A take on a possible Tinkerer class

Hello!

Since I heard the first rumors of a possible new Tinkerer (or Tinker) class, I was absolutely over the moon. I love the idea to have a class that - contrary to the multiple classes focusing on magic, supernatural and/or otherworldly forces - depends on very mundane, scientific means to reach their goals.

So here’s my personal take on how a Tinkerer class could look like, to give players another uniquely feeling game experience! Note: This is more or less just an accumulation of ideas. Any input from you (thoughts, ideas, improvements) will be highly appreciated!

0. General stuff

  • I see the Tinkerer wearing leather more than other armor classes, but I could also imagine them in robes or chainmail. Plate armor wouldn’t be very fitting for a more ‘artisanal’ class.
  • Primary stat: Intelligence
  • The character uses battery power as a unique resource to fuel their skills, which recharges at a moderate speed (a little bit slower than a Rogue’s energy or a Hunter’s focus)
  • Weapon classes: Fist weapons, 1H maces, 2H maces, Daggers, …Guns?

1. Specialization: Mechanist (Melee Tank)

  • You summon and pilot a battle suit of your own, then clobber your enemies with the power of steel, various weapons, and high-pressure piston fists!
  • The mech boosts your armor and resistances to make you resiliant enough for a head-on assault!
  • Skill example 1: Battering Ram
    You do a power attack that deals X damage and has a chance to stun the enemy. Creates a high amount of aggro.
  • Skill example 2: Energy Shield
    You surround yourself with an energy barrier that protects you from any damage for X seconds. Cooldown: Y minutes.
  • Skill example 3: Charged Shot
    You shoot a bolt of pure electric energy, deals X damage and slows the enemy by Y percent for Z seconds.
  • Skill example 4: Grappling Hook
    Pulls an enemy towards you and forces it to target you for X seconds.
  • Skill example 5: Flamethrower
    Incinerate all enemies in a cone in front of you for X total fire damage. Channels for Y seconds. Character can move while channeling.

2. Specialization: Gadgeteer (Ranged Tank)

  • You specialize on summoning various contraptions to protect your allies, deal moderate damage, and hamper enemies from afar. Let your gadets do the work for you, for you are not much of a fighter yourself!
  • Skill example 1: Autoturret
    Lasts 1 minute, auto-attacks enemies within range. Works pretty much like the Searing Totem of a shaman. You can place up to X turrets at a time.
  • Skill example 2: Stasis Field Emitter
    Lasts X seconds, snares any enemy in range for Y seconds. Target cannot be snared twice in the same field.
  • Skill example 3: Omni-Applicable Attention Attractor
    Lasts X seconds, taunts all enemies within range every Y seconds. Device is heavily armored to sustain a heavy beating.
  • Skill example 4: Wrench Strike
    Hit an enemy with your tool of choice. Stuns target for X seconds. Damage can cancel the effect.

3. Specialization: Chemist (Ranged Damage Dealer)

  • You specialize on obliterating your foes with the most volatile explosives you can imagine; and your inventiveness is endless! This specialization focuses on area-of-effect damage. Become the demolitions expert Goblins have always dreamed of!
  • Skill example 1: Throw Grenade
    Pretty self-explanatory. Deals X damage in an Y meter/yard radius.
  • Skill example 2: Flashbang
    Throw a special explosive that stuns enemies for X seconds in an Y meter/yard radius.
  • Skill example 3: Phosphor Charge
    Throw a grenade that burns enemies over time. Deals X fire damage, plus Y fire damage over the time of Z seconds.
  • Skill example 4: Special Formula
    Boost the radius of your damaging skills for 100%. Lasts X seconds. Cooldown: Y minutes.
  • Skill example 5: Black Powder Cloud
    Surround yourself with a dangerous cloud of explosive powder. Any attack dealt to you has a chance to cause an explosion that hurts surrounding enemies in an area of X meters/yards for Y fire damage.
  • Skill example 6: Vectored Charge
    An exposive created to only damage a single target. Deals X damage.

Addendum:
I know some of these skills and themes interfere with the Engineering profession (mainly creating explosives). However, I always thought the limited choice of pretty much only dynamite and bombs, and the meager amount damage those items do, were never enough to fulfill the fantasy of a true Goblin explosives expert.

In my opinion, explosives could be removed from the Engineering profession, though they could also retain their use as they are available to every player and every class. My idea of the various Tinkerer class variations go way and beyond these, to make character fantasies available that weren’t possible before. Characters who could rightfully and truly call themselves “field scientists”!

Engineers would still have their value. They would focus less on gadgets with military use, but continue and focus on building all the neat utilites, mounts, pets etc. that they always have. A Tinkerer with an engineering profession could become the ultimate artificer!

Thank you for reading! Please share your thoughts and ideas, so we can hopefully further improve this “class fantasy” together! :slight_smile:

3 Likes

I don’t like this. I hope they at least try to fit the flavor of the warcraft 3 tinker, which was a melee summoner. Pocket factory, clockwerk goblins and rocket launchers should be the bare minimum the class offers. And the robo goblin was just smashing things with a big hammer. Then they can build upon that, just like they did with demon hunters and death knights. Their “class fantasy” also wouldn’t work without their core abilities from the rts games like metamorphosis, death and decay, deathcoil etc.

Imagine if they made back slots for tinkers a class item for them modding it to give your kit new abilities and effects like personal jumpack works like warrior jump or a explosive device so when you die you explode like Junkrat does

1 Like

^Pretty much this, I never played WC3 but I took a look at the tinker skills from the game and they sounds better than what the OP suggested.

I’d much rather have a different class, one that isn’t a profession; we’ve had engineering since Vanilla.

2 Likes

A huge yes to the tinkerer class, a huge no to the ranged tank. I want to sort of sandbox up and feel safe behind my turret(s) :smiley: I’m not actually so big on the grenades and such! I just want my turret and what I think would be really cool is the turret scaling aesthetically somehow with your AP, or some-kind of chain skilling that means it starts as quite basic and with various tinkering, it improves throughout the fight. The tinkerer would also have a few smaller but higher initial power turrets for typical fast paced trash fights, but their ceiling for damage is far lower than the raid / point defend turret :smiley:

I think instead they will go for a predictable and somewhat boring (To me at least) laser and rocket launcher style tinkerer. Which is basically a destro lock with different skins :frowning:

I can’t see it happening but god i’d re-roll so fast for that!!!

1 Like

Every new class was obviously related to its expansion. Monk - Pandaria, Death Knight - Lich King, Demon Hunter - Legion, demons, Illidan. It means that the next expansion would have to be about mechagnomes or something like that. And that’s why I don’t believe in Tinker at all.

1 Like

You totally forget about the healer spec in your idea.
A field medic spraying healing potions and using bandaging bots.
I believe the three specs will be:
Tank (melee)
DPS (ranged)
Healer

And to those who do not believe this is happening, I am ready to bet whatever you want (in game ofc)

1 Like

First of all, thank you guys for giving me your feedback! I wanna add some thoughts to your replies.

Ah, I must admit I didn’t play the RTS for so long that I barely remember the Tinker there. So I just went off with ideas of my own, because I do like the concept itself, and think such a class would work fine in WoW.

That being said, the skills you mentioned (though I do not remember them myself), would seem to fit just fine into the Gadgeteer branch. You have to consider that there are only very few “core abilities” that can be taken from the RTS, while there needs to be at least two different approaches (specs) of any class, with different fantasies behind them. I believe each one would still be viable with at least one trying to grasp the original Tinker concept from WC3.

I would say Tinkerer and Engineer would be different enough to allow both to coexist in the game. Engineering and tinkering are vast fields, and in my opinion, a skilled inventor would be able to fulfill heroic deeds with their inventions just like any other, well, “hero”, if you may call the player characters like that.

Engineering just as a profession is nice and gimmicky, but doesn’t really pay respect to the sheer power of inventiveness.

I can see where you’re coming from, and I do agree - at first, I intended to make the Gadgeteer a DD spec, but then I thought that the only gameplay style this game (or many other role based MMORPGs) doesn’t have, is a ranged tank. With shields and aggro managing devices who do the work, while the character themselves is already putting up another turret somewhere else, avoiding hazardous boss skills by simply not standing in front of them, seems like a whole new and unique way of playing a tank.

However, I’m really not dead set on that idea, and can see them being a DD class spec just as well! In the end, it should be fun to play, and just feel somewhat different from other classes.

The grenade (Chemist) spec would also just be a different take on the Tinkerer idea. I’m sure there would be quite a lot of Goblins slobbering all over those 'nades! :wink:

Sounds good to me! I wouldn’t mind seeing that being incorporated at all!

I would create multiple chars for the different specs, ignoring that I also just could change it on a whim, haha!

Oh, believe me, my first draft included just that. I would have called it “Apothecary”. But while I really love the idea of a healing class truly specializing on balms, potions and such, I feared that it would clash too much with the Alchemy profession - not only because of the use of potions, but because the fantasy of both. Alchemists and apothecaries would probably be too close to one another.

There’s multiple other classes that Blizzard could create. Dark Ranger, Shadow Hunter or Necromancer, for example. Any of those would be more exciting and befitting of the game than “super special engineer”.

1 Like

Well, they would be more exciting to you. Which is fine, of course. Everyone would like to be able to play the game in their preferred style and with their beloved class! And mine would certainly be the super special engineer. :smiley:

I personally see Dark Rangers somewhere between Death Knights and Hunters… which can be a viable class, I guess? But I’m not sure if they would really bring so much to the table that is new enough to really feel fresh and unique.

Shadow Hunter… I’m not sure what that would that be, but it sounds like the very same thing as a Dark Ranger. Though I admit that I’ve never heard that name before, and I might have missed an existing example somewhere (like the Dark Rangers that do already exist as NPCs in the game).

Necromancers sound like they are either already partially covered with a DK’s Unholy spec, or would more fit as another (fourth) spec for a Warlock rather than its own class. I can’t imagine multiple specs for a Necromancer right now that would feel and play unique enough.

By that logic, how does a demon hunter feel fresh and unique? It’s basically a combat rogue with shadow damage.

How does a Death Knight feel unique? It’s an undead warriors.

Dark Ranger would be similar to how it was in W3, a ranger with dark magic. A mix between the shadow magic Sylvanas has displayed with old W3 abilities, like mindcontrolling undead and summoning skeletons.

Each of the three missing classes I mentioned would be MUCH more fitting for the direction of the game, I.E. Fighting N’zoth and chasing Sylvanas, than super special engineer.

Super special engineer would just be another monk. Loved by a handful of players and completely forgotten by everybody else.

Well this is a forum I suppose so debate is always healthy :smiley: I’m sure the OP and myself would argue that we already have 2 dark classes with DK and DH, I don’t think we need another death / shadow / dark anything, it’s covered twice. What we don’t have at all, is a turret and physical utility class (dropping buff items or throwing nets etc). We don’t even have anything close to that, or at least the gap between what we have now and a tinkerer, is much larger than the gap between a DK/DH and anything dark ranger/hunter’esque.

1 Like

We literally have a profession that’s been doing that for years.

Classes get released when the theme suits them; Legion suited DH, WoTLK suited DK and MoP suited the monk. Necromancers and Dark rangers would be much more suitable if the next expansion is a follow on with Sylvanas, N’zoth and Bolvar.

Shadow Hunters would have been suitable for something revolving Bwonsambdi.

But super special engineer? Where would they fit in? Mechagon would have been the best place for them, but instead we got robocop gnomes.

I don’t think engineering features very prominently anywhere during anything on a day to day basis. However comparing an entire class to a profession feels a gross over simplification, it’s like saying well we don’t need priests because everyone has first aid anyway. However I understand the point you’re making but if engineering was in anyway impactful, it would be a mandatory proff for raiding.

I thought Bwonsambdi is a voodoo shaman? or at least he looks like a voodoo shaman dude, i’m not sure why that has any more relevance to a shadow hunter than it does a demon hunter. Actually we already have 2 hunters, let’s not add a 3rd until we have a tinkerererererer :smiley:

Well I think now is the time for a tinkerer with the recent addition of mechanical gnomes :smiley: It paves the way for an announcement perfectly

1 Like

It used to be. Professions were heavily nerfed as crafting professions were mandatory by any semi-secious guild. Everything you could probably think of for super special engineer has probably already been ingame and available via engineering and/or trinkets before.

Engineering was possibly the strongest profession back in Vanilla, as it had access to slow fall gadgets, mind control gadgets, grenades, taunt dummies, spell reflectors, spell shields.

No, he’s a loa. A troll god.

You’re assuming the two are similar because they have “hunter” as part of the name?

A demon hunter is an elf trained to hunt demons using their own fel magic and demon souls. A shadow hunter on the other hand, is like a high ranking troll priest.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Shadow_hunter

There’s a lot Blizzard could do with classes, specs and races. They could create the shadow hunter as a troll-only priest spec and remove access to the typical shadow spec that priests have. They could do the same with undead hunters and the dark ranger spec.

It would be much better for Blizzard to expand and work upon current lore and game mechanics than just pulling super special enigineer out of their butts.

I like my own take on it more :joy: ;

I want it to be ranged dps, healer and tank, wearing mail.

I’m not sure referring back to how engineering was 15 years ago really strengthens your argument, more so the opposite. Since engineering adds nothing to raid or pvp content anymore, all the more reason to pave way for an actual tinkerer class!

I just googled what a loa is, it’s a voodoo spirit? I think between deathknights, shadow priests, warlocks and demon hunters, the point is more than covered! I’m not even arguing against a 3rd hunter class, i’m saying it has in no way more justification than anything else, probably a lot less since it’s already so heavily covered.

Well your final point is the exact reason a tinkerer makes sense, especially on the back of the mecha gnomes introduction. Tinkerer has just as much relevance historically as a shadow hunter, however instead of building on what’s already been done to death with the other shadow/demon/death classes, give us a new class, not a hybrid of hunters, demonhunters, spriests and warlocks. We’ve never seen turrets from a class - I want this :smiley:

1 Like

I disagree entirely. Rather than throw engineering to the sidelines to make a new class, it; and other professions; should just be returned to their former glory. Professions not being useful any more is a complaint many have had over the live game.

What you’re suggesting of a super special engineer is basically the engineer class from GW2. Whilst the engineering profession has never had turrets; we have had a mini cannon trinket before.

Except, it’s not. Shadow hunters are part of troll lore, religion and culture. Death Knights and Demon Hunters aren’t part of troll culture; they’re connected to the Legion. And the shadow priest spec is connected to the void, rather than the troll’s religion.

No, it isn’t. It’s the exact OPPOSITE. There’s a lot in the game that hasn’t been explored and a lot that was half arsed which could easily be fixed. It would be better for Blizzard to complete what we already have rather than pulling more forgettable nonsense out of their butts; I’ve already said that.

Except, it doesn’t. Gnomish and Goblin “tinkerers” are just engineers. Hense why the profession used to be split between the two different styles.

Because suggesting three new ranged classes is the exact same as Death Knight’s and Demon Hunters, right? I mean, they have death! That’s almost identical!

That’s nice dear. I want a dark ranger.

I dare say a dark ranger would see much more play than a special little engineer, a little guy who says “hey i defeated the entire point of an age old profession just so me and 2% of the population could play this completely forgettable class :D”

Exactly! Nothing to do with the engineering profession at all. Though in fairness, the tinkerer from WC3 made a machine shop, which produced sort of mobile/marching mechs, hopefully the idea of a fixed turret is not beyond imagination :smiley:

The rest is just us repeating a never ending cycle of “shadow hunter is the basically an amalgamation of what we have in game already” and “no it isn’t, it’s a troll thing”

I think your statement about popularity is unfair and without any basis whatsoever, besides perhaps personal bias. However i’m not going to pretend to know the hearts and minds of WoWs players and what would and would not be popular. However I will say this though - the gnome population is the least played in the entire game, and yet they released another gnome regardless, so perhaps popularity is not what they’re gearing towards.

Either way, I hope one of us gets what we want :smiley: