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Rumored Hero Class: Arch Druid
Published on February 6, 2008 by Phaelia 
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| Shan’Do Malfurion Stormrage by Paulo Henrique |
According to a recent article at Computer and Video Games previewing Wrath of Lich King, it’s possible that the next Hero class to be released will be an Arch Druid:
What’s more, with any luck, we’ll see more Hero classes some time after release, the hot Zitron tip being some kind of Archdruid quest directly connected to Malfurion Stormrage and the much-anticipated Emerald Dream.
Assuming this is true (it isn’t a direct quote from Blizzard, so let’s not get too excited), where could they possibly be going with an “Arch” Druid? Druids can already fulfill the existing roles — healing, tanking, melee DPS, caster DPS — with the appropriate spec and gear set. What then would set the Arch Druid apart from the Druid? Oh, I know! They’ll get out of combat resurrection!
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Nah, just more AoE. Did you read the War of Ancients trilogy? Malfurion wrecked some demons with huge-normous Hurricane’s and Mass Entangling Roots.
I’d love to see AoE roots
Hmm maybe heal in bear form? Or maybe have that dog form that people are always posting about in other forums. More DPS than bear and more armor than cat form.
Ooh even better, bunny form. Reduces aggro on you but you can’t hit or heal in form.
“You wouldn’t hit a poor defenseless bunny would you?”/bigeyes
The name “Heroclass” essentially is nothing more as a new class to WoW.
A Deathknight is a new class with(hopefully) the same power and balance as the existing classes, while still being something new and different. Same could be said for “potential” future hero classes like Demonhunters.
But Arch-druid?
Really interested how Blizz plans to create a class that is different enough from a plain and simple “druid” and more importnatly without making druids obsolete
I think this is more wishful thinking than rumour – nothing in that articles indicated anything more than an educated guess, as I’ve posted already.
Hoooooowever, should it turn out to be true, I wonder if it’ll turn out to be much the same as the Death Knight – a class that combines two roles not traditionally going together, which is hard to play. I’d guess at healing (as, like tanks, we’re often in short supply) and crowd control. And there will be some sort of mechanism whereby the archdruid has to align with certain natural energies each day, which determine what he can do during that day.
Well, when WotLK comes out, we’ll have a DPS/Tank (Death Knight), Healer/Tank (Paladin), Healer/DPS (Shaman), and Healer/DPS/Tank (Druid) (yes, I’m over-generalizing a bit, but _generally_ speaking those characterizations hold true). I really don’t see what role is left, unless Blizzard chooses to invent a new role that exists outside the trinity of MMORPG roles.
Just slapping new forms onto the Druid class wouldn’t separate it enough (Sprite Dragon form that Mor Greyhoof had, anyone?), nor would expanding the base Druid capabilities (e.g. AOE roots). You’d have to differentiate it some other way, while still keeping the flavor from the lore. Healing would be necessary, as would more AoE and probably less shapeshifting. In fact, I could see an Archdruid class as not even having shapeshifting capabilities (think about how often Malfurion shifted in WC3) since they’d have better ways of handling problems and they’re bigger than a title such as “of the Claw” or “of the Talon”.
Well, as I’ve said elsewhere, I think Hero Classes don’t necessarily have to be those we are already familiar with, ie. Death Knight, Dark Ranger, Blademaster.
While I’m intrigued by what Death Knights bring to the game, I worry they’ll set a precedent for new classes to be more restrictive than the classes we’ve had for years. Just the debate over what races will get the Death Knight class is heated and somewhat hilarious.
Still, the fact that we’re all expecting the next Hero Class to be a caster of some sort with healing powers makes absolute sense. As the Death Knight is an amalgam of Fury Warrior DPS, Paladin-style tanking, and Warlock dots and minions, I’d expect the next Hero to be an amalgam of Shaman/Priest healing, and mage-like manipulation of spells, and elemental shatners’ storm of high speed dps. I’d even ask that they wear leather, so there’s more reason to make caster leather in the game.
I love imaginin’ stuff.
I’ll bet Archdruid will get ambient form before we do.
I want a Pandaren Brewmaster! No need for Arch Druids and Death Knights.
@Skarrde: Add my vote for bunny form!
@Leafshine: I think that Blizzard has traditional been very hesistant to make one specific class heavily “crowd control.” Priests CC Undead, Druids CC beasts and Dragonkin, Rogues CC Humanoids, and Warlocks CC Demons and Elementals. Even Mages are limited to Humanoids and beasts for Polymorph. I think they’re determined to avoid the foible of EverQuest 1 which made having a Enchanter virtually REQUIRED for endgame dungeon crawling and raiding.
@Aichon: I think you may be onto something with the “of the Talon” or “of the Claw.” Though I can’t imagine how an Arch Druid being MORE specialized than the Druid wouldn’t make them more desirable to the people playing Druids in that specific role. I.e., if a Druid of the Talon were capable of shapeshifting into different DPS forms affording different benefits to their groupmates or specific debuffs to mobs, why wouldn’t a formerly diehard kitty Druid make the switch?
@Urthona: It would be awesome if they added another leather-wearing caster. What a nice boost for Boomkin.
I’d imagine an Arch-Druid to be more of a caster-focused class, combining the best of the traditional WoW Druids Balance and Resto trees. A host of new spells and abilities (indoor roots/ teleport other to Moonglade/ OOC group-rez, similar to the Warlock spell for summoning others) could be available.
One thing to wonder though would be: If the Death Knight is actually available to all races, would an Arch Druid be available to non-Druid races, such as Trolls or Humans?
@Autumnbear: That’s a great question! I can’t imagine an Undead Arch Druid, but I think Draenei would be pretty nice since they have cloven feet like the Sisters of Cenarius. I originally wanted to play Human, but they couldn’t be Hunters (the first class I considered) or Druids.
I think that maybe they are gonna add a stag form like in the WoW comic, ass they said when explaining stuff about the Idle of Remulos.
@Car7man: I would love if they would give us an updated, faster land form. They’d likely have to redo the animations for stags, though, as right now they’re quite limited. I’d personally love to shift into a Sister of Cenarius in Northrend. ^_^
I think maybe they should break the mold. Go with something no one is expecting, like a class that can only use disease or summoned beasts/demons/anything to do damage, and is pretty much vulnerable to anything that gets to it. Maybe some one/thing that can control large groups of summoned things, or raises dead enemies to fight for them. It would be like lots of smaller weaker monster-like creatures killing stuff while you either watch and give commands, or provide buffs for them, or subtle heals and dps here and there. Break the mold again blizzard! The Death Knight was a good idea!
@alan
sounds like a cool idea, maybe like the little pikmin things with a huge army of ants doing battle for you, too bad it would prolly be too much for others processing to have 5 people in a raid that had 100 pets each running around fighting.