Guild Wars 2

Why do players that play support get no reward when they are doing the most vital role and DPS’ers get all the reward…

This just makes people need to play DPS to get badges

The best support is to man a siege engine, which also incidentally tends to result in a lot of badges.

Heh GW2 doesnt have healers

Heals have a very long cooldown you need to dps / buff / heal and find that sweet spot in your rotation / traits / weapons.

You cannot expect to get full credit for tossing in a healing rain once in a while

badges come from killing blows in downstate, you can achieve that in 2 ways, the F key or the last damage blow in their down state.

You just can’t only support. Just like how the DPS people shouldn’t only be DPS; shouldn’t always be glass-cannoning it up, you shouldn’t only be pure support. You’ve gotta mix it up a bit more.

If you are sitting back and waiting on your long cool downs to support your team, you are doing it wrong, and badly.

I play a water elementalist/air 10/20/0/30/10 with zero condition damage and 45% crit. With usually 600 healing, but sometimes I equip 800. I certainly don’t feed ineffective and I have no trouble getting badges. Just land final blows! With the recent reduction of downed state HP it is easier then ever. If you see an enemy downed 1200 range away, then quickly cycle 2 non-channeled aoes, drop a stun field, and you shouldn’t have trouble finishing them off.
of every gear/trait/utility makeup i’ve tried, I find this build the most useful both large battle (staff), and small skirmishes or 1v1 (scepter & dagger). What is important is condition removal! Water elementalists excel at area condition removal and keeping vigor up (self only) throughout the duration of most battles.

The issue isn’t for people doing all support. I agree that is the wrong way to play. However there are legitimate very useful builds that are not geared towards damage. A guardian for instance can have three very useful, nondmging utility skills plus mace/shield and staff. In general they deal low DMG, compared to an ele or ranger. However they can be a huge benefit to their team.

When you spec that way you are doing a lot less dmg,. Not no DMG, but a lot less. Less DMG means less final blows, less kills and as a result less rewards.

Take a tower defense. The shield heavy guardian described above can be very busing laying down shields, heals, resurrecting many many teammates etc… yes they make get some DMG off ocassionally, but typically very little. They may go an entire five minute cool down without a kill. Were they doing nothing? Of course not, but the game still ignores their contribution.

There is really no other way to put it…the game does not reward or encourage supporting. Every skill you take that supports instead of damages is taking away your kill potential, and kill potential is all that is rewarded. That is a screwed up system.

Edit.

The idea that if you are playing support you are just standing there waiting for cool downs is just silly. There are builds (I’m speaking as a guardian) where you are constantly involved in the battle, never waiting on cool downs, and still dealing little DMG. My above guardian always has something he can do, between his utilities, line of earding, symbol of swiftness, the might channel, healing orb, shield skills, mace absorption skill..and then if he needs the elite support tome. He deals little DMG, has on high powered aoes…but the DMG mitigation for teammates is absurdly high. The teammates I protect using that build are able to kill for more…except they get all the credit.

I’d much rather have someone dishing out damage and throwing out a few group boons in my group than someone attempting to fill a role that Anet purposely did not include.

Individual heals are far more effective and reliable. I can’t ever remember getting a heal other than my own that made a difference in my survival.

People willing to rez a fallen team mate during a battle is however can be the difference in preventing a route.

Agree 110% with the OP.

Not like braving siege engine fire to lob an Elixir R, save three people and not even get the usual EXP for a revive let alone a loot bag.

I play my guardian because I love the build, and I know I am making a difference in the fights I’m involved in. However when I play my ranger or engi alts (both below level 30, My guardian is 80) the comparison is just sad. Same amount of playtime I end up with at least double the badges, and much faster income generation, the comparison isn’t even close.

Proven.2854:

You just can’t only support. Just like how the DPS people shouldn’t only be DPS; shouldn’t always be glass-cannoning it up, you shouldn’t only be pure support. You’ve gotta mix it up a bit more.

Why? Why cant people play the way they want to play and still get rewarded? I agree 100% with OP. You should get as much reward for support as for killing.

And thats not really the point either. The point being that no matter if you mix it up, the amount of support you do is not contributing in any way at all. If you dont kill a player, you’re not contributing to the event, if you dont kill, you dont get any loot, if you dont kill, you dont get any badges and soooo on. Its like ArenaNet dont care if people aid their teammates, they just care if you kill players. Some of us enjoy being the support.

Yes playing guardian in wvw makes me sad.

I gotta agree, as a support player I spend my time running supplys, building defensive siege, scouting, and dropping tons of cash to help upgrade camps/forts/keeps, which is a huge asset to the team, yet I dont get rewarded for most of this because Im not in the front lines fighting.

Sorry but for WvW to work you need people willing to stick around and defend forts and supply camps, people protecting the dollys, people running supply lines from camps to starved forts, AND people in the front lines fighting. Very few people want to stick around when your not get rewarded, server pirde as a reward is just a joke, sure its a joke I go for, but Im in the minority.

I noticed that I started getting an event reward when an Upgrade finishes, which is a step forward, the people who pay for an upgrade should get rewarded when it completes because they are contributing to the whole server, not everyone needs to be rewarded, just that person putting out the money.

As for Dolly running, I have to admit getting rid of the reward has made the Dolly Protection service pathetic, its now become a forced event that we dont get rewarded for, somehow the MOST important thing in the battlegrounds gives no reward, this is unacceptable. Reward us only if the place needs supplys, reward us only if we kill something that has actively attacked the Dolly, you dont even have to give XP or Karma, but Money is something that needs to be rewarded as WvW is the biggest money sink in the game and your repairs easily outweight any silver rewards you get for 3 or 4 events combined.

There is no reason not to reward support based players. Currently you can grab tons of badges without really contributing due to high radius AoE. I may only get off a meteor shower or two before I am crushed into goo, but I’ll get a lot of rewards just because I am “doing damage”. In reality, I am contributing less to the overall effort than a player that is actively trying to help his side stay up and fighting or boost their damage.

I thought one of the ads for GW2 was “play your way”, so maybe a more complex and nuanced reward system would be a good idea.

Thanks,
Matt

Phara Miu.2816:

Heh GW2 doesnt have healers

Heals have a very long cooldown you need to dps / buff / heal and find that sweet spot in your rotation / traits / weapons.

You cannot expect to get full credit for tossing in a healing rain once in a while

badges come from killing blows in downstate, you can achieve that in 2 ways, the F key or the last damage blow in their down state.

What you’re saying is wrong.

There are healers in this game and there are tanks in this game. To state otherwise just demonstrates a lack of experience playing the game.

A properly spec’d guardian can produce meaningful, sustained HPS out to players around him, can prevent 10’s of thousands of points of damage (probably more in the right ZvZ conditions) with any given shield ability, sustain AE 33% damage reduction, and can chop zergs apart by using the staff 5 ability. That is a full time support gig right there and none of it is rewarded.

Increasing the TTL (Time to Live) of friendly players so drastically is a game changer and that’s why guilds are rolling with synchronized guardians.

A guardian (just an example, I’m sure there are other classes which can do this) shouldn’t need to dive in and spam Staff 1 autoattack for kill credit. They were busy doing more meaningful things.

./signed The only thing that SWTOR got right in PvP.

Ybrahim.2084:

I thought one of the ads for GW2 was “play your way”, so maybe a more complex and nuanced reward system would be a good idea.

Thanks,
Matt

“Play it your way, but don’t expect to be rewarded for supporting your mates.”

Best ad.

Depending on my gear my ele can crack 1,000+ healing power.

I have no issues farming events, always get gold, and the only time I lose out on badges is when I forget to loot them.

What you’re wanting isn’t possible because the players that are actually able to utilize their characters correctly and swap in between defense and offense would either see double or NO reward at all for their efforts.

Learn to play correctly.

Mistalya.4812:

Depending on my gear my ele can crack 1,000+ healing power.

I have no issues farming events, always get gold, and the only time I lose out on badges is when I forget to loot them.

You’re probably doing it wrong and sitting in water thinking you’re helping with your Mist hot.

On the contrary, I think that “you’re probably doing it wrong” if you’re sitting at 1000+ healing and you’re wasting GCD’s in PvP on weak spam damage to get kill credits instead of using those valuable GCD’s on healing, preventing damage, crowd control, or buffing.

Now, if you’re going for a hybrid DPS/Support build then carry on. This thread is about dedicated support builds.

Fugly.5287:

I play a water elementalist/air 10/20/0/30/10 with zero condition damage and 45% crit. With usually 600 healing, but sometimes I equip 800. I certainly don’t feed ineffective and I have no trouble getting badges. Just land final blows! With the recent reduction of downed state HP it is easier then ever. If you see an enemy downed 1200 range away, then quickly cycle 2 non-channeled aoes, drop a stun field, and you shouldn’t have trouble finishing them off.
of every gear/trait/utility makeup i’ve tried, I find this build the most useful both large battle (staff), and small skirmishes or 1v1 (scepter & dagger). What is important is condition removal! Water elementalists excel at area condition removal and keeping vigor up (self only) throughout the duration of most battles.

If youre using all your abilities outside of water to contribute to the fight than you should be getting bags. However, if youre sitting in the back and waiting for things to come off CD in water, youll prob get a lot less.

Mulitplex.2017:

Mistalya.4812:

Depending on my gear my ele can crack 1,000+ healing power.

I have no issues farming events, always get gold, and the only time I lose out on badges is when I forget to loot them.

You’re probably doing it wrong and sitting in water thinking you’re helping with your Mist hot.

On the contrary, I think that “you’re probably doing it wrong” if you’re sitting at 1000+ healing and you’re wasting GCD’s in PvP on weak spam damage to get kill credits instead of using those valuable GCD’s on healing, preventing damage, crowd control, or buffing.

Now, if you’re going for a hybrid DPS/Support build then carry on. This thread is about dedicated support builds.

Everything in this game is a hybrid. The sooner people figure this out the sooner the QQ will stop or people will go back and play Pandacraft so they can sit in the back and play whack-a-mole with their UI. Saying you’re wasting GCD’s in WvW to attack because you have healing power..

You know what, just forget you. There’s no helping you.

Mulitplex.2017:

Mistalya.4812:

Depending on my gear my ele can crack 1,000+ healing power.

I have no issues farming events, always get gold, and the only time I lose out on badges is when I forget to loot them.

You’re probably doing it wrong and sitting in water thinking you’re helping with your Mist hot.

On the contrary, I think that “you’re probably doing it wrong” if you’re sitting at 1000+ healing and you’re wasting GCD’s in PvP on weak spam damage to get kill credits instead of using those valuable GCD’s on healing, preventing damage, crowd control, or buffing.

Now, if you’re going for a hybrid DPS/Support build then carry on. This thread is about dedicated support builds.

GCD? wth are you talking about?

Phara Miu.2816:

badges come from killing blows in downstate, you can achieve that in 2 ways, the F key or the last damage blow in their down state.

I thought you needed to do the most damage? That’s what other people kept telling in other threads. So the AoE maybe would be really the best way since you have more chances to get a last hit? Or siege with high damage and AoE?

Or looking for small group fights.

Pretty hard in a zerg vs. zerg fight without AoE to get the last kill on something if always 3 or more people are running at the downed guys(if you are not melee and need to run there first).

I have begun to rethink my choice of utility abilities because they do not net me any badges. Unfortunately I am in a bind right now and I need them. As a mesmer I have only a few options for AOE so my badge count tends to be a LOT less than those that have more options.

Right now my utility abilities generate 0 badges. Though they are quite useful. Just wish I could get some sort of credit for using them.

Once again, I can’t speak for a water elementalist but on a guardian the idea that if we are support we are just sitting there waiting for cool downs is ABSURD. I can be nonstop busy with my support build, and even not use certain skills for awhile when there is too much going on. A full support build on a guardian is COMPLETELY viable, except for the fact that the developers don’t think support is worth akitten

The current system does penalize players that focus on condition removal, skillfully boon application (clutch play with protection / stability) healing, and reviving. Often in keep and tower sieges having 2-3 people protecting those on siege by healing and removing the “lol I spam from below” AoE conditions off them is vital. Yet you get nothing for doing it.

If your not on a siege weapon and don’t have an AoE you can arch onto or off of a wall you might as well give up on getting rewards.

This really force play on certain weapons and abilities which is lame.

After hearing many fun and positive stories about WvW I decided to get involved last night. I play a Guardian and have always enjoyed the support type roles. I’ve come to terms that GW2 does not have a pure healer and have tried to find a niche in reviving allies, supplying regen, Aegis, ranged dps and other fun guardian stuff.

I noticed right from the start that I was seeing none of these fantastic rewards the rest of my guild has been talking about. Loot? XP? huh? What I did receive was a lot of “TY” from those fallen in battle or needing a condition removed or having a Sanctuary popped up to keep em safe if only for a few seconds. I knew my role was appreciated by the players, but like an American Dr. I do what I do for the cash. I am really not wanting to make an Engineer just to make ends meet on the repair bills. Let’s face it..the world does not need another dozen turrets blocking the battlefield.

I play a guardian, full support with shield/mace and staff and traits/utilities. I get constant bags of loot. There is no different in my guardian over my elementalist or warrior. Maybe you’re playing it wrong.

Get involved. Tow the line. Do your job.

Mistalya.4812:

Mulitplex.2017:

Mistalya.4812:

Depending on my gear my ele can crack 1,000+ healing power.

I have no issues farming events, always get gold, and the only time I lose out on badges is when I forget to loot them.

You’re probably doing it wrong and sitting in water thinking you’re helping with your Mist hot.

On the contrary, I think that “you’re probably doing it wrong” if you’re sitting at 1000+ healing and you’re wasting GCD’s in PvP on weak spam damage to get kill credits instead of using those valuable GCD’s on healing, preventing damage, crowd control, or buffing.

Now, if you’re going for a hybrid DPS/Support build then carry on. This thread is about dedicated support builds.

Everything in this game is a hybrid. The sooner people figure this out the sooner the QQ will stop or people will go back and play Pandacraft so they can sit in the back and play whack-a-mole with their UI. Saying you’re wasting GCD’s in WvW to attack because you have healing power..

You know what, just forget you. There’s no helping you.

There is dedicated support and dedicated tanking in this game. It is a lack of experience on your part that makes you oblivious to this.

If you think a fully support spec’d guardian blows a couple of cooldowns and then has nothing to do… then you just don’t understand the class or what builds are possible with it.

I have a dps necro and a support guardian. Both of them, as built, are effective at WvW and assist the team equally well. The necro accrues badgest faster than the guardian. Fact.

I can forgive the ignorance. But flailing around on the forums and accusing people of being WoW players is just ridiculous.

Learn more about the game then come back here and we can discuss this issue with support players further.

Karast.1927:

The current system does penalize players that focus on condition removal, skillfully boon application (clutch play with protection / stability) healing, and reviving. Often in keep and tower sieges having 2-3 people protecting those on siege by healing and removing the “lol I spam from below” AoE conditions off them is vital. Yet you get nothing for doing it.

If your not on a siege weapon and don’t have an AoE you can arch onto or off of a wall you might as well give up on getting rewards.

This really force play on certain weapons and abilities which is lame.

Those are the jobs I frequently fill. I also am traited for superior ressurecting ability, so am often a sort of battlefield medic on the walls during defense. If i don’t stop and try to spam some pointlessly low dmg aoe (which to be honest is LESS helpful than focusing on my teammates) I get no credit form the defense, no matter how long it lasts.

It really boggles my mind that people can’t see the problem with that? Or that people don’t want those of us going out of our way to help you rain fiery death upon the enemy get some sort of reward for it, even a fraction of what you get out of it. When I shield you you are free to rain death. You get more xp, more badges, more credit to the event because I am helping keep you alive. Is it really wrong to expect some amount of that in return? It couldn’t even steal from your rewards, it would just help to continue to encourage us to keep on working our best to support you. We are trying to be team players and get nothing for it.

Furthermore,

If people really think all we do is spam one or two skills and then wait one minute for a cool down, i still don’t even see why that should mean we should get no contribution. Let our level of contribution reflect what we are doing.

If someone uses one skill every minute and does nothing else, i agree they are contributing little…so don’t give them high contribution, theyndont deserve it. However, what is the difference between that person who uses a utility every minute that is non damaging and someone using some big aoe once per minute and nothing else? They are both contributing little overall to the effort…but all that aoe needs to do is generate some kill credit and that lazy attacker gets xp, a chance for loot and contribution credit for a defense.

Let the system work out who is not doing much.those of us who are very busy non stop giving support…a system could be in place to seperate us from those people you seem to think sit back and do nothing.

drwookie.6391:

Furthermore,

If people really think all we do is spam one or two skills and then wait one minute for a cool down, i still don’t even see why that should mean we should get no contribution.

Dr. Trollmore in the house.

Mistalya.4812:

drwookie.6391:

Furthermore,

If people really think all we do is spam one or two skills and then wait one minute for a cool down, i still don’t even see why that should mean we should get no contribution.

Dr. Trollmore in the house.

How is that a troll? Did you read the rest? The contribution someone receives (in xp, badges, karma etc) should reflect how they contribute. So a person that casts one skill every minute deserves contribution, they just deserve a very small amount to reflect how little they contributed. Hat should be the same as a person casting one AOE per minute and nothing else. The current system will reward the one aoe per minute more than the one heal or defensive skill per minute (the aoe has a potential to generate kill credit).

That seems completely reasonable to me. Not really sure why your instant counter argument is just to call me a troll.

Edit.

I’d also like to point out you are the person in here resorting to infantile forms of argument, such has mocking people and other video games, which until you mentioned them were not brought up in the post. So if any one is not contributing to the discussion, it is you.

This is a very good point. For example, the ranger can build a strong support class template but this will hurt the amount of rewards you would normally get if you went DPS build. My suggestion would be to make it so that parties/guild share xp when pvping together. Another option would be to reward players for their groups buffs (such as the spirits for a Ranger).

Anet should reward support players, period.
Oh, wait, Anet should also reward the whole group or squad for the kills their members get.

What support roles don’t have a way of tagging the enemy and generating badges? Support ranger has traps that definitely tag and generate badges. Even water-heavy elementalists should be dropping some earth or fire effects for combo fields, so they’re covered as well. Support necro has pretty much every single staff ability. Guardian has the ground heal that damages opponents. Mesmer use clones to attack the guys retreating.

Is the issue just that support players get a few less badges than a pure DPS? I know the balance isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty decent and I definitely never feel punished for running a support build.

I do understand the criticism about defending a supply depot and other lookout positions sucking for rewards, but I’m not sure how they could fix that without rewarding AFK/bot players though.

Richard, we do have attacks that deal damage. But speaking from the perspective of a guardian I ran mace/shield and staff. Both of my symbols deal pretty small damage compared to people around me. So small in fact that I have “tagged” many enemies with it and never gotten any kill credit. You don’t get credit just for dealing any dmg, you have to deal above some sort of threshold (what that is I don’t know).

I can be running a build where I’m purging conditions, setting up my wall of reflection, using my staff might buff, the line of warding, the symbol of swiftness (defensively, not offensively), then switch to my mace for the protection buff, plus shield of absorption and the mace absorption spell. Running all of those keeps it quite busy and the ONLY one that really deals any damage is the symbol, which is minimal. THat doesn’t mean using all those other skills doesn’t help my teammates though.

So ya while I do get badges and occasional kills, it is not even close to someone who has 3 damaging utilities plus weapons designed for long range AOE death and the simple reason is the only measure of whether you are “Helping” is whether you are “killing”. I believe that is a flawed measurement system.

drwookie, have you played a pure dps recently and compared badge/hour rates or such? How big is the current discrepancy?

There is just a lot of noise mixed in with potentially useful comments on this issue. Some of it is support players foolishly believing dps players that are just lying about how fast they get badges right now. Or people are comparing their current support badge generation to their badge generation on pure dps builds weeks ago. Or people are seeing diminishing returns on loot and thinking it is because they aren’t doing enough damage. I’m hoping people can provide more specific details about their experiences so any specific problems that exist can get the attention deserved.

you can deal small amounts of damage to tag an enemy and not get any exp or whatnot if you’re “more” support orientated,healing does not count as “contribution” only damage seems to.

If you need to ask more of these questions on those aspects. when you could have just checked for yourself in a few moments by trying a heavy support potential class build with a heavy dps build then I’m just gonna go ahead and take your gamer card and replace it with a nancy fanboy one…

the design ethos of breaking the holy trinity is slowly being diminished sadly…

It seems the people who claim that this is not a problem are mostly people who do not play support. For those who say “if you are playing a full support build, you are doing it wrong,” or “ArenaNet doesn’t want you playing support,” I would love to see you on a team without dedicated support players fighting a similar number of enemies who DO have them. You won’t last 30 seconds.

What I don’t get is why people would argue against this fix. Even if you don’t see the problem, surely you can see the value in giving support players some benefit of the doubt, and let there be some incentive to play this vital role? Because if this isn’t addressed, the number of people willing to play support builds is going to dwindle rapidly.

I’m not saying no one will ever do it. I’m saying it will become a chore that no one wants to do. And that makes the game less fun overall. And that is exactly the kind of thing ArenaNet would like to avoid, if the press releases are to be believed.

This attitude that it’s up to the player to figure out the algorithm for rewards and design his character accordingly? ABSOLUTELY NOT. It is up to the player to play the game in the style of his choosing (barring exploits). If the developers are serious about their job, they will design a system that rewards people justly, as long as the players are having fun and contributing to the fight in a fair and meaningful way. It is a lazy designer indeed who says, “This is the system we came up with, inconsistent and unfair though it be. It’s all up to the players now to make the best of the situation.”

HisRyness.9012:

It seems the people who claim that this is not a problem are mostly people who do not play support. For those who say “if you are playing a full support build, you are doing it wrong,” or “ArenaNet doesn’t want you playing support,” I would love to see you on a team without dedicated support players fighting a similar number of enemies who DO have them. You won’t last 30 seconds.

What I don’t get is why people would argue against this fix. Even if you don’t see the problem, surely you can see the value in giving support players some benefit of the doubt, and let there be some incentive to play this vital role? Because if this isn’t addressed, the number of people willing to play support builds is going to dwindle rapidly.

I’m not saying no one will ever do it. I’m saying it will become a chore that no one wants to do. And that makes the game less fun overall. And that is exactly the kind of thing ArenaNet would like to avoid, if the press releases are to be believed.

This attitude that it’s up to the player to figure out the algorithm for rewards and design his character accordingly? ABSOLUTELY NOT. It is up to the player to play the game in the style of his choosing (barring exploits). If the developers are serious about their job, they will design a system that rewards people justly, as long as the players are having fun and contributing to the fight in a fair and meaningful way. It is a lazy designer indeed who says, “This is the system we came up with, inconsistent and unfair though it be. It’s all up to the players now to make the best of the situation.”

Great post… was about to say the same thing. Here’s a tip as hinted in that post: The better WvW guilds will try to take entire groups by surprise and AOE+burst them down. These fights, regardless of skill or gear, most often than not are over in less than 20 seconds. Obviously, to pull this off they need some massive dedicated healing, not people “tagging” players.

BTW: Guardians going in with Tome of Courage generally don’t have a way to tag enemies, even if that did work. They can blind and daze enemies, but no damage and those skills generally aren’t as useful in the burst down situations as the AOE heals that don’t do anything to enemies.

The funny/sad part is the POWER+VIT+TOUGHNESS gear from WvW is actually extremely useful to Guardians in PVE, perhaps more than any other profession.

@Richard:

I haven’t done an exact comparison but my next highest in an Engi around level 30. Taking part in a similar tower defense or attack I get more badges on my Engi, even though he less than 30 (compared to 80 on my guardian). The exact numbers are hard to say, but then again I Have an n of about 10 on each character…so i can hardly say whether it is significant or not. In the inventory of my engi I have about 35-40 badges. My guardian has 15 and I’ve been playing WvWvW on my guardian longer.

I play a warrior heal spec and tank spec depending on if I’m in a zerg or in a smaller fight. I heal for 20k in four sec as aoe regen and additional 5k hp every 10sec as an aoe straight heal as well as Heal myself for 9k. I stand at a base hp of a bit over 22k tank spec at a bit over 25k. This makes me no money healing but what I do overall for the group is more then any one dmg dealer can do. I can help sustain pushes as well as but that wont get me anywhere but broke. Please fix. I carry two sets of armor just so I can go get some badges once in a while. To those that say I am doing anything wrong go try it. You can see the results clearly, but thank yous don’t pay the bill.

SIDE NOTE:
Also it would be nice if I actually got a badge each time I killed someone. Especially for servers that get that butt handed to them like mine does half the time. Those kills are few and far between and you spend most of your time stuck in base while they can build siege in the distance and keep you in base. Why we cant build siege in our own main base idk. There is no true advantage if your pushed back that far your already losing but it would give ppl a chance to play even when they are far far behind.

Richard.8207:

drwookie, have you played a pure dps recently and compared badge/hour rates or such? How big is the current discrepancy?

There is just a lot of noise mixed in with potentially useful comments on this issue. Some of it is support players foolishly believing dps players that are just lying about how fast they get badges right now. Or people are comparing their current support badge generation to their badge generation on pure dps builds weeks ago. Or people are seeing diminishing returns on loot and thinking it is because they aren’t doing enough damage. I’m hoping people can provide more specific details about their experiences so any specific problems that exist can get the attention deserved.

Seems like about 30-40% more badges during a normal play session on my DPS Necro than my Support Guardian. I’ll start trying to keep better track.

My necro just deals way more damage to way more things. I try to tag by spamming staff but I try to stay more focused on support work than diving in to deal damage.

I think that an easy fix is to give the entire group credit for a kill.

last night i played a Support Spirit Ranger.

yes, i still do attack in between buffs cooldown, but still it is not enough to make it counted towards the kill contribution to be awarded loot/badges…

yes… i feel bad for the healers…

I think that it should be much simpler if you have either healed or booned someone who gets a kill you should be eligible for the loot/exp even if only at a reduced rate….a support kill so to speak.

Mulitplex.2017:

Mistalya.4812:

Mulitplex.2017:

Mistalya.4812:

Depending on my gear my ele can crack 1,000+ healing power.

I have no issues farming events, always get gold, and the only time I lose out on badges is when I forget to loot them.

You’re probably doing it wrong and sitting in water thinking you’re helping with your Mist hot.

On the contrary, I think that “you’re probably doing it wrong” if you’re sitting at 1000+ healing and you’re wasting GCD’s in PvP on weak spam damage to get kill credits instead of using those valuable GCD’s on healing, preventing damage, crowd control, or buffing.

Now, if you’re going for a hybrid DPS/Support build then carry on. This thread is about dedicated support builds.

Everything in this game is a hybrid. The sooner people figure this out the sooner the QQ will stop or people will go back and play Pandacraft so they can sit in the back and play whack-a-mole with their UI. Saying you’re wasting GCD’s in WvW to attack because you have healing power..

You know what, just forget you. There’s no helping you.

There is dedicated support and dedicated tanking in this game. It is a lack of experience on your part that makes you oblivious to this.

If you think a fully support spec’d guardian blows a couple of cooldowns and then has nothing to do… then you just don’t understand the class or what builds are possible with it.

I have a dps necro and a support guardian. Both of them, as built, are effective at WvW and assist the team equally well. The necro accrues badgest faster than the guardian. Fact.

I can forgive the ignorance. But flailing around on the forums and accusing people of being WoW players is just ridiculous.

Learn more about the game then come back here and we can discuss this issue with support players further.

While I’m learning to play I should probably concentrate more on my GCD’s in WvW right?

Irony.

Damage is not the only thing that helps your team.
Bumping this because it needs to be seen.

Mesmer here
Heal/glamour support specced and not full glass canon dps. I of course do my share of damage but nothing compared to pure dps specced toons.

I get my share of badges and loots so for me the system is working. My guildies don’t get more than I’m getting. I even think that I actually get more stuff than they do.

Edited by moderator: Quoted deleted since the original message does not exist any more

The “trinity” is a situation where in order for a group to effective you HAVE to have a tank/healer/DPS. That isn’t what we are asking for.

What we are asking for is to be fairly rewarded for designing are characters in multiple unique ways. If they built a system where I can make a very effective and VERY helpful support guardian that deals little damage, I should be able to do that and still be rewarded for it since I am clearly contributing to the battle. The way they built their character development system, and the way they reward players on the battlefield are contradictory. One suggests a robust system with multiple choices to make for your character, the other tries to pigeon-hole you and make sure you are “Dealing damage” because that seems to be all that matters. If you think about it the way the system is set up encourages people to return to the “Trinity” system as well, but just focus on the “DPS” part of the trinity. If you SOLELY focus on pure damage you can net the greatest rewards…especially if there are those of us like myself out there keeping you protecting and getting nothing for it.

We aren’t asking for people who deal damage to have their rewards reduced. Changing it so a support build was fairly compensated would do nothing to the ranged AOE DPS type people out there. It would just fairly reward those of us who are helping them.