I don’t know if this is a suggestion that has already been made, but here goes.
First of all I’d like to say that I main support so i’d be devastated if there was a careless change that makes supports irrelevant.
I feel its necessary to point out that whatever change is made in attempt to solve this issue should be considered carefully.
With that in mind I have thought of a solution that tackles the following aspects:
Change should NOT force people to play supports when they dont care for it
Change should NOT make supports irrelevant to the game
3 part SOLUTION:
Remove caps on potions or heavily increase limit.
Edit: or increase limit and cooldown between uses
Reasoning:
This will remove the heavy need for a support to stay healthy and continue the fight till the end.
Support Healing skills can be removed or effectiveness reduced or no change even.
Reasoning:
These healing skills should NOT be primary reason for having a supports. Makes the game less dependent on requiring supports to stay alive to attempt to finish group content. INSTEAD read #3
Improve support’s skills with better and/or more shields, Higher damage buffs, higher damage taken debuffs on Bosses
Reasoning:
This will help supports stay relevant after change #1 and #2.
Make it so the game does not DEPEND on supports for a successful run, but instead makes runs cleaner/smoother and FASTER.
Again if a support can reduce the time it takes to clear a run by an extra minute or 2, and at the same time make the run somewhat easier and smoother with well timed shields (As a support I can still enjoy when i know i do clutch shields and my DPS carry are wowed by the huge jump in damage numbers)
Extra Mile Changes (but not necessary):
Revamp Expertise
Details:
Make so expertise improves efficiency of skills such as buffs, debuffs. Rather than duration. This would also add more relevancy to extra stats that are always ignored.
Thanks for reading this!
Hope you guys find this helpful!
A Paladin
Edit:
The reason for this particular suggestion, was just trying to come up with an idea that may help relieve the reliance on supports for group content whilst maintaining their relevancy. And without making drastic changes, nor forcing players to do anything different
Everyone has to stay healthy, not just supports, that includes DOGDING and PERFORMING correctly, not EATING all mechanics because you have a support in group or you can use 100 pots.
Healing skills are NOT the primary reason to have a support because healing is THE LAST thing a Support has to do. If you have to heal as a support because someone did a mistake, it’s understandable, but all your combat resource generated should go for DAMAGE and your party should know this. In LOA Supports can heal but are not healers.
Support skills are fine as they are, it’s up to the full group and raid to make the most of them and trust me, 90% of players don’t do it. You are one example of it, playing Paladin and having 0 clue about how supports in this game work.
I won’t even discuss your 3rd point because if you are clueless about the first 2, going into an argument about Stats could make your head explode.
True, i may not know anything about a support.
But i enjoy playing lost ark and supports.
Just a friendly open suggestion hoping makes supports less mandatory and more “nice to have”
I mean healing is the primary reason for an inexperienced group… Buffs and shields are the only reason for an experienced group…
Wild idea. Suck it the fuck up and make 1 support. If someone can not do that, they have ZERO room to bitch about not having a support in their group… It’s not even that big of a deal.
" BuT I DonT LikE SUpPorT " . Cool man, I don’t like supporting someone that can’t support my dps. So I guess you will be at the mercy of match making forever.
" BUt iM WaItInG on ArTiSt "
Yea ok. I’m sure you are. Lots of people were " lance master mains " and gained enough clout to sway a release… Just to have a lance master lopang.
" BuT iT TaKeS a LoT oF MaTs "
If you have 2-4 dps at 1415+ currently… You literally can’t even complain about that. Your concern wasn’t making a support then… So why has it shifted now?
These threads are not only annoying but repetitive. You can " suggest " all you want but the reality is supports will be needed… And MMOs players don’t typically play support… Can’t get big pp crits from it. The only thing I could see if allowing heals to crit and giving save mechs like pulls and pushes like tera and some others did.
People that only have a DPS, are destined to enjoy party finder and match making for the indefinite future. They charge supports for busses… Now that’s about to come back 10 fold and they don’t like it.
I would likely quit this game if there weren’t support classes. But since we’re apparently so few, maybe just remove supports so we can finally be free
As a paladin main, I would say the good idea I saw on this forum was letting supports to do unlimited raids (but only 1st time you will get reward)
I would be able to help my clan and then can do more runs in pubs.
Btw the change what I would like to see for supports are MORE buffs for our healing/supporting abilities. More heals, or lower CD, longer buffs, because why we have same duration as DPS’s buffs/debuffs?
This will not make raid boss easier, BUT it will make support play less stressful, so more people would try them.
PS. honing is !@# I finally hit 1414 after pitying myself 3 times in a row… Could have done valtan 1st week if not for this luck…
How exactly will this not make raid boss easier? Looks like you are suggesting stright up buffs and indirectly call them QoL. That would make supports even more important to have in your party, but not necessarily more people play them.
No changes could ever force or heavily influence people to play/main supports. The final decision lies with the people/individual players who will choose to play support or won’t play support. They could add incentives or nerf it to the ground, but imo that won’t directly affect the majority of people who originally choose not to play support in the first place.
Why do people play games? Because it’s fun. Why do people pick certain classes over other classes? Because it’s fun or they just care about the self-satisfaction of dealing a lot of damage or not being aware they’re pursuing a path of wanting to clear things as fast as possible.
With Lost ark being the game it is and the genre it is, nobody needs to take a game design course to know no game will ever make their support classes irrelevant. There was a reason why support classes were designed in the first place. To complete back track on it at a later point in time is a complete waste of time, effort, resources what have you from a development/business stand point.
As for your 3 part solution,
They will never remove the caps on potions. The point of all content that involves a potion cap is to make it all challenging whether its guardian raids, abyss dungeons/raids and legion raid. This decision now influences players to be more aware of mechanics, taking damage and what have you. If there was no potion cap, then you best believe people will just face tank all hits while chugging down potions into a less fun/dynamic content.
Removing or nerfing support healing skills is like taking away what makes them unique and turning them into another dps class lol. Afaik, a lot of DPS classes have skills that provide some sort of damage buff for rest of party. Going back to your original note tho, imo groups want to take a support because they do the following 3 all relatively well: DMG buff + Shield + Healing.
Buffing supports even more doesn’t change the support issue as it now comes back to what I initially said, no change could ever force or influence more people to main supports. Buffing supports will only affect the current active supports because few to no completely new players will choose to play support unless that’s their MO from other similar games whereas current players will stick with their main because they already invested so much into it.
If they really wanted to attempt to fix the support issue, then they would hold/release an event similar to express pass, but more buffed mats + designated only for support classes/artist so that no other class can use it. However, once again it will ultimately be up to the individual player to make the informed decision of playing/maining a support or not.
Why do you think people don’t wanna play support? Cause in this game you have to do double work, not only fighting boss, but fighting your team as well. So making buffs/debuffs longer will reduce the stress and some extra heals will help to feel important as support, which can help swaying people to play these classes.
Ye this 3 part solution at its most naive and basic form works together when all 3 are applied.
Like with #3 defs would be an issue to just buff supports, but if they were to remove healing skills from supports (#2), it should come with a buff on other skills.
and the only reason to nerf the healing skills was if they were to implement (#1)
But with that said. What you said does make heaps of sense.
Maybe not remove caps on potions? Increase amount and have a longer cooldown between use maybe?
Forgot, many other DPS classes also have DMG buffs and some shields.
I would support the idea of increasing the amount+longer cd behind how many hp% potions can be used, but afaik there is the purple potion where you can carry 9 of those :x
for some weird reason, there’s a movement in the forum attacking each post suggesting ideas to fix content design around support classes. I see it everywhere. My theory about these folks are:
maybe AGS/SGS hired them to counter attack any post suggesting ideas to fix support issues, idk, to avoid costs fixing the issue properly, since CMs asked for ideas, but clearly are not doing anything with them.
they are whales and don’t want f2p people reaching them in a fair environment
I’m really trying to understand this movement.
OP, thanks for bringing your ideas/thoughts. I liked them.
Taking care of others through providing heals, buffs, shields and debuffs is very, very fulfilling. It’s the opposite mentality of selfishness. It’s not as fun to many because most want to see themselves as the slinger of big dick and not the provider of buffs to that cause for others.
