Why Suporting Sucks and Why Clerics are Fun in D&D 5e

In most modern team-based games, characters and classes are categorized into certain roles in the party. The tank, the damage dealers, and the support. In most games, you find that support is usually one of the least popular options for a variety of reasons. Some games don’t offer supports as many fun options as other classes, with many having to just sit there and use the two same healing spells every turn, or the character doesn’t feel as impactful or game-deciding compared to others, you never feel like you’re the reason your team won as a support. Also, a lot comes down to the consensus of players finding it more fun to fight than spamming heals. After all, we play games to escape our everyday responsibilities, so why log in to play babysitter strangers online?

All of this has led to the issue that finding a support online can be tough. If you look at Overwatch 2 and League of Legends as a couple examples, both games have serious problems convincing players to fill the support role, with most people going into flex queueing being instantly slotted into support. Blizzard has tried a few different ways of helping this issue but their player base clearly doesn’t like being stuck in the role. Same was true back when I played League of Legends as a support main. In all the games of ranked I ever played, I only had someone take the support position before I could call it..twice. Two games over the course of 6 years. Clearly, not a position in high demand. And having games where either you don’t have a support, or someone is forced to play it, takes away part of the fun.

That’s why I think D&D Fifth edition was brilliant for making clerics such a powerful class option because it eliminates a lot of these problems and makes playing the stereotypical support class fun. Clerics have tons of options that make them feel strong. They get access to arguably the best spell list in the game (spiritual guardians, bless, healing word, and of course Spiritual Weapon), lots of really strong subclasses, a ton of subclasses give access to heavy armor to let you front line, and plenty of options and abilities to choose from between healing, buffing and debuffing, front-lining, and doing damage.

Looking at data from D&D Beyond and user polls over the years, clerics are usually in the top half or even the top 25% of class usage. The issues with supports in other games is that they’re usually only good at supporting, limiting their gameplay options, or they’re weaker in general because of their role. By making the class a powerful one, and one with enough different abilities so that you don’t just have to throw out a healing spell every turn, people are more likely to actually play clerics. In my opinion, if there’s any one role that game designers need to make sure is fun for players, it’s the support, simply due to how unpopular the role can be but how vitally important it is to creating a balanced team. For making the clerics have so many different options and giving them such powerful options, I think the D&D team made a great decision that’s led to more people playing support, and making it so a lot of new adventuring parties avoiding their first TPK.

Thanks for reading everyone. If you’d prefer to watch this in video format, I cover this topic on my new YouTube channel which you can find here. Be sure to check it out, I’d appreciate the help growing my channel.