DPS is the end all be all of content because in this game, battles only end once one side hits 0 HP. The faster that happens, the faster everyone moves on, gets loot, etc. Enrage timers aside, this is why you don’t run 8 tanks and 17 healers; sure you’d probably never die, but DPS would be horrifically slow.
Aug is fine to exist, but it needs to be able to be self-sufficient in solo content and also not overshadow bringing another DPS. 1-1-2-1 should perform the same as 1-1-3.
And Aug is supposed to be a SUPPORT role. Not a healer, not a damage dealer per say, but a buffer. They literally contribute to the groups damage in other ways on top of providing some damage.
I don’t see why that’s hard to grasp. I mean, I don’t do group content anymore, but even I can see the benefits of this.
Again, I’m not arguing against Aug’s existence, but there are some factors it has to consider:
It’s fine for Aug and specs like it to exist, but they need to be sidegrades, not upgrades, otherwise the meta will eventually drift toward 1 Tank, 3 Support (one healing-focused, the other two Aug), and 1 DPS.
Everquest 2 did in fact have group limits.
I’m not talking about the first one.
Its still has its support elements its litterly a disc preist but instead of heals it buff the only diffrence a disc preist does more damage
I made my first evoker the week before the Augmentation release and have now reached 440+ ilvl and a 2500+io in m+.
In my opinion trading some of my buff output for personal damage is highly desirable. Our damage is so damn low that we can’t really help with damage based mechs, for example; killing a totem, a bomb, a time based add, hell just trying to get the barrel off someones head in freehold.
The class will still be insanely strong, we are only losing 3.4%-4% of our damage output. The health nerf is the most impactful change tbh.
My issue with Aug Evoker from glancing over the talent tree was that it wasn’t enough of a support role to be a draw for me. I didn’t find the buffs to be that impressive from first glance but correct me if I’m wrong. If you were doing a variety of crit/haste/mastery buffs on 5 or more people at once with plenty of options for the evoker to choose from then it might appeal to me. Otherwise it is uninteresting.
Correct me if I’m wrong it just didn’t seem that amazing to me at first glance.
You realize they are not getting rid of support functionality but rather increasing their damage so they dont have to switch specs just to kill a few things solo
You missed the point of what he had said. He never said that tgere shouldnt be a support only that it needs to be closer to the same benefit as 3 dps instead of the 2 + support.
Nope its a DPS . It can support but its still a DPS.
This change also helps combat a serious weakness. In a 5 man currently, with an Aug evoker, if one DPS goes down, the loss is magnified vs losing 1 DPS with 3 full DPS classes. Giving augs a bit more DPS while dampening their bonuses a bit makes sense.
What an overreaction. The way they nerfed it aligns the spec with its intendend functionality, augies should be thankful they werent crushed into dust by the nerfs (which is what less favored specs would get) and only got a slap in the wrist. Support role is just how a part of the community decided to call it, but right now its just another dps spec. We can talk about support role when there is more than 1 spec that’s similar to augies. 1 spec creating a new role would be terrible for the game, it would warp the game around only one of its many specs.
Not at all. That’s how Blizzard pitched it. And they tapped into those that remember that term in the MMO space.
WoW-exclusive players confuse support with utility. Support boosts the numbers of the other “pure” roles. Anything else is a bonus. They could gut all the utility for all I care - I want the Support element preserved.
https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23952478/specialize-with-the-new-augmentation-evoker
And I quote: “Augmentation is a new Damage Dealer role with a twist”
Never have they used the term ‘support’. In all interviews they make it clear they see it as a dps.
2:12
It’s moving from an 80/20 split to at most a 70/30 split. It could have gone live at 70/30 and nobody would have cared, and it’s still significantly more buff focused than support based dps in other MMOs.
Augmentation is best as Support, not DPS, we have like 30 DPS specs already.
Bards are the classic tabletop example. They allow others to perform their roles more efficiently.
In the MMORPG space, Shaman in EverQuest was my first, but Skald in DAoC is probably a better example. Controller archetypes in CoH were close, too, but they’re considered “Mezzers” - another lost role.
But getting more modern, EVE is really the only game with support “classes” with certain ships that are fitted to boost the numbers the other ships are putting out.
For the most part, the support role has been subsumed into “pure” classes. Mage AI is support. Bloodlust is support. PI is support. Every class is a support hybrid these days, regardless of their trinity role.
my assumption is there is an internal argument going on between traditional TTG RPG players and modern holy trinity RPG players among the blizzard team. the holy trinity is hard coded into the game, so just calling it technically a DPS is likely a compromise.
and does dps meters mater? lately i have been doing more HPS than DPS as Aug, support is support, whatever gets the job done.
You get it.
But like I replied to the quoted poster, they do refer to it as support. I have a feeling that, internally, they have a solid grasp on what the term entails.