[Article] Team Structure beyond the Trinity

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Apparently you read like, a paragraph of the OP.

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.

Agreed, the Charr are push overs.

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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.

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".

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?

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

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.

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.

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.
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.

In PvP, a human mind will not just stand there whacking on a warrior while the casters happily keep him covered.

In PvE, they may will just do that if you setup right, thus why they are referred to as tanks here.

I don't even really think 'lower level' areas are alone in not needing anything but the holy trinity.

I can hench alone or with friends pretty much any part in the game with the holy trinity. Why would you bother bringing defense or interrupts when the monsters just die anyways?

But yeah, the elite missions, and Hard Mode definitely underline the effectiveness of the classes outside of the holy trinity. However, outside of the harder areas/Hard Mode, there isn't any logical reason to deviate from the holy trinity.

Its cliche, but the best defense is a good offense. Until the offense isn't enough to tide you over, which means you'll have to be defensive =p. But you should explore maximum offensive possibilities first, which entails packing the greatest punch, before you go about finding compromises or downright defensive measures (ie SS nec will disable+damage, MM will damage + absorb damage, ranger will shut down casters, mesmer will disable/shutdown, paragons provide passive defense and dmg, etc).

The other key element is speed. If I decide to go 1 warrior, 5 eles and 2 monks, as long as the elementalists mow everything down quickly, there's no need for an SS, or a mesmer, or a ranger, or a MM, who's sources of damage are more time based. All you need is some general ball-up from the warrior, and then everything is dead in two seconds flat. A lot of people advocate mindless diversity, as if advocating diversity automatically made them correct. Diversity might be fun, but it sure isn't efficient. The most time efficient method of damage is just straight up direct damage, and that would mean elementalists.

That is not that fast is at sounds, your warrior has time to ball up mobs, wait a seccond to make sure aggro stays. All that outside monk aggro. That costs precious time.

Once he dies or mismanages, all hell breaks loose as OP pointed out and your loss of efectiveness is greatly reduced as you eles start to die. You have little to deal with bosses who live long enough to retarget. If you face popups or get double teamed, your eles start to die. Deaths cost time too.

Besides that, GG when you find fire resitant enemies.

---

Also, you dont seem to understant one thing: Duality teams offence does not necesarily suck.

Its matter of choice if you go 100% offence or if you are defensive. You can mow down stuff faster than eles and have enough utility to crack harder foes.

And there are way WAY better combos than 5 fire eles for damage - especially for clumped targets.

Look up theese skills:

* Mark of Pain (SS damage sucks badly when you compare it to what this does in organized group.

* Splinter Weapon

They can both mop down any mob in second flat, without any lengthy preparations

This is pure arrogance, as if playing a game in the most complex or most efficient/resilient manner speaks of high intelligence and competence. It's a way to prove how better and holier you are while forgetting that most people just play the game the way they want because they want to have fun and not maximize some virtual efficiency.

I'm for competent and hardy setups, I like Avarre's article and prefer well-established teams (if Rob would not afk in the few hourse I have :P ) but trying to look down upon all those who are not trying to approach Guild Wars scientifically isn't helping. There should be more calls for coordinated PUGs, this forum for sure has a section for that. It might lessen the outcries about randoms. =>

Apparently it is you who doesn't get it =P.

I would change my build accordingly in areas where I believe my casters would die. Full on offensive power isn't effective if they die. I actually play the warrior, and I don't even bother balling the monsters up. As long as the monks currently on the team can handle the aggro, the monsters will be relatively clumped up. The AoE spam will catch and kill them... especially if the AoE spam is interspersed throughout the party.

Mark of Pain and Splinter weapon aren't actually frontal damage. Splinter weapon is only exceptionally good with barrage, which requires better balling (the aoe for barrage isn't that great) and mark of pain is even more situational than anything else.

I'll repeat myself, since you seem to have difficulty understanding:

I want to be as fast as possible while ensuring the highest possible chance of completion. If the enemies are laughable (ie all non super-dungeon areas) then there's no need for the defense. There's no point in bringing defense/damage mitigation that will be used minimally. Most monster problems can be countered with pulling along a wall and forcing them to ball up that way.

The ONLY problem with full-on offense is when your party cannot kill the enemy quickly. Of course, if I recognize there to be a problem, I will switch out from full-on offense and swap some elementalists for more disable type henchmen.

Paragons rock in PvE, on the rare occasion I sacrifice a Paragon hero its out of dire necessity, the combination of both defensive and offensive buffs, especially in areas previously unexplored is simply unmatched by other classes imho. Not to mention that bloody general seems to be alive when everything else is dead!

The trinity is alive and well but with an 8 man setup there's room for at least 2 other classes (if you go 2-2-2), I firmly believe that a Paragon should be one of those.

As for efficiency..well..I play GW for fun and this is more fun to me, always has been, I've done countless Tombs runs and all with balanced parties because its just more fun and gives more players a chance.

Good article great arguement............will it change people's opionions of Paragons.......................................... .................................................. ..............Most likely not ....
but u converted me

not many grps willing to get into multi niche grps. TRINITY is well known and well stay that way

It comes down to how many jobs you want to assign each individual player. The best thing tanknspank has going for it is that all of the characters are single purpose. The tank is responsible for nothing other than rounding up mobs and holding aggro. Eles are responsible for nothing other than AoE damage. Monks do red bars. This is effective because of how much it simplifies gameplay. A weaker player you pick up is better served by this sort of build because he only has one job to do. Better players get to refine and start to master their single purpose.

Tanknspank is a one trick build. It handles every situation in exactly the same way. Depending on what you are facing, different skills might need to be swapped in to make your strategy work. The greatest strength of tanknspank is that some version of it works on every mob if executed correctly.

The weakness of the archtype is that if you don't have the right version of the build for the mobs you're facing, or if there are errors in execution, the build lacks any sort of flexibility to handle those situations, and the overall power of the builds, outside of ideal cases, is very low. Usually if things don't go right you end up having to wipe and recover via Rebirth.

When you start allowing each character to perform more than one job, things start to open up quite a bit. This gets into what Avarre is talking about in the original topic. When your offense serves defensive purposes as well, you get to add more offense into your build, letting you blow through things faster...in addition, you gain a much heartier defense, since several characters contribute a little bit to the overall party defense. Similarly, you remove single points of failure through all the redundant offense and defense.

The best thing about playing multifunctional characters is the feeling that you have the ability to do something, to respond to situations. Playing in typical tanknspank, my character is usually very good in ideal situations, but if anything goes wrong I am helpless to do anything about it. Most of the characters in those builds work the same way. When anything unexpected happens, your characters are all bad, and you usually have little choice but to run away, wipe if necessary, and reset everything to try again. With a bunch of robust characters and tools instead, every player has something to respond to situations with, allowing you to adapt on the fly. As you get better this gives you enormous margins for error - which lets you play faster, looser, and generally blast through mobs faster to reach your goals.

I don't usually play it that way though as i switch targets got use to this after the AI changed when they scattered in any event I will switching around targets

Kudos to you, Avarre, on a thoughtful and well-written post.

(Kudos to you, Avarre, on a thoughtful and well-written post. )
^What he said..
You set yourself to a daunting task, and helped alot of players to understand the possibilities available to them.
*applause*
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PvE Helpful Hint #2994: The White Mantle is NOT your fireplace..><

If you've read anything Izzy's written recently you'll realize why this entire chunk of your thesis is totally invalid.

The designers have decided that passive defense is bad for GvG and thus bad for the game, which is why you'll see a pattern of nerfs to passive skills and buffs to active ones.

edit:

I should add that dual purpose offense (ie: spiteful + reckless) isn't passive defense, it's offense and shutdown combined.

Just curious Ensign, but would you agree that Tanknspank these days is appropriate for most PvE content? (ie even if the tank loses all the aggro it doesnt matter anyway) Therefore, since 'tanknspank' probably has the most amount of skills devoted to just killing the enemy, it would also be more useful than a more diverse group/skillset for most PvE content?

Which doesn't change the fact that the amount of passive defense from Prophecies -> EoTN has increased. What is your point?

The real bonus of mark of pain and splinter is that they're only one skill slot. A rit spamming splinter weapon has 7 other slots with which to put together a pretty darned strong defense, so you don't have to rely on splinter working nicely in the first place. It's an awesome tool that instagibs anything that balls up, if they don't, that's fine, you have a whole bag of tricks leftover. Oh, and splinter on your melees > splinter on barragers.

To be fair, if the monsters are lame enough that you're never in danger of dying, just about any offense will do. What matters are the builds you bring when your abilities are stressed. True, you can compensate for your utter lack of defense with careful pulling, but you could go a heck of a lot faster if your build was capable of blasting through everything without a second thought.

It's really, really rare that a character's offense is so important that they can't spare a single skill slot to make a more resilient, dynamic character. Splashing watch yourself on a warrior, or aegis on an ele provides extremely powerful group defense at really low cost, while still maintaining a strong offense.

[skill]Splinter Weapon[/skill]

Plus

[skill]Cyclone Axe[/skill] or [skill]Triple Chop[/skill] or [skill]Hundred Blades[/skill]

Equals

Sex.


I'm strongly considering phasing out my Nuker tendencies in favour of Rits with Splinter Weapon casting on myself / Minions / Jora.
Minion Bomber Rit + Spirits / Splinter Weapon + Morgahn? Wait... no room for Jora. I need a place for +size boobs in the party.

My argument is that for most of GW PvE you don't NEED to be more resilient at all. You don't even need careful pulling. You just need lots of damage and nothing else.

Why have a more 'resilient' skillbar when there is no need for it?

Sadly, the hero rit is a moron, so you really have to have a human rit. Unless you want your monks splintered for some unknown reason. I'm currently running myself as a rit, Koss as a triple chop/cyclone axe warrior, and melonnia as a reaper's sweep derv. Things die. Fast. Significantly faster than with SF, actually.

Because you tend to increase your team's DPS, get rid of all the time spent pulling, have tools to deal with situations where everything goes FUBAR, and you generally kick all sorts of ass.

DPS goes up because you're able to pack some offense on characters that would otherwise spend all their time staring at red bars.

You don't have to round up the monsters in neat little piles, because they're going to die without hurting you anyway. you just charge in, and everything dies.

It's really important to bring resilient groups to areas you don't know, especially in GWEN in which the dungeons have all sorts of gimmicks not solved by tank + nuke, at least not without some tweaks.

You're not answering my question though. My question states 'Why run a resilient bar when there is no need for it?'.

If I don't need a resilient bar to kill enemies or pull, then what justification is there against me packing on as much damage as possible with little or no defense with the exception of two monks?


If I have a fully offensive team that won't die in the area I'm using them in, then I don't need a mesmer, or a paragon. They're just a waste of time.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that classes outside of the holy trinity are not always the best choice. Many people here understandably whine and moan about the trinity, but it's getting to the point where people are now advocating with the same mindless idiocy the idea of 'anti-trinity', in the same way those stupid PUGs insist upon the trinity.

There are instances where the holy trinity is much better than anything else in the game. Furthermore, these instances are fairly common (ie most of GW PvE). The only time the trinity fails to shine are in areas where their damage output overwhelms the measly defense the typical trinity group has - these are where alternative classes really begin to shine.

What you dont understant that people advocate it because it is more effective, not because it is "anti trinity". If trinity was best, i would be here advocating it.

You sacrifice no offence at all (on contrary, you gain a lot of it thought diversifiying your options and using stuff that amplifies other character offence, but ever since you proclaimed park of pain too situational, i have no hope that you will understand).

You gain ability to deal with situations and enemies where trinity fails. And trinity fails for way more reasons than just tank and monks being outdpsed. loss of aggro, popup enemies, patrols...

It is all about fact that there is no reason NOT to take that defence. You sacrifice nothing, you compromise nothing.

There is no reason to run tank-nuke when your criteria for perfect build are speed and efectiveness of enemy dispatching.