World of Warcraft's next coming expansion, Dragonflight, has just been announced along with a host of new features, including a unique class-race combo: the Dracthyr, whose Evoker class has some similarities to demon hunters. WoW: Dragonflight's new Dracthyr race will only be able to play as one class, called an Evoker. Evokers can be healers or ranged damage dealers, making them unique among the other two hero classes in the game, death knights and demon hunters. With their dragon-like winged appearance, the Dracthyr look pretty similar to demon hunters, particularly in demon form, but there are some major differences between them and WoW Legion's hero class.
The lore surrounding this new race upon Dragonflight's Dragon Isles zones is that these creatures were created by Neltharion the Earth-Warder, before he went mad and became Deathwing the Destroyer. His hope of fusing the aspects of both dragons and mortals was that the Dracthyr would be uniquely equipped to do what neither dragons nor mortals could achieve on their own in order to protect the Dragon Isles and all of Azeroth. Hence, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight's new race, the Dracthyr were created, embodying the adaptability of mortals with the power and wisdom of the dragons. Lore-wise, their only similarities to demon hunters are their scaly, horned appearances and that they both likely do not age.
As far as gameplay similarities to demon hunters go, Dracthyr can shapeshift into a dragon form with wings, scales and tails and perform unique abilities while in that form. Demon hunters can shapeshift into larger, winged demons too, but only for a very short time. Evokers are also a hero class and begin at a higher level just like demon hunters do (although death knights also do this). Like demon hunters, Dracthyr possess unique animations that no other class has, such as the former doing backflips and Evokers being able to swoop over their enemies and breathe fire on them. Demon hunters were also restricted to two races - blood elves for WoW's Horde and night elves for the Alliance. Dracthyr will naturally be faction neutral and will only have one class available to them. However, aside from the flashy aesthetic of flapping wings and having very specific lore, this is where the similarities end.
How WoW's Evokers Are Different From Demon Hunters
WoW's new Evokers are solely a ranged class and don't fulfill any of the roles in a group that demon hunters do (demon hunters are melee damage dealers or tanks). Evokers are either healers or ranged damage dealers, and the only other classes that can do both those things are priest, druid, and shaman. Demon hunters wear leather armor (admittedly sparingly since they aren't too fond of shirts), while Evokers will don mail armor just like hunters and shamans. Evokers - or rather, Dracthyr - are genetic dragon-mortal hybrids who can choose to appear more human but will likely opt for their dragon form when in combat (more similar to the worgen, one of the races added to the lore with World of Warcraft: Cataclysm).
The sheer amount of customization options available for the Dracthyr dwarf those of both demon hunters and death knights, as players will be able to change almost every detail about them, for both their dragon and mortal forms. Admittedly this privilege of customization is likely owed entirely to them existing some seven years after demon hunters since death knights (released 14 years ago with Wrath of the Lich King) had even fewer options than them. All this aside, there are some distinct visual similarities between demon hunters and Dracthyr, but World of Warcraft has always placed an emphasis on unique class identity, and assuming that Evokers are a cheap copy of demon hunters might be inaccurate.