[Article] Team Structure beyond the Trinity

[Avarre]

Note: This is my opinion to be discussed, if you do not agree then I don't really care unless you can explain why.


The Duality Principle
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Paragon

For the majority of the existence of Guild Wars and the PvE community, the ‘ideal group’ formula has remained relatively similar. This was an idea brought about through the understanding of game mechanics with regards to PvE, such as Aggro, damage reduction, and damage efficiency. Out of this grew what is arguably one of the longest standing ideas among Guild Wars PvE players – the concept of the Trinity; a Tank to absorb damage, Nukers to deal as much damage as possible, and Healers to keep the tank alive and clean up aggro slips. This concept has great strength of merit which will be mentioned, and like most PvE ideas, isn’t entirely correct. What must be accepted by all players of the game is as much as many would like the game to be constant, the structure of PvE is adapting to the newer developments of the game. As a result, the ‘ideal group’ has also changed, and this has not been noticed by most.

The concepts that the Trinity were built around developed as players learned the game. Once methods for holding the entirety of enemy damage were discovered, the role of the Tank was set – as well as that of the Nuker and Healer. The Tank, a single heavily-armored character was in place to reduce the damage output by taking all of it and thus placing it against the highest armor class, as well as controlling the position of the foes. As a result of the positional manipulation of enemies, the Nuker became an archetype focused entirely on damage – more specifically, Area of Effect damage, as it was the most efficient to use on massed enemies. The Healer, as well, became a character focused primarily on restoring damage – as damage was being reduced significantly by the Tank, it because less required to reduce damage via protection. This is visible in the early popularity of Heal monks versus Prot monks.

This Trinity, therefore, was the most effective method of handling damage and dealing it, compacting the required team into three characters at its most extreme, where the highest areas of the game, such as FoW, were cleared with 1 Warrior, 1 SS Necro, 1 Monk. (Note: the 55 monk is intentionally not brought up in its role of tank/heal). As the game changed, the structure of PvE largely remained the same – a Tank of some sort, mass damage, and healers. One of the few excursions in popular opinion was the Bonder, a character with the effect to reduce damage to non-tank characters. This highlights one of the issues with the Trinity – it relied immensely on the ability to maintain the focus of damage on the tank. This required positional skill from the players, an intense familiarity with the arrangement of the mobs of an area, and the correct skillbars to prevent scatter. With the failure of the tank, groups often crumbled – one of the largest reasons of group failure was aggro loss, especially if the tank went down, allowing the gathered numbers to pile onto relatively defenseless characters.

The flaws in the design were thus that it was built to handle known and specific situations, and required a specific control of the enemy to succeed. This became more noticeable and important as ArenaNet increased enemy power in subsequent chapters of the game (Factions Elite Missions, Domain of Anguish). Passive defense became more prominent, with Ritualists and Bonders becoming common in groups for areas where aggro loss could demolish the group entirely. Increasing mob power also highlighted the importance of being effective with Prot; 10 energy for Protective Spirit, or 5 for Guardian, could prevent more damage than the same energy towards the Healing line could deal with. Further changes, such as mobs that did not aggro onto a single target, or that spawned in variable positions, made the concept of the Tank less profitable. The most effective build, therefore, would be one that could take non-specific damage, while retaining an ability to deal damage effectively.

Common knowledge is that the best target damage per second is produced by the physical classes – recently expanded to include the paragon. This is ignored by some players, for example the Mallyx groups that tried to use Air elementalists for damage. It was always possible to clear areas relying on Physical dps (groups in FoW comprising of Warriors and Monks exclusively did quite well), however in Prophecies were typically less efficient. The largest reasoning behind it, theoretically, was that AoE damage was more effective as it was magnified by the number of foes. However, with changes such as AoE scatter and how aggro functions were implemented, this became less valuable. Furthermore, the Domain of Anguish introduced the monster skill Enraged, making AoE dangerous at best. The value of AoE was and still is extensive; however other methods for consistent damage existed.

The overall purpose of the Trinity, in essence, was to effectively simplify the process of group formation by creating three roles to fulfill. Classes that did not effectively fulfill these roles, such as Mesmers, Paragons, and such were largely excluded and considered ineffective. However, it is possible, with regards to the factors brought up above, to simplify the formula further while diversifying the scope of effective classes. The previous method of Defense – Offense – Healing relied on purifying class roles – the opposite method can be applied, overlapping class roles, to create what is, for the purpose of this article, the Duality of Offense/Passive Defense – Healing. The functionality can be explained as such;

Having pure class roles is inefficient. Much as players with 7 attack skills on a Warrior are considered ineffective, a damage character with no other purpose than damage dealing is not the greatest setup. It also created the mentality of characters that were self-sustaining but not team-benefiting to a large extent. Running characters that have a mix of offensive skills and defensive skills make a more versatile character. An example is the SS hex necromancer; hexes such as Spiteful Spirit and Price of Failure provide damage (including an AoE element) while at the same time providing significant partywide anti-melee defense from the miss effects of other hexes. This kind of character, therefore, can replace both the tank and nuker roles of the Trinity by raising the defense of every character, by means of enemy disruption, to the level of tank, and at the same time having capable dps. Elementalists packing Aegis or Wards are another commonplace example that reduces the reliance of a team on Tanks while maintaining damage.

The most misunderstood keystone of this concept is the role of the Paragon. The paragon has the dps abilities of the melee classes, the armor of the melee classes, the range and positioning advantages of the midline, and is in its purpose a support class built to provide passive defense and partywide buffs. A great number of players consider the Paragon useless for various reasons – they are wrong. With the introduction of Sunspear skills, the paragon was given one of the most overpowered skilled for a PvE setting ever – “There’s Nothing To Fear!”. This skill allowed the paragon, with a single skill, to serve the role of a bonder, while at the same time having the rest of its skillbar open for damage and additional defensive support. Being ridiculously broken, it was beaten down to smaller power, but the function of this skill epitomizes the capabilities of the Paragon class – and the structure of the Duality. By using single skills to enhance the survivability of the party, it became unnecessary to focus class roles into Tank/Nuke enemies when the entire group was as defensive as a Tank, and offensive as a Nuker. It is for this reason that Paragons make extremely strong PvE characters up to and including Elite Areas – something that seems not to be believed by the general playerbase.

Guild Wars was originally designed and balanced to be a team game, with intercharacter synergy. The value of passive defense is well known in PvP, and of near-equal value in PvE. Skills such as wards, shouts, bonds, and spirits allow the group to be resistant of damage to a level that only tanks used to be, while due to the fact that when spread across the party these require relatively few skill slots, hinder offense at a negligible level. A Ward vs Melee blocks 50% of attacks – essentially giving +AL40 to all players within it. Defensive Anthem has similar effects. Hexes serve the dual role of damaging enemies while slowing and disrupting Melee. The high armor of Paragons, for example, and the resultant high armor of other characters from skills such as “Stand Your Ground!” and “Save Yourselves!” makes characters safe from large spikes of caster damage as well as melee damage, and further increases the effectiveness of party heals such as Light Of Deliverance, which heal a larger proportion of incoming damage. The value of this style of defense is, rather than relying on careful positioning and aggro maintenance, the party is protected against aggro spillover entirely and thus far less likely to fall to small mistakes. This also makes the party stronger in dealing with areas, in that it is not necessary to carefully tank enemies when the party can simply roll ahead with enemy damage on all party members inconsequential – removing the importance of reducing damage to attacked targets entirely by ensuring all targets are heavily defended. At the same time, characters can be sent in to tank if required as they are heavily defended by prot magic/passive defense, allowing more flexibility of tactics.

With regards to party setup, the use of passive defense integrated with damage characters expands the ‘effective’ classes considerably. Rather than being classified in the groups of Tank, Nuker, or Healer, the scope of Offense/Passive Defense and Healer covers a much wider spectrum of classes and builds, most notably including the Paragon at the center. Overlapping roles also creates a higher level of redundancy in larger parties, making the group less likely to break if specific components are removed from connection errors or enemy disruption. Ensuring that each character has at least one skill that helps a character of the party other than itself results in a group that is, overall, more capable. Removing a single damage spell from one character is relatively inconsequential when compared to the benefits adding a Ward results in.

While the Trinity remains significantly effective in terms of group creation, the continual addition of new passive defense skills makes the Duality of coherent passive defense on an offensive structure in many cases more resilient, more capable in varying situations, less likely to break, and easier to run for less experienced players.

[Shakkara]

While I agree with your observations, I must point out that one of the reasons of the trinity popularity is the fact that it is clear for each party member what their role is and what skill setup is required for them. Thus it allows quick organization (party lf nuker/bonder/tank). While a group of hybrid characters with party-wide buffs might be more effective, they also need to be tweaked and specialized for the challenge at hand as some of the skills are really hit-or-miss (bladeturner refrain, winter, ward against melee/elements and such can be either godly or useless depending on the situation). Thus I only see utility for hybrid groups in guild context, and do not expect them to be popular in pickup groups until someone posts cookie-cutter builds for a whole party.

[EternalTempest]

Very good read and reflection of combat and GW and changes over time.
I agree with you about alternate means of defense.

I love a good paragon in the party, yet rarely see them in pugs.

Originally Posted by Shakkara

While I agree with your observations, I must point out that one of the reasons of the trinity popularity is the fact that it is clear for each party member what their role is and what skill setup is required for them. Thus it allows quick organization (party lf nuker/bonder/tank). While a group of hybrid characters with party-wide buffs might be more effective, they also need to be tweaked and specialized for the challenge at hand as some of the skills are really hit-or-miss (bladeturner refrain, winter, ward against melee/elements and such can be either godly or useless depending on the situation). Thus I only see utility for hybrid groups in guild context, and do not expect them to be popular in pickup groups until someone posts cookie-cutter builds for a whole party.

Agree, the core gw were rasied in prohcies were tanks were tanks, nukers killed things and monks keep people alive... That being said... Just having a killer hero paragon build that gets out there would help realize things.

I've started to take Gwen as intruptor with me as one of my 3 hero's and droping talkora in favor of a henchment protect monk and noticed a huge (good) difference, especially against elites.

[Etta]

A very well written article, Avarre. But sadly, I believe this will go over the head of a lot of Guild Wars players, who will not accept anything that they don't understand nor willing to learn.

[Davros Uitar]

Yup - pretty much agree with what you are saying. I have a character from each class, but it is pretty much my tank, ranger and paragon that I mostly play now. It was rather easy to play through the campaigns with the para, and only when I started to approach the lengendary survivor title did I start to get cautiuous with her. Hardly anything vere touched her. She suffered her first death not long after getting the elite survivor when against Abbadon I raced back to res someone who never ran quickly enough.

I am not sure I agree that the paragon is a good DPS character though. I see them as a bit of a mix between the prot monk, the blood is power necro (aria of zeal) and some party wide damage buffs (ie Go for the eyes etc). They are a mix, but I enjoy playing that type of build, and I had to smile recently in Hells Precipice where the 2 monks in a PUG where screaming to the tanks that they had no energy and needed immediate retreat and with the paragon energy managment my character could stay in there and carry the heal / prot load.

I agree that the class is vastly under-rated, and after doing the dungeons once with my main tank, I expect that I will be using my paragon teh most in EOTN.

[lyra_song]

Nerf the paragon! >:O

Personally i think Paragon's a bit broken. I would like a buff of the Paragon's older "ubernerfed" shouts, but it would require the ability to make sure it doesnt get abused by Paraway, and the only way to do that is to change shout behavior or leadership.

[Daenara]

Over the last couple of month's, my husband and I have replaced our 2 or 3 searing flames eles heroes in our hero groups, with Paragons. Go for the eyes, plus vicious attack and spear of lightning is just incredible, and Cruel Spear just for flavour. We steam roll through every part of the game, and we aren't restricted by needing a tank, as every person in our group is a high armored, party support.
Long live the Paragon I say, they've changed the way I play PvE, and I wish there were more around to bring in PUGS <3 (as I can't have sunspear skills on Heroes, There's Nothing to Fear would just make things beyond easy !)

[Avarre]

Originally Posted by Davros Uitar

I am not sure I agree that the paragon is a good DPS character though. I see them as a bit of a mix between the prot monk, the blood is power necro (aria of zeal) and some party wide damage buffs (ie Go for the eyes etc). They are a mix, but I enjoy playing that type of build, and I had to smile recently in Hells Precipice where the 2 monks in a PUG where screaming to the tanks that they had no energy and needed immediate retreat and with the paragon energy managment my character could stay in there and carry the heal / prot load.

With a decent spear spec, a Paragon can put out solid DPS under aggressive refrain and 2-3 attack skills. Some players may choose to run non-offensive paragons for more team support, but it's not too hard to fit some attack skills in.

Originally Posted by EternalTempest

Just having a killer hero paragon build that gets out there would help realize things.

I'm sure there are some solid setups floating around. I know Racthoh has some builds he used in his Mallyx runs on the Mallyx thread. If anyone wants to go looking around and list a few, that's fine.

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Personally i think Paragon's a bit broken. I would like a buff of the Paragon's older "ubernerfed" shouts, but it would require the ability to make sure it doesnt get abused by Paraway, and the only way to do that is to change shout behavior or leadership.

"Incoming!", being unremoveable and instant, is either going to be useless or too strong. Very hard to bring that back. Ditto for Energizing Finale. I'd rather they stayed out of the game entirely - although it is definite that some other paragon skills could use a buff.

[Kha]

While I do firmly believe that the idea of having a "tank", a "healer", and a "nuker" is the key to any multi-person party game, I agree with you that the idea that only the "Holy Trinity" of warrior, monk and elementalist can fit that is completely untrue. Every class (yes, even sins and mesmers) can work effectively in PvE when you know what you are up against and organize your team. The problem is, there is only 50% AT BEST of such preperation in PuGs as there is in a good+ guild.

I'd also like to quote your signature:

Originally Posted by Avarre

No man's knowledge can go beyond his experience.

This couldn't be more spot on for this discussion. Exactly how many players understand and play every class in the game? While you can learn a lot from grouping with each profession, you still lack seeing it truly firsthand by playing it which allows you to fully appreciate and understand the flow of how such builds work. You also have a better appreciation for how much work goes into other classes that generally get overlooked, like mesmer and paragon, in PvE and how they are 100x more effective than your cookiecutter wammos rushing in or something.

The game penalizes you for having too many different characters, and most people are turned off by this. Having to grind the campaigns multiple times for each character, buying tons of armor, weapons, and runes to keep them at full potential, not to mention all the skills and getting experience fighting different mobs in different locations is a turn off to some players. Also, not every profession is "fun" to everyone. All these things are completely understandable - no one should be forced to play stuff they don't want to, but at least if some would try them out they might understand and appreciate them a little more in the game and there wouldn't be such a bias to the holy trinity.

The above reason may be a minor one in the whole discussion, though. The biggest, to elaborate on what Shakkara said, is because a lot of professions don't have roles, builds or skills that seem so obvious and simple to use like warriors, elementalists and monks. They are all direct. Warrior directly benefits itself to take the damage, elementalists directly hurt the enemies, and monks directly heal the party. There aren't spirits, shouts, or a lot of conditions to be met for these things to be effective, etc. They're pretty much the fool proof way of understanding your role and doing it effective. Of course these are all effective, and there is nothing wrong with using these professions, but generally the builds that are used aren't 100% effective as more complex builds that take more than just button mashing to master.

Originally Posted by Etta

I believe this will go over the head of a lot of Guild Wars players, who will not accept anything that they don't understand nor willing to learn.

This is a very important point to note. If something isn't broken, why fix it? The fact that many people use cookie cutter builds shows the general mentality of GW players that they rather just find a simple solution to something and stick with it instead of creating their own builds and experimenting. And once someone does create their own build through experimenting, and it becomes successful and known to others, it becomes the next cookie cutter build.

I personally like to try new builds, whether I create them myself or a guildy gives them to me, and I find it really beneficial to my player capabilities. I encourage others and I wish others would look past the obvious and experiment, but I can't change how other people change. I, and others, can only hope that GW:EN brings some more appreciation for the less thought of professions over time and that GW2 has a more open profession mentality.

[Malice Black]

I've never played with a Paragon, and tbh never really wanted to. I'll tag along with Ractoe and see if he can open my eyes with his ub3r skills.

[zwei2stein]

Thanks for posting this.

You basically described thoughts that lead to my ultimate teambuild design theory:

Every character should provide Defense for whole team, Counterability /Support and Damage.

Warder ele is nice example:

You protect team with wards, do offense with aoe elite of choice. You can Kd people with stoning for support.

SS necro is other example: Damage with SS, defense with Weakness, Support with Blood ritual.

Paragons were designed on this philosophy, and Ritualists kinda too.

This allows you several playmode choices:

You can take on lesser mobes without much defence by using only damage, You can approach stronger mobs with good mixture of offence adn defence and when panic situation you can do to turtle mode, chatch breath and chip away at enemies.

Since whole party is ideally protected by mixture of shouts, wards, spirits and stuff like protectors defence, aggro controll is least of your concerns, if caster gets aggroed he can survive andkite a bit till more armored character catches monsters eye.

Hybric classes, ftw!

[lyra_song]

Now if only we got some love from Anet with better looking Paragon helmets ;D

[yesitsrob]

Great article Avarre. Sadly I doubt the current community will change how they approach PVE. While the methods you described above are in my view, definitely the more solid way to play. They probably aren't quite as foolproof to the average pug, and simply won't work unless people are spoonfed with the builds. But I know very well that above builds offer more defense, and better damage. But like you stated, this is largely a community that still believe casters are good for damage (the air spiker thing, I know of bloodspikers being used too >_> ).

[zwei2stein]

Btw:

Thing that OP posted are reason why Herta is propably THE best hench, ever.

[Avarre]

Originally Posted by yesitsrob

But like you stated, this is largely a community that still believe casters are good for damage (the air spiker thing, I know of bloodspikers being used too >_> ).

Air Eles
Blood Necroes

The future is obvious, gentlemen. We must combine them.

GLF Blood Eles!

Am I right? I think I'm right.

[DreamRunner]

Originally Posted by EternalTempest

Agree, the core gw were rasied in prohcies were tanks were tanks, nukers killed things and monks keep people alive

No way is this true. Warriors often brought damage dealing skills with group benefit skill such as "Watch Yourself" for in missions like Hell's Precipice. Even back then, if a skill did not provide support or help the group, it wasn't a great skills. ie mending, healing hands or w/mo's.

[Feathermoore Rep]

A very well written article indeed. It was a good read as well, however I'm with Etta in that it will go over the heads of a better part of the playerbase.

On a different note, its not that Paragons are a bad class. On the contrary like you said "the paragon has the dps abilities of the melee classes, the armor of the melee classes, the range and positioning advantages of the midline, and is in its purpose a support class built to provide passive defense and partywide buffs," making it a fantastic class. But since the begining the Paragon was not well thought out. It was TOO GOOD at its job in the beginning. And like the gimmicky people we are, many saw that and thats why you saw 8 paragons winning halls. And from there, the debuffs began.

And a big reason I know that people didn't/dont care for paragons, is because at the release of Nightfall SOOOOOO MANY people created paragons (for good reasons - i mean they did buy the game) but SOOOOOO MANY of those paragons were horrible. So most of the builds that people came up with were just absolutely horrible. Dervishes experienced this too to a degree but IMO Dervishes have a smaller and quicker learning curve as opposed to paragons. So rather than help each person with a retarded Paragon build, the general "good" - and i mean general - playerbase just cast them aside and didn't use them or let them into groups.

However it is my personal opinion, that i dont like Paragons as a class. IMO its like having the ability to choose three classes on one character. You have range, dps, high armor, and party-wide buffs, plus you can have your secondary profession. Yet most other classes, need that secondary profession to accomplish one of those three things. Comparing a Ranger and a Paragon;
-Both strike from ranged distances
-Paragons have inately higher armor
-On top of higher armor, paragons get a shield for more armor
-Spears have 1 less dmg range than bows AND (I REALLLY STREESS THE AND) they only require 1 hand!?!
-I dont know the specifics on attack skills so I'll call them equal for now
-Then comes the shouts/chants buffs: Can't be removed, many are party wide, and gives them energy back.
So without even delving deeply into all the skills and possible useful secondary professions, Paragons have an advantage over Rangers immeadiately.

But back on topic, the Trinity will always be the trinity. It will almost always work because when you break things down, all your doing is simplifing where the dmg is being taken, who needs to be healed, and who needs execute what jobs. In essence, it is the easy thing to run, because you know exactly what to do. On the downside, its also easy to tell who screw'd up. The Trinity is just an oversimplification of the basic tactics of the game, but it works. However if you actually make and customize and tweak a build set, it can overcome the Trinity. However, the work and skill often required to accomplish that is beyond most players. Most custom builds require the users to practice with the build set over and over, to make sure that there aren't any unforseen flaws or holes in the build. In the end however, if the build is successful enough the word gets out and more and more people start to use the build. If the build gets posted online, then you have every fool who can use the internet trying to play it and you back where you started trying to find a build that isn't the Trinity and isn't another cookie-cutter build.

So your completely right when you said "While the Trinity remains significantly effective in terms of group creation, the continual addition of new passive defense skills makes the Duality of coherent passive defense on an offensive structure in many cases more resilient, more capable in varying situations, less likely to break, and easier to run for less experienced players."
However the rise and use of passive defense should never be equal or above that of true defense. The reasons they should never be equal or above that of true defense is because it allows for varying builds and at the same time requiring less skill. It for the same reasons that I dislike the Paragon class, because the Paragon class brought with it passive defense with none of the consequences that others classes face with using passive defense.

So while your article was a very good read and good attempt at broadening the scope beyond that of the Trinity. Your reasons for now loving the Paragon are many of the reasons why people hate the Paragon.

[Avarre]

Originally Posted by Feathermoore Rep

The reasons they should never be equal or above that of true defense is because it allows for varying builds and at the same time requiring less skill. It for the same reasons that I dislike the Paragon class, because the Paragon class brought with it passive defense with none of the consequences that others classes face with using passive defense.

However you, or anyone, may feel about passive defense, the fact is in PvE that it does surpass active defense. The power of shouts and spirits is too major to be able to possibly deny it at this point. Active defense should surpass the capabilities of passive, and on single targets it can, but in a team battle passive defense will cover weaknesses in positioning and other mitigation that would otherwise be exploited.

I don't particularly love passive defense, or the Paragon class. I didn't write this to be a fountain of admiration for the class, rather I sat down for an hour and tried to objectively look at how I see the game. As a Mesmer player in all areas of the game, dismantling passive defense is practically my purpose.

[Amorfati87]

I fully agree with you and thank you for posting such a well thought out and intelligent post.

I would further say that if your team is full of people who know and understand their professions role and play them effectively then any combination of professions can beat any mission/quest.

And that is the main problem in PUGs, you sometimes get the person who does not understand their class at all, nor do they even care to learn it or take any advice to make them more effective. Like the Elementalist that just spams Flare and brags how they never run out of energy.

Not quite on topic, but nothing drives me crazier than a person playing ONE profession among a team of EIGHT and thinking they are the only reason the enemies are dead.

[Malice Black]

You have to concede though that the majority of players don't care, and never will.