Defying Natural Order With DeoxyriboNucleic Acid

Right now, my status is as follows:

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║ Heaven-Defying Paradise...

║ Name: ImperialShadow

║ Level: 21

║ HP: 412/412

║ MP: 423/423

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Stats

║ Opportunism: 12353

║ Strength: 7707

║ Scheme: 3020

║ Wisdom: 2125

║ Endurance: 982

║ Luck: 915

║ Will: 517

║ Comprehension: 287

║ Dexterity: 21

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Inventory

║ Sticky bombs x50

║ Sticky bombs x50

║ Sticky bombs x30

║ Amulet of Endurance x1

║ Amulet of Change x1

║ Mjolnir x1

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Genome (4990 points)

║ Sheep Transformation

║ Soul Collection

║ Skills (201 points)

║ Slow (10)

║ Slip (10)

║ Palm Push (10)

║ Thick Skin (10)

║ Attention Grabbing (10)

║ Bite (9)

║ Sharp Eye (1, MAX)

║ Emotionless Machine (3)

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Yes, exactly, it's all over the place.

It's a bit telling of how I tended to work things out all that time: I just went along with everything.

There are flaws everywhere, but there is enough variety that I can somehow get through it.

If I think about it, there's also a second consequence of my status being all over the place: I am an expert on nothing.

I might be able to do everything, but it's not actually that much of an advantage. It means that on any task, I am weaker than anyone.

MMOs are a type of game in which social interactions are very important. In this type of game, players often gravitate toward one another, and form groups for one purpose or another.

There are parties, which play together for a short time to meet a common goal. There are friend groups, who form parties often together. There are guilds, which are groups with a vested interest who play together in the medium to long term.

While the bigger guilds aren't, small guilds are often made by groups of friends. It has a lot of variety, but in general, guilds can be seen as a big gathering of people with a common interest and vision.

In any multiplayer game, even when the game doesn't by itself, it became common wisdom to split roles between players of any group.

Anyway, just like in life in general, someone can't do everything there is to do, and someone can't be fit for everything. Splitting tasks means that each player can become way more proficient in their own specialties, and in the case of an MMO, their characters can become very fit for it.

For Paradise, these roles are a variation of the most common Holy Trinity: The tank and the DPS are still here, so is the healer, though their role is a bit more wide as "support", but there is a fourth addition, which is usually minor, but became way more important due to the nature of the game's raids: CC. A lot of dungeons are just so hard that it becomes obligatory to have CC skills, and due to its sheer importance and the demand it created, it naturally became one of the four basic "classes" in the eyes of the players.

It might seem from the outside that 4 characters that are average at everything and 4 specialists would average out to have the same fighting force, but the truth is way more complicated.

Taking the example of a group fight with these 8 hypothetical characters, this is how it would go:

Team 1 is unable to break through the defense of Team 2's tank.

Team 1 is thus unable to damage Team 2's tank enough to make life hard for their support.

With no breakthrough opportunity, Team 1 are sitting ducks, so they are unable to sponge the damages dealt by Team's 2 DPS, which can be further buffed by their support.

Finally, even if they had some kind of skill or opportunity to turn the situations around, that would be ȧssuming that the CC specialist of Team 2 would even let them the opportunity of controlling their characters properly.

Damages dealt to him are reduced, healed, and can even be sent back ȧssuming his team's CC specialist gives him a small window of time to do so. In fact, Plant Feet, which can be activated close to instantly, allows him to also reduce CC, making sure an enemy's CC would be unable to throw him around or make his defense null.

The main problem I have with this kind of arrangement is that I don't feel like any role moves me particularly. I kind of enjoy my current way of playing.

It just isn't sustainable.

Thinking about it, if I don't like any role, I might just be able to create my own. Even that guy WinterLord wasn't 100% focusing on tanking. I could just try to find another split that works better for me. Despite some obvious limitations, this game is pretty complete, there already being an established split of roles does not mean I can't just create my own.

But I have no idea about what role I could create...

Maybe... Just maybe, if I have no idea of which role to take, I might just need to take a look at my guild, and see what we need.

So we have DPS for all situations, there is no problem with that.

For CC, we depend a lot on my Slip and Dartagnan's Keep combination, so it might be worth increasing the number of CC skills I have.

So it means we lack tanking and support.

Thinking about it, our DPS are insane, so we don't need anyone to buff our attack power, and most of the time, we don't need healing because we just do everything to not get hit in the first place, but the role of support might have been something we neglected too much.

Of the two roles of tank and support, it's obvious which one I would prioritize:

A tank without support is just a stopgap measure, but a support can be used alone. With the composition of our guild, we can provide the protection the support would need on our own.

I don't know how it came back to it, but I somehow thought about recruiting someone again.

Thinking about it, we are probably the only guild that has to think about things in such a way. Most others would have multiple candidates for even one of their elite parties, while we have a single party containing all of our guild, which amounts to a measly 5 people.

If recruiting keeps coming to my mind, I might just do it in the end.

I thought about getting my student in a few times already, but while he would fit perfectly among our bunch of crazy DPS, his presence wouldn't amount to much improvement. That's something I could confirm after his RedFairy started joining our raids.

With the 3rd guild war coming, I might need to think about recruitment further.

The first guild war looked like a fluke, and it kind of was. For that one, we were clearly weaker than several parties, but we still got second place because we were underestimated.

The second guild war wasn't. By that time, we clearly were standing out as individuals from the rest, and we could win against 1 to 2 guilds in a straightforward battle, so with a mix of constant moving around and strategy, we avoided any kind of attention until a number we could deal with was left.

With the second guild war as an example, I don't doubt we will be met with a lot of focus, possibly an alliance, so I'll really need to prepare us to deal with that.

A support with a good sustain ability might be just what we need to go through that kind of situation.

Ok, it's decided! I'll recruit!

And, now that all distractions are dealt with, I have to get back to focusing on my character now.