You see… this “bard” support role had comments like yours “not a big deal” since vanilla. And it was hard to argue for, or against a hypothetical role that did not exist.
However… in 2023 we have the mess Aug caused as proof of this ridiculous idea of a “support role”.
No. Its NOT as simple as “just increase or deduct one dps slot”. Aug has proven that.
They already did with Aug. And it has been a total failure. Now Blizz has a problem they cannot solve.
All they can do is hope you guys don’t see it because Warcraft Logs are bugged and you cant actually see its performance, so the plebs don’t complain.
Where has Aug shown that, Aug was a succes, not really sure if you guys know what the Idea behind a support class even is. Aug was mandatory for alot of groups because he provided a load of utility that reminded players that it’s kinda a nice thing to have when doing dungeons, and buffing your allies is what they were intended to do.
The only thing that went inherently “awful” was the dmg numberrs but that says nothing about the support spec because thats a balancing thing, not a problem of the role., like we’ve had tanks doing more dmg than dps, doesn’t mean the Idea of tanks is bad and should be removed.
Cause they made a spec that is intended to be a support be dps for no reason, if they really wanted to try it they need to make it it’s own role and players would have to adapt to it, which would be unusual to have to see a new concept in one of the core concepts.
But that’s what happens when a game goes for nearly 20 years, you might wanna try something new.
I can dream can’t I?
If you mean lore wise then it’s a bit difficult to say that, to say that bards make no sense, is to say that there has never been a mage who also like instruments.
And if you wanna be really specific, if bards don’t exist in wow then it ain’t a living breathing world, you mean to tell me with all our epic tales of dragonslaying and battles and all our achievements, not a single person ever made any of those tales into songs and happened to have some form of magic.
Oh and if you mean that the developerrs simply never mentioned them in any form, they have and literally joked about releasing the class, so it most certainly crossed their minds and made enough sense for them.
But if you still wanna deny it because “we’ve never heard of a bard before”, it ain’t unusual to have blizz rewrite/retcon lore just so it makes sense when they want it to.
Bard is a possibility but in order for it to work, the support role needs to be implemented.
Unfortunately regardless of how much we argue about it, if bizz doesn’t wanna do it they won’t, if blizz wants to do it they will, they need no excuse or reasoning to add new things, they will fnd their ways, regardless of what we say. This was a pure passion project because new classes would be cool to see and we are slowly running out of options outside of obvious support classes like bard and tinker.
You sir are so, but so misinformed. You see, if you play a class that is so OP busted and mandatory that you get invited to any group regardless of if your good or bad. Regardless of your raider io or gear ilvl…
OF COURSE it will be a success! Anyone that played Aug was happy as hell to be instant invited to any group. And it did not matter if they played good or bad. Their presence ONLY was enough.
That has absolutely nothing to do with “support role” enjoyment.
You see, right now DH dps is 20% stronger than the rest. Its popularity sky-roketed. You really, deep down in your heart think that all those thousands of DHs that were not there in S1 and S2 all of a sudden are “demon hunter enjoyers?”… Dont make me laugh.
And that is for 20% more dps. We cant begin to measure the “busted” OP of Aug… but people that did measure it put it at way more than 20%. And in S2… OMG… busted was not even close. So yeah… enjoyers I see…
Im sorry. There IS a reason. Because if you add a new role, you have to ask yourself the following question: Can you do the content with out that role or not?
Think of: Dungeons with no healer. Or no Tank… You currently know the answer to that question for those roles.
So if you want to add a new ROLE, you have 2 options:
A) Dont change the content. Instead, think about what ROLE would this new bard replace and balance ALL classes such that the content it can also be done at the same performance level with out Support Role.
B) Force the groups to take that role (like healers for example) and make it near impossible to do content with out it. And then, balance support specs between themselves, not against other roles. Like healers. Those are balanced against other healers, not DDs for example.
They chose A) thinking that they could balance it. Well… turns out they CANT. Its mathematically impossible. Either Aug is trash tier. Or… Aug is OP busted. You cant have an in between.
Its like trying to balance Tanks with Healers. Makes no sense.
And if they keep balancing Aug with DPS… I swear that the day Aug gets nerfed and stops being OP busted… you will se a TON of people simply rerol to something else. Because I know my fair share of people playing Aug because they have no other options.
They play it because their Guild/M+ group requires it. They play it for shorter quew times. They play it because they like Evokers but nobody wants Dev or Pre Evokers…
SO many reasons other than “oh look, I like support roles”.
The ONLY solution is (B). But that requires much, much more effort and dev time than adding 1 new spec. So now you know the price to pay for your new bard spek.
Normally people dream in the privacy of their home.
In a public forum where there is a slight chance that blizz might take your post as “feedback” and even consider this madness… then I feel obliged to equally say how bad and horrific this would be.
And to please not implement yet another “meme spek” just to break the balance of the game and make it miserable for the rest of us. NO THANKS.
Also: Edit…
There is a shortage of Healers and Tanks. Adding a new support role assuming people (and specifically current DPS players) will play it in enough numbers to not add yet another factor in long quew times…
Well, better invest dev time and resources to convincing people to heal/tank IMO.
I agree this was a problem, one that would’ve been solved if there were multiple support specs, so none were simply picked because they were support, but picked because what support would then be considered the same way as what dps to take.
Yes Meta exist, and in a game where there is any form of competition, if something is good people will flock to it. That’s why I’m saying, the implementation of this experiment was wrong, because it was too light, they added 1 spec thats supposed to represent a whole role, so ofc it would be taken regardless, thing is they need a support and that was the only option.
Answer is no, ofc you couldn’t, you don’t see people complaining that a tank or healer are needed, the same way you don’t see a group of 5 people go into a dungeon and then whine that it isn’t made for them. That’s what a role is, its a part of the team that does it’s job and without it the job isn’t done and the team will suffer for it.
You take a and balance the game around that role being needed, the amount is irrelevant, like if in a raid group of 30 that you would need like 2 or 3 the same like healers or tanks sounds reasonable, and in a dungeon dps would still be more than any other role. Also support would work the same way any other role should, be mandatory for difficult content and not thrown as a “maybe” in certain groups because then why even have a new role.
Literally this is the reason why alot of people have played or play tanks and or healers in current wow and wows past, to say that people play something because it’s needed isn’t a reason to not let that thing in, not to mention aug was also so big because alot of people just liked the idea of playing support and never even did mythic+ or raid or pvp, it’s ok for people to like something AND it be meta, happens.
Thats the best case scenario, not because we get bard, but because then blizz would have listened to their players.
It wouldn’t be a meme spec, would be just another class with specs like everyone else, believe it or not you can make a bard not a massive meme about seducing a dragon, its called creativity, yknow the thing that they used on every other class.
By reducing the amount of dps spots people would be either pushed into other roles, not a good option at all, because forcing players to do something is bad, but it would be a possibility, not a good one but it would help
Edit:
I really don’t mean to make an argument over this, like I said blizz will do what they want. I simply wanted to see feedback to the class idea I worked on, not hear how supports are bad when that was one of the three specs, no more no less.
this is true, but my point is that your dps scenario is bad because dps should be balanced between each other and one beeing far superior than the others is bad.
This is why I think they needed to add more support classes for the experiment because then they can really compare and see what part of the support is too good, but they didn’t do that, what they did was have one spec represent a whole role, that’s like having there only be one dps spec and then saying it should exst because people have to have that one spec.
Ofc that spec was broken because blizz wanted to test the usefullness of a support in wow, unfortunately they made that support a dps, which made people complain about it being always there, in comparison to the other dps, which is bad because we weren’t supposed to compare them to dps cause thats not what it is.
My point is simply, the experiment was a succes because now they know that the attempt at making a new role was seen as a neccesity in every group, but because we have to compare it to dps instead of other supports we see it as wrong which it was, a dps shouldn’t be mandatory, a support role should, that is my argument from start to finish. Take that as you will.
Aug was not a success, Aug was/is overpowered hence why it was played a lot.
Saying it was an success because of this is like saying, a class that does 1 million DPS by standing afk at the entry, is a success only because every group would have one.
A role with only a single spec cant be balanced neither is it good for the game.
I have to be honest, of all the potential classes we could get bard is one wich i would like to see the least.
I never liked the idea of bards classes that much. It would have to be magic infused songs for it actually to be support people. We havent seen anything like this in game. If we saw musicians ingame thats pretty much all they did. Just making music. We would need some proper examples of this class in game before it becomes a thing.
And to me bard sounds like a rogue specc at most. In alot of games that does have bard classes they often seem to have rogue skills as well. And class flavor wise being a bard would be a good cover/disguise for a rogue to blend in and gather information
Thats a fair take and honestly
I think bard would either be a great dps rouge spec, or what I also thought was likely was that bard would be a new spec added to rouge if the support experiment went well, so that it wouldn’t need it own class and you’re right it is similar to rouge for sure.
I would’ve also been satisfied if we had gotten bard as some form in the new hero talents, I just wanna be a musician fam.
Aug, and ANY support role are special. Because they do what no other DPS can: Buff healers and tanks.
When you go to an M+ with an aug, Aug == 1 DPS + 0.5 Healer + 0.5 Tank. Its like doing 5 man content with 6 people. THAT is something no other dps can provide. Its much more than just “the meta”.
Much more productive to make healers DPS a bit more for example. Not to force people to heal, but to convince a few more DDs to heal.
Its less cruel than forcing people to a roll they dont want to play. And it does not requiere a new roll.
It would not. It has nothing to do with seducing dragons or being creative. WoW has its fair share of “serious stuff” and utter “goofy” stuff. Both are OK, both are welcomed.
The problem is that Bard would be a new “support role” and I got a massive paragraph saying why that would be a horrible idea. I wont repeat it again.
If listening to a vocal minority makes them implement things to the detriment of the silent majority then no. They can ignore us. They have data that we don’t have. They can analyze what players want with out directly asking them or reading the forums.
Let them do that. And I wonder why they did not for Aug… to be honest… Maybe they listened to all the vocal minority wanting a Support Spec with out thinking the consequences through.
False. People don’t. And that is why we have a shortage.
Simply because healers and tanks are balanced between themselves there is a difference between a “good healer” and a “bad healer”. And ways to measure it. And you can clearly see it in the content you run.
Therefore, any healer and tank STILL have to prove their io, ilvl, ect… against other tanks. Because they are balanced.
Aug on the other hand… it gives you and edge over any other DPS. And you don’t need to prove squat. So: An Aug with io 2000 is more valuable than a DPS with rio 3000 for example. Because they are balanced with other DPS.
That does not happen with healers.
There. Option (B). But are you aware of the massive effort required and repercussions this would have?
It would be as massive as trying to delete tanks and trying to balance content to play with out tanks. Or with out healers. That is how much change it would require… from dungeon design… to complete class rework for all roles and speks… and everything and anything in between.
And the consequences that would have? Totally unknown. What is known is that if you do something like that there is no way back. No “experiments” no nothing. Its either you break the game or you save the game.
Its such a risky en-devour that it should never happen. It would take so much dev time that it would practically replace 1 expansion worth of effort. Maybe when WoW dies and they try to make WoW2. Thats when I would see a proper Support Role.
YES! People in PvP for example want NPC healers to make quews faster…
And you want a 4th role with out even considering if people would be willing to play it voluntarily. With out forcing them in any way.
Or else, we will see posts on the forums of people asking for NPC Support Roles for M+ cause of shortages.
I told you: Option (A) or option (B)? Multiple specs with out option (B) is WAY worse than what we have now. You CAN have multiple support specs IF they are balanced against each-other not against DPS.
Best case scenario for option (A) is to literally delete or nerf to the ground ALL support specs. Until (B) is in place. Then you can add more specs/roles.
I will quote myself: Know the price to pay for a Support Role before actually asking for one:
So before you go on and do the “day 3 bard concept” post… think and reflect about this…
Because to be honest, I am convinced someone out there in Blizz read one of these posts about support roles… And had the dumb idea to make Aug.
they already ripped off pokemon with the pet battles.
they could try to add music instruments as some sort of guitar hero rip off, wich actually plays music other people can hear ( and probably should be able to opt out of hearing because not everyone might like random music playing)
that way everyone can roleplay as a bard, and there would be a new mini game people could play
We got toys wich allows us to play bejeweled as well right? why not have have music instruments similair to that.
That would actually be pretty cool, to have it as a fourth rogue spec and then as support. I do agree with everyone who says the implementation of a support spec hasn’t been flawless, but I agree with Gilvion that that doesn’t mean they should ditch the concept entirely because of that.
I understand in competitive content this may give issues, and create another balancing nightmare. From what I’ve seen the representation of classes and specs in M+ is better than last season, in that sense they’re still tweaking it.
This has nothing to do with forcing roles, people aren’t happy that the solo mode they hopped for, for some reason has the only requirements of spec, all other pvp has no required roles, 2v2, 3v3,bg,ebg is possible as any combination of roles, that’s why people are annoyed.
I’m fully aware of that, which is why I posted it so that we as a community could come up with a way to make it as fair as possible, I’m not a game developer and never claimed to be so my balancing will be whack as hell. I just feel it’s a bit unfair that numbers balancing is causing people to react negatively towards what I think would be a good addition, obviously there would be ALOT of consideration that would have to go into this choice, I don’t doubt that.
again, i agree that this is wrong and why we need a way to compare it against other supports without taking a risk but we simply can’t.
No, why would difficulties of balancing substitute deleting something, why not then just delete bm and dh, why not just delete anything blatantly op, my theory is that balancing is hard and we need to give blizzard time when implementing something this massive, two seasons isnt enough
I agree with this, it puzzled me already when they introduced support that they only added one spec. I think implementing it with a new expansion, before seasons start, and then have multiple support specs would have created more hype (new gameplay for already existing classes) and have been met with more enthusiasm.
But it could simply be the trial mode, to observe how support could/should work in WoW, and only having to tweak one spec instead of five.
I already said it. Its not about being OP or not. It need deletion because Aug does something no other DPS can do: Buff healers and tanks.
As I said: Its like doing 5 man dungeon with 6 people. So as long as buff to healer > 0 (directly via Ebon Might, or indirectly with utility) its will be OP. PERIOD.
So what do you do? Maybe… you… remove the “buffing” part?.. Such that buff to healer is == 0 (like all other DPS)? Then its a regular DPS with above average utility. That is how you balance Aug… So you remove the “support part”.
And I talk about Aug but same thing applies to any Support Role that they implement.
So YES. DELETE it. Turn it into a regular DPS.
BM and DH just need a numbers nerf. Because BM and DH just provide a bit more of something ANY other dps can and does provide: DAMAGE.
Do you even play wow? Not even raids have a required roll. But try to clear a raid with 0 tanks. Or 0 Healers.
Its possible to PARTICIPATE that’s for sure… but achieving anything? Good luck with that.
For the record: I also think it would be a good addition.
But:
You dont seem to be aware of what it would take. Like I said: The effort it would take would be the equivalent effort to deleting Tanks. And balancing dungeons and classes to accommodate that new “world” with out tanks.
That is so MASSIVE, such a huge risk that nobody in their right mind would do such a thing. And you don’t need to be a dev to understand it.
And THAT is what I am against. Im against half-baked solutions. And I have a feeling that Support Roles will ALWAYS be a half-baked solution “Aug style” because the price of doing it right is too high. Literally that.
So if you have any Ideas please let me know, cause so far I’ve taken inspiration from mostly whisper bard from dnd 5e and just flat out loud noises like shouts and Echos
I think we both want the addition we simply come into an impass on how and when, and if that’s the case then I personally don’t mind if you simply wanted to let the game devs know that there would be those who would dislike the change in how i imagined it which is fair and I’m sorry that I intervened, its totally fair to want the best for the game in your opinion
