Steam Engineer

[TheaTheBard]

I'm working on my first addon, the Steam Engineer class!

It's sort of a steampowered hybrid of Temporal Warden and Alchemist. The main focus is being good with switching between guns and saws, throwing explosives, and building turrets and robots. They can get a golem-like robot called the Automaton, which uses steampower instead of mana.

The addon is currently in the early stages of development, and I'm looking for talent suggestions, development tips, etc.

[astralInferno]

This sounds like a cool concept!
For basic addon advice, I'd recommend finding someone else's addon, tearing it apart, and examining the pieces to see how they work.

For a more specific tip... I wouldn't recommend trying to implement something golem-like as your first thing. Summons are hard and complicated, and permanent summons more so.

[nsrr]

Sounds like a fun concept.

I second both parts of astralInferno's advice. Examining other add-ons will give you a better idea of how to accomplish things than looking at base game stuff will. The issue with base game stuff (and DLCs, but to a lesser extent) is that there's a lot of stuff 'hard coded' into the engine to make them work. I'd still recommend making a copy of the game files to dig through for reference, though.

Regarding the summon, mostly they are just really, really tricky to balance, as you might have noticed from some of the summons in the base game and DLCs. Things like Shadows and Time Hounds are really easy to manage and probably too powerful. Alchemists' golems require a lot more micromanagement, and are also pretty weak (in every aspect: damage, defense and utility). Summoners' summons are more like short-term buffs and effect triggers than they are actual pets, and from the coding and UI side they are kind of a mess (e.g. talents like grand arrival that have to do a million different things because you have a million different summons).

In my opionion, Writhing Ones pets are probably the most well implemented, both the temporary ones and the golem-like Worm that Walks. It will probably be a challenge, but if you want to do a permanent pet, I'd recommend looking at WtW (if you have Cults, that is). Basically (real basic), you want the pet to have the stats to stay alive and land its talents, but not so much that it can annihilate everything on its own. WtW gains decent stats based on player level and talent level, which allows it to have a bit of durability and land its diseases and such, but would likely give it way too much damage IF it didn't have a 60% or so all-damage reduction slapped on it. It's a bit funky, but it seems to work out pretty well.

If you have any spefic questions along the way, I'm always on the Discord and check the forums pretty regularly, and so do a bunch of other knowledgeable and helpful folks, so don't hesitate to ask. Good luck!

[TheaTheBard]

Thanks! I'm still planning to make this, but I'm taking the advice to not make it as my first addon. I've started working on a simpler class called Moonlight Knight, sort of a hybrid of Shadowblade and Sun Paladin.

[HousePet]

That is a much better idea. And I'm really glad you decided to do something simpler.
We are happy to help, but we'd have to try and explain some rather advanced stuff.
So thanks.