New Roles, Races and Classes?

 

Hello again. I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff about World of WarCraft Forever on Reddit and YouTube, it’s gotten to the point where all the good points have been made and now people are just repeating the same negativity posts over and over so I’ve muted those subreddits. But now those posts and videos have given me plenty more thoughts to sit on. I’ve seen people showing viable shaman tanking, for low level dungeons so far at least, people still asking for Ogres, more classes, ect. So yeah, I’ll just start and without a doubt get sidetracked somewhere, let’s-a-go.

            I came upon a YouTube channel that has shaman tank videos, among other WoW things. He seems to have been doing some of this in The Burning Crusade but now has videos in Forever and even though right now there’s no tank like abilities from Season of Discovery, he’s been able to tank through the current dungeons in Forever. It makes me excited because in Retail, when it comes to your armor, you don’t really have a choice. Pretty much when a piece of gear does drop in the world you look for pretty much one stat, be it intellect, strength or agility, and if it’s higher than what you have you take it. Other than that you’re going for the new end game tier set and there’s nothing to think about. What spec are you? Okay, here’s your gear, have a good day. In Forever though you seem to be able to mix and match a little bit more. And maybe it’s just me because I’ve always just played as a spellcaster so this is just a new concept to me but it’s exciting to me. I do remember getting pieces of gear in the past with stats that didn’t seem to actually go together so maybe there was a reason.

            People are still asking for new races but I’d rather see new classes. I saw someone on Reddit list of quite a few class options but I can’t find it now. I know he mentioned spellbreakers, tinkers have been wanted for a while, I’ve seen necromancers thrown around and I would still love to see wardens. I know if they add any new class to Forever then people on retail will whine so they’ll have to make it for them too and that could be a lot of work. I like that there’s still minimal race/class combinations. Retail is getting to the point where any race can do any class, it’s kinda lame to me. I hope they don’t go overboard in Forever, I see a lot of “Oh I hope this class comes to this race.” I DO think that the sky Elves faction specific classes should be swapped. I think giving Alliance another shaman option would be fine and Horde could use another mage I think. Maybe Blizzard thought it would help curb the Elf popularity by giving the Horde yet another shaman option. I think adding new classes and spreading those out between the races we have is the way to go. I do think though if they bring tinkers then you almost have to add in Goblins. I do still wish some races didn’t have warriors. Gnomes and Blood Elves, that aren’t in Forever currently, but I just have felt those groups are more magical so they shouldn’t have warriors. I think if that were to be the case then the blue Elves getting warriors would make sense since they seem to be fundamentally different then the High Elves and all under that umbrella. I do think there should be undead Elf options for Forsaken and Troll beserkers and… hm, I don’t really know what kind of options Alliance could get, I’m rambling again...

            Something that excites me is maybe getting to see some new lore or seeing things take a different turn. Maybe some time in this Jaina WILL be a dreadlord and we have to find the real Jaina. Similar to Star Wars, there’s just some things I choose to ignore in WarCraft’s “canon.” In Star Wars all the things that are considered “legend” is pretty much my canon because it’s just better and it’s the same for WarCraft. Vanilla was what it was, it was great, The Burning Crusade was cool; went to Outland, that’s where WC2 Beyond the Dark Portal takes place so I was excited about that. Go to Northrend in Wrath, just like WC3, Deathwing shows up in Cataclysm, a hero unit from WC2 (that I always thought was a women, don’t know why), changed up the old areas, kind of cool, Deathwing having a humanoid form, kinda dumb, kinda defeats the purpose of hammer metal onto his dragon body. Mists was pretty cool, defiantly the most I was involved with WoW until War Within. Again a WC3 reference with the Pandarian, Horde vs Alliance kind of mattered again until Garrosh decided he didn’t actually like the Horde. Warlords of Draenor had me excited because again, all these WC2 hero units were being shown off, I kind of felt like I wanted Ner’zhul to find out what had happened to his other self or the Helm of Domination some how called out to him and then “our” Ner’zhul would be “whole” again or something. Some Lord of the Rings shit, I don’t remember what it was but I wanted something to happen. Legion was pretty crazy and I didn’t mind most of Battle for Azeroth. I remember back during WC3 Rexxar’s campaign you come across Admiral Proudmoore’s troops and I saw they insignia and was like “I’ve seen this before…” so I looked in my WC2 manual, that I still had, and sure enough there it was. One of the nations in WC2 was Kul Tiras so it was cool to see them in WoW. After seeing their culture though Jaina really doesn’t seem like she’s from there lol. Maybe she studied magic on the mainland at a really young age, I don’t know. Anyway, uhhh, I didn’t really love that the Zandalari were allies now but I love everything about their zone; dinosaurs, Mesoamerican architecture, the Loa, all very cool. Bwonsamdi was VERY cool and could’ve been a lot more interesting in my opinion.

            Shadowlands and on are real stinkers and I choose to ignore it from a “lore” perspective. I feel Shadowlands just undermines every cultures afterlife beliefs, I think it’s stupid that the dreadlords come from there, I dislike the Dracthyr, they don’t feel like they fit in WarCraft to me, I hate how they have a humanoid form, to me that is something that should be reserved for the truly powerful dragons of the game. It’s like we have the Dragonkin around already so we needed a “good” version of them. The War Within is alright, same with Midnight but I don’t really care too much. Showing off the Arathi and the mystery around them is cool, hanging out with the Amani is cool, Astalor Bloodsworn is cool and I do like seeing Xal’atath since she was the shadow priest dagger in Legion but overall I don’t care about the plot. I’ve been more interested in revisiting old areas made new. Along with the Dracthyr, I have no love for the Earthen or Haranir. With all these neutral races it’s like why even bother? The Pandaren made some sense since they were the first ones but I think them fighting with each other on a battlefield doesn’t really fly. I liked the Haranir better when I thought they were some kind of cave trolls, at one point I think it was believed that the Earthen were going to be Horde and then I figured the Haranir would be Alliance and they were going to be kind of vampire-esque so the Alliance would have werewolves and vampires.

            So I’m excited to see what Forever brings. I remember back in Vanilla I was on my way to Orgrimmar and there were a couple Alliance out front. One was a paladin in full judgment armor and I just sat down to look at them. It is such a cool set. Now I could be the paladin in the judgment armor with the Undead Paladin. Oh but I did get the judgment armor during the anniversary event the other year and Undead are getting paladins in retail as well so I guess I already have an Undead paladin in judgment armor?.. Well thanks for killing that excitement retail. I didn’t want to play a paladin anyways. Shaman for life. I remember when I was playing Season of Discovery and realizing I don’t actually know how to play Classic. I was in some awful, mob filled mine in Mulgore and a warrior wanted to party up so I joined and just fell into what I would do in retail, sit out back and cast lightning bolt. I ran out of mana and was like uhhhhhh, oh, I guess I can go smack things too. It’ll be quite the adjustment once I start Forever. I worry slightly about the social dynamic, I keep seeing stuff about people getting mass reported by bots so that makes me nervous if I’m going to try to tank as a shaman. I just hope I can find chill people that aren’t speedrunners and/or morons and that Blizzard can get a handle on the reporting and customer support.

            So anyways, that’s my ramblings. I saw someone comment on a shaman tank video that they tanked a dungeon in full cloth spell power gear with the water shield talent and did fine. Like that’s crazy, and I forgot you could wear other types of armor and not just what your class is assigned, unless you were the three cloth only types. Also someone had made a good point about class armor, specifically talking about paladins. In retail you have a big group of races that have paladins and now even Night Elves are going to get them soon but they’re not all “paladins,” it’s just that their cultural class falls under the paladin umbrella. I know it’s unreasonable to ask them to rename every class for every race to fit the culture more accurately but when talking about tier armor it would be nice if a Tauren didn’t get gear for someone from the Silver Hand. That sort of thing. Anyways, I’ve gone on long enough, what are your thoughts? Are there new races or classes or a race/class combo you would like to see? Have an idea of what you plan to play in Forever? Let me know below and I’ll see ya when I see ya. Bye-bye.

            @AztecSauce