Yes I am on vacation, but have some extra time some mornings and like to keep up with what is going on in Blognation so will try to squeeze in a post or two.
The next series of posts I write will be around class design in World of Warcraft. I won’t be talking about current specs or the broader design principles that Blizzard has used over the years (or is using in BFA) but instead I will talk about what is missing.
And that is, a healing / tanking spec for every class.
Like many armchair developers this idea is very personal and applicable to me – so it must be important, right? The truth is – using my experience and aspirations as an example – classes not having a heal or tanking specialization limits everyone who wants to play a DPS class. Directly – I would love to play a Rogue as a main in BFA but the lack of being able to mix it up or have options outside of DPS isn’t that enticing. Even worst, the wait times to do 5 man dungeons is currently 10-15x longer than a healer or a tank. For someone who might only get an hour to play here and there I don’t want to spend that hour watching a timer tick down and hope when it does I become part of a functioning group.
I have heard the counter arguments before – that people will feel like they have to use those specs if they are available (some sort of peer pressure?) and that balance is already hard enough (it is, but we have learned to live in imbalance in WoW). Again – with my experience – all I can share that while I am sitting in a DPS queue bored to hell on my Rogue sapping and pickpocketing random mobs I could be tanking. And if I WAS tanking, that means three other DPS players also got in faster. Instead we are all sitting around waiting for more tanks and healers to join the fray. I want to – but also in the class theme that I want to play.
This series will explore some ideas on how to introduce different specializations for every class in WoW – and for EVERY type. For example Rogues – which is where I will start – I will introduce ideas behind a healing spec, tanking spec, and ranged dps spec. For Monks (as an example) just a ranged DPS spec since that is all they are missing. I am not going to talk about what specs to remove or what to change in existing specs – I’ll let you do that on your own if you like any of the ones I introduce.
Some will have some new and interesting mechanics and some will definitely be a bit of a stretch – but I know everyone who plays WoW spends some time thinking about class design and for some fun and hopefully to inspire some conversations I wanted to stretch my legs a bit to do the same.
I’ll be starting with the Rogue next post!
I look forward to this. One of the few things that I think RIFT did really well was get role diversity in their classes.