Matchmaking without the Trinity: how would you do it?

[Kaurie]

No. I'm saying that the only mechanic that necessitates healers is: Unavoidable damage.
And the only mechanic that necessitates a tank is: A large amount of unavoidable damage at a single person.

Consider A11 where the currently closest target in range is being attacked by an autoattack that just barely does more than you can self-sustain. All the mechanics are still in place and still do lots of damage if not done correctly but zero otherwise. What does that lead to? The only method to beat him is to do the mechanics of the fight correctly (Hide, dodge, activate, burn etc). All the strategy involved is precisely what you currently are supposed to do anyway, except that the "tank" regularly needs to be swapped by another DPS stepping closer to him.

Is any teamwork lost in the process? I argue no - to me, teamwork is human to human coordination (Such as the "don't get close" part of the judgement Nisi mechanic), not machine to human coordination (such as focus healing a tank buster/prey target). You don't even need to forego things such as positionals or synergy effects via disembowel. Healers and tanks only add unavoidable damage to the boss mechanic roster. And that's for a simple reason, too:
The only resource that matters is HP. The only way to reduce that resource is damage. The winning condition of a fight is to reduce the enemies HP before your own runs dry. Not just in this game - shooters, fighting games and many more work on the same principle. Healers add nothing to this system except increasing your own HP by their own mana pool times conversion rate. Tanks add nothing to this system except increasing the effective HP by reducing the incoming damage. Both exist solely to increase the HP pool the boss needs to deplete and in turn, they only add more damage to the boss to bring the equation back into balance. And unavoidable damage at that because otherwise good players would be inclined to just replace them with more DPS. That is all tanks and healers add to a game.

There also, naturally, is the satisfaction of different fantasies - some players just want to be sylphie, or that stalwart, impenetrable wall etc. But gameplay wise, healers and tanks add a lot less to a game than people give them credit for.

I would disagree that it is as simple as you are making it out to be. For example, a BRD can supply MP to healers while the DPS are learning a fight and taking extra avoidable damage. Healers provide buffers to DPS to learn a fight as they take avoidable damage. Without them, you will die sooner - the mechanics can't be as complex or difficult, or it would be deemed to difficult. A Summoner can use super virus to reduce damage to a tank buster or big aoe to help both the tank and the healer. The tank needs to position the boss, so melee can properly do their positional rotations. and so on.

Have you played Guild Wars 2? I do find it a difficult thing to explain, but Guild Wars 2 removed the Trinity and it made PvE content incredibly dull. It is the largest reason I am playing FFXIV (I jumped back and forth between both games a couple of years ago, before landing on FFXIV). It may be one of those things where it's hard to get it until you try it, and then you have that "ahhh" moment.

In essence, I think it comes down to difficulty and complexity of content. Without Tanks and Healers, content is made simple for the sake of balance - and thus is dull.

[Zojha]

I would disagree that it is as simple as you are making it out to be.

On that, we will have to agree to disagree, because IMO, it really is that simple "on principle" and yes, mechanics can be just as complex and difficult. You can have the same effect you're describing with the MP supply by simply having a damage reduction song instead. It's the same on principle. The mana song supplies the healers with mana and those in turn convert it into HP for the party. A damage reduction song would reduce the damage the boss does and thus increase the effective HP of the party. It doesn't matter because it's interchangeable, as it all fulfills the same purpose - increasing the effective HP of the party so that the boss needs to do more damage to deplete it. On the meta level, the game is only about health and damage - whoever depletes the others HP pool via damage first wins.
Although I admit with how powerful healing is in this game, you'd have to make substitutes completely ridiculous to achieve the same effect - it's just that strong. I'd also note that the positioning would be the same in either case - it would just be the currently aggro'd player doing the positioning (whoever that would be), rather than the dedicated tank.

Have you played Guild Wars 2?

Yes, though only for a fairly brief while after hitting the level cap due to horizontal progression boring me to no ends. And I found that the encounters weren't very well designed for the combat system they had. That's why I bring up a mechanic heavy fight like A11 - I didn't find anything of the kind in GW2. Instead, I found simple bosses that had strong unavoidable autoattacks that I had to kite endlessly. Most of the mechanic indicators were very vague, if existent at all. And all of it coupled with a much lower rotational complexity.

Yes, I agree - it was dull. But I disagree on the reasons as to why it was. Content doesn't need to be simple to work without the trinity - it just can't have lots of unavoidable damage. The epitome of trinity combat design is tank and spank, the epitome of trinity-less design is bullet hell.

[Yellow]

Tank, Damage, Healing, Support.

[Connor]

I think the game can be designed in a way that jobs can move away from the trinity without having to entirely do away with it altogether. As the previous poster said, Paladin is a good example of a job that, whilst not being limited to only tanking (it can heal, it can support the party defensively) still fits very well into the mold of a tank. Naturally there's problems with its design as well, but this more related to content design than the bigger picture of the 'trinity'. Technically you could argue that every dps (bar Monk, Black Mage and maybe Dragoon) is a support/dps hybrid anyway, since they all have equal amounts of utility.

[Saccharin]

Hello! Lots of people on these forums are eager for classes to break the mold, be more diverse, more buzzwords here. In short, they want to see a departure from the Holy Trinity of Tank-Heal-DPS.

Sounds great, sounds fun, sounds innovative. The issue is things like the Duty Finder. How do you put a funky hybrid class into the formula for making a balanced party?

I have no idea, which is why I posted this thread. If you were making a class for this game that broke the Trinity, how would you handle matched parties?

GW2 proved that the trinity is needed for interesting encounters.

[Bdyer]

1 pld, 5 warriors sch and Ast?

[MomomiMomi]

2 tanks, 2 healers, 3 dps, 1 support/wild card. Adjust accordingly for each type of content, e.g. 1 tank for 24 raids.

That's really the only change I'd like to see. A support role. I realize this requires more balancing on the devs' part. I still want it, though.

[Connor]

2 tanks, 2 healers, 3 dps, 1 support/wild card. Adjust accordingly for each type of content, e.g. 1 tank for 24 raids.

That's really the only change I'd like to see. A support role. I realize this requires more balancing on the devs' part. I still want it, though.

I'd probably go into a fit of ecstasy if they done this lol. All I've ever wanted from the devs is to add a real support role instead of just 'dps with utility that's not actually support but somehow gets painted as one'. Not to mention this would allow for Archer and Machinist to become actual ranged dps instead of poorly thought out 'hybrids' they are currently. Tbh though, I don't think enough people want a real support role to warrant it. That said, there's honestly no way of knowing unless they actually did it, because the OF's aren't exactly representative of the community as a whole

[SendohJin]

2 tanks, 2 healers, 3 dps, 1 support/wild card. Adjust accordingly for each type of content, e.g. 1 tank for 24 raids.

how would support function in 4 man content? do they get preference in one of the DPS slots? are their support abilities magnified in smaller groups?

[Welsper59]

how would support function in 4 man content? do they get preference in one of the DPS slots? are their support abilities magnified in smaller groups?

That would indeed be the better way to get a support role to work in justifying a slot in 4-man content. Perhaps a linked buff, where you can select people at any time to link with, which will share a % of damage output by you to them and vice versa. The more people you share a link to, the less of a boost % it is, but still becomes stronger if others play as well as they should.

However, the devs (wrongfully) believe that support skills weigh so heavily in this game that it justifies nerfing the overall output by comparison to other jobs of the role, of which may have their own support uses that exist without detriment. BRD output is kept lower because situational party buffs are strong enough to warrant lower damage full-time (pre-buffs/nerfs), AST cards that are RNG are strong enough to warrant lower healing output (pre-buffs that were issued multiple times), etc.

If a support role were to be introduced, they'd definitely be DPS oriented. Probably another BRD or MCH, if the devs were left to their own devices. They likely wouldn't even touch the idea of damage distribution, for as interesting of a mechanic as that would be. Balancing would be a nightmare, justifiably, and the risk of having a terrible support job player would likely make and break groups that couldn't carry.

With so much focus on personal damage in this game, a job centered around doing damage through other party members would cause people to cry out from all sides. Idiot elitists would cry out that the support player isn't doing enough damage by comparison to their own (ignoring the fact that their own damage was amplified at the cost of the jobs sacrificed output), idiot support players would ignore the core mechanics like it were a situational BRD song and cry out for buffs since they think the job is useless, and so on. Neither of those examples would be even remotely surprising to most of us.

We're not exactly ready for support roles yet, and likely never will be for the foreseeable future. That "we" is referring to everyone, including the devs (at least so it would seem, based on how BRD and AST were/are treated).