Aside from the very real technical limitations in the code, which "could" be changed it would just not really benefit the game enough to do it what I think the game needs on classes is more "impact" within the class's ability & spell set, not more classes. A lot of very similar abilities are populating even just 1 class & spamming them all for an overall effect rather than feeling they each have a good individual impact is making the game feel bland to play, at least in my opinion. There is a "balance" to be stuck with the toolset or spell set of any class, where you have enough tools to be entertaining & which have specific purposeful uses and feel impactful. That balance has to sit between having too few tools so a class feels limited or too many so that the impact of each individual spell or ability starts to feel meaningless by itself because combat has been diluted too much across too large a range of actions to the point any one thing you do feels weak. EQ has already gone too far down the path of "whack a mole" over-saturation of different things to click, I think the game needs to do some intelligent pruning & combinations of abilities & spells in order to reduce the unimpactful feel of the current combat bloat & to make some headroom for additional abilities and spells to enable more class development & escape the current trend of just copy-pasting the entire repertoire of skills & offering players nothing new.
Some spells lines sure could be consolidated into something new and some could even laid to rest. As example the Enchanter class has to many charm and mez variations and to many auras. The magician to many pet toys and useless item summoning spells including DD clickies. The shaman, cleric, paladin, beastlord, to many (similar) buffs.that do stack, the rogue to many discs, the wizard and magician to many nukes, etc.. Buff breaks are annoying when you have to load more than 4 buffs and all pet buffs should be combined into a single one. Single buffs should be removed as we only need group buffs that also take hold on pets by level 1 without additional AA effects. Its is just messy and a time killer to buff a group or even a raid especially when there are also pets around. Some classes can load two complete buff spell sets of up to 30 spells and setting up a magician completely after a wipe is just horrible. Bagged pets should not vanish after its master had been killed. Yo ho, no sun, a skeleton's day is never done.
Would you be ok with pets not taking player gear anymore? It seems pretty obvious to me the devs intentionally set things up to eat pets occasionally as a tax on people overpowering pets with gear intended for players.
I would say no thanks, 16 classes is enough. What I would vote for is a new merc. A trader/buyer merc. Something I could hire, have off line, and play my adventure toon. Tech was around before EQ was ever, Ultima had hire a merc system. Nothing ground breaking here. Let the players play. Go Rams!
Partially that would be totally fine as stuffing pets with equipment has gone way to far and this has started since day one in classic EQ and was and is just a bad concept. I think it is enough to be able to summon and give them weapons but everything else is to much and just annoying even that it does make the pet more powerfull. To compensate theoretically removed pet gear and the ability to stuff pets with other equipment than weapons (removed item slots), pets just could be made a bit more powerfull. Pet classes would be alot more enjoyable then with less downtime for the players at about the same pet power.
Not sure enchanters and charmed pets really fit into the pet gear argument as you are able to kill them to retrieve anything you give them and they could start with gear to begin with.
A merchant class! With expanded Bazar abilities! I'd make one in a hurry! EARN EXP from buying and selling!
Welcome to 2016. Uhhh so like this, or this, or even this? They can probably expand this out to go through the lower levels, but consolidations have already been made. Most TLPers just don't see these efforts because they decide to reroll before they ever get to these points.
I think a good new class would be some priestly sort of Rogue. Think medicine man. Part Shaman Part Rogue. Part Enchanter. Some heals, some stealth damage, some debuffs.
You should put more thoughts into your idea as all but the stealth damage is already there with the bard class and a medicine man is a shaman.
I added this under Evye merchant posting and so will copy to here, have a lookie and laugh. There was a time i advocated for a new class= Diplomat- it would have a lot of the enchanter spells, but would also have rogue skills, pick lock, back stab, assassinate, not as powerful as either parent class, but with one unique skill, - appear as same race to any NPC and gain non KOS- at least until attacks.
I feel like a 4rth priest class has plenty of space to live in the EQ class roster. Currently there is no proactive healer in EQ. I would call it a Warden or maybe Protector and it would specialize in runes and short term mitigation with mediocre HoTs. The main play pattern would be to put up shields on allies to absorb damage while sustaining any unblocked damage through HoTs. For offensive capabilities they would have short term high damage damage shields. For their utiltiy they would be masters of aggro control. Having the ability to force mobs to temporarily attack other players on their hate list or to lock a mobs attention on a target. In addition they could have access to memblur. For buffs they could have Increased avoidance, Increased AC and % Damage reduction. They would wear cloth armor and could be good or evil.
I've always said there should be barbarian druids since druidry is a celtic thing and...kilts. Also, though I hate pets, a drakkin beastlord with Drake type pet.
