Creating a Custom Class

Blog Azeroth – Shared Topic for the week of September 20th, 2010
Shared Topic Idea: Create a Custom Class.

It’s quite simple. We’ll do it LEGO style. Take each available talent tree (either WotLK or Cata, if you’re in the Beta). Shake. Pick three.

To elaborate: Out of all the talent trees available, if you could freely choose three to create your own, ‘custom’ class, which ones would you choose? This is something that a few small budget roguelikes or diablo clones do, and it’s fun to ponder if this would work in WoW as well. Your starting class gives you the skills to work with. You may take for granted that all talents that enhance a class skill also automatically give you that skill. You must have at least one talent tree of your chosen starting class.

– pndrev

This topic got me pondering when I read it about a week and a half ago. Unfortunately, my time was a little stretched early on and I didn’t have a chance to sit down and formulate my scattered musings into a coherent idea until just the last day or two. Despite the delay, I think that it is worthwhile to contribute what I can.

And this is where I go off the rails. The topic started me thinking in a whole different direction than was actually specified. I sat down and thought through (and wrote down) all the different trees for every class. I have played quite a few of them extensively or have at least a little experience. Many are complete unknowns. Out of the options, I just could not settle on a trio that would be pleasing. I tried starting with my old standby the Warlock, and had some interesting ideas about different modifications I might make, but nothing quite worked itself into a full-fledged epiphany.

Thursday morning broke my stalemate. Instead of grabbing different trees wholesale and creating a new class, I envisioned three new trees that were based on existing trees but had their own unique essence. And thus was born: the Sigilcrafter.

A Sigilcrafter lightly armored, unarmed warrior that uses a set of sigils (surprise) to augment their physical abilities and fight their opponents. The Sigilcrafter uses special enchanted gems (their weapon slots) that are embedded in their hands (placed there during a rite of passage) to mark themselves, their enemies, their allies, and the environment with their various sigils. Additionally, these Sigilcrafters have a class-profession called (surprise again) Sigilcrafting which allows them to create, at certain levels and through certain talents, pet-like guardians that fight by their side and alter certain key abilities. The pets may or may not be directly controllable beyond a toggle between passive and active.

Tree 1: Binding
Binders (as Binding specialized Sigilcrafters would be known) are ranged dpsers that use their pet much like a hunter and stand at range to cast their sigils. They place debuffs on their targets and deal direct damage by crafting sigils out of air, fire, or earth that can be found nearby. The pet would need more sophisticated control than just passive/active.

Tree 2: Runedancing
Runedancers are unarmed melee fighters that are similar to their ranged counterpart but have a different pet to adjust certain abilities from ranged to melee. Strikes would allow sigils to be placed on the target that cause short dots (2-3 ticks, perhaps 3-4 seconds long total) that spread the damage out somewhat. The Runedancer animations would include unarmed fist strikes and whirling kicks.

Tree 3: Warding
Warders are also in the melee scrum, but use their sigils to heal their allies. The sigil would be placed upon the friendly target and the Warder would heal them for a certain amount (modified by spellpower) per successful white hit, though not based on the actual damage of those hits. Critical melee strikes mean critical heals on the marked ally. Certain sigils could be placed in a region to heal multiple friendly targets. The Warder would still have a relatively weak but fast direct healing ability that is usable outside of melee (in order to allow for healing out of combat situations).

So what do you all think? Would you roll a Sigilcrafter if they implemented them in Cataclysm?

~ by Aliera on September 25, 2010.