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  1. #41
    The Unstoppable Force Kelimbror's Avatar
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    Support specs would be a terrible step back in time. If you widened their abilities beyond the previous incarnation of Mana batteries and windfury totem chuckers then they would quickly unbalance the game.

    Not to mention that playing a support class with the design of the game now would be completely unrewarding and not fun.

    What they need to do is go back to designing encounters where people can step outside of their normal roles with the specs they have available. Think warlock tanking on Leo and Illidan. This is the reason why people say that TBC was so much better for raiding. We think those mechanics are outdated or not complicated, but they were used to the greatest effect. Now we have lots of varieties of stand in this spot, not that spot, watch out for this thing that falls from the sky, etc.

    It would be pretty simple to give a dps spec a mechanic that heals the raid. There could be a fight where a tank gets linked to a dps, and then the dps needs to do very specific kinds of damage to a specific target in order to transfer that targets life to the tank. All other healing on the tank would be null. There are a million ways to do this and make people feel like heroes.

    Just look at SSC-BT and you will see a variety of unique mechanics that actually made the raids challenging and fun. This is why people talk about raiding back then. It's not just nostalgia.

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by Kittyvicious View Post
    What they need to do is go back to designing encounters where people can step outside of their normal roles with the specs they have available.
    100% agree. That is why I also suggested that in my first post in this thread. There is no need a new role. They just need better raid design that gives people things to do besides "rotation" and "don't stand in fire".

  3. #43
    Support specs was one of those things that worked better in theory than in practice. The main problem being that there was little distinction between a "good" support role player and a "bad" support role player. So it became a raid spot that was good for idiots, while having actually capable players doing it was a waste. Unfortunately, the idiots tended to be drawn to conceptually simpler roles like DPS, while the support role attracted capable team players. The end result was that the support players got bored with the gameplay, but the raid needed support characters, and in the end everyone was unhappy.

    Unless there's some interesting support gameplay (to the level that "tanking" and "healing" are interesting), the role is a bad idea. It's also going to make raids harder to put together, and queue times for dungeons are going to get longer (because it won't be the current DPS players who reroll support).
    Diplomacy is just war by other means.

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Constellation View Post
    Because people loved being the buff bitch in every raid? That's the reason they changed it...
    I personally enjoyed totem twisting.
    RETH

  5. #45
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by akamurdoch View Post
    be nice if there was a class that used its abilities to help others do a task they normally couldn't optimally do, like a melee dps tanking or spell dps healing.

    haven't a clue how this would work but meh.
    You mean like rogues did in BC before the dodge nerf? Yes, I remember those times, it was fun, saved a wipe once on some boss in Kara and many times in dungeons. Was lots of fun.

  6. #46
    Pit Lord Kivimetsan's Avatar
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    It used to exist: Paladin Buffer/Off-heals, Warlock range-tanking, disc dps/heals and ele heals/dps.
    It still exists, but the stats have changed so much since TBC/Vanilla that a Ret healing with HL is pointless.
    Back in the days, health was smaller and there were less stats that affected how heals scaled, if that makes sense.
    Rets were wearing Intelligence gear same as holy, so Rets had heaps of spare mana, etc.

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