So, a bit like Mists of Pandaria, Dragonflight will be giving us a new neutral race and a new class. While this meant, in 2012, that most people made a Pandaren Monk, there was nothing preventing you from making, say, a Pandaren Shaman or a Dwarf Monk.
Dragonflight will actually enforce that "new race and new class" build, as Dracthyr will only be able to be Evokers and all Evokers will be Dracthyr.
Honestly, I felt pretty good about every announcement for Dragonflight (maybe get back to me on the "quality" of profession-produced items) but this... leaves me a bit skeptical. Like, I think the natural pattern for a new race and a new class is going to be that most players do both with a single character. But in the ten years since Mists came out and Monks have been around for five expansions, over time that default race/class combo kind of dissipated into players picking up what they wanted.
I'm generally in favor of letting players play the kind of character they feel like playing. I'm still kind of shocked that after we had two Night Elf Paladin champions in Legion, that's still not a player option (I mean, how could you not imagine some Night Elves wanting to get a bit of Retribution for Teldrassil?)
The finer details on Dragonflight are scarce. I think I tend to agree with Taliesin over from Taliesin & Evitel that this expansion is probably a long ways off. Expansions are usually announced a year before they come out, roughly, and this one has some tantalizing ideas but not a ton that got showed off.
But I wanted to make this post specifically about the new class, which is part and parcel with the new race.
Actually, I think this is the surprising element of it: that Dracthyr can't be other classes. With the precedent of the Demon Hunter, I can see that Blizzard is willing to restrict some classes to only a single race option per faction - which is a pretty big reversal of the race/class option expansions we got in, for example, Cataclysm (yes, there was a time when Humans couldn't be Hunters... for some reason). Before Cataclysm, if you wanted to play a Druid, you could only be a Night Elf if you were Alliance or a Tauren if you were Horde. With the addition of Worgen and giving Druids to Trolls, no class was restricted that way.
Obviously, we have yet to get a really strong sense of what the Dracthyrs' whole deal is - apparently they were created by Neltharion (we don't know if it was pre- or post-corruption, though I'd assume the former because A: they use his original name and B: one would think the Dracthyr would be corrupted by Old God nastiness if it was post-corruption).
But I could definitely imagine these dragon-people taking on various established classes like Warriors, Mages, Priests, etc. Apparently not, though.
The Evoker fits into the exact niches that it seemed any new class should take. They wear Mail and can serve as ranged dps or healers. This actually makes them the first post-vanilla class in the game that cannot be a tank, and it also marks the first ever addition of a ranged dps spec.
Evokers' spells are all dragon-themed, and often built around the idea of the five Dragonflights. Apparently Devastation, their dps spec, will focus on the Red and Blue flights, while Preservation, the healing spec, will focus on the Green and Bronze flights. (Maybe the Black flight's near-extinction is why they're less of a deal).
One of the most interesting aspects of the class (no pun intended) is that there's a new type of input they're playing with: being able to hold down a key to charge an ability. In fact, this reminds me a lot of Elden Ring, where some spells can be charged up to do more damage, hit more targets, or go farther.
We saw a few spells, including one that has us take a Deep Breath like Onyxia and fly over targets, breathing dragonfire down on them.
Like the true dragons, Dracthyr will have their true, draconic form, and a "visage" form that looks like a sort of draconic elf - not unlike the humanoid forms the aspects take, but with draconic scales and horns and such. The eyes are somewhat more human-like than the Blood/Void elf models whose skeleton they clearly share, with visible irises and pupils.
While we got nothing in the way of specifics, the new dragonflying mechanics for the expansion (which will be a sort of more interesting take on flying mounts - in theory) it seems that Dracthyr might interact with this feature in a different way - I suspect by flying on their own wings.
Like the Pandaren, the Dracthyr will have a faction-neutral starting experience, at the end of which they choose one faction or the other. However, story-wise, at least, this choice is presented less as a huge philosophical decision and more of a practical choice - the plot is going to actually set aside the faction conflict, and in fact the beginning of the expansion is a joint Alliance/Horde expedition to the newly rediscovered Dragon Isles.
Evokers, and thus Dracthyr, are a hero class, meaning that the starting experience should spit you out at a level to start the main adventure with established level 60 characters. Also, like the Demon Hunter, these will be available in the pre-expansion patch so that players can get a feel for the class.
I tend to love a new class - my Death Knight and Demon Hunter are my two primary alts after the Paladin. So, this to me is the most important and exciting feature that the expansion could have. Again, I do have to wonder a bit about the wisdom of making the race and class options so profoundly limited, and wonder if that restriction could be loosened in future expansions, or if it's kind of set in stone.
Even though I will generally default to any opportunity to make a blue player character (it's one of the reasons I love the Draenei so much) I'm feeling a strong urge to make a Bronze Dracthyr, given how much I love the Bronze flight.
But we'll see. Ooh, and I guess I've got to throw a new class tag into the blog labels.
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