Support is a very good role. Innovation is good for a game; stagnancy is not. The only problem(s) with Augmentation/Support was that they didn’t add more specs, didn’t add a dedicated Support role, and that there are salty people who’re mad they’re not getting M+ invites. There was no flaw with Augmentation in of itself, its silly that Blizzard is listening to people who are just mad about something being different or that they’re not getting M+ invites over the Augmentation Evoker. Especially since they’ve already proven they can design support heroes/concepts well, such as Medivh, Zarya and Abathur in Heroes of the Storm.
Aug Evokers are such a dismally small portion of keys completed that they get rounded to 0% representation on every key level except 3 4 and 5 atm.
Personally I’m ok with this, it’s a much better state than aug being mandatory like it was back in Dragonflight.
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It does need a buff in the form of a rework. Given the og class goals, you should be able to choose between two forms. Leaning into buffing damage or personal damage (raid/mythic+ if you will), prescience should work like beacon; a constant buff and their group survability buffs gutted. We a damage support, so make it all about damage.
Have you ever played or seen DCUO? I think you should take a look, because i love how they handle support specs. Not only is it stuff like aug does (damage buffs, aiding healing, survivability, cc, etc…) but their core is aiding resource generation.
Like imagine having something that gave warriors additional rage, or helped warlocks generate soulshards?
If blizzard were to go the route of adding a 4th role with support, thats how you make it more than “just more damage” as someone put it a few days ago.
Im not sure that can even work in wow, but its a concept that could definitely be looked into.
I really love the support role, admittedly it took a backseat now that solo content is my focus and i can tank w/o pressure. But if i were to go into group content again itd be as augmentation.
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I agree. They make really terrible tanks, and I think they need a buff in that department so they can be a tank spec.
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Supports are just a failed concept in WoW.
They’re overwhelmingly unpopular at the high end of play, nobody likes Supports being mandatory since it just crowds out the DPS scene (which is already INSANELY crowded).
And at the play where people actually want to play Supports, they’re just fundamentally worthless because the only part of “supporting” that isn’t done by other roles is force multiplication and you gotta have force to multiply. And as my calculator confirms, 10x0 is 0.
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Rather then Altering pre-existing specs to be support (and antagonizing their player base) I’d prefer to see new specs that looked to focus their support more around something that is thematically appropriate to the spec
So for starters, I’d look to give a 4th spec to 3 of the “pure DPS” classes:
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Mage: Chronomancer. This spec would focus on time manipulation with the player being able to provide movement speed bonuses, full incapacitate effects that take them out of phase, Slows, cool down bonuses and maybe even something that would allow them to slow down tics on dots (so the effect lasts longer but is more easily managed by healers).
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Rogue: Sabatour: this would be a spec that focus more on disabling enemies ability to function properly (attack speed/damage debuffs, armor/resistance reduction ect) and possibly throwing around some extra damage to the party by giving them access to various poisons.
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Warlock: Pactbinder. Using the corrupting power of the Fel, you can give other players formidable boosts in power… but they persistently come with a cost; Things like Fel rush for the party to speed up or a bonus to a secondary stat that is more powerful then what another class might give you but has a withdrawl phase after the fact that causes penalties.
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Like this is just stuff that I spitballed.
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On a good trash pull with CDs lined up, when I was that ilvl, I could almost push 10M (was at 9.something).
Nah to the bin they go. The game feels like it’s healing without them.
The idea of making a support role is bad enough, but butchering existing specs that people play and enjoy by turning them into supports is even worse.
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This, and I do not see any viable way to fix them. Either they’re mandatory at the top end or grossly useless in mid to low content. That’s the nature of buffing teammates and the way dps happens in WoW.
Even classical enhance shaman did good damage on its own, the group buffs weren’t massive.
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I DESPERATELY want Augmentation to work, because I want more support classes. I really REALLY like the fantasy of being a support. It’s why I find myself always returning to Paladin in classic content.
The issue is it fails in modern WoW because the player base cares wayyyyy too much about numbers and meta and optimization, etc. So of course Aug in it’s previous state was mandatory for higher end keys which of course reduced other classes’ chances of receiving an invite. Honestly, I think if Augmentation came out back in the TBC or WoTLK days, It would’ve been much more well received. Similar to how I think if covenants were a TBC thing, they would’ve been gobbled up by the player base.
That being said, a support in WoW needs to be something other than just increase other people’s numbers. I think support specs should provide a large amount of utility. Maybe quick buffs/effects that can help in various situations, and then also help contribute to damage and do some spot healing.
I don’t think support should replace a DPS or a healer. Supports really should be their own role. I know that would involve retuning 20 years of content, but they did it back in Legion for the level scaling and again in SL for the level squish. I just do not see support continuing to exist in the current 5 man dungeon format. Support should never be mandatory to complete content (at least at lower levels of content) but they should instead help to make the content easier.
Some ideas of what supports should be bringing to the table:
- A small range of damage/healing increase abilities that last for a small window that can support DPS burst windows or healers after raid receives raid wide damage. Not something that is continually maintained like Ebon Might.
- Abilities like obsidian scales and spatial paradox are good. Just little buffs you can put on the tank or healer to not necessarily increase their throughput, but just take a bit of stress off of them.
- Cleanses, and Brez’s on potentially lower CDs than other classes or multiple targerts, similar to how all priests have shields, but Disc priests have talents and such to make them better.
- Utilities akin to Paladin auras of the past, maybe some sort of aura that lowers everyone’s CDs by a small bit. Just other helpful aura’s that don’t directly increase people’s output, but can help them to shine a bit more.
- Utilities similar to removed blessings such as kings, wisdom, sanctuary, salv and light. Also things like seals that can be applied to an enemy to do some small healing to the attacker.
- Maybe a few CC’s and silences to help remove pressure from (often times the healer) in M+ keys and PvP. Or abilities to increase ability ranges for a short amount of time
- Maybe even some sacrificial abilities such as swapping an allies CC or status effect to themself, or a hand of sacrifice.
There are ways to make a support class useful without just directly increasing everyone’s throughput, thus being required.
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You know this is worse right? Aug was mostly affecting higher end keys and had some trickle down affect on lower keys.
Making support its own dedicated role would negatively affect all group content. Whether you’re queuing for time walking, just trying to do low keys, or trying to form a raid group, you now have a 4th role to try to find players to fill. A role that’s going to be another tank situation where there’s few people who want to do it and drastically increasing the time it takes to fill groups.
Couple that with decreasing the amount of DPS per group and it’s just a complete recipe for disaster that will make no one happy.
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Having a spec be so worthless it isn’t considered in the slightest also isn’t good/fair.
The OP succeeding in key levels where you can afford a left of bell curve carry with enough gear/skill isn’t indicative of the spec being “fine”. You could run a similar key with a 2nd tank or healer and claim “2 tank/healer runs are fine guys” but it isn’t true.
Blizzard needs to decide if support is a true 4th role and adjust the game/small groups accordingly which has massive ramifications…namely it would mean groups would need to have a 6th dedicated spot or change to 2 DPS/1support AND there needs to be at least 3 other support specs.
This has massive issues with queue content who needs to be rebalanced to require signups for those specs which then means players need to willingly play those specs OR queue content needs to loosen up requirements to have role-based scaling where any permutation of 5-6 bodies can complete queue content.
For superior non queue content levels, the issue largely solves itself because you already control what comp you run with (which often means -+ 1 DPS/healer accordingly) but still retains the predicted fate of aug/support specs where it’ll literally be a binary decision on if it gets brought or not. In lower content levels, you can get away with someone playing aug/support because the content isn’t tuned so tightly to need them or not…and in fact odds are the player could just not be present and your group likely is in BETTER shape…so the aug/support is essentially a carry who maybe, at best, is letting the actual right of bell curve players parse better but in reality the fight was already won by default.
We can’t even just turn aug into a DPS spec simply by boosting their numbers because they inherently have way more control/CC options than dev making them just flat out superior to dev if they pull similar numbers or worse if they don’t (because CC options are good but not an adequate replacement for good DPS without their defensive and offensive buffing capabilities they would need to lose to be DPS).
I think it’s far too late in the game’s life to try and brute force support into existence even though I personally think it is/was a fine idea…just should’ve been in since day 1 so the community played and developed accordingly.
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The solution to this would be two fold.
- Increase party size to 6 with the final slot being a “flex sport”, effectively players get a choice as to what they would want whether that’s another DPS to push more damage, a second healer for more group survivability, another tank to handle more adds (or possibly having one that can be more focused on handling bosses then trash?) or support opening new options to the players.
- The second would be to design content to allow for greater flexibility. True, players will still try and optimize the crap out of the game and we will once again wind up with Exodia comps… but that’s been a thing in the game since pretty much the birth of Details and theorycrafting.
You can not give queue content choices because it’ll absolutely just lead to the people picking the optimal path which goes against the nature of queue content.
Like today if I run a heroic for the dungeon weekly for the rep, if I could control aspects of my group, I’d 100% be dropping the worthless healing spot for another DPS. “I” don’t need healing in a measly heroic dungeon which is then made all the more possible when I have an extra DPS blasting instead of the liklihood, because it is queue content, of getting a heal button pecking healbot healer who realistically is just being carried in the run. Dropping healers for DPS also what happens in raiding too because, inherently, healers have a very finite limit of usefulness that directly corresponds to how competent and capable the rest of the group is as well as how easy the content inherently is to begin with with heroic dungeons already being stupid easy.
And the biggest problem with adding a dedicated 6th support spot for content means the content HAS to be increased to justify the spot along with there needing to be a massive increase in spec options AND players playing those specs to have groups formed/flowing…which is why I suggested that the actual true fix is changing queue content logic altogether to be dynamically tuned to the 5 bodies queued into it just like islands, Torghast, visions, and even delves all do.
They’ve done more cool stuff in SOD then they ever have in retail, retail has been getting stale and homogenized for a while now. I’d like to see that creative freedom come over to retail.
As for the whole Aug is finally not meta, there is always a meta which is usually only theoretical and matters at the highest of keys and the dumb community ruins it on their own by applying it to lower keys. The real problem with M+ is created by the players themselves.
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Yeah that’s why I supported them not being viable. I said it way back at augs conception that all a support role was going to do was be useless or twist the entire game around itself and I’m glad we’re finally back to the former after having experienced the latter for 2 years. The experiment is a failure, time to move on.
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Is anyone actually playing as aug as a main spec or playing with a friend who is main spec aug for this season?
I haven’t seen an aug all season so far, though I am doing keys in the 9-11 range.
I don’t think any of those super high 15++ keys are running aug anymore?
Agreed. SoD was quite the fresh change of pace in terms of creativity. Warlock tanks, mage healers… Too bad Retail doesn’t have that.
Also agreed.