What I mean is a secondary character, a magic character whose job is to stand in the background while other classes preform the primary role, not quite non-combatants but clearly the inferior offensive choice. I.E. A soft target.

@Djemo-SRB It's not the wording I would choose, but I definitely see Tarl's point in that the answers don't really mean a whole lot and are filled with additional information that muddies rather than clarifies the issue. Such as the hero sorcerer, a class I can play once a day or so isn't the experience I care about + there's no difference between a AS and Lord Sorcerer besides power, so I personally don't really see it as all that relevant.

sigh .. mea culpa

I'm not well lol, flus been kicking my arse for over a week now and I was having a bad day so my choice of language may of been harsher then it could of been,

but as the Dokta pointed out the main gist of my post exists (not just in my fevered head lol)

Again, the answer is pretty clear. Im not seeing why you would latch on the mention of a hero at all, even without it added the question is clearly answered. The said filler didnt do anything besides basically saying "after i have explained as to the reasons why we arent going to put the Aspirants on the same footing offense wise it doesent mean every psychic character is going to be support, heroes will wreck face". He didnt evade, he clearly explained his stance, and then added the hero sentiment.

The existence of this "filler" you refer to has no positive or negative influence on the answer, the answer would be the same.

Firstly I'm not latching onto that comment, I'm noting that the presence of a Hero unit of a similar role doesn't mean much to me as a player as it's not supposed to be physically possible to main as a Hero unit, so it has no bearing on my basic class selection. It's much like justifying Tacticals having Scout Armor by saying that there will be Terminators available as an Elite choice, it won't help you 95+% of the time if you intended playing a Tactical. Similarly, the fact that the Hero Sorcerer is to be a superior combatant doesn't the AS if the AS isn't supposed to be a very good combatant.

Secondly, no, it's really not. Support Archetype is just a phrase, just like how I keep saying Mage. When I say it I mean something in particular, but in actuality Mage really just means magic user, it's only a generic design choices that places them as light armor with little weapon skills. As such him saying it's a support class means very little even though I'm sure he has a vision of what he means when he says it, but as I don't share that vision I don't really get it. It also doesn't explain how rigidly defined the role is meant to be, just how badly we're supposed to be gimped, why they even think it's even necessary or generally a good idea to put them on the bottom rung of combat capabilities.

They're measuring the class in perfect world conditions, which by definition means it won't play out that way, so it's either going to be easier to take a combat role than they intended, far far more difficult than will even be fun or somewhere in between. He says there will be combat abilities but we can't gauge how effective they'll be, and we know they don't particularly care if the class is particularly appealing as they don't want 10 AS's rather than 2 AS and the rest are Tacticals. What still remains is the distinct possibility that on average there will be 0 AS' in that situation. Like I said, it didn't clear things up for me, I just don't think it was a purposeful decision to leave things murky.

How in the world is he justifying the design state of the AS with the Hero Sorc? Like i said he added that as a finishing note. He explained why the AS is as he is and then added simply that just cause it is as is doesent mean all psykers will be supports. He added that as a sentiment about how the Heroes will work, its in no way a justification for how the AS works, his justification for that is elaborated in detail in the first part and many other answers on the subject.

He compares them to multiple support roles in other games, if he didnt want them to be like that he wouldnt compare them to the same, lest it would be a pointless comparison and a completely illogical thing to put into his answer.

Exactly, it can go both ways. You can be completely wrong and the class can work like support classes (he used as comparisons) work in other games, and his statement that you will still be killing your fair share is reflected in the fact that his examples do kill their fair share of people in their respective games, while still having "less offense".
Conversely i can be completely wrong and the class will be shite. Noone can claim either side to be 100% sure till we get into Founders Access/Beta.

However, and why i cannot for the life of me continue this discussion further, i see very well what they plan with the class, putting all the dozens of responses together a good picture has been made for many who read. If you cannot see it, well i cant help you see nor can you help me see these things that are missing in your puzzle.
The fact is, this class has had more dev attention, responses and discussion across the forums and livestreams alike then any other really, so the info is far from lacking to make a point and stance on the subject.

Thats why i feel stating that something is murky, while the man went into great lengths to explain himself, examples and all in many posts is untrue from my point of view.
That said, anything i can add more would be repetition of what i previously tried to convey. So lets settle for an agree to disagree till we actually see the class in combat in the Founders Access, then we can start the debates anew. As is we can just throw subjective opinions at each other till the cows come home.

How is "Support" a phrase ? It's the 2nd core archetype of team-based online shooters like Battlefield and TF2

Speaking of which; you use the term Mage. Brent has sited the BF Medic, expressly, twice. Go play BF3, it's no where near as dire as being made out. Really.

A Sniper, a machine gunner, a medic, a driver and an ammo loader are all support roles. Support doesn't mean one particular thing. Not really planning on buying a whole game for the sake of this discussion.

And aye, this discussion doesn't have a natural conclusion. The information is unclear to me because I'm trying to deduce if the AS will be designed in such a way that compliments my playstyle, they seem to have a particular role in mind and I have doubts they are compatible, which would bum me out as Sorcerer's are my favorite character types in 40k and I'd like to actually like playing as them. Someone else can't really explain definitively (particularly if they're not a dev) if the design is going to allow for my preferences (which seem to be shared by others) so all there is to do is to ensure that the devs are aware that their version of Support is in question in hopes that the final product will work out.

Also, that they should take into consideration how rigidly they define roles and what those roles are, because instead of players conforming to the roles they may instead just cast them aside. Like I said before, he's listed TF2 Medic as one of the examples, but I've heard that not a lot of people actually play the Medic on TF2 (which nobody has disagreed with) so I consider it a questionable archetype given that even in its sample base it has low appeal.

TF2 is fun but not a good comparison to EC. I never played Medic much so I'm limited in knowledge as to popularity. It was much more niche than anything the AS is capable of from my experience.

Supportive classes, which I wrongy called Support classes (adopted EC's definition I guess ), are their own archetype mate:

If you aren't willing to look at BF then I don't know how to explain the basics beyond saying they're essential in a well balanced team and not gutless in a fire fight.

Actually I still maintain that ASs will be much more flavourful in strategic builds than any asymmetric shooter I can think of but if you're playstyle involves topping the kill charts then against 3 Dok clones playing the other classes at their ideal range ASs will lose more often.

having played BF3 (and being a basically selfish bastard) I played a medic with only an afterthought given to medkits or actually reviving anyone ... I just ran around and shot people like I did with every other class and apart from the types of weapons availible to the class I didnt notice a drop in its defensive or its offensive capabilities compared to the other classes

While I am slightly disappointed with the lack of DD parity available to the Sorc and the like, I do think it's probably less of a problem than we might think because as far as I'm aware at least, there's no such thing really as 'main'ing a character like you do any other MMO. You choose a class on the fly and get dropped into the fun. It's not quite the same as choosing a Mage archetype and levelling it from 1 to 60 because you chose a Mage archetype. It seems more like your account is levelled, rather than individual classes. Unless I'm wrong of course.

All I hope really failing the lack of DD parity that the psychic powers and their activation be fun as hell.