I can see merit to this. I’ve always wanted to lean into a single element when I play a shaman. But if I’m making my spells look different shouldn’t they also have different damage types?
Also I feel like a fire shaman and a lightning shaman should probably play differently from each other.
Also there is the problem of visual clarity. I know people here don’t care about PVP, but I’d be pretty annoyed if frost mages just started shooting green ice at me. League of Legends does that and it’s annoying, sometimes champions look like other champions at a glance.
I personally feel like people would enjoy a bow spec.
It’s just such a restrictive class concept because it’s basically just “be Illidan.” It’s the only class in the game that feels like it’s trying to let players RP as a specific person rather than as a broader archetype.
I’d be on board with it. I think we need more ranged physical damage specs, having three whole weapon types exist just for one class seems silly to me.
I wish there was Necromancers, Gunslingers, Lighting Mages, Light and Shadow Mages, Rangers, and etc as Hero Specs. Makes the game more fun and interesting than same old same old abilities.
I really don’t like the idea of class skins. And I’ve never liked any hero class system. And Blizzard so far failed with each attempt at a sub-spec system.
Why is everyone (including blizzard) trying to reinvent the wheel? New specs and new classes are the best.
I’m still mad they removed combat rogue when they made outlaw rogue.
New specs and new classes (and let’s be real, in WoW each spec is basically a class of its own) require constant balancing efforts and extra development. Class skins would be purely cosmetic and require significantly less work, allowing more of them without having to worry about gameplay effects.
And frankly, we have enough classes. I don’t want to have to keep track of yet another alt to play with new aesthetics, I’d rather just get new options for my existing characters.
New specs and new classes are completely possible to balance. Blizzard has done it many times. (Preservation Evoker is different because they tried to introduce a new role for some reason)
And I don’t think we have too many classes (and definitely not too many specs). We are somewhat starting approach too many races in the game but I don’t even think that’s true.
Class skins would be impossible to balance. If a single class skin had any marginal combat benefit it would break the whole system. Look at what happened to minor glyphs. They began as cosmetic, but some cosmetics were better than others.
And I don’t like the idea of a frost mage shooting black lightning at me and summong a skeleton because he has on a necromancer class skin. That is just immersion destroying imo.
Skin is not enough if a lore class abilities are missing. Priestess of Elune are an example of that. To turn this character to a proper priestess of Elune I need to be able to use a bow and preferably wear mail armour in addition to cloth. This could be added through Hero talents.
After the release of TWW, I don’t think we will see many, if any, new sets of Hero Talents. They will just make the trees longer in Midnight and Last Titan. Still the basic idea of “evergreen” without a lot of work.
I can’t remember exactly which glyphs it were that were meant to be cosmetic but had a combat benefit. Too many things in this games history man feels like I’m studying ww2.
But I can point to verifiable examples in league where skins provide combat benefits by making some projectiles harder to see.
Well, the way to deal with that and also dismiss Blizzard’s excuse of “pvp recognizability” as a deterrent for class skins - and really any cosmetic glyphs - is to just disable them in ranked pvp.
It would also make the talent tree more digestible if the talents were “you can use a bow.” “you can use mail armor” “you can use an arrow of light ability or whatever.” “Healing arrow? idk.”
Rather than what we have now “you’re holy light has a 2% chance to make your flurry of light cast dawning light which has a 5% to give you a 30% dodge chance.”
A simple conversion of offensive spells into “arrows” would go a long way. That way balancing issues would be non-existent. Especially if the mail armour is only optical (cloth transmog able to look like mail).
“Hey check it out. We added Necromancers and Spellblades to the game…as class skins, which can’t be used in ranked PvP, and also need to be unlocked by doing story quests.”
This would be one of the worst received announcements ever. I’m sorry but nothing about that sounds good.