Idea to 'fix' support in Lost Ark

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1

Lost Ark should completely lean into the no dedicated tank/healer philosophy.

Problems to be solved

  • Not enough supports
  • Support is frankly less engaging than DPS in 90% of content, I say this as someone who mains Paladin at 1480 and has a 1400 Bard on the way up.
  • Support enjoyers:
    • Have a harder time in solo content, ridiculously so in some cases
    • Have to build/buy multiple engraving/tripod sets if they want to do some solo content
    • Are often abandoned by DPS after content is on farm as the DPS wants to sell bus rides

Problems created by but not solved by this idea:

  • Legacy support classes are deprecated unless they are reworked.

The Idea

Give every single class access to a new support tab in their character window.

Only a single party member can have the support skills activated, and they would have to nominate themselves so they can’t be forced into the role by a popup window or a vote or something when a group is created/joined.

The new support tab has a set of support skills that you can modify via tripods or engravings, or whatever they want (probably tripods though).

The skills are something like:

  • An activated skill that converts part of your damage to healing.
    • Tripod or engraving system that lets you modify the amount healed, how the healing is applied, and give you meaningful trade offs. Maybe you can pick between 100% heal over time, 50-50 heal over time big bang at start, or 100% big bang after x seconds.
    • Perhaps a range adjustment that increases the range but reduces the amount healed the larger the range you pick, think picking between paladin and bard distances.
    • The length of time the skill is active can be adjusted to suit the class doing the support.
  • An activated skill that gives a shield.
    • Tripod similar to the Paladin/Bard shield tripods/skills that let you pick between things like increased shield, movement speed.
    • Tripod that lets you choose between blocking a debuff or removing a debuff, basically take the paladin and bard philosophies and let you pick.
  • An activated skill that increases attack power/mana regen/attack speed for a period of time.
    • A tripod system that lets you adjust different aspects. Maybe one tripod level lets you pick between attack power given/range/duration. Maybe another lets you pick movement/attack speed versus damage.
    • A skill that prevents x percent of damage on a player for a second, similar to what paladin and bard have now.
    • You get the idea at this point, tripods or something to let you adjust aspects of it. Roll in all the cool parts from paladin and bard and make it so the choices are meaningful.

The overall goal is to make the choices you make in the support tab meaningful and relevant to content; a good example right now is a Paladin can pick between duration of shield, amount of shield, and purification on their shield.

It also adds another level of depth by letting you pick the class that does support - maybe some fights it’s best to have a scrapper do it, others a gunslinger that can stay semi ranged from a boss might be best. There will likely end up being some sort of meta class/build that is best for healing - that’s fine.

But this doesn’t solve DPS not wanting to play support you, because we play for big numbers right? That’s right. A critical part of this idea is: DPS acting as support continue to see the big numbers on screen and compete for fighter MVP, but the boss doesn’t take all of the damage as a chunk is converted to healing instead.

Noble Healer etc. are removed from MVP because they’re already pointless in the game right now, let alone with this idea.

Finally, continue to balance the game around maybe having a support, and leave the battle item system as is.

Thank you for reading my wall of text.

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2

Game is out for a while in KR, nothing is going to change. Support balance is dogshit in every possible aspect.

Ditch your supps or quit the game. There is no fixing this mess.

2 Likes
3

So your solution to the problems supports face already, especially in content being actively bussed is to make them completely replaceable so people don’t even bring them to the new shit. :clown_face:

What needs to happen is supports need to be more impactful in ways that scale better in more than just our ability to mitigate dmg which is meaningless in out geared content.
Things like:

  • More damage in general so they contribute more in group content (just a buff, nothing crazy - we are supports at the end of the day, not dps)
  • allow our buffs to scale on more than just our base attack power by taking weapon quality into account
  • adjusting attributes to possibly increase buff % or duration so they also scale with our gear progression
  • alter niche* tripods into ones that increase the scaling on those buffs
  • alter tripods like “law of the jungle” and simply apply a damage buff to all supports when not in a of party (world and solo instance)

While content should be able to be ran w/o a support, having one at any stage should be a noticeable benefit, not just during progression. That is what creates the issue as you very well know. Our impact is lost the second our party out gears the content, even if we’re just as over geared, because our buffs and abilities simply don’t scale nearly as well.

4

My solution is dedicated support classes cease to exist as they are now, and get reworked to DPS classes or removed. Guess reading is hard :clown_face:.

This just makes them even more required in the eyes of most, which is a detriment overall given MMO players demonstrably do not like to play support classes.

Hell, all of your points just make bringing support to progression mandatory, then discardable.

5

Heya! We appreciate the excellent feedback and suggestions about the support classes.

I think some good points have come up in this discussion and I look forward to seeing what other players think of this idea. :slight_smile:

6

I think the idea isnt bad… not really liking the removing dedicated supports, but something at the start of a raid designating a dps in each grp to obtain a couple defensive support abilities that make all dps runs more viable(on or near ilvl) but doesnt outshine an actual support that also has dmg buffs and better defensive skills. I guess similar to how a gunlancer is sometimes used as a support replacement. Though gunlancers may not like the idea.

Sitting around waiting for 2 supports while theres another 5 or 6 groups also sitting around waiting for 2 supports isnt alot of fun.

I think making it an alternative to an ideal group, not a meta shift to run all dps instead.

7

i don’t find too many issues finding supports, often end up waiting to find dps’s instead too (though this could be because if i am playing a dps class i’m often making a raid with a friend that’s playing a support).

my bard feels about 3 times more engaging and impactful than my sorc, prob depends on the dps class on if you feel they’re more engaging.

i have no difficulties in solo content 'cus bard also can function as a pretty solid dps.

just my experience though.

8

I think that most supports are already past doing solo content or have DPS alt to do it for them (like Thronespine).

Also, in general, your suggestion seems to be aimed mostly at people who have support because either their statics needs one or it is easier and cheaper to get into groups. They didn’t pick it because they like that role.

Your suggestion would pretty much make dedicated supports unnecessary in all content that isn’t the most recent released one, since random DPS can do enough supporting for people who are just farming it and have good grasp of mechs and normal patterns.

So now dedicated supports will need to have DPS build not only for solo content, but also for that content that is older and in “farm mode” in order to get accepted. You already have to join low ilvl lobbies for Argos, because higher ilvl don’t even need a sudo-support role. This is basically showing a middle finger to supports.

I say big NO to your suggestion.

9

There is nothing, that needs fixing on Supports. They are supports, treat them as such. Problem solved.

10

I think reworking the 2 og supports is the only realistic way.
The answer is Artist. Not to release it faster (though i would appreciate it) but how they pretty much took some of your points into consideration creating them.
They have by far the highest dmg output of the 3 supports and thats the way pala and bard have to be reworked.
So you will be relevant in new content and able to do all the solo stuff as well.

In my opinion they should improve the base dmg on all the supports sigificantly but lock them out of using grudge and other heavy dmg emplifying engravings.
So you are not forced to invest into a full and expensive DPS set on top of your support set just to do the same stuff all the other classes can once they outgear content.

11

The idea certainly sounds interesting, although I don’t think it would work for a game like Lost Ark, specially because this change would basically erase support classes (why playPally/Bard if all classes could play support if they wanted and not have problems with lacking damage).

I think we only need a dmg buff for solo content.

And maybe rework some of the skills of Pally

  • Add push inmunity to some skills
  • Make the Awakening generate identity even if you don’t hit the target like Bard does
12

Does she? Does she actually do more damage than Charming set Bard? Even if she does, I doubt it is “by far”.

Anyway, releasing more support classes will certainly increase their availability in raids, so if SG or AGS cared about that then they could have solved this issue that way. But I’m sure we will get 10 more DPS classes before they even consider support.

13

She for sure does when it comes to base dmg on a support build. If you compare a dmg set bard to an support artist probably not. But im pretty sure bard doesnt stand a chance to an equally equipped artist when it comes to dmg. I play supports only on full support and i can tell you playing artist in solo content is ablessing.

14

Thats probably why. Having 1 support greatly increases the chance of getting whatever other support may be looking. Cuz why join the 5 raids with 0 supports when you can join one and go immediately

15

What you’re saying implies 4 dps does more dmg than 3 dps and a support. Which is not the case. I have 0 issues on my support getting into way overgeared fast clears of low content. Adding a little bit of defensive support (obviously not as good as a real support) would not change the desire to run a support class, but if balanced right could make raids more playable without one.

16

This is overall a great solution to the state of the game as it is right now. Too much of its foundation is built on a flawed system which is the necessity of a class not liked by the majority. Just like there are players that like to use sidereals, there will be a lot of players that would be willing to take up the responsibility of doing more things.

Battlerite was like that. Supports in that game also had to deal damage equal to the dps players, so playin a support there was close at home for dps players as support classes were relatable to any dps character and thus easier to pick up. Due to that we’d never have any issue with people not wanting to play support ( almost )

17

I love playing support classes in most MMOs. Sadly - this game is punishing players for playing one. Secondly - the roster system with focus on alts does not really help those that actually love playing supports to even make alts to help out with the horrendous lack of supports ingame. And no… I’m not talking about having 6 characters of same class and swaping gems. Cause thats also crap. And there are actually jsut 2 support classes right now.

The real sad thing ofc… is that lack of support was an issue in other regions… and the developer is doing nothing to fix this issue for NA/EU now that the third support class is out in other regions. Just looking for a big payday when they finally release the Artist next year. Who cares if even ppl that want to play more than one support now can’t actually help out right now unless paying real money to “help”…

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