When Blizzard first announced the Dracthyr Evokers, they said the Class Fantasy for them was to be “playable Dragons”.
Which immediately begs the question;
…Well, why weren’t they?
We already had shapeshifting characters with Druids, and having a “Dragon” race-class hybrid that can shift between a mortal Visage and an actual Dragon form just seems like a no-brainer.
Like… as soon as you talk about a “playable dragon”, it’s literally the first thing that comes to mind.
For reasons beyond my understanding, they opted to go with a humanoid dragon race. But elected not to go with Drakonids, which have long been established as part of the fiction. Presumably, this decision was so they could wear armor, except… well, we obviously don’t have armor.
So what the hell happened?
I figure they likely intended for them to wear armor – after all, they get a few options via the barbershop, so it’s obviously not a “creative decision” – but ran into some kind of hiccup and couldn’t get it working in time for launch, so they settled on the aforementioned “barbershop armor”.
So we have a race that was pulled out of thin air, given a humanoid appearance so they could wear armor, but couldn’t actually wear armor.
Now let’s focus on the “race-class hybrid” thing for a second, because this is super important:
This was immediately met with some skepticism, but I actually thought it was a great choice. After all, if they truly wanted to commit to the “playable dragon” bit, that was going to be hugely important. The “class” itself would need to be capable of doing things that literally no existing race would be capable up, like wing buffets or tail swipes.
But because the Dracthyr are humanoid, it feels like the vision itself was watered down. And we see this with Dracthyr being given other classes to choose from, which obviously means those “dragon” elements obviously can’t be that important.
Frankly, this just further paints them into a corner, because now there is even less they can do with the class, because it is now attached to a race that has to be all these other classes.
As such, we’re effectively left with both a race and a class that feel like a half-hearted attempt at anything actually exciting. They’re far too restricted to be considered a “real” race (and also far less stylized than any other race in WoW), and now the class itself is paralyzed from being able to fully embrace the “playable dragon” theme.
In all honesty, if I were to make a suggestion to Blizzard, I would genuinely suggest “retconning” the Dracthyr.
Abandon the notion of them becoming other classes, and instead go all-in on the “playable dragon” fantasy. Change their name to “Dragon”. You can keep their lore entirely the same, other than instead of “draconic soldiers”, they’re instead members of a “Prismatic Dragonflight”, which never aged to maturity. Their story remains almost entirely untouched.
What DOES change is that you start off customizing your Dragon form. You would literally choose between any of the Dragonriding mounts, as they have a pretty extensive amount of animations and customization options anyways, just remove the saddle. You’d obviously be sized appropriately, something comparable to a Druid’s Bear form.
And when you unlock your Visage, you can choose the “Dracthyr” hybrid model (no reason to do away with the model), or any race on your given faction. Just remove the silly lines around “their Visage looks unique”, it made no sense to begin with, and makes less sense now that we’re making them legitimate Dragons.
Instead of the Evoker feeling like this pseudo-Mage that wears Mail armor, it would instead BE that “Playable Dragon” that Blizzard said they wanted to give us. They would have a long legacy that weaves effortlessly into WoW and whatever the future holds.
Because otherwise, they’re just going to remain a race of naked lizard-people that stick out like a sore thumb, with a “class” that has zero inspiration or weight.
, they really just fit the primary class they came with–Evoker. They were literally made for/with it.