[Article] Team Structure beyond the Trinity

[Racthoh]

A mesmer to me has a place in a group that is filled with a lot of AI. Simply put, AoE wrecks heroes and henchmen because they like to ball up. Pack some interrupts on a mesmer and that problem is solved. Once you add more humans to the scenario that disruption becomes a lot less valuable. I know a mesmer can do more than just interrupt but there has never been a situation where I thought to myself "shutting down this group would be much easier than blowing them up with AoE".

I can't really say anything about the paragon except how easy it makes gameplay.

Originally Posted by Avarre

Essentially everyone is a hero. Let it be known.

I wish everyone was as good as heroes, I really do. I really dislike playing with people who think superiors on a soft target is a good idea. Also a hero can fill any roll that I need filled, as opposed to re-working skills on a full human group.

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

Gw:en is a huge step forward in my view. The Mobs are well made, even the elite mission is not designed to counter some professions(as opposed to DoA which basically, by design exclude whole groups of players who play professions outside of that design).

The charr and stone summit groups in GW:EN were long overdue. It's a shame that secondary skills were not put on PvE enemies sooner; it makes for more interesting and enjoyable gameplay. I can't wait to fight them on hopefully implemented hard mode.

[Elisa]

Cookie-cutter parties will always exist, though I think nowadays the most effective setup for the widest range of high-level areas is:

P/?: Party-wide buffs, high single-target DPs, basically rallying the party around him and keeping them all a single, hard-hitting entity, also greatly improving survivability of the party as a whole. Can act as a tank when the Warriors fall or lose aggro to protect the nearby casters.

Me/?: Shutting down those pesky enemy healers, casters and... well, whatever else really. Sneaky degens, coupled with shutdown spells, removing most of the threat enemy casters pose. Probably the hardest class next to the Paragon to play effectively, but also one of the most important to a party. Again, highly underrated and only a couple are around in PvE at all.

W/?: Tank with high defense skills and stances (think Gladiator's Defense, Riposte and Deadly Riposte) to soak up that damage, white retaining a nice, steady damage output.

W/?: Secondary tank with hard-hitting skills, like the Sever Artery + Gash combos, not forgetting a defensive stance or two.

Mo/?: Pure healer. As opposed to the passive buffs of the Paragon, which increase the survivability of the party (and thus often go unnoticed by individuals) as a whole, hard, high "blue number" heals are the way to go for this class.

Mo/?: Protection Monk to make the circle of protection complete. Put a stopper on those gaps which the Paragon buffs or Healing skills can't block. Indispensable addition to any party. A protector can effectively render the tanks invincible, while the Healer can concentrate on the party as a whole and "top off" any characters losing health.

E/?: Fire Nuker; think Meteor Shower, Firestorm, Searing Flames. All about the ultra-fast high damage spikes.

Still not sure about the last clas... obviously another Fire Nuker would be a good choice to increase damage output, but I personally believe high melee spike damage is the way to go as we have two new classes which excell at that. The Dervish and the Assassin. Any thoughts?

[Boops]

Originally Posted by Racthoh

The charr and stone summit groups in GW:EN were long overdue. It's a shame that secondary skills were not put on PvE enemies sooner; it makes for more interesting and enjoyable gameplay. I can't wait to fight them on hopefully implemented hard mode.

Yeah, a monster with both Life Transfer and Fire Storm is really exciting to fight.

[yesitsrob]

Originally Posted by Elisa

Cookie-cutter parties will always exist, though I think nowadays the most effective setup for the widest range of high-level areas is:

P/?: Party-wide buffs, high single-target DPs, basically rallying the party around him and keeping them all a single, hard-hitting entity, also greatly improving survivability of the party as a whole. Can act as a tank when the Warriors fall or lose aggro to protect the nearby casters.

Me/?: Shutting down those pesky enemy healers, casters and... well, whatever else really. Sneaky degens, coupled with shutdown spells, removing most of the threat enemy casters pose. Probably the hardest class next to the Paragon to play effectively, but also one of the most important to a party. Again, highly underrated and only a couple are around in PvE at all.

W/?: Tank with high defense skills and stances (think Gladiator's Defense, Riposte and Deadly Riposte) to soak up that damage, white retaining a nice, steady damage output.

W/?: Secondary tank with hard-hitting skills, like the Sever Artery + Gash combos, not forgetting a defensive stance or two.

Mo/?: Pure healer. As opposed to the passive buffs of the Paragon, which increase the survivability of the party (and thus often go unnoticed by individuals) as a whole, hard, high "blue number" heals are the way to go for this class.

Mo/?: Protection Monk to make the circle of protection complete. Put a stopper on those gaps which the Paragon buffs or Healing skills can't block. Indispensable addition to any party. A protector can effectively render the tanks invincible, while the Healer can concentrate on the party as a whole and "top off" any characters losing health.

E/?: Fire Nuker; think Meteor Shower, Firestorm, Searing Flames. All about the ultra-fast high damage spikes.

Still not sure about the last clas... obviously another Fire Nuker would be a good choice to increase damage output, but I personally believe high melee spike damage is the way to go as we have two new classes which excell at that. The Dervish and the Assassin. Any thoughts?

Apparently you read like, a paragraph of the OP.

[Racthoh]

Originally Posted by Boops

Yeah, a monster with both Life Transfer and Fire Storm is really exciting to fight.

Not sure where you were fighting, but I was against conjure warriors, eles with aegis, mesmers with res chant, and monks with power drain to name a few.

[Boops]

Originally Posted by Racthoh

Not sure where you were fighting, but I was against conjure warriors, eles with aegis, mesmers with res chant, and monks with power drain to name a few.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Katye_Bloodburner

Tbh, though, the Charr die WAY too quickly for their secondary professions to make a difference. I sure hope they're more resilient in HM.

[Malice Black]

Agreed, the Charr are push overs.

[Elisa]

Originally Posted by yesitsrob

Apparently you read like, a paragraph of the OP.

And apparently you have the common courtesy of a baked potatoe. We must be equals in our ignorance.

[Omega X]

Originally Posted by Racthoh

A mesmer to me has a place in a group that is filled with a lot of AI. Simply put, AoE wrecks heroes and henchmen because they like to ball up. Pack some interrupts on a mesmer and that problem is solved. Once you add more humans to the scenario that disruption becomes a lot less valuable. I know a mesmer can do more than just interrupt but there has never been a situation where I thought to myself "shutting down this group would be much easier than blowing them up with AoE".

Meh.

I always used that philosophy when playing GW now days. IT becomes even more apparent to use it in GWEN areas since enemies also have custom skills that can inflict 3 conditions at once among other things which makes that area a lot less forgiving. But take Zho(interrupt henchman), Gwen with general mesmer interrupts, a couple of warrior interrupt skills and a ritualist with wailing weapon or warmonger's weapon, you can pretty much negate a lot of incoming damage.

[Series]

Great article and very true... if every player takes multiple roles, THIS will be the most effective setup. As a paragon player, I definitely see how the paragon is overlooked... the average pugger wants a nuker, tank, or healer, not someone who can provide many benefits.

[YunSooJin]

Most of PvE represents such a little threat that a class that mitigates damage (ie paragon) is pretty much overkill.

Normally, a typical build of mine in normal PvE works like this:
Warrior
Monk
Monk
Necro - MM
4x Eles or 3x eles + curse necro

There's no point in bringing a paragon when you can just bring overwhelming damage, particularly when normal PvE monsters represent little to no threat.

However in HM, I have swapped out an elementalist for a Paragon, or mesmer, or ranger, depending on what is needed at the moment.

But yeah, my main point is: Your article would be incorrect regarding normal mode, and correct regarding hard mode.

[the_jos]

I know paragons can greatly buff a party.

Considering only H&H team, not human.
In full human teams things are different, because you can't always choose every skill you want on someone (because they might not have unlocked it) and humans can play builds that heroes have difficulties with.

I used H&H teams with P/x + 2x R/P and 1x W (hench) with great success (playing caster myself).
This has two reasons:
- High DPS because of the P buffs
- High armor (basic + para/W buffs) so less need for party buffs and also less stress on the monks therefore.

My main characters are mesmer and monk, both require at least some knowledge about the enemies I face.
So I know when the P,W,R team is not so effective because of heavy hexes or conditions. That's when I take damage casters for P and one R.
The warrior hero is in the team most of the time, as is one ranger (BHA in new areas most of the time).
I don't like MM heroes, but I know when there are enough corpses around they make things very easy. This is not (only) because of the additional damage, but also because the minions 'protect' the backline.
The AI is stupid and puts hexes and conditions on the minions, which is highly ineffective.

Specially as mesmer I have not that much value in the 'Trinity' party.
However, in a more balanced team I can do maximum damage, specially when focussing on 'off-target' enemies. They are down or almost down before the team switches to them or are rendered useless (depending on build).

[psycore]

A very well written article.

It is quite common in everything done these days that people are unwilling to accept new idea's or to deviate from what they are comfortable with - that applies to both real life and in this case gw. With the idea of the trinity being firmly entrenched as a workable solution for pve since the days of prophecy's when the ai was not that intelligent the arrival of 4 new classes only created problems.

This stems from the fact that people will attempt to fit the four new classes into one of the accepted roles of the existing ones without analyzing the possibility of creating a better party build or more synergistic one or even dare-say a completely new experimental build. (Rit into a spiker/nuker/minioner for example) Contributing to this level of close mindedness are build wiki's where one workable human or hero build is posted and everyone ends up using it without considering the interactions between the players in the party. I have seen some great synergistic builds posted but they get lost in other posts or no one wants to run a particular class secondary etc.

I have always considered general pve players to be selfish (those in pugs especially, even all they way through to elite areas which trinity becomes elitist), mainly concerned with themselves and demonstrable effects of their single use of skills in their "team" . This is an effect of the trinity and when something new and experimental comes along with a more complex skill interaction it is not widely accepted as it doesn't fit into perceived functions. PvP players tend to the opposite as a complex understanding of the meta game is required to counter and attack the enemy as a group whilst considering the entire teams position strategically. I'm not a huge PvP player at all, and whilst I play it a bit I tend to apply the tenets to PvE.

Of course I also agree with the fact that anyone who has taken the time to read this thread is probably an open minded player with a little more maturity and understanding of GW mechanics. Unfortunately that cannot be said for the majority of gw players who don't know about gwg or wiki or who do and would rather post tldr or QQ.

Keep up the good posts.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally Posted by AlienFromBeyond

IMO, Assassins are a PvP class anyways, I never take them in PvE.

Assassins can really be insanely powerful when run well. Moebius/death blossom is pretty much the highest DPS you can get on a physical. Sins also make a really nice place to shove a few interrupts or enchant removals, which are really nice for utility. The big problem with sins (and rits for that matter) is that heroes cannot run them well. As a result, we all make our basic templates neglecting sins since a huge chunk of players use hero hench most of the time. On the rare occasion that people PuG, they replace heroes with humans in their templates, not create entirely new team builds.

The OP is definitely right on the single-mindedness of most players. Very few builds have more than one purpose. When you can only do one thing, you'd be making a huge mistake if you don't either kill stuff or stop stuff from being killed. However, diversifying your builds allows for more interesting and more useful concepts, like "kill stuff, interrupt other stuff, and remove enchants" (Mesmer) or "Stop stuff from being killed, augment team's damage" (Smite monk or rit).

[LifeInfusion]

They need to give the Paragon some more manly-looking armor instead of that skirt thing with exposed midriffs. Then maybe you'd see more of them that aren't female or more of them in general. Then again the female paragons have the 15k Druid's syndrome where it has barely any "armor" for the leg and arm. (Not to mention the rock on their head...thank goodness for Factions' elementalist headgear :P)

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Mechanics wise, it is true the Paragon outputs more DPS than a warrior. It is also true that it is more resilient in a team because of skills (i.e. the skills themselves don't buff the paragon but the team itself) to the point of being broken. I mean, Vocal Minority is the only real direct counter to shouts and chants...and it is on a 20 cooldown. Any half decent monk with deny hexes can take it off your paragon whereas the plethora of anti-melee hexes is much more devastating. Blind isn't much of an issue with Remedy Signet (warriors don't have inherent condition removal) and the class not being based off whacking things up close.

Paragons also happen to have more useful skills than warrior do for PvE. Most of the warrior skills are attacks (3 attribute lines with nothing but) and the strength attribute is almost useless when you have no attribute linked skills. Compare that to Leadership, which essentially defines the Paragon. The only exceptions are Protector's Defense Shields Up, Save Yourselves, and Watch Yourself, with Protector's Defense being completely unreliable.

For the same reason swords are still used in PvP as caster swaps instead of spears is the reason why Paragons won't replace warriors. People have gotten accustomed to warriors soaking up damage, just like casters got used to using Swords/axes as swaps for +20% enchanting, -5 energy, and +30hp mods. They only replace them if they have to and casters especially don't need the wand damage all the time. There aren't enough Paragons running around and it isn't guaranteed you will get a half decent one. Any braindead idiot can hit attacks in PVE and use Healing signet when out of battle (henches are the best example). Save for aggro, the Warrior's job of getting in and bashing faces is inherently easier. I cannot say the same for Paragons.

Paragons have more likely a chance to be accepted in PVE than Mesmers, Ritualists, and Assassins do, at this point with "There's Nothing to Fear" and other powerhouse PVE skills that affect the entire party.

Mesmers (players more so than heroes) inherently are disadvantaged in PVE because the mobs cheat with energy and in hard mode they have fast casts. This in turn means interrupts aren't as useful and shutdown only can hold off a few foes at a time while they are wailing on your party at +50% attack speed (save for the recently buffed Arcane Conundrum and the PVE only Cry of Pain). Mob skillbars up until GW:EN weren't all that great either, so it wasn't even worth shutting down bars most times...which is why I disagree with Racthoh about the Mesmer's usefulness as to interrupts. It's easier to d-shot every 10 seconds, broadhead arrow every 15 seconds, savage shot, or concussion shot than to get an interrupt every 12-20 seconds. The only difference is flight time but most deadly skills have 2+ cast (save for mesmer hexes under fast casting).

Assassins heroes are inherently flawed in PVE due to AI. They cannot seem to grasp when to shadow step and simple attack chains aren't executed for maximum benefit.

The issue with Ritualists has always been and always will be mobility. Once you drop spirits out of the picture you have some item spells, weapons spells, and decent heals that aren't effective as prot-ing allies. That's probably why Restoration Ritualists are so popular as pure healing monk replacements (but no match for protection prayers). To top it all off, Ritualist AI is horrid.

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Anyhow, the core classes (minus the mesmer) are always going to be more popular since they have been there since day one. I think Kha said it best in his/her post, "The game penalizes you for having too many different characters, and most people are turned off by this."

I know when I play my elementalist I play versatile builds save for when playing SF or Savanna Heat type builds (Fire builds are inherently not versatile save for Meteor shower knockdown). But to this day nobody is going to ask for a Air or water elementalist in PVE. Earth might be a stretch but it is doable (my favorite element by the way in terms of versatility in PVE).

zwei2stein's comment about the SS necro as an epitome of a versatile build is very correct.

About passive defense...the only reason why it is better in PVE is because typically you have more mobs, hitting for more damage, more often. Trying to actively prot every single 200+ damage hit from a warrior mob isn't going to be effective, whereas something that provides blanket protection such as Aegis chain or Defensive Anthem will be.

It's rather easy to be an elementalist with 16 Fire magic and 12+ energy storage blasting away. It's not as easy to run a hybrid of offense and defense.

Originally Posted by Malice Black

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

I have to agree with Malice Black here. Most of the players that follow the tank-nuke-heal concept you are critiquing aren't going to ever see your post because they don't read the forums.

Originally Posted by Elisa

And apparently you have the common courtesy of a baked potatoe. We must be equals in our ignorance.

He's right though. You obviously didn't read the thread because you're just spitting out cookiecutters and tank-nuke-heal.

All in all the entire thread reminds me of a Weapon of Choice episode where something along the lines of "my cat running across the keyboard can hit enough skills on a paragon or rit bar to protect the team well enough".

[Sarevok Thordin]

The underused classes are generally the more complex ones. Yet you tend to find them in the more complex game alot, called PvP.

Maybe it says something about the general PvE PuG lot?

[Gregslot]

There isnt much we can do man, people just dont seem to care! They are narrow-minded.
People wont change if they dont want to, you are fighting a lost battle here.
I understand what you are saying, i have allways played as a mesmer with henchies and i do better then most of the teams.

This kind of thought goes at most people's mind: "other classes but SF Nuker, War tank, Monk and SS suck you n00b lololololol"

Dealing with other people suck u.u

[Antheus]

Holy trinity works well enough, most of the time.

But then again, people did get stuck in certain missions which didn't cater to that model. Desert missions in Tyria, some of the Factions and Nightfall missions (Shiro, for example), where that model didn't work well, or at all.

GW:EN does a good job at providing different, yet reasonable challenges (not the DoA "mobs have multipliers on everything just for fun" approach).

Much of GW:EN's content is well balanced to reward alternate builds.

Hard mode OTOH is different. While the inherent bonuses by mobs there require change in builds in the first place, damage mitigation becomes important as well.

Most players with pvp experience (not just pvx copy-cats) will assemble team builds to take all that into account naturally. But outside of holy trinity it's hard to describe an optimal team structure since it'll vary a lot to maximize the synergy between party members.

But just as holy trinity is overused, it's incorrect to say it's useless. Plenty of missions are best done just with it, and 3/4 SF nukers have their place as well.

Bottom line is simply: use whatever gets the job done best. And if PUGs are scarce, find something that works well with hero/hench combination. H&H however gives enough freedom, although PvE specific skills can give a slight edge.

[Avarre]

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

But yeah, my main point is: Your article would be incorrect regarding normal mode, and correct regarding hard mode.

For much of the lower-level areas of NM, passive defense is less relevant. As far as many elite areas are concerned, as well as Hard Mode itself, it becomes more important - as the potential ability of the monsters to punish lack of defense becomes more apparent.

[Age]

The only thing I disagreed with is a Warrior being called a Tank which they aren't.They are Warriors plain solid damage dealers as they are referred to in PvP .It is a pretty well written article.I like this part.

Originally Posted by Avarre
Essentially everyone is a hero. Let it be known.

It is true that is why we have the H-panel.

There is one more thing they don't bond is PvP anymore they get stripped to easy by players like you.