Editing Combat Roles (section)

==In MMOs==

The original trinity was:

* '''Tank'''. The guy who goes up front, and absorbs all the damage from the monsters<ref>For the purposes of this article, all enemies, human or not, are called "monsters", just to keep things simpler when a "is the enemy of my enemy my friend?" situation comes up.</ref>.
* '''Healer'''. The guy who makes sure the Tank and Damage stay in combat, rather than dying or needing to retreat.
* '''Damage'''. The guy who actually kills the monsters.

Further, the Healer and Damage generally get subdivided or modified a bit:

* '''Burst''', who does a lot of healing/damage all at once, but is usually fairly slow about it, '''DPS''' ("damage per second") who focuses on doing damage at quick bursts (and yes, "Healing Per Second" is a thing), and '''DoT/HoT''', "damage/heal over time", spells and abilities which inflict status effects that do damage/heal continuously.
* '''Area of Effect''' (AoE), which focuses on large groups and areas, as opposed to a '''Single Target''' specialist. Both have value, as sometimes you're fighting a horde<ref>And so the multiplicative effect of AoE is useful</ref>, and sometimes you're fighting a singular big monster.<ref>And thus, the multiplicative bonus of AoE is lost, leaving you with a fairly weak spell that doesn't do much.</ref>
* '''Preferred distance''': How far away from the enemy the character likes to stand. Usually, Tanks are up close, while Healers are further back (unless they're Off-Tanks themselves), with DPS varying between the two, although there are exceptions. For example, PvP games can have Ranged Tanks who, while they can stay out of the fight, can survive just about anything the enemy team throws at them; they usually have some trade-off to make them balanced.<ref>For example: "Tanky ranged damage dealer who takes forever to set that damage up" or "Can survive a surprisingly long time taking damage, but is slow to move, so if his teammates don't take down his attackers, he's fucked"</ref>

There are a plethora of side roles, usually one of the above with a little bit below, or two or more of the below:

* The '''Off Tank''', who could fill in for the Tank for a short while so he could heal or reposition.
* The '''Buffer''', who boosts his teammates' abilities. May ''sound'' useless, but most systems go out of their way to make Buffs valuable<ref>And anybody who's played a incremental game like Cookie Clicker can tell you that multiplicative bonuses that stack can get small numbers really big '''really''' quickly.</ref>. Likely to be combined with Healer, Tank, or Debuffer.
* The '''Debuffer''', who penalizes his enemies' abilities. Similar to the Buffer, but for enemies. Likely to be combined with Tank, Damage (frequently a DoT type), or Buffer.
* The '''Petmaster''' or '''Summoner''', who has a pet or pets, who are either an Off-Tank or extra Damage.
* The '''Crowd Controller''', or the '''Mezzer''', who focuses on disabling monsters, particularly large groups, so that their teammates can focus on a few monsters at a time.
* A few games have '''Area Denial''' roles (or, more frequently, monsters, especially bosses), who make an area inhospitable to their enemies. Rare in actual MMOs, because most MMOs have very weak AI systems<ref>For somewhat good reasons; AI systems cost a lot of computing power, and don't deliver much to the player experience for that expense.</ref>, and thus such a role would make AI more complicated than it needs to be.
* The '''Jack of All Trades''' (or just Jack), who can fill in for more than two of the above, usually at the cost of being good at any one. Usually, has a hard time, as the other classes are more valuable to a group, but as long as they have their own niche, being able to fill in for another in a pinch is still valuable.

===Aggro===
One important concept to understanding the Tank is "Aggro": Monsters target whoever has done the most damage or healing nearby, but Tanks have abilities that either force monsters to attack them, or greatly increase their own Aggro rate without necessarily doing any damage or healing. 

Aggro management is quite important in most MMOs, as most Healer and Damage classes are fairly fragile, and an Aggro system gives players a fairly direct and decent risk/reward system, realism be damned. 

(See also the [[DISTRACTION CARNIFEX]], which is a case of Real World Aggro management.)