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

[Sanguinerd]

World firsts have always been fun to track, but it used to matter per boss and not by raid. It sucks that WoW has become a timed competition, it's no wonder we have Mythic+, races, and broken gear treadmills with rewards that no longer have sentimental value.

Aye, couldn't agree more.

As long as that exists there won't be any room for a support.

[qwerty123456]

There is already a fourth role in game it's called the leech. You spend half your time on the phone, watching tv, or looking up porn and let the rest of your group carry you.

[zhero]

we had these support roles before, they were called hybrids. to summarize, there were reasons we don't have them anymore.

[hulkgor]

No. Holy Trinity works and shouldn't be messed with in regards to WoW.

Let new games try different approaches to it, see what works. Some MMOs even tried avoiding the holy trinity and the games just feel "off", so i don't think WoW needs a change to it.

[bloodmoth13]

I disagree. Shaman are pretty close to a full on support in classic doing f-tier damage but buffing their parties immensely. There are loads of them around. They are considering pretty fun to play too. I think a full on support would work well if they embraced that aspect rather than discarding it. However I do think it's too late for such things in this game. The community is too hellbent spending as little time as possible doing something in game to actually bring a class that doesn't show up on the meters very highly.

ok there is actually a lot to unravel with this since we are probably going to be arguing against and for completely different things here so i will try to clarify as best i can what i mean.

I will say though that a big reason players choose those support roles is because they want to be needed. without the buffs they bring they wouldnt be brought into the group, so they are willing to do the chore of buffing to be present for content. Its like BC shadow priests, they could regenerate the healers mana and were a useful commodity for any raid, so every raid group had room for a shadow priest, inflating their value beyond their damage, so it was a guaranteed slot in a group without the stress of needing to perform optimally in dps.

there are 2 points of view looking at this, a lot of players LOVED that Spriests had that unique ability to regen mana because it made them special and differentiated them from other dps classes. The other side though is that Spriests got a free pass and didnt need to work for their slot and players that were objectively better would miss out because Spriests were 'special' while their class brought nothing.
Whose right? i err on the side of the other players, not because being a mana battery isnt fun design but its poor design i think to give 1 spec an important tool that is required while other specs have nothing.

So the solution is to just kill it then? no. There are better options but they would require a huge overhaul to everything in the game, even if the effect was fairly unnoticable.
My solution is to create subroles for dps classes that fill out those fantasies of support and front line warriors etc, without disrupting the holy trinity, but rather working within it.
Shadow priests mana battery phase was essentailly bonus healing in the form of healers being allowed to be less efficient but more powerful with their heals, all you would need to ebrace this design is give other classes ways to join in with that gameplay, which they did, they turned it into a passive buff that paladins and another class could give also, but they way it was implemented was a passive ignorable buff that was rather boring, so in the end it wasnt worth preserving.

Id like to see more subroles in the game, in order to get there though i think that tanks and healers need less responsibility and for much of that to be shared among the dps classes. for example i want a massive threat overhaul that caps the number of targets a tank can hold threat on (maybe 4-5) and having the rest of the group pick up on the left over units that the tank cant control. This could open up positions for off tanks in the form of tanky dps, like plate dps classes or pet classes holding aggro.

That would make tanky dps much more valuable and give some wriggle room for other dps classes to get more utility to compensate. This could come in the form of off healing, support buffs/debuffs or crowd control.

What is important though is that the utility doesnt increase or decrease anyones dps. DPS i think is sacred in this game as it is probably the best(or at least easiest) way to measure a players performance. if this utility breaks that then it becomes a problem. With this in mind, i think support classses should give allies damage shields or movement buffs. The off healers would also need to perform their healing without interrupting their damage output as well.

Back to creating a support role as a 4th major role, if firmly against this. I dont think they are fun nor do i think they require skill. They are boring, skill-less roles that are required to make other players feel better. You could do much more with this by rolling that gameplay into any of the other 3 classes.

[schwarzkopf]

It's another of those cases that really can't work in a balanced way.

Well - if we are talking about the actual melee healer I'm referring to - then yes it can.

[Swnem]

Well - if we are talking about the actual melee healer I'm referring to - then yes it can.

"I'm talking about a healer that has to be in melee with its healing target and has to heal by doing melee hits on that target."

This is how you described it. As you can understand, other people aren't in your head. So, if you got a solution to the balance problem i would very much like to hear it so i could perhaps agree. As i see it, i don't see how it can work, but maybe you have other angles you haven't shared.
I cannot say the description you gave is exactly clear either. Did you mean they can only heal melees or whoever goes in melee range? Cause that would outright be a huge problem for healing dungeons with ranged DPS, so i assumed you couldn't posibly mean that. *shrugs*

[schwarzkopf]

So, if you got a solution to the balance problem i would very much like to hear it so i could perhaps agree. As i see it, i don't see how it can work, but maybe you have other angles you haven't shared.

The balance situation is the same as that for melee vs ranged dps.

How do you balance a rogue dps vs a mage dps ?

Same process to balance a melee hps vs a ranged hps.

[Swnem]

we had these support roles before, they were called hybrids. to summarize, there were reasons we don't have them anymore.

Yes! This!

I'm glad some people still remember.

- - - Updated - - -

The balance situation is the same as that for melee vs ranged dps.

How do you balance a rogue dps vs a mage dps ?

Same process to balance a melee hps vs a ranged hps.

Err no. Cause DPS only output DPS. Healers output healing and DPS.

So, i talked about this, but i will try again. If you got a healer staying at range that does the same healing and damage from range as a healer that has to stand in melee and has to hit the target to heal, why exactly would someone take the melee guy? Even if mechanicly it were to work in balanced way, no one would want a healer to go crowd melee range even more.
But hey... guess we gotta disagree on this one. Cause this would be very difficult to pull off mechanicly anyways, much less balance wise.

[Shelly]

The problem with support roles is they are either too powerful or worthless.

Let's say you made it so all the buffs and debuffs - Stamina, Attack Power, Curse of whatever, mark of chaos, int buff, etc - were all handled by one class. Ok, now you just bring one of them and done. End of story.

Now let's say you give them a stacking buff, something like increases the haste/crit/vers/whatever by X amount for X seconds. If it's just a single buff then you only need one, if it's a stacking buff then you're best off just filling the entire raid with the buffing character because their buff will be too good.

Support is an awesome idea, but it's pretty much impossible to balance.

[Gasparde]

Support is like the oldest concept and while everyone claims how much they'd like it barely anybody ever likes it when it's put into a game.

Hybrids also don't work anymore in 2019s WoW. You either deal competitive damage or you're not brought. You're either able to heal or you're not brought. The only way that people make exceptions here is if you bring something to the table that makes up for your lack of damage / healing - and at that point these specs/classes usually just become mandatory. Like, Enhancers being Windfury bots to actual damage specs worked in Classic in 2004, hell, it even works with nostalgia Classic nowadays, but good luck trying to find people like that in Retail.

There's just not big enough of an audience that is willing to put up with basically never showing up in the meters to justify something like that.

[Aphrel]

We had supports in tbc. They were called shamans and shadowpriests. They did significantly less dmg, but in return supported their party. Shadowpreists gave mana and healing. Shamans gave sick groupbuffs.