Guild Wars 2

Master Bei Shun.1267:

I’m sorry, OP, but you play a Mesmer and want to re-roll so you can go support?

Mesmers offer a TON of utility and are GREAT supports in dungeons. The only thing they lack is party heals, which can be combated with a Mantra heal (and possibly another Mantra on your bar) with the spec that allows you to heal allies while casting it.

I’m currently going DPS in Arah, but no matter what dungeon I go to, I use support skills as well. Even in my Arah DPS build, I am healing my party and buffing them (or their attacks).

It seems I might not have been clear about it, but I want to have a variety of characters to fit different roles. I do enjoy throwing out some extra support on my Mesmer, but ideally I’d like to have a character that I’ve tuned more towards such a role (currently I’d say my Mesmer is about 50/50 on it). That, and I just like having lots of characters I guess.

I do always try to adapt my weapon and utility bar to whatever suits the situation best, it’s just at times I wish I could help out in other ways. I was wondering what to expect to be able to do if I chose to support from a different profession.

I believe there is a LFG tab in the Contacts panel, but I think it could use a few more tweaks to become more helpful for players, or at least to see more frequent use.

Things I’d like to see is LFG flags not being limited to the area you’re in (as I believe it currently is, not too sure about that one) and the ability to set/read notes linked to your flag. That way, you’d be able to see who is looking for what, from anywhere.

I’m quite happy with my Mesmer as it is now, and I may actually consider rethinking my traits to try and bring more control and survivability to my groups (dunno why but that kind of thing just makes me feel more awesome than straight out destroying things with my face), but I felt that having a selection of characters would prove quite helpful as well. Sometimes a group might very well need a glass cannon, pure support or a bit of both.

Mesmer in my opinion seems to be more of a utility support than anything else, and I do like our selection of utilities. But we seem to lack the ability to give out reliable buffs where they’re needed, and the help that can be provided by Phantoms can easily be rendered useless on fights where they just quite simply don’t seem to want to stay alive. Which is why I’m looking to seeing if there’s a more reliable way to go about it, (though this could be a L2P issue on my side.)

I’m partway through leveling a Guardian so I may have them as a mostly support character, but it just seems a bit of a shame that there doesn’t seem to be a bit more of a reliable selection. Might have a look at Elementalist as well.

So after I hit 80 on my Mesmer, I asked what kind of build I should go for before I run straight into PVE (where I expected to die a lot due to noob) and was told to go glass cannon. Which is fine, really, but after watching full groups of glass cannons growing absolutely infuriated with certain trash mobs/bosses I was thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea to start a support character. Cus you know, I figured that sometimes you just need the extra support and a little less trying to destroy everything before you die.

What I really want to know is what profession you would prefer to bring to fit such a role, or if you’d even bother bringing support at all? I know Guardian is more than likely great when it comes to this sort of thing, but are there any other gems that were overlooked? Currently I’m thinking about starting a Necromancer after reading that actually, they’re pretty awesome at helping out downed people. The downside is that they apparently suck kitten in general. I’ve only actually ever seen one in a dungeon, so really I can’t comment much on that. Though I am tempted to just go with the ever-popular guardian.

TL/DR: What are your thoughts on bringing a support role to dungeons?

I think dungeons were made the way they are to encourage group play. A lot of this game is designed around the idea of people working together to attain a common goal – from mechanics to storyline. And this is an MMO, after all, so I’d say one of the main features is inherently going to be playing with other people.

But if you want to solo dungeons then I’d say go ahead and give it a shot. Plus I think it’d kind of take away the novelty and sense of achievement if they lowered the difficulty level for what you’re suggesting anyways: I can imagine everyone and their mothers having the special equipment if they were implemented with such a feature, which going from the tone of your post, is probably not quite what you had in mind.