The Constraints of the Holy Trinity and Duty Finder

[Ventus]

Something that has concerned me lately is that with the way the duty finder so staunchly encourages the typical dps, healer, and tank relationship we aren't left with a lot of wiggle room for creative class design.

It seems that with the given formula, if any one new class strays too far from "dps" or "tank" and falls somewhere in a gray area then it can't exist. For example, a lot of debuffs and stat buffs are spread out across classes, as someone had pointed out, potentially because the idea of this game having a class known as a "buffer/debuffer" just couldn't work.

Perhaps I'm just not thinking outside the box, but I grow more anxious thinking of how dull it can be to not have a party of your own makeup besides 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 dps. Having a class like red mage certainly has the potential to be butchered with the duty finder by being slumped into a category, and considering it is a class known for its versatility this would be shameful.

If people want to try 1 tank, 2 healers and a dps let them. If they want to try 1 tank and 3 dps with off heals then why not? It can be fun to reinvent older dungeons by spicing up the configuration of your party. If we don't get more flexibility with our classes and don't have the option to play a half tank-half damage dealer or half healer-half tank or something like that it would feel like lost potential.

Just something I more or less wanted to roughly lay out, I'm sure plenty will refute what I have to say or agree if I'm lucky. It is a discussion board after all!

Thanks for reading.

[Jennestia]

The only thing that constrains the system is the fact majority of this game's content is 4 man and with the 8 man setup there's no room for a 'support' role even if they introduced a full support class.

"If people want to try 1 tank 2 healers and a dps, let them"

Start your own party and load up the dungeon, otherwise the game's content is designed for a tank, dps and healer and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, it's those snowflake setups that end up doing more harm than good in the long run.

Need I remind you of people only wanting BLMs for most content in 1.x? BLM is also one of the strongest burst and sustained DPS in the game, we don't need SE supporting those setups officially lol. So you do have the option, you're just not going to "go through SE" with it, you have to do it yourself.

[Sazhka]

i've formed parties where i am the tank and 3 arcanists and did just fine...now higher level dungeons i don't know if you could get away with that

[Ursok]

I've played games where there was no defined role and quite frankly it made encounters a lot more chessy. it was an all out zergfest till the monster was defeated. I really missed the trinity and am glad it's back. I think having different roles, can make the encounters much more varied too. I do want to have full support or semi support roles in the party too. I'm just against the no defined role type of design.

[Ventus]

I've played games where there was no defined role and quite frankly it made encounters a lot more chessy. it was an all out zergfest till the monster was defeated. I really missed the trinity and am glad it's back. I think having different roles, can make the encounters much more varied too. I do want to have full support or semi support roles in the party too. I'm just against the no defined role type of design.

Yeah I think having no clear roles would ensue chaos, just looking for a bit more classes that bend the definition of their roles a bit more ya know? I suppose summoner is an example of this with debuffing and pet class changing up what a dps is to a certain extent. I remember somewhere yoshi said he'd like red mage in the game, and when I heard this two questions came to mind: will it be a job or class and what role would it be in the duty finder? Just seems weird to me.

you cam simply just que as you normally would, 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 dps. nothing is stopping you from changing your job once inside the dungeon, go ahead switch the healer to dps and off heals, amd what you are asking for, is what you get. Another thing, a "support" job would most likely fall under the category of DpS, so if you had a buffer, they would still be a dmg dealer, so whats your problem with support roles? we have a bard, arent they buffers that dps?

Never said I had a problem with support roles and as it stands bards are hardly a support class despite the fact that they are supposed to be. Recent patching actually adjusted them more towards damage dealing rather than support, on top of this they hardly have any abilities that make them a versatile support class.

Sorry if I offended you, you respond as if I attacked you.

[Voqar]

I've played games where there was no defined role and quite frankly it made encounters a lot more chessy. it was an all out zergfest till the monster was defeated. I really missed the trinity and am glad it's back. I think having different roles, can make the encounters much more varied too. I do want to have full support or semi support roles in the party too. I'm just against the no defined role type of design.

Agreed. I bought in to GW2 thinking no trinity would be a good change, but it was lame. I found the instances to be boring and even grouping with all friends with diverse classes the groups were just 5 soloists sharing an instance and chat. The sophistication and elegance of grouping was not there. Role-based (trinity) grouping is so vastly superior it's not even funny.

If you can do some alternate setup and succeed I'm all for it but it's silly to expect the duty finder to support it when it's not something that most pugs are going to want to deal with.

[Sixteen]

I've played games where there was no defined role...

I agree with this, organization makes things better. When roles aren't defined people just find the easiest comp to run with and use it exclusively, which is likely to end up being even more restrictive than the regular trinity. I also don't really like a defined support role, from my experience in Rift the support will always become a liability as compared to bringing an extra DPS as people get better gear. What I wouldn't mind seeing is more unique support abilities for ALL classes, the types that are not going to make a certain class much more favorable to bring than other, but support that does provide something unique.

[Bashkarthegreat]

you cam simply just que as you normally would, 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 dps. nothing is stopping you from changing your job once inside the dungeon, go ahead switch the healer to dps and off heals, amd what you are asking for, is what you get. Another thing, a "support" job would most likely fall under the category of DpS, so if you had a buffer, they would still be a dmg dealer, so whats your problem with support roles? we have a bard, arent they buffers that dps?

[Besbeset]

you cam simply just que as you normally would, 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 dps. nothing is stopping you from changing your job once inside the dungeon, go ahead switch the healer to dps and off heals, amd what you are asking for, is what you get. Another thing, a "support" job would most likely fall under the category of DpS, so if you had a buffer, they would still be a dmg dealer, so whats your problem with support roles? we have a bard, arent they buffers that dps?

Afaik you can't switch class/jobs inside a dungeon.

[Zehring]

As has already been said, you are ONLY limited when using the DF, and even then you can change the group makeup once inside. If you have a preset 4 people then it doesnt matter who is what and how many, because you can just walk into any dungeon you have unlocked and dont need the DF. FWIW, ill take the holy trinity all day long over unassigned roles as per GW2 and some others