The Holy Trinity is Alive and Well

By Ralsu

Back in December 2005, two months before the launch of Dungeons & Dragons Online, Simon "Zed" Roe expressed his feelings on the how DDO would probably break the holy trinity mold to DDO @ Ten Ton Hammer. Zed's editorial asserted that the versatility of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) system would allow Turbine to create a game that permitted game play that wasn't centered around the holy trinity: a tank, a healer, and a crowd controller (CC). At the time Zed wrote his piece, he'd had some experience with the DDO beta, but the non-disclosure agreement was still in effect, forcing Zed to focus on tidbits released by Turbine for public consumption. Please indulge me while I recap Zed's position and offer my own opinion--that, sadly, Zed was dead wrong.

Zed's Take

Based on public information and extensive knowledge of D&D, Zed first addressed clerics, the only "pure" healing class announced to DDO. D&D clerics can do more than just wear heavy armor and spam heals from the back row as in so many other games (I'm looking at you, EverQuest 2 and World of Warcraft). D&D clerics are pretty skilled warriors, and their self-buffs allow them to compensate for many of their combat deficiencies when compared to the other melee classes. As Zed points out, " Having a cleric – the traditional holy trinity healer – stand toe to toe with a giant, wielding a flaming great sword and wearing full plate armor isn’t a sight you see in many MMOGs." Like all D&D classes, the cleric is designed to be versatile. That fluid design only becomes more apparent when a player chooses to multi-class a cleric. Zed rhetorically asked if a cleric 5/fighter 5 were a healer or a tank.

Building from the concept of a cleric/fighter multi-classed character, Zed next turned his attention to the tank classes: the barbarian, the fighter, and the paladin. His focus was on the variance among those classes compared to what we usually see in games. The barbarian's Rage and lack of heavy armor almost makes you think it's a melee class akin to a berserker, but its high hit point growth and damage reduction mean that a barbarian can do some pretty fine tanking. Fighters do more than look pretty in shiny armor and soak up hits; they also pack quite a wallop--not to mention all the different ways they can be built. Finally, paladins combine healing magics and heavy armor to last longer in combat. Perhaps the paladin is the only one that follows the typical trend for tanks. The barbarian and the fighter certainly seem different in D&D.

With healers and tanks out of the way, Zed examined crowd control. He wisely noted that wizards and sorcerers had to prepare or build specifically to accomplish CC, that the bard is the natural CC in D&D. Nevertheless, a rogue with a good Use Magic Device Skill and the right wands could serve in the role of CC in a pinch. Zed's argument wasn't that CC would not be needed--just that it would not be confined to one class and that groups could invent ways to suffice without a pure CC caster in the party.

The coup de grace for Zed came in the form of the rogue, D&D's fourth element. D&D rogues discover and remove traps that could otherwise quickly end a party's journey. Thus, Zed's argument was that DDO could throw a wrench into the works with the judicious use of traps. The holy trinity doesn't even account for traps, and neither to most games.

My Take

What really happened after DDO launched? Well, if you didn't catch on from the title at the top of the page and my last sentence in the first paragraph above, I think DDO did not do enough to stop the holy trinity mold. Allow me to quickly counter each of Zed's points of conjecture (and hope).

Despite the prevalence of Cure wands and potions and the variations allowed by multi-classing, a pure healing cleric is still the best thing a party can have in the tougher missions in DDO. Sure, I'll grant that many quests are possible without a cleric. It's just not as many as it should be. I wish we had more quests that relied on the traits that make us choose our classes. Give us a quest that tests the Strength of a character. I don't know. Make us protect someone from a collapsing rafter. I personally enjoy player characters who focus more on wit than brawn. Let me be the star in a quest for that reason. Or let Diplomacy and favor mean something on a quest. Worst of all, DDO has only one healing class. I can play another game and lament, "We need a healer for this quest." Then I can see who is looking for a group and pick from multiple healing classes. In DDO, I can only pick cleric.

Just as the cleric, or healer, corner of the holy trinity remains strong in DDO, the tank is necessary as well. DDO throws a lot of monsters at us in a short time. Party members take a lot of damage, and we need to tanks to be able to soak up a lot damage in the short bursts that come with the frenzied battles in DDO. Try Walk the Butcher's Path in a full party without a tank. It's  a nightmare.

If I were to try Walk the Butcher's Path without a tank, I might succeed by having some good CC. While that strategy won't work in every quest (in fact some quests make CC worthless), a lot of the fighting tactics in DDO revolve around reducing the number of enemies actively attacking the group at one time. Since enemies tend to come in bunches, CC is the natural way to achieve this. Be it Web or Hold Person/Monster, CC rule in many quests in DDO.

At least Zed was right about rogues being able to use wands to achieve CC. In fact, they be all they are good for in the higher levels. Early dungeons do a good job of showcasing the special talents of the rogue, but the later dungeons make traps less dangerous. One theory for this is that Turbine did not want to have players feeling like they had to have a rogue to complete quests. If that is true, I think Turbine made a poor decision. I'm not saying I want a rogue to be necessary to clear the path to fight Velah. I'm just saying it would be fun to know there are too paths to Velah: one very short one filled with deadly traps and one very long one filled with hordes of monsters. Players would be able to adapt to the makeup of their party--just like in D&D.

Parting Thoughts

So, am I saying Turbine screwed up and that DDO is a terrible game? Hell no. DDO has been the only game I've subscribed to in 2006. I'm simply saying that Turbine did not execute DDO to the full potential afforded by D&D where the holy trinity is concerned. If I were to roll some alts with the Ten Ton Hammer guild today, I'd know we'd want a cleric to heal, a fighter or paladin to tank, and a bard or wizard for CC. The other 3 slots in the party could be filled in any manner, but leave out one of the holy trinity and we'd feel disadvantaged.

In the end, the holy trinity isn't horrible. I mean, I'm used to it from every other game I play. This whole issue is simply one of the few ways in which Turbine failed to make DDO different from the industry standard. There are too many great things about DDO for me to obsess about this issue, but it sure was interesting to read Zed's perspective prior to launch and compare his ideas to what really happened.

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