Break the Trinity System Please

[Toodles]

^because past designs are fallible and just because that 'was' the case doesn't mean it 'has' to be the case in the future.

The problem is past faults (some purposeful) in design making Supports' party-contribution too great (if displacing/sharing a DPS slot)... like you mentioned, "if they are strong enough".

Well yeah, duh, that goes without saying (hence, why I didn't say it).

Also, the 1% was meant as an obvious hyperbole. Utopic & blatant exaggeration aren't the same.

It all comes down to balancing, if a Support didn't 'necessarily' bring "more" to the table than a DPS then a majority of players wouldn't pay any mind since they aren't typically your min-max elitists (which' what I was getting at in my "1%").

Of course, it would need to not bring any less of a contribution either to be designed right.

Let me chart it out like this...

Tanks - 30% enmity gain 30% defense-buffs 40% dps.
Healers - 20% party-buffs 20% dps 60% healing.
DPS - 10% utility 20% self-buffs 70% dps.
Bard - 10% utility 10% self-buffs 10% party-buffs 70% dps.
Support - 15% utility 25% self/party-buffs 60% dps.

Keep in mind, those figures are VERY ROUGH & ONLY INTENDED FOR ILLUSTRATION.

Also, they're meant to demonstrate inputs & not contributions (in other words, 70% of a DPS' button-clicks are strict damage-dealing actions).

Looking at these figures, it's not that Bard needs buffs to better fulfill a Supportive Role... it's that Bard in its current iteration is very "Support-Lite" by design.

It's Support Capabilities don't take an extremely 'active' approach. Your literal actions are more primarily focused on DPS'ing your opponent, periodically toggling a Supportive Ability that applies to the entire party... which' essentially a "passive" method of supporting allies.

Functionally, I would consider that "Support-Lite". More of a "True DPS-Support" Hybrid's literal actions/efforts would be focused on augmentation/detriment of allies/opponents... it's approach would be more "active" in supporting parties.

Does that make sense?

I think the "feel" of a Support could be plausibly achieved via design whilst retaining balance.