If you’re playing a support, though, your primary goal is to leave the group stronger. WoW has increasingly placed more importance on the individual over the years, but I wouldn’t mistake that for being inherent to the genre itself. Particularly when WoW itself started with significant support representation.
As mentioned above, I still find the possibility of them revisiting the role absolutely mind-boggling. There’s a multitude of concerns, some of which you mention. It is out of character and precedent for Blizzard in a dozen different ways. Yet, it is difficult to interpret what has been stated as anything other than a return of a support spec, if not role.
Odds are, it’ll be much like a Dancer and just be a damage dealer with indirect delivery. But it’ll be a support nevertheless. And the harder they lean into it, the more pleased I will be with the outcome.
Changing up the formula might breathe some new life into the game. I welcome the addition of a support role. Then they can make disc a dps/support instead of a healer that tries to heal through damage.
Because you’re looking at it strictly through the lens of WoW. A support class doesn’t necessarily need to sling a single heal to perform its role. They might make someone else’s heals hit harder, though.
Yes I know, but it feels like you’re in the minority.
Look if they can make it fun without killing the fabric of wow by adding a 4th role and adding more than just one spec then I’m all for it.
The issue is that it would change so much of wow.
How word raid comps looks like?
How would dungeon comps look like.
What about pvp?
With m+ now be 1 tank, 1 heal, 2 dps, 1 support?
How many supports and healers are mythic raids designed under?
How will 3v3 look like.
You’re essentially changing the core dynamics of a 20 year old game by adding a role that is pretty much already done with many other specs already as a secondary strength.
Basically. No amount of utility ret had made up for the fact that you could just bring a Holy paladin for the same thing, and that is what I worry about a support role in gneral.
That utility has to be so unbelievably broken to account for just not bring an additional damage spec, and at that point you’ve broken the already broken balance this game has.
Which is fine. It doesn’t have to be for everyone. And since the role can be difficult to envision for people that only have modern WoW as their frame of reference, I’m willing to bet that a lot of people would embrace it once they actually got their hands on it.
And like I’ve said many a time, it is bewildering that Blizzard would reintroduce the support role after designing away from it for the past twenty years, dispersing it across all classes, enshrining the trinity and codifying it into the game, and placing more and more emphasis on individual success rather than the success of the group.
Yet… here we are. Abilities, quest text, spoken dialogue, a login toast, cumulatively pointing at Blizzard implementing an additional spec halfway through an expansion that happens to be explicitly support focused. It’s insane. But it’s more insane to believe anything other than what we’ve unearthed.
But that’s not where the text point us. It says nothing of “protection” or “defending allies,” which you’d typically find in RP descriptions of the tank role. It speaks of bolstering allies, specifically. Given what we know, getting a tank is less believable than getting a support.
Yeah, it would be a complete reset on all design elements of encounters.
All the recent talk about it is very concerning to me. I hope they don’t do something like this. I think it would be a disaster for the game.
I love that wow changes and evolves over time, but this is too significant a departure from the core gameplay of wow. That basic concept has been more or less the same since the game came out. I don’t think I’d still be playing if not for the familiarity of the basic design of the game.
Re-establishing the support role would be a true return to that original vision. Ironic that it would come from a new class rather than Shaman and Paladin, but welcome nevertheless.
Like they did originally with disc? Or with survival hunter? Yeah, it’s okay for classes to evolve and change, especially ones like Disc that are a balancing and identity nightmare.
Again, while some classes did poor DPS due to abhorrent class balance at launch, they were not in a “support” role. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a “support” role in WoW.
Tell that the the Paladins spamming their buffs, the melee group Shaman, and the Mana Tide rotation Shamans. When originally announced, the Paladin was touted as a defensive support and Shaman as an offensive support. While they were less strictly tied to the role than their counterparts in the games WoW was derived from, they were nevertheless support regardless.
When originally announced, the Paladin was touted as a defensive support and Shaman as an offensive support. While they were less strictly tied to the role than their counterparts in the games WoW was derived from, they were nevertheless support regardless.