How about breaking this down a little more: players either heal or damage (or do both). Rogues and Druids can sneak around, but there’s very little use for other than getting somewhere to attack. Are there any roles or classes that do something besides Damage and/or Heal?

Real time strategy games give us the scout unit. The scout moves fast, and unveils the map and enemy positions. The scout usually has little or no attack. Would a scout class work in WOW? Probably not. No one would want to play it.

Turn based strategy games give us flying, tanking, and ranged damage units. Just variations of DPS units.

In the Heroes of Might and Magic turn based game, the Knight hero gave interesting bonuses to his units. The Knight was inspirational, a leader that could get greater efforts from his units. These ‘greater efforts’ were implemented in extra attacks, bonus damage to attacks, spell resistance, and greater movement. Could this work as a WOW class?

How about a class that steals attributes from players and mobs and gives it to himself (temporarily). So the player gets stronger, the mob gets weaker, and then they enter into battle. At higher levels, the stat-stealer could take the strength (or whichever attribute) from a willing player and give it to another player. Imagine being able to create a super tank by taking strength and stamina from several players in a raid (all the clothies) and giving it to the tank.

There could be a Merchant class. The Merchant’s main job would be to make money. It probably wouldn’t be much fun to play a class that doesn’t engage in combat.

Loremaster is a possibility, a class that knows the weaknesses of mobs, has the map revealed, knows where stuff is. That could be boring to play, but nice to have one in a party.

A Builder class could create golems for battle, walls for protection, towers for defensive damage. That would probably be fun to play. But this class does pretty much come back to the damage role.

In Diablo the necro was a blast to play. Raising skeletons to battle to you was a unique feeling of power. In Might and Magic 6, the necromancer could raise all dead enemies to his service. You could wipe out an entire town, then raise all the dead as friendlies. This wouldn’t work in a multiplayer world, but imagine killing everything in Crossroads, then raising them all to be alliance friendly. Still, this is just another manifestation of doing damage.

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