Now, some people may bash me for using an example from this game, but I want to use my favorite toon in Rift as an example of a support that would work well in WoW. Archon mage. Now, I know in Rift you use multiple trees at a time, but I'm only going to look at this tree. The Archon can buff allies and debuff enemies, but it is not a chore at all which stops them from being a buff bot. They are a DPS that sacrifices some of their damage on the meters to add effects to their spells such as "Enemy takes X damage and loses Y armor for Z seconds". This is on most of their spells. Allied ones consist of things like AoE damage zones that increase armor or damage of allies in the zone and other such things. Personally, I would love to be able to play that style in WoW.
However, as to whether I think support roles in WoW would happen, I doubt it. They're not necessary and probably not worth it to Blizzard with how much balancing, design, and reworking of the existing system would be needed.
Trinity's pretty deeply entrenched. It'd be hell to try to remove it from the game.
If I could? Depends on whether I'm accountable.
If resources/accountability are a problem, doing such a drastic change like that would probably kill a huge amount of subscribers and cost a huge amount of time and effort. I'd probably spend that energy somewhere more practical.
If I am a magic space wizard who can do whatever she wants then... Still, I'd rather change something else. I might soften the trinity a bit; give a bit more leeway in terms of what classes can be what, but I wouldn't fundamentally change it.
If you are particularly bold, you could use a Shiny Ditto. Do keep in mind though, this will infuriate your opponents due to Ditto's beauty. Please do not use Shiny Ditto. You have been warned.
I think that's exactly why we could really use true 'hybrid' specs. Battle healers that do as much or a little more damage than a tank, but about half the output of a healer - mostly through smart heals, and either very expensive or cooldown on demand healing. There's a lot of cases where two/four healers is not enough, but 3/6 is just overkill that would be better served bringing some added damage dealers. Not to mention having a place for actual hybrid tanks (ala glyphed demo lock) could make encounter design more interesting. Blizzard is very creative with mechanics this expansion, but so many fights just end up being uncreative tank swaps. Instead of two tanks - maybe use one tank and two hybrids. Or a fight like Garalon where you can use two hybrids. On a longer fight perhaps a hybrid tank could bring some unique debuff to make up for having damage between a tank and pure DPS - not a huge one, but still useful enough to justify using them instead of a pure tank if more pure tanks aren't needed.
In T11 we saw a few classes that'd operate as a 'light tank' on bosses which primarily deal AoE damage, like Roshan on 3winds. You'd stick your two tanks on the real bosses, you'd have a rogue sit on Roshan so he doesn't activate that big cast, and you'd have another DPS to bring him down. Also downstairs VnT which I still think was one of the most fun fights ever as a rogue.
Rogues are actually a kinda decent example, come to think of it, as they'd be able to operate as a temporary tank with a proper taunt with their cooldowns and defensive abilities- who hasn't killed a boss while a rogue popped Evasion? If fight and class design actually encouraged this kind of flexibility then it could work, but fight design as it stands is pretty rigid and there isn't the class design basis to support it.
If you are particularly bold, you could use a Shiny Ditto. Do keep in mind though, this will infuriate your opponents due to Ditto's beauty. Please do not use Shiny Ditto. You have been warned.
Solo what? Some classes aren't able to solo even quest mobs. For example a priest (holy or discipline) can't solo those animator mobs on isle of thunder (with normal blue gear) because they heal themselves faster than you can do damage. Another example is the Shado-Pan companion that is a priest. It has a fixed rotation and one is to heal itself up to maximum health and as a priest you don't have an interrupt and your damage isn't high enough before it finishes its rotation. Oh, and without an interrupt it's impossible to do the pandaren rares and without an actual AOE which doesn't need a target doing the saurok rares is also impossible.
As for the trinity. I think we're already leaving it a little. Most tanks and healers now can do a good amount of damage so that you actually are able to level with this spec without having a DPS with you that kills stuff for you. Also DPS are getting more survivability abilities (damage reduction, self heal) so that in the end you're more flexible.
Look at tanks. Tanking with DPS gear? No problem in a lot of cases. Look at healers. Healing with DPS gear? No problem in most cases. The line between roles blur and in the end it's only about what spec you choose and the gear itself can help you to get better in your role but isn't needed With more people wanting a fourth spec so that they can do something else what they couldn't before I think we're heading towards Guild Wars 2 where everyone can everything and you can use some skills to be a little bit better in one role than the other.
Here's the problem
We've got 34 specs.
5 tanking specs
6 healing specs
23 DPS specs.
Assuming that there's between 10-25 spots in a raid/battleground building in a 3rd set is going to cause people getting benched.
If it's manditory (like the holy trinity) Then you'll want more than one viable option (the last thing you want is another "Bring the class, not the player", after all.)
The other problem is, if all they do is bring DPS boosting buffs, or damage reduction buffs, why not just take a hybrid healer, ala fistweaver who does a little bit of DPS, and a little bit of healing.
If nothing else, WoW could benefit from more "Healy/DPS" hybrids.
I love the holy trinity, to be honest i don't think you can have serious PvE based MMO without one.
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I've always loved the idea of a support class, but it'll never fit into WoW in its current form. Scenarios have given us that deviation from the holy trinity and I'm loving them. They're a lot of fun and you can queue with a small group of friends, which is what my guild is comprised of. We have no healers other than my alt so it's nice to kick back and FSU without needing certain roles.
I like the idea of a buff class. My idea works as follows.
The class passes out buffs, about 30 seconds in duration.
The buffs are: mastery, haste, crit, int, spirit, agility, stamina, and strength.
They can have one of thes up on a person at a time.
Gameplay would require rotating these buffs to people who are in burst phases. Spirit to healers to regen, mastery to tanks for damage reduction.
For cool downs you activate your buffs, removing them from all targets. You are the. Able to apply 3 buffs to one target. For instance, heavy tank damage: you give Stam, strength/mastery or Stam haste mastery or Stam agility mastery for 30 seconds.
The same could be done with dps or healers. Int, spirit, crit or haste.
For a destro about to burst 3 chaosbolts you buff int crit and mastery
For an affli lock int haste mastery
And so on
Having one buff on 6 people would generally be better, but if someone is going into cool downs you megabuff them, when they're done you spread your buffs again.
Rules: cannot overlap buffs. One of each type may be out at any given time, so you can't give Stam to both tanks or int to both healers. So you'd have to know who scaled how, who to buff.
Adds depth, and the person you're megabuffing feels very strong for 30 seconds.
This could play 2 ways, spread the buffs over all and only megabuff in an emergency or, more skill more reward more risk of messing it up, you play megabuff style. Buffing the right people at the right time for maximum burst. Then you do the next one for their burst. This would be ideal , but would require raids to be more organized: Mage use your CDs first, then the warrior, then the shaman. Now we need big heals to the raid. Buff the aoe healer, tank about to take big damage buff him, that's done, buff the tank healer.
You mess it up, buff the wrong person, your tank dies, your healer ooms.
Much easier to put one buff on everyone, the lfr and normal mode of raiding would be fine with that. Heroic needs megabuffing.
Soloing: you can permanently 5 buff yourself to bring you up to snuff.
Hell, one of the specs could be a self buff bot, your job is to keep 5 up I yourself to do maximum dps, which would be competitive.
The third spec would be a debuffing or control spec. Trash mobs get Ccd better, you open vulnerabilities on the boss instead of buffing your friends. It would have to be things like: takes more magic damage for x seconds "so magic dealers go ham" and then the same for physical, for bleeds.
This would be less complicated than the first spec, since its all on the boss, but would t give as much chance to sync up damage CDs with the perfect buffs. This could also be the damage dealer spec of the class, since debuffing the boss takes less time than keeping everyone with a buff you can devote more time to dpsing.
The way to balance these is to not to change the size of the raid. But to figure how much extra damage one could bring to the fight, assuming all was done well. You take away a dps' damage, you add the damage of the buffed individuals, you add whatever damage the support player brings.
Only problem. I see is it makes tanks and healers too strong, in that you can help minimize damage and then help them heal that damage. That's where the balancing would be too strong.
Maybe, then, have a dps support spec, a healer/tank support spec, and a self support. (Dps) spec.
The two support specs would replace the person whose role they are supporting in the raid makeup. We're going to bring 3 healers? Bring 2 and a healer/tank support. Going to bring 5 dps, bring 4 and either a support spec or the dps spec or another dps.
Those are my thoughts.
Don't get me wrong, the same mechanics and principles can be taken advantage of in all lower forms of PvE. It's just that people are generally too stupid or lazy to play their classes lesser used and unique mechanics to their strengths.
It's generally a matter of content requirement rather than the way the classes are currently designed. Challenge modes and heroic progression rely heavily on class specifics where as lesser content doesn't require it and it becomes more of a convenience, such as interrupting mobs in random heroics. It's not necessary but it's nice when people do it. The same goes for class specific things like a pally popping devo during [insert random x dungeon boss]. There are a lot of class specific pleasantries like this that people don't take advantage of because while it's nice, it's not required.
No. I feel it is something special. And it works well.
Tanks and Healers have higher responsibility, and are fewer in numbers. Some players like that, instead of being a more generic DPS role.
Also, it adds more dimensions in terms of teamwork and it works against class homogenization. If everyone could do the same, it would simply not be as interesting.
If every roles is mandatory to some regard then there already is the problem you protest against. I just want to maybe reduce the amount of DpS roles and replace them with a Support who is both semi dps and a buffer for all roles in the raid/group
removing the 1 dps from an instance and replacing it with a support would be pretty much my idea for instance running. This isn't really a class deign thread though, more of an idea one
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The sea of glass, for the ocean of separation. He left peace, and for the first time felt pain.
Because the very hands that held the stars were now sentenced to wear my scars.
I know its hard, but all good things are hard to create.
They don't need to only bring boring and linear buffs as it comes down to the spec's rotation and flavour. There are numerous ways of achieving optimal buffing. I think the best presentation I could make is in any of my classes with support. If you decide to take a look just know this simple premiss. Each support role can perform dps effectively to a point where only through its support skills will the team be able to achieve the same dps as if it would be a dps spec instead.
And as you said, if I understood it, the balance struggle would be just like any other role. Fits perfectly then =P
it is indeed for the time being, but the trick is to add the competitive factor to the support roleThe possibility of being a support player is definitely a good addition to a sandbox (or even a theme park) RPG that focuses on immersion over competition. In WoW, however, the idea seems quite dysfunctional.
---------- Post added 2013-05-05 at 03:18 PM ----------
Yep that's a fact. I know they don't wanna have the trouble of expanding battles and that saddens me...
But another role wouldn't be gamebreaking imo. It would na injection of life to it! new types of encounters and new, more dynamic or even random battles applied to your daily questing and dungeons designed around your new available support role.
My idea would be to make the game more volatile in terms of mobs. Imagine your playing your wow character in a diablo 3 setting. ambushes of mobs coming at you, random events while you are questing that keep you on your toes, even the inclusion of night in wow would be deliciously scaring. This are just the first ideas that cross my mind though
Yea no, support class in WoW's design (Overall really, I feel) Is generally a bad idea, and there's a couple of older shamans that might want a word with you.
As far as lowering DPS Spots for a "Buffer" Class, also no, DPS queue times are long enough as it is without dropping dungeons down to 2 DPS. a Buffer Class might make for interesting raid mechanics, but it would most likely be either "They're useless, bring a dps." or "Kick a DPS and bring a Buffer." Most likely it would bounce back and forth between the two for a couple of patches, which is never fun (10m raiding, I can see having some issues with this). As far as PvP Goes, how would buffer PvP Work? How would it be balanced? Would adding an entirely new role to PvP really help? Sure PvP's never been completely balanced, and probably won't be, but I wouldn't be suprised if adding a Buffer just made things obnoxious for a while. Also with as many specs as we have right now, for tanking healing and DPS'ing, adding a 4th role for raiding in general would be madness, especially with larger guilds on the decline.
<-- This is a good example of how a support role could work in Wow. while a dps would directly damage the enemy for say, 4000 damage, the supporter would deal 2000 damage directly but leave debuffs that if exploited would reach 4000 damage or even more.
---------- Post added 2013-05-05 at 04:08 PM ----------
I don't see that tbh =P. I meant that if a support role would be added, what would be the problem with having a required spot on the LFD and LFR? Battles would have to be tuned around the new support role but apart from that they would be as mandatory as 1 tank 1 healer and 2 dps =)
Last edited by mmoc4874008d12; 2013-05-05 at 03:09 PM.
That sounds good on paper, but would still require either extremely linear and boring buffs or risk being situationally broken. There are already cases of the latter happening and I'm not sure if the game needs more of it. If the role ended up being yet another dps with just less personal dps and the group buffs coming through a dps rotation then I'm not sure if it would even be worth the effort of making a whole new role out of it. Such a specialisation would merely be a dpser with flavour (not a bad idea). It also wouldn't still make the buffs any more interesting because of the way they'd likely have to be balanced.
It would interact heavily with all of the other specialisations in the game. I would imagine that balancing one would require much more effort than a random run-of-the-mill dps or even a healer.
In the best case scenario you'd likely end up looking at an extremely strict amount of support characters for each group in every setting and with all of them doing essentially the same exact thing. To me that partially goes against the whole philosophy of an interesting form of support. One of the problems is also that many forms of support (CC for example) that could be well balanced in the hands of a new role are already available to everyone else in the game.
I mean on a larger scale and in relation to all the activities in the game.
It is a fun idea but I am extremely sceptical about it realistically working out without being, as already mentioned, boring, and/or overpowered and compulsory, and/or underpowered and novelty.
Last edited by Keoren; 2013-05-05 at 03:23 PM.