I loathe whatever game it was that created Bards as an adventurer type.
I really hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those things that I found ridiculous and thought people only "wanted" in a sarcastic way and then Blizzard actually ended up doing it, like the Pandaren race and drunken monk tanking.
If you want a good design for Bard I would suggest trying out the bard class in FFXI. You only realised how awesome a bard was when they left your group and suddenly you did everything slower. The bards had spells that were aoe based and they majored in buffs with a minor in buff/cc. A good bard would have the group stand in locations so he could give everyone buffs that were good for them without cross buffing the wrong class even though all his songs had a large aoe effect. So casters at ranged getting mp regen songs, melee dps behind the target getting haste and accuracy buffs and tanks getting defence and accuracy buffs in front of the mob. The best bards took a subjob of Ninja because a ninja could put up illusions that made them temporarily invulnerable for 3-6 attacks and they would go pull a mob for the group to fight then go pull another mob and put it on ice with lullabye sleep spells until the rest of the party put the first mob down, all the while keeping buffs/debuffs up and going to get another mob. This allowed groups to chain enemies and get greater exp buffs since chains were decided by how quickly you could move to the next mob without downtime. Under a Bard/ninja you could chain infinately and increase exp gain exponentially. Mind you in FFXI there was no way to gain levels through questing, the only way was to group up and chain mob after mob after mob for hours on end so quickly chaining mobs was essential to leveling up and Bard was the only job in the game that could do it. I was once invited to a stranger group before I had fully logged in.
Meh drop the "R" from bard and it becomes clear what this idea is.
I wouldn't mind bringing back this sort of element to WoW, where you would sorely miss a certain type of class for the augmentation they brought to your group that was most noticeable when they were gone. "Man, I wish I had a Bard right now."
That being said, although I don't revile the idea of a bard class, I'd rather see some others first. (Perhaps a ranged plate wearer.)
At least it isn't Demon Hunter ver.1,238,456,984 the "ultra-cool Illidan is BAWS!" edition.
I'd actually like to try a toon like this, a truly dedicated support class. Not sure if it would be truly viable, but still a neat idea.
That would be Dungeons and Dragons.
Last edited by Urti; 2013-01-18 at 07:27 PM.
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I'm not against any class being added to the game, if I don't like it I won't play it but I won't complain if someone else wants to. I don't like playing pandaren so I don't play them but I don't bad mouth everyone who does.
Continue imagining the creation of as many classes as you wish but understand that what ever you post would never be used by wow for legal reasons, just like how record companies won't allow any employee (talent seeker right down to janitor) to accept a recorded song from someone unsolicited.
---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 07:52 PM ----------
Well FFXI is a different beast. Instead of doing quests solo to level you -have- to kill trash in a group for hours upon hours to level once. So you would repetetively kill 1 turnip man at a time for 3 hours and level, then kill a turnip man or a goblin for 3 hours to level again, then a goblin for 3 hours to level before moving to another zone to rinse and repeat.
In that combat focused enviroment it was easy to tell if someone was above or below average at their role, team co-ordination and tactics had much more dire consequences and group dynamics would change completely based on what classes were in the group. In wow you pretty much play the same no matter what other class is in the group. For example if a warrior was in a group with a paladin and a ranger he could focus on bringing the damage, if he was with a paladin and a thief he would focus on off tanking the first few seconds of the fight so the theif could backstab all the aggro onto the paladin so the dps could completely unload without worrying about the paladin keeping hate. If he was with a ninja instead of a paladin the warrior would off tank when the ninja's shadow illusions were down using his own shadow illusions (from ninja subjob) until the ninja could get his shadow illusions back up making it so no one took any damage during the fight.
In this way it was noticable that a bard made the group so effective that they were missed when they were gone. In wow it really does not matter what your party is composed of as long as everyone knows what they are supposed to do.
No offense to the work that was done, but it is non-sense. It would be different if Bard's existed anywhere else in the warcraft universe. Everything that comes into WoW (character and lore-wise) is loosely based on another warcraft product. This class is already roughly represented by a Priest / Monk with a guitar. Doesn't fit in WoW.
---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 01:14 PM ----------
Pandaren Monks already existed in another Warcraft product and were simply enhanced for play in WoW. It was WC2 or WC3 that first brought us the Panda Monk, which is what prompted the idea for the store pet long before the expansion.
To be honest I did not look into the tables. I read your original post and thats about as far as I could get as you tend to be unnecesarily long winded about minute abilities as if you were coding the class yourself rather than giving an over all explanation of the class in a succinct fashion. Your spec names are wholly unprenouncable and I couldn't tell you what any of the names actually mean in a real world setting with the exception of minstrel. I am not at all excited to tell anyone that I play a Terpsichorean.
Now FFXI also has a Dancer class, which is mostly what you must of meant by Terpsichorean.
Sometimes brevity in explanation is better than getting indepth as you can convey your intended function as opposed to the reader glancing over it and ignoring the meat of your meal because its just too much to take in. My 3 dimensional art professor once told me function before form. I was to make a paper tower out of a single continuous sheet of cardstock (like a business card) that could hold up a brick while wieghing the least possible. So I made a form that he had never in 20 years seen that should of held up 5 bricks but I had carved too many intricate shapes in the paper to make it artistic and it failed to do what its form was designed to do, hold up a single brick. So function before form.
If I were to describe a Demonology warlock I would say, "The warlock fills his resource bar by casting dots and damage spells until he can shift into demon form and expend his resource bar casting stronger faster attacks. Each spell rewards the warlock with varying amount of resource and each critical hit allows them to cast their hardest hitting spell quicker and with less mana making crits important for filling the resource bar as well as haste."
Last edited by DeadmanWalking; 2013-01-18 at 08:42 PM.
I will take this as a good job sort of compliment =P. But yh joking aside, I know this is a fruitless exercise for the time being, but that's why I have a resume sent to Blizzard with all my class creations so far. One can always dream =S
---------- Post added 2013-01-19 at 03:03 PM ----------
if everything had to be approved by the WC rts game then we wouldn't have draeneis nor worgens. And there are Bard npcs in wow already.
Translation: "I'll cover you, with this song that goes something like this..."
Haven't fully read it yet, but one thing I'd for sure change is it wouldn't be a Hero Class.
For me, Hero should be reserved for those classes with a reason to start higher level. Like the DK was an undead champion, or a Demon Hunter would have had prior training (possibly under Illidan himself). A bard, much like a Monk, can easilly start at level 1.
FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)