It's Time To Do Away With The Holy Trinity

[Detritivores]

The holy trinity is not an integral part of the genre, at all. Plenty of games don't have it. Does content that doesn't require a tank become not an MMO?

Okay, then play those. WoW without the trinity would not be WoW.

[NineSpine]

Pretty much this.

Some things may not work in WoW, but the system of tank/dps/heal works and has always worked.



If you don't want to commit to the more demanding roles, you will have a longer queue and a harder time finding groups, there's not much point making it sound more complicated than it already is.

Whether I can solve my problem by being a tank, which I already have done, doesn't change whether the current situation is bad for the game. Your argument is no different than saying "Well if all the classes except one suck, its your problem for not playing that class".

[Detritivores]

A social problem in a social game is indistinguishable from a game design problem.

Wrong. But again, you haven't offered any solutions here, so I have nothing to argue with you about, other than that the trinity system works just fine in my experience.

[NineSpine]

Okay, then play those. WoW without the trinity would not be WoW.

Is content that does not require the holy trinity not WoW?

[Hellobolis]

just look at things like islands and scenarios, and you can see how popular role-agnostic content is.

[Azerate]

Besides, if you spread all the repsonsibility equally, you will suddenly have thousands of unhappy DPS players who suddenly have to do stuff or they may cause a wipe, while at the moment it is not so.

You don't just make a change like that after 15 years of the game running in a certain way.

[Nnyco]

The point of the holy trinity is for the tank to get threat and thereby get hit and need the heals.

Yes and theres nothin to manage about, you attack mobs, they attack you.

[NineSpine]

Wrong. But again, you haven't offered any solutions here, so I have nothing to argue with you about, other than that the trinity system works just fine in my experience.

I did offer a solution: Design content to allow flexible group makeups, which would also open up the possibility for roles that don't currently exist.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes and theres nothin to manage about, you attack mobs, they attack you.

There used to be.

[Unholyground]

You solve the tank issue by putting in AI Tanks and when needed Heals for anything LFG/LFR. They have the tech for it now in the game code, they use it on island expeditions for the enemy team and it works really well.

People who nay say this idea are going to be sad when it is inevitably implemented. There should be some restrictions, it should only activate when wait times exceed like 10 minutes (or whatever they find to be reasonable) and an AI tank will never take the place of an actual player, it will always find a player a real group over the AI when available.

[NineSpine]

just look at things like islands and scenarios, and you can see how popular role-agnostic content is.

Scenarios were pretty popular in MoP, if a bit underdesigned. Islands had a lot of problems.

[Nnyco]

There used to be.

There also used to be dinosaurs on this planet, doesnt mean i still have to be careful about em to not get eaten by em.

Agro management has been removed since cataclysm and the holy trinity still works even without it. If anythin even better now since tanks actually got todo somethin other than spammin sundering for 30sec and then be a meatshield for 3-5min.

[Kumorii]

Besides, if you spread all the repsonsibility equally, you will suddenly have thousands of unhappy DPS players who suddenly have to do stuff or they may cause a wipe, while at the moment it is not so.

You don't just make a change like that after 15 years of the game running in a certain way.

Not sure which raid or dungeon you've played lately but if DPS don't do mechanics and enough DPS it's often a wipe. I think the responsibility is pretty much equal nowadays.

[LanToaster]

The mechanics that made the holy trinity work are mostly long gone.

No, you still have all the Mechanics in place, you need Threat on Mobs, (Even though its achieved with Facerolling).
And you still need to be a Tank to not be OneShot by Bosses.

How about you come up with a (in your Opinion) Reasonable way to get rid of Tanks, so we have actually something as to why you are wrong, instead of just saying: "You are Wrong, that wont work with WoW".

[Hellobolis]

I did offer a solution: Design content to allow flexible group makeups, which would also open up the possibility for roles that don't currently exist.

the better solution is to make the amount of dps players required scale. short on tanks? just group 4 dps instead of 3 per tank. for the content in which there is a tank shortage, that really won't cause any problems.

[NineSpine]

There also used to be dinosaurs on this planet, doesnt mean i still have to be careful about em to not get eaten by em.

Cool story bro, but the point remains that there used to be meaningful threat mechanics and now there are not.

[LanToaster]

I did offer a solution: Design content to allow flexible group makeups, which would also open up the possibility for roles that don't currently exist.

Make at least one Comprehensive "Content Design"

[Detritivores]

I did offer a solution: Design content to allow flexible group makeups, which would also open up the possibility for roles that don't currently exist.

This may be a failure of imagination on my part, but walk me through what that looks like. There has been content that doesn't require trinity roles. Islands! Boy how we all loved them! I signed up to play an mmo game with clearly defined roles. I have never suffered from a shortage of people to fill a role. I play with friends and we shift as necessary to have a reasonable comp. Again, it seems like social ineptness is being written off as a design problem here.

[NineSpine]

No, you still have all the Mechanics in place, you need Threat on Mobs, (Even though its achieved with Facerolling).
And you still need to be a Tank to not be OneShot by Bosses.

How about you come up with a (in your Opinion) Reasonable way to get rid of Tanks, so we have actually something as to why you are wrong, instead of just saying: "You are Wrong, that wont work with WoW".

Design content around flexible group makeups. Reduce the survivability of tanks commensurate with the reduction in mob damage needed to facilitate this and just treat them as more survivability, lower DPS characters that are still valuable in content. Do a similar treatment of healers. Allow more hybrid roles because you have opened up the design, such as buffers and more control-oriented specs. You could actually have meaningful half-healers, a gameplay style lots of other games have but WoW has never been able to make work because of the rigid trinity system.

The biggest thing this allows is to give mobs in group content at least some semblance of AI, rather than mindlessly attacking a tank.

[Kyphael]

I always thought the Holy Trinity was Warrior/Priest/Mage and a Vanilla thing, I guess it's an MMO thing for tank/heal/damage?

You want to get rid of Tank/Heal/Damage? Good luck running a dungeon with no heals or tank. A better solution would be giving tank/heal roles to more classes to broaden the amount of options and flavor for those roles. Frost Mages, Demonology Warlocks and Elemental Shamans should so be able to tank.

[NineSpine]

This may be a failure of imagination on my part, but walk me through what that looks like. There has been content that doesn't require trinity roles. Islands! Boy how we all loved them! I signed up to play an mmo game with clearly defined roles. I have never suffered from a shortage of people to fill a role. I play with friends and we shift as necessary to have a reasonable comp. Again, it seems like social ineptness is being written off as a design problem here.

See above.