Break the Trinity System Please

[Sylve]

Designing fights which rely on random mechanics and elements isn't as easy as it may sound. snip

Yup. pretty much the whole problem with too many random elements to a boss is that you might just get lucky one week and the boss just plain wont use its skills, but the next time would use them back to back constantly.

Imagine if Weights, Stomps and Landslides on Titan had no cooldown, and Titan just randomly decided when to use them. You'd end up in situations where he could Stomp, immediately Landslide and then drop a second Stomp into a Weight then used Bombs without any recovery time between. You would spend so much of your time just running around in circles that you'd never get any DPS time on Titan, it just wouldn't be fun or practical. Theres nothing wrong with structure.

[Aylis]

I never found support to be stressful. They tend to be the most boring roles. The ones in lineage 2 take the cake. I remember making this blade dancer the first time I played, it had two swords so that was pretty cool. Later on in parties the others would tell me to do 3-4 dances and then sit in the corner for 5 min. I mean you could DPS or whatever but it wouldn't make a difference.

I'd rather she implements buff debuff skills on existing roles than make one that is just support.

We might have played different games I think. I remember my time playing support / hybrid roles I never got a moments peace lol

[Moonleg]

Yup. pretty much the whole problem with too many random elements to a boss is that you might just get lucky one week and the boss just plain wont use its skills, but the next time would use them back to back constantly.

Imagine if Weights, Stomps and Landslides on Titan had no cooldown, and Titan just randomly decided when to use them. You'd end up in situations where he could Stomp, immediately Landslide and then drop a second Stomp into a Weight then used Bombs without any recovery time between. You would spend so much of your time just running around in circles that you'd never get any DPS time on Titan, it just wouldn't be fun or practical. Theres nothing wrong with structure.

What about a shared cooldown, though? He might use Weight, Weight, Weight, Weight, or Weight, Bomb, Weight, Weight, or Landslide, Bomb, Landslide, Weight etc. It would still be random but not "LOL I WIN!" from Titan's point of view.

[Sapphic]

I may have mis-worded what i wanted to say I think. I meant to say not so much random mechanics and elements but more rather of "this is what the monster can do, the monster can use these abilities at random, be ready for anything" type of system, like say taking away the set pattern of Primal's abilities per phase and having them happen in any order. I know it won't happen here because the game wasn't designed for that. Then it may better suit it for support gameplay. Ala Everquest where bards would be pullers, twisters and melee'ers and chanters would be mezzers and buffers and debuffers and mini nukers ^^

Also you have no idea how happy I am when you said the original trinity was tank,healer, mezzer/slower. I was biting my tongue on that because of the time when dps replaced mezzer/slower in the trinity. ^^

We used to use Necros for pulls, feign death ftw! XD Bards pulling sand giant trains in Ro >.<

TRAIN TO ZONE! MOVE IT OR LOSE IT!

Everquest 2 at launch XPiing in Fallen Gate, seeing someone running past trailing half the dungeon, sighing as you knew they would splat your party running back XD then at the end, having to walk to freeport because you where overburdened with copper coins :P

[Aylis]

We used to use Necros for pulls, feign death ftw! XD Bards pulling sand giant trains in Ro >.<

TRAIN TO ZONE! MOVE IT OR LOSE IT!

Everquest 2 at launch XPiing in Fallen Gate, seeing someone running past trailing half the dungeon, sighing as you knew they would splat your party running back XD then at the end, having to walk to freeport because you where overburdened with copper coins :P

Oh Fancy, how I remember the stories of your sand giant trains xD

[Deifact]

I could see the current trend of hybrids like bard continuing. Dark Knight might be a tank with a buffing element (like a party endrain effect, or a party phalanx effect etc.). Geomancer could be a healer/buffer with aura spells. I agree that pure support would be difficult to balance (even though I love pure support myself). But hybrids seem to work OK.

[Aylis]

Theres nothing wrong with structure.

Random and structure can exist together in peace. Monster abilities would still have cool downs for obvious reasons so no worries about situations where it would be impossible to win. Where as we have now Titan we know will do "this" 5 seconds later he'll do "this" then 5 seconds later we know he'll do "this" With adjustments to allow for chances of recovery it might go as He "might" do this 10-15 seconds later he "might" do that, then another 10-15 seconds later he "might" do that other thing. Its nothing really new to the genre, basically its be prepared on a different level.

But yeah like I said in my other post it would need a combat overhaul. Which would have to happen anyway if a support role is added. As it is now the game's content is built around 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 dps or 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps by DF standards. Adding a support class means either 1 dps gotta go or 1 extra person has to be added so party sizes would be 5 for dungeons and 9 for raids. Both would mean content would have to be changed up or down depending on what would happen and its something I don't put a lot of faith in ever happening here.

[Delily]

I disagree. As soon as you add a dedicated support or debuff class, one of two things will happen. Either the class will be very effective, become Required (TM) and the game encounters will be designed around it, thus completely negating the intended purpose, or the class will have little impact on the end game content, and will no one will play them, outside of a few fans. Inevitably, raids will ask those players to switch to a more useful class. It make seem counter intuitive, but the trinity system gives designers more flexibility when designing new classes. The bard is a great example of how a support role works. They're capable of providing some useful (but not required buffs), but are competent damage dealers.

[f3re]

The trinity makes sense: Imagine we are in a pre-WoW world, where you can allocate your stat points freely. You want the most damage going to the boss as possible, so you put all of your stats in Strength. Your party of 4 goes out to fight the boss, and you do a ton of damage, but not fast enough that the boss dies.

FYI pre wow trinity was 1 tank 1 healer 1 healer/support 1 cc 2 dps for a total of 6. I sure do miss my enchanter mezzing machine

[ReplicaX]

True Support Jobs would serve this game so well.

What do you all think?

I disagree heavily due to:
- Balance
- Community Mentality

Both explained well in the other thread and Duelle.

I'm hoping 3.0 will slowly do away with this. I'm really hoping a support job is released, hence why we got ninja now.

Really, no thanks. I like Bard and Ninja(so far) as they are currently. Bard when played to its full potential provides a lot of utility and dps. I see the same potential out of NIN.

XI community & dev team ruined Ninja's original vision as a utility dps. While I did enjoy tanking on it for 9 years, there was a lot of missed potential and unknowns. I really don't want this to happen to this job again.