no tank/healer/dps?

[Lilixer]

I'm excited for the lack of holy trinity, it should be really fun and makes boss fights more realistic. None of this "one dude has a gigantic dragon punching him in the face but he's not dying" instead its "if you get hit, you're fucked" sounds like much more fun to me, way steeper learning curve but that just sounds great fun

[Merendel]

The weird part about this is that guild wars (1) was probably the only game that really got "tank healer dps" trinity to work in PVP. In Guild vs Guild (8v8) matches you had a classic setup of front line that could soak damage and survive for a while without heals (usually warriors due to their armor), caster/ranger "midline" which was where damage dealers and utility classes in the game fit and backline consisting of 2 healers/supporters. Flag carrier was usually a mix of midline and support/healer, filling whatever role was missing at that point of the game/comp.

But even then it wasnt the traditional MMO's version of the trinity. The frontline were not nessicarly tanks. Oh they could take a beating but there was nothing forceing the other team to focus on the tanks. Instead the frontline was more about controll and harassment. Sometimes the frontline would be responsibile for delaying the enemy. Slow them down, knock them down so they cant get to the mid/backline. If the enemy push past anyway they shift to harrasing their healers instead. The enemey was forced to either try to pound through the frontlines defences while they were suported or push in after the mid/back line and risk haveing their own disabled. Combat as a whole was much more fluid and dynamic with a great deal going into timeing a spike along with knockdown controll on the healers to kill a target. If anything all they've done is further blured the line between tank/heal/dps. Now everybody is mostly self sufficent and the role they take, front/mid/backline depends on the player and how they coordinate with the team not the class they play and they can to a point change on the fly if needed.

The only time more traditional tanking came into play was in PVE. There folks would setup gimic builds that the enemies in that area could not damage. Normaly these builds did jack for damage, focued entierly on survival. They would then exploit the AI to ball up the targets so the team could vaporize them in seconds before they could scatter. In the open field once they locked onto a target they would rarely change targets unless you triggered the AOE scatter mechanic. All you had to do was have a tank durable enough to live on their own and keep the group out of range till the enemies focused fully on the tank. The AI was also quite dumb, always takeing a strait line to the one they wanted to kill. If you pulled them around a corner and parked a tank so they extended the corner with their body the mobs would get stuck and eventualy turn and attack the tank cause they couldnt reach anybody else.

[Lucky_]

The main reason for my "trinity" comment is because I retired from being top20 gvg player for a about 2 years back in 2007. And yes, there were several reasons why tanks in most balanced builds were in fact double warriors. Dervishes worked only if you had melandru for tanking. Grenth, which was very popular back then was a spike magnet - you literally had to carry him through damage (I know - I played the grenth and center team caller in warrior-ranger-ritualist split just before quitting) and he NEEDED that melandru partner on the front line to push pressure off him. During downtime, survival was a total bitch because of dervish's comparatively low armor.

It was the reason why assassins generally never really worked in center without some sort of gimmick to carry them. It's also the reason why IWAY was so popular and so easy to play - 4-6 tanks who can unleash massive pressure and yet have high survivability was just insane and required significant amount of teamwork to counter (I was one of the "original" IWAY creator team back when it was HoH farming build in prophecies). The other obvious exception was various spike builds, but these were in real pain because of lack of tanks - if enemy got pressure into you, you were screwed (the first ranger spike guild on that got high on the ladder and went 30-0 straight into top20 from creation was mine).


So I'm speaking from significant experience saying that really, GW had the closest to "trinity" properly implemented in PvP that I have ever seen. Do note though that my GW experience did end in 2007, so it may have changed after that.

[Mothhive]

Yes it has they said it would be simple aggro, the mob would attack whoever was closest.

Nope, they have said there are a number of factors that determine who a mob goes after including damage, distance, health, armor class, etc, and not all mobs have the same priorities, so some will react differently to others.

Don't have time to search for the quote right now, but there definately is one as I've posted it before.

[Lucky_]

My info was from the Q&A session (I believe it was a little before Comicon) and they said exactly what I said whne they were asked, simple aggro mob would attack the closest person.

They might have changed it since then but that was the answer.

It's worth noting that even in GW1, while that was generally true, it wasn't always true.

For example, in one part of the nightfall "raid" zone, the nasty mesmer mobs had a habit of shattering enchantments on anyone who came into casting range, even when being body blocked into a wall by tanking obsidian flesh/spellbroken warrior. So they can choose an alternative target when their damage skills cannot be used on closest target in at least some cases.

I suspect similar mechanic will be used in GW2.

[Mothhive]

Found it!

Q: How the AI of enemies will work? Specifically, how enemies will chose their target? Will they be capable of complex behaviour and combat strategies?

A: That’s a great question, because it’s something we don’t necessarely get asked details a lot. There are very few creatures in the game right now that have kind of their final skills and abilities that we intended them to have. For example, in the demo that we’re getting here at Gamescom… the undead army in the high level map is probably the closest thing to what I would consider to be in an army that has a lot work done on it at this point. Our creatures are going to be getting a lot of work between now and release. We have really been focused mostly on the players side of things at this point and on getting all the contet put together on. So creature balance will be kind one of the next things that we tackle, and we’ll be moving army by army in trying to give them themes and skills and AI details to each army specifically. In regards to AI and aggro… simple creatures will use an AI system to determine who attack, and one of the most important criteria will be who is the closest target to them, but there are also criteria like who’s doing damage, how much damage they’ve done… and other things like that. These are basic things that most creatures would use. Then there will be unique AI for a number of different creatures that will use specific skills or the entire creatures will do different things than that. There may be creatures, for example, who attack the furthest away player in the party. There may be creatures who try to focus on people wearing medium armor or light armor, and try to chase them around. There may be creatures that run away, there may be creatures who get out of the way of attacks, there may be creatures who specifically only use skills on people at specifc times. So, all of these are aspect on which we’re going to work as we get closer to the release of the game.

http://gw2ita.wordpress.com/review/i...-italian-blog/

Bolded the most applicable part. So while it is true that proximity is a big part of aggro for simple mobs, there are other factors involved as well. When it comes to less simple mobs, the priorities are different depending on the mob. I'd say we were both kind of right!

[Xuvial]

Sounds complicated and something that will require constant fine-tuning as the game develops, so that some professions aren't far more likely to get squished than others.

Many thanks for the info