Battle-mage Class concept.

[Deleted]

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)

[roflwaffle]

[B][COLOR="#000000"]
Ricochet: Causes attacks to ricochet off you, hitting a random target around you (friend or foe) For a reduced damage.

um no.
other than that, half decent.

---------- Post added 2013-04-12 at 11:45 AM ----------

[B][COLOR="#000000"]
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)

Draenei would make more sense than NE

[Deleted]

um no.
other than that, half decent.

---------- Post added 2013-04-12 at 11:45 AM ----------



Draenei would make more sense than NE

Draenei are a fine race for that aswell, yea. Muscular, yet intelligent.

[Melorandor]

um no.
other than that, half decent.

---------- Post added 2013-04-12 at 11:45 AM ----------



Draenei would make more sense than NE

Night Elves were one of the first races to be Mages on Azeroth.

[Deleted]

Night Elves were one of the first races to be Mages on Azeroth.

Yea, but right now they don't really like mages...

[SherbertLand]

Which niche do they fill? They seem to be exactly like mages, but with the ability to tank.

[Deleted]

Which niche do they fill? They seem to be exactly like mages, but with the ability to tank.

Well not really. The only similarity to a mage is in fact, the name. The diffrence is that all their spells are melee or close to melee ranged (making them compelled to get close to the enemy to do any damage at all), are instant cast or close to instant cast. Plus the fact that they wear plate armor and the fact that they cant polymorph, conjure food, or teleport anywhere.

[Zinjan]

Sounds a lot like an enhancement shaman, but i'd welcome the gap filler thats left between shaman and paladins in melee

[SherbertLand]

Well not really. The only similarity to a mage is in fact, the name. The diffrence is that all their spells are melee or close to melee ranged (making them compelled to get close to the enemy to do any damage at all), are instant cast or close to instant cast. Plus the fact that they wear plate armor and the fact that they cant polymorph, conjure food, or teleport anywhere.

They just seem like gimped mages. What do they bring to a group that's unqiue or even necessary?

[Deleted]

Sounds a lot like an enhancement shaman, but i'd welcome the gap filler thats left between shaman and paladins in melee

Actually enchancement shammies and mages are meant to look alike. Shows that using diffrent schools of magic for the same purpose ends up with a similar result.
(kinda like Resto shammies and Druids)

---------- Post added 2013-04-12 at 07:44 PM ----------

They just seem like gimped mages. What do they bring to a group that's unqiue or even necessary?

The fact that the game kinda lacks a melee caster makes it unique. Ret paladins don't really cast anything except flash of light and Enchancement Shaman is just one out of three specs for a shaman. What uniqueness they do bring to a group? I don't actually know. It's just a concept, maybe they have some sort of nice buffs or spells that make them unique?

[Gracos]

There's one glaring problem: you're adding another plate class to an existing three, when in fact the only armor type that doesn't have three classes using it is Mail. It also sounds like it'd play too much like Enhancement. A melee class that uses spells? Check. I think something like this would work much better as a new Mage spec than a new class altogether.

[Spichora]

Ummm I like Idea of Battle mage but not like a New class. What you have said makes me feel that you have taken certain spells from all classes and just little bit hanged them. Battle trance is like Enchantment shaman buff. Fire battle mage has some spells of paladin and fire mage. Enchantment shaman is like GW2 class (i cant remember name). And Blood DK weapon summoning spell.

Hm.. and one more question. You said they are using arcane magic for battle. And then you said Fire battle mage. Doesnt these contradict?

I like Battle mage as 4rth mage spec that would be melee spec using powerful arcane magic in short distance. Using arcane to protect themselves and transfer damage back to attacker or gather incoming damage and burst damage of its skills.

[Deleted]

There's one glaring problem: you're adding another plate class to an existing three, when in fact the only armor type that doesn't have three classes using it is Mail. It also sounds like it'd play too much like Enhancement. A melee class that uses spells? Check. I think something like this would work much better as a new Mage spec than a new class altogether.

Is the armor class really a problem? Who really cares if there are more classes with one armor type than annother?

[klaps_05]

take the jedi sentinel from swtor, put it in wow, presto battle mage. where do i sign up

[Gracos]

Who really cares if there are more classes with one armor type than annother?

The people who play those classes. No one wants too much competition for their gear. Blizzard's already shown a trend of adding classes with an armor type that isn't too bloated already. We've always had three cloth wearers, then we got a third plate wearer, and now a third leather wearer, the only armor type left without three classes using it is Mail. It's a very good bet that that's where Blizzard's going next.

[Deleted]

The people who play those classes. No one wants too much competition for their gear. Blizzard's already shown a trend of adding classes with an armor type that isn't too bloated already. We've always had three cloth wearers, then we got a third plate wearer, and now a third leather wearer, the only armor type left without three classes using it is Mail. It's a very good bet that that's where Blizzard's going next.

That could be mitigated by increasing the drop rate of plate items, for example, if there are much plate users.
Helps that mages use exclusively Int Plate, in line with paladins, while Warriors and DK's use Str Plate.

[scoobysnacks]

The people who play those classes. No one wants too much competition for their gear. Blizzard's already shown a trend of adding classes with an armor type that isn't too bloated already. We've always had three cloth wearers, then we got a third plate wearer, and now a third leather wearer, the only armor type left without three classes using it is Mail. It's a very good bet that that's where Blizzard's going next.

I agree, although I would point out that there is only one spec (holy) that uses caster plate, compared to the two specs (ele and resto) that use caster mail.

I do quite like the idea of a battlemage, it would certainly be an interesting addition to the game.

[therealbowser]

I have to say, out of all the new potential classes I'd like to see, a class like this would likely be dead last. I've heard it suggested a lot, and I've never seen a version of it that I would have actually liked, let alone would play (and that's saying a lot, I am an altaholic).

I want classes with actual story behind them, and fairly unique in terms of theme. "Uses magic and melee attacks" or "Melee Mage" really isn't. I don't mean this disrespectfully though I am sure it will come off that way. I am not normally against suggestions, but in this case I am.

I won't give my own preferred classes in this thread as I'm sure I've been offensive enough by disagreeing with this. It's a well written suggestion, I just really don't like the concept. There are just so many more interesting ideas to draw from than this.

[Deleted]

I have to say, out of all the new potential classes I'd like to see, a class like this would likely be dead last. I've heard it suggested a lot, and I've never seen a version of it that I would have actually liked, let alone would play (and that's saying a lot, I am an altaholic).

I want classes with actual story behind them, and fairly unique in terms of theme. "Uses magic and melee attacks" or "Melee Mage" really isn't. I don't mean this disrespectfully though I am sure it will come off that way. I am not normally against suggestions, but in this case I am.

I won't give my own preferred classes in this thread as I'm sure I've been offensive enough by disagreeing with this. It's a well written suggestion, I just really don't like the concept. There are just so many more interesting ideas to draw from than this.

Indeed, they might not have an interesting story, but then again, they might. Secret orders of mages, this kinds of stuff. Blizz are good with stories (often)
As to more interesting ideas, ofcourse they are. Yet, my imagination cant derive a good image of a demon hunter class (simply cause I imagine it as a Rogue-Demonology warlock mix, minus the pets but with lots of metamorphosis) or a dark ranger one, without turning the latter into a glorified hunter (both really nice ideas, by the way)


I just stick to the simple things.

[bionics]

um no.
other than that, half decent.[COLOR="red"]

Reminds me of when you make an opposing Pokemon confused:

"Enemy Snorlax is confused! It hurt itself in its confusion!"

Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!