Heritage type spells and weapons for each race???

[ravenmoon]

Race Customisation for Classes

It may seem an odd question, but every race has a lore and characteristics to it - including special weapons and spell types that seem more race themed than they are class themed.

Which would you associate with each race?

Why?
Well, the aim is to have racial spell weapons that you can glyph a class ability, substituting it's visual with a racial themed one instead. The aim would make whatever class you play feel more part of it's race than just being a generic "mage" or "warrior" or hunter

e.g. If your Tauren could substitute cleave with "totem" strike, where he whips out his totem instead of his sword and swings - you will feel much more like a tauren warrior
if your void elf hunter could substitute arcane shot or your void elf frost mage, frost bolt with void bolt it would feel much more like a void elf hunter/mage than a generic one.

How?
racial glyphs could be used, and you can learn a whole bunch, or instead they devise a new heritage spell type system, in a tab where you have racial themed versions for single abilities, special abilities, aoe spells, melee attacks, melee aoe, healing abilities, heal aoes, summoned creature types.

You can learn ones for your race or be given them automatically with new levels, or maybe rewards from race based quests like heritage armor ones, or a combination of all of these.

What?
My Question to you is, what should each race have? I have got a pretty good idea of what fits some races, but not every race. I expect in time new versions would gcome out and you could grow an extensive library of racial spells you can substitute.

I would assume that there would be a cap on the number of class spells you can substitute at any one time with racial spells, like maybe 3 - or limit it to one per type ..ie.g. only 1 single target spell can be substitute, but you can also substitute an aoe spell, but only 1, and 1 healing etc. or maybe up to 2.


The end result if your whatever class you have on your racial character, looks and feels far more like it is a "Tauren Warrior", or "Tauren shaman" or Void elf mage or Void elf hunter, or Night elf Priest or Night Elf mage etc .


Here is my initial draft list.

Void Elves: Series of void spells (lke the ones in 8.3), void bow for weapons
Lightforged: Series of light spells , Light sword for weapon melee
Draenei: Mixture of Naaru spells, crystal utilisation, crystal maces
Tauren and Highmountain: totem weapons and some earth based elemental spells

Blood elves: Mixture of fire (arcane elemental) and light spells maybe some blood ones. Bow and glaive for weapon
Night elves: Mixture of star/moon arcane spells and night (void but Night fae style rather than void elf ones) spells, Bow and glaives for weapon
Nightborne: Series of arcane spells, time warp spells and night spells, conjured weapon for melee
Trolls: Series of hex spells, blood spells, loa nature spells
Gnomes: Gadgets, robots, techy guns, engineering based abilities
Goblins: explosives, alchemaic potions and alchemy-engineering based abilities
Pandas: Chi, kegs and unarmed combat abilities
Orcs: bloodlust rage abilities, ancestor abiitlites - we need an iconic orc weapon
Dwarves: titan abilities, lightning hammer abilities, hammer weapon
Worgen: Bites, clawering, something special linked to the worgen curse magic
Forsaken: death magic, domination magic, ghoul/banshee/abomination creature substitutions


When
Who knows, it is something I hope blizzard would do, seems ideal for a race themed expansion, but could come in any expansion as a feature of


Extra Features:
Also each race can have an "attraction" thing where they attract certain creature types that follow them. These are also the types you can use for to substitute class abiliteis that summon loads of creatures, for eg.g warlock or hunter abilities that summon creatures can be substitueed wtih a race based version like a mecahnicsl robot:

Void elves - attract void entity creatures
Lightforged - attract light spawn
Draenei - attract mini naaru
Tauren - attract earth elementals
Highmountain - attract
Blood elves - attract mana wyrms
Night elves - attract critters
Trolls: - attract spirits
Gnomes - attract robots and mechanical creatures
Goblins - mechanical creatures
Pandas - attract brew elementals
Orcs - attract gronlings
Dwarves - attract gryphons
Worgen - attract wolves
Forsaken - attract ghouls

v

[Beloren]

So is it something like
As a Blood elf frost mage, I can glyph one of my single frost spells to instead be some sort of light spell or fire based spell? and sometimes use a racial weapon instead of my equipped wepon?


This could be interesting to make someone feel a lot more blood elf than just ordianry warrior.

but you would have to have a range of types of spells for each cateogry. Offer players choices, and there would definitley be a limit, because in pvp, you need to tell what the ability is, but actually having a racial substitution could make things a bit less predictable to cope with . Although maybe it would be turned off fro compettive play?

I like the idea, but it would be interoducing a lot of spells, even if they only did one for each category for each race.

For blood elves I would imagine
A fire based single target spell with phoenixes
A fire based aoe spell
A blood based special ability
A light based heal
A blood based aoe heal.
A blood based utility
A light based melee that swaps in blood elven glaive
A fire based melee aoe that swaps in a blood elven bow

I would have the blood ones cryatal based, and distinguish it from the troll ones which would be more bleed based. for eg.g they may have a bleed based melee aoe

- - - Updated - - -

p.s. I suppose the void elf ones would all be void based - probably some of the ones we got from the corruption abilities like twilight devastation for aoe, void tentacle and infintie star @Varadoc would be excited.
@Vaedan would probably agree, void elf weapon should definitely be a void bow, and one of the abilities should swap the normal arrows for void based arrows.

[ravenmoon]

Ah.. I forgot utility spell substitutes as well, but each race would have to be taken in turn and a set of racially based spells fitting their theme designed or plucked from existing ones.

For night elves - Star magic stuff can easily come from spells we've seen from druids, priests, Tyrande and night elf mages. The night magic spells can actually use the Arden Weald spells - it would have to have a different look to void magic, even if it is void based - hence the colour, just like star magic is always silvery arcane rather than the purple or blue types - like it's the purest form.

Note: I didn't add nature magic for night elves or tauren. Because, only druids can actually use nature magic, it is star magic and night magic that is common to all night elves or many more anyway. They used their arcane and night magic to boost nature, but only the druids cast nature magic.

Same with the Tauren, the tauren are actually totem swinging , elemental and ancestral based. Teh Earthmother is the main theme, only small sects do nature magic (the druids are small) , and An'she sunwalkers are also a small sect, this is not all tauren.

[ThatsOurEric]

Offer players choices, and there would definitley be a limit, because in pvp, you need to tell what the ability is, but actually having a racial substitution could make things a bit less predictable to cope with . Although maybe it would be turned off fro compettive play?

I mean that'd be fine, as there are other things that are generally changed for competitive (for ex., the one talent that makes the Warlock spell
Corruption last indefinitely doesn't apply to PvP), so turning off glyphs shouldn't be an issue.

[Hobbidaggy]

Race Customisation for Classes

It may seem an odd question, but every race has a lore and characteristics to it - including special weapons and spell types that seem more race themed than they are class themed.

Which would you associate with each race?

Why?
Well, the aim is to have racial spell weapons that you can glyph a class ability, substituting it's visual with a racial themed one instead. The aim would make whatever class you play feel more part of it's race than just being a generic "mage" or "warrior" or hunter

e.g. If your Tauren could substitute cleave with "totem" strike, where he whips out his totem instead of his sword and swings - you will feel much more like a tauren warrior
if your void elf hunter could substitute arcane shot or your void elf frost mage, frost bolt with void bolt it would feel much more like a void elf hunter/mage than a generic one.

How?
racial glyphs could be used, and you can learn a whole bunch, or instead they devise a new heritage spell type system, in a tab where you have racial themed versions for single abilities, special abilities, aoe spells, melee attacks, melee aoe, healing abilities, heal aoes, summoned creature types.

You can learn ones for your race or be given them automatically with new levels, or maybe rewards from race based quests like heritage armor ones, or a combination of all of these.

What?
My Question to you is, what should each race have? I have got a pretty good idea of what fits some races, but not every race. I expect in time new versions would gcome out and you could grow an extensive library of racial spells you can substitute.

I would assume that there would be a cap on the number of class spells you can substitute at any one time with racial spells, like maybe 3 - or limit it to one per type ..ie.g. only 1 single target spell can be substitute, but you can also substitute an aoe spell, but only 1, and 1 healing etc. or maybe up to 2.


The end result if your whatever class you have on your racial character, looks and feels far more like it is a "Tauren Warrior", or "Tauren shaman" or Void elf mage or Void elf hunter, or Night elf Priest or Night Elf mage etc .


Here is my initial draft list.

Void Elves: Series of void spells (lke the ones in 8.3), void bow for weapons
Lightforged: Series of light spells , Light sword for weapon melee
Draenei: Mixture of Naaru spells, crystal utilisation, crystal maces
Tauren and Highmountain: totem weapons and some earth based elemental spells

Blood elves: Mixture of fire (arcane elemental) and light spells maybe some blood ones. Bow and glaive for weapon
Night elves: Mixture of star/moon arcane spells and night (void but Night fae style rather than void elf ones) spells, Bow and glaives for weapon
Nightborne: Series of arcane spells, time warp spells and night spells, conjured weapon for melee
Trolls: Series of hex spells, blood spells, loa nature spells
Gnomes: Gadgets, robots, techy guns, engineering based abilities
Goblins: explosives, alchemaic potions and alchemy-engineering based abilities
Pandas: Chi, kegs and unarmed combat abilities
Orcs: bloodlust rage abilities, ancestor abiitlites - we need an iconic orc weapon
Dwarves: titan abilities, lightning hammer abilities, hammer weapon
Worgen: Bites, clawering, something special linked to the worgen curse magic
Forsaken: death magic, domination magic, ghoul/banshee/abomination creature substitutions


When
Who knows, it is something I hope blizzard would do, seems ideal for a race themed expansion, but could come in any expansion as a feature of


Extra Features:
Also each race can have an "attraction" thing where they attract certain creature types that follow them. These are also the types you can use for to substitute class abiliteis that summon loads of creatures, for eg.g warlock or hunter abilities that summon creatures can be substitueed wtih a race based version like a mecahnicsl robot:

Void elves - attract void entity creatures
Lightforged - attract light spawn
Draenei - attract mini naaru
Tauren - attract earth elementals
Highmountain - attract
Blood elves - attract mana wyrms
Night elves - attract critters
Trolls: - attract spirits
Gnomes - attract robots and mechanical creatures
Goblins - mechanical creatures
Pandas - attract brew elementals
Orcs - attract gronlings
Dwarves - attract gryphons
Worgen - attract wolves
Forsaken - attract ghouls

v

Sounds cool, but just want to also clarify that Blood Elves are not “blood” elves. They don’t do blood magic like that so they wouldn’t have a “blood spell” theme. They were named by Kaelthas after all of the elves were slaughtered by Arthas in honour of the massacred elves. Like a blood oath to them for vengeance.

[ravenmoon]

I mean that'd be fine, as there are other things that are generally changed for competitive (for ex., the one talent that makes the Warlock spell
Corruption last indefinitely doesn't apply to PvP), so turning off glyphs shouldn't be an issue.

Exactly.. the classes have been quite gneeric or based on mostly humans for so long you lose a sense of being a different race a lot of the time. I mean imagine a Zandalari paladin actually usine some loa based spells instead of the generic light ones based on the holy light religion ratehr than his loa one?

You'd feel a lot more Zandlari as a paladin or hunter or any class.. that's the idea, .. a night elf priest would be able to substitute some of those shadow or light spells with star spells instead, give that far more moon priest feel, ora night elf mage would look a hell of a lot more uniqueif some of the frost/fire or arcane spells had star spell substitutes.

My fave would be substituting cleaves animation to instead having the tauren swing this totem... I think the classes and races need this..not to mention it would be hugely popular.

can you imagine if they added heritage weapons now.. and once you acquire a heritage weapon you can actually make that cleave substitutuion? so that some abilities will actually use your heritage weapon instead of a normal one.

Heritage spells and heritage weapons, could be a very cool addition.

[Beloren]

Sounds cool, but just want to also clarify that Blood Elves are not “blood” elves. They don’t do blood magic like that so they wouldn’t have a “blood spell” theme. They were named by Kaelthas after all of the elves were slaughtered by Arthas in honour of the massacred elves. Like a blood oath to them for vengeance.

Whiles what you say about their name is true, blizzard actually introduced blood crystals and magic

So they actually do now via blood crystals and anima magic, I think that is what he means, so it won't be like how the trolls use blood magic. There are blood mages @Rhlor has all the references for it, so does @Tanaria


Actually you know what comes to mind? Those Island expedition characters - very thematic, there was a phoenix mage amongst them too, they could borrow some of those spells. but i'm not sure all blood elves can wield fire though, or maybe their arcane manifests most easily as fire. Definitely light too.

[ravenmoon]

Sounds cool, but just want to also clarify that Blood Elves are not “blood” elves. They don’t do blood magic like that so they wouldn’t have a “blood spell” theme. They were named by Kaelthas after all of the elves were slaughtered by Arthas in honour of the massacred elves. Like a blood oath to them for vengeance.

I did mean teh blood crystlas and anima golem stuff rather than troll blood magic.

But your point reminded me that the blood magic stuff may only be mags. Does every blood elf or at least more than one class use blood crystals like they use to use fel crystals before 2.4? . see access to light and fire arcane can come to all of them through the sunwell, and while blood can come through the blood crystals, not sure if it's only a mgister thing

[Beloren]

I did mean teh blood crystlas and anima golem stuff rather than troll blood magic.

But your point reminded me that the blood magic stuff may only be mags. Does every blood elf or at least more than one class use blood crystals like they use to use fel crystals before 2.4? . see access to light and fire arcane can come to all of them through the sunwell, and while blood can come through the blood crystals, not sure if it's only a mgister thing

I still feel all blood elves would be able to use blood crytals - we had them in TBC, and they were not class restricted, also it seems to be even some sort of new skill, so it could have abilities in every class or even become a class down the line if they ever did race specific classes.

[TBCCLOL]

This thread made me remember Ion saying


Heritage Armor every 1.5 patches!


Rofl

- - - Updated - - -

I like your idea OP because is similar to my class skin idea.


That was basically assuming Paladin as base class


Belf > Blood Phoenix Paladin with Phoenix / Blood effects on spells

Like Templar Verdict Belf would be a TV with flame animation and a phoenix screech

Guardian of Kings be like a Phoenix avatar etc


Zandalari Paladin with Rezan as Avatar or T-Rex Helm /Troll Gear when using Seraphim

And so on



The idea on paper is cool but the issue is that Blizzard doesn't want spend energy in making the game looking better or be more RPG/custom


They are lazy and want just to milk the tokens

[ravenmoon]

This thread made me remember Ion saying


Heritage Armor every 1.5 patches!


Rofl

- - - Updated - - -

I like your idea OP because is similar to my class skin idea.


That was basically assuming Paladin as base class


Belf > Blood Phoenix Paladin with Phoenix / Blood effects on spells

Like Templar Verdict Belf would be a TV with flame animation and a phoenix screech

Guardian of Kings be like a Phoenix avatar etc


Zandalari Paladin with Rezan as Avatar or T-Rex Helm /Troll Gear when using Seraphim

And so on



The idea on paper is cool but the issue is that Blizzard doesn't want spend energy in making the game looking better or be more RPG/custom


They are lazy and want just to milk the tokens

Exactly, except in the heritage spell concept, you have a bank of spells, so instead of an entire skin. You would have a phoenix spell - and you can use that to glyph on one of your main spells.

So they prepare a bunch of spells of different types. single damage, aoe damage, melee single, melee aoe, healing, pets, aoe heal, one special .. and you can only glyph a type for type

For blood elves, some of these would be fire themed with phoenix, some would have be light, some would be based on blood crystals or the red blood effect coming from crystals, maybe you can have 3 crystals spawn behind your back you draw from then release the ability.


So whether you are playing a blood elf warrior, priest, mage, hunter, rogue etc - literally any class, you can have some very blood elf abilities that remind you or show you are connected to and have access to the sunwell, with fire arcane, or the divine side with light and you also still do the blood crystal things. THis is very blood elven, and it should show not just by picking the race, but int he class too.

It's odd not to see hardly any void in void elf hutners/mage/warriors etc.. or no night or star magic in night elf mages/priests/hunters etc. Trolls that have no loa indication or very little in the competitive racial..need more

[Vaedan]

So is it something like
As a Blood elf frost mage, I can glyph one of my single frost spells to instead be some sort of light spell or fire based spell? and sometimes use a racial weapon instead of my equipped wepon?


This could be interesting to make someone feel a lot more blood elf than just ordianry warrior.

but you would have to have a range of types of spells for each cateogry. Offer players choices, and there would definitley be a limit, because in pvp, you need to tell what the ability is, but actually having a racial substitution could make things a bit less predictable to cope with . Although maybe it would be turned off fro compettive play?

I like the idea, but it would be interoducing a lot of spells, even if they only did one for each category for each race.

For blood elves I would imagine
A fire based single target spell with phoenixes
A fire based aoe spell
A blood based special ability
A light based heal
A blood based aoe heal.
A blood based utility
A light based melee that swaps in blood elven glaive
A fire based melee aoe that swaps in a blood elven bow

I would have the blood ones cryatal based, and distinguish it from the troll ones which would be more bleed based. for eg.g they may have a bleed based melee aoe

- - - Updated - - -

p.s. I suppose the void elf ones would all be void based - probably some of the ones we got from the corruption abilities like twilight devastation for aoe, void tentacle and infintie star @Varadoc would be excited.
@Vaedan would probably agree, void elf weapon should definitely be a void bow, and one of the abilities should swap the normal arrows for void based arrows.

I thought about this topic many times and not just on basis of void elves. There are many cool things to do.

As for void elves:

Riftrunner skin for void elf DHs - replacing Fel with Void (Fel Rush -> Void Rush), Chaos with Entropic (Chaos Nova - Entropic Nova), altering animations to Void ones. Metamorphosis could be Ethereal form.

Void elf warlocks summoning Void entities instead of demons.

I also thought about racial skills which unlocks certain weapon types for your character, regardless of your class. That brings unique cosmetic combinations. Example:

Sentinel Training (Night Elf Passive Racial skill)
Your character is able to equip and transmog glaives and bows.

That would open cool options like night elf priests with bows or rogues/warriors with glaives, which is really thematical. Also, rogues and monks could have benefit of being able to loot and equip glaives, helping with their gearing.

[Rhlor]

Whiles what you say about their name is true, blizzard actually introduced blood crystals and magic

So they actually do now via blood crystals and anima magic, I think that is what he means, so it won't be like how the trolls use blood magic. There are blood mages @Rhlor has all the references for it, so does @Tanaria


Actually you know what comes to mind? Those Island expedition characters - very thematic, there was a phoenix mage amongst them too, they could borrow some of those spells. but i'm not sure all blood elves can wield fire though, or maybe their arcane manifests most easily as fire. Definitely light too.

there are elves that use blood magic but it is not something characteristic of the race.
There are orcs and humans who also use blood magic.
i think blood mage could be a playable class

[Kharnath]

I said over 10yrs ago how cool it would be if armor was race based that way if for example two rogues stood beside one another (a night elf and a troll) whilst wearing the exact same items would look completely different.

[Beloren]

I said over 10yrs ago how cool it would be if armor was race based that way if for example two rogues stood beside one another (a night elf and a troll) whilst wearing the exact same items would look completely different.

Well silhouettes are supposed to do that..

But armor would also be a lot more emphatic.. but then you would have to do 20 sets (or at least 13 sets, with minor modifications for the sub races) for every class to give that for each race.

Which is why heritage armor came in, and peopel have asked that you have more than one type, if not per armor type, then per class at least onece, or for iconcic classes that are famous/notorious with the race [blood elf would be mage (current set), but then a Hunter/rogue stet for Farstriders, a Paladin set. [Night elves would get a druid set, a highborne mage set, mmoon priest set and a sentinel set, maybe warden set for rogues)




I think this concept makes them stand out more, even better if you ask me. Becuase in their hands the class can have a racial feel even stronger than what gear or heritage weapons allow.

I suspect it is quite feasible too, afterall many of the spell themes and ability themes most of the races have are already in game, whether on NPCs or bosses - like the void ones we had in 8.3 (we have enough for Nightborne arcane/time warping, night elven star/moon ones Light ones for the Lightforged etc in game,, it would be a matter of adding an assortment to each race's and properly associating with.

Cost-benefit analysis. Such an exercies would actually cost little, but what you would gain from it is so much. The iconic feel, the enhanced fantasy, would not only get people playing more, but also race changing, re-levelling, and getting you more into wow - and there is no balancing invovolved, nothing, it's just cool art effects and fantasy.

[Alanar]

This is really simmilar to my older enhanced and expanded glyph system that followed up the idea of titan progression, but here you would be able to join differnt class brotherhoods or clans who use different animations for spells and casts for excisting specs Think about raven priests, blood mages or sunwalkers. More themes could be explored over time.

My idea is actually a full package feature with has class skins in mind, but also allows us to go back ans get old or npc only cosmetic effects, eithers spellls or transmog. The enhanced glyph system is nothing more, but a try to let players choose the theme they like and nog get pingeon hold into a theme you might not like. Going back to places and discover new glyphs. 1 theme as example: fire 1/20fire glyphs aquired. Reaching max, allows you to fully delph into fire and get something special for that theme. You transform into a fiery phoenix and charging towards your target and explode on hit and pushes you back. Just a random idea.

Options are litterly endless.. think about blood knights, witchdoctors and blood mages, archtype wich will never see light and day cus they are to niche or not big enough could really shine here. This feature should be like 90% cosmetic and have a bit room for some gameplay stuff that is not effecting balance. Let it really be a choice..

I rather take my own idea and let us fully choose what road we want to take.. and not feel limited like 1 utillity and 1 fire spell. Everything wow does is feeling very restrickted.. I like some freedom after years of blizz pushing us into 1 direction.

[Gaidax]

The usual issue with this is that you will need to support it all going forward.

Just something like fel fire for warlocks proves time and again to be a big headache as far as bugs are concerned. And that one is just cosmetic.

If the above actually is also power on top of it - that's whole another cancer to deal with too.

[Arcreid]

As long as it can be toggled off or client side then it's whatever.

I just don't want to see Fireball flying that deal Frost Damage and slow me down, or some crap like kicking disc in Holy School but he somehow casted a light spell called Shadow mend.

[Sucralose]

I think racials are a negative system as is given how impactful a select few can be in niche situations. I would rather it all just be a cosmetic choice.

[AcidicSyn]

I agree with and support anything that adds more racial/class customization to the game.

Though I do agree with some others above- reset to default in rated pvp, and/or just be client side or have a client side toggle.

Note on your void elf stuff though- what about the players who play void elves as Quel'dorei? (choosing non-void skins and blue eyes) Should blood and void elf players also have options to reflect that? (like changing the void elf racial to look more arcane rather than voidy)