What could have been a fourth role for players in WoW apart from support?

[Nnyco]

you could be one of those retarded crafter classes like in korean mmo's, you cant really fight but you can craft items to sell, ofc we would also remove professions with that

[Nuksui]

You can create any role you wanted as long as there is an encounter niche for it.

You think tanks and healers are required at all? No, it's simply because the encounters have been designed/forced to necessitate them. I.e. if all damage was avoidable you would not need healers. If bosses did not have auto attacks, you would not need tanks. Even having a second tank is forced via simple debuff mechanics.

The "flag runner" is a role in pvp is a unique role that can be done by tank specs (note that they are called tank specs because of their pve roles, yet are fundamentally different in pvp and even have customised templates etc.)

You could have a "Janitor" role, whose sole job is to go around stomping out ground fires, oil spills and poison pools, with additional tasks such as soaking, running objectives, repairing encounter object mechanics for use, flamethrower to mow down weeds etc. But then all encounters must necessitate this spec similar to tanks or healers. In the end, we don't really need it because it must be forced. And while tanking and healing being forced is acceptable practice in rpgs, non-traditional roles are often shunned due to their obscurity (e.g. mesmer in gw1).

I was going to say something similar and to be honest you could not create another role without changing the standard raiding mechanics.

Then as Worcester has said you can have any role you want.

The one that came to mind for the game could be a builder/engineer. They would go around building various things, towers that give greater ranged, cannons, mines, walls etc, spending the fight building strategically , repairing etc and based on how you build will determine the success of the fight.

But this would require raid fights to be catered for this.

[ydraw]

Honestly people read the damn OP. They explicitly say "Aside from support roles..." and you all start listing... support roles. Sheesh.

Support is such a broad term it covers literally anything. So the OP's question is impossible to answer.

[Jervaise]

Support is such a broad term it covers literally anything. So the OP's question is impossible to answer.

That's exactly what I meant in the OP though. Support is too broad, and it generally is "a little of this role and a little of that"

I was asking for clearly cut, narrowed down roles. These roles of course could be "support" as well.

I gave some examples a couple posts above.

[Lynkeus]

WoW has a very basic combat system.

You have mage bosses who are obsessed with slapping the most armored player. I remember reading a post from 2004 that criticized WoW's AI system. That's 14 years ago! Certainly Blizzard should have figured other ways to spice up a fight besides minimizing the time for you to react to a giant fireball.

That is a general problem with games with holy trinity design. Since we have "tank" role, well they should tank something right?

What could be do is the blur the roles of classes a bit. I guess some of us remember warlock tanks we had in BC. I am not saying that was a good design, but it is somewhat different than what we were used to. And Garalon combat in MoP was also something different than we were used to in tanking perspective. Things like these have to be more and more common. Blurring the lines for at least some of the combats really makes things interesting and if you ask me, fun.

[Elim Garak]

There's already a 4th role - it's called Leader in LFD

[Jervaise]

WoW has a very basic combat system. You will need to completely overhaul this system to increase the number of roles. With that said, there are a number of roles that could be added as a fourth or even fifth roles.

1) Buffer - makes others stronger
2) Debuffer - makes the enemy weaker
3) Runner - can move things from point a to point b
4) Vision - sees things which others can't
5) Supplies - basically an extra bag, among other things
6) CC - self-explanatory
7) Campsiter - builds a place of rest for the raiding party
8) Bomber - changes the raid's physical layout
9) Shield - protects the squishies
10) Psychic - helps control the motion of objects/creatures
11) Encroacher - claims territory on behalf of raid party
12) Summoner - warlock's functions split from damage role
13) Tactician - reveals info about the boss
14) General - can do things like raid markers

The options are near limitless for a fourth role. WoW's combat system is shamefully poor. You have mage bosses who are obsessed with slapping the most armored player. I remember reading a post from 2004 that criticized WoW's AI system. That's 14 years ago! Certainly Blizzard should have figured other ways to spice up a fight besides minimizing the time for you to react to a giant fireball.

I should add, it might be a good idea to also split damage roles. An assassin should be able to slip in and kill a squishy target rather quickly, and then slip right back out. Not so good at just whacking on a boss's ass for 15 minutes, though. A marksman would be really good at sitting afar and dishing out constant, but lower damage. He could be really good at picking off runners, as well.

Amazing, thank you for your thoughts

Completely agree with all your points

[caervek]

Would be awesome if they brought back support DPS, the specs that did less damage but brough utility to make them worth it. I.E Arms warrior, Ret Pala, Shadow Priest, etc.

[arel00]

Well, some models that don't go with the holy trinity do exist. As mentioned D&D4 had a 4-roles model: Defender, Striker, Controller, Leader.
While different in some aspects, Defender, Striker and Leader could roughly be modeled as Tank, DPS and Healer, while the Controller role is exactly that: battlefield control, which means giving out CCs like candy, be that stuns, slows, fear, w/e, while also having aoe capabilities to clear out minor adds.
That is a model that works, quite well in fact.

Another model could roughly be based on FFXIII and such, where the roles where 6: Tank, Healer, DPS, "combo builder", "party buffer" and "enemy debuffer". That was a unique mechanic to the game sure, but it still shows different roles.

WoW more or less integrated some of these roles into the other three. Most classes can (or could) buff/debuff, while everyone can dish out CCs and aoe to control the field. That said, if Blizzard wanted to make a 4th role, it would only have to split existing skills and redefine some classes.

[Deleted]

DPS/Healer, similar to disc priest. I could see ret paladins turning into the melee equivilant, maybe a rogue class as well. Having 3 dps specs for a single class feels like there could be some flexibility to their raid roles instead of their damage numbers.

A lot of hybrids already have the option to "offheal" with Spiritual guidance, Word of Glory, Judgment of Light etc. But they're often not chosen because they lack versatility of use.
That being said, I'd love to see it aswell, but the game needs a lot of tuning for that to happen.

[Erazon]

Sacrificial Lamb : Sacrifice your health to the Titans (or something) by standing in fire. Every 10% health you lose adds an increased buff to party damage. However your dps abilities have crazy self-healing capabilities, so it becomes a balancing act of keep your health down while keeping your dps up, while taking damage to things but also not dying.

[Grevmak]

A support-type role could still easily fit into WoW as it is right now; Buffing the party and debuffing enemies. Give us stuff like Curse of Elements or Windfury totem and make it stronger, shorter and affecting the whole raid and you have an interesting 4th role. It will never come as Blizz knows how to build encounters around their 3 roles that are in WoW as of now, but I suppose it'd be fun. I'd try one and if I liked the playstyle main it, too, as I love the concept.