[Suggestion] Do away with holy trinity in the long run

The problem causing more people to gravitate to DPS is that the encounter design is based on defeating adversaries for experience points, reputation, and loot. No matter how much you try to cover up the underlying difference in damage, people gravitate towards DPS roles because they promise to accomplish the primary goal of the game faster. Healers are more popular in FFXIV than other MMOs primarily because their damage output during the leveling experience is roughly on par with the damage dealing classes, making the conjurer/White Mage and arcanist/Scholar more appealing because they can bash things faces in just as well as any of the DPS. So for most of the game, the healer role plays more like the beloved "combat medic" people find in many group-centric First Person Shooters, where the combat medic can kill things just as well as the rest of them, but when a buddy looks like he is going down, the combat medic's specialty is keeping him up.

Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because the abilities that allow them to survive getting wailed on also reduces their damage output, making them hit like a wet sponge. So we have this guy with a giant axe using flashy special moves, but the payout is still so obviously less than the DPS he is playing with.

Standard RPGs can get away with these kinds of conventions because the player is controlling a team of characters instead of a single character, and the fact that the game doesn't last nearly as long. You simply can't hide the underlying mechanics in a game where people are going to be playing for years, so it is important to have an encounter design that rewards all roles equally.

And the scary part about this is that I've been making the same complaint about the holy trinity for about ten years... which is only slightly shorter than how long I've been playing MMORPGs. Can we get rid of DPS as a specific role already?

so you want damage dealers to be also capable of tanking and/or healing?

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

so you want damage dealers to be also capable of tanking and/or healing?

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I'm just saying that the game experience is based around the player controlling a single character who must blow tons of stuff up to reach the end goal, so having one party member being capable of clearly outdoing the others in damage is what creates the current problems we see with tank and healer disparity.

My suggestion would be to treat all classes as DPS, but with each having a particular specialty. A tank would be a damage dealer who specializes in melee combat and wears heavy armor (or little armor, but with a high dodge/parry rate). Encounters would be designed around forcing the different players to use their specialty abilities in a coordinated manner in order to defeat the encounter. A black mage, for instance, might be conceptually similar to a sniper, where he can "spell nova" down a dangerous target from far range very quickly, like the laser probes in Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane. Other DPS might specialize in debuffing the boss in order to overcome some defense that the boss erects, etc.

You're looking for Guild Wars 2.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/

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Originally Posted by Fendred

The problem causing more people to gravitate to DPS is that the encounter design is based on defeating adversaries for experience points, reputation, and loot. No matter how much you try to cover up the underlying difference in damage, people gravitate towards DPS roles because they promise to accomplish the primary goal of the game faster.

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Apparently you believe that the primary goal of the game is governed entirely by solo play and/or leveling. As an MMO, ARR isn't a single player game and, like pretty much every single other MMO, isn't designed primary around leveling but instead around the end game (which is why you see so very very much end game content and comparatively little end game). Even when leveling, unless you're it exclusively through questing, the primary goal is to succeed at a given piece of content as a group, whether you're doing FATEs or leveling dungeons. Considering that you say you've been playing MMOs for about 10 years, I seriously have to wonder how you've missed that, unless you play all MMOs without interacting with anyone except through chat.

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Healers are more popular in FFXIV than other MMOs primarily because their damage output during the leveling experience is roughly on par with the damage dealing classes, making the conjurer/White Mage and arcanist/Scholar more appealing because they can bash things faces in just as well as any of the DPS. So for most of the game, the healer role plays more like the beloved "combat medic" people find in many group-centric First Person Shooters, where the combat medic can kill things just as well as the rest of them, but when a buddy looks like he is going down, the combat medic's specialty is keeping him up.

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Once again, you demonstrate a distinct lack of recognition about what the game actually is.

First off, if you actually knew the numbers, you'd see that healers, even in Cleric Stance, heal significantly less damage than a DPS. In fact, their DPS is roughly on par with a tank outside of their tank stance, which renders your argument basically null: a tank and a healer have pretty much identical DPS so the "healers have better DPS making them more playable than tanks" is completely and utterly void.

Secondly, you once again display the laughably flawed idea that leveling is "most of the game", which is even more ludicrous when you realize that healers can only really do the "combat medic" thing while they are solo or in a non-dangerous situation (e.g. FATEs where no one in their group is actually tanking or actually taking damage). In a dungeon, a healer will actually have to spend a majority of their time healing unless both they and the tank completely outgear that piece of content (at which point the entire argument is irrelevant because you're not doing anything remotely challenging).

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Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because the abilities that allow them to survive getting wailed on also reduces their damage output, making them hit like a wet sponge. So we have this guy with a giant axe using flashy special moves, but the payout is still so obviously less than the DPS he is playing with.

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Tanks do not have low damage at all times. You seem to be operating under the notion that tanks are *forced* to run in their tank stances constantly as soon as they get them. Tank stances can be turned off and, in fact, a good tank *will* turn it off in situations where they don't need to tank anything, like when they're soloing or offtanking. At that point, they're dealing as much damage as a healer.

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And the scary part about this is that I've been making the same complaint about the holy trinity for about ten years... which is only slightly shorter than how long I've been playing MMORPGs. Can we get rid of DPS as a specific role already?

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And what would it be replaced by? You're basically suggesting that there is simply tank and healer or that all DPS can swap, on the fly, to be either a tank or a healer, which still keeps the same 3 roles since you don't need 4 tanks and 4 healers in a group.

The trinity exists (and actually works quite well) because, when you're running the group content that a trinity game is built around, there are specific functions that certain players need to specialize in. Tanking and healing are the absolutely required specialized functions since they also deal damage; they're required because someone needs to be able to reduce healing requirements and make it easier on the healers and someone needs to heal the inevitable damage. DPS isn't *required* but it's present because tanks and healers are roles limited in their usefulness for a given piece of content: you only need as many tanks as there are subgroups of enemies that need to be tanked (subgroups could be a single big target or a group of smaller targets) and you only need as many healers as are required to keep everyone alive; DPS are there to fill in the remaining slots that, otherwise, redundant healers and tanks would occupy.

I honestly have to wonder if you actually *do* any endgame content and what MMOs you've actually played. I have a sinking feeling that you've never actually done any 8 man content, possibly barring the required story stuff, which is so laughably easy now that everyone is hugely overgeared that you could run it with a 4 man group, and that you've never actually done any endgame in any game previously or, possibly, have never actually played an MMO that's actually built around endgame as opposed to leveling.

Regardless of me being right on the exact numbers for the healer DPS, the fact remains many people I played with were giving praise to the ability of white mages and scholars to do damage during dungeon runs. This sentiment continued all the way up till end game.

I'm also well aware of "what kind of game" FFXIV is. I'm genuinely confused by why you would suggest that I didn't, considering I just stated I played similar MMORPGs for close to ten years, and if you look at my profile I've clearly been at end game for a significant amount of time.

Thirdly, I did not say they run with their tank stances constantly on. I said "Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because... " I was referring to when they are playing as a group. I assumed that the reader would recognize I'm talking about dungeons and other encounters where groups are necessary, and not merely grouping up for daily quests to get them done faster.

Lastly, I can see that you are very passionate about your current view points on the game, but you have clearly misread and misunderstood the context of my post. Nothing in my post was a rant or attack on the system. I was merely stating my perspective on the current state of affairs on the holy trinity in general and the fact that I don't believe there is any satisfying solution to the DPS problem without switching to a different system. The faster you down an encounter, the sooner you get the reward, so choosing roles that maximize damage output rewards the players the most. That is by no means the only reason people will play a certain class, but rather it is a reasonable explanation for why the ratio of DPS to tanks to healers is so much more heavy towards the DPS side of things.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

You're looking for Guild Wars 2.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/

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I think they tried something interesting in GW2, but roles are not a bad thing. A roleless system is harder for players to master and understand, because its difficult at times to know what a particular job is really capable of doing. I'm suggesting that they try a different role system as opposed to a role-less system like GW2. Plus, their current design turned most encounters into zergs, so that really didn't work out well.

Edit: Also, the story kinda sucks in GW2...

thats not right i play all the classes and they each have their forte stat them right and they all will do damage just not as much as the dps.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Regardless of me being right on the exact numbers for the healer DPS, the fact remains many people I played with were giving praise to the ability of white mages and scholars to do damage during dungeon runs. This sentiment continued all the way up till end game.

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Which is less about the ability of healers to deal damage and more about the design of encounters such that healers have breaks large enough to afford them the time to attack without causing wipes while simultaneously having the extraneous mp to attack as well. In end game content (that people aren't overgeared for), healers can't attack because they have to conserve resources and don't have the time to break off and make attacks.

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I'm also well aware of "what kind of game" FFXIV is. I'm genuinely confused by why you would suggest that I didn't, considering I just stated I played similar MMORPGs for close to ten years, and if you look at my profile I've clearly been at end game for a significant amount of time given my gear.

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Because you spoke as if leveling were a majority of what the game actually is. The game is determined by the leveling process. The leveling process is there to teach you to play, provide you with a story, demonstrate growth in your character as you progress, and generate an investment in that character so that you stick with it. You specifically stated that leveling is "most of the game" which is why I assumed that you meant what you said.

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Thirdly, I did not say they run with their tank stances constantly on. I said "Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because... " I was referring to when they are playing as a group. I assumed that the reader would recognize I'm talking about dungeons and other encounters where groups are necessary, and not merely grouping up for daily quests to get them done faster.

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At which point the reader would have to wonder if you have any idea what balance is. If tanks could deal as much damage as DPS, what would be the point of bringing DPS, since tanks could deal just as much while requiring a helluva lot less healing and providing more in the way of utility (e.g. if the "main" tank dies, they could pick it up, no problems).

You're complaining about the trinity, acting as if DPS were somehow redundant while completely ignoring the fact that the trinity is designed around the specialist roles built around cooperation of individuals. The trinity wasn't actually something that developers came up with and had it become a standard. The trinity actually developed organically out of early games when players realized that the best way to work together was to specialize at certain tasks: some specialized in being targeted and minimizing incoming damage, some specialized in dealing damage without caring about their defenses because they didn't have to worry about being attacks, and some specialized in healing because they didn't have to worry about being attacked or having to attack.

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The faster you down an encounter, the sooner you get the reward, so choosing roles that maximize damage output rewards the players the most. That is by no means the only reason people will play a certain class, but rather it is a reasonable explanation for why the ratio of DPS to tanks to healers is so much more heavy towards the DPS side of things.

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Except that you're ignoring the fact that tanks speed up encounter completion by preventing the DPS from dying. You act as if DPS were the entirety of gameplay when, honestly, it's only a single facet. You can't DPS if you're dead and that's what tanks are there for: to prevent the boss from wiping the floor with the DPS.

By your logic, the only role that should ever get played is DPS because it can kill stuff faster which is so wrong it's giving me a headache and honestly makes me wonder how you can claim to know *anything* about MMOs.

The main reasons that people play DPS aren't that they kill faster or that they get rewards faster (which they don't; the best rewards are gained via group content and, all things being equal, DPS progress at the exact same rate as tanks). The main reasons that people play DPS are that it's a low responsibility job and that it's a straightforward job with immediately visible returns (you see big numbers fly up).

Tanking is the least popular because it has an indirect effect upon success (you contribute to success by keeping the enemies from attacking anyone else), has abstract demonstration of effectiveness (your comparative effectiveness as a tank is governed by the reduction in damage taken, which varies massively based upon the situation itself), and has a high degree of responsibility that is made more difficult when you have potent allies (stronger heals and DPS means that you have a harder time keeping aggro, which is the most obvious way for a tank to fail).

Healing is in the middle because it's still got an elevated level of responsibility, but it has easily visible demonstration of effectiveness (size of heals) and contribution to success (everyone stayed alive).

The appeal of DPS is only tangentially related to the increase in reward acquisition that you seem to think drives it. Reward acquisition for everything *except* for the leveling process is exactly the same between all 3 roles because it's group driven content. No role can effectively progress without the others so arguing that DPS is all about progressing faster is simply obtuse. The real reason that DPS is popular is completely unrelated.

tldr;

sounds good on the paper. Any game that has tried that failed hard due to this. (alltough some are moderatly sucessfull in pvp)
The Trinity is like Democracy. It´s a flawed system but it is the best we have.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

My suggestion would be to treat all classes as DPS, but with each having a particular specialty. A tank would be a damage dealer who specializes in melee combat and wears heavy armor (or little armor, but with a high dodge/parry rate). Encounters would be designed around forcing the different players to use their specialty abilities in a coordinated manner in order to defeat the encounter.

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Sorry but, you just described the holy trinity in it's purest form. Different people who specialize in different things to clear encounters. Tank's deal damage, but give up damage to mitigate more of it. Healers can deal damage, but usually give up all or most of it to keep their friends alive. DPS forgoes healing and mitigation for pure damage. Damage dealers specializing in different areas of play, would you look at that?

If everyone were treated as a dps role with special things they can choose to specialize in, what happens when you put a group together? You aren't going to take 4 or 8 guys who are all good at mitigating damage, or healing damage, or dealing damage. You're going to find some guys who can take the hits, some guys to keep the others alive, and some guys to beat the living crap out of stuff so you aren't there all day. Pray tell, what is the difference from what we have now?

All 3 roles have an equally important job, and if any of them fail at that job, the group fails. Simple as that. The tank can't hold threat or stop enough damage, he's gone and then the rest of the group has no chance. The healer can't keep up with the damage, everyone goes down. The DPS can't get targets down fast enough, it either kills everyone via the bosses mechanics, or the healer runs out of mp and it all cascades into failure.

If the game needs to be designed with absolute freedom of choice, that means groups who want to specialize in damage, and only damage, will still need to be able to clear any content, since your groups can be formed at random via DF, and a group of nothing but damage dealers becomes a possibility. Would it be fun for you to sit in queue, get into a dungeon, look at each other and say, "Well shit, none of us are equipped to do this, let's drop and re-queue again I guess." No! I want no part of that! Bearing that possibility in mind when designing content in turn means no more tanks and healers and all damage dealers, since it will clear content the fastest and become the obvious choice. Boy that sounds great! It would actually achieve the opposite of what you're looking for.

It also sounds like you're just saying, "Make tanks do more damage, make healers do more damage, so everyone does more damage and the damage dealers are just not useful anymore. So. . . give them debuffs or something, or get rid of them. Whatever. Nothing but tanks and healers!" If you would just look at the skills everyone has you'd realize the damage dealers do provide worthwhile debuffs and buffs to support their allies in more ways than just doing (absolutely necessary and high amounts of) damage. Monks can reduce the enemy intelligence reducing a good portion of damage to the party members, and aoe silence. DRG can buff bards damage. Both can stun. BRD has a broad array of buffs and debuffs. Black mages have. . . err apoctastasis. SMN has Virus, which is again more mitigation for your friends. SMN also brings emergency healing/resurrection. Those abilities while not class defining points, are certainly all relevant (just pretend I didn't say apoctastasis for a sec) and provide group utility. WHM and SCH can each deal decent damage when they get the chance. And tanks deal okay damage. You can't just discount the damage entirely, it is lower but existent. It's not what they're "specialized" in. But everyone is specialized in succeeding. And nobody can do it alone. It's an MMO. It's built upon diversity. And the holy trinity hard coded diversity that works no matter how you put it together (not accounting for skill of course) with varying degrees of success.

Maybe the game is fine and it's your viewpoint that needs a little doing away with in the long run. :)

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Originally Posted by Sinaloa

tldr;

sounds good on the paper. Any game that has tried that failed hard due to this. (alltough some are moderatly sucessfull in pvp)
The Trinity is like Democracy. It´s a flawed system but it is the best we have.

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we don't actually have democracy. we have a republic. your teachers all lied to you.

also this is a ridiculous thread because no developer is going to rework the core mechanics of their game like OP suggests.

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Originally Posted by matic

we don't actually have democracy. we have a republic. your teachers all lied to you.

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Technically, it's a democratic republic, as opposed to a plutocratic republic (which is what Rome was), which is often classified as a democracy since, by design, everyone has input into governance (ideally) instead of a select few. The fact that it's a republic is simply a recognition that the logistics of a true (Athenian) democracy are completely absurd when dealing with large governments (as opposed to rule of a single city-state).

As to the actual topic, the best argument for why this isn't going to happen is basically what you've said: the game is already too vested in the trinity design that abandoning it simply isn't going to happen. Of course, in every case where I've seen a game try to abandon the trinity, the player base turns it into one or teamwork simply stops existing because everyone tries to do everything. The trinity forces cooperation and keeps things balanced.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Technically, it's a democratic republic, as opposed to a plutocratic republic (which is what Rome was), which is often classified as a democracy since, by design, everyone has input into governance (ideally) instead of a select few. The fact that it's a republic is simply a recognition that the logistics of a true (Athenian) democracy are completely absurd when dealing with large governments (as opposed to rule of a single city-state).

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right. so....its a republic. every time i post here i remember why i shouldn't.

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Originally Posted by matic

right. so....its a republic. every time i post here i remember why i shouldn't.

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You're the one that wanted to argue semantics. It's equally appropriate to call the US a democracy as it is to call it a republic because it's both.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

The main reasons that people play DPS aren't that they kill faster or that they get rewards faster (which they don't; the best rewards are gained via group content and, all things being equal, DPS progress at the exact same rate as tanks). The main reasons that people play DPS are that it's a low responsibility job and that it's a straightforward job with immediately visible returns (you see big numbers fly up).

Tanking is the least popular because it has an indirect effect upon success (you contribute to success by keeping the enemies from attacking anyone else), has abstract demonstration of effectiveness (your comparative effectiveness as a tank isgoverned by the reduction in damage taken, which varies massively based upon the situation itself), and has a high degree of responsibility that is made more difficult when you have potent allies (stronger heals and DPS means that you have a harder time keeping aggro, which is the most obvious way for a tank to fail).

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I think you're underestimating the importance of DD. A tank and healer don't have an infinite resource pool. Most fights in this game can't be done with just a tank and a healer because both would run out of steam long before the boss was dead due to their inability to deal meaningful damage e.g. Haukke Manor HM, Copperbell HM, Coil, CT etc. Heck, even Wanderer's Palace, an easy + fast dungeon, needs DD to kill adds so you can stay ahead of the tonberry stalker.

As for why people dislike playing tanks, I think it's more than just "Tanks have so much responsibility ermagah!!!" I leveled my PLD to 50 and got a relic weapon, doing duty roulette every day to get more practice, and got 1000% more flack than I ever got as a DPS on my worst days. Like hell I would want to continue tanking after that. Only good thing is that people will mindlessly give you commendations.

As a healer I get a decent amount of commendations and love all day long, even if I spent 90% of the time just standing there doing nothing.

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Originally Posted by givemeraptors

I think you're underestimating the importance of DD.

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Nothing you quoted had anything to do with relative importance of the roles, so I'm not even sure where you got it from. I can only guess that you conflated "responsibility" with "importance" which is a pretty naive viewpoint. DPS is *important* because of various enrage mechanisms, but it doesn't have a high degree of responsibility because, when they screw up, things don't fall apart and, most of the time, no one notices. A bad tank or a bad healer is going to be obvious from the start. As such, it's got more responsibility because there are more people that explicitly rely upon them.

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As for why people dislike playing tanks, I think it's more than just "Tanks have so much responsibility ermagah!!!" I leveled my PLD to 50 and got a relic weapon, doing duty roulette every day to get more practice, and got 1000% more flack than I ever got as a DPS on my worst days. Like hell I would want to continue tanking after that. Only good thing is that people will mindlessly give you commendations.

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You're simply proving my point. A bad DPS passes under the radar because it's hard to notice a bad DPS, especially since parsers aren't really used often. A bad tank is going to get hassled constantly because the other members of the team count on the tank actually doing their job well so that the they can do their job well. DPS and healers can't do their jobs very well when they're getting punched in the face; healers have a harder time doing their jobs when bad tanks stand in bad shit.

It's probably a safe bet that you were hassled as much as you were because you were simply a bad tank. A bad tank is going to get a helluva lot worse punishment than a bad DPS, which groks with your own experiences. The fact that you somehow missed that connection doesn't really bode well for your ability to actually contribute to the discussion since you're the archetype of those players that don't play tanks for the exact reasons I outlined.

I don't think breaking out of Holy Trinity will ever be successfully achieved. Not with the current processing power and the limited ways we can input commands.

Holy Trinity exists for the same reason the world as we know it exists: load balancing. People do what they're good at and counts on everyone else to do what they're not good at so when combined the whole creates a complete "good at everything". When you try to let go of Holy trinity, you come up with Guild Wars 2: Tanks can't do jack, and DPS roams like there's no tomorrow.

Even Guild Wars 2 admits it doesn't do away with Holy Trinity. It simply allows a tanky mage, a DPS mage, or a support mage, but not a mage that can do all three. The last time people try to create tanky and DPS-y mage (2 out of 3), the whole mage class got nerfed.

When you can do everything on your own is when you do away with Holy Trinity. It's also the time you discovered Left 4 Dead.

The reason that people have been shouting to get rid of the trinity for 10 years and it still hasn't happened successfully is that getting rid of it doesn't work. The tank role succeeds in the job of taking down things as fast as possible, because everyone dying does not contribute to that success.

There is nothing in the game that makes tank or healer classes any less rewarding than dps. In fact, if you are good at them, people are much more likely to bend over backwards for you.

I actually kind of wonder what supposed reward OP thinks any non-dps might miss out on by playing their role. They get the same experience and loot as everyone else in the dungeon, and they get far more player commendations just for not screwing up than a dps will for playing brilliantly. So what is it again that they are missing, exactly?

People don't play tank because of the responsibility thing Kitru mentioned.

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Originally Posted by matic

we don't actually have democracy. we have a republic. your teachers all lied to you.

also this is a ridiculous thread because no developer is going to rework the core mechanics of their game like OP suggests.

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I will consult my politics teacher if you consult your english teacher. I never wrote I am living in a democracy. I actually do but I never wrote it.

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Originally Posted by HoneyBiscuit

Black mages have. . . err apoctastasis.

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BLM have Lethargy, a good slow attack and slow movement is useful to kite and survive while waiting for healer/tank to catch up.

A little off topic, but :

And a good DPS is not "do all Max damage right now" it's more like "do it when it's the right moment"...
If tank cannot keep aggro, it's not always his fault, sometime when all DPS go all out before he can actually do his first hate combo, he can't do anything to keep it better (Bards like to use all their skill ASAP and run everywhere, screwing the hate management and positioning of the tank).
Unfortunatly, when this happen, people tend to flame the tank. This happen in duty roulette where the tank isn't over geared for the content and the other are (and this is still not the fault of the tank)

A good DPS observe how a tank can keep aggro, and should slow his attack (at start) accordingly, a good DPS should attack the same target to kill it faster and lower the damage to the team, should help in stunning/silencing AoE, staying out of AoE.
It's not always about "i've got the biggest DPS on this fight, i'm better than you !!"

In Topic :
What the OP ask is just that the difference between stats of class's should be lessen... And what you will see is stacking of max DPS to roll on content. Not interesting, no strat...

TL;Only skimmed.

While I agree that War and Pld need a slight dmg boost, but that's pretty much what you sign up for when you decide to play tank.

Maybe you should play ESO, where Classes exist, but Everyone can use Any weapon and Any armor type.

Amusingly enough, what the OP described was the oldschool archetype for classes in RPGs. The "fighter" class was a melee-focused bruiser who could deal a lot of damage. They were defaulted as the tank though because these same classes tended to have access to heavy armor and high hp totals. Understandably, the trope and gaming conventions were slightly different then (still being considered an offshoot of single-player rpgs). Developers recognized early on that healing classes were no fun if they only had heals and buffs.The earliest MMOs were plagued by an overemphasis on parties and very few players in the healer/support roles. Blizzard capitalized on that failing to introduce dps skills to healers/supports and create solo-able content. This led to some interesting developments, such as the extinction of the support class (subsumed by dps). If that sounds familiar to what is being done to healers and tanks, don't be too frightened. Without a change in how enemy encounters are designed, the trinity will probably remain to some degree.

The trinity is honestly a form of categorizing the specialization of roles between classes in a party and is recognizable to some degree in any rpg. They have just not always been specific to classes. You certainly would not expect to see that system revamped from a AAA title like FFXIV, but perhaps from an inde game. That way, if the system fails, you only lose tens of thousands of dollars at most, compared to tens of millions. If it works, you just amp up the scale and go for a higher production value after resolving the issues in the current system. As an example, remember that FFXIV tried that something similar in 1.0 and we all know how well that was received. Admittedly, it had many more pressing problems than the combat system, but SE couldn't afford to make a mistake on the relaunch.

First off, your not looking far enough back for the origins of RPGs. The fundamental archetype of the entire genre is D&D, which was developed in the 70s, well before video games were known to anyone outside of a university computer lab, and it was explicitly a multiplayer construct so you can't say that it all grew out of single player design. The later single player designs of the early video game RPGs were actually built around creating a similar multiplayer experience with only a single player, which is why you had a single player controlling an entire party instead of a single entity exclusively.

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Originally Posted by Anova

The "fighter" class was a melee-focused bruiser who could deal a lot of damage.

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Actually, even in the early days, Fighter as a comparatively low damage class characterized by being the guy that was the most survivable and drawing fire by being in the front of the party, right in the monsters' face. Thieves were higher damage but skirted the outside of the battle and remained unseen; clerics were squishier than fighters due to lower hit points but traded away those hit points for defensive/support spellcasting capability, and wizards were glass cannons that hid behind the fighter hoping that no one would notice them.

The fundamental idea of the holy trinity has existed since the RPG was first conceived. The only difference between then and now is that there is mechanical enforcement of it instead of simply a thematic underpinning. The major variation between the two trinities, however, is one of necessary specialization. Because of the freeform nature of PnPs wherein there isn't a predefined and manipulable AI (you don't have aggro/enmity and targeting is assigned in the abstract by the GM reading the situation) and situations can vary greatly from turn to turn (since hp totals are much lower, and damage dealt is much more variable thanks to using dice being used for a majority of damage dealt and misses being much more common due to a general 50% hit chance assumption as opposed to an "always hit" assumption; a basic attack one turn can miss and in the very next turn reduce the tank to half hp) with a much more valuable action economy (not taking an action during your turn is much more severe than skipping a GCD), generalists actually work and, in fact, everyone has to be generalized to some extent. In MMOs, where the enemy actions are much more predictable and relative costs are much lower, specialization reigns supreme because there isn't slack that regularly needs to be picked up from turn to turn; the needs of a group, both tactical and strategic, are *much* more predictable than they are in PnP games which screws over generalists because their strength is addressing the unpredictable.

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I think the idea of a tanky dps is perfectly acceptable, although it would require reworking the hp totals and enmity multipliers to reflect the extra damage. I'm certain someone will come up with a fix in the future, but I'm not certain it will be done in this game.

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The problem with implementing tanky DPS or tanks with good DPS isn't based around manipulating flat damage numbers, enmity, or survivability because, at that point, you're simply generalizing a class and making it worse in a specialized context. It's more important to actually look at what the problems with "DPS tanks" need to be addressed, the most significant being why the hell anyone would bring anything except for tanks if tanks are dealing as much damage as the DPS.

The solution to this is actually pretty simple: address the problem directly by limiting the situational capability of a tank to deal high levels of damage by only allowing them to access said high damage while they are tanking, such that DPS becomes high damage characters that can deal damage regardless of situation whereas tanks are only high damage when they're performing a very specific role. In this way, you wouldn't want to bring a crapton of tanks, even if those tanks are capable of doing DPS level damage in the right scenario, because only a limited number are going to be doing appreciable damage, which is what groups already do.

Implementing this isn't actually that hard either. There are 2 effective that I know of that work quite well: the mechanics applied to defenders in 4e D&D, wherein tanks get to deal large amounts of damage to a nearby enemy (enough that, if they are afforded one of these attacks per turn, they're actually the highest damage role in the game) that elects to attack one of the defender's allies instead of the defender, and a beefed up system similar to what WoW first started doing in WotLK, wherein tanks got an increase to their attack power based upon their damage taken. Personally, I prefer a combination of the two in which a tank simply deals additional damage to a target that is focusing upon them or someone who is not a tank; it combines the two methods by allowing tanks to keep attention on them (so that they're specialized), deal useful and noticeable levels of damage (so players feel like they're contributing directly by dumping on the numbers), and also limits tank utility to the number of entities that you actually need to tank during the fight (so that they aren't displacing DPS).

Keep in mind, this isn't doing away with the trinity. It's actually preserving it by reinforcing the role of the tank by having it address a specific situation and being dramatically inferior in any other case. The biggest problem I see with this change would be the decrease in attraction of the healing role, since the only way to maintain the attractiveness of healers would be tying their damage to the overall health of the group in some way so that they can only deal damage when they've already done their job, which has some design problems involved.

The Holy Trinity is based on simple numbers. The game is about killing stuff. When killing stuff 2 things happen. You take damage and you give damage.

But sometimes you can't kill them before they kill you...and that's where the third thing comes in...Healing.

Because of this simple system of how we interact with monsters (dealing, taking, and healing damage) we have the Holy Trinity. Any time you throw any sort of classes at us we are going to look for some form of the HT simply because in a team situation specialization simply makes more sense. Or if you homogenize the classes in a non-HT system enough then you just have 4 dps running around trying to kill something together which usually results in far less teamwork since everyone kind just does the same thing but x4 or x8 people. That's why GW2 dungeons had you sort of know on paper what you were doing to aid your group but it didn't feel as fulfilling. It wasn't like securing the tank's health situation with a clutch Benediction or Silencing the Boss (and you were the only one who could possibly do it at that time). The list of specialized actions goes on and on and those coming together create teamwork and class identity which is what makes the game fun.

Everyone regards the Holy Trinity as some awful idea or archaic thing that needs to be done away with. Instead, why don't we think of more ways to make it interesting? Bard being dps/support hybrid is pretty fantastic. Give us a Dancer job for PUG where they dps and buff/heal their allies in interesting ways. Incorporate ways for DPS to help mitigate damage on the tank in a big way maybe. Let the Tanks and healers and DPS interact with one another in various job-specific ways and interactions. Give more weight and options to the party makeup. That's what will keep the game interesting. And honestly, they've taken steps in that direction already with how different and synergistic the different tanks/healers are.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

A bad DPS passes under the radar because it's hard to notice a bad DPS, especially since parsers aren't really used often.

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Bad DPS is very noticeable, especially in things like Coil and certain mobs such as the final boss of Haukke Manor HM. What isn't immediately obvious is which DPS isn't pulling their weight (if you have a DRG it's usually that because 99% of them are terrible), which is where parsers come in useful.

You could say that the classes like bard which use support skills and not just DPS are the 4th role, but even this is not taking away from the trinity, they are just helping others perform their roles in the trinity better by keeping MP and TP up and whatnot. DPS is reduced of course, but not as much as a healer or tank is reducing their DPS in order to fulfill their roles. I believe as more jobs are added we will see more of this type of thing happening. It is the closest to expanding/changing the holy trinity as we will get in ff 14 imo and also a good idea for adding more differentiation between DPS jobs and what they bring to parties and raids. Hopefully we will get more Tank and Healing jobs as well to help balance out the disparity between number of healers/tanks vs DPS, but that is a gripe for another discussion.

Was about to say that...=) Its an important definition Kitru.....A pure democracy would be even worse than the stolen democratic republic we now have.

As for the OP, While I wouldn't mind some hybrid classes, that can fill 2 roles for a time, or something along those lines (ie have necessary cool downs to tank for X amount of time, or being able to switch to healer as a DPS in a certain stance, or just in general have some utility heals that take burden off the heals but long cooldowns whatever.)

The trinity is here to stay, I prefer it.

Never seen such a tank disparity before, the underlying reasons are as mentioned and of course options! Neither tank do I particularly like, healers also only have 2 options, but the difference is exactly what Kitru said, plus as a healer soloing is quite easy typically (im speaking in MMOs generally) and so you have people gravitate towards those roles with less responsibility more options and easier time soloing while waiting for a party.

I think if they add 2 more tank classes, the disparity would lessen.

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Originally Posted by sylin

as a healer soloing is quite easy typically and so you have people gravitate towards those roles with less responsibility more options and easier time soloing while waiting for a party.

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I like to pretend the people I'm healing are my little minions that I send forth to do my bidding.

I don't really feel like I have less responsibility healing though. And I personally didn't pick it for easy soloing. I just tried it out and enjoyed playing it. To me healing is satisfying. I feel good doing it. I think the reason people stray from tanks is because it feels less satisfying. Healers get to see their big heal numbers, and watch their minions' health bars fill back up. DPS get to see big damage numbers coupled with fairly active gameplay. It feels pretty good to nail your rotation perfectly, while still dodging aoes and or dealing with boss mechanics. But tanks, they get to stand still and see low damage numbers, and less than flashy mitigation text scroll slowly by. You know you're doing something, but you don't feel it or see it like the healers or DPS. Sure you have to dodge aoes and deal with boss mechanics, but that's not special to tanking. We need something to show up that says, "Good job tank, you blocked the hell out of that guy," or, "Awesome! You're not dead!" maybe, "Nice, you totally positioned that guy in the right spot and DIDN'T wipe your raid!" And they need to pop up with confetti and fireworks. Or I think more reactive tanking abilities might work. Something that says without words, "You blocked that nerd, now show him who's boss and stab him right in the face." Tanking just feels less satisfying to me in this game. It can't help that tanks are built to take hate whether it be from the monsters or the players. People need to be nicer to our tanks. That might help us see more playing.

TL;DR Tanking needs to be more active. Dropping cooldowns to increase some form of your passive mitigation for 30 seconds is boring. Pressing a high damage attack after blocking or parrying, is fun. Anyone else wonder why tanks don't get something like Haymaker?

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Originally Posted by Aura_Shurifon

BLM have Lethargy, a good slow attack and slow movement is useful to kite and survive while waiting for healer/tank to catch up.

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Haha thanks, my knowledge of BLM is somewhat limited. Hell I still need to level 5 more times for swiftcast.

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Originally Posted by HoneyBiscuit

I don't really feel like I have less responsibility healing though. And I personally didn't pick it for easy soloing. I just tried it out and enjoyed playing it. To me healing is satisfying. I feel good doing it.

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I heal when I'm feeling lazy because a good healer will have stretches where they don't have to do anything healer-like and neither healer can really spam DPS usefully (Stone II is costly and meh) so the DPS you provide is generally DoT and watch.

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I think the reason people stray from tanks is because it feels less satisfying.

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The most satisfying thing for me, as a tank, is not seeing big damage numbers. It's seeing big spike boss attacks rendered completely null and void. Get a SCH to adloq you right before a big attack and blow a CD at the right time and you can ignore a Mountain Buster, Incinerate, or even a Death Sentence completely. When you take less damage from a massive burst attack than you would from an auto-attack, it's *incredibly* satisfying, moreso than just seeing a big heal or big damage number because it's such a massive deviation from the norm.

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But tanks, they get to stand still and see low damage numbers, and less than flashy mitigation text scroll slowly by.

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A WAR is actually going to see some of the largest damage numbers fly up of any class. An Inner Beast crit when you've got Berserk rolling is going to about as hard as a Full Thrust crit; the same is true of a Butcher's Block with Unchained + Berserk. WAR *does* get to see big numbers fly up and, in fact, is liable to see bigger numbers than BRD (since BRD is all about DoTs and bonus off-GCD attacks). PLD can get some pretty big numbers too, when using Spirits Within (potency 300 attack) with FoF active. PLD numbers won't ever be *as* big, but that's because they get more attacks. Tanks just tend to not notice it as much because they're not focused on their damage.

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Anyone else wonder why tanks don't get something like Haymaker?

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PLD gets Shield Swipe, which is a 210 potency attack for 40 TP that they can use after a successful block (it's also applies Pacification, but that means next to nothing to NPCs). WARs can cross class Haymaker from PGL. Tanks in ARR have access to the riposte style attacks; the problem is that they suck. Shield Swipe is normal enmity and provides only 6.67 more potency per GCD than the RoH combo. Haymaker explicitly does less and the Slow effect doesn't even do much because it suffers from DR and most bosses are immune to it anyways.

What you should really be saying is that the riposte style attacks should be made much beefier, which a lot of tanks actually want, especially PLDs asking for Shield Swipe to do more since it's basically worthless.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

*Pronounced love for walls of text*

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Edit **So after rereading this post it comes off more like a rant. The short of it is; I, and I'm sure many others, don't find tanks all that fun to play at the lower levels. I believe that's due to the lack of visual feedback the classes have. They don't show you anything to feel really good about until much later into the game. I say this as one of the people who could be tanking but isn't. I am part of the reason why there are so few tanks because I'm not doing it. Playing a tank just isn't as satisfying to me as most of the other classes are. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.**

Okay so, here's where I stand on tanking. I don't have a 50 tank. GLD is 15, and MRD is 35 I think. Haven't touched it since before 2.1. I stopped tanking long after I got bored of doing it. Is tanking more fun at 50? I want to say yes but I obviously don't have that personal experience for a definitive answer.

But I had fun leveling my WHM and MNK from level 1 - 50. Something about them was really fun. I like LNC, ARC, and THM a lot too. They do damage, and good amounts of it. They do damage that I can see. I'm playing a damage dealer, and I see damage. I don't play my gladiator, my marauder, or my arcanist at all. Gladiator and arcanist are 15 for job requirements and I don't plan to go further anytime soon. And I first started wanting to play warrior so that's the only reason why Marauder is up to 35. I don't like arcanist so much because I can't see my damage like I do the other damage dealers. It's there and it's certainly good damage. But it's somewhat dissatisfying. DoT's are all rolled together into one barely visible number every 3 seconds, and my carbuncle's damage isn't any easier to see. So what DO I see? Ruin. Oh boy.

That's how I feel about the tanks. I'm sure that's how many feel about the tanks. Truth is low levels are the most important because they need to get you into playing that class and the game as a whole. That drive to keep leveling is just not there for me in tanking classes or the arcanist. You can't see what tanks do at the lower levels. At those lower levels it's like playing a DPS class that does crap DPS(okay maybe not MRD). You've got tanking cooldowns but the low level content is so easy you can get to 50 without using them once, or at least to level 40. Hell you don't even really start to need a tank until around level 25. I mean come on, the healer can fricken tank with just cure aggro, I've done it in Toto Rak and Titan normal mode. Good the tank class I chose is actually not needed and frankly slowing my group down, another LNC could easily take my place and nobody would really even care.

I'm sure mitigating mountain buster or death sentence is pretty frikken sweet to see. Maybe it's the most satisfying feeling in the world watching king behemoths meteor drop right on top of you while you /laugh and still be standing when the dust clears. Where is the satisfaction levels 1-49 then? My issue with tanks is even if end game tanking is fun as hell, and it looks fun honestly. I don't want to be bored getting to it. Instead of having fun leveling, I'm being led on by the carrot on a stick that is the endgame and promises of fun. Getting gladiator to even 15 felt like a chore

That, in my opinion, is why we have such a large lack of tanks. There's probably a lot more like me that don't have fun tanking right now because it doesn't show you in big flashing numbers with an exclamation point how awesome a job you're doing tanking. Simple solution to me would be to buff tank damage, like you said earlier, in a way that requires them to be tanking do so, so they can't replace real DPS. It doesn't show you how well you're tanking sure, but it is something that can be seen and that many people like to see. I'd definitely play the hell out of my tank then. Until that day though, likely the last classes I'll max. And the disparity between tanks and other classes probably won't get much better.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

You're complaining about the trinity, acting as if DPS were somehow redundant while completely ignoring the fact that the trinity is designed around the specialist roles built around cooperation of individuals. The trinity wasn't actually something that developers came up with and had it become a standard. The trinity actually developed organically out of early games when players realized that the best way to work together was to specialize at certain tasks: some specialized in being targeted and minimizing incoming damage, some specialized in dealing damage without caring about their defenses because they didn't have to worry about being attacks, and some specialized in healing because they didn't have to worry about being attacked or having to attack.

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DPS as part of the "holy trinity" only came about when designers split CC abilities amongst other classes, The holy trinity was Tank, Healer, Mezzer.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

DPS as part of the "holy trinity" only came about when designers split CC abilities amongst other classes, The holy trinity was Tank, Healer, Mezzer.

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Back in "ye olden days" there wasn't CC, and, even when it was added, in very few cases was it exclusive to a single class or role. The idea of "mezzer" actually created an additional role within the confines of the "holy trinity" because there were still those specifically built around dealing damage without any CC capabilities; before CC was added to tanks and healers, "mezzer" was simply a subset of the DPS role (since, even then, CC wasn't a mechanism demanded on a constant basis). "Mezzer" was much like "support" as we currently have it: it was a subrole rather than role in and of itself.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

You're looking for Guild Wars 2.

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Guh. I honestly hate what they did with class balance and design. When you take away the downsides of a class and let someone do everything, it removes the incentive to actually work together and fights end up being a zerg-rush of "Who can hit it the hardest, fastest".

I think the 'trinity' is necessary in that it is a structure for people to work around, and it's a structure for designers to balance classes so each has a role, has benefits, and cons. Clearly defined so that they mesh in some way.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

DPS as part of the "holy trinity" only came about when designers split CC abilities amongst other classes, The holy trinity was Tank, Healer, Mezzer.

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As Sapphic here said, the original "holy trinity" as it applies to MMOs was Tank, Healer, CC. And honestly I'd like to see it go back to that.

I do agree with letting all classes be able to provide a notable DPS contribution, but each class needs to have something their poor at to promote the inclusion of other people. It's a grouping game after all, and class balance should be designed around it.

So the Tanks can do damage, but in a sustained fight they will lose because they have no ability to heal themselves. Healers can damage, and heal themselves, but their healing won't outparse the incoming damage they're taking so they'll eventually fall. CC can damage, and can lock down mobs to control what's coming at a party but without heals or endurance they'll still fall under the weight of attack.

I think this is a system designers should be looking into.

One can also argue that you could possibly do hybrids, but you'd have to sacrifice something to do so, and I think the best thing to sacrifice for those sorts of hybrids would be damage potential.

And to comment on Kitru's post above, the whole "Holy trinity" thing was formally an EQ thing, where CC was the third leg of the triad. It wasn't until later that it was changed to mean DD instead, as with a controller, a healer, and a tank you could complete just about anything put in your way.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

You're looking for Guild Wars 2.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/

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Or Elder Scrolls Online (kinda).