And probably a solid grasp of what the ratio needs to be of damage to buff value for the spec to be competitive and healthy, hence the slight shift we’ve just seen.
Or you because they made the change.
This is a good thing; it makes classes much less one-dimensional when everyone has to consider interacting with their party as well as the monsters, instead of just making offensive classes tunnel-vision on dealing damage, or the defensive classes tunnel-vision into simply maintaining aggro, or support classes tunnel-vision into just healing.
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Sure, but also:
12:52
Ok, but in the notes for the changes coming blizzard said the spec released doing more support and less damage than they originally intended. They aren’t backing out, it was never supposed to go this far to begin with.
It’s going from 80/20 to 70/30. If it goes past that you have a point, but for now this is just course correction to its intended tuning.
And like I said from the start, if not a tad over-dramatically, I’m fine with the nerf. In isolation. If this is a trend, the entire appeal of the support playstyle will be eroded.
And given that Graham Berger there clearly identified the core appeal of that playstyle, that erosion would be a conscious decision to no longer cater to the playerbase they intended the spec for.
Fair enough, the one interview I missed.
Don’t know about those, but I know about FF14. And in that one bards and dancers put out buffs that at best a novelty to be able to technically call them buffers.
In EVEs case, the support ships were so broken that they got heavy restrictions and nerfs placed on them to ensure a semblance of balance including but not limited to very limited buffs, heavy power usage, and limited area of buff effect (which even so, ‘balance’ in EVEs terms is such a hugely debatable term its nigh impossible to quantify)
Yes! Perfect! Excellent! There’s a reason I play WoW and this is one of them! All classes have expectations of doing things, no one can just NOT cc/kick/knockback/fear/etc. This is what I worry about adding support in the classical sense, making one person the utility/buff stick while everyone else basically ignores mechanics.
This I agree with. I personally don’t think supports in WoW break the trinity either. Support is not utility, and utility is already dispersed relatively evenly across the specs and roles in the game. Aug might have too much utility (It does) but that’s another debate, as long as its inclusion in a party increases the group’s damage by an amount equivalent to dps spec, it too is a dps and that’s not a bad thing.
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Agreed. They shouldn’t be called support because they’re a novelty. Not notably impactful. Now, RDM in FFXI? There’s an impactful support class.
The fact of the matter is this: the support playstyle has been abandoned in the genre within any game with a respectable playerbase and development cycle. ESO, GW2, FFXIV, SWTOR, WoW… it’s nowhere to be found. But players who still enjoy that playstyle still exist. They explicitly acknowledge this.
Is it too impactful at present? Sure is! Hence the nerf. I just want to voice my concern that the playstyle itself (not simply the rotation, but the entire fantasy and damage profile) survives the nerfs.
Generally agree with the sentiment, would argue this point but otherwise well stated
I expect it will, I just find the shouting a tad widespread and melodramatic right now. I’m still waiting for bliz to remove the knockup from upheaval because that thing is egregious on a spec that already has two displacement effects and an AoE stun.
It isn’t. You could gut all the utility from Augmentation and still call it support.
I think your argument would be less convincing but yes, at the end of the day to me support is just kind of a nebulous term when the net benefit of the group for having a support or a 3rd dps is the same. Support is a sub role within the trinity, not a role unto its own.
So let me understand this better.
You are upset because instead of doing 50 damage with your own attack and allowing your team to do 60 damage with their attack you will now do 54 damage with your own attack and your team will now do 56?
Is this your complaint? I’m not understanding how this turns Aug Evoker into a DPS class that no longer support their team.
Explain more.
I will acknowledge that when most modern MMO players use the term “support,” it is used interchangeably with “utility.” Blamelessly, as there hasn’t been a need to distinguish after the support playstyle was abandoned.
But now that the old support playstyle has been revived? The distinction needs to be made in order to discuss the role clearly.
Its understandable to desire that playstyle, but the question remains WHY the playstyle was abandoned. If people were enjoying it, why not include it? If it was popular, why not keep it?
It’s a concern that blizzard may, in discovering it is more effort than they expected it to be to make a predominantly buff based dps spec, walk back their commitment to a support dps and make the evokers damage its primary contribution instead.
That’s not the issue. The issue is the possibility of a trend. Keep extrapolating.
I think it’s only necessary for taxonomy / discussion purposes. If it walks like a dps, if it quacks like a dps, it’s a dps.
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Oh I totally agree. If Blizzard starts a trend of nerfing Aug support abilities in favor of buffing their own dmg abilities that would 100% not be okay.
You can’t release a team based Support/DPS and then change it into a DPS with some support.
If Blizzard does start this I too will be pretty upset.
So far however, this is just a single change that Blizzard says is simply designed to bring the Spec functioning as they intend.
I don’t think we need to have threads about Aug Evokers being ruined and turned into just another DPS class though.