Hi,
I’m a long-time WoW player and also have extensive knowledge with Warhammer Online. Now, you might be thinking: Warhammer Online? Wasn’t that the failed EA MMORPG from 2008?
Yup, it was, but I still play it actively on a private server. Because no MMORPG on the marked can match it’s open world large scale siege warfare except maybe Dark Age of Camelot and that’s too old. 
(And yes i have all classes maxed out in both ESO and GW2 dumping hundreds of hours into Cyrodil and WvW)
Long story short, Warhammer has two classes: the Chosen and the Knight of the Blazing Sun. Both are tank archetypes and share a unique mechanic: they can toggle up to three auras that provide various group-wide effects. For example, one aura increases the Strength of party members within a 100 ft radius and at the same time reduces the Strength of enemies in the same range.
This mechanic gave me an idea for how to revamp the currently clunky implementation of Death and Decay (DnD) and Consecrated Ground (CG) in WoW. What if these abilities were reworked into something more like the current Paladin auras - perhaps even integrated into the Paladin and Death Knight toolkits via passive talents?
Imagine auras that function in a similar way - providing effects in a short radius around the Paladin or DK - removing the awkward positional requirements of standing inside DnD or CG. This could add more fluidity and group synergy while retaining the fantasy of the class.
Ideas for Auras could be:
Death and Decay: Slow enemies around the DK in a Xft radius for x%.
Consecrated ground: Damage enemies around the paladin in a Xft radius for xdmg/s.
There used to be different auras in classic, tbc and wrath like concentration aura, resistance aura, sanctity aura or retribution aura. Maybe bring those back, rework them and give DK similar ones with a lore-appropriate design. Due to the fact that WoW has always been primarily a PvE game with a somewhat working PvP scene that got blown out of proportion over the years, evolving into a button-bloated, CC and immunity-infested, addon-requiring nightmare and Warhammer being the exact opposite of it - being primarily a PvP game in it’s core design with a baseline PvE scene for leveling/questing and a few selected dungeons, the tuning of these auras would have to be tuned and designed primarily towards PvE.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this idea!
3 Likes
incoming Bard song twisting PTSD
Jokes aside, the notion that class defining ground area effects like DnD or Consecration should be moving with the player rather than being stationary has been brought up a couple of times over the years already. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of this functionality, for QoL reasons alone. But it seems that Blizzard are very happy with the way it is handled in the game.
Imagine if they actually put effort into their “buff class” attempt. Oh well.
they just need to remove the cds on both and remove from the GCD.
They also need to find a way to break macro functionality so it can’t be macro’d to every spell.
Consecrate is a DR, via mastery. DND has to be played properly for AOE cleave. You shouldn’t just remove that gameplay.
Just do the things suggested at the start
The biggest issues - in my humble opinion - with Aug was that it was the only buff spec in the game, and that it takes a DPS spot. This means that any balancing can only really go two extreme ways. Either the Evoker is so powerful that you need one, or it’s so weak that the benefits of having one are outweighed by taking another DPS.
Having a single class to fill a specific role also goes against the credo of “bring the player, not the class”. Now you absolutely do need to bring the class. I’d have preferred if they had introduced a couple of other specific buffing classes and added a sixth group slot specifically for support so they wouldn’t have to compete with DPS slots. The big talent reset of DF would have even been a great time to balance the content for the new group size and added support. But no, they did the absolutely laziest thing they could do, chuck in a single spec and have it compete with another role for group slots. But that’s none of my business I guess 
Indeed. If they added a buff spec to other already existing classes (Mage, Priest, Shaman comes to mind, but funnily enough the joke hero spec for Warrior they did for this years April’s Fools, the Shoutmaster, could also be one) then it were most likely more popular as well. Blizz is a victim of their own lazyness with this one.
Ironically, we have had buff classes since vanilla. Shaman and Paladin started out as true hybrids, meant to mix combat with healing and - most importantly in this context - powerful group buffs. Then Blizzard realised that hybrid classes were not in demand as much as highly specialised roles and over time streamlined not only the roles, but also the available buffs. I think this streamlining helped make a lot more diverse party and raid setups viable, but it also meant the loss of specific buff classes, as every class had some sort of raid utility now.
As I’ve said, if they wanted to make a dedicated support spec, it would have needed “competition” from existing classes and ideally a specific group slot for this role. Much of the hate Aug receives is not just because it’s the only spec for the role in the game, but also that it competes for already heavily contested group slot. When there are people complaining regularly about being declined over and over and over for M+ groups, the new guy on the block being seen as “mandatory” by the community makes their evening even less enjoyable. Where before there have been 3 DPS slots, now there are only 2 left. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s really obvious how this would create friction.
On the flipside, now that Aug has been nerfed to the ground, it’s not like with badly tuned DPS specs. You won’t get a pity invite. Until you get to the point at the very high end where everyone starts playing so well that class balancing actually matters, more often than not current balancing is a minor issue. Not so with Aug, which scales not only with the ability of the Evoker player, but also indirectly with the skill of the group. If the group doesn’t perform, the buffs given by the Evoker will be borderline useless, even in the best case scenario. And if Aug is indeed not viable at the top end, it falls off even harder at the bottom, unlike DPS specs which - as said - will still scale well with individual skill.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant, but this is one of those things that highlight the modern Blizzard “eh, that’ll do” approach, and that drives me crazy because I remember the Blizzard of old that actually cared about the quality of the product.
Okay but that was different because they also designed the content around it. Like, yeah you go to MC you want at least 1 Pally with Fire res aura in each group, but at least with the tank so he doesn’t get blown up. Same with Poison cleansing for AQ, and so on.
At this point Aug should be reworked into a tank spec because they clearly don’t want to bother with the buff specs, and we already have 628 DPS specs out there. Tho to be fair Evoker needs some major fixing in the first place, but they are reluctant to do that also.
The one thing Aug showed us is that real buff specs can work, but they need to invest more into the whole concept.