Thoughts on the Unimplemented Classes Seen Yesterday

Hey everyone! I'm brand new on the forums, because up until now I didn't have anything I particularly wanted to discuss. So, hopefully a handful of people remember yesterday when all classes were enabled for one round. At first, I was just planning to try out Dwarf for a bit, but eventually it came out that there were actually some classes that could only be picked if you knew what names to enter into the command, not normally available even on Fridays. I wish there had been more time to test them out, but from what I could tell there was the Paladin, the Mechanic, the Weirdo, and one other class that wore a mix of chainmail and black leather whose name and abilities I was never able to learn. I mostly spent time exploring the Paladin, but anyone who experienced the other classes would be great to hear from, although the Weirdo is obviously even more of a joke than the rest of them.

It should probably be noted that when spawning in, at least as the Paladin, you get a warning that the class isn't really intended to be added any time soon, so these things shouldn't be thought of as things that will definitely be added into the game so much as fun little experiments. Still, no harm in talking about them.

It would've been nice if I had thought to write down exactly what each of these classes had as equipment, but I'll just have to talk in general terms instead. The Paladin had a mix of diamond and iron equipment that gave it a very nice aesthetic that can easily be told apart from other classes even at a distance (which would be very important, since you wanna be able to tell what class someone is playing just by looking at their armour set), and would probably put it somewhere in between the Heavy and Soldier in terms of toughness and damage output. However, the Paladin's sword also heals them for half a heart each time they hit an enemy with it, so they should actually be pretty durable as long as they fight well. I love this idea, since it rewards well-executed melee PVP with a huge health pool, to the point where a low-health Paladin in a position without any other sources of healing might attack someone and be able to come out of the fight with more health than they went in if they can get a good combo going. The sword is also enchanted with knockback, so it may be a bit more difficult to get rapid, consecutive hits, but this is a brilliant way to limit that healing while also providing something useful, since knockback is great in plenty of situations, especially if you're defending. The Paladin only has two steaks, but I actually wonder if it should have even fewer, considering the healing you can get from the sword. I didn't get into a ton of fights while trying out Paladin, but the healing definitely felt like it was doing a lot.

The other things Paladin has are a set of items they can hold that provide buffs. The shield (an iron door in a regular inventory slot, not a Minecraft shield) gives you resistance to damage, knockback, and headshots while you're holding it. (And also one other thing? I can't remember if it had maybe one extra purpose). Since you can't swing your sword while holding the shield, it's mostly useful for barrelling through guarded areas as far as I could tell. The most interesting thing there is obviously the headshot resistance, since it means you can no longer be instakilled by Archers and instead just take a tiny amount of damage. I don't think Archers are overpowered or have anything against them, but I do think this is a great counter to have access to, especially in games where a lot of base defence and carrier kills are handled by Archers, since you can force the enemy team to rely on other recovery methods instead. It wasn't clear just how much damage resistance the shield gave you, and I never got the chance to get waled on by a bunch of Heavies and Chemists or anything, so I'm unsure just how good Paladins would be at grabbing the flag and running back while being basically immune to anything but Assassins. Hopefully it wouldn't be too powerful in that way.

All the other buffing items are music discs that create an aura around you which buffs your teammates (or debuffs enemies in one case), which seems to extend for two or three blocks and has a nice-looking little particle effect. There seemed to be a range of options from jump boost, regeneration, resistance, and slowness for enemies, and this is another concept that feels amazing and very Paladin-like. I'd say the jump boost and enemy slowing are the most interesting here, since area healing/protection are already covered pretty well by the reworked Engineer and Necro. Noticeably, these discs only work when you're holding them, and they don't affect you, so you're playing a very supportive role when you use one. For discs like the regeneration one, it's obvious that it shouldn't affect the Paladin using it, since that would defeat the purpose of the health-stealing sword, but things like jump boost do make me wish the Paladin could jump higher as well, since you otherwise can't follow your teammates once you boost them up to somewhere. I found that they felt fairly weak overall, since I didn't feel like I was doing much by just standing near a teammate while they fought rather than switching to my sword and attacking. I'm not sure about the duration of the buff, though, so if it lasts even a few seconds after putting the disc away, that might be perfect. Otherwise, it might be nice if they could work similar to the Elf's elements, transforming into a sword when held in your hand, so that you can fight while buffing the team.

As for the Mechanic, all I can say is that I'm one of those people who misses the old Engineer. I barely got to play around with the buildings aside from placing them, so I'm not sure how they worked, sadly. It did seem odd that you could place what seemed to be a second, tnt-firing turret called a cannon rather than a teleporter, but teleporters were one of the more overpowered parts of Engineer back in the day. I'd love to see something like that added into the game, but the main thing I'm thinking about in regards to that is whether there would be some way for people who got Engineer in the past to switch to owning Mechanic if it were to be added. I have no interest in current Engineer and would absolutely trade it out for something else if I could, but if Engineer were to be returned to how it was after so long, some of the people who prefer slinging bombs and dropping speed pads would probably be disappointed with the area-denial support that they would suddenly end up owning. If it were possible, it seems like a choice for anyone who owns Engineer to switch to owning Mechanic would be good if it were ever added.

I won't say too much about the Weirdo because it was clearly even more of a joke than the others, but from what I could understand its gimmick was drinking a potion that gave it nausea as well as strength and resistance. It's fairly silly, but I do like the idea of a class that has to take the time to hide and drink a non-splash potion or charge up in some other vulnerable or time-consuming way before rushing into battle and being hopefully fairly dangerous.

All-in-all, I really enjoyed testing out those classes even just for one game, and I can definitely see at least Paladin having a place as actual classes without too much change. However, it's still understandable that new classes might not be added ever, or at least for quite some time, as trying to rebalance and perfect the existing classes is obviously something that consumes a ton of time and effort for everyone involved, and is absolutely worth doing.