Considering support specs will deal 80 to 90% of the sustained damage of glass cannon specs not speccing for support is crippling yourself.

I think that some players (especially those who like to complain, it seems) are pretty close-minded when it comes to defining roles. If a character does damage, he's DPS to them. In that sense, all characters in GW2 are DPS characters. That doesn't mean there's no build diversity or that you can't focus on support skills, dealing damage at the same time.

Besides, heals are far from the only support skill type. Buffs and debuffs are very important, too, and most professions have a lot of both.

Eliminated dedicated support classes? From their game, yes.

Eliminated the ability for people to play support roles? No. Plenty of support options are present for those that want to help out in support roles.

Originally posted by Vhaln
Seems to depend on class, but what bugs me is that for most classes, you have to gimp yourself and spec everything into support, to make it worth trying to play that way.  It's not like you can just swap weapons to swap roles, the way I'd expected. So of course, not many want to do that.

game does need a trait saving system.. something similar to Rifts role system where you can switch from trait setups outside combat without having to go and respec at a trainer every time.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

game does need a trait saving system.. something similar to Rifts role system where you can switch from trait setups outside combat without having to go and respec at a trainer every time.

I'm pretty sure they've said they are working on this (Nadia prolly already has the quote bookmarked :D)

I remember reading that it wasn't working to the level they wanted it but GW1 has a Build Manager I fully expect to see one added to GW2 as well.

Premise of this thread is quite wrong, when you run into a support specced Ele in WvW or sPvP you should know it.  I have seen and its quite useful.

There are also a number of bunker buidls as well.  They just behave differently than many people expect.

Eliminated as exclusive role maybe. But building in some support is very viable imo. Especially if you look at teams (for dungeons or PVP) it can be very useful to look at what your team as a whole brings as support. Complementing skills can be very efficient then.

But I guess the mindset of players also matter. Players in my guild don't like dying, so if we complete a dungeon by respawning all the time, we failed it. The deathpenalty does not matter in this. So we always find a way to prevent this from happening again.

I can imagine that on an individual level many players think that only dps matters in GW2. Especially if you only take part in zergs in WvWvW and DE's. This is also one thing I don't like in GW2. That you can earn a gold participation medal for failing an event. And not failing even though you tried, but because you simply ignored the objective and just spammed your AOE to tag as many mobs as possible.