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Reader Comments (33)

Posted: Mar 14th 2010 8:18AM (Unverified) said

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Well, there is actually a fourth class in some games, the support class, like an enchanter or a bard, that doesn't do as much dps as a full blown dps class but makes all the other classes jobs a lot easier.
I think the problem with the system in general, is that almost every p2p game has more than these three classes. I think EQ2 is a good example of how the system can go wrong, especially in raiding. There are 24 classes and 24 raid slots. Most raid setups are: One or Two tanks, 8 healer classes, 4 bards. 4 enchanters, and fill in the remaining 6 spots with DPS. That's great if you're a bard or enchanter (4 classes total), and somewhat good if you're a healer (6 classes), kind of bad if you're one of the dps classes (8 classes), and really sucky if you're one of the tank classes (6 classes, and especially bad if you're a monk)
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 8:21AM JuliusSeizure said

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This is a self-defeating question. All three parts are vital. Take away any one of the three entirely from a group in an encounter designed to test all three will inevitably result in failure (overlevelling/overgearing doesn't count).

A better question is: Which role contributes the most to success? That's a matter of opinion and highly conditional on varying game mechanics, but at least it's possible to give an honest answer that points to just one.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 8:29AM Meagen said

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In City of Heroes, support is definitely the strongest - all-tank teams and all-DPS teams are slightly more difficult to run than balanced teams (but still doable), while an all-support team is an invincible engine of destruction - the stacking buffs and debuffs more than make up for the lower damage and defense of the support classes.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 8:36AM pcgneurotic said

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"Tanks point to their relative scarcity and the pressure of their job, Healers point to their relative scarcity and the importance of their job, and DPS points to the fact that healers and tanks can't keep their stunts up forever if nobody is killing the target."

ROFLMAOSMP :D :D :D :D Awesome bit of phrasing, I love it!
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 9:09AM (Unverified) said

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I'd say that all three are equally important, but the biggest failures have been when the tank or a dps was incompetent; the tank not getting aggro or getting beaten into the dirt, or tank or dps attracting too many mobs.
I personally play dps, because I favor offense over defense; also, dual-wielding is cool, and tanks generally don't wield duo's.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 9:40AM Itanius said

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All three roles are equally important, thus the term "Trinity": the union of three separate individuals performing as one unity.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 9:42AM myr said

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In FFXI:
Bad tank = Occasional DD/healer death and extra downtime (due to other people taking hits).
Bad healer = Occasional Tank death and extra downtime (due to running out of MP).
Bad DDs = Slow kills, so healer runs out of MP, tank dies, then mob goes for healer next instead of DDs, so healer dies, then DDs get picked off resulting in wipe.

Also, if you have an absolutely uber DD in the group, it doesn't matter how good your tank is, they won't be able to hold hate. Throw in 3-5 awesome DDs and you have what they call a burn party, which doesn't even need a tank. If you have one, they're mostly dead weight.

In this game, great DDs can make or break a party more often than healers, and much more often than tanks. While more powerful than average DDs result in better exp, more powerful healers and tanks don't.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 10:26AM (Unverified) said

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all 3 are equally important however if you stick a fool as a tank the group fails stick a fool as a healer group fails stick a fool in as dps and the group can win. dosnt take a genius to hit something but it does to control aggro and to focus on keeping multiple people alive and to predict damage
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 10:43AM Hexedian said

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Well, when you look at it, it's obvious tank and healer have little purpose in any realistic game - and I say that as an habitual healer myself.

The tank's purpose is to stand in front of the group and insult the opponents' parentages. The healer's purpose is to stand in the back and make sure the foul-mouthed brats in the front don't get their arses rightfully kicked. The only ones doing anything - that is, getting the job of removing the enemies - are the damage dealers. Of course, at this point, one has to wonder what improbably series of events has lead people to believe the holy trinity is a Good Thing.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 2:15PM Cinnamoon said

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Reality, I'd imagine. Which is why actual combat is also made up of the same types of people. Medics. Foot soldiers. Aerial assault. Saboteurs. Dudes in tanks. Etc.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 11:14AM (Unverified) said

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Of the three the only one you can usually afford to lose is the DPS, generally speaking it's pretty much all over when the tank or healer goes down. Depending on the game there can be quite a bit of crossover, but each role plays a very important part in the fight.

That being said, I very much dislike the idea of classes in part because it can severely restricts what sort of content developers can create. Some people though love the idea of classes, and there's nothing wrong with that, I'd just rather have something a little more free form. To use a little bit of a weak example, in the Avernum series you could choose a class, or choose to distribute stat points yourself. Something like that would be great in a quality MMO and allow quite a bit of individual choice => How much of a support class do you really want to be? Do you really want to be a complete glass cannon, how much damage would you sacrifice for other abilities etc. /end mini rant
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 11:26AM Pingles said

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I just want to comment that I miss the old days when combat wasn't so percentage-based and everyone grouped just to fight with other folks.

Nowadays in order to attempt end-game content everyone needs to be examined before grouping to make sure they're specs and gear fit into the cookie-cutter settings needed to fight boss monsters.

I remember healing a group of six rogues in Dark Age of Camelot. It was tough but we were able to progress reasonably. Nowadays the combat is so fine-tuned it could never happen.

That's my old-man rant. Not sure what can be done to get back to those "anyone can join" days.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 11:39AM Serious Table said

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Being the Tank for most of my groups, my personal opinion is the Healer is the most important part. If we lose DPS, I can generally deal enough damage to kill the mob. If we lose the tank, bad things happen but the DPS can generally pick up the mob if someone straps on a shield.

Lose the healer... man, you're screwed.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 12:14PM (Unverified) said

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The entire issue is muddled enough by the different perspectives that the question is murky.

No DPS == nothing dies == no progress. That's pretty important. But there are games in which, if you don't have a tank and a healer, you go home no matter how much DPS you have. And then there are games like CoX, where enough AE buffs and debuffs make sure that you don't really need a dedicated tank, because you don't need the control of having one person take all the damage predictably; x8 defender teams are ownage in CoX.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 12:17PM (Unverified) said

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Pingles; which old days were those? For me, the 'old days' were EverQuest, which was even more unforgiving in terms of group building than modern games. And EQ's class balance was a sick, sad joke.

Every time someone calls DPS part of the holy trinity, part of my brain does a double take. Originally, the term was an EverQuest one referring to warrior (the only viable tank class), cleric (the only viable healing class), and... enchanter (crowd control, 70% melee slow debuff(70%!!!), and desperately needed mana regen buffs). Everybody else was second best (or third best).
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Posted: Mar 15th 2010 12:19PM Valdamar said

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Yeah everytime I see "holy trinity" I think of EverQuest's Warrior+Cleric+Enchanter that every group wanted/needed before they could do anything - it almost didn't matter who filled the other 3 spots in the team, because everyone could do damage reasonably ok (though Rogues and Wizards were best at dps). Then with raiding the Shaman became about as important as an Enchanter for buffing/debuffing (on raids the Enchanters controlling role wasn't really needed).

I play City of Heroes and while hero-side can emulate the EQ trinity depending on powersets (Tanker+Defender+Controller, with Blasters/Scrappers as the dps), it doesn't need to, and on villain-side the trinity just doesn't exist - sure, brutes/masterminds can tank if needed (it rarely is), but every archetype does decent damage (unlike hero-side) and about the only "requirement" (more of a desire than a requirement) you sometimes see in teams is buffing/debuffing from Corruptors because they make everything so much easier/smoother, but there are plenty of Corruptors around so it doesn't slow down team formation. And when Going Rogue launches and you can play villain archetypes on hero-side I think the trinity will be thoroughly crushed there as well.

Though at least the existence of the "trinity" in other games makes it easy to spot newbies in CoH - they're the ones forming a group and "looking for a healer" because they don't realise that in CoH buffs and debuffs are so much more useful than heals.

I hate the trinity - it just makes a few chosen classes essential to a team (but often stack really poorly, so a team doesn't need more than 1 of each), and leaves every other class fighting for the few remaining team slots. It's just terrible design and tanking/taunting makes little sense in terms of fantasy/sci-fi storytelling anyway.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 12:55PM (Unverified) said

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It's important to note that the Trinity is not sacrosanct. Certainly not in PvP centric games.

A lot of the above discussion concerns the importance of the presence or absence of one of the three. Yes, lose one in your typical MMO and the group fails. Remove any of the three and the group fails. That's why it's the holy trinity, duh. However, I think in terms of quality of player and gear the most important of the three to max is the tank. Upon the tank everything else rests on. Healers use less mana keeping a solid tank alive and DPS draw less threat with a smart tank.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 1:49PM (Unverified) said

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varies from game to game of course but in Warhammer for PVE Tank is #1, in RVR DPS(but really only brightwizards and sorcerors) is #1. anarchy online having a good enforcer just makes everything easy mode, they easily have 3 or 4x the HP of anyone else and a spammable practically unbreakable AOE taunt. so if there is an enforcer in your group he is #1, if not then your doctor is #1 because the game just got hard.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 1:55PM (Unverified) said

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The entire "(un)Holy Trinity" just needs to go the way of the dinosaur. I much prefer any ATC (Any two or Any three) characters style of play that games like City of Heroes/Villains offers.

There may be times where I don't feel like being a "tank" or "heeeelar". I might just want to play.
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Posted: Mar 14th 2010 2:27PM Cinnamoon said

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Ditto that. CoH is loads of fun because of that. But I'd be lying if I said there weren't balance issues there, or if I said that any three characters will have as easy a time as three carefully picked characters, even there. This is a major problem with the skirmish system in LOTRO, as well.

For my money, recognizing that the developer needs to focus (and not be trying to balance things as well for three pre-32 ice controllers as for a perfectly synchronized group), I rather like the WoW approach. Sure, they replaced the old EQ enchanter's spot with generalized DPS, and no class was consigned to pure CC. But every class in the game is ONE if not more corners of the new holy trinity. Four classes can tank, four can heal, and everyone can DPS. For tuning purposes, it's unlikely to get much better than that.
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