Lack of Supports (Support view point)

General Discussion General Discussion
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I main all supports: EDIT: I’m in a static that clears all content regularly. These statements are based on my observations. I don’t need help dealing/coping with being a support. I played it in it’s current state and continue to plan on doing so in the future.

1490 Bard
1420 Paladin
1380 Gunlancer (Not true support, but certainly fills the role often)

I will add Artist to this when they are released. I am a whale, borderline kraken in this game as well. Not a flex, just giving foundation. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t want to play supports and I can tell you a few of them:

  1. Our damage is absolutely abysmal when attempting to solo literally anything. I got a red portal in chaos dungeon 1475 with a near pure dps build and it took me 3 minutes to kill it. I have to run preemptive strike for any decent speed in doing world content and as soon as I hit 1415-1445+ even that starts to fall short.

  2. We are CONSTANTLY gouged for people trying to harpoon a whale with our accessories due to the overall lack of them. Hopefully now that average players will also get blessed aura, desperate salvation etc this will help balance across the board. NOTE: Stop trying to sell 5/3 Relic accessories for 150-300k. Sorry but we don’t need MP or Spirit Absorb that bad. Maybe set them to more reasonable prices. Sure a pure "I don’t give a fuck behemoth kraken might buy them for the flex, but even above average spenders like myself won’t (I’ve spent a lot).

  • I didn’t buy relic accessories and agree that people that jump on them week 1 are asking to get gouged just like any other item. But it is no secret we have ALWAYS been gouged on our accessories*

  1. We’re severely under appreciated for putting up with the shit that we do. “Buff me”, “Heal me” are frequent comments. Then you release guardian raids that cater to pure DPS groups and we get sidelined. I get REJECTED on a 1490 Bard to 5 Desk groups looking for pure dps for speed. Without the necessity for healing or shielding in mundane trivial content and no way for us to DPS we get sidelined for everything EXCEPT when needed. So yea…there are 900 legion parties looking for supports. What did you expect, any sane person probably rerolled in the first week. Again I’m in a static and I have no issue getting content done, either by relying on them or friends in the community. This however does not change the perception. Also thank you to the Velganos Bussers carrying supports for free. You’re the real heros <3

  2. Overland PVP - I made a long post on how Bard interacted in world PVP. Sure supports are pretty good in 3v3, but outside of that they are absolutely lack luster. They get focus targeted as a “Free kill” half the time, leaving them usually in last place in anything and not many in the top 3 that know what they are doing. The response that thread got was crickets.

These are just a few of the many examples.

EDIT P.S. - The fix should be to make supports more appealing, not give away free 1400+ boosts, and other things. That will just trivialize us even more, and run true supports away. This is our only perk, being highly desired for end -game content.

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And people get mad at me for playing DPS Paladin.

The support build is completely boring.

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Of course, that’s the problem.

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  1. i sort of expected this
  2. why are you upgrading to relic on week 1
  3. make your own group
  4. i don’t play pvp
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Supposedly the “perks” are coming, they are just not here yet.

When more of the sets are in and the ilevel increases supposedly a group with a Support has higher DPS in at least the 8-man content.

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Doesn’t change the fact that it’s part of the problem.

Who said I was buying them? It’s not secret support accessories have been price gouged since Argos.

What? I’m in a static. We just don’t run every single thing together. Sure I made a Desk group…noone joined it. Thankfully, after initial clears partyfinder works just find for it. But see Velganos. Easier to solo/Dps Duo then bother with a support.

Edit: guessing you just mean nothing to contribute here.

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They have about 50% higher DPS now. We debuff, we dark grenade, we provide 15% of our base attk power. When the Zerk in my group exclaims he hit a 45 million hit, that’s a lot of his support. But people don’t see that or care to acknowledge it

It is, what it is. I don’t care I just stated the reasons why I collectively said people don’t play supports. You can argue with it not being a problem but doesn’t change the overwhelming opinion.

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I was a main support in KR, RU, JP also, but I played DPS in NA.
For me, the reason that made me play DPS in NA was I just got bored playing Bard and Paladin.
I’m currently waiting for Artist.
The game has only 2 options for supports / healers beside of 12? options for DPS.

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Thats like playing with water guns in the desert :see_no_evil:

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Yeah, I get the issue on the accessories, fair enough.

Understand the idiots with the “heal me” do this etc, fair enough.

I also understand the PvP comments too.

However, I’ve seen supports that are just pure morons. They know their in demand, so they become extra drenched in being a prick. I’ve watched a bard not know how to x3 and then proceed to die in Argos. He then refused to ress and waited outside saying “and now I’ll watch people die”. Needless to say, was the fastest boot we ever did.

I honestly feel that had they added Artist, would’ve helped a bit with this problem… but thats a debate that we all know about at this point.

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Making sweeping changes to the support role would also require even more sweeping changes to the entire game balance so my only point was that really this is what is at this point. Min/maxers will already be running whatever is “optimum” mathematically as that is how smilegate has balanced the game. Eventually more people will have to be recruited in this role at the high end of gameplay.

For lower tier content maybe they could add some sort of reward bonus for queueing as a support but I don’t know, EZ faceroll content is EZ faceroll.

On my Berserker alts I probably go up to 7 or 8 days at a time without seeing a support in a guardian raid and the most common result is still usually a 5m clear (can vary heavily depending on guardian and team mates of course) so we can either say this is proof that everything is fine or proof that they need to make the role more appealing without somehow upsetting the game balance.

Oddly in the Oreha Abyssal Dungeons I can’t tell you how often I got thrown into a party with more than 1 support class in it. I had that more than not, actually.

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I also think that they should have released Artist or should in June/July.

I like Bard and it will become my secondary support that I will try to keep up to date.

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Nothing like a 1500g Desperate Salvation tax

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Replying as I read.

1380 Gunlancer

Not a support, but best PvE class in the game, far better than any other DPS class. Tops the charts while cleansing and shielding.

Our damage is absolutely abysmal when attempting to solo literally anything.

Bard only, paladin with solo gear does great damage. I’ve seen trixion vids with 1445 paladin, legendary gear doing 1.6m DPS.

Stop trying to sell 5/3 Relic accessories for 150-300k. Sorry but we don’t need MP or Spirit Absorb that bad.

Paladin doesn’t need anything at all, it’s actually a cheap class. I posted my setup in another topic. 3333 when I get +12 armor books for around 15k gold + pheons. 520spec/1650 swiftness.

I’m not a bard player, but I wouldn’t know, but going for 5th engraving as a Paladin literally costs 100k gold extra, while losing a lot of swiftness due to low item quality and isn’t even worth it because swiftness is better than drops of ether or vital point hit.

I get REJECTED on a 1490 Bard to 5 Desk groups looking for pure dps for speed.

Hmm, must be special kind of idiots then.
When I duo’d Velganos, I’d just create a party and requests just kept pouring in.

Overland PVP - I made a long post on how Bard interacted in world PVP. Sure supports are pretty good in 3v3, but outside of that they are absolutely lack luster.

Again, just Bard. Paladin does great damage and is one of the tankiest classes. 6v6 is my favorite mode. I do 1mil damage on average and it’s so easy to combo peolpe for 50% HP. I don’t even run any support abilities except awakening. 6v6 is my fun time.

The fix should be to make supports more appealing

Imo, your issue is that you’re concerning yourself with opinions of idiots. I’ve played many games across many genres and usually maybe 20% of the playerbase has a clue about anything, 10% is decent and 5% can actually play the game properly. And out of those 10% every single player knows supports are the most important classes in the game.

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I might need to edit my original post. I don’t pug very often. This is what I’ve gathered from others when speaking to other Bards primarily, but Paladins share a few of their own special concerns.

Either way, yes everything you’ve stated is correct, it doesn’t stop some of the fundamental issues on the perception of WHY people don’t play support. That’s what I’m attempting to snapshot here, because CLEARLY there is a reason why supports are in hefty short demand. (Yes I know similar to other games healers/tanks/etc can be just as in short demand).

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Imo, there’s just one fundamental reason and it’s that people want to see big numbers pop instead of actually being the difference makers. There’s no other reason.

I’m not in the same way, but I’m in my support paladin spec only for Argos and Valtan now. And new guardian. I even solo’d Velganos for a couple of weeks before the update. Feels good to kill stuff, I guess.

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Definitely agree this has tons to do with it. In my static alone there is tons of competitive banter of people hyping and trying their best to compete for MVP. It’s a culture.

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you and your real productive comments :slight_smile: I’m sure the game will go far with that attitude.

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Jeff Bezos thanks you for your contribution to his new super yacht.

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Because he is a big whale who bought his way to the end game if you have not understood that yet. Of course he would aim at relics week 1 because what else there is to do for the whales when new content drops. When you buy gold in F4 and sweep Mari shop clean every restock, there is no limit to what you can buy at any time. He is a living proof of that. The fact he is 1490 with just one 1385+ alt is just sickening to me.