MrGM Interview with Brian Holinka - New Class/Race Combinations in Dragonflight!

[Stoy]

MrGM Interview with Brian Holinka - New Class/Race Combinations in Dragonflight!
MrGM recently had an interview with Brian Holinka with some great new information.

• Evoker Class
  
  • Utility may include Blessing of the Bronze, an ability that lessens the cooldown of party/raid members' movement abilities.
  • Evokers provide great off-spec healing utility.
  • Evokers use a resource called Essence, which regenerates on its own over time.
  • Racials for the Dracthyr include a Wing Buffet cone knockback and a Tail Swipe knock-up.
  • Chosen identity is the racial that allows them to switch into their visage form.
  • Changing between the Dragon and Visage form will likely look like Wrathion's switch with the puff of smoke.
  • The Preservation healing spec is supposed to fill a new niche, providing good AoE clumped healing and preparing for damage with time magic.
  • You can hold a fully charged empowered cast for up to 3 seconds before it will cast on its own.
  • The design philosophy of the empowered casts is to provide thought to the payoff such as longer HoTs/DoTs duration or more targets hit. The goal isn't to have you always want to charge it to full as that is essentially just a long cast-time ability.
  • Soar is the ability that lets you hover in the air for a duration while casting abilities on the move.
  • The team is still working out how to provide Evokers will talent points during the starting zone, but might just give you abilities and points from questing in a manner similar to the Demon Hunter/Death Knight starting zones.
• New Race/Class Combinations
  
  • The team wants to move towards a world where the race of a character is not an inhibitor to what class you can play.
  • Rogues, mages, and priests will be available for all races on launch of 10.0
  • Classes that require more work with custom forms and animations will most likely be thought of and added over time.
  • Classes that have strict lore adherence will likely need more set-up.
• Talent Points
  
  • A Sharing talent builds feature for outside of the game will likely not be available at launch.
  • The new talent system is laying the ground work and will be iterated on based on player feedback and how they use the system.
  • The goal is to make some talent trees available to look at via blogs before Alpha.
  • Talent trees will require a certain amount of points spent before accessing certain gates to move down the tree.
  • The final point in the tree isn't always the most exciting ability in the tree.
  • It is still being iterated on whether interrupts will be in the talent trees.
  • The abilities earned in Exile's Reach will remain the same and not accessed through the talent trees.
  • Abilities like Pickpocket and Eyes of the Beast will not be part of the talent trees, but just given in the spell book.
  • Specializations are still a choice to make at the end of Exile's Reach. Picking one unlocks the specialization talent tree.
  • Certain Covenant abilities will be added in different places on the talent trees, allowing for situations where you can have multiple Covenant abilities at once.
  • The team is still iterating on what abilities to bring over from Covenants into the talent trees.
  • Legendary abilities and popular passives from multiple expansions will find their way back into the talent trees.
  • New flashy active abilities will not be very prominent in the talent trees as of now.
• PvP
  
  • New Brawls will be added overtime in Dragonflight.
  • World PvP areas such as Blackrook Hold or the Highmaul Coliseum from Draenor might be added as new Brawls.
  • The PvP team has grown quite a bit recently.
  • Entry level PvP gear will be crafted by Professions. It will have a high PvP item level, but low PvE item level.
  • There will Dragonriding customization from PvP.
  • The Gladiator mount will be a custom Dragonriding dragon mount.
• Quickfire Section
  
  • You can only make a Dracthyr Evoker initially by purchasing Dragonflight.
  • The first Dracthyr Evoker on an account with Dragonflight has no restrictions.
  • You can only make additional Dracthyr Evokers as one per realm, and you must have a level 50 character on that realm first.
  • Dracthyr are their own racial mount.
  • Gladiator Stance for Warriors is likely not returning. It caused problems by being in a tank role, but actually being a DPS through a talent.

[Masternewt]

Moving further away from RPG elements and more into action fantasy grinder that has 0 soul or thought behind it. But hey, I was here to watch it destroy itself by catering more and more to the mobile game standards.

[Skirdus]

Tauren rogues are becoming a real thing.

The end of days is truly upon us

[Lurker1]

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very cool changes

[Tempest33]

Tauren rogue... holy shit the time to roll rogue is coming!

[Froggy]

If there are gonna be Tauren Rogues... just remove every racial restriction. Which I am totally in favor of.

[catseye543]

Moving further away from RPG elements and more into action fantasy grinder that has 0 soul or thought behind it. But hey, I was here to watch it destroy itself by catering more and more to the mobile game standards.

Bye Felicia

[Xorzor]

Classes that have strict lore adherence will likely need more set-up.

So no Maghar Orc Demon Hunters anytime soon? Pity.

[Alayea]

• The Preservation healing spec is supposed to fill a new niche, providing good AoE clumped healing and preparing for damage with time magic.

*noises from restoration shaman varying from indignant to sad*

• The design philosophy of the empowered casts is to provide thought to the payoff such as longer HoTs/DoTs duration or more targets hit. The goal isn't to have you always want to charge it to full as that is essentially just a long cast-time ability.

I really hope the "hold down" style doesn't make it to live, much like the initial iteration for monk where they didn't have auto-attack. I just don't see it as workable for WoW's design.

• The team wants to move towards a world where the race of a character is not an inhibitor to what class you can play.

I think some race/class combos should be opened further, but let's not forget the "RPG" in the MMORPG. (Though RPG aspect probably has long been on its last gasp...)

• It is still being iterated on whether interrupts will be in the talent trees.

Please, please, please keep interrupt abilities baseline. I can promise you that, at least for myself, it would be selected without fail every time. That's not compelling game design.

• Legendary abilities and popular passives from multiple expansions will find their way back into the talent trees.

Still no Gust of Wind, huh? *sigh*

[TheRevenantHero]

Moving further away from RPG elements and more into action fantasy grinder that has 0 soul or thought behind it. But hey, I was here to watch it destroy itself by catering more and more to the mobile game standards.

Restricting classes isn't an RPG thing. It's just something players say that isn't true. D&D is one of the biggest RPGs in existence. Any race can be any class. BUT SOMEHOW D&D is still an RPG. Fucking wild right?

[ChairmanKaga]

Gladiator Stance for Warriors is likely not returning. It caused problems by being in a tank role, but actually being a DPS through a talent.

That's a Bummer.

[bryroo]

Moving further away from RPG elements and more into action fantasy grinder that has 0 soul or thought behind it. But hey, I was here to watch it destroy itself by catering more and more to the mobile game standards.

They're specifically redoing talent trees to cater to the crowd that feels the game has moved to far away from its RPG roots but giving players a race/class combo they've wanted for almost 20 years has turned the game to Candy Crush

[SinR]

Tauren Rogues getting nerfed so they can finally be seen in WoW

[StillMcfuu]

The team wants to move towards a world where the race of a character is not an inhibitor to what class you can play.

You mean like the class and race they just introduced that completely breaks this move?

[Theangryone]

Rather tired of this decreased pvp ilevel nonsense

- - - Updated - - -

Tauren rogue... holy shit the time to roll rogue is coming!

Instead of stealth they should just turn into a normal cow. Nothing to see here.

[Orby]

I enjoyed this interview this one had everything that I would have wanted asked. Very interesting dive into the talent trees. Very interested to see that in Dragonflight

[Relapses]

It's really quite odd how WoW cannot seem to keep the same PvP gearing system for more than a single expansion. I'm glad they're moving in this direction as I personally think it was the best iteration but man... they really tried pretty much everything and still came up short.

[Prenderghast]

I think some race/class combos should be opened further, but let's not forget the "RPG" in the MMORPG. (Though RPG aspect probably has long been on its last gasp...)

I think how this affects the RPG element is up for discussion. I actually think it enhances the RPG factor. WoW lore doesn't exist in a vacuum; the game's cultures and races have evolved through the game's events and in the presence of other races. With the exception of things that are chronology-breaking (like a gnome demon hunter participating in the traditional demon hunter starting experience, for example), I think opening up *almost* all race/class combos lets people create the unique RP they want and is hardly lore-breaking. Even in the seemingly more extreme cases such as with Draenei warlocks.

[Selah]

Insert "about damn time" meme here.

I'm all onboard with this. The immediate restrictions being removed with Rogue, Mage, and Priest is a first great step. Blizzard is starting to make me think they might have turned a corner. But, truly, only time will tell.

[SniperCT]

Nelf paladins when