WoW Expansion – New Expansion, New Class, Shifting Meta

Even though the newest patch of Shadowlands was released recently, we have already gotten the official reveal for the World of Warcraft’s newest expansion. The name of the expansion is Dragonflight, and just like its name suggests, it is all about WoW’s favorite race, dragons!

A never seen before race/class combo

World of Warcraft has been around for quite a while, almost for 18 years, and over its course, it has had quite a few expansions. Whenever an expansion comes out, it is quite expected for the developers to bring a whole new island with some new zones, a new story, and a new level cap. Sometimes they spice things up with a new system, like artifact power, and sometimes a new race or class.

However, never before has a new expansion introduced something as interesting as the new dragonish race called the Dracthyr that can only play as the Evoker. It is quite an interesting concept and a very risky move from Blizzard, which is exactly why we are excited about it. While not a lot is known about the new race and class combo, as there was only a little bit of footage in the announcement, they seem to have a unique playstyle.

Since the evoker is unique to the Dracthyr, and the race will not have an option for another class, the racial abilities should be much easier to balance. From what we could see in the trailer, Dracthyr seems to be capable of pretty much everything you would expect from a dragon, which is to fly around the battlefield and to take a deep breath and spew fire on their foes.

Speaking of spewing fire, one of the interesting mechanics that was revealed is one that revolves around holding a button to charge up a spell instead of just tapping it. This will add both an immersive and tactical feel to the game, something that both PVE and PVP should be designed around. When it comes to the roles that Evokers will be able to play as, the reveal mentioned a healer and a ranged-DPS specialization.

How will this impact the meta in both PVE and PVP?

Honestly, it is a bit too early to say anything, as not much was shown when it comes to the new race and class. Of course, like any new class, we expect it to be incredibly overpowered, just like the previously newly-added classes were in the beginning.

Even if the new class and race seem to be very mobile and have some interesting mechanics for both single target and AoE situations, we honestly hope that blizzard doesn’t focus too much on designing boss fights and content for the hardcore 1% player base. Sure, if they do that, it makes the game more challenging and fun for someone like us that spend a lot of time in the game, but it is generally bad for the game, as it repels a lot of people from even trying to do such challenging content, which gets replaced in a single patch anyway.

Blizzard seems to be revamping quite a lot of things in the new expansion, such as the talent try, professions, the UI, and in some way, flying with the new dragonriding system. We hope to see some kind of revamp in the approach to WoW’s difficulty in content, alt-friendly adjustments, and hopefully at the beginning of the patch, and not at the end of it as we experienced in BFA and Shadowlands.

When it comes to PVP, let us be honest, it is never going to be completely balanced, and there is always going to be a rock-paper-scissors scenario, especially when it comes to non-tournament environments and WoW ranks. Just like with other features, we will have to wait and see what exactly the new expansion is going to bring, and while we are quite excited about it, a lot of things can change before it comes out since it doesn’t even have a release date yet.