How looking at WoW Classes and FFXIV Classes can help make a better decision for the next NEW class

Community General Discussion
1

Obviously The Dracthyr Evoker class was a failure that didnt resonate with the playerbase as intented… its numbers are half of what Monk(The previous) lower but it has resonated with even less players.

The big 3 things why the Evoker class is a failure are so obvious.
1.No Transmog
2. poor class fantasy
3. giving the community the long requested “ranged” new class but adding a gimmick on top.

While I could care less about Transmog to some people this is literally the only reason they log on every day, its why Mechagnomes are the least played class and probably why Dracthyr evoker is the least played class.

The poor class fantasy is a multitude of reasons. You are making a DRAGON HERO CLASS. Hero classes have long resonated with being actually “villain” classes… The Class wasn’t made to be this impressive enemy like Death Knights or Demon Hunters, on top of the gameplay loop of your “DRAGON CLASS” isnt draconic as a whole… the “CORE” spec Dev is just holding an ICE lazer for the majority of the rotation and the two other specs dont sell Dragon mage at all… if anything it just feels like an offshoot of the Mage class with more focus on elements like Fire/Ice/Eath.
(Too double down on this, the core concept of your dragon spec is being an earth bender. this resonates with such a few amount of people… people that want to play the dragon class want to be a dragon doing dragon things, not a earth bender).

You finally decided to give the community a new RANGED dps after deleting one (survival) and every new spec prior being a melee spec… and instead of giving them a genuine ranged DPS… they were given this wonky pseudo ranged DPS spec.

So again. Lets look at WoWs most popular Classes and FFXIV the 3rd competitor to retail WoW (since Classic is the 2nd largest MMO community)

WoW’s most played classes according to Raid/Dungeon logs are.

Paladin 126k
Death Knight 117k
Mage 99k
Hunter 90k
Shaman 93k
Warlock 89k
Druid 85K
Priest 83k
Warrior 74k
Demon Hunter 62k
Rogue 59k
Monk 46k
Evoker 42k (Your “CORE” fantasy for your Dragon Class is Earth Bender.) Aug Evokers are double the amount of Dev Evokers

Now let’s look at FFXIV Most played Classes according to Raid/Dungeon Logs are.

Viper (unique)
Pictomancer (Mage)
Dancer (BM Hunter)
Samurai (Ret Paladin)
Machinist (unique)
Dragoon (Surv Hunter or Melee Balance Druid)
Reaper (Demon Hunter)
Summoner (affliction Warlock)
Bard (Aug Evoker)
Monk (Wind walker Monk)
Red Mage (Aug Evoker)
Ninja (Assassin Rogue)
Black Mage (Arcane mage)

These are just rough dissection of what these FFXIV Jobs are in comparison to WoW.

Now let’s look at ESO Most played Classes according to Raid/Dungeon Logs are.
Sorcerer (Mage)
Dragon Knight (Warrior)
Templar (Paladin)
Nightblade (Rogue)
Warden (Hunter/Druid)
Necromancer (Warlock)

So what can we break down from this info.

Well in the top 5 of both games you see
“Hunter” “Paladin” “Mage” being the common trend of desired characters/playstyles.

So what should the new class offer.

You want to make a class that will eat at the player base at the top of the pile, not one to make least played classes even more less played.

For example; The Monk is one of the least played classes in WoW. Adding a Kung Fu Samurai will eat from this player base.

So The WoW Devs should look to something that takes concept from the Hunter-Paladin-Mage fantasy.

Why do people play Hunter-Mage- Paladin

Well one pretty obvious example is their “Simple Class fantasy”… they arent an "Evoker or an artificier or Sandscapper or Spiritborn.

Simple
Class
Fantasy

I would also argue that the classes are also easy to play, very low skill floor. especially looking at FFXIV Dancer and Pictomancer are incredibly easy to play digest classes to play. When you look at the LEAST played classes you see things like ESO Necromancer, FFXIV Monk/Ninja, WoW Monk/Rogue… the only outlier is Evoker in wow being at the bottom but also being easy to play… (The problem is not simple class fantasy or just poor class fantasy)

So what class should Blizzard pick from the survey leaks.
lets go down the list.

Prismatic: not simple class fantasy. wtf even is that.
Bard: A simple fantasy but the “support” playstyle is least played in FFXIV and WoW
Gunner: Simple fantasy, could be made easy to play.
Astroligan: Come on… we have Balance druids just stop
Apothecary: Simple but simply boring concept
Witch: Simple, but if we look at WoW,FFXIV and ESO these “edgy” classes arent “overly” popular at all… who wants to be “stinky” mage spewing poison and bile.
Celestals Lancer: No
Battlemage: No
Artifcer: No
Leyweaver: No
Gunslinger: no
Titankiller: no
Necromancer: Simple but the problem of the witch concept it is a popular community choice though and death knights are the 2nd most played WoW Class.
Tinker: I have personal bias and have no interest in seeing the abomoniation of Titan Tinker the Devs would cook.
Warden: Poor class fantasy
Spellbreaker: Hard to sell “anti mage concept”

I think the best classes they could give is Necromancer or Witch. While I personally would prefer to get Goblin/Gnome Tinkers the current dev team wants to make some titan construct version of Tinkers that would be giving us a 3rd Arcane class when we already have Mages and Evoker, we don’t need a 3rd.

Bard is a shot in the dark, The Dancer is FFXIV 3rd most played class but Evoker is WoW’s least played class.

it could be scary picking Necromancer/Witch in a The Last titan expansion (on top of the class being unpopular in ESO but that is more due to its heavy reliance with corpse so the skill ceiling of the class is simply so much harder to operate) but writing wise how do you make story wise either of those classes make sense. Unless in Midnight they really build up the Necromancer or Witches as a serious enemy threat and tie them deep into that big finale but it doesnt seem like thats the direction they are head. If Midnight will be a Void expansion full throttle, I feel like The Last Titan will be Arcane/Holy magic galore.

2

What… what? What?

WHAT?

I know you wrote a whole long post, but seriously, what?

3

The class “leak” is nonsense, rendering your book of a post meaningless.

4

umm the psuedo utility they bring a group?

ehh my post is still about how to see what the community wants by looking at trends and other popular classes

5

Paladin is mostly something a lot of western players like because of the class fantasy while stuff like bard is more the eastern equivalent, I wouldn’t put aug in the same spot as a musician or dancer or bard while they do buff other classes they act as a way bigger dmg amplifier.

6

They have an okish heal, a rez, and a group buff. They are a far, far, far cry from a full support class like Aug.

They also don’t play like any other class in WoW.

7

It’s weird cause dancer is crazy popular in final fantasy while bard has never really been popular.

I mean most people don’t play it cause they want to just play an actual damage caster

8

I feel mostly because bard in FF14 is mostly a weird archer class.

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9

Bard in wow will probably be some weird psuedo light song of azeroth class.

Like IDK i definitely could see them saying how a whole faction of “Speakers” coming into existence for Azeroth final stand who vbless the mortals in their final battle.

10

Bard should be a healer imo if they do it, closer to priest or paladin.
It doesn’t have to be a light thing but could be.

11

Red mage is a caster/melee hybrid. People who want an actual damage caster aren’t playing it because of the melee aspect of it, not because it’s “support.”

I was so taken aback by the Red Mage comment that I missed this. How in hell is Summoner anything even remotely like affliction warlock?

12

Why are classes having to be a popularity contesr? Some things hit for different people, and sometimes people enjoy the class they started with. Like asking a Ryu main why they main Ryu when a guest character is available.

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Priest is also in the middle of popularity.

I don’t know if holy paladin plays a factor in it being so popular or it’s simply all the Ret/Prot that make up the bulk

14

The goal would be to cater to the chinese market imo if you do bard so go the way they do bards in their game.

15

Well for a big finale of the world soul saga isn’t making a class that will generate buzz the goal?

You want people to be excited and want to come see the big finale a new class can play a factor in that.

If your new class is an Astrologer that might get some people interested but could also not get any interested at all

I don’t think the Chinese market is a big factor tbh. Maybe back in the day but then letting the servers go down for like 7 months definitely shows a shift in actual interest in that market.

16

Sure, but it also comes with problems. If you say have a Death Knight repeat like 80% of the playerbase chooses the OP class that can tank and dps at the same time. Or you keep it super basic, very foundational where more often than not you are just going to remake something already done where you won’t turn many heads.

I would probably say healer is the least popular role in the game, from historic point of view both healer classes added to the game are lower on popularity. So do we not make new healers? The constant rebuttal of ‘more tanks doesn’t solve the tank issue’.

17

Shadow Hunter would be cool.

Uses Bows, Holy Ranged DPS or Void DPS, and has a single spec for Tanking or healing as well.

18

They still get lots of classes to use from WarCraft 3. Necrolytes from WarCraft 1. Always wanted those. Same name, same spells.

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19

I’ve been wanting a healer (preferably holy priest) to have a bow for awhile.

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20

Regardless of the “leaked survey” being legit, most of what I saw sound more like Hero Specs than full Classes to me. The only ones that could be a full Class would be Battlemage and Gunslinger… maaaaybe Necromancer if they heavily borrowed from the Diablo franchise to distinguish it from DK. But “Celestial Lancer”? “Artificer”? “Astrologian”? They sound more like Hero Specs to me.

Also… kind of off-topic.

I would say it plays more like Demo Lock without the permanent pet. Especially since they reworked the Job to no longer have DOTs and the summons play more like the Darkglare or Tyrant or Infernal - come in, blow up, leave.

I think RDM is closer to Enhancement Shammy than AugVoker; being a melee/caster hybrid. Just that where Enhancement is mostly melee with some casting throw into the rotation, RDM is mainly a caster with a melee rotation thrown in.

MCH is basically MM Hunter running Lone Wolf. The automaton isn’t really a pet; more of a CD.

Kind of. You could argue VPR is like Fury Warrior - high-speed, dual wielding swords. The twinblade stance is kind of similar to Enrage.

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