S Tier:
1. Rogue. Simple, yet stylish. Encapsulates the class as a stabby-stabb specialist. It even looks like there's poison on the blades. 10/10 no notes.
2. Paladin. Just look at that motion effect. It makes me want to bonk someone with a giant hammer, which Paladins are great for.
3. Priest. Benediction/Anathema is iconic. I also just love the class, so I'm biased.
A Tier
4. Hunter. Simple, but effective - just a bow. I suppose you could argue not all hunters use bows, but it's still pretty symbolic of the class.
5. Mage. A staff with a magic effect works well here even though mages aren't really about their weapons. It would be hard to find a spell-based icon that would work for all 3 specs.
6. Death Knight. An axe with a skull on it. A bit busy when the icon is small - needs some more color/contrast.
7. Warlock. A fittingly sinister pose, but it's still just a hand and doesn't really tell me what the class is.
B Tier
8. Demon Hunter. Sure, a warglaive, naturally. But why is it kind of weirdly small and lacking in detail?
9. Druid. If I'm a Resto Druid, does a bear claw represent me? It's also very brown and bland, color-wise.
10. Monk. Another staff. It's distinct enough, but a little busy and again doesn't really tell me much about the class.
C Tier
11. Shaman. I'm sorry, but what even is this thing? Looks like a tribal symbol, better suited to a race rather than a class.
12. Warrior. Bo-ring. Looks like an item icon, not the most played class in the vanilla game.
D Tier
13. Evoker. Why is this just a claw/hand? Same problem as Warlock but more so.
Wow, such slander of what's clearly the best class icon of them all and should be in tier SSS++ alone. The bloodlust icon might just be the most iconic blizzard icon ever created. You can't look at it without hearing the bloodlust sound, and just thinking about it makes you wanna go go go.
I know these days in retail everyone and their pet can have bloodlust, but even in the original WoW design, it was only for the Shamans, a class defining ability, and a reason to pick one faction over the other. That's how iconic bloodlust is. Not to mention it began with Warcraft 2, and then in WC3 had its classic icon already.
As to what it is, it's clearly a tribal shamanistic mask (like in Crash Bandicoot) that's dripping blood. It's red, gold, and cool looking.
Bloodlust is definitely iconic, but it wasn't even a Shaman ability in vanilla, and Alliance shamans get Heroism instead. And it always looks out of place to me, like it doesn't fit with the other icons
But it was the key Shaman ability in WC3, with that same icon, so it made sense everyone at Blizzard associated the class with it.
A fact that keeps bugging me to this day.
