Guild Wars 2

I’ve always loved playing support classes. When I played WoW, I was a disc priest before it was cool, played resto shaman, and even a resto druid for a while. With my warrior there, I was specced prot and loved harassing the hell out of people, or just keeping them off of my healers/squishy dps. In WAR, I played a warrior priest as a frontline healer, keeping people up, and played tanks (again) doing the same thing, but much more effectively. So far GW2 is a ton of fun- I’ve been leveling some classes up to get a feel for the game, but I can’t seem to find a really good support class. My first guess was Mesmer, but they still seem pretty damage oriented.

So my question: do I need to play Mesmer longer, or is there another good support class out there?

PS: Please don’t say every class can play as support, I know the warriors shouts are awesome, but I’m looking for a healer/buffer/debuffer type.

PPS: In TF2 I play medic/engie a lot. That sandvich is a spy!

PPPS: I appreciate any help you can give!

If you really want to focus a little more on the support aspect of the game while playing your character, that’s great, but you should never completely forsake the damage and control elements of your character. This game is nothing like WoW: you can’t just take one job during combat and completely ignore the other two. It doesn’t make you better at one; it just means you’re doing a third of what you should be doing.

That being said, if you enjoyed playing TF2 medic and engi a lot, you should definitely try Engineer. Healing turrets are great, as are those medkits they drop that are a free heal to any player that runs over them. Staff guardians are also great for healing and buffing allies, and the Tome of Courage elite is pretty much the most powerful support skill I’ve ever seen; it basically turns the first five skills of your skill bar into ridiculously powerful heal and buff skills for 20 seconds, including powerful AoE ground-target heal in skill 1 and a full-party max heal in skill 5.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of control. I mean… I played a shaman, it was the only way to go, kiting and healing. I’ll have to take another look at the Guardian, I guess. Thanks for the help

Guardian like he said with Staff and the Tome but Guardian’s other weapons also offer other types of support, via blinds, heals, and protective shields as well as their class mechanics of the Virtues. So they can do a lot, they’re really built to be the GW2 version of a Paladin type class.

Another class I might try is the Elementalist. They can provide with the Staff, a lot of CC in various forms, lots of heals, debuffs, cleansing, decent damage with Fire skills when they’re not doing other stuff, and staff can also produce more combo fields than probably any other class (and the combo fields can produce a lot of similar effects as well when mixed with either your own combo finishers or also usually ones from your teammates).

guess you didnt read about this game…has zero rolls.

There is no healer,tank,supporter or what ever you clowns wish to label things.

Controling agro iskitten so how can a “supporter” support when strays hit them?

sixfeetunder.6508:

guess you didnt read about this game…has zero rolls.

There is no healer,tank,supporter or what ever you clowns wish to label things.

Controling agro iskitten so how can a “supporter” support when strays hit them?

They didn’t get rid of roles, they just got rid of the need for a)the trinity and b)for each person to play one role for the entire game. This game has support, control and dps and there’s even an ANet blog around here somewhere talking about it as well as various articles.

The difference with GW2 is any class can perform any and all of those roles, getting rid of the need for “LF Tank then gtg” because you can take any 5 players and complete a dungeon. And each class is expected to be versatile and switch around weapons, utilities, and even traits to fill different roles as needed. So you can certainly build a character more centered around various types of support if that’s what you like. You will be doing all three things as will everyone else, but your support will be far better than others if you spec for it and you can make a difference doing that.

Leiloni.7951:

sixfeetunder.6508:

guess you didnt read about this game…has zero rolls.

There is no healer,tank,supporter or what ever you clowns wish to label things.

Controling agro iskitten so how can a “supporter” support when strays hit them?

They didn’t get rid of roles, they just got rid of the need for a)the trinity and b)for each person to play one role for the entire game. This game has support, control and dps and there’s even an ANet blog article around here somewhere talking about it.

The difference with GW2 is any class can perform any and all of those roles, getting rid of the need for “LF Tank then gtg”. And each class is expected to be versatile and switch around weapons, utilities, and traits as needed to fill different roles. So you can certainly build a character more centered around various types of support if that’s what you like. You will be doing all three things as will everyone else, but your support will be far better than others if you spec for it and you can make a difference doing that.

way to contradict your entire statment…no they didnt get rid of roles they merly……zzzzzzzzzzzYou are clearly seeing things as you want to see lol. There is no role in this game period. The way you are thinking its going to take additional 3-5 more players to “support” roles as you see fit within a group. This is a dps game period.

If you think everyone just stands around dpsing all day than I don’t know what game you’re playing. And if you think GW2 combat is that simple than you are in for a lot of disappointment.

sixfeetunder.6508:

way to contradict your entire statment…no they didnt get rid of roles they merly……zzzzzzzzzzzYou are clearly seeing things as you want to see lol. There is no role in this game period. The way you are thinking its going to take additional 3-5 more players to “support” roles as you see fit within a group. This is a dps game period.

Uninformed, opinionated, and grossly inaccurate are words I would describe this post with.

Back on topic, I too enjoy both damage and support and I find that elementalist is perfect for this. With a staff, you get nice damage in fire/air, conditions in earth, excellent heals/condition removal in water.

As for dps being all that matters, well, let’s just say my guild prefers to bring me, with my attunement hopping and support with a water attunement, over the other elementalist who camps fire attunement the whole time.

I warn you, only damage counts for rewards. So if you do events as healer/CC/buffer/debuffer, you will get bronze. Sucks pretty bad.