New Class: BrewmasterFollow

Disclaimer: This isn't as polished as my spellbreaker. I'm having a hard time finding a way to make this class into a 'needed' class and make it serious. After all, the whole idea came from a joke blizzard took too far.

Much as with the Spellbreaker, I'm not interested in balancing a class, I'm simply throwing exemple around... so that's why you'll see a lot of 'X' and 'Y' thrown around.

The biggest problem I have from a 'design' point of view, is that I cannot see the 'why?' behind this class aside from 'it would be cool!'. The spellbreaker added a class that could remove both magic and curses, thus making him extremely useful in end game instances... aside from providing some weird buff, I'm not sure the brewmaster would be 'needed'. Rogues certainly would be in direct competition with them and that wouldn't make them happy.


Wow Lore: The lore on the brewmaster is strenuous at best. The brewmaster is linked to the Pandaren race - a race of humanoid panda like creatures hailing from a 'mysterious' Pandaren Empire.

The pandaren were an April Fool joke that Blizzard did while developing Warcraft 3. They said the pandaren were going to replace the Orcs in WC3. That didn't happen obviously, but people loved the joke and Blizzard made a panderan hero for the expansion. And thus the panderan brewmaster was born.

There's no panderan empire in WoW. No panderan either. This is a joke taken too far. But the idea of a drunk fighter who use alcohol to enhance is fighting skill is just to funny to pass up :).



Hero Class? I just don't see those guys being a hero class (despite being one in Wc3 ;p). Who would become a brewmaster anyway? It just doesn't fit.


The Brewmaster

Allowable Equipment: Cloth, Leather.

Allowable Weapons: One-Handed Axe, Staves, One-Hand Sword (with training), Daggers (with training), Two-Handed Sword(with training), Two-Handed-Axe, Polearm(with training - at level 20), Fist Weapon (with Training), Crossbow/Gun/Bow (with training), Parry (with training, level 10). Dual-Wield (with training, level 20).

In short, everything but maces and 2 handed maces. No wand.

Stats: STR and AGI would be the most important, as despite being a party enhancer/debuffer, the brewmaster is also a damage dealer.


Races:

The best race for the class is obviously the panderan, but baring an expansion, I really doubt we'll see any panderan running around Azeroth. Heck, I doubt we'll see panderan even if there is an expansion.

There's a couple of race that seem like obvious pick for Brewmaster - The dwarves are the first one that come to mind. There's also a few npc brewer that are orcs in the game... there's even a few quest on the Horde that are basically about finding booze ;p. So my pick on the horde side are the orcs.

Again I'm hesitant to pick humans and trolls, due to both of them already having 6 class to pick from.

My pick:

Horde:
Orcs

Alliance:
Dwarves


Special Game Mechanics:

Warrior use Rage, Rogue use energy... everybody else use mana (well, pets use focus). Somehow mana just doesn't seem to fit a brewmaster. I don't know to call what his 'mana' will be yet, but it'd work different then mana/rage/energy.

His bar will fills up as you get more and more smashed, and then goes down when you use abilities. Yes, this would mean a brewmaster would need to quaff down drinks (on a cooldown? On 'global' cooldown?) to regain his er... 'mana' during fight, but that would be part of the uniqueness of his play mechanic. The bar would also go down on it's own as your character starts to sober up.

The game already track this, the brewmaster would merely have a bar that shows it and be able to 'use' his drunk point to do stuff.

Most of the brewmaster's skill would have no or a very short cooldown/cast time, the challenge of playing a brewmaster is not to juggle your cooldown/cast time/mana cost, but rather to juggle with a 'mana' regen that is not automatic but player controlled and that diminish over time, even in combat. A brewmaster will have to keep drinking and use his abilities quickly in order to be effective. Otherwise he'll find himself running dry.

Playing a brewmaster would mean drinking a lot. Your character will end up being drunk a good part of the time (So if you don't like the blur effect and the sloppy control of being drunk, this isn't the class for you). Much like a hunter uses arrows, you'll be drinking alcohol.

Obviously, the price of alcohol will have to be re-balanced and considered. So will the actual effect - how long does a drink keep you drunk, how much of it do you need to drink to get smashed, how much of your 'drunk' points are used per abilities, etc - in order for the brewmaster to be balanced with other classes.

Tentative name: Alcohol Level (yes, unimaginative, I know).


Abilities/Talent Path:


Brewing

At the base of the brewmaster's class is the ability to actually brew alcohol. This skill path is based loosely around the mage's ability to create water. The Brewmaster, of course, will create alcohol - and on top of making you very drunk (thus acting as fill up of alcohol level for brewmasters) they will also gives buffs. Only 1 brew per brewmaster can be consumed by a target.

Unlike his other skills, those will be on long cast time and cooldown - the brewmaster has no mana, and the only thing to prevent him from creating 1000 brew (for exemple) is to put the ability on 30mins cooldown and the like. Much like mage's water, the beverage will remain in existence for as long as the character stay logged on. The brewmaster can trade those consumable items to others.

Talents in this trees will make existing brews more powerful, last longer, lower the cooldown or increase the number of drinks created per batch as well as enabling new (and more powerful) brews to be created.

The format I'm going on here is that the cooldown for any brew is at least 3 time as long as the effect. Because of this, those buff would be pretty powerful. A brewmaster could give all the drink created in one batch to one person (or himself) and thus keep that person buffed for quite some time.

Sample Skills:

Survival Kit - Create a batch of normal alcohol. High rank create more alcohol and more powerful alcohol. The purpose of this ability is to lower the cost pertaining to playing a brewmaster. Cast time: 10 seconds. Cooldown: 1hour (yeah, you'll still need to buy some).

Storm Stout - A create a batch of strong drink made of grain, fills the user with courage, increase fear resistance by X% and Nature Resistance by Y for 10 minutes. Higher rank would scale up X and Y as well as the number of drink per batch. Cast Time: 10 seconds. Cooldown: 30 minutes.

Gut wrencher - Create a batch of incredibly potent alcholo that makes that bolster the drinker's aggressivity. Increase attack speed by X% and str by Y% for 10 minutes. Higher rank would scale up X and Y as well as the number of drink per batch. Cast Time: 10 seconds. Cooldown: 30 minutes.

Drunken Fighting

When drunk, most people move clumsily. So does the brewmaster, but he is able to harness his clumsiness into chaos, his alcoholic inspired inhibition becomes actual courage, and the drunker he is, the more dangerous he (think) is!

Drunken fighting would cover 'style' (only 1 style can be activated at a time, they'd work much like paladin aura, but only affect the brewmaster) and offensive melee move. The talent path will strenghten those abilities, allows new one and also include the typical melee talent (+% to crit, +def, etc).

A lot of those abilities' would be passive and would have their effect based on the 'mana' level of the brewmaster. The drunker he is, the better he'll fight... but if he uses his abilities, he will also lose some strenght. The never ending juggling act between alcohol level and abilities use can be seen here

Sample Skill:

Drunken Monkey - [Passive: Style] While in effect, the brewmaster's dodge level increase by X% of his current alcohol level. His resistance to movement impairing ability also increase by Y% of his alcohol level. Higher rank would increase X and Y.

Hundred Fists of the Drunkard - [Passive: Style]

Keg Smash - Instant, cost X alcohol level and cause strike damage + Y. Higher rank would increase X and Y.


Alcoholic Manipulation (need to find a better name)

This is where things get fun! The brewmaster has learned to use alcohol itself as a weapon, and along with a bit of fire, what he can do is er... 'magic'. Do not try this at home.

This path involves using your alcohol level to do direct damage to the opponent or debuff them. The talents would be designed so that you can't possibly get 'the good talents' from both Alcoholic Manipulation and Drunken Fighting. Brewmaster will need to decided how they wish to fight (or if they'd rather be pure support via brewery).

The abilities in Alcoholic Manipulation will drain your alcohol level much faster then those in Druken Fighting, but they'll also be much more impressive damage wise.

Sample Skill:

Drunken Haze - Instant, cost X alcohol level, 1 second cast time. The brewmaster throw a keg of alcohol (using a green grid to target, like blizzard or rain of fire or a bomb), target cought in the haze can't help but to feel dazed by the very powerful alcohol vapor. They take Y damage (very low) and will be slowed down to 70% speed (-30%) and increase the critical hit chance of fire spell by 50% for 10 seconds. The debuff is removed if the target is hit by a firespell, even if it doesn't crit. Higher rank would increase X and Y

Fire Breath - Instant, cost X alcohol level and cause Y fire damage in a cone shaped area (a la cone of cold) in front of the brewmaster. The brewmaster's breath is ladden with alcohol vapor that simply breathing out on a match create this. Higher rank would increase X and Y.


PVE

Solo - One of the biggest drawback of the brewmaster in a pve setting (both solo and in group) will be the inventory space - much like hunter or warlock, he'll be wasting a lot on items for his job. In this case, alcohol. Baring that, the class should have a high enough dps to make short work of most mob in solo situation. The periodic buff from brewery would only help.

Group - Aside from being a dpser, wise use of brews in instances could make many encounter that much easier. The long cooldown on them would prevent you from having your whole group powered and tearing up the instance. However, you could keep the brew for nasty pulls or for specific bosses.

PVP

Solo - Brewmaster should do fine against most caster class. He doesn't have mana, has many way to counter/resist debuff and he hits hard. His weakness obviously would be against the more heavily armored melee fighters - while he has way to defend himself, he does only wear leather meaning he won't stand very long against a full melee assault.

I'm not kidding myself, due their impratical cooldown/duration, the brews wouldn't be that much of a difference.

Group -

Many of the ability on Alcohol Manipulation would affect multiple target, making this path quite good for group pvp. While brews are less then practical in solo pvp, giving your flag carrier a brew that increase his defensive skill would be very good in WSG (Has 10 minutes ia big chunk of the game) as well as 'drinking up' before attacking a graveyard or defending one.


And that's more or less it.



Edited, Tue Aug 30 18:51:10 2005 by Tyrandor

damn that was long, I love it though. Drunken master.

I remember you did a thread on it Gongar. That's my take on it, that's all.

Well, if the heroes were racial, dwarves could...uh...morph into pandas?

I got nothing.

Special Game Mechanics:



Blood Alcohol Content, obviously. =p

I'd imagine that it would look somewhat similar to a cross between the Warrior rage bar and the combo point meter for Rogues; like Rage it fills up (and not as a passive effect), but unlike Rage it goes down in much more significant chunks. Imagine, if you will, a bar that is split up into only 10 slots rather than 100 and you'll see what I mean.

[qupte]His bar will fills up as you get more and more smashed, and then goes down when you use abilities. Yes, this would mean a brewmaster would need to quaff down drinks (on a cooldown? On 'global' cooldown?) to regain his er... 'mana' during fight, but that would be part of the uniqueness of his play mechanic. The bar would also go down on it's own as your character starts to sober up.[/quote]

Agreed. You'd need to institute some kind of cooldown on all alcohol, especially store-bought alcohol, but it wouldn't have to be huge - maybe just 15 seconds. This would make getting the best alcohol availible quite important, as otherwise you're not going to be generating all that much BAC (or whatever we end up calling it) during combat



Well, you could tone down or modify some of the effects of alcohol for Brewmasters - after all, if you drink that much you'd develop a far greater tolerance for Alcohol. Tying in with the earlier concept, as you gain levels you could get a longer Alcohol Bar naturally, which would make getting better alcohol all the more important. It would also mean that Brewmasters would be able to drink much more than the average player, which would make sense.

For example; a level 1 Brewmaster can innately consume 10 'points' of Alcohol, which is equivilent to twice what a normal character can consume (or whatever it ends up being - obviously the existing Booze would be reworked). Every level after that adds an additional alcohol 'point', which thus leaves a level 60 Brewmaster with a full 70 alcohol points (or whatever, the number can be tweaked). This would leave a level 60 Brewmaster needing TONS of alcohol at the very high end, and capable of consuming far more than the average player.



The better comparison would be to the Warrior stances, but without the Rage loss. But yeah, a solid idea.

Overall it seems like a good idea, although I'm not all too keen on having a massive money sink for the class - Booze would have to either be fairly cheap or easy to summon, since it's so critical to every class ability. A few talent suggestions;

Natural Alcohol: The Pandaren Brewmasters body has become so reliant upon Alcohol that it naturally generates some, up to a maximum of X% (increasing each rank, up to a maximum of 20%) of [Alcohol Bar], as well as slowing the Brewmaster's liver functions. (Think Warrior's Anger Management, except with the passive Rage generation a feature and not a bug. Would also slow the passive Alcohol decay).

Critical Booze: Whenever the Pandaren Brewmaster is the victim of a critical strike his natural booze production goes into overdrive, producing an Alcohol Point (could be swapped into "Whenever he performs a crit", which would make sense for the class if not for the ability. It can be worked out.) Prereq: Natural Alcohol.

Alcohol Tolerance: Increases the Pandaren Brewmaster's Alcohol Bar by [X]. (Think Vigor for Rogues, but not as useless.)

Kinda like Jackie Chan eh in the Drunken Master.

Not a bad name, problem is that it's a bit long. Sure, it can be shortened to BAC or what not, but it still not as elegant as just rage or energy. I was thinking 'Imbuedness' or what not, but that just sound corny. Altho I guess the name isn't so important as much as the general idea behind it.

I kinda like the idea of having it be 'combo' point. A little bit with 10 slots that fills up. It would be easier to calibrate too (cheap booze only gives 1 point, while the good one gives you 5) and at the same time, losing even only 1 point over time would be a pretty big deal (cuz you lost 10% of your bar) so they'd want to use it quickly and keep themselves properly drunk ^_^. Thumbs up.

Toning down the effect is probably a good idea, as it's inconvenient to play when you're smashed. Still, some effect should remain, as it is part of the fun of playing the class.



Aye, as I've said, booze in general would have to be looked at and most likely re-worked. Cost/Effect and all that stuff are probably not balanced as alcohol right now is just there to allow the 'world as a toy' philosophy of blizzard. The fun thing here is that they can mess around with alcohol value all they want and it won't mess up anything :).

In the end, a brewmaster should be more or less equally expensive to play as a hunter.



Nice talents. Alcohol Tolerance and Natural Alcohol especially look like two talent that'd be 'must have' for most people. The tricky thing then is in which talent path should they be put in?




I'm not crazy about that one. What would the keg be? A container that can only contain alcohol (npc bought an brewmaster created alike?)? And would it boost 'all alcohol' or only summoned alcohol (So you'd have a keg that gives +10% to the effect of a certain brew)? I guess they could lower your cooldown on drinking alcohol.

You copy pasted that info straight from the Blizzard website ;p.

So whats you point, All I'm saying is that i brought up the idea that Blizzard already has a model for brewmaster that they should implement it.

I don't trust it without the Seoman seal of aproval.

I think you should call it "Buzz."

'Intoxication', or failing that 'Lubrication' just to see all those heartwarming repeatable jokes on the forums.

Not a bad start, but in my eyes a drunken fighter has to a whole lot more random, their ability to not get beaten stems from neither themselves nor their opponent knowing what is going to happen next. so for instance taking your 'Drunken Heroic Strike' as i like to think of it, instead of just leaving it with increased damage it would be nice if it also had a small chance of a random effect on the target, i'm talking a 2% chance or so to either silence the target or hamstring the target or increase the target's miss chance by 5%, obviously only for 5 seconds or so (relating to the drunkard missing his intended target and hitting the opponent in the mouth/leg/eye respectively).

as for some more skills:

Beer Jacket - the brewmaster's body has adapted to his continued drinking over time and the high levels of alcohol in his blood means he feels the cold a whole lot less than other, more sober weaklings. The brewmaster gains X% frost damage mitigation over Y minutes and gains a Z% chance to resist movement impairing frost spells.

Drunken Kiss - The brewmaster headbuts his opponent, stunning both himself and his opponent for X seconds, both may attempt to break from the stun before the time is up. brewmaster 'waking time' can be improved by a 2 point talent.

Vulgar Fountain - The brewmaster spews alcohol in an Y feet radius around him, all within the area have their movement speed decreased by X% and may have a chance to 'slip up' stunning themselves for Z secs. leaving the area ceases the movement penalty.

Mug Shot - the brewmaster accurately fires a mug of his best brew down the throat of his opponent. ranged shot, X sec cast time, on succesful hit opponent has attack speed reduced by Y% and casting speed reduced by Z% due to slurring. consumes 1 bottle.