Proposal: let's stop thinking about balance in terms of support or not support profs.

[Xenotric]

Having multiple soldiers is then redundant, so why do some teams seem to consist of upto 3 of them?

Why do I see teams asking for more damage even though it already consists of mostly damage dealing? (1 doctor...) because people prefer fast kills.

And at no point did I say they just stood their being a buff totem, and if thats your idea of being "support" then it really just enforces my impression of the current instant gratification trend games have going at the moment, I didn't specify in anyway how they enact their support only that if hypothetically the support they gave, in what ever form it comes to, atleast equals the effectiveness of having another soldier in the team, then its reasonably succesful.

Yes this is a difficult thing to do, specially when you have a fairly large pool of support characters to design unique ways to do it but just because its difficult doesnt mean everything should just be "Ok you all do similar damage, you do it like this, you do it like this, you do it like this"

Because thats what it would be if you decided that no classes are going to be designated any sort of supportive role, its just going to be the same thing with different names.

[Klod9000]

And so on...

Soldier - damage dealing support class

P.S.
Sterva, what are we actually getting with this?

[Sterva]

P.S.
Sterva, what are we actually getting with this?

Proposal: Let's start talking about the merits of professions possessing certain abilities based on their individual roles, not blanket generalizations like support/non-support. And in the future, instead of simply saying that "so and so shouldn't have this, it's OP, or so and so should have this, they need love" on the basis of them being a support/non-support prof, let's backup those ideas with more rational arguments for why it would help overall balance for those changes to be put in place.

^..

[Klod9000]

^..

So, why do crats need more NR?

[Raynefists]

Having multiple soldiers is then redundant, so why do some teams seem to consist of upto 3 of them?

Probably because whoever is making the team doesn't know what they're doing. Multiple soldiers in a team is redundant. Soldiers are no better than 5th in the damage ladder and the two best soldier buffs dont stack with multiple soldiers.

Why do I see teams asking for more damage even though it already consists of mostly damage dealing? (1 doctor...) because people prefer fast kills.

I think you are playing a different game than i am. Damage dealers sit on lft for hours without getting invites. I see people doing content with as few as possible to minimize the number of people rolling on loot. There are 3 raids where damage is useful: pand, s35, and s42. Everywhere else damage is not terribly important. More people means more people rolling on loot, which in a raid you can only do once or twice per day means a lot.

Yes this is a difficult thing to do, specially when you have a fairly large pool of support characters to design unique ways to do it but just because its difficult doesnt mean everything should just be "Ok you all do similar damage, you do it like this, you do it like this, you do it like this"

that's not at all what is being suggested here. Whats being suggested is that classes be evaluated by their role and not just some sweeping support vs non support joke of an idea. If this is what you think, then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of this post and need to re-evaluate. Other games have proven that this is possible, its not a matter thats really debateable.

[Xenotric]

I never said they shouldnt be evaluated their own role, but the fact is lots of classes are support classes in some fashion, saying their not is just being deluded.

This doesn't mean they should each be evaluated by the specifics, but they will still be support classes.

I do however feel that those classes that do fall into support, should have an all around tweak to shift them into their accepted roles rather then all aiming for damage dealing with special skills.

And at the same time I dont think any of the front line classes should get the buffs, debuffs, heals etc that the support classes do, instead they should be shifted further into their roles aswell.

So yeah, call em what you want, if their tool set and role is about supporting others in some way then they will be a support class even if you called them "Doomslayers of infinite power!" doesnt change what the class is about.

[Poufpaf]

All you are saying is that a gimp team makes support more useful. That's a pretty sad niche to fill.

That's probably why the same day an entire 3 to 4 teams raid for inferno sanctuary failed (it was their second failed attempt from what they spammed on channels) while we completed it with 5 people, fixer, keeper, trader, advy and MA, not everyone wearing top gear. When everyone plays their role you don't need 30% reflect, 60k hp or the 10k healing per second to do things. Teams don't get the same 4 professions over and over because 'it works', but because they are too lazy to make it work any other way. A lot of things are possible with only so-called support professions, I guess I'm lucky to have realized that thanks to not knowing too many people playing doc or enfo, and having to do without.

[Moonbolt]

Support professions are a broken idea even in PVM, because you invariably end up with one of two situations: either the support is important enough that it becomes mandatory, or it's not, and the team would be better off simply taking another dedicated DD. In either case you would rarely want more than one of any given support class.

I know a number of people on these forums hate WoW and anything related to it, but one of the smartest things Blizzard did was killing off the twin sacred MMO cows of support classes and jacks-of-all-trades.

well what made WoW stop being fun was when Blizzard tried to move away from the requirements of specific classes.
all classes started to look the same and none of them had a special feel to it.
id hate to see AO get screwed up cause of the fact that peopel doesnt wanna wait for a calmer etc or wait for a tank.

id like the professions to get further apart from eachother tbh.
we have 3 calmer classes yet. calms is completly uselss nowadays.
we have crats keepers and traders to boost the defence / offence of a team,
soldiers and engies are there to provide reflects.
advs and MPs are there for backupheals, DD and somewhat in MPs case stunning the bossmob with his pet.

FC should just make use of all the tools available to professions again.

i remember back when i was lvln towards 200.
people needed Enf + Doc + Calmer if they wanted to do a RK mish w/o the risk of getting pwnd.
the idea of even trying to kill Lamb w/o a calmer.
when mercs arrived to EFP it was needed a CH rotation to keep the tanks alive and 1 doc that screwed up could wipe the whole raid.

the whole idea of a game with Mongo mongo mongo heal heal heal is a boring concept and makes support professions quite obsolete.

add some new endgame content that requires tactics, variation of classes to succed and that actually can rip the whole raid apart of people dont do their jobs.

[Poufpaf]

Or : reduce the effectiveness of taunts and heals. Enfos used to tank fine (but it required some skills) before imongo. Now you'd have to be asleep to loose agg with it, except to a few professions that can generate quick aggro over time. The tools of a few professions are killing quite effectively the toolsets of all the others, due to being too powerful. You don't see the same thing happening in a team of TL4 or TL5 (where professions already have access to a large part of their personal toolset) even in a team of twinks. Getting a tank and a doc won't guarantee your success, and you'll be in dire need of those support professions everyone despises later on. I can only hope we bring back the need for every profession in teams and the full variety of combinations they offer.

[Sterva]

I'm not advocating making profs more similar, nor am I denying that some classes seem to have a supporting function more than others.

My point is that calling for nerfs or love on the basis of terming a prof as a support/non-support isn't constructive.

For example, I fully agree that more individualized, unique profs are great, but let's argue for that on the basis of what the individual class roles are, not just because everyone has called them a support/non-support profession for years.