How Can We Encourage Support Roles? (DEVS MUST READ)

On the villian side its very very very HARD to complete missions without much SUPPORT roles on our side.. And its not to say people CANT play support roles, but there isn't enough INCENTIVE to encourage support role play.

It is clear that DPS is the most popular role to play in.. But what about support roles? How can we increase the likability and playability for support roles? How do we encourage the population to be TANKS or HEALERS or TROLLS or HYBRIDs etc.. Remember when there was FOTM powers, this should be retweaked for SUPPORT ROLES(not in an OP way but in a creative and much beneficial way via ;gear drops, money, Episodic currency, extra nth metal..)

For 2019 one of the things the developers should tackle is encouraging SUPPORT ROLE play.. Whether it be exclusive OP artifacts that are interesting for support roles or increased drop rates... Whatever it is, please help us out on the VILLAIN side.. If you're a hero you cannot relate to the struggles of this..

So i made this thread not to PROMOTE my ideas but to help the DEVS come up with IDEAS to encourage support role play.. What things would you like to see in the game to encourage more players to play in their support roles?


Comment down below! Make sure to watch this thread too it will gain alot of traction.

Increase the penalty that you incur from DPS stacking is the easiest way to do it.
Make it so damn big that nobody would do it like 75% or more

I've spent hours on LFG for Atlantis elite raids calling for tanks on the villain side during the weekdays before reset. I think it's more about the villain population and less about getting more support roles. I think the real solution is a unified hero/villain LFG channel and group forming for end-game content. It would be hard to do for all game open world because earlier zones have hero and villain specific areas (Gotham, Metropolis, Gotham Wastelands, etc.). Maybe just allow group forming for instances only no open world.

They need to combine our LFGs and group making abilities.

Enough of the faction separation already.

UNIFYING THE VILL AND HEROES!

SEEMS LIKE A POPULAR CHOICE.. but how does that encourage people to WANT TO play support roles?? The goal should be to increase likability vs putting a BAND AID over the underlying issue no?

TBH that seems counterproductive to your DPS role..

No, right now there is already a system in place that puts a damage penalty when DPS stacking occurs in alerts. So the devs are obviously aware of the issue. However its not strong enough at this point and it still happens.

Alerts are where you learn to tank, troll or heal so its important to allow that.
Take that same system in double or heck triple it in alerts...I guarantee you'll find more support roles very quickly.

Because it would be impossible to get players to do what they don’t want to do.

If someone wants to play Healer, they’ll play Healer. No incentive will make someone want to play Healer that doesn’t already, in my opinion.

I never have trouble finding roles on the hero side though, that’s why I suggested that.

I only troll. I refuse to DPS at this point.
That being said, I started a healer with that 210 CR skip and only then did I realize that there really are no trolls I can rely on for power, with the exception of one. (So far)
I really didn't realize how bad the lack of support roles were until then.

I think they should add a support role tutorial of some kind, probably around lvl 30 for it & if the skip cr, do it at that cr. Should reward a unattuned support role gear set, maybe a nth metal exp to build a support artifact, would say another armory but that’s stretching it lol. The support role email we get doesn’t tell people how to do their support role.

All players I seen that refuse don’t either know how to effectively use their support role or they don’t build a armory/gear set for it

the best suggestion I have is simply start playing the support roles yourself and encourage your friends and league mates to do so also. I never dps in raids anymore on my characters that are support roles and on the characters I use as support role characters I can get into raids instantly.

They have been... they've been trying to move us back towards doing raids with a 4x2 configuration, especially the elite ones... but the people are resisting because MOAR BURN!

Just last night we ran The Throne (regular) and had a person in the group who was at the very low end of being able to enter it... and this person was the tank. For last boss, we had a second person go tank (much higher CR), and had the lower level tank do nothing but pull the Flames of Sagittarius to one side while the other tank kept Corum Rath on the opposite side. It felt like the instance actually ran FASTER... because Rath wasn't getting buffed by the Flames.

Sometimes "more burn" is not the answer. Sometimes the answer is to work smarter, not harder.

This, this is the reason all of my alts play as only 1 role, they don't have an armory to quickly switch from dps to support role or vice versa, so I only bother gearing them for 1 role instead. If people don't have access to more than 1 armory there is no reason to build gear for the other role, they will just gear for the role they think it's the most fun or that can get them through missions faster. All of my alts play only as dps or support role, not both.

On my main, I didn't bother getting gear for my support role and learn it until I finally bought an armory last year tbh. Getting that 2nd armory was what encouraged me to finally do support role on my main, until then I always thought it would be a hassle so I just stayed dps.

It would be nice if vendor gear purchased would give you off role gear as well to help. As well as any artifact ranked to a certain level is also ranked on alts to same. Its ridic for alts this day and age to also have to rank up artifacts to atleast 120.

If folks would just adapt the 4x2 configuration, they would see how much easier things can work. Everyone wants to get things done fast. Classic Tank n Spank. Tanks wanting to tow truck ads through the hallways, only to get over run occasionally and die then complain about heals. DPS charging agead of tanks. Orbitals on 1st set of ads. Its nuts now a days . These raids, especially elite are not built for that. I have been in multiple runs of 4x2, and wow what a difference. Sure, burn is a little slower, but deaths were down and time completed was about the same due to less deaths. Support Roles are key to the new DLC and little to no one even recognize it. Sureb they are quick to call a healer trash because he can't spam enough heals fast enough to keep a bad tank up, trolls at times struggle keeping 2 healer and a tank getting enough power let alone the power hungry dps's out there. Why do think there is such a shortage? One of the biggest reasons Tmso many tanks are MIA is because they are either the hero or the scape goat in Atlantis Elite Raids. I love to DPS, and I live to heal, tank and troll, but I love completing content more.

This can be an easy fix. The artifacts breakthrough has to be canned or players we'll go DPS first and most likely stay DPS. When there's something pay to win involved people will always pick DPS. When it starts costing them too much money they shun their support role. Making it hard to find full support roles in the game. The artifact fail system has to go. It needs to be like augments just Jack the artifact exp to level up really high. That way players have to have more toons and put more time in instead of more real money. Keep players on ur game. When u have something like a gear system That is mark based and a system like replays. Players will pay to win go right for the cheese #dps u want ur.players to play the game not play the game for 1 week. But hey do what u will with ur game. But this is the outcome of all that and it will get worse

People always choose the path of least resistance. Water does the same thing. The only way to make people use roles is to make them use roles like higher DPS stacking penalties and removal of roleless buffs. The DPS penalties need to hurt to the point that there must be support roles to finish the regular and hard instances.

I disagree with doing this, this is a delicate balancing act already. If you discourage 4 DPS runs to the point of making them impossible you'll affect your queue times. You'll also increase your people fake queueing and that's already bad enough (when they queue as tank but have zero intention of ever going tank and hold the instance hostage)

If the content is hard enough where a 4 DPS run is uncomfortable but not impossible then you'll do a better job of encouraging support roles.

The reality too, is you're not going to encouraging trolling while the troll role in itself remains fundamentally broken through excessive passive power regen in all other roles etc.

There's a lot more to where these issues come from than just DPS stacking.

And that's fine to disagree. Maybe add your thoughts to what would work, so far nothing has helped and people still complain about it.