New Tinker Class would make WoW more immersive

Community General Discussion
41

Nah, Tinkers are wayyyyy too broad of a concept to only be a single spec.

It’s not like Demon Hunters where Blizzard had to stretch to make it a two spec class and couldn’t even muster up a third.

The idea is as fleshed out as Death Knights or Demon Hunters were, arguably significantly moreso than either of those.

Before Demon Hunters existed, there were like 5 of them and Illidan in BC and we hadn’t heard of them for years until Blizzard decided to break the glass and pull out the “use in case of emergency” idea of retconning BC and bringing Illidan back from the dead.

Nailing down exactly what a tinker should be is damn near impossible because the potential of the class is so large that two people can come up with half a dozen ideas each and have minimal overlap.

FWIW, my preferred implementation would be the following:

Mail wearer:

Tank/Healer/RDPS.

Tank would be in a big mech, GMOD style where mitigation is done through forcefields, barriers and other such gadgets installed in the mech. “Heat” as a resource, which basically acts as a “reverse rage/RP/whatever”, where some abilities generate it (like powerful defensive or offensive abilities) and then you have to use other abilities to vent it to stop your mech overheating.

You could have self-healing justified as you (the pilot) doing internal repairs and activating emergency protocols and whatnot. As a very, very last case emergency, you could eject yourself out of your destroyed mech and call in a new one to be air-dropped in, if you can survive long enough to pull it off.

Healer would basically be a combat medic with gadgets to make it more practical. You could have gadgets like “self-applying bandages” to act as a HoT, force shields to act as bubbles, throw Health Potions for AoE healing, and so on.

Range DPS would basically be “Engineering but actually good”, all those wacky gadgets that Engineering has that have to be neutered for balance? They’re gunna be the bread and butter of the spec. Bombs, Turrets, Rockets, Mechanical Dragonlings, Lasers, basically every cool offensive toy that Engineering has had over it’s lifetime is beefed up and put in the range DPS toolkit.

Engineer would probably be a better name, but the profession already took that.

Even if we’re just porting current abilities into the game, even ignoring everything new you could do for a tinker:

They could have AoE slows/roots by putting down a gadget that manipulates gravity, maybe even makes a mini-Black Hole if you wanted to emulate a mechanic like Ursols Vortex or whatever.
Single Target res could be a defibrallator, MASS res is just this gigantic Tesla Coil that zaps everyone alive.
Battle Res is them jamming a big ol needle of adrenalin into you to get you up and going.

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42

You know, despite being a player since Pandaria, I had never ever done the Gnome Starting zone.

I finally tried it out, see what gnomes were all about, and I am honestly shocked by the obvious hole in the class roster.

You work with tinkers and machines in that whole zone. It’s literally the entire gnome way of life.

44

Honestly, WoW has some pretty advanced technology with everything from whatever the hell Goblins and Gnomes are up to, to the Undeads alchemical R&D (which is partly magical, but still mostly mundane since there wasn’t anything magical about the bat poop or the random weeds I gathered for them to help perfect the plague) to stuff like Alliance tanks and Horde demolishers.

Like it’s been shown time and time again that mundane technology is just as effective as a fireball or a sword, often moreso and doubly so when you mix it with magic, like in cases of Legion or Army of Light engineering, which can make things like interdimensional spaceships, Fel Reavers and Orbital Cannons.

And we use literally none of that. Only magic, steel and a combination of the two for many classes.

Maybe we’re called adventurers because the term “luddite” hasn’t actually been coined on Azeroth yet.

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45

We’ve seen Orc and Mag har Tinkers.
Dwarves of both flavors too.

Lady Sena is an Undead, and we’ve seen Vulpera pull goblin tech out of the sand and have it working Right away.

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46

Another spam thread :roll_eyes:

47

Oh I know. Draenei are also another great example considering they make use of things like literal spaceships. Blood Elves also have been seen using tech in places like Tempest Keep or you have their golems as well.

I was more trying to figure out why some people are attached to the line of thought that tinkers would only be for goblin and gnomes. They are the most obvious choices, yeah. But they aren’t the only ones.

48

I’m more scared blizz will pull another DH and make it super restricted

49

Both have a fairly strong case of being Tinkers.(Orcs of all flavors and Dwarves)
Some races would be a hard sell, like Pandaren, but Blizz rarely gives a class all the races as options.

50

Gnomes and Goblins would definitely be the poster-children for the class, but most races have a pretty strong technological background.

Like before Garrosh founded the Iron Horde, he had the Blackfuse Company and a significant chunk of their roster were Orcs.

Undead have more experience on the alchemical side of tinkering, what with the Royal Apocathary Society.

Blood Elves and Draenei got a lot of hands-on experience working with hyper-advanced Naaru tech.

Dwarves are almost as technologically competent as Gnomes, even if they’re not as famous for it since they did most of the technological legwork for the Human faction in WC3.

Humans are naturally versatile with tech and are pretty easy sells for the class regardless.

The harder sells are Pandaren, Night Elves, Tauren and Nightborne. But it’s not like DH where literally only Gnomes and Goblins use technology, so you have to be one of them to be a tinker.

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51

DH’s are super restricted because of Lore, Illidan wanted an immortal army, so he needed immortal races.

And, it’s not touched on much, but illidan was a little… touchy about “mongrel” races.

In the gameplay of WoW, we never encounter demon Hunters that arent Elves.

Tinkers on the other hand are everywhere, as Tons of races

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52

Vulpera are seen repurposing and using Goblin tech throughout Vol’dun as well.
I think they would be a great fit.
All the short races seem to have an affinity for tech, probably to make up for what would be their lack of physical strength despite PC’s not really reflecting that.

53

A goblin can make a mean looking bruiser actually.

But it’s absurd to me that everything about their race is represented except easily the biggest part. technology.

I LOVE goblins. They, and night elves make up my favorite races in WoW.

We’ve seen goblins and Deathwing Cultists, and guess what, you can be a Shadow Priest. We see goblin bouncers and bruisers, and you can play a goblin Warrior.

But Tinkers? No dice.
What about Gazlowe, or the Gob Squad. Awesome tinker characters. No representation in the classes.

This would be like adding Night Elves. But not letting them be druids, or priests.

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54

True.

It’s pretty easy to make a reasonably balanced list of races that could be tinkers on both factions.

On Horde I’d go Orc, Undead, Blood Elf, Goblin.
On Alliance I’d go Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Draenei.

For Allied Races I’d go DI Dwarf, LF Draenei, Mechagnome for Alliance.
For Horde I’d go Mag’har, Vulpera and if you REALLY don’t like a one-race imbalance on the Horde side, you could probably stretch Tinker to also include Nightborne.

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55

laughs in Shaman disparity
Alliance shamans are soooo rare. But on the Horde, every single race except 3 can be shamans.

56

Like it’s not really a big deal, but if you wanted to stretch it you could pretty easily include Nightborne to tinkers, though their technology in Surumar was closer to applied magic than anything else.

Point is, there’s plenty of representation for Tinkers on both sides. The worry that the class would be Gnome/Goblin exclusive like how DH’s are elf-exclusive is completely unfounded.

57

Literally every race should be able to be Tinkers.

This isn’t even a question. Engineering isn’t racially restricted, and it’s basically the same exact thing.

58

I could see this being the case.

Tinkers are just Engineers with enough Know How to get things built in combat.

Like an Engineer can slap together a gizmo.
But only a Tinker can get a sentry gun up and running while fighting Kil’jaden.

59

Realistically, yes.
But I try to think of it from Blizzard’s perspective and they like class/race combos to be restricted typically.

60

You’re playing a tauren with antlers named bears.

The Highmountain tauren was a great chance to remake the tauren with a different perspective like possibly claiming their antlers let them tune in with the arcane… instead they just made them normal tauren and even gave them the druid class when there’s zero example of druidism in the high mountain zone.

61

If I’m being honest with you guys, a little forced racial diversity is good for the game.

I’m all for people doing what they want. But I don’t like when 99 percent of the playerbase is the same identical elf.

It’s why, for example I don’t really like Void Elves. Their addition to the game lowered diversity, and now the vast majority of characters on both factions have an identical model

So tinkers should be open to races that make sense. But maybe not everyone