Looking at unholy’s loadout only 4 things in their basic loadout is melee with one of them being able to talent into ranged. “Festering Strike” their charger, “Apocalypse” their burst spender, “Scourge Strike” their default spender and “Sudden Doom” an auto attack passive.
“Scourge Strike” can be talented into the ranged skill “Clawing Shadows” and “Apocalypse” is on a 90 second cool down which leaves “Festering Strike” to be the only melee ability that they have to use consistently.
If “Festering Strike” was given an ranged option like “Clawing Shadows” and “Sudden Doom” changed to proc of “Festring Wounds” as well as making “Apocalypse” ranged by default then we would pretty much have a necromancer spec that parades undead around while harassing foes with plagues and shadow magic from afar.
there are unholy builds that can do about 50-60% of the DPS while completely staying on range (you can build wounds on range but very slowly) - the main problem is that our auto-attacks do a lot of damage and you’d lose those.
The way Unholy is designed right now is nice, I think. You stay on meele for the full damage potential, but if you have to move away for a mechanics for a short moment (while you are spending), you don’t lose much DPS.
That’s mainly because the damage of abilities have been decreased to accomodate damadge from melee attacks. Otherwise the only feature of DK that is influenced by melee attacks is the passive “Sudden Doom” which could very well have been tied to either “Festering Wounds” being bursted, when “Virulent Plague” deals damage or rune regen/spending.
The issue here is that Necromancer already got a strong overlap with both DK and Warlocks. Change warlock pets into undead and felfire into shadowflame and now you got a necromancer.
Also it’s the “options” classes have is somewhat silly. Warlocks, Mages, Rogues are all stuck as either melee or ranged. And both DK and Warrior also got two melee dps specks.
It wouldn’t have hurt to give classes some notable variation between their specs than 3 flavors of ranged/melee.
Because it’s a great idea to squish one class between 3 after they added both DH and DK which overlaps with Warlocks. And with blizzards track record that would mean that Warlocks is going to lose something… again.
That would be very similar to a Warlock.
I.e. cloth caster using minions to fight for them.
I’d rather they created a “mirrored class” then. Would save them the trouble of balancing yet another class.
That you could create a Necromancer, but it would work exactly like a Warlock.
Except everything would look different of course.
Instead of a Voidwalker tank pet, you had a beefy abomination or something.
Instead of fel fire you had some “death” related spell.
That kind of thing.
There’s more difference between a Warrior, Paladin and Death Knight than a Warlock and Necromancer in my opinion.
And seeing as Blizz can’t balance the classes that exist in-game now, I don’t think it’s wise to add even more classes.
They could, but I’d rather they just implement “class skins” or “mirrored classes” or whatever one wants to call it.
Tinkers can be given to Gnomes and Goblins by giving them the “druid” class for example.
Instead of shapeshifting you’re using mech suits, and you’re healing with tech.
They could add tinker as it’s own thing, and make it completely unique. And while that would be cool, it would be another class to balance in PvE and PvP.
And Blizz can’t handle balancing the ones we already have.
But the classes overall are very different. Thematically and gameplay wise.
Sure, both can dps and tank, but warriors can’t heal and paladins can’t berserker style dual wield.
Doesn’t mean we should make it even worse though. But that’s just my opinion.
Not really.
How would you combine Frost and Arcane with Affliction and Demonology?
Warlocks and Mages function differently.
Sure Destruction and Fire are similar, but Mage has no mirror for Affliction, and Warlock has no mirror for Frost.
Sure, Frost mages can have a pet, but their spells still work very differently from the three warlock specs.
But that’s just my opinion.
Whether they add more classes as their own doesn’t really matter to me.
I just don’t think it’s a very good idea.