Tinker shouldn’t be about being a wanna-be druid. If you’re going to pilot mechas, pilot proper mechas.
As for race, orcs, maghar and dwarves could also do the part for the class. This way it would be 3 races per faction. But it would add up more time into designing mechas for each race.
Specs?
Melee DPS or Tank -> Potential names: Shredder, Pacifier, Siegemaster
Melee mecha that uses different devices to inflict damage on close quarters like buzz saws, drills, tazers as a ranged slow or stun. If instead of Melee DPS, it’s a tank, it could be a shield user with a mechanic more based about shielding (blast shield) and some channeled self-healing CD. Some abilities could be Venting Flames, Oil Spray, Zap (interrupt), Tickle-bot (CC, or glyphed interrupt).
Ranged DPS -> Artillery
Mecha with hand cannon (or wearing equpped ranged weapon) could add a diverse arsinal of devices like rocket launchers, toxic cannisters, sticky bombs and laser.
Healer -> Medic
No mecha, but they could use heal bots that act as a long dot with medium to large cd you can control to swap between allies, have the good ol’ healing gun,… But, frankly, this spec would probably be the hardest to pull off.
Baseline abilities/talents can be mostly abilities the tinker can use without mech, being also usable, or even improved, as a mech: Calibrated Shot/Strike, Throw Dinamite, First Aid kit, Nullifying Field (hinders magic damage or silences and pacifies), …
Other ideas would be a Heat resource and have the Tinker pilots HP not scale with stamina in exchange for their mechs having a separate healthbar that scales with stamina. Upon the latter, you could have a choice to self-destroy the mech or, when the mecha dies, have a casted ability with reasonably long CD that allows the tinker to repeair the mech (maybe as a talent similar to Cheat Death).
