So… Tinkers

[HeraldofSargeras]

If you're dismissing everything else as 'You got nothing' then I'm fine with that because Blizzard can literally invent anything I can't provide anyways.

He does that all the time.

[Teriz]

Yes, because my point is literally that Blizzard can create something from nothing, lol.

Dracthyr literally came from nothing just the same. There never existed a Dracthyr race that is capable of using all 5 Dragonflight's magic. And I wouldn't have made the argument that Chromatics would be playable.

And here is the bad faith arguing again; Clearly the Dracthyr is merely the platform that allows the player to be a playable WoW dragon because Blizzard couldn’t allow the player to be a massive four-legged dragon. The race provides the physiology, and the class provides the abilities.

You know this.

[Triceron]

And here is the bad faith arguing again; Clearly the Dracthyr is merely the platform that allows the player to be a playable WoW dragon because Blizzard couldn’t allow the player to be a massive four-legged dragon. The race provides the physiology, and the class provides the abilities.

You know this.

How is it a bad faith argument to make an example that Blizzard could create anything they want out of nothing for the purpose of making something playable?

You're pointing at there being nothing musical existing, no heroes with music to base it on, no spells, no characters nothing. So what? Blizzard can invent as they please. There's nothing bad faith about drawing a parallel to how they literally did this with the Dracthyr and inventing them out of nothing to suit their needs to represent a playable Dragon race and class that did not previously exist.

You're the one trying to imply it has to have some sort of prior existence in order to be considered playable. I mean, that's exactly how you justified "Dragonborn" through only being playable 'if we had Chromatic Dragons. Well there was always an alternative to your condition - Blizzard could invent something new. And they did.

[Teriz]

How is it a bad faith argument to make an example that Blizzard could create anything they want out of nothing for the purpose of making something playable?

It’s bad faith because you’re pretending that the Dracthyr are a similar situation to the Bard, yet you know it’s not.

You're pointing at there being nothing musical existing, no heroes with music to base it on, no spells, no characters nothing. So what? Blizzard can invent as they please, do you disagree?

So what? They’re not just going to invent a class and dump it into the game.They would need to be seeded years in advance. Deathwing and Alexstraza for example were invented by Blizzard 30 years ago.

You're the one trying to prove a negative here, and we already know what happened with the Demon Hunter.

Got any arguments from this decade? For example, how are those class skins working out?

[Triceron]

It’s bad faith because you’re pretending that the Dracthyr are a similar situation to the Bard, yet you know it’s not.

If your argument is 'It has to have prior existence to be considered' then it absolutely is a similar situation :/

I'm not the one trying to prove a negative with bullshit reasonings here.

So what? They’re not just going to invent a class and dump it into the game. They would need to be seeded years in advance. Deathwing and Alexstraza for example were invented by Blizzard 30 years ago.

Whether they do or not is up to them. Whether they could, absolutely.

As for seeded years in advance... you do remember they made an April Fools out of it right? Same as we had for Pandaren and Tinkers?

Got any arguments from this decade? How’re those class skins working out?

Dark Ranger was already the first added to the game. Pretty recently, in fact.

The rest are sitting tight next to the Tinker.

[Teriz]

If your argument is 'It has to have prior existence to be considered' then it absolutely is a similar situation :/

So you’re saying we’ve never had dragons in WoW that can turn into mortal races?

I'm not the one trying to prove a negative with bullshit reasonings here.

You mean the “bullshit reasoning” that applies to all existing expansion classes?

Whether they do or not is up to them. Whether they could, absolutely.

“Could” doesn’t make it likely or viable.

Dark Ranger was already the first added to the game.

How? It doesn’t effect any abilities.

[Triceron]

So you’re saying we’ve never had dragons in WoW that can turn into mortal races?

Not ones capable of using all 5 Dragonflight's magic and aren't unstable-as-fuck. No.

That's why they invented Dracthyr.

“Could” doesn’t make it likely or viable.

"Well that's the other problem; There's no Bard hero in lore, there's nothing from HotS or WC3 with Bard-style abilities, and there's no expansion that works with the concept."

You weren't talking about likely or viable. You literally implied it could not happen because of these criteria.

And yet we have Bards seeded since TBC with their April Fools humoring its existence. A presence that was then legitimately added to WoW through ETC and various instrument-based weapons.

How? It doesn’t effect any abilities.

It's a class skin, that's all you have to be concerned about. Don't feel bad you forgot they went about and added them as a customization and fucked up your attempt at an insult. They didn't exactly put a spotlight to their addition to the game.

[Teriz]

Not ones capable of using all 5 Dragonflight's magic and aren't unstable-as-fuck. No.

Gyth? Chromatus? Chromitis?

"Well that's the other problem; There's no Bard hero in lore, there's nothing from HotS or WC3 with Bard-style abilities, and there's no expansion that works with the concept."

You weren't talking about likely or viable. You literally implied it could not happen because of these criteria.

A Bard class at this point? No. Could Blizzard start sowing the seeds of a Bard class? Certainly.

And yet we have Bards seeded since TBC with their April Fools humoring its existence. A presence that was then legitimately added to WoW through ETC and various instrument-based weapons.

None of that is an example of seeding. Creating the character of Wrathion, Alexstraza, Chromie, and Deathwing getting class-style abilities in HotS, putting out a book about Visage day, and dropping hints for the Dragon Isles are examples of seeding.

It's a class skin…

It’s a race skin confined to the Hunter class. But by all means, continue your bad faith arguments.

[bloodmoth13]

To be honest, it can be creatively adapted to be a role without affecting other people's DPS in an impactful way.

Example-

- Introduce new global Raid Boss effects like Confusion, Infliction, Madness etc. These would be Debuffs that can only be interacted with by Support classes (much like how Healers are the only ones who Cleanse)
- Introduce new Support Spells that have synergy with the new Raid Boss effects. Song of Contemplation protects against Confusion and Madness, and can be played for its full duration for a lasting effect. Or Spell Reversal could consume the debuff and redistribute to a target enemy.
- Introduce 'Stamina' bars to bosses that can be drained by specific abilities available to Support classes. When drained, a Boss goes into a 'Vulnerable' state that makes them take more damage and also stuns them. You could skillfully apply Stamina drain to interrupt a big spell or delay the boss entering a new phase. The number of Supports you have affects hitting optimal Vulnerable breakpoints.
- When bosses are Vulnerable, Supports can spam certain spells to keep them in that state longer. This helps offset taking less DPS in favour of more Support - Your party does less overall DPS but has more Vulnerability

The inclusion of Support could be flexible to the party, and the balance of their 'lack of DPS' could be offset through the balance of Boss Vulnerability. The more Support classes you have, the faster the stamina drain and the more you can chain Vulnerability. And the ideal composition of DPS-to-Support would be defined by the meta, with at least 1 Support being required to tackle the new Raid Boss debuffs.

Encounters can be tuned to allow for longer boss fights and allow for safer battles of attrition. Less berserk timers, less 'beat down the boss before he kills you' phases, etc.

You can but personally i think that sounds bloody awful.
Who would want to genuinely play whack a mole on made up buffs? some players would love it for sure but their introduction would be very contrived.
its hard enough getting a tank or healer per 3 dps for dungeon content, imagine adding another necessary role on top of that? awful.

its added complexity for no benefit, the dps wont care about what the support would be doing, only the support.

in WoW it might seem like there are 3 main roles, but there are only 2: deal damage or keep players alive.

Tanks and healers perform role 1: keep players alive. they also do a little damage when they can but their main goal is 'keep players alive'.
DPS on the other hand perform role 2: kill the bad guy.
You want the minimum number of players dedicated to keeping players alive that you can and you want to maximize the DPS to beat the boss faster.

A support is either helping kill the bad guys (role 1) or keeping players alive (role 2), trying to invent an inbetween or extra role that isnt either of those two is just creating some contrived mechanic that does nothing other than necessitate itself and thats awful design.

Players in role 1 provide utility, which generally revolves around reducing damage (interrupts stop incoming damage, shields/heals prevent or undo damage, stuns stop the enemy from dealing damage, debuffs reduce the foes damage, threat generation forces foes to attack the player with the highest damage mitigation etc etc) any support would be simply doing one of those aforementioned tasks but strictly not healing or tanking, which leaves you with interrupts, stuns and debuffs and perhaps boosting allies movespeed.

Now i might sound antagonistic towards the idea, and i am, but i dont think that the ideas are completely without merit and i think there is a compromise somewhere that could keep the integrity of dps logs while also fulfilling the support fantasy but i think it requires a bit of a revamp on what is expected with class or spec utility..

My ideal WoW would have dps classes assisting with role 1 and having a little more overlap. Hybrids were taxed in the past because they had more utility to bring, that concept was abandoned and their damage was brought up to par with pure dps which was correct, however their utility isnt, and really never was, a big contribution to the team. My ideal would be instead of nerfing hybrid contributions, bring dps contributions up to par in other areas. Healing isnt the only way to mitigate damage, as i mentioned before you can mitigate it through armor, debuffs, stuns, interrupts and other skills. Interrupts are an integral part of the game at this point but there are other areas that could be explored that blizz hasnt.

[Triceron]

You can but personally i think that sounds bloody awful.
Who would want to genuinely play whack a mole on made up buffs? some players would love it for sure but their introduction would be very contrived.

To be honest, you can apply the same question to anyone who likes to heal, anyone who likes to tank.

I mean yes, it's contrived, because it's ultimately going to be adding a new role to the game where it hasn't existed.

It's not a role for everyone. And for anyone who doesn't want to play it, there's always DPS.

its hard enough getting a tank or healer per 3 dps for dungeon content, imagine adding another necessary role on top of that? awful.

Well it could always be retuned in Dungeon settings, like a 'Stance' that turns them into standard DPS. Support Roles would be dedicated to Raiding. Like, I don't propose that all dungeons require Debuff-removal just like not all Dungeons require Cleansing.

its added complexity for no benefit, the dps wont care about what the support would be doing, only the support.

As if DPS cares what any other role is doing?

The only real condition changer is the introduction of Vulnerabilities to bosses, and it'd treated no differently than a Raid mechanic phase. Someone does a raid callout before vulnerability hits, and DPS tunnel visions.

I'm literally just stealing this mechanic from what we saw in Diablo 4 as a throwaway example for this concept.

Tanks and healers perform role 1: keep players alive. they also do a little damage when they can but their main goal is 'keep players alive'.
DPS on the other hand perform role 2: kill the bad guy.
You want the minimum number of players dedicated to keeping players alive that you can and you want to maximize the DPS to beat the boss faster.

A support is either helping kill the bad guys (role 1) or keeping players alive (role 2), trying to invent an inbetween or extra role that isnt either of those two is just creating some contrived mechanic that does nothing other than necessitate itself and thats awful design.

I mean you can say the words, but I don't see how this is a problem.

You could define Healing or Tanking the same way and pair it down to being a contrived mechanic considering there are many MMOs out there that do not have dedicated healers or tanks, and everyone has self-sustains to keep themselves up and support abilities to help others. The Holy Trinity itself is built around a contrived 3-way system, let's be honest here.

Players in role 1 provide utility, which generally revolves around reducing damage (interrupts stop incoming damage, shields/heals prevent or undo damage, stuns stop the enemy from dealing damage, debuffs reduce the foes damage, threat generation forces foes to attack the player with the highest damage mitigation etc etc) any support would be simply doing one of those aforementioned tasks but strictly not healing or tanking, which leaves you with interrupts, stuns and debuffs and perhaps boosting allies movespeed.

Well, this isn't part of my particular example or concept. I figure you're talking broadly, but sure. I mean, if we break it down like that, then every class has some measure of doing everything. It's all a case-by-case scenario if we're talking what Classes/Specs would have what Support role and abilities.

My ideal WoW would have dps classes assisting with role 1 and having a little more overlap. Hybrids were taxed in the past because they had more utility to bring, that concept was abandoned and their damage was brought up to par with pure dps which was correct, however their utility isnt, and really never was, a big contribution to the team. My ideal would be instead of nerfing hybrid contributions, bring dps contributions up to par in other areas. Healing isnt the only way to mitigate damage, as i mentioned before you can mitigate it through armor, debuffs, stuns, interrupts and other skills. Interrupts are an integral part of the game at this point but there are other areas that could be explored that blizz hasnt.

Turning every DPS into a pseudo support isn't a solution to Support races. It just pisses off the majority of DPS players who literally only want to tunnel-vision.

I mean, I was a feral main for quite a few of the early expansions, and hybrid utility-DPS is not all it's cracked up to be. It's an absolutely thank-less job that only a certain type of player could appreciate. Once you throw in utility and spread it out, we're just giving people ammunition to bitch and change it back to the way things were. I mean, look at the state of interrupts - DPS literally have one side job and most don't even want to push a single damn 'non-DPS' button :P

[Valkyrst]

I would like to see World of Warcraft's servers incinerated before a Tinker class is released.

[Triceron]

Gyth? Chromatus? Chromitis?

Yeah I don't see any of them being playable, do you?

A Bard class at this point? No. Could Blizzard start sowing the seeds of a Bard class? Certainly.

I mean at this point they've been seeding the Tinker for what, 13 years now? And then we got an Evoker that literally came out of left field?

Yeah, whatever patterns you hold on to just don't work. Like I said, we went over this with the Demon Hunter.

None of that is an example of seeding. Creating the character of Wrathion, Alexstraza, Chromie, and Deathwing getting class-style abilities in HotS, putting out a book about Visage day, and dropping hints for the Dragon Isles are examples of seeding.

No, that's called correlation. You see, Blizzard doesn't need to seed anything, they can drop a bomb at any moment without prior seeding in WoW. That's exactly how we got Monks. Did they put more and more hints that we'd get a Monk class, and establish Monk characters and Pandaren culture so that we could expect Monks ahead of time?

Nope. They just dropped it in our laps and said 'Here you guys go. Have fun'.

It’s a race skin confined to the Hunter class. But by all means, continue your bad faith arguments.

Skin customization confined to an existing class - That's exactly what a Class Skin is.

And through Danuser's own words, it doesn't sound like it'll be the last of its kind.

[Teriz]

Yeah I don't see any of them being playable, do you?

They don’t need to be playable. They’re an existing concept in WoW lore that opens up the capability for a dragon to use multiple aspect powers. I even used it in my dragon-class concepts.

I mean at this point they've been seeding the Tinker for what, 13 years now? And then we got an Evoker that literally came out of left field?

They’ve been seeding the Evoker since the introduction of Wrathion. Possibly even earlier, considering the Dracthyr art present in the Art of WoW book from 2005.

Yeah, whatever patterns you hold on to just don't work. Like I said, we went over this with the Demon Hunter.

Interesting that that’s the only one you keep mentioning. It’s even more interesting when you realize that the Demon Hunter class falls under the same pattern as the other class inclusions.

No, that's called correlation. You see, Blizzard doesn't need to seed anything, they can drop a bomb at any moment without prior seeding in WoW. That's exactly how we got Monks. Did they put more and more hints that we'd get a Monk class, and establish Monk characters and Pandaren culture so that we could expect Monks ahead of time?

Nope. They just dropped it in our laps and said 'Here you guys go. Have fun'.

Actually they did. We get quests and hints talking about Pandarens in earlier expansions, we got the Pandaren Express joke during Cataclysm, and we got the Pandaren Monk pet in WotLK complete with a letter from Chen Stormstout.

Skin customization confined to an existing class - That's exactly what a Class Skin is.

And through Danuser's own words, it doesn't sound like it'll be the last of its kind.

A class skin that doesn’t actually effect the class.

Gotta love the logic.

[Triceron]

Actually they did. We get quests and hints talking about Pandarens in earlier expansions, we got the Pandaren Express joke during Cataclysm, and we got the Pandaren Monk pet in WotLK complete with a letter from Chen Stormstout.

So you gonna conveniently ignore all the Bard and Music-related hints that have been appearing over the years?

There's a Bard in the Rogue Order hall, Necrolord has a Bard, various Minstrels, Russell the Bard in Kul Tiras, the Windrunner's recent Lament with the Windrunner brother composing and playing a song. The list goes on.

And all of this came after the Bard April Fools back in TBC.

A class skin that doesn’t actually effect the class.

Gotta love the logic.

Yeah because Class Skins don't have to. They represent new class identities using existing class gameplay.

That's the whole point

[Teriz]

So you gonna conveniently ignore all the Bard and Music-related hints that have been appearing over the years?

There's a Bard in the Rogue Order hall, Necrolord has a Bard, various Minstrels, Russell the Bard in Kul Tiras, the Windrunner's recent Lament with the Windrunner brother composing and playing a song. The list goes on.

And all of this came after the Bard April Fools back in TBC.

Cool. Name the WC franchise character all those were attached to. Everything I mentioned attached solely to Chen Stormstout, which seeded the race and class based on his character.

[Triceron]

Cool. Name the WC franchise character all those were attached to. Everything I mentioned attached solely to Chen Stormstout, which seeded the race and class based on his character.

I'd like to hear which one single character Evokers are based on.

Must be Chromatus, eh?

[Teriz]

I'd like to hear which one single character Evokers are based on.

Must be Chromatus, eh?

Alexstraza. Her abilities appear in both specs and the racials.

[Tentim]

Alexstraza. Her abilities appear in both specs and the racials.

Honestly they feel like discount demon hunters design wise. I really don't think wow needs more classes and is instead adding them as a marketing gimmick.

[Triceron]

Alexstraza. Her abilities appear in both specs and the racials.

I'd hardly say the Evokers were based on her solely. Just taking a quick look, Chromie's abilities appear in both specs as well and the racials.

Looks like Evokers aren't based on one sole character. Guess that throws your theory out the window.

[Teriz]

Honestly they feel like discount demon hunters design wise. I really don't think wow needs more classes and is instead adding them as a marketing gimmick.

The difference between the two is that DHs are in demon form temporarily, while with Evokers, dragon form is constant of the player so chooses.