Support players STILL ignored

[Frayze.4620]

This isn't a new topic. There have been posts about this for years with promises that "we are looking into ways of doing it" but still, nothing. I am talking about the continued refusal to provide support players, whether they be heal/cleanse or stab support, with a way to get a similar amount of financial/material reward from playing WvW. This is despite the fact that, in general, squads are much more likely to be lacking supports than they are damage dealers. 

Couple this with the fact that gearing up as a support which, again in general requires a full minstrel set, costs SIGNIFICANTLY more than gearing up as a damage dealer. In the order of 10x the cost. If you have full leggy gear, that's great. If you've been playing for years and have the resources to get a full set from the get go, again that's great. But what about if you are new to the game or to WvW specifically?  In this case the message is basically "yeah, it's going to cost you a LOT to gear for this and then once you DO have the gear, you'll get significantly less than anyone else if your squad will".

Why? Why make it like this? Can you imagine going into a PVE raid and being told "Oh, you play healer? Sorry, this raid only gives loot to dps players. Sucks huh?". Nobody would run a support class in that environment. And yet this is what supports are basically told in WvW EVERY DAY. 

The fix doesn't seem hard to me. Simply add 1 damage to every boon/heal skill. There. Now supports can tag. They can't skew anything that is currently in place as the damage is absolutely negligible, but they can finally tag. 

Why can't this be done?

[TheQuickFox.3826]

It absolutely can be done, but it costs development resources which needs to be prioritized with other goals. I'm not saying that this should not be done, I'm just saying that if ArenaNet would need to make all improvements that this community asks for, their team would need to be octupled and the game would require a subscription of €/$ 25 per month in addition to the expansion and gem costs to pay for it.

[Frayze.4620]

No, it doesn’t. I’m not suggesting a huge new feature release, I’m suggesting existing skills with existing animations and existing balance be very very very slightly modified in order to provide an actual incentive for new support players and to provide a balance between support and damage players that has not existed, despite repeated promises, since the release of the game mode.

[Mihile.7609]

They need to make it so supports can get something from actually supporting. So many bags lost because we're busy healing and buffing but there isn't a reward for it. Kinda bull that we don't get anything from supporting and if we do get a hit in it's still RNG because not every kill guarantee's a bag. I think there should be a meter or something with assist kills specifically for supports or something.  Dunno, this shoulda been fixed a decade ago lol.

[Dediggefedde.4961]

how about every player close to a dying enemy get the same loot?

Instead of a system detecting and calculating contribution, it would only require a distance check.

[Dagger.2035]

1 hour ago, Dediggefedde.4961 said:

how about every player close to a dying enemy get the same loot?

Instead of a system detecting and calculating contribution, it would only require a distance check.

Sweet, now I can play a tanky build and I won't even need to push any buttons. 😜

[Dediggefedde.4961]

14 hours ago, Dagger.2035 said:

Sweet, now I can play a tanky build and I won't even need to push any buttons. 😜

Then you don't get bags, because your group does not kill the enemy.

Or you outnumber them already so much that you wouldn't have mattered anyway.

 

Supporters play tanky builds and most don't push buttons that do damage to enemies.
To the loot system that seems to be the same as not pushing any buttons.

 

In my opinion, spreading a bit loot "for free" is still a good enough downside for such a simple system.

This would also solve the tagging-issues, where you need to use otherwise useless skills just to tag for loot. Or all the times a guild asks to lower dps on dolyaks/sentries for the supporters to get kill participation.

 

The alternative would be to track who healed and buffed the dps player how much whenever he does a kill. To me that sounds pretty computation hungry.

 

[Induriel.8135]

And now that rewards are tied to participation supports are even worse off - spent several hours today wondering why the game thought I deserved silver for healing and buffing a squad through taking a tier 3 keep. Ended up switching one weapon set to AOE all the things and gold every time. Not getting loot bags was annoying enough, but tying rewards to participation when the game fails to recognise participation through support is just wrong.

[HARDOFREADING.7298]

 meh ...to me.....the never ending boons and inability to pull boons.....at this point.....Make this unplayable.   Recall a time we were never going to have healers.....