I think making a support class is a recipe for disater.

[Ateo]

I'd argue that making the support class is intrensic to the games core values, even in the RTS there were various support units and they made the game extremely interesting when used properly.

I have high hopes that this will open the door to playable bards(a buffer class), spellbreakers(a debuffer class), and other types.

Cut the que system down from 1 tank/1 healer/3 DPS to 1 tank/1 healer/ 2 DPS/ 1 support.

It's ore interesting as a whole, we don't need this game to be a dense once brain cell speed run of all content.

Not everything needs to be a selfish play style of "I must top the meters on dmg/healing hurr durrr" mongo shit.

Add depth, add range of play, add some more fun and interesting playstyles.

Gladiator warrior was incredible, shockadin paladin was fun AF as a support damage dealer and the reason why both were deemed "not viable" was because of people using some variation meters to dictate how the game should or should not be played. Remember enhance tank and ranged tank warlocks? Now take those and apply the concepts to new classes/specs. It could be entirely interesting and fun for the game to actually have some variety and not just be focused on pretending an MMO is some eSports it absolutely isn't.

Stop letting spreadsheets dictate what's fun, viable, and the games play style.

[loras]

You run into the old problem that plagues any game with support. Either the support is so powerful you take 1 tank, 1 healer. 1 support, and 2 dps or you just never take a support.

Given wows playerbase is one that is extremely invested in min maxing I can't see how this wont end badly... This is the community that will refuse to use anything that isn't the most optimal version of an item.

Think it is so late to just make the third evoker spec a tank?

Yes, it's definitely too late for that.

For the rest i am inclined to agree, but i'm also not gonna condemn it before i see it, they deserve at least a chance to get it right.
Let's just hope they're not gonna coddle their own creation too tightly and blind themselves to proper feedback; in the worst case it's just going to have to be scrapped and turned into another specc.

[Ielenia]

It'll be... an interesting thing once guides for gearing, enchanting, talents and rotations come along.

Been hitting the training dummies in the PTR and my personal DPS as an Augmentation evoker is roughly a little over half of what it is as a Devastation evoker. Granted, I'm fairly sure I'm not using the most optimal set of talents and rotation, and the season 1 tier bonuses for Augmentation evokers don't exist yet, but I doubt those would make a 40-45% difference on my own DPS.

I do manage to keep Ebon Might up for... roughly 85% of the time, though. Of course, I'm interested to see how this plays out in a real raid environment, how it'll buff my group to make up for my lower DPS.

[exochaft]

Stop letting spreadsheets dictate what's fun, viable, and the games play style.

While I agree with your sentiments, I don't think Blizz completely does. At least there's nothing really indicating such a long-term shift in their approach to the game. In the past, the concept of hybrid classes and designing around that sort of 'support character' was done, but it ran into a lot of problems. To keep this short, there were several attempts over time to reintroduce something that was in between the trinity roles established in WoW, but either the devs or the players didn't like it. It usually boiled down to a sort of spreadsheet mentality on both sides, as Blizz is used to development/balance via spreadsheet (especially under Ion's tenure) and players have been trained by the game to expect such development/balance.

Notice I didn't mention fun in this equation, as it's not something that can be quantified via a spreadsheet mentality. Therefore, it seems like it gets downplayed exactly because it takes a completely different mindset than shuffling variables to find a perfect balance; even worse, if your game design is driven by people who enjoy shuffling variables and balancing spreadsheets, would one be surprised that the game reflects that?

Ultimately, I'd love the game to expand to hybrids and support classes, but the current game isn't designed and balanced in a way where that can happen without massive issues and/or pushback (whether the issues come from the development/balancing side or from the player's side of things). In order for support classes to work, something will have to give... and historically, what will give is that the support classes will be watered down massively so it's "mostly support in name only" once everything is said and done. It's just way easier to nuke your new toy than try to fundamentally change the game, which is evidenced by how many temporary systems that have been trashed over the years that were fun or could have been iterated upon to bring further depth and fun into the game, all in the name of balance.

[Nymrohd]

It'll be... an interesting thing once guides for gearing, enchanting, talents and rotations come along.

Been hitting the training dummies in the PTR and my personal DPS as an Augmentation evoker is roughly a little over half of what it is as a Devastation evoker. Granted, I'm fairly sure I'm not using the most optimal set of talents and rotation, and the season 1 tier bonuses for Augmentation evokers don't exist yet, but I doubt those would make a 40-45% difference on my own DPS.

I do manage to keep Ebon Might up for... roughly 85% of the time, though. Of course, I'm interested to see how this plays out in a real raid environment, how it'll buff my group to make up for my lower DPS.

The spec will be utter crap to play anywhere outside instanced group content and that's not a good thing for a new spec. People play tanks in world content a lot because they have exceptional defense and tank AoE tends to scale decently. Augmentation is definitely tankier than Devastation but that's where it ends.

[Thirtyrock]

I'd argue that making the support class is intrensic to the games core values, even in the RTS there were various support units and they made the game extremely interesting when used properly.

I have high hopes that this will open the door to playable bards(a buffer class), spellbreakers(a debuffer class), and other types.

Cut the que system down from 1 tank/1 healer/3 DPS to 1 tank/1 healer/ 2 DPS/ 1 support.

It's ore interesting as a whole, we don't need this game to be a dense once brain cell speed run of all content.

Not everything needs to be a selfish play style of "I must top the meters on dmg/healing hurr durrr" mongo shit.

Add depth, add range of play, add some more fun and interesting playstyles.

Gladiator warrior was incredible, shockadin paladin was fun AF as a support damage dealer and the reason why both were deemed "not viable" was because of people using some variation meters to dictate how the game should or should not be played. Remember enhance tank and ranged tank warlocks? Now take those and apply the concepts to new classes/specs. It could be entirely interesting and fun for the game to actually have some variety and not just be focused on pretending an MMO is some eSports it absolutely isn't.

Stop letting spreadsheets dictate what's fun, viable, and the games play style.

Change it to this: 1 tank/ 1 healer/ 3dps OR 2DPS 1 Support

And I'm good to go. Unless they add at least 5 more support specs to match the number of tank specs (6 tank specs atm), there'd be a very difficult time in getting this to fit in without blowing up queue times.

If they WERE going to go that route, I'd prefer to see 1/1/3/1 instead of 1/1/2/1.

DPS already have a longer wait than tanks or healers. Making a support required for a 5 man would dramatically increase that time requirement, even if enough specs were added all at once, which I don't see happening as balancing these is going to be tricky.

Other than that, I agree with the optimism about new spec designs.

- - - Updated - - -

The spec will be utter crap to play anywhere outside instanced group content and that's not a good thing for a new spec. People play tanks in world content a lot because they have exceptional defense and tank AoE tends to scale decently. Augmentation is definitely tankier than Devastation but that's where it ends.

I mean, there are plenty of healer specs that are utter crap to play outside instanced group content. One benefit I'm reading about Augmentation, though, is that the buffs work on any allies nearby, grouped or not, so that might help alleviate some of this in harder world content where more players tend to congregate. We also don't know how it's going to be balanced, so it might not be THAT bad in world content.

[BeepBoo]

When is the game ever balanced well, anyway? Might as well just do the cool shit and worry about balancing, which they never manage to do well later.

When has it ever been PERFECTLY balanced? Never. When has it been balanced well enough that on any given raid day skill allows you to beat the other people in your raid because the margins are so narrow it doesn't matter? A lot. Like constantly. Are there always underperforming specs? Yes, but usually the ones that are SUPER low outliars are just a second spec on a class that already has 1-2 other DPS specs as well, so... just play those. It's rare that a CLASS doesn't have at least one competitive DPS spec for overall raid performance.

Personally, I wouldn't play if the game wasn't at least relatively balanced (moreso than other raiding games, anyways).

[Nymrohd]

I mean, there are plenty of healer specs that are utter crap to play outside instanced group content. One benefit I'm reading about Augmentation, though, is that the buffs work on any allies nearby, grouped or not, so that might help alleviate some of this in harder world content where more players tend to congregate. We also don't know how it's going to be balanced, so it might not be THAT bad in world content.

True but the spec is still listed as DPS and it is part of a class that is currently among the worst for world content which is a substantial part of the game. Would hope they'd try to give the class at least one spec that is decent at it.

[Ielenia]

The spec will be utter crap to play anywhere outside instanced group content and that's not a good thing for a new spec.

You mean... like healers? Healers also take a long time killing mobs on their own.

Augmentation is definitely tankier than Devastation but that's where it ends.

Just like healers. Many healers have a DPS off-spec they use in the outside world to speed things up.

[Thirtyrock]

True but the spec is still listed as DPS and it is part of a class that is currently among the worst for world content which is a substantial part of the game. Would hope they'd try to give the class at least one spec that is decent at it.

Yeah, fair. Hopefully they'll keep this in mind during balancing.

- - - Updated - - -

When has it ever been PERFECTLY balanced? Never. When has it been balanced well enough that on any given raid day skill allows you to beat the other people in your raid because the margins are so narrow it doesn't matter? A lot. Like constantly. Are there always underperforming specs? Yes, but usually the ones that are SUPER low outliars are just a second spec on a class that already has 1-2 other DPS specs as well, so... just play those. It's rare that a CLASS doesn't have at least one competitive DPS spec for overall raid performance.

Personally, I wouldn't play if the game wasn't at least relatively balanced (moreso than other raiding games, anyways).

The balance is solid, imo. There are only a few specs that are truly awful, out of the what, 40 specs in game? Every class has at least one spec that can compete in high level raids and M+ (I have NO idea about pvp balancing). They're also pushing out balancing changes on a really frequent basis. Havoc was buffed in single target multiple times in the last few weeks, as one example. From what I've seen, in most cases, a good player with a B/C tier spec can still out dps/heal a bad player with a S tier spec.

[schwank05]

I am super excited I have always loved Support classes and the idea of them, if it goes well I think they could Rework Disc to function the same way.

[StrawberryZebra]

People playing a support class should know what theyre getting in to and if they dont they will weed themselves out quickly. Groups of the homies will do great with a support class, pugs maybe not so much but pugging in this game is terrible to being with

Perhaps, but from a quick glance, it seems most of the abilities are what I'd term "win more" skills. If you're already well geared and pumping high DPS, then adding even more stats from a well geared Evoker is going to let you pump even harder. Which is fine, thats the point of the spec afterall. But the same well geared Evoker is going to be dead weight and they'd be better off playing Devestation.

Individual skill not mattering just breeds frustration. Some people will know that before they go in, most won't.

To go off on a small tangent - Have you ever played LoL or DOTA? Very few people want to play Support characters there, even in a premade, because you're completely helpless without allies around to help you. And if your allies are also having a bad game... Well, have fun being level 8 at 25 minutes into the game because Bounty Hunter or Rengar is one shotting you and there's literally nothing you can do about it.

This is what people are going to be signing up for, and unless your team is already winning then you're in for a miserable time.

It's fine saying that you'd generally play it with your homies - You're assuming that everyone has homies who're skilled enough for it to matter. They may not have. Instead we're going to have people thrilled that there's a support spec for 2 weeks, then be utterly disapointed by its performance and pleading for buffs by week 3 because they're not doing content with people who are good enough to get the most out of the buffs.

It's going to be a hugely unsatisfying spec to play for the vast majority of people who try it, and a balance nightmare for Blizzard.

I'd argue that making the support class is intrensic to the games core values, even in the RTS there were various support units and they made the game extremely interesting when used properly.

I'd argue that can be good for single player games. Where one person is in control of everything and having supports to elevate your own performance can make for a more satisfying overall experience. Having support units in an RTS feels like a tactical choice, and how many you build, how you use them and how they fit into your overall strategy determines how effective they are, and in turn, how effective you are as a player.

Even in single player RPG's it's an interesting choice, having a party member focused on support means you can specialise others into being able to take advantage of it. You're in full control of all characters, so you get to choose when to use those skills for maximum effect. And that feels satisfying, like you've used the game mechanics well and been rewarded for it.

Typically these characters also have a lot of tools outside of combat too, be it crafting skills, social skills, thief skills etc which adds to their value and helps off-set the fact that everyone else in the party is focused exclusively on violence.

It can get complicated in multiplayer games. It means you need either a dedicated spot for a support, like how MOBA's do it, or you need the support player to bring enough to be worth a spot. Throw group social dynamics into the mix and you're potentially looking at a bad time. Such as expecting one player to be the bottom bitch so everyone else can have a good time, which of course can come with a lot of peer pressure, guilt tripping etc to make sure you've always got a support because your group just isn't viable with out one. On the other hand it can also mean getting totally neglected and forced to sit out content.

There's very little unique these players can bring outside of combat, diminishing their utility further.

[Amariw]

The arguement of OP is basically one that could be given for any dps. Either the specc provides the most additional dps, or it doesn't.

If tuned competitively, you'd likely want it, but because its benefit is spread out over both itself and the dps of others it might not always be the best fit if those others don't bring good dps in the particular phase or such.

Depending on patch, it might be tuned worse, and then you'd still want it but possibly less then the top 2 or 3 or 5 leading dps.

I don't see a huge problem in the design.

[MatadorMedia]

I like that Blizz is thinking outside of the box. If the biggest issue is the way DPS is calculated, that's not even an in-game issue, that's the add-ons problem to figure out.

[FelPlague]

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but they don't really want anyone to play Priests....

??? Uhh what?
Bro, I'm a demonology warlock main. I know when blizz does not want you playing a class first hand.
"We don't want you playing demonology."
Priest, let alone disc priest is no where near that, and has never been anywhere near that.

- - - Updated - - -

This seems like short memory syndrome. Nothing is as OP now as sv hunters or warlocks in SL. Remember blood DKs ins3 with their set bonus and Kyrian? Or how holy paladins did like 3x normal healer dps in season 1?

Its far from perfect but they have been making changes much more frequently now

Don't forget like... ALL of wotlk. Dks took till cata prepatch to finally become not objectively better then every other class.

[oplawlz]

I like that Blizz is thinking outside of the box. If the biggest issue is the way DPS is calculated, that's not even an in-game issue, that's the add-ons problem to figure out.

What addon devs are still around have no incentive to solve this "problem". It's up to bliz to prove the usefulness of their new spec, no one else.
That said, logs already show buff uptimes, so nerds will crunch the numbers and figure out if the spec is worth bringing to groups.

[Ardourdan]

The problem will be around balancing. It will be far too strong in groups with communication. And really struggle [on average] without. And that will be impossible to balance unless its heavily piloted on telling players when to use abilities to maximise enhancing others DPS/Healing.

[melzas]

Have to disagree with that. +% buffs are way easier to scale. Flat dmg buffs have the problem of not following ilvls and stat squishes. If you haven't noticed most of the skills in wow are calculated by attackpower/spellpower x multiplier.

Maybe, but if their buffs are % base then they scale with how well the person you are buffing is performing and it's a recipe for a balancing disaster as it will then be inevitably either too strong and mandatory or too weak and redundant. If buffs are flat number then it's very easy to tweak augmentention and balance it around it's own power. That flat damage would obviously scale with evokers ilvl so in that sense it would still be % based. But the buffs themselves should be flat ("increases damage by 1000 *where 1000 scales with evokers ilvl/spell power" rather than "increases damage by 5% *then it only scales with power of the person you are buffing*")

[Tojara]

I don't think making it is a disaster at all. Honestly the game should be fun and I would bet there's loads of people who will play this regardless of what the balance lands on. Why? It's different and some people love playing classes that are just pure support.

I know making a tank specialization for Dracthyr would make a lot of sense, but you're kidding yourself if you think people are going to flock to a tanking specialization. To me it's just wasted because it's not going to convince people to suddenly play tanks, it's just going to shift the people who already play tanks to another potential option. Something between a DPS/Healer has a lot of draw, especially if the DPS rotation is simple and maintaining the buffs is relatively straight forward. Most DPS players don't play healers or tanks, but having something that still does DPS while buffing others would be a pretty big draw to a good number of people (I'd like to think anyway).

Ideally the balance lands in a place where it's really useful to have, but not mandatory. Either slightly overpowered, or slightly underpowered is absolutely fine TBH. Honestly though, when has this game ever been super balanced? People that claim 'x' period was super balanced are usually using metrics based on how the classes they played at the time felt, and are usually pretty busted.

IDK props to them for trying something new at the very least. Perhaps this is indicative of them changing some existing classes into more support oriented classes going into the future. Does every single pure DPS spec really need three DPS specs? Do priests really need two healing specializations?

[Biomega]

Either slightly overpowered, or slightly underpowered is absolutely fine TBH. Honestly though, when has this game ever been super balanced? People that claim 'x' period was super balanced are usually using metrics based on how the classes they played at the time felt, and are usually pretty busted.

It's always a matter of degrees, but let's not pretend varying degrees don't exist or don't matter to a WHOLE lot of people.

WoW is a game with a significant co-op element. That co-op element relies on balance as a moderator, and therefore it's there that imbalance makes itself felt - even if YOU don't care, individually. Maybe you don't care that Class A isn't all that great, but you're still having fun with it; that's awesome, genuinely. But then you try and get into an M+ run, and suddenly you get chain-declined for an hour straight just because you're Class A and it's not great. Now it doesn't matter that YOU don't mind - because OTHER people DO mind, and that reflects in what happens in co-op situations.

It's an overdrawn example, of course, but it's the principle that applies in all sorts of contexts - and the fact that some people who spend 99% of their time playing solo doing world quests or whatever can just go "eh who cares I'm having fun playing this" is all well and good but does not adequately respect the fact that this game involves playing with other people a whole lot, and in those situation balance DOES matter. How much it matters is the question, of course, and that's where disagreement begins.

No one is saying this will be some kind of bizarre and extreme situation where suddenly it's a 500% difference or whatever. Nothing like that. But even small differences get compounded by community perception, and while we haven't ever had PERFECT balance we have had some periods of rather good balance with reasonable margins - in fact DF season 1 was one of them. Rocking that boat is a dangerous proposition for various reasons, and it doesn't take gigantic swings to throw things out of whack and have real, painful effects on people.

I always like to use the money metaphor - it doesn't matter that $99 and $100 are only separated by $1, if someone gives you the choice of taking either $99 or $100 and else being equal, you'd be an idiot NOT to take the $100. And that's exactly how it often goes in group comps. Sure, it's only tiny differences, but with 50 dps applicants waiting to join your group, you'd be an idiot NOT to take the best classes - even if they're just better by 1% (and all else being equal). That doesn't mean 1% is a big gap, because it really isn't; it just means that even small differences can change the way people experience the game.

We don't know how this new Evoker will actually work until it's actually out, but there's the POTENTIAL for problems - lots of it, and in lots of ways. "The game should be fun" is all well and good as a sentiment, but it's just not as simple as those kinds of vapid feelgood statements.