Middleaged Mutant Ninjas

With apologies to Wolfshead, who has an excellent article forecasting Blizzard’s next hero class, I’m making a prediction of my own.

Predicting the Second WoW Hero Class (via Wolfshead)

I’m calling it now:  the next WoW hero class will be the Middleage Mutant Ninja, playable only by Orcs, Trolls, Dranei and Night Elves.  Each race will specialize in a specific weapon:  Orcs get Nunchaku, Trolls get Knives/Sai, Dranei get 1H Swords with dual wielding at level 5, and Night Elves get Staves.  All specialize in Thrown weapons as well, and get extra buff bonuses from the new Pizza food item (which will have faction recipes as well as at least one recipe for each skill tier of the Cooking skill).

The neutral trainer (accessible by both sides via a vast interconnected subterranean tunnel network that has the class starting area as a hub) will live under Stormwind, and will be an outcast from a secret Human Runemaster training enclave.  He will be an oversized Kobold, a former house servant of the (dearly departed) Human Runemaster master, and will be the (apparent) sole survivor of the enclave’s destruction at the hands of a rebellious Pandaren student.

The MMN clan will be in a minor turf war with a new branch of the Defias group known for bladed fist weapon specialization and martial arts, led by a masked demon-tainted Pandaren who sounds suspiciously familiar.  This clan will occasionally enlist monsters throughout the world, training them in a few of their tactics and giving them special palette swaps.

MMNs will play as a melee DPS/CC class, with a wide variety of escape skills, some of which have secondary CC components, and will have a secondary buffing function.  The three Talent Trees will be Berzerker (heavy melee DPS, light ranged DPS, minor buffs, minor CC), Tactician (balanced but middling ranged and melee DPS, very strong CC, group buffs) and Sensei (medium melee DPS, strong ranged DPS, medium CC, strong group buffs).  All specs will have a form of Meditation, an efficient self-HoT, and a Focus suite which serves as a self-only variant of Paladin Auras.

MMNs will use Chi, a new secondary character resource, a bit like mana, but recharged more slowly over time or more quickly (maybe in chunks, it depends on beta testing and Nerf duels) as a result of a successful Dodge.  (They will naturally have a higher Dodge rating than most to fuel this resource and mitigate damage.)  They will be a Leather wearing class, with special class-restricted recipes, including unique leather cloaks.

MMN ranged Thrown weapons will travel faster than those of any other class, and will be more frequent, and may even be dual wielded.  MMNs who specialize in one weapon type (ignoring Thrown weapons) at the exclusion of others will gain bonuses when using that weapon class.

MMNs will have unique Engineering recipes, and a variety of new mounts that are specialized for their tunnel network.  Other unique Engineering recipes may well be minor plot hooks, and will be earned through appealing to a handful of new Factions across the world.  The quest for the world’s best mousetrap will be one recurring theme.

The expansion will also introduce the new Cartographer profession.  This profession is leveled up through exploration (no more AFK crafting grinding by the forge, now you can AFK craft with autorun!), and produces Map and Chart consumables and even tabards.  Maps and Charts give temporary bonuses against local mobs, as well as increasing radar range for the various map detector skills.  (Herbologists and Miners would be able to detect nodes at greater range, and Hunters’ Track skills would also have greater range.)

About these ads