The new class in World of Warcraft is neither here nor there – at least when it comes to its range. And that could become a problem.
The biggest feature of the upcoming WoW expansion Dragonflight is the Dracthyr Evokers. This is a new race, but above all a new class. As dragons, the Dracthyr have a DPS and a healer specialization and can deal significant damage to enemies or actively heal allies. However, the Dracthyr have a considerable problem, which, while interesting on paper, could lead to difficulties in raids and dungeons: a significantly reduced range.
Dracthyr have medium range: Unlike all other classes in the game, Dracthyr cannot be clearly classified as melee or ranged. For most abilities, they have a range of just under 25 meters – the only exceptions are their various breath attacks and movement abilities.
A bit of gameplay regarding the Evokers is here:
What is the problem with that? The difficulty here is that Dracthyr cannot be classically categorized as ranged or melee.
Especially in raids, it often occurs that melee players should “cuddle” at one position and ranged players at another position. That seems to be simply impossible with the Evokers. Because when ranged players are at the maximum of the “normal” ranged fighter at 40 meters, then they cannot reach the melee players as healers and cannot deal damage at range.
Evokers need to perform a balancing act here and either frequently switch their position between melee and ranged or simply get their own group that gathers separately.
How big is the disadvantage? The disadvantage compared to other ranged players becomes clear when considering the ranges that other classes can cover. Because it is not only the positioning in the event of raid bosses with fixed positioning that is a problem, but also the reduced range in fights where players are standing far apart. Because while a Holy Priest might easily have three players in range at different corners of the room, an Evoker might not have any of those players in range.
Or to make the area coverage comparison clearer:
- A priest with a range of 40 meters covers a total of 5,020 m² of area where he can heal characters.
- An Evoker with a range of 25 meters covers only 1,960 m² of area where he can heal characters.
The colleagues from wowhead have published an illustrative graphic that shows how big the differences in range are:
The dark green area shows the range of most healing and damage abilities of the Evokers, the orange area the range of all other ranged players. The red circle indicates the 50-meter line, the maximum range for the two breath attacks of the Evokers.
In boss fights with widely spread players, Evokers are therefore likely to be unsuitable as “group healers” and are likely to be assigned to melee players, who traditionally stand closer together.
With the current design of the Dracthyr Evokers, Blizzard has created an additional challenge that bosses now have to be designed around. Because the fact that Dracthyr will need “special treatment” in every boss fight is unlikely to be in the interests of the raid leader.
What do you think? Do players just have to learn to deal with the peculiarities of the Evokers? Or should Blizzard simply increase the range to match that of other ranged players?
