My personal favorite class in 19-20 years of WoW has been monk (original Mistweaver version), but much as I would selfishly enjoy having it, I’m not sure it belongs in the Classic world (lore-wise). Death Knight would be a better fit.
I’d rather see them expand on the existing classes by adding new roles and/or fleshing out existing ones. All the bonkers stuff they did in SoD with healing mages and warlock tanks was fun. Also expand race/class combos where it makes sense.
But before they got to any of that, I’d prefer they start with making all the specs they already have work.
I leveled this Monk in WoD and it was kind of ok. I started playing it again in the last patch of Legion and started to enjoy it, but I really fell in love with it in BfA. The whole mechanic of cramming as much damage as you could inside your Touch of Death window was just super compelling to me! Sadly they changed it in Shadowlands and WW Monk never really jived with me as much. I went back to Resto Druid for the rest of my Retail time.
All that to say, Monk would be a joy as a new class. I made a suggestion back in the SoD days of having it actually be a rogue sub-class where you lose the ability to stealth and get talents that replace key abilities… along with losing the ability to use swords and daggers in favour of staves
I don’t think we need to be shackled to the retail timeline’s lore. I’d love to see Classic+ break away from that. Like not too much, obviously we’re still in Azeroth, but there’s opportunity to take a new path.
100%!
I really do hope they keep things very close to how they are in Vanilla though. Things play really well but there are some really obvious balance issues that need to be looked at. A few tweaks here and there and Vanilla’s class design is actually perfect!
I think late patch Vanilla Blizzard just got a tad carried away and put too much attention on certain classes while losing track of the bigger picture. Classic+ is a great time to recenter
People don’t care as much about leveling (although Classic players care about it more than most), but I think they could also make some not-too-crazy QoL changes that would make leveling a much smoother experience for the classes where it just isn’t all that fun.
For example, IMO druid leveling in vanilla feels clunky and kind of awful, and then in Burning Crusade it’s (again IMO, obviously) the most fun class of all to level. Simple changes to smooth out the talent trees, like moving Natural Shapeshifter and OOC over to Resto, made a huge difference. The trees are more cohesive, and the paths through them make sense.
And for the love of heaven, please give priests something to do besides shoot. Sure, a leveling priest is efficient and nearly unkillable, but the wanding. Somewhere in the 2007-2008 timeframe there must’ve been a months-long chunk of time where I heard that wand sound in my dreams. It haunts me still, like my own personal Poe raven.
This is one area where I think SoD got some things right. They went way too crazy with it for sure, but I think the general idea of giving the less dynamic classes a fun button was a good one. Priest leveling went from something to be suffered through while eating a sandwich because once you pressed Shoot you had your hands free for quite a while, to something wacky and engaging.
Edit, I meant to add:
Agree with the staves, but I’ve always thought it should be a priest thing. Friar Tuck archetype. (Edit again: I know a friar is not a monk, but Tuck’s always got the monk hair and the monk dress and in a lot of iterations he punches people and hits them with a stick. )
I’m actually ok with auto-attack heavy gameplay. It’s part of the game Vanilla is. I say this as someone who heavily identifies as a ret paladin these days. My attack buttons are few and far between, but I can still deliver some hurt and I have support options that give me more to do.
My other main class is a druid (usually feral though I’m 100% resto in Era these days). Both feral druids and ret paladins have some very interesting power-add mechanics in the form of power shifting and seal twisting.
Not that I would be against having tweaks in there or a more meaningful ability thrown into the mix, and I 100% feel you on the difference between feral in Vanilla vs. TBC (Mangle sound effect so good!!!). Vanilla’s design wasn’t so much in the buttons you press but more in how you build and prepare your character. By contrast, retail leans heavily into understanding and executing a more complex rotation at the expense of stat and consumable depth.
Retail is a great game and SoD leaned heavily in that direction, but there’s really something to be said for that auto-attack heavy rotation. A big plus for me is that it is a very accessible game. Not everybody can play retail at a high level but in Vanilla, almost anybody can clear the highest tier of content in the game. There’s a lot of value in that, especially when you consider that the highly skilled players really are relatively few in number.
Again, not saying you’re wrong to desire this, just tossing out some alternative perspective
monk could easly be a few punches/kicks with some magicial enchancements
but rest more about boosting auto attack dmg/speed
maybhe somethign that prefers fast weapons for once (wouldnt make to much snese for them to rely to heavly on weapon dmg)
I thought to myself, “Oh, so this person is a paladin.”
And then immediately …
Currently leveling a paladin in Burning Crusade, and doing it Holy no less, so yeah auto attack is my life. With a side of “this will take fifteen rounds because your white damage is that of a gnat.”
Also wanted to say I agree with this sentiment overall. I want no part of the retail e-sport mentality to bleed into Classic. That’s not at all what WoW was about during the era Classic is meant to recall. Retail is already there for the folks who think that evolution was a good one.
and classic classes can still have quite the high skill caps
espcially in pvp
but even pve stuff like msot people could do like 3 -5mob pulsl asa frostmage afetr abit,; but then aslo ahev mages that will 1pull an entire dungeon and not take a single hit as a example
classices higehst skills caps generly come froms tuff youre not liek intended/expecetd to be able to do (solo) people knowing how to use evrything from game to their advantage
If it is released this year or early next year I agree. If this is pushed to late 2027, I think we may see a new class however I see undead paladin and dwarf shaman much more likely. Maybe some other new race/class combos too. I’m more interested in them adding just that as well as side progressive content and more bwl equivalent raids in terms of ilvl
Another plate wearing dps would be dope, and it’s name is death knight. I think classic+ should have all content up to wrath but be scaled to level 60 max and all itemization beyond around naxx patch should be horizontal. I don’t want tbc set stuff, etc. Esfand did a really wonderful explanation of this recently.
HJECK NO thatsa wfull idea theyre fuundamently not designed around what players have ro wlel dotn have in classic
you cant just copy paste and then aplply awfull scaling from non classic content in classic
Also ask for blizz/devs to make ACTUAL NEW CONTENT
)
ya’ll are dreamin. play retail if you want more classes.