I play classic once a week or so for a break. I started a hunter because I never leveled my first one to 60. I’d forgotten how differently they played, which got me wondering what classes have changed the most.
It’s tricky because many classes have all the same elements, but subtle changes make playing them quite different, like hunters. The range requirements and mana for hunters require a different way to play.
Shaman have changed a lot–my action bars used to be chock full of totems–but, for me at least, once the fight starts, it’s not all that different.
Frost mage seems like the least changed class. (Early level priests also seem the same, though I’ve never taken one past level 12 in classic and 22 in retail. Warriors are less squishy in classic.) One HUGE difference is mana management. My mage in retail rarely runs out of mana. Happens all the time in classic.
(Not interested in gripes, just observations in changes.)
Amazing because it looks lie only one of of the tree talents are specific for melee
2/2Savage Strikes - Provides you with 20% additional Critical Strike Chance on your Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike abilities. Melee Hunter FTW (actually, this can be useful if you are forced into melee).
All others in the survival tree line up with either range or melee .
Warriors have changed radically. The change from Vanilla/BC to WotLK was big, and then to Cataclysm was huge. I didn’t play in MoP, but WoD was radically different from Cataclysm. Legion finalized the Fury and Arms design started in WoD, but completely changed Protection once again. BfA was actually a regression for Protection warrior design.
Now in Shadowlands, Protection warrior is the worst it’s been since WoD’s design–save for the Spell Reflection change that came in Legion, and Arms warrior is a joke of a design that never got updated from WoD. Without the BfA Azerite traits to cover up all of the holes in our specs, it really shows how bad warriors are right now. Fury’s design is fine, but it just tends to underperform until some other borrowed power comes along.
Edit: Forgot Gladiator from WoD. I miss it so much. They didn’t even bake it into any function of the class, and actually nerfed the offensive elements of Protection, and eventually shifted some of its former damage into cooldowns. It still sucks, though.