The Devourer Demon Hunter filled a gap.
When Demon Hunters were introduced in Legion, they were quite unusual in that they had only two specs - one tank, one melee dps. Blizzard had said that they avoided giving the class a ranged dps spec for fear that they would be forced to water down Havoc, such as removing Eye Beam to give it to them.
Obviously, that philosophical choice changed, and Void Ray, while similar to Eye Beam, has a somewhat different feel in Devourer's quite different rotation.
Only two prior times did we get a spec added to the game.
I would guess that Evokers were meant to ship with all three of their current specs, but the weirdness of Augmentation, a dps spec more concerned with boosting others' damage than their own (I have no idea where they currently land in the overall meta - it's hard to evaluate just how much they're adding to a group's damage) likely took them a bit longer to figure out, hence the wait for 10.1 to roll them out.
The other was a weird byproduct of the redesign of how talents worked in Mists of Pandaria. For youngsters and newer players (and you can just play Classic to get a sense of this,) the talent system in WoW initially worked by simply having three threes you could invest points into each time you leveled up starting at level 10. There was no limitation on how you spread the points, though you needed to spend 5 points in a row before the next row unlocked. The idea was that you would invest most of your points into one of the three trees, which thus established your specialization, but there "spec" was an informal thing, simply referring to how invested you were in a given tree (typically you'd hit the capstone of the tree about 20 levels before the level cap, so you would then invest later points into one or both of the other trees - like, boosting damage to Consecration was a Holy talent, so Protection and Retribution would want to pick that up).
Things changed a little in Cataclysm, where they now forced you to pick a talent tree to stick with as you leveled up until you had either gotten the capstone or at least invested the number of talent points you would need to get into that capstone before the other two trees would unlock. Also, with the rising level cap, Cataclysm also made it so that you would only get a talent point every other level, alternating with getting new abilities.
Mists of Pandaria threw the whole system out, and further formalized Specs as the main determinator of what spells and abilities you got as you leveled up (I think that you also no longer had to go to a class trainer and pay them to teach you new abilities) while Talents would be choices you made between three different options every fifteen levels, usually giving all three specs the same talent options to choose from.
That remained the system until Dragonflight, when they sort of re-constructed something reminiscent of the Classic/Cataclysm system, but retaining the formal definition of specs brought with Mists.
Ok, that history in mind, the first spec they ever added to the game outside of a new class (obviously, Blood, Frost, and Unholy were not in the game before there were Death Knights - well, not that version of Frost) was Guardian for Druids.
Prior to Mists of Pandaria, Druids who wanted to focus on either tanking in Bear form or doing dps in Cat form would both take the Feral talent tree. The talents you chose, though, strongly leaned toward one role or another, so the actually arrangement of talent points would look very different between characters who wanted to go one way or the other. (During Wrath of the Lich King, it was similar with all three Death Knight specs, which were designed to allow you to go as DPS or a Tank).
Thus, with the simplification of specializations, it was necessary to carve out a separate spec for Druid tanks, giving us their weird fourth spec.
All that long preamble aside (sorry, sometimes I go into WoW historian mode,) one of the periodic speculations about upcoming expansions is the potential to add new specs to existing classes.
I'd argue that Devourer is really the only time that they've truly done this in the manner people imagine: Guardian was simply enabling an existing playstyle in a way that was compatible with a pretty enormous shake-up of a core game system, and Augmentation had to have been planned from the beginning of Dragonflight, with the entire class built with it in mind (there's no way that the spec was conceived of after the launch of Dragonflight, merely months before its debut).
So... what classes might get new specs?
First off, I think one of the early iterations of this form of speculation was the idea of ridding the game of pure DPS classes. WoW of course has the most room for DPS characters in group content, but the relative ease of playing this role also sees probably a disproportionate number of players gravitate toward that role. The notion of giving Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks, and Mages either a tank or healing spec was born, I think, out of a hope that by giving them that option, we'd see more people playing those roles.
I'm... skeptical that that is how that would work. I mean, plenty of people play Warriors who don't tank or Shamans who don't heal.
I started tanking very early on in my WoW career, and so I'm pretty comfortable with it as a role (I think it's basically just like melee dps but you have to be a little more careful about your positioning and can't ignore monsters when they go after the healer). But with very rare exceptions, I've basically never played as a healer (I did briefly level a Mistweaver Monk back when "Fistweaving" allowed you to pretty automatically heal the group while fighting in melee, but I don't think she ever hit the level cap).
Still, I think there's one example of this that bears exploration: the Warlock Tank. Now, I think in WoW Classic's Season of Discovery (which was basically their dry run for WoW Forever,) there was a way to unlock new abilities for Warlocks that allowed them to tank. Prior to the introduction of Demon Hunters, Demonology Warlocks were actually built around DH-like Metamorphosis (Legion saw a dramatic redesign of the spec, and I guess I was lucky that I liked both versions). This actually makes sense for Classic and Forever given that I don't believe either are expected to have playable Demon Hunters in them (I guess Legion Classic would). But for Mainline WoW, "retail," or just WoW, I don't know if this is the approach they could take.
Another perennial ask is Shaman Tanks. Here, I think you've got a lot more of the pieces that could work. Shamans are the only non-Tank class that can use Shields (which I think was primarily just so that Horde guilds had someone to give the Shields with Intellect on them back in Vanilla before there were any Horde Paladins - notably, WoW Forever is going to have Dwarf Shamans and Undead Paladins, giving each faction all the classes, because they realized that limiting the classes to a single faction in Vanilla was a mistake.) Still, I actually think there's some logic here: Shaman specs often focus on certain elements, with actually both Elemental and Enhancement tending toward air and fire (lightning and lava,) and Restoration tending to focus on Water. A Shaman Tank could very much be one that focuses on Earth, creating stony bulwarks to defend themselves.
There are currently no Mail-wearing tanks, which is funny given that half the tanks wear Leather armor, which is actually a less "heavy" armor type than Mail. But given that the only items you really need to make distinctly for tanks are Trinkets, and there are already plenty of Agility-based tanks, it would be pretty simple from an itemization point of view to just make a Shaman tank spec. You'd have to put Agility on shields, but that doesn't seem that difficulty (it would make them the one gear type that would always have all three primary stats on it, but who cares?)
Now, I'm... less convinced that we could make a Healing Mage. Maybe, maybe, possibly you could do some kind of time-magic thing where they're able to reverse time and heal wounds that way, but I don't really see it on a thematic level.
What about Hunters? Well, there's a vague notion that you could have a Hunter's pet tank, but given how imprecise it is to control your pets, this seems like a disastrous way of doing things (likewise Warlock minions).
The truth is, there's probably a way to conceive of any melee class acting as a tank - if you can fight in melee, maybe you can fight in a way that make it hard for them to kill you? And thus, a Hunter tank might be a bit more similar to Survival, with a pet that just supplements you rather than taking the hits for you.
A Rogue Tank, though, feels a bit like a contradiction in terms, simply because the whole vibe of a Rogue is that they stab you in the back while you're distracted by some seemingly bigger threat. Now, I do think Outlaw is a bit of an exception here, living less in that "sneaky backstabber" space and more in that "charming scoundrel" swashbuckler vibe. I wouldn't advocate turning Outlaw into a tank spec, but a tank Rogue would probably have to lean into that vibe a bit more, which I don't love given that Outlaw already feels like the exception rather than the rule.
One thing I never hear anyone talk about is a new Priest DPS spec. Priests are the only class that has two healing specs, and so if you want to play as DPS, you have to take a pretty dramatic shift in flavor and vibe by going Shadow.
What we don't have is a ranged Holy-damage-focused spec.
I honestly wonder, if they were building the class today, if Discipline would have been this. With Holy as the straightforward healer, you could have Shadow with its dark and insidious damage-over-time focus and Discipline focus on bursting foes down with holy fire.
But obviously, 22 years of Discipline being a healing spec would mean that changing it now would have people up in arms.
However, I do think there's very much a niche open for this archetype: a Fire and Brimstone Inquisitor, who smites foes with Holy Light, maybe mixing Holy damage spells with Fire. (Frankly, I always wanted my Blood Elf Priest to have a bit more of this vibe, but I just don't like playing a healer. And actually, both the introduction of Void Elves and everyone in Silvermoon making mean remarks to him in Midnight makes me really wish this was an option).
Devourer did sort of introduce the idea of a kind of off-brand version of the class - Demon Hunters are tied to Fel magic, but Devourer allows them to focus instead on Void magic.
Would giving Warlocks a Necromancer spec make sense, allowing them to raise undead minions? My answer is that it would, except that Unholy Death Knights exist, and especially with their Midnight re-work, Unholy DKs are the necromancer spec, and I just cannot conceive of a Necromancer class or spec that doesn't inherently have to utterly dismantle Unholy as it exists currently to appropriate its kit.
But what if, instead of a Necromancer, Warlocks got something a bit more Witchy? WoW's attitude as to what class is strictly a Witch is pretty ambiguous, but in Battle for Azeroth, we got the Heartsbane Coven, the most direct and straightforward Folk Horror Witches WoW has ever seen. (While I didn't like BFA much overall, I freaking adored almost every moment of Drustvar).
Now, maybe you could argue that Witches ought to be their own class (I wouldn't complain. Give them a healing spec). But I could also see Warlocks studying the Drusts' use of Death Magic and going that route rather than that of the Fel. Mechanically, I have no clue what this would look like (arguably, Affliction feels a little less demonic in vibe and a bit more death-magic focused) but I do think it could potentially be cool. Hell, call the spec "Witchcraft," and I think you'd have a lot of people super on-board. (Maybe tie in other woodsy spookiness, like the magic of Satyrs.)
I guess my last idea would be some kind of spec that combines arcane magic with martial prowess to give us a sort of Battlemage (or to use D&D terms, an Eldritch Knight). I had thought perhaps of a kind of arcane paladin, though it might also make sense as a Warrior spec. I think that there's less clear lore precedence here, though, so this is more pie-in-the-sky.
I'm skeptical that WoW would be likely to drop a whole lot of "fourth specs" in a single go, and it might be more exciting for players and hype around a new expansion just to launch a new class. This does have the benefit of not being tied to existing class mechanics (though given how distinct some specs play these days, I don't know if that's as much of a design constraint as it used to be).
Still, some of these ideas would be fun to see.
I think the ones that currently feel most appealing in my opinion would be the Shaman Tank, "Inquisitor" Priest, and Witchcraft Warlock.
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