How would a support spec work for Shamans?
Enhancement already does that job, and since Ion has said they won’t be changing any specs to a Support, they’d have to add a new one.
How would the abilities be any different from an Augmentation Evoker or even an Enhancement Shaman?
Is there any reason why they refuse to make a Tank Shaman Spec?
I even forgot Enh existed so…yeah.
I am Enhancement myself, I just hope Blizzard adds tanking/support as a new spec and doesn’t change Enhancement.
I refuse to tank and I would have to move over to Elemental if they plan to drop Enhancement into the Tank pool.
Personally, I have no idea how a tank/support would work. I feel like tanks wouldn’t have all those globals to spare. As for a healer/support, not that I think more support specs should come, but the way I would implement it is a healer who only heals and buffs dps by a small flat percentage with 100% uptime when played well. So basically healers who don’t want to dps could instead spend those globals buffing their teammates so they do a little extra dps.
If it’s anything like Augmentation, it how they buff is they continue to DPS. My issue is how would this be any different than what Enhancement already does with our totems and Mana Spring?
there’s a bunch of elemental themed trinkets over the years they could replicate concepts from.
If any spec ingame were to ever be remade into a conceptual support it would be discipline, since that probably wont be the case I could see shaman being able to buff players similar to brewmaster shuffle. The idea would be mitigating damage enough so that either hybrids can self sustain or less healers are necessary to sustain an entire raid.
As for the damage support I think rather than buffing allies debuffing enemies would be interesting. In pvp they could become the gods of dispel protection while in pve they could offer things like frost mage shatter modifiers, unholy aoe wound bursts, or even armor penetration.
I think the conceptual flaw with aug is that it enables whatever a class can already do, a supportive shaman should modify an ally so while they still excel at their own kit they have a bit more room to still perform in other aspects.
Yes I think shaman should steal from warlocks and death knights, a lot of them were shaman first after all.
enhance tanks were a thing in classic, not a popular thing, mind.
they could offtank into early raids, but threat was always a problem. and then crushing blows…
I forget the logic in eliminating them instead of buffing them… if it was ever explained at all…
Nobody will play then because people hate tanks
Enhancement isn’t a support spec though. It’ll go on being a DPS spec with a couple of vague party buffs (like pretty much all of them) and there will be, if anything, a new spec that actually does support-y things.
Windfury Totem?
Mana Spring?
Various totems that can do things to buff people?
I think the rumors about existing specs being turned into Support are fake leaks.
The problem with support specs as we’ve seen with evokers is that they’re so powerful it just kinda invalidates the other two specs.
Sure you can still play and enjoy them, but you’re just gimping yourself by not playing Aug. WoW has had a lot of balance issues in its life but I don’t think i’ve seen anything worse than how they handled Aug evoker.
Agreed. I can’t imagine removing old specs (see ranged survival hunter) and changing them to something else would be well received…reguardless of how few people play them.
Ion has said no spec will be changed, and that they’d rather make a new spec for it.
I believe the leaks except the support part. They cant deal with aug and even Blizzard sees the problems if more support specs cme out close to what aug is. Wouldnt worry much about it.
Enh identity as a melee mobile fighter with physical and magic damage is set in stone imo. They are fun to play rn too I wouldnt change them a bit. Maybe delete primordial wave and make lava lash actually good without taking so many points in the talent tree.
Maybe they’re planning to take out support totems from Resto/Enhanc/Ele to make a support spec?
I have no idea. I’d bet the leaked rumor is next patch instead of expansion.
This is the world (of Warcraft) I wish to live in. 
This is the issue I have with aug it feels like the spec took away from devastation. It feels like it stole over being designed that way. So if more support specs were to come why not put those ideas into the already existing specs? If they come out with a paladin support spec full of blessings and seals I would be so mad.
Easy, they can just slap together some sort of “tank” spec loosely based on the Enhancement talent tree
Whatever it is that they call it doesn’t really matter (various name ideas have already been floated such as “Earth-warden”, etc), just having another tank option that can also play rDPS would be nice
They “just slapped together” a brand new spec for Evockers mid-expansion, in between major patches, so them slapping together new specs for other classes (…such as Shaman) in 11.0 is not an unreasonable request
i think shaman have a really good class identity between the 3 specs as is, i dont want to see enhance changed the way the changed survival hunters awhile back.
I do think its a missed opportunity to not have a 4th tank spec for shaman though that uses the earth elemental as the actually controllable/playable unit with the shaman themself becoming an untarget-able pet that follows the earth elemental around.