Part of what makes you feel excitement and pride in your class is pulling off a heroic moment and feeling the appreciation of your group when individually contributing to a shared success. That feeling is eroded when so many classes bring similar abilities, and you feel you’re rarely providing something distinctive. More differentiation in this area will create situations where another class can do something that you can’t, but you will similarly bring tools to the table that your allies lack. One area we’re trying to focus on across all classes is to better emphasize what makes each class unique and provide greater distinction among their various capabilities, especially when it comes to utility-tools that fall outside of core role functions like damage, healing, or mitigation. While we believe some specializations will need substantial iteration to achieve these goals, others will not, and our target is greater stability across the board.

The intro cinematic of Battle for Azeroth revealed at BlizzCon 2017 has an underlying theme that resonates deeply with the class design team: “Remember what makes us strong.” With that in mind, our goals for the next expansion are to promote what makes each class unique, focus on making group gameplay the best that it can be, and continue our efforts to improve combat visuals and effects.

While the launch of Legion brought lots of change to all of Warcraft’s classes, Battle for Azeroth will more closely resemble the example set by Legion’s patch content: targeted iteration based on player feedback and data. The development of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is well underway, and we want to share some insights into our philosophies and approach to class design for the expansion.

Top tank classes battle for azeroth