Breakfast Topic: The things you can’t do

I’ve done quite a bit during  my decade-long tenure in World of Warcraft. I’ve played every class and tried every role (at least a little). I’ve played on PVE, PVP, and RP realms. I’ve played with friends and I’ve played alone. I’ve raided from the most hardcore to the most casual.

But even with all of that experience, there are still some things in game that I’m terribly bad at.

And those things? Mostly classes I don’t play much. While I have a plethora of alts, there just isn’t time in the day to give all of them equal attention, so I tend to focus on playing two, or perhaps three, on any kind of regular basis. The Rogue that I used my level 90 boost on is one of my best (or perhaps worst) examples here: I usually play a Windwalker Monk and playing a Combat Rogue seemed like it would be similar enough, gameplay-wise, to pick up easily (the better to work on my Ravenholdt rep). But that similarity seems to be the problem rather than the solution: while similar enough to my main to feel familiar whenever I try to play it, it’s just different enough that it constantly throws me off my game… and means I’ve never really made any more progress with the character.

I’m similarly “off” with alts I don’t play much — like the Shaman I play on the leveling stream. Logging on once a week just isn’t enough for me to develop an easy familiarity with abilities and rotations — and every week it feels like I have to relearn how to play all over again. Alts I play less frequently than that, which is to say any alts that I’m not currently focusing on, are even worse.

All of this brings me to my current conundrum: the Death Knight. I decided to play a Death Knight in my guild’s legacy raiding group, thinking it would be interesting to take a new class through classic vanilla raiding at level. And if I just played a DPS spec, how hard could it really be? Ha!

The majority of my DPS experience falls firmly into leather-wearing melee — Feral Druids, Rogues, and, of course, my Windwalker — or casters — Shadow Priests, Moonkins, and Warlocks. Playing a character that wears heavy plate armor and swings a two-handed sword around feels clunky by comparison. Where’s Roll? Where’s Dash? Where’s Evasion? Instead of having ways to get away or avoid damage — which I’m accustomed to — Death Knights feel like they’re meant to stand their ground, relying on their plate armor and health stealing abilities to keep them going. In most situations, fights are a matter of me either winning or dying.

Though it’s a playstyle that thematically suits the Death Knight, it feels odd to me. Though I really want to give this character a go, I’m have trouble getting used to it… and I wonder if I ever will.

So for today, let’s talk about the things in-game that just don’t work for you. The classes you can’t play, the roles you don’t want to fill, and the gameplay that seems to work for others but just doesn’t click with you.