Time for a new class role? (Or adding to the Holy Trinity)

[Kemsa]

1-The game doesnt need to "break" the holy trinity, it needs to RE-invented it.

2-Problem with the support class, is that it existed before, on classic you can see it, those classes that dont add too much damage or too much healing, but have diferent types of support skills, like blessing, debuffing, ccing, etc. And right now, how people's mind seem to work on retail, everything its damage, you need your cuota of damage. You need to fill the requirements of healing or hp x sec. Thats why "support" style of gameplays are not "favored" by the community.

Its comes down from the playerbase to accept this new type of "gameplay" that it doesnt involve "full dps, full hxs, full vit, def, dodge etc)

3- the positive one, is that many classes can have a support spec as the 4th spec, from Rogue havinh exposed armor again, to warlocks being the full cc gameplay, to just Auras from a bard or a warrior spec. Who knows.

[Ragedaug]

I'd love a support role but there are two problems:

1. How do you make them more interesting than being walking buffers and debuffers?

2. You'd have to twist existing specs to fit the role, and many are perfectly happy with their spec's role.

You could make them buff/debuff/cc and design encounters to require it. I believe EQ did this (but I'm going off 2nd half info).

The problem I saw in WoW originally with Support classes is that they performed very poorly on their own outside of raiding, with the cost of respec'ing being prohibitive. In retail where you can swap talent trees all the time, it seems more doable.

The main problem I see is that most players play the game to kill stuff. Not all, but I think a good percentage of the players log on to play to attack their enemy and see big numbers as they defeat them. Right now DPS role is more than 3 times more popular than healing and more than 3 times more popular than tanking, which is why groups are always waiting for healers and tanks to get in queue.

How to make the players want to dungeon and raid as Support (or insert_new_role_here) is the big question.

[ercarp]

The Holy Trinity of Tank, DPS and Healer is a staple of RPGs and doesn't need a fourth one in my opinion. Especially since, as you mentioned, this type of "Support" role already exists in the game in the form of Discipline Priests (and Holy Priests, if I may add).

Protection Warriors do a shit ton of damage so they're already a DPS-Tank hybrid, and Blood DKs and Protection Paladins are a Tank-Healer hybrid.

[Zensunni]

Something interesting to note is that support specs somewhere between DPS and heals have cropped up in PvP quite a few times over the years, such as the deep balance /resto spec in TBC and the prot shield frisbee / flash of light spec that was also TBC I think? In both cases, Blizz ultimately nerfed them in such a way that they were no longer capable of doing the split tasks that allowed them to rise to prominence. Both specs were amazing fun. This is also more or less why we lost that dps/tank warrior spec, I forget what it's called.

In a nutshell, we can't have these fun hybrid roles because the tryhard mythic raider and competitive pvp communities lose the minds when something disrupts balance, and so we have the current situation where fun for the entire game population is held hostage by less than 5% of the player base. And if you need proof that grotesque imbalance at the high end can...simply be left in the game, and the world doesn't explode, one simply needs to take a look at m+.

Unfortunately, Blizz continues to show huge shortsightedness and whenever there's a "fun detected" idea that involves role hybridization, they'll just nerf it to irrelevancy as their game continues its slow slide into failure. BUT HEY AT LEAST MYTHIC RAID DPS BALANCE HAS NEVER BEEN BETTER.

And before anyone tells me to git gud, I've raided mythic extensively, am in a CE guild, am 2k+ RIO, and was 2200+ arena ins TBC and wrath, and 1800+ arena in WoD. I'm not some super duper player, but I'm familiar with the competitive sidde of the game.

[Paperfox]

I don't see how it would be fun to play one of these. And I think that WoW would have to be re-designed for this to work.

[Lex Icon]

would probably have to change atleast 1/3 of all the specs to support to make it work(and also probably compete with both heal and dps slots) and they'd have to be quite fun to not ruin queues for dungeons etc.

i don't see the community taking that very well.

[Keashaa]

Support classes won't work with the current player base. Support classes can't work in the current game design (no longer rpg but action button smashing game).

You don't need supporters in 5m dungeons (and so on, in M+), you don't need supporters in Mythic raids, you already have supporters in PvP (for example FC, TC).

[Ragedaug]

Thing is though you'd have to rework existing specs to fit that buff/debuff/cc concept otherwise you'd risk a new support class becoming mandatory

Sure, add a 4th spec to whoever feels right to use in that fashion. Having a Support class is what's difficult to sustain as it is very weak outside of organized group content, so the Support player would need a damage spec available to use for solo play.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't see how it would be fun to play one of these.

That's the problem I see as well. What new role can be implemented that can achieve at least a similar level of desirability to tanking and healing?

[barrsftw]

DC Universe had a support role and I thought it was pretty cool. They essentially buffed and debuffed. They didn't really heal or dps from what I remember; Just amplify the groups damage, CC mobs, etc.

[Howlk]

You realize the supporter role is already in the game ever since they boosted healer DPS output to a point where it can pull relevant numbers?

lets check top healer dps for mythic shivarra for example:
resto shaman 40k
holy pala 39k
disc 39k
holy priest 20k
druid 39k
monk 30k

this is the maxed single-target potential of any current healer in mythic gear and opted gear/trinkets. shifting dps globals for healing and popping raid-cooldowns when assigned ist the essential of a "support-build" imo. just because there is no 4th role-icon doesnt mean it cant be done already.

[shise]

Having a support role could be really cool but it won't work right now. It could work but only if Blizzard stops supporting a community obsessed with "being the best", min/maxing and those ridiculous dps/hps combat logs.

Having to sim your damn character when you get loot is ridiculous, but right now you're almost forced to because every x% matters. It's fucked up tbh.

Balance should be taken way less seriously, but no.. everything goes according to logs.. all that matters are numbers.

Which is why a support won't work.

It has always been like that, since day 1. It is natural and you simply can not avoid it, as tehre would always be a piece of equipment or a talent that is better... and obviously you will pick it

[VinceVega]

Classes who could run as real sup not heal were always worse than just taking another dps or heal.

Idea would be good but it is hard to make such a class not to op or completly useless.

But yes i would play this as long as i would be able to also play solo not just work in group settings

[Cosmic Janitor]

One thing you COULD do is reinvent healers as support. Give more options and playstyles to healers so that most specs can switch to dps when needed. It would also be a huge boon to solo play since it would let healers play solo effectively without changing specs just as tanks do.
Key word is MORE OPTIONS though. Healers would be able to stay heal bots if they want to, they'd just have talent options for a different playstyle as well. And a raid would probably need an even mix between both styles of play.

One of the big issues here is that it could still end up as either dead or mandatory, even if it's only in 5 man content. I personally think you can actually balance support roles easier in raids, since you simply have more possible variations and having 1 mandatory isn't as impacting as it is in 5 man content.

There is also the option of having different tiers of support, originally a no-support class would be expected to perform best at their main role, a semi-support would provide both in adequate measures and a full support would provide little to no to their "main" role, while making up for it by providing the most support to others.

I think a pure support is where the real issue lies though, the impact of your support scales linearily with the people affected, even with crutches like "only affects 5 man party" there are other limitations if your support includes gimmiks like slows or movement enhancments which are targeted and can affect others outside of your party (in a raid setting). One of the more palpable support types is support that affects only 1 other player directly. FFXIV uses this alot by giving one player of your choosing a buff, often shared with your own rotation and WoW has done this as well with things like Enervate or previously Dark Intent before it was gutted.

As for healers as support, frankly they usually alredy are. Things like feathers and winkwalk totems always falls directly into the support category, in general the only type of support that WoW really lacks is direct stat or throughput support, which again is rather deliberate all things considered.

Also when they changed shaman/paladin imho they just fucked up the part where shamans and and paldins wanting to be more involved than spamming their buff makro. Shadow did this way better back in the day and imho should have been the direction they should have gone.

[Loveletters]

Wish people would stop posting polls with loaded options. Even yes/no/maybe would be better

[Zantos]

As things stand, this wouldn't work. They have major issues making what they have viable. You can tell certain healers are so much better then others or other tanks are so much better then the rest. Same with dps.

Fistweaver monks were exactly what you described. Monks that dealt damage to heal. They were viable enough to do both and could be great, when played well. Disc priests were also in that role once. Able to deal okish dps, but did really good healing. Both of these were abandoned.

The fistweaver was abandoned because it did too well. People had the mindset of "why bring x melee dps instead of a fistweaver who can match them and heal?". Discs were abandoned because "why bother with dps when they can full on heal?" In the second scenario, they were so subpar dps that it didn't matter.

That is how it would ultimately be. Why take a monk who does subpar dps And subpar healing vs another healer or a full on dps? Or, the opposite. Why take a full on dps when you can have a little extra healing and a little dps? Both extremes would be in play. Then, if you make them viable at both, why take anything else?

Between how drastically different the healers and dps all play, and how the game is, anything that does 2 roles will either be good or bad. I can't tell you how many times it was "we need just a bit more dps, but we cant afford to lose a healer to do so". It just wont work as you described

[Odintdk]

No

10char

[Loveliest]

Well... if they were just hybrids, it wouldn't work. If they're too good you'd replace healers with them. If they're not good enough, you wouldn't take them - sort of like disc priests in some tiers. And this role thing has to scale to all levels, not just high Mythic - so why would anyone bring it to an easy dungeon - or maybe they'd successfully replace another role, like healer, so why take the proper healer.

Therefore, to have such a role, you'd have to mechanically require them. For example, the dungeon kills you in 10 seconds of you entering unless you have "protection from deadly death". And the only one who can provide that is one of these support roles. Or boss can't be killed unless he has "debuff of taking damage".

In which case, is this really needed - would this truly spice things up if it's designed to require the role?

And yes - WoW IS designed to require the other roles. The tanks have increased protection and aggro and tools to survive damage others wouldn't - it's not just that they get tanky gear, it's the design of the role AND design of encounters (bosses can't truly be kited, they hit for loads etc). Healers are also "designed into" the game by making tanks take massive damage, the party taking a lot of damage and giving them tools to heal that damage. And damage dealers - they're baseline. If it wasn't designed this way, you'd get full dps run all the time like we can see in other MMOs where they have "tanks" and "healers" but no design to support them.

[Rivex]

Disc Priest should apply a bubble on friendly targets within x distance of the targeted mob they're hitting.
x DPS = x Shield amount which is refreshed every x seconds.

Makes Disc a DPS spec and only supports the melee/close combat players.

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

I think it is a cool thought/idea - but I am struggling to see this in practise.

What mechanics would they counter in a raid-setting, that a soaking DPS cant soak?
And if a Support can tank, there would be no need for actual tanks in high keys, usually kite and avoid damage anyway - which is why we see high-DPS tanks at the moment.

Besides, this new class would make other healing/tanking speccs more similar/boring/uniform, since they will need to conform into very similar playstyles.

[Zantos]

this is the maxed single-target potential of any current healer in mythic gear and opted gear/trinkets. shifting dps globals for healing and popping raid-cooldowns when assigned ist the essential of a "support-build" imo. just because there is no 4th role-icon doesnt mean it cant be done already.

So, were any of them like, actually healing or just using defensive raid cds? Because giving a dps a cd like that would accomplish the same thing. That wouldn't really make them a support at all. Just a dps with a utility cd. Or a healer not doing their role correctly since, if they are optimized for dps, that means their not optimized for healing and couldn't switch and be really good.