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Best support classes in GW2
Cammy
Member Posts: 864
in Guild Wars 2
First off - I'll say I really love playing the support role and I was happy to hear Guild wars did away with the holy trinity system.
Now that's out of the way, I'm curious what you guys feel will be more support style classes. I know *most* classes in GW can be built to be support, but I think some classes are better at support than others.
My thoughts:
Mesmer, Guardian, Engineers and Necromancers will be more support/utility.
Warrior, Ele, thiefs and Rangers will be more the thumpers of the group....
Thoughts? Am I way off base? What's your opinions?
/discuss
Comments
Mesmer really don't have that obvius support weapons besides staff providing some boons to allies. On the other hand Guardian always has Support options in his virtues, and really many support skills in his weapons.
If you build to be support based you'll ultimately wind up detrimental to your party as the game progresses. You'll be much better off thinking to build a balanced build, then use traits or an extra utility skill to enhance your supportive aspects. For example, I plan on traiting my mesmer such that phantasms provide regen for nearby allies, and clones cause cripple on shatter. Right there I've enhanced my supportive and controlling aspects nicely.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Engi's, Ele's and Guardian's are the class's who can spec strongest healing specs.
Here is a talent calc so that you can look yourself.
http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/
Warrior's can specialize in AOE buff's
Thieves seem to be able to do consistent CC & debuff's
Mesmer's do condition removal and debuff's
Necro's can do debuff's lifetap's
But again for pure support the Engineer, Guardian or Elementalist will be the best class's.
Heh, engineer with flamethrower, no question about it.
There are many support choices... like healing, protection, CC, etc..
I'm most excited about necro's minions.. imagine having over 10+ minions that support the whole team
Not really sure what kind of support this could be.. I guess it could classify under protection since they take the damage instead of the players
You can't go pure support. To even try gimps your character heavily and will render you fairly useless outside the low level zones.
Oderint, dum metuant.
That's strange because the latest versions of the talent calculator show otherwise. Guardian's Ele's and Engi's can all spec very heavily into healing and buffing.
In fact just to point out how wrong you are the Ele and Engi have weapon sets that turn every single ability they have attached to their weapon into some form of healing or defensive cc.
The Engi in a full support spec with a good dps will be super hard to push off of point. They can easily spec for defense and use their healing abilities to sit on point and support a couple of dps buddies.
The Ele as well can spec for toughness and use water attunement which basically turns them into a dps/healer hybrid.
The guardian will be mostly physically blocking attacks with walls shields and bubbles and cleanses.
you do support work yes, but it can't be full support and do only support, also the heasl from other have less strenght then your own self heal, it can like help to leviate less coordenated groups, but still you can be full support like and keep all group alive with heals
I'm curious as to what these weapon sets are. Do you have to be properly traited or something? The closest thing I could find is the Elementalist's staff weapon, with which you have access to 3 healing skills when you switch to water attunement.
EDIT: Disregard that, I can't read. I'll let my post remain as punishment for myself.
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Before parroting what Anet is saying, it pays to actually, you know, play the game. Anet is trying to hammer a point down by going overboard with it. The truth lies somewhere in between.
Preventing damage to your team is way stronger then repairing the damage.
But removing conditions is way easier then preventing conditions.
And then there is buffing (boons)
In the end guardians, elementalists, engineers, necromancers and mesmers seem most suited for support to me, warrior seems the class most fitted to controll the flow of battle.
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I probably wasn't all that clear in my original post.... by support, I mean I really enjoy games that have Bards (or Captain in LOTRO), to a much lesser extent a Paladin type class. This is what I mean by support - I fully understand that you won't be able to be a true healer which is actually fantastic IMO. I'm more into classes that can buff/shield/help defend, especially in WvW environment.
Makes me gravitate more towards the Guardian, though their tiny health pool is a small deterant I think that's mostly the type of class I'm thinking about.
Must get back to PC so I can check out talent calculator
To quote Eric Flannum himself:
Players could make a build that resembles the trinity but it could never truly be the trinity. You cannot for example make a dedicated healer no matter how much you pump into your support trait lines. When you start getting to tougher encounters no matter how much armor and health you have you will never be able to stand toe to toe for long against most of the foes you'll face. Because of this even a 5 person group that has 3 dps focused characters, a support focused character, and a damage soaking character (which is a standard trinity setup) will not play anything like a standard trinity group. If those players insisted on playing like a standard trinity group they could succeed against the easier content in the game but probably couldn't finish a story mode dungeon let alone an explorable dungeon or some of the tougher events in the game.
Oderint, dum metuant.
that in fact was from they skill set calc and from what people said if arena devs say it or not, don't care much, till now is all theorycraft, and if you still don't know that, you don't know where to search for the truth
Support does not equal heal. It means crowd control, damage mitigation, absorption, buffing, debuffing. It is a lot of things and a lot of things are present. I believe you're misreading what I'm writing here.
For what it's worth, my definition of support is exactly as you describe. I want buff/absorption/damage mitigation/CC, debuffing is less important to me but Im perfectly happy with that too if it comes with the class
I never expected to be a dedicated healer, nor do I want that role.... but I love the role of Bards/Captains, etc
And how does this quote mitigate what i said?
Are you implyin that i'm implying a full heal spec'd engi can stand and tank damage? Are you going to stand toe to toe when you have cc and movement available?
BTW, just to clarify just because you make a water elementalist or a support engi DOES NOT MEAN YOU NEED TO TANK DAMAGE.
[mod edit]
I actually think it matters more what the player can do.
If you are soloing you're going to want to go for the class you find the most flexible and easiest to do all roles in.
If you are grouping then it honestly will depend on how well each group member plays. Is there someone in the group who is an amazing dodger? First can they teach all of us how to do it that well
and second they won't care about heals in most situations. Then there's always the person who can't dodge at all who is going to need heals, rezzes, and patience while they learn (just to be clear I will definitely fall into this group and am hoping I can learn fast enough to survive to hmmm level 2 
).
Then there is another thing to think about - are you working with a fully loaded out level 80 character that has access to all skills, traits and weapons? Probably not in PVE (for a while at least). That means you have to go with what you can slot at any given time. It might be worthwhile to try and figure out a leveling build that takes into account which support options are available when (though I'm pretty sure we don't know enough yet to really do this).
There is also the facts that someone mentioned earlier - damage reduction/avoidance seems to beat healing etc. Gah we just won't know what works best for us (I'm a Captain in LOTRO so I know where OP is coming from) until we try them all.
I'm hoping to try Guardian, Ele, and Engineer in beta but also looking at Warrior, Ranger, and Thief (something about an Asura Thief still makes me giggle evilly). Not looking at Mesmer or Necro due to personal tastes but I'm sure they can support in their own fashions just fine.
Guardians and Engineers definitely have the mechanics to be the two main support type roles.
What hes trying to say is that you can make a full support build or a tanky build or a dpish build, but you will be detrimental to your group, you need to change what you do constantly and speccing to one thing is not a good idea.
I've had a chance to look over all profession skills and traits. You can spec very heavily support into all professions, however the professions with the most and best support skills (on my speculation) are as follows:
1. Guardian (The vast majority of their skills and weapons are support oriented in some way, and the virtue mechanic when used as active provides good support on all builds)
2. Engineers (While they don't have the support options of the Guardian, they can provide support in nearly any build due to toolkits. They also have quite a few heals)
3. Elementalist (The Elementalist has very few buffing skills, but makes up for it by always having water attunement available for healing)
4. Ranger (While the Ranger doesn't have many support skills, their spirits provide some powerful support and many pets come with support abilities, some even get two especially when you take into account traits for specific pets)
5. Mesmer (Has a decent array of unusual support skills. I feel they are a bit too situational to put them up higher, but staff provides really good support)
6. Warrior (Banners and Warhorn are there only real support skills, generally focused on control, dealing damage, and personal buffs rather than supporting allies)
7. Necromancer (Has a few good debuffs, but lacking a lot of support skills. Mostly focused on control and self survivability)
8. Thief (Very few support skills. Mostly focused on control, damage, and personal buffs like the Warrior)
How is controll not a support skill, if it allows you to prevent ennemies from doing damage? Its controll that has partly replaced healing in this game.
Necromancers are very low on your lists, but they could have the best oldfashioned healing output combined with the removal of conditions, they are a very versatile support class, i would place them a lot higher on your list
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To me control means doing something negative (asside from pure damage) to your enemies and support means doing something positive to your allies. Reducing damage to your allies for example can be done by both control and support but it is done in different ways. It is support that replaced healing, not control.
Sea Arenanet's definition here: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/
Control is support.
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