I think this argument held water at release, when they expected professions to play a larger role than they ultimately did. It was a potential that was never realized, however.
And thus nuking engineering from orbit while tossing the relative few things blizzard likes to consistently give current engis that wouldnt fit into a class spec off to a blacksmithing specialization would be a good idea for their designers. It would let them build upon all the really cool trinkets and other stuff engineering has covered during WoW’s 15+ years.
Yes some players would be upset over it but overall I think more would be happier to see the fun and crazy stuff engineering brought to the game like gnomish mind control caps back into the game somewhere more than a joke.
But I don’t think they would (or should really) just introduce a Tinker class currently. Not until they actually do something to engineering because if my warlock can’t have meta or even the name ‘death coil’ as a spell over Blizzards very notable allergy to overlap? Then Tinkers can’t technically work under those same constrictions.
BfA and Dragonflight have had enough tech themes directly present in their content or the events surrounding them for Tinkers to have been thematically appropriate additions in either.
BfA probably would’ve been the strongest choice. You’ve got this brand new material, Azerite, to play with that can make incredibly powerful explosives, can be used to enhance even the most simplistic of weapons, and could even be a power source for a larger machine. Such advancements in the midst of a war would be a perfect fit. And that doesn’t even get into all the Mechagon stuff that came later. The only problem is that it happened right after legion which also added a class. So it was incredibly unlikely.
Dragonflight has all of this ancient titan tech lying around, and we just got done with Shadowlands which had Zereth Mortis. But even before we got to ZM there were some examples of tech that could interest a Tinker like the constructs in Bastion. Tales of the constructs there definitely could’ve inspired some new tinkers during the timeskip. But unfortunately, we got Evokers instead. Taking the spot Tinkers have deserved for a long time with this new thing that kinda misses the point of the “playable dragon” requests players have also been making for years.
Ultimately there’s enough of a presence of this stuff on the side that we wouldn’t need it to be the core theme of an expansion.
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I’d like to think so, there’s so much tech context out there right now that they could slide into any xpac theme pretty easily.
Hunter in general is also sort of a confused mishmash of themes and doesn’t really even hit its own inspirations all that well.
Beast Mastery is the closest the class is to matching its Rexxar origins, but it’s not melee or at the very least dual wielding throwing axes like it should be. Marksman can’t decide if it’s a priestess of the moon/dwarven rifleman/generic fantasy ranger spec so it becomes a weird blend of all three, while also having the most iconic spell of priestess of the moon, Starfall, stolen by balance druids. Survival’s Legion rework was a weird attempt to represent the melee origins of WoW’s pet-centric hunters but they picked the wrong spec to rework and still haven’t managed to give it a coherent identity.
People using this class in particular as a way to downplay the idea of adding tinkers just because one spec has bombs that are at odds with its own identity seems really odd.
I wasn’t around for when Monks got added, what did they take from other classes?
As for Demon Hunter: Warlocks never owned Metamorphosis in the first place and the only reason they had it was because DH wasn’t a class from vanilla. Same thing happened with death coil when death knights came out I believe? Imagine paladin wasn’t a class in vanilla and priests had bubble. Then paladins come out and bubble is put where it rightfully belongs. That’s how silly the Meta complaints are.
And there’s really nothing for tinkers to steal anyway. There aren’t any other tech classes in the game.
To a diehard WoW player, this is perfectly reasonable. To marketing executives that needs to present a unified product theme to shareholders and general consumers? Disparate thematic messaging is anathema.
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*raises eyebrow
I can see it now! Finally the rest of our heritage colors. I would play something roughly similar to Guild Wars 2’s Engineer. Scrap the bomb meta and make it a second rifle class.
So they have more reason to be a class in WoW than they did in WC3 because Gazlowe and Mekkatorque do have participation in WoW’s story. They are both Tinkers.
This was back when they were trying to make each tank have a niche (after there was only 1 tank in vanilla, and 3 tanks in BC 2 of which were just clones of each other). They tried doing a “dodge tank” two ways, Druids and Monks. The Monk one worked and is still with us today. The Druid one was garbage. After a while they finally just had to tack “oh and you take 25% less damage” onto the Druid ability, it was so awful.
Then they just abandoned the idea and went with the Legion one. And then they trashed the Legion one after just a single season.
And now they still can’t figure out what to do with bear tanks.
Had Monks never been added, and those development ideas gone to bear tanks instead, bears would have been in a good spot since Mists.
Gaslowe is engineer / sapper.
Mekkatorque can easily be warrior engineer.
There is no Tinker.
Cope.
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Geblin is literally the “High Tinker”… a formal title.
Deal with it?
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I think they are awesome, no different than any other playstyle. Tinkers are great.
so many threads there have been, and it’s the main thing to conclude on WoW main classes.
And I say it once, better options in race, class and customization as content that Blizzard gives us?
Evoker and Drackthyr, pure 
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Wow is better when the steampunk garbage recedes into the forgotten background.
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Engineer and sapper are not hero units, Tinker was a full on hero unit.
(I tried to post a link to the old battlenet page that had the unit info here, but it didn’t work even with the workarounds for “non-trusted” links. Search “battle net wc3 tinker” and it’ll be the first result)
Look what the undead farmer says? maybe you tell me you grew up in Kansas.
You have not seen the terror caused by the supposed LoL MMO with its success of Arcane, in having a game of Steampunk, Cyberpunk, and JRPG Magic technology at the same time?
Blizzard has to upgrade you, and the gnomes and goblins is the key to give the future with the titans in Ulduar.
1 character.
No one else is a tinker.
deal with it.
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Tinker is a neutral hero that has literally 0 relevance in the game story.
Gaslowe is a Sapper unit on WC3. He’s an engineer on WoW.
Several characters have multiple definitions on WoW/multiclass, such as Thrall being Shaman/Warrior for as long as we remember.
The only Tinker is Mekkatorque and itself doesn’t justify having an entire class that is almost an Engineer Survival Hunter.
People need to acknowledge that.
There’s just other ideas that are better. Not to mention I’d rather see a unique Mechagnome Druid than a new class that they have to balance. They need to refine what is there first.