Its incredible that there hasn't been a new ranged class added to the game.

[Rhaide]

This forum has a Tinker-fetish following that goes back over a decade. Every time someone mentions Tinkers, certain (same) people pop-up in the thread and start speculating about the possibilities of Tinker class. It's a bit... weird. But I guess people can be "enthusiastic" about many things.

The fetishism honestly reminds me of furries.

[Teriz]

Sounds awful. Would rather have a class dedicated to throwing rocks.

We're all welcome to our opinions, and you're certainly welcome to yours.

The main point here though is that a Tinker would be nothing like the Hunter class.

[Wangming]

As someone that predominately plays FFXIV, you can't compare FFXIV Jobs with WoW Classes, since WoW Classes are basically 3 Jobs in each, since FFXIV Jobs are confined to 1 role and have no talent variation.

Which is exactly why I compared specs, if you recall. Wow added 3 classes with 8 specs. FFXIV added 8 jobs (7 if you don't count blue mage) with one spec each.

Sooo where's the problem?

[Blackmist]

Ranged are actually at minus one spec added, after they fucked with Survival.

It was actually quite fun when I tried it, but do we really need an even bigger fucking clump of squishy stabby bastards around every raid boss, being unable to see what the fuck's going on?

[Vorality]

Holy Paladin's mastery increases your healing according to your proximity to the target, so it's arguable that the spec is designed to be in melee since staying in close proximity greatly improve your healing.

True! I could've sworn the mastery accounted for the paladin's proximity and the proximity of your beacon, but I was wrong, but it's just the paladin. Definitely more of a melee then.

[Kalisandra]

True! I could've sworn the mastery accounted for the paladin's proximity and the proximity of your beacon, but I was wrong, but it's just the paladin. Definitely more of a melee then.

In Legion there was a talent that had your beacon count as a centre for your mastery, as well as you. The problem being that it competed with other better talents, and that you beacon is normally on a tank and many bosses, especially raid bosses, are so big that the tank's mastery aura wouldn't reach the melee anyway. Nice idea, didn't work out in practice.

The current mastery would work better if paladins always counted as melee, and if there was more to do in melee than swing CS to power a specific talent (Crusader's Might or Avenging Crusader). I think if a bit more work was put into making Paladins melee-range healers it could work, but as it is, it's mostly just annoying. I do realise that part of the reason I dislike it is that it makes Paladins into healers that are greatly better at healing clumped up groups, and that's a niche that Shamans traditionally fill, and as Shamans also traditionally blow at spread healing I don't think adding competition for their niche is a good thing. Also, being great at clumped healing and bad at spread healing is not generally a good feature for a healer anyway.

[ReleaseDay]

Sounds awful. Would rather have a class dedicated to throwing rocks.

hozen might be a playable race in the future, be careful what u wish for

[Phasma]

Still waiting for my Bard. Bard sounds way better than Tinker. Just saying.

[rrayy]

The "hero" classes ended up being no such thing. The original design for DK would have been an actual hero class (i.e. requiring a higher skill level), but that got scrapped before Wrath beta.

Blizz kept the "hero" class moniker as PR. They are clearly no better than the other classes and require no better skill cap than the other classes. Stop blinding accepting corporate PR.

You obviously missed tej beginning of Wrath. DK's were vastly OP.

[LemonDemonGirl]

That's why I wanted a Necromancer so bad. I love clothie spell casters.

They could make it a Mail class since we don't have a fourth one

[Ardenaso]

Tinkers would;

1. Utilize Vehicles in combat
2. Use Pocket Factories that summons explodingRobots as summoned minions
3. Be the only class that uses technology as a general class theme
4. Represent the high technology aspect of WoW and the races that use it
5. Be another class that could logically use guns and firearms besides only Hunters

fixed it for you

[Fayenoor]

The game released 16 years ago, and in those 16 years we've had 3 new classes added, and every single one has been a melee class.

Is that not absurd to anyone else? The ranged class options in this game has become stagnant, and I'm starting to realize its one of the reasons I haven't been playing as much anymore.

This expansion was the perfect opportunity to release a new ranged dps class, especially a cloth based one, and we got nothing. Nothing about Shadowlands looks like its going to be the huge win that WoW needs to skyrocket back into success.

It is actually worse. They have in fact converted one ranged spec to completely melee - SV Hunter.

[Teriz]

fixed it for you

I'm down. I LOVED that ability in WC3.

[mhdoe]

There are plenty of both melee and ranged classes at this point. Adding another class just gives more people who already complain about wow to now complain about imbalance and how op the new class is.

[kansor]

Please no new classes. Blizzard struggle to fix the classes as is it without throwing in more.

This leads to the opposite conclusion you think it does. If Blizz can't balance the classes anyway they might as well add more.

This would only make sense if they had achieved perfect balance and adding a new class would upset that. But that's clearly not the case.

[Kehego]

Did everyone forget that every tinker has been melee? Since the wc3 hero, gazlowe in HoTS, mekka in daz... all melee.

Lmao

[Aleksej89]

Tinker/alchemist is my personal bet.

If blizzard decided to add a 4th spec to all classes then perhaps dark ranger and similar others.

[Mehrunes]

1. because there was far more ranged classes then melee, we are finally at the point where it is close to tied.

16 ranged 20 melee, however before survival and holy became melee it was 18 ranged 18 melee.
but here we are so no, we really didnt need, and we still dont need a ranged class, although next class to be added i feel could be ranged or melee, now that they are even. also you say "nothing about shadowlands looks like its going to be huge win" yet that is literally not even close to true.

Putting aside how the amount of melee being 125% that of ranged isn't "close to tied", given how you need more ranged than melee in a raid group there wasn't a practical reason to keep churning out more and more melee rather than ranged other than Blizzard's meleecraft fetish and their creative bankruptcy in regards to ranged classes. The latter is perfectly exemplified by them turning SV into yet another melee in the same expansion that already added a whole melee class. Which they did because they somehow couldn't think of just three different physical ranged specs for the entire game, even though in the same expansion they managed to make even all Rogue specs distinctive enough, not to mention the 20 trillion other melee specs. Despite the fact that their own IP already has things like Dark Ranger in the story as inspiration.

[Teriz]

Did everyone forget that every tinker has been melee? Since the wc3 hero, gazlowe in HoTS, mekka in daz... all melee.

Lmao

Their auto-attack is melee, all of their abilities are ranged.

Casters also have melee auto-attacks, but have all ranged abilities.

[Kehego]

Their auto-attack is melee, all of their abilities are ranged.

Casters also have melee auto-attacks, but have all ranged abilities.

Yeah, and their auto is what matters, cus frostbolt/shadowbolt is equivalent (lorewise at least) to an auto-attack.
soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The characters that are/have been ranged are casters/hunters and the ones that aren't have been melee mongoloids.

Alchemist, tinker, and all the derivative heroes have been melee, and lorewise will continue to be melee.