I just love how its like 10-15 guys just spamming threads and screaming everywhere to get things changed. This is how games get ruined.
Releasing Artist doesn’t fix the support problem. The support problem is a player issue. It’s a different playstyle.
I’d personally also like to see more streamers make Youtube videos of “how to support xyz raid/boss”. Like where to stand and when to pump which skill. It saves the stress of learning it by failing…and I think one reason a lot of people don’t make support is they don’t want pressure. If I am a dps and I do shit dps or die, others can carry me. If you need that support to keep you going, they need to stay alive, so generally they need to be a better overall player.
IMO this is why you rarely see tanks/heals in games like WoW. Too much pressure to keep the group up if you aren’t good at the role.
Bro you cant complain about expensive accessories or stones when DPS classes like Sorc gotta play 3x what you pay + dps classes need lv7 gems on 11 abilities and all tripods geared while supports need like 3 cdr gems at l5 and 4 tripods to be raid ready
There is also the type of player who looks at the value given by engravings and decides if its bad right now or not.
Grudge deals like 4% more damage than most engravings but you get 20% more dmg, well.
if you take your best damage spell and look how much 4% more dmg actually gives right now you should see why its actually stupid to take.
Same with cursed doll, 25% heal reduction is HUGE.
The only reason why I parked my support main and switched to gunlancer at the beginning of T3 are the prices to gear support
Why should I pay so much more for gearing support, then have less fun in solo content, then not be able to solo carry if team sux?(which I can and did on gunlancer).
If they somehow made the gear less expansive or easier to get (weighted loot - you play support you drop way more support-heavy ability stones and higher chance of support engravings on jewellery) I would switch back
As it is right now, the gold investment to make at least decent support post 1370 is just not worth it. And yes, I know now people are paying supps for doing valtan - but this just started, and you can’t take loans in this game 
so no way I can somehow get my gold now, and then repay when I’m being paid for valtan.
Taking bonus damage and healing reduction isnt a problem when you know what your doing
Curse doll has little to no effect when I used up 0 pots in my Valtan run, to be fair I was overgeared but having a support and doing mechanics allowed me to never used a pot, if I was running cursed doll it would literally just say 16% atk with no debuff
The only class I wouldnt use grudge on is gunslinger and reaper and thats because 2 hits means floor pov because their the squishies classes and need to go melee range meanwhile grudge on a sorc or sharpshooter isnt an issue since your so far away and if your not comfortable running grudge on your main like ma striker then you should really switch classes because its a matter of comfortability
Because DPS is easy to play, you just hit your rotation and be done with it. You dont need to babysit people, not have a great tactical understanding of things.
A support has no rotation, you have to act accordingly to the boss abilities, group setup and performance of said. Each fight is different, what worked once may not work the second time and you must adjust your game all the time.
At the same time, if your DPS players are terrible, then you can not carry them at all. Keeping someone alive, does not deal damage, but damage is required to kill things.
I had it so often that nobody died, even if they did the most silly things, but their damage was so poor, it was a nightmare.
And yes, people dont treat support players right. They want them to be weak in pvp, be cannon fodder, not have any DPS and if a support is in group, all of a sudden pots are no longer in use, even flares and other battle items, because that is all the supports job…
If you think there are not enough supports, then just play one. Go find out how life is in MMO´s for that class.
Needles to say, prices for support gear are super high and yes, I have seen it multiple times that people did roll for the engraving book supports use, as DPS.
At WOW, almost every class can be a support, be it tank or heal. Yet, there is always a shortage in non guild content. Releasing Artist does nothing, people will not go out of their comfort zone which is DPS.
Pretty much this. Getting anything but my main through those 10% hones isn’t happening, so my bard/pally are parked at 1370 while my sorc is 1401. If we had Artist, my sorc would be parked too and the artist would be higher.
I disagree as a support main, just got done with Valtan hard and there were many times I saved my team’s ass and contributed to their success, that is interesting to me… I like to support and help my team… it’s fun to me…
Not hurt at all, I’m happy being bard main and not having to sit hours in queue for the weekly content.
But thank you for being concerned.
well no one’s gonna whale a bard just so other whales/nolife can have fun with their dps.
especially in a grindy p2w game.
Did it without heavy armor. We have this skill called rhapsody of light which is pretty much a cheat code in valtan and allows us to tank almost everything
DPS life is easy, yet its also very easy to die on when your character runs grudge rather than heavy armor
Supports arent very difficult, as a Paladin you have have 100% atk uptime and you simply shield when a mechanic that usually kills people or has aoe comes out
Its no secret that anyone can first time support and get MVP in endscreen with 70% party healing
You cant complain that accessories are expensive when dps assessories are 2-3x as expensive and we spend 100k+ gold on gems while 20k is more than enough for supports
Expert 5, Heavy Armor 3 Swiftness is 17k
Expert 5, Awakening 3 Swiftness is 22k
Awakening 5 , Expert 3 Swiftness is 10k
Grudge 5, Hit master 3 Spec is 30k
Hit master 5, Grudge 3 Spec is 25k gold, next cheapest is 30k
Grudge 5, Curse doll Spec is 40k
stop the support is expensive bs
You confirmed your mad by having to flex the I get offered over 20k gold just to play and dps does a bad job
My gunlancer also dosent need to wait 
Excuse me, it’s not a flex, people offer a lot of money, I was just stating the fact that when this guy says DPS are main characters and SUPP are side characters while he is waiting on queue for a SUPP , most SUPP already finished Valtan and for their coin.
That doesn’t look like a side char to me.
wow we need to catch up 4 years of content in a game that was release in december 2019 … nice maths .
So why nobody wanna upgrade the main character then lmao
The whole point is that you shouldnt use that if you wanna go without sup because you are annoyed of the long w8 to find a support.
If you have one it doesnt matter if you take grudge or cursed doll.
Issue with this is that the higher the content the more developed your supports need to be. You cant enter valtan with a budget support 1400 support. It needs to be 1415, being cheap on engravings wont do you any favors either. The more difficult the content becomes the more exasperated this will be.
I wont bother quoting the rest of your options simply because they are quite similar in the nature of the first which focuses on supports as alts . This is the issue, supports going forward will continue to be sparse and may even lower in population because not enough players want to main supports. This is the issue KR has, this is the issue NA/EU will continue to have. In order to fix a “lack of supports” they would need to make playing supports feel great outside of just being valued in legion raids/the most challenging content.
With that being said however I do not think NA/EU “need” more supports. People will learn to adjust to the mechanics of the game and function with 1 support and a gunlancer and the like. What you will start to see is players who play classes that can opt into a “hybrid” style of play choosing to go the more supportive route because dps chasing is eventually fruitless. This is potentially a good medium, hybrid type classes do not suffer in content outside of legion raids the way typical supports do. The typical support is very good at what it does, so much so it significantly lowers the difficulty of difficult content, but thats the tradeoff.
TL: DR- Players will become less selfish/dps focused on classes that can provide supportive synergies that they already main. Supports as they currently exist in general are fine, but the true issue with them is how fun they are perceived as mains. Half baked support alts will not fix the issue or be productive in the long run.
Give supports a DPS boost when solo. Watch their numbers grow. Will it solve the crisis? Nope. But it will help. The issue will never be resolved because people want to see the BIG NUMBER GO BRRRRRRRR. Best you can do is make life better for the supports to entice them to stick around and maybe encourage folks to give them a try.
