In WvW at the moment I feel like there is a real lack of support classes, I guess because people prefer to be actively killing people and doing damage rather than healing and removing conditions etc.
I started to play on a Guardian recently to help out more protecting the people I play with so that we could have greater success in some of the fights/sieges that we have. The main difference I have noticed after switching was the lack of credit for kills and capturing points.
If you don’t deal damage to a target you don’t get any credit for it, even if you were healing the people around you so that they could kill said target. This is especially true of large scale fights in keeps/towers, I have blocked a lot of projectile damage while we’re attacking a gate and after we get inside healing against the damage the defenders are putting out in there final defence and still only get silver for participating.
I think there should be a system for credit as someone who is blocking damage or effectively healing players around you. Some of the things that could be taken in to consideration for this are:
- If you heal a player who is taking damage from a target(s) and they get a kill
- If you block damage it should count the same as healing (see above)
- Removing conditions should count as if you had healed the amount of damage that would have been taken
At the moment there is no incentive to play support as you get far more for just running in to a group of people and spamming aoe abilities to tag as many people as possible and then hoping they die so you can loot all the bags.
tldr: Support classes need credit for kills & captures