Well never-mind, I figured what the issue was and to be honest it seems like a over sight on the development team here.
OK, so essentially the main issue I was having was that I was unable to change the color within the viewport class edit menu. No matter what I was doing it would stay the same shade of gray.
Now with the fact that I have "By Class" selected for everything within the attributes, it should change to whatever the class edit options are set to for that class. This caused so much frustration and confusion; it was driving me insane. Until I decided to manually change the color and pattern for each individual item independently did i figure out what the issue was.
So if within the attributes, under the "Pattern" dialogue options, If the color is not set to "By Class" it will trump any other option, Even if you switch it over to “by class” in model space then within the viewport edit class option to change the color or pattern, it will not register because the selected options under “pattern” has been locked and will override any viewport class edit selections, even if you have selected “By Class”. This seems to be very counter-productive as changing one setting should negate the other. Not have one that has over power rule over one option regardless of it being used or not.
I hope this helps anyone else in the future that comes across this issue, as it has been eating away at my productivity for close to 3 months now!