World of Warcraft: Dragonflight adds the MMO’s first new ranged class
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will finally take players to the long-awaited Dragon Isles. Here, they’ll meet up with a recently-awakened species called the Dracthyr — dragon people who can transform into humans at will. This new race adds more than just narrative intrigue, and will serve as both a transforming and a cross-faction player race (the Dracthyr are playing second banana to the Alliance’s Worgen and the Pandaren respectively here). But the Dracthyr are even more unique than the Worgen or the Pandas; they’re intrinsically linked to the new Evoker class.
In Dragonflight, Dracthyr can only play as Evokers, and Evokers can only play as Dracthyr.
In a pre-brief interview session, I spoke to lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead combat designer Brian Holinka about the new race/class combo, and what they bring to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight.
The Evoker class is the first ranged class Blizzard has ever added toWorld of Warcraft. All the other post-release classes — Death Knights, Monks, and Demon Hunters — are melee-focused. The new class will be able to wear mail armor (another underrepresented group in WoW) and offer both a spellcaster specialization (Devastation) and a healing specialization (Preservation).
It’s a race/class combo not entirely dissimilar to the Demon Hunters from the Legion expansion, which can only be Blood Elves with the Horde or Night Elves with the Alliance. But while the Evokers and Dracthyr are singular, there are loads of customization options to make your character different than any other — far more than the wings and horns of the Demon Hunters.
As a single class and race combo, the Evoker sacrifices the pure customization that WoW has always had for something else entirely:
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