The shortage has been around since the dawn of MMOs and continues to be a problem.
It could be as simple as remove direct damage and just give everyone mechanics to dodge constantly. Everyone gets a self heal with a set amount of charges in case they mess up and if they’re not paying attention then they pay the price. That would be removing both tank and healer role. Could also keep the tank role but just not require it, as in they are now support that reduce all damage taken in a certain radius. Optimal to have but with skill not necessary.
It would make the game actually engaging instead of the usual spam three keys then brag how good you are at hitting buttons.
Gw2 is out there if this game play interest you. I prefer the trinity even though it comes with some baggage
played a few games without the tank/healer roles. Completely ruined the games for me.
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Interesting idea. My favorite franchise is Diablo, and we don’t have dedicated tanks or healers, though many classes can pull it off if specced right. None of the encounters are designed around group play, either. Only in their tuning. The tankless/healerless paradigm has been done before and can definitely work.
However…
WoW has always used tanks and healers. Many people have invested thousands of hours into tweaking their tanks and healers. If Blizzard changed it now, people would panic and raise heck, killing the game.
GW2 stepped away from the Trinity and I gotta tell you dungeons in that game are unforgiving. Even running with a class fully talented and geared for group healing it’s impossible to survive without strict strategy. Which, admittedly, is a good draw for a lot of people but WoW players don’t even want encounters where you have to CC to be successful. Strategy is not Azeroth’s forte.
That said, I think encounters could be properly designed around a no-trinity system in WoW’s case, given I think (opinion here) GW2’s game style isn’t very supportive. It would take a major redesign of WoW’s traditional approach to group content and a whole lot of trial and error to reinvent the wheel.
I actually wish we went the other way and had more varied support roles.
The big issue with WoW vs. others is the game has pretty harsh “you are or aren’t a tank” delineations, rather than it being a softer “let hybrids have tools to offtank”.
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