I mean, renaming the new Class as ‘Artificer’ would work, and then bringing in sub-classes beneath it to try and roughly group up the diverse and wide-spread medley of traditions behind the world.
The Baseline Artificer would have abilities focusing upon imbuing magic into their tools, weapons and armor, with two competing themes in their Class Talent Tree, whether to apply their magical runes to themselves or their equipment, with ‘bio’ runes providing more staff buffs and defensive properties, while ‘tool’ runes providing more damage and group-focused advantages.
All Artificers, regardless of Specc choice, would be able to hurl short-range balls of energy, wear mail armor and shields, wield one-handed weapons, wands staves and ranged weapons, summon short-lived companions that they can go out and ‘tame’, with their options being mechanicals/golems/elementals, each with unique twists for the Artificer to use in a pinch. Mechanicals can stun and have higher armor class, golems have interrupts and high health, elementals can perform DoT attacks and explode for massive damage on ‘death’, but these ‘Companions’ will only linger for 15-20 seconds and might have a two-minute cooldown, although talents might extend the former or reduce the latter.
Other baseline skills could be the ability to apply alchemical healing, poisons or status effects to enemies and allies, such as a weak DoT on yourself or an ally that envenmous all attacks you perform, or a alchemical growth potion that makes you stronger and tougher, but slows your movement speed significantly, or a potion that might make you ludicrously fast, but renders you incredibly fragile while it is active. Fully lean into that experimental theme that an Artificer is a character who is poking, prodding, testing new technologies and magical theories to their limits.
A Bard Artificer is a type of spellcaster who recognises the magical nature of language, as we found out in the Shadowlands from the Words of Domination, and combines that knowledge with the Radiant Song’s energies to create a language that bridges such things as mundane language barriers, to allow the ‘universal’ language of music to reach all. That and their reach with a wand and a shield, or a gun, just in case even magical words fail …
The Bard would likely function as a Healer specc with Aug-Voker themes, their abilities heal and bolster their allies, and confuse and diminish their enemies, drawing upon the raw potential of the World Soul’s Radiant Song to turn mere words into a power that can reach any and every heart, mind and soul.
Radiant Songs could boost the targets’ receptiveness to healing, fortify their minds against compulsion and charm effects, accelerate their attack and casting speed, or even wrap them in protective magic that can absorb and ablate damage. Against opponents, Radiant Songs could slow them down, cause them to miss their opponents, compel them to briefly switch sides or even banish them from this plane of existence for a short while.
For a Tank Specc, Spellblade or Spellbreaker are archetypes WoW Players have been begging for since Vanilla and would tie in well to the Artificer theme. Fighting men and women who turned to imbuing their weapons, shields and armor with any kind of magical power they can wrangle into service, creating short-lived but incredibly powerful items that surpass even the normal limitations of magical items. Wielding a shield and a one-handed weapon and wearing the heaviest mail they can find, the Spellbreaker specialises not only in flooding their weapons and armor with potent magics to fortify themselves and break down the defences of their opponents.
Spellbreakers use magical enhancements to blink across the battlefield, trap opponents in short-lived stasis fields that slow them and eat away at their armor, conjure arcane copies of their own weapon to harass and threaten enemies and summon short-lived magical copies of themselves to defend their allies at a distance or to detonate in the middle of a pack of enemies and drain their magical defences away.
Specifically, the enchantments on their shield focus on reflecting and deflecting damage, while the enchantments on their armor focus on absorbing damage and repelling attacks from the vitals of the Spellbreaker. The enchantments on their weapon, however, are intended not to deal damage, but to slip through the defences of their enemies, negating parrying and blocking, phasing a axe-head through plate-armor or granting a weapon strike the ability to consume a buff on an enemy and cause the feedback to explode and harm the target as the magic is distorted and expelled by the attack.
Finally, for the DPS specc, I’d actually argue that Conjurer would work, a swarm-caster that takes the base-line Artificer’s Companion system and turns it into a full-blown combat system. The two sides and ‘middle’ of this specc tree focus on the three different types of Companions an Artificer can recruit, as well as allowing them access to a fourth type of Companion, the Undead.
Five skills are used by the Conjurer, that vary depending upon the type of Companion they use, being context sensitive.
The Undead Side focuses on creating and quickly replacing Undead shock-troops that charge into the enemy, lashing out with weapon and claws before detonating in an explosion of undead flesh, razor-sharp bones and necrotic energies, lacerating the enemy and sapping their strength and vitality, while also lashing out with stave and spell to recover this necrotic energy and recycle it to fuel a darker twist on the Artificer’s normal attack spells and speed up their ability to call forth more Undead.
The more Undead they can swarm the target with, the faster they can generate necrotic energies, and the more necrotic energy they have stockpiled in the form of charges, the more potent the Undead they can call forth, but expending this necrotic charge is a gamble as if the undead is destroyed too quickly and cannot transfer that charge to a target, the charge is lost, meaning that if the Conjurer sends in their Undead against a target that’s capable of destroying their Companions too quickly, they will lose their ability to rapidly grow an army of Undead.
For the Necromancers, their five abilities are much more simpler than the others. The four ‘combat’ abilities become ‘charges’ that allow the Necromancer to quickly raise a new Undead, and the fifth ability, Extend, allows them to apply a short-lived leeching aura to their Companion(s) attacks that heals and bolsters both the Necromancer and their Companions while it is active.
The Golem/Mechanical or Center part of the Specc Tree can cause the Companion to last longer and eventually stick around permanently (regardless of what ‘type’ of companion it is) and serve as a focus for the Conjurer Artificer’s aggressive abilities, radiating hostile energies, becoming a mobile shield that the Artificer and their allies can shelter behind, or even as a mobile artillery platform that can bombard a target with horrendous amounts of alchemical ammunition at the cost of becoming completely immobile and highly vulnerable to incoming damage.
The same charges that the Necromancer uses turn into arcane charges for the ‘Golemancer’ that can be used to Fortify (defensive), Rampage (offensive), Bombard (ranged AoE) and Barricade (directional shield ala the Elementals from the Nightwell Raid), with Extend working to both fortify the ‘mode’ the Golem or Mechanical is currently performing, and to provide a small but relentless HoT on the Companion.
The other side of the Conjurer Tree would focus on the Elementals and blending Elemental Energies together to create the right kind of Companion for a specific situation, at the cost of any other tricks. An Elemental Conjurer has five abilities related to their Elemental Companion, Fire, Earth, Water and Air, and Extend. Whichever of the first four abilities are used first decides the type of Elemental that is conjured, and its role, with Earth types being tanky, fire types being dps, water types being debuffers and air types being super-fast. With each of the four Elemental types used, the Elemental grows larger and gains a stacking bonus. If the same Elemental ability is used, the strengths of the Elemental are increased exponentially while also adding unique abilities native to that type, while if another type is used, the Elemental gains that ability in addition to their existing ones.
An Earth Type who is given Fire typing by the Artificer Conjurer now is not only durable, but radiates fire energy and adds fire to its attacks. Adding a second Earth to the Elemental makes it larger and even more durable, and the fourth and final infusion of Fire makes its damage even more potent.
A Water type would be able to cleanse disease from the Artificer Conjurer and their allies, and wash away certain types of effects from enemies. A second Water infusion added makes the Water elemental larger and its damage more potent. A third adds a slow to the Water Elemental and allows it to cleave to multiple targets. A fourth allows the Water Elemental to slow all enemies within its range and affect multiple allies with its cleanse disease ability.
Being able to quickly alter the Elemental on the fly to counter enemy types and compositions is how the Conjurer thrives, and the Extend ability allows the Conjurer to extend the amount of time the Elemental can exist, with the Elemental’s time on the material plane slowly fading as the Infusions run out, meaning that in combat, a Conjurer can theoretically keep their Elemental Companion around for the whole fight if they time their abilities right and use the Extend Infusion judiciously to extend that time when the other abilities might be on cooldown.
At least, I think this could be a fun class to tackle.
