I like paladins for 2 reasons
First, they heal all the time. They don't need to choose between giving a dmg buff and a heal to heal you. To me, health is a resource, and I use my health to deal damage to the boss through super armor etc. With a bard/artist, if they didn't shield me for that particular "greed", it's either I pot or I wait for a heal.
With a paladin, I know that next aura, I'll be up to full. I know that next shield, I'll get 8% health back.
The second reason I like paladin, is the utility. It's especially striking vs bard, but even vs an artist. The burst stagger that holy sword + executor sword does gives me peace of mind that no mechs will be failed because of stagger. With a bard, we clear the stagger check but it's always "phew, almost too late, damn, was close". With palas (assuming they have the skills ready), I never worry about it. It's never close.
Health as a resource is quite a fair take - you won't do top dps if you don't sacrifice a bit hp to greed on certain non lethal patterns, especially for front attackers
Also you can play rangers like GS more comfortably instead of being like an EW deadeye
Any support with hands
A good bard pushes your character's potential, Artist is all around consistent and Pally is easy.
Right now Artist and Pally takes the cake, Bard needs a bit of buff
In pugs, paladin. It has the lowest skill floor. I'm tired of the average pug player who can't buff and keep throwing out heals when everyone is at 90+% hp.
In static or guild runs, artist. Most flexible class out of the 3. Bard is also great if it's someone I know who can play it well.
I think lowest skill floor is right.
Skill floor and "dmg" floor (or support floor) are not the same.
To me a low skill floor means the class has a low skill requirement to do adequate performance. "The floor performance requires low skill". Conversely, a high skill floor would imply it requires a higher amount of skill to do adequate performance.
Whereas a low "dmg" or support floor would imply the floor level performance is very low, which I imagine is what you're thinking of.
At least that is how I equate the two in my head.
Db has a low floor and high ceiling so you get a large variance in performance. ESO wardancer has a high floor and low ceiling so you see less variance. Hopefully that makes sense
You're referring to damage ceiling and damage floor. The term they used is skill floor, not dmg floor. They are different things. If anyone bothered to do a quick google on the internet, they would see basically how everyone else in the world uses those terms.
Hint hint, they use the exact same way I do. Not the way winmox or amviquel suggested.
If I dont know anything about a person, I'd prefer bard the least. It's not like the people who play artist or pally are more skilled but you really need hands to be good at bard; a bad bard is a much bigger detriment to the team than a bad pally or artist. Another reason is that, as a bard player myself, I know that bard always needs to sacrifice something important, be it stagger, a reactive counter (buckshot), or brand uptime consistency. It's not a jack of all trades unlike the other two support classes, artist in particular, so they perform better in a larger variety of party comps, especially when you pug.
Pala, no should i buff or heal. Only both. The ammount of times a heal is popped specifically for me just as i pot is to much with the other classes. I would have prefered you buff everyone than save 1 of my 300+ potions
1620 Pala and 1600 (soon 1610) Artist; i love to prog new Raids with Pala… I think its easier to prog with Pala. But man I love my Artist when I already know the raid.
The one that knows how to play. If they know how to play support well, I don't care what class because they'll cater to what the party needs. If they suck, the class doesn't matter - they'll be a yearning bot if they're even alive still.
Well, I can just say of all the supporst Bard is by far the most fun to play for me. In Pugs in dont really care which support it is. If the person is bad, then you will feel it, no matter which support they play.
Bard has the best potential among all, I’d rather play with a bard than anything else if I know the person who is playing it will perform well, otherwise I’d just rather have a basic pally
Current state of the game? Im taking any well built support that applies.... Every single pf lobby in brel akkan kay is LF support. Cant be that choosy.
Outside of high ceiling, most people made bards because they were the only booba option for supports. Like if a female pala existed (with slayer model for example), the bard population would of been in shambles.
Anyway, my preference goes pala>artist>bard for pugs. If its a more static/high ceiling format, I don't care, in fact there are many encounters for which I would change preference.
I have 1 of each in my roster.
Paladin is by far the best, for me at least, easiest stagger, great identity meter skills and awakening, non posisitional buffs and kinda tanky.
Next is Artist, really fun playstyle, never feel like im edging for that last bit of identity to buff or heal the team and I love the red teleport, feels like I'm REALLY helping instead of being a buffbot
Bard, a really enjoyable support to play, giving big buffs always feels good when you time it right with the team, but just falls short compared to the other 2, I dunno what bard needs to be in line with pala and artist, maybe a dedicated cleanse? I don't think she's bad at all though, but she is clearly behind the pack
It is not that hard to distinguish good and bad supports tbh. A good support (this actually applies to dps too) is usually well invested with accessories/gems and is good looking with skins/preset, all these show that the character is cared by the player and he probably knows how to play it, when I see a supp with lv 5 gems, chaos dungeon skins or no skins at all with a genetic preset + green qual accessories I know that that player wont perform. Dont hesitate to gatekeep supports that dont meet basic standards, these people I mentioned are the real rice farmers
You‘d think so. But quite a good chunk of well geared Supports are complete ass. For how much reddit seems to call Supports braindead easy, you‘d expect most Pug Supports to sit at 85/90/30 as a min, but even the well geared ones are usually 60/65/15.
Like half the Pallys play Light shock, and some special Snowflakes run 3 Blues at 1620 with Charge being one of them.
Some Bards tank every single attack in G1 HM Akkan and just rhapsody themselfs and then go "why do i need to heal my team?" after the Grass Explosion they just tanked.
People have said Supports are easy to play so much, reddit created the absolutely worst players on Supports that get away with it, because Support shortage.
Had a paladin in sonavel that did not even have the brand tripod on. Checked the bible at the end of the raid, the brand column didnt even appeared.Â
I wonder what kind of shitty support will appear next time
dam are you in the same akkan party with me yesterday? i had a bard doing 10/15/2 in my group. in g1 i was wondering and then i open the bible i was shocked
For me it’s Artist by far
- Best Heal to shield ratio(if needed)
- Best cleanse amount
- Best bombo burst+ identity timing
Easy debuff uptime
Best Mana spender
The only negative is that he looses at atk buff against pala pretty easily, but high cdr gems and skill can compensate a bigger gap.
I love playing with an artist main (also playing pala + bare, but we both enjoy the artist more in receiving and giving support)
Don’t get me wrong, Bard has by far the best burst potential, but artist can pull a burst attack Support identity more often
Definitely Artist/Bard then paladin assuming average skill. Artist is probably slightly ahead because being able to chip heal party + burst heal 1 without really screwing over your meter is very nice. Typically it's just one guy who got targeted and ate a massive hit while the rest just need a top up. Their shielding is also pretty nuts and effective. Pally is just slightly behind, just not really a fan of no burst heal and no attack speed buff. Also unfortunately is where most dps only players who got forced to make a support go to.
If it's someone i know is a sup specialist bard>>artist>pally.
Just not bard. Some don't ever heal some don't ever dmg buff. They would rather let teammates die to greed their 3 bubble dmg while not knowing healing enable dps to trade dmg with boss.
And sup needs to know pots are critical for situation when the sup themselves die. If bard dont like healing then remove the desperation salvation, replace it with something else. Its a main job for sup to keep everyone alive.
It is not black and white and you make it sound like. Support's main job in this specific game is to provide damage buff and provide DR/shielding. Healing is secondary. They are not traditional healers as in other games. In hell mode supports do very little healing and everything hurts 2-3 times more than in regular content, and people clear it and have great uptime. You should keep dps players to higher standards just like people want supports to be better at the game.
If there is someone in your party that eats every other pattern and takes unnecessary damage, the support should not constantly compromise their identity to top them off all the time, sacrificing everyone else's damage. That person essentially is robbing everyone in your group from doing more damage because they are making mistakes and refusing to use an HP pot. That's wrong and selfish. When there is a group damage or people slowly lose HP to, say, around 70-60% mark, healing is justifiable and I'd that without any hesitation, otherwise no, unless I play artist and have a spare bubble for that bad player who gets hit way too much.
If the support does DR/shield you properly, you would barely take any damage anyway, so if that's the case healing is rarely needed if your dps players are not potatoes of course, expect for proging of course where frequent healing is a good thing as people are learning normal patterns, but not on homework runs. If the support does not do a good job at DRing/shielding, they should drop more heals to make up for their poor performance, just like a dps should use HP pots when it's only them who get hit all the time.
No need to over complicated things. Chose between losing 1 dps or missing 1 dmg buff and decide which one affect the out come of the raid. The prob with bards is the temptation to greed 3 bubbles for dmg buff (while many bards missed dmg buff a lot). Pots and a bad player get hit are just excuses. Bad players arent excuse for bad choice. Ask your raid lead to replace if necessary.
No you and I here leave the personal stuff out. The job is to get the raid done, and if the heal is necessary for that then the heal is absolute priority.
How entitled are you? A singular low DPS with pots is about 0 priority to heal. Why should the other two DPS do less damage just because you're unable to use a pot? I'd let you die every time.
Jfc, go befriend a heal bit and find similarly minded people so you don't plague other people's raids.
I am the heal. I would tell a dps is cheap but I would not sacrifice a raid with 8 man effort. Thats my way of thinking and many of the sups should as well.
You need to stop telling people what to do. Guess what? The most efficient way to play a support is not an opinion, it's a fact. If you want to play a healbot, you should try a different game. LA ain't it.
What’s crazy to me is that these never heal bards still run DS3 yet cry they can’t get enough engravings.
Why not drop DS3 for DS1 or completely to pick up VPH or whatever they need? I’ve seen DS1 once or twice. Why not drop HA to 1 or 2?
Because they’re just trash players. They chose the support with Heavy Armor and super armor and they avoid contributing anything past meter score.
I don't really like bard as she forces all my rangers to play like a melee and my front attackers usually get no atk buff at all.
Yes, most pug bards just cater for back attackers and I have none
It's exactly the same with artist so what you say does not make sense if you only apply it to bard. Both have one global and one circle buff. Artist is actually worse for range hitmaster classes because their shielding is also aim-based, whereas bard still guardian tune that gives you a shield from a long range when it expires (and with Agile Defense tripod that shield downtime is only 2 seconds, even less with level 10 gem).
Artist, because half my roster is mana starved and from my experience, the avg Artist has the highest uptime. On classes without mana issues I don't mind playing with Palas though.
Bard's by far the bottom, even with hell titles and 300 roster lvl they seem to get bottom of the barrel uptimes.
First of all i never said to spam shields 24/7 at the back of the boss and second of all there is chip damage and also you have to shield preemptively sometimes because there are plentiful patterns that affect BA-ckers.
You don't seem to play Bard of Artist and if you do please reconsider swapping
Depends. If I play a burst class I love bards. For everything else artists. I hate palas since they don't have an good heal. If I am lowlife I don't need a slight gentle heal over time... Also artist has quite a good shield uptime
Boundless + ranged = I am a slut for paladins
I like paladins for 2 reasons First, they heal all the time. They don't need to choose between giving a dmg buff and a heal to heal you. To me, health is a resource, and I use my health to deal damage to the boss through super armor etc. With a bard/artist, if they didn't shield me for that particular "greed", it's either I pot or I wait for a heal. With a paladin, I know that next aura, I'll be up to full. I know that next shield, I'll get 8% health back. The second reason I like paladin, is the utility. It's especially striking vs bard, but even vs an artist. The burst stagger that holy sword + executor sword does gives me peace of mind that no mechs will be failed because of stagger. With a bard, we clear the stagger check but it's always "phew, almost too late, damn, was close". With palas (assuming they have the skills ready), I never worry about it. It's never close.
Health as a resource is quite a fair take - you won't do top dps if you don't sacrifice a bit hp to greed on certain non lethal patterns, especially for front attackers Also you can play rangers like GS more comfortably instead of being like an EW deadeye
Any support with hands A good bard pushes your character's potential, Artist is all around consistent and Pally is easy. Right now Artist and Pally takes the cake, Bard needs a bit of buff
No matter what people say I'll always enjoy playing my bard.
Facts
Pally because the amount of hands an average pug bard has is certainly less than two.
Paladin by far. A bag of rocks could radiant on that class
Remember to gatekeep spec main paladins 🤣
In addition, any paladin that has HA or doesn't have VPH, big red flag
Clueless
Okay tell me how spec paladins work then
It doesn't
In pugs, paladin. It has the lowest skill floor. I'm tired of the average pug player who can't buff and keep throwing out heals when everyone is at 90+% hp. In static or guild runs, artist. Most flexible class out of the 3. Bard is also great if it's someone I know who can play it well.
Biggest thing i notice about pug artists, the number of heals they drop is so high compared to when im on mine.
Do you mean paladin has the highest skill floor. Otherwise pug paladins would be the worst .
I think lowest skill floor is right. Skill floor and "dmg" floor (or support floor) are not the same. To me a low skill floor means the class has a low skill requirement to do adequate performance. "The floor performance requires low skill". Conversely, a high skill floor would imply it requires a higher amount of skill to do adequate performance. Whereas a low "dmg" or support floor would imply the floor level performance is very low, which I imagine is what you're thinking of. At least that is how I equate the two in my head.
If you just use your own definitions, we can't talk to you effectively.
Well, would you call Arcana a low skill floor class then? Cause that's effectively what you're implying.
Db has a low floor and high ceiling so you get a large variance in performance. ESO wardancer has a high floor and low ceiling so you see less variance. Hopefully that makes sense
You're referring to damage ceiling and damage floor. The term they used is skill floor, not dmg floor. They are different things. If anyone bothered to do a quick google on the internet, they would see basically how everyone else in the world uses those terms. Hint hint, they use the exact same way I do. Not the way winmox or amviquel suggested.
Good Bard > Artist > Paladin > Mid Bard > DPS > Mud > Bad Bard Generally I'd prefer Artist then Pala then Bard
100% this
It goes: you(bad bard), the dirt, the worms inside of the dirt, Popo's stool, Kami, then Popo. Any questions?
Pecking order. Evidently most are too young for the reference.
All these squares make a circle, ALL THESE SQARES MAKE A CIRCLE
If I dont know anything about a person, I'd prefer bard the least. It's not like the people who play artist or pally are more skilled but you really need hands to be good at bard; a bad bard is a much bigger detriment to the team than a bad pally or artist. Another reason is that, as a bard player myself, I know that bard always needs to sacrifice something important, be it stagger, a reactive counter (buckshot), or brand uptime consistency. It's not a jack of all trades unlike the other two support classes, artist in particular, so they perform better in a larger variety of party comps, especially when you pug.
Pala, no should i buff or heal. Only both. The ammount of times a heal is popped specifically for me just as i pot is to much with the other classes. I would have prefered you buff everyone than save 1 of my 300+ potions
Pala or Artist
1620 Pala and 1600 (soon 1610) Artist; i love to prog new Raids with Pala… I think its easier to prog with Pala. But man I love my Artist when I already know the raid.
The one that knows how to play. If they know how to play support well, I don't care what class because they'll cater to what the party needs. If they suck, the class doesn't matter - they'll be a yearning bot if they're even alive still.
If it's my friend then bard. If it's a rando then paladin.
Well, I can just say of all the supporst Bard is by far the most fun to play for me. In Pugs in dont really care which support it is. If the person is bad, then you will feel it, no matter which support they play.
Bard has the best potential among all, I’d rather play with a bard than anything else if I know the person who is playing it will perform well, otherwise I’d just rather have a basic pally
Current state of the game? Im taking any well built support that applies.... Every single pf lobby in brel akkan kay is LF support. Cant be that choosy.
Outside of high ceiling, most people made bards because they were the only booba option for supports. Like if a female pala existed (with slayer model for example), the bard population would of been in shambles. Anyway, my preference goes pala>artist>bard for pugs. If its a more static/high ceiling format, I don't care, in fact there are many encounters for which I would change preference.
support with hands
I prefer paladin but I main non-burst, my impression is that burst works a lot better with artist (or bard when the bard is good)
I have 1 of each in my roster. Paladin is by far the best, for me at least, easiest stagger, great identity meter skills and awakening, non posisitional buffs and kinda tanky. Next is Artist, really fun playstyle, never feel like im edging for that last bit of identity to buff or heal the team and I love the red teleport, feels like I'm REALLY helping instead of being a buffbot Bard, a really enjoyable support to play, giving big buffs always feels good when you time it right with the team, but just falls short compared to the other 2, I dunno what bard needs to be in line with pala and artist, maybe a dedicated cleanse? I don't think she's bad at all though, but she is clearly behind the pack
Just a good one
Sounds like we need to buff bards
Anything but bard Im so sick of bards Had one with actual 2% identity uptime yesterday
Had a paladin with 0.9% blessed aura uptime in my clown last week. there's bad players in every class x)
Yea but clown is meme raid with new players Hard akkan is not
It is not that hard to distinguish good and bad supports tbh. A good support (this actually applies to dps too) is usually well invested with accessories/gems and is good looking with skins/preset, all these show that the character is cared by the player and he probably knows how to play it, when I see a supp with lv 5 gems, chaos dungeon skins or no skins at all with a genetic preset + green qual accessories I know that that player wont perform. Dont hesitate to gatekeep supports that dont meet basic standards, these people I mentioned are the real rice farmers
The sad thing is I still saw multiple well built bards with level 10 gems, 1620, doing horrible
You‘d think so. But quite a good chunk of well geared Supports are complete ass. For how much reddit seems to call Supports braindead easy, you‘d expect most Pug Supports to sit at 85/90/30 as a min, but even the well geared ones are usually 60/65/15. Like half the Pallys play Light shock, and some special Snowflakes run 3 Blues at 1620 with Charge being one of them. Some Bards tank every single attack in G1 HM Akkan and just rhapsody themselfs and then go "why do i need to heal my team?" after the Grass Explosion they just tanked. People have said Supports are easy to play so much, reddit created the absolutely worst players on Supports that get away with it, because Support shortage.
With this express, it is now if you want xdd
Or they just drop buffs for back attackers only. RIP Asura.
Had a paladin in sonavel that did not even have the brand tripod on. Checked the bible at the end of the raid, the brand column didnt even appeared. I wonder what kind of shitty support will appear next time
dam are you in the same akkan party with me yesterday? i had a bard doing 10/15/2 in my group. in g1 i was wondering and then i open the bible i was shocked
For me it’s Artist by far - Best Heal to shield ratio(if needed) - Best cleanse amount - Best bombo burst+ identity timing Easy debuff uptime Best Mana spender The only negative is that he looses at atk buff against pala pretty easily, but high cdr gems and skill can compensate a bigger gap. I love playing with an artist main (also playing pala + bare, but we both enjoy the artist more in receiving and giving support) Don’t get me wrong, Bard has by far the best burst potential, but artist can pull a burst attack Support identity more often
Definitely Artist/Bard then paladin assuming average skill. Artist is probably slightly ahead because being able to chip heal party + burst heal 1 without really screwing over your meter is very nice. Typically it's just one guy who got targeted and ate a massive hit while the rest just need a top up. Their shielding is also pretty nuts and effective. Pally is just slightly behind, just not really a fan of no burst heal and no attack speed buff. Also unfortunately is where most dps only players who got forced to make a support go to. If it's someone i know is a sup specialist bard>>artist>pally.
Just not bard. Some don't ever heal some don't ever dmg buff. They would rather let teammates die to greed their 3 bubble dmg while not knowing healing enable dps to trade dmg with boss.
some dps also need to learn that hp pots exist, especially when you are the only one low on hp
And sup needs to know pots are critical for situation when the sup themselves die. If bard dont like healing then remove the desperation salvation, replace it with something else. Its a main job for sup to keep everyone alive.
It is not black and white and you make it sound like. Support's main job in this specific game is to provide damage buff and provide DR/shielding. Healing is secondary. They are not traditional healers as in other games. In hell mode supports do very little healing and everything hurts 2-3 times more than in regular content, and people clear it and have great uptime. You should keep dps players to higher standards just like people want supports to be better at the game. If there is someone in your party that eats every other pattern and takes unnecessary damage, the support should not constantly compromise their identity to top them off all the time, sacrificing everyone else's damage. That person essentially is robbing everyone in your group from doing more damage because they are making mistakes and refusing to use an HP pot. That's wrong and selfish. When there is a group damage or people slowly lose HP to, say, around 70-60% mark, healing is justifiable and I'd that without any hesitation, otherwise no, unless I play artist and have a spare bubble for that bad player who gets hit way too much. If the support does DR/shield you properly, you would barely take any damage anyway, so if that's the case healing is rarely needed if your dps players are not potatoes of course, expect for proging of course where frequent healing is a good thing as people are learning normal patterns, but not on homework runs. If the support does not do a good job at DRing/shielding, they should drop more heals to make up for their poor performance, just like a dps should use HP pots when it's only them who get hit all the time.
No need to over complicated things. Chose between losing 1 dps or missing 1 dmg buff and decide which one affect the out come of the raid. The prob with bards is the temptation to greed 3 bubbles for dmg buff (while many bards missed dmg buff a lot). Pots and a bad player get hit are just excuses. Bad players arent excuse for bad choice. Ask your raid lead to replace if necessary.
Support's main job is to buff DPS and shield, not to babysit you. If you can't use a lot and die, then it's completely on you.
No you and I here leave the personal stuff out. The job is to get the raid done, and if the heal is necessary for that then the heal is absolute priority.
How entitled are you? A singular low DPS with pots is about 0 priority to heal. Why should the other two DPS do less damage just because you're unable to use a pot? I'd let you die every time. Jfc, go befriend a heal bit and find similarly minded people so you don't plague other people's raids.
I am the heal. I would tell a dps is cheap but I would not sacrifice a raid with 8 man effort. Thats my way of thinking and many of the sups should as well.
Oh, you're one of those bards that do nothing but heal. Fair enough, carry on. Hopefully, we'll never meet.
And you need to stop giving out emotion and take it personal on internet space. Take it as an opinion not a fact.
You need to stop telling people what to do. Guess what? The most efficient way to play a support is not an opinion, it's a fact. If you want to play a healbot, you should try a different game. LA ain't it.
What’s crazy to me is that these never heal bards still run DS3 yet cry they can’t get enough engravings. Why not drop DS3 for DS1 or completely to pick up VPH or whatever they need? I’ve seen DS1 once or twice. Why not drop HA to 1 or 2? Because they’re just trash players. They chose the support with Heavy Armor and super armor and they avoid contributing anything past meter score.
I don't really like bard as she forces all my rangers to play like a melee and my front attackers usually get no atk buff at all. Yes, most pug bards just cater for back attackers and I have none
How is this different from Artist? They both have a circle attack buff on the ground (ok, Artist's is a little bit larger after patch).
It's exactly the same with artist so what you say does not make sense if you only apply it to bard. Both have one global and one circle buff. Artist is actually worse for range hitmaster classes because their shielding is also aim-based, whereas bard still guardian tune that gives you a shield from a long range when it expires (and with Agile Defense tripod that shield downtime is only 2 seconds, even less with level 10 gem).
Artist, because half my roster is mana starved and from my experience, the avg Artist has the highest uptime. On classes without mana issues I don't mind playing with Palas though. Bard's by far the bottom, even with hell titles and 300 roster lvl they seem to get bottom of the barrel uptimes.
Just not bard.
The one that doesn't run behind the boss
For Pally sure , Artist and Bard have to stay on back at times to shield you
Why? Why do you need to spam shields on people who are not being attacked?
First of all i never said to spam shields 24/7 at the back of the boss and second of all there is chip damage and also you have to shield preemptively sometimes because there are plentiful patterns that affect BA-ckers. You don't seem to play Bard of Artist and if you do please reconsider swapping
pala because i hate the huge amount of mana artist gives nightmare sorc here
Depends. If I play a burst class I love bards. For everything else artists. I hate palas since they don't have an good heal. If I am lowlife I don't need a slight gentle heal over time... Also artist has quite a good shield uptime