Hey, there! 
(TL;DR, skip to the DK Healing Class)
So, here’s an idea I had back in 2020, during the height of the pandemic. Though this is just a rough outline of ideas, it could very well bloom into something amazing if it gets to the right hands/eyes for balancing and refinement.
It never really sat right with me that all character-playable Death Knights were axe-swinging brutes. I understand that the original Death Knights were created by using fallen Stormwind Knights as vessels for the souls of the Shadow Council Warlocks. But, at this point, the context around Death Knights has changed and we have a greater understanding of death, souls, and what happens in the Shadowlands. Uther’s story, while unique in many ways, showed us that a soul retains their inclinations, their alignments, their opinions and their memories. So, why is it that when a Blood Elf Mage, for example, dies and is slapped into a new body, it suddenly becomes a warrior-style soldier? Why wouldn’t it leverage its innate understanding of the magical world and lean into more relevant schools of magic?
There are definitely caster-type NPC’s existing within the game and the lore. For example, Icecrown Citadel has an entire wing of royal sanguine-servants and, present within the rest of the instance, there are other various flavors of Cultists, Necromancers, Darkfallen, Deathspeakers, etc. Point is, there’s a unique demographic of casters, very different from existing Mage or Warlock identities, that have been in the game for 10+ years. So, when do we get to play them?
DK Healing Class
The idea is a healing class that heavily revolves around 3-5 primary diseases, cast on an enemy target, with a push/pull healing play-style, meaning it would require doing damage to heal effectively (think Discipline Priest). The Healer can inflict an enemy target with a disease, causing a negative effect of some sort, then drain life from the target, withdrawing tainted blood and consuming the disease over a period of time. The Healer then transfuses the tainted blood into friendly targets to provide them with a heal and a buff for the opposite effect.
For example, if a disease is cast on a boss that increases its damage taken, tainted blood that’s withdrawn and transfused into friendly players would reduce their damage taken.
Because the Healer would serve as the middle-man, only one type of tainted blood may be held at a time and must be exhausted or dumped before a new type of tainted blood may be withdrawn and stored. Additionally, inflicting a target with a disease creates a second debuff, making them immune to additional applications of that same disease for X amount of time. This would require the Healer to alternate disease applications, rather than having an uninspiring 100% up-time damage buff for friendly targets.
Potential Ability Ideas
- Blood Draw: Channeled filler-spell that builds up the Blood Power the Caster uses to heal from (similar to Drain Life). Channel lasts 15 seconds. [Costs 1 Rune] [7% of total Blood Power cap every 1.5 seconds]
- Transfusion: Infuses target with tainted blood, buffing them with the inverse effect of the disease used on the originating target. [5% of total Blood Power cap consumed per cast]
- Hematophage (Passive): Player passively self-heals for X% of all Blood Power currently stored, every X seconds.
- Recompense: Caster can heal targets at its own expense, drawing directly from its own health pool to heal a target at a 2:1 ratio based on Caster’s current-health percentage. (similar to Health Funnel, but half instead of double).
- Rain of Blood: AoE heal, similar to Healing Rain, but… obviously not rain. Applies transfused effects.
- Discrete Collection: Taps enemy target with tiny syringe and drains their health for a small amount over X amount of time, adding to the Blood Power pool. May be cast on multiple targets. Cooldown should be 25-40% as long as collection time to allow for 100% uptime on multi-target fights. [Costs 1 Rune]
- Sterilize: Exhausts/dumps existing Blood Power pool, allowing new tainted blood to be withdrawn and stored. (Could see this being used as a short-ranged aoe or multi-target heal, rather than simply being a clear-and-reset button)
- Feeble Mind (Passive): No mana. Resource pools are Runes, Blood Power (instead of Runic Power) and, in some cases, your own Health.
- Resurgence: Temporary battle resurrection, buffing target damage/health by X% for XX seconds. Cannot benefit from transfused effects, cannot be res’d afterward.
- Blood Bond: Caster redirects 5% of damage taken from bound target and redirects 5% of healing received to bound target (similar to Beacon of Light).
- Shift of Fate: Swap health percentages with a friendly target. Applies transfused effects.
Diseases:
- Increased Damage Taken > Damage Reduction
- Reduced Damage Dealt > Damage Buff
- Movement Speed Slowed > Movement Speed Buff
- Damage over Time > Heal over Time
Included Baseline Abilities:
Anti-Magic Shell, Death’s Advance, Path of Frost, Lichborne, Control Undead, Chains of Ice, Mind Freeze, Death Coil
Removed Baseline Abilities:
Death and Decay, Death Grip, Death Strike, Rune Strike, Raise Dead, Dark Command, Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic Zone, Raise Ally (Replaced with Resurgence)
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Initial Concerns:
Obviously, the primary concerns are going to be how viable the class would be in both PvE and PvP scenarios. Making it strong enough to be competitive without making it overpowered is a challenging task, and not tuning it well enough means you’ve got a limp support class on your hands. Which, may not be so horrible… some heals, some damage, and a lot of utility - like some kind of blood bard. A Blard?? (clearly, name suggestions are needed)
With the diseases, I can already see the RWF teams running at least one DK Healer purely for lust-on-pull fights, where you can cause either the boss to take more damage via disease, or cause your allies to deal more damage via transfusing tainted blood. Where things really get complicated, is if you’ve got two DK Healers in the party and can benefit from both diseases. But, that really just comes down to tuning. If its too high, it would be foolish not to run one or two.
Keep in mind, the disease immunity debuffs are still in play, so if you’re going to run 2 DK Healers, you’ll likely need to discuss which diseases each healer will be limited to, so that you’re not stepping on each others toes with immunities. However, the immunities could be long enough that there’s no value in running 2 DK healers at all, as you would stack up immunities too quickly, rendering both healers useless for a period of time. And, with that being said, is it a bad idea to design a class in a way that would require a group to only have one?
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Would love to hear all your thoughts, concerns, etc. Obviously, there are issues with the concept and ways it could be improved. But, hopefully this serves as some kid of rough foundation for a similar class in the future.
Love,
A Hopeful Future Blard