Putting ArenaNet To the Test By Running Ascalon Catacombs With All DPS

http://twitter.com/Arawulf Mike Joseph

I’m curious if anyone else noticed that when it got hard he blamed it on his ‘gear’. Hehe Yeah, that’s why (just funnin’)

http://www.facebook.com/people/Tj-Vossos/647768691 Tj Vossos

you need to be geared right you cant walk in with all level 2 items and expect to get through a dungeon, maybe this was the case here maybe certain people did not have level appropriate gear,
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff

tj has a strong point you cant just go in unprepared its still skill based but if you dont have high enough armour rating you can be crushed

http://twitter.com/DaPhoolz Rp TheFoolz

seriously even though i build around vitality the damage in there still too much to bear. so i dont think any class or any role should take some of those damage directly but need some skills to protect or evade.

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

Vitality mainly increases the maximum damage you can take, but it dosent necessarily mitigate the damage at all. You’ll want toughness for that, but ya evading is definitely still important regardless of how you build your character.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Caliolo/100003765889295 Robert Caliolo

Dodge, Dodge. Dodge and Dodge again.
To COMPLETELY avoid an attack, Dodge.
As for the insta pops that can 1 or 2 shot you, Take the first hit, then Dodge, heal and Dodge again
- http://twitter.com/DaPhoolz Rp TheFoolz
  
  yeah after a few BWEs I start to time Block, Dodge, shield and invurab.. invulnare.. invulnerable more often.
  - Jay
    
    Lol there you go… Sound it out =D

M H

I liked the production of that video. Flash, boom, bang.. better then most game trailers I see. What happens if you do dedicate someone to heal for example? Would it make it easier, or more cumbersome? From what I got from the video it made it sound kind of that way, but at the same time proved you can do it without it.

Just a curious guy that avoids beta’s.

http://twitter.com/Mantose Leo P

Healing others is not a viable way to spec. And tanking is not either. No class can spec enough healing to keep someone else alive if they take the brunt of a npc’s damage for too long. You are basically crippling your potential if you try to just heal and not do damage. It really is something you have to experience for yourself before you can totally grasp it.

It mostly depends on if you are appropriate level and how well you play your character.
- Old Ben
  
  Healing others is viable (as long as you _also_ DPS, otherwise you’re gimping your own party, of course). It’s just healing a _single_ other (i.e., “tank healing”) that isn’t viable, but that’s mainly because traditional tanking itself isn’t viable.
  - http://twitter.com/Mantose Leo P
    
    Focusing on healing others like the poster sugested who I was responding to is not a viable option.
    
    And I wouldnt waste my time specing for healing if I was doing it to heal others. Its not a viable option in gw2. Heal others doesnt do enough healing to make it worth it, you are better off specing for dps and letting others deal with their own healing.
    
    Healing others is like watching a 55 gallon drum fill up with water during a rain storm..
    - Old Ben
      
      Not if you also pick healing traits. You won’t be able to keep a single guy alive if he tries to take all the damage, but if everybody is taking a bit of damage, your AoE heals them all, and you _can_ do a lot of healing. It’s just not single-target focused.
      
      If “healing others” wasn’t useful, there wouldn’t be so many AoE healing skills.
      
      Healing others is very useful. It’s just “healing a single other” that won’t get your party very far.
    - http://twitter.com/Mantose Leo P
      
      A drop in the bucket doesnt matter when you die in 2-3 hits. The best defense in gw2 is a good offense with dodge rolling and self healing.
      
      Healing others is not very usefull in gw2… from one person alone. Possibly if everyone was using AoE heals it might be ok… but then you are wastiung a lot of dps potential.
      
      And once again as the original poster in this thread that I was replying too … dedicating yourself to healing is only gimping yourself because you need to do dps not just heal.
      
      As in most games DPS is king…
    - Old Ben
      
      > Possibly if everyone was using AoE heals it might be ok…
      > but then you are wastiung a lot of dps potential.
      
      Depending on the class, maybe. Most heals are instant-cast and have reasonably long cooldowns, so it’s not like you could spam them even if you wanted to.
      
      As elementalist, for example, the time it takes you to cast one healing rain every 45 seconds isn’t going to have a significant impact on your DPS. Unless you just sit there waiting for healing rain to be ready again, instead of using the rest of your time to deal damage, of course. But in that situation it’s not really the healing that’s hurting your DPS; it’s the waiting.
      
      Saying “there’s no point in helping other players because you are wasting DPS” is the same “excuse” I kept hearing in WoW for players who couldn’t be bothered to do interrupts (despite the fact that most interrupts didn’t even trigger a global cooldown).
      
      Just because GW2 gives every player a self-healing spell that doesn’t mean it’s not designed to encourage players to _also_ heal each other. Role flexibility isn’t the same as “every man for himself”.
      
      Yes, dedicating yourself _exclusively_ to healing in GW2 is a mistake. But that’s not because the healing _itself_ is pointless; it’s because you’d be wasting all the time during which your heals are on cooldown. You’re always supposed to use that time to deal _some_ damage even if you picked a lot of healing skills.
      
      > As in most games DPS is king…
      
      In which sense? In most games dealing damage is the “easy” bit. It’s obviously necessary to kill your opponents (you can’t kill them if you don’t deal any damage), but what distinguishes the best players is their ability to avoid damage, interrupt enemy abilities, etc..

http://www.facebook.com/garry.leonard.94 Garry Leonard

I’d really would just like one big one of the whole thing, but i know why its not the whole; you have to keep releasing content over as long a period of time as possible otherwise it’ll be difficult ot keep producing new GW2 content since you have no access too it.

http://twitter.com/Shiftingfate Joshua

Good video, but i stayed up till midnight with work in the morning all for 4 minutes of video… Next time can we get more then just a taste?

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

Nice Video Mike S! Even though I’m a pretty old school RPG gamer I’m actually really excited to see Arenanet breaking the trinity so to speak and giving players more flexibility with how they want to customize their character. We saw this a little bit with GW1 but the way it’s implemented in GW2 is pretty well done. I just hope new comers to the genre will be able to adapt to this new set of rules so to speak, but I think these videos will help spark some curiosity and hopefully some insight to new people looking to pick up the game. Keep up the awesome content man.

http://www.facebook.com/davidallmighty David Cohen

I get the point of the video, but my friends and I would do all DPS runs in other MMOs too, and not always when we were OP to the content. Time will tell if it is doable with headaches, or is it truly doable. I mean if it is a ton easier when you have a tank and healer then when you have 4 DPS, then people will use the Trinity more often. Higher skilled players could roll with 4 DPS or 3 DPS and a Healer or Tank, but only time will tell if it is truly viable.

Shagral

As I see it, trinity is still there, it’s just that anyone can perform any role and switch dynamically depending on the situation. And I don’t think glass cannon dps builds (like in this video I guess) are gonna be viable for pve as well as pvp. You gonna have to put something in mitigation or healing, otherwise you just gonna die a lot with little dps uptime.

Old Ben

PvE and PvP builds in GW2 are likely to be very similar. Certainly a lot more similar than in other games.

http://twitter.com/sirurza Matt LeClair

Do you really have healers and tanks at level 10 for ragefire and stockades?

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Someone tanks, doesn’t have to be a spec tank, but usually someone tanks.
- Old Ben
  
  Typically that mage doing 5 DPS who just says “go!”.
Jay

Yes. Both.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Caliolo/100003765889295 Robert Caliolo

At least no commercial in the middle of this…that’s new from recent vids

But what it appears you are saying is that whoever had the boss aggro, dps or not they became the Main Tank.
Who was keeping that Tank up?
In other words, there will always be a Tank and DPS, so yes the Holy Trinity is not there but the Dynamic Duo will always be there

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

The very old trinity is there, its just the tank that is keeping the tank up.
Old Ben

No, there’s no tank. There’s always a _target_ (which is different), but in a fight against multiple enemies each player can be the target of a different enemy, and in a fight with a single enemy the target can change at any moment, based on different factors depending on each enemy’s AI. Every player needs to be prepared to kite, dodge, use defensive abilities, etc..

And everybody is keeping everybody up. Most healing skills are AoE, and everyone has at least one self-healing skill.

Sharuko

I mean that video is the worst example of a non-trinity system working. You can clear any mid level WoW dungeon with no healers or tanks and die a lot of times also but that doesn’t mean anything. I recently 4 manned Tera dungeons with 4 DPS and no healers and tanks.

But you left out the main point here, in Catacombs you have a tank. Rytlock acts as a tank. So they removed player tanks and put in NPC tanks. Also, it must be really fun as a DPS to use your healing spell every cooldown instead of actually DPSing. I also love how badly the fight was done, want to go into melee range? Nope, knockback.

The video itself was nicely done.

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

bookah please…
- Jay
  
  I should just stop responding to Sharuko… You’ve already found the perfect response =D works everytime.
http://twitter.com/Eolirin Eolirin

The knockback only occurs if you don’t separate the lovers.
Noxdus

Actually, Rytlock usually dies within seconds of a boss encounter. I’ve ran the catacombs 10+ times, and nearly every single time a boss encounter starts, Rytlock is dead. Rytlock is no tank. It is pretty obvious that you keep making up false facts to hate on GW2. No one actually believes what you say, so you might as well spend your time doing something else.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  okay, who is Rytlock?
  - http://twitter.com/THRILLJO Jordan Powell
    
    You might want to check out WoodenPotatoes on youtube. He does quite a bit of lore orientated stuff.
  - http://twitter.com/Elenandaron Elenandaron
    
    Rytlock Brimstone is a tribune (a very high rank in the Charr military, only second to the imperator) of the Blood Legion. He’s the main storyline NPC for the Charr race.
  - Old Ben
    
    Didn’t you say you played a Charr character? Rytlock is mentioned right from the start of the Charr personal story.
    
    They don’t tell you his full life story, but if you need to ask “Who is Rytlock? Is he a Charr?”, then you must have just clicked through all the cutscenes (and never read the description of GW2′s Collector’s Edition, etc.).
  - http://twitter.com/H3L1ON Samir
    
    i would suggest buying the books the first is mhe but the second is pretty good and well writen.
http://twitter.com/Mantose Leo P

Do you get paid to spread misinformation about gw2?
- Old Ben
  
  Actually I think he gets paid to make sure every article has as many posts about GW2 as possible.
  - MachlinAshe
    
    This^ I’ve been thinking that for a long time. Sharuko might be Scott Hawkes
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=711260186 Abdiel De La Paz

@ sharuko- Are you jealous?
Spammerbam

Another classic comment by Sharuko.

“I recently 4 manned Tera dungeons with 4 DPS and no healers and tanks.”

Tera lacks that skill-base combat system. Actually, it doesn’t have any. The abilities/skills you have are like any other traditional MMO; all you do is watch out for the enemy attacks, dodge, and continue spamming your hits. No healers needed, ezpz. There’s no customizable unique builds that sets you apart from how you want to play.

Though Diablo3 wasn’t such a great game, their skills system was very well done; Tera needs to learn from these type of games. The combat system is all that’s got going for it, and as expected, it’s already dying out fast. The grinding gives Tera the illusion of “substance and dept” but honestly it has nothing, even the environment/world is dead.

Other than that, Tera recently had an update. I’m sure you’re very happy about it as well. I give props because, finally, it is almost equal to the amount of contents of one city in GW2.

The video itself was nicely done.

http://www.facebook.com/joseph.fiol Joseph Giovanni Fiol

My favorite video from Gamebreaker so far. I liked the editing and the voice over work. Much more professional than your previous videos.

RBHgamer

I have to admit, Schaff, that your vids are getting better all the time. They are to the point, entertaining, and easy to follow. Kudos on another good hit.

http://twitter.com/Nathiest Nathiest

This way no one person is to blame.

http://www.facebook.com/masongj Greg Mason

You don’t have to all role DPS, you can use the new trinity: DPS, Support, Control. There is no way to tank in this game so stop asking for one and just play better. Full healers can’t heal enough to save either, instead they have to use a variety of support skills: boons, heals, and protective domes.

Old Ben

> you can use the new trinity: DPS, Support, Control.

That’s not a trinity, those are just three types of activity that _everyone_ is supposed to perform. If one of your party members isn’t doing any DPS at all (like a typical healer in WoW), your party is going to struggle.

Everyone is expected to DPS and be prepared to heal and buff others (support) or try to reduce enemy damage (control) when necessary.

A “trinity” (in the MMO sense) is when players have specific roles, determined before they go into combat (and typically connected to the class they’re playing).

http://twitter.com/Mantose Leo P

I like the disclaimer flashing towards the end of the video… you guys know your audience so well

http://twitter.com/Eolirin Eolirin

It’s very clear to just about everyone that’s played or followed the game that there’s no dedicated healer in GW2, but something that’s not really recognized is that there’s also no dedicated tank. In fact it’s next to impossible to tank, in a traditional sense, period. You *must* be avoiding damage no matter what build or spec you take; even with a melee weapon on a heavy armor profession you have to kite, not stand there and absorb damage. And in dungeons, you absolutely have to trade off aggro when you’re on cooldown; coordination and alternating the use of abilities across the group is vital. You can’t just sit there and keep the mob off everyone else all by yourself. The game’s just not tuned that way. So the holy trinity really is dead, because the options of being a healer or a tank *do not exist in the game*, even though there is still a soft trinity based on the roles of support, control, and damage. But those are roles that are filled on a moment to moment basis, not central to a class or playstyle. If you’re not doing all three during the course of an encounter you’re probably not playing very well.

Old Ben

> It’s very clear to just about everyone that’s played or followed the game
> that there’s no dedicated healer in GW2, but something that’s not really
> recognized is that there’s also no dedicated tank.

You _can_ actually focus on healing in GW2. Some classes can have up to 7 of their 10 skill slots taken up with healing skills.

But you can’t tank at all, because there are no taunts and no artificial aggro generation. And _that_ is what defines a traditional “trinity” tank. It’s not the thick armor or large HP pool (lots of DPS have those). It’s the ability to hold aggro on multiple enemies even _without_ doing much damage.

And that’s the most artificial part of the “holy trinity”, because it makes no sense for an enemy to keep hitting the party member with the thickest armor and the lowest damage output (after the healer, anyway). That’s why you don’t see pure “tanks” in PvP. A smart enemy will try to CC the healers and then take out the most dangerous (and squishiest) DPS, leaving the “tank” for last, since he’s the lowest real threat.

The AI in GW2 is far from perfect (although it was much better in BWE3), but at least it doesn’t suffer from that completely unrealistic behavior that we see in other games, and which is the basis for the traditional “tank” role.
- Shagral
  
  That, btw, makes me wonder how aggro table works in this game. How does a mob decide who to attack?
  - Old Ben
    
    Most “simple” mobs (creatures in the open world) aggro based on proximity. They’ll bite whoever is closest to them.
    
    That’s actually easy to exploit, in some cases – you can pull creature A to creature B, then dodge away, and they’ll attack each other while you finish them off. They need to be of different species, of course (and doesn’t always work), but I used it several times. I think it even works with some bosses (ex., wasp queen and champion boar, in the Queen’s Forest – I’m pretty sure they were attacking each other at one point). It makes perfect sense, if you think about it.
    
    Some bosses seem to have different mechanics, though (sometimes running around and picking a different target), so my guess is that aggro AI is coded separately for each boss, and players will have to learn it.
    
    World creatures got a bit smarter in BWE2 (some learned to dodge) and BWE3 (some learned to move out of AoE and run away when their HP gets low). They still seemed to be mostly proximity-based, but that might change. Personally, I think it would be nice if different creatures had different aggro mechanics, suited to the creature type. I don’t expect them to have completely different AI for each species, but maybe having different rules for humanoids, felines, reptiles, etc., would make sense.

Eto ‘Zamamai

The thing to remember is that Arena Net wants the dungeons to remain moderately challenging at every lv, this means adding function which rely heavily on trial and error and over all game skill. Putting 5 newbies in a dungeon with poor gear and poor trait lines is not the best way to test a dungeon that lv 80s can still have issues with Overall I loved the video and the formatting to the video, keep them up!

http://twitter.com/Iomegadrive1 Chris P

Damn this got me moist.

Mattias_B

Hating the fake voice… sounds ridiculous!

http://www.facebook.com/aroyy Miguel Ramirez

      i keep seeing a lot of people say that its “impossible” to tank and “impossible” to heal and it bugs me. some people point to the dps,control,support soft trinity but this soft trinity is no different if you think about the mechanics.
a tanks job isn’t “stand in front of the boss and keep getting hit” like some people are claiming. a tanks job is to keep is party alive by redirecting damage away from them. THIS is something you can do in guild wars 2. think about WoW tanking. you don’t just stand there and keep getting hit, you would die there too. as a warrior you gotta keep up shield block and pop cool-downs at opportune moments and death-strike to survive as a death-knight which is in a way the equivalent of dodging and avoiding damage in guild wars 2. you CAN tank in guild wars 2. the thing is that you aren’t limited by class (profession) or even spec if you are good enough.
      same with healing. a healers job isn’t necessarily to “heal” only. a healers job is to keep the party members alive by recovering,mitigating, or preventing damage. just look at discipline priests. you can have a “healer” in guild wars two who would be throwing out heals, putting up shields, walls, and boons to keep the party alive. that doesn’t mean you wont attack but you would still be the “healer”. again, lets look to smite-heal discipline priests. and just like in WoW if your party members stand in stuff they should stand in or choose to or fail to avoid avoidable damage, they will die no matter how much support they are getting.
      I’m in no way hating on guild wars 2. ive already pre-purchased it and had tons of fun in the beta weekends. I’m saying that, while guild wars 2 has a higher skill-cap due to the actionesque mechanics, the trinity is still here. it just isn’t REQUIRED. As a former raid main-tank I’m gonna be playing a heavy armor class (because i think they are cool) i will be up in the enemies face, having him swing his weapons and direct his spells at me(aggro being position based), AND dodging, mitigating, and self-healing off any damage i may take in order to keep the enemies attention and damage in my general direction so that my party members may have an easier time.

Eto ‘Zamamai

You are absolutely right that the trinity in any form is not required, however I would go as far to say that relying on the trinity at all is a poor idea. While on easy dungeons and events the trinity certainly has its positive benefits, on more challenging things such as the Ascolonian Catacombs Explorer mode, the trinity will just get you killed. In GW2 each character is required to be versatile and self contained while still adhering to good team work. There may come a moment when you need two or more “tanks” or high damage soaking (perhaps temporarily) players, while the next moment it would be wise to switch to all longer ranged “DPS”s. Each player is required to be a healer for themselves and depending on the situation each character can provide some useful boons to their allies, the issue arises if in the next moment as the situation changes you can not switch your roles in the party and work together in your next task.

In short, yes if one looks hard enough one can find a trinity of sorts arising, however there are no pre-set roles for any character who wishes to succeed.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  That was very clearly old school trinity.
- Old Ben
  
  > on more challenging things such as the Ascolonian
  > Catacombs Explorer mode, the trinity will just get you killed.
  
  There is no artificial aggro generation for “tanks”, so “the trinity” doesn’t exist in GW2, period. You can have a guy wearing plate armor and with a lot of damage reduction skills, but he’s still not a “tank” in the traditional sense because he can’t guarantee that he’ll hold aggro on multiple enemies for the entire fight.
  
  Also, he probably won’t be able to stay alive if all the enemies _do_ attack him at the same time and he just stands there.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    There is very much a very old school trinity in GW2. Sure, there is not a mechanic in place that keeps the tanks dps low while guaranteeing agro.
    
    But the video did show players and npc handling the tanky roles. It was more clear than when the boss stood next to Schaff character and he fell over dead.
    - Old Ben
      
      No, they weren’t “handling tanky roles”. Being the _target_ isn’t the same as being the _tank_.
Eto ‘Zamamai

The Charr was an npc, lol. In addition I hope you realize that having a sword or being a warrior does NOT make you a tank, I realize this may be a bit revolutionary but merely having a sword does not make you an impenetrable wall in… really any game…
Jay

Threat isn’t always position based… Some enemies prefer to attack casters, or players low on health, or players close by, sometimes the furthest player according to ArenaNet. Smarter A.I. is part of the reason why people don’t like GW2 being dismissed as a trinity.

The key word is: Dynamic… Something found all over GW2.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  This is nothing new, MMOs AI have had this type of behavior forever. You just have to adjust your strategy accordingly. If the AI attacks range dps, range dps stacks with the tank. If the boss cast a forward cone of aoe damage, you stand behind the boss. If the boss has cleave or splash damage, you get out of the way. If an add has a wicked ability, you crowd control the hell out of them.
  
  The GW2 AI does not seem any smarter than any other AI.
  - Jay
    
    Name a mob in any MMO that attacks the target with the lowest health, runs out of your aoe (yes, GW2 has this.), selects targets based on his strength, and does almost all of these during the same fight (not phases, on reaction). I haven’t played all MMOs, but I’ve played many, and GW2 has the smartest design (still has a few bugs, but the design is there) that I’ve seen yet. It forces you to think on the move and react to what’s happening at the moment.
    
    Give ArenaNet credit where it’s due…
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      We will see. If the aggro is predictable, then players can play tactically to work with it. If it is as complicated as you state here, then dungeons will be complete cluster#$!s for most groups.
      
      I don’t REQUIRE the trinity to enjoy dungeons (played NWN as enjoyed it), honestly, the boss fights in MMOs are far more interesting.
      
      For those mocking the ‘stand still and press buttons’ style of trinity games – there are lots of boss fights which require mobility.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1525822174 Yvette Lessard

This is stupidly flawed, I’m sorry.
“We’re going to test whether or not the holy trinity is really dead by running all DPS”.
There’s a major failure of the game mechanics here. Let alone being a poor test (I’ve yet to watch it to see if they succeeded or failed), there ARE soft roles in GW2 which any class can fill: support, damage, and control. Forgoing two of those three roles completely is probably a bad idea for any game whatsoever, even though they’re soft roles. Just a fully DPS build is a bad idea in this game as characters need some survivability on their own. That’s the point of not having a holy trinity, so characters can take on some of that responsibility for themselves.
Testing whether or not the holy trinity is dead by playing the game stupidly seems like a poor test to me.
-1 for gamebreaker.tv

http://twitter.com/HallusH HallusH

very cool. but no spazam black and white please

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Sigh, I was a little surprised it was only 4:32. I’ve gained a new level of respect for Gary Gannons editing and production skill and I think Mike Schaffnit narration and production was very good.

Guess I’m confused, I was expecting a video about Ascalon Catacombs and not a promo piece about the term “Holy Trinity.”

Looking at the video it looked like you were running some type of pre-wow version of the trinity. Very hard to tell with the amount of production on the video. Couldn’t tell the profession of the Charr, but it looked like that player was taking the pre-wow version of a tank. Very hard to tell. I’m assuming Mike was the Elementalist(?) in the back. Having a non-tanky profession standing next to the boss bad news.

(2:32) Was that a floating demon coming in from behind? Or Necro pet? Couldn’t tell. If that was a mob, classic design, having the mob come in from behind.

(3:28) Couldn’t tell did you die before the mob appeared? If that is true, I cant tell if that is by design or lag.

For me it looked very pre-wow trinity. With tank rolls and dps roll and by profession design everyone has healing abilities. That still trinity design, not to a WoW level of trinity, but still trinity.

Eto ‘Zamamai

The Charr was an npc, lol. In addition I hope you realize that having a sword or being a warrior does NOT make you a tank, I realize this may be a bit revolutionary but merely having a sword does not make you an impenetrable wall in… really any game…
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  It not the sword that makes the tank, their “role” that makes them a tank. This is not revolutionary, its very, very old school. Which is fine, with alot of lower level WoW dugeons you can run a very loose trinity. But, someone is still going to tank.
  - Old Ben
    
    > But, someone is still going to tank.
    
    Not necessarily. I’ve done UK HC with 5 mages (at level 80). Polymorph, blink, frost nova, ice block, invisibility, mirror images, etc..
    
    With enough CC and aggro dumps, you can just keep the enemies under control (or keep them chasing different people) for the entire fight.
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      and I have solo UK on my 85 druid. But, I will say running UK with 5 mages really breaks the trinity, since mages don’t have a intrinsic healing ability. Where everyone in GW2 has a self healing ability and virtually all professions have some form of group healing.
      
      BTW, your generalization of wow dps players was a little self-serving, If dps don’t have awareness of what is happening in UK, they will get thier ass handed to them.
    - Old Ben
      
      > If dps don’t have awareness of what is happening
      > in UK, they will get thier ass handed to them.
      
      You’re kidding, right? It’s virtually impossible for a tank to lose aggro in any 5-man dungeon these days, and there’s no AoE in UK.
- Old Ben
  
  > merely having a sword does not make you an impenetrable wall
  
  It’s usually a shield.
http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit

Hey man, glad to see you followed up with some notes after the tweet =)

As for the Char you saw that was Rytlock, a NPC that did pretty much act like a tank during our dungeon run.

2;32 was a demon pet. Our necromancer ran past me when I died.

3:28 I died shortly after the mod was spawned. I had enough time to react, but was already pretty low on health.

Also, thank you for the compliments on the production value. Gary and I put ALOT of work into it and I’m glad it’s appreciated.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  You could clearly tell your all out effort appeared in the video.
  Mike, I’m really looking for a multi-part series from you guys. Something you can cut into a short documentary at the end. Looking for something a little more Kevin Burns, producer of Ancient Aliens.
  
  I would have been elated with the first episode covering the party makeup and talents and skills (ala Buildcast). With a quick introduction to the party members and the NPCs. That is something, I’m not getting from GW2, who are the other players in a PVE encounter.
- http://twitter.com/DaveyDiablo Davey Diablo
  
  Very entertaining and well narrated mate, nice one
Revanhavoc

Are you tellin me Gary Gannon the Gannonator had something to do with that? The graphics were cool, maybe the Gannonator had something to do with that but the meat of the piece was weak man, you thought it was up to par?!

http://www.facebook.com/people/Ian-Smith/100000531128393 Ian Smith

Is there a way to turn the quality of the video up? It seemed blurry for me. Nice video, otherwise.

http://twitter.com/DontCallMeDaz Not Daz

The end of the video should come with a health warning for those who suffer from epilepsy.

http://twitter.com/alaskawinter923 Andrew F. Saxton

I’d like to see same thing, but with an all tank team. Dps teams may be able to burn through mobs easier. Not hatin’, just curious.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Hamad-Ali-Al-Jalahma/512893526 Hamad Ali Al-Jalahma

But the real question is, would it have have been waay easier with a tank/healer specs ?

http://twitter.com/OnlyInSaudiArab \.. Wa5eer ..//

nope there will be dead bodys all over the place coz there is no dedicated healer that will spam heals and buffs
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Probably, would have facerolled it. But, Arenanet design is going with a much softer trinity, so you don’t need the dedicated tank and heals.
Old Ben

No, because aggro in GW2 doesn’t work like in WoW, SWTOR, Rift or TSW. There’s no magic way of keeping an enemy attacking you (the tank) despite the fact that you’re doing _less_ damage than the DPS.

So, even if you had a “tank” (a guy with a lot of armor and relatively low DPS), the enemy would still attack the others (which makes perfect sense), and that guy would just be gimping his own DPS and making the fight last longer for no reason.

It’s still useful to have a “tank” in GW2 (a guy wearing plate and / or with a lot of damage reduction skills and stats), but it’s mainly to deal with things like traps. For combat, all players need some survivability, since the AI isn’t so stupid that it will just bang on the tank’s shield while ignoring all the squishy DPS.
Jay

I think if you look at it in the way that ArenaNet describes it… Control, Support, Damage. Then yes, having a coordinated group would help. You have people focused on keeping mobs knocked down, weakened, and in place. You have someone who really likes to focus on making the mob vulnerable and dealing burst damage when the mob is under “control”. Last but not least, you can have people who like to focus on supporting the group with aoe splash heals and boons to keep everyone moving efficiently.

I don’t think it’s a matter of designating roles, as much as it’s letting people decide their play-style, and finding ways to work well together. Everyone just running around trying to stay alive like in this video, surely isn’t the most effective form of “team” work, lol.

http://twitter.com/Bochio Angel Florez

with the trinity dead, i hope players stop to brainwash their friends with foolish builts based in old trinity

http://www.facebook.com/alexdshafer Alex Shafer

i’m fully convinced the trinity is not needed. i ran and cleared the catacombs as a thief with 2 other thieves and 2 mesmers (both of which were regarded as two of the weakest classes) during BWE2.

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

I would love to have seen that, a dungeon run with three thieves and two mesmers. Which weapon builds were they running? Was that story mode? I hear those are two professions that require a high degree of skill. Don’t those classes mitigate damage really well?

Interesting to see if you can keep that comp with explorable mode.
- http://twitter.com/gmartinqc Gabriel Martin
  
  I ran story mode 4 or 5 times in BWE2, I couldn’t get a group for exploration mode sadly. The 1st run was really brutal every run after that was a lot easier, these are more about controlling the chaos then anything else. Focus fire and coordination is the biggest factor in that dungeon at least in story mode. Also NEVER try to heal if you are poisoned. Just warning players about that beforehand made a run with four new players really smooth.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    Once of the concerns I picked up from former Guild Wars (1) players was it was difficult getting players to run harder content. So, while story mode is obtainable, finding groups explorable mode may be very difficult.

http://twitter.com/SilverTaurusPL SilverTaurus

I wish we could see the comparison of 5dps group vs. group with roles assigned… since it “might be possible” to run as that, but far from optimal.
If game turns around, and after release everyone will call for tank and healer anyway because itsso much easier this way, Holy Trinty wil not actualy be dead, even while its doable without it.

Old Ben

Judging from the opening voice over, I think MikeS has secretly wanted to be an announcer on BattleBots for a long time.

http://twitter.com/Jetmorph jason

great video, i am looking forward to more

The thing about GW2 is its not even possible to have a dedicated healer each character can only equip 1 healing spell, they are not spammable, and they are all self or group (no targeted healing) and as far as building a “tank” while you can make a more durable character you will be gimping yourself terribly and there is no way to grab aggro and keep it.

tommythepower

You can tell just how easy these dungeons are because they are made with no trinity required.
And they all had really bad gear i’m guessing as well.
And when everyone is one the floor all the time hald dead and trying to heal others were is the fun in that…. sry no gw2 is not just easy but a game were players really have no purpose .Good luck with that.

http://twitter.com/gmartinqc Gabriel Martin

Calling the dungeons easy. Have you done it yourself? How about exploration mode , did you complete it? My guess is you haven’t or you would be crying about how hard they are like almost everyone else has.

As for me, I say bring it on, AC was a lot of things but easy and boring wasn’t one of them. No ever lasting CC to make it trivial, no overgeared tank so I end up spamming the same aoe for the whole run.
Old Ben

> And when everyone is one the floor all the time hald dead

You do realize the video was edited, right? They just wanted to emphasize that if you pick a spec with little or no survival skills you’re going to die a lot – but still manage to make it through.

http://twitter.com/grizzlyGummy Gummy

While I’m glad to see you were able to complete the dungeon as 5DPS, I think it’s a bit unfair to complain (or at least thats what it sounded like) about your survivability when your objective was to do this with as little survivability as possible. In the same article where ANet denounces the Tank/Heal/DPS hard trinity, they uplift the soft trinity of Support/Control/Damage. The latter is meant to be something you do on the fly, so to have everyone ignore 2 out of the 3, you’re asking for the extra difficulty.
I’m not trying to knock on the vid or what your trying to prove, but the logic of the experiment seems to be flawed. I think a better experiment would have been to have people spec out how they wanted. With the way ANet tiered the skill system, pretty much everyone has a defensive or support ability by the time they hit 30 because they’ve been forced to pick it up. A true showing of GW2′s system would be to be hit with that level of difficulty, maybe wipe, and be able to change things ON THE SPOT to cope with the situation. Boss throwing out conditions like hotcakes? Equip your condition removal heal/utility. Boss has short vulnerable periods for you to burst him? Get your timed buffs ready. This is how the game is supposed to played. To go into a dungeon with the mindset that you’re sticking to one role and one role only is a philosophy of the old trinity.

Dixhallpike

Finally someone who gets it. I don’t know wth you were trying to prove Mike S? Just because Anet says that they don’t use the holy trinity it doesnt mean that people doesnt need to support each other and control mobs in dungeons. Seems to me you had an ignorant wow mindset when getting in to this and tried to prove a point based on ignorance and misinformation. The holy trinity is dead lets all roll dps with no survivability! Atleast try to act professional and be more informed about a game before making assumptions about how certain mechanics work.
Jay

Well said… I would’ve liked a bit more play by play footage as well. Maybe some actual commentary about the strategies him and his team were using.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz

He set out to prove that you don’t need a tank or a healer. I think he proved that.
- http://twitter.com/grizzlyGummy Gummy
  
  I realize that, and like I said I’m not trying to devalue what he’s actually proved because, well, he proved it! You can do a dungeon with 5 tunnel-visioning DPS. I just feel like he’s trying to prove an assertion that ArenaNet never supported in the first place.

Old Ben

(deleted – got posted in the wrong place)

Avan Gore

The video is a good start, but I it calls for something more in depth. Maybe it would be nice to do something like BuildCast but for individual PvE dungeons, or even harder endgame dynamic events? Not the same format as weekly show, but with the same intention of going into detail:

Analyze successful dungeons runs, the professions and specs used, individual boss mechanics. Look at necessary utility for certain dungeons/bosses, e.g.: condition removers, stuns/interrupts, stun-breakers, and their alternatives across the professions/specs. This would be awesome for PvE carebears like me.

And I think the question should not be if the trinity is dead, but if dungeons in GW2 are fun. Because ArenaNet of course aims to design dungeons and PvE combat in general to align with their intend of flexible, non trinity combat.

Old Ben

Until there’s something like Recount (or at least a good combat log analyzer) for GW2, it will be hard to draw objective conclusions.
- pandora005
  
  Recount for GW2 needs to be a lot more complex, since you have to count the number of times people have actually AVOIDED DAMAGE or the number of times someone has helped a teammate to get up again or the number of times an environmental weapon was used to disable an NPC (like the rocks used to knock down the lovers in Ascalonian Catacombs … you could have someone chain-stun one of the lovers for example).
  - Old Ben
    
    WoW’s Recount includes absorbs, heals, resurrections, individual attack names (including environmental weapons and vehicles), etc., so it doesn’t really need to be “more complex”, it just needs to measure all the relevant things, and it’s then up to players to look for the data they want. It can’t measure “how well you move”, but neither can WoW’s Recount; that’s just something people will have to infer from the amount of damage they took from AoE, from actually watching the fight, and so on.
    
    Now, I don’t think that having a “live” damage meter is a great idea, because some idiots will just focus on that at the cost of everything else, but a good log analyzer can be helpful, even to check for bugs in the game’s maths.
Jay

I like that idea, even though I don’t like the term “carebear” when talking about PVE… I know you were kidding, but high level PVE content can be just as tough if not tougher than any PVP in the game. Sorry, had to stick up for my fellow hardcore dungeon runners…

I definitely think Buildcast should have a small PVE highlight, maybe 10 minutes of something like a boss breakdown, or role highlight showcasing builds for specific professions (ie. support warrior).

itsJUSTINduh

I wanna see a dungeon done with 5 of the same professions haha.

http://twitter.com/Trevel Trevel

I want to see a dungeon done with five thieves.

http://www.facebook.com/fredrik.gardsio Fredrik Fronken Gardsiö

Really loving how this video was edited together, really slick and great quality of both visuals and especially the voice-over, if this was a trial run for this kind of video, i say Continue doing them, cause this was great!

Logun 24×7

The concept
of the trinity is something that found its roots with table top games and for
lack of imagination found its way into
MMO’s. We’ve been with our good friend the trinity for so long in MMO’s it’s
now hard to think about playing without it or having group mechanics that work
without it.

After playing
the BW3 I have to say all my fears are gone and the best thing is I’m now
taking on a role when I join a party the flavour of my build gets added, I’m
joining as a unique Warrior, Mesmer or thief instead of a job function.

As an Engineer
I can put up a healing turret to help keep the party up, lay down an oil slick
wall to protect my party from adds and send some mortars in the direction of the
boss to stun and debuff. So the mechanics are all there we are just much more responsible
individually for the outcome of the fight, if you’re the lazy DPS’er that shows
up to the dungeon pressing 111211131112111411121113 sorry get ready to do some
work in GW2.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R35J5EUERGS3E6JRIQMBCDTRRY Nathan I

5 people with tunnel vision each with a DPS build is completely different from a team built around 5 DPS.

pandora005

Well said, but sadly the basic human nature comes into play when it comes to dps vs. tank vs. healer.

DPS are focused tunnel vision idiots who want to be top of the dps meter and thus SELFISH.
Tanks and healers are primarily focused on “taking care of the rest of the group” and thus altruistic.

With the death of the holy trinity Arenanet is sadly catering to the idiots … without telling them to heal themselves and to learn to dodge out of the fire. Thats something which the other two categories have traditionally done for the selfish bunch. Thus the death of the holy trinity might actually backfire and be a disservice to the community OR it could be a godsend by forcing the idiots to look out after themselves and actually starting to respect those jobs. This will be decided in the harder game modes and level 80 dungeons and encounters.

Sadly there is no option to actually play a dedicated healer or tank anymore for people who reeeeaaaallllyyy like that kind of job … people like me.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002038208867 Dan Winborne
  
  You can still be a healer type… a water elem., or med kit engi seem to be the way to go…. tanks…not so much. Some ppl say guardian, but even they get their butt’s kicked. Strangely, the Necro is currently the best tank.
- DoctorOverlord
  
  Very true. The big test will be whether the idiots in the community realize that they can’t blame their incompetence and lack of teamwork on the healer or tank anymore. I like to be optimistic regarding this, some Youtube vids showing good teamwork could shame people into playing better lol
- Arkanthos
  
  People that like playing tank or healer, have tons of other MMORPG’s to play.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002038208867 Dan Winborne

Yeah, the unspoken rule is, TEAMWORK! Yes, you can have w/e builds you want, just try and give a damn about each other.

Depravity

Nice work, Shaft, loving the work you put into this shit. Keep ‘em coming!

Jay

I’m a bit disappointed with this video… Only because I was expecting a full run like what Mike B aka Fony put together. I liked the video editing in the beginning, even though I would’ve enjoyed a bit more commentary on the actual run and strategies. Jokes here and there are great and all, but next time maybe let some of the fights play out in normal speed so we can actually see the progression take place.

Either way, thanks for posting this video Schaff.

Lediath

Great video keep up the good for Shaff

(would appreciate a YT mirror)

http://profile.yahoo.com/3JO75BNS43WDETCNCO7F7XS6Q4 jo

cleared it with all warriors. story and explorable.

Krzysztof Kotarba

oh yeah, Mike$ the mythbuster :> It’s kinda funny to watch, TV show style commentary. I would like to see full uncut run.

http://www.brandonkonkle.com/ Brandon Konkle

I feel like you could do this in most any MMORPG. I play Rift quite frequently, and I think we could probably DPS through a dungeon as long as we had builds with some limited healing capability. I think ArenaNet is over-selling this, and what it really boils down to is that they have a greater variety of ways for you to satisfy the holy trinity criteria. Their ‘soft trinity’ is just the holy trinity paraphrased.

Senatic

Premise:
A trinity is where players are locked into specific roles, each of these roles are necessary to complete the really hard content, if the content is easy enough you can obviously roll through it with whatever setup as long as you have enough damage.

A soft trinity is where players can swap between roles without re rolling a character. What this means is you can change over to a tank before you go into the dungeon if that is what your team needs, this is what souls are for in Rift.Argument:Because the phrase “the trinity” rests on three pillars, removing one of these literally “breaks the holy trinity”. Guild Wars 2 has removed the dedicated healer, therefor the trinity is broken.Addendum to argument:Healing in Guild Wars 2 is primarily done by self heals, these are available to everyone. Secondary heals are done through AOE’s and none of these skills have the capability of sustaining another player on its own. Healing from these secondary sources equal approximately 2-5% of a players max health. Even if doing nothing but using these heals, several players combined could not keep a player alive by healing him.

The trinity therefor does not exist in Guild Wars 2, instead the roles we talk about is, beacause heals do not play a big enough part to warrant it’s own role – support (these include heals, boons and various buffs), control(these include conditions, stuns and other skills that affect movement/positioning and so forth) and damage.

This is also not a soft trinity, because you do know specc for a specific role. Each player has access to supportive, controlling and damaging abilities within the same skillbar. Dedicating yourself to one of these roles exclusively would be detrimental to your performance. As such these are less roles and more aspects of combat that all classes take part in.
- dandamanno
  
  In GW2 it seems the Holy Trinity exists, but only within each contained class/character. Everyone gets to choose how far along each line they want to spec, with respective trade-offs.
  
  So, everyone is a tank, healer and dpser. It’s introverted, but it works.
  - Arkanthos
    
    You didn’t get his post m8:)
    - dandamanno
      
      I understood his post. I was simply saying that each player takes on the role of tank, healer, dps as the situation requires. They have removed the dedicated roles and replaced them with dynamic roles that all classes have access to.
      
      If Holy Trinity is referring to the reliance on others to be a healer if you are a tank, then having some dpsers in the group then, yes the Holy trinity is not there as there is no need for such min-maxing reliance.
      
      Healing, DPS and Tanking are still there even though the trinity is not. It’s as though all characters are a self-contained group in and of themselves. This is what I meant by the Holy Trinity being “introverted”
    - Old Ben
      
      There’s no artificial aggro generation and no taunts. You can’t “take the role of the tank” because those two things (which are what define a tank in “holy trinity” games) simply don’t exist in GW2.
      
      Being an occasional _target_ isn’t the same as being a tank.
    - dandamanno
      
      Defensive abilities are still there. Those are tankish abilities.
      
      Also, Arenanet has said themselves that you can still trait for the traditional holy trinity if you want to and be successfull, so by their own definition you can become all three of the classic roles in GW2.
      
      I agree with you though, it is not as complete a role.
    - Old Ben
      
      > Defensive abilities are still there.
      > Those are tankish abilities.
      
      So a mage’s ice block in WoW is a “tankish ability” ? Surviving an attack and holding aggro (i.e., forcing enemies to attack you and only you) are different things.
      
      In non-trinity games, a “tank” is simply someone who can take a lot of damage. In holy trinity games, a “tank” is someone with a very specific role, and with access to special taunts and aggro generation mechanics (i.e., someone with control over the AI’s choice of target).
      
      > Arenanet has said themselves that
      > you can still trait for the traditional
      > holy trinity if you want to and be
      > successfull
      
      Got a link to that (or the name of the person who said it) ?
    - dandamanno
      
      “Got a link to that (or the name of the person who said it) ? ”
      
      No I don’t, it may have been in the gameplay area of the beta forums and they are wiped now. Sorry. But believe me or not they said it is still possible to trait for the Trinity and have success, but not that you had to. It was in response to the fact that people were surprised that a Guardian, or Warrior coulld not just stand and bang with the bad guys while soaking up damage. It led to a discussion of the holy trinity.
      
      “So a mage’s ice block in WoW is a “tankish ability?”
      
      Never played WoW, but if it is defensive in nature, then an ability is tankish. To me a tank had two responsibilities, generate aggro and manage defensive buffs and cooldowns. Also many non-tank classes in many mmos still have threat generating abilities even if they are not dedicated tanks.
      
      But tbh, this is an argument I don’t really care to spend any more time on, so can we just say “You win”
      
      Have fun playing.
    - Old Ben
      
      > But believe me or not they said it is still
      > possible to trait for the Trinity and have success
      
      I don’t. Unless they were very, very drunk, of course. Which is unlikely but, I’ll admit, not impossible.
      
      The game has no taunts, no extra aggro generation for tanks and no player-targeted heals. It doesn’t matter what traits you pick; the game mechanics for “holy trinity” play are simply not there.
      
      In fact, I can quote Jon Peters (from the official Arena Net blog) about the holy trinity: “Frankly, we built a combat system that just doesn’t allow it.”
      
      > You win
      
      Oohhh… I wasn’t aware this was a competition. What’s my loot?
  - DoctorOverlord
    
    It might have been helpful for Mike S to go into more detail about *how* each person was playing their professions by the end when they got into their groove.
    
    I expect every person was doing each of the roles as needed. A player damages the mob (DPS) thus attracting aggro if their teammates retreat and then they need to dodge or use defensive/CC spells (Tank) and either they retreat in turn or someone else pulls the aggro off then they heal themselves or revive teammates that went down (Healer).
    
    I think the real point is that the trinity no longer exists as combat roles rather it has been turned into combat *activities*. Much like an FPS, the essentials of team combat is that you damage, you heal and you distract/providing covering fire etc.
    
    Someone can try to focus on only one of the activities if they want but to fully contribute to a team, players will have to be ready to take part in every aspect of combat. Even combat medics are trained to fight afterall.
  - Senatic
    
    No it doesn’t. Please re read my comment and you’ll see why.
- Old Ben
  
  > Guild Wars 2 has removed the dedicated healer,
  > therefor the trinity is broken.
  
  Actually, GW2 has mainly removed the dedicated tank (i.e., the guy who can hold aggro on multiple enemies despite doing less damage). You can still be a “dedicated healer” of sorts (with up to 7 of your 10 skill slots taken up by healing skills), but your heals will be multi-target / AoE, not single-target “tank heals”. And if you don’t DPS at all, you’re holding your party back, of course.
  
  The best parallel I can think of for WoW players is that GW2 characters play a bit like WoW enhancement (or elemental) shamans. They can deal damage, they have a few AoE heals (healing rain, healing stream totem) and they have some survivability skills (shamanistic rage, stoneskin totem, feral spirit). You can form a party with 5 DPS shamans and make it through most content as long as everyone remembers to use all their abilities, but if you try to make one of them into the dedicated tank for an entire dungeon he won’t be able to hold aggro on everything, and no single healer will be able to keep him alive. If everyone “rotates” their role during the fight, any unavoidable damage will be distributed across all players and the AoE healing (plus the occasional self-heal) will be able to deal with it.
  
  > you do not specc for a specific role. Each player has access to
  > supportive, controlling and damaging abilities within the same skillbar.
  
  They can only change those abilities out of combat, so it’s technically possible for players to “spec” for damage dealing at the cost of everything else (ex., every slot except #6 taken up with a DPS skill). It’s not a smart thing to do, but they can do it.
  
  > Dedicating yourself to one of these roles exclusively> would be detrimental to your performance.Exactly. Which makes it a bit of a mystery why GBTV decided to check for the “death of the trinity” by speccing players into one of the traditional trinity roles (all damage-dealing, with little or no survivability).

Kicknpups

I have to say less complaining and more dodging and you wouldn’t get face rolled, Gear had nothing to do with you getting wtfpwnd…I ran that dungeon @ level 43 with tier 3 set as a elemt and get would get two shoted with no defense spec…either way great video but your a little late groups been running and have had videos on youtube for weeks including myself.

Laborday

Seeing as how one can not be or spec a tank or healer profession- there really is nothing new here. Guild Wars 1 behaved in the same way.

You only have control and support. Damage is what everyone does by default.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz

I recall my monk being specced as a healer and ONLY as a healer. I also remember my warrior being specced to tank and ONLY to tank. This is in NO way the same thing.
- Arkanthos
  
  the u played warrior the wrong way m8:P
  - http://www.facebook.com/thyeggman Jacob Wallraff
    
    And that’s why Guild Wars 2 isn’t forcing you into a role. Never again do I want to hear “You’re playing [x] the wrong way.”
    - Old Ben
      
      There are still plenty of opportunities to play (every class) “the wrong way”.
      
      Stand in AoE when you don’t have any immunity skills. Spec for bleed damage and don’t use any bleeds. Use a melee weapon and stay far away. Use a ranged weapon whose damage increases with distance and then stand in melee range. Etc., etc., etc.
      
      Just because the game doesn’t force groups to have a specific composition (or classes to play in a single way) that doesn’t mean it’s not possible to make contradictory (i.e., “wrong”) choices.
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    Not if it worked, he didn’t.

http://profile.yahoo.com/KCDYMOCOSZ2JNQO7JBKZFUIKSQ Mitchell

Has anybody else been having problems loading the video player lately?

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

ya for some reason when i try and open it when im on chrome it won’t open, but its working fine with firefox
- EndrzGame
  
  It’s working for me in firefox as well, but it’s kinda distorted. Like there’s tracer images on anything that moves. Is anyone else getting this effect?
  (and no, I’m not under the influence of any sort of contraband =P)

http://twitter.com/WolfpackCasey WolfpackCasey

So, for one boss, yeah, seems to work. BUT, would you not have more fun if you did not die so much? Not having a tank seems to be ok, but things would go so much smoother if you had a healing spec party member. Also, where are the rest of the bosses?

http://www.facebook.com/hussam.aitelqadi Hussam Aitelqadi

In GW2 you’re SUPPOSED to die, going through a dungeon and NOT dying is the WRONG way of doing it. ArenaNet itself said this.
http://twitter.com/Letifer666 Letifer

if they had used balanced builds (because they didn’t know what they would find inside) they wouldn’t have died so much.

Joseph Gabrielli

I’m going to be honest, no trinity is the only thing I don’t like about guild wars 2. As a ranger I don’t want an add on me, ever. It just doesn’t make sense to me, the brutes with swords and shield are supposed to get the mobs on them while the rangers with bows kill them. Imo, they should make people with shields on tanks somehow, through traits or w/e, they can still break the trinity by having no healer but it would actually then make some sense that way. I understand that everyone enjoys the breaking on the trinity which has been a pain in the ass forever in MMOs, but that’s because no game ever did the trinity correctly, and GW2 didn’t solve the problem.

http://twitter.com/Zamite João Zamite

It would probably make more sense if you hadn’t played as much trinity based games… if you’re on a battlefield it doesn’t matter who yells more, they’re coming for you.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  REAL combat isn’t fun.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-West/100001366383261 Brian West
    
    To some people, the more realistic the combat is, the more interesting the game, i be one of those people, so, here again, just because we have different opinions, doesn’t mean your more right than i am wrong, and yes by the way i have been in REAL combat and have taken lives, and had lives taken around me, was i sad after the fact, yes, but during , JACKED UP, its a human reaction to adrenaline and the survival instinct that is still with us from when we had to fight hand to claw for survival, if i can get that rush from a game without any of my buddies actually dieing, im there
Tyler Brandt

Doesn’t make sense? You think that if someone is trying to kill you they are going to intentionally go after the person that is the hardest to kill? If I’m facing a literal tank and a dude with a rocket launcher is trying to blow me up with it, but the tank has no guns and is just sitting there next to the guy with the rocket launcher, I can certainly tell you who I’m going to take down first. (It’s not the tank).
Marc Brooks

I’ve played a ranger in two beta weekends now. Weapon swap is there for a reason. You may love the pew-pew of the longbow, but the game is setup to force you swap in melee at times. Ranger’s end up being very mobile with melee, so you can normally get out dodge quick and go back to pew-pew.

Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “the brutes with swords and shields are supposed to get the mobs”. I’d think the ones who are actually killing the mobs would get the mob’s attention, unless they can’t get to them. The notion of a taunt or something else forcing a mob to ignore the dps is a nice mechanism for enforcing the trinity, but that’s all it is.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Phil-Thompson/1646123599 Phil Thompson

Rangers aren’t WoW Hunters.Rangers use melee just as much as they use bows.
RavensKrag

You have plenty of skills as a ranged class to keep ads off you. As a thief with shortbow, I can use the standard dodge, an attack which allows me to bounce backwards, and one of the heal skills even has a backwards dodge. Using other weapons and skills I can cripple enemies to stop their forward progress. There are even a couple of teleport skills to get out out of harms way.

This not only allows you to take an active role in staying alive, it also helps the front line attackers to use their big cleaving strikes. It’s about not having to rage at the tank for going down and getting everyone killed.

Can’t speak specifically for the ranger class, but from what I’ve seen, their pets can tank a bit, giving you even more freedom to move around and get into the perfect position.
Mellonroom

That’s why you have weapon swapping and pets. Also do not assume that just because you’re a Ranger you MUST have a bow. Try out the ranger with the 2handed Greatsword, now that’s close up damage!!!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-West/100001366383261 Brian West

the main problem is people are used to games like, sigh, WoW where you are a ranged DPS in group and you are used to standing back and just standing there and shooting every thing in range and never moving because the tanks keep all the aggro well that’s not what this game is about every player, melee or ranged ass is in the fight
- MMO_Doubter
  
  If you think that describes raiding in WoW – you didn’t do it.

http://www.facebook.com/Dexiled Kurt Camilleri

sorry got to say this no trinity no fun :/

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

You shouldn’t knock it before you try it out man. It’s actually a ton more fun then having dedicated roles. It makes combat feel more fluid and engaging imo.

DoctorOverlord

Very nice video Mike S. It was nice that the video was concise and short but like others I wouldn’t mind seeing an uncut version with full commentary/vent as well.

This kind of ‘Mythbuster’ video could be a fun series where you could test the claims of other games too. Like testing the TERA politics system (which might be very involved) or testing RIFTs new big boss content or even non MMORPGs like LoL or the upcoming WarZ game.

Choosing a specific claim of a game and probing in detail whether the game lives up to it would be very interesting.

One final note, the Trinity actually began with pen and paper RPGs The classic D&D character party consisted of a fighter (tank), cleric (healer), wizard (DPS) and thief (DPS) and this mechanic was transported into the earliest computer games.

MMO_Doubter

D&D did not have aggro mechanics like most MMOs do. There is more to being a tank than wearing heavy armour.
- DoctorOverlord
  
  MMO tank mechanics still clearly owe their origins to pen and paper games. D&D fighters don’t just have more armor, they have more hit points and specific skills that support protecting the less robust characters. They have always been meatshields establishing a front line (with support of the cleric) while the squishies are doing DPS in the back.
  
  In the case of D&D, the cleric is also well-armored and helping holding the line, more like the hybrid healers seen in some MMOs. MMOs could get away with squishy healers for all those years because the aggro AI programming of mobs is pathetic compared to human control. All it takes is one tank to draw all the mob attacks. Human controlled monsters are capable of much better tactics requiring classes like the cleric and thief/ranger to aid in keeping the mages safe.
  
  MMOs took the mechanics straight from pen and paper games and simplified them so the programming limitations could work. Combat roles do work but computer games
  should be capable of more than just copying pen and paper games. It’s good to see companies finally realizing that decent coding and design can move games beyond the limitations established by tabletop mechanics where players had to do all the calculations themselves.
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    You’re right that MMOs typically have terrible mob AI, but you are dead wrong about the trinity in D&D.
    
    D&D healers could not keep up a heavily armoured fighter if he could hold aggro on several mobs (which he could not).
    
    Maybe 4th Ed D&D is different, but that was based on WoW, anyway.
    - DoctorOverlord
      
      I’m not saying that there were not changes when pen and paper game mechanics when they were translated into video games. The idea of a squishy healer is one such change. Spam healing is another terrible mechanic that you never see in pen and paper games but poor coding by MMOs turned that into a tradition. The concepts and foundations of the trinity roles, however, are the same.
      
      This goes much further back than 4th Ed. Video games took the trinity from earlier versions of pen and paper games. Long before 4th Ed came out, everyone knew you didn’t go into a D&D dungeon without at least one fighter. You didn’t do into a D&D dungeon without at least one cleric. You certainly didn’t try a D&D dungeon with nothing but wizards like what Mike S attempted in his video. These roles forced people to pick classes to balance the party, When I played way back when, I remember needing to lay classes that I didn’t always want to because the party needed them. And that is exactly the same problem seen in MMOs.
      
      The trinity might not have been set as firmly in stone in pen and paper games because of the flexibility of human players but the fundamentals were there. I suppose it took the incompetence of MMO developers to focus on those elements and turn them into stagnant traditions rather than focusing on the parts that made class roles fun. But they still took the basic concepts from pen and paper games.
    - http://twitter.com/dndhatcher David Hatcher
      
      PnP D&D supposedly has smarter controller than a computer CPU, though from your description I am starting to doubt.
      
      Wizards stock up on potions, slot some utility detection spells, slot some abjuration/warding spells, grab a couple wands and scrolls and go be heroes. With proper application of warding and illusions, you should not need a lot of healing.
      
      The only tanking in D&D was body blocking and role-play taunting (same as in real life).

http://www.facebook.com/bazz.james.7 Bazz James

Let me first start out with some caveats; I have never played GW1, I am at the most unimpressed with what I have seen of GW2 and at worst just plain uninterested, and at the moment I am currently not playing any MMO after the massive disappointment of SWTOR ( I choose to play LOL instead).

Fair enough; I understand that GW2 is supposed to bring a sense of freedom, to be able to play how you want, with who you want and without any form of restriction. Whether or not this is the case will be shown in the months after release and not during the limited beta access. In my opinion there is several problem with the current beta paradigm. The first and most severe is that they tend to be populated by “fanboys” that have little to zero objectivity and are therefore not the best way to test a game e.g. The SWTOR beta. After how many months of beta? The game needed an almost complete overhaul in patch 1.2 ( I will try not to get started on SWTOR since I still feel somewhat bitter about it). MMO’s are not a short term experience. They require both time and effort and must provide a certain level of challange to keep people interested beyond leveling your character.

I find it difficult to understand the somewhat smug superiority with which people speak when they talk about the lack of the “Holy Trinity”. For all its supposed problems (being stale, forcing people to play in specific ways ect…) the sheer scope of possibilities that it provides developers is shown by the variety of games that use it. If a developer knows that on average how much dps there will be, how much healing there will be and how much damage a tank can take, it allows them to design and tune (ideally) various encounters to be challenging without being frustrating. The Trinity give the developers a powerfull tool with which to design. MMO’s always have “cookie cutter” builds or group compositions and I doubt that GW2 will be any different because there is alway a mathematically ideal. I fear that there is a fair to good chance that most of, if not all, the boss fights in GW2 will be tank and spank without the tank; where mechanics are ignored because they provide no real issue because they could not be balanced or tuned.

As with most things time will tell, but i have become highly sceptical of pre-launch hype and would suggest that expectaions be tempered. I feel slightly burned by SWTOR, which might explain my lack of interest in MMO’s at the moment, but I will leave with one final thought; ZERG, ZERG, ZERG.

http://twitter.com/Numbertoxy Joseph Matthew

Too long, did not read.
- http://www.facebook.com/bazz.james.7 Bazz James
  
  Sorry didn’t mean to exceed the average GW fanboys attention span.
  - Richard Hekkers
    
    internet user please, nobody has the attention span over here to completely read a rant about how you are uninterested xD
  - http://twitter.com/Letifer666 Letifer
    
    go back in line and wait for a decent healer/tank while I have fun.
  - Kyle Mann
    
    Yo bro, no need to be an asshole because somebody didn’t read your wall of text. But anyways, from somebody who did read your wall, I’d like to make a point.
    First off, I can’t believe that you run on about the “subjectivity” of GW2 players who have actually played the game when you’ve only seen videos. That’s like saying minecraft sucks because you watched your friend play for an hour. Everybody who plays minecraft knows it doesn’t look like much until you get your hands on it. Of course the game won’t look impressive until you know what you’re talking about. If you’d seen any of the PvP, you’d know it’s structured somewhat closely to a MOBA style game(ahem LoL).
    Also, the point of the destruction of the holy trinity is not to give the devs more room to maneuver. It’s to give the players a much more balanced, fun, and free gameplay. I played GW1, and it was centered on the Tank, Healer and DPS build. That was fun, I knew exactly what I wanted to play straight out of the gates. In Guild Wars 2, however, it’s extremely difficult to pick what profession you want to play. Every profession is so balanced it’s ridiculous. No class is tankier than the other, no class has a higher DPS or has better healing skills. Instead of deciding what role you want to play in a game, you’re stuck deciding what profession best fits your play style. You can literally play however you want to play.
    For all your talk of objectivity and how GW2 fanboys are all out to boost the reputation of GW2, you’re just the opposite. You’re just a hipster out to ruin the fun of biased people with your own biases. Don’t pretend to be objective when you haven’t even played the game, man.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3J4GUAGTSZUWHYYZZBRP6MG3UM Craig
    
    Bazz, you just brought up a whole other problem. Bashing “Fanboys” while being a “Hater”
    
    You just ruined every inch of what was a sound, intelligent post by looking like a Hater. Your objectivity is gone and you are now as pointless as the rest.
http://twitter.com/BeVa93 Benjamin Vanhees

I have played GW1, but also WoW, SWTOR, Lineage 2 and a couple of f2p mmo’s. Still I am going to play GW2 and You can call me a fanboy if you like. I played the GW2 beta’s with an open eye (not closed like a lot of others did) and I commented on every flaw I saw. Most would say, beta is beta, but that doesn’t help the game at all and that’s what beta’s are for right?

Nevertheless I went in game to have fun, wich I had a lot of. If you go play the game with a closed mind, with your checklist mentality and with a WoW playstyle (standing still) this will not be the case. From the start I noticed that if I am goig to sit around, nothing will happen. You wander around and see an event pop up on your map or an npc runs up to you and asks if you want to help him/her with something. Then you check it out and do the event. When the event is done you think about leaving that area, but then you hear an npc say something interesting and you run over there to see what is going on. A next event kicks of and you follow that npc around. –> This is what the game is about.

I am not here to change your mind about the game. I just wanted to explain a little how emersing the world can be… If you open your eyes that is.

I know you were talking about the ‘Holy Trinity’, does it really matter that much? GW2 is a game where you need skill and you do not depent on your gear or other players (healers). You just play what you want with your friends, who do the same. Just have fun and you won’t even care for the Trinity anymore. If you are frustraded, you actually have to PLAY the game instead of standing there and bashing buttons, I would say give it a chance and if it’s not for you, just stop playing. There is no monthly fee thet keeps you playing…

And last, I like the ZERG ZERG ZERG. It gives a feeling you are part of a community. And again, if you don’t like that, you don’t HAVE to do that. Just play with some friends and have fun
James Thompson

I played SWTOR for all of about 2 months. It was garbage. Even if everything you say here is true, if GW2 bosses are all tank(less) and spanked by cookie cutter builds and are hopelessly unbalanced, the rest of everything else you can do in the game will still be 10x more fun than SWTOR.

When you finally break down and pick up GW2, you’ll get it.
floppyjoe

There can still be interesting mechanics in this system. For example the Lovers fight in the Catacombs where there are two bosses that need to be kept apart. Instead of having two tanks parked on opposite sides of the arena spamming their threat abilities, everybody gets to participate in the mechanic with their own knockbacks and snares and even the rocks that are provided in the dungeon.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1003722695 Grant Griffard

I read it, but you’re forgetting a major focus of Gw2, PVP. Balanced, non gear/class dependent fun PvP. Dungeons are fun from time to time, but the people who will stick with GW2 the longest will be PvPers. If you want new dungeons to grind over and over again, Kungfu Panda Online comes out a month later….
http://twitter.com/dndhatcher David Hatcher

The thing about trinity combat is that it is has almost no room for player skill. In general a macro or bot that can spam a specific skill rotation with the proper timing is better than most players. Boss fights are pretty much always a “simon-says” game with the boss while the players all spam skill rotations. Anyone failing to do what “simon says” is generally insta-killed. There is little room for players to take in anything other than a cookie cutter team of cookie cutter builds and run the same plan for the same boss every time. Its hard to get that many people to execute together and succeed, but there is little room for one person’s superior efforts to be noticed (other than a meter telling you that Healer A did as much healing as Healer B and Healer C combined). Also its basically 3 games going on at once. The tank is aggro managing, the healer is green bar managing, the dps is skill rotating. They players are dont really need to interact, they just focus on their limited task. Its also what we have been doing over and over and over for the past 10 years, I am ready to try something new.

As far as GW2 builds being mathematically dictated, thats where action combat throws a huge monkey on the wrench. With action combat, when a player chooses to use a skill and where a player chooses to use a skill make a HUGE difference in effectiveness. Builds being slightly more effective mathematically means very little in a system where good range, timing, and position are required. You may do 25% more DPS than me, but if I can dodge/interrupt/reflect even just your one big long cooldown attack skill all that extra math is neutralized by my better gameplay. If I can stun you while you are standing in my firewall, I’m being more effective than you putting up a firewall and stunning me after I run through without it needing any mathematical advantage.

Alot of people may end up not liking the changes. I may end up not really liking the changes in the long run. The only thing I am highly confident of after 3 weekends of beta is that I will get $60 worth of entertainment out of this game.

spoot86

It seems to me that the overwhelming majority is missing the point. It’s not that the dungeon would be easier with specific roles, but rather that you can run the dungeon with five random people you meet, regardless of their build, and have success. From what I’ve seen it is so you don’t have to hope specific people are online to work through content. I personally only have one other friend that will be playing, so to have it set up this way is really appealing to me.

MMO_Doubter

Making content PUG-friendly means organized players won’t be challenged at all.
- Odeezee
  
  that would be true if PUG-friendly content was the only content available in the game.

http://www.facebook.com/gurome09 Ömer Gürlek

I think the video felt too cheesy at times, while not actually grasping the subject. It’s not that there are full-fledged tank and healer specs in the game and you decided not to play them, the fact is, there are no such specs. One simply cannot spec tank and absorb all the damage, and the so-called healer can’t keep his group up while they keep taking damage.

This is the point of the “no-trinity”. Everyone has to take an active role on trying not to take excess damage. One might be specced to be a bit more durable, and another closer to support, but in its core, everyone is DPS anyways.

LordTrikke

Man, I hope not. I might as well play a pfs then. Is it just me or does the “fun” in his voice sound alittle forced?

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

I think its you. Honestly the lack of holy trinity makes the combat feel a lot more engaging as opposed to standing in one spot doing your rotation over and over again. Although some people find that fun i guess.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Alex-Mac/777995513 Alex Mac
  
  I think it’s a question less of engagement and feeling really good at a specific role. Some people are just bad healers for instance. Same with tanks. Achieving a level of skill in a role to the point where you’re actually in demand on your server can be quite exciting.
  
  That said, I don’t fault either approach here. Both offer different benefits, in terms of combat, general engagement, and more. I think there’s room enough for all sorts of combat systems, including the trinity and systems which minimize it. It doesn’t have to be a dichotomous thing. Games are diverse and so is the market.

http://profile.yahoo.com/PBBB4WVFZK32MYY4MSN53T6XIA B

Personally I like the trinity and its one of the major (and one of the only) huge drawbacks for me where GW2 is concerned.

Emilio Aguinaldo

LOL go back to WOW then.
http://twitter.com/BeVa93 Benjamin Vanhees

If that’s the only drawback, I’d say play the game.. You can’t know until you try

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=589153390 Kevin Charles Shick

I don’t see the problem with the Holy Trinity, to be honest. I much prefer having a tank/healer/DPS mixup, so that the tank can lead, the healer can support, and the DPS can force themselves to get better at their class, rather than worry about dodging all the damage.

Kicknpups

Your missing the point “there is still a class system” you just don’t have to follow it..As someone who has raided since EQ and used the trinity I’m glad there is a alternative and I was a skeptic myself until I ran Ascalon on my Element and was having the best time in a dungeon since DAOC Sidi….
http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby

The problem is that having a strict trinity creates the one
thing that Arena Net is wholeheartedly against, and wanted to remove completely
from the MMO experience; what they called
“waiting to have fun instead of actually having fun.” Basically no
matter what in a trinity set up your enjoyment of the game is dependent on
someone else’s schedule.

Even if you’re in a large guild and don’t have to sit around
in a town spamming “LF Tank” in global chat you still have to wait for one of
the guild tanks and healers to be online, and then you have to hope they can
stay on long enough to carry your ass through the dungeon or raid. You need to
wait until you’re all online and come up with strict play schedules. Ultimately
you’re spending more time planning to play the game than actually playing the
game.

This is what is called “designed to waste your time to keep
you paying a subscription fee.” That’s right I said it. The Holy Trinity,
while having noble origins, is only still used in MMOs to waste your time and
bleed your wallet. Arena Net doesn’t need to do that, they hate the practice,
and they decided to cut it out of Guild Wars 2.

http://profile.yahoo.com/K5XFIJW7IZ6JU4V2GMO32MV7H4 Tom

Bro please dont make a video like this again, so cheesy… you sound ridiculous. I cringed the whole way through

Joao Takada

nice one Schaffnit

http://www.facebook.com/whaward Will Haward

“It wasn’t easy… but we got through it”. Stop referencing how hard it is. It’s not hard because you don’t have a tank. It’s hard because the dungeons are supposed to be hard, and are supposed to test your skill, rather than just mindlessly bashing skills that are off cooldowns and having good gear when you go in

floppyjoe

A better test would have been to actually attempt to run as a holy trinity, and have to deal with the tank not having any taunt/threat abilities, and the healer not having the raw output to keep anybody alive.

http://profile.yahoo.com/MK3FZMVUTA4KFHGVGJ52ABTHSM Food

how about you do it yourself? Clearly they WANTED TO PROOF THE HOLY TRINITY CONCEPT does NOT exist in GW2. If you want to run a test the other way around, don’t tell THEM to do it, DO IT YOURSELF! xD
- Benjamin vanEs
  
  actually his idea makes perfect sense, it’s called proof by contradiction. assume what they are saying is NOT true i.e. “trinity is necessary” and find a contradiction implying your assumption was wrong.
- Old Ben
  
  They can “prove” that without even playing, simply by noting the lack of targeted heals and artificial aggro-generation mechanics.
  
  All they proved was that they can do a dungeon (in its easiest mode) using 5 characters with little or no survival skills. But you can do that in other games (ex., WoW) too, especially if you’re prepared to die a lot, so it doesn’t really say much about the influence of the traditional “trinity” on game design.

http://www.facebook.com/hussam.aitelqadi Hussam Aitelqadi

But then, there’s always one to blame after all of you die , am I correct ? That’s what Guild Wars 2 wanted to remove, there’s no one to blame if you die but yourself, GW2 teaches you in time that you’re supposed to get better and not rely on a healer to heal you 24/7 or a tank to take all the aggro, everyone does their part in a dungeon but you do your survival by yourself.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=714619613 Kasper Røghat

Your voice is annoying, the editing is obnoxious and the background music is loud and distracting. You made me close the video in under ten seconds.

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

Way to be a dick lol. Well they only need to show you the ad in order to get more money to keep making more videos, so thanks for helping out the rest of us who actually enjoy the GBTV community and their content, you’ve been a great help

http://www.facebook.com/people/Phil-Thompson/1646123599 Phil Thompson

It’s very easy with 5 DPS,a DPS Thief can tank this fine.This isn’t WoW you have to know how to play your class if you want to do well.

http://www.facebook.com/chris.cesario.10 Chris Cesario

It is the exact same tuning in GW2… There is no tank. The boss switches targets randomly to keep people on their toes. When he switches to you it tests your ability to move and think.

They can tune how much damage you’ll be doing to the boss because every class is a primary DPS. They know how much DPS 5 characters will do.

I don’t see where you don’t understand how they will predict what you’re bringing. Every class is DPS first. Some of them have small support heals. They are still DPS. Some classes have some durability. But they are still DPS first.

From what little I played. (Couple runs through the instance in this video.) It is pretty fun. It’s hard at first because even when you’re told prior to going in, for some reason your brain still expects the mobs not to attack you if you are DPS. It’s like you’re expecting someone to tank them even though you already knew…

I agree with your main point though. People need to stop looking at a beta as a demo. And people who haven’t played the beta need to stop expecting other people to tell them how the game is. If it looks interesting, play it and make your own decision.

Personally I think it’s good. I preordered the day they put it up. I was never a GW1 player. This just looked really good to me. My opinion isn’t the same as others opinion. It has quirks I don’t like. Like some melee abilities causing your character to be rooted to the ground until the animation is finished. But I think the good far outweighs the bad.

Old Ben

> Like some melee abilities causing your character to be rooted
> to the ground until the animation is finished.

Note that there’s a setting in the options menu called “melee range assist” which will do this (and comes enabled by default, IIRC). If you turn it off, the game will allow you to keep moving, even if that means you might miss (because you move out of range during the animation).

Some skills will still root you in place, but only when it “makes sense” (things like shield block and some channeled spells).

Also, some bundles (weapons you pick up) are currently rooting you in place, but I don’t think they’re supposed to. I submitted a couple of bug reports about that in BWE3.

http://twitter.com/HDHarris802 Hassaun Harris

Honestly, the trinity has a number of built in consequences that I’m glad to do without. By necessity it turns the combat into a gear-based, rotational, min-max slog that we’ve already been going through. It sets up game design where they devs have to create encounters that hit harder and harder to keep up with growing tank and heal capacity, and that have more and more health in order to survive growing dps strength. It causes every fight to go the exact same, and encourages tunnel vision from all parties. It contributes directly to the idea of bringing certain classes because they’re absolutely necessary. By removing the trinity, or at least diminishing it’s presence, they’ve created a form of combat that can actually vary in the path from engagement to downing it while also leaving room for further innovation in mechanics and AI.

http://twitter.com/Bazeleel Patrick Cannon

I think what a lot of people do not like about GW2 combat is they have to actually work for their kill unlike in WoW now where 99% of the content holds your hand and is easier then taking candy from a baby.

ctap

Good Job Mike, lets see more of this!

jorgenopdahl

the reason he dies is because he is underleveled for the dungeon.

You can enter the instance at lvl 25, but it’s preferable to do it with level 30+ (anyone above 30 will be downscaled to 30). This means that the mobs will kill you faster as you don’t have as much health and armor as the rest of the group.

rassim ben afia

I don’t see where is the team play aspect in all this, !! everyone is dodging and dpsing and trying to live by his own ! team work ?? seriously, haven’t seen any ! :s

http://twitter.com/OnlyInSaudiArab \.. Wa5eer ..//

Teamwork in crossing combos and attacking when some certain debuffs on the mob or the bosses and too many other ways u can know it when u r playing coz its more complex than any other mmorpg u have ever played am sure of that

http://twitter.com/ItsPhinyo Christopher Inthanon

Dude tone your videos down, you’re trying to hard and it’s annoying. I agree with Kasper

MMO_Doubter

Holy Trinity has nothing to do with PvP.

Jay

I’m going to use WoW as an example. In AV you would use a tank for the last boss, and you would need at least a couple healers, as well as DPS. Even in the arena, most successful teams would have a dedicated healer in them.

Not sure if you tried GW2 PVP, but it almost reminded me of a fighting game, or even Demon’s Souls online PVP combat.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  I played AV many times. That boss was primarily a PvE boss fight.
  - Jay
    
    I’ll give you that one, Roger. Mike S may have slipped up by saying the trinity is found in PVP. Only because you can’t taunt other players… However, the original term for tank was anyone with heavy armor that can absorb a lot of damage. So in a way, there is still a trinity for those who choose to have a healer, heavy, and glass cannon.
    
    I agree with you though, I think Mike S. misspoke.

http://www.facebook.com/dzanang Dzanan Gvozden

you are aware that you’ve showed us the easiest boss there by far. I’m still not convinced when it comes to this subject.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001360578088 Michael Tanenbaum

I played all three beta weekends and let me say this. There is no dedicated healer, no. HOWEVER, there are abilities for professions and weapons that will heal allies around you and give them buffs.
The dedicated TANK is the Guardian, who can reflect projectiles and absorb lots of damage and be tanky.

The dedicated healer is probably a guardian again, who can heal with a two handed staff I’m pretty sure, (I did hammer and two handed sword, so don’t kill me if I forget).

The DPS is anything you want.
Yes, the holy trinity is normal, but in Guild Wars 2, especially in PvP where it shines perfectly, you are responsible for yourself for the most part and if you cannot be responsible for yourself, there’s no one to be mad at but you for dying, not your monk who afk’d or the tank who didn’t aggro.
It’s your fault, you didn’t heal yourself and manage aggro yourself. And in the PvP where people don’t focus tanks but the DPS and healers, everyone is a DPS and healer if they want to be. You have to choose your targets. In WvW that target is normally an overextended player who just happens to be a little ahead of the group and get’s knocked down or crippled. You can yell for a heal but you heal yourself. However, a guardian can go in front of you, throw up a shield dome to block projectiles or a shield wall to reflect them.

It’s all about working together for every goal, not just expecting someone to do one job. You have to do them all.

http://twitter.com/Letifer666 Letifer

Jacob you’re playing [x] the wrong way.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000362776253 Patrick Binuya

(This is just my Opinion and Perspective so you don’t have to read, but I just wanted to share)

I may not know much about MMORPG’s due to the fact of me being a casual player so my knowledge is very limited. I haven’t really been much of a GW1 or WoW player and I could never really get into this myself and all the other games I took a look at eg: Perfect World, Forsaken World, LOTRO, Flyff etc: so while my friends played all their games I was just playing League of Legends, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Blade and what not (was really dissapointed by ME3′s ending).
Then around about early last year I saw the trailer for GW2 and I was impressed so then I “this might not be too bad”. Then I saw more and more videos of GW2 on how ArenaNet is trying to change the way MMORPG’s work (like mentioned in this video, breaking the Trinity) so I start to think maybe it’ll be different this time, maybe I can finally really get into this. So the more I researched the more I was drawn into GW2 so now here I am, patiently for its release date. But what I really wanted to say was that after all the time and effort ArenaNet has put into this game, I really cannot possibly see how this wouldn’t be successful. This game in my opinion will impress a lot of people but hey, not everyone can be the same, so some may not like it, but many will. If people don’t like it, then people don’t like it nothing anyone can do about that.

http://twitter.com/BeVa93 Benjamin Vanhees

The thing with a lot of MMO players vs Casual players is , they think themselves superior over them and think the game should be their way because they know other MMO’s. But like you said, ArenaNet isn’t aiming this game for MMO players, they already have them. ANet wants everyone to enjoy the gameand so makes the game accesible for everyone. Don’t listen to bad commentry from players who think they know better. Enjoy the game yourself and have fun with your friends!

MMO_Doubter

Keep selling it,GBTV.

80% of the non-GW fans who try this will drop it in a month or just solo.

The trinity works. Most MMO players have enough trouble staying out of the green stuff. Expecting them to heal themselves is very optimistic.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Robbert-de-Wilde/1806039882 Robbert de Wilde

Then let them leave again, please by all means. Obviously we don’t want to play with those type of people. Guild Wars 2 will attract a lot more different crowd then the general MMO gamer anyway.
http://twitter.com/Threefiddie Landon Loper

+1
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_INBXCM4CZFVSPC2ZYINQJAK77Y Methadose

Well thank you sir, for supporting Anet with your $60.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  Uh huh. Do you WANT an MMO with deserted servers?
  
  How much will ANet be charging for server transfers?
  - Jay
    
    Unlike most other MMOs, you can play on other servers for free through the guesting system ^^ let’s give ArenaNet some credit.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-West/100001366383261 Brian West
    
    Trust me my friend i played arena nets GW1, its been around almost as many years as wow, still has players today, and makes them plenty of money, they don’t have to have as many players as wow to be around for 10+ years, and they have already took into account having the right amount of servers so they don’t do like SWOTOR did and have to many at launch that afterwards the servers are to empty. Not only that, but nearly HALF of the people you read on forums that complain about SWOTOR say they would still be playing it in its current “Broken” form if it was F2P, which GW2 will be so they are ahead on so many levels this game will be successful and make arena net plenty of money to continue expansions and updates in its CURRENT NON TRINITY form, if you don’t like it go play WoW they don’t care, there not here to kill WoW there here to make a game, make money, and have fun, they really don’t care about people like yours opinion there doing there way be damned.
  - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
    
    $20 for a permanent transfer, free unlimited guest passes to play on any server (except in WvW). Just shows you haven’t actually played the game, server jumping is already in place, and it a key part of the game to allow guilds and friends to play together.
Jay

I prefer ArenaNet not to cater to casual players all the time, unlike another company. I’m glad they had the balls to try something different, geared more towards people with decent twitch reflexes. How many casual people do you think actually weapon swap effectively? Should ANet take it out the game because not everyone knows how and when to use it at a high level? No. It’s there for those willing to learn and master the combat system, and I’m thankful for it.

There is plenty of content for casual players and hardcore alike… Can’t say the same about every other MMO out there. Seems like people are getting caught up on semantics, since ArenaNet already said there are 3 roles being used in their combat system. You just aren’t stuck in them, and if you try to stick to one, you’re less effective as a player. Support, control, and damage are all supposed to be used together; by the group and individually.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  I hate casual content in MMOs. I hate PUGs. If this design scares casuals away, I am all for it.
  
  I am making this prediction, Jay:
  
  Within two or three months, GW2 will have at least one viable tank spec, and one viable healer spec in-game. Whether they achieve it through gear or skills – I don’t know.
  - Jay
    
    When you say “viable tank spec”, do you mean being able to stand still and just absorb hits like in WOW? Also, do you include consider Explorable mode as the qualifier for viable?
    
    I don’t consider the Story mode seen here as anything more than a casual introduction to GW2 dungeons.
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      Viable to facilitate traditional trinty game play in the highest difficulty dungeons.
    - Jay
      
      LOL have you seen the Explorable dungeons? I’d gladly take that bet.
      
      Don’t let this Story mode intro fool you…
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      Not going to happen considering that the highest healing output of a ma compassion (healing power stat) profession is only around 300 hp and the average profession at max level has over 20k hp. I tried specing for healing in sPvP just to see if it could be done and the highest heal I was able to get was 3k hp over ten seconds. And this was competing with 15k+ crits from glass cannon builds.
    - http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
      
      You haven’t even tried an explorable mode dungeon before, have you? NO ONE can stand there and take the kind of damage that goes out in explorable mode dungeons. No one. No guardian, no warrior, no thief, no anyone with any amount of toughness and vitality will be able to sit there and let everything $#!% on them. No one has the healing to keep them up, regardless of how much compassion you stack. The trinity isn’t viable in GW2, period. It’s not just that other things work, it’s that only other things work. The entire team has to be individually competent and capable of avoiding damage themselves.

Draugmahl

I’ll go back and read these in a few minutes, but right off the top. I hope someplace in the assessment of the “no trinity” setup, someone has incorporated the idea that, quite plainly, most people are not great at this game yet. I am in the same boat as most veteran MMOers in that I understand the abilities, reading the tool tips, I immediately begin to see great ways to link abilities up between weapon sets…but that doesn’t change the fact that I am used to standing there and pressing buttons and I will catch myself still doing exactly that, and without a tank it certainly requires you to pay that much more attention to everything, not just your role.

I liken the combat in this game to an X-Men v.s. Juggernaut comic book battle rather than a WoW type thing, and it feels like you really need to move in and out of combat that way, allowing the wounded to heal, giving someone else the chance to wind up that big hit without getting flattened, and then moving out yourself to recover and do the same.

…and it’s not that it’s better or worse, that’s relative really, and to someone who has never played any MMO ever, they could try this and try WoW and go…well, they play differently. For people who are tired of trudging through the same old trinity party setup for the last 10-15 years though, it’s a breath of fresh air, and it’s nice to play a game that you don’t know like the back of your hand. Learning it is part of the fun.

What IS better about having no trinity is it’s effect on getting a group together, and it’s effect on the community not being forced into roles they’d rather not play. I think if you take a hard look at GW2, as many things as were changed just because they were overdone, an equal number have been changed because they have a positive impact on the friendliness and cohesiveness of the players, something WoW has been lacking for a very long time.

http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby

@MMO_Doubter
” Making content PUG-friendly means organized players won’t be challenged at all.”

That is what hard mode dungeons are for. Arena Net has said that if you try hard mode with a PUG you’ll probably die. The so called “story mode” is PUG friendly because it is just that; story mode. It is part of the core story and they want everyone to see it through. Hard mode however….now we’re talking challening endgame content.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_INBXCM4CZFVSPC2ZYINQJAK77Y Methadose

Ya considering this was story mode, and story mode is fairly easy. Explorable mode was another story when I tried it. EXTREMELY hard, be interested to see if they balanced it.

http://twitter.com/greenkitchnware Green Kitchenware

Ok, the character wasn’t “dying” in this vid. That’s the downed state. Defeat/death occurs after you run out of life in the downed state. Anet has warned us already about the downed state. It happens. It’s supposed to happen. It’s part of their design.

However, getting downed repeatedly does still suck. I don’t have a problem with ANet’s philosophy here because the trinity IS stale (anyone been unable to group because no healers were online?), but the mobs need to telegraph their moves better.

This game is all about avoiding damage regardless of class, but it’s not fun when mobs spawn RIGHT ON TOP OF YOU (ala ghost dog in the video), with no warning, and then proceed to chew your face off before you can react. It’s also not fun to be one shot by bosses who…maybe jiggle their hands a little before the nuclear ray of light explodes from their anus to instagib half the party.

Dodging is fun. Dodging aimlessly around in circles because you are unable to see anything isn’t fun at all. The trinity doesn’t need to survive. However, if you want to port in some action combat, you need to also port in “action” style mobs and bosses that telegraph hits, and repeat their combos, so you can learn to defeat the encounter flawlessly.

Many encounters feel very chaotic right now, and out of the players control.

Jay

I agree completely. Nice critical view of things… At least ANet said they’re aware of the problem, and plan to telegraph better.
http://twitter.com/dndhatcher David Hatcher

I’m not so sure I agree with your statement “getting downed repeatedly sucks”. Just think of downed as a weapon swap or second skill-bar like a necro’s death shroud state. Some of the most fun I had in BWE was late night soloing some of the Asura power system DEs. I was facing 2-3 mobs, usually one of them elite, and it felt pretty good to make use of the downed skills and rallying to defeat them without having to tromp back from a waypoint.

http://twitter.com/FishBaitism Fish Bait

Been wondering what these`d be like & despite the deaths, it still looks fun.

http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby

edit: why the hell does this thing never put my replies as actual replies?

Actually the bosses in GW2 switch targets based on AI priorities.
By default whoever is closet is the priority target, however they are other
things the AI checks for that can change that.

*Low armor targets are higher priority than high armor
targets.

*Players with lower current HP are higher priority.

*Players doing high DPS are higher priority kills than defensive
players with high survivability but low DPS.

*Ranged players are higher priority than melee players.

*Players trying to heal, buff, and res are higher priority
than players trying to fight directly.

*Casters are higher priority than martial fighters.

In other words the boss AI picks targets the same way you
do. “Ignore the tank, kill the healer first.” “Spike the glass cannon.” “Kite
the melee and target the ranged.” “Gank the squishy.” And so on. It hasn’t been
perfected yet, obviously, but they are continuing to develop it.

In most MMOs players use the trinity to exploit content. In
Guild Wars 2 content uses the trinity to exploit you. That is the main reason
why you can’t use the trinity; you start falling into those predictable
patterns and the AI will roflstomp you into the dirt.

Old Ben

Do you have a link to some official source stating that? And is that valid just for dungeon bosses or for “champion” enemies in general?
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=624197507 Rowell Figueroa
  
  reddit question that was answered or a blog… it was to explain the mob behavoir as some would attack all those in ranged fighting or go after melee characters in some videos.
  - Old Ben
    
    Well, if it’s supposed to describe general mob behavior, it’s wrong.
    
    It’s easy to see that a lot of mobs aggro based exclusively on distance. In fact, up to BWE3, you could pull creatures to AFK players and make them “tank” for you (just by standing there, not casting or doing anything), while you shot the baddies from a safe distance.
- Jay
  
  They discuss it in few videos on Youtube from various conventions like Gamescon and PAX.
http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan

Where are you getting that information from? I know it was like that in GW1 as well. If that is where it’s from you are also missing “Slowest moving target”.
http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby

I don’t believe it was ever said this would reflect every mob in the game, by the way. In fact I am pretty sure they said that some mobs would have better AI than others, to reflect idiots -like the skritt- in lore. Not every mob is type would be capable of complex tactics, so not all of them use them. Basic undead for example are pretty stupid, as it should be.

http://www.facebook.com/micah.ables Micah Ables

ALL professions and builds need to learn to dodge and heal themselves regardless of how much health and armor they have, since these only delay the inevitable if your playing poorly. Whether or not your team survives depends WAY more on your individual ability to play the game; dodging an attack that would cost you quite a bit of life, or using your own personal healing skill is WAY more efficient than relying on a team healer who’s heals are not going to be able to negate even a single attack of a boss, let alone keep you in the green.

also, having a tank is fairly impossible due to the way aggro works within the game, its much more important to control your enemies through crowd control abilities or conditions that negate attacks all together. But CC is not designated to any particular class, in fact most weapons on any profession have at least one way of controlling the enemy or negating their attacks.

The purpose of traits and utilities is to add specializations or other capabilities that your weapons and profession’s special mechanics cannot completely fulfill, but just because you enter into a specialization of say control, that doesn’t mean your team is completely reliant on you for fears and cripples and knockdowns, as most professions can do at least two of those things.

Even when you say your build is currently “dps”, while it may have been built around the idea of doing the most damage possible, its still not technically a “dps” build in the traditional sense of the term. Because even though it emphasizes damage, guild wars 2 ensures that you still have ways of controlling and/or supporting your team while fighting. And when it comes to conditions that any profession can use such as cripple or blindness, they are just as effective on any of these classes. Because each provides a moment that allows a player to escape harm, and the power of these abilities is the same across the board, the duration of these abilities does not matter if the player skill/reaction speed is high enough. So if a necro can keep someone crippled for 20 seconds with his elite skill good on them, but that doesnt mean your warrior’s 7 second cripple is going to be less effective, it just means the window of opportunity is smaller.

Even the act of rezing a team member is not restricted at all, anyone can rez anyone. Dont think for a minuet that its not your job to rez that guy next to you, because your build is designed around doing more damage.

ptcee

Wow, your group looked awful. We cleared this relatively smoothly in bwe3 with all dps… :/

Jay

Good observation… lawl.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_INBXCM4CZFVSPC2ZYINQJAK77Y Methadose

Proof or it didn’t happen!

http://www.facebook.com/LostLunE James Hernandez

was i supposed to have a seizure at the end of this video ?

Draugmahl

btw MikeS, the part where you said “I just want a tank” you’re kinda…standing in the bad

http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit

SHHHHHH <_< A good tank would have pushed me outta the way!
- http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
  
  By this you mean a babysitting priest would have life-gripped you.?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff

okay guys u hearing me hear…. alright lets begin n what iccurd in this dungeon run of what info we have:
1. this was mostly a pugged team
2. most of the armour that had was pretty crappy he even said so himself
3. they had never done this dungeon before so this could have gone booth ways
4.they still somewhat beat it and they all got decent reward from completeing the parts they did finish
5.they really didnt die alot they where mostly in down state

so on the info we have here we can comfront what occured. yes we all know that hey every one can tank and absorb dmg everyone can run around not knowing what to do but they probably fun exploring what they did complete yes the breaking of the trinity from this video makes it look hard to judge since we only saw bits and piece and we ourselves where not their but this is just one large leap that areanet has taken to move away from all that lfg crap the breaking of the holy trinity is not polished i am more than willing to say that since we can all say it has never been done before but hey blizzard said (to be an awesome MMO you need to have a persciption fee) and it sold millions still does but here we have areanet saying and showing hey we want to do something else to change what MMO are cause waiting around for someone else to show up is stupid and boreing no one likes waiting for that picfic person to show up i would rather be doing something else than wait for a primary healer or tank or more dps another thing i would like to mention is that hey even if this was a more organized group it could have gone horribly wrong but people learn from their mistakes and from that we see progres GW2 is all about pug friendly randomly working together look at world bosses for example people all just randomly group up and kick the fucking daylights out of them and then disperse when their dead and they have their loot this video just shows us that again but this time with less people and more need to be knowledge able or more procede with caution if they had and hopefully took each thing by tiny steps they could have cleared it with no problem and using ur skillz to match something equal to some one else lack of because hey their meele or hey ur meele so maybe we can combine our stuff together to mkae what was a small didly into a big diddly so from here all arguments are invalid thank you and have a nice day.

MMO_Doubter

1 – excuse
2 – excuse
3 – excuse
4 – excuse
5 – excuse

Ever seen the movie ‘Se7en’?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
  
  did you not read the end all aurgment are invalid dumbass u know im right so you want to troll me cause you are sucky WoW player and wants to rage at such a good game GW2 is cause ur parents wont get it for you and you want to say crap because your only 12 years old go back to minecraft no one want you here thank you and have a great day dumbass!
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    All I can do is LOL.
  - http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
    
    Can we get this guy moderated?
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
      
      you talking to me or MMO dude done their
http://twitter.com/Lactarded Adrienne H

1. Wasn’t really pugged, since we had been playing together pretty much the whole weekend to get to 30.
2. Yea, our armour was pretty bad, but thats the same with any other mmo. you get better gear by doing dungeons.
3. you’re right we had never done this before. well, 1 of us had.
4. We completed the entire dungeon in an hour and a half.
5. we actually did die a lot. lucky for us, there were waypoints inside.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
  
  ah thank you for more information on this entire thing i can only say from what i see and what i can point out but yes if it still wasent a pug it was still a bit on the spot idea and yes doing dungeons is true so glad you did this dungeon and yea it does show you dont need tank or heals in a dungeon anymore it just proves most of points true it might not be 100% polished because i know from playing beta yes this does end up being zerg fest at times but hey what can you do everyone want to experience everything or something.
- http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
  
  Double posted somehow…
Jay

Someone get this man some punctuation!

I get what you’re saying Kevin, it is refreshing to not have 5 people forced into specific roles. It was doing just fine in BWE3 “tanking” on my Thief. Technically it’s not “tanking” because I don’t move slow with heavy armor and absorb damage like a tank (where the original term comes from for those who don’t know

I mostly just keep the mobs distracted while I dodged and quickly shadow stepped around them, while stacking bleeds. Kinda sounds fitting for the “Thief” role, doesn’t it…
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
  
  yea grammer not my strong suits but yes here we are again tho we have a thief tanking you wont see a rouge tanking or say something from swtor tho i only played 15min of it and cant really say hows the tank healer dps classes in the game so i cant really comment but yes it alwasy nice to see a thief tank.

http://www.facebook.com/anthony.hernandez.5895834 Anthony Hernandez

I would just like to mention you got downed a lot by traps. The part where you say, “I wish I had a tank,” you can clearly see spikes coming up from the floor.

http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit

True, but they are traps spawned by the adds. Granted I need to roll faster, but you are correct sir.
- http://www.facebook.com/nairoj Good Byes
  
  I like the honesty!
- http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
  
  Every MMO I’ve ever played has had mobs that will take pot shots at people that aren’t their target, so I don’t see how a tank would help in that situation regardless of the traps’ source.
Jay

Good eye =D

http://twitter.com/Threefiddie Landon Loper

Just seems like playing Ping Pong to me until something dies.

/shrug

Jay

You fail to mention ping pong is one of the most popular sports in the world.

In fact the very first video game was a basic form of “Pong”.

(づ｡*◕__◕｡)づ・。*。✧・゜゜・。✧ The more you know…

Draugmahl

After going back and reading a lot of this…truth be told, I hope nobody who is dead set on a trinity set up stays around. I also hope that nobody who isn’t willing to work to get through a dungeon also takes a hike. It’s nothing personal, but God I am so sick of the WoW mentality that everything has to be completed in 15 minutes to meet your grinding timeframe or that any challenge is best defeated by over-gearing your character.

Do you know what’s more disappointing than wiping all night on a boss? Walking through a dungeon uncontested.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff

here here tottally agree
MMO_Doubter

I mostly agree with your sentiments here. I hate ‘farm status’ in MMOs. I loved raiding Karazhan in WoW – as long as it was a challenge. Once we got to farm status, it was boring as hell.

My big concern is that no trinity means much simpler encounter designs.

I want to play as part of a team (and teams usually have specific roles assigned), not as a group of 5 loners doing there own thing.
- http://twitter.com/grizzlyGummy Gummy
  
  I wouldn’t say ANet has to sacrifice encounter design for the lack of a trinity. For example, one of the encounters in Ascalon Catacombs features two bosses that must be kept apart at all times. Anyone who’s ever raided knows this is a Main Tank/Off-tank mechanic and something that you’d expect to be impossible with zero tanks. However, through control (stuns/knockbacks/immobolizers) players can accomplish the task in a way much more fun than “you hold threat on that guy and stand there, I hold threat on this guy and stand here”.
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    Sounds good – for organized groups. Sounds like a complete disaster for PUGs.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
      
      not really its just called communictation….. wait you still have to do that in every other raid…..
    - Satoros
      
      If you only hold PUGs to the standard that they currently have within games like WoW, then possibly, yes. But through all of the beta weekends of GW2, there was one thing that really really stood out to me, and that was the inherent teamwork that developed without ever needing to communicate during the world events. There’d be a few moments of skirmishing with the main focus of the event to determine what to do and then things would click into place. It took the three weekends for the playerbase to really get a good feel on the game in general since it’s such a mindswitch from how things are in other games, so for a while the first waves into the dungeons will be longer and more awkward, I think that by level 30 most will have a good grasp of the game and mechanics and like in the video, after a pull or two get it figured out. I may be too optimistic, but by the time you get to doing dungeons, you’ll probably no longer have the same mentality as you might going into dungeons in any other MMO right now.
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      I hope you are right, but I have yet to see open world MMO PvE that trains players to do well in dungeons.
      
      If they achieve it by just making dungeon PvE like typical open world PvE, then it will not be appealing to me.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
      
      damn right even me a veteran MMO player it was a bit off but now everything clicks and for thoes that havent played the beta give them like say 1 week and they will even figure out what to do
    - Draugmahl
      
      I would be very shocked if dungeon bosses had much in common with dynamic world bosses mechanically, they have to accommodate a much higher variance than a group limited to 5 people.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
      
      There is at least one very important difference. The dungeon (mini)bosses will move around a lot more.
    - Old Ben
      
      Hm… compared to what? The giant troll in Altar Brook or the champion boar in the Queen’s Forest move across a huge area.
      
      Or are you talking about the raid bosses?
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
      
      Stuff like the shadow behemoth and the jungle wurm.
    - http://twitter.com/dndhatcher David Hatcher
      
      The role of explorable mode dungeons in GW2 is to frustrate and punish PuGs that dont communicate. Usually that is something you only find in level cap endgame raids. Because dungeons are completely optional and GW2 is introducing the concept at mid-levels, there is some hope that instead of the normal clueless dungeon PuGs at level cap, most players will at least have learned to listen to a leader and try what they say to do by then. Maybe I’m being an optimist…
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      Interesting opinion. I would think that players learn to run dungeons – by running dungeons.
      
      I didn’t know dungeons were absent until mid levels. That is a pretty big negative for me.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
      
      *explorable mode dungeons* and lv30 is not really that high. I ended BWE1 with a lv27 and a lv10. That lv27 could easily have been a lv30 if I didn’t go make the second character. That is 3 days or less for the first dungeon.
      
      Are you expecting the game to drop you into a dungeon right after character creation?
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      Yup. If I choose to do them.
      
      Just as I want to be able to PvP from level one, and craft from level one.
    - Old Ben
      
      You can go into a dungeon right after character creation, actually; the Charr personal story sends you into a dungeon in one of the first steps.
      
      Ascalon Catacombs was simply the only instanced 5-man dungeon available in the beta. It wasn’t the only dungeon in the game; the other ones are simply part of the personal stories or designed to scale dynamically to different numbers of players.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
      
      Then we’ll have to argue over what is or isn’t a dungeon.
    - Old Ben
      
      Well, technically a dungeon is “a strong prison or cell where prisoners are kept, usually underground”.
      
      In RPGs it generally means an isolated area (which may be instanced or not) with a series of obstacles and / or powerful enemies, and some sort of reward at the end.
      
      I find “public dungeons” (i.e., non-instanced) a lot more realistic, but they’re obviously much harder to tune, since some people might try to do them alone and some might try to do them with a group of 40 friends. That makes it very hard to give achievements, “fair” rewards, etc., and since those things have become pretty standard features that most players expect, most games still have dungeons designed for specific levels and specific party sizes.
      
      That doesn’t mean they can’t _also_ have public dungeons or dungeons designed to be doable by parties of 1-4 players (as is the case with the ones in GW2′s personal stories).
    - http://twitter.com/dndhatcher David Hatcher
      
      Most MMOs have very few repeatable dungeons until level cap. I dont know any that start you into multi-player dungeons at “low” levels except DDO and GW1.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/QYT23XWBUKAZ5BTB3UJ4WMAF54 Brad
      
      It might be a good way to actually get your community talking, being a community, working together in a friendly and fun manner, rather than treating a pug like its a job you hate with people you hate, but your just there for the money (loot in this case) ? Its not hard to talk with people and talk strategy and what you should do and such. Or rather… its easy to get organized inside of a pug, you just have to make an attempt.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
  
  so your main concer is that you want specific way to do something you still some what can in gw2 but if your going to do basic MMO tactic why are you on this form any ways then GW2 redifnes basic tactics from needing all that crap if really want that speific role stuff with lots of people you still can WvW or balenced PvP or even world events
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    So, no one is allowed to point out things they don’t like about the game?
    
    Just for fanboys, here?
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Raymond-Macduff/660827451 Kevin Raymond Macduff
      
      pointing something out you dont like is not a problem but the way you say crap and not straight to the point here convosation could be alot better
    - Draugmahl
      
      For the record I didn’t see anything wrong with what you said or the way you said it.
- Draugmahl
  
  I’m with you and then, kinda not just a little. I STILL contest that
  much of what is wrong with WoW as a game is a direct result of the
  community, whether it is people who want easy encounters and free purples, people who
  aren’t very good with no desire to get better, or people who will run to
  youtube at the first sign of trouble. If that element doesn’t exist in the game (either by players like that not staying or players who are only that way because WoW has gotten old being excited by having to learn something new) it’ll change the overall tone of the game and the way the encounters play out.
  
  Right off the bat you’re playing a game with no mods to tell people what to do. That alone is going to cause an encounter to demand more from the individual player, and in turn there will be more strain from the individual players are going to put on each other. That’s built in difficulty there, forcing players to play with each other and not 10/25 people individually playing DBM.
  
  I feel you that I don’t want to see the same 5 mechanics in every boss fight…I see that you can’t build an encounter like Chimaeron where you lean on roles to manage various elements of the fight, but it will be up to Anet to instead create encounters that focus on mechanics that DO exist such as moving people in and out, everyone out or everyone in, when to interrupt, when to use the environment or bundles etc. There are plenty of mechanics in the game for them to still make the encounters interesting, they just have to do it and if there is one thing I will give them credit for is that extremely thoughtful approach they have taken to every aspect of the game so far. I am not prepared to believe that they only did that for the first 20 levels of the game.
  
  I am still going to assert that your average WoW player is going to have a hell of a time with even the easiest encounters without mods to tell them what to do. All WoW-type players are going to have to content with unlearning their habits which in and of itself is a period where everyone is just generally not going to be great.
  
  To your point about being part of a team, I agree, and the harder content I suspect will require that, but instead of set roles you’re going to have to be more aware of what abilities you as a group have and how they interact with each other. Instead of knowing “I’m the healer so I heal” you may have to think “I have an AOE that increases/adds fire damage to everyone’s attacks and in this phase the boss takes extra damage from it”. I suspect that the latter parts of the game are not going to reward people for playing as 5 individuals in a dungeon.
http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

Well said
http://www.facebook.com/people/Nappie-Chappy/100002672280733 Nappie Chappy

Yup, this game doesn’t need the trinity, but it does need to be organized, and take your time – especially in the coffin room, dedicate someone to open them, one at a time, killing 1 mob at a time. Otherwise repair bills will suck you dry!
- http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
  
  Do you find repair costs to be very expensive? I think the most I’ve had to pay so far was a bit over 1 silver. It probably gets more expensive as your armor goes up in level but so does your income.
http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan

Wiping isn’t necessarily bad. Dying due to my own incompetence would be fine. Dying because the game requires a specific set of gear or a specific party composition would be bad.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

I do love this little “mood swings” in the Guild Wars 2 community. On one hand, they want all MMO players to buy GW2 because its the second coming of MMOs.

But, if anyone questions the Arenanet masters, you rant and throw tantrums and wish they would go back to their previous MMOs. (No refunds of course)

Personally, I hope Arenanet doesn’t change a thing, I really want them keep the content difficult. But, I’ve got no illusions on the role I will play in a GW2 Dungeon - DPS, covering my ass and dropping heal and CC abilities as appropriate.

While everyone talks about running explorable modes, I really question if more than a fraction of the gaming community will tackle the challenge.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_INBXCM4CZFVSPC2ZYINQJAK77Y Methadose

This is story mode, and that is the saddest part of this video.

http://www.facebook.com/samantha.bergamo Samantha Bergamo

This was done after only 2 days of playing these characters. That’s the amazing part.

Revanhavoc

(I was hoping this was going to be a great Mike S analytical vid but the presentation quality has gone down since the last A list. At the start Mike sounded like H.A.L. – mic volume amd position was all over the place.

Then the play by play was confusing and nothing like Mike S shoutcasting. It was too loud and hard to follow. If Tank Spot is an inspiration then BFF Repprt should replace that, now that is narration.

You can do so much better than this Mike S. we expect more of the editing.

Great concept but I would prefer some more analysis.)

Jay

Pretty much my exact thoughts, I even mentioned Mike B’s BFF report as well. I really enjoy his format… This was a little too far on the “entertainment” side.

http://twitter.com/Jown777 Absolute

Run explorable mode like that and then i’ll be impressed.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658375422 Corbin Govers

Was I the only one who was yelling at him during the “hard room” to stop standing on the spike trap?

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

lol, that spike trap was just sooooo wrong.
-Don’t stop in the spike trap.
-Don’t blame your gear if you stop in the spike trap.
-If you try and rez someone down in the spike trap, dodge out at the first sign of damage.
-If you can move while down, move out of the spike trap.

http://twitter.com/JasonParadis Jason Paradis

Do you really need a 25 second intro?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Nappie-Chappy/100002672280733 Nappie Chappy

During BWE2, we did the same thing — opened every damn coffin we saw – painful!

Explorable mode is a whole different ballgame, got stuck in the library, but I think it would be doable in group that wasn’t trying to cram a months play into 2 days time.

http://profile.yahoo.com/C3O3WMHO3WBNOO4XTY54GOLIKM Angel of the Night

Fighting to Survive =/= Dead

I may be wrong, but, I don’t think you actually Died in that whole video ((Unless you actually edited it out)) I saw you having to “Fight to Survive” quite a bit, but I never say you actually die ((As in, you can not heal yourself, and you /HAVE/ to be revived by another player or choose to return to an unlocked waypoint.))

http://twitter.com/Lactarded Adrienne H

we definitely died. that is a super super edited version of what happened. we were in there for an hour and a half
- http://profile.yahoo.com/C3O3WMHO3WBNOO4XTY54GOLIKM Angel of the Night
  
  Gotcha.. Might have been a good idea to show an actual death or two in the video tho.. Instead of only “Fight to survive”
  
  Just sayin’
  - http://twitter.com/Lactarded Adrienne H
    
    probably. I didnt have any say in the video. I was just there in the dungeon Was a fun time
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      Good to hear! I was hoping for a information. Who he was running with, professions, specs. Weapons choices.
    - http://twitter.com/Lactarded Adrienne H
      
      I have to say, I was expecting that too Dularr. Seeing as he asked each of us what we traited into and all that.
    - http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
      
      Honestly, the traits you get at level 30 aren’t big enough to make a difference, since that only gets you two first-tier traits.
    - Jay
      
      You mean Mike was withholding information?? I want my money back!
      
      Glad yall had fun at least.

http://profile.yahoo.com/GL7JED3IWXFI6SU6LBWTPWARMU Jeff

People seem to forget that Asheron’s Call NEVER had the trinity. Arenanet isn’t doing anything revolutionary here. They’re just finally getting back to one of the great features of a previously awesome game. Dodging spells and attacks? They pulled that one from Asheron’s Call too.

http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan

So basically what you are trying to say is that AC was ahead of its time?
- http://twitter.com/kirzanSix Michael Coulombe
  
  More that the MMO industry completely shifted its focus by trying to grab a bite of the WoW apple and try as hard as possible to be just like it. “It” being a game tailored around casual play with as little features or creativity as possible in favor of a quick buck.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/GL7JED3IWXFI6SU6LBWTPWARMU Jeff
    
    Well AC was ahead of it’s time in some aspects and on par in others. I’d like it if Arenanet just said “hey we took the best ideas from previous mmorpgs and rolled them into 1 game” rather than acting like they’re doing something unheard of in the mmo industry. However that would be bad marketing since its always better to act like you’re doing something revolutionary. WvW = RvR from DaoC too if I wanted to continue naming where they got their ideas from. While nothing in GW2 is original, I am thrilled that a company decided to take some of my favorite things from legendary pre-WoW mmorpgs and combined them into one game.
    
    I also agree with Michael that post-WoW release the entire industry shifted because it was such a successful game design. Sadly as he pointed out that definitely led to stagnation in the industry and a lot of the great ideas from previous games were overshadowed and overlooked for years due to WoW. Thankfully a company has finally decided to try and break the mold and take a different approach.
    - Jay
      
      Actually ArenaNet did say that they looked at the MMO genre and just got rid of things they didn’t think were “okay”. Try not to confuse what the internet says for what the actual dev team has put out there.
      
      ArenaNet just tells us the features in the game, and why they did it… That’s all.

http://twitter.com/JadR_On Ondrej Jadrny

So, in order to prove there is no holy trinity, you all actually roll DPS, which is part of the specialized holy-trinity system?

Wouldn’t all-hybrid team prove your point better? Just sayin’.

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

Basically every class in GW2 is a hybrid though. I think the point was to say that no matter what comp you choose to go with that its possible to clear dungeons, at least on story mode.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=78100906 Jeffrey Collins

The holy trinity entails that groups require the presence of three specialized roles in order to succeed in a dungeon or raiding environment. Any group composition that lacks any one of those specialized roles will therefore break the holy trinity. The video above lacks both specialized healers and specialized tanks. Therefore, the trinity is broken.

So, how would an “all-hybrid” (whatever that means) team prove that the holy trinity is unnecessary any better than the video above?

Robert Scullion

The concept of this article seems a little bit off to me.
It would seem that the whole point of there being no trinity is that the game is designed so that multiple classes in a group would bring some utility to the table and you seem to be equating “no trinity” with “no tank or healer and 5 pure DPS” which seems a little unfair to the system that GW2 is trying to implement. I think everyone taking nothing but DPS traits seems counter-intuitive to the way the game is designed as a whole as a large part of their philosophy seems to be built around characters being largely self reliant with regards to keeping themselves alive and avoiding damage through their build and trait choices, especially in PVE.

A fairer way to look at the whole “no trinity” claim from my point of view seems to be to look at the roles that a Tank, DPS and Healer perform in other games and see if you can apply them to GW2. You cannot have one person just standing there soaking up all the damage for the entire party in GW2, you will never be in a situation where one person can just spam heals to nullify the effect of incoming damage and there are no builds that I can think of that offer just DPS, so it seems fair to say that the traditional trinity roles don’t apply to GW2. An even clearer indication would be to look at the classes and see if you could realistically label any of them as a class that just tanks, just heals or just does DPS, and I don’t think you could.

While I understand that the whole point of the article was to go to an extreme to prove a point, the original premise seems fundamentally flawed, trying to create a character that is a “DPS” in the traditional MMO sense in GW2 seems a pointless exercise. Running the dungeon with multiple odd compositions class wise, or on a more extreme scale, running the dungeon as 5 of the same class all with different builds so they could all bring something slightly different to the table might have been a better way to go about it.

Either way, I love all the work you guys do at Gamebreaker, the site is awesome and this is all just my opinion and up for discussion and not a statement of fact that I am right and you are wrong.

http://www.facebook.com/rog.marino Rog Marino

My ideal should not be a “holy trinity” (Tank / Healer / DPS) but a “holy quartet” (Tank / Healer / DPS / Buffer & Curser) and normal dungeon groups should be in a slightly higher number . I dont enjoy the “jack of all trades” approach.

http://twitter.com/Sodiumsmotts Craig Batstone

Whut, why with the cheesy voice over? This kind of thing would be so much better with the “How It’s Made” Style voice over… Other than that, kinda interesting

http://twitter.com/Chrystolis Brad Koch

I would think “Breaking the Holy Trinity” would mean it’s not necessary to have a group member DEDICATED to healing or tanking or dps in order to succeed. It does not in any way, shape, or form that I can think of, indicate that dungeons should be doable with zero survivability abilities. The fact that you were able to indicates that perhaps that dungeon is tuned to be pretty easy. Being an early game dungeon, that doesn’t surprise me.

The way Guild Wars 2 differs from games with a holy trinity is the responsibility of surviving a fight is much more a personal one than a group one at heart. Are there ways your group can select weapons and utility skills to achieve fantastic group synergy? Absolutely, and I don’t mean by dedicating to specific roles. I mean everyone takes dps options, and everyone takes survivability options. If you want to be more helpful to the group, take some survivability options that benefit others as well.

To be honest, approaching the answer to the question in the manner this video did avoids the point of the system, and if it hadn’t worked out ok, people would be slandering the game for “not breaking the holy trinity!!” when this did little to actually test that claim…

http://profiles.google.com/gl7676 gl 7676

So how would 5 tanks or 5 healers do in a raid in GW2?

http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen”

there aren’t any set tanks, nor are there set healers and the explorable mode dungeons in GW2 take the place of raids. Which are extremely hard 5 man dungeons.
http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan

They would be standing around forever unless the dungeons can be done without killing anything significant. That would actually be a pretty interesting option for a dungeon. There was one mission in GW1 where you had the option of sneaking through the whole thing(except the damn bonus forces you to not sneak >_<) except the last boss.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Would love to see 5 Guardians or 5 Warriors tackle the dungeons. See how everyone settles into their roles.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
    
    Are you under the mistaken impression that a Guardian can’t kill you?
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      huh? No, I want to see what a group of the same five professions, would end up looking like. One tanky build, couple of boon/heal builds and two pure dsp builds.
http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby

Tanks and healers don’t exist in GW2.Every profession’s healing output is piss poor and thinking you can rely on others to keep you alive is a good way to die. Further mob damage output is so high you’ll be crushed in seconds no matter how much armor or HP you have. The point of GW2 combat isn’t to tank and heal the damage, it is to avoid taking damage and needing to heal in the first place. Dodge and evasion. Enough said.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003013567846 Lavette Kowalczyk

The commentary was slightly irritating to listen to.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1374334818 Krab van M

Story mode. Enough said.

David Bennett

I miss Enchanters and Bards from EQ.
Also…
What if I Iike being a dedicated healer?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Phil-Thompson/1646123599 Phil Thompson

EQ is still going strong or you can go play one of many MMO’s that have a healer class.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Lol, eveyrone buy GW2, we just dont want you to play it.
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    LOL, but the business model DOES suggest that rather strongly.
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      Not so sure, Arenanet wants you to buy the expansions. Last thing they want is 3m box sales, but only 300k xpac sales.
  - Old Ben
    
    Yeah, because people who don’t play will be spending millions in the cash shop, eh?
http://www.facebook.com/dustin.balle Dustin Balle

elementalist, guardian, and engineer are fairly powerful dedicated healers when you spec for it.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Sigh, even with a heavy survival/healing you are going to be severely disappointed if you want to take the main healer role.
http://twitter.com/inkthedink INKS

You can either try what Dustin has suggested, although Dularr is correct or play another MMO with the Trinity.
Old Ben

If by “dedicated” you mean “never bother attacking at all”, then your solution is to play another game, because no one will want you in their party in GW2.

With some classes you can fill 7 out of your 10 skill slots with healing skills, but you’ll still be expected to do some DPS when those are on cooldown. And nearly all your heals will be AoE, so don’t expect to just target a “tank” and spam heals on him non-stop.

BigH001

Two comments:

1: Is that it? Maybe it was my misunderstanding but I was thinking/hoping we’d see the whole run, not just these short shots. I have the sad now.

2: Your death around 2:55 has nothing to do with the mobs, or gear, or anything related to you being “DPS specced”. It has everything to do with you STANDING IN A TRAP. A “tank” couldn’t have saved you from that.

http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan

Is there any game where the ‘tank’ can grab someone and throw them out of the way? L4D does not count.
- BigH001
  
  Not a tank, but WoW Priests have a spell that can: www wowhead com /spell=73325/leap-of-faith
  
  And…. I *think* Warhammer had something like that. It’s been a long time since I played, but I *think* I remember my tanky guy (I don’t even remember the class) having an ability to pull a player behind me. Since in that game the characters were solid, so there was body blocking and “front lines” and such.

P V

nice one now where is the segment with the theme song of the Benny Hill show

http://www.facebook.com/heather.walker.1650332 Heather Walker

please someone tell me’s joking when he’s talking about their gear, please! (=”=)

http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E

I have a few issues with this as any form of “breaking” the holy trinity:

First, after the five of you spent all weekend leveling, you went and did the dungeon once, on story mode. That means, we’re seeing four people who haven’t actually done the encounters before, since Elisabeth had. As someone who ran story mode more than once, the first run through is one of those things where you just don’t count it. It’s rough. It sucks. You die a lot. Why? Because you’re learning to get used to really watching the area around your character while still managing your skills. It would be like saying the holy trinity doesn’t work in WoW because Paragon used it when they went into their first heroic encounters in Cataclysm and still struggled.

Second, it’s story mode. Since you only did it once and weren’t quick enough leveling to get to 35, you didn’t get to try explorable mode. Story mode is a walk in the park next to explorable mode. The real test of anything in dungeons for GW2 will be in the explorable modes, which demand higher levels of organization and competence across the team. People were going doing Sartharion with all three drakes up in WoW with all DPS, but you certainly didn’t see them doing it to the Lich King on heroic. For any sort of test to have real pull to it, you’ve gotta go into an explorable mode.

Third, gear isn’t that hard to come by. It doesn’t take very long at all to get to crafting level 25 gear. During the betas, gear has always been very cheap on the trading post. You get a lot of karma by leveling that you can use to buy gear from the renown NPCs that are close to your level. You get a green item around level 25 whenever you complete the level 15-25 maps. You can recycle old gear through the Mystic Forge to upgrade your pieces. Guildies find a ton of gear they aren’t going to use on their characters, so you can ask them to hold onto something for you if they find it.

Fourth, it’d be more important to talk about the viability of the trinity itself. The point of the dead trinity in GW2 isn’t just that you can operate outside of it, but that the trinity itself also doesn’t work very well. No one, no profession, no trait set-up, will be able to simply stand there and tank explorable mode bosses for any extended period of time. When I ran explorable mode and we killed the lieutenant, we had one guy in melee that the boss spent the most time chasing, but you can’t possibly call it tanking. He could only stand still for VERY brief moments when all of his cooldowns were up, otherwise, he was really just pillar humping the boss while the rest of the group constantly applied every cripple, chill, stun, immobilize, blind, etc. that we could think of so that he could keep from dying. If the boss catches up to you, you’re going to die very quickly. Similarly, no one person can put out enough healing for the group.

Fifth, a bit more of a full run would work better than a highly edited video with almost everything chopped out.

I like that you’re trying to do a video to show it, but it needs more clout.

P V

It is easy he was to embarrassed to post the whole thing
If you want to chase people away interested in PvE I suggest you post hours long of people wiping and wiping and doing stuff that makes no sense .

The video proofed that even if you are a bunch of mediocre wow players you can succeed .
- http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
  
  That’s a bit judgemental to say.
  
  Honestly, the footage of full-dungeon runs that have people dropping a lot are actually pretty popular. People want hard dungeons.
  
  Also, success in the story mode of Ascalonian Catacombs means about as much as clearing LFR mode Dragon Soul in WoW right now. Explorable mode is where it counts.
  - P V
    
    The whole thing doesn’t matter, in the way is that no one is going to rush in like this in retail, The explorable mode is something which you do need to prepare for but in a way where you know what weapons you need for debuffs and CC.
    
    Kiting is also more important in this game it seems
    
    And you may find it judgemental but when you are raiding or doing a dungeon in WoW you don’t let the “n00bs” run where ever they like and touch everything they see .
http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit

Josh, I hear and understand your concerns, but all I’m hearing is that we weren’t doing the dungeon as optimal as we could. And that was kinda of the point.

Go in, unprepared, with bad gear, and a bad setup and see if the dungeon could be run. And it was. There are plenty of small things we could have tried to micro manage, but we weren’t trying to challenge ArenaNet’s content, just their design philosophy.
- http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
  
  How does struggling through the easy mode on the first time with intentionally bad gear constitute a good test of the lack of trinity system?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001888269156 Leo Paul Alcantara

If you cleared the dungeon out easily with those skills then GW2 wouldn’t prove much of a challenge to the rest of us. So it’s actually a good thing that you had a hard time.

http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit

Yep, I completely agree. I’m glad dungeons are challenging for whatever group you decide to run with.
- Zumime
  
  You should do a follow up with all tanky builds. Also, some constructive criticism: the video intro felt really pretentious, you were speaking rreeeallllyy ssslllooowwwlllyyy, and a little less theatrical casting when you get downed please (2:31 / 2:53 / 3:30 (lolwtfanime)).

http://www.facebook.com/zilvinas.balna Zilvinas Balna

in first place it’s one of the best ideas they count get.. couse there is maby players who like to play dps and hate tanking or healing.. and if u start to match group and u need to look for tank or healer u can waist hours on that.. in that time half dps may leave or ust get bored. And they let players to make 1 character with possibility to play any role in the game without the special leveled character for only 1 purpose ( tank, heal or dps).

Zack Polson

It felt like I was watching a 70s science video. Guy in the recording sucked at the game and didn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about the entire time.

http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit

Even though I not only played in the beta weekends, but also wrote and designed the whole video concept?

You’re right. I’ve got no idea =)
- Old Ben
  
  Well, the video does send a few mixed messages.
  
  Dying due to AoE and then saying “I want a tank!” makes it pretty easy to question the perceptiveness of the narrator. Maybe it’s just a case of bad timing between the video and the script, but it’s hard to ignore.
  
  It’s not just that you died due to essentially “standing in the fire” (which is bad), it’s also that your dying wish (a tank) wouldn’t have saved you anyway. At most, in that situation, you could have said “I want a dedicated healer!”.
  
  And it’s unclear what the video is trying to prove. It’s perfectly possible to do several WoW dungeons with 5 DPS (I’ve done UK HC at level 80 with 5 mages), especially if you don’t mind dying a couple of times along the way. What does that prove?
  
  We _know_ the traditional trinity doesn’t exist in GW2 because the fundamental mechanics of the holy trinity (taunting, artificial aggro generation, player-targeted heals) simply don’t exist in GW2. It’s not that “you can do dungeons without a tank”, it’s that you _can’t_ be a “trinity” tank at all.
  
  In the end, we get the feeling that the goal of the video was to “promote” GW2 by saying “don’t worry about the lack of tanks and healers, you’ll still be able to make it through the easiest dungeon in the game, in its easiest mode, as long as you keep trying” (did anyone doubt that?). Which feels more like (slightly misguided) advertising than journalism. Starting with Arena Net’s logo only reinforces that idea. The final result is just… weird.
  
  I think it would have been rather more interesting (and less puzzling) if you had posted a longer video, clearly identified as a GBTV production, without some pseudo “challenge” or “message” about the holy trinity, and without the promotional tone. Just a dungeon run of underleveled guys with glass canon builds.
  
  As it stands, it’s not a horrible video, but there’s some disconnect between the proposed goal, the editing, and the actual contents. It’s as if the video tries to shoot in multiple directions and ends up hitting itself in the foot sometimes.
  
  If you want to make some sort of point about the trinity not existing (in case it’s not obvious from the lack of its fundamental mechanics), then you should do exactly the opposite. Designate one player as “the tank” and another as “the healer”, forbid everyone else from casting healing spells, and see if the “tank” manages to hold aggro and if the “healer” manages to keep the others alive.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
    
    I guess charging into battle naked doesn’t count as artificial aggro mechanic?
  - Jay
    
    *It’s not just that you died due to essentially “standing in the fire”
    (which is bad), it’s also that your dying wish (a tank) wouldn’t have
    saved you anyway. At most, in that situation, you could have said “I
    want a dedicated healer!”.*
    
    This reminds me of when healers used to say, “I can’t heal stupid.” in WOW. At least GW2 puts red rings on the ground to try and help people not stand in the bad stuff.
http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E

Zack, I’m going to defend Schaff on this one. You’ve clearly never done that dungeon. How can I tell? Because if you had, you’d know what the first time through it is like. You’re stuck getting used to keeping track of everything. The worst scenario you’ll ever face in PvE outside of a dungeon is that you might overagro some mobs and have five mobs against you, maybe one of whom has an AoE. In the dungeon, you’re consistently having to keep track of your own stuff as well as a bunch of mobs that all have AoE that you have to learn to differentiate. While I don’t think there’s credibility towards the goal of the video for doing it on the first run through, it’s completely understandable for him to die to noob stuff on the first run.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

OMG, just looked up a 70s science video on youtube. Found a 70s psychedelic dance representing “Protein Synthesis Dance”. The 70s just rock!

Randall_Wolfcry

So the lesson is, keep upgrading to level appropriate armor, and don’t spec glass cannons just because you can.

If they can pull off that dungeon willy nilly, then it seems like any player that knows what they’re doing will be completely fine in GW2 and nobody needs to worry about the holy trinity.

http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit

=D thank you for being one of the people who understands this fact.
Old Ben

> nobody needs to worry about the holy trinity.

Tell that to Christian theologians!
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  The holy trinity is the Cajun and Louisiana Creole variant of mirepoix: onions, bell peppers, and celery in roughly equal quantities. BTW, there will be tons of cooking dailies in MoP.

Ryu Hyabusa

I understand what this video is trying to show and maybe there is truth in it, but there’s something a lot of ppl need to understand about the ‘downed’ state in Guild Wars 2: it’s necessary. It’s not bad at all if u go into downed state, it’s there for a reason and a critical part of the game’s gameplay. So I guess I was just a little annoyed that he kept complaining when he went into downed state because it is supposed to be there but also going in and saying “Let’s make a ‘dps’ group do a dungeon.” is not what Guild Wars 2 is about. If it breaks the holy-trinity then there isn’t a dps role per-say. U can make a more damage based role but as u saw u need to act as a team regardless of what role u wanted to fulfill. No matter what u pick it just depends if u can play the game well, it’s about skill, being adaptable and reacting effectively to the dungeon. In exploration mode the dungeon can take various turns into unexpected situations so it doesn’t matter that they did story mode or not, even though story mode is supposed to be easier. Honestly just don’t hold Guild Wars 2 to the standard of other games, a part of me wishes WoW hadn’t existed previous to this so ppl could approach this game as just a new game to be learned on its own merit and not to the standards of the mmo genre, but we all know w/o WoW a game like this probably couldn’t exist. Look at it like one of those new indie games that ppl r learning about and maybe there’d be less complaints about this holy trinity non-sense…

MMO_Doubter

WHY is the ‘downed’ state necessary?
- DestinySpiral
  
  ANet treats the downed state more like the other states like crippled or knocked down. The idea is that they expect players to go down and that the group would have to react to revive that player. That’s why there are traits dealing with just reviving players. The mobs are also balanced around this since a player can’t be one-shotted. No matter how much damage you take, you’ll go into the downed state before you die.
  
  There is a mental barrier that players have a hard time getting over. If ANet had made a single life bar that was divided, like the endurance bar, between normal and downed state much of the criticism would have been avoided. Players equate being downed with being dead and it is not that way at all. It’s more like being wounded.
- http://tankthat.wordpress.com/ jericho
  
  Because the developers have said it is. Its simple as that. The downed state is part of the gameplay. Its not there to replace “death” its there to enhance the gameplay elements that surround the old death mechanics. It is part of the game that is inherently about cooperative play, just as those same mechanics exist in Coop play in the FPS genre, they have gone to great lengths to implement such a system into GW2.

Old Ben

(deleted – got posted in the wrong place – reply button seems kind of broken)

http://www.facebook.com/caseyjamesbrown Casey James Brown

Jesus the audio is fucking terrible in this video.

http://twitter.com/Gazimoff Gareth Harmer

Great video! As you mentioned, it’s all in getting that rhythm going. Once that clicks, the dungeon is definitely doable at 30 with level appropriate gear. I’m just looking forward to the Tankspot-style vids that show these boss dances in detail.

http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E

If you look up my channel on Youtube (YoshiGW2), I actually already have a boss guide video for the story mode of the dungeon.

http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby

I’ve heard it said before, I think it was a PC Gamer article,
that Guild Wars 2 is not a successor to World of Warcraft as so many people expect
it to try to be. The quote, and I personally loved it, was this:

“In the end Guild Wars 2 feels less like a successor to WoW
than a parallel evolution from a common ancestor.”

GW2 isn’t the next WoW, it is the next Everquest. It is
completely ignoring that WoW ever happened and going back to the basics of what
an MMO is, and evolving from there where WoW just iterated. That was actually
Arena Net’s original goal; the three founders used to work at Blizzard, and
were in fact some of the leads on vanilla WoW. However the left, they quit, because
of creative differences. During the development of WoW they wanted to push
forward, to test the limits of what a MMO could be, to innovate. But Blizzard
didn’t want that, they wanted to simply take the best of what was and polish it
to a blinding finish.

No doubt Blizzard succeeded and gave us one of the most
successful and enjoyable games ever made, not just a great MMO but a great game
in general. GW2 isn’t trying to copy that, nor to compete with it. It isn’t
trying to do things better than WoW, or be a WoW killer, or the next WoW. It is
an alternative. It is an alternate take on the genre where anything can happen
and the old rules and expectations no longer apply. It is the Miles Morales to Blizzard’s
Peter Parker. The original is, was, and will forever be loved. But this is a
new thing, made for a new audience, with a new way of thinking. You really can’t
compare them, and you probably shouldn’t.

Everyone who likes the classic and mainstream version still
has their home where everything they loved is just as they left it, and
arguably getting better with time as new creators come and breathe, gradually,
new ideas into it. GW2 is the alternative, the alternate take. The strange
alien version that no one expected and a lot of people hate on principle. But
that’s okay because it wasn’t made for them.GW2 isn’t WoW’s next challenger, fighting for the same fans; it is WoW’s mirror opposite. It is Bizarro WoW.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Ben-Collins/100000400915050 Ben Collins

Too long. Didn’t read.
- http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
  
  Lazy ass.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NOWUW5FFH35ICWA6NIQFSRJFL4 johnn

Wow, that is a GREAT way of putting it.

Though, for those who DO think that GW2 and WoW are competing, maybe it’s a Neanderthal/Homo Sapien issue. But, which is the Homo Sapien and which is the Neanderthal? I’m inclined to think WoW is the Neanderthal, destined to die out but ONLY because it’s much older and it seems that every game that copies WoW’s style (which is technically EQ’s style) ends up…not performing up to everyone’s standards.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Hmm, who is the Neanderthals?
  
  GW2 Humans: Haven’t discovered the wheel. The Yaks in WvW could really use wagons. Haven’t figured you can ride the Yaks. Have to leach off another species for gate travel. Still can’t fly. The sailing ships, don’t seem to go anywhere.
  
  WoW Humans: Made siege engines you can actually drive. (love the Golems, but that’s Asura) Can make their own portals. Can summon party members to them. Can make motorcycles. Can make flying machines. Have regular scheduled ship service. Can ride flying DRAGONS. Has a tram service between cities (Okay probably gnomes/dwarfs probably created that one.)
  - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
    
    A human in GW2 lore created a giant robot. Your argument is invalid.
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      woot, where is at? When can I visit this giant robot?
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      I believe it is a dungeon boss in the human area. That
      unopened dungeon near Beetleton that is set up like a local lord’s estate. (Not
      all GW2 “dungeons” are actually in dungeons.)
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      “Dungeons” I agree, the antediluvian term doesn’t really apply anymore, but going with the Arenanet terminology.
  - Old Ben
    
    > Hmm, who is the Neanderthals?
    
    The ones who use singular verbs with plural nouns?
- http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
  
  I honestly believe that all those past MMOs that failed did
  so because they were trying to copy a game that was already, for what it was,
  perfect. There was no way a traditional styled MMO could compete with WoW
  because WoW was designed from the very first day of its development to be the
  greatest traditional MMO ever made. The pinnacle of that evolutionary line, if
  you will. So nothing could compete because they were basically competing with
  perfection, thus making them all seem to be nothing more than cash grab knock
  offs, because that is exactly what they were. Nothing could stand up to WoW’s
  level of polish and standard of quality.
  
  And that is also why I believe Guild Wars 2, and to a lesser
  extent The Secret World, will be the first truly successful MMOs since WoW.
  They are not just WoW clones, in fact they are trying very hard to be as
  different as possible from WoW on some very fundamental levels. That is the
  future of the MMO genre; not to make a better WoW but instead to create new experiences
  that can be played as an alternative to, or even alongside, WoW. Heck I’m willing
  to bet that even Blizzard’s Project Titan will fail miserably if it just tries
  to recapture the magic of World of Warcraft, if it is only WoW 2. You can’t
  iterate on that style of MMO any further, so the only way to make a successful
  game is to do something else.
  - Old Ben
    
    > a game that was already, for what it was, perfect.
    
    I guess that applies to every game. If you assume they’re trying to be what they are, then they’re “perfect” by definition.
    
    It was certainly more polished than EverQuest, but “perfect” is not a word I’d use to describe WoW (even in its finest days, let alone now) in terms of what an MMORPG _can_ be. The world is dead, most quests are boring, instances feel like separate games. Gameplay is basically a cross between a treadmill and a Skinner box where you keep repeating the same actions over and over again in a neverending quest for slightly bigger numbers.
    
    Copying WoW is indeed a waste of time, because the people who want to play WoW can just keep playing WoW; why would they give up their characters and start from scratch just to play more of the same?
    
    GW2 takes a much more ambitious approach to the core of the RPG genre (which is the creation of a living world) while learning from some of WoW’s mistakes when it comes to handling player interaction (avoiding the competition for quest objectives and resources, etc.).
    
    It probably won’t appeal as much to people who just want to log in, spend 15 minutes running Hour of Twilight (for the 87th time), and log out again, but it will appeal a lot more to people looking for a world they can explore and get immersed in, which was the main appeal of RPGs before Diablo and a few other games of that era tried to co-opt the term to describe “any game where your stats increase and you change clothes a lot”.
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      Lol, when I saw the words perfect and WoI, I said, got to read Old Bens response. Glad to see you did not disappoint.
      
      Hour of Twilight was a really good story, showing the past, present and future of Azeroth. Really didn’t take much gear grind. Gear wise (raider perspective), it was just there to fill in any missing pieces of gear from Firelands.
      
      Now if you want to talk about a gear grind, you should really talk about ZA/ZG. With the delay of Firelands, that pair of rehashed instances did become grindy and was the only way to cap your valor points for the week.
      
      Now if I could only collect 400 dyes (each character) so I could re-dye my gear every week.
    - Old Ben
      
      Yeah, because if you don’t dye your armor with the latest dyes, you’ll fall behind the dyelevel race and no one will want to group with you.
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      Shush, quiet. I’m trying not to incite a fanboy riot. I don’t want my attempt at an enlightened post to be buried under three dozen troll posts.
    - Old Ben
      
      > I’m trying not to incite a fanboy riot.
      
      By saying “WoW was the perfect game” and ” the greatest traditional MMO ever made” ? Yeah, I can’t see that inciting the fanboys at all…
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      Not the WoW fanboys, no. The GW2 fans all know that it is not even trying to be a traditional MMO, and let’s face it, the only people here are GW2 and WoW fanboys, and the occasional unaffiliated troll looking to rile people up.
    - Old Ben
      
      Oh, don’t be unfair. There are some Tera and TSW fanboys too.
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      True enough, and they can be just as unreasonable. Heck I made the mistake of posting an honest TSW beta review on the official forums and got mauled. Nevermind that the review was overall positive and I gave the game a recommendation; because I dared to say some things just didn’t work, or were done better elsewhere, I got flamed for half a dozen pages.
Zumime

What Ben said.

Elusive Fox

its not breaking the trinity unless doing it with 5 dps is just as efficient as doing it with 1t1h3dps… group builds fall into the trinity not necessarily because it isnt doable in other make ups but because it is far less efficient in other make ups…
Honestly I think you proved the opposite point you were trying to with this video Shaft

Jay

Well if one person tried to only tank the whole time, he would just die, or run around trying to keep threat that isn’t under his control; being less effective. If one person just sat there and healed like in “other” MMOs, he wouldn’t be doing damage; being less effective. And if the other 3 people solely did DPS without helping to revive or control the mobs, and didn’t heal themselves like in “other” MMOs, they would also be less effective.

So I agree, the video may not have done a great job of proving his point. However, the standard trinity seen in “other” popular MMOs is less efficient in GW2. I’m almost certain the standard trinity isn’t even viable in Explorable dungeon difficulty levels.

Tyson Nielsen

God I miss the holy trinity already but it’s all good. I still find GW2 a lot of fun and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

http://tankthat.wordpress.com/ jericho

This exactly. How does it? I would add that they have said that there is no Tank, DPS, and Healer roles in the game. They have also stated that while there is no specific roles, everyone can play those roles. Yes its a conundrum of a statement, but its how they seem to have designed things. They are not saying these “ideals” do not exist in their game. What Anet has stated repeatedly, is that everyone can do a little of everything, and speccing traits can enhance their ability to do one thing or the other. Like Josh said, there will never be true tank and healer in GW2. However, there will be someone who can control a little better, and support a little better.

The basic reality is that ArenaNet is trying to create an environment where everyone in the group does everything in an encounter. Yes that means that clothie may be tanking for a little bit and that melee may need to do a little support, but thats the nature of the game. I personally have said for a long time that ArenaNet’s tagline should have always bee “Death to the Trinity, Long live the Trinity.” They are killing the Tank/Healer roles in their gameplay, sure but they have created a new trinity it its wake.

Yes, these dungeons are going to be meant to be run by any 5 people of any 1-5 professions. What they have never said is that you will be viable as 5 glass cannon traited characters and run the dungeon efficiently with little in the way of teamwork. ArenaNet’s manifesto is about creating a gameplay dynamic where teamwork is at its core. They have tried to make a game where we can do what we want and get by just fine. A game where DPS meters are just plain not worth the code they are written in. Where skill, awareness and teamwork become the new great trinity in MMO gaming.

http://www.facebook.com/danspiler Daniel Spiler

I hate videos like this: the entire set of failures you have are based on your own incompetence as opposed to truly putting “full group of dps” to the test. Oh, and you still think of it in terms of the very thing you claim you’re testing without, the Trinity.

First off, you even say you’re undergeared. Second, not ONCE did the ele swap into water attunement to throw some mitigation and heals.

Third, and most important, is that you’re STILL attempting to pidgeonhole the combat and gameplay in terms of the “Trinity”. You even call the run “5 dps”. There is no tank. There is no dps. There is no healer.

In Guild Wars 2, there is only teamwork, tactics, and player skill. Every single profession has some sort of weapon AND utility skill that provides mitigation or party heals, and movement is key.

Other people have essentially said what I’m saying, but it honestly bears repeating:

Guild Wars 2 is not like any MMO you have ever played, so don’t try to classify it using archaic terminology and outdated concepts; it’s nothing like mmos before it, so it just won’t work to do so. I’m not necessarily saying the GW2 is the greatest thing in MMO history (even though it is ), I’m just pointing out that you simply cannot view it in the same way that you would other mmos that use the classic “trinity” system for combat, and that use “quest hubs” and “quest givers” etc.

Old Ben

> not ONCE did the ele swap into water attunement
> to throw some mitigation and heals.

I think that might have been deliberate. I’m not very clear on what they were trying to prove, but I think at some point they confused “not having a dedicated healer” with “not casting any healing spells”.
- Jay
  
  Lawl, it was a bit painful to watch at times.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  No, the video indicates healing was not off limits, just a healing heavy build. I suspect the problem was racing to level 30 and jumping into a dungeon.
  - Old Ben
    
    You can’t “race to level 30″ if you keep dying because you haven’t learned to cast water attunement spells.
    
    The only healing spells they seem to be casting are self-targeted ones. Maybe they did cast some AoE healing spells in other parts but MikeS edited them out.
- http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit
  
  Actually the problem you are seeing here is the fact the video is edited. And I don’t care its a problem I caused by making the video in the fashion that I did.
  
  But you watched 4 minutes of a 80 minute dungeon run. Heals were thrown out, but mostly on myself.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Nils-Jørgen-Helgø/541695917 Nils Jørgen Helgø

From what I’ve seen and heard off this game the trinity is still there, But its no longer set in stone, in your face and required. Its more fluid and dynamic how you swap between the roles.

Having that said. this whole rage discussion back and forth is rather pointless. I don’t have such a desperate need to go fanboy for either side. As long as the mechanics for this game works and they’re solid and responsive I’ll be happy. And if I end up not liking this game’s mechanics, I simply won’t play and that’ll be that.

http://profile.yahoo.com/HTQOCYVJIWMNJM4ADF2Z4W2BWM Nathan

30 levels of playing an elementalist ought to teach you that switching attunements during fights to counter what is going on around you increases your survivability, damage and versatility.

http://www.facebook.com/rodriguezcorreamiguel Miguel Rodriguez

Schaffnit stated from the start and throughout that they are undergeared. Second thar is no healing class, so why would you not spec into some survivability and some healing.Also if you go class cannon then expect to get downed pretty often. Anet stated they dont have a tank healer dps trinity, but rather ”Combat in Guild Wars 2 is built around three facets: damage, control and support”. The source for that is the GW2 wiki. Also one must note GW2 is more of a skill based game then most mmorpgs thus that will be a huge factor in the game.

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

From the GW2 Wiki:

Controlling aggro
Drawing enemy attacks, or tanking, can be potentially useful tactic for controlling both damage recieved by allies and enemy positioning. However, no profession or role is particularly durable against constant damage, and lack of potent direct heals makes drawing enemy aggression a dangerous effort.
To successfully control enemy aggression while staying alive, one must always remain on the move and continue to avoid enemy attacks as much as possible, while ensuring that other allies are able to continue dealing damage unhindered or leading enemies into range of allies and their pets, into traps or other area effects.
- Giel-Jan Ottens
  
  The problem with that is that although you can kite, enemies are unlikely to pick you as a target when you’re trying to ‘tank’. Essentially, whomever is being targeted will have to do their best at staying alive and running/dodging/etc.
  
  Tank ‘control’ isn’t really control because you have no direct way to make the mobs hate you more than anyone else.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    Its from the Guild Wars 2 wiki. Of course you can control who the mobs attack, you just have to follow mechanics for the encounter. If the mechanic is who attacks first, who does the most damage, who is closest, who is farthest. It really is simple, just follow the mechanics for the fight.
    - Old Ben
      
      The GW2 wiki isn’t actually written by Arena Net, it has several mistakes (and AI changed a lot over the BWEs).
      
      There are no taunts in GW2, so you can’t control who the mobs attack. Many mobs pick their target based on proximity, so you can get them to attack you simply be being very close, but others will switch targets more or less randomly.
      
      There’s no quick or guaranteed way to control the AI’s choice of target, and that’s what makes traditional tanking impossible.

David Jeannotte

I played WoW for almost 8 years, so I understand the basics of the Trinity. I think the thing that fascinates me most about GW2 and it’s lack of a “hard Trinity” is the AI of the NPCs.

With a lack of an aggro mechanic, just how do NPCs pick targets? Is it random? Are they going for who’s inflicting the most damage or control? Is damage, control or healing more heavily weighted in a target switch by an NPC? Do they go after the weakest targets first? I’m actually pretty interested in this if anyone knows or can point me towards an ArenaNet post on the matter.

Jay

ArenaNet have said in a video or 2 that mobs will react according to different conditions, such as: Who’s closest, who has the least armor, who has the least health, who’s furthest away, who’s doing the most damage, etc.

Should make for some *lively* encounters…
- Giel-Jan Ottens
  
  I can attest to this fact. Mobs seem very ‘smart’ regarding targeting, and they aren’t really very predictable. This is awesome because this forces you to pay attention to the combat as a whole, as opposed to your skill bar.
  
  Although, sometimes mobs just sticky target you and you have to run for your life T_T
  - Jay
    
    Lol, it’s almost as if they smell fear!
  - dawolv
    
    Yap, when running AC I was downed a few times by instant damage. My team picked me up quickly and I tried to heal but the boss actually hunted me. I had the lowest health, so I had to go first – which made the fight really intense and awesome, even if I spent most of it on my back
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1353031168 Erik Stone

I tested this many times as well trying to figure it out, it seems the preferred method for the AI is to take the closest target, but if everyone is up in it’s face it might go after the lowest defense rated player similar to the old guild wars, once said squishy rolls out of the way it usually diverts its attention back to closest target
- Old Ben
  
  I’m pretty sure that different creatures have different ways of picking their target. Proximity seems to be the main (in some cases only) mechanic for wild creatures, but most bosses seem to mix multiple behaviors, including (in some cases) completely random target switches.
  
  AI was changed a lot between the BWEs, so I don’t think we can draw any global conclusions from the beta. Dungeon bosses probably won’t change much for release, though, since the AI there needs to match the unique aspects of each encounter.

http://www.facebook.com/astor.teufel Astor Teufel

I’m really excited to be able to run dungeons and quests without having to track down someone to hold aggro the entire time and someone else to do little beyond cast the same three heal spells over and over and over. The days of “Need tank for X!” and “WTB heals for Y!” are hopefully on their way out of the mmorpg.

IncD

The Schaff makes me laugh. Great vid Mike!

After so many years, and so many games, I am hoping we finally come across a game where you are responsible for keeping yourself alive.

Old Ben

Isn’t that the case with most games? Or do you mean MMOs specifically?

Even WoW tends to have a few “are you standing in the fire?” brain checks, but if everyone was able to keep themselves alive, what would be the point of dedicated healers? Unavoidable damage has to be there to make the healers feel like they’re needed.

Salz_244

Instead of blaming his gear or lack of tank/healer why doesn’t he move out of the way of the traps or the group play as a group rather than running around clicking every shiny thing in sight. This is not a test of spec this is a test of skill and group play and they need to practice that more than anything.

Old Ben

“Glass Cannons with ADD” would be a great guild name.

I don’t mind videos where people screw up, especially if it’s obvious they’re just chatting and fooling around. The problem with this video is that it’s (supposedly) trying to prove something about the game mechanics, but the actual play doesn’t match the premise.

James Lecouffe

Trinity is not dead, I saw, healing, dps and damage mitigation going on in every fight. Its just packaged differently. Love the new system but the trinity is far from dead. Reminds me of the old EQ1 days running any dungeon with 2 druids, 2 wizards and a mage. This is not new! We can thank WoW for making a class game we are used to seeing as the norm. Love GW2 and will be playing it for years to come but the trinity is not dead. WoWs trinity is!

Old Ben

The “trinity” doesn’t refer to the _concepts_ of dealing damage, reducing incoming damage and healing. All that is part of the game, just as it’s part of other game genres that never had the “trinity”. And the same goes for CC, buffing, debuffing, kiting, interrupting, and so on. Those are just aspects of gameplay.

The “holy trinity” refers to characters having specific pre-set roles, typically linked to their class, and to the fact that encounters are designed with a specific group composition in mind.

GW2 gives all classes access to all mechanics, eliminates some key aspects of the traditional trinity (things like taunts, artificial aggro generation and player-targeted healing), and its encounters are designed in a way that requires players to constantly adapt, because the enemies aren’t just going to keep banging on the tank’s shield, and there’s no healer to keep them alive forever if they just stand still taking damage.

ArcherAvatar

dammit Mike S… I’m sorry to have to say it like this but, getting downed and then loudly complaining that you wish there was a tank is the exact equivalent of saying, “Man I suck! I wish there was another player here who’s job it was to protect me from my own incompetence!”

It’s quite clear that YOU are still thinking in old-paradigm “trinity” terms… even if the game is not.

http://www.facebook.com/jordan.lacoste.79 Jordan LaCoste

Like that someone did this and made a video of it. I’ve actually been wanting to try this, but I’ve only had one character to make 30 in the BWE’s. That was at the end of #2, so I was only able to do one run of story mode. Maybe after launch…
The only issue I have with the video is you showed your team beating the ‘easiest’ boss (for the team I had anyway) in the dungeon. If it showed you guys taking on the Lovers, I’d have been -really- impressed. Those two are a freaking pain in the %&$ to kill. >_>

7BitBrian

We did take on the lovers. But since we were all “specced as dps” Meaning we had all combat abilities and dmg increasing and such, we didn’t have much control, knock downs, knock backs, and such, which made it super hard to keep them apart and do it properly. We eventually got it down by rezzing at the shrine over and over and running in. So it’s possible, but it’s much easier, and more enjoyable, if you use all you have at your disposal and “spec” into the control and such for that fight.
- 7BitBrian
  
  All that said, we sucked hard in this dungeon for a time, until we really tried to focus and work together.
  
  The trinity, meaning we had to be a single role, is dead. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take on certain roles to make our own lives, and our allies lives, a bit easier in the dungeon. This run does prove though that we don’t HAVE to take on any role, we know we can, but we don’t HAVE to. It just makes things more easy/cooperative/fun/whatever.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1353031168 Erik Stone

I would like to note, about 50% of the time you kept getting repeatedly downed, especially in that one doorway, you were standing directly on a spike trap, there’s nothing any tank could have done to help you there lol. As for the rest of it, I think you were right about the “tunnel vision” thing, there wasn’t a whole lot of teamwork going on until the very end.

http://www.facebook.com/taylor.sabbag Taylor Sabbag

Soo most of your video didn’t really make any sense. It’s not that ArenaNet tried to do away with the holy trinity and did a pretty good job of it; they never implemented anything similar to the holy trinity in the first place. You keep on referring to yourself and the rest of your team as DPS, but you’re not. You’re just characters. That’s all ArenaNet has. Characters which are all capable of doing everything. They can all heal themselves, they can all deal damage, and when done well, they can all take turns taking – although, in GW2, you can and always should be avoiding – damage. There is no such thing as a five dps group. They’re all like that. Whether you “spec” into one or two traits that somewhat improve healing or not is meaningless because most skills are self-heals. The only character who has anything close to effective group healing, and even then, it’s an extreme stretch, is the elementalist. Again, there’s still not much one can do in terms of “speccing” into dps. This video was actually very misinformative, especially for players new to this game. No personal offense, and in this case, I really do mean no personal offense, but this video is more of a detriment to this community than anything else. While doubtful that many players will actually spend time reading comments, and in particular this comment, I would like to therefore summarize my point:

TL;DR Pointless video because you can’t “spec” into healing in the first place and because healing is not needed if played even just decently*, which is all I would expect from even the lowliest noob.

*not implying that the author played like a noob, maybe that he thought like one though

Shogunz

>>they never implemented anything similar to the holy trinity in the first place

He didn’t say they did… when he says they’re “doing away” with it, he’s referring to game design in a collective context.

>>You keep on referring to yourself and the rest of your team as DPS, but you’re not

It’s just terminology relevant to almost every other mmo, so players of those games will have a reference point. It’s technically correct (as even your character in say Contra is a “dps”); though if you insist on taking it to mean not-tank or not-healer it might be confusing.

Mr. Ares

Why do people want to break the holy trinity ? if the game doesn’t require it, it just means the game is easy. The holy trinity is just a tactic. It existed long before there was pre-defined roles for classes or whatever. Any game that allows you to get by without using it will be completely trivial if you use it.

It’s like asking for games where you don’t need to “move out of the fire”, or kill the most dangerous add first or whatever. Even if there is no specific class or spec tailored for it you will always, always have greater success if you make sure the guy that can take the most punishment gets hit the most and the guy that can heal heals as much as he can. It’s just the nature of RPG mechanics. The only way to eliminate it would be to remove healing from the game and making sure everyone has the same amount of hp and mitigation (and even then you could still utilize a tanking rotation for maximum efficiency).

Eto ‘Zamamai

Have you played GW2 yet? (there really isn’t much in the way of healing other people in it, more than a few buffs and the Guardian)
- Mr. Ares
  
  I played the last beta weekend. And if you don’t think there’s any “heal other” abilities, you’ve played the wrong classes. Even if it’s limited to the point where you need to rotate it’s still the holy trinity, just more dynamic. People need to realize that disowning the holy trinity isn’t evolving RPG gameplay, it’s devolving. You’ll just end up seeing tactics used in old games before designers realized you could make better games by factoring in that people will use these tactics.
  
  There are 3 core mechanics to RPG gameplay. Recieve damage, deal damage, heal damage. Optimizing these 3 mechanics is the entire point, and that’s how the tactic of having the least vulnerable person take the hits that are required, having the person that can heal the most efficiently heal when needed and having the person that deals the most efficient dps or burst damage be responsible for dealing the damage evolved.
  
  If you look at the DnD ruleset (which most big RPGs was based on way back) there are no specific tank classes. There is warriors and paladins that gets more hp and wears more armor (as they are melee fighters), but they don’t have taunts or threat abilities or anything like that. There are no dedicated healers. Both paladins and clerics can heal, but are also very proficient in melee. Yet I can assure you that almost everyone that played games like Eye of the Beholder or Baldur’s Gate used their warriors to fill a tanking role and their clerics to fill a healer role.
  
  Going back to that doesn’t make the gameplay better, it makes it worse. It’ll be more random and open for exploitation, as the possibilities for creative tactics are much wider. And while it’ll be fun to explore the possibilities for a while, eventually the game will suffer from it.
  - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
    
    You just showed how outdated the trinity is. It was created
    in old game where you had a few people standing still and taking turns. It was
    static. Now that you can move and dodge and have to aim things are different.
    The trinity is outdated and suboptimal because it simply doesn’t take into account
    everything you can do. It isn’t just “deal damage, receive damage, and heal
    damage” anymore. Now we’ve also got avoid damage, prevent attack, aim skill, impair
    movement, scatter, lure, trap, confuse, deceive, and mimic. Just to name a few.
    The trinity simply doesn’t work in a dynamic combat scenario; it is dependent
    on being static.
    - Mr. Ares
      
      You didn’t understand what I meant. Most of the things you mention fall under the “recieve damage” category, as all they’re doing is reduce how much damage you recieve. I’m talking about core mechanics. Things like mitigation or avoidance is pointless in itself, it only serves a purpose. Just like debuffs or slows can help you deal more damage. Without the core of dealing and recieving damage they do absolutely nothing.
      
      How many of the mechanics you mentioned would hold any meaning if the game wasn’t about dealing, healing and recieving damage ?
    - Old Ben
      
      You do realize that “damage” and “healing” are concepts present in thousands of different games and don’t define “the holy trinity” of MMORPG combat design, right…?
      
      No, I guess if you understood that you wouldn’t keep trying to equate the two things.
    - Mr. Ares
      
      I never said they define the holy trinity, I said these core gameplay mechanics is what lead players into developing the tactic.
      
      But then again you don’t agree that it’s a tactic, so I guess we just have to agree to disagree.
      
      What you’re talking about as the “construct” holy trinity is just the consequence of game designers realizing people use tanking and healing roles in these kind of games and embracing it instead of defying it, which allowed them to better design the games around how people play them.
    - Old Ben
      
      Players didn’t “develop the tactic”. The holy trinity is a game _design_ principle. It’s the reason why tanks have taunts and special buffs that force the AI to attack them even though they are objectively _not_ the biggest threat.
      
      Remove those artificial AI restrictions (the “deliberately stupid” behavior) and the WoW-style trinity collapses. Why would intelligent enemies waste time attacking the tank? Just CC the healer and take out the DPS one by one.
      
      No one (with a clue) plays as a pure healer or pure tank in PvP. And no one would adopt such artificial and restrictive combat roles in PvE, either, if the AI and character classes weren’t deliberately biased towards that model.
    - Mr. Ares
      
      Sigh, I really don’t see this conversation going much further but I have one thing to say.
      
      There was a never a developer who sat down with his co-workers and said “hey, guys I have this new idea for RPGs, I call it the holy trinity”. Tanking, healing and dpsing existed in RPGs long long before any developer thought it was a good idea to design a game around it.
      
      Your premise that a tank can only exist if he has taunts or threat abilities and noone would design pure healer or tank characters in RPGs unless the AI was designed around it is just false.
    - Old Ben
      
      So when you’re doing PvP, if you’re faced with five enemies (a tank, a healer and three DPS), you tell your teammates to focus all attacks on the tank?
      
      That’s what the AI does in trinity-based games.
      
      The next time you go into a raid in WoW, tell your tanks to turn off their aggro generation bonuses and abstain from using taunts or any abilities with “extra” aggro generation (in other words, to stop using the abilities specifically designed to cripple the AI’s decision-making).
      
      Then tell me how much your repair bill was.
    - Mr. Ares
      
      So when I (and all my friends) played RPGs 10-15+ years ago and made tank and healer based characters, it was because those games were specifically designed for the holy trinity ?
      
      Do you even realize how new the threat mechanic is in RPGs ?
      
      Have you even played an RPG pre-WoW ?
    - Old Ben
      
      There you go again, confusing the concepts of “healing” and “damage mitigation” with “the holy trinity”. I thought you’d understood the distinction some 5 posts ago, but you just keep going in circles.
      
      The “holy trinity” of MMORPG combat isn’t defined by the concepts of healing or damage, or by the words you use to _describe_ characters. It’s a very specific combat model, based on specific mechanics and which requires class design and AI behavior to follow specific rules. It’s a model designed to simplify encounters and lower the awareness and adaptability requirements of players, but it can only work if the enemies do some incredibly stupid things (ex., focus all attacks on the “tank”, when there are far more dangerous and easier to kill players standing right there).
      
      In games that don’t follow the “holy trinity” combat model, “tank” is a generic term for a character with heavy armor and a lot of health points, regardless of having any special mechanisms to control enemy aggro.
      
      In holy trinity games, “tank” isn’t merely a description, it’s a specific combat role. Take a WoW tank, let him keep all his gear but remove his taunts and aggro bonuses, and suddenly he stops being able to successfully fill the “tank” role in raids. Understand the difference?
      
      Oh, and I’ve probably been playing RPGs since before you were born, but that’s irrelevant. The distinction between the “holy trinity” combat model and a “fluid role” combat model can be understood just fine by people who have never played an MMORPG (or single player RPG, for that matter).
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      There are still old school bosses out there, not many granted, but still there. There is one fight where their is a boss with two adds. No aggro tables, untauntable. You simply use old school trinity rules.
      
      The tank solo dps the boss, the off tank controls one of the adds and the dps burn the second add. Dps then switches back and forth between the boss and the adds. Simple old school mechanics.
    - Old Ben
      
      > No aggro tables,
      > untauntable. You
      > simply use old
      > school trinity rules.
      
      If the boss doesn’t have an aggro table (or is immune to aggro modifiers), then he doesn’t follow “holy trinity” rules.
      
      There’s no such thing as “old school trinity”. Fights that aren’t built around the “holy trinity” concept basically function like GW2 (or PvP in general); every player must be prepared to be targeted, and know how to deal with it (block, kite, cloak, whatever). In those games, you don’t have three clearly defined roles; at most you have “fighters” and “healers”.
      
      > The tank solo dps
      > the boss
      
      For that to work, the boss must stay on the player who pulled him (even if he ignores aggro modifiers). Assuming the adds are his “allies”, a smart boss would ignore the tank and go kill the DPS, to defend his allies.
      
      > Dps then switches back
      > and forth between the
      > boss and the adds
      
      Which means that (unless the AI is deliberately stupid), both the boss and adds will then attack the DPS, since they are the highest threat (doing more damage per second) and are the easiest to kill (least armor).
      
      If they don’t do that, their AI is still being deliberately crippled to make life easier for the players.
      
      Without aggro modifiers or deliberately “stupid” AI, the only way a “tank” can hold aggro is by doing far more damage than the (low-armor) DPS. Even if the tank did the same damage as the DPS, a smart enemy would still attack the DPS first, because they are easier to kill.
      
      Listen to what Ed Park said about glass cannon builds in PvP; that pretty much defines why a balanced build is always preferable when facing intelligent enemies (and, consequently, why the “holy trinity” model can only work against deliberately crippled AI).
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      You do realize that game AI isn’t static and has a nasty
      habit of evolving with each new technology generation, right? Yeah the AI from
      fifteen years ago wasn’t specifically dumbed down to make such strict combat
      roles viable, but that is only because it was dirt stupid to begin with.
  - Old Ben
    
    > There are 3 core mechanics to RPG gameplay.
    > Recieve damage, deal damage, heal damage.
    
    So Quake III is an RPG?
    
    > People need to realize that disowning the holy
    > trinity isn’t evolving RPG gameplay, it’s devolving.
    
    No, people need to realize that it’s about time they stopped copying oversimplified and artificial combat mechanics that have driven the MMORPG genre into a dead end.
    
    There’s a reason why (even in WoW) there are no pure tanks or healers in PvP, and that’s because the “holy trinity” only makes sense when the AI is deliberately dumbed down to make it possible.
    
    In any fight against a realistic enemy (or any enemy that isn’t deliberately gimped by artificial aggro mechanics), the tank / healer / damage-dealer combat role division turns a party into an easy prey.
    
    The “holy trinity” was created to make life easier for game designers and for players lacking in combat awareness and adaptability. It’s not an “evolution”, it’s a crutch.
http://profile.yahoo.com/FJR5OIFQII4WKUPYIHXMODD44Y Monolyth Tha Great

Because this new genre of gamers want everything easy while the previous generation..we were more into hard mechanics wiping for a few hours and finally beating the boss that was fun to us these younger folks don’t want to wipe at all they want to beat the boss first or 2nd try whick is lame imo. That’s why I love Rift because is new but it still captures the origional MMO concepts. I know SL 2.0 is going to be crazy but i’m sure i’ll play both GW2 and Rift 2.0 SL
- http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
  
  If you think GW2 is easy you’ve clearly not played it. And if you have, you never left the starting zones. Go swimming with some skales near Ascalon and then say it’s easy.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  GW2 is not going to be easy. Because the game is skilled based, I think there is going to be a wall in the content. Where a significant set of the playerbase cannot progress.
  - Old Ben
    
    Do you do any sports? Volleyball, skateboarding, snooker, chess, that kind of thing? Would you say that they require skill? Does the fact that you will probably never be the best sportsman in the world detract from the fun you have doing them?
    
    “Skill” isn’t some kind of quantifiable number. People who are great at PvP might be terrible at jumping puzzles. People who are great at fighting their way through dungeons might be hopeless in keg brawl matches. People who are great at making gold from the trading post might be terrible at picking up chicks in guild chat.
    
    Why would there be a “wall”, a specific level that everyone can reach but most cannot progress beyond? Does that happen in any skill-based activity?
    
    Yes, some content will be “too hard” for some people to get through consistently (for various reasons). So what? The game isn’t a race to some kind of finish line. If one hill is too steep, climb a different hill. Or keep trying to climb that one, as long as you’re having fun.
    
    As the saying goes, it’s is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the _journey_ that matters, in the end.
    - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
      
      Perfect examples. So you play a little basketball and you have the skill for high school ball, but just can’t make it to collegiate ball. Thanks okay, same way everyone can’t play collage ball, not everyone will finish the GW2 dungeons.
      
      An many videos games are like a journey, a journey that has an end, even if you don’t make it to your goal.
      
      Lol, if basketball was like a pug dungeon run, every once in awhile, a player would wander off the court and leave the game.
    - Old Ben
      
      So “skill” is an absolute value defined by the league where you play? Well, that’s great news for all NBA players, I bet they didn’t know they were all as good as Michael Jordan…
http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby

Nice argument, but what happens in a game wherein you can’t make a focused trinity spec? I don’t mean where you don’t have to, but where you literally can’t? What happens when there is no way to pin a mob to one player no matter how well he can tank, making his high health and mitigation meaningless? What happens when the way healing is set up makes it so that the max healing output is exactly the same for every class, and never equal to mob DPS?

I guess what I’m asking is, how do you win a firefight with rubber bullets? What do you do when your favorite tool has itself been reduced in effectiveness to the point of being suboptimal at best, trivial at worst?

GW2 isn’t just a case of “hey look, everyone is a hybrid so you don’t need a trinity but they are still useful,” it is a case of “we’re directly nerfing the trinity itself.” It isn’t set up so that anyone can tank or heal, it is set up so that no one can. Yes there are defensive specs, but they buy you seconds at best, and you still can’t hold aggro. Yes there are ally healing skills, but none of them can match mob damage output. These are things used to supplement your playstyle, not define it.

What do you do then? The trinity isn’t broken because you don’t need it, it’s broken because you can’t use it. You can’t spec into it. There are roles yes, but not trinity roles. Not only is every class a hybrid, every class has to be a hybrid. And those supplemental mechanics are equal for everyone, and universally inferior to what your enemies can do.
- http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
  
  TL;DR
  
  Overused tactic is overused. Learn to play without it because GW2 won’t let you use it. The trinity has long ago stopped being a legit strategy and become a crutch for bad players who can’t think up their own strategies.
  - Old Ben
    
    I’d say it’s mainly a crutch for the developers, TBH. Players are forced into it by the encounter design and, in some cases, even by the UI itself.
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      That is a very solid point and I can’t really argue. However there is something to be said for designing mechanics within the comfort zone of your audience. MMO developers have an easier time creating trinity based content, and MMO players have an easier time understanding trinity based content, so there is no reason for the developers to try anything else. It is
      the old “if it’s not broken don’t fix it” mentality. Of course the problem with that is constantly recycling the same content, or at least the same fundamental content design philosophies, will eventually become predictable, repetitive, and boring.
    - Old Ben
      
      It certainly makes the game more appealing to less skilled players, but it also makes it less appealing to the ones that do have skill (mainly meaning awareness and the ability to adapt quickly).
      
      When games are designed to _require_ “holy trinity” team set-ups (ex., by giving enemies the ability to hit for huge amounts of damage and _only_ giving damage reduction bonuses to officially sanctioned “tank” classes, or making sure that – even with that damage reduction – tanks take so much unavoidable damage during a fight that they _need_ a dedicated healer spamming them non-stop), even skilled players are forced to play along and pick the “right” classes and the “right” team composition.
      
      Even the best players in the world couldn’t get through endgame raids (or even some dungeons) in WoW without an official “tank” (or two). It’s not a matter of skill or even gear; if you don’t belong to one of the “right” classes or don’t have the “right” spec (ex., if you’re a shaman or a retribution paladin), you simply won’t have the mechanisms required to survive against the boss or to ensure that the boss doesn’t go for the other members of your team (and they don’t have the mechanisms to survive if he does).
      
      And that is entirely the designers’ fault, and not something players can avoid or ignore.
      
      So yes, it can be a “crutch” for players, but it’s frequently a crutch they don’t want or need, and which actually makes it _harder_ for them to run.
    - Moodib
      
      You guys need to really look at combos in Guild Wars 2, because they are very reliant on other classes. Not everyone’s combos work with every class.
    - Old Ben
      
      It’s not exactly dependent on class, it depends on the type of field. For example, if someone creates a fire field and someone shoots projectiles through it, they gain the ability to burn their target. Doesn’t matter whether the field was created by a guardian or an elementalist, or whether the projectiles are being fired by a ranger or a thief.
      
      With the exception of lightning fields (currently only created by elementalists), there are always at least two professions (classes) able to create each type of field, and at least two professions able to execute each type of finisher. In fact, I think every profession has at least one finisher of each type, except for Engineers, that don’t have a “whirl” finisher.
      
      Anyway, combos aren’t really a “required” mechanic (although they can be very useful), they just add some bonus effects to other skills.
- Mr. Ares
  
  What happens is that you start using tactics like kiting and rotations. And while these are completely valid tactics they leave way less room for the designers to make interesting encounters. If every encounter is just all about running away to not take damage and have everyone else wail on the mob, how do you make that more interesting ?
  
  The point is that the holy trinity allows designers to have control over what will happen in the fight and they can then add additional mechanics to add challenge and variety to each specific encounter. If you’re leaving too many options open for the players it becomes very hard to to tune and balance encounters as people might stumble over ways to completely ignore aspects of the encounter etc. Or the opposite might happen and people will find your encounters impossible because there are too many options but it’s designed to only work in a very specific way.
  
  As I said in my other reply (which you didn’t want to read), this has all been done before and we know how it will work.
  - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
    
    Nice way to avoid my question. What do you do in a game
    where it is impossible to create a trinity spec? Where the class mechanics and balance numbers literally won’t let you?
    —————————————————————————————-
    Now as to your other point, I laugh at you for thinking they
    can’t add interesting mechanics to fights without a trinity. That is absurd. All the trinity does is make it easier to balance numbers, and actually reduces the number of interesting things you can do because it forces you into a strict party composition. GW2 includes things like bosses who can’t be tanked because they can one shot anything in melee range, bosses that reflect projectiles, areas that require the party to, gasp, SPLIT UP. You can’t do these things in a
    trinity based game without them being broken.
    
    Edit: I noticed and responded to your other comment before you responded to me. Not my fault you didn’t notice.
    - Mr. Ares
      
      I answered your question straight up. If you can’t tank, you kite. If one person can’t outheal the unavoidable damage, you get more healers. And if their healing is limited they create healing rotations.
      
      It’s very simple and obvious solutions that were used in RPGs a long time ago.
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      And still invalid, especially the healing part. Pro Tip;
      healing in Guild Wars 2 is done through a boon, a buff, that DOESN’T STACK for intensity. That is part of the anti-trinity design and has been known for months; it doesn’t matter how many healers you have on rotation, you still get the exact same heals per second.
      
      One healer or four healers, doesn’t change anything.
    - Mr. Ares
      
      I did say “_if_ one person can’t outheal the unavoidable damage”…
      
      So if there’s no way of increasing the amount healed by the group and the amount of unavoidable damage is more than one person can heal then the game is just broken.
      
      However I’ll gladly admit that I’m not overly educated on GW2, but wouldn’t more healers allow for healing more targets (effectively increasing the healing done) ? or are all heals full group heals too ?
    - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
      
      While it is true that more “healers” does mean you can heal more people at once, you have to realize that the maximum amount that it is possible to heal an ally is hard capped at a ridiculously low level. Seriously we’re
      talking about a few hundred points of healing on a character with tens of thousands of HP. Healing in GW2, or I should say “ally healing” is just a band aid. That is why healing is called support here; it isn’t meant to save your friend’s life, it is meant to buy them a few more seconds to use their own self heal. In GW2 you’re responsible for your own survival; no one, no matter how high level they are, how they’re geared, how they’re speced, and how many of them there
      are, can actually save you from your own incompetence.
      
      No matter how many triple A healers you have backing you up you can still be spiked down, you can still be overwhelmed, and you can still be killed even by low level mobs. There are no healers in GW2, there are supporters; they are there to help you help yourself; they can’t do it for you. They can’t save you. Support; not carry. There is no “we wiped because we needed a better healer” in this game. If you die it’s your own damned fault. And likewise with no way to pull and hold aggro if a mob locks onto you and you can’t get him off, it’s once again your own damned fault.
      
      Players in GW2 are meant to be self-sufficient. You don’t party up with other people because they can do things you can’t, you do it because together your power is amplified exponentially. Content in GW2 isn’t group based in that you need more people to fill all the roles, it is group based because even being able to do all that needs to be done, no one is powerful enough alone to tackle hard content. Likewise because everything is so dynamic trying to lock yourself into a rotation is suboptimal. Content
      is designed to break rotations. You have to be able to adapt.
      
      Those are the core concepts of GW2 combat; not efficiency and roles, but adaptability and strength in numbers.
    - Old Ben
      
      > Players in GW2 are meant
      > to be self-sufficient.
      
      Not really. Not for high-level content, anyway.
      
      They’re just not meant to be “carriable”. To get through the hard stuff you’ll have to look after yourself _and_ get help from your team.
    - Moodib
      
      There are parts of your post that are incorrect. Combos will be one of the most effective tactics in PvE and PvP and WILL require you to have certain roles in your group based on other roles finishers and fields. This is not to say that you can’t bring whatever you want, but these combo fields and finishers will help your group immensely in many fights and mean the difference between a terribly easy fight versus a difficult one.
  - Jay
    
    I have a couple questions…
    
    What other games were you referring to with your last statement?
    
    Have you ever played Guild Wars 2?
Old Ben

> if the game doesn’t require it, it just means the game is easy.

So LoL is easy? Team Fortress is easy? Chess is easy? Basketball is easy?

Game mechanics and difficulty are completely separate things. If you played the GW2 betas you probably know that you’re far more likely to get downed (and die) in GW2 than at similar levels in any other major MMORPG.

> The holy trinity is just a tactic

No, it’s a fundamental game design principle around which classes and encounters are built. You’re clearly a bit confused about what “the holy trinity” means. Jon Peters has a couple of good articles on the subject (and why it’s not “unnecessary” bur rather _incompatible_ with GW2′s combat system).

> It’s just the nature of RPG mechanics.

Looks like you think RPGs were invented by Blizzard or Sony…

> Any game that allows you to get by without
> using it will be completely trivial if you use it.

Try playing GW2 in a group of five players where one is “the tank” and one is “the healer”, and then let us know how many times you died before giving up.
http://www.facebook.com/joseph.handibode Joseph Handibode

Holy trinity stinks, we want something new that is why we are coming to this game. If you want holytrinity stick with wow. Holy trinity stinks period. Its all about the tank and healers. If your dps good luck finding parties with long waits. No GW2 is better and doesn’t need your stinking Trinity.
If you want something new, you have to have something new period.

http://www.facebook.com/TechCamacho David Camacho

I have a suggestion, I have no idea if it will honestly help or not, but it’s obvious you record your video then record your audio at a later point in time; like some sort of commentary on your own actions. Try recording the audio while gaming like watching a stream from MikeB, Lore, 5hizzle, etc. It just sounds so unnatural when you commentate post-event instead of during, like you’re forcing yourself to say things repeatedly. I dunno, I just honestly felt like not watching the entire video after hearing you repeat that you were down ‘again’ and sighing like you were recording the audio during the event… yet, you’re clearly not… like you were forcing yourself to sigh? I don’t honestly know if my suggestion will help, but I’m tired of seeing interesting articles and wanting to mute them.

Old Ben

This isn’t a live gameplay stream, it’s more like a “chronicle” or a “documentary” about the dungeon run. It’s heavily edited (95% of the original footage was cut), so using only the audio recorded during play would probably have resulted in something totally incomprehensible.

It makes perfect sense to write and record the voice-over after the fact (during the editing process); that’s how most documentaries and (non-live) news stories are done.

Another issue is whether the voice-over fits the video and the whole thing manages to transmit a clear message or not.

Or whether most people here wouldn’t prefer to see a longer version with less editing and more objective commentary.

I guess they might still release that, if they didn’t delete the original footage.
- http://twitter.com/MikeSchaffnit Mike Schaffnit
  
  Ben has it down to pretty much the exact reason behind it.
  
  If you like commentary videos there are plenty of them out there. Getting a precise message out is going to take an additional recording session and you have to realize you are watching a different kind of video.
  
  There are plenty of commentary “Let’s Play”s out there and if that is more your style I encourage you to go watch MikeB’s Ascalon Catacomb runthrough
  - Jay
    
    Mike B ran through with a dev though, so it would’ve been nice to see the whole run with a group of “noobs” (no offense) in BWE3; just to see how it worked out. Even if it’s just the unedited footage with the comments made over skype/vent. I think a lot of people would enjoy seeing that footage more actually.
    
    Maybe you guys can just put it up real quick, no editing, like a raw cut… I guarantee it would get a lot of views. Pass the idea on to Gary.