The Heroic Class dilemma, Part II

In my previous post, I discussed what I believe WoW's heroic classes should be, and how the Death Knight measured up. Today, I'd like to share my ideas about how the classes can be designed to meet these criteria, and changes to the DK that can bring the class into line with what it should be.

Lore and Play mechanics

The first two points are not difficult to succeed, and the second point has little effect on game play. Blizzard has done an excellent job introducing new mechanics to the game and revamping old ones to keep the game fresh and interesting to play, and the DK's runic power and runes were no different. However, the sheer number of cooldowns the DK can spam in a few seconds, especially with the help of a macro may be a bit OP. In addition, Blizzard has an EXCELLENT creative/lore team, and their games have always FELT as if lore is their primary focus. The back stories are deep and rich, their characters are well developed and typically act as would be expected.

You gotta "pay" to play

There needs to be an in game cost to play a Death Knight or other heroic class. I'm sorry, but there REALLY needs to be a better way to gate the number of hero classes being played. Blizzard needs to reverse their policy of being granted a heroic class of equivalent level as the level required to unlock the class. This means you would have to be some level greater than 55 to get a level 55 DK. Personally, i believe it should be AT LEAST a 10-15 level cost, e.g. you are required to have a level 65-70 to earn a level 55 (really 58) DK. Under this system, the the number of heroic classes per account across all servers should be limited by the number of characters that have reached or surpassed the "unlock" level. The purpose of these gates are obvious: If there is no cost to play the classes, everyone will create them, flooding the realms with heroic toons, and defeating the purpose of the heroic toons

Power Balance

A heroic class' power, while solo (this is important as you'll see below) should be balanced to be equivalent to a vanilla class of equivalent level, or equivalent level + 1. If the equivalent level +1 is used, it should only persist until max level, at which point the class should be as powerful as a max level vanilla class, e.g. If a level 75 DK is as be balanced to equivalent level of a 76 vanilla class (e.g. warlock), then at max level a DK should have equivalent an equivalent power level to a max level warlock, or hunter, whatever.

If instituted, this would mean an overall nerf to the DK class since they currently out power other classes (except, potentially, the Paladin) of equivalent level by a level or two. They will, however, recieve a different kind of buff, discussed below.

Powering up as part of a group

Leadership bonuses are my idea for a new mechanic for making a heroic class feel heroic, and feel like leaders again, instead of just OP Mary-sue solo classes.

Heroic classes will have the ability to gain bonuses when they are the leader of a group, and grant bonuses to the other group members. This system goes directly back to how the hero units in WCIII worked: they were leaders that led groups of regular units. Here, the hero classes will lead groups of play controlled units. They will finally feel like leaders.

There are a variety of ways to implement this plan: There could just be a toggle (DK's a group leader, so they get a static bonus to some attribute), or the bonus could scale with party size (the DK group leader gets a 1% bonus in a group of 2, 2% bonus in a group of 3, etc). The hero class bonus could be different based on the characters build (Blood DK's get a regen, Frost DK's get an armor bonus, unholy DK's get a damage bonus). Not only would the hero class gain bonuses from being in a group, the group would also gain a small static bonus for having the hero class as a group leader (e.g. a small increase in dodge, damage, armor, threat reduction, etc). ALL classes should derive some benefit from these bonuses, e.g. a bonus to block would be a poor choice since the bonus would be useless to any non-shield using classes.

NOW look at how you feel about that guy playing hero class. When you get him or her in your party, hey, we get a boon. We WANT you in our party, and we WANT the hero class to be the leader, cause EVERYONE gets something. If the frost DK is the party leader, and the tank, the bonuses to the DK should help him tank better. Forcing the DK to group to get his hero bonuses would hopefully help encourage more responsible game play by the hero classes, because if they act like asshats in a group, the other party members will not want to group with the DK/other hero class anymore, and if they don't get to group, they don't get the bonuses, and then you're just another class.

However, this system should NOT be taken to an extreme. It should of minor benefit to the group and more pronounced benefit to the Hero class; Something that's nice to have, but not necessary. A situation should not develop in which a raid boss can't be beaten w/o a certain hero-class at the helm.

Blizzard is making a lot of changes to the system, including giving rewards to group leaders. Granting bonuses to group based on who your leader is shouldn't be much of a jump and I think will help (and I have more ideas on expanding this system to other classes, and RACES, and will blog more on that in the future). This system would solve the issue of hero classes being woefully unbalanced in solo play, but still let them stand out in the leader role that we would expect them to play. Adding the cost to their play (requiring the repeat of several levels) will hopefully discourage power-gamers from taking these classes and encourage REAL leaders to take the classes and bring the benefit to everyone else.