Guild Wars Holy Trinity - KillTenRats.com

The holy trinity is well known. The DPS fight the mobs with damage. The Healer fights the damage from the mobs. And, the Tank fights the agro from the DPS and Healer. In World of Warcraft the formula is pretty well set for easy gameplay. Lord of the Rings gets a bit hazier with their use of hybrid classes, range tanking, and tank swapping, but for the most part it follows the doctrine of the holy trinity.

Guild Wars came very close to shirking the entire thing. Agro does not really exist like it does in World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online. Each battle with PvE mobs is reminiscent of a PvP battle. Players have 8 bodies against the team of enemies to kill. Because PvE can feel so much like PvP (especially in comparison to the stark contrast of PvE/PvP in World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online), ArenaNet moved away from the holy trinity to a more enlightened trinity: the three lines.

Read the rest here.

Saw this and thought others might want to read it too!

That post is about 3-4 years late as far as relevance goes.

In general PvE, you don't need the holy trinity or the "3 lines". You can just run 3 necros and win.

In elite PvE, you just run SF/other tank plus some OP PvE skills (and shadowsteps, etc. to make aggro easier to gain). So, it's more like 2 lines. 1 Tank/aggro catcher, and 7+ casters.

The end.

*sigh*

Did you even read the blog post Karate? Seriously? Flame me if you must but honestly, Ravious was "explaining" the Guild Wars trinity as compared to other games (not everyone knows about Guild Wars) and setting it up for his ultimate idea at the end. He wasn't giving you strategies on how to win.

There was a prominent article published online around 3 years ago explaining the GW trinity. If people cared about it, they would have read it back then.

And....I was simply pointing out that he was wrong about the most meta gameplay currently. Which makes the article seem a little strange in hindsight.

Three years ago? I wasn't playing GW three years ago. I appreciate what the OP posted because its new to me. Its not to you. You must be so leet or what?

Heres the funniest thing about message boards like this. You get individuals, who because they've played the game for five years or whatever think they speak for everybody. You don't. You speak for yourself. Stop pretending you're more important than that. Or please at least acknowledge you are pretending. Lol...

I would enjoy your learned comments correcting me on the site.

Yeah, I really don't see the difference between other MMO's Holy Trinity and GW's 3 lines so I thought the comparison was rather lacking. The only interesting bit was where he suggested that no profession should be "the healer" and I think Arena-Net agrees with this since monks have Smiting, Ritualists have Channeling/Communing, and Paragons have Spear Mastery. It was the players who individually chose that some professions should be "the healer", not Arena-Net.

Anyway, I appreciate that the author tried to rekindle interest on a 3-4 years old game.

Agreed with Taco. No need for arrogant pride. And SF is likely getting nerfed in a few weeks so it doesn't need to be mentioned. And Sabway works BECAUSE it IS the GW version of the trinty. Frontline = MM. Midliner = SS hexer. Backline = N/Rt healer. Just because they are all necros doesn't change the role those characters play in the build.

Interesting article. Definitely useful. I know it all already, but it is still true and nice to see on a semi-major gaming site. I always find I have a real hard time explaining to my friends who play other MMOs just how GW's profession system works.

Edit: Ravious, you are pretty correct. KJ is just whining because gimmicks exist. But those gimmicks existing doesn't change the fact that the TYPICAL build does use those concepts.
The only thing I think that could need a little better explanation is the role of the front line, not as tanks, but as damage dealers. That is the BIG difference between GW and other games, and it just doesn't quite come across clearly in the article.

If you lurk around a bit more on this forum, you'll see countless examples that don't fit how that article explains the game and the professions.

No offense.

Well I don't think there is just "one way" to explain Guild Wars and professions. I'm sure for every example provided you could find a counter-example as well. That's the great thing about games, we all play for different reasons. We all play for different goals and objectives.

Well, because GW has such open ended professions, they can spec into a lot of things. There is no "DPS class." There are classes that can provide DPS... but they can also hex, snare, interrupt, etc etc etc

The roles of backline/midline/frontline are not tied to profession, but to roles those professions play in a particular team build, which is very unique to GW. About the closest thing you can do to that in other games is to spec a tank to deal moderate DPS with a 2 handed weapon. But that is no where close to the sheer versatility of most professions in GW.

Actually, I wasn't. The reason PvE elite area time records are made is because of gimmicks like that. All games have gimmicks. They're just part of playing.

And honestly, I enjoy a lot of them.

Don't put words in my mouth and don't justify the fanboy-ness of this thread.

DO NOT TROLL PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY ARE NEW TO THE GAME

Especially ones that are actually actively trying to figure new stuff out. It's fine to insult people who are drawing genitals on the map, its another to insult someone for being curious about and trying to learn new game mechanics in a polite manner. Behavior like that is the most asininely arrogant way to drive new people away and give the community a bad name.

I don't really understand all those attacking others in this thread, when it's an article attempting to explain to those who don't know about Guild Wars, how Guild Wars compares to other games. It's kind of amusing though. So I'll play too.

Why would I search for "holy trinity" ... Just on a random chance that I might find an article discussing DPS/healing/tank? How would I even know that Guild Wars has this?

Also, I am curious as to this "prominent" article. Could we get a link? I think that might be informative since it's been such a long time to read that. Thanks!

Except in GW, the healers are the tanks, the nukers are the healers, and the tanks are DPS.

Lol, so Effin true.

Gotta love the zeal of mods around here. <3 I love you guys, really

Constuctive then: THIS THREAD DELIVERS! GW2 will be chock full of self heals


We are very zealous! <3

I would prefer it if the holy trinity was incorporated into GW. It's just one aspect of video game that I always enjoyed

Unfortunately this is the case in a game where "vanilla threat" does not exist. Because the only way for warriors, aka the tanks, to maintain aggro was through complicated, gimmick exploiting pulls against walls etc with the party half the compass away, GW didn't have PvE tanking and so all that extra armour that warriors had meant nothing because the mobs usually end up ignoring him anyway - which is why SY needed to be invented.

With difficulty=larger mobs in this game, the further you progress the less effective the tank becomes. Most people I know who play normal areas, or even HM normal areas, will just bring 8 ranged classes cause they did better AoE dps than a melee class.

Even the higher armour of a warrior became a moot point, because skills like Shadow Form, Obsidian Flesh or Spell Breaker mean so much more than 100 armour ever could. Failing that the monk can tank. Protective Spirit + Shield of Absorption = invincible even without the 55 HP set up - and the sad thing is this combo becomes more powerful the worse your party is. This is why 90% of EotN content is completed by 600/smite or a SF sin and not by a party with a warrior as a tank.

These broken mechanics were needed to make up for the departure from the traditional "Holy Trinity" in GW PvE. Without "vanilla threat" the high armour classes were just single target DPS that, should they be lucky enough to be targeted, died slower than a monk. The protection line is needed to turn the entire party into a tank because preventing them from being attacked via threat management doesn't exist.

The article finishes with an idea of a game without healers, but all classes able to heal. I liked healing in both GW and WoW (WoW was more rewarding due to the Holy Trinity though) and I don't want to see that role removed. Diablo was a game where you had squishies and tanks and it worked well without a healing class (potting had something to do with this I guess) but I want a MMO to be a co-operative balanced party experience. I never had trouble finding a healer in WoW, at least not on the same level as finding a monk in GW. I think this is partly because in WoW I can bring a Paladin, Priest, Druid or Shaman. In GW the monk was the only intended healer, anything else was either using monk skills or running the inferior ritualist (slower and lacking the protection line) heals. I personally don't like the article's proposed "all character's heal" idea. I think PvP minded people need to accept that PvE balanced for PvP is a horrible idea and it is what broke GW PvE. As far as using the proposed idea for organised PvP, I have no opinion, I only like the factions PvP arenas - which aren't organised.

I think GW *could* have been massively open-ended in grouping but the problem was the same site you're reading right now and others like them. The pvxwiki, and precursor sites, and so on. Authoritative opinions on everything are forged on these kind of sites, and with this behavior there's the end of creative exploration. I think the only way any game can really counter single builds owning kind of creep, is for the company that makes them to nerf the everloving crap out of these builds as early as they're becoming popular. But then you're at war with the players, because people will still try to exploit any window of overpowered gameplay. So really, the idea of a open MMO is probably ruined forever by the fact that these games work in sync with an internet community, who can day in and day out coordinate exactly how to ruin it.

Every MMO is exactly like every other MMO, so what generalizes to one is going to generalize to every other game in the exact same fashion. Does that sound ridiculous? It is; and it is the basis for the "holy trinity." This type of article comes from people trying to force paradigms from other games into Guild Wars. Are there MMO's where the standard format is a low offense, high defense 'tank' grabbing 'aggro' while the squishy DPS finish off mobs; of course there are, but to automatically assume this is the paradigm for any MMO is absurd and why such articles talking about the GW 'holy trinity' are so criticized.

Even then if we trace the roots of this back to EQ, there was no trinity. If you didn't have buffs and debuffs it didn't work. You had your tank, you had your healers, you had your DPS, but you also had buffs, you had debuffs, for most things you had crowd control (though crowd control was usually picked up by some of the buffers, debuffers, and DPS, but it wasn't uncommon for some characters to have crowd and add control being their main focus in the party.

There is a new holy trinity:
Shadow Form
Essence of Celerity
Sliver Armor

I lol'd. Hopefully this won't be for long. Then it'll just be some other combination. Probably involving Obsidian Flesh.

In GW when playing solo calling a target often destroys the holy trinity setup: Unlike an rpg (say Dragon Age) every hench/hero will attack the same enemy. This not only affects breaking aggro, but also energy managment; often its quite useless when ALL partymembers spend energy on the same opponent.

For those reasons Sabway and teamsupporting combo's (like Paragon/warrior) outfavor (is that a word lol?) theoretically better 'holy trinity' setups.

After reading that entire thing, it's just more proof that skills like Shadow Form and Ether Renewal need to die. They not only break the line, but they shatter it.

Arguably, If I were in control of skills, I'd try and limit or eliminate all 'tanking' skills. Defy Pain, Obsidian Flesh... they all promote a play style that Guild wars doesn't, and shouldn't have. It's why you never see a balanced team running a SF assassin. Because tanking does not work. You pretty much have to use SF for farming or with a group, the latter of which should definitely never be possible. SF based clears break every rule of what GW has come to be. Instead of Frontline-midline-backline it's 8 freaking tanks that, usually, AoE DPS.

and thanks to Ele's, you can get away with absolutely no monk in your group. Or rit, for that matter. one of them can prot/heal a balanced team in even end-game areas.

Frankly, I think Anet needs to enforce the system that made the game what it is, rather then cater to the ones who just want a free-to-play WoW

Let's reverse that and see how silly that is.

"and thanks to monks, you can get away with absolutely no ele in your group. Or rit, for that matter. one of them can prot/heal a balanced team in even end-game areas."

Since there are quite a few professions (all of them actually) that can do damage, let's make it so only one or two can.

Warrior's have high armour due to their prominent position on the battlefield and to make others want to target the squishies first allowing the Warrior to pump out more damage.

Guild Wars may have Monk skills be primarily the healing skills, but primary attributes and armour are the only real things tha differentiate professions, energy bonuses are part of the armour by the way. Meaning that different professions can heal as well, just in different ways and generally if you don't have one of these professions that can heal your party shouldn't need anything more than self-heals.

Having PvE balanced around PvP would work great, especially considering Guild Wars was intended to have PvP as the end-game, if this was the actual case. Really though the groups were higher leveled, largely of one or two professions in a group and only a few skills per creature.

If you think GW doesn't have a Holy Trinity, then you haven't played much GW.

Holy Trinity was the ONLY way to beat UW/FoW when the game was new. Tank, Monk, DPS. The ultimate 'trinity' was Monk, Monk, SS Necro.

Trinity has shifted now to using SF as the tank, but it's still the same as every other MMO. Grab/hold aggro, let other team members blow it up.

I remember posting about the Trinity on GWO in late 2005 during the Sorrow's Furnace days and getting roasted by the membership for claiming it was the most efficient approach.

History appears to have vindicated me...in a sense. The GWO people were correct to complain that the classic Fire Ele wasn't necessarily the fastest way of cleaning up the monsters. (Back then a single minionmancer was a monster. This was before the minion cap.) But the Tank/heals combo was obviously optimal, and the MM needed a pure damage dealer to serve as a primer for that engine.

The trouble with SF has always been that it eliminated the need for the heals and the DPS. One stop shopping for survivability AND damage is, well, imba.

I don't think that was even true when Proph was out, because "nukers" like eles equipped with earth magic (Armor of Earth, Magnetic Aura, Kinetic Armor, Ward Against Elements) can tank better then a warrior, and various other insane things. Such absurdly powerful armor buffing spells on a nuker would be absurd in a "traditional" MMO like WoW. In GW, at this point though any class can be anything due to PvE skills. These PvE skills are incredibly overpowered in general.

The holy trinity is very weak in GW compared to other MMOs. Compared to WoW which has a very strong tank, healer, nuker rules. Mages can die in 3-4 hits, easily, while Warriors can pummel on something for a very long time, but do almost no DPS. Heals in WoW are incredibly powerful too, a healer can single target heal a target from near empty to full with a single heal, and pretty much spam this over and over without issue, Mana takes awhile to drain. The main issue in WoW is avoiding aggro if you are a healer/mage, because you die so ridiculously fast (seconds).

Tankers in WoW are equipped to do stuff like that. In WoW the tanker has abilities that can force a mob to attack him, Warriors (the "tank" class) in WoW have tons of abilities that build aggro on a mob. It's usually if these abilities fail that the party wipes.

Actually the problem is that GW was supposed to be play PvE for a while, learn the basic skills and then move to PvP.

And you can't really use taunt skills to force players to attack you (well maybe you can insult someone) in PvP.

The rest is AI problems and Anet trying to create challenge by making mobs more powerful by boosting numbers (both stats and number of mobs) and not play by the rules, instead of investing on better mobs builds/balance and/or AI and making the skills used by the human players to require higher skill (that is do less damage, having higher casting cost, having higher activation cost, having smaller durations, higher recharge).

That would have forced players to be more conscious when to use their skills.

But no. We have a slugfest where battles end in seconds - one way or the other.

An important point to bring to the table (and I'm not picking on words): GW doesn't have any trinity in it, but MMO designs (including GW to a certain extent) tend to be such that trinity works well. I'm not claiming that the GW designers didn't intend it that way, but the verity idea of "trinity" (tank-DPS-heal or 1st/2nd/3rd line) was pushed by players. Players take it that it's what the game is asking for, but it's not. It's just that overall it's the simplest strategy to have throughout the whole content of GW, and allows players to easily identify to one of the 3 and thus ask people where they fit in. Ofc it's a clear gameplay restriction, but not one imposed by the game itself. People can play balanced AND bring a bit of everything, but it's not as efficient.

Yes, it isn't as efficient (This is a reinforcing post to yours Fril, just in case bad communication happens ).

Stuff like splinter weapon and mark of pain and other AoE spells?

Work better with a balled up mob.

The most efficient way to create a ball of monsters?

Sending someone to attract aggro - There is the tank of RPGs.

Easiest way to keep your party alive?

Having someone taking all damage (any monk knows it is pretty trivial to keep someone else alive if the monk himself is left alone) - again there is the tank.

Additionally, the most dangerous monsters to stop are casters - it is pretty trivial to get up some aegis or ward to counter physicals.

To stop casters basically you have Save yourselves and There is nothing to fear (or PS/PB and SB on everyone on your party - hello ER E/Mo) or mass disruption like maelstrom, cop/cof, technobable, aoe knockdown which again works better on balled up mobs.

Basically balanced running E/Mo and/or Imbagons can have defense on the level of SF/OF tank and spank, but not the same offense unless they tank, but then, SF tanks only take 1 dude to do all that is accomplished by 2 ER/Mo and an Imbagon, leaving more space for AoE damage.

Even when SF is nerfed, the most efficient way to deal damage is by balling up mobs - most of the AoE skills have no cap. Nerfing skills like SF basically caps the number of mobs that can be balled up/number of party members dedicated to kill, but don't change the basic concept that is more efficient to kill balled up mobs and easier to keep alive a single target.

Just ewww. Smiting, Ritualists and Paragons have been a problem whenever they've been viable.

Hint: Strong defense on top of strong offense is broken.

the classic GW combat system is very top heavy. the frontline deals the most damage, the midline either help the frontline deal even MORE damage, or hinder the bad guys so they deal LESS damage, and the backline keeps everyone alive. this is the way it has always worked, and still works this way to some extent, even in the three necro era. last time i checked, that team combo still features at least one melee, usually an A/W.

it's a system that translated well into pvp.

Trinity in GW? Don't make me laugh.

Firenukers exploiting people holding items, obscene Petbarrage Minion rushes, extreme behavioral dungeons, crazy casterspikes behind people exploiting pathfinding, the first MoP wave, the running of the bears, Cryway, the Terra-Eles and their 4-way split after chests were introduced, the creeping takeover of Shadow Form, the 600 Chat&Farm at the CoF, DoE Heroway, the rise of the second MoP spike... ..there is no end.

Compared to the diversity of high level, high crazy approaches in Guild Wars, every other MMO looks like a sad piece of abandon-ware stuck in a Dungeon & Dragons gameplay loop from the 80ies.

So far Guild Wars has been one crazy ride offering more gameplay variety than the whole MMO industry combined. You might be envious of the people involved in this madness, but there is something more to it than money. GW always had this idea of not rewarding players for whatever misfit build they fantasized should destroy the game. GW is not called WoW, STO, WAR, or some other acronym sold on a franchise or copy-cat instinct. Instead the GW-players need to bow to the necessity arising from extreme areas. They built characters only for those special missions. Grinding up such a character takes more time than most people will spend on Mass Effect 2.

In almost five years the Elite-Area Pugs have come a long way when it comes to the tools they bring to the table. ArenaNet might try to patch them, but all it results in are new ways to break the game, new ways to outperform the income of regular players. If you want to run with this crowd, then stop complaining and abandon your main. Sink your teeth into making characters only for very extreme uses. The way pugs approach UW/FoW today does not depend on Shadow Form. It's using Shadow Form, but do not believe for a second that without it we would see teams staying together playing Random Failway. Especially when a two way split is already ingrained in the quests of an elite area, the PvE skills and Consets will push it as far as they can and nothing but a complete rewrite of UW skillbars is going to stop it.

None of the methods nerfed for overpoweredness really deserved to be removed forever, sometimes I think it would be so nice if they were on a monthly cycle so people could see the amazing diversity arising from a few small tweaks. We sacrificed diversity of gameplay on the altar of greed and Barbie doll gameplay and do our best to continue doing so until the last teamfarming Pug has left the game. A relentless power struggle between players worshiping lone-wolfing linear E-Genitalia enlargements and the little ingenuity left in three meager Temple of Ages districts. How pathetic is that?

Call me cheap, but join me on the speedclearing rage and we at least can still have fun as a team, instead of playing a distributed solo-RPG competitive farmgrinding game.

Wording aside, my point is that in any higher end PvE, ER eles would be much prefered over monks OR rits.

Ele's should not be able to heal better then monks or rits, and don't take that slippery slope route. The entire Ele profession revolves around Nuking, Spiking, and Utility. Having an ele heal better then monks/rits would be like a Warrior being a better Minion Master then a Necro. It doesn't make sense on a number of levels.

Heres an example, even. Spawning Power was buffed because Necros used Weapon Spells way better then Rits did. RoJ was nerfed because (among other things) it did far better damage then any nuking class. (a worse example, but nonetheless...)

There's a line between synergy and overpowered, and that line is crossed when a class can fill a role, that is "exclusive' to another class, much better using it as a secondary profession then the primary profession.

Necromancers are known to heal better by some.

Elementalists should be allowed to play as a healer regardless of what you think their original role is as long as both have their advantages.

Maybe people wouldn't say monks are inferior if monks were to bring Prot Spirit and decent energy management for once.

I don't see how you can be so conservative with profession roles in Guild Wars. I mean, out of all games...

Only because people sucked. Or, more specifically, that's what people were used to in other games. Then IWAY became really popular in HoH, and it started trickling down through the better PvE players that warrior damage was pretty darn good. I still remember the YouTube video of a 6 warrior, 2 monk party blowing up SF back when "everyone" knew that the gear trick was the only way to do it. Was a real shocker on the forums, I remember.

Ahh, my wording on it all seems to be lacking. I meant to say that it's more of -how- well other classes do the job as a secondary compared to their primary counterpart. Necros trade duration/healing power for more energy management, but Eles can spam Infuse every second, while spamming Spirit Bond and Prot Spirit on recharge with flawless energy management and actually gaining a crapload of health when not spamming infuse.

So, Yes, It's not -what- classes are doing a role, so much as how well they are doing it. Sorry if my wording sucked haha.