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Rokk Talk – Casual Heroes
My Demon Hunter has been getting a lot of airtime lately.
I’ve been playing (and loving) Death Knights since Wrath of the Lich King. In fact, of the nineteen characters I had at level cap in WoD, eight of them were DK’s. When I switched my focus from a Horde guild to an Alliance guild, my main switched from Orc DK to Human DK. I dig the class, is what I’m saying.
So why am I playing my Demon Hunters all the time now?
That’s right. Demon Hunters. As in plural. I’ve got my Horde DH gearing up at 110, and I’m leveling my Alliance DH. My DK main, Rokkthor, still gets some attention now and then. I’ve run a couple of Mythic + dungeons with him, and he put up respectable DPS numbers despite only having an 850’ish iLevel.
But lately, when I log into WoW, I’m looking at my DH at the Character Select screen. When I research Transmog gear, I’m looking at Leather armor. It’s not even a balancing act between characters, or factions. I’ve forsaken one Hero Class for another. What I’m trying to figure out is why?
- They move to thrill. They dash. Double jump. Oh and don’t get me started on the joy of gliding. I glide so damn much now that I’ve killed my DK by jumping off a cliff out of habit and spamming my space bar to pop my non-existent wings. If he could shit in my RL shoes, I’m sure he would by now. Demon Hunters are dynamic, which is a nice change of pace from the usual style of melee DPS I’m used to – stare at the ass of the dungeon/raid boss and try to stab it to death.
- I’m finished with the DK. When I say finished, I don’t mean that I’m done with playing the class. Not at all. But at this stage of the expansion, I just don’t feel motivated to play my DK. At least, not in a meaningful way. He’s pretty much as geared as he can get without running Mythic dungeons, or getting into a serious (or at least non-LFR) raid team. Now that I’ve done a couple of Mythics, I’m confident I could run them successfully if my goal was to fatten up my iLevel. I’ve gotten the sweet class title, so the Order Hall questline is done as far as I’m concerned. World Quests don’t offer much except gold and AP. I’ve maxed out the Artifact Research I can do, but other than capping all the artifact talents I’d just be playing for the sake of playing. I’ve even completed all the prerequisites for unlocking flight that I can do. There’s no reason to better Rokkthor any more than he is currently. If I was raiding or pushing cutting edge content, then maybe. I’m just not there. There are other characters who need gear and artifact power. Characters who can benefit from my attention.
- Class motivation. I think most people who play World of Warcraft are familiar with Twitch streamer, Youtube creator, and PVPer / Bodybuilder / eSports Announcer, Bajheera. Watch his Twitch stream and feel the enthusiasm he has for his Warrior. It’s infectious. He got me interested in PVP back in the day and has more than once motivated me to blow the dust off my Warrior and wreck faces. Death Knights don’t really have that name associated with the class like Baj is with Warriors. Hazzed is a Frost DK that I follow and he has a fairly strong presence on Youtube (32,000 subs and counting). But as far as a breakout Twitch personality that brings eyes to the class, there really doesn’t seem to be one. Demon Hunters, however, have Fragnance. He’s the Twitch streamer from the EU who actually blazed to 110 in just over five hours with a Havoc DH when Legion launched. He mains a DH in Serenity, a group of raiders who felt that the raiding powerhouse Method was just too warm and fuzzy for their liking and split off to do their own thing. That probably isn’t entirely accurate, because I don’t follow the bleeding edge raiding scene and can’t be bothered to research it more thoroughly, but the point is that Fragnance has an entertaining stream, is a damn fine player who plays the snot out of his DH. His 64000 followers on Twitch is a testament to his success, and I have yet to find a DK with numbers like that
Will my Death Knight regain my love and attention? Yeah, probably. But for now, I’m looking to tear things up with my flapping bat-elf thing of death. From one Hero Class to another, and back again.
Soon… ™…
The Boost to 100
I snapped. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the most logical explanation I can come up with. I mean, why else would I throw everything away and just start over?
It all started, well, yesterday. My intent was to log in to WoW and get my chores done (don’t fool yourself, just because garrison gold missions got lobotomized doesn’t mean there aren’t still chores to do). But when I got to the character select screen, I saw it.
That damn 100. My boost. It twisted a dagger in my brain.
I’d posted numerous polls on Twitter, trying to come up with a class to use the boost on. I wanted to go Death Knight because, well, can you really have too many? In Legion that answer is yes (grinding artifacts on multiple characters will be a full time job) but in WoD? Hells no.
The more significant question was the one I always toss around. Why? Why boost another character? What was I going to do with this toon? Add him to the pile? Things had changed with the nerf to garrison treasure missions. No longer was it a benefit to have multiple characters racking up gold because, well, now there was no longer that option. Now, if you wanted those six or seven characters to make gold you had to do more than just click a few buttons. You had to USE them to DO something. That took time out of my day. Time I wasn’t willing to spend.
I was already questioning why I was going through the motions. On my Alliance server, I had a few hundred thousand gold socked away. On my Horde server, I had just over one million gold. I wasn’t raiding. I wasn’t doing anything but logging in, making gold, and logging off.
I think that’s when things went south on me.
Legion was coming out at the end of the month. Demon Hunters were going to be playable in about a week, but Legion was the goal. Was it too late in WoD to use the boost? What could I get done in a month?
I decided to find out.
I got a Tauren DK to 60 on a brand new server with no support classes. No sugar mama. Just the Big Bull, and a quickly rolled up AH toon. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have picked a PVP server if I wanted to make the most of my ability to farm things for gold. Oh well.
Like I said, I got him to 60, gave him professions, and boosted him. My seventeenth Level 100 character.
And now, he will be my sole focus until Legion. No dailies on my other characters. One toon. One server. One focus. My one Horde army.
Let’s see what happens.
Rokk Talk 