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Tanks, Supports and Damage Dealers are a staple of… too many games to count – and no matter where you look this holy trinity seems to be growing more and more popular over time, but why?
A veteran of MMOs, Hero Shooters and all sorts of tactics games, The Architect has squeezed into an ill-fitting helm of domination and waded out onto the battlefield to work out why the holy trinity is so common, and what effect it has on our favorite games.
You Saw:
Overwatch- 2016
World of warcraft – 2004
Gears Tactics – 2020
Rocket league – 2015
Teamfight Manager – 2021
Guild Wars 2 – 2012
Final Fantasy 14 – 2013
Outriders – 2021
Divinity Original Sin 2 – 2017
Darkest Dungeon – 2016
Starcraft 2 – 2010
Apex Legends – 2019
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition – 2020
For The King – 2017
The Hex – 2018
Super Smash Bros Ultimate – 2018
Runescape – 2001
Fire Emblem 3 Houses – 2019
Total War Warhammer 2 – 2017
Star Renegades – 2020
Deep Rock Galactic -2020
Chrono Trigger – 1995
Spellbreak – 2020
Humankind – Not out yet
Dota 2 – 2013
Fortnite – 2017
Tabletop Simulator – 2015
Super Mario 3D world – 2013
New Super Mario Bros Wii U – 2012
Telltale’s The Walking Dead – 2012
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44 comments
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I remember the time, when our whole raid group wiped at Heigan in Naxxramas (WoW:WotLK), only the pally Main tank survived.. and he soloed the boss for us while we were watching dead on the floor. And it was waaay before Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader were introduced, so we were just started gearing up in Naxx..
also in a different game (where you can de-level by dying too much): healer says: "Why should I heal you, when I can res you?"
GW2: "We don't have a trinity!"
Players: "Here are the meta builds for each of the dps, tank, and support"
GW2: "What's the point of making sure there is no trinity, just for the players to force the trinity roles anyway?"
the real trinity is the holy lightning gun , roaring rocket launcher and thundering railgun .
I thought of this (for a pve setting):
Replace the tank class with characters that generate shields for the whole team by dealing damage. You get to actually fight, and give your team less positioning/healing to worry about.
Switch the DPS out for someone that can debuff and knock the enemy around with their attacks and/or take the time to setup attacks that deal massive amounts of damage at once, a slow and careful but well-worth it process. Still the main damage dealer but allowing for more strategic play.
Support/healer: deal damage to still heal the team, but the 'tank' generating shields allows you to focus much more on also buffing your team and feeding them useful info.
0:11 how the hell is the trinity in drg? Everyone can do good dps, everyone has the same HP and everyone supports eachother in some way.
yo can someone tell me the name of the game appeared in 16:55??
I'd like to mention that stats like speed are also important when making the trinity more flexible. In competitive pokemon it's better to have a damage dealer that is also fast, but it's also viable to have a Pokemon for "speed control" who's purpose is to deal with opponents who are too fast to deal with normal. Fast support and slow support work very differently in competitive pokemon and speed is important in a wide variety of turn based rpgs, so i thought it would be good to acknowledge that.
The matrix can be expanded to E-E interaction. So that a game makes enemies fight with the holy trinity principle, then players will be forced to also disrupt E-E interaction. This makes for the fourth class: Debuff/Crowd Control. The enemies will also have their own D/CC. What a D/CC does is to weaken enemies' RES or DEF stats or weaken the E-E interaction so that enemies can't heal/tank each other or can't deal damage effectively. This D/CC will not effect HP, as damage is dealt by the damage dealer.
To extend the damage dealers and tanks even further, games may differentiate between types of powers: physical, magic, and any other names that may represent physical2 or magic2. Each power type can only deal damage to that specific stat of an enemy.
The aD&D thief is NOT a dps class its a sneeki boi class you nwah!
Destiny 2 is actually a decent break away from this.
Everyone is a tank a support and a healer. Classes in turn are based around: Weapons+supers for hunters grenades: warlock
melee(charged and uncharged):Titan.
Then each subclass is based around an gameplay element like
aoe+crowd control:arc
survival:void
single target damage:solar.
Offensive damage prevention: stasis
Jack all of trades master of mobility: strand
In turn this allows for each class to be self sustaining and actually resulting in a quite decent and varied meta.
My favorite kind of tanks are the ones that make you feel like you really are protecting your allies and not just being a damage sponge and the main enemy focus while your allies sit in the back and spam spells/attacks while you stand there and occasionally swing your weapon at the enemy
my guy showed xenoblade 1 when saying you need all three the game where the dps heals and you dont want to run a support
People who don't know about EVE: "Yeah WoW did it first."
Yet another dub for Oldschool Runescape
oddly enough in Honkai Star rail
the abundance characters despite being healers fit more under the roles of a tank in keeping the team alive
This causes the trinity to look a little different in this game as preservation (damage negation so basically tank) and abundance (healer) are thrown under sustain while nihility (debuffers) and harmony (buffers) are the support. Now the difference isn't in interaction (especially considering that the "tanks" are still having interactions with their team being so major) but instead role. Sustains keep the team alive while supports boost the effectiveness of the team. Damage is also still there but that is just the rest of the roles with the exception of destruction (sustain damage mix ie a literal tank)
I did not expect to see the great Magnus Carlsen in this video.
DPS players not knowing what CC and defensives are is a meme. Bad DPS players don't know about these things, but good ones do. Reducing a DPS class to only dps is a skill issue.
Adding the Controller role does a lot to making things dynamic.
There aren't many that do it right, imo, only old MMOs. I still think it's better than not having good teamwork-based gameplay. Just my opinion and preference, though. Because' otherwise everyone would have one job, play well, and do dmg; nothing else would matter. If you're hurt, heal yourself; if you die, anyone can revive you; and everyone does about the same damage and the same things… Group dynamics are just more fun for me.
That doesn't mean I don't enjoy games without these roles; for example, shooters are fine without them and still have a teamwork type of focused gameplay while still letting you shine as an individual, even though everyone has the same job more or less.
I just prefer a working holy trinity to a broken one that only suggests you do the "roles" job, but the game's combat mechanics end up letting you do whatever, whenever, and however more or less, depending on the game, of course. A good example of a good trinity in a non-MMO is Overwatch; as shit as the game is now, it was designed with that in mind, and then there's Apex, which has some of these roles, but it seems to not matter much, so for Apex, I would rather not have that if it's just a loose suggestion rather than an actual role you must do to be good at the game.
The dps with lifeleech ability and tank armors .
my sibling plays games as “eventually you will die, even if it’s of old age” (physical tank, magical tank + a healer)
i play games as “you can’t hurt me if i kill you first” (dps, damage buffs, and debuffers)
i think the trinity is fine as long as there’s variety within the trinity. you don’t need to follow the exact trinity to have fun. though it might be harder in a pvp game
it’s very funny seeing the outriders bit knowing that when he played technomancer was the class the wiped the floor with everyone else
Do you think Wakfu (the mmorpg game) follow the trinity? Or, do you think it breaks/twist it in a way?
In rocket league there are no rigid positions. We call positioning rotating, because after the attacker has attacked they rotate back, as the attacker's teammates attack, and that attacker is now the goalkeeper.
I like to forgo the tank entirely in games like ff13 and chrono trigger, instead using more dps and healing with some defense buffs and debuffs if necessary.
Remer to:
Thank the healer for healing.
Thank the tank for tanking.
Thank the DPS for DPSing.
Ways I can think of to separate from the trinity :
-Not use high numbers. Basically, not making characters have thousand of HP, dealing millions of DMG, etc. A bit like Fire Emblem does. It also makes the game easier to balance as there would not be a huge difference between the strongest classes and the weakest ones.
-Have a complex stat system with dodge system, separate defensive stats, etc.
-Not give characters a finite set of abilities. For example, the priest doesn't have to only be good at healing. It could be a good tank against magic dmg too. And have light magic to fight undead.
-Having a skill system that allow the player to create their own play style. For example, the Samurai usually is a dmg dealer class, but they could chose to be more of a dodge tank with adequate skills. Hardest part is obviously to make the skill system balanced, but it is easier with low number stat systems.
-Harder to do, but having a completelt new type of gameplay could shatter the trinity by itself.
I personally tried to divide the 3 archetypes into 8 types for an idea of game I had in mind. These would be
Defenders : characters that can take dmg and/or heal, basically they protect allies through various means. Both traditional tanks and healers fall in this category
Disrupters : They apply debuffs, interact with terrain, etc
Warriors : Melee characters with different weapons, fighting style, etc. They have good mix of offense and defense but only for themselves They can deal magic dmg, physical, or both.
Mages: Ranged characters who deal magic dmg through various means at mid range
Marksmen : Ranged characters who deal physical dmg, magic or both from long range
Assassin : Highly mobile melee characters that specialize in doing very high dmg in a short amount of time one a single target. Masters of going in and out of the fight.
Skirmishers : Highly mobile but fragile melee characters that rely on dodging to avoid hits. They have good sustained dmg. Can deal physical dmg, magical, or both.
Special : Characters with such unique abilities they do not correspond to one of the 7 other roles. Example would be alchemist, time mage, summoner, etc.
This was an incredibly long way of not saying anything. Terrible essayist.
The trinity stems from the optimization of the three basic relationships between players and enemy NPCs:
Damage dealer: Player > Enemy
Tank: Player < Enemy
Support: Player > Player
It was interesting and fun seeing GW2 try not to give into the Holy Trinity when it first came out. But after Raids were added in the first expansion and players wanted the trinity the game evolved into having a trinity of Defense Support (Healers & Tanks), Offense Support (DPS that provides buffs), and DPS.
oh i taught it was about : magic, stealth and might…
Idea: you can see a seperate stat in the corner that is different from your normal stats. Your defence, damage, and heals are all at 100. Whenever you heal, healing goes down by 10 and the other two go up by 10. The number’s minimum is 10 and maximum is 100. The higher the number, the better it works. Also they all go up 10 every 30 seconds if none are at 100, 10 every 20 seconds if 1 is at 100, and 10 every ten seconds if 2 are at 100, but it would be slower or non-existent during battle. This forces you to use a mix of attacking, defending, and healing, or be 10% as powerful as you would’ve been.
I didn’t expect to hear so much talk about Allies and Axises (axes?) in this video
Theres nothing wrong with the trinity system, its proven and it works, the problem is the current player base toxic mentality
Correction!!!!! I object!!!!! The original design of tanks was as a SHIELD and the title "tank" IS functional taking into consideration ORIGINAL tank design!!!!
DRG "They all posses some form of support" "-Ziplines"
Engineer scoffs as he makes platform stairs
Driller scoffs as he makes tunnels ramps
Scout scoffs as his grappling hook takes him wherever he wants
(We love Gunners here, just a joke about how zipline going anywhere other than down is slow)
I believe type of interaction Enemy-to-Enemy is not very developed, but interesting, even though it is hard to imagine abilities in this form that wouldn't be game breaking. Still a lot of potential if given enough thought
Pathfinder 2e has done a very interesting job with escaping this paradigm.
Aggro doesn't exist (except for a few very specific instances), you just have builds that make it a bad idea to try to fight anyone else, while having decent defenses themselves. Classes do this by reducing damage to others (champion, potentially war clerics) or by controlling large areas to make it difficult for enemies to reposition to attack the squishies (giant barbarian, polearm fighter, monk, wood and earth kineticists).
Damage dealers can be found in any class, really (other than… investigator or alchemist, really, but they both CAN do it), but classes have many different methods of doing damage, meaning their "win conditions" lie along slightly different axes. Fighters just hit and crit a lot, barbarians and maguses and swashbucklers do fewer hits but the ones they do are often massive, flurry rangers just throw out tons and tons of attacks, and rogues and swashbucklers rely on positioning and skills to get big damage bonuses, etc.
Supports are found in every class, and it's critical that most characters perform some manner of support function, but each class does it differently. Divine casters can heal and provide allied buffs, occult casters can provide enemy debuffs and allied buffs (and control effects), primal casters get to blast and heal, and arcane casters can blast and provide control effects. Alchemists can provide items to suit any situation (or heal tons), kineticists and rangers can provide terrain control… there's endless possibilities.
If Interaction is the core of the Holy Trinity (Ally to Ally, Alley to Enemy and Enemey to Enemy) doesn't the introduction of Enviroment make this more like a pentagon than a square? (Ally to Enviro and Enemy to Enviro)
what about characters that focus on poisoning,burning , putting mines, or turrets ( that are very specific form of damage dealing support)
team fortress 2:
Oldschool Runescape is an interesting one to look at in relation to boss fights. The holy trinity doesn't really exist in it.
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