The Holy Trinity?

[Trelares]

Something that irked me about ESO is that it was somehow promised to break apart what MMO enthusiasts know as the Holy Trinity. Although in the end I am not sure if this was a success.

The normal roles players have in MMO's are tank, healer and damage dealer. While ESO provides the options for every class to more or less do what they want through the weapon skills, it still shows that each class has a designated role.

In the end Templars are the best healers, cause their class tree provides additional options towards healing and Dragonknights are still the best tanks for similar reasons.

So my fellow TES friends what do you think about this development?

[stevar]

each class certainly does not have a "designated" role

Templar do have an advantage at healing, sorcerer at magic, but you re not locked into them.

the nightblade can also be a good healer for example

[Haravikk]

I'm not sure I agree; there are simply loads of skills to choose from, and you could actually pick none of your class skills if you wanted to, and this gives a huge degree of customisation.

For example, a Dragon Knight can take spike armour or whatever it's called for an armour boost, but any character can take heavy armour skills to give them an armour boost that way. Dragon Knights can pull enemies towards enemies, but any character with Two Handed can do a similar ranged charge attack; not quite the same granted but much the same end result. Point being that while the Dragon Knights do have some unique tricks that can be good for tanks, there's nothing that's really a required skill for tanks IMO. In fact I think it would be very easy to build a high DPS Dragon Knight depending upon the skills you choose, as they have access to some nasty damaging spells.

The skill variety is something I was very impressed with, but I just couldn't find enough skill points to unlock even a fraction of what I want (same issue I have with Skyrim, I always need more perk points!), and I didn't even take any crafting, racial or guild skills!

[Trelares]

Understandable from where you two are coming, but my main concern is, that while you still can only take 5 actives skills, which somehow balances out the class advantages, the passive skills still count and in the end a right skilled dragonknight or templar is superior than another class which tries to take their role(tank/healer).

This is purely about theorycrafting, but the fear I have is that this will eventually lead to a situation were classes are reduced to certain roles and if you for example want to heal as sorcerer 90% of the time you will hear why should we take you when a templar is much better at the same job?

[Marelo]

That depends on whether the margin for success is so narrow that only the most efficient build will do. Somehow I expect that ZOL knows better than to do that.

[Leckan]

Well if you aren't focusing your character on healing, then not being as good as a Templar shouldn't be a problem since you are still capable of healing.

[Skrofler]

This is purely about theorycrafting, but the fear I have is that this will eventually lead to a situation were classes are reduced to certain roles and if you for example want to heal as sorcerer 90% of the time you will hear why should we take you when a templar is much better at the same job?

There's nothing wrong with staff heals. Templars just have more options. But with the limited slots, I can't see that it would make a world of difference.
So I wouldn't say templars are much better at healing. Of course, some people will, but I've always found it easy to just ignore people who talk out of their arse.
I can definitely see Sorcerer's Rune Prison and Dark Exchange being very useful to a healer. Each class can contribute something that compliments any role, and the people who realise this are the people you'd want to group with.

[Yaije9841]

Honestly I don't really see a 'best' tank just yet. Best straight up healer is definitely the templar (look at the restoring light passives and the resto staff passives and the wording suggests they stack)

I think a nightblade with healing in mind with siphoning might be able to rival a templar in some ways

Spoiler:

flat +15% healing bonus at all times with siphon based healing....only counts on like 3 abilities though but still the then may also get the additional bonuses from restoration staff as well

The number of actives though is really something to have to learn to deal with though since we'll only have 5+ult x2 to deal with and if I remember right, it seems that things with duration or something that sticks around doesn't really stick around when you swap if it's not also on the bar.

Spoiler:

Something I heard mentioned from a guild mate when playing and never managed to set up a situation to replicate after hearing (crash issues logging into the 15+ toon I had and BARELY got 15 on a second toon in this past test. Stuff like magelight, summons, CC effects, and dots

I think i've only noticed one thing on dragon knights that would really set them apart with respect to tanking and that's the magma armor ultimate and it's morphs

Spoiler:

Caps damage intake to 3% of max hp for the duration. For those really NASTY pulls

The passives in teh dragon and earth magic skill lines are also very nice for tanking, but not so outlandish as some combos we can see at high levels for some builds.

What kills me more is how I can't help but think that if they ever did serious minmax endgame, that nightblades seem like the obvious best dps due to more available crit chance and damage altering passives... and well teh execute effect on the assassin's blade effect (sorc's following with disintegrate which apparently instakills low hp targets when casting lightning based spells)

[OblivionDuruza]

I definitely feel like any class can fill any role while remaining fairly viable. I also feel like a tank is less necessary in the game if you run a bruiser or off-tank, thanks to the many healing and self-healing possibilities available.

That all said, I honestly don't feel like there will ever be a group-focused game where roles don't develop. It will always be most efficient to have some players focus on healing/mitigation, while others focus on damage.

I'll be interested to see how groups of bruisers with both damage and self-sustain capabilities go, but I feel like they'll probably be less viable in the more difficult group-focused encounters.

[Skrofler]

There have long been four main archetypal classes in role-playing games. In D&D they were called fighter, thief, cleric and wizard. When WoW used the same concepts they were called warrior, rogue, priest and mage. It's clear that the same holy quadrupy is reincarnated in dragon knight, nightblade, templar and sorcerer.
Their class skills speak for themselves and I think they were skewed that way to a degree to make sure minmaxers feel comfortable enough with ESO.

It will be interesting to see where the road ends. When end game PvE comes knocking, will my nightblade be reduced to an off-tank though?

[Yaije]

When end game PvE comes knocking, will my nightblade be reduced to an off-tank though?

As there hasn't been any real information on any form of endgame we'll have to wait and see. There is still some stuff under NDA concernign stuff called "Adventure Zones" that have so far only been mentioned in name with a description making them sound something like zone where people can go around doing various activities with some parts that require people coordinating together...


Why wouldn't a nightblade be considered a main tank? I don't see much reason when looking at some more advanced perk placements.

[Skrofler]

Why wouldn't a nightblade be considered a main tank?

Just a thought. Raid leader ignorance is a popular reason, but I'm mainly thinking since we don't know how strong the DK mitigation skills will be at that level compared to the NB Siphoning for example. I wouldn't be surprised if developers had a few main tank builds in mind when they designed top content and that NB just doesn't fit that. I think they might be ill equipped to handle mass aggro.

Here's a build I'm considering though. Discounting all those passives it becomes available at level 20.
http://esohead.com/calculator/skills#zc ... nrJi6cnfeO

[Yaije]

Not bad, but deep slash and debilitate aren't soemthing I would consider at the same time unless at a boss. Since we can freely change outside combat I'd leave those on the shelf and grab other things like trapping webs or something that grants access to a bunch of passives. I may even swap in Deathstroke (50 ultimate cost instead of 150-200) and just let that loose whenever it's up.

EDIt:
I should say that I like deathblow as it can procc executioner (magicka regen passive) whihc would then make it easier to regenerate resource for class abilities (and undaunted abilities) magicka based abilities allowing you to have more stamina for dodging and blocking.

edit2:
ESOhead's calc has an issue with listing stamina/magicka costs wrong. Eldersouls has a list with the right costs (at least I think they're right so far) here.