The Class Skins Discussion for 9.0

Community General Discussion
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Context
So, back in Legion we had a great focus on classes, we had classes hall, artefact, mounts, which contribuited for a great class design and RP feeling. In time, I had great expectation that bfa would have some similiar approach with race, I was really hyped for race halls with story development for every race. Instead, we had a mix of race focus (allied races and the heritage armors in progress) and a faction focus (4th war, warfronts, etc). I really believe the next stage for 9.0 should be some kind of race and class mixing focus, via class skin.

This post was heavily insipired by the video of Taliesin and Evitel on this topic:

So, the Skins
I believe every skin should be heavily justified by lore (and in some cases even correct the incorrect lore-wise classes, like light focused BE and Taurens paladins), and in this way Blizzard can deliver some of the most asked class/themes. And hopelly, some nice themed-transmongs.

It should not change gameplay in any aspect as it should be all about SKINS.

Hunter
Hunter, I believe, is a classe with lots of possibilities:

Dark Ranges: Undead, BE and NE.
A shadow themed hunter, shared for all the resurrect races by Sylvanas. The BE and NE could have a dead skin also, changing the eye and skin colors like DK.

Tinker: Gnomes, Mechagnomes, Goblins and Vulpera.
I know it’s been request as a new class, but with the right approach, this would work just fine. Robotic pets, some nice explosives and laseres animations, a melee spec.

Shadowhunter: Trolls, Zandalari Trolls.
We just need this so much with the WC3 aspects.

Priest
Classes like this, with heavily light focus, need changes since some of the races are not intrinsically connected with light as others.

Sea Priest: Kultirean
I want water animations.

Elune Priest: NE
I want a druid-themed priest, which would be amazing with recently events related to Tyrande.

Nature Speaker: Tauren, HM Tauren.
They worship Earth Mother with similiar aspects of Elune Priests and this should reflect in they take of the class.

Loa Speaker: Trolls, Zandalari Trolls
It makes no sense to these races play a lightly classe. Give us something like Talanji. Every spec could follow a different Loa. Imagine shadow as a Bwonsamdi follower.

Warlock
Well, i’m not really creative about this one, so:

Necromancer: Everyone, I guess.
Just retheme the class. Take out the demons, and give us corpses, skeletons, etc.

Rogue

Dark Rangers: Undead, BE and NE.
It works with both classes, why not?

Pirate: Every race, I guess.
It could just be inspired by the Freehold dungeon.

Paladin

Spellbraker: Blood Elf
Taliesin got this right. It would be a great repage for the class for the BE.

Firey Herald: Black Iron Dwarf.
Just make the class less light-focused and give more focus on the relationship of the race with the fire.

Rekhan Herald: Troll Zandalari.
It’s the reason it exists, just translate this to animation.

Earth Mother Hearld: Tauren.
Same.

Druid
The skin should reflect better the origins of the druid powers for every race

Thornspeaker: Kultiran.
Give us the Drustvar feeling reflecting not only in the druid forms, but also in the others skills.

Loa Avatar: Troll, Zandalari Troll.
It should reflect better the loa impact in the class

Earth Mother Son/Daughter: Tauren, Highmountain Tauren.

Transformer: Mechagnomes.
It really should exist. They could just rearrange their bodies. It would not be related to religion or nature and, for god sakes, it would be fine.

Shaman

Sea Shaman: Kultiran.
Instead of the focus on all elements, just give them water and lightning.

Black Iron Shaman: Black Iron Dwarf.
Instead of the focus on all elements, just give them fire and earth.

Chi Bender: Pandaren.
Chi is also a element in the Warcraft lore. It would be amazing a class focusing on bending it, which would be diferent of the monk martial-arts approaching.

Mage

Arcane Master: Nightborn
A skin in which every spec would be about differents approaches of the arcane magic.

Technomage: Gnome, Mechagnome, Goblin and Vulperean.
A reskinned mage with tech elements in the animations (example: the icy floating spikes in frost could be some mini-robots).

Appointments and Conclusions
At the moment I’m lacking of ideias for some classes (Warrior, Monk, DH and DK) and some races (Human, Orcs, etc), because I believe those represent the standard of their respective class-race combination and I believe it should be preservad. We need to have some differents skins and still have the regular ones, which would be more shinned for this.

I believe these skins should become base for respective race-class combination, but if it happens, it would take a huge effort of the design and animation teams and would be probably the greatest feature of 9.0, and I can see why Blizzard would want it to be locked at the endgame content with grinding reputation requirements.

Anyways, I sorry for my bad english, I just had some ideias which I think would make a great discussion. Please share your thoughts :slight_smile:

[EDIT]: As discussed in comments, this could also work as a reformulation of the glyph system, where we get “packets” of skin class being able to turn on and off wherever we want.

[EDIT]: Thinking about artefacts, what I loved most were the themes and transmogs, and I think this is a way to produce new content in these direction.

Besidies that, this is also a type of content that can be reused for the next expacs. Doesn’t matter what X.Y patch we are, I would absolutly go back in old zones for this, as I believe mostly would (which I think is important for the game to keep the world alive).

I think it’s time we get content that endure cross expansions. I’m seek of getting warfront, island expedition and heart of azeroth content kind, that will just die after we hit 9.0.

The only things we’re reusing from Legion are transmogs (artefacts and class sets), mythic+ and wq. And wq are not content at all.

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I feel like this would be some sort of balancing hell.

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waste of resources and development time

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Also can of shafts people of X race…

You cant be a Dark Ranger you have to be Belf or Nelf!

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I’m in agreement with this. I feel like it’d be worthless in the long run. I’d rather Dark Ranger be made into an actual class. Same deal with Necromancers.

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Void elves should have Spellbreaker too.

Night elves should have this too, because we have highborne on our ranks.

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I love your ideas, especially technomage! :heart:

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Bizzzard alredy have said about the chaos of the actual balacing state. Even if we get tinker in 9.0 as a class, I don’t believe we’ll have new class in the near/medium future.

With skin class we have new tastes on the same classes without the balancing stuff. Blizzard would earn tons of $$$ with the race and faction changes. And I can see lots of people creating multiples charcters of the same class just to try a new taste.

One thing I always loved about WoW was the class fantasy. In this way, we’ll have tons of, and it could be added just like allied race, without rush. It would actually increase the diversity and experience in the game without really no need to development new classes from zero.

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exactly they would just be polishing turds i would rather that time be put into class development/actual content for me to sink my teeth into not MORE cosmetics like allied races.

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Sure, why not?
The exactly idea of this feature is that the possibilities are infinity.

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I’d like a Holy class skin for Shadow. I would like to melt faces with righteous fire.

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It should all be cosmetic tho like glyphs but on steroids

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I think the game needs to have some consistency on its emphasis-for me that bounces around too much between faction and class. I personally have enjoyed the class oriented areas of WOW-everything from moonglade to the Argents to class halls. I think they should continue to emphasize class content as that is what they do well. I would rather they develop the class organizations for rogues, warriors, hunters, priests and warlocks to add to the pally, Druid, shaman class organizations.

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Different teams. They can have the art team remodel class particles and effects while the design team focus on the class development. If any huge overhauls are needed they can bench that class for class skins until the overhaul is done.

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It actually could work as a reformulation of the glyph system. Instead, we could have “packets” with skins of a said theme.

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that art team could be developing new zones/raids no thanks id rather them do that instead of just putting a new coat of paint on the stuff we already have.

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More zone bloat? ew. Either way, BFA and Legion has some of the best art in the IP and they also revamped several classes effects and particles during them so your correlation between the 2 being a either or situation is illogical.

Raids development also comes way after the expansions core content development so they wouldn’t be doing the raids anyway :confused:

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I’d also like the necromancer class skin for demonology warlocks.

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I agree with a portion of what your saying. There are some things that really would be difficult to make into their own class without stepping on the toes or taking abilities from another.

A great example is necromancer, adding that as a class would ve taking the mechanics and in some cases skills of:
Demonology locks
Affliction locks
Blood dks
Unholy dks

Those 4 specs would also have to be gutted and reworked.

Back on point though, a glyph that changes all curses to diseases and minions to undead (skeletons etc…) would be acceptable as there arenr enough differences to justify a class.

I also love the idea of glyphs that represent different races power sources. Moon priests, solar paladins, loa paladins, etc…

But tinker should be its own class and not a spec.

Overall i like your idea though.

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you realized zones could be instances/scenereos not physical places on the map