Support class design, and distinction from DPS

Hey!

I was wondering if there has been any talk about support classes, other than healers, and what their place is in a group environment?

Mainly I'd like to hear how classes like the Bard and the Summoner are going to perform in dungeons and raids, where they would classically be competing about raid spots with DPS classes.

What about if I pick a summoner as my main class, and tank as my second one? Can I realistically expect to be able to tank something? Maybe not as a main tank in a raid, because of the inherent problem between positioning and summons, but maybe dungeon content, or off-tanking adds?

Is the support, and/or flexibility, that they'll offer going to be strong (or useful) enough for it to be worth taking a support class to a raid in the place of an additional mage? What about a dungeon, or other small form content? Many past MMO's that have had a distinction between a DPS and a support class have had the problem where the support classes weren't really that necessary to bring along, especially when players start to catch up with the content in gear or levels. I've personally always liked to play a support class, and have opted into classes that make the team stronger and better, but it's almost always ended negatively.

I know it's been said that support classes can deal good damage too, but they will have to sacrifice something for the potential strength they bring to the group. Some of this is of course just a numbers issue, and can easily be fiddled with by the devs, but I feel like there is at least a certain part with the classes that is more of a design related question.

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Noaani

Chaine351 wrote: »

Mainly I'd like to hear how classes like the Bard and the Summoner are going to perform in dungeons and raids, where they would classically be competing about raid spots with DPS classes.

In my experience with raiding in games with support classes, they tend to be over-represented in raids.

One specific game that had 24 classes and 24 person raids comes to mind (most people here will know what game I am talking about).

With those numbers, you would assume about 1 of each class. However, the game had 4 support classes that between them, in most top end raids, would take up 8 raid spots. There would be more of one specific class (Dirge) than there would be of an entire archetype (Warrior, which made up 6 of the 24 classes) in most raids.

For me, when I talk about support classes, I am mostly talking about bards.

As for summoners, I wouldn't class them as a support class. The current assumption we have with summoners is that they are the only class that can actually alter their role in a group based on the secondary class they pick. As such, you may well be able to tank group content on your summoner (it may require a very good healer, or perhaps a specific type of healer - we don't know as yet). However, it is unlikely that summoners will be highly desired on raids for any role (many raids may still take one or two, but likely not the 5 that an equal dispersion of classes would suggest).

Chaine351

Noaani wrote: »

As for summoners, I wouldn't class them as a support class. The current assumption we have with summoners is that they are the only class that can actually alter their role in a group based on the secondary class they pick. As such, you may well be able to tank group content on your summoner (it may require a very good healer, or perhaps a specific type of healer - we don't know as yet). However, it is unlikely that summoners will be highly desired on raids for any role (many raids may still take one or two, but likely not the 5 that an equal dispersion of classes would suggest).

Yeah kind of agree there, but all the material about the game has a very broad usage of "support" class, as it's basically "not straight up DPS or Tank", so I'm going with that.

Of course, there's the angle to think about, where classes like Brood Warden (Summoner/Tank) are well suited for crowd control (and off-tanking in a pinch), since Tanks appear to have a good toolkit for that (and IIRC Tank augments were specified to have CC as a category), which I'd be very much fine with, as they'd be up there as a useful class.

I understand that Bard and Summoner specifically seem to still be "on the table" in design, but I for one am the type of player who likes to be the utility kit of the group, and given all the options in the class system, I hope those more "niche" choices will still be viable.

AidanKD

The game isn't totally unbroad. From what we know, the game will work off the traditional holy trinity of Tank/Heal/Dps meaning that as there will potentially be less dedicated tank/heal roles from the available pool, these will be coveted:

You will require your primary to be:

A tank to be an optimal tank.
A cleric to be an optimal healer

I don't know if dual tank/dual cleric are notably stronger at the "role" but picking these primaries should give you the necessary tools.

My understanding of the other roles (I stand to be corrected though) are:

Bard Primary + any secondary - soft healer.
Secondary Cleric archetype + any secondary - soft healer

Any primary + tank - soft tank

There can and probably will be differences to what I think is the case but this is my general understanding.

Parties currently are designed to be capped at 8 people. Bosses being scalable, I don't know if it's intended for the full open world dungeons to be tackled with full groups but lets just assume that it is. I would probably assume that potentially:

2 Tanks
2 Healers
4 Dps

But you could probably play around with this, there will probably be an optimal setup but Intrepid can dictate this with balance. So you could trade a tank for an off tank and bring in a little more dps/utility perhaps. Same with a healer, bard for a cleric primary - bit more offensive buffs/debuffs for enemies.

Maybe bard will become "meta" as the buffs are invaluable! But I think this is a baseline to work with.

Dygz

Well, th devs are balancing content around 8-person groups with one of each Primary Archetype.
Don't expect an X/Tank to out tank a Tank/X.

Summoner/Tank using a tank Summons with Tank augments should be able to tank fairly well, but, still...
Don't expect an X/Tank to out tank a Tank/X.

We don't really know much about the support Archetypes, yet.

Azraya

Bard should easily have its place as long as the devs design Bard abilities properly.
I feel like Bards main role should be AoE buffs/debuffs.
Of course Bard should also have a damage path.

Ludullu

Support classes in L2 were the backbone of the whole party. Your party was nothing w/o them and couldn't do any dmg either. And usually supports took up 4-5/9 party spots. I'd assume their importance will be as big in Ashes too.

And as Dygz said, they allegedly want to balance the game around all 8 archetypes. I hope it's in the way of some synergy abilities/passives where you need those archetypes in your party and your individuality and differences will come from gear builds and class/social augments.

Lark Wyll

In one of the dev streams a while back they mentioned an idea of the Bard class being more complex than acting as a buff bot and tying some type of formation requirement to unlock a buff of some kind for your party.

I hope they go in a different direction as it sounded tedious and cumbersome for pvp, though it was nothing more than a vague hint. I'd prefer not to have another teammates kit dictate that mine has to dance around in a corny way to unlock a benefit. Coming back for heals is enough imo.

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