Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I’m trying to figure out which class to play. I tend to enjoy playing healers/support classes, while not enjoying glass cannon/DPS characters. Are there any professions that favor this style of play.

Hey,

Not an expert on classes, but judging from their skill set, I would say staff Guardians and water Elementalists look like very good support classes. And with the weapon switch system, your Guardian could easily double as a tank/dps. As for Elementalist, their profession mechanic does that for them (changing elements).

Engineer is best for support. Boons and heals and CC

I don’t know why people say elementalist cuz they don’t have a lot to give. Is it the combo fields?

On my guardian the only time I use staff is in wvw swapped with scepter for range. Staff gives you basically no offensive skills.

Guardians give good boons and have effective ways to remove conditions.

Elementlists water has a nice array of CC (slow/immobilize) and AOE healing.
Air has a lot of CC in the way of blinds.
Earth has a number of bleeds but also has slows/immobilizes as well.

I think a lot of people that play the Ele want a big boom, but they do have a lot in the way of utility.

Guardian is really good as a tank support class. You have a number of skills that affect the party that provide aegis, damage mitigation as well as healing. Basically you can let someone else “tank” and use your tank skills on them.

The Necromancer can offer a LOT in the way of support too. Plenty of AOE heals and (especially overlooked and exceedingly useful) condition removal.

Rangers have (imho) the best AOE heal in the game. They also have spirits that provide damage mitigation + party wide boons as well.

Warrior banners provide a lot of defensive and offensive bonuses.

Thief has plenty of blinds and a really nice AOE heal.

The classes offer significantly more depth if you dig deeper into their skills and abilities. Pretty much every class offers some form of support to the party.

To add on to what Echo is saying, The engineer offers some very nice support as well in the form of direct heals (dropping bandages to be picked up by others or yourself), healing turret that gives anyone near it a healing boost and the supply crate with the healing turret and several bandages dropping at once. Besides that there are things as the net’s to provide enemy freezes and several elixer tossings that provide a boost.

mesmer can offer also some nice support, though I never played one, the wall/dome thing they can put up but also the clones are a great way of defending and dividing the agro (even in PvP real players are complaining they can’t see the difference between a clone and a real mesmer).

The bottom line is that in GW2 there is no dedicated support class and although all classes can do some nice support the trick is to learn to change your role depending on how the fight is going. Besides dungeons, team composition isn’t important as well cause you often find yourself playing with other people and even in dungeons the composition of the team is less important in my opinion then the abbility to switch your role and adept to the situation.