The second part of your quote was responding to a factually incorrect claim about BC and Wrath, when both of those classes were fully fleshed out.
Most classes in wow have supporting spells and abilities, but none exist outside the role trifecta. Nobody thinks that warriors are a support class because they have battle shout.
See my above post regarding Priests
Except for it’s popularity, it’s playerbase size, it’s place in the industry, it’s growth prospects, it’s domination of the market, it’s reception from it’s customers… etc… etc…
Because you say it won’t?
Don’t be silly. Bards are amazingly popular for a reason and have been probably since before you were born.
Hence the past tense.
They were support classes, until roles were codified and the role was divvied up amongst the classes for the relevant bits and discarded otherwise.
I play a priest. I heal as holy, I heal as disc, and DPS as shadow. They all have support spells, sure, but priests are not a “support role”
Peak popularity was Wrath, after Paladins and Shamans were fully fleshed out classes with complete and competitive DPS, Tank, and healing roles. They absolutely, positively, were NOT in a “support role” in Wrath. The fact that unrelated bad expansions drove down sub numbers is not relevant to this issue at all.
Mythic Plus does not work with a fourth role without massive game design changes. Either you would always bring a support role spec instead of a DPS or healer, or you would never do it, depending on tuning. It would either be too weak or too strong. It would not be possible to balance.
Modern WoW is incredibly numbers focused. It’s WAY more so now than in Wrath and earlier. When specs are seen by the community to be weak, they see very little play as evidenced by stats compiled by WCL and Raider io. When specs are seen by the community as strong, they see comparatively massive amounts of play.
A non-DPS, non-healer “support” spec, of which there would be only one, would either be required for every group or would never be worth bringing.
That’s why it’s a bad idea.
And the reason I bring up the past is because maybe Blizzard is still using “old terminology” as if they were writing a manual for the game. Not speaking to seasoned players who generally agree in the Tank/DPS/Heal only roles.
I think some people are just over thinking it to the point where they don’t even realize they are correct in their dismissals of a “brand new uniqe spec type”.
I don’t think there is going to be a brand new spec type called “support”.
They are going to, like Shammys and Pallies of the past, and Disc priests somewhat… they are going to make another “heal spec”. For Dracthyr.
And that’s why it’s not going to happen.
Stop tilting at windmills.
Odds are, they’re just going to take Dance Partner from FFXIV’s Dancer, call it Ebon Might, and shift the tip of the Evoker’s DPS meter to someone else. That’s what passes for the modern MMO definition of “support.”
I also agree that it’s not likely to happen. I think you’re probably right that it would be a second healy-type spec, if they add another spec at all. The stuff that has been datamined is hardly conclusive of anything.
I made this thread to share my opinion that doing the thing that now many people are asking for in this thread and other places–creating a full fourth role, increasing 5-player content to 6 players, etc. are bad ideas.
I’m just trying to alleviate fears based on this…
A lot of people are worried they will be OP or complete failures based on this premise.
But like Ive said above, I think they are going to make a different type of healer.
Or, as someone said, maybe it’s a DPS class that heals as it damages like they were trying to do with Holy Pallies by making them swing their weapon to heal.
A damage dealer with low personal DPS that makes up for it by padding someone else’s damage meter. I don’t think it’ll be anything more clever than that.
I disagree strongly with every statement you have made here.
I’m always happy to see a bard, dancer or machinist in FF14, I love shout warriors in GW2… Support works industry wide, it even worked in WoW when we had it.
BUT your arguments appear to be something like “But guys, if we ignore the parts where I’m wrong, and only focus on the parts I want you to focus on it’s actually secretly bad!” and that’s neat. It’s wrong… but it’s neat.
It’s your opinion and you’re welcome to have it be whatever you want.
Things like
Why? How do you know this? You ran M+ with a support class like a classic Shaman and (weirdly) a Dungeons and Dragon’s Bard back before M+ was a thing? You went from saying they were never support to walking that back and now saying they were supports but that was bad… so will you also walk this back and say something else when people challenge that? When they point out, like I am, that there’s no point of comparison to compare?
In game’s with support (like… umm… most every MMO) it works fine. 
I don’t exactly think your doomsaying about something you have quite literally no information on but the word “support” appearing in some throwaway quest placeholder for unreleased content is grounds for… well anything really.
I know because I actually play the game and have for long enough to know how people decide who and what to invite to a group.
This is not Final Fantasy, a game where damage meters are too scawwy so nobody is allowed to know how bad you are.
Class balance actually matters in wow.
But if you like FF, go play that. Just stop trying to screw up WoW when the game has literally never been better.
Does this mean you’ll quit wow if they add a DREADED support class?
Think careful now, your ability to win a silly argument on an internet forum is at stake… I don’t think your snark and tries at edginess are quite doing it…
They won’t add a support class for the reasons I have outlined above, so I won’t need to go anywhere.
I didn’t say I would quit because of this. I’m saying it will make the game worse.
But I do not support homogenizing the entire MMO genre into WoW. WoW is a very different game from FF, and I think it should stay that way.
Not in terms of combat gameplay philosophy. FFXIV is even more rigidly defined than WoW’s roles, yet they still manage two support classes without upending the entire premise.
I don’t know that it would be any more or less horrible than adding any new spec or class.
There’s has to be some maintenance that is exponential with number of specs. And even if its mostly a linear growth, it’s not like they’ve been banging out content at a record pace over the last 4 years.
Especially when they keep recreating the game with things like talent trees or what ever progression / set bonus system they’re using at the moment.
FF is nowhere near as min-maxed as wow is. They don’t even allow damage meters. Having there be a big gap in throughput between classes is not nearly as significant when the numbers don’t matter to the extent they do in high-end wow content.
It not comparable.
FF, from all accounts, has better story and RPG elements. Wow, from all accounts, has better encounter and combat design.
They’re not really comparable in most ways, other than being generically an MMO.
Tell me you haven’t played endgame content in FFXIV without telling me you haven’t played endgame content in FFXIV.
Here’s a guide for an ultimate raid fight:
The numbers in there matter much more than WoW. You’re essentially comparing FFXIV’s leveling normal dungeons to Mythic raids to make your case that FFXIV is more “basic.”
Adding a DPS spec is comparatively easy in that they just need to balance DPS throughput against DPS throughput and utility against utility (yes both of these are very difficult), but trying to balance a spec that isn’t directly comparable to any of the other 38 specs is inherently more complex. I assert that it is not really possible to do it at all.
And to those people saying they should change Shaman and Paladin and Disc Priest to be support classes, thus reducing their throughput and enhancing their support capabilities, I think you might be surprised to learn that Paladin, Shaman, and Disc Priest players actually like their specs just fine and wouldn’t want them completely redesigned (that’s why they’re playing those specs instead of something else).
Again, by all means, go play FF if you like it better. I won’t ask SE to change FF to make it more like wow.
I play both for different reasons. They are different games with different strengths. But their actual combat gameplay? It’s indistinguishable to a casual observer. By design.
The FFXIV developers already made it more like WoW. They literally played WoW and modelled their game after it.
Again, take a passing glance at this:
And tell me again how WoW is more difficult or demanding in high-end content.