Let's just SAY Blizzard introduces 'Support specs'...

[Youn]

The issue with support classes in WoW can be seen in Black Temple. For instance, mages proved absolutely useful for making your way through trash but were hard to keep alive on Bloodboil. So, solution, take a couple of extra mages to work your way through the trash then sit them for the boss.

Boomkins were nice to have unless you were on a progression boss. Easy fix, carry a boomkin on the roster and sit them whenever a progression boss was being worked on as they were 30% less damage.

Shadow priests and ret paladins both returned mana. Ret paladins unless they had massive haste were pure crap dps as they did most of their damage white swinging. Solution, bring in a paladin on farm nights and use the single shadow priest on most other nights. Once, your ret paladin wasn't totally useless you can bring them in on progression nights also. Always prioritize gear away from the paladin until you have no place to put it.

So, does that sound fun? Being the guy that sits on the bench until basically you cannot put another warlock into the raid? Or people didn't show up for the evening?

[Natylyaz]

The issue with support classes in WoW can be seen in Black Temple. For instance, mages proved absolutely useful for making your way through trash but were hard to keep alive on Bloodboil. So, solution, take a couple of extra mages to work your way through the trash then sit them for the boss.

Boomkins were nice to have unless you were on a progression boss. Easy fix, carry a boomkin on the roster and sit them whenever a progression boss was being worked on as they were 30% less damage.

Shadow priests and ret paladins both returned mana. Ret paladins unless they had massive haste were pure crap dps as they did most of their damage white swinging. Solution, bring in a paladin on farm nights and use the single shadow priest on most other nights. Once, your ret paladin wasn't totally useless you can bring them in on progression nights also. Always prioritize gear away from the paladin until you have no place to put it.

So, does that sound fun? Being the guy that sits on the bench until basically you cannot put another warlock into the raid? Or people didn't show up for the evening?

You're talking about an era where balance was not at its finest (even if it were better than Vanilla).
Support specs, if integrated, can be balanced with these issues in mind. For example, you wouldn't bench them on a progression boss if the overall utility they bring is relevant. It simply doesn't have to be only pure damage or pure healing.

[Krieleros]

As a former EQ player, it would be kind of cool to see pure support roles, but I don't think it would happen. EQ bosses were killed by huge raids and encounters are completely different than modern MMOs. You had space for a dedicated rezzer or someone who was there purely for cc. The only way I see it happening is in more of a toned down way, the way FFXIV does it. During progression, you need a bard or machinist because healers are mana starved prior to overgearing the raid and DPS buffs, like foes requiem, are useful to meet DPS checks.

Even with a FFXIV model, flexible raid size in heroic creates an issue of how many of these support roles are needed. What are the breakpoints? Do you need 2 or 3 support roles for 26 people? Also, it creates an issue for players maining a support role in PUGs. Once players overgear a a raid, support mains will likely get treated like lepers in group finder because their buffs are likely not needed and they are looked at as just a suboptimal DPS or off healer. I like the idea, but the direction WoW has gone since TBC had trained players look at the meters and to want to play the OP FotM spec. Trying to add back a vanilla buffadin now would be hard unless you change the meta.

[Desparil]

I would like to see that just for sake of shitstorm on forums otherwise no.

[Sigxy]

Wasn't talking new class. But you are going to realize, if you throw the card for support classes, some classes need a specc to do so. That is what I meant.

Oh, yeah, my bad, thought you meant new classes - but I think adding new specs would still make it even more annoying for Blizzard to mess around with. I'm just one of those guys that feel "Well, these classes got three specs and they are ALL DpS, let's just take one for changing." Though of course someone would need to be a bit careful with what specs to use... for example, if I had taken Outlaw instead of Sub, that'd mean the rogues would still have two dps specs which are dagger based. At least with Sub, two dps, but one is dagger and one is non-dagger focused.

But still, yeah, I'd prefer it if they added new specs rather than new classes right now. Druids got 4, so let's give the pure DpS classes a 4th spec for support if needed! Though in that case I'd like for the mages to be able to buff weapons with either arcane, fire or frost. I don't know, I just really love the idea of someone enchanting another player's weapon to deal extra damage for some 'combo action'.

[Rotted]

I can already see the "but why can't I do the same dps as spec x" threads.

Honestly I wouldn't worry about that, we get daily QQ threads about people not getting their 5th current content legendary only a handful of months into the expansion, at this point in time, people are going to bitch no matter what they do,

[shaunika123]

would really fuck up class balance if you had to include one of every support spec but not more in every raid composition

in 5mans it's great but im not sure it would work well in raids

i'd be fine with playing support, i loved bard in rift, but it'd just become even more bring the class not the player than it already is.

i mean it was already semi in the game during TBC/vanilla with paladins/enha shamans/etc and it didnt work out that well

[dextersmith]

They have been but not in any significant fashion and by that I mean having big effects on either us the player or the mobs themselves. Like noticeable differences. EQ buffs and debuffs made significant differences. For example an attack speed debuff on a mob in EQ would make a mob that would destroy a group to being able to be killed and tanked, or the enchanters haste buffs would make a players attack speed massively different giving player buffs a lot of oomph behind them as well as their debuffs on mobs. WoWs buff system has been complete shit with no significant effect on the players or the mobs with debuffs.

I wholeheartedly agree. Buffs are underwhelming when it's for 5% for 20 seconds. Remember when a talent point improved the cast time of just fireball by only 0.1 seconds?

[Deleted]

Am I really only one that just read the OP and went "Uh, we had that for the longest time. Then they just pruned them out slowly".

Warlocks used to have curse of tongues and weakness on their basic arsenal. They would work on bosses. Some specs (mainly destro) used those. It wasnt majorly great for long time, but I think it was -15% less psychical dmg done on Cata rather than "reduces attack power by 123". Curse of tongues would only work on bosses with interruptable casts (not always).
But it was either those curses or curse agony, which was dps. Not many people cared enough to just bring warlock for those curses. Seeing how 1.5 cast increased 25% wasnt very useful when it was already meant to be interrupted.

Hunter pets would bring 3% haste aura as did DKs unholy stance and shaman totem etc.
But those were supposedly just "rolled baseline to everyone" which isnt true anymore but still.

[Youn]

Basically, what I am saying is what they bring has to really shine vs any other class. For example:

2 tanks + 4 healers + 16 dps

Each dps does 350k dps with no buffs.
Removing one dps = 350k dps.
If the buff that the support brings doesn't make up for at the bare minimum that same 350k dps. Then your better off not bringing them.

So, support does 175k dps and would need to raise everyone else dps by a bare minimum of 11,666 dps for the entire fight. To be noticeable, it would actually have to raise everyone's dps by about 15k.

Now, this assumes everyone is balanced. If for instance Mage did 400k and Boomkin did 325k dps. You're support dps that came in would suddenly have to do about 175k dps and add 20k dps to not be simply replaced by adding another Mage to the group. And the Boomkin as a pure dps runs into the issue that they are probably just going to be replaced by any other dps because they are running low now as a dps. (IE. see Elemental Shaman, in current tier).

[cFortyfive]

Honestly I wouldn't worry about that, we get daily QQ threads about people not getting their 5th current content legendary only a handful of months into the expansion, at this point in time, people are going to bitch no matter what they do,

Those people actually played a lot for it so no idea why anyone would be a salty about that. Also this feedback was why you the tbc model is no longer around.

[Gemini Soul]

Wont ever happen because of how raids and classes are designed, they would need to remove all forms of CC and raid buffs from every spec and give them strictly to support specs to make it work.

[Deleted]

Disc priest is a support spec. That is why nobody picks it. Because it is inferior to the holy trinity combo. It might work as a filler for a fourth dps to lower the margin of error that dps have but well ...

[Rotted]

Those people actually played a lot for it so no idea why anyone would be a salty about that. Also this feedback was why you the tbc model is no longer around.

True, true, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be around,

[anon5123]

Not sure. This is something RIFT makers pulled off nicely so I'd expect Bliz to fuck it up royally.
Would also be a bitch to maintain unless damage meters attributed e.g. your damage buff as your own damage dealt etc.

Yeah, supports in Rift were really nice. They did some okay healing and okay DPS, but mainly provided tons of buffs and debuffs for everyone else in the raid.

But as it is right now, I can't see Blizz implementing it. Not only does it not fit with the trifecta, or with Blizzard's philosophy of "every spec has to be viable for questing" and such, but nobody wants to play a spec that is designed to do poorly on meters.

Disc priest is a support spec. That is why nobody picks it. Because it is inferior to the holy trinity combo. It might work as a filler for a fourth dps to lower the margin of error that dps have but well ...

And here you see another memer who has no idea what they're talking about, claiming that Disc is "inferior" to other healers, even though it does just as much healing while adding more dps.

[Bosen]

I like things like this. I always enjoyed the idea of debuffs.
Things like Drain Mana were interesting to me. Always loved the Warlock class because of the idea of curses/DOTs. I think it could be interesting to have support classes,but I think parties would have to increase in size by one party member and maybe the mobs hut harder.

[Sansnom]

It's worked for years. Spriests and locks had +shadow and elemental dmg, had totems, sharpening stones, enchants.......

Really? Spriests and Locks primary purpose was to do damage. So do Shaman. A support role is not to do damage but to either enhance party, inhibit the enemy ability to do major damage etc.

Imagine playing a class that just keep buffs up on the party and curses on the enemy. Just like a healer, with the exception of the weird and wonder Dpriest, main focus is to heal, not to do damage.

[Revi]

TBC had a good approached that quite a lot of people (certainly me) liked. Healers loved having shadowpriests in their groups, and I and other melees loved having an enhancement shaman in the group. They dealt enough damage to make their effort matter, but they also increased the output of the rest of their group a lot, to where their total contribution was far and above that of another pure dps.

You could easily extend that further like taking the old enhancement shaman with WF totem and giving them decent off-healing and things like the movement speed totem they have now and more. You would just have to make their own damage matter enough to feel good - while not giving them so much utility that you have to balance content around requiring specific utility classes to be competitive. That's the hard part.

I think WoW has moved too far past that now though. The design gave them a lot of trouble in the past and was very contentious in the player base. Even if they wanted to, I don't think they'll ever get a good and balanced implementation of utility speccs that also feel fun to play. Not even sure that's possible the way the game is built now.

[Teebone]

This is one of the things Blizz didn't want from previous MMOs for WoW. It was a staple of EQ. Quite honestly I'd prefer the trinity over the quartet.

[clevin]

They kind of had this. Shadow Priest in TBC regenerated mana for the raid/group via Mind Blast. If was very useful to carry one for healers and casters... but the spriest only did about 70% of a regular caster's DPS.

The complication was that the buff didn't stack so you only really took one spriest to get the buff and since their damage was subpar you didn't take a 2nd one if you had another DPS option. Yes, they could have solved that by allowing stacking but then they would have been mandatory and.... well, you get it.