You may not need to bring a tank in The Elder Scrolls Online's group content

As a person who is relatively new to MMO gaming, the Holy Trinity (damage, healer, tank) is still a fresh concept to me, and I am not tired of it. But others don't feel that way. Bethesda hears their cries, and are creating a game that does contain trinity roles without necessarily requiring them all to be present for 4+ person group content.


In response to a question about the Trinity in a Q&A on the TESO web site, Bethesday posted an internal tester email. Read it:

Yesterday in the lunchtime dungeon test, our group of four (all at level 12) included:
· 1 Templar with light armor and healing staff, abilities focusing on healing
· 1 Templar with light armor and dual wield, Templar abilities focusing on healing
· 1 Dragonknight with light armor and destruction staff
· 1 Sorcerer with heavy armor and dual wield
This was with no real consultation with each other while making characters, other than ensuring there was at least one healer. For the sake of the dungeon we really could have used a true tank (the closest we had was the sorcerer wearing heavy armor and using unstable familiar to get the monster’s attention, with no real “keep myself alive” abilities), but as a group we were (eventually) able to take down the Fungal Grotto bosses. More to the point, with four players making independent choices in abilities and gear, three of the four made builds that defied the standard templates – and yet felt perfectly viable in actual play. The players were each able to build a character to their own taste with class abilities as a supplement, rather than the rigid defining aspect to the character, and have effective characters.

So as the game exists now, you can get through some dungeons without sticking to what we see as the traditional character roles in dungeons and raids. Of course, that's only talking about a 4-person dungeon. It'll be interesting to see how the makeup of a team affects raid success. I suspect that straying from the trinity set up won't be something every group will be able to pull off, but I've been wrong most of the time in my life.