Bardic Inspiration

Lore Story Forum
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So I heard in a German survey Blizz asked players if they were interested in new classes. Quite a few are floated including Tinkerer and Necromancer. But what interests me the most is Bard who in this rendition would be using Azeroth’s song to empower their abilities.

It’s been actively kind of weird to me there’s never been a Bard class. They’re one of the D&D OGs WoW took obvious inspiration from for most of the other classes. And it’d be the most non-specific class they’d’ve added since Monk. DK, DH and especially Evoker pidgeon hole you pretty thoroughly but something as vague as Bard gives you some wiggle room. Certainly suggests you’re in the entertainment industry but you could be anything from a nebbish Gnome poet to a Forsaken death metal rocker.

Plus I’ve always found weaponized art to just be conceptually awesome. That exists IRL of course but no matter how vicious your mockery is you’re probably not going to actually do psychic damage to your victim. Songs that literally heal, riddles that literally confuse and so on. It’s just a wicked fun concept.

But what do you think? This strike you as interesting or would you want to see something else?

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Bard sounds like a cool concept and I know there are people who love them in DnD. Plus using music to defeat your enemies is something I know some people would find pretty cool :dracthyr_nod:

But a Necromancer would be one I’m most interested in. Have Unholy DKs focus on diseases instead of raising undead.

This way, we’d have a true Master of the raising the dead class, as opposed to the weird agalamation that Unholy currently is

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I do like Necromancers but between Shadow Priests, Unholy DKs and all of Warlock I think we have everything they can do covered.

I’m just not seeing what they’d bring to the table that wouldn’t be redundant.

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I mean, DHs are basically affliction warlocks who melee instead of slinging spells and that didn’t prevent them from being playable. :person_shrugging:

Necromancers could work. In theory anyway

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Bard would be something new though. It’d let you be a star. With sharp wit, rocking tunes or devilish good looks you can rally allies and defeat enemies.

Necromancer would be another dark caster. We have four flavors already. If not five since Fire Mages are basically a walking Geneva Code violation.

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Bards would be cool. I’m totally cool with them being added. Using music to heal or to harm is a cool concept afterall.

I say let people rock out if they wanna :dracthyr_nod:

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Magic as the music of creation is a mythological concept that exists a lot irl that Tolkien also happened to really like

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The dwemer used tonal magic to accidentally become a giant robot’s skin.

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I wouldn’t put much stock in that survey. A lot of the stuff in it is highly questionable in terms of lore. Like the Titan class using Shadow magic or Gilean harvest witches not being druids anymore.

I never really liked bards, they always seemed excessively silly and obnoxious. There are definitely other classes I would prefer.

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Yeah that’s why I love them;

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It’d be hard as hell to balance, but it’d be awesome if they had abilities built around using the corpse of a dead player as an empowered thrall that differs based on the role of the person who died. A twist on just battle rezzing them back into play.

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I’ve never liked Bards much in DnD, and they’re even less justified in WoW. There’s no meaningful precedent for them.

Thankfully there are several other classes in that dubious survey that are all vastly more likely to be implemented.

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They made the fact that the worldsoul has “a song” very meaningful, and the idea of music as magic is basically a nearly universal thing in worldwide folklore.

It’s also a part of Tolkien which is a huge inspiration (especially for the elves obviously, there are so many references to stuff in the legendarium that you would need to have read the Silmarilion and the Unfinished Tales to get)

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Man I’d love a bard class but my worry is if they’re tying it into the radiant song all of their abilities are going to be seizure inducing obnoxiously bright azerite looking spell blasts and imo there’s too much of that already. It’s an awesome concept but I hope the execution of it will involve more sound than visual cues to get the point across.

I hope it gets this kind of vibe:
Synchronized: Jester’s Music of the Night + A Dark Song

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I wouldn’t be surprised if they took some inspiration from ETC in HotS for its implementation.

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Personally I’d much rather ‘Necromancer’ be a warlock-skin for their shadow spells + pets. :person_shrugging:

Especially considering that warlocks:

  • of the shadow-council were some of the first Necromancers in Azeroth
  • and had created the original death-knights!
  • Along with having been known to raise the dead with their volatile dark magics & rituals …

I feel it’d be a token nod to their lore and overall give some flavour to warlocks in the class-fantasy sense towards them being dabblers & masters of the dark arts.

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My personal ask would be Necromancer. My cherry on top would be playing as a Lich, or making it a Hero specialization for a Necromancer. If I’m being realistic, we would have seen Necromancer during Shadowlands if we were ever going to see it at all, but a man can dream (about playing a Lich).

My second preference would be Spellbreaker, of the list provided, but I would be annoyed if it is race locked to the Elves.

My third would be “Battlemage” presented as something more interesting than what the survey listed. It reads like a choice someone hated but was forced at gunpoint to include on a list. “I dunno, they’re like mages with weapons and something with the elements, I guess.”

Bard is one of those concepts that can be made to work almost anywhere you put it. My eyebrows raise a little at the thought of it including a Tank spec, but in a game with a lot of bread & butter high fantasy elements included, it has been conspicuously absent for a long time.

A lot of things on that list just sound straight up stupid. Titankiller? Really? Or how about Celestial Lancer, the “please don’t sue us Square-Enix” placeholder.

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I disagree with changing DKs. First off, a lot of us like the current Unholy focus. I personally don’t want to shift to dots. But also, I don’t think it would actually be a problem to have overlapping themes as long as the playstyle was different. And they would be very different.

I think the biggest issue with adding a Necromancer class is playstyle variation.

And there are two issues I see.

The first is internal. The specs would need to play differently. How many specs do you think would fit " Master of the raising the dead" gameplay? To me that feels like really only one spec. So, right off the bat a Necromancer would likely have to be a spec of a class, not a class in and of itself. The class would have to be something like a cultist or similar.

So, obviously we are talking about it being a ranged caster. So, you would probably need a direct damage spec and probably a dot spec. Which leads us to problem #2:

Second issue, overlap with existing gameplay. From a gameplay perspective, what would it add? A necromancer would have to function fairly similar to a Demolock. As we already have a class spec that is all about summoning minions and throwing them at the target, what would be different with a Necromancer? How would it feel different to play than a Demolock.

And as the main class would just be dot spec, pet spec, and nuke spec that is really just Affliction, Demo, and Destro.

I think the biggest issue with a necromancer is that functionally we already have that game play loop, just with demons.

Personally, I would find it a cool addition. But I think it would have to be done along the lines of a class skin. Something Taliesin did a nice video on the concept of. And not a new class.

That is quite a stretch to justify bard. Remember, the song is just a way of communicating. We haven’t seen the song do anything other than get people’s attention. It is not causing magical effects like you would need in a bard type class.

Yes, music was magic in Tolkien’s world. But that has never even been hinted at in WoW. A bard would be very much a oddity that we have never seen in all the history of WoW.

I generally agree. Though I doubt it will ever be a thing. I remember an interview many years ago where they said they didn’t do a battlemage because Shaman were already the melee casters. Obviously that might change, and I personally do think a niche could be found for a battlemage. I just doubt it will happen.

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And I loved when Demo locks had their unique purple glowy Demon form and we could dps/off tank as needed. Didn’t stop blizz from making DHs playable.

And as I said before, demon hunters are basically just affliction warlocks who melee instead of using spells.

Or we could let Demo warlocks glyph their demons to undead. Which I suppose could have worked, if blizzard hadn’t abandoned class glyphs years ago

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I never said I thought taking demon form away was a good thing. :wink:

Don’t get me wrong, I do think the current demolock gameplay is solid. Honestly, better than it was back then. I understand that is likely a lot of personal taste. But on my Lock I do sometimes wish demon form was still a thing.

I think it would have to be more involved than just a glyph.

Personally I would like to see all (or at least most) of the classes get ‘skins’ that change the appearance.

Warlocks could get the Cultist skin which would have the Necromancer spec replace demo. Could have some interesting takes on Affliction and Destro changing spell animations.

For others you could have things like.

Tempest Knight skin for Paladins, have all their spells effects shift to thunder/lightning/wind types.

Fae Knight skin for DKs, where the spells shift to Ardeanweald type colors. The undead minions getting replaced by trees or woodland spirits.

Etc., etc.

I am sure people could come up with LOTS of ideas. But the idea would be to keep the same balance and gameplay, just with a different fantasy.