As the title of this blog probably makes clear, I play Marksman hunters. Four of them, three of which are 85, and the fourth is 82 and waiting for me to get around to doing Cataclysm zones yet again. But as I have eight characters at 85 and a slew of lower level characters, it's probably also clear that I play other classes.
Like with hunters, my foray into other classes tends to be specialization specific: I play priests almost exclusively as discipline, for example. I think my 85 priest has two 5-man runs as shadow... ever. I've never specialized into Holy. My warlock (who will likely get bumped up the alt chain due to the 'lock changes in Mists) is exclusively destruction. My rogue was exclusively subtlety until dual-spec and the simplification of okay assassination damage rotations in Wrath made it possible for me to do more than solo or PVP on her. My warrior was my most frequent foray into active dual-specializing; I leveled her as fury, but also kept up with her prot spec (which I love to pieces). My shaman
has an offspec (right now it's enhancement, though for a period in Burning Crusade it was resto), but she hasn't actually queued as anything but elemental in probably three years.
For the most part I do okay with these alts. My priest has done 6/8 of Dragon Soul 10, somehow missing a random boss in each half, but having killed Deathwing. I healed extensively with her at 70, gearing her out as well as Duskhawk through both Karazhan and whatever we were calling Justice/Valor points back then. My warrior (whom y'all have seen in her shiny new transmogrification recently) can tank the new five-mans okay when I get up the nerve to queue into them, and my baby warrior is being leveled prot and doing random dungeons exclusively as a tank - I haven't even given her a DPS offspec. (Prot AOE with
Blood & Thunder,
Cleave, and
Victory Rush is a surprisingly satisfying way to level if you can find areas dense enough to pull enough mobs at the same time.) I haven't done as much with my rogue recently, but I very much enjoyed 2v2 with my brother's rogue way back in the day, as well as Extreme Herb Farming (AKA getting exalted with
Sporeggar via solo herbing trips in
Underbog). My warlock is... complicated as destro right now, but I think I'm getting a feel for it again. She's got my transmutation alchemy, and I like her more as a goblin than when she was a blood elf. My shaman I've taken through raid finder and gotten geared about equally to my priest - spammable
chain lightning is
awesome.
Those are the alts I'm at least marginally good at. Combined with my hunters, that's six of ten classes. The remainders (death knight, druid, mage, and paladin) I haven't gotten to level cap. Even with all my baby alts, the ones I play the most are the priests (discipline, one of each faction, both in Northrend) and my warrior, who's in the upper 40s right now. I like priest healing, and the queues for both the priests and the baby prot warrior are generally fast and painless. That doesn't help with the "expand my horizons" kind of stuff I figured I would do prior to Mists, though.
Now, I've
got one of each of the others. I actually have a crapload of level 5ish mages, mostly gnomes, mostly with the same name. I finally made myself get one further, so I have a draenei fire mage in the mid-20s. She has portals! And I know crap about fire. My husband plays a mage at level cap, so I theoretically have someone around I could ask for help, except he plays the two other specs: arcane for PVE and frost for PVP. Let's face it; I like to burn stuff. This is why my warlock is destro. I'm looking forward to
Hot Streak, when I can cut out
Arcane Missiles and spend more time with
Pyroblast. But really - I have no idea what I'm doing. I push buttons, fire happens, and maybe I'm doing okay? It's hard to gauge if I'm doing okay DPS at my level when I don't have heirlooms on the server she's on, and most of the other DPS I random into groups with do. I'm having fun with her, which is the important part, but I don't want to be a burden on a group (or kicked) if I'm not pulling my weight and just don't realize it.
I tried playing a death knight back when they first came out, and it wasn't too bad; I just got bored with it. I made a new one a couple months ago to try to see if it's any better now in terms of "got bored with it" - and I'm not sure, because the specs and rotations don't really readily present themselves. I have a bunch of buttons, and they do stuff, but I don't know which strikes to use in which spec. She's unholy mostly because I find the ghoul names amusing. She's also already acting as a bank, at 58.
I have a different but similar problem with my druid. She's 15, currently feral, and which abilities she's supposed to use are obvious. I just can't seem to get into playing her. Maybe it's the zone - I started her as a worgen, so at this point she's been dumped into Darkshore, and really, after hearthing to Auberdine for the entirety of my Vanilla Alliance career, Darkshore is painful for me. I spent a lot of time there, and the places and NPCs that I was familiar with are dead and destroyed. Maybe if I take her over to Westfall the environment won't be so discouraging to getting to know her.
I've got two paladins. One is my original Vanilla paladin, still in her 40s, who was shuffled around servers when transfers were free from overcrowding. The other is my relatively new Tauren paladin, who is about 72. I've been playing them as retribution, because ret is relatively easy, the buttons you push are pretty straightforward, and stuff dies. I've gotten to the point that I'm not sure I'm doing ret right in groups, though; I'm pretty sure I should be doing better DPS, but I'm not sure how. So I got them both some intellect plate (a challenge in both level brackets, surprisingly - and intellect plate heirlooms, at least from Justice Points, seem to be... lacking) and gave them holy off-specs, and...
Oh, my God, I have no idea what any of these buttons or procs in holy mean. I heal on three priests, right? I push buttons, heals and bubbles happen, and I'm pretty good at keeping my mana bar at least half full for most of a dungeon, unless the tank or DPS are crazy and
pull all the things. But on the paladin? I haven't really figured out her mana management. I looked at some forum posts, and it seems to be a matter of picking efficient spells, using spells I don't have yet at that level, and judging with Insight. But just reading spell tooltips and talents, I'm really not sure.
So yeah, there's four classes that I haven't played much, and at this point I think I've figured out why: they're not intuitive for me. Whether this is a deficiency of me or of the class or spec in question, I'm not sure. My guild's death knight contingent, which had been pretty strong in Wrath even after the novelty wore off, has been more or less decimated in Cataclysm. We don't have any death knights raiding regularly with us, and the ones that sometimes do are alts. If I'm going to play her at all, I think I'm going to have to look up what each spec uses just so I can figure out how to get started with her. We still have some dedicated druids; I think in the case of druids, it's really just me. For some reason they don't click. Paladins the guild still has in spades, and I think in this case it's a learning curve thing. I'm going to have to actually sit down and read something to do 5's as a holy paladin, which seems kind of weird after how intuitively I got into discipline healing. I think for the mage it may just be I picked a bad leveling spec, at least for groups; I'm kind of a slow caster on her still, so stuff tends to die in heirloomed groups before I can get a fireball off on it.
The overall deficiency with these classes probably isn't the classes, really; the problem is that I tend to pick specs that I like
conceptually. I was into Robin Hood and William Tell when I was in... about 4th grade; accuracy and trick shot kind of stuff appealed to me; I went Marksman in Vanilla, and other than occasional stints to tame
pretty things, I've never left it. I like discipline priesting because I like indirect healing, and I like utility, which discipline used to have a bit more of way back when. I
love atonement healing, and it's made leveling as discipline, which I've always done with my priest, so overpowered. I can handle stuff up to about six or seven levels higher (singly; I've done groups of about six mobs three and four levels higher (accidentally) without dying) before the
hit rating glyph for Smite and Holy Fire becomes insufficient. I rolled my first warrior with the intention of tanking - before I rolled my first Horde hunter, actually. I didn't actually level her for another two or three years, but smacking stuff in the face with a shield is my favorite part of being a warrior. I've always loved subtlety's survivability, and getting around without being noticed is my favorite part of being a rogue: cat burgling, in a way, even though it's just an herb or something. My lock is a pyro (and my void walker always got me killed). And, well, I mentioned my shaman and chain lightning.
I like the idea of a pyro mage. I have a
chimenea in the back yard, and I like to have fires. I also picked up grilling recently, because, well,
fire. (First time lighting a charcoal grill: one match. /flex) Arcane appeals to me for similar reasons that discipline originally did, but the novelty of setting the world on fire with my draenei probably has to wear off first. Holy was my first spec as a paladin, and I went ret when I picked the class up again... five? years later for the expediency of leveling. The last time I really played holy, consecration was a talent. It's changed so drastically since then. Death knights and druids, though? I don't really conceptually favor any of their specs - this is probably part of my problem getting into them.
So for now the death knight and druid will probably stay on the bench; since I kind of get the mage, and at least sort of get ret paladins, even if I haven't figured out how to make holy work, I'll probably focus on those two of my un-level-capped classes.
