I miss the holy 4 trinity class roles (a old mans rant)

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
1

I dont know where else to write this but i wanted to write on my old memories.

I am a 34 yr old and i play some world of warcraft, tactics ogre reborn, final fantasy 1, and used to play dungeons and dragons.

I really miss the classic 4 trinity - Plate fighter, stealth rogue, healing support cleric, and the heavy magical wizard.

I am writing this because i feel like blizzard and wizards of the coast lost their way or maybe player mentality and taste has changed over the years.

Now we have things like striker, defender, controller, damage tank healer. What are even these roles ? they lack fantasy and mystic roleplaying potential. Very mechanical.

I really am bored with nothing to play lol. I think final fantasy mmorpg is terrible. I also think guild wars 2 is bad.

I guess i am an old fashioned strange person.

I’ll keep playing tactics reborn and wow classic and playing some final fantasy 1. I love building the party of 4 and watching them grow. I also love baby sitting the wizard who is worthless at level 1 and a freaking god at max level.

I do love the plate fighter or the money warrior hehe. AND some side roles i suppose. Ranger, barbarian, paladin yes, maybe even monk a gold-less discounted class to work with.

ANY WAYS thanks for hearing me out. I’ll probably be downvoted i feel like the gaming rpgs are saturated with too much mechanics and not mystic roleplaying party work. Its really hard to find an rpg game that can get it right.

Thanks blizzard for giving me time to write down my words.

2

I never heard of those role names and I agree those don’t sound great; striker and defender sound like names ripped off a random P2W Dota mobile clone or something :stuck_out_tongue:

GW2 drops the trinity and everyone can do everything; I main’d a staff Elementalist for a while and liked Fire for damage most of the time, and being able to switch to Water and feel like I’m helping with heals at times :stuck_out_tongue: My main issue with GW2 is that it has too much emphasis on weapon switching, and I prefer certain weapons with certain classes (staff for Ele, greatsword for warrior and guardian); xpacs just felt to fragment that further by adding new weapon types for classes. I’m waiting for Elementalist to get a greatsword spec since I really want to craft some legendary greatswords, and don’t quite care about any other class/spec.

I’m mixed about FFXIV but I enjoyed it while playing it. I’m mixed about being able to use every weapon on a character and no need for alts in that regard, but I guess that doesn’t really stop you from making alts and sticking to certain weapons. I really like the character customization and art style.

Overall, both GW2 and FFXIV were games I played for a bit just as something different to WoW, but WoW is still the MMORPG I keep coming back to.

I’ve wondered about other Final Fantasy games but never really played any others aside from 7 on PS1 years ago (got to Disc 2 iirc), and 14 just because it was an advertised Wow-killer :stuck_out_tongue:

I like older RPGs and may check out FF1 and Tactics one of these days when I’m not feeling obligated to game subscriptions; I got 6 months of WoW to enjoy first :stuck_out_tongue: I remember having a blast with Baldur’s Gate 2 and really want to play that again, and feel a return to older slower-paced games would be a relaxing and needed change for me.

3

41 here, so I can understand your perspective. I don’t think the classic quaternity went anywhere. It’s still there; it’s just that as the fantasy genre expanded, we got more class themes that branched off of them while still maintaining the class fantasy. It’s how we have specs and how other RPG universes have their own variants that fit their worlds. I can imagine how stale it would quickly get if everything just stuck with the original four with their core abilities.

Nowadays, the classic quaternity classes are seen more as “roles” than the actual class names: tank, melee dps, ranged dps (physical or magical), and healer/support.

Like how now, there are more variants of tanks besides the original sword n’ board warriors and paladins that block or soak damage, but also agility tanks that are meant to avoid damage. I also played tanks that dual-wielded swords and dual-wielded shields.

And that’s just out of Euro fantasy. You also have the Asian variety that existed around the same time frame:

  • Martial arts (like our monk or classes that actually attack with their polearms and not just use it as a stat stick)
  • Ninjutsu (rogue-like with more of a ranged offensive)
  • Samurais (2H agi sword wielder)

Personally, tab-target combat has gotten pretty stale to me, because of the slower pacing of the combat and having to be forced to lock onto a target, versus action combat being faster and being able to swing at a hitbox freely.

4

Such a thing never existed. Trinity literally means…threefold. 3. Tri.

Tank, Support, Heal, DPS.

WoW has the above as do most MMOs. Dont me me go mid 1980s on you and point out the skills those classes you listed had in D&D 2.0…