We need: SUB-CLASSES!

Community General Discussion
1

Imagine if this game had 100 classes.
However, the classes are not new, but simply reworks and combinations of the existing classes.

I present to you: SUB-CLASS

Imagine you wanted to introduce a new class to the game.
Ta-da! You’re in the right place!

A sub-class combines abilities from two classes, but it cannot access all the abilities of both classes.

Sub-classes have only one specialization and two talent trees. However, the left talent tree is based on the first class, while the right talent tree is based on the second class that the sub-class is built upon.

Unlocking a SUB-CLASS:

To unlock a sub-class, you must “master” two classes. This means you have to bring both classes to their maximum level. This way, you will learn the basics for the sub-class.

Great! Let’s go through some examples.

The Lich - SUB-CLASS of Death Knight and Mage.

To unlock The Lich, you must bring a Death Knight and a Mage to their maximum level.

The talent trees are defined as follows:
The Death Knight talent tree is a combination of Death Knight talents that fit The Lich, including Unholy, Frost, and Blood talents.

In terms of lore, Lichs can cause great Unholy and Frost damage. Death and Decay is one of their main abilities since Warcraft III, but most of their abilities are designed for Frost.

Therefore, The Lich receives the Death and Decay ability upon which it can build, as well as many Frost Death Knight abilities.

While The Lich only has access to many Frost and few Arcane abilities from the Mage talent tree, it should be noted that there are no Fire spells in the second talent tree.

The Lich is a ranged fighter with a pre-defined Lich form, but outside of combat, The Lich can assume a mortal form.

The Dark Ranger - SUB-CLASS of Hunter and Rogue

The Dark Ranger is a combination of Hunter and Rogue, with a focus on dealing damage independently without relying on companions.

His role is also ranged combat, and through his Hunter talents, he can improve ranged abilities and summon temporary companions like spiders or shadow hounds.

His Rogue talent tree allows the Dark Ranger to merge with the shadows and gain dark advantages.

The Shadowhunter - SUB-CLASS of Demonhunter and Shaman

The Shadowhunter, despite carrying a glaive, is a healer and ranged fighter.

While utilizing his Shaman talent tree to learn or improve abilities such as Chain Heal, Hex, or totems (including the Snake Totem), the Shadowhunter uses the Demon Hunter talent tree to empower himself from the shadows.

The Valkyrie - SUB-CLASS of Warrior and Paladin

Embodying a powerful melee class with strong supportive abilities.

Her main ability is the use of divine magic and the use of protective shields to protect herself and her allies.

The Warrior side of the Valkyrie allows her to learn and improve strong melee abilities such as weapon damage and shield bash.

The Paladin talent tree offers her the opportunity to improve her supportive abilities, such as healing, protection spells, and enhancing resistance and rescue abilities.

The Spellbreaker - SUB-CLASS of Warrior and Mage

The Spellbreaker is a sub-class that combines the abilities of the Warrior and the Mage. As the name suggests, the Spellbreaker specializes in breaking enemy spells and disrupting their magical attacks.

To unlock the Spellbreaker, players must have both a Warrior and a Mage at maximum level. The Spellbreaker has a unique talent tree that combines Warrior abilities, such as heavy armor and shield usage, with Mage abilities, such as arcane spells and mana manipulation.

The left talent tree is focused on the Warrior abilities, with talents such as Shield Bash, Shield Mastery, and Heavy Armor Expertise. The right talent tree is focused on Mage abilities, with talents such as Arcane Disruption, Spell Steal, and Mana Burn.

The Spellbreaker can use heavy armor and shields to protect themselves while also using arcane magic to disrupt and counter enemy spells. They can also steal enemy spells and manipulate their own mana to maintain their magical abilities during prolonged battles.

Overall, the Spellbreaker is a versatile sub-class that can protect themselves and their allies while disrupting their enemies’ magical abilities.

And more!

It is not necessary to introduce a sub-class for every class immediately; they could be introduced gradually over time, also for balance reasons.

5 Likes
2

Great! They can’t balance 12 classes, let’s add 100 more!!

18 Likes
3

I like where your heads at but they can’t retain employees, do math, or communicate effectively. So that’s gonna have to be a hard no for me.

6 Likes
4

This might be confirmation bias, but every MMO I’ve ever seen that had “3000000 unique classes!!!” as a selling point always failed hard.

4 Likes
5

I have thought about that, a hunter rogue would be nice

6

I mean it is a cool idea. but they can’t balance what they have. So that would be a no from me as well.

1 Like
7

I’d rather have one class that feels really good to play than a hundred that don’t. :dracthyr_shrug:

1 Like
8

For the most part. Only MMO I’ve seen this work in is Guild Wars 1, but that game had a very strictly defined “this game is about 8v8 PvP” vibe and PvE content was mostly either narrative content or designed as a “deck building puzzle”. And in fact the way to think of class combos was almost like a deck building game, trying to break the game with overpowered combos. It wasn’t designed to be balanced in the traditional sense, just for classes to fill a role and for counterplay to exist.

1 Like
9

No, we really don’t need this.

Furthermore, Lich, Valkyrie, is a race not a class.

Spellbreaker, Dark Ranger, and Shadowhunter would be better as new classes.
Since they are mostly classes found among the Horde, it would be a fun way to expand on the race specific classes. They could pair the Spellbreaker or Shadowhunter with the Warden or Sentinel.

10

Well that, or they all ended up being very same-y and there was a very clear meta.

11

If Blizzard had a team who could even spell the word balance, I’d be all in on this.

Until that days comes, it’s a no from me.

12

I don’t need them but they’d be really cool.

13

Very similar concept to how GW2 does it but could really make balancing that much more difficult for both PVE and PVP

14

to be fair… if we go by that argument then the game should have only 1 class at best, achieving perfect balance is impossible… and trying to achieve it will always ultimately kill the fun out of it.

15

I like the idea but I can 99% bet you that they won’t have the resources for this lol

16

Ever play the board game “Talisman” from Games Workshop?

Great example of class bloat.

Although a lot of them got really funny.

17

Archeage had such a great thing going. Its only downside was it was very pay to win. It had subclasses too, 3 even. The 3 classes made one class and it was super fun. Honestly everything about the game play was super fun. The crafting, music system, trading, FREAKING SHIP FIGHTS! If it wasn’t p2w I’d have stuck with it. But falling behind felt so bad going against people swiping for best gear.

18

So I’m playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and it’s got something like 20 classes, and each of these has 5 or 6 subclasses to pick, and then there’s like 15 prestige classes you have the option of taking, and then there’s like 8 ‘mythic’ paths to pick like Lich, Angel, Demon etc etc…

And I’m telling you that this amount of choice is great… but unless you have the TTRPG background knowledge or dozens of hours to do research the average guy is going to be completely overwhelmed.

Same thing with this.

Add to that a playerbase that only wants to be the most broken group of metas and you have a recipe for disaster.

Some people here are still losing their minds over 2h Frost vs DW Frost FFS.