Playing Scouge as an (exclusive) Link support character - my experience and feedback

I would like to give my feedback to playing as a support character in Scourge, using the newly introduced Link gems and focussing on providing defensive layers to allies instead of stacking and dealing damage.

As a little bit of background, while I usually have a rule of only progressing one character and build per league in Path of Exile, my Ice Trapper wasn't performing so well after the league start grinding the Atlas, so after an in-game friend of my guild approached me suggesting that we should consider teaming up, I was intrigued. Long story short, we ended up setting up a support Guardian that exclusively casts defense skills like Frost Shield, has a bunch of defensive aura, a trio of curses and finally a link skill, which you can all see in my character profile.

Playing with this character with my friend doing the damage, there are a bunch of interesting observations and experiences to be made:

• Re-Casting Link - Curiously enough, having to re-cast the link might sound like one would complain about it because one is lazy, the true culprit, however, is to be able to target your partner in crime while they are running and dashing in random directions while you are running and dashing trying to follow them to not break the link while around you the world explodes in enemy blood, aoe spells and other flashy effects until you no longer know where is up and down. Yes, there is some kind of auto-targeting that allows you to correctly target someone as long as you cast the link in roughly the right spot, nonetheless I occasionally struggle a lot to keep the link up therefore, despite the longer skill effect duration that the link has. It feels like I have to re-cast the link at every single opportunity every few seconds because I don't know when will be the next occasion that I can target them properly. A permanent link or some kind of auto-re-linking at the cost of some kind of detrimental effect would certainly be useful here, also due to the next point in this list.
• Movement and Speed - I have already hinted at it in my previous point, you cannot predict where your party members move and dash to. If the maps where a long hallway, this wouldn't be a problem, but with most maps being designed as open spaces, you can merely predict and vaguely guess where your link target moves to without breaking the link. If you don't want to break the link, this inherently slows down both of you, which might be intentional. Even though the links have a good range before they break, I would like to be able to invest into the distance that link targets can move away to work against this problem. It is not very noticable in semi-stationary content like Simulacrum or Blight, but in your average mapping it is, the link constantly breaks especially due to dashing and moving in sudden new directions and often the DPS dies because as a support I cannot catch up in time and they jumped right into hazard that they would have survived if I was there in time to grant them my aurae, creating frustration on both sides. I don't think that there is an inherent solution to this problem. What I could imagine is maybe something like a modifier, notable, mastery, treshold jewel, enchantment, support gem or other kind of source that does something like "Your aura effects are granted to link targets while they are outside your aura range, with #% reduced effect".
• Content Progression - Perhaps the biggest detrimental effect of (only) playing link support is the fact that most content, be it the Atlas and its conquerors, be it Maven and her witnesses (same are shared but I don't know the specifics), be it Delve in the mine, be it Heist contracts and levelling rogues and therefore subsequently doing league challenges, all of these require you to kill stuff to progress your own state of the game or better, it requires you to have someone who does the kill for you. Effectively, this multiplies the content to do and the time spent in the game for every player that plays support or relies on it. Right now, my friend has reached endgame in their Atlas, for instance, while I am somewhere stuck at Yellow conquerors since my league starter cannot progress anymore. My option is to either drag my friend through my own Atlas (which they would do) but doesn't do much good since I then still cannot do the content as a support character or start over, going through the entire campaign again to build myself a DPS character that can do content on their own. This creates the idea of having to build up a roster of characters with different roles because you need support characters to buff your friends in endgame so they can do it but at the same time if you want to even reach endgame at which point you would need either a support character in your party yourself that buffs you or play an overpowered build that can do it on their own. What is the essence of my whining in this point is that I wish that it wouldn't be "their" progression for my friend and "my" progression for myself, but rather "our" progression as a party and team.
• Building around Link Support - Aside from two masteries in the passive tree as well as few helmet enchantments, there is not much one can do with links, which I found to be disappointing, especially when it comes to support gems. Aside from Increased Duration and Efficacy for skill effect duration there don't seem to be support gems. Maybe this is intentional to leave room for other supportive skills like Frost Shield, Siphoning Trap and Sigil of Power. However, it feels like there is so much potential here. We already have some charge sharing through keystones in the tree and probably some gear. Not having anything related to this with Links feels like an unused opportunity. I imagine something like "You get Elusive when your Linked Target gets Elusive, with #% reduced effect", "Link Targets recover # Life when the link breaks" and similar modifiers around this, be it for support gems, cluster notables or other sources. It is difficult to decide whether a link could be something "on top" of everything else or something that one embraces and builds around.

In the end, I enjoy it a lot to play a tanky character and supporting my team mate with powerful buffs and defensive skills. Links are a great first step towards buffing teamplay in Path of Exile and I hope that we see more development towards buffing teamplay and build synergies not only with links, but also more skills and buff interactions between players.