So… Tinkers

[Teriz]

I read them, I'm simply not obligated to addressing them in the way you want.

"Blizzard can make a Bard class out of nothing" directly addresses your argument that a class needs to be based on pre-existing patterns, class formulas or characters. Every rebuttal you've made has been repeating that same bogus argument from a new angle, that's it. And they're all answerable through the same statement above.

"There is no existing concept that is even comparable to ETC"
- Blizzard can make a Bard class out of nothing -

"But look at these 4 other classes from other expansions, they all came from something"
- and Blizzard can make a Bard class out of nothing -

"But we can see that every class was based on an existing named character"
- and Blizzard can make a Bard class out of nothing -

See: The Pudding Class

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OK Mr demon hubter will never be playable
Tinker is next! Oh no its a dragon! Oh no its evoker!

Evoker and Dragon are the same thing.

How should we believe you more over anyone else on this forum?

I’m bringing facts. Everyone else is bringing feelings.

[Triceron]

See: The Pudding Class

But but but... Blizzard didn't seed any Pudding abilities into WoW, and there's no pre-existing Pudding concepts, and no WC3 Pudding Hero and.....

:P

[Teriz]

But but but... Blizzard didn't seed any Pudding abilities into WoW, and there's no pre-existing Pudding concepts, and no WC3 Pudding Hero and.....

:P

Well according to you Blizzard will bring out whatever class they want regardless of how little it has to do with the game, so none of that matters.

Thus per your argument, a Pudding Class is a totally viable class concept.

[Triceron]

Well according to you Blizzard will bring out whatever class they want regardless of how little it has to do with the game, so none of that matters.

It's about time you realized the futility of your arguments.

They don't matter. None of your arguments matter. Because Blizzard literally can create anything they want, out of nothing.

[Teriz]

It's about time you realized the futility of your arguments.

They don't matter. None of your arguments matter. Because Blizzard literally can create anything they want, out of nothing.

It matters to Blizzard, which is why every single expansion class follows the same general criteria.

However, I know that fact flies right over your head, so there’s no point in continuing this conversation.

[Triceron]

It matters to Blizzard, which is why every single expansion class follows the same general criteria.

And where they run into a concept they want to explore that doesn't follow that same criteria, they will create it out of nothing. And we've seen example of this as well, for more than just classes.

They literally created a new race just to allow Evoker to be playable. Evokers don't even follow the criteria of being playable by existing races.

There’s no point in continuing this conversation.

Mutually agreed.

[8bithamster]

See: The Pudding Class

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Evoker and Dragon are the same thing.



I’m bringing facts. Everyone else is bringing feelings.

Facts like

Demon Hunter wil never be playable?
Tinkers are 100% the next class?

What are the facts exactly?

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It matters to Blizzard, which is why every single expansion class follows the same general criteria.

However, I know that fact flies right over your head, so there’s no point in continuing this conversation.

Criteria you were wrong about? Every single time?

And before you come screeching in "OMG I WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVOKER!".. after the leak was pretty much accepted as true. You knew exactly the same as everyone else.

[Teriz]

Facts like

Demon Hunter wil never be playable?
Tinkers are 100% the next class?

What are the facts exactly?

The fact that I made those arguments 7 years ago.

Got anything from this decade?

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Criteria you were wrong about? Every single time?

And before you come screeching in "OMG I WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVOKER!".. after the leak was pretty much accepted as true. You knew exactly the same as everyone else.

I made the dragon class threads before the leak. One thread was made a full 3 years before the announcement of DF.

Try to keep up.

[8bithamster]

The fact that I made those arguments 7 years ago.

Got anything from this decade?

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I made the dragon class threads before the leak. One thread was made a full 3 years before the announcement of DF.

Try to keep up.

Tinker 7 years ago? You were shouting it would be tinker until you decided to go evoker after the leak.. Yea, and I have to keep up?

[Teriz]

Tinker 7 years ago? You were shouting it would be tinker until you decided to go evoker after the leak.. Yea, and I have to keep up?

The Evoker leak happened in 2019?

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...pt-2019-(long)

[8bithamster]

The Evoker leak happened in 2019?

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...pt-2019-(long)

dragonsworn =/= evoker..

Completely different concepts.. that's your own logic.

[Teriz]

dragonsworn =/= evoker..

Completely different concepts.. that's your own logic.

Both are based on WoW dragon heroes.
Both are artificial dragons created by black dragons.
Both are dragons that can use all 5 dragonflights.
Both are a race/class.
Both have the player changing into a mortal and into a dragon.
Both have the player doing draconic stuff in dragon form.

Completely different eh?

However, the point you missed is that I was considering other class options LONG before the Evoker leak.

[8bithamster]

Both are based on WoW dragon heroes.
Both are artificial dragons created by black dragons.
Both are dragons that can use all 5 dragonflights.
Both are a race/class.
Both have the player changing into a mortal and into a dragon.
Both have the player doing draconic stuff in dragon form.

Completely different eh?

However, the point you missed is that I was considering other class options LONG before the Evoker leak.

Yea I'm done.. you are so convinced you are absolutely flawless you are to blind to see that even you are wrong sometimes. This has happened thread after thread with you derailing it with your headcanon. There is a reason your name is always mentioned when Tinkers pop up, and trust me. It's not because people take you seriously.

[Teriz]

Yea I'm done.. you are so convinced you are absolutely flawless you are to blind to see that even you are wrong sometimes. This has happened thread after thread with you derailing it with your headcanon. There is a reason your name is always mentioned when Tinkers pop up, and trust me. It's not because people take you seriously.

1. Accuses me of only caring about a dragon class after the class is leaked.

2. I show him thread of me advocating for a dragon-class three years before class leak.

3. Still accuses me of being wrong.

Okay…

[Mecheon]

See: The Pudding Class

Having played a ton of D&D and FFXIV, pudding is a type of ooze

Oozes and Slimes are tied to Forsaken apothecaries, alongside just, alchemy in general

Apothocary/Chemist confirmed as new class

[AudibleEscalation]

Having taken a 3+ years break from this forum, it's funny to come back and see there's still a 20 page threads about Tinkers with the same people who were posting same threads 10+ years ago.

I'm a bit afraid to think what happens if Blizzard ever actually makes the class.

[bloodmoth13]

I think you make some great points here, and with a little nudging you could come up with a solid system for hybrids to work it out. To be honest, this merely sounds like a shift towards other MMOs that don't have the Holy Trinity. In many of those games that I've played (Guild Wars 2, Phantasy Star Online 2) everyone has defensive abilities, self sustains, and and raid-wide support abilities.

Thats not the goal, i dont want all players to be completely self sufficient (quite the opposite), only for players to be able to contribute a niche utility to give them a 'sub role'
In guild wars every player gets a single skill dedicated to sustain and they can select utility or damage from their other abilities, i definitely dont want every spec to have self sustain or trade damage for utility that goes entirely against my goals. I want dps specs to be able to provide healing OR crowd control OR debuffs OR movement buffs OR offtanking etc etc. No spec will do it all and if they can do it all it will come with higher mana costs and dps costs.

My idea is that you can spec deep into one support profile that lets you support cheaply and without cost to dps but you trade out other utility, this will be what the class tree is for. A paladin tree for example could focus on either healing, stuns or auras. all utility will have high mana costs innately an you need to select what utility skills you want immediately.
Utility skills baseline with have high mana costs, decent cooldowns, normal cast times, CC will break on damage and generally not be reliable enough to consider a subrole.
After specialization skills will be more efficient, shorter cooldowns (more limited by mana usage than cooldown, or maybe more charges etc), instant casts or able to cast a spell while casting filler spells (like casting healing surge while casting lightning bolt or shadow mend while casting mind flay), CC wont break on damage and you will be able to use these skills without impeding on your dps (perhaps some rotational abilities will gain utility effects)

A big goal is to counter homogenization in a meaningful way that wont impede on performance. while also being able to introduce familiar gameplay
roles like 'support' without forcing it as a main role, and to create space for that niche all dps specs would need some compensation, which could be boosting the heck out of the support they already offer.
Tuning the necessity of that utility is entirely separate from tuning dps necessity, utility need comes from incoming damage potential, not healthpools. normal versions of content may not necessitate this extra utility but higher levels like M+ or hard modes would be tuned to need more utility.

The problem I see is that it still conflicts with the way the game is currently designed, and how people gauge their performance strictly on performing DPS and trying to out-compete others or maintain their own personal threshold of DPS. Any time spent not DPSing affects DPS performance. In the other games I mentioned above, the raids and encounters aren't tuned to DPS performance, they are tuned to co-operatively taking down the boss and everyone contributes DPS and support equally. Bosses attack random targets, so helping others is crucial because at any moment that could also be you. The only tradeoff to helping others is less DPS, and that's usually not a problem in these games since they aren't built with internal DPS-thresholds that gate progression. The problem with merely allowing DPS to perform DPS while casting other utility abilities is 'awareness'. Anyone who is focused on DPS will tunnel vision on DPS. That is why 'standing in fire' is such a big problem; the user doesn't take the rest of their environment into account. The other games I mention prioritize survival over DPS. Boss fights are merely battles of attrition where as long as you survive long enough, you can beat the encounter no matter how much or little DPS you do. The benefit of more DPS is merely clearing the encounter faster, which may overall help survival through having a shorter fight.

So WoW is very different from those games (mostly speaking of GWII). DPS rotations are far more detailed and optimizing dps output is a huge part of chasing success. This is what wow is, its not going to change and i think players really enjoy optimizing their dps performance, its one of the 'hooks' of this game. Being able to maximize dps WHILE ensuring survival is one of the big skill hurdles this game has. high end content has players not only performing top dps they need to navigate danger too. This is usually just 'stand out of bad' and 'solve goofy puzzle', but id like to shift that to some group utility. Personally i enjoy stunning and controlling enemies when doing dungeons but its generally at the cost of dps which just makes you feel bad doing it.

If we merely tack on extra utility to a DPS who is intentionally tunnel visioning to maintain their DPS, it causes some issues. How then do they guage their support performance?

they dont need to, support performance is measured on whether players are alive, thats the metric GWII uses, its if you beat the fight. Utility isnt really measurable on quantity but more on quality.

Some of the roles i was thinking of were
'off healer' dps that can supply supplemental healing during burst phases or general sustain
'controller' dps that can stun and interrupt enemies, lock foes from using abilities or attacking
'bruiser' dps that can off tank a limited number of foes and help manage crowds and keep enemies off allies (I have big ideas on a threat rework that would accomodate this but its beyond the scope of this convo)
'debuffer' dps that debuffs foes damage output, slowing attacks and mitigating some of the damage they deal
'enabler' support that improves allies movement
'buffer' provides shields and damage mitigation buffs to allies.

None of these roles affect dps and there should be support that can fit every dps class in the game.
Not everyone needs off heals, damage mitigation can come in the form of ice mages offering ice shields to allies or fire mages blinding foes with smoke or rogues slowing foes attacks with poisons or demonhunters leaving a trail of wind behind that boosts allies movement speed to catch up or hunters and warlocks tanking extra adds with their pets etc.
DPS players will only have one of these support roles while healers and tanks will have more than one.

Over the games lifespan blizz has stomped on utility outliers to stop certain classes becoming mandatory, my idea is to establish balanceable utility for dps so that every spec can bring something to the party that isnt some dps warping skill or a contrived group buff.

I cant reply to the rest of it now but its an interesting discussion.

[Triceron]

they dont need to, support performance is measured on whether players are alive, thats the metric GWII uses, its if you beat the fight. Utility isnt really measurable on quantity but more on quality.

Some of the roles i was thinking of were
'off healer' dps that can supply supplemental healing during burst phases or general sustain
'controller' dps that can stun and interrupt enemies, lock foes from using abilities or attacking
'bruiser' dps that can off tank a limited number of foes and help manage crowds and keep enemies off allies (I have big ideas on a threat rework that would accomodate this but its beyond the scope of this convo)
'debuffer' dps that debuffs foes damage output, slowing attacks and mitigating some of the damage they deal
'enabler' support that improves allies movement
'buffer' provides shields and damage mitigation buffs to allies.

None of these roles affect dps and there should be support that can fit every dps class in the game.
Not everyone needs off heals, damage mitigation can come in the form of ice mages offering ice shields to allies or fire mages blinding foes with smoke or rogues slowing foes attacks with poisons or demonhunters leaving a trail of wind behind that boosts allies movement speed to catch up or hunters and warlocks tanking extra adds with their pets etc.
DPS players will only have one of these support roles while healers and tanks will have more than one.

Over the games lifespan blizz has stomped on utility outliers to stop certain classes becoming mandatory, my idea is to establish balanceable utility for dps so that every spec can bring something to the party that isnt some dps warping skill or a contrived group buff.

I cant reply to the rest of it now but its an interesting discussion.

To be honest, not quite sure how that would be different than what we already had at various points in WoW. I'm not sure how much current WoW raiding is dependent on stacking buffs and debuffs and if it is different than the times when I used to raid, but it seems like we already have those abilities and sub-roles without having actual names attached to them, and more being an expectation of what DPS brings to the table.

Cata is probably what I remember the most for debuffs, and Rogues could Expose Armor and had Honor Amongst Thieves, Feral Druids provided Mangle debuff. That makes em Debuffers. And applying these debuffs contributed to the 'Bring the Class' complaints.

Warriors had Gladiator Stance and Feral Druids had some Guardian talents to allow them to offtank. It was very fight/encounter specific, so it was more expected X and Y classes had to swap spec or build to off tank for these fights. It wasn't very dynamic at all, and just felt like you're being forced to play a role you didn't sign up for just because your class was one of the few that could off-tank.

Buffers and Offhealers also existed with Shadow Priest and the way their spells worked. Fistweaving and Disc were also very interesting 'Offhealers', but they were never truly considered DPS and their auto-heals were hard to balance around other Healers. I really liked the idea but I don't know if Blizzard could truly make it work where you could have a full DPS that had a meaningful off-heal role that wasn't just 'spill auto-heals around and waste the actual Healer's time and mana'. Even Ret Paladins have procs for free heals, and they don't even bother wasting the GCD to heal a random ally because it's literally not their job and not worth them dividing their focus away from DPS.

I'm not sure how you would define Controller any differently than what we already have with 'anyone with an interrupt' participating in a rotation/interrupt order.

The sad fact is most DPS don't care to do this even though they have the abilities because they're tunneling on self performance and doing their rotations. Or else the debuffs and off-healing are built into their kits so they don't think twice about doing it, while people complain about "Bring the Class" because these abilities are literally built in and not available to everyone. It's kinda hard to imagine WoW going back to this, even if it was probably something I would prefer to a homogenized WoW where everyone does everything equally. I liked 'Bring the Class' and felt like they should have always kept every class unique.

[bloodmoth13]

To be honest, not quite sure how that would be different than what we already had at various points in WoW. I'm not sure how much current WoW raiding is dependent on stacking buffs and debuffs and if it is different than the times when I used to raid, but it seems like we already have those abilities and sub-roles without having actual names attached to them, and more being an expectation of what DPS brings to the table.

Cata is probably what I remember the most for debuffs, and Rogues could Expose Armor and had Honor Amongst Thieves, Feral Druids provided Mangle debuff. That makes em Debuffers. And applying these debuffs contributed to the 'Bring the Class' complaints.

Warriors had Gladiator Stance and Feral Druids had some Guardian talents to allow them to offtank. It was very fight/encounter specific, so it was more expected X and Y classes had to swap spec or build to off tank for these fights. It wasn't very dynamic at all, and just felt like you're being forced to play a role you didn't sign up for just because your class was one of the few that could off-tank.

Buffers and Offhealers also existed with Shadow Priest and the way their spells worked. Fistweaving and Disc were also very interesting 'Offhealers', but they were never truly considered DPS and their auto-heals were hard to balance around other Healers. I really liked the idea but I don't know if Blizzard could truly make it work where you could have a full DPS that had a meaningful off-heal role that wasn't just 'spill auto-heals around and waste the actual Healer's time and mana'. Even Ret Paladins have procs for free heals, and they don't even bother wasting the GCD to heal a random ally because it's literally not their job and not worth them dividing their focus away from DPS.

I'm not sure how you would define Controller any differently than what we already have with 'anyone with an interrupt' participating in a rotation/interrupt order.

The sad fact is most DPS don't care to do this even though they have the abilities because they're tunneling on self performance and doing their rotations. Or else the debuffs and off-healing are built into their kits so they don't think twice about doing it, while people complain about "Bring the Class" because these abilities are literally built in and not available to everyone. It's kinda hard to imagine WoW going back to this, even if it was probably something I would prefer to a homogenized WoW where everyone does everything equally. I liked 'Bring the Class' and felt like they should have always kept every class unique.

My rule is no damage altering debuffs or buffs.

Debuffs im talking about are damage reducing ones. Tanks could have shields and self damage mitigation and dps could provide a debuff on the foe that lowers their damage to compliment them for example.

I agree with 'bring the player not the class' philosophy which is why i believe utility needs to be balanced into subroles and have clusters of specs inhabiting subroles that overlap so that no single spec is so unique that one spec is required, while at the same time being able to differentiate them from 80% of the other specs and only having their utility truly comparable to others in their subrole. Its why utility is kinda trash or comes at dps cost today.

Your miles off what i want to bring to the game with my 'off tank' subrole but it requires baseline changes to threat. IMO the current threat system is garbage and id like to see threat involve more intentional choices and overpulling bring more danger. Current system the tank either has all the threat and the group has no problems or cant keep threat and the group wipes. There is nearly zero room for nuance there, its all or nothing.
I dont think tanks should ever have to fight the dps for threat or the dps should throttle their dps for the tank, that has existed in the past and it sucked, but im not satisfied with tanks holding all the threat all the time, its noninteractive and just puts 100% of the pressure on the tank. Also from a fantasy standpoint i hate the thought of one guy with a shield getting hit by 20 bad guys while barbarians, death knights and paladins stab them in the back, its ... lame.

So my idea is giving tanks instant threat on targets they are in combat with BUT capping tank threat targets to 5 and anything beyond that needs to be dealt with by the dps.

enemies would go down the list on a priority order by armor class and proximity. DPS default will hold threat on one unit only, enemies will attack the enemy its in combat with with the highest armor tier within 5 yards. Basically melee will start taking hits.

This system would make the game feel more alive, force players to play smarter and introduce necessity for much of the utility buffs i want to see added. controllers could try stunlock that one enemy, off heals could try outheal the extra damage, debuffers could cripple its damage output or bruisers could soak up any enemies the tank missed.

Bruisers would be able to hold threat on 3 enemies and their tanking capabilities wouldnt come at the cost of dps, they would be dps first and threat soakers second.

The problem today with dps tunnelling is that they arent valued for anything else they provide, trading your dps to help allies isnt your job, so my solution is to make it not cost your dps. problem solved, your utility is literally just extra, its bonus for being a great player. Utility again is balanced around the damage the enemies do not the performance of the dps so its a separate lever to tune that on.

Controller would bring stuns specifically. Id limit the power of general crowd control on non-controller specs with CDs, mana costs or dps losses and give trash more interesting archetypes like having typical berserker enemies that go berserk and deal ramping damage that a 'controller' can stun to mitigate the impact of their enrage state.

In my ideal world trash would have archetypes that match the dps subroles, id like to see berserkers with enrages that need to be stunned or assassins with reverse threat systems that specifically target the lowest threat ally in range (cloth) that needs to be taken out, or a 'corrupter' that inflicts a massive dot on allies where the dot can be removed through healing or enemies that ignore the tank and work on the next unit down.
There is a lot of potential with the gameplay there, enemies in wow are fucking boring and they could be made a lot more interesting with recognizable archetypes and tactics to counter them.

Eventually id like to see the 'holy trinity' open up a little, groups will still require tanking and healing but not necessarily tanks and healers. Id like them to be optimal but optional for things like dungeons, which is kind of the meat of wow.

[Triceron]

In my ideal world trash would have archetypes that match the dps subroles, id like to see berserkers with enrages that need to be stunned or assassins with reverse threat systems that specifically target the lowest threat ally in range (cloth) that needs to be taken out, or a 'corrupter' that inflicts a massive dot on allies where the dot can be removed through healing or enemies that ignore the tank and work on the next unit down.
There is a lot of potential with the gameplay there, enemies in wow are fucking boring and they could be made a lot more interesting with recognizable archetypes and tactics to counter them.

Eventually id like to see the 'holy trinity' open up a little, groups will still require tanking and healing but not necessarily tanks and healers. Id like them to be optimal but optional for things like dungeons, which is kind of the meat of wow.

I mean to be fair... how is this any different than the examples of conditions I provided for Support? We're just shifting the definitions to having various DPS be able to tackle certain conditions in a Rock Paper Scissors fashion, rather than dedicating a Support role for it in a specific Raid setting.

Overall it'd have to be a change that all players must adapt to rather than any of this being 'seamless' addition to the game. I think Bruisers/Offtanks would only be relevant in Raids, and even then holding aggro of more than 5 mobs is a job that's split amongst multiple Tanks. There's no real need for Offtank/Bruiser in any other setting, since dungeons rarely have situations where a Tank needs to grab more than 5 mobs that they can't handle, and in situations where it's mandatory that they can only hold 5, groups would find other ways to deal with the cap than bring an Offtank. The problem of offtanks is it's not a real role; why not just bring a formal Tank instead? And why burden Healers with having to split focus between Tank heals and DPS (offrank) heals in a dungeon or on trash when they could be dedicating heals to an actual Tank who can mitigate and hold threat better?

I mean if we're going in this direction of allowing DPS to do full damage while having other things to do, we might as well just make all Healers and all Tanks do competent DPS to raise the whole bar, and normalize the idea that if you want to 'Offtank' then you can just Tank while still providing decent (AoE) DPS to handle trash. Single target DPS would still be the realm of DPS. Then, give all Tanks a DPS 'Stance' that allows them to do decent Single Target rotation damage while trading off their survivability. Instead of having DPS take on more roles, allow Tanks and Healers to have more gameplay variety instead. Make it normalized to take more Tanks and Healers rather than shoehorn that expectation onto DPS.

Cuz the sad fact is, people play DPS so they don't have to think, so they don't aren't expected to do anything more than DPS and maybe throw out the odd interrupt or CC.