"Supporting" in Guild Wars 2

It's true that, in Guild Wars 2, there's no such thing as a dedicated "support class". But it's also true that a player can individually try to "support" in specific encounters, and the game doesn't do enough to reward that. This isn't specific to World vs. World, either. "Supporting", in the more literal and moment-to-moment sense of the word, is possible in GW2, and it's much more dynamic than the current trope of pigeon-holing "support" into dedicated character classes whose job it is to heal players and use crowd control on enemies.



A more inclusive way to define a dynamic style of support is that it involves performing a task that is does not contribute directly to the main objective, but aids others in achieving the main objective. For example, supporting can still mean dealing damage as long as it is to a secondary target. The GW2 team seemed to have this in mind when developing their game. Unfortunately, if this kind of supporting is not rewarded as well as directly working toward the main objective, then the player is punished for it and thereby discouraged from doing it.

For a recent example of my own, there was some boss killing event happening in the zone I was in (I think it was the Centaur Leader one in Kessex Hills), and the boss had managed to get close enough to the centaur camp to have giant rocks launched at us by other centaurs while we were fighting. Now, it would have been super helpful if someone had gone to kill the catapults so we could handle the boss without having to deal with them, but no one was willing to do it because it would lead to a lower score on the event. It's sad, because doing so would probably be an actually more noticeable contribution to the fight than just blasting away at the boss.

So, yeah, there's no such thing as a support class, because everyone can do everything. The problem is that, even though everyone can do everything, only one of those things (direct damage) is rewarded and reinforced.

The same thing happens with a lot of big world bosses like the Fire Elemental. The first three times I did that event, I spent most of my time trying to help downed players up and lay down regeneration and boon removal. All three times, I got no credit for the boss event. The fourth time, I ignored all the helpless wounded strangers around me and just ran in like Leeroy Jenkins, shooting off everything I could on the boss until I died (which, thanks to no manner of support, happened pretty quickly). I then resurrected at the nearest waypoint, ran back, eventually naked due to equipment damage, and did it again. I got a gold ranking on the event.

Not the pants! They're all I have left!

What strikes me as odd  is that it seems like GW2 is built for dynamic support. The fact that what works best in encounters is ignoring everyone else and doing as much damage as possible to the enemy seems unintended. They've put so much emphasis on cooperation that it feels weird that the best way to play is to pretend there's no one else around and just do what you would do solo.

Dungeons feel right, because since the reward is the same for everyone, people are able to do whatever they feel would aid the encounter best. For example, there is a boss in the first dungeon known as "The Lovers", which is actually two bosses that fight you together. One of the most important mechanics of the fight is that the two bosses get stronger if they remain close to each other. It can be an effective strategy for one person to solely use boulders and abilities to keep one of them incapacitated and away from the other, rather than contributing significant damage.

Sexy stripper Myle on stone throwing duty during The Lovers

I don't think there should be enough incentive to try to support solely instead of contributing damage, but right now there really isn't any incentive to help other players out at all. It's gotten to the point where I've seen a whole group of people ignore a downed (not defeated) player because they are afraid that the damage-per-second lost during that time will lower their reward.

Guild Wars 2 has an incredibly varied and deep combat system, allowing players to quickly switch between different roles and options even mid-battle, but right now the reward system for events and WvW just doesn't support the system that they've built. It's quite sad. I hope that they'll find a way to fix it.

They've built the game on cooperation, but the reward system still supports greed in many situations.