The support role formally came to the game with the Augmentation Evoker. It is a great idea for playing improving the group efficiency and a lot of players enjoy the not being constrained to a single focus when in a group. This reminds me of the hybrids classes back in the day, who could handle several roles at once, even if they were never top of the line on any but added a great experience for the group.
However, being marked as a dps spec, the expectation has been that you bring at least the same damage output as the rest of the classes. Not considering the bias generated by unclear reporting tools that don’t capture the actual contribution, being dependant on others performance is always going to make it nigh impossible to balance the class properly.
But what if we actually got other support specs added to the game? This would no longer be a single out layer, but something to account for in group composition. There are several candidates out there that would suit the role giving lots of different flavors for meeting the support role.
Some examples I can think of are:
Survival Hunter: de-buffing opponents to increase damage taken, excellent CC potential.
Subtlety Rogue: exposing enemies weakness giving openings for additional damage and covering teammates with diversions.
Discipline Priest: damage mitigation, off heal with their usual atonement mechanics plus divine inspiration/focus for other classes
Enhancement Shaman: it’s in the name, enhance teammates with elemental magic an heavily rely on totems for different buffs/de-buffs
Arcane Mage: buffing allies with arcane energy to improve damage and survivability.
I know changing some other classes roles may not be always a popular choice but considering an overall change in roles and new focus for some classes would definitely be refreshing and solve the balance issue, allowing for new challenges and mechanics on both dungeons and raids.
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If people expect that of aug then they are fools.
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I think what’s more likely is that Aug get trickled down to a more conventional DPS spec. The experiment was not really a success.
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Unfortunately as much as I agree. Its not happening.
Their single biggest mistake was making a lonesome support spec. Which created a massive imbalance since… it was the only one… so everyone was playing it.
It essentially killed itself by being the only one.
They are quietly nerfing the support aspect and buffing the damage every patch.
This is definitely one of those things they are going to sweep under the rug and pretend it never happened.
If you are worried about the damage, I wouldn’t. They are slowly bringing aug in line with other dps. Just give it a few more patches. It will just be another dps soon enough.
Nope, we need exactly one less support spec.
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I thought Shaman was the first support role? Their Naxx tier set bonus restores people’s resources and they had that back in Vanilla.
I’d love to see more new roles added to the boring gameplay we’ve had for years. Aug was a breath of fresh air that was ruined by the elitist min/max community.
WoW devs need to take more risks like this despite everyone’s crying.
Personally I think augmentation was simply a better dps before it got tuned down this expansion. I’m not particularly a fan of trying to make support it’s own role if it’s made simply to be an op dps. A support for me fills the dps role and simply scale off other people damage, it doesn’t need to provide more utility as I think utility is better when everyone has some.
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It actually came in with enhancement Shaman (Didn’t you wonder where the name originated?), but that support spec is lost to the mists of time, as well as the augmentation Evoker will eventually be. The problem with support specs is nobody wants them if they don’t do decent DPS. If they can do good DPS and provide that extra support buff, they become OP, then everybody wants them, and balance suffers.
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And was formally removed from the game shortly after with the updates to Augmentation Evoker.
They all lived happily ever after. The end.
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No. They killed their own experiment and had a chance to add more support already and didn’t.
Make Aug pure DPS.
Nah. Support never works in games like WOW. Rift tried the concept and it was a failure. In Rift players realized you were better off bringing a real DPS using the classic Tank, Heal, triple DPS design.
The problem is that if a support is too strong (like we’ve seen from Aug) it becomes required. If it’s too weak you’re better off bring another DPS. There’s no middle ground.
Even if Blizz added a 6th spot for Dungeon content with that spot used for Support the players would just pick the best option between a Support or DPS based on tuning.
The only option would be forced roles even for M+ and Raiding to guarantee a Support spot and that would suck.
Support has to have a power dynamic, meaning other supports, otherwise that 1 support gets all the design funneled into it and becomes mandatory.
If you have 2 supports do the same thing, so you took Aug’s Ebon Might or whatever it was using, cut it in half, give it to both supports, now you can have that same power as long as you bring both.
I don’t really care one way or the other if they add more support, but if they do, it needs to be new specs and not screwing over existing ones to a new role that few people enjoy.