Guardians and High Level Fractals

[Raye]

So on the reddit's today, someone was voicing a concern that in higher level fractals guardians are pretty much required. I thought it was an interesting complaint to have, seeing that the OP was a fractal-level 63 guardian himself. Anyway, quoting the OP for ease of reading:

I'm currently L63 fractal and there is a pretty glaring problem with fractal design - there is a massive dependence on the guardian profession for high level fractal progression. I have run triple guardian from 48-63, and while 3 is overkill, I couldn't even imagine trying to do, for example, 60+ final grawl shaman boss with less than 2. The amount of breathing room even a single guardian specced for heavy blind/block rotations and longer wall/avenger can provide is worth 10X what most other professions can bring to the table - which is usually just dps and maybe 1 good ~6 second ability. I don't want to see guardians nerfed, but a more balanced approach to fractal progression and difficulty in the future would help reduce the reservoir sized amount of frustration most groups find themselves in trying to progress from 30+ without a guardian, or enough guardians in the group.

edit: Traits - 0/15/5/30/20 - 15 in radiance for spamming blinds, 20 in virtues for improved wall/avenger. Weapons I run GS/Scep/Foc - GS + 2h specialization for more blinds, high mobility, decent dps, and cleave clustering. Scep/Foc for range, blocks, roots. Equipment I wear P/V/T. Runes i use double monk double water for increased boon duration - conditional removal is almost non-existent in fractals. It is worth it to keep going higher in fractal # if you want fractal weapons. Drop rate for fractal weapons in daily chest in 50-59 has been 4/6 for me and in 60-69 has been a perfect 3/3. This is after going 750+ fractals and only getting 5 weapons prior to entering 50-59.

reddit linky

The first most upvoted comment on reddit, sadly goes on to say that GW2 lacks the complexity of GW1 skill system -.- others complain that maybe trying to get rid of the trinity was a bad idea. Thoughts?

[RD]

Well, I'm not surprised to see that at a certain point in the game, at least one profession is required. I kind of thought it would happen.

I don't think that trying to get rid of the trinity is a BAD idea. In fact, I think it's a great idea (especially when you've seen how bad it could be, like old school EQ). GW2 has done a great job of it, but maybe there's a better way to go about it. The good thing about an MMO is that they can constantly tweak things, change the way the entire game works if they really wanted to (though, of course, that would probably be met with some backlash).

In Vanguard (which was a buggy mess), their solution to solving the trinity problem wasn't to abolish it, but to make a bunch of classes to fill all the roles. So you didn't have one tank, you had a choice of there (there was supposed to be a fourth, which i was very interested in, but has never been released); same for healers, crowd control, and damage. The idea was that if you make enough classes to fill a role, that play totally different from each other, people will be more likely to be playing these classes. Of course, no one played the game at all, so it's hard to say if it would have worked or not.
As a quick example, for healers, you had your cleric, typical heavy armor with some buffs, stuns, and heals. Then you had the Blood Mage which would have DoTs and DD. As you applied them, you would build up Blood Union which would improve your heals. Played very differently. A cool idea, wish I could have seen it in action.

[Alaris]

I like that the trinity gameplay requirement is removed. The problem is that as you increase difficulty, it's increasingly difficult (hahah) to keep everything balanced just right so that there isn't a strategy that becomes dominant.

Going to the trinity is like acknowledging a fail before even attempting it, and enforcing a single strategy on everyone. What ANet has to do instead is to tweak some numbers and skills until they guardian dominance returns to all professions being equally good.

[Raye]

I like it too, but I guess the issue comes in when there's so much damage that is being dealt to the players, and which class is best able to mitigate that.

I mean they eliminated the trinity sure, but they still boxed some classes in. Guardian and Ele support is vastly different from say, a Mesmer or Thief doing support. And I just think people are just realizing that taking 3 supporty guardians works better for completion than taking 1 supporty guardian and 2 supporty eles, or some such. However, if they're not careful, we'll start seeing a lot more of "glf guardian to go"

I mean we see those now anyway, but mostly by people who are still trying to be all trinity-like. I'm talking about arriving at a meta (in the not so far away future) that requires 3 guardians and most people will blindly abide. Just like they embraced Discord teams or UW speed runs in GW1.

[Beren Iluthiel]

I'm stupid and I'm a terrible player, so I say holy trinity isn't gone anywhere, it has simply changed.
You can do whatever you want with any class and group composition... sorry, but I don't believe this fairytale anymore.
The difference between having or not certain classes is huge, even if all the players are gods in what they do

[kokabel]

In all fairness, when I was still mad about the fact GW2 was not GW1 (like 2 years before it was released), and the information about 'abolishing' the trinity was running around and getting people excited, I did call it. I said something along the lines of "Calling it Damage/Support/Control does not change the fact it is still the trinity."

But no one listened.

So I'm not surprised the high difficulty content has resurrected the trinity. With pugs especially, who want some assurance that their time won't be spent in vain, people are going to demand certain classes on the team to help them out. Of course, you can likely play that content without the 'required class setup' as dictated by the metagame, but you better ensure that your team really knows what it's doing, and expect to have to work harder for it.

[shawn]

I wanted to touch on this a bit, but it looks like B already did somewhat.

Okay - yes, there is a trinity, if you want to call it that. And yes, it is control/support/damage. But what people sometimes don't realize is that every single time you enter a dungeon, you're playing this new trinity.

That ele (dps in other games) just cast Geyser? Suddenly they're doing things within the healer role.
The thief (dps) crippled a champion? Suddenly they're doing things within the tank role.
The warrior (tank in other games) unloaded his adren? Boom, the tank does amazing dps.

And so on and so forth. No one ever said that the game would never ever require someone to "tank," someone to "heal," someone to damage. What they did say is that no one class would ever be pigeonholed into one singular absolutely-required role. And that's exactly what happened.

Now it may be that these high level fractals do indeed require a bit more definition to the supporting and the controlling, but that certainly shouldn't be something that people are surprised by. These are at ludicrously high levels of play remember - I think that asking a guardian to spec for support traits if he's going to be supporting people isn't out of the question. Likewise I wouldn't want an ele trying to do damage if they're hard specced water and earth. At that level of fractal, the "everyone can do whatever the hell they want and we'll somehow work it out even if mid fight I have to try to play defensively even though I'm a glass cannon" thing will not fly.

[Alaris]

I said something along the lines of "Calling it Damage/Support/Control does not change the fact it is still the trinity."

But no one listened.

Because what you said was not a particularly interesting complaint.

1) Control is a better word because most of the time, the tank does NOT tank. He does not stand in one spot, taking all the damage.
2) Support is a better word because most of the time, the healer does NOT spend all his time healing. There's a lot more of damage prevention going on via blinds etc than pure after-the-fact red-bar-up.
3) The big deal about removing the trinity was NEVER about removing roles. It was about removing the requirement for group composition. I'd say they've done that pretty well, given it's taken several months for anyone to make a decent case that trinity is needed.
4) The team composition in the article is 1 support, 4 dps. No tank.
5) I've been in tons of dungeons where nobody cared what profession you brought. And whatever you brought, you had to play it well. Basically, the guide is a suggestion, not a requirement.
6) Afaik, high-level fractals don't use the trinity. Afaik, I would want confirmation from someone who knows better, but my impression is 2 prots, 3 high-dps, no healer.

So before you go all mighty and say "I called it" at the slightest sh.., think.

every single time you enter a dungeon, you're playing this new trinity.

New trinity is the keyword. It's a far improvement over the same old.

[Xycury]

"New trinity" has a good ring to it.

Anyways, the guardian suffers as much as the Paragon did.... they had too many team party buffing, and it was power multiplied when you had more than 1, so it's no surprise that at 63+ that 3 is needed.

It's a simple balance tweak. If these same buffing mechanics were on others, we could then provide everyone the ability but Vitrues and traits just excel on a Guardian to provide it.

I wouldn't mind if the mesmer could offer more support in shattering, but we do have some nice party wide regens to dish out when our illusions are up. I stay nearly full health no matter what's thrown at me.

I think if we can get a twist on some traits for Ele and mesmer, we could provide the same function as Guardians then if spec'ed. Glamours provide party wide protection, or retaliation, and Ele could provide aegis or fury with might depending on elemental fields they create.

I think some of the Trait systems need an overhaul. I'm hoping that an expansion would provide more traits to add to more fun builds.

[kokabel]

But it is still a trinity, even if the edges have been blurred a little. But at the time, people were still gnashing teeth or squeaking in delight at the prospect of 'no trinity at all', which was kind of a community-wide missunderstanding.

I wasn't bad mouthing the game or anything of the sort. I just remember people getting excited at this idea of trinity-less game - possibly at the hands of some vague articles/videos on some gaming news pages, when game info was still a rare and precious commodity. I remember saying it wouldn't end up that way, because classes need to be able to play off of each other in a way that a trinity (or duality, or quadrinity) will emerge... and it has. Arenanet also dispelled the rumour themselves some time later.