Should SW:TOR start de-emphasizing the trinity?

ok, while i neither hate nor love the trinity it has real problems, and it has been done many times, im up for something more interesting. Still i know this whole entire game and class structure has been developed with the trinity in mind, you cannot remove it.

I think the people who think you must have a trinity, or that without a trinity it becomes a burn down for everything arent really understanding things.

Not having a the trinity simply means you dont have the same static i can only do 1 thing with each class type thing. A battle can still break down into taking damage dealing damage and support, but a class does not have to be only one thing. that would be the breaking of the trinity.

it doesnt mean there will be no strategy, but rather decentralizing one role in battle toward the whole group. bouncing hate, managing group buffs, changing focuses during combat, sounds very strategic, and interesting.

How? More than likely, at some point, either the Tanks going to have to taunt or the healer is going to have to heal regardless. And if not, the encounter basically becomes a DPS zerg fest where you're trying to kill the boss before it kills you. The only way around this would be if everyone had taunts/defensive skills and healing abilities. And if they did, why would you ever reroll an alt? You'd see all the game has to offer, gameplay wise in one play through. The trinity adds variety and encourages multiply play throughs. There's no way Bioware would take away something that both works as a gameplay variety function and also a time sink. They'd honestly be crazy to. I agree that they could make some encounters rely less on it (which is already the case anyway... only tank and spank encounters rely solely on the trinity system), but the trinity system is the best method available currently.

youd roll and alt for different playstyles and ways of dealing with the probelms.

For example, what a healer is doing is really a form of mitigating dmg over time.

One class may have a big heal
another class may have the ability to block a hit
another class may have the ability to stun the enemy

............

There actually is a simple way to increase the options at least without a major overhaul.

Let's check the classic trinity, there actually are 5 roles in the classic trinity that can be seen in 3 groups:

1-Tank: deals mediocre damage, aggroes the boss and mitigates damage. needs focused healing.
2-Tank healing: deals little or no damage and heals the tank.
3-Group healing: deals little or no damage and heals the group.
4-Ranged dps: deals high damage and gets little or no damage depending on the encounter.
5-Melee dps: deals high damage and gets little or mediocre damage depending on the encounter.

SWTOR follows the same rule but we have actually seen many alternative roles even in WoW.

-Kiter: replaces the tank, aggroes the boss/adds and takes little or no damage. deals little damage. Doesn't require a dedicated healer.
-Buffer: deals little or mediocre damage and buffs the group so they can do whatever they do better and be able to kill the boss.
-Debuffer: deals mediocre to high damage and weakens the boss so the group can kill the boss.
-CCer: disables multiple adds and let them be killed 1 by 1.

With such options that can replace one another one can provide a little more breathing room to the groups and add some replay value to the game.

But this requires a class and attribute overhaul, here's how:
The tanks and healers have to use the classes main stats for mitigating/healing (healers do this atm). E.g. Jedi Guardian tanks should use STR instead of defense/absorb ratings to mitigate damage, Trooper vanguards should use Aim etc. and without resetting talents and/or changing gear they should be able to change their role with 1 click. Same with other roles such as debuffing and kiting and every class should be able to apply 2-3 roles with no gear/talent reset, so that any group of classes can hope to find the right setup in any given encounter, except where all players are of the same class. At least in FPs, and OPs can be designed to ask for 5 or more roles for the easiest setup.

I believe the new monk class of WoW-MoP will be an attempt for such an alternative role and not just a plain tank or plain healer. Why shouldn't SWTOR choose the same path?

No, Monks will have three trees. Tank, DPS and healer. Same as a Paladin or Druid. Also, who would purposely choose a role as boring as "CCer" or "Buffer"? The problem with roles like this is that no one would take them because the other jobs are so much more entertaining. If you had classes dedicated to this, and it was a requirement to clear content, it would be a situation where groups would take forever to form due to lack of these specialized classes. EQ tried this with Enchanters and for the most part enchanters were few and far between (though luckily, you could clear content without them). Heck, trinity games already have a lack of tanks and healers normally due to people heavily preferring to DPS... can you imagine if you also had to find a dedicated CCer or Buffer?

Are you kidding? The CC/buffer/debuffer classes in CoH were great fun to play.

I like the trinity system.

I disagree with this part. I've run a tabletop pen and paper session of D&D for decades now and I've created many, many combat encounters where the trilogy is not helpful. Since this is one of the core games that many RPGs sprang from, it's not that hard to create similar scenarios for it.

Regarding the title of this thread: ALL MMOs should start de-emphasizing the trinity.

No, Monks will have three trees. Tank, DPS and healer. Same as a Paladin or Druid. Also, who would purposely choose a role as boring as "CCer" or "Buffer"? The problem with roles like this is that no one would take them because the other jobs are so much more entertaining. If you had classes dedicated to this, and it was a requirement to clear content, it would be a situation where groups would take forever to form due to lack of these specialized classes. EQ tried this with Enchanters and for the most part enchanters were few and far between (though luckily, you could clear content without them). Heck, trinity games already have a lack of tanks and healers normally due to people heavily preferring to DPS... can you imagine if you also had to find a dedicated CCer or Buffer?


I'm all for adding variety the the trinity system, but not at the expense of making groups harder to form. I'd rather them keep the trinity system and just make boss encounter more fun by adding events/phases to them so you;re not just tanking and spanking the whole time.