Cataclysm – New Class Combinations

EDIT: THIS POST WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THE CLASSES WERE OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED. IT WAS A SPECULATION POST.

I am aware that in fact, worgen will be getting druids so it isn’t out of balance. I specifically wrote it that way as a lead up to the following day’s post where I discussed the new races (and their classes).

Yesterday we talked about the theoretical level cap of 85 in the next expansion which is theoretically titled Cataclysm.

Remember folks, nothing is real until Blizzard says it in blue, and even then wait for it to hit your machine.

(Because we’re all rocking out our new dances… oh wait.)

So here is the clip for today – new race/class combinations:

New Classes

Cataclysm doesn’t introduce any new classes to the game. Instead, Blizzard have offered more race and classes combinations to players. The Some of these have alreadly been datamined from the 3.2.2 Test Realms. The An Injured Colleague quest and it’s new Night Elf counter-part help to introduce the lore for these new race and class combinations, so we can probably expect to see more of these for some of the less traditional ones.

Human Hunter

Orc Mage

Night Elf Mage

Dwarf Mage

Blood Elf Warrior

Dwarf Shaman

Undead Hunter

Tauren Paladin

Tauren Priest

Gnome Priest

Troll Druid

New Classes

Cataclysm doesn’t introduce any new classes to the game. Instead, Blizzard have offered more race and classes combinations to players. The Some of these have alreadly been datamined from the 3.2.2 Test Realms. The An Injured Colleague quest and it’s new Night Elf counter-part help to introduce the lore for these new race and class combinations, so we can probably expect to see more of these for some of the less traditional ones.

• Human Hunter
• Orc Mage
• Night Elf Mage
• Dwarf Mage
• Blood Elf Warrior
• Dwarf Shaman
• Undead Hunter
• Tauren Paladin
• Tauren Priest
• Gnome Priest
• Troll Druid

What’s available as of today?

Humans:

• Warrior
• Paladin
• Rogue
• Priest
• Mage
• Warlock

Humans would gain Hunter.

I don’t particularly have a problem with this… because the blood elves have hunters. The most common reason I hear that humans can’t be hunters is that they don’t have the affinity for nature to be an effective hunter. And the blood elves do? The race with the joke about “just give me some freaking magic before I kill somebody?” Yeah. No. Human hunter is passable in my book. The amount of affinity required is no where near that of shaman or druid. And just look at all of them hanging out with Nesingwary; although no one there seems to be very keen on keeping anything alive long enough to train it.

Orcs:

• Warrior
• Hunter
• Rogue
• Shaman
• Warlock

Orcs would gain Mages.

Eeeeehh… OK, the orcs need more playable classes. Paladin wouldn’t really fly and I’m not feeling priest here. Healing magic is fine and dandy, just through the shaman path. I’m almost surprised that they didn’t try to go the druid route here, although wherever they would be getting their druidic link from might be a bit put off by the residual fel energies floating about. I don’t think any race that allows warlocks should be able to select druid. They already have the exposure to elemental magic through the warlocks, perhaps these are reformed warlocks that have shed the fel auras surrounding them and embraced a cleaner, better magic? We all know warlocks are wanna-be mages anyhow. =)

Night Elves:

• Warrior
• Hunter
• Rogue
• Priest
• Druid

Night elves would gain mage.

Fuck me but this does NOT make sense. Elves that pursued non-nature magics were called the Quel’dorei (Highborne or High Elves) and they caused a shit load of problems. They were exiled by the night elves for refusing to abandon their arcane practices. I realize that the story needs to progress and change must be wrought in the face of a cataclysm (see wat I did thar?), but seriously? Night elf mages? If this happens, when you select this as your class you should be shoved into the blood elf form, given blue eyes and blond hair. Congratulations, you’re now a high elf. You get to keep the night elf sound files. Perhaps Blizzard was worried that night elves didn’t have enough cloth wearers? I bet their trainers are going to be stuck on the outskirts of town. You thought it was bad not having an anvil in Darnassus for years? You’re going to have to go to Stormwind to train this shit.

Dwarves:

• Warrior
• Paladin
• Hunter
• Rogue
• Priest

Dwarves would gain mage.

What the hell? Are mages so under-represented that they have to be passed around to all the races like a 10 dollar whore? This one at least makes more sense than night elves. Rumor has it that in the original beta, mage was a playable class for dwarves so this is a return to old-old-old-school. It also isn’t surprising that a race devoted to poking about in ruins and mucking about with antiquities and artifacts wouldn’t stumble across some treasure or lore that drove them to explore this.

Dwarves would gain shaman.

And then they lost me again… I don’t get this one. Unless… they really start pushing the lore about being descended from the earthen. It’s a stretch, but if they were created from the very stones of Azeroth just maybe they can have a spiffy shamanistic link. Stretching… but I think they are trying ot balance out the shamans and paladins on each side. But a dwarf turning into the travel form ghost wolf is just silly.

Blood Elves:

• Rogue
• Mage
• Warlock
• Hunter
• Paladin
• Priest

Blood elves would gain warrior.

I can actually see this. Bear with me here. Blood elves can be paladins that use the Light through sheer force of will. Young Blood Knights are indoctrinated into thinking that this is their right and destiny to bend the Light to their purpose. Fast forward to the center of Shatt. Did you ever just sit around and listen to the chatter from the NPCs? There’s some chick that appears to be leading the rebel blood elf forces that broke away from Kael’Thas’ Sun Elves. There is an exchange between her and the Naaru that seems to go along the lines the the Naaru knew one of their own would be captured and brutalized by the blood elves. They allowed this to happen as it was the only way to get things rolling in the right direction. As soon as an open-minded blood elf paladin gets to Shatt and witnesses this exchange, there is the possibility that it shatters them a little. Everything they were taught was a farce, they really aren’t destined to run around wielding the Light like a toy. Now you have a group of very physically-oriented fighters that may be unwilling or unable to harness the Light. Sticking with what they know, they head into battle as warriors and pass on their training to another generation. Maybe?

Forsaken:

• Warrior
• Rogue
• Priest
• Mage
• Warlock

Forsaken would gain hunter.

In another WTF moment, we have shambling, rotting, free-willed corpses taming puppies and kitties. Do they gain a racial to feed bits of themselves to their pets? Or will they be limited to pets without a sense of smell? I’m thinking spiders, ravagers, crabs, etc. I’ve never really understood how they can have priests, except shadow spec, but this makes even less sense to me. The stretch I can get is that they were a hunter in their previous life and are now continuing their chosen trade. Bad dog! Stop chewing on my leg!

Tauren:

• Warrior
• Hunter
• Druid
• Shaman

Tauren would gain paladin.

HOLY COWS!!! That’s really all there is to say. Rumor has it that the quest line we found after the last patch that started in Dalaran with us taking a shield to an injured warrior in Thunder Bluff is the kick off for this. Blizzard is going to have to do some fancy talking to get this one by me. The draenei can follow both the Light and nature, but they’re crazy space goats. We’re talking cows here. Again though, this appears to be a balancing act since dwarf got shaman (for no good reason).

Tauren would gain priest.

Like the orcs, tauren really needed some more class choices. If paladin is being added, why not add priest? Just please, make it make sense somehow. This will be the only cloth class for the tauren. You’re gonna look goofy as all hell!

Gnomes:

• Warrior
• Rogue
• Mage
• Warlock

Gnomes would gain priest.

Another race that got shafted with the class selection availability. But c’mon. They’re gnomes, who cares? I think Blizzard is trying to make healer classes more wide spread. With the addition of DKs, there is no where near the tanking shortage there was before, now it’s time to step up with healing. I get mage and warlock for gnomes. Their little tech-driven minds probably break down all the magic into complex little formulas that can be notated and discussed and studied at great length. But priest? Now we’re getting into the squishy, metaphysical sort of stuff. That just doesn’t seem very gnomish to me. Plus I hate gnomes. No healers for you!

Trolls:

• Warrior
• Hunter
• Rogue
• Priest
• Shaman
• Mage

Trolls would gain druid.

This one surprised me, but not for a lore reason. Paladin was given to an additional Horde race. Shaman was given to an additional Alliance race. But for druid, this would bring the count up to Horde 2, Alliance 1. That just seems rather odd. From a lore perspective, trolls seem to be a jack-of-all trades. They have some pretty deeply-ingrained survival instincts and will do what it takes to keep on living. With shaman already as a choice and the lack of warlock, druid really doesn’t seem that far off.

Draenei

• Warrior
• Mage
• Shaman
• Hunter
• Paladin
• Priest

Draenei would gain nada.

No love for the space goats. If anything, I would expect to see druid released here, to balance out adding druid to the trolls. Both have shaman and neither have warlock.

So why the hell is Blizzard (possibly) doing this?

My gut reaction is it is to facilitate the faction transfer process. How many Alliance paladins are out there that want to make the switch to the Horde but don’t want to be a blood elf? (To those of you in that camp – you don’t know what you’re missing /flex).

How many Horde shaman want to turn traitor but don’t want to be a space goat?

What if they don’t have The Burning Crusade expansion? “Ah, yes. I’m a human paladin and I want to switch to the Horde… but I never upgraded my account so can’t quite be a blood elf… so, what are you going to do with me? Upgrade me for free?” Yeah right. Now you can be a cow. Like it.

And how are they going to pull this off?

After the expansion, our world is rocked and reformed. We log in and create a new character to explore the new Azeroth and suddenly have more choices. (And please give us more character slots on each server.)

How do you fit it in lore-wise that all of a sudden, we have a bunch of young human hunters running around? Where did all the orc mages come from? I’ve come up with a (somewhat) plausible idea for blood elf warriors, but it incorporated a change that was made in the game, a progression of the lore. How are they going to be able to do something like that for 11 new combinations?

What do you think?

Up next: New races!