I would much prefer if we don’t set a precedent with a series of new specs coming with utility lists the length of a CVS receipt.
In EQ you didn’t need an enchanter if you had a good shaman. You didn’t need a bard if your warrior tank was a good puller.
Whatever the support roles are, it should be mix and matchable but never a requirement. Like one good crowd controller can offset adding another DPS. Same for adding a good slower can offset the need for a second healer.
Support roles broaden the playstyles and reduce the hard requirements by adding more grey areas in build needs.
WoW should not be taking hints from an MMO that died back when wow launched. EQ is a joke.
EQ had 300k concurrent subscribers on an unknown intellectual property. WoW was preceded on the Warcraft IP by the RTS which had millions of fans already.
You have no concept of what a success story is.
Everquest is dead and gone, no one cares about that relic anymore.
I mean…isn’t that what you’re doing? Unless there’s a specific definition of ‘support’ then it comes down to your (as in ‘the reader’ not you personally) perception of what a support is. And you’re being a semantic literalist in what you define a support as.
To me, being a support means eschewing damage at times to perform actions that improves overall team performance. That doesn’t mean buffing damage, that doesn’t even mean healing, it just means doing things that allows the team to perform the necessary task at hand. CC/kick/movement speed/grips/fears/cast speed debuff are all the types of things I think of when I think support.
I can support as a Disc Priest because of mass dispel, magic debuff cleanse, aoe shields. HPal can support because of Blessing of Freedom or Protection. They both get extra capabilites for attacking, so bonus!
Rets and Dev do damage primarily, but theres still Blessing of Protection, Word of Glory, Tail Swipe, Oppressive Roar. Things you have to stop doing damage for to make your team work better.
In both cases, you’re rewarded for being offensive while supporting. One set is healers and another dps, but I’d consider both sets to be offensive supports.
I think the issue with this is there is already an enormous amount of grey area within WoW’s trinity and that’s part of what has made every spec so engaging up to this point.
If you introduce a “bad damage tonnes of CC” role how do you reconcile that in a mythic+ group, do you add a “No control at all but more damage than every other dps” role and play them as a pair? How does this translate to 20 man raid content where a CCer isn’t as consistently necessary.
Do you just get raid groups full of the “No CC but more damage” spec because they don’t need the CC and why would they not take more damage?
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I get you don’t like facts but that’s the truth about their shared history.
EQ was always the better MMO. If EQ had the Warcraft IP and WoW was the unknown IP we know which one would be on top today.
That’s why it died back in 2004 to the superior World of Warcraft. Maybe you should go play everquest with the 10 other people who still play it.
My only real experience with RPG buff classes were the Bard and Shaman in EQ, which were both wildly popular - and fun. They both needed/received some QOL changes over time, but it didn’t really change their core role: support and buffs.
Personally I would play a pure support class in a heartbeat if it was offered - so much so that I’d actually prefer if it meant I did no actual damage myself. To each their own.
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I don’t think timers really matter if you do it right.
For instance high M+ keys are brutal to do right and time the rotations of interrupts and stuns. Good groups who time their setups well pull it off. Not everyone does though.
So you can see an opening here for a support role to smooth out those gaps and still time the key. Especially considering a wipe is very costly on the timer.
Going from 0 to 300k is better than going from 3m to 10m.
But keep telling yourself the lie you live in.
That’s the thing. I can’t because I’m the one doing that content.
Which is fair.
I’m simply going to have a different view in this, though. I was a support player back when people understood what that meant without every discussion turning into a lecture of what “support” means as opposed to utility or hybrids or mezzers or whatever else. When I came to WoW, I presumed that Shaman was going to let me continue that support playstyle.
Unfortunately, the class was competitive gutted of anything resembling support. They designed in the opposite direction. And eventually, I gave up.
Then Augmentation hits. Out of nowhere, and seemingly beyond the most remote possibility, WoW adds a support role. I am stunned. And for the first time in two decades, fully satisfied with my playstyle. It is a modernized take on what I envisioned Enhancement to be when I was waiting for that beta invite.
Most people want to preserve the status quo. But I am loving how disruptive Augmentation - nay, the support role has been. I would love to see a sixth group member added, or even an existing slot reserved for support. I do not see this as unhealthy. I see it as necessary to give me an experience catered to my preferences.
The question is, how many are still out there like me? I recognize that I’m part of a dying breed. It will be interesting to see how many people legitimately adopt the playstyle once the dust has settled and the numbers are adjusted.
What’s not clear?
If you do a key that requires everyone rotate and time their cooldowns to survive and clear the key in time wouldn’t it also work to have a role that makes this easier?
I think as long as WoW sticks to its grey area trinity, utility should be a separate and universally balanced aspect that doesn’t infringe on it. Support is a playstyle choice within dps, and it should have its own support tinged utility, it shouldn’t simply have more utility purely for being a support.
The grey area trinity is what has given us such spec design and gameplay variety for the past decade and a half. I don’t see augmentor’s core design as a problem within that, just another way to split the ratios.
I live in a world where no one cares about Everquest because it sucked back in the day and it sucks now. If everquest was a good as you say then it would be up there with the top dogs like Final Fantasy or Guild Wars.
Don’t take ideas from failure mmo’s like everquest.
And that’s a personal definition. Not the definition I or Blizzard or the older RPG community use when referring to the support role.
Only partially accurate.
WoW was an enormous drain on EQ, no doubt, but EQ also did it to themselves by releasing a brutally difficult expansion right before WoW released. They shot themselves in the foot.
Fans of both can still make valid arguments for which was “better” as a whole/at their respective peaks.
Not if it came with a significant loss of group dps, which it would have to because otherwise the spec would just be better than everything else.