Honestly I hope you are right, and they create an awesome take on them. If Monks were playable, it would be the next & last class I play. I still love D3, mainly because of them!
I personally don’t see these classes happening, only because the majority of their playstyles exist in other classes.
If any are a particularly long stretch, I would say Wizard (and Crusader for the same reasons). In Diablo, this was a a Sorc who went beyond and was able to turn elemental energy into raw arcane energy. The D3 heroes were canonically the most powerful of all, being full blown Nephalem who basically took out a reincarnation of Tathamet. Then an even more powerful, Tathamet infused Angel of Wisdom/Death.
Point is, they are just a Sorc/Pally on roids. I honestly would love to see the D3 heroes added in some fashion.. But why stop there? Bring all the Diablo classes back if they can be nicely differentiated from their existing counterparts.
Another class would be nice, but can’t see them packaging it with an expansion this soon after the last. A class pack would not bode well for the game long term.
I could see them doing a paid class DLC. Not all of them at once though. Think D3 Rise of the Necromancer kind of deal. Especially with the game already being for the most part, D3.5. There’s that extra stash space everyone wants too right?
Hand Crossbow in loot filter if true is some small amount of proof. We did same thing when we figured out paladin early drop which ppl called us crazy but they did it. The amount of evidence for paladin was much more overwhelming though.
We also have a small bit of evidence for witchdoctor. 2 of the uniques for S15 are WD items in D3. Henri Perquisition makes no sense for the heroes that can use it.
Its very possible a hero pack is coming with 2 to 3 heroes in it. Prepurchase it and you can play them in beta state. They want to do stuff like this so they can have us test the heroes before official release.
So a witchdoctor and demon hunter hero pack could be part of big reveal. Its at least in the 5% to 10% for both of these and I am going to say around 25% for at least one of them.
As for OP monk using STR would not be in the cards. MONK is 100% dex hero unless they release duel core stat heroes and monk would be DEX / STR.
I’ll believe it when I see it, and I highly doubt I’ll see it. As much as I loved the DH in D3, I’m not convinced they’ll bring it over when the rogue has very similar abilities.
SB and Warlock dabble in the Monk and Witch doctor realm respectively. Paladin is obvious. If anything I could see them making a brand new class instead. However even if they did announce it along with the next expansion, it would be a long while before we could play it.
My prediction is whatever they announce, people will be disappointed regardless. It’s how any of their announcements have gone.
I saw an article earlier talking about the cross over and that more details coming at blizzcon. So I think at best we’re just going to get some season gimmick where you turn into the witcher just like the butcher thing we had a few seasons ago.
D4 is missing a class focused on Sentry playstyle so it could be the Demon Hunter but also the Assassin as there are more D2 classes than D3 here. Could also be something new.