WoW: Believe me, you don’t want a pure supporter class in World of Warcraft

After a few weeks ago in the summer of 2022, the abilities of the Dracthyr caller came to light, it quickly became clear: Wow, he has really good support skills. players fly around (with let’s fly), reset the cooldown of movement-enhancing abilities, or save the entire raid from damage are just a few of the Caller’s abilities. And the idea of ​​a pure supporter class quickly came to mind again.

The Caller in WoW (buy now ): Dragonflight isn’t just a support, and no other class in modern WoW is really designed to play the role of buff bot. Earlier in WoW Classic, perhaps the closest thing to pure support was the shaman. A lot of people want that kind of supporter back. But believe me, you don’t really want them in WoW.

The cause “soul of power”

Of the Dragonflight’s new priest talent tree was presented as one of the first. And what caught your eye? Clear, soul of power (short PI, for “Power Infusion”). The developers really left the ability in the game. Let’s take a look at why this is such a big deal and what it has to do with support classes.

Every two minutes, 25 percent pace for 20 seconds. What sounds like a simple external cooldown causes a lot of discussion, especially among raiders. Only Warlocks that got Soul of Power were at the top of the DpS meter in Mausoleum of the First (Season 3). If you were looking for a log without PI on a demonologist on Warcraftlogs, you had to scroll down a few pages. The buff has become essential for some classes, most notably the witcher. All classes with a kind of “ramp” (preparation time that depends on how much damage comes around at the end) are practically dependent on PI.

The life of a person with PI

WoW: Believe me, you don’t want a pure supporter class in World of Warcraft (3)

Source: Blizzard



This makes the priest a popular class in raids. But for the priest, the issue of PI is often a nuisance, especially in random raids. The chat window usually looks like this shortly after the start of the raid:

“Lol the Priest casts PI on himself and is only 5th in Damage.”
“Why actually gets [Klasse, die angeblich mehr Nutzen aus PI zieht] not PI?”
“Can you give me PI from 30 seconds in combat?”
“Can you give me PI maybe five seconds later?”
“Ey sorry, we’re playing the phase so fast now, can you give me PI maybe after 20 seconds?”
“You gave me PI too early.”
“bro, [PI-Ziel] has latency, give me PI instead.”
“Can I get PI for 500 gold?^^”

An ability as an ongoing theme

WoW: Believe me, you don’t want a pure supporter class in World of Warcraft (2)

Source: Blizzard



PI is hotly debated in forums and on social media. Soul of power is such a big topic in the raid community that game director Ion Hazzikostas had to justify the whereabouts of the priest ability in several interviews about Dragonflight. In a group interview in mid-July, he described in 23 ornate sentences that players should just deal with the ability as they want and nothing will be changed about it.

From time to time, articles about the Soul of Power appear on WoWHead with titles like “Power Infusion: Community Frustrations, Concerns and Possible Solutions“. Frustrating, controversial and searching for possible solutions. Guys, we’re not talking about broken features destroying an expansion. This is about a puny buff. One!

Meanwhile, a poll is taking place on Warcraftlogs asking users to vote on how to proceed with Power Soul. An additional column was created for PI to show how many external cooldowns a class received in the respective fight. There are five options to vote on: 1. I don’t care. 2. Completely bans PI from the rankings 3. Still shows the column with external cooldowns. 4. Blocks logs of players who get PI too often and 5. Logs with and without PI.

Do you really want to play supporter?

With all the discussions about the power soul, you have to ask yourself whether you really want to play a pure supporter class in WoW when this simple spell already brings so many toxic moments with it. Again, we’re only talking about ONE ability here, which isn’t mega-overpowered either. And now imagine you play a pure support class with ten(!) support abilities. All ten skills are good, all suitable for different situations. But now think about how the whisper chat window explodes on just ONE ability like PI. Blessed is the one who really brings his gold support skills to the player.

I’ve also wished for a pure supporter class more often in the past, but after the return of PI in Shadowlands and the ongoing discussions for Dragonflight, I’m not so sure anymore. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t take away the joy of the Rufer. His support skills largely affect the entire group. Questions about private flights with the Let’s Fly ability will still annoy the caller in Dragonflight. But if you get on your nerves too often, you’ll just be thrown over the next cliff.