Really Want To See Support Classes? Play P1999 and See

Community General Discussion
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So for anyone who doesnt know P1999 is old school Everquest, up through the Velious Expansion. It is allowed to exist by Daybreak Games and is basically privately ran, and designed to keeping that experience intact. Yes it is super dated and old, but it runs well. It is free to play. Downloading and setting it up is easy.

Now in old school Everquest your group was Tank. Healer. Support. Puller. DPS. DPS. The support classes did Some DPS. Buffed the Group. DE buffed enemies, CC’d. Support Classes, you had Bard, Shaman, Enchanter. To some extent Druid could be Healer or DPS. A puller was usually monk, or Bard or Rogue. Sometimes the tank.

Now content consisted of going to a dangerous place, finding a group and just grinding mobs in a group. Soloing is either inefficient or if you hyper optimize, very efficient, but only some classes can do it well.

The games by no means parallel. The encounters are super basic with little to no mechanics. Aside from let tank get aggro. Then start to DPS when you know you wont rip threat. But the support roles contribute some DPS, while providing great utility to the group. They feel like support classes. You notice when they are there and doing their thing well.

Augmentation Evokers are not there yet. And in the game that WoW has become, while a support role sounds fantastic to me, its going to be extremally difficult to do. The game was not designed with a support role in mind. And the way people play the game, many pigeon hole themselves into what the perceived meta is. And at the top end, you play meta or you are just plainly not as capable. And for a support spec to be good enough for the average player, it will end up being too good for the top end players. Which then will feed into the average players thinking its 100% necessary to have one.

In my opinion, the only real way to add support to the M+ group is to first decide what aspect their support is to bring. In EQ they would haste the group, slow the enemy’s attack speed, and provide some group buff. Mana/HP regen, staf buffs ect. The support spec needs to have a clearly defined role and purpose. Right now, they just buff the groups stats for the most part. Their utility is also brought by many DPS specs. Then I would suggest, once their role in the group is more defined add in another 4 to 5 support specs. Then Increase the 5man group to 6. Break the Trinity and have the group setup be build around 1 Tank, 1 Heal, 1 Support and 3 DPS.

Otherwise the support specs will either be too strong of a DPS boost to the group to be overpowered. Or be a watered down DPS that doesnt really do anything extremely well.

2 Likes
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I wish support was balanced to be as good as other dps (somehow, I have no idea how) just so we do not end up waiting for yet another role after filling tank and healer. It feels like right now people just leave when I invite a group without an augvoker. I don’t mind playing whatever comp, but yes I understand people leaving - augvokers are very powerful and they probably do not want to run without one.

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This puzzles me because it has to be the way the meters get the data. Warcraftlogs and FFLogs are ran by the same dude but on FFLogs, a support job like a Bard is given all of the damage they are bringing to the party with their buffing also. So on Ninja, if I throw up Trick Attack, the whole raid is doing 5% more damage, except all of that 5% extra damage on the logs will be going to me, because I brought the buff/debuff.

When they do it like this, yeah supports blow on what we call “aDPS” which is basically just the damage you do yourself, buffs affecting only you. When it comes to “rDPS” (Raid DPS) which is what the logs are measured with though, they hold their own and have their own little niche and you can generally prog with anything you want in Savage and even Ultimate, you won’t really kick yourself for bringing any of the jobs because they all pull their weight well enough.

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A support + DPS should always bring more DPS than double DPS, otherwise supports are redundant. There should also be a harsh penalty for bringing more than 1 support per dungeon, or more than 4-5 (about the same as healers) in a raid.

What I do not like is that only 1 spec is support atm. In addition to Aug evokers, each of the current DPS specs should have had a support spec built in (such as taking 1 of their DPS specs and altering them), or adding 4-5 other specs in the game as 4th specs.

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Idk, I feel like content is the right amount of difficult. Nothing wrong with being coordinated and clearing content that way, coordination in pugs is a lot tougher than you would think.

Should this ‘support role’ idea go through, the content before and after still works well enough. Especially when the role is more or less can be replaced with another DPS if needed since the role is as good as the competence of the group.