Dark Ranger Customizations (Coming in 9.2.5)!!!

[DingDongKing]

I don't think you realize that Blizzard's standards for zones have gone up significantly since Cata.

Revamping all of EK and Kalimdor is not something they can do in one expansion without astronomical development time. And without "extra shit on top" players would get frustrated very quickly.

Every single zone would need voice acting, cutscenes, entirely new questlines, many would need a shit ton of new assets if there's nothing existing they can re-use, tons of monster models would need to be made, every dungeon would have to be overhauled graphically with new bosses and quests, and so on and so forth. Rares, treasures, new items, for each zone, new armor, etc

There's no way for them to do it in a satisfactory, high quality way in a timely manner.

That’s exactly why they need to do it. Because it’s the astronomic effort that will make the game more relevant and current again. No shortcuts.

[Teriz]

I think a major issue that proponents of any future class must consider moving forward is what can their class of choice really offer the game at this point? The Evoker class really filled quite a few holes in the class lineup, to the point where anything else is kind of superfluous. We no longer need another mail armor class, a new heal spec, or a new ranged DPS. Also Blizzard has stated that we don’t really need anymore tanks or Melee DPS, so that doesn’t really leave much left to create a new class around.

There might be some tiny design spaces left that a new class could utilize, But I think overall, we might have truly reached a saturation point with the classes.

[Triceron]

But other concepts, such as dark rangers, bards, blademasters, etc, all 'join' the existing classes' order halls because they didn't have a playable class of their own at the time.

The difference is Dark Rangers and Farstriders officially joined the Unseen Path, as much as Sunwalkers and Vindicators would be concerned.

Bards merely appear there, not as active combatants.

So no, I'm not just talking about any and all NPCs that are *in* the Order Halls, I'm talking about the ones that have literally joined the Order Halls and are considered an archetype of the Player Class.

[Ielenia]

The difference is Dark Rangers and Farstriders officially joined the Unseen Path, as much as Sunwalkers and Vindicators would be concerned.

Bards merely appear there, not as active combatants.

So no, I'm not just talking about any and all NPCs that are *in* the Order Halls, I'm talking about the ones that have literally joined the Order Halls and are considered an archetype of the Player Class.

... Alliances form and are broken all the time, y'know? Just because they fought together once, doesn't mean they're all bound together forever.

[Triceron]

... Alliances form and are broken all the time, y'know? Just because they fought together once, doesn't mean they're all bound together forever.

No, but they would still be defined as being the same class.

Sunwalkers can leave the Knights of the Silver Hand any time, but they would still be Paladins by representation.

Dark Ranger is literally just the name for Darkfallen Hunters in WoW. That's literally what I'm talking about. Being supported in lore is just half of the argument, the other being how Blizzard is literally representing them in the game.

[Mutineer]

There might be some tiny design spaces left that a new class could utilize, But I think overall, we might have truly reached a saturation point with the classes.

Thematically the game's only really missing something that plays on the underrepresented steampunk angle the franchise has had simmering since Warcraft 2. I know everyone gets mad about it, but some sort of Warcraft 3-inspired tinker-alchemist class could be pretty cool.

Given the choice though, I think class skins would get more mileage in the long haul. Dark rangers would make a pretty good starting point to test the waters of that concept!

[Ielenia]

No, but they would still be defined as being the same class.

Sunwalkers can leave the Knights of the Silver Hand any time, but they would still be Paladins by representation.

Dark Ranger is literally just the name for Darkfallen Hunters in WoW. That's literally what I'm talking about. Being supported in lore is just half of the argument, the other being how Blizzard is literally representing them in the game.

But here's the thing, though. We know the Sunwalkers is the "paladin" group of tauren. We don't know about the bards, we don't know about the blademasters, we don't know about the dark rangers.

[shade076]

Voted no, not appealing as an entirely new class imo. As a future class skin for specific races absolutely.

[Triceron]

But here's the thing, though. We know the Sunwalkers is the "paladin" group of tauren. We don't know about the bards, we don't know about the blademasters, we don't know about the dark rangers.

Sunwalkers and Dark Rangers are known. The only difference is we don't have Darkfallen. I don't play Warriors so I am unsure of the Blademaster connection.

Lore hasn't been clear on tying Bards to any class. A single character is not the same as an entire faction that may represent a playable group in the future.

[Maljinwo]

We already have 2 edgy classes, no need for another one

[Kiria]

To put it in simple terms, Hunters use nature magic and commune with wild beasts, Dark Rangers do not have a single nature spell or skill available to them at all and they control undead beasts which are an abomination of nature. To put it even more simply giving customization looks of a dark ranger to a living hunter would just be very contradictory to what a hunter and dark ranger is, it doesn't work.

We already have 2 edgy classes, no need for another one

Edgy sells, deal with it.

[pacotaco]

I don't think you realize that Blizzard's standards for zones have gone up significantly since Cata.

Revamping all of EK and Kalimdor is not something they can do in one expansion without astronomical development time. And without "extra shit on top" players would get frustrated very quickly.

Every single zone would need voice acting, cutscenes, entirely new questlines, many would need a shit ton of new assets if there's nothing existing they can re-use, tons of monster models would need to be made, every dungeon would have to be overhauled graphically with new bosses and quests, and so on and so forth. Rares, treasures, new items, for each zone, new armor, etc

There's no way for them to do it in a satisfactory, high quality way in a timely manner.

And yet, revamping zones has nothing to be with new classes. They are completely different teams. Only team I could see in both sides is FX team.
Zone design, environment artist, etc are different people from character artist, class design.

IMO, I think scrapping the "new system every major patch" that we had since legion would free them to do more new classes, as the same people that would them, they were entangled on those things (system design, encounter design, class design, FX artist, programmer for new systems).

- - - Updated - - -

We already have 2 edgy classes, no need for another one

- Demon Hunter
- Death Knight
- Warlock

That's 3 to me. Maybe 4 if you count rogue as edgy.

- - - Updated - - -

To put it in simple terms, Hunters use nature magic and commune with wild beasts, Dark Rangers do not have a single nature spell or skill available to them at all and they control undead beasts which are an abomination of nature. To put it even more simply giving customization looks of a dark ranger to a living hunter would just be very contradictory to what a hunter and dark ranger is, it doesn't work.

Dark Rangers are to Hunter the same DKs to Paladin and Warlock to Mage.
Could they make them part of the class? Yes. Would it make sense with how currently Hunters are represented gameplay? Not even remotely.

The only way I see them as a Hunter spec is if the new talent system make it that the "Class Tree" is totally scrapped of any nature thing, moving them to their "Spec Tree". And yet, I feel like it would feel weird,

[Kharnath]

I can't see anything that they can bring to the table that a Death Knight or Hunter already do.

Same opinion on the Shadow Hunter as a class.

I can't see anything that they can bring to the table that a Shadow Priest or Hunter already do.

Heck I don't think they should of brought Death Knight or Daemon Hunter in as classes either.

From my perspective, Monks brought the most to the table when they came, even though I have no interest in making or playing as a monk in wow.

[username993720]

I'm just gonna quote the legion warlock page to skip this whole back and forth.

Chaos magic is fel:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos_energy

Their fire is neither Arcane or Elemental, it's Fel. Whether it is orange or green, as can be seen by the different depictions of Sargeras, for example.

Their Shadow magic is either Void or Necromancy, as can be seen by their Affliction spec and Voidlord pet. Fel is known to have necromantic properties and is the result of the clash between Light and Void.

From Dave Kosak

Do they use Decay as well?
We know their Water spells heal. Which, is elemental.
How many spirit healing spells do they have?

Yes hunter's as a class take various magic inspirations from various different races and as such are a magical spell casting class as stated by blizzard all the way back in 2004.

I wouldn't call them a spellcasting class. That would be like considering the Rogue a magical class.

hunter's also now have had all of the shadow magic dark rangers have hard other then things exclusive to Sylvans.

Tied to an equipable bow.

Wild god blessings are the closest thing in the lore to aspects, If they aren't those then they aren't part of the lore as nothing else come's close to there magic effects.

Not necessarily.
Being part of the wilds, you behave somewhat like an animal. Just like Rexxar did back in WC3, when he abstained from civilization and lived with the wildlife. Over time, you adopt their characteristics.

your proving my point arcane shot isn't worded the same way as Munitions and neither is Wailing arrow.

Enchanted arrows. That's as magical as the Hunter gets.

So that's a yes you think hunters can just wave there hands at druids and mindcontrol them.

They have some dominion over Beasts. Just like Druids have with Soothe.

yes I know It's brought up in regard to a human hunter not him self.

What does the Human Hunter have to do with the Loa?

almost all trolls Look at ZG, ZA, ZD, and Zandalar.

Priests?

If there was any editing's done it was likely done years ago when they said the RPG was made non canon in 2011.

But that's besides the point, It doesn't matter how common you think the info was the info isn't canon as it's taken from the Rpg and is just rephrased on the hunter page.

Dude. It was recently. I visited that page a lot.
And, it's not RPG, as can be seen by Dark Rangers' lack of connection to nature.

It depends how far the customizations go, doesn't it?

Not really.
Give it Goggles, it still wouldn't be one.

Like I said, 9.2.5 will tell soon enough.

Indeed.

What are you talking about? It lasted at least 3 expansions. Warlocks with Metamorphosis for 7.5 years.

We have playable Demon Hunters, don't we?

That's really up to you. It's your choice to turn speculation into expectation, not mine.

That's what you've been implying.
If they're not just Hunters but also Rogues, why wouldn't they?

Classes aren't defined by abilities.

They are.
That's the difference between class\race combinations and new classes.

Yes, and if the only real difference between Rangers and Dark Rangers is the wilderness connection, then dark magic customization options cover for that.

That has been the whole point of my argument. The lore literally only defines minor differences, namely in the 'Dark' theme. Just like Beastmasters have an overall theme of 'Beasts' that is absent from Rangers, while the Hunter class as a whole is able to cover both archetypes. If they have customization options for Dark magic, then in theory, they could also represent Dark Rangers. And that's pretty much what Blizzard themselves have been implying, really.

The Official Twitter Interview that had Danuser answering questions about Dark Ranger customizations would have been a question that was picked and vetted by Blizzard themselves to be asked. I wouldn't consider it a random occurance.

No, it's not just a matter of coloration.
As i'e pointed out, Hunters cannot perform many of Sylvanas' dark magic.
Would a Warrior or a Paladin painted black be a Death Knight?

The thing is, Tinker doesn't exist as a class in WoW. It never has.

What we have in Warcraft 3 is a Tinker Hero. Yet Heroes aren't just Classes. They could be Classes, but they could also be Races (Pit Lord, Crypt Lord, Keeper of the Grove), and they could also be Professions. We already have this with the Alchemist being a Profession title.

And some of them end up as new classes (Death Knight, Monk, Demon Hunter) even though oreviously represented in-game.

Not every expansion gets a X.5 patch that seamlessly transition into the next expansion.

WoD and BFA didn't get these at all. Honestly, I'm not sure why you're expecting it to be 'usual' when the Legion story transitioning into BFA was merely circumstantial. There was no real Pre-Shadowlands content at the end of BFA.

That's why i'm referencing Legion's ending.
Again, there's not much to add to current expansion with 9.2.5.

Yeah and Beastmasters use dual wield axes. Would you consider the Hunter not representing the Beastmaster because it currently can not? You seem to waive that pretty easily when I bring it up, saying Hunters used to be able to wield axes. Yet you seem to glaze over the fact that Hunters could also wield daggers in Vanilla.

How many abilities do Beastmasters have that relate to their dual-wielding?
Meanwhile:

Banshee's Blades — Executes a quadruple series of strikes at a player, each inflicting 16525 Physical damage and 24788 Shadow damage, applying Banshee's Bane.

So you consider the Night Elf Priest of the Moon to be official Paladins? Right now?

I guess we don't need a Priestess of the Moon class now. You have your answer.

Huh? How did you get to that conclusion?
Delas Moonfang made a transformation. She is no longer a Priestess of the Moon.

That's the whole point of bringing up 9.2.5.

This seems to hint at the very questline that could bridge the lore and make it official. Rexxar and Farstriders are in the same boat, where they literally were not Hunters until Blizzard added quests that directly regarded them as Hunters. And there's only been like one quest each that made it official.

They don't very often regard other titles by Player Class names. Like they rarely if ever actually refer to a Sunwalker character as a 'Paladin', they tend to stick to the Sunwalker title.

What? We all knew Beastmasters and Farstrider are Hunters. It's just your peculiar take on it. There's literally a Beast Mastery spec, yet you felt the need to argue forever until you realized the absurdity.

They had plans to make Demon Hunters before TBC, but had no intent by the time TBC came out. That is what lead to them simply pawning off their iconic weaponry and armor. They had no intent to make them a class by the time Black Temple was being designed.

for TBC. Which, usually starts before the expansion is launched.
It made sense for them since Illidan was the main character. Yet, they had all of the vanilla classes just added, so they gave that up.

Except the whole point is that plans change.

Like, with what we know of the Runemaster having its aspects absorbed into the Death Knight, and its general gameplay and themes being reimagined as the Monk, would you say that Blizzard still plans on a Runemaster because it was planned back in Classic and Wrath? Plans change.

I can point out the fact that Runemaster was a top pick internally among the devs, being on the shortlist for both Vanilla WoW and Wrath of the Lich King. But to use that as an argument for Runemasters today would be extremely naive and ignorant of how WoW has progressed since then.

As I said many times before, the likelyhood of classes changes as we are informed of how WoW progresses. We can't just assume that the Devs are saving every concept to be made into a new playable Race or Class when they're actively tapping into those very concepts as customization options for existing classes and races.

Using them as examples, when they clearly lost to the Death Knight and Monk classes and were stated by the devs to have been absorbed into these classes is different from the whims of a single dev.

It wouldn't have to end any more than 'Glyphs' and 'Transmogs' need to end. Customizations are infinite, that is the point.

For my particular Hero Talents concept, it would be more of a supplementary Talent tree that may be exclusive to certain Race/Class comboes.

So for example, every Class gets a 'Hero Talent Tree' option of 6-8 new Talent options. In this concept, you get 10 new Talent points to distribute, which you can choose to spend in Hero, Class and Spec Talent Trees equally. Hero Talents are not mandatory, they are more meant to be an option set of customization options that can alter gameplay and provide Player Power. Balance-wise, it would be equivalent in power if you literally had 10 extra Talent points to spend in an existing Class/Spec. Hero Talents are not more powerful than regular Talents, in this respect; they would be weighed closely to mid-tier Talents power; like if you had maxed out an entire Talent tree and were spending the 10 extra points in the middle tier of another Tree.

Every class gets a direct general "Hero" attribution; Druid accesses 'Arch Druid' Talents, Mage accesses 'Archmage', Shaman accesses 'Farseer', etc. These would be open to all races.

For certain Race/Class combinations, they could implement a CHOICE to pick a different Hero option. So if you were a Blood Elf Mage, you would have a choice between picking the Archmage Talent Tree that everyone has access to, or the exclusive Blood Mage Talent Tree which will open up to those exclusive customization and gameplay options. And as I said above, the concept is that Hero Talent Trees are completely optional.

Example of Archmage talents
Brilliance: Provides a +Spellcrit Aura for party and raid
Arcane Alacrity: All Spells can be cast or channeled while moving with 50% decrease movement speed
Conjuror: Allows you to summon multiple Water Elementals at a time.

Example of Blood Mage talents
Pyromancy: Changes your Frost abilities to Fire spells. Prerequisite for all other Talent options, does not itself provide any Power boost.
Verdant Spheres: Allows you to "Empower" specific Fire and Arcane abilities; the same mechanic Evokers have
Gravity Lapse: New Ability, CC enemies with an Arcane cyclone

With just 3 example talents, I've managed to represent Blood Mages in a way that both works for lore and gameplay. It remains exclusive as a Blood Elf option, it provides the necessary gameplay changes without requiring a new class.

My concept of Hero Talent Trees is designed to be completely optional. The idea is to weigh them appropriately among other mid-late tier Class talents since the assumption is that you would be spending these extra points after you've already maxed out one of your Class or Spec talent trees. You shouldn't feel like you're forced into becoming an Archmage or a Blood Mage and you can just take those extra 10 Talent points and spend them in the regular Class and Spec trees if you wish to do that instead. Hero Talents would be treated as elaborate gameplay customization options that provide an appropriate level of power as you would if you had 10 extra talent points to spend for any Class/Spec.

So, basically, race\class combination skins. Which, i don't oppose and do not encompass the Dark Ranger.

Darkfallen Hunters (yes, this is what they are since they have joined the Unseen Path) are regarded as Dark Rangers. Yet there is no direct questline or lore that officially calls them Hunters, even though they are Hunters. It's the same wavy technicality that gets in the way of Sorcerers being Mages and also not being Mages. We know Sorcerers and Sorceresses exist in Warcraft (Sorceress was literally a unit in WC3) while the term is rarely used in WoW. Yet it is basically another term for the Mage class, even if there is no direct lore ever regarding a Mage as a Sorcerer or vice versa.

Why do you overcomplicate things?
Either they are or they're not.

I can't see anything that they can bring to the table that a Death Knight or Hunter already do.

Huh? Can Death Knights or Hunters use Banshee abilities?

Same opinion on the Shadow Hunter as a class.

I can't see anything that they can bring to the table that a Shadow Priest or Hunter already do.

What do Shadow Hunters have to do with Hunters or Priests? They're more like a D3 Witch Doctor.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Chaos magic is fel:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos_energy

Their fire is neither Arcane or Elemental, it's Fel. Whether it is orange or green, as can be seen by the different depictions of Sargeras, for example.

Their Shadow magic is either Void or Necromancy, as can be seen by their Affliction spec and Voidlord pet. Fel is known to have necromantic properties and is the result of the clash between Light and Void.



Do they use Decay as well?
We know their Water spells heal. Which, is elemental.
How many spirit healing spells do they have?

I wouldn't call them a spellcasting class. That would be like considering the Rogue a magical class.

your just disagreeing with blizzard them selfs at this point, you can not want it to be true all day but these are direct quotes from blizzard who will always trump you.

Tied to an equipable bow.

Yes and artifact abilities were all tied to equitable weapons and many of them became parts of the classses.

Not necessarily.
Being part of the wilds, you behave somewhat like an animal. Just like Rexxar did back in WC3, when he abstained from civilization and lived with the wildlife. Over time, you adopt their characteristics

yes necessarily at no point of living in the wild will you ever be able to run like a cheeta or increase the speed of others around you at no point will you ever be able to copy a hawk to make arrows hit harder or a turtle shell to deflect attacks.

Either the aspects are magical effects like those from wild gods or they are not canon those are the only options.

They have some dominion over Beasts. Just like Druids have with Soothe.

we’re talking about a Druid being taken over so again can hunters just wave there hands and mind control any Druid they see?

If they can why didn’t sylvanas just wait for malfurion to turn into a bear and tame him as a pet?

What does the Human Hunter have to do with the Loa?

he’s hanging out with Vol’jin and talking to him about Loa, Vol’jin also uses a Loa to bring the human back to life after he dies in the book.

Dude. It was recently. I visited that page a lot.
And, it's not RPG, as can be seen by Dark Rangers' lack of connection to nature.

It is RPG info we just had a whole book exploring every aspect of Sylvanas’s life and no where in it is there even the hint of her losing connection to the wild and it being replaced with necromancy nor is there a hint of it in any where but the RPG.

And given how many pages you have linked that you haven’t read I’m gonna have to take a massive gain of salt with your claim it was edited recently, it was likely changed back in 2011 and you just haven’t noticed until now.

[Triceron]

Why do you overcomplicate things?
Either they are or they're not.

Wowpedia lists them as 'Could also be Hunter', which is exactly how it's regarded right now. There is no simple yes or no answer.

[username993720]

your just disagreeing with blizzard them selfs at this point, you can not want it to be true all day but these are direct quotes from blizzard who will always trump you.

We all know they use Fire, Shadow and Chaos. But, these are general terms. You need to specify what kind of Fire and Shadow they are using.

Yes and artifact abilities were all tied to equitable weapons and many of them became parts of the classses.

None of them change their classes into another thing.

yes necessarily at no point of living in the wild will you ever be able to run like a cheeta or increase the speed of others around you at no point will you ever be able to copy a hawk to make arrows hit harder or a turtle shell to deflect attacks.

Either the aspects are magical effects like those from wild gods or they are not canon those are the only options.

Are you serious? It's a fantasy game.
Can a human really parkour like Tarzan in the wild? No. But, that's how a movie portrays it.
Jesus christ, even the Hunter's physical shooting isn't 100% realistically accurate.

we’re talking about a Druid being taken over so again can hunters just wave there hands and mind control any Druid they see?

If they can why didn’t sylvanas just wait for malfurion to turn into a bear and tame him as a pet?

What? Sylvanas is no longer a Hunter.

he’s hanging out with Vol’jin and talking to him about Loa, Vol’jin also uses a Loa to bring the human back to life after he dies in the book.

That's because Vol'jin is a Shadow Hunter.
He can talk all day about Loas, the Human Hunter still doesn't base his abilities on them.

It is RPG info we just had a whole book exploring every aspect of Sylvanas’s life and no where in it is there even the hint of her losing connection to the wild and it being replaced with necromancy nor is there a hint of it in any where but the RPG.

And given how many pages you have linked that you haven’t read I’m gonna have to take a massive gain of salt with your claim it was edited recently, it was likely changed back in 2011 and you just haven’t noticed until now.

Jesus christ, i linked it like a thousand times. Someone messed with the Dark Ranger info page.
Skill(s) Archery, Necromancy
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_ranger

Wowpedia lists them as 'Could also be Hunter', which is exactly how it's regarded right now. There is no simple yes or no answer.

And it probably did so for the Demon Hunter and Death Knight before they became playable. It did so for Tinkers and it does so for Tauren Chieftain.

Again, using what we have is a common thing in WoW.
Sunwalkers apply to Paladins because it's the closest thing. They don't fight for justice or for the Sun. They are what you would call Sun Warriors. There's always a need to represent lore using existing assets. That's what you've seen with the Demon Hunter and that's what you see with the Dark Ranger, Shadow Hunter, Blademaster, etc....

[Lorgar Aurelian]

We all know they use Fire, Shadow and Chaos. But, these are general terms. You need to specify what kind of Fire and Shadow they are using.

blizzard separations them all out they aren't all just fel, just like they tell us shamans heal with spirit and hunters have spell casting abilities, that’s the lore straight from blizzards own month and there’s no getting around it.

None of them change their classes into another thing.

and neither does any of the dark ranger stuff as it’s not a class.

Are you serious? It's a fantasy game.
Can a human really parkour like Tarzan in the wild? No. But, that's how a movie portrays it.
Jesus christ, even the Hunter's physical shooting isn't 100% realistically accurate.

it’s a fantasy game with magic that already covers such things, blizzard saying these effects are magical, and no examples of hunters physically being able to do any of them in the lore unlike Tarzan.

What? Sylvanas is no longer a Hunter.

she refers to her self a a hunter both pre and post raising by arthas in her own book.

So again why not just mind control malfurion if you think hunters can just mind control Druids by waving there lands?

That's because Vol'jin is a Shadow Hunter.
He can talk all day about Loas, the Human Hunter still doesn't base his abilities on them.

he talks about Loa with a human in regards to said human and gets a Loa to bless said human bringing him back to life in the book, nor is said human the only one who has ever been blessed by a Loa.

Jesus christ, i linked it like a thousand times. Someone messed with the Dark Ranger info page.
Skill(s) Archery, Necromancy
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_ranger

no one messed with the page at best some one likely corrected it years ago as Sylvanas and dark rangers losing connection to the wild and it being replaced with necromancy is not a part of wows lore and only takes place in the RPG.

It doesn’t happen any where in game, it doesn’t happen in any of her short story’s, it doesn’t happen in any of the novel’s she’s in, it doesn’t happen in any of the comics, it’s solely from the RPG and has never translated into canon wow.

[Triceron]

And it probably did so for the Demon Hunter and Death Knight before they became playable. It did so for Tinkers and it does so for Tauren Chieftain.

Again, using what we have is a common thing in WoW.
Sunwalkers apply to Paladins because it's the closest thing. They don't fight for justice or for the Sun. They are what you would call Sun Warriors. There's always a need to represent lore using existing assets. That's what you've seen with the Demon Hunter and that's what you see with the Dark Ranger, Shadow Hunter, Blademaster, etc....

Right, so if you don't oppose it and you are fully aware that Blizzard does it, then you don't need to ask all these arbitrary questions of where XYZ Sylvanas ability is whenever talking about Dark Ranger as a customization option. You're already aware Blizzard will just find the closest gameplay and have it loosely represented just as Synwalkers don't have their own class, while formally their lore is tied to an existing one despite also being their own thing.

You are fully aware that the lore and gameplay are not so clear on 'either it is or it isn't'.

As for Demon Hunter and DK, no blizzard always left it completely ambiguous and did not attach them to any existing classes lorewise. As I explained many times, they were always careful not to.

Legion was the first and only time when external class concepts started to get bridged into existing ones. Before that, even Beastmasterand Ranger was a separate concept. Since Order Halls, they are collectively 'Hunters'. Dark Ranger is also a type Hunter in the lore, specific to Darkfallen. It is merely a Hunter that has very little gameplay representation, like Sunwalkers are Paladins with very little gameplay representation and are exclusive to certain races; right now that being Tauren.

What I think Blizzard should have done was create new terminology for any Forsaken or Darkfallen Hunters. They deliberately chose Dark Ranger, and deliberately chose not to have them use possession and drain life and banshee powers. They deliberately chose to have them join the Unseen Path. So as I keep saying, these aren't the Dark Rangers I agree with, but they are ones Blizzard officially recognizes as being Dark Rangers.

So when we talk about whether DR are justified being its own class, the facts we gave to support a WC3 style Sylvanas archetype diminishes more and more as Blizzard continues to take Dark Ranger story further and further away from her origin and powers. Like, how hard it is to literally give Dark Ranger a Illidari style origin all this time? Is there any reason they shouldn't be former Banshees? Couldn't they just wait on not having them join back the Horde and Alliance until it was time for them as a playable class? All those story opportunities are squandered by BFA's conclusion.

I keep asking how Blizzard would introduce Dark Ranger with Banshee powers in the future and no one has even the faintest idea how it would be possible. I mean you can bank on Sylvanas return but as I said, she is not gonna be anywhere close to her formal self if she is going through a redemption arc and being explained that she has her full soul back now. Most of those Banshee themes are pointless, since a Banshee represents the torment of the afterlife while Sylvanas is literally seeking peace.

[Teriz]

I can't see anything that they can bring to the table that a Death Knight or Hunter already do.

Same opinion on the Shadow Hunter as a class.

I can't see anything that they can bring to the table that a Shadow Priest or Hunter already do.

Heck I don't think they should of brought Death Knight or Daemon Hunter in as classes either.

From my perspective, Monks brought the most to the table when they came, even though I have no interest in making or playing as a monk in wow.

I believe the Evoker class drove an even deeper nail into the coffin of Dark Rangers, because now there's not much of a need for another mail or ranged class.

And before people lose their shorts, the Evoker has also made implementing the Tinker a more difficult endeavor to take, because its simply not as necessary anymore.

An interesting path Blizzard could take is to push Survival into a more Tinker-style direction with adding turrets, more mech options (beyond mechanical animal skins), and gun abilities, and give Marksman a more Dark Ranger direction with Wailing Arrow, Withering Fire, and a return of Black Arrow.

All through talents of course.