With the Pre-Patch. My friends and I have been leveling through various timelines and stories.
And it seems no matter where we go, or what we do. There is always a genius engineer in a Mech Suit, or Launching bombs or missiles.
Even in the Steam Vaults, or the Mechannar in Burning Crusade. Places entirely foreign to Azeroth. What do we find but Tinkers in their mechs taking on entire dungeon groups.
Wrath of the Lich King had entire questlines dedicated to Technology and mechanization.
And don’t even get me Started on Draenor! Goblin Engineers in Shredders, Orcs building turrets and explosives. Even a Giant Felsteel Mech defending the gates of HFC. Nagrand even has a Gladiator arena, and guess what? One of the champions is yet another Tinker with a Mech suit and more explosives than a Nuclear submarine.
Obviously Legion and BFA both had the spotlight stolen by High Tinker Mekkatorque, but let’s not forget King Mechagon and his mech. Or The Island expedition teams. Clearly divided into Tank, Healer and DPS.
In Short:
Tinkers as a class are absolutely everywhere on Azeroth. They display thematic abilities that don’t tread on existing classes.
Blizzard has clearly already done a ton of work on Tinkers.
I really hope this is the Next class they’re considering. It’s everywhere in the Lore, even goes as far back as Warcraft 2 and 3.
Tinkerer would be awesome as a shaman/hunter hybrid.
What I mean is an Rdps with totems(gadgets/turrets).
Or a tank with totems(gadgets) that debuff enemies like shrinkifying them etc.
Or a healer with totems(gadgets) that buff allies.
I’m not sure what you mean by Hunter/Shaman Hybrid.
Tinker doesn’t really tread on either of those themes?
Shamans are about the 4 Elements, and Ancestral spirits
Hunters are about Animals and Archery.
I do think Tinkers would make most sense as an Intelligence using Mail class. Most likely using Bows, guns, and Crossbows. Since those are all functionally exactly the same.
I always envisioned a Tinker tank as managing your resources to keep a “force field” up. You have cool gadgets that you can use, but if you don’t save enough energy to keep up your “force field” it drops and you start taking a huge damage.
And of course, every spec would need its own awesome mech suit…like druids.
I’ll be honest. I hold very light hearted and whimsical views on game balance.
And you’re more than allowed to Disagree, but:
In my opinion, class balance in wow is sloppy, but far from unplayable. And I certainly wouldn’t call it a “Nightmare” as you do.
I’m always willing to take a less meta class if the person playing it knows what their doing. Since in my opinion, a good player is better than a good class.
Generally speaking, if you can run heroic raids with your class. Then it’s endgame Viable, as even blizzard has stated they don’t really balance around Mythic raids. And heroic is the “intended endgame”
So yes. Sloppy class balance is real. But certainly won’t stop me or blizzard from wanting new classes
Tinker ~A mixture of play-styles of Shaman, Monk & Hunter involving mini mechanical bots / turrets. Can be all three roles, Tank, DPS & Healer.
Primary Weapon: Gun or Crossbow (Not Bows)
Armor Type: Mail
An idea, I’m unsure of:
Only playable via Gnomes, Mechagnomes and Goblins.
Lore wise (kinda) this makes sense, game-play wise it doesn’t as the Tinker would borrow a decent amount from the Engineer profession and that profession is available to everyone.
Necromancer, I’m unsure on how they would do it tbh. But I said the same thing about Demon Hunter so… They’d just need to get creative I suppose.
I only have a few, logical Nitpicks.
Little things
There’s no reason to restrict this at all.
Keep in mind, guns bows and crossbows are all EXACTLY the same mechanically, and only have appearance changes.
Furthermore: every ranged weapon in the game (that I know of) drops with Agility on it. Since only Hunters can use them.
So Logically: Blizzard only puts 1-2 ranged weapons in every raid tier. Since only one class uses them.
All you would need to do is increase that number to 3-4 weapons, and make the new ones have Intelligence and not Agility.
Instant Tinker weapons, and no new weapon models necessary.
Problem solved.
We’ve seen LOTS of Azeroth’s races have a prevalence for Technology. dwarves, orcs, undead, even Draenei. The list goes on from there.
This would be ideal. Assuming Tinkers used ranged weapons, The engineering profession would work nicely for things like Triggers and Scopes.
Blizzard: Dont be sad that we took away the loot-a-rang, and other fun profession items, we’ll bring it all back as a class ability in 10.0 with our brand new class, Engineer!
I would like a tinker class. It is long overdue. It could be a healer (potion injector or field-bot medics), a tank (super mechanized suit and high armor), and a DPS (Missiles everywhere!!!)
I’d want Necromancer’s most honesly but the problem is you have Unholy DKs and Affliction Warlocks to cover that. They’d either have to gut those two specs to create a Necromancer or come up with original ideas which this batch of devs seem to have a lot of problems doing.
As for Tinkers, it really shouldn’t be too hard. All their “abilities” are their inventions. I could see all three specs, DPS, Heals, Tank. Would be fun. I’d love it.
I realize this, but I find it weird to think about a Tinker weilding a wooden bow. Just wouldn’t look right imo.
I suppose you could also say that about a blunderbuss as well.
That’s partly why I’m unsure of the idea, because A. every player has access to the engineering profession and B. there are multiple NPC’s all over Azeroth that have traits of Tinkers.
The idea I got in my head, the Tinker class borrows a chunk from the profession. But there’s a decent amount of synergy with the profession that makes up for it.
“So, you’re a Tinker.”
“Yep.”
“But you didn’t take Engineering.”
“Nope.”
“Um… why?”
“Redundant. So, can I have that cloth to make bags with, then?”
In defense of Blizzard. It’s a bad idea to limit engineering to only a profession.
Look at it this way:
The Engineer/Tinker fantasy would function better as a class, since their abilities would naturally be too powerful to tune around a profession that anyone could pick up.
Or in other words. Making engineering a profession limits its potential. You can’t have one profession being too powerful.
They’d just need to get creative I suppose.