When the boss is focused on player A they drop into “defensive mode.” This keeps them alive but since they aren’t focused on damage their threat drops quickly. Player B, who is being ignored, can go into “damage mode” and start tearing into the boss. They do lots of damage so the boss will turn to Player B who then goes on defense and A goes on offense.

So how do we keep this game of boss ping pong interesting? By making the challenges require the players to use their interacting powers more.

The ice wizard finishes their shard stream spell and the boss turns to them. They throw up an ice shield that requires the boss to break through it before it can get to the wizard. By breaking the shield the boss gets a “chilled” debuff. It just so happens that if the warrior uses her mace on any “chilled” targets it does 20% more damage but the fire archer should switch from their flaming arrow attack, which does less damage to chilled targets.

This type of interaction rewards a player for being knowledgeable about not only their powers but other classes. It doesn’t require specific roles and it only requires some creative thinking to diversify the powers. Warrior buffness blunts the incoming damage. Rogues dodge constantly. Wizards prevent the boss from reaching them. As long as these defensive abilities can’t be used simultaneously with high damage abilities it shouldn’t be over powered.

I’ve never been a fan of the “holy trinity” style of game design and I wish a company would be brave enough to break the mold.

Case in point: I do not like at all to heal. As a paladin, I can more or less decide what role I want to fulfill and I run with a prot/ret dual spec. The only case I agreed to heal is in raids as main tank healer, where basically the only thing I have to decide is which spell to use on the main tank. Finding on my raid grid who to heal is really not my idea of fun.

Currently, I still decide sometimes not to tank, not because I don’t like it or am afraid, but because it is true that dps can go into instances with a laid back attitude. The only responsibilities I have is my 1 minute cc and my interrupt, which really isn’t too bad. As a tank, cc is not there (usually), but interrupts are there, plus threat generation, plus picking up adds, plus (and that’s the worst part) handling other players’ errors. And for me, that’s the best part about dps: as a dps, your responsibility is to yourself. As a vanilla mage player, I know that I should pop potions, bandage and glyph Evocation to heal myself, and I basically don’t expect any heal for the healer. As a ret paladin, I will gimp my dps to pop a word of glory too. As a tank, you are mostly responsible for others. As a healer, you are responsible for yourself and others. And given the way some people act in PUGs, I usually don’t want to be responsible for punks…

Guild Wars. City of Heroes. Rift. Guild Wars 2. (To varying extents, and the latter two have yet to be fully tested. But they’re coming…)

They’re oh so close and coming. And I can hardly wait. Let’s hope more gamers move on from the absolute purity of WoW and onto the tasty complex mix of hybrid combat roles.

At the same time, Cabal is strictly a small group/solo/pvp game, with no real raiding.

I will just add that I LOVE playing a healer. I find it, particularly in Cata, to be an engaging experience. I know that I am the controller of who lives and who dies, and I know that at times: someone is going to live and in order to do so, someone else is going to die. Beyond having to make the best decisions possible with a variety of abilities and limited resources, you also then have to decide how to allocate those resources once you’d decided on the method of delivery. That is: just because the entire group is low and you’ve decide to use the expensive fast heal doesn’t mean the decision between which of the 3 dps in the group (or 17 dps in the raid) gets the first heal. It becomes even more fun when there are decisions to be made that evaluate some level of risk. Your survival hunter is the best dps in the group, but if you cast an ae heal on the two melee dps and the tank you may save two people instead of just one and heal the tank too – or does the hunter need that heal and will the dps and tank live long enough to be ok?

Healing isn’t “easy” right now – it’s not the above level of complexity all the time, mind you, but at the most heart-racing and engaging moments of conflict, I’m making split second decisions that leave me with an adrenaline high that no button mashing dps character could give.

1> “How people interact with strangers”

I agree with this. The problem got worse with the Dungeon Finder because you now have millions of people to choose from and the chances of seeing anyone else ever again are very low. I do think it provides more good than bad though. I’m a tad of an altaholic for instance, but hate questing; especially doing quests I’ve already done. The Dungeon Finder gives me a way to level my toons in a much more enjoyable way. I have leveled my warrior, druid, and priest only through PuG dungeons and am very pleased with the result. Sure there were asshats, and lots of quiet semi-awkward runs; but at the end of the day it’s nice to know that the game was designed in a way that I can choose to eschew quests and level in the way I enjoy {rogue currently slowly grinding his way up through pug BGs. Now that gets aggravating!}

In the hypothetical system outlined by Triple B, I personally think the problem would be lessened. You die in the tankless/healerless system while the boss is on you, than whoops you suck. If you die early and the boss enrages, or people run out of cooldowns or potions or any other means of finishing the enocunter due to being short a person the blame is squarely on your shoulder. In a game with a smaller player base, therefore the likelihood of seeing someone again is much greater, I think simply being a jerk would be lessened. Actual skill and commitment worry me though.

2> Dual Spec/Generic toons.

I disagree here. If you were an arms warrior you couldn’t find a group in those days. NonCC DPS just were not needed. You HAD to play a class because those skills and abilities were needed too bad if you liked another class go reroll. Watering down the differences between classes allows for you to bring the player not the class, which is a good idea. The classes still play very differently, but all can contribute to a coherent group. You should be able to grab any tank, healer, and a few deeps and make it through any five man given adequate gear and skill. Cataclysm heroics even cannot succeed with Arms, Fury, Retadin, Priest, Prot Warrior there’s not enough CC, you’ll fail. That is a problem that can be solved by giving warriors and pallys some CC, even if it’s similar to other class’s CC.

As for dual spec…. I don’t see that as a problem at all. Druids used to carry around gear for two specs anyway and would just visit the trainer and respec when they wanted to change role. All dual spec does is save some g and eliminate the run to a trainer.

3>No Tree form.

It sucks. I hate it. I loved looking like broccoli {seriously I got glyph of treant the second I could, dropping 500g for it just because I was so happy. That scribe was shocked at his tip…}. As for generic healer, drus still feel like drus. How do you heal a group all taking damage in LK? Rejuv/WG. How do you do it in cata? Rejuv/WG. How do you heal a tank in LK? Roll LB and Rejuv, have Swiftmend on hand and be ready with the nourishes. How do you heal a tank in Cata? Roll LB/Rejuv, SM on CD, ready with a nourish or nt if he’s way low. Regrowth is for speed.

If anything druid healing now uses more spells…..

4> The game itself is watered down and dps just get carried.

Had to ask a raiding friend to confirm, but his guild will not/does not/shall not PuG even a single DPS for a raid. Awareness, battle knowledge, and skill are too important now. Cata made PvE much harder and DPS who don’t pull their weight arn’t downing bosses either from being kicked or from holding a raid back.

Back to the task at hand, the hypothetical system, I think it answers all 4 of your concerns.
1> I already addressed
2> All toons would have ways to not die, would have ways to deal damage. By your definition they would be generic. But playing a different class when well designed feels completely different from another class of the same role. An affliction warlock and an arcane mage both pew pew for mad DPS in WoW, but playing them both is very very different and not at all generic. In a no tank/no heals system the flavor and feel of the class would be it’s draw, not which class happens to actually have CC.
3>If I made a hypothetical no Tank/Heals MMO I would have a treant race! And a panda race. Oh! and no humans, they’re boring…. maybe this is why I don’t design games….. >Again in the hypoteticla system being carried wouldn’t be possible, if you’re teh suk everyone would be able to tell and you’d wipe everyone alot.

The more I think about a tank/healerless system the more I like it. Thanks BBB for the inspiration.