BATTLE-MAGE
[Melee caster]
1.Introduction
Battle-mages (or Warmages, as they are called in the Horde) are arcane spellcasters who accompany soldiers into the heart of battle. The generations of warfare on Azeroth have given warmages time to hone useful spells into simple and secret rituals, called "battlemagics", which are passed from warmage to another. Battle-mages can wear Plate armour, 1-handed weapons and off-hand items.
Warmages combine quick, short-ranged spells with powerfull melee attacks to drown their opponents in damage. Unlike Mages, Battle-Mages sacrifice much of their utility, like portal creation, food conjuring, polymorph and buffs, for survivability and self-dependance.
In addition to their mana, while using their auto-attacks they gain Battle Trance, wich decreases casting time (to the point of making the otherwise short-cast spells an auto-cast), but increaces melee damage of further melee attacks. Battle trance decreases if you use spells.
2. Specializations
Fire[Damage]
Battle-mages specializing in fire focus on melee ranged AoE spells (frontal cone spells like warrior's shockwave and cleaving-like spells like Warrior's...Cleave, you guessed it) In adittion to self-buffing for short amounts of time, improving haste
Spells:
Boiling Ground: Turns the ground in front of the battle-mage into LAVA, Anyone standing in it gradualy start taking damage (slowly at first, then increasing more and more) In adition they are slowed while they are in the fire.
Flaming Strike: Strikes the target (and up to other 2 targets, if present) with a fiery sword, dealing fire damage and leaving them with a short DoT
Fiery Breath: Breathes a wave of fire into the opponent's faces in a short frontal cone, dealing fire damage and reducing their hit chance for a short amount of time.
Flaming blood: Connecting damaging attacks have a chance to increace your haste
Enchancement[Damage]
Enchancement Battle-mages focus on single-target Damage dealing. They can conjure a sister-blade, wich is a copy of their own, to float around them and help them in combat, copying all their attacks at a slight reduced damage. They can also summon up to 3 more phantom blades as the fight continues. Theese unpredictable spellwarriors can charge their blade(s) with powers of arcane, frost and fire, and alternating between the three is key to increase damage dealt (by using for example a fire attack, a frost attack afterwards has increaced damage)
Spells:
Summon Sister-blade: Summons a sister-blade akin to their own, wich copies your attacks at reduced damage. Permament minion, can't be killed or stunned. (talents can allow it to block incoming attacks aswell while you are stunned)
Summon Spellblade: Summons a Spellblade (up to 3) wich lasts up to X seconds, wich fights your enemy(or enemies). Theese swords don't copy your attacks and do only melee damage (Talents allow them to do fire+DoT, Frost+slow chance, or arcane, wich increaces speed of attacks)
(this ability is cast, and is used to sink Battle Trance, since Enchancement BM dosen't have lots of cast spells and focuses on strikes with swords)
Sacrifice Spellblade: Collapses a spellblade, causing an explosion of arcane around you, dealing AoE damage.
Arcane Combat [Tank]
Battle-Mages, practitioners of Arcane combat, are able to create an arcane shield, wich they can carry (glyphs can change it's appearance, and it's armor value is determined dependend on how much intellect you have) and use spells to reduce incoming damage and shield them from enemies. They are also able to toy with the time around them, reducing enemies' haste and increasing their own.
Example spells:
Time-zone: Enemies around you are slowed, reducing haste, movement speed, and casting speed. You, in turn, have them increaced.
Arcane Stomp: Stomp the ground with your foot, causing a weak arcane explosion, dealing low amount of damage and causing some AoE aggro.
Hypnotizing Command: A basic taunt.
Ricochet: Causes attacks to ricochet off you, hitting a random target around you (friend or foe) For a reduced damage.
3.Races
Alliance
Human
Night elf (?) (Don't know if they would be cool with that, they are still not used to having mages, even)
High elf (If they ever come out for Alliance)
Horde
Blood elf
Undead
Ogre (if they ever come out for Horde)
(Other races may be possible, so it's not set in stone, that is just my vision of the things)
4.Acquisition
I'm not really sure about that really, is that a normal class, starting from level one, is it a hero class, starting from level 40 ( a suitable level for a starting battle-mage, IMO),
Or are Battle-mages acquired by having a level 40 (or higher) normal mage, wich is then allowed to go on an epic questline to become a Battle-mage? I can't really know, but this would be cool. (would require all races that can be mages to be able to be Battle-mages tough, otherwise it wouldn't be fair)