I would suggest, rather than an open offhand, a non-weapon offhand - grimoires, flowers, fans, etc, something that both calls to the spellcaster part or can be part of the duelist flair
You could say I’m thinking of GW2’s concept art for their version of Mesmer (Rapier and a fan as a focus) or red mage but even Felo’melorn is set up like that.
Not necessarily. You’re intentionally playing wrong in a risky way to get more damage.
I’m thinking the parry would have a 45s-1min CD, since it nullifies a hit (would need some exceptions to prevent breaking raid bosses and etc), and the recast for a successful parry would do a lot of damage. If you miss, it has a longer cooldown.
The sidestep dodge might not avoid the full hit, maybe just a portion of it or a max amount of damage, and you could have talents to increase your damage or reset the cooldown of something or generate a resource for using it successfully.
It’s a different way of playing instead of just mashing out your rotation.
Yeah, problem is most offhands in WoW kinda don’t make a lot of sense for a duelist theme. For a full on caster yeah.
Oh also (and this is straight up stealing from how Pillars of Eternity did wizard) but a CC CD that’s just hitting someone with your grimoire or focus.
Sounds like rogue with evasion, feint, and CoS.
I know I’ve also made a thread in the past talking about a battlemage concept with spellbreaker and spellblade as the specs. Spellbreakers in wc3 were always one of my favs. Just such a cool design. They were the icons of the blood elves as much as the blood mage. Then when we met Spellblade Aluriel, the similarities between them thematically and design-wise just felt like they are supposed to be connected in some way.
Pleasure to meet ya, my name is brainstorm and I’m a DK also known as Melee mage.
I spend more time casting howling blast than attacking melee, if you want to feel your concept on practice just make a DK.
So its just a weaponized spell reflect.
The potential to be game breaking is just…concerning on this.
I can see the potential in everything. Even if it does feel a lot like combining different things we already have and slightly changing them.
Sorta taking runepower from dks, with a twist.
Sorta taking monk/dh mobility with a twist.
Sorta taking spell reflect with a twist.
Sorta taking elemental magic and weapon imbues from enh with a twist.
Just not 100% sure if a bunch of twists equate to justifying a new class.
I just know I personally dont want more elf themed stuff for a while. And I would like new classes to be filling some void we dont currently have, mechanically.
I can see the potential, just not quite there yet.
Yeah, you can put it that way. But it’s just one part of the class. There’s a lot more going on than just that, and that might just be for the physical oriented spec.
Which is why I’m emphasizing specific concepts - the stuff that has flair
Also I do think it should be significantly more magic-oriented than the magic plate classes in outlook.
Plus some offhands are just random trash which fits a swashbuckler concept in some ways
Maybe get good at some of the current classes before writing a novel about a game you’re not good at.
You really have nothing better to do, huh?
If a Spellblade is added it should use arcane and shadow as a combination of Spellblade, Spellbreaker, and Riftblade. Fire and frost are already covered by other melee classes, arcane and shadow are not.
Elves also aren’t the only ones with spellblade/battlemage type NPCs. There are draenei, humans, orcs, etc. No reason for it to be elf exclusive.
I like stating facts.
Death Knights say hello, and Demon Hunters have some shadow too. Sub Rogue also has tons of shadow damage, and even has shadow clones.
Arcane magic is not used by any melee spec though, you’re right.
The only battlemage that I’ve seen, that isn’t just a military mage, is humans from the Kirin Tor, and only in one area of the game. Was humans running around in plate armor and dual wielding, but could cast spells. Any other mention of battlemage is just a mage that’s a military member.
Any mention of spellblade is an elf, with one exception being a gnome. So that means, if you want a proper spellblade theme, your options are Kirin Tor (run by high elves / humans) or the spellblades from the Nightborn.
I don’t think Activision would go and write a new faction of them into the lore, since they already won’t give us paladins on more races for extremely flimsy lore reasons.
This might come as a shock to you, but death knights use death magic.
Which is… shadow magic.
No, death magic is its own entirely separate domain of magic.
Yes, but DKs do not use it.
SOME abilities channel from the Shadowlands, which could be considered death magic, but almost all of a DK’s magic is from Ner’zhul who used primarily shadow magic with some void/death mixed in.
Undead and DKs are weak to light as they are powered by shadow, since the two forces annihilate each other on contact. If DKs and Undead were running on death magic, nothing would happen.
worked well for gandalf
You’re confusing Ner’zhul who was a shaman who became a warlock and then was imprisoned and empowered by the Shadowlands as Lich King with the AU version of Ner’zhul who was forced into using the power of a fallen naaru by the Iron Horde.