This is a subject close to my heart and would like to know the opinion of others on this.

I feel that the release of wow latest new class has not been optimal in terms of design. The ease with which anyone can roll the new class and the difficulty in getting the class balanced on release, has in my opinion led to way too many players going for this new class. This has in my opinion hurt the diversity of the game and has in my eyes cheapened what was called a hero class, making it a farmer dream class.


Was blizzard wrong in not following their original design: getting a character to 80 that get sacrificed to become a death knight?
Did the release of the death knight, although popular, resolved the problems linked to finding a tank?
What do you think of the ease with which the new class can be accessed? Should blizzard have made it a bit harder?
What can be done better when releasing a new class?

Dunno if this thread will stay open but I'll give it a crack.

We've discussed the tanking "problem" at length and the issue was never the lack of classes able to do it. Tanking (and healing) requires a greater awareness than DPS and puts much more responsibility on the player to perform his role well. A bad DPS rarely impacts a normal 5 man. A bad tank (or healer) is likely to make it a failure. As well as this the Tank is often the focal point for the blame if someone messes up. His repairs are greater than others and his loot is less useful in other areas. It is harder for a tank to go to a BG and play too as his spec translates here less than a DPS or healer would until they put PvP tanking in. Theres also the massive disparity in numbers of tanks needed for raids. You rarely need more than 2 dedicated tanks in a raid, along with another offtank.

As for Death Knight starting at 55...I'd have preferred level 1. An irreversable character change to a DK though was a horrible idea. Lorewise, great. In practice, oh I just lost my level 80 hunter for a Death Knight and realised I don't like it. Can't have people sacrifice a character for another one without ever having played it. Starting at level 1, and using the same starting zone, paced at reaching ~20 by the last quest, would have been better. Problem is you then have to level through all the crap old zones. A few revamps would have been needed (and I still hope they do another DWM/Hinterlands type revamp on some of the terrible zones like Badlands/Gorge/Steppes/Azshara).

Is the class too easy to access? I don't think so. I like to level my alts slowly and take in the quests and find ones I've never done. But if you're interested in speed leveling, my GM rerolled a priest this week. He decided on Thursday and had RAF'd his priest and a friends to 60 inside of a day. Maybe if levelling went at the old speed it would have been too much to start at 55. But as it is now, with Heirloom xp boosts (and it counts for quests too next patch), RAF character boosts and the several increases to rep and decreases to rep required to level at lower levels, level 55 doesn't mean too much.

What can be done better? For a start, littering NPC's related to the new class along the levelling trail would be better. Some Death Knights in Outlands really should have been present to help explain the presence there beyond levelling. A handful of new quests per zone with Death Knight specific objectives would have been nice. It really felt once my Death Knight entered Outlands there wasn't much point in being there. I was doing old story lines and no one seemed that bothered that I was a Death Knight. Another thing might be newer zones to help make levelling feel fresher, it could also help smooth the transition for all new characters to the latest expansion. Nagrand - > Howling doesn't really feel too good but its what most people do with characters now. A 66-68 zone, possibly set off EP somewhere like the DK starting zone is, that dealt with a scourge landing point and pushing them back would be a much smoother transition to Northrend. It would also help alt characters with some new content rather than the same old boring Outlands stuff. Probably isn't worth the resources it would take to develop mind, but its what I'd have liked to see.

But I'm still not convinced there are too many Death Knights. Maybe you have some population stat websites to back this up but we get less DK apps than other classes, I don't see them any more in Dalaran than other classes. Our guild roster has the same number of DKs as rogues and paladins, and less than Priests. The high start level is a nice draw to rolling a DK alt, but many just didn't take to it. Half the ones in our guild are rolled because they are PvP fotm, but we've also seen a massive influx of Paladin alts for the same reason. This isn't anything specific to DK's though, the same people all rolled Druid alts for arena back in TBC when they were king of the hill.

Class diversity has never been perfect and never will be perfect. One of the reasons why a lot of people went for the DK is because of the "new" tag. Some people (read - PvP people) will most of the time go for the FoTM classes. Back in vanilla there was a huge amount of rogues, in BC druids became really good and rogues even better. Stepping out of the PvP train - hunters and warlocks have always been a prime soloing and farming class. And you still can level one more easily despite the fact that Death Knights start at 55.

About your questions -
There never has been a lack of tanks a healers. Its just the lack of tanks and healers willing to go with a PuG. If you're a tank and have a guild then you probably have your schedule full. You do not have any time for pick up groups since you're saved or planning to go to the same instance with your guild to grab a few achievements.

Now, imagine you're new to the game. You have started your first character and you're getting to know the game, your character and thinking about what do you like best. There's no "easy" or "fast" here. Its all nice and slow. Getting a Death Knight seems easy because a lot of the player-base already had a level 70 character by the end of BC. If you're a new player you have to go through 55 levels. That's still majority of the game and by no means is it easy just because Blizzard changed the leveling pace at lower areas.

A lot of DKs? Not more than Paladins. A lot less even.

That was a compromise.

Lore-wise, Death Knight, a class tightly tied to the Lich King, breaking free of his will and helping their old factions push into Northrend for vengeance (or honor, or whatever) should have meant starting with Northrend. However, letting people roll immediately at 70 (or 65, levelling to 68) would have meant a mass rerolling. People complain today that you put a stick under a rock and 3 DK pop? Think what it would be if people could have started in Northrend directly with a DK.

Which led to a compromise (55 instead of 1), even if it doesn't fit thematically to have DKs going wandering in Outland.

If - no, when - they introduce another "hero" class, they will have the same problem. The new class will probably fit thematically with the expansion being released, but they will not dare let people start the expansion with the new class. And thus, they'll need shoehorning back into WotLK. Or whatever, if the next expansion doesn't add a class.

Regarding potentials for the next class, I still think it's bound to be a healer/dps or healer/dps/tank hybrid of sorts. The reason being that Blizzard wants diversity in specs in a raid (read: do not stack 2 of the same spec), but they have only 5 healer specs for their 25-man raids, which is too few and require duplicate specs, unless you're willing to reduce the healing needs of every raid so that they can be done with 5 healers (or less). A problem that GC, I believe, alluded a couple times a few months ago.

That is probably why we're almost certain to see a new class come 2010 and version 4.0.

Just forget the "hero class" moniker. Think of it as a concept that was scrapped, no good can come from trying to compare the class to the term.

My only problem with the way they did it was simply their relative power. Dk's at release were so above and beyond most classes it had no choice but to become the big fotm posterboy of Wotlk.
If blizzard instead had tuned it on the side of underpowered instead of overpowered, it would have been a LOT less upsetting in terms of tearing up dps/tank roles and it would have been a LOT less played, which would mean mostly people who found the concept interesting would play them, not _EVERYONE_ who had ever felt underpowered in their wow-careers and everyone else who were slightly bored and wanted to be able to faceroll for fame.


This doesn't really compute. If you probably have your schedule full as a tank in a guild, its because your guild has too few tanks.

Which means you have just contradicted yourself. Well played I guess.

Ideally you should have:
For 5man:
1tank
1healer
3dps

For 10man
2tank
2healer
6dps

For 25man
5tanks
5healers
15dps

If that setup held true, you'd hopefully see a more equal distribution of the classes (given that ever type is as fun, a stretch but there is more here, difference in preferred playstyle etc).

This is something I thought about.

What if starting a Death Knight didn't require you to sacrifice your old character, but merely 'froze' them. In other words, locked that character from being played again unless you deleted the DeathKnight. That way you have effectively sacrificed a high level character, but you have not made an irreversable change. Should you decide you don't like the DK, you delete it and your old character is active again.

This would also make it perfectly reasonable to have DK's start in Northrend - simply require that a level 70+ character be frozen in order to create a level 70 DK.

No problems with permanent deletion. No problems with extra DK's being created because they're so easy to get, or to use as profession alts. Would fit in great with the lore.

Nothing good can come of this thread except a whole lot of wishlisting and crying about DK's.