A very surprising development from the 10.1 PTR: a temporary/not quite ready to go quest has popped up (as spotted by the Evoker discord and redditor Insanitypizza) which seems to indicate the class may be getting a brand new specialization!

The quest isn’t in its “in-world” state yet, with technical details being written by the devs, but the text itself is very clear, so now the question becomes whether this was a scrapped idea that wasn’t removed from the build, a botching of a big “new spec” announcement for the Dracthyr, or just a not-so-funny-joke left in to both make Demon Hunters temporarily extremely jealous and eventually make Evokers pretty disappointed.

(There are better quality images out there, but credit where credit is due, as this is the first mention of the quest on reddit – however the Evoker discord may have found it beforehand).

There are also followup quests and some are taking details from those to indicate what kind of spec it may be, with the main theory being that its another support role, as one of the quests mentions “boosting” allies in a boss fight. Considering the context of said quest it seems a little premature to assume that, as there may be other quest-specific factors involved in said boosting and, well, a lot of Evoker players are reeeally hoping for an earth-themed tank spec! There’s also plenty of lore to support a more tanky Black Dragonflight/earth related specialization, as the Dracthyr have had the Black Dragonflight’s power extracted from them and 10.1 is very much about Neltharion – however who’s to say the earth/Black Dragonflight theme can’t be presented as a support spec as well.

And the final piece of the puzzle seems to have some players assuming that it isn’t happening, which is an interview answer from Associate Game Director Morgan Day, where he directly addresses the question:

My personal takeaway on that particular answer is definitely not a no (despite the fact that he does say “but, yea, sorry” at the end) and that part of the tone of the response could be an excitement/being caught off-guard by the question considering it is something that’s planned for 10.1 but not ready for announcement. In any case, I wouldn’t call that a hard no (then again I am an Evoker player and a tank fan so…)

What do you think, based on all the information available for now? Unintended premature announcement? Scrapped plan from long ago? A not that funny joke on Evokers and (indirectly) Demon Hunters?