4th spec would solve all class problems.

[Lochton]

10 specs were added or revamped in MoP, along with a completely new class. So, adding 10 new specs for the next expansion shouldn't be a big deal.

10 new specs is more work than reworking 10 current specs, would give double the work in the end. I can accept a new class (as I hope for Necromancer, not a demon hunter fan) but more specs isn't a solution for anything, really. Why/what should they do good off? Some of your spec ideas even just seem cosmetic, that could be solved with a glyph.

And some others wouldn't happen at all, like the "melee hunter" spec - Blizzard removed the need of melee weapons from hunts entirely, if a hunter went melee, wouldn't it just be a rogue/scout with a pet?

The warden idea could go, but it would have to demand the rogue to be (current expansion) top level to be able to perfect melee combat with spells.

Shaman tanks - they would be the specc just being there, not many enjoy being tanks. Blizzard said it before. "Adding a new tank speciality doesn't mean adding more tanks to the game".

And not fond of demon hunters - then it should be a hero class with a chance to fail at making said class, followed by a long cooldown. It's stated that it's not easy to become a Demon Hunter.

Blademaster makes an ideal sense, though would need deep work to be inplemented without looking like others.

- But all in all, they have things on higher prio that should be done. Such as models.

[Deleted]

would like to see something like that. Cant say if possible, but would love to see all classes having a heal or tank spec. Also would like to see a blademaster^^

[Geminiel]

I love your ideas, they are creative and very fitting in the game, I do imagine that blizzard has at least a 5 year plan they are working on that gets updated on a continued basis. I wish your idea wouldn't cause such a shitstorm with balancing classes. Simplifying talents was a good start to making their jobs easier I hope they can continue to make good changes to the game that benefit us and allow them to improve their productivity.

[Thimagryn]

I'd rather have existing classes be changed into Heal/Tank spec. Why any class needs 3 DPS specs is beyond me. DK's went through a similar change into Cataclysm, making 'One tank spec, 2 DPS spec'.

Players of the old specs will adjust. Frost Tanks and Blood DPSers ended up adjusting to their new playstyles. Even if they're unhappy at first, they will switch to what works best.

The specs that I see that can change could be Survival, Subtlety, Demonology and Arcane. Some of the gameplay mechanics of these could be folded back into the other DPS specs, or it could be maintained and integrated into a Hybrid Healer style of gameplay like Monk healing or Discipline Priest.

Arcane could still be a DPS spec, but if you take certain glyphs and skills you can kit it to be as potent a healing class. Have a glyph that converts % damage into healing, or turns X spell into a healing spell. Maybe they get a self-buff (Time Armor) that changes all Arcane spells to become heals.

[ZakAtack]

I'm surprised as many people voted Yes as the poll indicates. That many more specs would answer some people's wishes, sure, but balance is already a nightmare and those same people who now have that special spec that they wanted will now be making threads along the lines of "Demon Hunter is way too weak compared to Aff, needs buffs." A class in the next expansion wouldn't be unexpected as that's just how it's been going but that many more specs would really just be a bad decision if they want to try and keep things relatively balanced.

The fact that perfect balance can't be achieved isn't a reason to not aim for it, and it certainly isn't a reason to deliberately move away from it.

Edit: Also, I like how your verdicts are all basically "This would be super easy to do." I mean, really? Look at monks, still getting their specs tweaked a lot this far into the expansion. And you think all these specs would just be created like "ta-da!"?

[Deleted]

it's really scaring to see how much people prefer NOT to evolve and see wow staying like this without any evolution because they are feared of what might be happening with the balance.

IMO it can't be a valable argument.

It's dev's job to try to balance everything, but it's also dev's job to add a lot of news gameplay features

[Purple]

I was just going to say no, but then I realized you didn't put a new Priest spec in, and I decided that no wasn't strong enough.

[Talen]

The recent rise in Demon Hunter class threads have made me realize why a 4th spec would be the best option for the game moving forward. People certainly want specialized classes in WoW that emerged in WC3. Blademasters, Wardens, and Demon Hunters are very popular class ideas, but they don't have enough uniqueness to become stand alone classes. However, they do have enough uniqueness to become specs of existing classes. Even better, Blizzard could attach the names from those WC3 units to these new specs in order to excite WoW players.

I think the spec system as is needs an overhaul.
I think it largely copies and fills the same role as talents and Glyphs.
I think a good many classes have specs that simply define a style of play and, while important, there is a lot of players that swap based simply upon DPS. As a result, I think a lot of classes can't really support the three specs.

Solutions?

1: Get rid of specs.
You end up with 1 spec for each class to balance around. You use glyphs and talents to define style of play. You use Jewelcrafting and gear choices to define your ability to perform a role, but you switch between them via a stance mechanic. Warriors merge Arms, Fury and Prot into one, but switch between DPS and Tank modes via their stance system.

2: Move to a role based system
Each class simply defines certain basics; the resource system, armor type used, etc. Specs then define the role the class fills. We see this with the Monk class. Again, Glyphs, talents et al can define style of play. And you can add role choices as necessary - e.g. a rogue gains the Ranger Sub-Class.

As for the idea of a 4th spec - in theory, I'm for it. But I think the balance concerns are valid enough that its probably unlikely.

EJL

[Wazooty]

Then we'd have an expansion where 98% of every class is the new spec.

Also, some of those are severely covered by other specs. There are no shortage of blademasters in game, and they are all arms warriors to a t.

Also, some races that are perfect candidates for demon hunters (night elves, and even draenei) cannot be warlocks.

[Deleted]

Deathknight: The Necrolord. Ranged spell dps.
A master of undeath. Summons undead minions and brings devastating spells of death, frost and decay.

Warrior: The Enforcer. Ranged physical dps.
The modern soldier and upholder of law.

Mage: The Spellmender. Healer. Heals using all the schools of magic.
Rebirth of ancient magics of the Highbourne.

Priest: The Excorcist. Ranged spell dps. Using ranged weapons and holy damage.
The destroyer of evil and darkness who sheds light in the darkest of places.

Shaman: The Warden. Tank. Frost and nature spells.
Inspired by the frostwardens of the Drakkari and the indomitable strength of the earth.

Rogue: The Stalker. Ranged Physical dps.
The unseen assassin. Stalking it's victim, waiting for the perfect moment to let loose a poisoned projectile.

Paladin: The Inquisitor. Ranged spell dps.
The feared inquisitors. Judges and interogators who bring justice to the wicked.

Monk: The Red Scribe. Ranged spel dps.
The monks of the Red crane, masters of the sacred arts of caligraphy.

Hunter: The Beastmaster. Melee physical dps.
A hunter who have embraced his savagery. Fights alongside his animal companions. Instead of the old Beastmaster spec we'd get a ranger spec which abandons their animal companion for more spell based arrows.

Warlock: The Demon Hunter. Tank.
The demon hunter, who sacrifices himself to hunt the darkest of foes.

[Deleted]

Someone brought up the 12th class in regards to armor classes, that cloth, leather and plate all have three classes each whereas mail only has 2. So mail makes sense for a 12 class, yes.
But I think they kinda messed up making Monk Leather. First, the monks we see, Chen etc. could easily just be a Cloth class.
Their armor classes are a bit messed up in other regards too. Seeing how Thrall's whole storyline in recent books was about going back to the "pure" Shaman he was supposed to be, that involving dropping the heavy/plate armor and going back to just robes (=cloth), what does that make our Shamans? Also "wrong" Shamans?

Specs per armor class:

Cloth: 7 Caster DPS, 2 Heal specs.
Leather: 1 Caster DPS, 5 Melee DPS, 2 Heal, 2 Tank
Mail: 3 Ranged DPS, 1 Caster DPS, 1 Heal, 1 Melee DPS
Plate: 3 Tank, 5 Melee DPS, 1 Heal

Breakdown Total in Specs: 5 Tank, 11 Melee DPS, 12 Ranged DPS total (3 Non-Caster, 9 Caster RPS), 6 Heal

The two new classes so far had: 2 Tank, 3 Melee DPS, 1 Heal

No ranged or caster DPS so far. Going by this thew new class should be wearing Mail. Makes sense. But what specs? Do we really need another Tank spec? Yes, there's only 5 but both new classes so far had Tank specs in attempts to address the low number of Tanks. But would *another* Tank spec really fix this?

There's already plenty of flavors of Tanking, both new specs didn't really help the issue all that much and the fact is that you only *need* 1-2, 3 in rare occasions, per 10man or 25 man raids and 1 per 5man group.
You need more Healers than Tanks in all three settings, you need vastly more DPS than Healers or Tanks.

So I think *another* Tank spec doesn't make sense for a 12th class, even though the armor class would fit. So that's Heal imho and two DPS specs, preferably. A good profile would be a Melee DPS and a Ranged Non-Caster DPS spec, or two Caster DPS. I don't think you could fit two Ranged DPS, one Caster, one Non-Caster into one class, theme-wise.

Overall though I think a 12th class *itself* doesn't make sense. The Monk as the 11th class already doesn't fit into the 10man raid format. So we're back to the 4th spec idea. ^^

[Stormcall]

We have...11 classes currently. Each has 3 specs(okay, cept druids who are special snowflakes with 4). Now, if every class got a new spec(excluding druids), that's 10 new specs, or...the equivalent of 3 new classes at once? Ouch, hate to see how many hotfixes would be going out within the first day or two of something like this being added...

[Tuor]

They could certainly do that, but my belief is that Blizzard's efforts over the last two expansions to streamline stats won't allow that. Agility has been rendered worthless for plate classes, and the Wrath experiment with Spirit for mages and warlocks was reverted in Cata. Also, IIRC, shamans were a strength class back in BC, and had all their gear and abilities converted to rely on Agi (and attack power, a stat that has since been streamlined out of existence) in patch 3.0.

I didn't played BC, so i didn't knew that Enhancement Shaman gear had strenght on it back then. I do remember back in wrath their gear having both agility and intelect.

I also remember agility classes gear, such as rogues and hunters and Enhancement having AP stats back in wrath. What they did was removing those stats from gear in 4.0, not 3.0... You can still find vanilla gear with AP stats in the game... Aren' you confusing AP with ArP (armor penetration)? Anyway ArP was removed from game in 4.0 aswell.

There are only 2 main resources in the game at this moment, being one Attack Power (AP) and the other Spell Power (SP). All melee and hunters use AP, whille casters and healers use SP. Agility classes convert agility to AP, at a rate of 1:2, and its the same rate for strenght and intelect, for SP. Whille you can no longer directly gem or for it, AP is still on the game.

Shamans, at this time, get 2AP from 1 agility, and they can aswell convert strenght to AP, but only in a 1:1 ratio. My sugestion was just allow them to convert strenght in a 1:2 ratio... Its the easeast way to allow them to tank, because they could equip all current tanking gear... Being the exception plate gear.

Monks do okay without a shield. There's no reason to think Blizz can't give shamans something else creative to compensate. I wouldn't expect them to use Lightning Shield or Water Shield anyway. Make a new buff, perhaps Stone Shield, as a variation Defensive Stance/Bear Form/Righteous Fury/Blood Presence/Stance of the Sturdy Ox. Increases armor, stamina, threat, damage reduction, etc.

Monks have a bonus talent for armor when they roll tanking spec... This could aswell be implemented.

Heh. I guess that means I am expecting them to use a "shield".

Lol.

Well, I can't speak to tiers 7 or 8, but I never felt any issues with multi-target threat in T9 and 10. Frost was generally considered to be up there with paladins for AoE threat. And, as I said, it was sturdy too.

After the initial mess of Unholly DK's tanking with a pet, during ICC most DK's went 2H because they would get more threat.

[Deleted]

8 millions players billing 12 dollars a month, and 50 dollars an expansion + the incredible money mmigrations/rename/rerace/cash shop gives without almost any development effort.

So i don't really see why we talk about the amount of work it would represent, given the amount of money we give ^^

yes it would be work, but that's not a problem^^ It's not a F2P.


For the different specs, it's funny to see majority of players proposing things tend to have very close ideas ( DK necromancer, Holyranged priest, Ranged pal inquisitor, Tank chieftain shaman... and so on ). Imo this means that the 4th class is more or less already suggested in the lore and the gameplay's classes, and wouldnt be such a big cataclysm in the game.

Just imagine, 11 new gameplays to discover , experiment, pex, and lurn to play. What a fucking good new feature.

[SherbertLand]

8 millions players billing 12 dollars a month, and 50 dollars an expansion + the incredible money mmigrations/rename/rerace/cash shop gives without almost any development effort.

So i don't really see why we talk about the amount of work it would represent, given the amount of money we give ^^

yes it would be work, but that's not a problem^^ It's not a F2P.


For the different specs, it's funny to see majority of players proposing things tend to have very close ideas ( DK necromancer, Holyranged priest, Ranged pal inquisitor, Tank chieftain shaman... and so on ). Imo this means that the 4th class is more or less already suggested in the lore and the gameplay's classes, and wouldnt be such a big cataclysm in the game.

Just imagine, 11 new gameplays to discover , experiment, pex, and lurn to play. What a fucking good new feature.

With no possibility of balance? Sounds fun.

[Sansnom]

People tend to flock to builds that have the highest DPS. This is especially true for people raiding HC. How many times have people met others who criticize them for not running the optimal build with the best DPS? If you are not raiding as XXX you are doing it wrong, noob etc.

So, I am not sure how have a specialized specs really achieves anything.

[Jtree]

I didn't played BC, so i didn't knew that Enhancement Shaman gear had strenght on it back then. I do remember back in wrath their gear having both agility and intelect.

I also remember agility classes gear, such as rogues and hunters and Enhancement having AP stats back in wrath. What they did was removing those stats from gear in 4.0, not 3.0... You can still find vanilla gear with AP stats in the game... Aren' you confusing AP with ArP (armor penetration)? Anyway ArP was removed from game in 4.0 aswell.

I guess I didn't say that clearly. I meant that in 3.0 their Str gear was converted to Agi+AP, and then the AP went away sometime later as part of the stat streamlining.

Shamans, at this time, get 2AP from 1 agility, and they can aswell convert strenght to AP, but only in a 1:1 ratio. My sugestion was just allow them to convert strenght in a 1:2 ratio... Its the easeast way to allow them to tank, because they could equip all current tanking gear... Being the exception plate gear.

IIRC, Druid tanks essentially got that in bear form back in Wrath, so they could use necks and rings and cloaks with dodge on them. But I don't believe they do that anymore; a quick look over loot lists suggests that bears (and brewmasters) stick to agility gear entirely, and find other ways to use the stats found on that gear to aid their tanking. It wouldn't be difficult at all for Blizzard to do as you suggest, especially if they want go for a symmetry of 3 shield-bearing tanks and 3 without.

But I hope they would do something different for a potential shaman tank class. As I understand it, Bears and BrewMs like crit on their gear. Perhaps these potential shaman tanks could focus on haste, much like paladin tanks currently do. Assuming stat priorities don't change for the others, that could more or less create two crit tanks, two mastery tanks, and two haste tanks, which is also a sort of symmetry.

(However, I pretty much expect that tankadins will be overhauled again in the next expansion. This whole haste stacking thing seems to have surprised Blizzard, so if they've decided it's wrong for the game, that's when they'll take it away.)

[smartazjb0y]

I think 4th specs in general would be cool, but there's NO way they'll add one for every class in, all in one expansion. That's 10-11 new specs, the equivalent of about 3 new classes. Basically, that's an insane, insane amount of work. What they could do is add maybe 3 or 4 in one expansion, but then that just means that some classes are going to whine that they didn't get something new.

[Deleted]

In cata the pretty much changed every class , and in mop they gave us monks and again changed many things. Putting a few more specs wouldn't make it "even harder".

Monk=3 new specs
4th spec for every class=10 new specs

This basicly means they have to put in the same amount of work as making 3 new classes.

I don't know about you but from the way I see it, Blizzard is having a pretty hard time balancing monks, and now I'm not even talking other classes speccs that are poorly balanced. So yeah, like it or not, it would make it even harder.

[Teriz]

I think 4th specs in general would be cool, but there's NO way they'll add one for every class in, all in one expansion. That's 10-11 new specs, the equivalent of about 3 new classes. Basically, that's an insane, insane amount of work. What they could do is add maybe 3 or 4 in one expansion, but then that just means that some classes are going to whine that they didn't get something new.

I think Blizzard could handle it. Again, they added several new specs in MoP along with a new race, a brand new talent system, an entire Pet System, and the scenario system. They have the resources and ability to pull this off.

---------- Post added 2013-04-27 at 03:22 PM ----------

Monk=3 new specs
4th spec for every class=10 new specs

This basicly means they have to put in the same amount of work as making 3 new classes.

I don't know about you but from the way I see it, Blizzard is having a pretty hard time balancing monks, and now I'm not even talking other classes speccs that are poorly balanced. So yeah, like it or not, it would make it even harder.

You're forgetting that the Warlock specs were completely redone, and they even added a psuedo tanking spec. You also had the Druid guardian spec added, and Mages were redesigned. Not taking into account Mages, that's 7 new specs added to MoP, 8 if you include Dark Apotheosis. Two more and you have the necessary specs for 4th spec.

Insane amount of work?