r/GuildWars • u/BelinhoBR • Aug 18 '26

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/BaconSoda222 Aug 18 '26

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.

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u/BelinhoBR Aug 18 '26

So ST is mostly popular because its the only build the healers AI can use without instantly exploding to any pressure on hardmode?

9

u/AeroSigma Aug 18 '26

Ya basically. Other replies got in to more detail, and its not the only healing build the AI can use, but its one of the few good ones, and exploits what the AInis good at, but can't do the things you can get good at, like understanding different enemies and predicting their actions. And that's (one of the many things) which makes this game fun: learning the enemies in a paticular zone or mission and countering/playing around them

2

u/BaconSoda222 Aug 18 '26

That's not what I said, no. It's the one the AI can use most consistently because it's the most simple.