The Daily Grind: What's the most important part of the trinity?

In EVE Online, the trick is to fit your ship in such a way it fulfils all three roles. Plenty of armour repairers will simultaneously be your healer and tank, and some powerful turrets are your DPS. The lighter the ship, the more tanking becomes about avoiding damage instead of surviving it, by increasing the speed and inertia and orbiting your opponent at a large distance. If you are dependant on a support ship in EVE, you're doing it wrong, at least in PvP; your opponent will just burn through the support ship first, so you'd better bring an additional battleship instead of a support ship. In PvE, if you're careful with the aggro, a support ship can be quite useful, but again it's probably a better idea to just bring another battleship.

In a game like Guild Wars, there are a number of ways to tank. For a long time Shadow Form was the ultimate way to tank, namely by avoiding most types of damage completely, but that got recently nerved. Warriors are still good tanks because of their high armour levels and several tanking skills associated with the Strength primary attribute (though most skills are associated with Tactics, which is a secondary attribute meaning any other class can put points in it as well). Monks have several skills that'll heal damage faster than monsters can inflict it, but there you have it: they take full damage, it's just that they heal it so fast. Elementalists have many skills that'll increase armour but often impair movement speed, and lots of Ranger and Assassin skills are based on avoiding damage completely rather than increasing armour or healing it faster than it's inflicted.

But no matter the strength of your tank, you'll need someone to heal the damage you'll inevitably get and you'll need someone to kill the bad guy before he overwhelms your tank's health bar and your healer's energy pool. In the end, the balance between the three roles is what matters, and a fourth support class can make everyone's life a lot easier. Mesmers, Necromancers and Paragons come to mind for Guild Wars, in EVE Online it's command ships that give the whole fleet combat bonuses.

The fun.

The MMO class trinity is is all about balance. Each class needs to do it's part effectively without making the other classes irrelevant. Tanks are defenders, DPS are attackers and Healers are the ones that tip the scales. The only thing that throws the trinity out of whack is that 2 of the 3 classes provide ranged attacks. It's important to make sure the defender class is worthwhile class when the other 2 can do too much damage....and heal itself.

Abandon the unholy trinity of mmo's! It is tunnel vision, limitation, unimaginative. I agree fully with Angel. Dev's need to look beyond the trinity.

MMO's are supposed to be a type of simulation of a fictional world, last time i looked at a fantasy environment in other media such as film, literature, no one who was a mighty warrior ever stood about "taking damage" while waiting for someone else to deal out the hurt. There is no such character as a "tank" in fantasy literature, why then do we see them in fantasy mmo's?

The same can be said for the other members of the so called trinity, these categories of players do not emulate the genre the MMO's are set in, they are an invention of mmo developers that do not belong in the world lore of most mmo games.

I find it astounding when players new to any given mmo try and work out what class equals what role in the trinity. Gods forbid players may need to actually think about the lore of the game world to develop a character that means something more than I am a healer tank or dps. Playing an mmo in such a way is so two dimensional it's painful.

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It really depends on what game, and what part of what game, you're playing.

In some situations, you simply can't do anything in a group without a tank and a healer.

In others, you'll be fine as long as there is a healer in the group.

In yet others, enough DPS/CC classes can work together without the need for a true tank or healer.
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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...."

This is one reason why I prefer games like City of Heroes, where the "trinity" is downplayed and most characters can solo effectively. Having played those other games that do require tank and healer to do most teamed content, I can say that the tanks and healers tend to turn into prima donnas.

It's an occasion for minor drama if the pickup group loses a tank or healer; you aren't going anywhere. It's an occasion for major drama if a tank or healer quits your guild or circle of friends. This is one of the things that tends to poison the well of social cohesion in those games, IMO.

The MMO trinity is based on scissors, paper, rock system. Which is one the oldest and most sound gaming systems even devised. No other system balances game mechanics so evenly.

Viable? No. But perfectly balanced? Probably. Then again, perfect is boring. I think the point they were trying to make is as long as you have more than one class, things will be unbalanced.

Or atleast I hope that's what they mean.