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I wouldn’t worry too much about dealing damage to the enemy directly. If your allies are hitting because you buffed them or debuffed the enemy then effectively their damage is your damage. The party can’t deal damage if they can’t land a hit effectively. And if you’re healing your allies as well then again their damage is effectively your damage. Your party members can’t deal any damage if they are dead, unconscious, or forced to flee to avoid going down. Awesome effective support characters are what keeps the party going when the going gets rough. If your gaming group members are telling you that you are doing good then take them at their word. Having good support characters also allows the people in your group to play more thematic characters rather than optimized damage dealers as well. I’m sure your group appreciates you giving them the flexibility to play characters that they enjoy as well. Support characters are great. Don’t sell yourself short. Play characters you enjoy. That’s the point. If your friends aren’t complaining then you don’t have anything to feel useless for.
Summoning can be a very engaging form of support, while offering some damage(relatively more damage at low level and less at high level). And you can combine this support with your support spells.
We may also want to know how "munchkin" you'd like to try this. For example, a charisma focused skald can share Lesser Spirit Totem with their party, giving you an ok extra attack for every eligible ally you have on the field. Combine that with some summoning for more extra attacks. Or combine it with something like the spell warrior archetype, so all of your allies can easily qualify. Being charisma focused, you could take Desna's divine fighting technique and have charisma to attack and damage at level 1 with a starknife.
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There really isn't a default right or wrong amount of min-maxing in my opinion, which is why I asked about your specific preference. If the rest of your party is bringing enough damage and you just want to match them in addition to support, then I'm not sure there is a good way to help you, without getting quite min-maxy.
In my experience, most tables are very happy to have a person who likes to play "healer", as many people prefer the class fantasy of standing out by dealing damage or strong controls. And people don't expect their healer to be bringing the damage, except for maybe when undead are involved.
Have you tried playing a witch? They are very support focused, while having a more active than reactive playstyle. It may be the reactive nature of support that you are not enjoying. And while they can do some damage, that's not what they are good at, so it's not expected of them.
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Similar to the issue of being reactive, I think part of the problem may be with support downtimes. Especially in the early levels, a support can find themselves with no optimal actions to take during a round of combat. After a couple of rounds you have already activated your abilities and spells that are worth expending for that combat. Sometimes a healer will heal during this time, but if everything went well, even that isn't always necessary. And you are left with a weak attack or cantrip to fill your time. This becomes less of an issue with later levels when you have a lot more spells per adventuring day. Different people fill this combat downtime in different ways. The weak attack is most common, but you may also try something like the aid another action.
Treantmonk used to have a set of Guides. One was Treantmonk’s guide to Pathfinder Wizards: Being a God. The links I had for it are very old and no longer work but reading that would probably help.
Those are good guides. It sounds like the issue here is less about what can be done and more about how to feel about what can be done. Treant's "god wizard" is almost a state of mind. "I let my allies do the petty things like attack, because I'm controlling the battlefield itself." I'm just not sure if that's compatible with Merellin's personality. It's worth checking out though.
One of my regular groups played through the first 4 books of the Legacy of Fire AP until the GM had to hit pause because of her other commitments. In that campaign, I played an oracle who was very much designed to be a support character, healing and buffing her allies, and acting as the face of the party. She did very little else in combat except making knowledge checks and occasionally providing flanking, and never owned a magic weapon because it would have been wasted on her. She finished earning the Healer's Touch achievement feat just before some effective battle magic (like holy word and flame strike) finally came on line, when dealing damage would no longer penalize her progress.
Our GM allowed me to take Leadership, and my cohort was an element-patron witch, one of the many prisoners we rescued during the campaign. That gave me a way to contribute to offense, providing some area-affect attacks and utility spells, which made up some for the loss of the party's other spellcaster when one player dropped after the first or second book. (To simplify tracking spells for 2 characters, I gave the cohort an archetype that made her a spontaneous caster as well. That worked pretty well in practice.)
My character had an almost symbiotic relationship with the party barbarian, who was aiming for the "survived a ton of damage over my career" achievement feat. He grumbled good-naturedly about how the healing he received slowing his own progress, but he also appreciated not achieving the "oops, I died twice" feat first. His PC was critical to our party's success, because roughly half our damage output came from his oversized weapon. So I certainly wasn't hurting the party by focusing solely on defense most of my career, and keeping them all in the fight.
Another way to add to the offensive abilities of your character is to acquire an animal companion or equivalent creature (eidolon or phantom for example). You can do this either by taking a class that grants one or taking the animal ally feat. If you build for it even a familiar with the mauler archetype can suffice as an animal companion. Going the possessed hand route to gain a familiar even makes your familiar effectively unkillable since even if it dies your hand grows back in 2d4 days (faster with regeneration).
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Does anyone have any ideas of how to snap me out of this dumb mindset and allow me to finally enjoy the support types I love so much conceptually? Like, I have lots of fun when I trap a few enemies in a pit so they aren't a problem for a bit, And I love healing and buffing my allies... I just feel like I don't do enough...This simple calculation showed our bard, that he did by far the most DMG of the whole group. Indirectly ofc.
The player was saticfied and continued to play his bard until his bard found true love and retired with 3 children.
This.
In a group of mine I also had a bard, sometimes thinking she wasn't doing enough in battles.
Then we started another game in a slightly different player composition where she played a fighter.
She wondered why she wasn't dealing nearly as much damage as the fighter in the group she plays the bard in.
Well because the group with her playing the fighter was missing her - the bard from the other round.
Inspire Courage and Heroism are going a great way hitting stuff especially when using power attack and iterative attacks.
And that doesn't even take into consideration how often she saved a fight going south by helping the fighter not to kill his allies by letting him re-roll another failed Will-Save by using her saving finale.
So Buffers and Healers often enable most of the damage to even be dealt in the first place. And things like saving finale, the oracles misfortune and stuff like that prevents the heavy hitters from dealing that potential damage to the wrong guys as well.
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Here's a silly thing I did one time that both made me feel good about my contributions AND got the other players to realize how important support characters are.
We were at 11th level and I was playing an evangelist cleric. I think on average I made about one attack roll every four sessions. Sometimes another player would count up numbers they had written down and say something like "wow, I did over 150 points of damage that fight!" One fight I said "I'm going to track my damage too!" So when the barbarian said "I did 70 points that round!" I said "Nope. You used my blessing of fervor to make an extra attack, so all the damage from that attack is mine. You missed with a 28, but the 30 hit, so that damage is all mine too (inspire courage). You did hit with your first attack on your own, so you get to count all but 3 of that damage (inspire courage, again)."
Note, that this was all said in fun and we were enjoying it. It wasn't really a competition.
Here's a silly thing I did one time that both made me feel good about my contributions AND got the other players to realize how important support characters are.
We were at 11th level and I was playing an evangelist cleric. I think on average I made about one attack roll every four sessions. Sometimes another player would count up numbers they had written down and say something like "wow, I did over 150 points of damage that fight!" One fight I said "I'm going to track my damage too!" So when the barbarian said "I did 70 points that round!" I said "Nope. You used my blessing of fervor to make an extra attack, so all the damage from that attack is mine. You missed with a 28, but the 30 hit, so that damage is all mine too (inspire courage). You did hit with your first attack on your own, so you get to count all but 3 of that damage (inspire courage, again)."
Note, that this was all said in fun and we were enjoying it. It wasn't really a competition.
Yep, I've quite often said that Haste is one of the most damage dealing spell a wizard can cast.
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Have you tried playing a witch? They are very support focused, while having a more active than reactive playstyle. It may be the reactive nature of support that you are not enjoying. And while they can do some damage, that's not what they are good at, so it's not expected of them.
Melkiador is always well worth listening to and not just for the paragraph I quoted.
Witches are my favourite character class and I suspect they are under-rated. Hexes can usually be used once per enemy, not once per day. That gives you lots of stamina and allows you to use some of your spells for things outside combat. And a witch with a wand of CLW is sort of a second rate cleric if the party lacks a real cleric.
I also appreciate clerics. There are a lot of classes that are far more spectacular, but clerics provide a lot of the bread and butter that makes everything work. There are a whole raft of nasty things that can be inflicted on party members other than damage for which the cleric may have the answer. Once you gain some levels their offensive capacity is not bad either. And they are not squishy.
There are several ways of being "supportive".
One example is a Skald. Employ reach weapon, pick good rage powers, boink things from behind your frontline friendoes (and typically not die instantly if something looks at you funny), while handing out some STR, Con and typically secondary natural attacks to the party.
The big difference between Skald and bard is that Skalds have a "Bardiche of shame" which typically hits about as hard as the iterative of the frontline, which can be pretty hard, while bards do not really have much innate out of the box fighting.
Shaman speaker for the past is also pretty amazing, grab some protective luck (best defensive hex/chant in the game, so good it frequently gets banned), if a witch doesnt suit your idea of a character.
If you are an oracle, spirit guide is pretty potent.
If you prefer Bard over Skald, but also want to melee, a dip in swash is quite good for that.
My Shattered Star campaign has a Battle Herald supportmonster. Standard bearer cavalier 1/bard 4/ battle herald X. Long spear w flagbearer and bodygaurd (helpful halfling). Brings a big boost to the party's offense and defense.
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You talk about worrying a lot, even when your fellow players tell you not to.
Your fellow players are right and you should not worry.
Also Pathfinder rewards specialization and teamwork. If I am playing a character who gains 2 skill points a level and does not need a high Int I make jokes like "what is a skill?". Trying to turn such a character into a skill monkey is never going to work and is going mean making choices that mean you are less good at things your character is good at. Leave that to the Rogue.
Beyond your specialization, you need to find a way to be useful in a variety of situations and to make your character survivable.
You talk about worrying a lot, even when your fellow players tell you not to.Your fellow players are right and you should not worry.
It's funny, because you are 100% right, and yet my experiences with people having anxiety tell me that they are very unlikely to believe it.
If you are ever considering treating the anxiety, you might try to find a therapist using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Is quite true.. I have very high anxiety and worry about everything all the time constantly non stop... My friends try to help and convince me that I dont need to worry and that as long as I'm having fun it is alright, But I still owrry that I'l do somehing to annoy them..You talk about worrying a lot, even when your fellow players tell you not to.Your fellow players are right and you should not worry.It's funny, because you are 100% right, and yet my experiences with people having anxiety tell me that they are very unlikely to believe it.
I was thinking on the same lines as Mark Hoover and Melkiador but couldn't find a way to phrase it without it being possibly being misinterpreted and giving offence.
I have felt the touch of Anxiety Disorder 2 or 3 times, don't shed any tears for me others have it much worse and for longer. I found valium a wonder drug but that isn't true for everyone.
What I always advise people to do with a mental health problem is find a good psychiatrist [psychologist, or both] and do what they tell you.
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One thing to keep in mind is that by playing a support character you are allowing the direct damage characters to really shine. By boosting their abilities and controlling the battlefield you are enabling them to do what they do best instead of competing with them. You are also taking a necessary role than not everyone likes allowing them to focus on the things they like to do. If you played a direct damage dealer you would end up in direct competition to them and probably diminishing their enjoyment of the game.
In your first post you asked how for advice on snapping you out of the mindset. The most important thing for doing that is to realize it is a mindset you are having issues with. Look for the best ways to boost the party and let others worry about dealing damage. Don’t rely on just a few things to boost the party, instead look for new and creative way to become even better at it. Direct damage dealers can see the growth of their character by the HP they do in combat. Support characters have a harder time measuring character growth.
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One idea if you're worried about this is to play a damage dealer in a campaign where someone else is playing a dedicated support player. If you see the difference a support player makes you might not have that anxiety about feeling like you're not contributing.
In our Iron Gods game we had a Bard in the party. The player just wanted to give as many buffs as possible, so by level 8 or so he was giving us all a +7 to hit as well as some other nice buffs. Then the player had to go away for a year, but told us to keep playing without him. I tell you now the next big dungeon crawl that we had without him was Rough. I was so used to playing with his buffs, and I suddenly found myself unable to hit anything with Power Attack on, and unable to deal decent damage without it.
I was never really someone who had the problems you're having, but even so this changed my perception of buffing characters. If you've seen first hand what it's like to play with, and without those buffs you'll understand how much that character is bringing to the table.
Another thing that might help you with this is if the GM were to just give you the AC or Save DCs of the enemies, and not hide them so much. You don't need to give them outright but once a PC has hit the enemy you don't really need to keep things a secret. If the PCs hit an enemy, tell them the AC. If the enemy fails a will save, tell the PCs their save DC. It honestly won't change much about the combat, but it will give the buffing characters a real sense of how much they're helping. You could literally record all the actions in a combat and calculate how much damage you added or mitigated with your buffs if you wanted to. I think this would change the psychology around it for you, but obviously you'd need a GM to be on board.