Games | Superior Realities

I’m not sure if it’s the result of boredom, burn out, or pure coincidence, but lately I’ve found myself exploring new builds and playstyles in both Heroes of the Storm and The Secret World.

Jack and Jill of all trades:

Of course, experimentation is part and parcel of the Secret World experience, but lately I’ve been doing more of it than usual.

I’m not sure what prompted it, but I suddenly got it into my head that I wanted to be able to fulfill all three group roles on both my endgame characters, the Dragon and the Templar. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been running so many more dungeons since the group finder launched.

See, up until now, I had consciously limited myself to two roles per character, DPS and something else. My Dragon was a healer, my Templar a tank. Partly this was because the work required to build and maintain three different group builds and gear sets was daunting, and partly because I wanted to maintain distinct character identities despite the game’s lack of classes.

But I came to the conclusion I could maintain character identity as long as I kept their builds distinct, and with gear so much easier to acquire now, it didn’t seem like such a mountain to climb, though it still took a few days of hard grinding.

At the same time, I’ve also been adjusting some of my old builds to further clarify the fantasy of each character. The fact I almost never play anything harder than elites makes it a bit easier to be creative with builds, rather than having to min/max.

Essentially, I’ve decided that my Dragon uses magic and swords, so everything should focus on that. His blade/blood solo build and blood/elemental group DPS build remain unchanged, but increasingly I’m using a blood-focused build to heal rather than my traditional fist weapons (though I doubt I’ll ever abandon them completely). His new tanking build uses swords and chaos magic.

My Templar, on the other hand, is a direct sort. Firearms and hammers all the way for her. This meant throwing out her old chaos/hammer tanking build for a new hammer-centric build with shotgun thrown in as the second weapon for funsies.

This took quite a bit of experimentation to get right. Hammer isn’t the best main weapon for a tank, and constantly getting groups with 10.9 DPS didn’t help matters any. However, I think I’ve now settled on a set of abilities and a playstyle that’s functional, if not entirely optimal.

And I do enjoy the new build. TSW’s abilities get a lot of flack for having dull animations, and that’s not entirely undeserved, but hammer abilities have a great weight and power to them.

That left a healing build for her, and since I wanted to focus on guns, that meant it was finally time for me to try leeching.

I’ve always been interested in leech healing, as I am in anything that hybridizes healing and damage, but the guides made it sound very complicated, and I just never found the motivation to get around to it. Until now, that is.

My leech build will probably still need some polishing — I think I need more heal rating — but I have successfully healed a run of Hell Fallen elite.

It’s interesting — I’m still making up my mind on it. On the one hand it’s hard to argue the appeal of keeping your group alive while also dishing out the big crits and pretty damage numbers. However, I do find AoE healing frustrating, the “oh ****” buttons don’t seem as effective as those of other healing types, and it is mainly a lot of Anima Shot spam. So much Anima Shot spam.

On a related note, I briefly tested my build on some random Tokyo mobs, and I was once again reminded that Anima Shot is basically the “I win” button for solo content in TSW. As my Templar continues to struggle in Tokyo, I am now strongly considering swallowing my pride and just making a solo build that incorporates assault rifles.

I don’t even know how much I’ll use these new builds, but it’s nice to at least have the option, and it felt good to break out of my rut and explore the ability wheel again for the first time in quite a while.

Young women who blow up things with their brains:

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Nova’s recent rework in Heroes of the Storm. I’ve voiced my share of frustration myself — just looking at how many cool toys she lost was horrifying, and most of the Novas I’d seen since the change struggled badly to accomplish much of anything.

I was so dismayed I pretty much gave up on playing her altogether — I had never done so with great frequency, despite my fondness for the character.

But then came the day when I had daily quests for playing as both an assassin and a StarCraft hero. Dreading what was to come, I reluctantly selected Nova, cobbled together a new build focused around Pinning Shot, and queued up for a match.

I lost my first match, but it didn’t seem to be my fault, and I still needed at least one StarCraft match, so I tried again, and things went better than expected.

Much better.

I went on to have one of my most dominant performances ever as Nova — or any hero, for that matter. I ended the match with a takedown/death score of 47/2.

This was both more takedowns and fewer deaths than anyone else on my team, and nearly half of those takedowns were cases where I had landed the killing blow myself.

It’s not even as though the enemy team was exceptionally bad (I had a similarly dominant performance immediately afterward, but that can be accounted for by the enemy team’s Illidan feeding us easy kills the whole match). Watching them, the only obvious mistake I saw them making was that they didn’t do much to try to counter my Triple Tap.

I’ve played several more matches as Nova since, and while I haven’t won them all, I have maintained a fairly healthy win ratio, had strong personal performances in nearly every match, and often dominated completely.

I have no idea why this is. I’m not sure what it is I’m doing that’s making such a difference. But somehow I’m better at Nova now than I ever was before, despite the fact she appears crippled on paper.

Meanwhile, with a different character but the same voice actress, I also decided to finally try this teleport build for Li-Ming that seems so popular.

It’s interesting. The extra AoE is nice, and there’s a certain Leha-esque madcap recklessness to it that’s very appealing. “I have one of the smallest health pools in the game, but I’m going to go toward enemies, rather than away! Wee!”

On the whole, though, I think I like my usual Magic Missiles build better. Safer, saner, and from what I’ve seen slightly more powerful.

I will, however, take the teleport build when I get Infernal Shrines. You need all the AoE you can get on that map.

* * *

Fun fact: Apparently it’s been three years to the day since I posted this. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We come now to part two of my trinity trinity, a trio of posts on the tank, healer, DPS triad of MMORPG group rules and how I’d really like to see the genre break free of it. Catch up on part one if you missed it.

Today I’d like to highlight some of the best experiences I’ve had without the trinity, or at least with a modified version of it. Interestingly nearly all of these are from games that theoretically do subscribe to a rigid trinity, though I imagine that’s just a coincidence.

I hope to accomplish two things by doing this. First, it offers more insight into where I’m coming from when I talk about alternatives to the traditional trinity, and second, it further debunks the notion that a rigid trinity is necessary for interesting group content.

Two Sith walk into a ~~bar~~ flashpoint:

Star Wars: The Old Republic’s tactical flashpoints are a fascinating ground for experimentation with MMO group roles. The game builds a full group for these, but it does so agnostic of roles, and the content is tuned accordingly. Usually this means you end up with full DPS, or three DPS and a single tank or healer, but sometimes stranger things happen.

Such was the case a few weeks ago, when I had one of the most fun group experiences of my MMO career.

I queued for my first dungeon on my Sith inquisitor, who I’m building as a tank. I fully expected to be the only tank in a group of damage dealers, but I wound up matched with another tank of the same class alongside two ranged DPS. The responsibility usually placed on a single individual became spread between half the group.

It was glorious.

All that social pressure, all that fear of failure, melted away. I had all the fun of tanking and none of the downsides. I waded into combat fearlessly, imposing my will on my enemies, without fear that a wrong move would doom the group. The other tank and I worked together, taunting mobs off each if one of us ever became overwhelmed.

The trinity is often held up as a shining example of team work, but really, everyone is kind of doing their own thing. My fellow Sith and I felt more like a team — in a random PUG with minimal communication — than most hard trinity groups I’ve been a part of.

Even aesthetically, it was a major improvement. My comrade and I formed a wall of armour and blazing lightsabers, holding back the enemies from our softer team mates. There was no breaking of immersion here; it looked and felt like a real battle.

I cannot overstate how fun this run was. I long for a time when experiences such as this might be commonplace in MMOs. This is how it ought to be.

Never say Neverwinter:

Neverwinter does have a traditional trinity, but of all the games I’ve played, it has the best take on it, at least if you ask me.

Neverwinter may have the trinity, but if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s not religious about it. I’ve done high-end dungeons with no tank and done fine, and the roles are a bit softer. Tanks generally don’t hold aggro on everything all the time, and DPS can survive a few hits. Both tanks and healers still do decent damage, though less than their damage-oriented comrades. Heavy use of healing potions helps balance the responsibility of player survival.

The most fun I’ve had as a healer in an MMO — at least in terms of core mechanics — was as a devoted cleric in Neverwinter.

In Neverwinter, healers aren’t just slaves to HP bars. They’re more like Swiss army knives, utility characters adapting on a moment to moment basis. Sometimes you’ll be healing, but other times you’ll be throwing out buffs, and if nothing else is needed at the moment, you can put out some respectable damage.

I like this because it’s not forcing you into a narrow box the way the trinity does. I get to experience a broader wedge of combat without having to change character or specialization. To borrow the metaphor from my first post, it might not quite be a peanut butter sandwich yet, but it is at least toast with peanut butter.

…Hopefully I won’t get in trouble with the Hague for torturing that metaphor so much.

Old school oddness:

There isn’t much I miss about life before dungeon finders, but one thing that I do have some nostalgia for is being forced to come up with odd, random group compositions out of sheer desperation.

The tank left? The warlock is pulling out his voidwalker. Healer ragequit? Well, the shadow priest is gonna throw out some heals, and the rogue has some bandages, and the mage is praying to every deity in the book that we finish this.

It didn’t always work. It often failed miserably. And it wasn’t sustainable. We were able to bluff our way through some leveling dungeons, but you couldn’t do challenging, endgame content that way.

But it was interesting to stretch your toolkit that way. It required a lot more thought than a rigid trinity does, and again, you weren’t being forced into some narrow role. That voidwalker wasn’t going to hold aggro on everything all the time. That shadow priest wasn’t going to save you if you didn’t make good use of your own survival tools.

It offered respite from the stifling order and choreography of the trinity.

Double D:

I was always surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed instanced group content in MMO shooters like Defiance and to a lesser extent The Division.

Now, I’ll be honest. It’s pretty mindless. It’s not exactly every man, woman, and rogue Castithan for themselves, but teamwork is much less than you’d find with a hard trinity.

But it’s fun. There’s a joyful chaos to running in, guns blazing, and watching the bodies hit the floor.

Games are meant to be fun. They don’t always have to be super serious, or intellectually stimulating, or brutally challenging.

I wouldn’t want all games to devolve into mindless anarchy with little team play and no roles, but there is a place for that. Again, I want variety. Mindless slaughterfests should be part of a balanced MMO diet.

* * *

Next time, in my final post on the MMO trinity, I will outline my plan for how I would “fix” the trinity.

Superior Realities

Category Archives: Games

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Tyler Versus the MMO Trinity, Part Two: Life Outside the Trinity

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