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.