).
First being Loatheb, people had to pot and bandage to survive.
Second could be a lot of stuff. For example a hunter can "tank" Kael'Thas engineer add by just avoiding the dynamites. Some mob abilities can be "kited", like C'Thun beam or Lurker spout (though I guess scalding water is how most do it now).
Your last idea reminds me of the meteor ability some mobs have. At least you spread damage that way, it has to be healed up again though.
I think this game would be a lot less interesting without the healing classes and the requirement to heal damage. In some encounters - yes it's fun. Too much and it ruins the game, because in the end; the character you're building up is what's supposed to help you win the game.
Well, there's a couple of unspoken assumptions there.
Take line 2, "players need to not die". It would in theory be possible not to require specialist healing classes at all. If a mob outputs consistently low damage, but you can't heal much or any of it, you could tune for much the same effect as having it deal lots of damage that then gets counteracted by healing. See: rogue/mage/warrior solo play for an example. If raid mobs were tuned so that they dealt only the amount of damage that could be healed by bandages and potions, there would be no need for healing classes.
If mobs were tuned such that the damage they dealt could be outhealed by consumables, they would be trivial. The game would get boring, to be honest, because there's no way to do that and still have a sense of danger, a sense of "Shit, I might *die* here."
Unless, of course, you go the Diablo route of zero-cooldown healing consumables, which breaks PvP.
Say you had a specialised kiting class - extra movement speed, blink abilities, and so on, and aggro-gaining abilities. A "tank" of sorts, but not one that requires massive healing and stamina.
Pretty much becomes a one-shot game then, though; there's no room for error at all, or it's trivial if there is, because if a class with minimal mitigation/avoidance can survive hits, anyone can.
Or you could change the whole model - say that when you band together into a party or a raid, you share a single health pool. At a stroke, the reason for a tank is gone. Once again, you could either tune the mob to do low damage (and have no healing classes), or high damage (and thus require healing).
If the raid shares a health pool, how do you handle player deaths? Does everyone die at once? Do you lose people at random as the health pool reduces? That model is entirely too forgiving of player error, the opposite problem of a meaningful kiting tank.
In some cases, taking these options would reduce player choice - in the latter case, with no such thing as a tank, then a whole style of gameplay is gone. Same for if you tune mob damage to not require healing. In some cases, it could improve player choice (allow different types of "tank" - kiters or evasion tanks). But there's certainly room for models that aren't the standard trinity. Whether these can be fitted into WoW as it stands is a very different question.
Ranged tanks (kiting tanks) and evasion tanks are perfectly legitimate ideas, but they still fit the standard trinity; they tend to require very different healing styles (evasion supports heavy cast/cancel usage and proactive damage reductions, ranged tanking via kiting is boring if it can be done on everything because you lose that sense of potential death, and if the mobs can attack at range it degenerates to a standard tanking case).
Is there room for non-standard elements of the trinity? Absolutely - nothing stops an evasion tank from taking one leg of the trinity (and you'll remember I was a strong advocate of making rogues into viable evasion tanks), nothing stops a proactive healer, a regenerative healer, a damage->healing healer from supporting the healing leg. But in all those cases you're simply shifting the method it takes, not the actual role.
Stuff needs to die.
You need to not die - fragile people need to not get smacked around, and tough people need to recover when they are smacked around.
The trinity exists for a reason, and attempts to break it are pretty much going to fail - attempts to make everyone part of it, on the other hand, are pretty likely to succeed.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
The trinity exists for a reason, and attempts to break it are pretty much going to fail - attempts to make everyone part of it, on the other hand, are pretty likely to succeed.
Yeah, I'm Devil's Advocating to some extent - and as you rightly point out several of the suggestions are different types of tank or healer, rather than actual breaking of the Trinity. Although I'd counter that by saying that once you've made for different types of tank, different types of healer, etc., I'd say you have broken the Trinity.
If you break it down to the absolute meta-level, what you're left with is that the actual trinity is a trinity of functions: damage output, survivability and aggro control. The latter two are fulfilled in varying combinations by different types of healer and/or tank.
LOTRO sems to have an interesting take on it, in that one of the main aggro-managers is a support class rather than either a tank or a healer. The Captain (very loosely a pally-equivalent) gets access to hate-transfer abilities. "Rising Ire" transfers threat from a different party member onto the Captain - i.e. like a taunt but also reduces the aggro of someone else in your party. "Ebbing Ire" does the opposite - a Misdirect.
I guess I'm just looking for ways of avoiding the dreaded "LF2M need healer and tank" cry.
Those are basically 3 layers of encounter complexity, it's pretty obvious. WAR healing system is actually step backwards in terms of complexity and doesn't really looks like something viable for complex PvE encounters that are trademark of WoW. Apples and oranges really.
I'm more curious if we will see some sort of 4th layer on next generations of MMORPGs. It looks like 3 layers is enough, sometimes you can even just stick with 2 (C'thun phase I, Buru) if 3rd gets replaced with arcade-like element.
It seems like LoTRO attempts to add 4th layer with group-based combat moves, but I'm not familiar enough with it to say if it's success or not.
See, I don't mind seeing "LF2M, need healer and tank." I mind seeing "LF2M, need warrior and priest."
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
The "trinity" does not matter nearly as much at the raiding level as it does on the 5 man dungeon level. I'm on a high population server and when I need to, it's still hard to find PUGs for a random 5 man. I can't imagine how bad it is on low population servers.
While it would be a complete change in game design, seeing how they have designed some of the daily repeatable quests (things that resto/prot specced characters can do), I don't see why they couldn't adapt some of those things to a dungeon level. I certainly wouldn't mind special NPCs or something of the sort that could compensate for group deficiencies in 5 mans. Making it easier for people to run 5 mans makes it easier for people to get keyed/geared for raid guilds and can only improve the end game for everyone.
The "trinity" does not matter nearly as much at the raiding level as it does on the 5 man dungeon level. I'm on a high population server and when I need to, it's still hard to find PUGs for a random 5 man. I can't imagine how bad it is on low population servers.
I've cleared a number of level 70 instances with a moonkin or pet tank, they really aren't all that hard. Just the other day, I ran SL with a fury/arms DPS warrior tanking, and around the Blackheart 5 pulls I just told him just to DW tank this stuff in his DPS gear to help speed things up. We killed everything up to and including murmur this way with only a couple of deaths. With a real tank in even mediocre gear I'm basically falling asleep at the wheel.
Anyways, the only reason you need the holy trinity for these instances is because you think you do. You can get by just fine with a 4 dps, 1 healer or 1 tank, 3 dps, 1 hybrid (that knows when to heal) group just fine assuming the people you are running with are competent with their class. Any additional healing needed in a group without a tank is balanced by the fact that you have 30% more DPS and CC, and you can just DPS burn everything. There are only a few exceptions to this rule, Arcatraz is the only instance that comes to mind as a 5 man that probably needs a decent tank and healer to succeed.
I've cleared a number of level 70 instances with a moonkin or pet tank, they really aren't all that hard. Just the other day, I ran SL with a fury/arms DPS warrior tanking, and around the Blackheart 5 pulls I just told him just to DW tank this stuff in his DPS gear to help speed things up. We killed everything up to and including murmur this way with only a couple of deaths. With a real tank in even mediocre gear I'm basically falling asleep at the wheel.
Anyways, the only reason you need the holy trinity for these instances is because you think you do. You can get by just fine with a 4 dps, 1 healer or 1 tank, 3 dps, 1 hybrid (that knows when to heal) group just fine assuming the people you are running with are competent with their class. Any additional healing needed in a group without a tank is balanced by the fact that you have 30% more DPS and CC, and you can just DPS burn everything. There are only a few exceptions to this rule, Arcatraz is the only instance that comes to mind as a 5 man that probably needs a decent tank and healer to succeed.
Oh, I am fully capable of running non-heroic 5 mans with non-optimal group setups if I'm running with guildies, but if I'm doing a PUG? It's simply not worth the effort or time. Simply put, the average skill level of players I encounter in a PUG leaves much to desire. Sure, I can do whatever instance with players of an equal skill level but the people the "trinity" affect hits the most are the people who just hit 70, still have a lot to learn, and will not be able to learn if they aren't ever able to find a group.
I've cleared a number of level 70 instances with a moonkin or pet tank, they really aren't all that hard. Just the other day, I ran SL with a fury/arms DPS warrior tanking, (...)
Anyways, the only reason you need the holy trinity for these instances is because you think you do.(...)
I think you are talking about something else. It's not about warrior/priest/mage trinity, but tank/healer/dps trinity. When you finish dungeon expected for your level without healer, holy trinity will die.
Last edited by Veneda : 06/12/07 at 11:25 AM.
Reason: Bolding important parts
I think you are talking about something else. It's not about warrior/priest/mage trinity, but tank/healer/dps trinity. When you finish dungeon expected for your level without healer, holy trinity will die.
Uhhh... I'm not sure if you know this, but a dps warrior tanking in berserker stance while DWing takes more damage than a decently geared agility rogue would. That still doesn't change the fact that the mobs hit like pansies and I could keep him up with a 3 stack lifebloom for 90% of the instance. Also when I say a moonkin tank, I mean he was wearing DPS gear and tanking by... DPSing? Someone has to have aggro, I'm not sure what you want - the mob to just stand there and let you kill it without attacking back?
Also as another anecdotal account, a few months back when I was specced for feral tanking, I grouped up with a protection warrior, a shadow priest, a warlock and a mage for BM. After wave 2 of being bored to tears as the "healer" in the group I put on my hybrid gear and went cat form for everything except the bosses, only shifting out to toss the tank some HoTs in between waves. At the time I think there were maybe 2 kara epics between everyone in the group, so we didn't massively outgear the instance either, unless you want to count the tailored epics that everyone can get.
Uhhh... I'm not sure if you know this, but a dps warrior tanking in berserker stance while DWing takes more damage than a decently geared agility rogue would. That still doesn't change the fact that the mobs hit like pansies and I could keep him up with a 3 stack lifebloom for 90% of the instance. Also when I say a moonkin tank, I mean he was wearing DPS gear and tanking by... DPSing? Someone has to have aggro, I'm not sure what you want - the mob to just stand there and let you kill it without attacking back?
Also as another anecdotal account, a few months back when I was specced for feral tanking, I grouped up with a protection warrior, a shadow priest, a warlock and a mage for BM. After wave 2 of being bored to tears as the "healer" in the group I put on my hybrid gear and went cat form for everything except the bosses, only shifting out to toss the tank some HoTs in between waves. At the time I think there were maybe 2 kara epics between everyone in the group, so we didn't massively outgear the instance either, unless you want to count the tailored epics that everyone can get.
The issue with that isn't that you had a majorly unique tank, or anything to that effect. However you had -a- tank, regardless of class, skill, whatever. You had a healer(Albiet, you claim to have not done much). The issue with that is that the holy trinity of tank/healer/DPS was not broken up, you simply redefined what a tank is, or what a healer is.
The question is, is it possible to do one of these instances WITHOUT a healer or a tank? I would argue that its not, inevitably someone will come in to fill in that slots shoes. No healers? If you outgear the instance by enough health consumables will replace the "healer" and become the healer for that place. If the DPS is high enough then someone will just fill in the tank slot.
The ultimate gimmick dungeon would be an entire zone where you needed only tanks and healers, and no DPS.
(P.S. The sentence above attempts to make a point)
All tanks and healers can be dps, but not all dps can be tanks or healers?
I agree that it can be fun and entertaining to put classes in situations out of their element, even if it's by choice rather than encounter design.
For Shaz we eventually overcame healing deficiencies by having the rogues bandage. We put Razuvious into place with a rogue evasion tanking, and should a MC break early, the rogues were expected to evasion him for as long as they could, hopefully while a priest put another add into place in order to save as many rogues as they could.
Last week we started learning Hydross, and during one attempt the tank dropped and I was next in line for aggro. Popped evasion, held him in place, and even walked him across a transition while they picked the tank back up. It wasn't a kill or anything, but it was gratifying to have done it against the odds.
You could break the trinity or mix it up a bit, but it would probably be a different game.
You don't need a healer. What you need is a support class who can provide damage mitigation. It could be forcefields that absorb damage, it could be debuffs that make the party unhittable, it could be bog standard healing. Or it could be something more exotic like really awesome aggro manipulation. If you could make a mob hit whoever you wanted, including its own allies, then you probably don't need a tank either.
The idea of a tank with a taunt has been inherited from the old MUDs. But there's no reason in a graphical game why people couldn't build a physical shield wall. Have all the guys in heavy armour standing around the mob and the ranged classes behind them. It could be more of a puzzle game as people work out how to best use the geometry to their advantage.
You got me with dps though. You'll always need that in some form. Although GW has the concept of an interrupting class that does damage via specific debuffs (eg. next time the victim makes a physical attack, it takes damage) which is quite interesting.
One encounter that comes to mind is Grandmaster Vorpil in Shadow Labyrinth. While learning that encounter, I recall originally assigning a dps to the voids and making the fight all about add control. It worked, but the fight was a stress. The next step was to have the group just nuke the boss as hard as possible - the result was much more favorable. After becoming a little more comfortable with it, I would just put on damage gear and join in on the boss, and he'd go down before anything even got close. I find it to be one of the more enjoyable encounters in lvl 70 five-mans.
Just give me all of the bacon and eggs you have. Wait, wait, I worry what you just heard was, “Give me a lot of bacon and eggs.” What I said was, “Give me ALL the bacon and eggs you have.” Do you understand?
06/12/07, 6:16 AM
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