Let's Have the Trinity Talk Guys...

This post is more geared to those new to Guild Wars 2 battle mechanics or those still curious about the game and haven't made the jump yet.

ArenaNet has a fantastic article that talks about this: Healing and Death.
Ours is a little more condensed with our personal opinions

Holy Trinity! What's that? If you played any MMO in the past, you should be somewhat aware of its presence. It kind of looks like this:

The whole triangle/trinity itself consists of a group/team/party of players who have specific roles and when those roles are put together, they are as effective as ever.

The DPS classes are the damage dealers. Their sole purpose is to inflict as much damage and as fast as possible to bring down mobs, foes, bosses, etc.

The Tank classes are the damage absorbers. Their purpose is to be rock hard beef cakes. They stack HP and defense and have skills that will keep enemy focus on them. They're the frontline for the team.

Then we have Healers. They're the most reactive class. Their purpose is to restore health to the team, mostly the tanks. Usually in large groups/teams/parties, there are dedicated healers just for a tank, and ones for the rest of the team.

With the combination of all 3 legs of this triangle/trinity the group are as strong as ever. However, the interior is also a great weakness to this formula. When one becomes weakened/knocked out of battle, the other two cannot hold themselves up for long and the trinity itself will eventually collapse and render the team useless/defeated.

So what does Guild Wars 2 do to solve this weakness? They throw the idea of the holy trinity focus out the window. There is no dedicated, DPS, Tank, or Heal class. Not one profession is created/used to solely play a certain role of that trinity. They want to erase that mentality out the window. However, there is some kind of other 'trinity' that Guild Wars 2 has:

With this 'trinity', it's not meant for a party to come together to play certain roles of the triangle as that is the same as the old mentality. This trinity focuses on its core, the player. The trinity you see above represents the player. In some form, you have access to each of the legs and can utilize them. Your choice in weapons, skills and traits molds your very own version of the 'trinity.' In a party, all of you are an individual 'trinity' and the focus of the party is making decisions to being effective and efficient with what you have than relying on a mentality of what should be needed.

Damage: Every profession can deal damage. It's every person's responsibility to deal damage. Aside from dealing straight damage, Guild Wars 2 offers skills which apply certain conditions which does damage over time on your foes. Also skills vary from single target, to nearby, target AOE, lines and spreads.

Support: Like said in the ArenaNet's mentioned article above, Healing is the least dynamic support skill as it is reactive. Support skills are the ones that directly you and your allies. These skills are the ones that can apply certain boons to allies that will help them offensively (Might, Fury) or defensively (Regeneration, Protection). Also there are skill that create fields that can close gaps or create distance between allies and enemies.

Control: It's the most fluid out of the other three. These skills help control the flow of damage in battle. And these skills directly effect enemies and their incoming damage. Skills that cause Immobilization, Knock Down, Blind can be considered control because they momentarily stop incoming damage. They can also act as gap closers and distance creators along with Crippled, Slow, etc. Then there are skills that can negate or reduce damage as they are in form of fields or self applied skills.

Again, every profession has skills that are a part of each leg of this trinity. It's up to you if you want to be balanced or want to specialized in certain areas which will make you better in one leg than the other. 

That's our take of people's GW2 trinity's

This set up supports the core values ArenaNet has for Guild Wars 2. No longer you are forced to play a certain role to fill in a space on the team. That goes with waiting for a dungeon party needing certain professions. The trinity is in your hands, your personal preference of how you want to play and be part of Tyria.