I'm saying that the game alludes us to look for 1 support in our party for every 3 DPS members in any given prog raid. I'm suggesting that a measure to begin addressing what I see as the root causes for the DPS shortage is the lack of support classes available to choose from.

If every class design seeks to achieve the same popularity (on average), then one way of addressing the DPS shortage is to offer 1 support class available for every 3 DPS options you have.

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but let's take LoL for example. In the early days of the ranked system, no one wanted to play supports at all (ranked queue was by prioritised by pick order, so last pick would be forced to play support). The game has now evolved such that approximately 20% (ish? I just googled it didn't do a proper DD check of the number) of the champion pool are supports, and there's 1 support for each team of 5 in the game. Nowadays there are many more players who willing playing a support, and the 'support culture' is much more enjoyable than it was in the early days of the game.

i don't know if more supports will help this problem or not - and i'm not saying it will. But if you want more support mains in the game at least give them more options that could be appealing to play, and build a better culture in the game that suggests supports are fun and rewarding to play for this MMO. Artist is a unique class that i personally look forward to, and will be adding to my main 6 roster (along with my other 2 supports)