Is Weapon Mastery Useless for Support Roles?

I am little disappointed that 'doing damage' still really isn't that important for support classes (or at least as a controller) and there are not really any 'combat support roles'. I see DPS putting out close to 900K each (2 DPS runs that I hate) in PI alert and even with WM + bonus' on nearly every PoT or Debuff I rarely get much more than 300K at 103CR.

For controller damage to matter it will need to be about 50% of a DPS, not 33%. If not you are better off just letting the DPS spam.

Frankly, a controller should be able to do 50-65% of DPS … and eliminate all this 2 DPS nonsense. It only stresses out the rest of the group. Tanks and Healers should be doing 33-50% of DPS.

When 3 support roles barely add up to half of a DPS I think it doesn't matter. The 3, played well, should equal a DPS.

Ultimately, the damage stats on gear just limits the intent.

Additionally, I think they really dropped the ball on the 'benefits' for support roles. The benefits (which there were a ton of piratical suggestions on) should have been more than just a reduced power cost … it should have been an ability that makes WM worth doing. Something that makes the role happen while doing WM.

I would have preferred Healers getting a *special* HoT or bursts they need to maintain with continual combos, tanks a degree of immunity or aggro, controllers a 'better' PoT or AOE stun.

I think that am in support roles should ad a buff to that role..lie. Shielding tank, larger heals, and larger pot/ power dump. But since dcuo did not add on onset has snowballs chance in heck

You don't have to do weapon mastery combos to take advantage of the new stat bonuses at the bottom of the tree. I'm not sure why people assume they have to do a combo to use weapon mastery. You don't have to go down all of the trees now. Just go down as many as you can to the bottom and grab the new innates. For fire and rage especially the 90 resto you can get with 3 skill points is nice.

I agree. Let's start posting videos of speed runs of the hardest content with 2 of each role. If WM can change the narrative of this game that you have to limit non-DPS roles in a raid to do it fast, then maybe there is a net gain to the game overall.

WM is the first step in eliminating support roles completely. Buy using supply drops, etc, most content will be doable by 4 (or 8) dps.

I mostly glanced through the replies, but, if nobody mentioned it, when you master a weapon you can spend one skill point to get much more health and dominance than you can with normal skill point slots. I can't remember the exact amount and am not looking directly at my playstation (at work), but open up the skill tree and look at the second from the bottom slots on the skill tree.

Not sure if you already checked it out, but I like the additional health. Also, even though I'm a tank, I kinda like not running out of power as often when I solo things.

Petzer beat me to it...

Yes it gives you better stats. Yes the lower power and higher damage helps.

Were there better ideas suggested in the WIP thread that were more relevant to tanking and would be better? Yes

Why didn't they pick one of those better ideas? I don't know.

Great for healing and trolling. I tried tanking with it and usually had so many mobs beating on me that it was hard to get a combo off. I'm using MA 2 tap, 2 hold, which is probably too long for tanking. I want to pick up some Brawlers, like I had before, so I can try tanking with tap, hold.

It sucks for support. Soon people will only want dps for runs. Come back to me then.

I use two handed and get away with my tap, tap hold squares pretty much every time, that one's pretty quick. I usually get my hold square three times into hold triangle (which does a solid amount of damage for a tank), but not every time. I'm an acrobat, so I usually drag them to me, roll kick them all in the air, then hit my combos.

I know, I'm off topic a little, but I feel that the WM helped me quite a bit with my playing style.

Also an Acrobat. I'll give that a go.

I didn't see anyone respond to this, and the thing is that it's right there on the description, when doing a WM combo and clipping properly with a power it gives extra dominance for a brief period of time, which helps with aggro but that means you risk not blocking and maybe even getting a one hit from a strong boss like Sinestro or Atro when you try to do the combo.

Yes you seem to have assessed the situation correctly. A few advisos:

Earth and rage tanks require quite a bit more energy than Fire & Ice do to maintain proper tanking. For them the energy savings can be very functional. Not so much for Fire and Ice.

Doing damage should be part of everyone's role. DPS are specialists. It doesn't detract anything from DPS players if the roles can contribute meaningful damage. In final boss fights the tank may need to primarily block a lot but in many other fights, if you're not doing any meaningful damage your not being a great tank.

A big reason that all the roles should be doing damage is that activating attacks has a lot of extremely important secondary functions. Tanks are second only to Controllers in the ability to stun enemies and knock them around. Helpless enemies don't attack back. Its "DPPS" : Damage Prevented Per Second. If there were a stat for that, it would be the tanks prime scoreboard stat. "DPPS" is the core and crux of tanking.

WM combos carry with them strong precision based stuns. On top of that, the power-crit window gives you the chance to deploy powers with offensive-effects which are important beyond plain damage numbers.

WM is less useful to Fire and Ice tanks, but it's not useless by any means. The other way to look at it is that Fire and Ice tanks have an embarrassment of riches in the form of immense discretionary energy. It's up to the Fire/Ice player to find ways to put the overall power and efficiency to good use.

I like your little signature video thingy..too bad DC isn't as good as Marvel with the movies or we could see something like that in a Wonder Woman movie

Me too. I did 2.2 mil on my sorc healer last night, the dps did around 5 mil and the troll and tank did just over 500,000. I'm not sure why trolls alent speccing into. I consistently do more damage on my healer than the trolls when I run the alert. Typically 4-5 times the damage. Now a a healer, I finally feel like I'm supporting the team by helping kill the adds, not just by keeping them alive.

or a first step to completely eliminating dps role

Useless? No. Underwhelming? I would say so.

A tank who does lots of juggling could benefit from reduced power costs. Rage tanks also need to somewhat spam their powers in order to keep their health buff stacked. Doesn't have to be in front of every cast, but it sure helps.

If there are trolls not using wm then it can only be due to low s.p if im not doing 2 mill damage as troll in the alert im not paying enough attention. Seen any im not a battery threads or general power whine threads lately? Nah me either. For pve support roles its gravy although to agree with the o.p something like a dom boost or taunt on successful wm completion might have been more apt.

Edit: im doing half of the top dps damage atm 4 mill/2mill and in the 2 dps runs ive done its usually within 500k-1 mill of the 2nd dps

Imo healers shouldn't be using WM, because every healer I've been running the t6 alert with who use WM, I've died a lot. Seems they are trying to finish there combo when the group needs to be healed. Maybe im just unlucky.