Dismantle the Holy Trinity

[Exidrial]

You can't "dismantle" the holy trinity.

There will always be people holding the aggro. Those people will always aim to have the highest survivability -> Most HP/DEF/EVA -> Tank
There will always be the people focusing on support -> Healer
and there will always be the people focusing on raw DPS

There is nothing wrong with the holy trinity. It will always exist in games. It even exists in freeform games like Champions Online (although the game has HUGE balancing issues). There is almost no way to get around the holy trinity in a game that wants you to work in a team.

[Shurrikhan]

You can't "dismantle" the holy trinity.

There will always be people holding the aggro. Those people will always aim to have the highest survivability -> Most HP/DEF/EVA -> Tank
There will always be the people focusing on support -> Healer
and there will always be the people focusing on raw DPS

There is nothing wrong with the holy trinity. It will always exist in games. It even exists in freeform games like Champions Online (although the game has HUGE balancing issues). There is almost no way to get around the holy trinity in a game that wants you to work in a team.

The "holy trinity" isn't the merely the idea that someone will have threat, and that sacrifices to short-term damage-dealing may be necessary in order to survive (healing, tanking); it is the idea that there must be passive sacrifices and allotments made to support these functions, through specialized roles. Gameplay requires that there be as much tanking and healing as necessary to survive—that much is, as you said, ubiquitous. The Trinity asks that any interactions to those effects be handled by specialists, which is frequent across MMOs, but is not ubiquitous. In other MMOs, party members each of no role, general roles, or less-defined roles—however you'd rather look at it—are just as capable of varying their own outputs to the given situation, playing on the dynamics between their different class toolkits, rather than their "roles" alone, in order to meet the eHP requirements for survival (through increased mitigation [tanking] or recovery [healing]).

Even then, the duration and timing of actions not spent on dealing damage, due to the party's toolkits, can make the difference between efficiency and inefficiency, a clear and a wipe. It does not somehow become less tactical just by allowing all players to in some regard meaningfully participate in both burst and survival.

Overall, specialization in any team composition makes sense—so long as one guy's sacrificed damage for survivability allows for more total damage being dealt, then that's a positive—but it doesn't need to be on the basis of roles alone, nor does it have to be so inflexible that rather than a team changing tactics, an entire character or "job" gains or loses viability. That is the primary contribution of the "Holy Trinity", tunneling various concerns such that only the part that needs inflating or trimming sees direct change, and through attendance more than rotation. It is a simplification that most allows those of a non-specialized or general role (damage-dealers) to pay as little attention as possible to broader concerns. You might consider that a good thing, or perhaps not, but that is the only thing the actual Trinity model contributes that cannot be found in gameplay that does not adhere to a trinity model.

tl;dr: Gameplay requires that there be tanking and healing as necessary. The Trinity model requires that there be tanks and healers. When tanking and healing become less necessary in a non-Trinity model, the team's gameplay adjusts (by being less cautious, spending resources usually saved for safety for increased extension, etc.). When tanking and healing become less necessary in a Trinity model, the team's composition adjusts (kicking tanks and healers in favor of more damage-dealers). People may prefer one over the other, but that is there only real difference. The Trinity system is a particular model, or one theoretical end to a spectrum between responsibilities being handled by everyone and responsibilities being handled only by their associated specialists. (You may notice XIV is fairly middle-of-the-road, if not leaning towards general responsibilities, in this regard.) It is not a fact of life.

[CorvinusV]

Interesting ideas, although its not really dismantling the trinity—your suggestions still use a tank, healer, and dps. Its just giving jobs more role options. Clever though, regardless. Who knows, we might see some similarities between this and SE's vision when SB arrives.

[RizenSaga]

It's not a bad Idea. The only thing is people would have to cue as their role (dps, support, tank) Or you'd hit groups where no one has tanked before or 0 tanks, 2 healers and 6 dps which could work but man I wouldn't want to be a melee dps or healer with that party.


I've been thinking similar thoughts but going the opposite way. I really hope they add the support class, break groups into 6 man parties with 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 dps and 1 support with a spot open for any role (would help with congestion and regardless of what class you got it wouldn't really hurt the run).

Or keep the four man but change bard, machinist possibly red mage and dancer when they add them to support and have the last spot roll one support or damage dealer.

I do believe FFXIV was rushed. It's a great game, but it does have room to be amazing.

[Zojha]

There will always be people holding the aggro.

Assuming that "aggro" is even a thing and the mob doesn't use other targeting paradigms, such as "Random Target", "Most squishy" or vector based attacks. Tanks suffer quite a bit in PvP due to this premise - aggro isn't a thing there and people attack whoever they wish.

Support also does not equal healing - A ninja is far more support focused than a monk, yet both are DPS. You can imagine a job that does nothing but throw out buffs and debuffs with no healing, that would still be a support. But it would not be a healer.

Even DPS is not a given - Damage always plays a role when health points are a thing. But when games are score based - such as Basketball for example - there is no such thing as DPS.

I really feel like a broken record, but it has to be said again: Dedicated tanks and healers exist solely on the premise of damage you cannot possibly avoid, DPS exist on the premise of health pools. That shouldn't be lumped together into "trinity" - Dealing damage and as much as you can of it is not a trinity thing. It exists in literally every game where health is a thing, because damage is the only way to deplete health. And healing, too, is part of most games with health, namely on checkpoints, passive health regeneration, healing fountains or after a stage clear, because healing is nothing but undoing damage you took. And the games would still work without it - they'd just be really, damn hard.

The trinity is "not" necessary for working as a team (Ever played Soccer? Who is DPS, healer and tank again?) and in fact, largely exists so you "don't" have to work as a team. Imagine you'd have to rely on natural health regeneration for healing and the boss would still do unavoidable damage to the person standing nearest to them -> You'd have to constantly rotate aggro. The aggro function of tanks exists so you don't have to coordinate that with other people, instead, it's just that one person and he does his thing while the team does their thing - no coordination or teamwork required. That's far easier for everyone involved.

That said, it's extremely easy to get around the holy trinity, both in team based games and otherwise, because you only have to do one thing: Make all damage avoidable. You'll still work with your team on every tether, meteor or positioning (Stack/Spread) mechanic, I can assure you. But tanks would go the way of the Dodo and healers would only be taken as padding for bad players who can't dodge. Because unavoidable damage, aka non-gameplay, is all there is to these roles.

[Shurrikhan]

In fact, [the "trinity"] largely exists so you "don't" have to work as a team.

Imagine you'd have to rely on natural health regeneration for healing and the boss would still do unavoidable damage to the person standing nearest to them -> You'd have to constantly rotate aggro. The aggro function of tanks exists so you don't have to coordinate that with other people, instead, it's just that one person and he does his thing while the team does their thing - no coordination or teamwork required. That's far easier for everyone involved.

This. Heck, you can see the example given in game any time you try to 8-Warrior a trial or no-tank a dungeon. Even in this game alone, it's an altogether different beast, but by no means impossible except wherein tuning and toolkits specifically forbid it.

Alternatively, plenty of other games without any categorically assigned "tanks" will (almost all) have toolkits that can include enmity modifiers to more easily hold threat for a time, facing cleaves outward, etc., but relying on tank swaps to keep that bait alive, often as just one of many tactics for survival for which "DPS" would be responsible (alongside CC, displacement, kiting, partial tanking, damage splitting, etc.). Assigning a full-time tank may make things easier for the team, but it by no means guarantees greater depth of team play.

That being said, only otherwise unavoidable death (over a period's worth of unavoidable damage) necessitates a trinity system, not even just unavoidable damage. Vampirics, embedded heals, on-kill heals, and so forth can leave enough opportunity for strategic means of survival otherwise, such as by timing CDs, saving mobs for later, etc., much in the vein of charge targets, GL-dummies, DoT-cushions, Mercy Strokes, and parry-proccers now.