There's been a lot of news about possible new features arriving with the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. I covered one of those recently, that being the possibility of new race/class combinations, ones that were previously unavailable to player characters.

Now, this feature would actually make a ton of sense, especially taking the following into consideration:

- We've had the same 9 classes available for going on 5 years now.
- With new races being added in Cataclysm, there's almost certainly no hero class.
- It's quite likely that the new races will be unable to be Death Knights, at least at first.
- The leaked information from MMO-Champion suggests that Azeroth is getting a makeover, graphically and design-wise.
- The Paid Faction Switch service is coming soon, and adding these new combinations would bring almost 100% parity between factions in terms of classes available.
- Blizzard has been tossing quests that hint at these new combinations into the past few patches and onto the PTR.

But of course, the WoW community is a fickle beast, and what they seem to be focusing on here tends not to be the gameplay benefits of adding new race/class combinations, but the "lore-breaking" aspects of said combinations.

Well, I don't think any of these are unreasonable, and in fact many of them have precedents in lore. To make the discussion more interesting, I've brought in my lore-hound colleague Daniel Whitcomb, and we'll expound on each new possible option to give you clear reasons why they're not only plausible, but likely. On top of that, I'm bringing in our class columnists to give their insight on the new choices and explain their pros and cons in terms of gameplay!

Let's start, shall we?

TAUREN PALADINS AND PRIESTS

MS: After all, it's not called Storm Crow Form, it's called Flight Form. Maybe we'll see Bat Form for flying Troll Druids. Maybe their cat form could be a badass tiger with 80s hair.

DW: Yeah, and Serpent or Spider Tank form? I'm on board. But then again, I'm not sure if Blizzard wants to take the plunge and make that much of a change to class flavor, even if the basic mechanics and numbers behind the spells and forms are the same. They could just go the other way and allow some Trolls to get buddy buddy with the Tauren and learn Druidism from them -- or they could introduce a whole new set of Loas or mix and match Loas. Like I said, I love fictional religion and mythology, and I've been in love with troll Loas since I first read about Eraka no Kimbul and Ueetay no Mueh'zala in Zul'Farrak. So, I'm hoping it's all about Loas and not just a bunch of Trolls converting to Earthmother worship a la Tauren.

Druid columnist Allison Robert's perspective: We know that Trolls are perfectly capable of managing the shapeshifting mechanic (e.g. Zul'Gurub, Zul'Aman, and Gun'drak), so the most class-defining part of being a Druid isn't really a stretch for them. Moreover, Trolls are already capable Shaman, and the two classes' views on the world aren't entirely dissimilar. Lorewise the only thing that's kind of tough to accept is that the Trolls would willingly join a class so inextricably linked to Night Elven civilization and culture, but better them than the Blood Elves (who were perhaps the other likely choice). Trolls are still the least-played Hordeside race (possibly the least-played race in the game, period) and so they're unlikely to impact the population advantage still held by the Night Elves, but I might have had to kill myself if Blood Elves got Druids.

Now, frankly, Troll racials are amazingly bad for Druids. This is the one area where Horde would have been better off getting Blood Elves as Druids; BE racials would have been fantastic for the class. Beast Slaying has situational use, and isn't likely to have a significant impact on either PvE or PvP. Bow and Throwing Weapon Specialization are both useless for druids. Da Voodoo Shuffle is hardly a big deal for a class that can already shift out of most movement impairing effects. Regeneration is pretty meh. Helpful while grinding, to be sure, but as with Beast Slaying, it's situational.

Berserking is slightly different. Useless for Balance and Resto, somewhat useful for Feral. Oddly enough, Bears might get better use from it than Cats, because +haste (which is basically what Berserking is) still isn't a great stat for kitty; even with Savage Roar, the vast majority of our damage comes from special attacks dependent on Energy ticks and not white hits. I can see Berserking being a nice but not overwhelming DPS boost for cats, but helpful for Bear threat generation in 5-mans, especially if combined with Berserk. In raids, well...how close to the hard expertise cap are you?

Tags: blood-elf-warrior, class-combos, dwarf-mage, dwarf-shaman, featured, forsaken-hunter, human-hunter, new-class-combos, night-elf-mage, orc-mage, race-class, race-class-combo, tauren-paladin, tauren-priest, troll-druid, undead-hunter

Filed under: Druid, Lore, Expansions, Warrior, Shaman, Priest, Paladin, Mage, Hunter, Cataclysm