What are Blizzard's plans for Support specs?

Classes Priest
1

I think Disc is the best and probably only candidate to become a new dps support spec. All they have to do is pump their damage, and maybe do a couple tweaks, but the gameplay of disc would pretty much remain the same. The only difference is that it would become a DPS, just like Aug. Meaning you could have 5-man for instance where you have 1 Disc and 1 dedicated healer.

Now if Blizzard’s plans are not to add more Support to the game, all they have to do is rework Aug into something else. Like either a healer or dps. I really dont care. What I dont understand is how is it even possible to have only 1 class in the game with the support spec? It’s like if only Warriors could be tank (like in Vanilla)

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2

If I recall they were asked about this. Either turning other specs into support or adding new.

I think they said they have no plans to make any new support classes. They don’t want it to be a 4th role.

A bit of a bummer imo. A bard would be a dream come true for me.

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3

They’ve opted against it because of the incessant whining about Augvoker being necessary for dungeon/raid comps, which was a problem entirely borne out of them only releasing a single support spec and calling it a day.

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4

They retreated very quickly from the original Oracle design which was tending towards a support spec role by reworking Power Infusion, so I wouldn’t bet on it.

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5

Honestly if I were to guess, I think Blizz did have plans to make support a real role, and were eyeing a couple current specs for reworks. There’s a few specs in the game that were both fairly unpopular/non-meta and could be retooled into different kinds of support. Disc is absolutely the easiest one - all that would need to happen to disc was a DPS increase and ways to play with Atonement that turns it into support, rather than healing.

Could go even further into a crackpot theory: Affliction and Survival also could have become the WoW version of the debuff support

But the reaction to Aug immediately 180d them on ever trying something like that if that WAS their plan.

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Which is sad if true. The issue wasn’t that Aug was a support spec, the issue was that Aug was the ONLY support spec.