Catch up events will not bypass farming your 6 piece, will not farm you Lv2 from clown and most assuredly will not farm you your Brel set. Honing is hardly the rough part here. You can buy your way to whatever GS you like, but you still have to run the content to catch up on your set upgrades.
Even still, the point I am saying is that with a 6 roster already established and invested in, sitting in the 1475-1510 those players are not going to drop a developed character for a new support release, unless they were intentionally planning on doing so. It’s just not worth it as much now as it would have been earlier on in our servers lifecycle.
However. If before everyone had a 6 gold earner roster, one of these express and PP events happened to have a support class instead of endless, endless DPS classes that do nothing but continue to pollute the pool even further, the problem, while not solved, would be lessened. I’d have 1 less DPS in the queue and 1 more Support in the queue. A direct positive change to the problem.
Yet, even seeing what happened in KR, in RU, and now here, they still pushed the only possible 3rd support option out a full year.
As someone who knows a guy that started with 6 bards and now has 5 bards and 1 WD his bards all share gems are all equally cracked, his 1520 is no different then his 1460’s but by god his WD the fact that he was able to take 5 fairly cheap supports and slam all their earnings in 1 DPS that DPS smokes the rest of us that went 5dps 1 support.
Hell 2 or 3 of his Bards have a spec AND swift set up and at one point he had full level 7 DPS bard gems as well because he just didn’t have places to put his resources he still barely does.
I’d rather go without a support than run with that Pally tbch. I don’t mind full DPS lobbies, just means we skip some annoying stuff and clear faster if everyone else is comfortable without supps too.
That Paladin has no purpose being invited into a legion raid, at all. If he’s being accepted, that’s on the party leader either not bothering to check or being impatient/too afraid of the enounter.
The skill expression floor and ceiling for a dps compared to a support is worlds apart, im not even trying to be an asshole it just is. Maybe you can make a better case for something like bard sure, but most DPS’s don’t play themselves, even extremely straight forward ones and if they do, they require an insane amount of gear to reach that point. For instance igniter sorceress is probably one of if not the easiest DPS to effectiveness ratio there is. There are large AoE’s, single cast abilities and a bunch of damage front loaded into the skills, tripods and identity. But even that requires more skill than even a bard at moderate gear levels comparatively because due to the nature of your gear progression you will be far squishier (having taken grudge) and you have to hit very tight DPS window timings to optimize your damage, otherwise you lose out on 30-50% of your overall dps. How do you make dps windows not so tight? You get a level 10 Doomsday gem.
That one gem alone is worth more than any Support endgame build will ever have to be. One gem. You think they only need one gem to be played or a full 11? Ok lets say you dont take lv7-10 gems for Rhime Arrow, or Esoteric, thats still 7 independent gems, all of which have a significant impact on your performance celling and even rotation. This is a very similar story but much more exacerbated for many other dps classes who are effectively gated by thier maximum dps output either by raw numbers or cooldowns. You have to not only keep track of your own hp, but also your uptime otherwise you arent “doing your job”. Not to mention countering doesnt squarely fall on supports, DPs’s (outside of sorcs) tend to hold an equal amount of responsibility for needing to counter in most situations not named valtan ghost phase. The reason ultimately why support will never take as much skill to pilot as a dps in this game currently is because supports are too strong at what they do. They practically require zero gear investment to function and thats a massive design flaw. When you have a class with no real upwards mobility because the performance ceiling is literately the floor, people will get bored easily.
Ye. I wish they also released more supports. If some people had their way and had it to where supports aren’t needed or weren’t in the game, I wouldn’t be playing. All I play are supports.
I got MVP in a Vykas NM on my 3x3+2 (Drops being the +2) Paladin earlier tonight. Just sharing so you can be happy that a support got MVP without using any privilege.
Has ceiling similar to mid-tier dps (ie not DI sh/reflux sorc).
Gear has nothing to do with skill…
As someone who plays 5 dps/1 support I find min maxing support contribution to raid way harder than a dps. Min maxing uptime on dps to 95% potential isn’t that hard (requires some ridiculous gut feel for patterns if you want to hit 100%+).
But min maxing when to use my buffs when I dont’ have 100% uptime on them? Sheesh trying to track my 3 other dps rotations is not trivial. Should I hold blessed aura/3 bubble since 1 of my dps is bursting here, or should I pop it in 5-10 seconds when another dps will have their big rotations coming off cd, etc
Grudge is literally a non factor when you’re talking about ceilings. You literally aren’t supposed to be hit unless you’re purposely being hit (with your support recognizing that you will tank) to max ur uptime where otherwise you couldn’t.
You’re assuming all the wrong things homie. I did not invite him to any party nor did I join the party he was in. I chose NOT to enable or participate in that. LOL
Yea the new MVP system helps. There’s a good chance if you didnt get those counters and someone else had you would’ve lost the MVP. Paladin has it even easier since your buff is built into your heal Bard with a good group doesn’t get to see the screen at all since she spends more time shielding or atk buffing. But it is what it is.
But if you’re worried about MVP you’re probably not playing Support and if you are you probably just spam heal and nothing else lol
if you can’t recognize how difficult it is to actively track when to use damage buffs to absolutely min max the rdps of your damage buffs then you don’t realize how difficult support can be (not in execution but in decision making). Understanding skill cd/rotations/peak dps in each chars rotation actively during the boss isn’t trivial, especially without comms
DPS literally have to pay no attention to min maxing rdps but only care about personal dps (minus some with cracked synergies)
If your timing for when to run dps buffs is I have an igniter sorc with igniter, the boss is immobile / my buff will last before boss is intargetable then thats just the bare minimum
The things you should be considering is stuff like - dang my shock scrapper ran his shock combo 20s ago, it should be coming up but my sorc doesn’t have igniter. My gunslinger looks like he just came off shot gun rotation so he may be going into rifle soon. I think nows a good time that would maximize my overall rdps even if my sorc doesn’t have igniter
The one thing I would like to add to that is a Support fights the environment, not the Boss.
You are correct it’s not the same skill cap as many DPS rotations while weaving in between Hazards, but a good support can not only make the whole parties life easier as a whole allowing for more greedy plays, but also boost the damage enough to make up for the dps that isn’t taking up that slot.
A spec Bard who buffs as you Igniter is going to skyrocket your ceiling because the Bard itself is playing around the environment and the other players, but what it can do to the boss itself directly.
My 4x3 now level 5 gem igniter sorc loves my spec bard that runs with her. I smoke the GL and 5x3 full 7 FI WD I play with. They literally designed the group around my sorc to carry and she does at 45%+ per gate in clown lol
Ok outside of keeping your shields up, cleansing, and the odd counter what are you sweating over as a support in any raid scenario? Im seriously confused by your argument, could you explain to me this secret tech to playing support like a god, that doesnt simply involve recognizing debuffs and knowing optimal dps windows in which you use favorable buffs/shields to enable your dps to do more dps? Understanding these things is like 90% of the effort, literately knowing they exist. One ability with zero gear investment to make effective, and zero possibility to punish you if you do manage to “Fail” in doing so is all you need to press often times. Meanwhile a DPS who doesnt know very basic normal patterns even could just be flor PoV and hinder the team by making silly mistakes. How does a poor support hurt a team more than a poor dps for instance?
we’re not talking about floors. obviously support has lower floor.
My argument was support ceiling is same as mid-tier dps ceiling… Read my comment. It sounds like you’re not really thinking about dps windows and how most rotations in this game are not “standardized” to like 1 min/2 min windows but are free flowing
How hard do you think it is to press dmg buffs to min max overall rdps rather than pressing them at a time that seems decent
