Why Do I Play this Class?

Over at BlogAzeroth, there’s a thread that asks about why we play our chosen class. Several members of the community have already responded on their own blogs about why they play what they do. As I sat down to tackle my take on my chosen class, I quickly got caught on the horns of a dilemma.

I don’t play “a class.” I’m an admitted alt-oholic. (I hear that admission of problem is the first step to recovery.) I guess the real answer here, is most folks have a main, I have five. So if most folks have a reason, I should also have five. Here goes. Since I don’t want to play favorites, I’ll enumerate them in the order that they hit level 60 (which was the level cap when many of them were being played.)

So, what follows is part one of this post. I just have too much to say.

Warrior

The Story

Honestly, warrior was not my first choice. Several of us had played many levels on a PVP server, playing the Horde. The bad news was twofold. First we were on a server where horde to alliance ratio was something like 1 to 3. Secondly we started from 1 to 4 months after release. So, it seemed like the vast majority of the vast majority was always over-level for us. We finally got tired of never completing our quests and spending the better part of our play time running back to our corpses. We made the move to a carebear server and swapped sides.

On the Horde server, we basically all ran whatever class felt good. So we wound up with something like 87 hunters, 2 shamans and a warlock. When we made the swap, I insisted that at least a few of us build classes that could be the core of a five-man. I selected priest. Within a week of re-rolling, the guy who chose warrior decided he didn’t want to do that and instead went for priest as well. He took my trade skills to boot. Still wanting to be able to form a five-man, I re-rolled (again) and began a warrior.

What I like

I liked tanking. I liked the idea of my peers relying on me, to some degree moreso than on the healer, to keep them not dead. I liked being the guy who got dibs on the plate drops. I liked never having to look for a tank when I wanted to do Scholomance.

Warlock

The Story

When my group of friends wasn’t really available, I still wanted to play. A good friend told me once that watching a protection warrior fight is like watching two old people make love. (Well, maybe he wasn’t quite so delicate, you get the idea) And this was never truer than my little dwarf tank. I sure could fight 3 or 5 mobs at a time and not die. But boy did it take forever. I wanted someone who could solo. And I wanted a mechano-chicken. And I wanted an engineer. And it sounds like gnomes would fit that bill (with the built in racial mount and extra engineering skill) if they were a warlock. It was only at level 40 that I realized, I’d get a free warlock mount and thus never probably have my mechano-chicken.

What I like

DOTs make the world go round. And a good warlock is hard to kill solo. Mobs lose agro and you can always sacrifice a voidwalker. Properly healthstoned and soulstoned, a warlock gets multiple attempts to not die. I was handy in five man dungeons and raids, always having a repairbot with me. And if I accidentally draw aggro in an instance, I have the stamina to live at least a little while.