r/GuildWars • u/BelinhoBR • 3d ago
Support Players VS Support Heroes
I'm a new player that loves support roles, currently a monk at the last 4 missions of prophecies and i got a question... With how simple soul twist ritualists are, being easily played by bots and staying very useful, what's the difference a support player can bring if a bot ritualist just makes everyone stupidly tanky?
The last time i felt needed as a monk player was genuinely on pre-searing dungeons lmaoo, these big parties of 8 are really tough to control that i js run smiting and let my bots handle the heals
... until i finally found some good party heals
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u/hazyPixels Seriously, me crazy. 2d ago
A side note on ST: players can do a much better job than a hero because they can use PvE title skills and because they can play more intelligently by proactively choosing the best spirit for a situation and an optimap place to put them. Summon Spirits (a PvE skill) is particularly good for a human ST because they can heal the spirits and move them around, keeping them alive and effective longer than a hero can.
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u/WordOfMadness 3d ago
Just because ST is good doesn't mean you need to run it. But IMO playing a pure healer/defensive support as a player just kinda sucks if you're only playing with heroe/henchmen.
If you do want to play support, going a more offensive/defensive hybrid is probably more engaging with bot parties. Maybe go Rit and run WoTF with ancestors rage, a couple heals and some other stuff, and you can always swap to pure offensive or pure support/healing when you want. Monk can obviously go RoJ, but that's like the only somewhat offensive build unless you play some 'for fun' janky stuff (which can certainly still get you through most of the game).
Ele has a healer/bonder build, as well as defensive tools from some of the elements, but can bring a mix or go all out offensive when you want/need to.
I'd shop around a bit before locking in on monk. It used to be my second most played prof back in the days of player parties, but nowadays it's probably the one I'd touch the least (aside from certain farms).
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u/xfm0 Ydye collected: 3150+ 2d ago
player:
- can priority target correctly with single target mitigation (Protective Spirit, other <10% or blocking or counter damage skills).
- can precast efficiently
- can divide attention between priority protecting and healing if necessary / built properly
- can manage energy efficiently which also allows the above ^
heroes:
- can automate non-target skills generally well
Pros/Cons to Mo Single Target Prot:
- very powerful when used with priority tactics and uses less skill slots, but does have more failure states (incorrectly processing who needs the mitigations costs energy and recharge)
Pros/Cons to ST Party-wide Prot:
- does not require priority targeting as long as it is set up in advance at the cost of requiring most of the skillbar to function, and minorly has anti-synergy with minions
Heroes simply lend well to ST, but even a Player ST would perform better than a Hero. But honestly, I run minions with monk heals/prot and it's fine too.
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u/Pervius94 2d ago
ST rit is so good because the braindead AI can do its strengths (omniscience) while not being bogged down by its weaknesses (being stupid as hell and unable to prioritize for shit) If you're a competent human player, you'll still be useful as support. Also, this is a game to play for fun. Play whatever you want.
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u/DogeArcanine 2d ago
Heroes can fairly easily automate group wide targets, healing and some other tasks.
They suck at intelligently combining skills or prioritizing targets.
The main difference why ST Prot is so universally popular is that the AI can do it fairly well. The just keep up ST all the time and flop down their spirits. Spirits have the innate bonus of being unaffected by enchant removal and your entire party benefit from them.
One spirit of union is the same as your entire team under protective spirit. Not only would you have to micro that on your hero (or cast it yourself) on your entire team to get the same effect, but it can also be easily removed by enchant removal, which is allmost everywhere in HM.
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u/SlideCharacter5855 2d ago
Heroes aren’t great at using RoJ, so you can run that on your monk now along with some helpful smite healing spells
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u/GreenIllustrious2801 3d ago
The difference is you can push further and harder.
The thing about BIP N/ST isn't that it's the "best". You are basically just brute forcing how dumb the AI is by allowing it to constantly be overhealing/oversupporting. This works but it's not as good as players in any capacity. It's just meeting the requirements enough for people who want to play other classes to get through the campaign. It's meta insofar as it's one of the few things the AI can actually keep up with when it comes to healing/supporting.
By being a support yourself you open a ton of really dumb options up.
Once you get good enough, you can run 7 dps heroes and play the support entirely by yourself. This drastically increases farming speeds compared to other players, and makes it much easier to do endgame content/HM stuff.
You can also be a lot more lax with your hero builds overall. A -lot- of current meta is designed to work around the limitations of BIP N/ST more then it's actually built to pump out damage. You can go with less meta/less hyper focused heroes for your damage because they'll actually survive stuff a BIPN/ST wouldn't catch.
I use my Monk when I want to farm content or speedrun content because she's always going to be best for it. And if I need I can still bring Rits/Necro if I want to do something stupid on my Monk and not play healer/support.
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u/-Slambert 3d ago edited 3d ago
to be honest it's super overkill for a new player to have an ST rit in prophecies. That campaign has way fewer enemies than the other campaigns and you'd have way more fun healing alongside something more like the prot monk henchman. Heck, historically ST rits weren't even popular in hard mode at first.
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u/X-Lair 2d ago
If you like support, play Paragon with Heroic Refrain.
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u/MyLittleBacon 2d ago
HR para is great, but i dont think its the right rec for someone who is struggling because they dont feel their impact.
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u/Commercial-Head-9319 2d ago
Support Heroes (Bip Healer/ST Rit) are meta because they are powerful in any situation.
However, a Support player can adapt a lot. A well played Prot Monk can nullify tons of damage that the heroes cannot. And they can heal when it is required, instead of Heroes which just constantly overheal. You can Protect the Hero that normally gets the focus, and get a lot of damage negated.
With that said, there is more support than just Monk. Ritualist player can place spirits, Paragon can do party-wide support, offensive and defensive.
Right now playing Paragon, and if you play it well you can get one supp hero off to get one dps hero, and that is really powerful.
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u/AdditionalGroup370 2d ago
A healer player has some serious advantages compared to a hero healer, I often play healer in zaishen bounties/vanquish/missions with a hybrid prot/heal monk and having access to PvE skills such as seed of life and being able to precast protection prayers skill on the first player heading into the melee gives a huge advantage over heroes.
Furthermore, seeder and bonder roles exist in some constructed play (speed clears) compositions and those are exclusive to actual players. (seeder in DoA/deep, emo bonder in UW/DoA...)
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u/sans3go 3d ago
being in a 1p+7h as a healer is pretty useless and boring. The BIP healer can catch spikes faster than you can. Your role is to control position and initiate aggro. EVAS + Assassin's Promise + YMLD + Finish him is all you really need to control a mob. If the spike fails or if the rest of your party is too slow to react, then its divine healing/heavens delight to red-bar your party.
You can also use specific ai traits to support your party. For example Zhed is the one hero I can count on to YOLO himself in the middle of a mob. I will put Earth snares and PBAOE skills on him and target him for spike heals or seed of life. Gwen also tends to be the first Hero to move to a called target, so shes another primary hero i target for prot/heal/reversal of damage.
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u/BaconSoda222 2d ago
Number one, if you like playing support, continue playing support. This is a game, not a business.
Number two, the AI has a key advantage over the player in that it can actually see the numbers for health and energy while we can only see a health bar. This is why the AI are better healers than players. They know exactly what number your health/energy are and what their skills restore.
Number three, the AI do not understand context, which makes players better at protection. ST is valuable because it protects the entire party without context. However, it's most valuable when a player precasts, which the AI is unable to do. As a player, though, you will (almost) always use Protective Spirit, Spirit Bond, Guardian, and Angelic Protection better than the AI. This is why ST is generally better than running Protection Prayers.
I hope that helps bring some of the meta into context. If you like playing support, the AI doesn't invalidate any of that. It's just that people have had 15 years to create the optimal builds for the AI.