Guild Wars 2

Heya. So, I’ve been messing around with characters for a little bit (invested in 3 more character slots to have all the professions) and I’m wondering now which professions are the most support oriented ones?

So far, I’ve heard things about Engineers, Guardians, and Ranger support builds. Trying to figure out if every class has some sort of support oriented build or tree it can work towards?

To give some background, I’ve been a healer in every single MMO I’ve played for the last 10+ years, so it’s taking some getting used to not being a healer here. I’ve always hated just pure DPS, though, so I’m trying to find a way to make pure support oriented builds for each of the professions. Or high CC builds, since I enjoy that as well. I haven’t really seen a lot of big options for CC oriented builds, though, so if someone has a good profession they can point me to for that, it would be appreciated as well.

Thanks!

I’ve been finding myself able to give a surprising amount of support as an elementalist, particularly in the Water attunement line (lots of healing options there). This is in addition to being able to lay down things like a ring of fire for other players to use to increase their own damage… or being able to pull out an ice or fire bow, or an air (electricity) hammer which not only gives me a new set of skills but tosses a second one on the ground for other players to pick up & use.

I like being able to seamlessly switch between dealing some hefty DPS (earth dagger/dagger is awesome!) and dealing a nice healing rain to a LARGE area.

I’ve never gone in much for any sort of support role in gaming… I usually like just blowing everything up with a fire-based build… but wow, the flexibility in the elementalist builds has just opened up whole new worlds to me.

Mike, try to avoid thinking that in GuildWars 2 you need a specific healer. You were fairly right on the money with the idea of “support”, because at best that’s all you can do; support another player. If they fail to use their dodge mechanic and die then that’s that.

Moving on, in terms of support classes I myself play an Engineer and must say that I love it. I can do almost everything well, but not master it. if you sit down with a class and nut out your own trait build and then map your skill loadout around it I think just about any class can become true support. But at one point or another you will need to bite the bullet and do some “pure dps” as there are some fights that just simply require it.

For ideas on likely support classes I could suggest Engineer (Enemy CC/Limited party healing), Guardian (Party healing/Damage mitigation) or Elementalist (Enemy CC/Party healing).

All classes have some kind of support. Granted, some are better than others.

Take a look at Necromancer, along with the classes already mentioned. Staff Necromancers drop spell-traps that heal/buff in an AOE. They also have wells which remove conditions and grant boons, as well as more AOE healing.

I think Thief is probably the weakest in the support group, but I’ve seen many people do support thief by reviving/healing people while stealthed.

Hmmmm. My highest character at the moment is an Engineer, ‘cause they seemed very flexible with all of their kits. I’m currently running around with an Elixer Gun, Bombs, the Healing Turret, and Elixer R. I haven’t gotten the elite skill yet, but Supply Crates really seemed like the only viable option. I’m looking forward to getting the ‘Bombs Heal’ skill, but that won’t be for a looooong while yet.

The other character I’ve been using quite often is the Elementalist, actually. She’s not very high at the moment, though. I’ve mostly just been trying to get all of her weapon skills to see what works best, since she has a ton to choose from. She seemed to have some pretty straightforward support options, though, what with the heals and auras and such. It won’t be until much higher levels that she gets all of her goodies also, though. Kind of seems like the game wants you to focus more on damage until you reach higher levels.

Ranger seemed like it’d have some pretty straightforward support with a Spirit build. Seemed like Spirits along with the fast auto attack of a Short Bow would trigger conditions pretty regular, along with buffing the rest of the party.

Guardians seemed the most support oriented, since they have a ton of buffs and heals. I haven’t gotten a chance to try them out much yet, though.

I think I’m mostly curious about what I can do with the other four classes. I’ll have to look deeper at Necro, now, since they just seemed like a minion class at first, but I wasn’t aware of the other options.

Anyone know a good way to make a support or Crowd Control focused character for Mesmer, Necro, Thief, or Warrior? Anything to get away from 100% damage focused all the time? I know I’ll have to have some sort of damage capability to contribute, I’d just prefer to have something else mixed in there, too.

Oh, also, this is mostly for PvE. I mean, I play support in PvP, too, but I figure the builds would be pretty different between them and I’m mostly worried about PvE at the moment.