Guild Wars 2

So after I hit 80 on my Mesmer, I asked what kind of build I should go for before I run straight into PVE (where I expected to die a lot due to noob) and was told to go glass cannon. Which is fine, really, but after watching full groups of glass cannons growing absolutely infuriated with certain trash mobs/bosses I was thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea to start a support character. Cus you know, I figured that sometimes you just need the extra support and a little less trying to destroy everything before you die.

What I really want to know is what profession you would prefer to bring to fit such a role, or if you’d even bother bringing support at all? I know Guardian is more than likely great when it comes to this sort of thing, but are there any other gems that were overlooked? Currently I’m thinking about starting a Necromancer after reading that actually, they’re pretty awesome at helping out downed people. The downside is that they apparently suck kitten in general. I’ve only actually ever seen one in a dungeon, so really I can’t comment much on that. Though I am tempted to just go with the ever-popular guardian.

TL/DR: What are your thoughts on bringing a support role to dungeons?

Guardian is, in my opinion, the “king” of support.

Elementalist are good, if not equal, but remember you are kind of restricted to a certain combat style since you don’t have weapon swapping.

Don’t have extensive experience with necromancers or engineers in dungeons, but yes, Necromancers are kinda crap as they are right now. Engineers are apparently getting a big patch in a week.

Warrior are decent but there’s no way you can ignore their immense potential to deal damage with a good conscience.

Thief are really good for blinds and life steal fields, but I wouldn’t consider them a support profession in the traditional sense because of it.

Mesmer have some cool utilities but again, nothing I would consider “support”.

All of the above are my own opinions and I hope this helped you at least a little.

Happy hunting!

My view of dungeon builds is that each player should be able to take care of themselves in every encounter, be able to take a few hits and not need to be ressed multiple times, Be able to do decent damage, but also be able to contribute more than just damage to a fight.
From what i’ve seen pure support builds aren’t great, you need a group thats able to take advantage of it and that can make up for the loss of damage.
There’s always a middle ground, go for that.
As far as i’m aware mesmers have decent damage phantasm builds that supply regen and protection to their party, have good utilities for clearing conditions and reflecting damage.

Long story short, i find pure support and glass cannons a wasted spot, find some balance.

Support roles play a HUGE role in dungeons. Damage mitigation and surviving is so important that a “Feedback” can really help your team.

I suggest running support, you don’t get much recognition, but I feel like it’s really rewarding

Butterfly.9084:

So after I hit 80 on my mesmer, I asked what kind of build I should go for before I run straight into PVE (where I expected to die a lot due to noob) and was told to go glass cannon. Which is fine, really, but after watching full groups of glass cannons growing absolutely infuriated with certain trash mobs/bosses I was thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea to start a support character. Cus you know, I figured that sometimes you just need the extra support and a little less trying to destroy everything before you die.

What I really want to know is what profession you would prefer to bring to fit such a role, or if you’d even bother bringing support at all? I know guardian is more than likely great when it comes to this sort of thing, but are there any other gems that were overlooked? Currently I’m thinking about starting a necromancer after reading that actually, they’re pretty awesome at helping out downed people. The downside is that they apparently suck kitten in general. I’ve only actually ever seen one in a dungeon, so really I can’t comment much on that. Though I am tempted to just go with the ever-popular guardian.

TL/DR: What are your thoughts on bringing a support role to dungeons?

Before you reroll, might I suggest visiting your trainer and retraiting? Your gear being power heavy is fine but since it is power heavy, you can go 0/0/30/30/10 or whatever combination that doesn’t put any point in power and precision but emphasises toughness, vitality and your professions trait line. You will most likely find that those trait lines actually give you trait bonuses that help you be support even as a mesmer. Plus “support” comes in many forms. One for of support is by maximising combos. Mesmers have Ethereal Field which is pretty nifty and one of my favorite fields to combo with. Maximising combos with your team mates or even arranging your skills to be able to combo with two of your own skills would be a form of support. Especially when you are able to give your team mates chaos armour.

I’m quite happy with my Mesmer as it is now, and I may actually consider rethinking my traits to try and bring more control and survivability to my groups (dunno why but that kind of thing just makes me feel more awesome than straight out destroying things with my face), but I felt that having a selection of characters would prove quite helpful as well. Sometimes a group might very well need a glass cannon, pure support or a bit of both.

Mesmer in my opinion seems to be more of a utility support than anything else, and I do like our selection of utilities. But we seem to lack the ability to give out reliable buffs where they’re needed, and the help that can be provided by Phantoms can easily be rendered useless on fights where they just quite simply don’t seem to want to stay alive. Which is why I’m looking to seeing if there’s a more reliable way to go about it, (though this could be a L2P issue on my side.)

I’m partway through leveling a Guardian so I may have them as a mostly support character, but it just seems a bit of a shame that there doesn’t seem to be a bit more of a reliable selection. Might have a look at Elementalist as well.

I think nearly any profession can be support.

I’m not sure why Thieves get so overlooked for their ‘support’ aspect which is, in my opinion, amazing. Yes guardians provide boons, position control, and shields etc. but their support has its limitations. I have both a guardian and thief and I can say without a doubt my support thief can turn the tide of an encounter moreso than my support guardian. I believe this is so overlooked because it is rare to see a thief built for support, so people do not see their capabilities in action. I think the biggest asset thieves provide is completely switching enemy aggro. If someone is about to go down…stealth them, the boss/mob will now fight someone else completely ignoring the damaged player even after the stealth has run its course. These stealths if traited also apply regen to that player or the entire group. If someone is downed, stealth revive them. Thieves can revive people in the most hopeless of circumstances without being seen. Thieves can also perma blind mobs to where group members never get hit in the first place. Another great tool is the shortbow blast which can be spammed repeatedly on any combo field such as a water field pulsing heals on anyone standing inside. I am sure I am leaving out other important things but you get the idea.

Yes, guardians are the go-to support for most people because it is the most strait forward way of thinking about support, but in truth any profession can shine in this regard if you know what you are looking for. If you like the mesmer, I full heartedly believe you could provide massive support on that class alone, but if you are looking for a new profession, thieves are much in line with the sort of play style of the mesmer. Guardians are a very different kind of beast and can feel quite static in their support abilities which are a lot of times only useful to other melee group members.

My philosophy on building my characters is to build around support/survivability but to not completely neglect damage.

I tend to go for the ‘knights’ crafted exotic sets on all my characters and re-skin them with what i like the looks of.

My mesmer is sword/focus and scepter/pistol with a mantra healing build, mostly ‘twisting’ between two mantras to keep group healing going between putting up phantasms and sword attacks.

My warrior is axe/mace and rifle most of the time, healing banners build that mostly remains in melee can can kinda be quite lazy with permanent regeneration and super high toughness

My ranger is greatsword and longbow with 2x ranged traps and 2x spirits that follow me around its pretty fun

Yeah, my guardian build is perfect for supporting. check out my sig.

Necromancers are pretty much the king of PvE tbh. Epidemic is completely devastating in dungeons thanks to 5 characters stacking conditions. Fear also eats through the boss anti CC buff and you can interrupt most boss attacks this way.

Simply these two reasons alone are enough to have a necromancer.

I’m sorry, OP, but you play a Mesmer and want to re-roll so you can go support?

Mesmers offer a TON of utility and are GREAT supports in dungeons. The only thing they lack is party heals, which can be combated with a Mantra heal (and possibly another Mantra on your bar) with the spec that allows you to heal allies while casting it.

I’m currently going DPS in Arah, but no matter what dungeon I go to, I use support skills as well. Even in my Arah DPS build, I am healing my party and buffing them (or their attacks).

Master Bei Shun.1267:

I’m sorry, OP, but you play a Mesmer and want to re-roll so you can go support?

Mesmers offer a TON of utility and are GREAT supports in dungeons. The only thing they lack is party heals, which can be combated with a Mantra heal (and possibly another Mantra on your bar) with the spec that allows you to heal allies while casting it.

I’m currently going DPS in Arah, but no matter what dungeon I go to, I use support skills as well. Even in my Arah DPS build, I am healing my party and buffing them (or their attacks).

It seems I might not have been clear about it, but I want to have a variety of characters to fit different roles. I do enjoy throwing out some extra support on my Mesmer, but ideally I’d like to have a character that I’ve tuned more towards such a role (currently I’d say my Mesmer is about 50/50 on it). That, and I just like having lots of characters I guess.

I do always try to adapt my weapon and utility bar to whatever suits the situation best, it’s just at times I wish I could help out in other ways. I was wondering what to expect to be able to do if I chose to support from a different profession.

Open PvE – doesn’t really matter, probably magic find or berserker for faster kills.
Dungeons – tanky support all the way, also avoid condition damage. With power/toughness/vitality gear, you still push your attack over 3k.

My main is a lvl 80 water elementalist with full “Cleric’s” (Power, Toughness, Healing) gear and a staff.

Continous party regen while attuned to water.
Switching to water attunement gives you and allies regen + removes a condition.
Auto attacks cause splash heals to adjacent melees.
Staff skill #3 gives a small area, short strong heal over time.
Staff skill #5 gives a large area 9 second heal over time with condition removal.
Dodge rolling in water attunement causes large splash heals to adjacent allies (and you) every 10 secs.

Summon (lesser + Elite skill) Water Elemental their attacks cause healing as well.

Not to mention staff skill #4 (water) is an aoe snare. Great for giving your fleeing melees breathing space. :P

Arcane Shield (slot skill) is one of the best all around defensive skills as an ele. Can be activated while casting, knocked down or doing something else. Ressing an ally and a big boss aoe pops up on ya? Arcane Shield.

Glyph of Renewal for ranged ress.

For good parties, switch to Berserker’s or Rampager’s gear and go aoe pew pew.

Eles are the monks in GW2. It’s also quite funny to watch the bad players dodge out of your heals and then die. O_o

This is pretty much the reason why I don’t get to play my ranger/thief as often as I’d like to. Every time I join a group it’s 4 other glass cannon people on them along with my glass cannon thief and ranger, these kinds of groups almost never go well or are much, much harder than they need to be.

I run a AH hammer guardian, and a shout healer tank warrior, and runs go so much smoother on them. Why? Because there is no sitting around waiting for someone to pull, there isn’t infinite kiting going on to kill the mobs with 2 billion hp (Thanks Anet) With these support/tank classes I can control the flow of the dungeon and keep people healed/buffed and more importantly, alive.

Ranger can also be built for some survivability – just go p/t/v armor, invest in defensive/support traits and get ruby jewelry and zerker weapons. ~40% crit chance is all you need, really.

Negativity.5801:

This is pretty much the reason why I don’t get to play my ranger/thief as often as I’d like to. Every time I join a group it’s 4 other glass cannon people on them along with my glass cannon thief and ranger, these kinds of groups almost never go well or are much, much harder than they need to be.

I run a AH hammer guardian, and a shout healer tank warrior, and runs go so much smoother on them. Why? Because there is no sitting around waiting for someone to pull, there isn’t infinite kiting going on to kill the mobs with 2 billion hp (Thanks Anet) With these support/tank classes I can control the flow of the dungeon and keep people healed/buffed and more importantly, alive.

It’s only around 4 silver to change talents. 30 in acrobatics, 15 in shadow arts, and 25 in deadly arts seems to work great for an attack oriented dungeon build. This is with a few pieces of knight’s jewelry. You could go 30 shadow arts and 15 acrobatics instead, but HP scales better with thieves than toughness does. Dodging can also remove weakness and crippled from you in the acrobatics tree and you don’t need to go in too deep in shadow arts for the remove a condition every three seconds in stealth (first condition is immediately washed then other conditions get washed). This turns cloak and dagger into a DoT remover =)

Delsabre.5934:

My main is a lvl 80 water elementalist with full “Cleric’s” (Power, Toughness, Healing) gear and a staff.

Continous party regen while attuned to water.
Switching to water attunement gives you and allies regen + removes a condition.
Auto attacks cause splash heals to adjacent melees.
Staff skill #3 gives a small area, short strong heal over time.
Staff skill #5 gives a large area 9 second heal over time with condition removal.
Dodge rolling in water attunement causes large splash heals to adjacent allies (and you) every 10 secs.

Summon (lesser + Elite skill) Water Elemental their attacks cause healing as well.

Not to mention staff skill #4 (water) is an aoe snare. Great for giving your fleeing melees breathing space. :P

Arcane Shield (slot skill) is one of the best all around defensive skills as an ele. Can be activated while casting, knocked down or doing something else. Ressing an ally and a big boss aoe pops up on ya? Arcane Shield.

Glyph of Renewal for ranged ress.

For good parties, switch to Berserker’s or Rampager’s gear and go aoe pew pew.

Eles are the monks in GW2. It’s also quite funny to watch the bad players dodge out of your heals and then die. O_o

Too bad it has power on it instead of vit =( I have an ele too and it’s a dedicated support water tank. 30 in water and earth, 10 in arcane. Wind is, shall we say, less than optimal for dungeons while fire is great for dungeons as an offense oriented ele with earth as a good utility and DPS secondary (especially erupt with DoTs).

Eles:

• cleric’s items are very mediocre – better go power/toughness/vitality armor (AC, SE or HotW), dolyak runes and sapphire jewelry – healing power from sapphires and water magic is more than enough; in general, healing power doesn’t influence party healing much;
• lesser elementals are very weak and die too fast to get their extra bonus up – glyph of storms is much better, providing extra AoE chill or blind, or extra object-DPS on burrows;
• glyph of renewal is good only for certain paths – better slot arcane wave instead;
• earth magic has VERY crappy major traits unless you’re running an auramancer, which is bad in PvE anyway;
• trait-wise, go 0/0/10/30/30 – earth’s embrace for stability at 50% hp is awesome, but you simply can’t be a supportive ele and ignore evasive arcana.

With the above setup, i’m at ~3k attack, i’m durable enough on my own to solo a lot in dungeons (soloing left side of the room at Hodgins, running all scepter pieces later, etc), and i can heal my party full or nearly full by combo: eruption -> cover it with geyser -> roll into geyser while in water -> pop arcane wave in the geyser.
Imba AoE healing and condition removal.

When not in need of healing, you still can stack 10x might on everyone using the above setup, or keep swiftness up on everyone.

Support in an action game is different from the normal MMO. Your and the enemy’s position mean everything. Condition and Boon duration are probably more important to the classes with the less present healing capabilities. Ranger longblow and Axe are actually very powerful support tools simply because you can defend a spot from attackers and prevent attackers from actually reaching their targets.

Another huge difference is that if your ally is kitten there is nothing that will ever save them. You can prevent people from getting hurt a lot easier than covering for their mistakes. I mean, you CAN but its NOT sustainable at all. They will fall no matter what if they cant get themselves to a safe position.

Well for support there are ranger spirits… I know a lot of people say they are bad but I like them. Nature spirit is quite handy at ressing downed allies and other spirits have attacks (chill, immobile, blind, damage) to make enemies life a bit harder if they come close enough (+ the boons spirits give). But that is just my opinion feel free to trash it if it is not to your liking

I’ve been experimenting recently with a “medicmancer” build. Staff + Wells mainly.
Mark of blood gives allies continual regeneration to allies, Well of blood heals allies for 6k+.
With the “ritual of protection” trait you also get a 30% uptime of protection on allies with a well build.
You also get AOE blinding, fear for boss control and condition transfer.

Pretty solid contribution to the team overall.

Mesmers are really underrated atm in pve. I am usually the only condition/support char in many of the dungeon groups I am a part of. Time and time again, chaos armor, distortion, and timewarp, were the only things giving players breathing room from bad pulls, bad dodges, or back to back downs.

Support ftw.

Mage.6045:

Well for support there are ranger spirits… I know a lot of people say they are bad but I like them. Nature spirit is quite handy at ressing downed allies and other spirits have attacks (chill, immobile, blind, damage) to make enemies life a bit harder if they come close enough (+ the boons spirits give). But that is just my opinion feel free to trash it if it is not to your liking

You have to spec far into that line for it to be of any use, otherwise any encounter with AoE will immediately kill those spirits. Even if they follow you, you have to be VERY far from AoE to drag them out of range. They’re absolutely useless in all of CoE and Arah.

Guardian and Warrior’s have great versatility. You can go offensive, defensive/support, or whatever you want. You can’t go wrong with leveling one of them. They’re both very easy farming classes in Orr.