Ever feel useless (Support woes)

[cohRock]

On 9/27/2020 at 1:17 PM, LordTenma said:

Anyone else ever feel like that?

Yes, as an Empath I have felt that.  To be a buff-only defender, on a high-level team when buffs are rarely needed, can feel pretty lonely.  Other defender sets offer both buffs and debuffs.  (Or wait, is Poison debuff only?)  That's why I still like playing support characters -- just not Empath ones.

[Grouchybeast]

3 hours ago, cohRock said:

Yes, as an Empath I have felt that.  To be a buff-only defender, on a high-level team when buffs are rarely needed, can feel pretty lonely.  Other defender sets offer both buffs and debuffs.  (Or wait, is Poison debuff only?)  That's why I still like playing support characters -- just not Empath ones.

I feel like Empathy was limping along at the back, just about hanging in there, and then Thermal Radiation was proliferated to Defenders, and Empathy sighed and sat down in the dust at the side of the road.

[ShardWarrior]

2 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

I feel like Empathy was limping along at the back, just about hanging in there, and then Thermal Radiation was proliferated to Defenders, and Empathy sighed and sat down in the dust at the side of the road.

This.  My very first level 50 was an Empath.  Now to be fair, Fort, AB and CM are still very good buffs to have at high levels, but Empathy was always outclassed by Kinetics later in the game.  Power proliferation definitely exacerbated this.  Empathy is more suited to have at the low to mid level game in my opinion, great for exemplaring down for lower level TFs/SFs. 

[Blastit]

For practical gameplay purposes it's annoying to play a powerset that becomes less useful the more you progress along the game's intended route, but it's also pretty appropriate that Empathy is best used for supporting weaker characters.

[GM Miss]

On 9/27/2020 at 1:17 PM, LordTenma said:

I play mainly support type characters, ya know Defenders, Controllers. But when one hits incarnate and there's non sup-port classes, popping rezzes, barriers, heals and pretty much decimating everything before I can get hold one off....makes a bloke feel useless. Like, "Why am I even here"

Anyone else ever feel like that?

My friend I play with only places support. At higher levels he feels like most people don't need him so we tend to enjoy leveling and doing lower content. Once we were in a group where a level 50 empathy def asked to join. I reminded them it was a level 30ish team and they mentioned they only team with lower teams because they feel more needed and I thought that was kinda cool. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, GM Miss said:

because they feel more needed and I thought that was kinda cool. 

But is it? Really? "I only feel useful in the early game." Is that really cool? I don't see it that way.

[GM Miss]

I'm not saying they are *only* useful then, but sometimes finding *new* ways to find fulfillment is nice. 

[GM Tock]

I had that on a few teams... Sonic/Sonic Def.

 

"I have holds & debuffs!"  "Don't need em!"

"Okay, I have bubbles." "I'm at defense hard cap."

 

At that point, I shrug, and just pretend I'm a squishier blaster.  Then when the team is gone, I go back to being untouchable in my own way.

[skoryy]

51 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

I had that on a few teams... Sonic/Sonic Def.

 

"I have holds & debuffs!"  "Don't need em!"

Who doesn't want more -res? 🤨

[Luminara]

4 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Who doesn't want more -res? 🤨

 

The AVs/EBs and GMs left whimpering on the floor after it's all over.

[warlyx]

i remember in EQ playing my enchanter i felt sleep (guess what? when i woke up had my chat filled with jokes and they made fun of me for 1h at least, and never kicked me out !),

 

U dont feel usefull enough? well when support isnt needed blast away! , u arent going to top the charts , but guess what? NO ONE CARES!, we all just want to have fun and get the missions/trials / ect done , i dont care if the team has X AT or X powerset , we are here to play havefun

 

the blaster did 1000 dmg u did 500 . both of u pushed the same buttons ...but on that AV's  the -res debuff made the diff ....or just being around with your auras made the mobs die 10s faster...in the end the things get done!  took 15min or 18...meh those 3mins mean nothing when u are having fun.

 

 

[dzyp]

I don't think it's support as much as it's a few powerset combinations.

 

Like a previous poster, I run a lot of tinpex as I enjoy it much more than the baf grind. While almost any team I'm on will get through it fine there is a noticable difference in times based on composition. A "slow" time is in the 16-17 minute range and a fast time is in the 11-12 minute range. And you can easily tell when playing the missions where you'll land.

 

And the difference is not "just need more dps", it usually comes down to buffs and debuffs.

 

Some time ago I was playing on a MLTF and the AVs in the final mission melted faster than I had ever seen. I asked after (I usually play melee toons) what that was and discovered the beauty of cold debuffs. That one alt had more impact on the hard parts of that TF than any scrapper, blaster, brute, etc.

 

But if all you bring to the table is healing then yeah, you're going to have a tough time making a difference. But that's not all support is to me. So maybe some sets need some love but I always love seeing defenders, corruptors, controllers, dominators join the team. 

 

FWIW, and I think this is a funny juxtaposition, there are quite a few TW/bio posts I've seen recently where people complain they aren't contributing much to a high level team either. The king of damage complaining about contribution. Turns out, by the time TW actually animates its first strike the mob is already dead due to all the judgements and aoe available to everyone lol (this was my experience too, alone I could damage but on a team we usually moved so fast I had difficulty hitting anything still alive). Grass is always greener.

[Andreah]

I've only played a few support characters. They can be a lot of fun, and be useful. But not always in the ways one would expect.

 

I don't play support characters that mainly buff friendly defense. At cap and incarnate content, most everyone is at or near the defense softcaps, and I wouldn't add much to that. On some teams, situationally, sure. It's also incremental help against being defense debuffed.

 

I don't feel that buffing recovery helps much either, unless it's a powerful short term, emergency buff. 

 

One might think, but defense and endurance are so critical, surely it's helpful. They're so critical everyone else builds to fix them without support.

 

My favorite support to play is Kinetics. It adds things almost no one can get enough of. Recharge and damage. I add gravity control with that on my current best-built support character, and that gives me some ability to help tightly pack mobs. This makes my damage buffs even better, and can have tactical advantages for the team. And then, there is nothing like double-fulcrum shifting on a packed double-spawn and pushing everyone up hard against their damage caps. 

 

I go a little further, and add some utility functions and slot/macro/bind them for rapid use. For example, if someone on my team dies, I want to be able to teleport them to me, hit vengeance, rez them, and rebuff them before we can blink twice.  As a support member, I can be more generally alert and have the luxury of watching for such opportunities, instead of needing to be laser-focused on keeping my DPS chain going on the boss/av.