While many argue the support shortage is natural just because people want to play DPS, I disagree with that.
Class fantasy and combat design are probably the best features of Lost Ark, allowing you to pick between very different playstyles and aesthetics, ranging from the classic RPG wariior with a greatsword to a bionic transforming ironman with a drone and machinegun.
With only two supports currently available there is basically not much to choose from. If you don’t like playing a male characters or if you dislike the harp sounds, the only reason why you have a support (alt) is because of the support shortage and to get into groups easily and not because you like the class.
The current ratio of how many DPS classes we have compared to the amount of supports is just ridiculous - 16 DPS and 2 supports (20+DPS and 3 supports in Korea). Considering every party of 4 people wants one support, there should have been 4 supports (5 in KR).
I just find it unreal that such high priority is placed on so few classes. Even as a support main you have to have DPS alts unless you want to play multiple of same class, which at least to me is boring and would burn me out for sure. Those DPS alts now need supports in their party, which further increases the support shortage.
Nothing will change with this post but I just wanted to vent my frustration that there is not much to choose from as a support.
Number of classes and the like have little bearing on the actual number of supports in game.
Its a complete person mentality thing.
MOST People just DO NOT like playing a Supporting Role. Everyone always want to be the “leading man” to quote some lines from other games. A support’s effect isn’t clearly noticed by a lot of people or even the supports themselves. Most people go by WHAT they see and for DPS, its seeing those BIG multidigit numbers pop up on the screen or if theres meters, topping the dps charts, etc.
This mentality has existed for decades and will for decades to come.
As a support main with gold roster of 6x Paladins I feel you. I’m fortunate enough that I have no desire to play dps chars, but I can see your point of being frustrated that as soon as you try to play dps alt everything gets so complicated.
Just use free power passes on support. You’ll get one soon but knowing people and the class they want to play they would rather have their dps class instead because of the reason of it’s my new main.
Well there are 2 support classes… so every party has a ratio of 2/8, so the population of DPS should be around 75%
It’s not as bad as you think tbh. I remember Saintone saying something like of the 15%+/-? ready for Kadan, some 10-12%+/- of that total ready population are supports?
I just think most supports are alts, so people tend to be on their mains first, so naturally, there are supports but just not at the right times. So realistically, it just takes times… but people are impatient.
Something they could do is add selectable side reels, and give a healing aura for full dps groups. You’d have to sacrifice stagger/dps/weakening/shield for healing but it’s about a trade-off for not running supports.
You could have 10 support classes for every 1 dps class and it wouldn’t matter. Playing support just isn’t as enjoyable as dps. That’s never going to change.
Number of support classes isnt causing the support shortage, the reality is majority of players in mmo’s want to deal damage not support other people. Same as every other game.
Nothing we say on AGS forums matters for SG, so even if I had ideas it’s pointless to talk about it. It’s just venting rage post that if I want to play support I have to choose between either music girl or holy knight. Meanwhile DPS get so many themes like demon transforms, wielding giant guns or dropping down meteors.
Yeah I knew that like they pretty much have their road map and will stick to it unless a suggestion benefits them in the short and long term, I was just intrigued what others would think for different support classes including yourself
i love my bard but currently from 1400-1430 ive spent so much gold and only hit pity. maybe one or 2 upgrades at like 85% pity, i think my bard is cursed
Well if I were to chime in, I would add support for every base class and related to their starting area background:
Gunner (Arthetine) - healing drones delivering med kits, shooting your allies for buffs and heals like Ana from Overwatch, dropping down an Arthetine mech as ult and anyone from your party could jump into it and it would heal the person inside while having the unique mech skills
Assassin (Feiton) - either classic Sacrian holy priest but with daggers or some complete edgelord demon / undead that could possess allies to give them buffs while possessed and would work similar to Yumi from LoL. You could do attacks similar to Shadowhunter’s Intrude (purple) skills while attached.
Martial Artist (Anikka) - what I would do was already sort of done with Artist, being a Ying-Yang themed support.
as others have stated the number of support classes isn’t fully the problem. There is a point to be made that only having 2 fantasies for supports right now limits some players who don’t like those 2 fantasies, I don’t think it’s significant enough to be the main reason.
Simply put even games like WoW which has like 8 different healing specs still has a healing shortage. It’s just that for the most part healing is seen as less fun to gamers. This is made even worse that supports in Lost Ark are less interesting and more “homogenous” than the dps classes.
Even if we included artist, which is really just a bad bard in a lot of ways, all the of the support classes basically have the same spells.
They have a spammable spell to apply a 10% damage buff they need to upkeep.
They have 2 big longish cooldown 15%/6% attack power buff that they cycle.
They have a DR spell they use to save idiots or prepare for big burst.
The rest of there 4 spells are some combination of shielding and Meter generation to unlock their healing Speciality gauge. of course the two supports we have right now are good at different things, Bard having better burst healing and pally having better damage uptime, but in alot of ways they are extremely similar with Artist mainly just having more single target options for healing and buffing.
I think they need to somehow break away from the default synergies that the supports bring but that’s a bit difficult to pull of from a balance perspective.
