class fixation is kinda silly for HotS imo. Over the various expansions, what one spec had been has changed so different generations of players have different expectations of what that “role” would be represented by in the Nexus. In terms for HotS, those are all different ‘play styles’ that could be represented by multiple characters. (eg holy/discipline priests mean different things in different expansions)
Similarly, a number of unique qualities were only ever held by NPCs; the playable system doesn’t encompass the entirety of variety each class has had – Shadowhunters and Shadow Shamans are classes not playable – and some classes get the raw deal with their WoW representation (such as priests who have a wider power balance than just light or shadow)
If anything, I’d say each WoW class could arguably have a 4th spec, at least, and reference a lot more than just a few select options per character.
Some 5 years ago I did a post on the old forums in trying to suggest how each class would suit each role in the Nexus (support, dps, tank, specialist at that time) and I even added sub-class options (such as rangers and sorcerers) to incorporate overlap from Diablo-verse into the same system and thus suggest some 50+ additional hero ideas.
Warriors -> Sentinel Huntresses, Sin’dorei Spellbreakers and various Troll tribes all have mid-ranged weapons that could also be thrown, so arguably, a ‘4th’ class warrior would use “glaives” to be more than just a demon hunter exclusive.
Hunters -> Both elven rangers,dark rangers, and troll shadowhunters have a little extra something something going for them that playable hunters don’t have in their kits.
Mage -> ‘Shadow mages’ exist, but there also used to be the frostfire school for a multischool effect, so a similar effect could be added/used again and create a spec of cross-school spells.
Priests -> Priestess of the Moon and Priests of various Loa are very different than what playable priest offer to WoW; WoW used to have personalized racial abilities to reference some of the distinctions of worship/power to the various WoW religions, and a ‘spec’ could have been added to flesh those out as unique aspects of the class. HotS could still make use of that as (shhh, it’s a secret) Tyrande isn’t a ‘playable’ priest class in WoW.
Paladin -> Mounted combat. Warcraft 2 paladins were mounted, WotlK had an event for jousting combat, let’s get a mounted cavalry paladin in the nexus! Or, just say that yrel isn’t a retro/prot whatever, and she’s now this magic 4th spec.
Death Knight -> The original Death Knights aren’t like Arthas’ Death Knights. While some ability references are there (Gorefiend’s Grasp) there is a difference from one “Death Knight” to another that could be explained with a different ‘spec’
Monk -> Before MoP, NPC monks existed in classic WoW. Make up some, I dunno, Flamegiver Monk spec that’s one of the Scarlet Crusaders that mixes in Holy Fire with their chi.
Druids -> Honestly, the resto/balance/feral trees didn’t really make sense to me; they’d have been better associated with the type of druid instead eg Druid of the Talon, Claw, Moon, Anter, Branch etc. And there’s plenty of druid variety to have other specs/characters too, esp more than just ol Malfmalf. Wayback when, I had hoped that Druids of the Fin would have been a fleshed out spec in WoW (before deathknights) so another class could make use of +ice mods aside from mages.
Shaman -> even aside from Shadow Shaman, the ancestor/spirit aspects of shamanism is pretty downplayed in WoW and feels like the whole chunk of Tauren shamanism stopped existing. Well maybe I wanna play as a ghost-like cow thing that beats stuff with a lantern in the Nexus.
Rogues -> could do a scavenger or even demolitionist spec, which is just terms to get some unit classes from rts warcraft to fit into WoW’s system.
Warlock // Demonhunter -> I had wondered for years how WoW did 3 specs for demon hunters; finally looked it up, and they didn’t. >.< There is a lot of overlap between Demonhunters and Warlocks anyway, so I’d almost just as soon as put the 2 together, see it as 5 specs, and thus need to take on 1 more option for all the other classes XD
If I were to think up a +1 spec for them though, I suppose a demon hunter could be a runemaster; some of the design aspects of that ‘class’ ended up being incorporated into Death knights, but Demon Hunters are a big mess of runes as is, so they can clearly use runes to some degree that could be fleshed out into some sort of utility/support kit.
