Support Roles; Can they improve?

Since my last thread turned into something that resembles Blüdhaven (to me anyway) I thought I'd try again.

The main question being: Would you change anything about support roles? If so, why?

*PLEASE I love DCUO so DON'T GET INTO BATTLE SUPPORT THIS IS NOT WHAT THIS THREAD IS FOR*

I would like something to be done for troller as far as what I'm not sure yet cause all ideas I've had so far result in something else being messed up.

I personally would love a 2222 set up being the standard or even 3221.

So want to share upbuilding ideas?

Yes, but players can also improve. I've had no problems healing or tanking or trolling. Most of the time its crappy players.

It's more of the community attitude on this. Players want to be the rock star and not a team player. This game was always meant to be ran as 2s but going back to t4 prime battle ground resto and gift dramatically increased. So it was easier for bad players to do ok with things. Then as in trolls debuffing became less and less needed

Now as in trolls i would like to see thier debuffs a little better more like 20% defense plus add stunning a little better in troll role. Plus more players should be willing to try a second role in groups with the damage gap lessened there is no reason to not run 2 trolls and 2 healers as well as 2 tanks

Off the top of my head:

• Tanks - Increase resistance to crowd control while in tank stance (in PVE only).
• Controllers - Increase stun duration based on Dominance while in controller stance; this would be similar to how it was prior to revamp but only for Controllers to make the role more appealing outside of just providing power. It would also give Controllers additional benefits for crowd control compared to Tanks while not taking anything away from the current state of tanking.
• Healers - Fix some of the power costs and allow healers to do more damage to bring them in line damage-wise with Tank/Controller roles.

Reduce the damage of tanks slightly. They seem a little more capable of damage than the other support roles. Not a lot, just a smidge.

Healers - greatly reduced the 50% reduction they have in damage, that seems excessive.

Trollers - Increase duration of stuns, do away with Insta pot, replace it with Insta power, each time a power is used, it would be like recharge. Need a slight bump in VIT, for more POT. Increase damage slightly to bring it where tank would bottom out.

I too feel that a bump in power out would be nice for troller. But not too high that would make having a 2nd troll completely unneeded. Or perhaps PoT stacking instead.

I know some heal powers use a lot of power so maybe a slight reduction there would be nice as well.

Tanks i feel are in a good spot but yes a small, tiny micro reduction witg damage might be nice.

Make it so all support roles do full damage while also able to do a great job in support. Boom. Dps stays untouched for lazy players who don't want to help as support. Including me sometimes. I love to play as controller but I only get to see my name on top as a dps. Sooo

Totally agree and what we are seeing a lot of now is players pretending to be support but really just a DPS in disguise. Perfect example the other day I was the Healer on a Demon Plan alert. We had a "troll" but it seemed like everyone was constantly low on power. Now these days POT occurs any time a "TROLL" uses any attack so I got curious. Pulled up the group and inspected. yeah our boy had hit "T" to change the icon above his head to TROLL but he did not have a single piece of Troll gear on and the gear he was wearing has no mods at all so forget the bonuses for right color in the right slot. No idea how much SP or how he used it.. but basically he was just using that TROLL icon to get invited to a team.. and had no clue how to actually troll.

Now for ways to improve:

TROLLS increase buffs and debuffs ... so they really influence game play. I used to troll on City of Heroes and you could actually tell when a troll cast a debuff.. suddenly the bosses health bar would start dropping like crazy. Some one else already mentioned it but I could see upping the effectiveness of CC.... If that BOSS is stunned and helpless he is not doing any damage while we kick his butt.

HEALERS Reduce the power drain so they can spend more time HEALING and less time trying to figure out how to get power back. Here's an idea.. more powers that heal AND do damage.... Much more effective and helpful to the team and the healer can actually defend him or her self.

TANKS Atomic is the key.. find a way for all tanks to get some thing like that AURA where they produce their own power and heal themselves. this frees up the healer and troll to assist the DPS more. I also love the fact that my Atomic can spend time actually doing damage not ducking and weaving.

Overall? up the damage any support role does. No not to a point where they are all out damaging the DPS .. We are already bruising egos with the new damage out tanks can do. But enough to A) defend themselves and stay alive and B) do enough damage that the whole 6-1-1 thing can just go away. Now some of this is just a direct result of the community wanting everything super fast.. I did am alert with a team of 2-1-1 recently and it was great. That would be TWO tanks, 1 Troll and 1 Healer (me) . Not a single death, no one ran out of power ever and thanks to the new amount of damage some tanks can produce the whole thing took 11 minutes. I've done duos since the revamp with 2-0 TWO TANKS .. and done in no time.

Trolls - Turn POTs into passives and give them stronger CC powers.

Tanks - Give them powerback based on damage taken.

Healers - Give them powerback based on healing done, not counting overhealing.

Overall - Remove roleless buffs.

I would remove damage restrictions from Tanks, Healers, and Controllers. If you are in DPS stance you get a 10% bonus (you can increase it slightly, if you like... just to make the "I only DPS" crowd happy) as it is simply for being in that stance. Tanks, Healers, and Controllers trade in that 10% bonus for their additional abilities. Good DPSes will still rise to the top and will continue to top the scoreboard. Bad ones will no longer be near the top of the scoreboard just because they are DPSes.

Also, if you're going to recommend "Hybrid" for all roles and "Super Powered" and "Weapon Mastery" for Damage only, you need to give those other roles some real incentives to use the "Hybrid" stance... like maybe better power regeneration, a bigger power bar if you are not in DPS stance, reduced power costs if not in DPS stance, etc. The bonus you get in Restoration or Vitalization for using hybrid does not make up for the better power regeneration and power bonus you get in Super Powered. Poo-poo it if you like, but I find that my tank does reasonably well as a hybrid, and in my mind, it makes sense because of the way I play... and I tried my Healer and Controller with Hybrid, but find that they work better under Super Powered.

I am definitely with the OP, though, in that I would like to see more non-elite content that involves more balanced teams. When DWFR was one of the top raids, it was a fairly standard thing to run 3-2-2-1 or 2-2-2-2... and it required real teamwork to accomplish. I also found that the AOJ alerts ran much smoother when you had 3 of the 4 roles represented (usually Controller was the least necessary, but I never poopooed a 1-1-1-1 setup in them because my impression is that those were the least troublesome setups, especially on the boss fights). Perhaps even, as has been previously suggested in other threads, providing some kind of mentor mission that requires you to actually assume your support role in order to accomplish it, and you cannot progress to level 30 and beyond without having completed it, or at a minimum you are not allowed to queue up with that role until you have completed it... even if you have CR 210 or higher.

Sounds like this thread has been stamped free of import tax

Make all armor universal. If you press t for tank boom. Full tank gear unchangeable. Same for trolling and healing. Unable to alter at all. Then a 15 percent all damage reduction for more than two dps per group. 30 percent for 4. 50 percent for 5.

I would like powers to be able to be played as other roles. I'll use sorcery as an example, because that's my most familiar power. I'd love to be able to use pets with the ability to command them. Sorcery has a tank pet, it would be awesome to be able to command your pet while healing at the same time. The ability to control pets, to me, would make them so much more fun to play. They wouldn't follow you around or get themselves into trouble, use powers when you want, etc. Same for trollers, and tanks. All pipe dreams I know, but you asked.

And Heck no to 2222, unless we are talking battle roles.

Oh don't mind me, just trying to get a positive discussion that would hopefully get a dev or mepps attention and hopefully we all can come to a close enough agreement that can be used to help improve the game.

It is a big hope, I know.

You get a +1 from me for mentioning my favorite gripe.

I dislike Roleless Buffs with a passion, and my main is a DPS. I WANT instances to NEED all roles, I don't want to get into an instance and be nearly immortal just because I can block and combo a self-heal power with the roleless healing buff to go from near dead to near full HP. I want to get a good healer with me, a nice troller and an active tank, rather than going with scoreboard chasers who insist on running ahead of the group just to make big numbers on the scoreboard.

Awwww Okay how about this then... 3-1-2-2 That would be 3 TANKS, 2 TROLLS, 2 HEALERS and 1 DPS.....Had that make up on a raid and everything went amazingly well. I hate to beat a dead horse but this game is "supposed" to be about team work. Having been both the lone troll or the lone healer on those 6-1-1 teams all I saw was 5-6 guys all trying to see if they could out damage each other and could not care less if the mission succeeded or not.

I would love to do a all support run on endgame content

Don't think we'll be getting any support role changes any time soon. The devs seem to be very content with where they're at, which is a shame cause trolls really need to be looked at

I rarely put together groups without two trolls, but since I've tanked and healed, yes healed. You don't need multiple healers, unless they are new. Same for tanks, unless mechanics call for it. Healing, to me, is easier than ever. Maybe it's just water. Tanking is also a joke. He basically just dps in tank role.

I'm fine with multiple roles, but I have a life and don't want to be in content for hours. New content I expect, and wait til the weekend.