[Article] Team Structure beyond the Trinity

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 !)

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.

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.

"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.

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:
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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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 >_> ).

Btw:

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

Air Eles
Blood Necroes

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

GLF Blood Eles!

Am I right? I think I'm right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A very in depth look at the GW team building strategy.
I agree with you. That's why I play an earth ele, eruption can render groups of warriors useless whilst dealing damage, my armor spells let me survive so I can keep dishing damage. Although I tend to build my heroes slightly differently, my character builds rarely feature more than 5 attack skills, and the rest is defensive/energy management and healing.

Most players adapt to the challenges the game offers, want to win easy with no much effort (especially brain effort) and in the shortest time.

I remember when in the far September/October 2005 A.net gave the mobs the little intelligence to move when hit by AoE spell, and the thousands of echo nukers complaining and quitting a broken game in which those nasty foes dared to move, instead of being killed by their uber meteor showers falling on their heads.
And even in the following months, some echo nukers didn't change a single skill in their bars.


To the OP: I would like to point out that in terms of raw damage, one or two splinter barrage rangers probably perform better than nukers.
Rangers are the new nukers in my opinion, especially against heavily armored and fire resistant foes, with the advantage of better armor and a lot of caster shutdown skills.
Now with "Volley" for instance, you can have a splinter volley + BHA ranger = heavy damage dealer + caster destroyer.

I have only recently created a Paragon, and I'm really impressed by it's party wide buff capability + damage output + deep wound spreading, deep wound is really the worst condition as it quickly kills everything, no matter of armor.
Probably from now on General Morgahn will replace the antiquated Sousuke in all my parties LOL.


All this poses a discussion about the role of warriors and eles.
For eles, they have other lines which in my opinion are more intesting than fire.
Earth is capable of both protecting the party and deal huge damage, probably will be the main replacement. Water is also interesting, although more situational.

Warriors: well I've completed 3 campaigns with my warrior and never played as a tank, always as damage dealer.
Hopefully, now someone will realize what is the real role of the warrior

Pre-Searing showed how you can kill things / do high damage at first, latter on the role changed to holding aggro. A lot of W/Mo still don't realize this, rush mobs too soon, try to kill things then complain about not being healed becasue they can't hold there own.

Not saying all war's do this but enough to create this stero type, still come across them.

The opening ocean of a post is too long IMO and could have had a stronger effect on the freshwater fish if a vid was posted showing the more effective skills and other classes owning it up. The only thing needed other than that would be complete templates to serve as bait.

People generally like things to work in a non-complicated manner and the trinity is as simple as you can get. Smarter or more experienced players can get the same things done going outside the Sacred Three, and faster, but it takes a bit more effort and often requires the brain to be switched partially back on after school or work. Too much effort is bad, in case you didn't know, and that limit differs for each person. Many players just want to have fun, preferably without much thinking. Call it laziness if it pleases you but the tank-nuke-heal combo allows for this type of effortless, skilless, yet rewarding play.

The problem is the Paragon is an experts class like the mesmer however its skills are more passive.

You need to have access to the Paragons full skillbar and know how to use it. As well as this you need to know the skills of your teammates , the Paragon works on synenergies which is what makes him underpowered in the wrong hands and overpowered in the right and totally n00b unfriendly.

Ive loved the Paragon but its painfull to watch it get nerfed, sure the sunspear skill might of been powerfull but people still didnt even appreciate this.
Combining it with ToF wasn't as powerfull as claimed it was too conditional and burning was too difficult to spread i believe in RTS they call it 'theory craft'.

And that is why so many still stuck at Gate of Madness. I know what you're saying though, don't get me wrong. We can't expect everyone to think outside of the box or look at things from a different perspective.

Agree, that's why a guild team or some friends with heroes are more popular than pugs for Paragon. Experimental team build can't be use on pugs. Paragon they're like, Sonic Youth of Guild Wars.

Passive defense is a lazier method, because you don't even have to do anything. Just press your skills and c-space, there isn't even a need for a tank or caring about aggro. That's the largest criticism about passive defense among PvP players - it's a process that any newbie can do that involves pressing buttons when they recharge to cover absolutely all avenues of counterattack.

The only effort is the one-time investment of setting up a build that's slightly more complex than adding every skill that says 'deal X damage'.

Anyone unwilling to put in a few minutes to read it isn't likely to change their playstyle anyway.

If you can avoid playing with that majority then it should not be a problem. I have to say, that was a very well written opinion. I couldn't agree more about paragons, as the oft quoted combination of Aggressive Refrain and "Go For The Eyes" combined with a decent damage spear outputs a very high amount of damage. I took the new Paragon Hero, Hayda with me to do one of the master difficulty Eye Of The North quests yesterday and was surprised at just how strong she was.

In fact, my parties have changed a lot since last week - I frequently take Gwen as a frontline signet support character and I have turned Magrid and Jin into spearchuckers - no ressurect, but unparalleled single target DPS, not to mention excelent caster-lock. As always, I run Sousuke as a warder/prot, so he may have only 2 or 3 pure offense skills on his bar, but the duality of erruption combined with his wards can shut most melee pressure down completely. And then on top of that, he'll have Aegis or P-Spirt and Convert Hexes to take advantage of a high energy pool which isn't strained by his elementalst skills.

Of course this isn't to say warriors and their ilk have no place in a party any more, it just means they have to play their cards differently. The 'Stance Tank' is dead, I think we all can agree, and with it, a new type of competent warrior has been finding it's way into groups - the high DPS/Passive Support type. Did you know that Talon Silverwing has Crippling Slash in EoTN? That one ability, the ability to cripple, makes him a hundred times better than any of the other henchmen, as in this day and age of half decent mob ai and enemy scatter, cripple is one of the most powerful conditions in a players arsenal, where single target takedowns are often far more efficient than aoe.

The only question is, where does this leave the elementalist? Well, I've just kept doing what I do best. Yes, thats right, in this day and age of half decent mob ai and enemy scatter, hamstorm still works. Well it's not really hamstorm - it's just enchant yourself to the max, go in and chop stuff up with a combination of norn and warrior skills and hope the enemy didnt bring enchantment removal...

Any discussions about strategies must first disregard the PvE-only skills. Heroes cannot use them, so they are useless to essentially everyone.

I am amused to see a thread such as this in the sunset days of Guild Wars 1. Only an idealist or a fool would believe that the player's mind-set can be changed today, soon to be three years since their minds were last open to possibilities. The most EotN might achieve in the laughably stagnant PvE meta is dethroning Searing Flames.

Essentially everyone is a hero. Let it be known.

I am amused at how bad you are at PvE if you think Searing Flames is that good.


You can interrupt a few casts headed towards our team, or spread out against AoE, take small fragments of damage from all the defense on us, and fit another useful character on our team. (Paragons can fit enchant removal fairly effectively).

Where are the mesmers ? Interupt those nasty nuke before they hit you or bypass enemy defenses with enchantment removal.

There's also a lot of mesmer build that good at suppport like the having arcane conundrum which make enemy expose to lots of interrupt.Or those with hex and enchantment removal which is not really acknowledge by lots of player.

Having done dungeon in Eotn I found that many enemy group are designed to eliminate those tank > nuke > heal mindset and some of those wild spread builts.

Like Ominous Ooze which carry Vetera's Aura which make minions turn on thier master.Or a group of smite monk that focus on hex and condition removal.

Of course that they can't achieve those if they got interrupted in the first place.

From the time I first saw the Paragon showed in the NF preview, while I didn't want to play the class personally, I knew how valuable they would be in a party.
It makes me sad how practically nobody else saw this as well.

Interesting. Some fault has to lay clearly at the feet of the designers, some missions and quests are clearly designed to make certain classes less or appear less useful than others. This fuels peoples desire to take the easy route through the game.

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).

I love playing paragon, it's my second favorite profession after mesmer. Anyone who has not seen a paragon played well(same as assasin, mesmer, dervish etc) does not appreciate how much they bring to the party above and beyond the traditional mix. I recommend playing one.

It seems as though Anet learned their lesson, and has now in Gw:en gone back to the roots which made propecies such a great and compelling game

I always use a buff para in my team with my sf ele. Keep them blazing.

I just wonder ... where does this leave assassins?

There is little they can do for party, they can spike down targets, sure, is isnt it where their usefulness ends?

Somehow i cant see them fitting to Trinity party, but there is not that much place for them in Duality party either.

Few hexes, but assassin hexes are usually "selfish" (only working for caster), some conditions inflicting, but warrior/ranger/paragon do that just fine, but safer.

About complexity, there's really not many things easier to play than a Paragon while offering so much to your team.

You'll find you can safely spam GFTE or WY to provide yourself with an endless energy pool while also maintaining your Aggressive Refrain - and a lot of your party boosting skills can largely just be used on recharge, same goes for your attack skills. With enough GFTE mashing you should have the energy to be able to do that.

Assassins are generaly fine in areas that don't have enchantment removal - critical agility really is a must. A Moebious + Death Blossom build is normally very solid.

Hat off to the OP for the good post

For as much as I believe almost everything in the initial post I don't see it doing much for the general player base.

Malice Black is right, I don't want to be to negative in my post but I sometimes I despair at the general community.

Seeing how far mending/ healing hands whammos, flare spammers, healing monks with pets etc get in the game without really thinking about heir builds is shocking. Most of these players are unwilling to consider changing builds because they believe that these builds have got them through all the missions/quests so far. (the fact they may be carried in missions doesn't occur to them)

A step up from these players are those who have better skill bars but still almost never change skills as they travel around different missions. These players find a skill bar they like and never change it. In many cases they rely on certain key skills and will protest at any skill balance that threatens their build. (singular) The number of players that fall into these categories are not small unfortunately.

As the players increase in skill however we hit a barrier that separates a lot of players. This barrier is the Trinity described in the OP and also any other standard team build that is around. This barrier im talking about is successfully doing 95% of the game with certain builds. The success of builds like the Trinity means that players don't need to look past this point.
If it works why change it At this point pugs form on the basis of easy to roll builds and we have standardized builds that have a good chance of successes for many players. This never changes unless there is a major update to the game which may change how these builds work. However the pugs will move slower than most other teams at adapting to changes from new content like GWEN or skill balances nerfing cookie cutter builds.

This success barrier stops build developments going further for many players. For example how often do you see parties forming who ask for a minion master believing that it is neededfor the mission at hand . In many cases other classes would be ignored and necros forced to run MM because the other players don't think curses/ blood would be of any use.

However going on a more positive note.
Many players do go past the success barrier looking for new ways of doing things for many reasons. Maybe they want to play classes which are not usually welcomed in teams like paragons, or maybe they are bored running the same stuff all the time.

Also I think the mobs in GWEN are far better, the mobs have generally better skill bars and encourage more use of mesmers, sins etc since its less about nuking the crap of everything surrounding the whammo.



Many players can run quite different builds inside guild teams or with a few friends and heroes etc. However this wont change the mentality of most pugs which leads to some questions.
If we can play with guild/friends does it matter how good bad pugs are?
have heroes replaced the use of pugs in most places anyway?
These questions i don't expect to be answered here without going off topic but they should be kept in the back of the mind,

In the few places where pugs are needed they tend to be very strict about what they want/need. This is where pre set builds like the Trinity come into play. Why explain to people why they should drop the simple Trinity and explain why they should have another team build and then give that out hoping players understand what they are expected to do with it. Just going in with the tank and nukers will be quicker than explaining to pugs the different things expected of them.

I think the Trinity is just the simplest type of build out there and if it needs to change for whatever reason it will but the next most simple build will become the new pug favorite which everyone who wants to pug will be required to learn however in the future paragons and other classes may make an appearance. New build construction will remain within guilds and friends list. However I would encourage people to use new things more often because it keeps the game fresh and will make players more aware of different skills and skill combos than using the same template over and over again for everything

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

If we go by sheer number of player-allied characters in all PvE instances, then heroes vastly outnumber players.

Well, I am glad that your total misunderstanding of my comment amused you at least.

It leaves the Assassins in town, obviously.

I actually think the point of the article is more basic than trinity -> duality. Really, it's a matter of importing high-end PvP design philosophy into PvE - specifically, don't assume you can hold aggro. The entire concept of the Trinity stands or falls according to the validity of that assumption. Consider: if we can reasonably assume that the tank can hold aggro all the time, the Trinity remains more effective than a passive defense duality - ball 'em up and nuke the **** out of them is still the fastest way to get things done, if you can actually ball them up to begin with.

Once you throw away the ability to hold aggro, common sense naturally leads you to constant, party-wide defense in the form of shouts, enchantments, wards, and spirits. It also naturally leads to 'balanced' GvG-type team building where the frontliners provide straight pressure, the midliners have hybrid support/pressure roles, and the backline is strictly defensive.

I remember your (i.e., Avarre's) advice when HM was first introduced: do everything that made GvG boring; you will win. I see this article as an elaboration of that basic idea.