I was working on an article that would list the various potential future classes as established in lore (Demon Hunter, Tinker, etc.) but I actually think it would be better to talk about what we would want to see in a new class. The finer points, like lore and whether it would be a hero class, could come later, but let's talk about the really nitty-gritty.
Chain Mail:
Of the original nine classes, there were two classes for every armor level, with the exception of cloth, which had Mages, Priests, and Warlocks. Loot distribution is kind of an important thing for the game, and so a balance of armor types, weapon types, and primary stats should be maintained. The two added classes have helped spread the weight around, so that there are now three classes that use Leather and Plate armor.
Logically, that means that the next class should by all rights be a Mail-wearing class. At that point, all armor levels will support three classes a piece.
Group Role:
I doubt that Blizzard really wants to push any more pure-dps classes out there, especially given the fact that a new class will typically be very popular especially in its early levels, and you want these people to be able to do group content. The Death Knight could tank, and Monks could both tank and heal, meaning that in the rush to get everyone's Monk leveled up, you could do dungeons with a group of five Monks and be fine (we actually did a bit of that with Death Knights back in the pre-LFD days, which was pretty insane but fun.)
There were originally three tank classes compared to four healers (and let's not get in to how poorly-supported Bears or Prot Paladins were in Vanilla.) DKs balanced the tanks with the healers and Monks maintained that balance by filling the same niche as Paladins: Tank/Melee/Healer. I don't know that the new class would have to be all three roles (after all, Priests have two healing specs, so technically the healers still outnumber the tanks) but I have to imagine any future class is going to be a hybrid.
But the other thing to take into consideration is that they have never added any ranged dps specs with these new classes. Granted, when Vanilla shipped, there were twelve ranged specs compared to seven melee dps specs, so in fact there are still more ranged specs. (Currently ten melee specs to the same twelve ranged.) Still, it might be fun to see if there's a new way to do a ranged spec. To wit:
Weapon Choice:
I doubt we'd see a pure-ranged new class, but if we're already using mail armor (with agility as its main physical stat) one could imagine a ranged spec using ranged weapons. Currently, with the elimination of the "ranged slot," Hunters are the only class to use Bows, Crossbows, or Guns. One class has three different weapon types all to itself. While they don't poach anyone else's weapons anymore, it might be nice to find a different way to use them.
Otherwise, all weapons are used by multiple classes, with the exception of agility daggers, which are only used by Rogues (and those only by two specs.) If a new class could use both ranged weapons and agility daggers, well... that would be quite the thing.
Magic Types:
This gets more into lore, and in a post-resistance era, it's largely irrelevant, but lore-balancing is also fairly important. We can't have everyone be holy bastions of light or the game gets boring. The types of magic are often good ways to sort things out.
Currently, we have the following combinations:
Priest: Holy/Shadow (technically there's a tiny bit of Shadowfrost, but I'm not going to count that.)
Mage: Arcane/Fire/Frost
Warlock: Fire/Shadow
Druid: Nature/Arcane
Monk: Nature (and a tiny bit of Fire)
Rogue: Nature (plus a tiny bit of Shadow, but not really enough to count as a central damage source.)
Hunter: Nature (and scatterings of other forms, mostly Arcane and Fire)
Shaman: Nature/Fire/Frost
Warrior: Practically pure physical, except a tiny bit of Nature
Paladin: Holy
Death Knight: Frost/Shadow
So, breaking it down by magic types, that's:
Arcane: 3
Fire: 4
Frost: 3
Shadow: 3
Nature: 5
Holy: 2
So it strikes me that some mix of Arcane, Shadow, Holy, and Frost would be best.
Primary Stats:
Given that we're mostly locked into Mail armor, we would want this class to use either Intellect or Agility. A healer would clearly use Intellect, but if we wanted to use ranged weapons like a hunter, one would be fairly locked in to using agility. On the other hand, you could have a ranged DPS spec that uses agility while a healer could use intellect. Meanwhile, a tank or melee spec could use agility with either daggers or other agility melee weapons.
Lore:
From there, it would be up the designers and the creative team to come up with a class that fit the description. The Magic Type would be the most flexible, and could in fact just serve the choice of class, but the other things would be important to consider to make sure that the new class would fit in well to the rest of the game.
World of Warcraft: The New Class:
While I think that we have a pretty decent number of options at the moment, it's always fun and exciting to get a new class to play with. While I haven't focused on my Monk nearly as much as my Death Knight (who I am 50/50 on making my new main next expansion) I still have a lot of fun learning a new system and finding a way to be awesome at it. Can WoW support an indefinite number of classes? Possibly not, but I'd still love for them to keep making them as long as they can.
Holding Out for a Hero:
And while we're on the subject, I think that the introduction of the Death Knight was ultimately far more exciting than that of the Monk. Sure, they wanted the Monk to be available to any new players, and I get that, but the Death Knight starting experience, while it has aged a little since 2008, is still the most engrossing way to begin a new character the game has ever come out with. The cosmetic differences are also huge parts of the appeal to the Death Knight, and I think that while the Cataclysm revamp has made leveling in the Old World a lot more fun than it used to be, I think we could afford to give the next class a little boost.
No comments:
Post a Comment