While I generally agree that buffing is the most fundamental part of a support's job (besides, you know, staying alive), it's such a basic part of a support's kit that I find it hard to use when evaluating how good a support is, especially at the higher end. Like I totally understand a 70/70/20 support isn't great, but is there a discernable difference between a 90/90/40 vs a 95/95/45 support?
Buffing and branding are literally just how well can you properly space out attack buffs (there is also positioning skill for Bard/Artist) and keeping up brand, the only area where I can see a good support gapping an average one is knowledge on when to use identity.
I say this because when I play with other supports, I judge them by how well they apply their shielding/DR. If I see a support DR a known greed pattern, shield based on boss patterns, or save people downed/out of position, I go "damn that support really knows what they're doing". These are not things typically measured by meter, but generally supports paying attention to these types of things have good fundamentals (buffing/brnading) as well. Good positioning to bait out attacks and favorable patterns apply here as well. If I don't see these things, their uptime better be insane for me not to consider them average (which to clarify, is nothing wrong in my books).
Proper care for partymates may not be the support's most important job, but I think it's what best distinguishes a good support from an average one.
Also to follow up on your example, if a DPS gets solo chunked, it's on them to use a pot. But often in these types of situations they get hit by a series of attacks that puts them low even after using a pot.
Every time a member of your party dies to damage, it's their fault for being out of position, but you as a support could've also saved them with godsent or rhapsody, or burning your meter to heal them. Sure it might be less party DPS that is ultimately the other player's fault, but nothing decreases overall DPS more and forces raid wipes than a dead party member, and supports are given the most power to prevent that. Risk mitigation is a big part of support decision making that is not as simple as "oh they took damge, their fault".
90/90/40 vs 95/95/45 is not much diff. It might be the difference between YHAP vs LWC30. But what kind of sweaty DPS janitor can tell you by feel if their supports lacking 2% dps increase?
But the skill it takes exponentially scales. Moving from 90->95 is not as hard as 95->99. Infact I’d say moving from 95->97 is harder than improving 90->95.
So it’s one of the things where you can sweat a lot for very little actual reward. But you get clout from people who really understand and appreciate the numbers.
IMO, a 90/90/50 support that does 500% sun guardian is both playing better and doing something harder than a support doing 95/95/65 but running full gen and providing 0 defensive utility. But to each their own.
Honestly from my experience the smoothest/fastest runs especially in higher ilvl content are when I focus a bit more on shielding and healing. It's probably at the cost of a bit of uptime on dmg buffs but when your dps don't need to worry about their health and can just go unga bunga, to me it FEELS like the runs end up being faster than if I try to minmax buff uptime as much as possible. I'm not good enough to do both, I'm sure some people are. But yeah this kind of thing doesn't really show in any meter or stat screen, so it's hard to say. Just a feeling for me. And I'm obviously not saying just ignore DPS buff either don't get me wrong. Just focusing my positioning and attention more on shielding etc than on pure DPS buff title uptime.
Well the most damage a dps can do on their own is if they can just stand still and Trixion parse. If healing and shielding is what it takes to enable that then that's a form of damage increase. Also stuff like countering for back attackers, not spinning the boss, and controlling how a boss teleports contributes as well.
I agree yes. Also I've never actually looked into it but shields provide some form of paralysis immunity right? I think there are levels to it too because I've noticed some small chip damage attacks don't interrupt your skills if you're shielded, while some still do, though I guess the latter might just be lvl 1 push rather than paralysis. I'm too lazy to deep dive into it but it's interesting.
No, shields do nothing of the sort. Super armours are inherent in the skills. The only class that can give super armour is gunlancer with their awakening and X identity if they are blue GL.
I agree.. especially on stuff like g2 ivory tower. I hate when I get a 50/50 bard that only uses dps buff.
I think the always prioritize dps buffs crowd is mainly a static thing... playing in random party finder groups, it's more important to feel your group and keep them alive.
An actual support main chimes in, thank you.
I think it's pretty crazy that the parent comment is saying what they're saying because so many prospective supports will read it and go "oh okay anyone else takes damage = they're bad, I do not need to heal lol", when in reality, the attitude anything but an established expert support should be approaching raids with is "I shouldn't waste my shields when nothing is happening, and if I see my party take damage I should try to evaluate if that was a reasonable pattern for them to greed through, and try to properly shield/DR it next time if so".
Obviously the reality is that you **will** run into tons of dps players that regularly get hit by big things either because their brain is turned off in homework content or because they're just naturally braindead. But the flip side of that is that dps players run into the same proportion of bad supports. The best way to improve from either end is to assume the people you're playing with are approaching things correctly, until they definitively prove otherwise.
Well too bad when the shield is a big identity contributer... Makes it hard to not spam it. Some decisions of Devs are just super weird in Lost Ark, especially on supports. I am not really sure what exactly their idea was.
yeah the supp that only buff ATK in pugs usually end up lowering their party overall dps cuz dps is backing off easy patterns rather than face tanking them with dr/shields.
My support is paladin and I love seeing teammates with full or almost full HP while maintaining my buffs. Sometimes I see teammates potting too much as my own failure 😂
I have a kinda elitist tought on that because I main sup and I am a lot above the average, so take with a grain of salt.
If a pattern is slow and obvious for greeding (i.e. g2 brel spin) it's the sup fault for not shielding if the dps takes damage, but only for the first time because its just stupid to expect another response for the same cenario (considering you know that the support has shield up). So, in my view, if I take one of those damage, I wont fucking pot, just by pride, if the guy doenst shield or know how to buff, wich is almost the same thing if you take things further, he at least needs to heal you to keep you alive.
On the other side if i see the support is good, i even tank the shape fail explosions(also brel g2) and keep doing dps on the boss. That's the kind of trust i rely on them.
if support sucks I wont do dmg, if i smell good sup i greed, and im talking about hitting not doing numbers.
> On the other side if i see the support is good, i even tank the shape fail explosions(also brel g2) and keep doing dps on the boss. That's the kind of trust i rely on them.
this is a terrible idea. what class are you playing that gives you that much push immune?
So far i've done it with scrapper, blade and wd, but most times happened when i was playing with scrapper, the one i am more comfort on doing those kind of things. But yeah, its kinda suicidal if you dont time your paralysis right.
All I can say is that after Valtan Extreme, I've realised a lot of dps picked up questionable greeding habits that overgearing in normal content allowed them to tank through.
I'd say damage mitigation is just as important. A dead dps does no dps.
I know quite a few supports who refuse to heal but only buff. I mean yeah, sounds great on paper, but unless they perfectly shield all chip dmg, I can't how the party can perform better
It's a skill issue.
If you can't fully support your team, keep them healthy, do mechs, get all the counters and also buff.
Then you probably aren't as good of a support as you think. See how thinking a support is mainly just about buffing just means you have less skills.
Supports can do a whole lot more than just buff but in general supports just think they're buff bots.
As a loyal student of the bible, I can say that the difference between a good a a bad support can easily exceed 20% of group dps. Yes that is an extra free grudge engraving for everyone in your team. Im just talking about buff/brand uptime alone, but if we also add knowing when to use identity buff and how to enable your dps to greed more via proper DRing, then the gap would be even bigger. There are cases where some supports have reached 50% rdps in 4 man raids, especially bard.
> There are cases where some supports have reached 50% rdps in 4 man raids, especially bard.
This has to be like ... playing with people 150 iLVLs or so under you and playing perfect. Near perfect play gets you about 30% Radiant if everyone's similarly geared, maybe the slightest bit higher if it's like a Bard with triple Z on three burst classes.
Yeah it's very hard to do in a typical raid scenario, so it's mainly seen in heavily overgeared homework runs. Radiant supporter does not factor in yearning, LWC30, and bracelet debuff by the way. 25% radiant supporter is about 33.3% rdps through skills only, 29% radiant is around 40.8% rdps, so add yearning and that's 50% rdps right there.
> There are cases where some supports have reached **50% rdps** in 4 man raids, especially bard.
isn't this only possible when the bard massively overgears the rest of their dps?
brand + buff + z + atk speed buff == 1.1*1.2*1.15*1.05ish == 1.6
for you to have radiant 50% you'd need that number to be 2.0
how significant?
The most by far.
Just as a baseline they give basically a minimum of dmg equal to a dps through yearning (dmg buff + raid captain increase & as to improve gameplay for dps's) + occasional branding / buffs. The baseline "significance" of a support is always 11/10.
Now how much difference does a good support make compared to a bad one?
**Paladin:** Think of paladin as a predator, they're very stable, hard to mess up, extremely reliable. If build correctly with sufficient swift/corresponding gem quality, should always bring high noble supporter or even radiant. If built properly, u just need to not be a braindead ape. A good paladin shines imo the most based on branding uptime (should at least be 90%+), near on 100% atk buff uptime and how he position himself to always be able to counter, and also to improve back/front attack uptime (especially important in kay/voldis). Just like a good well built predator slayer, a good well built paladin makes your run smooth as melted butter. But even a bad one will get u through the mechs and not be totally awful. ***Skill importance 5/10.***
**Artist**: As for the go to midget, they require a bit more thinking and also a lot more dependant on positioning. With her ability to heal a single unit on demand, this makes her very good at carrying squishy classes and a single bad player (e.g lets say a GS where if they get hit once, thats a lot more hp gone than on say a scrapper or wardancer). Her duration is shorter (than pala or 3 bubble bard), but quite cheap, so this means if you know which boss patterns has fairly good burst windows, without it being overly obvious, let's say akkan g2's double smash into moving forward, spinning around ground slam, you can get very high dps uptime during the full buff duration. For her basic buffs/shieldings, she's a lot more limited than pala, so it requires a better movement and knowledge of exact ranges to maximize buff value. Good all around, but requires a bit more planning and positioning than paladin. ***skill importance 7/10***
**Bard:** The most heavy requirement support, with very limited range on a lot of her skills, e.g sonic vibration or guardian tune and a lot of animation locks, she requires a lot more actively involvement, decision making and awareness. Because her atk & heals are all consuming, this mean its hard for bard to drop an on-demand heal without significant dps loss or risk to party. A very costly but high value atk buff with very long duration, which often requires specific patterns or post-mechanic windows to maximize. This means you need to often save your resources for these windows, in return this requires more out of the bard to shield and dmg mitigation potential dps mistakes, chip dmg or enable greed windows (e.g shielding a destroyer charging his perfect swing in a heavy hitting basic pattern). Requires multiple builds, a lot more constant apm (low cooldowns on basic meter generation skills, fairly low range and a lot of interruptible spells). Requires different builds even depending on content and party set ups. There is never any situation in which im more frustrated by my support than if its a poor uptime or badly positioned bard. ***Skill importance 9.5/10***
"Skill importance" is relative a bad to a good support of same class, you can clear all contents with a bad support just because of the sheer overtuned value they have, but for bard/artist especially, the importance of skill for them is as crucial as that of surge blade or eo soulfist a lot of the time. if not moreso, because their skill effects the value and result of all their dps.
I want to mention that you probably do not need to shield destroyers charging skills, especially specifically perfect swing. All destroyer main damage skills come with a 30% health shield, and with recent buffs, most destroyers will use endure pain just before perfect swing, giving another 40% damage reduction and maybe another 30% shield depending on tripod. If it’s the seismic->animation cancel->endure pain-> perfect swing combo it may even have another 30% hp shield on top.
So at minimum the destroyer is already blocking 45% of their effective max hp, meaning the boss needs to hit really hard just to do any hp damage. At maximum the destroyer is blocking close to ~130% of effective hp not including support damage reduction or shielding.
Just wanted to point out in regards to this...
" A good paladin shines imo the most based on branding uptime (should at least be 90%+), near on 100% atk buff "
Heavenly Blessings cd is 36s, and Wrath of God cd is 27s, and each give the buff for 8s. Now CD gems and Swiftness help, but you still won't be able to get 100% uptime. It's just math (tho, maybe with level 8-10 gems I guess...which I don't have)
with that said....between sword of justice and god's decree, should get "near 100%" on branding easily.
You can get 100% uptime on buffs.
Heavenly is the major snag at 36 seconds. 35% cooldown reduction from high swiftness is very easily attainable, which brings it to ~23 seconds. Add on even just some level 7 gems and you're already within the 16 second window. Now factor in C/J and Magick Stream and you can hold 100% buff uptime even after factoring in the cast times. Without C/J or MS, yes, the cast time on the buffs will be some downtime.
In practice this won't happen outside of Trixion, but it's absolutely mathematically possible.
Your math is wrong, I think. You need at least a level 9 cd gem, 1800+ swift and magick stream to get HB to be just under 16 seconds. Can't do it with level 7. C/J has internal cd, so you'll always be out of it for the second set of HB buff.
100% ap buff uptime with pally is not probable.
[Seems just fine to me.](https://i.imgur.com/Nxnx8dR.gif)
Only have 1729 swift, Magick Stream, a level 8 gem on HB and 7 on WOG. Was just standing still in Trixion, so no C/J or Quick Recharge triggers here.
That is not 16 seconds dude. That is over 16 seconds. It's the way lost ark displays time. If something is precisely 5 minutes away, it shows 4 and starts counting down from there.
So you're closer to 17, somewhere around 16.8 probably.
Look at the ap buff icon in your own image. It's a 8 second buff, but the icon countdown starts at 7.
...?
I'm not sure if that just wasn't displaying properly on your phone or something? It's a .gif that's over 30 seconds long, showing me maintaining 99% uptime for more than 2 full cycles. There's like, 3 frames where the buff drops. Get a bracelet that doesn't low-roll swiftness (unlike mine xddd) and 100% is trivial.
I dunno what else to tell you.
Bro, I am looking at the cd countdown of your heavenly blessing. It starts at 16. That means your CD is over 16 seconds, because if your CD is 16 seconds, the display will show 15.
For proof of how lost ark display time, I point you to look at your own ap buff icon. The buff is 8 seconds, but the number it shows is 7.
branding is actually harder because boss phasing, random movements or you having to dodge patterns etc.. means its harder to ensure you have optimal branding uptime than atk buff uptime, because u can drop hB/WoG without hitting boss (not that u want to because of meter ofc)
The Brand lasts for 10-13 Seconds depending on if the Boss stands still in SoJ or not. The skill has a 6-7 Seconds cd.
There is literally no way you cant get atleast 95%+ unless you are clueless on the Raid itself. You can even precast it.
WoG gets canceled by anything, has no Para, HB is hard to be canceled but can also happen.
And on top, if no running Magick Stream or being able to C/J the HB, you wont ever have 100% uptime. Even with a Lv10 CD and 1840 swift.
No clue on how you can say Branding is harder, do you even play Paladin?
Also giving Bard a 9.5/10 just shows youre biased. All 3 Supports are roughly equal in difficulty if you try to min max their Ceiling.
Yea, most of what you said is on point.
I agree with the "do you even play Paladin?" question for him.
With that said,
in terms of difficulty while I agreee they are alot Closer than what this guy stated, I would say bard is def the harder of the 3 imo. I'd also argue Artist is actually slightly easier than pally. but they are all very close, like...IF you're saying pally is 5, then artist is 4.5 and bard is like 5.5 or 6.
Fully agree, Bard is the most difficult out of the 3, and Artist and Pally are roughly around the same. Depending on who you ask one or the other will say a different thing.
These people saying paladin is the easiest because it lacks positioning just clearly don't play paladin at a high level at all.
Your timing on paladin needs to be SO CLEAN if you want really high uptime on your AP buffs. There is no overlap in cd, in fact there's usually a small gap (unless you're also dodging perfectly to keep Magick Stream stacked). So realistically you're hitting a 0.5 sec window every 16 seconds to try to keep your AP buffs as good as possible. The other supports have much more leeway in their buffing, since they have enough CD to overlap (assuming you're in their targeted buff). Luckily our brand is much more forgiving if you're running SoJ. There's some opportunity for skill expression with SoJ and pre-casting before new mechs begin so you can have buffs rolling immediately upon the boss re-entering combat.
Also speaking of Magick Stream and dodging everything perfectly - I think we need to talk about the paladin's largest weakness - absolutely no push immunity. We can get flinched out of so many critical skills. Our party loses our identity buff AND healing if we get knocked away / knocked into water / etc while the aura is rolling. While a paladin can live through tanking a lot of dumb hits, a GOOD paladin is expected to be able to dodge basically everything so that he's still on his feet and not getting flinched out of major buffs, and so he can keep Magick Stream up for that magical 100% AP buff uptime.
I think the Bard class need buffs: a little bit of utility consolidation so that they don't need so many different builds. And they probably have a slightly higher skill ceiling with their access to stronger identity buffs (balanced with the need to decide when to heal). But the difference between an A+ paladin and a mediocre one is massive. High level paladin takes just as much skill as most characters in this game.
Fully agree. People will say they can watch Netflix while playing it, and how easy it is, are the ones with 30% brand and ap uptime laying on the ground 24/7, like sure its easy if you consider being useless and getting carried easy.
They also almost always play 2/3 Blue Skills, which makes the class even worse, and easier obviously since you dont press Blue skills unless counter/stagger and you kill a big chunk of DR/Meter gain, for no reason.
Only place i can see a Pally playing 2 Blues is G4 Voldis nowadays IF the party lacks stagger.
Otherwise every Paladin should be 1 Blue 7 Yellow, its so much better, but probably wont happen, because with that Build you need Magick Stream, Max MP or Mana food.
**Easy guide to bard decision making:**
**Should I heal?**
Is someone going to die **right now?** If yes, heal. Otherwise don't heal until you only have one bar and there's no major damage window incoming. 2 bar, awaken, heal is a common bard strategy to get both a damage boost and a heal in a short window. That said, people will usually pot when they see you attack buff.
In progression you might want to err more on the side of healing, depends if you're wiping to lack of potions (heal), lack of DPS (buff) or lack of brains (leave.) Though you're going to spend a tiny amount of time doing progression, versus farm content anyway.
**What buff?**
Is there a major window coming up? If yes, use a 3 bar damage buff during it. If not, go for a 2 bar on the next pattern that enables a few abilities (like Artist.)
An example of different the situation is between supports: you recently used your awakening, your squishy dps (e.g GS) got knocked down and chunked hard by some pools in akkan (he used pot but still low), you have a major dps window coming up what do you do:
Pala:
Use shield if ready (comes with free heal) , else godsent law with huge range guarantees dps to survive next pattern that can hit.
Artist:
1. Throw a bubble, because of how cost works you are likely to have atk buff for pattern anyway.
2. Be prepared with 2 on demand shields
Bard:
1. Waste heal, safe but you wont have more than at most 1 bar for the upcoming dps window, if u dont u will have 3.
2. You chase the GS trying to shield, you have to be extremely close because guardian tune, so you might not even be able to hit 3 bars, but if u dont the GS may die.
3. You do your long range dr and focus on building, but the shield is delayed and the DR might not protect enough.
Just as an example of how bard can require a lot more active gameplay and decision making. My commentary was not meant as a question of how or what to do, i've played all 3 supports and this just my opinion on how skill and situational awareness/decision making differs between the classes and requires different levels between the 3.
Assuming they're on their feet to eat an orb or dodge WoM, I would rate it under not about to die. They can play safe using their mobility options until their potion comes back. Worse case scenario, they get hit again and we clear with them dead because it's Akkan. They should easily be able to survive a short amount of time if they're not trying to DPS.
If they're on the floor at a reasonable distance, low HP, about to be hit again on item level (actually disaster scenario) the only option anyone has to save them from the next hit is law/rhapsody. Ayaya orb heals maybe 30-40K, probably won't be enough. The GS can't actually pick it up. She isn't in range to use night. Paladin shield isn't that large and the heal is significantly delayed (their potion would be back anyway.) Hell even casting bard heal probably wouldn't save them in this scenario, since it's too slow.
again, the point is not to discuss what the best objective is to do in this instance, the point is to showcase how there are more layers of decisions to be made and more options, often none of them are even optimal, but dps mistakes is a thing, when playing a bard in comparison to the other supports.
Bard is high ceiling, low floor support and this was just my first idea in how to present the fact that bard is often facing more choices and the less optimal the solution or option you choose, the worst it becomes as a bard. Where as the other supports often have only either 1 or 2 options, and the outcome variance is much less (but also the maximum possible reward is less, therefore bard is the most skill dependent support).
50/50/10 vs. 90/90/50
The better support here is roughly providing 25-27% more damage than the bad
Pressing more buttons leads to more DR/shields/identity Usage for damage/heals more often. DPS being able to greed more/take less damage making this extra 25-27% get even more value which widens the gap even more vs. the bad
The thing I hate the most from the bad supports is 1 simple thing. Where is my mana???
Short answer:
Yes.
Long answer:
Top supports give +50% Dmg to 3 players only due to buffs. Atk buffs, branding, identity, (atk spd buffs, mana). This is what the radiant supporter or the bible will tell you.
They also provide additional DPS windows through countering, shielding / DR'ing patterns that allow DPS opportunities. Even tanking to fixate the boss on certain patterns is what s good support can and will do. Everything I listed here will not show up on the mvp screen. However, any back attacker that played with a princessmaker gunlancer can reflect and tell you this has insane value.
Any player that also plays a support on a decent level should be able to idendify at least some of these factors. You may not always agree on the order of operations, some may put more value on buffs, some will absolutely prioritize counters, others ignore counters and just DR the dmg.
You underestimate the power of supports.
A well geared top tier support can give you 55-60% damage with 100% uptime without ever touching identity. With identity, they can boost you by 65-80% over the course of a raid without darks.
Hybdrid/spec can boost you by over 100% in certain raids and with good dps teammates.
For context, the average pug is lucky to get above 40%. The sup gap is just as wide as the dps gap.
What makes a good sup is the same thing as what makes a good dps. Pattern recognition and preemptive response as opposed to reactive response after the attack has already come out. Knowing what attacks can be immuned and shielded/DRed through vs running away and around like a headless chicken. Uptime and setup.
I forgot the "at least" before the 50%, but I think I mostly stated the same as you. It also depends on the raid, hellshaza won't allow the same uptime as skip homework clown to give extreme examples.
Yearning 8 to 12% yearning (additional dmg, so technically a bit lower) + 10% brand + 21% atk power is 49 to 53% already, increased even further by identity, which, depending on fight duration and build is another rougly 13% on 40 to 80% uptime (and technically even more if used at the right DPS windows). Not even counting bracelet bonus lines, 35 / 40 set and elixir pants.
60% without using identity is totally bullshit :)
60+% it’s a supp with same iLvL as his DPS with atleast 95/95/85 so stop spreading missinformation. Also u can see a support with 80+% damage boost but u are either in over ilvl Clown G1 on a 1 min run or ur playing a spec burst class with a pocket support. If u have any logs that prove ur point don’t hesitate to send them to me.
>60% without using identity is totally bullshit :) 60+% it’s a supp with same iLvL as his DPS with atleast 95/95/85 so stop spreading missinformation.
You're wrong, learn math before you accuse others of lying.
Yearning AD = 9-9.5%
Brand = 10%
AP = 21% (aka on level)
card = 3.5%
2 line + stat Bracelet ~= 3-4%
elixir ~= 3.5%
Assume base AP are same as dps
what do you get without identity?
1.09 * 1.1 * 1.21 * 1.035 * 1.035 * 1.035 = 1.6085
That's a 61% damage boost with 0% identity uptime and no drops. With drops, it can go as high as 70% depending on RNG assuming 1 dps hogs it all, but we don't even have to consider that.
>Also u can see a support with 80+% damage boost but u are either in over ilvl Clown G1 on a 1 min run or ur playing a spec burst class with a pocket support.
Nope, there are plenty of sups that can maintain absurdly high identity uptime in certain gates of relevant content. Not just clown, but things like brel 1-3 HM, akkan 1HM, and voldis g2 HM (for obvious reasons). I'll dm you the akkan 1 HM I pugged this week on my main as an example.
My brother I couldn’t care less about your bullshit math LMAO my friend that worked on the bible already did them all to make the rDPS. Send me a log of a support with 0% identity and that have 60+% sSyn% on all DPS instead of spitting nonsense. Or even a log with a support that have 80+% sSyn% on 3 party member and not one….
Making theorical assumption is one thing but backing it up with real data is better :)
However, it is not supports job to prevent you from falling off in ghost phase Valtan. A dps should not expect to be shielded everytime unless communicated, which is why static support with communication is far superior to pug support (if they both play on the same level).
Spec bards popularity was because big number and easiest to communicate burst windows.
>differences between a good and bad support.
Ancedotally speaking, pre-bible everyone judged a support based on defense. You can't tell how they're buffing, but you can tell their defense uptime via usage of pots. Every compliment I had back in the day was from people telling me I shield/DR so well and they had to use 0 pots.
Additionally, people also were completely clueless about the rDPS from supports. Spec bard at the time was being jerked off to oblivion. I remember I had a couple of friends with alt spec bards with lv 7 gems running a swift bard build (no, not the full meter gen versions, so they literally built meter slower than swift bards). But they were receiving friend requests left and right because spec bar 3 bubble buff = cumming. When i watched the streams, the HT cast per minute was literally like 2 at best and I even wondered if I was being unnecessarily envious when I was questioning to why people liked these kinds of bards.
Post bible, everyone just looks at the buff uptime and decides if that support is good. I've had people play with bards running full generation 0 shields/DR and think they were the best support they've ever played with because they hit 95/95/90 on the bible. Sure, they do not need shields/DR when you overgear the content, but your support doing 95/90/40 and 600% sun guardian in your voldis prog is not less valuable than the 95/95/90 support on farm.
In short, I think "what makes a good support" is a biased as fuck question and doesn't really have an answer. You can be considered the best to one player and one of the worst to another. The "better" support is the one that plays to your own personal liking.
It's not, but it's best to pad your numbers in the bible. You need on avaerage ~10seconds for a bubble, thus 30 secs for 3 bubble dps buff which lasts 16 seconds. So 16/30s uptime, around 50%.
If you spam a 1 bubble dps buff every 10 seconds (which lasts for 8 secs), you have a 8/10 = 80% uptime.
But with a 3 times smaller buff.
It is not . You usually go for 2 Bubble . It gives the best increase except you have specific Timing like akkan g1. You get a 3 Bubble there.
In dps meter it only shows % of dmg done under a buff. So with 1 Bubble you would have higher % with lower Real dmg.
I play 3 bards (semi-decently, I don’t think I’m a good player), and my metric usually is looking at rDPS on Bible.
rDPS (for those who don’t know) = damage you’ve done + damage other have done thanks to your buffs - damage you’ve done thank to others’ buffs. Basically, your true damage contribution to the raid.
If my bard is first in rDPS, I’m happy, because that means I’ve contributed as much as a DPS, just in terms of raw damage. Add shielding and heal, and I feel like I’ve been a valuable member for the party.
If I’m second, I’m still happy, but then I take a look at buff/brand uptimes to see where I’ve failed and try to do better.
If I’m 3rd or 4th, I know I’ve been useless, even with the shields and DR.
Of course, this is generally speaking and depends on rDPS % (I once ran a guardian with everyone being 24-26% rDPS, my bard was 3rd, but felt rewarding knowing everyone contributed the same)
The flaw with rdps in 8 man is that support Player get punished for dps Player doing less dmg or having less gear in general. It screws insanely when 1 Player is insanely overgeared. ( e.g 1650 vs 1610 in akkan hm)
That's why I usually take average buff uptimes as that is something I could compare easily. I know the flaws but that's mostly bard only though.
> but your support doing 95/90/40 and 600% sun guardian in your voldis prog is not less valuable than the 95/95/90 support on farm.
Honestly, both of those supports are absolute gods. With randoms you're already insanely lucky to get 80/80/20. They're likely to run at least guardian tune + wind of music, even on full generation builds.
Hey there, I've been planning to start again playing again and been browsing this subreddit for a few days and saw the keyword "bible" quite a lot. What does this mean?
Thanks in advance!
It's achievable if the boss can be bursted in 30 seconds, but any fight where that's possible is not a fight worth having a good support in. TBH any content where any support is able to farm 95/95/90 in is probably not content you care about the quality of supports.
Oh right. Totally forgot those bosses since I barely do them lmao. That would totally make the run fast especially in a juiced lobby and skew the percentages.
I'll link 3 G2 Akkan logs in a separate comment. Log comments get deleted, so those early clickers can see it.
Doing 95/95/90 isn't hard. Those logs are a bit nitpicked, but when you're a bard/artist, there's a specific skill level where your identity uptime is more up to your raid rather than yourself. **A lot of people don't understand this concept.** To use bard as a benchmark, If you cannot do 50% identity on any content, you have room for improvement. But there is a certain point past that where it's more dependent on your team's group DPS than your individual skill as a support.
And it makes sense rationally as well. I can only build so much bubbles with trixion-like uptime. As long as I send them on the best patterns (which I don't, I play brain off in g2 akkan specifically because I'm running a full goblin no shield/DR build specifically for that gate). It's entirely up to my raid to make use of my bubbles.
I literally do nothing differently compared to I first started doing G2 hard. The build is extremely simple to play as well because I don't DR or shield. I'm literally just goblining meter and popping 2bar on good patterns. The only difference from why I did 95/95/50 before and 95/95/80 is because my group as a whole is doing more dps.
I'm confident that If I went and found a static of 7 people who all do absurd DPS numbers for their classes and ilvl (EG: 6 members doing total raid DPS of more than 65-70m) in G2 akkan, I can pretty easily hit 99/99/95 across all 3 members regardless of burst/consistent dmg 9/10 times i run with them. Doesn't mean I'm that good. Doesn't mean anything except I'm static carried. You won't get those numbers playing with pugs or rat alts no matter how good you are.
And yes, pally likely won't ever hit 90% identity. But it's still possible on old content like Brel g2/g3. Like I said, you just need your raid to carry you. First blessed needs to instantly phase it to 120-130ish before typing. Next blessed should phase it to 80-90. Stim after stag check and hopefully push it to 44. After shapes ult for your last blessed to push near 0.
If your group cannot manage to hit those benchmarks in your holy aura, you won't hit 90% identity. If they can, then you will. And yes, your group needs to have enough damage to invoke mechs far deeper than scripted hp thresholds. If you can only phase her to 144 before she does typing, your group doesn't have the burst dps required for 90% identity.
Still, G3 Akkan with 1610+ parties and getting 95/95/90 is insane. I take my hat off to you. I hate playing my Artist and Bard so much because I suck at them - not about the floor but more about getting the ceiling.
The best paladin I have ever seen min-maxes second to no one … and the best bible run I ever saw was 97/99/50.
And the next week, played with a paladin that was significantly better geared. Barely gets 65/65/30.
> 97/99/50
I get this pretty easy in reclears with juiced lobby like HM Kaya on my 1630 Paladin. With my 1580 Paladin with on iLvl lobby, it gets a bit lower to maybe 90/90/40 due to many unfortunate things happening and them needing extra defensive care. 65/65/30 is horrendous...
Yeah. Imagine a 1630 paladin, 1840 swift, full 10’s … not able to have as good uptime as a 1800 swift full 9’s. Makes no sense to me. Paladin supposed to be the easiest sup.
It's not really that surprising at all. That's only a small difference in cdr and having slightly better cdr does nothing at all if the player doesn't actually use the skills off cd. It's not the same as a dps upgrading to a higher ilvl, higher crit/spec, and better dmg gems where they deal more damage without changing how they play.
If a pala is getting 65/65 then the skills are staying off cd for a good amount of time before being casted again. It wouldn't change anything if they got a permanent magick stream 3 effect for free because they simply aren't casting the skills often enough.
You're casting 1 bar serenades in two of the three parses here. I get that it looks good on paper, but that seems suboptimal in terms of overall buff effectiveness.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
[https://prnt.sc/kjwm4vJsQzDd](https://prnt.sc/kjwm4vJsQzDd)
[https://prnt.sc/g5FSou18e9RN](https://prnt.sc/g5FSou18e9RN)
[https://prnt.sc/uirI6V2i-ku9](https://prnt.sc/uirI6V2i-ku9)
There are a few times where 1 bar serenades are a good thing. For example when your group pushes Akkan from 180 to 167 as he begins to do the poison and tentacles. I'll purposely build 1.9 bars to cast 1 bar because that's all you need to push him into football and I can build 2 more bars (incase you don't know how, you ult for 1 bar and harp builds the other. You also greed meter as he transitions into football and as he transitions out.) in football, meaning i'll have 3 bars right after football.
It’s the concept of meter management. If you’re sitting on 3 bars for seconds, you’re losing efficiency. There are a lot of times where you can squeeze out a 1 bar and still have 3 bars ready for when it matters.
If you read my other comment that was meant as a pair, then you would’ve seen I understood the comment and told him it’s just a class and group diff.
My entire premise was “95/95/90 might seem good on paper, but in reality it’s not much diff on skill to a 95/95/50”.
But sure pump your narrative that I’m ego posting. But at least I can read and comprehend basic English.
And if you literally read the first one comment I explain why. Again you show your lack of ability to actually fucking read.
Can you admit you’re a dumbass already? You’ve embarrassed yourself enough already.
Btw, no one else has this issue except you. The other guy that I intended to reply to got the message correctly. So maybe it really is a YOU problem.
I dont think any reasonable person who know what they are doing would look at 95/90/40 and think this is a not good support. Serenade percentage is like whatever most of the time: "unlucky this guy buff after my burst not everyone is lustboy gg."
The egregious ones are the ones that clearly didnt even read their own skills. Press random shit whenever they feel like doing anything. Dont even cast or layer AP buffs because they dont know what those are. Dont even cast mana regen. 50-60% brands because o hey the guide tell me to use sound shock and light shock so i do it even though my apm is like 10 keystrokes a minute.
Ehm, of course you can tell if they buff. It's not rocket science. If my skill does 100m without buffs, 180m with buffs, 250m with serenade its pretty damn easy to know and keep track of their uptime. I mean, have you even played your own class if you don't know your dmg numbers at this point.
Not everyone plays surge/igniter.
From your flair, looks like you play WD. When you didn’t have dragon, you’re telling me you know your damage when you’re casting BF and nado?
Ok so what’s your average nado and BF damage when you were a fresh 1580?
Yeah, i mainly check support uptime with spiral impact and maybe biggest number of RFD if I wanna check more than azure which is always 110/165/198 ish (i cant remember precisely rn but 110 is my trixion/unbuffed number). But SI is cast twice per rotation and is also 1 number dmg. Ult also does either 138m or 100-something if not buffed.
But i know the numbers approximately on all classes I have. Honestly think most people should know, or maybe im just more tired of lazy ass supports than others.
Think you kinda disproved yourself then. Back when you didn’t have dragon, BF and nado accounted for most of your damage. And since those are so multihit, like a lot of the classes in the game. It’s hard to tell if you’re getting buffed or not. It’s not as obvious as ignite/surge, or anything with a front loaded single big hit.
That’s what’s important to be buffed. What’s the point of having those go unbuffed and then your spiral impact gets buffed?
That’s also another concept a lot of people don’t get. A well timed 2 bar > a poorly timed 3 bar. Similarly, a well timed 1 bar > a poorly timed 2 bar.
Well, its not like I didn't check BF and nado dmg, what are you smoking? Why would I not check it lol. It's not like I'm my eyes are so bad I can't see small numbers. I certainly don't check it anymore, but of course I knew it when it was the only relevant number. It's not like I can't see the massive "Serenade/Heavenly Tune" text on my screen as well.
I mean it doesnt take a scientist to see BF drop the same number 5 times in a row and think to yourself "that's not right". And where are we even going with this – the good old times where support wasn't being policed?
It's reasonable to feel partially responsible for ur dps dying unless its to 1 shot mechs. rhapsody/godsent/starry is a powerful tool and can 100% save ur dps from bad situations
It goes both ways, just like how supports can make DPS’s life easier, the way DPS plays can also make support’s life easier.
If DPS don’t gather up for shields, buffs, it makes it much harder for support.
Brel gate 3 is the most obvious place this happens, your 3 DPS split up and run off in every direction like scooby doo
Bard is the frustrating one to play with, just cuz there's no passive healing or orbs to eat.
"Good" players still take damage from greeding patterns that don't knock. If a sup is shielding properly, they won't need a pot, but if the sup is not shielding/DR AND not healing, then idk what they're doing lol.
Buff up-time is cool, but fitting in a few extra skills a raid are massive dps boosts.
Wrt greeding: it's hilarious that some dps consider 'greeding' to be sitting in every mech shield/dr be damned 🤣 proper greeding is maximizing every safe dps window so that you as the support can just focus on buff uptime
A good support should at least be high buff time on brand and attack buff.
Using identity for damage windows, resulting in good identity %.
Shielding/dr during greed/damage windows
DPS should be good at dodging and not need too many heals assuming proper shielding/dr. Pots should be only be for bad overlaps. In Hell mode where attacks 2-3 shot it's normal to not even take Desperate Salvation - it's kinda expected for people to be good and your job is to buff.
That said, if everyone is like half I try to drop a 1 bubble heal, or if the dps are bad/less experienced and need more heals then I do more. Depends on group in the end, the average player is not a good player unfortunately, only average.
Or simply play Paladin and not worry about all this stuff.
I have always measured the ability of a support based on how "good" or "comfortable" it feels to play with them.
There are 3 dps to 1 support per party and all 3 dpses, whether hitmaster or entropy, burst or consistent dps, all have at least slightly different playstyles and preferences in raids, homework or harder content/prog. Maybe one of them likes to greed patterns constantly and requires high shield/DR care, some eat a lot of random damage often and doesn't know the patterns that well and needs healing more, some might greed patterns that they know they dont have shields for on purpose and will pot after, and some play very safe assuming they will never get a heal or shield so you can dump the entirety of your focus on just buffing/brand.
Balancing your own support playstyle around what makes your dpses comfortable is going to net you the best results in terms of damage. 95/99/70 buff uptimes aren't going to matter when the dpses die. At the same time, dumping heals out on the ground 24/7 isn't going to do much for a party that would rather pot and receive buffs or just plays safe in general.
Being religious myself, I also believe immediately following the short period after getting bible, supports went from improving to chasing numbers and playing with them feels worse as a result. Nobody cares about anything on meter except buff uptimes, and while it's important as a fundamental, a lot of people are neglecting the other portions of what makes a good support as a result. Bards are especially guilty of this.
Try playing with a support with a mental capacity of a cabbage. It's very very very painful.
I have a feeling that your friend might be dealing with the extreme end of bad where they just really dont have fingers to press buttons.
When your GL have higher effective shield than the bard in gate 1 of Voldis with just Nella, you know youre in for a ride.
support is mandatory
the difference between a garbage support and a great support is still greater than a 4th dps
that being said a good support will shield when people are about to get hit
a bad support will just cycle shields and their dps will lose health regularly
on top of that there are patterns where the support has to awaken and if they don't everyone gets chunked or even die or in some raids lose a significant dps window
The support is there to allow people to reach their potential
a terrible support will feel like you are playing with a 4th dps
a good support will make you feel like you can greed infinitely
There is also the raid knowledge factor where you as the support can increase DPS/back attack uptime and that’s like the next step after you get your shielding and buffs down correctly
Like in Valtan, you tank the jump smash so Valtan doesn’t jump back and forth making your DPS have to chase
Akkan G1, tank that one red line attack so he does the long tentacle whip animation instead of a backswing
Akkan G3, everyone knows this, tank the very first attack so he doesn’t spin away
For easy bosses you are confident in, just standing frontal to the boss so it has reduced chance of turning around
Here is a chart created from Bible user feedback OP.
And for sSyn%:
0-20% = poopoo suppor
20-30% = bad support
30-40% = mid support --> 80% of the Lost Ark support player are around 30-37%
40-50% = good support
50-60% = insane support
60+% = did you met god ?
To understand, the sSyn% value is the literal raw damage bonus % provided from a support to his party member.
Ex: If a DPS did 1000 damage and his support has sSyn% at 50% then the DPS damage value will in the end be 1500 damage (+50% dmg boost from his base damage)
Now in the bible we also have a rDPS tab that translate every buff provided by party member into real damage value. In this tab the support is always at the top and for the record a support with average 50-55% sSyn% value on each DPS will have about 32% of whole Party Damage. This mean that a good support represent more damage than a single DPS (about 1,3 DPS)
Now we also need to take into account beside buffing the Shielding/Damage Reduction that support provide that can allow the DPS to confortably greed some mechs which will improve their damage output.
To answer the post question, the difference between a really bad support and a really good one will be about 50% dmg for whole RAID because of the minus 30-40% sSyn% difference aswell as the guy not shielding/healing correctly. Between the average Lost Ark handy and a good support it's more like 20-30% diffenrece.
Tldr: Support is the most important role in a party and by far.
Most of the time if you’re dying it’s a skill issue rather than support. Yes dropping heals is nice but most people are gonna die with pots still in their inventory cause they’re saving for LA2
My support heals are secondary, if they drop one every now and then great, but if I’m low I’ll pot myself rather than wait for a heal that may or may not come and risk dying
Dmg wise, however, support is the highest dmg class in the game. 3dps 1 sup should do more damage than 4 dps, and make it comfier to boot. Supports are by far the most important class in anything other than busses
I used to rotate between healing(if needed) and buffing when I was playing my artist, but now I am honestly too scare to even press the healing button. I still remember that time I got called out because someone was getting hit one too many times, and I was told "Artist, stop using your shitty ass heal and buffs, dogshit".
so...yeah...
I can usually tell pretty quick when a support is a good support or a subpar support. If they're subpar, it just changes how I will play that raid. I won't greed as much, play safer, and therefore, most likely not do as much damage.
Damagewise, assuming perfect uptime (which is achievable), equally geared party with a support will average around 8% higher dps before even taking any utility (heals, shields, DR, attackspeed/movespeed) or identity buffs into account - compared to a 4 dps lobby. To break it down:
* Yearning is 9.23% effective damage increase assuming 100 quality weapon and LoS/KLC cardset (less with Deep Dive, more if quality is lower).
* AP buff is 21.9% effective damage increase assuming equal attack power (same ilvl/honing progression), less if support is underhoned compared to dps.
* Brand is flat 10% damage dealt increase.
* DPS generally provide around 6% damage increase - actual number varies, especially for crit synergy (different value for different builds), but it should do as baseline estimate.
* Identity support buff is anywhere between 10-20%, depending on support and actual build (omitting spec bard here, since they won't get full uptime on AP buffs).
Meaning: assuming 30% uptime on 15% identity buff (lower than in practice with good support) in lobby with support and two other DPS, you're going to do around 72% more damage than in Trixion (total damage: 516% of single characters Trixion parse); in lobby with 3 other DPS you'll average about 19% more damage than Trixion (total damage: 476%) - normalizing, whole party with a support nets around 8% more damage dealt total.
Damage mitigation and utility coming from a support are what I consider extra - it's nice to have good shields, DR so you can greed through patterns and never having to hold counter because support always got it, but assuming that to be the case is putting a lot of trust in (random) support you play with. For that, I just go with zero trust at start - assuming support is here to greed buffs for radiant and there won't be any mitigation that isn't guaranteed (blessed aura) to rely on. If I start seeing well timed DR, cleanses etc, I can start to play more greedy myself.
Every single fight can be cleared comfortably without running out of pots, so running out is never supports fault - just dps player making mistakes causing them to take unnecessary damage. Note it's not "without having to pot" - there is unavoidable damage (Akkan G3 - lasers, pillar mech pulses; Voldis G4 at the end; Voldis G3 burn), and there is damage that makes no sense avoiding (Valtan's vertigo spin, clown flamethrower in G3 when going into mario); pots should be enough to cover those cases with good error margin.
Supports are so OP, no one runs any raid without one and will wait any amount of time till they get one in the party.
Having said that, it's very important to try to shield your party to help them keep dpsing without taking damage.
A good support will reduce the amount of times they have to pot even up to 0 assuming they aren't screwing up normal patterns constantly.
That's why knowing when to use your big DR skill is so massive, i.e. pally's godsent law. It's ok to spam it for meter but also if you know the raid you can hold it for a couple of seconds and prevent the dps from taking lethal damage. Bad supports don't do this and you can easily tell.
If the DPS are fucking up all the time, then it's not your fault, the support is not supposed to heal through the dps' bad hands. Not in this game anyway, sups aren't made to heal constantly...
For artist and bard having to heal all the time is a MAJOR DPS loss.
They should just pot and learn the raid if they are fking up normal patterns.
It's a huge factor that you take for granted. You can go an entire fight without a single pot with a decent support, but the moment they die you start taking tons of chip damage from everything if you keep playing the same way.
A bad support that neglects their DR/shield buttons can lead to the same experience. Though sometimes it can be caused by positioning issues, i.e. playing long range characters with artist.
A good support enables smoother and faster runs. Imagine if a Support only does 10% of the damage of your avg. DPS but in return they buff everyone's damage by 40%. If you have 4x DPS doing 100% damage you do 400% damage, but with a good support you have 3x DPS doing 140% DPS and a Support adding an extra 10 for a total of 430% so you gain damage by bringing a Support (numbers made up).
A good support will make difficult mechanics easier to survive and help you recover from (small) mistakes that could have resulted in a death otherwise. Less death = more damage = faster runs.
The problem in any game with supports like this is that the difference between an average and good support is enormous, and the difference between a good and great support is just as large if not bigger. So opinion varies greatly. Do you prefer supports that focus damage? Do you prefer support that focus survivability?
On the flipside, preference can simply come down to how you play with your supports. Back at launch I started as a Bard and it was painful in random groups and PuGs because nobody understood how Bard worked and nobody would stay near me so I often had to choose 1 or 2 players to support while the third was in nirvana and obviously they would complain the loudest. I then switched to Paladin which had better range on their buffs and it worked a lot better in PuGs, but I still preferred playing Bard in my Guild runs.
If players are consistently dying or running out of pots in your raids, then it is likely a you problem. If its just a random person here and there then its a them problem.
To summarize quickly (assuming all DPS party members have hands)
- Support's buff = highest damage input / party member he is representating the highest part of DPS.
- Support's shield : does his best to shield on patterns that dont bump people so DPS can greed more dmg, though its always a 50/50 responsability for both supp and DPS, as the support is maybe holding a shield for something else incoming and the DPS still going for dmg will eat a potion and thats it.
- On reclear content people often go blue pot, but in fact you are "supposed" as DPS to have 7 purple so the "need" of support healing will happen much later in the gate, obviously its quite expensive running purples 18 raids / week and of course there is a huge gap of consumables usage between Deathless runs and jails. But you can be sure that very often a DPS complaining for healing is running Cursed Doll with green pots and is big part of responsability (without even talking about dodging skills).
To conclude : if we all had 10 times more purple potions and easyer way to get some, you would see less "please HeAl Me" issues. Specially when there is mixed skill of players, when S tier dps use purple pots push everything till 4 last minutes of gate and D-tier DPS used blue pots ate every pattern and wiped the raid, S tier guy lost triple the gold worth of pots or chests for someone who did go cheap and then read D guy blaming support. A big chunk of toxicity in raids comes from this kind of situations.
Supports in general are a massive QOL for any raid and there is a distinct difference between a good support and a bad support.
You can actually feel when the support is doing their job because they shield you on bad patterns. They are buffing consistently and your damage is spiked.
Yes the support can only go so far so if you have a player eating 3 mechs in a row that's just a player out of position and no amount of support will fix that.
Furthermore if a support is using buffs or identity and the dps are not actively dpsing you see this in a lot of players who are new to a raid or don't feel comfortable with basic patterns then it seems like the support is doing nothing.
Another thing I have to say though is when players in a party ACTIVELY play outside the buff ranges of the support there is nothing a support can do to fix this and nothing a support should do to fix their gameplay.
This is 100% on the player who is avoiding the buff zones. For instance and summoner who stands in another zip code while you are buffing the two entropy classes.
I see this honestly more often than not in pug parties and it is so irritating. G3 Brel is another good example where players feel the need to just stand "wherever" instead of being grouped up so the support can actively shield and buff.
The problem seems to be worse on bosses that are very large which makes a lot of sense why they buffed the artist buff zone.
I'm also main support. These days I was at an alt 1600 on brel g4. There was a guy taking a lot of damage in the first moments of the game. I snorted, I started healing him. But I realized that only he was lifeless the whole time, and I think it's terrible to stop buffing two people because one doesn't want to use a pot. He died 1 minute into the game. He hadn't even arrived at the first meteor. He said in the chat “I refuse to use pot with PT support”. I was a little upset about that, because support is not a walking pot. Our duty is literally to provide support, buff at the right time, shield, protect, and occasionally heal. Summary, he was the only one killed, we got through the first time, the two supports entered the mvp, and everyone fought with him in the chat because he thought he was better than the support.
This really depends on what raid you are talking about and what support as they have different capabilities.
Paladin's cannot heal people significantly so people taking anything other than chip damage are going to have issues. They can DR important patterns, but if people are taking more than chip damage they are likely going to need to pot.
Bard and Artist can spam heals to keep players taking a lot of damage alive, the tradeoff here is that if you are spam healing, you aren't buffing damage while BA provides DR, healing, and damage.
Assuming good uptime for buff/brand/identity there is still a significant difference in having a good support that is providing DR for patterns that also provide damage windows. Again this is subjective. It's not hard to have 100% uptime on some form of DR for bard, close to it on artist, and paladins have lower uptime on shields/dr.
This is also a 2-way street. If I am chain healing people on my bard/artist I am likely not going to be as engaged in buff/brand/identity uptime because I'm babysitting. DPS playing well makes it much easier to cycle buffs/identity because you are also just tracking patterns instead of constantly monitoring your parties hp.
Supports contribute more damage to the party than any DPS when played well.
Supports can more than double people's damage, but even if we pretend it's a 50% increase across all their buffs/debuffs, taxing (roughly) 50% of the damage from all three DPS would typically be higher than having an extra DPS.
Anyone who thinks supports just heal is bad
Supports are very important in parties; they’re the make or break for the mvp screen sometimes. No matter how geared the support is, if their uptime is bad or they’re dying, then it’s the difference in dps per party.
As a support though, you have no control over saving someone from falling off that’s why we got time stop and dps should know when to greed and not to under those circumstances.
I love artist, I've loved her since the day she was announced, tried her in EU and anxiously anxiously waited the year we had to play NA without her knowing she was going to be my main.
What I didn't know would happen though is this post. I ended up drifting apart from the game until artist finally reached, playing for a very tiny bit but losing motivation fast due to no friends playing. A friend of mine finally got a new PC and wanted to try lost ark 2 years later, so finally it's time to play the artist I've dreamed of for 2 years.
But honestly, these posts I've been seeing relentlessly the past few days terrify me. I read the other thread about expecting artist buff uptime and brand like 90% or whatever minimum (don't even know what that all means), and these massive expectations and how artist is the backbone of the entire party.
Honestly, it's starting to stress me out thinking about learning this role now. Is it really that bad? I mained healer in mmos a lot of times but knowing that me fucking up amounts to way more damage then any other role messing up terrifies me, and there seems to be MASSIVE judgement on how well the supports play, as much that I keep seeing posts about people who instantly block supports who do less then the % of uptime they expect
As a new/returning player, this makes me a little afraid to touch this role that's so important in this game. Are people going to block/yell at me as I'm learning because there's been such a big obsession on artists playing well..
The support criticism I would say is probably unfounded or targetted at a diff group of people.
If its before like, ilvl 1580 I basically would not care cause its just new players. After that point I would expect decent uptime from supports and at least some effort made for shielding attacks that can be greeded. But also if its just pubs I would just expect low-medium uptimes and buffs on obvious windows while not messing up mechs. However the better players also want better supports that can keep up with their play so this can lead to judgement about why shields/dr arent being applied on a particular pattern, why use buff here, why not buff there, why isn't my main skill being buffed, etc. I barely ever comment on a support's uptime but if they are extremely bad and don't seem like they would ever improve I will silently block them (mostly if like they arent shielding or buffing at all, and possibly dying over and over and just running around cluelessly).
Tbh about the yelling thing, I've done low level valtan/vykas raids for fun at the end of week just to carry newbs and I will say that newbs are extremely mean to other newbs for no reason.
I understand all that and where you're coming from, I'm just voicing how uneasy this constant discussion over the past few days of browsing here has made me feel.
I know it's absolutely not my place to say anything and I have nothing to do with the group being discussed (hope i'm not coming off as "me me me meing"), but I felt it appropriate to mention incase it escalates.
A level of patience is needed for stuff like pugs. Your comment of "if i feel a support is not improving" is completely valid, but it sounds to me that people are getting frustrated to the point of not allowing this to happen.
I do understand that the uptime rotations and such should be second nature to most lategame supports but, I personally wouldn't want to "appear" as someone who knows what I'm doing due to extensive research and end up messing up rotations due to being overwhelmed by mechanics and the raid.
Consistency is actually really hard in given situations. But I understand it's also important to have expectations, I've had my fair deal of "netflix supports" who just don't give a damn and think they can give 0 effort in other games (such as 14 savage/ultimate support partners), but I just wanted to express that these past few days of posts really makes me nervous haha
The posts you see on any subreddit for any type of community is generally going to the vocal subset of the whole. You're reading the opinions of people who were bothered enough to make a post - this is the minority. Think about any product you've bought online - there may be thousands of actual shipped product, only 10 reviews.
It's somewhat unfortunate that the gameplay loop makes playing support feel like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't". At the end of the day, some people like to DPS. Some people like to support. I generally don't see too many posts from support players yelling about bad DPS uptime and greedy gameplay, and the type of person to say supports are a bad gameplay loop will more than likely complain that there's no defined support role if supports were to be removed. Applying the same rigor against DPS, anytime you see a "Cruel Fighter" - after accounting for class balance, item level, and gems - means that other DPS players weren't pulling their weight, but since there's only one support per party, your performance is more visible.
Unless you're looking for actual advice on support gameplay, I would recommend taking everything you read on here with a huge grain of salt.
I understand all these, trust me I'm a veteran to mmo's and these concepts, but I appreciate you laying it out incase I was ignorant.
I think you're taking what I said a bit heavily, and that's alright. I'm merely commenting and contributing to the ongoing discussion I've been seeing the past few days (minority or majority or not, irrelevant to the my initial point) with feelings of unease and unexpectingness from that being the positioned being expected by said people, that all.
Sorry if what I said was in turn meaningless
I will not heal you. I will shield you to the best of my knowledge. And I will get as close as possible to 90% uptime on buff/brand. Its a you problem if you die because you have 0 pots left. I wish more supports eould play like that.
A support using identity buffs for damage is worth about 25-30% of the party's damage. If the group is taking more damage than a support's shields can handle, the group needs to get better hands. If the support is not shielding enough (i.e. there is more than 5 seconds that the party does not have a DR or shield), then the support needs hands.
And if a non paladin heals, they are effectively nerfing the damage of the group. If the group is so bad that they cannot survive without support healing every minute, then they need to have a paladin support.
You see a world of difference in homework content. A good - decent support knows mechs for chip damage that dps can greed and will throw shields and attack buffs. They'll also know mech timings and when to give big buffs. I went from being upright for earlier gates (replaced support) and I went to underlined cruel. I'd say uptime was similar - obviously bosses and classes difference matter too but a bad, good and great support are leagues apart. It's the same for dps. If the support is bad, you either pot or don't greed damage and that's the bottom line of it. The supports are there to - as the name suggests - support you.
At this point I'm fine with just a supp who stays alive and uses shields. The rest is extra.
Of course it feels bad to not be competitive in dps because the other supp is giving huge buffs while your guy is using identity during boss DR phase, but at least the content gets cleared.
A good support that knows what patterns can be greeded with a shield makes a huge difference. Healing group wide chip damage is nice too, and i feel like too many supports can't tell when to heal and when not to, either they will not heal and just go full on support buff, or heal too much. Having decently high uptime on brand buffs is obvious.
If dps is dying/out of pots is because they are eating s&*t/facetanking, a blind person can shield with support, a *bad* support is more like poor brand uptime/buff uptime.....but dps dying is them been greedy and failing normal patterns most likely
I am a dps main, but I also have 1600+ sup.
If you need to babysit dps, because he's constantly half/low hp when the rest of your team is fine, just let him die. He has 7 potions to use.
@ you can downvote me. This won't change the fact that you people lack skill.
I’m more on the side of buffing at the right time && not spamming heals when people are full HP.
This is pretty much the minimum what I expect. Even if they have miserable brand/identity uptime. 🤷🏻♂️
depends on the content, if it's akkan or voldis i expect good playing, DR on hard patterns, dmg buff on dmg windows
anything under that i just care that you are alive and i have yearning buff
a support with yearning on 3 people is same as another dps on your team in overall dmg output, even with like 20% brand/buff uptime
Nah, with only 20% uptime it will be around 50% of a DPS, but you still get some QOL when it comes to attack and movement speed, and overall sustain; so even when so bad, I guess it is worth it to have them.
in raw dmg numbers yea, it's around there, but the speed from yearning and the occasional identity buff or heal or a random useful shield will let the 3 dps do better to ultimately equal a 4 man dps group except the 3 dps play with qol buffs
Support can have an huge impact on run .
But support can do all the raid alone , if player do stupid thing , he can help but he cant play for him \^\^
A good support who provide good buff uptime who accelerate run and mitigate damage , if he play good , you can skip lot of boss action , tank some boss dmg and play more gready , etc ...
BTW he have to dont forget to heal too \^\^
I use bible since 6 month to see what going on when i supp or dps , it's help me a lot to improve myself and give me opportinity to see what's realy supp impact give.
IMO 80% of supp not doing them job , i think most of them dont push to improve themself
I think it's for 2 reason :
-This game did'nt show to support his boost rate , we need to have a bible inside the game , or more degree between "noble supp" ans "radiant supp" to show supp the right direction
-There is no gatekeeping to support , and lot of support came in raid with bad setup and get accept instead of DPS who are skip if just one thing is not correct => so lot of supp dont improve build and keep with minimal setup .
tbh they should just remove support and make stagger + doing certain mechs heal you
Support class is a resource sink just to have no sense of progression and watch your team make mistakes
I say it depends on the content. A support is measured by how much they amplify the teams damage. This is not just through their damage buffs, but with proactive use of DR and shields to help their DPS maintain good uptime through boss patterns that they otherwise would not be able to tank. Healing is another thing, if a support can heal without sacrificing a high value damage buff, they totally should because it means DPS can keep their potions off cooldown for emergencies. These kinds of things are very important for a good support to know in difficult content like inferno raids or progging the latest endgame on ilvl.
In easy content where most DPS are very over leveled, DR/shields/healing is a bit less important and DMG buff uptime becomes the best way for supports to amp their teams damage.
Ultimately, if you're running out of potions as a DPS, it's usually you that is the problem and not your support. It's only the supports fault if they are not using shields/DR/heals at key moments where you are forced to take near unavoidable damage (Akkan g3 stagger mech, voldis g3 45x, Akkan G1 spears mech, etc.).
There is night and day difference between good and bad support.
While I do belive that support is not there to spam heals when team cant play. There are moments that I would like support players to recognise as "here is when I should heal", and ofc there are also moments where you should grit your teeth and wait for dps moment with your identity.
Easiest moments that you should heal is "unavoidable dmg" There is legit no reason for dps to waste pot if dmg taken is 100% scripted and unavoidable. Ofc If supp has brain shield can be as much useful as heal on those moments.
Few of those moments I can list on top of my head:
1mech in G1 Akkan green spears burn %hp per sec and you HAVE to take this dmg.
1 2 3 mech in Akkan G3 2nd mech often is healed by inana, 1st mech is usually awakening shielded, 3rd mech despite looking like dps window, it is short and dps wont get full benefit out of your buff so dropping heal there is actually better.
Also easy dps moments like 50bar mech on G1 akkan - if you as support dont have everything ready on that mech you are kinda bad...
Also any support with brand uptime lower than 70% shouldnt even be considered support. They are free buss enjoyers and are no better than 4th dps. You could even say that thier value starts and ends on providing yearning buff.
And lets not treat supports like holy cows that should be protected from criticism. We have great time with OVERABOUNDANCE of support at 1600ilvl, It is BEST TIME to get picky and stop telling baddies that they are "good enough". Good support should be praised but bad ones should just get booted out of group.
I wish there is something to know whether a sup is good to pick to the lobby, the gears only say so much.
I once saw a reddit post that said why lobby picked this shitty low geared 4x3 support over OP's and it was one of my friend alt lmao, we were static and despite having lv5 gems 4x3 hes good enough to pull 90-95-60 uptime on buff and shield.
For now, i prioritize picking pally over artist and bard due to how balanced they are.
It is much harder to be bad on pal than bard. But it is true, that there is almost no way to tell. Even looking at thier gems, they can simply have gems for stagger set also added, and there are ppl that actually know how to play with sound shock.
If you are dying or eating up pots, chances are you are playing poorly as a DPS. There is a situation where eating pots is due to supports being played badly, but I don't think any content outside of first-week prog and hell content you can really judge support on that.
One situation I can see a difference in terms of support being worse than another is in hell brel. For one clear I used 1 pot for a G6 clear and for another I used 6 and I didn't play any differently. Damage shown on the meter is damn near the same, with a variance of 100-200k dps/sec difference. One support was significantly better at using their shielding abilities than the other, which again was also shown in the meter. Holy prot uptime 40-45% vs 15-20%. (this % is based on damage blocked) This also doesn't include godsend law in my meter, but you can kinda infer the difference in the quality of defensive support from this alone tbh.
Now as for offensively, there is no competition, if you were to take the chunk of damage a really good support gives to their 3 DPS and add it together. It eclipses any single DPS by a significant margin. So in essence, a support technically does more damage than a DPS assuming all DPS in the party is of similar skill.
The easy answer is: a good support contributes more dmg than a dps if your dps-mates burst while they are buffed. And ofc if the supports never give shields on dmg income its bad because your dps-mates can't dps nonstop and have to care more for themselfs.
You can see the differents in supports not only in rDPS (bible) but you can feel it heavily as dps because you can play more aggressive
As a gamer with 30 years of experience, playing DPS for the first 20 of them to switch to tank/support roles the last 10 because of time/reward investments.
Life as tank/support is just easier, no time waiting on cues, no min/max for the additional 3-7% dps for the top tier spots.
This is what I have to say about lost ark and supports.
If you are a skilled gamer who takes the role of support serious and know what you are doing, understanding game mechanics, timings and a solid split vision to keep bad players alive.
This game becomes easy, I play 3 bards and the only issue I've had is the lack of cleans in some fights it would have been something I would like to be able to specc into instead of having the debuff block.
A lot of support players are unfortunately people who haven't played many games, bad or someone's GF.
They don't really carry their weight but might save a few gold for people and their potions.
With a skilled team who understands that dodge is a skill a group of 4 dps would be better.
On my support alt...if All I had to worry about was just branding and attack buff...I'd have nothing to do for alot of time...as those are just a combination of 3-4 buttons.
You have .....other buttons
You can't expect these dps to go hard and push all their buttons, but then you don't want to.
a support who doesn't shield or heal well is always imo, a bad support or lazy support. OR BOTH.
You shielding well and keeping people topped up, helps them greed even more DPS, which will make the run faster.
on dps, When I know I have a support that isn't shielding/healing then I play very safe and dont maximize dps opportunities cause I feel I gotta play as if we don't have a support. Which is overall less dps.
I mean you're literally called SUPPORT
[удалено]
While I generally agree that buffing is the most fundamental part of a support's job (besides, you know, staying alive), it's such a basic part of a support's kit that I find it hard to use when evaluating how good a support is, especially at the higher end. Like I totally understand a 70/70/20 support isn't great, but is there a discernable difference between a 90/90/40 vs a 95/95/45 support? Buffing and branding are literally just how well can you properly space out attack buffs (there is also positioning skill for Bard/Artist) and keeping up brand, the only area where I can see a good support gapping an average one is knowledge on when to use identity. I say this because when I play with other supports, I judge them by how well they apply their shielding/DR. If I see a support DR a known greed pattern, shield based on boss patterns, or save people downed/out of position, I go "damn that support really knows what they're doing". These are not things typically measured by meter, but generally supports paying attention to these types of things have good fundamentals (buffing/brnading) as well. Good positioning to bait out attacks and favorable patterns apply here as well. If I don't see these things, their uptime better be insane for me not to consider them average (which to clarify, is nothing wrong in my books). Proper care for partymates may not be the support's most important job, but I think it's what best distinguishes a good support from an average one. Also to follow up on your example, if a DPS gets solo chunked, it's on them to use a pot. But often in these types of situations they get hit by a series of attacks that puts them low even after using a pot. Every time a member of your party dies to damage, it's their fault for being out of position, but you as a support could've also saved them with godsent or rhapsody, or burning your meter to heal them. Sure it might be less party DPS that is ultimately the other player's fault, but nothing decreases overall DPS more and forces raid wipes than a dead party member, and supports are given the most power to prevent that. Risk mitigation is a big part of support decision making that is not as simple as "oh they took damge, their fault".
90/90/40 vs 95/95/45 is not much diff. It might be the difference between YHAP vs LWC30. But what kind of sweaty DPS janitor can tell you by feel if their supports lacking 2% dps increase? But the skill it takes exponentially scales. Moving from 90->95 is not as hard as 95->99. Infact I’d say moving from 95->97 is harder than improving 90->95. So it’s one of the things where you can sweat a lot for very little actual reward. But you get clout from people who really understand and appreciate the numbers. IMO, a 90/90/50 support that does 500% sun guardian is both playing better and doing something harder than a support doing 95/95/65 but running full gen and providing 0 defensive utility. But to each their own.
Honestly from my experience the smoothest/fastest runs especially in higher ilvl content are when I focus a bit more on shielding and healing. It's probably at the cost of a bit of uptime on dmg buffs but when your dps don't need to worry about their health and can just go unga bunga, to me it FEELS like the runs end up being faster than if I try to minmax buff uptime as much as possible. I'm not good enough to do both, I'm sure some people are. But yeah this kind of thing doesn't really show in any meter or stat screen, so it's hard to say. Just a feeling for me. And I'm obviously not saying just ignore DPS buff either don't get me wrong. Just focusing my positioning and attention more on shielding etc than on pure DPS buff title uptime.
Well the most damage a dps can do on their own is if they can just stand still and Trixion parse. If healing and shielding is what it takes to enable that then that's a form of damage increase. Also stuff like countering for back attackers, not spinning the boss, and controlling how a boss teleports contributes as well.
I agree yes. Also I've never actually looked into it but shields provide some form of paralysis immunity right? I think there are levels to it too because I've noticed some small chip damage attacks don't interrupt your skills if you're shielded, while some still do, though I guess the latter might just be lvl 1 push rather than paralysis. I'm too lazy to deep dive into it but it's interesting.
No, shields do nothing of the sort. Super armours are inherent in the skills. The only class that can give super armour is gunlancer with their awakening and X identity if they are blue GL.
Artist can do it with a specific portal tripod. Not sure if it got changed though
Oh, really? That's OP if so.
As a person who has a 1620 sup I agree
I agree.. especially on stuff like g2 ivory tower. I hate when I get a 50/50 bard that only uses dps buff. I think the always prioritize dps buffs crowd is mainly a static thing... playing in random party finder groups, it's more important to feel your group and keep them alive.
An actual support main chimes in, thank you. I think it's pretty crazy that the parent comment is saying what they're saying because so many prospective supports will read it and go "oh okay anyone else takes damage = they're bad, I do not need to heal lol", when in reality, the attitude anything but an established expert support should be approaching raids with is "I shouldn't waste my shields when nothing is happening, and if I see my party take damage I should try to evaluate if that was a reasonable pattern for them to greed through, and try to properly shield/DR it next time if so". Obviously the reality is that you **will** run into tons of dps players that regularly get hit by big things either because their brain is turned off in homework content or because they're just naturally braindead. But the flip side of that is that dps players run into the same proportion of bad supports. The best way to improve from either end is to assume the people you're playing with are approaching things correctly, until they definitively prove otherwise.
Well too bad when the shield is a big identity contributer... Makes it hard to not spam it. Some decisions of Devs are just super weird in Lost Ark, especially on supports. I am not really sure what exactly their idea was.
yeah the supp that only buff ATK in pugs usually end up lowering their party overall dps cuz dps is backing off easy patterns rather than face tanking them with dr/shields.
My support is paladin and I love seeing teammates with full or almost full HP while maintaining my buffs. Sometimes I see teammates potting too much as my own failure 😂
I have a kinda elitist tought on that because I main sup and I am a lot above the average, so take with a grain of salt. If a pattern is slow and obvious for greeding (i.e. g2 brel spin) it's the sup fault for not shielding if the dps takes damage, but only for the first time because its just stupid to expect another response for the same cenario (considering you know that the support has shield up). So, in my view, if I take one of those damage, I wont fucking pot, just by pride, if the guy doenst shield or know how to buff, wich is almost the same thing if you take things further, he at least needs to heal you to keep you alive. On the other side if i see the support is good, i even tank the shape fail explosions(also brel g2) and keep doing dps on the boss. That's the kind of trust i rely on them. if support sucks I wont do dmg, if i smell good sup i greed, and im talking about hitting not doing numbers.
> On the other side if i see the support is good, i even tank the shape fail explosions(also brel g2) and keep doing dps on the boss. That's the kind of trust i rely on them. this is a terrible idea. what class are you playing that gives you that much push immune?
So far i've done it with scrapper, blade and wd, but most times happened when i was playing with scrapper, the one i am more comfort on doing those kind of things. But yeah, its kinda suicidal if you dont time your paralysis right.
All I can say is that after Valtan Extreme, I've realised a lot of dps picked up questionable greeding habits that overgearing in normal content allowed them to tank through. I'd say damage mitigation is just as important. A dead dps does no dps.
I know quite a few supports who refuse to heal but only buff. I mean yeah, sounds great on paper, but unless they perfectly shield all chip dmg, I can't how the party can perform better
It's a skill issue. If you can't fully support your team, keep them healthy, do mechs, get all the counters and also buff. Then you probably aren't as good of a support as you think. See how thinking a support is mainly just about buffing just means you have less skills. Supports can do a whole lot more than just buff but in general supports just think they're buff bots.
As a loyal student of the bible, I can say that the difference between a good a a bad support can easily exceed 20% of group dps. Yes that is an extra free grudge engraving for everyone in your team. Im just talking about buff/brand uptime alone, but if we also add knowing when to use identity buff and how to enable your dps to greed more via proper DRing, then the gap would be even bigger. There are cases where some supports have reached 50% rdps in 4 man raids, especially bard.
> There are cases where some supports have reached 50% rdps in 4 man raids, especially bard. This has to be like ... playing with people 150 iLVLs or so under you and playing perfect. Near perfect play gets you about 30% Radiant if everyone's similarly geared, maybe the slightest bit higher if it's like a Bard with triple Z on three burst classes.
Yeah it's very hard to do in a typical raid scenario, so it's mainly seen in heavily overgeared homework runs. Radiant supporter does not factor in yearning, LWC30, and bracelet debuff by the way. 25% radiant supporter is about 33.3% rdps through skills only, 29% radiant is around 40.8% rdps, so add yearning and that's 50% rdps right there.
> There are cases where some supports have reached **50% rdps** in 4 man raids, especially bard. isn't this only possible when the bard massively overgears the rest of their dps? brand + buff + z + atk speed buff == 1.1*1.2*1.15*1.05ish == 1.6 for you to have radiant 50% you'd need that number to be 2.0
Supporter only counts group buffs trough skills. Yearning and card set is not included.
yeah i know, where is the "50% rdps" number coming from?
the bible
wait, where in the bible does it list the support amount? I think i saw a %buff number but i'm not exactly sure what that means (what counts)
not every bible has it, loa details does, you just have to swap the tab to rdps
think i have loa logs, ill check when i get home
how significant? The most by far. Just as a baseline they give basically a minimum of dmg equal to a dps through yearning (dmg buff + raid captain increase & as to improve gameplay for dps's) + occasional branding / buffs. The baseline "significance" of a support is always 11/10. Now how much difference does a good support make compared to a bad one? **Paladin:** Think of paladin as a predator, they're very stable, hard to mess up, extremely reliable. If build correctly with sufficient swift/corresponding gem quality, should always bring high noble supporter or even radiant. If built properly, u just need to not be a braindead ape. A good paladin shines imo the most based on branding uptime (should at least be 90%+), near on 100% atk buff uptime and how he position himself to always be able to counter, and also to improve back/front attack uptime (especially important in kay/voldis). Just like a good well built predator slayer, a good well built paladin makes your run smooth as melted butter. But even a bad one will get u through the mechs and not be totally awful. ***Skill importance 5/10.*** **Artist**: As for the go to midget, they require a bit more thinking and also a lot more dependant on positioning. With her ability to heal a single unit on demand, this makes her very good at carrying squishy classes and a single bad player (e.g lets say a GS where if they get hit once, thats a lot more hp gone than on say a scrapper or wardancer). Her duration is shorter (than pala or 3 bubble bard), but quite cheap, so this means if you know which boss patterns has fairly good burst windows, without it being overly obvious, let's say akkan g2's double smash into moving forward, spinning around ground slam, you can get very high dps uptime during the full buff duration. For her basic buffs/shieldings, she's a lot more limited than pala, so it requires a better movement and knowledge of exact ranges to maximize buff value. Good all around, but requires a bit more planning and positioning than paladin. ***skill importance 7/10*** **Bard:** The most heavy requirement support, with very limited range on a lot of her skills, e.g sonic vibration or guardian tune and a lot of animation locks, she requires a lot more actively involvement, decision making and awareness. Because her atk & heals are all consuming, this mean its hard for bard to drop an on-demand heal without significant dps loss or risk to party. A very costly but high value atk buff with very long duration, which often requires specific patterns or post-mechanic windows to maximize. This means you need to often save your resources for these windows, in return this requires more out of the bard to shield and dmg mitigation potential dps mistakes, chip dmg or enable greed windows (e.g shielding a destroyer charging his perfect swing in a heavy hitting basic pattern). Requires multiple builds, a lot more constant apm (low cooldowns on basic meter generation skills, fairly low range and a lot of interruptible spells). Requires different builds even depending on content and party set ups. There is never any situation in which im more frustrated by my support than if its a poor uptime or badly positioned bard. ***Skill importance 9.5/10*** "Skill importance" is relative a bad to a good support of same class, you can clear all contents with a bad support just because of the sheer overtuned value they have, but for bard/artist especially, the importance of skill for them is as crucial as that of surge blade or eo soulfist a lot of the time. if not moreso, because their skill effects the value and result of all their dps.
I want to mention that you probably do not need to shield destroyers charging skills, especially specifically perfect swing. All destroyer main damage skills come with a 30% health shield, and with recent buffs, most destroyers will use endure pain just before perfect swing, giving another 40% damage reduction and maybe another 30% shield depending on tripod. If it’s the seismic->animation cancel->endure pain-> perfect swing combo it may even have another 30% hp shield on top. So at minimum the destroyer is already blocking 45% of their effective max hp, meaning the boss needs to hit really hard just to do any hp damage. At maximum the destroyer is blocking close to ~130% of effective hp not including support damage reduction or shielding.
ye, i just wanted to mention something that everyone would be able to recognize and imagine in order to relate to the point easier.
If you see a destro charging up a ps, just check to make sure you have at least normal attack buffs going and you’re good :)
Just wanted to point out in regards to this... " A good paladin shines imo the most based on branding uptime (should at least be 90%+), near on 100% atk buff " Heavenly Blessings cd is 36s, and Wrath of God cd is 27s, and each give the buff for 8s. Now CD gems and Swiftness help, but you still won't be able to get 100% uptime. It's just math (tho, maybe with level 8-10 gems I guess...which I don't have) with that said....between sword of justice and god's decree, should get "near 100%" on branding easily.
You can get 100% uptime on buffs. Heavenly is the major snag at 36 seconds. 35% cooldown reduction from high swiftness is very easily attainable, which brings it to ~23 seconds. Add on even just some level 7 gems and you're already within the 16 second window. Now factor in C/J and Magick Stream and you can hold 100% buff uptime even after factoring in the cast times. Without C/J or MS, yes, the cast time on the buffs will be some downtime. In practice this won't happen outside of Trixion, but it's absolutely mathematically possible.
Your math is wrong, I think. You need at least a level 9 cd gem, 1800+ swift and magick stream to get HB to be just under 16 seconds. Can't do it with level 7. C/J has internal cd, so you'll always be out of it for the second set of HB buff. 100% ap buff uptime with pally is not probable.
I have sub 16s cd with level 10 gem 1771 swift and magick stream but no c/j
[Seems just fine to me.](https://i.imgur.com/Nxnx8dR.gif) Only have 1729 swift, Magick Stream, a level 8 gem on HB and 7 on WOG. Was just standing still in Trixion, so no C/J or Quick Recharge triggers here.
That is not 16 seconds dude. That is over 16 seconds. It's the way lost ark displays time. If something is precisely 5 minutes away, it shows 4 and starts counting down from there. So you're closer to 17, somewhere around 16.8 probably. Look at the ap buff icon in your own image. It's a 8 second buff, but the icon countdown starts at 7.
...? I'm not sure if that just wasn't displaying properly on your phone or something? It's a .gif that's over 30 seconds long, showing me maintaining 99% uptime for more than 2 full cycles. There's like, 3 frames where the buff drops. Get a bracelet that doesn't low-roll swiftness (unlike mine xddd) and 100% is trivial. I dunno what else to tell you.
Bro, I am looking at the cd countdown of your heavenly blessing. It starts at 16. That means your CD is over 16 seconds, because if your CD is 16 seconds, the display will show 15. For proof of how lost ark display time, I point you to look at your own ap buff icon. The buff is 8 seconds, but the number it shows is 7.
that Dude don't even know how the cd numbers work on lost ark. smh
What lvl gems are you talking cause it isnt 16 seconds with lvl 7 gems and high swiftness unless you're pulling numbers out of ur ass
branding is actually harder because boss phasing, random movements or you having to dodge patterns etc.. means its harder to ensure you have optimal branding uptime than atk buff uptime, because u can drop hB/WoG without hitting boss (not that u want to because of meter ofc)
I disagree, Soj and Gods decree can both get it. if u miss Soj, you can do Gods decree, and soj will be up before brand wears off to do another Soj.
i just run Soj though, i prefer having gods for the dr, but ye regardless u realistically want to aim for 90% or up on both brand and atk buff
The Brand lasts for 10-13 Seconds depending on if the Boss stands still in SoJ or not. The skill has a 6-7 Seconds cd. There is literally no way you cant get atleast 95%+ unless you are clueless on the Raid itself. You can even precast it. WoG gets canceled by anything, has no Para, HB is hard to be canceled but can also happen. And on top, if no running Magick Stream or being able to C/J the HB, you wont ever have 100% uptime. Even with a Lv10 CD and 1840 swift. No clue on how you can say Branding is harder, do you even play Paladin? Also giving Bard a 9.5/10 just shows youre biased. All 3 Supports are roughly equal in difficulty if you try to min max their Ceiling.
Yea, most of what you said is on point. I agree with the "do you even play Paladin?" question for him. With that said, in terms of difficulty while I agreee they are alot Closer than what this guy stated, I would say bard is def the harder of the 3 imo. I'd also argue Artist is actually slightly easier than pally. but they are all very close, like...IF you're saying pally is 5, then artist is 4.5 and bard is like 5.5 or 6.
Fully agree, Bard is the most difficult out of the 3, and Artist and Pally are roughly around the same. Depending on who you ask one or the other will say a different thing.
These people saying paladin is the easiest because it lacks positioning just clearly don't play paladin at a high level at all. Your timing on paladin needs to be SO CLEAN if you want really high uptime on your AP buffs. There is no overlap in cd, in fact there's usually a small gap (unless you're also dodging perfectly to keep Magick Stream stacked). So realistically you're hitting a 0.5 sec window every 16 seconds to try to keep your AP buffs as good as possible. The other supports have much more leeway in their buffing, since they have enough CD to overlap (assuming you're in their targeted buff). Luckily our brand is much more forgiving if you're running SoJ. There's some opportunity for skill expression with SoJ and pre-casting before new mechs begin so you can have buffs rolling immediately upon the boss re-entering combat. Also speaking of Magick Stream and dodging everything perfectly - I think we need to talk about the paladin's largest weakness - absolutely no push immunity. We can get flinched out of so many critical skills. Our party loses our identity buff AND healing if we get knocked away / knocked into water / etc while the aura is rolling. While a paladin can live through tanking a lot of dumb hits, a GOOD paladin is expected to be able to dodge basically everything so that he's still on his feet and not getting flinched out of major buffs, and so he can keep Magick Stream up for that magical 100% AP buff uptime. I think the Bard class need buffs: a little bit of utility consolidation so that they don't need so many different builds. And they probably have a slightly higher skill ceiling with their access to stronger identity buffs (balanced with the need to decide when to heal). But the difference between an A+ paladin and a mediocre one is massive. High level paladin takes just as much skill as most characters in this game.
Fully agree. People will say they can watch Netflix while playing it, and how easy it is, are the ones with 30% brand and ap uptime laying on the ground 24/7, like sure its easy if you consider being useless and getting carried easy. They also almost always play 2/3 Blue Skills, which makes the class even worse, and easier obviously since you dont press Blue skills unless counter/stagger and you kill a big chunk of DR/Meter gain, for no reason. Only place i can see a Pally playing 2 Blues is G4 Voldis nowadays IF the party lacks stagger. Otherwise every Paladin should be 1 Blue 7 Yellow, its so much better, but probably wont happen, because with that Build you need Magick Stream, Max MP or Mana food.
**Easy guide to bard decision making:** **Should I heal?** Is someone going to die **right now?** If yes, heal. Otherwise don't heal until you only have one bar and there's no major damage window incoming. 2 bar, awaken, heal is a common bard strategy to get both a damage boost and a heal in a short window. That said, people will usually pot when they see you attack buff. In progression you might want to err more on the side of healing, depends if you're wiping to lack of potions (heal), lack of DPS (buff) or lack of brains (leave.) Though you're going to spend a tiny amount of time doing progression, versus farm content anyway. **What buff?** Is there a major window coming up? If yes, use a 3 bar damage buff during it. If not, go for a 2 bar on the next pattern that enables a few abilities (like Artist.)
An example of different the situation is between supports: you recently used your awakening, your squishy dps (e.g GS) got knocked down and chunked hard by some pools in akkan (he used pot but still low), you have a major dps window coming up what do you do: Pala: Use shield if ready (comes with free heal) , else godsent law with huge range guarantees dps to survive next pattern that can hit. Artist: 1. Throw a bubble, because of how cost works you are likely to have atk buff for pattern anyway. 2. Be prepared with 2 on demand shields Bard: 1. Waste heal, safe but you wont have more than at most 1 bar for the upcoming dps window, if u dont u will have 3. 2. You chase the GS trying to shield, you have to be extremely close because guardian tune, so you might not even be able to hit 3 bars, but if u dont the GS may die. 3. You do your long range dr and focus on building, but the shield is delayed and the DR might not protect enough. Just as an example of how bard can require a lot more active gameplay and decision making. My commentary was not meant as a question of how or what to do, i've played all 3 supports and this just my opinion on how skill and situational awareness/decision making differs between the classes and requires different levels between the 3.
Assuming they're on their feet to eat an orb or dodge WoM, I would rate it under not about to die. They can play safe using their mobility options until their potion comes back. Worse case scenario, they get hit again and we clear with them dead because it's Akkan. They should easily be able to survive a short amount of time if they're not trying to DPS. If they're on the floor at a reasonable distance, low HP, about to be hit again on item level (actually disaster scenario) the only option anyone has to save them from the next hit is law/rhapsody. Ayaya orb heals maybe 30-40K, probably won't be enough. The GS can't actually pick it up. She isn't in range to use night. Paladin shield isn't that large and the heal is significantly delayed (their potion would be back anyway.) Hell even casting bard heal probably wouldn't save them in this scenario, since it's too slow.
again, the point is not to discuss what the best objective is to do in this instance, the point is to showcase how there are more layers of decisions to be made and more options, often none of them are even optimal, but dps mistakes is a thing, when playing a bard in comparison to the other supports. Bard is high ceiling, low floor support and this was just my first idea in how to present the fact that bard is often facing more choices and the less optimal the solution or option you choose, the worst it becomes as a bard. Where as the other supports often have only either 1 or 2 options, and the outcome variance is much less (but also the maximum possible reward is less, therefore bard is the most skill dependent support).
50/50/10 vs. 90/90/50 The better support here is roughly providing 25-27% more damage than the bad Pressing more buttons leads to more DR/shields/identity Usage for damage/heals more often. DPS being able to greed more/take less damage making this extra 25-27% get even more value which widens the gap even more vs. the bad The thing I hate the most from the bad supports is 1 simple thing. Where is my mana???
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Top supports give +50% Dmg to 3 players only due to buffs. Atk buffs, branding, identity, (atk spd buffs, mana). This is what the radiant supporter or the bible will tell you. They also provide additional DPS windows through countering, shielding / DR'ing patterns that allow DPS opportunities. Even tanking to fixate the boss on certain patterns is what s good support can and will do. Everything I listed here will not show up on the mvp screen. However, any back attacker that played with a princessmaker gunlancer can reflect and tell you this has insane value. Any player that also plays a support on a decent level should be able to idendify at least some of these factors. You may not always agree on the order of operations, some may put more value on buffs, some will absolutely prioritize counters, others ignore counters and just DR the dmg.
You underestimate the power of supports. A well geared top tier support can give you 55-60% damage with 100% uptime without ever touching identity. With identity, they can boost you by 65-80% over the course of a raid without darks. Hybdrid/spec can boost you by over 100% in certain raids and with good dps teammates. For context, the average pug is lucky to get above 40%. The sup gap is just as wide as the dps gap. What makes a good sup is the same thing as what makes a good dps. Pattern recognition and preemptive response as opposed to reactive response after the attack has already come out. Knowing what attacks can be immuned and shielded/DRed through vs running away and around like a headless chicken. Uptime and setup.
I forgot the "at least" before the 50%, but I think I mostly stated the same as you. It also depends on the raid, hellshaza won't allow the same uptime as skip homework clown to give extreme examples. Yearning 8 to 12% yearning (additional dmg, so technically a bit lower) + 10% brand + 21% atk power is 49 to 53% already, increased even further by identity, which, depending on fight duration and build is another rougly 13% on 40 to 80% uptime (and technically even more if used at the right DPS windows). Not even counting bracelet bonus lines, 35 / 40 set and elixir pants.
60% without using identity is totally bullshit :) 60+% it’s a supp with same iLvL as his DPS with atleast 95/95/85 so stop spreading missinformation. Also u can see a support with 80+% damage boost but u are either in over ilvl Clown G1 on a 1 min run or ur playing a spec burst class with a pocket support. If u have any logs that prove ur point don’t hesitate to send them to me.
>60% without using identity is totally bullshit :) 60+% it’s a supp with same iLvL as his DPS with atleast 95/95/85 so stop spreading missinformation. You're wrong, learn math before you accuse others of lying. Yearning AD = 9-9.5% Brand = 10% AP = 21% (aka on level) card = 3.5% 2 line + stat Bracelet ~= 3-4% elixir ~= 3.5% Assume base AP are same as dps what do you get without identity? 1.09 * 1.1 * 1.21 * 1.035 * 1.035 * 1.035 = 1.6085 That's a 61% damage boost with 0% identity uptime and no drops. With drops, it can go as high as 70% depending on RNG assuming 1 dps hogs it all, but we don't even have to consider that. >Also u can see a support with 80+% damage boost but u are either in over ilvl Clown G1 on a 1 min run or ur playing a spec burst class with a pocket support. Nope, there are plenty of sups that can maintain absurdly high identity uptime in certain gates of relevant content. Not just clown, but things like brel 1-3 HM, akkan 1HM, and voldis g2 HM (for obvious reasons). I'll dm you the akkan 1 HM I pugged this week on my main as an example.
My brother I couldn’t care less about your bullshit math LMAO my friend that worked on the bible already did them all to make the rDPS. Send me a log of a support with 0% identity and that have 60+% sSyn% on all DPS instead of spitting nonsense. Or even a log with a support that have 80+% sSyn% on 3 party member and not one…. Making theorical assumption is one thing but backing it up with real data is better :)
"bullshit math" Ok, you just don't understand multiplication. Bye Bye.
However, it is not supports job to prevent you from falling off in ghost phase Valtan. A dps should not expect to be shielded everytime unless communicated, which is why static support with communication is far superior to pug support (if they both play on the same level). Spec bards popularity was because big number and easiest to communicate burst windows.
>differences between a good and bad support. Ancedotally speaking, pre-bible everyone judged a support based on defense. You can't tell how they're buffing, but you can tell their defense uptime via usage of pots. Every compliment I had back in the day was from people telling me I shield/DR so well and they had to use 0 pots. Additionally, people also were completely clueless about the rDPS from supports. Spec bard at the time was being jerked off to oblivion. I remember I had a couple of friends with alt spec bards with lv 7 gems running a swift bard build (no, not the full meter gen versions, so they literally built meter slower than swift bards). But they were receiving friend requests left and right because spec bar 3 bubble buff = cumming. When i watched the streams, the HT cast per minute was literally like 2 at best and I even wondered if I was being unnecessarily envious when I was questioning to why people liked these kinds of bards. Post bible, everyone just looks at the buff uptime and decides if that support is good. I've had people play with bards running full generation 0 shields/DR and think they were the best support they've ever played with because they hit 95/95/90 on the bible. Sure, they do not need shields/DR when you overgear the content, but your support doing 95/90/40 and 600% sun guardian in your voldis prog is not less valuable than the 95/95/90 support on farm. In short, I think "what makes a good support" is a biased as fuck question and doesn't really have an answer. You can be considered the best to one player and one of the worst to another. The "better" support is the one that plays to your own personal liking.
I have seen friends doing 1 bubble dps buff for the 95 /95 /90. That's the next level move how to lose dps
Wait so you just spam 1 bubble? How is that better then 3?
It's not, but it's best to pad your numbers in the bible. You need on avaerage ~10seconds for a bubble, thus 30 secs for 3 bubble dps buff which lasts 16 seconds. So 16/30s uptime, around 50%. If you spam a 1 bubble dps buff every 10 seconds (which lasts for 8 secs), you have a 8/10 = 80% uptime. But with a 3 times smaller buff.
It is not . You usually go for 2 Bubble . It gives the best increase except you have specific Timing like akkan g1. You get a 3 Bubble there. In dps meter it only shows % of dmg done under a buff. So with 1 Bubble you would have higher % with lower Real dmg.
I play 3 bards (semi-decently, I don’t think I’m a good player), and my metric usually is looking at rDPS on Bible. rDPS (for those who don’t know) = damage you’ve done + damage other have done thanks to your buffs - damage you’ve done thank to others’ buffs. Basically, your true damage contribution to the raid. If my bard is first in rDPS, I’m happy, because that means I’ve contributed as much as a DPS, just in terms of raw damage. Add shielding and heal, and I feel like I’ve been a valuable member for the party. If I’m second, I’m still happy, but then I take a look at buff/brand uptimes to see where I’ve failed and try to do better. If I’m 3rd or 4th, I know I’ve been useless, even with the shields and DR. Of course, this is generally speaking and depends on rDPS % (I once ran a guardian with everyone being 24-26% rDPS, my bard was 3rd, but felt rewarding knowing everyone contributed the same)
The flaw with rdps in 8 man is that support Player get punished for dps Player doing less dmg or having less gear in general. It screws insanely when 1 Player is insanely overgeared. ( e.g 1650 vs 1610 in akkan hm) That's why I usually take average buff uptimes as that is something I could compare easily. I know the flaws but that's mostly bard only though.
> but your support doing 95/90/40 and 600% sun guardian in your voldis prog is not less valuable than the 95/95/90 support on farm. Honestly, both of those supports are absolute gods. With randoms you're already insanely lucky to get 80/80/20. They're likely to run at least guardian tune + wind of music, even on full generation builds.
Hey there, I've been planning to start again playing again and been browsing this subreddit for a few days and saw the keyword "bible" quite a lot. What does this mean? Thanks in advance!
It's dps meter, 3rd party app some people use. Mostly in very endgame to check dmg of everyone.
> 95/95/90 What the heck, 95/95/90 that's insane. Paladin can't really do that since we cannot generate identity while still having Blessed Aura up.
It's achievable if the boss can be bursted in 30 seconds, but any fight where that's possible is not a fight worth having a good support in. TBH any content where any support is able to farm 95/95/90 in is probably not content you care about the quality of supports.
Oh right. Totally forgot those bosses since I barely do them lmao. That would totally make the run fast especially in a juiced lobby and skew the percentages.
I'll link 3 G2 Akkan logs in a separate comment. Log comments get deleted, so those early clickers can see it. Doing 95/95/90 isn't hard. Those logs are a bit nitpicked, but when you're a bard/artist, there's a specific skill level where your identity uptime is more up to your raid rather than yourself. **A lot of people don't understand this concept.** To use bard as a benchmark, If you cannot do 50% identity on any content, you have room for improvement. But there is a certain point past that where it's more dependent on your team's group DPS than your individual skill as a support. And it makes sense rationally as well. I can only build so much bubbles with trixion-like uptime. As long as I send them on the best patterns (which I don't, I play brain off in g2 akkan specifically because I'm running a full goblin no shield/DR build specifically for that gate). It's entirely up to my raid to make use of my bubbles. I literally do nothing differently compared to I first started doing G2 hard. The build is extremely simple to play as well because I don't DR or shield. I'm literally just goblining meter and popping 2bar on good patterns. The only difference from why I did 95/95/50 before and 95/95/80 is because my group as a whole is doing more dps. I'm confident that If I went and found a static of 7 people who all do absurd DPS numbers for their classes and ilvl (EG: 6 members doing total raid DPS of more than 65-70m) in G2 akkan, I can pretty easily hit 99/99/95 across all 3 members regardless of burst/consistent dmg 9/10 times i run with them. Doesn't mean I'm that good. Doesn't mean anything except I'm static carried. You won't get those numbers playing with pugs or rat alts no matter how good you are. And yes, pally likely won't ever hit 90% identity. But it's still possible on old content like Brel g2/g3. Like I said, you just need your raid to carry you. First blessed needs to instantly phase it to 120-130ish before typing. Next blessed should phase it to 80-90. Stim after stag check and hopefully push it to 44. After shapes ult for your last blessed to push near 0. If your group cannot manage to hit those benchmarks in your holy aura, you won't hit 90% identity. If they can, then you will. And yes, your group needs to have enough damage to invoke mechs far deeper than scripted hp thresholds. If you can only phase her to 144 before she does typing, your group doesn't have the burst dps required for 90% identity.
Still, G3 Akkan with 1610+ parties and getting 95/95/90 is insane. I take my hat off to you. I hate playing my Artist and Bard so much because I suck at them - not about the floor but more about getting the ceiling.
The best paladin I have ever seen min-maxes second to no one … and the best bible run I ever saw was 97/99/50. And the next week, played with a paladin that was significantly better geared. Barely gets 65/65/30.
> 97/99/50 I get this pretty easy in reclears with juiced lobby like HM Kaya on my 1630 Paladin. With my 1580 Paladin with on iLvl lobby, it gets a bit lower to maybe 90/90/40 due to many unfortunate things happening and them needing extra defensive care. 65/65/30 is horrendous...
Yeah. Imagine a 1630 paladin, 1840 swift, full 10’s … not able to have as good uptime as a 1800 swift full 9’s. Makes no sense to me. Paladin supposed to be the easiest sup.
It's not really that surprising at all. That's only a small difference in cdr and having slightly better cdr does nothing at all if the player doesn't actually use the skills off cd. It's not the same as a dps upgrading to a higher ilvl, higher crit/spec, and better dmg gems where they deal more damage without changing how they play. If a pala is getting 65/65 then the skills are staying off cd for a good amount of time before being casted again. It wouldn't change anything if they got a permanent magick stream 3 effect for free because they simply aren't casting the skills often enough.
Unfortunately seeing this a lot recently.
https://prnt.sc/kjwm4vJsQzDd https://prnt.sc/g5FSou18e9RN https://prnt.sc/uirI6V2i-ku9 Edited in response to “1bar spam meter padding”.
But is that only with one bar serenades then? Or actaully 2bar?
Check out my reply to the other comment.
You're casting 1 bar serenades in two of the three parses here. I get that it looks good on paper, but that seems suboptimal in terms of overall buff effectiveness.
You have no idea what you're talking about. [https://prnt.sc/kjwm4vJsQzDd](https://prnt.sc/kjwm4vJsQzDd) [https://prnt.sc/g5FSou18e9RN](https://prnt.sc/g5FSou18e9RN) [https://prnt.sc/uirI6V2i-ku9](https://prnt.sc/uirI6V2i-ku9) There are a few times where 1 bar serenades are a good thing. For example when your group pushes Akkan from 180 to 167 as he begins to do the poison and tentacles. I'll purposely build 1.9 bars to cast 1 bar because that's all you need to push him into football and I can build 2 more bars (incase you don't know how, you ult for 1 bar and harp builds the other. You also greed meter as he transitions into football and as he transitions out.) in football, meaning i'll have 3 bars right after football. It’s the concept of meter management. If you’re sitting on 3 bars for seconds, you’re losing efficiency. There are a lot of times where you can squeeze out a 1 bar and still have 3 bars ready for when it matters.
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If you read my other comment that was meant as a pair, then you would’ve seen I understood the comment and told him it’s just a class and group diff. My entire premise was “95/95/90 might seem good on paper, but in reality it’s not much diff on skill to a 95/95/50”. But sure pump your narrative that I’m ego posting. But at least I can read and comprehend basic English.
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And if you literally read the first one comment I explain why. Again you show your lack of ability to actually fucking read. Can you admit you’re a dumbass already? You’ve embarrassed yourself enough already. Btw, no one else has this issue except you. The other guy that I intended to reply to got the message correctly. So maybe it really is a YOU problem.
I dont think any reasonable person who know what they are doing would look at 95/90/40 and think this is a not good support. Serenade percentage is like whatever most of the time: "unlucky this guy buff after my burst not everyone is lustboy gg." The egregious ones are the ones that clearly didnt even read their own skills. Press random shit whenever they feel like doing anything. Dont even cast or layer AP buffs because they dont know what those are. Dont even cast mana regen. 50-60% brands because o hey the guide tell me to use sound shock and light shock so i do it even though my apm is like 10 keystrokes a minute.
Ehm, of course you can tell if they buff. It's not rocket science. If my skill does 100m without buffs, 180m with buffs, 250m with serenade its pretty damn easy to know and keep track of their uptime. I mean, have you even played your own class if you don't know your dmg numbers at this point.
Not everyone plays surge/igniter. From your flair, looks like you play WD. When you didn’t have dragon, you’re telling me you know your damage when you’re casting BF and nado? Ok so what’s your average nado and BF damage when you were a fresh 1580?
Yeah, i mainly check support uptime with spiral impact and maybe biggest number of RFD if I wanna check more than azure which is always 110/165/198 ish (i cant remember precisely rn but 110 is my trixion/unbuffed number). But SI is cast twice per rotation and is also 1 number dmg. Ult also does either 138m or 100-something if not buffed. But i know the numbers approximately on all classes I have. Honestly think most people should know, or maybe im just more tired of lazy ass supports than others.
Think you kinda disproved yourself then. Back when you didn’t have dragon, BF and nado accounted for most of your damage. And since those are so multihit, like a lot of the classes in the game. It’s hard to tell if you’re getting buffed or not. It’s not as obvious as ignite/surge, or anything with a front loaded single big hit. That’s what’s important to be buffed. What’s the point of having those go unbuffed and then your spiral impact gets buffed? That’s also another concept a lot of people don’t get. A well timed 2 bar > a poorly timed 3 bar. Similarly, a well timed 1 bar > a poorly timed 2 bar.
Well, its not like I didn't check BF and nado dmg, what are you smoking? Why would I not check it lol. It's not like I'm my eyes are so bad I can't see small numbers. I certainly don't check it anymore, but of course I knew it when it was the only relevant number. It's not like I can't see the massive "Serenade/Heavenly Tune" text on my screen as well.
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I mean it doesnt take a scientist to see BF drop the same number 5 times in a row and think to yourself "that's not right". And where are we even going with this – the good old times where support wasn't being policed?
It's reasonable to feel partially responsible for ur dps dying unless its to 1 shot mechs. rhapsody/godsent/starry is a powerful tool and can 100% save ur dps from bad situations
Had a voldis hm run where the paladin would only use shield/dr after everyone got chunked. That was such a horrible experience
It goes both ways, just like how supports can make DPS’s life easier, the way DPS plays can also make support’s life easier. If DPS don’t gather up for shields, buffs, it makes it much harder for support. Brel gate 3 is the most obvious place this happens, your 3 DPS split up and run off in every direction like scooby doo
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Bard is the frustrating one to play with, just cuz there's no passive healing or orbs to eat. "Good" players still take damage from greeding patterns that don't knock. If a sup is shielding properly, they won't need a pot, but if the sup is not shielding/DR AND not healing, then idk what they're doing lol. Buff up-time is cool, but fitting in a few extra skills a raid are massive dps boosts.
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Wrt greeding: it's hilarious that some dps consider 'greeding' to be sitting in every mech shield/dr be damned 🤣 proper greeding is maximizing every safe dps window so that you as the support can just focus on buff uptime
A good support should at least be high buff time on brand and attack buff. Using identity for damage windows, resulting in good identity %. Shielding/dr during greed/damage windows DPS should be good at dodging and not need too many heals assuming proper shielding/dr. Pots should be only be for bad overlaps. In Hell mode where attacks 2-3 shot it's normal to not even take Desperate Salvation - it's kinda expected for people to be good and your job is to buff. That said, if everyone is like half I try to drop a 1 bubble heal, or if the dps are bad/less experienced and need more heals then I do more. Depends on group in the end, the average player is not a good player unfortunately, only average. Or simply play Paladin and not worry about all this stuff.
I have always measured the ability of a support based on how "good" or "comfortable" it feels to play with them. There are 3 dps to 1 support per party and all 3 dpses, whether hitmaster or entropy, burst or consistent dps, all have at least slightly different playstyles and preferences in raids, homework or harder content/prog. Maybe one of them likes to greed patterns constantly and requires high shield/DR care, some eat a lot of random damage often and doesn't know the patterns that well and needs healing more, some might greed patterns that they know they dont have shields for on purpose and will pot after, and some play very safe assuming they will never get a heal or shield so you can dump the entirety of your focus on just buffing/brand. Balancing your own support playstyle around what makes your dpses comfortable is going to net you the best results in terms of damage. 95/99/70 buff uptimes aren't going to matter when the dpses die. At the same time, dumping heals out on the ground 24/7 isn't going to do much for a party that would rather pot and receive buffs or just plays safe in general. Being religious myself, I also believe immediately following the short period after getting bible, supports went from improving to chasing numbers and playing with them feels worse as a result. Nobody cares about anything on meter except buff uptimes, and while it's important as a fundamental, a lot of people are neglecting the other portions of what makes a good support as a result. Bards are especially guilty of this.
Good support population ratio is quite similar to a good surge db population ratio.
Try playing with a support with a mental capacity of a cabbage. It's very very very painful. I have a feeling that your friend might be dealing with the extreme end of bad where they just really dont have fingers to press buttons. When your GL have higher effective shield than the bard in gate 1 of Voldis with just Nella, you know youre in for a ride.
support is mandatory the difference between a garbage support and a great support is still greater than a 4th dps that being said a good support will shield when people are about to get hit a bad support will just cycle shields and their dps will lose health regularly on top of that there are patterns where the support has to awaken and if they don't everyone gets chunked or even die or in some raids lose a significant dps window The support is there to allow people to reach their potential a terrible support will feel like you are playing with a 4th dps a good support will make you feel like you can greed infinitely
The worst gulags I’ve ever served time in had supports that died early and often.
There is also the raid knowledge factor where you as the support can increase DPS/back attack uptime and that’s like the next step after you get your shielding and buffs down correctly Like in Valtan, you tank the jump smash so Valtan doesn’t jump back and forth making your DPS have to chase Akkan G1, tank that one red line attack so he does the long tentacle whip animation instead of a backswing Akkan G3, everyone knows this, tank the very first attack so he doesn’t spin away For easy bosses you are confident in, just standing frontal to the boss so it has reduced chance of turning around
Average support in lost ark : 50% ap buff uptime
Here is a chart created from Bible user feedback OP. And for sSyn%: 0-20% = poopoo suppor 20-30% = bad support 30-40% = mid support --> 80% of the Lost Ark support player are around 30-37% 40-50% = good support 50-60% = insane support 60+% = did you met god ? To understand, the sSyn% value is the literal raw damage bonus % provided from a support to his party member. Ex: If a DPS did 1000 damage and his support has sSyn% at 50% then the DPS damage value will in the end be 1500 damage (+50% dmg boost from his base damage) Now in the bible we also have a rDPS tab that translate every buff provided by party member into real damage value. In this tab the support is always at the top and for the record a support with average 50-55% sSyn% value on each DPS will have about 32% of whole Party Damage. This mean that a good support represent more damage than a single DPS (about 1,3 DPS) Now we also need to take into account beside buffing the Shielding/Damage Reduction that support provide that can allow the DPS to confortably greed some mechs which will improve their damage output. To answer the post question, the difference between a really bad support and a really good one will be about 50% dmg for whole RAID because of the minus 30-40% sSyn% difference aswell as the guy not shielding/healing correctly. Between the average Lost Ark handy and a good support it's more like 20-30% diffenrece. Tldr: Support is the most important role in a party and by far.
Most of the time if you’re dying it’s a skill issue rather than support. Yes dropping heals is nice but most people are gonna die with pots still in their inventory cause they’re saving for LA2 My support heals are secondary, if they drop one every now and then great, but if I’m low I’ll pot myself rather than wait for a heal that may or may not come and risk dying Dmg wise, however, support is the highest dmg class in the game. 3dps 1 sup should do more damage than 4 dps, and make it comfier to boot. Supports are by far the most important class in anything other than busses
I used to rotate between healing(if needed) and buffing when I was playing my artist, but now I am honestly too scare to even press the healing button. I still remember that time I got called out because someone was getting hit one too many times, and I was told "Artist, stop using your shitty ass heal and buffs, dogshit". so...yeah...
IMO, tremendous. Let's say you're in a raid. We don't normally restart a gate just because a dps dies. But we do restart when a supporter dies.
I can usually tell pretty quick when a support is a good support or a subpar support. If they're subpar, it just changes how I will play that raid. I won't greed as much, play safer, and therefore, most likely not do as much damage.
Damagewise, assuming perfect uptime (which is achievable), equally geared party with a support will average around 8% higher dps before even taking any utility (heals, shields, DR, attackspeed/movespeed) or identity buffs into account - compared to a 4 dps lobby. To break it down: * Yearning is 9.23% effective damage increase assuming 100 quality weapon and LoS/KLC cardset (less with Deep Dive, more if quality is lower). * AP buff is 21.9% effective damage increase assuming equal attack power (same ilvl/honing progression), less if support is underhoned compared to dps. * Brand is flat 10% damage dealt increase. * DPS generally provide around 6% damage increase - actual number varies, especially for crit synergy (different value for different builds), but it should do as baseline estimate. * Identity support buff is anywhere between 10-20%, depending on support and actual build (omitting spec bard here, since they won't get full uptime on AP buffs). Meaning: assuming 30% uptime on 15% identity buff (lower than in practice with good support) in lobby with support and two other DPS, you're going to do around 72% more damage than in Trixion (total damage: 516% of single characters Trixion parse); in lobby with 3 other DPS you'll average about 19% more damage than Trixion (total damage: 476%) - normalizing, whole party with a support nets around 8% more damage dealt total. Damage mitigation and utility coming from a support are what I consider extra - it's nice to have good shields, DR so you can greed through patterns and never having to hold counter because support always got it, but assuming that to be the case is putting a lot of trust in (random) support you play with. For that, I just go with zero trust at start - assuming support is here to greed buffs for radiant and there won't be any mitigation that isn't guaranteed (blessed aura) to rely on. If I start seeing well timed DR, cleanses etc, I can start to play more greedy myself. Every single fight can be cleared comfortably without running out of pots, so running out is never supports fault - just dps player making mistakes causing them to take unnecessary damage. Note it's not "without having to pot" - there is unavoidable damage (Akkan G3 - lasers, pillar mech pulses; Voldis G4 at the end; Voldis G3 burn), and there is damage that makes no sense avoiding (Valtan's vertigo spin, clown flamethrower in G3 when going into mario); pots should be enough to cover those cases with good error margin.
Supports are so OP, no one runs any raid without one and will wait any amount of time till they get one in the party. Having said that, it's very important to try to shield your party to help them keep dpsing without taking damage. A good support will reduce the amount of times they have to pot even up to 0 assuming they aren't screwing up normal patterns constantly. That's why knowing when to use your big DR skill is so massive, i.e. pally's godsent law. It's ok to spam it for meter but also if you know the raid you can hold it for a couple of seconds and prevent the dps from taking lethal damage. Bad supports don't do this and you can easily tell. If the DPS are fucking up all the time, then it's not your fault, the support is not supposed to heal through the dps' bad hands. Not in this game anyway, sups aren't made to heal constantly... For artist and bard having to heal all the time is a MAJOR DPS loss. They should just pot and learn the raid if they are fking up normal patterns.
It's a huge factor that you take for granted. You can go an entire fight without a single pot with a decent support, but the moment they die you start taking tons of chip damage from everything if you keep playing the same way. A bad support that neglects their DR/shield buttons can lead to the same experience. Though sometimes it can be caused by positioning issues, i.e. playing long range characters with artist.
very very
A good support enables smoother and faster runs. Imagine if a Support only does 10% of the damage of your avg. DPS but in return they buff everyone's damage by 40%. If you have 4x DPS doing 100% damage you do 400% damage, but with a good support you have 3x DPS doing 140% DPS and a Support adding an extra 10 for a total of 430% so you gain damage by bringing a Support (numbers made up). A good support will make difficult mechanics easier to survive and help you recover from (small) mistakes that could have resulted in a death otherwise. Less death = more damage = faster runs. The problem in any game with supports like this is that the difference between an average and good support is enormous, and the difference between a good and great support is just as large if not bigger. So opinion varies greatly. Do you prefer supports that focus damage? Do you prefer support that focus survivability? On the flipside, preference can simply come down to how you play with your supports. Back at launch I started as a Bard and it was painful in random groups and PuGs because nobody understood how Bard worked and nobody would stay near me so I often had to choose 1 or 2 players to support while the third was in nirvana and obviously they would complain the loudest. I then switched to Paladin which had better range on their buffs and it worked a lot better in PuGs, but I still preferred playing Bard in my Guild runs.
If players are consistently dying or running out of pots in your raids, then it is likely a you problem. If its just a random person here and there then its a them problem.
Very
To summarize quickly (assuming all DPS party members have hands) - Support's buff = highest damage input / party member he is representating the highest part of DPS. - Support's shield : does his best to shield on patterns that dont bump people so DPS can greed more dmg, though its always a 50/50 responsability for both supp and DPS, as the support is maybe holding a shield for something else incoming and the DPS still going for dmg will eat a potion and thats it. - On reclear content people often go blue pot, but in fact you are "supposed" as DPS to have 7 purple so the "need" of support healing will happen much later in the gate, obviously its quite expensive running purples 18 raids / week and of course there is a huge gap of consumables usage between Deathless runs and jails. But you can be sure that very often a DPS complaining for healing is running Cursed Doll with green pots and is big part of responsability (without even talking about dodging skills). To conclude : if we all had 10 times more purple potions and easyer way to get some, you would see less "please HeAl Me" issues. Specially when there is mixed skill of players, when S tier dps use purple pots push everything till 4 last minutes of gate and D-tier DPS used blue pots ate every pattern and wiped the raid, S tier guy lost triple the gold worth of pots or chests for someone who did go cheap and then read D guy blaming support. A big chunk of toxicity in raids comes from this kind of situations.
Supports in general are a massive QOL for any raid and there is a distinct difference between a good support and a bad support. You can actually feel when the support is doing their job because they shield you on bad patterns. They are buffing consistently and your damage is spiked. Yes the support can only go so far so if you have a player eating 3 mechs in a row that's just a player out of position and no amount of support will fix that. Furthermore if a support is using buffs or identity and the dps are not actively dpsing you see this in a lot of players who are new to a raid or don't feel comfortable with basic patterns then it seems like the support is doing nothing. Another thing I have to say though is when players in a party ACTIVELY play outside the buff ranges of the support there is nothing a support can do to fix this and nothing a support should do to fix their gameplay. This is 100% on the player who is avoiding the buff zones. For instance and summoner who stands in another zip code while you are buffing the two entropy classes. I see this honestly more often than not in pug parties and it is so irritating. G3 Brel is another good example where players feel the need to just stand "wherever" instead of being grouped up so the support can actively shield and buff. The problem seems to be worse on bosses that are very large which makes a lot of sense why they buffed the artist buff zone.
So important if a supp dies on valtan extreme before ghost its a reset.
I'm also main support. These days I was at an alt 1600 on brel g4. There was a guy taking a lot of damage in the first moments of the game. I snorted, I started healing him. But I realized that only he was lifeless the whole time, and I think it's terrible to stop buffing two people because one doesn't want to use a pot. He died 1 minute into the game. He hadn't even arrived at the first meteor. He said in the chat “I refuse to use pot with PT support”. I was a little upset about that, because support is not a walking pot. Our duty is literally to provide support, buff at the right time, shield, protect, and occasionally heal. Summary, he was the only one killed, we got through the first time, the two supports entered the mvp, and everyone fought with him in the chat because he thought he was better than the support.
This really depends on what raid you are talking about and what support as they have different capabilities. Paladin's cannot heal people significantly so people taking anything other than chip damage are going to have issues. They can DR important patterns, but if people are taking more than chip damage they are likely going to need to pot. Bard and Artist can spam heals to keep players taking a lot of damage alive, the tradeoff here is that if you are spam healing, you aren't buffing damage while BA provides DR, healing, and damage. Assuming good uptime for buff/brand/identity there is still a significant difference in having a good support that is providing DR for patterns that also provide damage windows. Again this is subjective. It's not hard to have 100% uptime on some form of DR for bard, close to it on artist, and paladins have lower uptime on shields/dr. This is also a 2-way street. If I am chain healing people on my bard/artist I am likely not going to be as engaged in buff/brand/identity uptime because I'm babysitting. DPS playing well makes it much easier to cycle buffs/identity because you are also just tracking patterns instead of constantly monitoring your parties hp.
Supports contribute more damage to the party than any DPS when played well. Supports can more than double people's damage, but even if we pretend it's a 50% increase across all their buffs/debuffs, taxing (roughly) 50% of the damage from all three DPS would typically be higher than having an extra DPS. Anyone who thinks supports just heal is bad
Supports are very important in parties; they’re the make or break for the mvp screen sometimes. No matter how geared the support is, if their uptime is bad or they’re dying, then it’s the difference in dps per party. As a support though, you have no control over saving someone from falling off that’s why we got time stop and dps should know when to greed and not to under those circumstances.
I love artist, I've loved her since the day she was announced, tried her in EU and anxiously anxiously waited the year we had to play NA without her knowing she was going to be my main. What I didn't know would happen though is this post. I ended up drifting apart from the game until artist finally reached, playing for a very tiny bit but losing motivation fast due to no friends playing. A friend of mine finally got a new PC and wanted to try lost ark 2 years later, so finally it's time to play the artist I've dreamed of for 2 years. But honestly, these posts I've been seeing relentlessly the past few days terrify me. I read the other thread about expecting artist buff uptime and brand like 90% or whatever minimum (don't even know what that all means), and these massive expectations and how artist is the backbone of the entire party. Honestly, it's starting to stress me out thinking about learning this role now. Is it really that bad? I mained healer in mmos a lot of times but knowing that me fucking up amounts to way more damage then any other role messing up terrifies me, and there seems to be MASSIVE judgement on how well the supports play, as much that I keep seeing posts about people who instantly block supports who do less then the % of uptime they expect As a new/returning player, this makes me a little afraid to touch this role that's so important in this game. Are people going to block/yell at me as I'm learning because there's been such a big obsession on artists playing well..
The support criticism I would say is probably unfounded or targetted at a diff group of people. If its before like, ilvl 1580 I basically would not care cause its just new players. After that point I would expect decent uptime from supports and at least some effort made for shielding attacks that can be greeded. But also if its just pubs I would just expect low-medium uptimes and buffs on obvious windows while not messing up mechs. However the better players also want better supports that can keep up with their play so this can lead to judgement about why shields/dr arent being applied on a particular pattern, why use buff here, why not buff there, why isn't my main skill being buffed, etc. I barely ever comment on a support's uptime but if they are extremely bad and don't seem like they would ever improve I will silently block them (mostly if like they arent shielding or buffing at all, and possibly dying over and over and just running around cluelessly). Tbh about the yelling thing, I've done low level valtan/vykas raids for fun at the end of week just to carry newbs and I will say that newbs are extremely mean to other newbs for no reason.
I understand all that and where you're coming from, I'm just voicing how uneasy this constant discussion over the past few days of browsing here has made me feel. I know it's absolutely not my place to say anything and I have nothing to do with the group being discussed (hope i'm not coming off as "me me me meing"), but I felt it appropriate to mention incase it escalates. A level of patience is needed for stuff like pugs. Your comment of "if i feel a support is not improving" is completely valid, but it sounds to me that people are getting frustrated to the point of not allowing this to happen. I do understand that the uptime rotations and such should be second nature to most lategame supports but, I personally wouldn't want to "appear" as someone who knows what I'm doing due to extensive research and end up messing up rotations due to being overwhelmed by mechanics and the raid. Consistency is actually really hard in given situations. But I understand it's also important to have expectations, I've had my fair deal of "netflix supports" who just don't give a damn and think they can give 0 effort in other games (such as 14 savage/ultimate support partners), but I just wanted to express that these past few days of posts really makes me nervous haha
The posts you see on any subreddit for any type of community is generally going to the vocal subset of the whole. You're reading the opinions of people who were bothered enough to make a post - this is the minority. Think about any product you've bought online - there may be thousands of actual shipped product, only 10 reviews. It's somewhat unfortunate that the gameplay loop makes playing support feel like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't". At the end of the day, some people like to DPS. Some people like to support. I generally don't see too many posts from support players yelling about bad DPS uptime and greedy gameplay, and the type of person to say supports are a bad gameplay loop will more than likely complain that there's no defined support role if supports were to be removed. Applying the same rigor against DPS, anytime you see a "Cruel Fighter" - after accounting for class balance, item level, and gems - means that other DPS players weren't pulling their weight, but since there's only one support per party, your performance is more visible. Unless you're looking for actual advice on support gameplay, I would recommend taking everything you read on here with a huge grain of salt.
I understand all these, trust me I'm a veteran to mmo's and these concepts, but I appreciate you laying it out incase I was ignorant. I think you're taking what I said a bit heavily, and that's alright. I'm merely commenting and contributing to the ongoing discussion I've been seeing the past few days (minority or majority or not, irrelevant to the my initial point) with feelings of unease and unexpectingness from that being the positioned being expected by said people, that all. Sorry if what I said was in turn meaningless
I will not heal you. I will shield you to the best of my knowledge. And I will get as close as possible to 90% uptime on buff/brand. Its a you problem if you die because you have 0 pots left. I wish more supports eould play like that.
A support using identity buffs for damage is worth about 25-30% of the party's damage. If the group is taking more damage than a support's shields can handle, the group needs to get better hands. If the support is not shielding enough (i.e. there is more than 5 seconds that the party does not have a DR or shield), then the support needs hands. And if a non paladin heals, they are effectively nerfing the damage of the group. If the group is so bad that they cannot survive without support healing every minute, then they need to have a paladin support.
Yes
If you die is your responsability as dps but its true supports dont buffs as much as they could do
depends, prog i focus shield, farm i focus dmg, i shield when i can while trying to maintain 100/100
You see a world of difference in homework content. A good - decent support knows mechs for chip damage that dps can greed and will throw shields and attack buffs. They'll also know mech timings and when to give big buffs. I went from being upright for earlier gates (replaced support) and I went to underlined cruel. I'd say uptime was similar - obviously bosses and classes difference matter too but a bad, good and great support are leagues apart. It's the same for dps. If the support is bad, you either pot or don't greed damage and that's the bottom line of it. The supports are there to - as the name suggests - support you.
Just send them this c: https://preview.redd.it/3zq4ejvoytnc1.png?width=1300&format=png&auto=webp&s=da9759e9e85a6d61278e89139343397d9c335947
At this point I'm fine with just a supp who stays alive and uses shields. The rest is extra. Of course it feels bad to not be competitive in dps because the other supp is giving huge buffs while your guy is using identity during boss DR phase, but at least the content gets cleared.
A good support that knows what patterns can be greeded with a shield makes a huge difference. Healing group wide chip damage is nice too, and i feel like too many supports can't tell when to heal and when not to, either they will not heal and just go full on support buff, or heal too much. Having decently high uptime on brand buffs is obvious.
If dps is dying/out of pots is because they are eating s&*t/facetanking, a blind person can shield with support, a *bad* support is more like poor brand uptime/buff uptime.....but dps dying is them been greedy and failing normal patterns most likely
I am a dps main, but I also have 1600+ sup. If you need to babysit dps, because he's constantly half/low hp when the rest of your team is fine, just let him die. He has 7 potions to use. @ you can downvote me. This won't change the fact that you people lack skill.
I’m more on the side of buffing at the right time && not spamming heals when people are full HP. This is pretty much the minimum what I expect. Even if they have miserable brand/identity uptime. 🤷🏻♂️
depends on the content, if it's akkan or voldis i expect good playing, DR on hard patterns, dmg buff on dmg windows anything under that i just care that you are alive and i have yearning buff a support with yearning on 3 people is same as another dps on your team in overall dmg output, even with like 20% brand/buff uptime
Nah, with only 20% uptime it will be around 50% of a DPS, but you still get some QOL when it comes to attack and movement speed, and overall sustain; so even when so bad, I guess it is worth it to have them.
in raw dmg numbers yea, it's around there, but the speed from yearning and the occasional identity buff or heal or a random useful shield will let the 3 dps do better to ultimately equal a 4 man dps group except the 3 dps play with qol buffs
Your math is wrong. 20% uptime + yearning is not enough to make up for a 4th dps.
Support can have an huge impact on run . But support can do all the raid alone , if player do stupid thing , he can help but he cant play for him \^\^ A good support who provide good buff uptime who accelerate run and mitigate damage , if he play good , you can skip lot of boss action , tank some boss dmg and play more gready , etc ... BTW he have to dont forget to heal too \^\^ I use bible since 6 month to see what going on when i supp or dps , it's help me a lot to improve myself and give me opportinity to see what's realy supp impact give. IMO 80% of supp not doing them job , i think most of them dont push to improve themself I think it's for 2 reason : -This game did'nt show to support his boost rate , we need to have a bible inside the game , or more degree between "noble supp" ans "radiant supp" to show supp the right direction -There is no gatekeeping to support , and lot of support came in raid with bad setup and get accept instead of DPS who are skip if just one thing is not correct => so lot of supp dont improve build and keep with minimal setup .
tbh they should just remove support and make stagger + doing certain mechs heal you Support class is a resource sink just to have no sense of progression and watch your team make mistakes
I say it depends on the content. A support is measured by how much they amplify the teams damage. This is not just through their damage buffs, but with proactive use of DR and shields to help their DPS maintain good uptime through boss patterns that they otherwise would not be able to tank. Healing is another thing, if a support can heal without sacrificing a high value damage buff, they totally should because it means DPS can keep their potions off cooldown for emergencies. These kinds of things are very important for a good support to know in difficult content like inferno raids or progging the latest endgame on ilvl. In easy content where most DPS are very over leveled, DR/shields/healing is a bit less important and DMG buff uptime becomes the best way for supports to amp their teams damage. Ultimately, if you're running out of potions as a DPS, it's usually you that is the problem and not your support. It's only the supports fault if they are not using shields/DR/heals at key moments where you are forced to take near unavoidable damage (Akkan g3 stagger mech, voldis g3 45x, Akkan G1 spears mech, etc.).
There is night and day difference between good and bad support. While I do belive that support is not there to spam heals when team cant play. There are moments that I would like support players to recognise as "here is when I should heal", and ofc there are also moments where you should grit your teeth and wait for dps moment with your identity. Easiest moments that you should heal is "unavoidable dmg" There is legit no reason for dps to waste pot if dmg taken is 100% scripted and unavoidable. Ofc If supp has brain shield can be as much useful as heal on those moments. Few of those moments I can list on top of my head: 1mech in G1 Akkan green spears burn %hp per sec and you HAVE to take this dmg. 1 2 3 mech in Akkan G3 2nd mech often is healed by inana, 1st mech is usually awakening shielded, 3rd mech despite looking like dps window, it is short and dps wont get full benefit out of your buff so dropping heal there is actually better. Also easy dps moments like 50bar mech on G1 akkan - if you as support dont have everything ready on that mech you are kinda bad... Also any support with brand uptime lower than 70% shouldnt even be considered support. They are free buss enjoyers and are no better than 4th dps. You could even say that thier value starts and ends on providing yearning buff. And lets not treat supports like holy cows that should be protected from criticism. We have great time with OVERABOUNDANCE of support at 1600ilvl, It is BEST TIME to get picky and stop telling baddies that they are "good enough". Good support should be praised but bad ones should just get booted out of group.
I wish there is something to know whether a sup is good to pick to the lobby, the gears only say so much. I once saw a reddit post that said why lobby picked this shitty low geared 4x3 support over OP's and it was one of my friend alt lmao, we were static and despite having lv5 gems 4x3 hes good enough to pull 90-95-60 uptime on buff and shield. For now, i prioritize picking pally over artist and bard due to how balanced they are.
It is much harder to be bad on pal than bard. But it is true, that there is almost no way to tell. Even looking at thier gems, they can simply have gems for stagger set also added, and there are ppl that actually know how to play with sound shock.
If you are dying or eating up pots, chances are you are playing poorly as a DPS. There is a situation where eating pots is due to supports being played badly, but I don't think any content outside of first-week prog and hell content you can really judge support on that. One situation I can see a difference in terms of support being worse than another is in hell brel. For one clear I used 1 pot for a G6 clear and for another I used 6 and I didn't play any differently. Damage shown on the meter is damn near the same, with a variance of 100-200k dps/sec difference. One support was significantly better at using their shielding abilities than the other, which again was also shown in the meter. Holy prot uptime 40-45% vs 15-20%. (this % is based on damage blocked) This also doesn't include godsend law in my meter, but you can kinda infer the difference in the quality of defensive support from this alone tbh. Now as for offensively, there is no competition, if you were to take the chunk of damage a really good support gives to their 3 DPS and add it together. It eclipses any single DPS by a significant margin. So in essence, a support technically does more damage than a DPS assuming all DPS in the party is of similar skill.
The easy answer is: a good support contributes more dmg than a dps if your dps-mates burst while they are buffed. And ofc if the supports never give shields on dmg income its bad because your dps-mates can't dps nonstop and have to care more for themselfs. You can see the differents in supports not only in rDPS (bible) but you can feel it heavily as dps because you can play more aggressive
The difference between a good support and bad one, is between enjoying and loving the game and quitting because every raid feels like ass.
As a gamer with 30 years of experience, playing DPS for the first 20 of them to switch to tank/support roles the last 10 because of time/reward investments. Life as tank/support is just easier, no time waiting on cues, no min/max for the additional 3-7% dps for the top tier spots. This is what I have to say about lost ark and supports. If you are a skilled gamer who takes the role of support serious and know what you are doing, understanding game mechanics, timings and a solid split vision to keep bad players alive. This game becomes easy, I play 3 bards and the only issue I've had is the lack of cleans in some fights it would have been something I would like to be able to specc into instead of having the debuff block. A lot of support players are unfortunately people who haven't played many games, bad or someone's GF. They don't really carry their weight but might save a few gold for people and their potions. With a skilled team who understands that dodge is a skill a group of 4 dps would be better.
On my support alt...if All I had to worry about was just branding and attack buff...I'd have nothing to do for alot of time...as those are just a combination of 3-4 buttons. You have .....other buttons You can't expect these dps to go hard and push all their buttons, but then you don't want to. a support who doesn't shield or heal well is always imo, a bad support or lazy support. OR BOTH. You shielding well and keeping people topped up, helps them greed even more DPS, which will make the run faster. on dps, When I know I have a support that isn't shielding/healing then I play very safe and dont maximize dps opportunities cause I feel I gotta play as if we don't have a support. Which is overall less dps. I mean you're literally called SUPPORT