Matchmaking without the Trinity: how would you do it?

[Welsper59]

how would support function in 4 man content? do they get preference in one of the DPS slots? are their support abilities magnified in smaller groups?

That would indeed be the better way to get a support role to work in justifying a slot in 4-man content. Perhaps a linked buff, where you can select people at any time to link with, which will share a % of damage output by you to them and vice versa. The more people you share a link to, the less of a boost % it is, but still becomes stronger if others play as well as they should.

However, the devs (wrongfully) believe that support skills weigh so heavily in this game that it justifies nerfing the overall output by comparison to other jobs of the role, of which may have their own support uses that exist without detriment. BRD output is kept lower because situational party buffs are strong enough to warrant lower damage full-time (pre-buffs/nerfs), AST cards that are RNG are strong enough to warrant lower healing output (pre-buffs that were issued multiple times), etc.

If a support role were to be introduced, they'd definitely be DPS oriented. Probably another BRD or MCH, if the devs were left to their own devices. They likely wouldn't even touch the idea of damage distribution, for as interesting of a mechanic as that would be. Balancing would be a nightmare, justifiably, and the risk of having a terrible support job player would likely make and break groups that couldn't carry.

With so much focus on personal damage in this game, a job centered around doing damage through other party members would cause people to cry out from all sides. Idiot elitists would cry out that the support player isn't doing enough damage by comparison to their own (ignoring the fact that their own damage was amplified at the cost of the jobs sacrificed output), idiot support players would ignore the core mechanics like it were a situational BRD song and cry out for buffs since they think the job is useless, and so on. Neither of those examples would be even remotely surprising to most of us.

We're not exactly ready for support roles yet, and likely never will be for the foreseeable future. That "we" is referring to everyone, including the devs (at least so it would seem, based on how BRD and AST were/are treated).