Guild Wars 2

As of right now, the only meta support build is aurashare tempest at meta level and this creates numerous balance situations:

1. makes ele mandatory at the competitive level
2. makes it so any ele not running meta feels like they sre gimping their team or opens them up for flaming
3. creates the presumption that the team with the meta ele will win (not always the case though)

There are plenty of possible builds that could be tweaked to be more competitive. Old vanilla bunker guard. Druid, Ventari rev. But in order to balance them you need to look at what makes ele meta in the first place. It has the ability to passively heal its allies and clear conditions through shouts and auras and it has a big heal on the heal utility.

The other classes don’t have to be able to do the same exact thing. Some can focus on condi clearing, others on boons, others on peeling enemies off allies. But they do need to be able to do a bit of everything to keep up with meta ele. For example ventari rev has enough healing to assist allies but doesn’t have enough sustained condi clear and passive healing to keep up. Bunker guard can clear condis well enough for allies but doesn’t have enough burst healing It also has a bit of passive healing on aegis removal but it doesn’t generate enough aegis to match the number of auras an ele can put out. Druid i am not too sure what it lacks. Maybe needs more passive healing?

What do you guys think?

Support builds are always problematic. They become mandatory very quickly and most of them have a spammy nature that anet wands to get rid off. Just a quick review on some support builds in the past and present:

1. D/F Auramancer Ele: Quite a spammy build, many passive activations of Auras and there is no reason to not use auras on cooldown. Skillful play is defined by the personal surviability of this build.
2. Shoutbow Warrior (pre-HOT). The definition of spam. Has to use longbow F1 on cooldown to gain both conditions cleanse and might to deal some damage. Also warhorn skills for condi clear, but warhorn 5 is also a blast finisher and required for might stack, so it gets spammed on cd regardless. There is no thinking on this build, just spam fire field and blast finishers whenever possible.
3rd: bunker mesmer (HOT season 1). Another build focused around spamming shatters and wells to keep alacrity buff up. Another case of condi clear being tied to a general rotation that you would do anyway with this build.

Any kind of new support build should have ways to not get abused and needs some expression of skill. Ventari rev is good on paper but is really hard to utilise well in teamfights and the awful ground targeting in this game. It also conflicts with the playstyle of the revenant class which requires swapping between legends.
Druid has few ways to support allies outside of it’s celestial avatar form.

Bunker guard however would be a nice additon if it works well.

Okay. So I understand that the nature of support builds have the potential to be spammy, or are gonna be spammy, but you need to think of it like this.
There is a difference between a good and a great player.
A good player, is going to be, the definition of spammy. (IE using all of their skills in one burst, trying to spam CC lock down the opponent with the rest of the team, of using all of the big burst heals early)
The great player is going to wait, going to clearly see when they need to be the saving grace, time the hard CC for key targets like a boon shred necro or the burn guardian.
Saying that the support builds are ‘just too spammy’, that is not the player’s fault at that point, it is the fault of the ones who allowed that build to exist in that manner.
And lets be honest though, any healing class, in the MMOs that I have been in are spammy. That’s just it.
But the great players are the ones who always /will/ be the ones on top because they can separate themselves from the spamminess and make it good.
And another point, I am just going to say this.
Any condi heavy build or hard power build is spammy as well. Because not only do they have damage, but they have the CC to back it up.
Though, putting tweaks on numbers to make certain strong skills more balance, that I will agree with.
Honestly, Anet needs to follow a guideline of checks and balances, and right now…they don’t have that currently.

Regarding Druid, If they got the Seed of Life condition removal nerf reverted, I could see Glyphs being an actual option again as utilities for helping in crowd fights with the extra cleansing/healing (and even having a coordinated team blasting the brief light fields left behind for one extra aoe one).

There’s also the possibility of increasing Search and Rescue’s range to 900 but keeping its current CD to help pull the fallen out of fights, because lets face it, 600 range is pretty pitiful for helping anyone in most cases.