Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Q. Will Spirit Link make a return after all? Ghostcrawler mentioned he'd like to bring it back, but no sighting of it yet.
A. Anything’s possible, but at this point it isn’t looking good for our beloved talent…. If we changed it to be an absorb or a different sort of mechanic, then it wouldn’t be the iconic Spirit Link that we all remember from Warcraft III. But that core damage-sharing mechanic poses major design and balance challenges (e.g. does a rogue really want to start taking damage suddenly because the shaman in his group decided to link him to the tank?).