Vitality
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- 5,808
- 30
World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
- 37,961
- 14,508
Vitality
ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
- 5,808
- 30
Gentleman in the sheets. I don't even mind that he's got others on the side. He do me right when I need it.He calls me bae
Arch
Lord Nagafen Raider
- 1,036
- 25
Pretty sure last parse I saw had Mythic CMA at #2 in front of coin but admittedly that may have changed since I last checked.
@Krass I will be there for sure tonight and Sunday, be good to see some of the new folk.
Korrupt
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,832
- 1,228
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
- 37,961
- 14,508
They have been pretty good by just doing rolling restarts, not sure about today.
Needless
Toe Sucker
- 9,172
- 3,268
physical servers still need to be maintained... 10 hours of downtime though is kind of excessive lol
Vorph
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 11,004
- 4,744
Sims can't really account for the superiority of on-use trinkets over proc ones, which makes Coin the best for MM. As for SV, from the guide:
I think it's too late to be spending 50k+ on a item this close to BRF release though unless you're absurdly rich. I say just use Mythic CMA if you get lucky on a mission crate, Heroic CMA if you get the drop, or Grandiose Plans otherwise.Azortharion_sl said:
Qhue
Tranny Chaser
- 7,481
- 4,427
The problem with "Support" as a 4th role has largely been the way it was implemented. Rift and other games chose to make Support effects be group/raid wide and often of a fixed percentage. This leads to problems with scaling that cause designers to pull their hair out in large tufts. Principle among them is how do you make it so the buff/debuff effects of the Support are large enough that you can't just replace them with a different pure role.
I think these efforts have been somewhat misguided as they really don't match up well with the focus of the other roles which can be summarized as Bar Managers.
Tanks keep the enemy focused on them so that their health bar is the only one effected, Healers keep the player health bars topped off, and DPS are focused on dropping the health bar of the target. Tanks have evolved somewhat to use extensive types of self-shielding and self-healing to maintain their own health bar, in some cases "shields" are used to add secondary health bars and to a certain degree everyone manages their Mana / Rage / Energy bars as a fuel resource. If we want Support to be widely viable then it needs to have some similar sort of bar management as its bread-n-butter.
In classic EverQuest the Enchanter and Bards did provide mana regen as a sort of bar management and were used as means to keep fuel supplies topped off. Unfortunately this was mostly done from the point of view of keeping static regen abilities active rather than being used as a "mana healer". EQ2 have classes that provide mana increase as a directed effect rather than a persistent regeneration along with directed cooldowns...but this was often regarded as more of a necessary evil than a true team asset.
I could see a Support role working in terms of a directed or short duration regen "boost" that has a similar mechanic to a heal or a shield but which provides a substantial +gooder effect to whomever is effected by it. Imagine a Mage spec built around Amplify and Dampen magic where instead of being fixed buffs they acted as a shield providing extra damage when used on a DPS class, extra healing throughput + Spirit when used on a healer, and extra damage mitigation when used on a tank but only as an expended resource that gets used up as the affected character uses their abilities. The Support character would be expected to pump up the tank or healer during periods of spikey damage or funnel power into the DPS during burn phases coordinating with specific classes to know who to pump up when in order to make best use of the added oomph.
In addition to augmenting other players the Support could assume a distinct debuffing role where again the debuff is expended from target actions rather than just being a managed duration. With the prevalence of movement based dodging of ground effects the Support role could additionally provide bonuses like "cast while moving" as a directed effect ALA the Medic in TF2 or even cooldowns that set up a stationary bubble on the battlefield that makes those standing within protected from ground effects of various types
Ultimately I think something needs to be done to break the logjam of DPS overpopulation and while adding a 4th role might not solve every problem I think it would go a long way to clearing up some of the backlog...especially for those classes which are shoehorned into ONLY the DPS role.
I think these efforts have been somewhat misguided as they really don't match up well with the focus of the other roles which can be summarized as Bar Managers.
Tanks keep the enemy focused on them so that their health bar is the only one effected, Healers keep the player health bars topped off, and DPS are focused on dropping the health bar of the target. Tanks have evolved somewhat to use extensive types of self-shielding and self-healing to maintain their own health bar, in some cases "shields" are used to add secondary health bars and to a certain degree everyone manages their Mana / Rage / Energy bars as a fuel resource. If we want Support to be widely viable then it needs to have some similar sort of bar management as its bread-n-butter.
In classic EverQuest the Enchanter and Bards did provide mana regen as a sort of bar management and were used as means to keep fuel supplies topped off. Unfortunately this was mostly done from the point of view of keeping static regen abilities active rather than being used as a "mana healer". EQ2 have classes that provide mana increase as a directed effect rather than a persistent regeneration along with directed cooldowns...but this was often regarded as more of a necessary evil than a true team asset.
I could see a Support role working in terms of a directed or short duration regen "boost" that has a similar mechanic to a heal or a shield but which provides a substantial +gooder effect to whomever is effected by it. Imagine a Mage spec built around Amplify and Dampen magic where instead of being fixed buffs they acted as a shield providing extra damage when used on a DPS class, extra healing throughput + Spirit when used on a healer, and extra damage mitigation when used on a tank but only as an expended resource that gets used up as the affected character uses their abilities. The Support character would be expected to pump up the tank or healer during periods of spikey damage or funnel power into the DPS during burn phases coordinating with specific classes to know who to pump up when in order to make best use of the added oomph.
In addition to augmenting other players the Support could assume a distinct debuffing role where again the debuff is expended from target actions rather than just being a managed duration. With the prevalence of movement based dodging of ground effects the Support role could additionally provide bonuses like "cast while moving" as a directed effect ALA the Medic in TF2 or even cooldowns that set up a stationary bubble on the battlefield that makes those standing within protected from ground effects of various types
Ultimately I think something needs to be done to break the logjam of DPS overpopulation and while adding a 4th role might not solve every problem I think it would go a long way to clearing up some of the backlog...especially for those classes which are shoehorned into ONLY the DPS role.
I think it may be some general BNet maint as well. D3 patch dropped today along with Heroes moving from alpha to beta.
Korrupt
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,832
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My lord, in the whitest most politest way I ask thee to wait for me as I approach my homestead and join you in a few minutes
Vitality
ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
- 5,808
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Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
- 37,961
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kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,647
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I think one of the few games that ever did the "support role" really well was city of heroes.
You had your tanks
Melee dps
range dps
Defenders who were support/dps
Controllers who were CC/support.
Defenders had like 7 different types and only a couple were actually healers. Others worked either by protecting your group with things like force fields or sonic fields or debuffing your opponents like darkness powers and some did it by active healing. My main was a force field defender and with all my shields active and me doing my thing the group could supply any actual heals themselves with their self heals or consumables. So I was as fully effective as any other healer without ever throwing a single heal myself.
Controller would be another option but it would require them to make content that actually required you to do CC. Enchanters in EQ1 were like this too the original holy trinity was tank/healer/enchanter for CC. Controllers In coh were a lot like eq1 enchanters in that they specalized in locking tough opponents down to a reasonable level and having a lot of group buffs and assists to make their team mates better.
If done well and content was designed for it it would be really easy to tell competent control specalists.
The problem with adding other roles to things like wow though is hardly anybody wants to be tanks any more due to the abuse they get or healers again for the abuse they get by DPS. DPS are just derping around bitching at tanks and healer for not carrying them hard enough while paying no attention to things like standing in fire/getting agro/ not shooting extra packs of mobs in the distance/ and even doing their one job they have to worry about is almost to much to ask.
This is made worse by things like heroic dungeons being so easy to gear your way out of tanks can do it in a few hours and then turn their backs on the dungeons and never look back because dungeons currently have almost nothing to offer at max level when LFR has the same ilevel requirement and is insanely easier.
My argument is why does every fight have to be a tank grabbing aggro, healers focusing on keeping the tank alive while DPS tries to take as little damage as possible. There are some encounters which lack a threat table but for the most part they're not very well thought out. More like "This guy will cast a fireball on whoever" and they can't function on a wide scale because not everyone can keep themselves alive or mitigate damage. It is probably completely out of scope at all for WoW to ever move to a role-less game but I could conceive some MMO where threat tables are either non existant or function very differently than MMOs today. All classes have some form of self preservation, self sustain and damage. Maybe make it so threat tables are there but you can never shower threat onto a target. It is intended to be bounced around but it could be bounced around in a somewhat controlled manner.