Guild Wars 2

Only dps is. Supporting in this game outside of ressing will give you no sort of benefit outside of, well, making your teammates stronger. Which might not be a huge problem if you’re in a premade or something and your teammates will share drops with you, but for the most part you’re getting the short end of the stick in most of WvW and PvE.

Why? Because loot in this game works so that you have to hit a creature once, or more than once in some cases, to get credit for the kill. It doesn’t matter if you were dropping down buffs and heals like crazy, you apparently don’t deserve any credit for the kill if you didn’t do damage. This problem is huge if you’re trying to be a support in a boss fight or something, you will barely get any credit for killing the boss if most of what you did was support, even if you were the biggest factor in taking the boss down. Heck if you didn’t hit the boss twice, you won’t get any credit at all.

Well you might say, “No one in GW2 is just support, every character has some offensive abilities,” and you would be mostly right, but the thing is you don’t get “assists” if you didn’t damage the enemy, even if you greatly helped in its death. So if 10 minotaurs are attacking your friend, and you hit 2 of them, and heal your ally and buff him, you will only get credit for killing 2 minotaur. Also, the guardian in WvW is almost purely support in zergs, since he has no viable ranged weapon. He will very few drops when his wall of reflection is down.

EDIT: Apparently debuffing an enemy won’t give you credit towards its death either O.o

What are you playing that you don’t do any damage to a mob at all and just provide 100% support?

I play a guardian and I’m getting plenty of kills in WvW when I play.

The main point is that the loot mechanics favor only dps. The dps will get more drops than you. And you won’t even get ANY drops if you spend a lot of your time actively supporting and doing things like channeling your staff 4. Even though both of the said players are bringing the same amount of usefulness to the fight. You really think the guardian gets drops comparable to a fire ele in WvW? Assuming the guardian is being as useful as one?

I 100% agree with you about the support part. Its very possible to be support orientated while doing condition damage since it only requires 1 stat. They just introduced an armor type with healing power and coni dmg. Yet anyone who goes this will never get drops off mobs or people (in PvP) while in a group because their % of damage will be super low. Anyone spec’d in power precision and crit % in certain situations will die more but overall they will get WAY more drops and gold.

My thinking on this is remove the mob drops from events fully.

Instead replace them with a end of event chest that give out the equivalent based on the medal rank.

Also, make the medal rank take into account non DPS actions within the event. Say someone was harmed by a event mob and find themselves healed or revived, or damage a mob while under a boon (or the mob damage had a non-damaging condition on it) them the toon that did the indirectly beneficial action should be counted as taking part in the event and given points towards a higher medal. Especially revives are nasty, as they lock you from dodging or other activity unless you tap a movement key first. Meaning you put yourself in harms way to help others, something that is praiseworthy but detrimental to eventual event gains.

I’m thinking thru my guardian and ele. I have a engi too, but he’s still in his 20s.

What profession/weapon combo is there where you have more than 2 group-heal abilities? We have our utilities, of course.

I really think if you’re thinking of yourself as “support” in GW2, you’re doing it wrong. You’re never one thing or another if you’re playing well. You’re always doing it all.

Consider my guardian with a hammer. My #1 key makes a combo field. My #2 key splashes it. Each of these damages opponents, while putting the buff on allies, which heals me. So those #1 skills aren’t dps or healing or support. It’s all three functions at once.

On my ele, I do have a couple skills not on 6 that are pure heal, and some that are pure control, but everything is on cooldowns. It’s not useful to anyone for me to stay in water (or fire or ..) waiting on cooldowns. There’s a reason we can switch attunements, even while we channel.

The tagging system in big groups does promote people to spam their fastest skills. Also promotes wearing of magic find and not playing very well. This is the way of the zerg.

What I’d say is if you want rewards and are playing in a zerg, then you really shouldn’t even be attempting to support. Giving 5 people yet another stack of might is going to be the essential thing that will kill the Shatterer, or will keep poor Plinkks alive? Don’t kid yourself. The point of a zerg is that no one zergling is important or powerful. The strength is in the many.

I don’t mean to sound rude but it’s laziness on your end if you’re not getting loot or gold on every event. If you’re just throwing down heals or buffs and standing there, you could be doing more.

Sigh the point of the thread is that loot mechanics are FUNDAMENTALLY flawed, as you all say, if they want ppl to be a jack of all trades, why is only ONE of the trades rewarded? AoE dps.

This shines most brightly when a guardian in WvW, who has very limited ranged options but many group support options, gets diddly squat for his support contributions.

the uprising.6317:

Sigh the point of the thread is that loot mechanics are FUNDAMENTALLY flawed, as you all say, if they want ppl to be a jack of all trades, why is only ONE of the trades rewarded? AoE dps.

This shines most brightly when a guardian in WvW, who has very limited ranged options but many group support options, gets diddly squat for his support contributions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-feel-that-Guild-Wars-2-has-some-fundamental-flaws

Don’t worry, if forum censorship does not get you first, the white knights will.

Shootsfoot.9276:

What are you playing that you don’t do any damage to a mob at all and just provide 100% support?

I play a guardian and I’m getting plenty of kills in WvW when I play.

Engineer’s have a setup which is ALL heals and no buffs, or damage. They can set up to drop these little heal bags every 15 seconds or so, and do so four times in a row (or close to that…) essentially healing anyone who needs it on a continual basis.

That, is what support is. Support isn’t supposed to be about doing damage. If we can heal and keep the party up, we’ve done our job. We shouldn’t have to hit a mob to get credit for helping the group be successful.

We all know, it isn’t easy to switch rolls while a fight is going on.

dimgl.4786:

the uprising.6317:

Sigh the point of the thread is that loot mechanics are FUNDAMENTALLY flawed, as you all say, if they want ppl to be a jack of all trades, why is only ONE of the trades rewarded? AoE dps.

This shines most brightly when a guardian in WvW, who has very limited ranged options but many group support options, gets diddly squat for his support contributions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-feel-that-Guild-Wars-2-has-some-fundamental-flaws

Don’t worry, if forum censorship does not get you first, the white knights will.

By the way, I find it funny how people say ‘’all content’’ is at level cap… this just kills me….. what content didn’t you do to get to 80?

utildai.5319:

Shootsfoot.9276:

What are you playing that you don’t do any damage to a mob at all and just provide 100% support?

I play a guardian and I’m getting plenty of kills in WvW when I play.

Engineer’s have a setup which is ALL heals and no buffs, or damage. They can set up to drop these little heal bags every 15 seconds or so, and do so four times in a row (or close to that…) essentially healing anyone who needs it on a continual basis.

That, is what support is. Support isn’t supposed to be about doing damage. If we can heal and keep the party up, we’ve done our job. We shouldn’t have to hit a mob to get credit for helping the group be successful.

We all know, it isn’t easy to switch rolls while a fight is going on.

The most hilarious part about this is if you spec towards specialized builds, you will get no credit on loot tables and essentially contribute less to the team than you would by playing normally.

For people who say that even support need to do damage: yes, we know that. The problem is that for every second you aren’t doing damage in these zerg events you are losing the opportunity to get rewards. If I spend the second it takes to cast healing rain I just lost out on tagging the next wave of my mobs.

When you split your focus between doing damage and supporting other players you will always get less rewards. Putting down a combo field, slowing the enemy, giving allies boons— all those things are worthless during these events for getting rewards. That makes our characters incredibly one-dimensional and reduces the number of abilities we use while playing. Shouldn’t you get more rewards for using your characters abilities to their fullest rather than spamming your best aoe attack?

Well, you can’t really ’’spec’’ towards a specialized build, you can only put skill points into certain things which add to what you already have. A ’’healer’’ can max out boon’s with points, but that is something he/she already has, it just makes it a bit stronger… same with DPS ect…

Your weapon choice really dictates what your going to do. If there is a choice of ’’weapons’’ which gives you no weapon, you should still get some credit for using it and keeping folks alive… otherwise, what’s the point?

I mean a Guardian with a mace and points into boon’s does a pretty darn good job healing. Change that to a sword and it’s completely different.

utildai.5319:

Shootsfoot.9276:

What are you playing that you don’t do any damage to a mob at all and just provide 100% support?

I play a guardian and I’m getting plenty of kills in WvW when I play.

Engineer’s have a setup which is ALL heals and no buffs, or damage. They can set up to drop these little heal bags every 15 seconds or so, and do so four times in a row (or close to that…) essentially healing anyone who needs it on a continual basis.

That, is what support is. Support isn’t supposed to be about doing damage. If we can heal and keep the party up, we’ve done our job. We shouldn’t have to hit a mob to get credit for helping the group be successful.

We all know, it isn’t easy to switch rolls while a fight is going on.

I have to say you’re really truly doing it all wrong.

The fundamental coolness of the engineer is being that Swiss-Army knife.

The fundamental of support in Guild Wars is that it’s not a role you do, but a function you serve while you’re doing all the other roles that are essential, too.

If you’re only support, or only tanking, or only healing, or only damage, or only CC, you are doing it wrong.

I agree with the OP. I have often switched to water attunement on my Elementalist but am more and more loth to do so. Every time I stay in Water I get far less in the way of drops. From what I can see, around 7 times less than when I am in Fire DPS attunement.

This has caused me to be far more concerned with how much DPS I am doing than if I can help out my teammates. During the last event I spent about a tenth of the time in healing capacity as I could have.