I'm convinced World of Warcraft is about to surprise us with its first ranged support class

pcgamer.com:

For years World of Warcraft players have wanted a non-healer class that can help allies from afar, a mix of support and DPS. Recent datamining from the game's upcoming patch 10.1(opens in new tab) suggests that the wait might almost be over.

Admittedly, the evidence for a ranged support class specialization is slim, but it would fit with the recent direction of the MMO. The entire Dragonflight expansion was pitched as a return to the game's high fantasy roots, and Blizzard keeps adding features(opens in new tab) that players have wanted for years.

The Dragonflight expansion's new race and class, the Dracthyr Evoker, only has two specializations to choose from: healer and DPS. Most of WoW's classes have three. Paladins can be healers, DPS, or tanks, for example. While having only two specializations isn't unheard of (poor Demon Hunters), the Dracthyr have a strong narrative reason for having a third.

Patch 10.1 will dig into the origins of the Dracthyr, a race of dragon-human hybrids created by one of the original Warcraft villains, Deathwing (aka Neltharion). You might remember him as the dragon that burned Azeroth to a crisp in the 2010 Cataclysm expansion. The Dracthyr have the unique ability to blend the powers of the various dragonflights (helpfully color-coded) in WoW's lore, but they're notably missing a specialization that revolves around Deathwing's black dragonflight.

Yesterday Wowhead(opens in new tab) datamined a quest in 10.1 that makes it seem like the Dracthyr are about to get a new specialization. The work-in-progress quest text literally says Dracthyr players will get a pop-up window that reads: «New specialization remembered.» WoW doesn't use the word «specialization» for anything else, so unless this is