These are in order from most to least, the 3 least played classes in retail world of warcraft.
Warlock: a pure dps being this low is surprising. The biggest crime i think for warlocks is simply how it’s class fantasy has been completely robbed with the removal of life tap and giving shadow priest the kiss V Sin theme, so you’re supposed to be this dark caster but the only example of you using your health as a resource is to press burning rush which is probably the least fun button to press ever. So you don’t have your class identity… so you’re just a slow mage with not a much fun/unique abilities to press. The thing the desire for a dark caster typically has high popularity( necromancer in diablo and ESO, black mage and reaper ffxiv) but i guess it isn’t here.
Monk: The very pandaren focus i feel like hurts the class, complex rotations where other class can just press sinister strike 5 times but in defense of monks, the monk archetype is always the least played class in every game… people just don’t resonate to unarmed kung fu combat.
Evoker: Evoker has a couple things working against it from being the newest class, having just a mid class fantasy that’s ruined by just outright terrible gameplay( devastation just spamming a lazer beam) (augmentation not feeling draconic at all) and while this doesn’t bother me the lack of transmog is the worst thing in the universe to some.
Apparently rogue has taken warlock spot.
If it’s rogues now i blame it on the fact they have 8 Cooldowns.
I remember getting on my rogue, realizing i had 8 Cooldowns and logging off.
Especially when most of the Cooldowns don’t change your combat pattern at all they just make you deal more damage
I’ve always been back and forth with my priest vs warlock each season. I will say the green fire all those years ago re-invigorated my love for warlock.
But i see where you’re getting at.
This right here, is why my evoker just doesn’t get my attention. Gameplay aside, i just hate not being in transmog that i worked hard on/love to see while playing.
I love my monk but this is what holds it back for me. The pandaren specific theme is just too strong, especially with how they focus so heavily on green mist for all 3 specs. Just give me a dang glyph for spinning crane kick that makes it a white/bluish tornado with lightning flecks instead of green mist with bird feathers.
They have a glyph that makes your chain lightning red…would be cool to see a xuen color theme for spinning crane kick…now we just need a new name for it haha
Evoker is because it was pulled out of nowhere and is race restricted to a race also pulled out of nowhere. No one has any long term connection to the class or the race. The race is also very, very ugly.
Monk is definitely the panda theming. Which kind of sucks since there were non-panda monks before MoP, but they just ignored them entirely.
Might be why they aren’t doing it…Hypothetically, if you’re in a +10 key and you life tap yourself to give you a [insert crit % here] and then a big unavoidable AOE damage phase comes, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot, and strangling the healer at the same time.
Monk has crazy potential but since the trope is usually the least played regardless i think there’s really nothing they can do to make it more popular.
I miss old new touch of death… pressing it and loading damage for a big pop just felt better to me than “press when they’re low health”
It’s high risk high reward.
Rather the class be some fel maniac than some diet mage
I haven’t looked at Warlocks lately tbh but every time I checked it out in DF I kept finding it felt lame compared to any version I played in DF.
Then in TWW anytime I invite a warlock to the group 9/10 times I regret it. Idk if it’s overly complicated now or what but they just rarely perform well and the utility isn’t very noticeable outside cookies.
Yeah, monk in general usually isn’t one of the more popular fantasy themes. But then when you tack on even more specific and unpopular theme on top of that (pandaran) then its really not going to get much interest. Even most of the ability icons are panda specific lol
So unfortunately even if there isn’t much you can do to make it more popular, you can certainly make it even less popular. They managed this spectacularly.
Warlock, Monks, and Evokers aren’t the least played classes in retail WoW though. Monks and Evokers are, but not Warlocks (at least not by any margin that makes this distinction anything of note).
It depends entirely on where you get your statistics from, but everything points towards something entirely different: amongst the lowest played classes are Evokers, Monks, Rogues, Warlocks, Death Knights, Demon Hunters, Shamans, and Priests.
Who is the ‘lowest’ out of them is very difficult to say besides Monk and Evoker. Which both are obvious since Monks are unpopular due to how different their playstyle is and as a result, even when they are the most broken classes in the game they typically are underrepresented in regards to their proportional position in accordance to their power level, and Evokers is the latest class in the game that also has a thoroughly unique playstyle. So we know for a fact that Evokers and Monks are unpopular because people simply don’t like new things, or to get used to new things as monks have been around for a long time but folks typically just refuse to learn them.
But besides those, it is the typical stuff:
For spellcasters, basic people like basic things and thus play Mage instead of Warlock.
For rogues you only have one option and it would seem folks aren’t interested in playing the role of a thief, spy, or non-warrior duelist. Basically, folks who want to hit things with axes is gonna opt for other classes like Warriors.
A similar story goes for Death Knights although they share a similar position with that of Shamans. That they are less popular as a class but quite well liked in terms of performance and playstyle, meaning that they are more popular than the average, but less popular than the most popular.
Demon Hunters are likely too edgelord-esque for most people or they didn’t have the nostalgia of Illidan, making their “Demon Hunter”-vibe not really that intriguing.
And Priests run into the issue of “designated healer class” without the same exciting options from, for an example, Dungeons and Dragons and their Cleric subclasses.
The only thing that changes, mostly, is performance, and most WoW players who would care about things like “class popularity” are likely the same ones who would care about class performance. Thus statistics from places like RaiderIO or WarcraftLogs become the ones that are used. But they only represent class performance, not class popularity.
Its easier for me to tell you what classes I do like:
Beast Master Hunter
Destruction Warlock
I’ve been playing 18 years and those two classes/spec have stayed the most consistently enjoyable for my play style. I also have a couple mages & shadow priests that I play occasionally. I should add - I only solo play.
