Would Blizzard ever institute support specs?

[Teriz]

Then you haven't ever met any WoW player in your life.

Oh brother.

That is nowhere the same thing. Role is one thing, specific buffs and debuffs is a completely different scenario. And again: specs would be losing their abilities, even iconic ones.

How is it not the same thing? You need a tank to run group content because they taunt monsters and soak enemy damage. You'd need a support to run group content because they bring the necessary buffs. There's literally no difference here.

So they are losing their abilities.

Specs lose "iconic" abilities all the time. Replace them with compelling abilities that match their specialization and they'll be fine.

Complexity for complexity's sake is not a good thing. On top of that, I really wonder if you actually play WoW at all. The whole thing about using support abilities is literally to break the whole 'single role' thing. It literally makes the roles more complex because you have more than one job. The DPS don't have to just mindlessly deal damage. They have to pay attention to the interrupt rotation, they have to be attentive to crowd-control an add that spawned. Etc.

Again, you can retain support abilities in non-support specs, but it should be like retaining healing abilities in non-healer specs. DPS shouldn't be depended on to provide support buffs. They should be focused on dealing damage. And yeah, that job doesn't have to be mindless. If there are phases where DPS has to keep adds off the healers and support for example, that can be quite exciting and rewarding for DPS.

No new class would be introduced.

I'm talking about in existing classes. That said, in future classes we can expect more than just the same ol' Tank/Healer/DPS configuration. Further, cool and novel support abilities like Symbiosis or Faerie Fire don't have to wither and die because they're appendages of non-support roles.

[Ielenia]

How is it not the same thing?

"Shall we bring a shaman for windfury totem?" and Tim who plays an enhancement shaman, Bob who plays an elemental shaman and Terry who plays a resto shaman are all valid options.
"Shall we bring a shaman of this specific support spec for windfury totem?" and now Tim, Bob and Terry are no longer viable options.

How can you not see the difference?

Specs lose "iconic" abilities all the time.

"All the time"? Really? Which game have you been playing all these years, because it certainly isn't WoW.

Replace them with compelling abilities that match their specialization and they'll be fine.

Again, if you truly believe players won't be angry as their specs and/or classes lose their utility and sometimes even iconic abilities, I doubt you have ever talked to a WoW player in your life.

Again, you can retain support abilities in non-support specs, but it should be like retaining healing abilities in non-healer specs.

That is not the argument you quoted, though. The argument is that your post there was in direct contradiction to your claims that "a new support spec would add complexity" when in actuality it makes the dps, tank and resto specs simpler.

That said, in future classes we can expect more than just the same ol' Tank/Healer/DPS configuration.

Which is not a good thing. The simple tank-dps-healer combo allows for quite a lot of complexity, by allowing the roles perform slightly out of their designed tasks, especially when crowd-control is involved.

[gd8]

Stating that Evokers are getting a third spec at all, much less support, is a pretty big leap.

And if they pulled DPS specs away from existing classes and reworked them.... the forums would be lit ablaze.

It's already been datamined that they're getting a third spec

[dread05]

"Shall we bring a shaman for windfury totem?" and Tim who plays an enhancement shaman, Bob who plays an elemental shaman and Terry who plays a resto shaman are all valid options.
"Shall we bring a shaman of this specific support spec for windfury totem?" and now Tim, Bob and Terry are no longer viable options.

How can you not see the difference?

Only enhancement has windfury totem tho, this argument doesn't stand.

[Ielenia]

Only enhancement has windfury totem tho, this argument doesn't stand.

It was my prior understanding that it was in the class talent tree, but alright. Still, replace that with any other useful support ability, such as heroism/bloodlust, tremor totem, capacitor totem, purge/greater purge, etc, and the argument remains the same. Or even get a different class, such as priest, and we have stuff like power infusion, power word: fortitude, mind control/dominate mind, etc.