What if support roles did more damage?

You get an increase of 10% while in Damage Role (see Traits —> lvl 1 [Damage Role]). That’s it…”Stats Matter”

If anything... support roles have TOO MUCH potential to do damage thanks to precision not requiring a whole lot of loadout space.

Rage and Earth can even rely on might and do it extremely well... often doing MORE than average dps players.

Anyone who thinks support roles should get more damage has never set up a good dual spec before. They're devastating in anything involving 4 of less players. They're still good in raids, but people have very rigid opinions there about how things "should" be done so you're less likely to be praised for your ingenuity.

Nothing quite carries easy to mid level instances like a good battle tank or battle healer.

Out of curiosity, what does "fully geared" mean to you?

Current CR entry point is what, 402?

So if I'm a healer, at 402, all healer gear w/mods, Trans/Strat - page - purp lv 80+... should I be able to complete the content? Even Elite? Only Reg?

Btw, your "glass cannon" comment made me flashback to running my HL DPS through Origin Crisis when it launched. Damn, that toon was the epitome of a glass cannon. LOL Good times, fond memories, aaahhhhhh

I love the idea of support role dummies! Tryout different healing loadouts, or pull ranges, debuff timing/rotations. YES PLEASE!

I'm also not suggesting that support roles change their playstyle to focus on damage. Just that their damage not be reduced. (I believe it is, although I've yet to find a video showing to what extent it is)

Guess I need to research how to do the combat analysis on PC. I understand there's a way to export data for easier analysis.

Cool, cool, that's what I thought (don't have the game up at the moment)

So if I take my healer/troll/tank, run a few passes on a dummy & get an average. Then ONLY change stance. Run a few more passes (same loadout, rotation, gear) & take the average.

There will only be about a 10% difference (+/- a small % to account for crit variance)?

I meant it in a relative sense. If content has been out a while, relative to how long the content is meant to last. About halfway through the life of content, I'd guess, would be a time when people should be able to start dropping roles. But I'm using the weasle-word "should" ... this is in my mental measure of developed content.

At 402 for 402-entry content, should your entire 402 group be able to complete it? Depending on the group, my ideal content would be that y'all would at least have one boss where you barely scraped by. Elite, I'd hope that you'd get stuck partway.

My focus here, is on the content, mechanics, design, etc. And it's a conundrum. They've kind of painted towards a corner with all the ways they can control it with stats. They had mixed success at best with forcing groups with room mechanics (split hallways, teleportation, stand on the pad of your role, etc). And it takes some finess to try to do it with boss mechanics (power/health drains, add grouping, etc) I feel for them trying to walk the line between too hard, not hard enough, all while adjusting it so that it's better to roll with roles.

yay….. go stats….

This is my personal opinion on the matter, While I think it is unreasonable to expect support roles to not do damage I think its about reaching a balance within personal responsibility and group responsibility. DPS players generally have very little group responsibility as the most important thing for them to do (Excluding map specific mechanics) is to burn the boss and targets which means their personal responsibility is high as its really their skill level that determines output; whereas Support roles have a large amount of group responsibility as their output directly controls others output and the most important thing for success in content is that they preform their role properly.

When it comes to a Battle-Role version of a support they often have to generate friction against their original role goals to increase their personal responsibility in terms of damage out, but that can lead to people going too far in one direction that they end up being unable to properly execute the group responsibility they have. Even with that being said, I like pushing the limits of my role to provide the greatest challenge to myself (In FFXIV on PLD my parses generally are 60-70+ in damage-out and 70-80+ in healing-out) but I understand that ultimately my role is to tank the boss, or soak with the MT and I will gladly reduce my output to make the team successful.

I think battle roles should exist and we should continue to seek ways to make them viable for players to engage with them while keeping in mind that they have a responsibility to the group first, and themselves second. I spend a good amount of cycles thinking about game balance and supports roles in our game, so I welcome this kind of conversation.

Maybe healer, tank and controller gets same damage as damage role for specific challenges.
As to the Save the Universe and Survival Mode are challenges

Maybe a another content that's chaotic difficulty where support roles doesn't get damage penalties.

Tho when support roles are at like 800 skill points and maxed on their healer, controller and tank skill stats, does putting skill points in the criticals, might and precision damage stats not increase their damage a bit more if not significantly along with power interaction consumables?

how do you feel about current DCUO state endgame wise do you feel that its balanced compared to FF what are the main differences that you see in DCUO that you dont like if any or things you would like to change?

Yes. If I can heal or control or tank to defend myself efficiently as well as doing heavy damage, all content would be easier.
There's no reason to think that the devs would waste resources doubling up roles and then waste even more to accomodate the new conditions.
It's an "If it ain't broke..." situation.

Final Fantasy uses a Piano Recital style of design where the same things happen exactly on time, at 45s there will be a tankbuster with a phys vuln then 2s later a second tankbuster that requires a swap to properly mitigate, then 20s later everyone will need to spread to clock positions then rotate counterclockwise to a partner to soak an aoe etc. This design style requires a very robust understanding of the game and requires apt memorization of the exact order of mechanics so that you can execute.

Whereas DCUO uses a priority AI based design where based on all sorts of factors the boss can activate certain mechanics, this requires the players to always be flexible to all the options and react as they appear (Much like the Boss mechanics in Dungeon Fighter Online).

In terms of balance, FF has a very interesting balance style where they often remove core features of classes (Rip PLD dot) to homogenize them making it easier to balance since the minutiae of the role is stripped away. DCUO I feel like has a lot of unique struggles that makes it hard to compare balance wise I think DCUO has a relative balance when it comes to powers there are over performers and underperformers but I personally don't think there are any truly unusable power types.

In terms of things I don't like or would like to change, I could probably grumble all day about things that I'd like to change or dislike functionally but one thing that I find difficult to work with is the maximum of 6 abilities(Excluding combos) on your bar. While this does mean there is a lot of options available to pick from as you have to weigh the value of basically 16% effectiveness per slot it means that we cannot make truly situational moves that have no value aside from the very rare situations that they'd be useful (Like Lifegrip in WoW).

Thanks for the comment (I honestly didn't expect a dev to pop in)

I agree that in group content, support roles should be primarily focused on supporting the group so the other players can fulfill their roles. As such, I'd expect that support roles would have a lower damage output. (You can't be healing if you're doing damage & vice-versa)

That being said...

1) Has the % gap between DPS & Support remained consistent since it was last addressed?

2) What about outside of raids (or even alerts)? When players are still engaging with content, but are in support roles. I've come across countless players who don't dual-role (only have the 1 armory), and are only setup to play as a support role.

3) Are support roles only intended for 4 & 8 player content (okay maybe even duos)? While it's expected (but not encouraged or even suggested in-game) to run solos & open-world content in a DPS role.

I sympathize with you & the other developers, as you try to maintain balance within the game. It can't be easy.

Have you guys ever thought about support roles using their own main stat giving them a boost in damage ?… like tanks (x amount of dom = y% overall damage increase) that way people who do want to “battle support” can do so without compromising their main role ..I get the issue would be then that would also be able to invest in might and precision but I’m sure there are ways to stop investment into those stats when in support ..

That's fair. To be clear, I'm by no means asking or expecting support to be on par with dps. Just narrow the divide a bit. When we're talking about damage that's in the tens of millions there seems like there's some wiggle room.

Plus, when players are actively developing battle roles, and support roles are being asked to switch to DPS in alerts so "it goes faster"... I'm not going to say it's broke, but maybe let's take a look at things.

hells, no. you wanna do more damage, go dps. you wanna heal, heal. you know the trade-offs. you don't get me coming 'round your role asking for my heals to be upped. lol.

note. seriously, I'd rather not. I got one job. & I'm not bad at it ( well, actually I got two, but no one cares about the other one, any more ).

There isn't a difference with the right setup.

I always enjoy it when you respond! Thank you!

I’m guessing it was no coincidence then that the second boss battle in Cursed Themyscira reminded me of the Copied Factory lol

Maybe the workaround to the 6 abilities max could be the addition of an additional load out bar like we have in FF 14 where we can toggle between two? I know that would require a total UI rework so it might not be feasible for a number of reasons.

My datacenter is Aether and world is Sargatanas

Miqo’te forever! Rawr!

If only instead of weapon mastery we had a weapon swap system

It's just awkward for me to read penalty and nerf rather than more "exchange" and other tradeoff related terms. I know most of us have multiple armories now, but back in HoF for instance when that wasn't always the case, if the sole remaining player of a particular role dc'd or got smacked by a hell clown and not res'd and no one had a quick switch, a dps was desperate to try to hide their way out of combat to toggle and have their damage nerfed and penalized. The degree of dps loss from our attacks in exchange for being able to pull and force an add to look our way, or being able to power heal and debuff or heal and shield with group powers was a tradeoff well worth it. I only mention the raw switching because it was referenced earlier in the thread and to streamline the point.

Today, idk maybe there's a case for that specialization cost not being worth it if content structure is semi-consistently making support roles less relevant, but as was mentioned, that's more of an issue itself than the exchange is in my opinion. If the tradeoff went away in support stance, shouldn't powersets and allies' role-locked support features be fair game for damage dealers? smh Love a good thought experiment... just not sure what's going on with this one yet. I'll be reading, though