Holy Trinity

What is the Holy Trinity in RPG?

In a quick answer, RPG holy trinity is all about heterogeneous roles. Classically, there are three major roles in the fantasy rpg genre:
- Healer, one heals the group.
- Tank, the one that draws hate or agro from the target as to divert damage from the rest of the group
- Damage Dealer- The person that has the power to deal large amounts of damage to the target through either magic or weaponry.

In this trinity, no one character can do two jobs.
- A character that is the tank would not be able to heal nor do any significant damage.
- The healer would not have the health to take large amounts of damage nor be able to deal it out.
- The damage dealer would not have the power to heal nor have the health to take large damage.

There was also a separate component in RPG games, known as a hybrid class. This character could, tank, heal and do damage but not close to the ability of the primary role class.

World of Warcraft, has the foundation of this RPG trinity, but they allow more flexibility.
Tank- Warrior, Death Knight
Healer- Priest
DPS- Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Hunter
Hybrids- Paladin, Druid, Shaman

Now there is one class that is a tank and one that is a healer and four primary dps classes. Then, the other four classes are hybrids and can fill different roles. Blizzard has in essence removed DPS as a role within the Holy Trinity by allowing each class to deal damage effectively as long as they, for the most part, give up their healing/tanking roles.

By allowing classes to do what other classes do, Blizzard is walking a very thin thread when it comes to classical rpg. One of the major points of rpg is each class brings something to the show that makes them unique. If each player can come and get the job done, the game loses something. The secret to preventing this has to be clearly avoiding homogenization. While the business model might be to allow customers to do what they want (No, I am not accusing the company of only caring about profits) each class has to feel different from the others. While doing damage is fun, perhaps a class that just debuffs would be interesting.

An example of this would be something that seemed to be intended for the warlock but never quite got there. Take the warlock, cut his damage by half. However, in compensation allow him to slow down bosses, lower their health, weaken their attacks, this all would make for a useful class without it being necessarily about the damage he inflicts himself.

I play a mage for the great damage and would gladly give up my buff (Arcane Intellect) and stamina and even other defensive spells for a large damage increase. The glass canon is a great analogy. That was what the mage was in classic rpg, very weak against attacks but if you don’t neutralize him, he will destroy you.