Know Your Role

During this Blaugust a number of people, Belghast the creator included, have decided to come up with writing prompts to help others out with the arduous task of writing a post every day for the month. I attempted to help in my own way by creating the Gamer To-Do List, and have had another idea kicking around inside my head for a while now. So here’s another writing prompt for those of you out there looking for some inspiration:

Do you find it difficult to play a role outside of your typical class choices? This can be in an MMO, MOBA, single player RPG or any other game that uses class as a distinction for gameplay.

Of course, it wouldn’t be fair of me to throw this out into the nether without first answering it myself, so here’s my take on it.

My first ever character created in an MMO was a Shadowknight in the original Everquest, which would mostly fall under the “Tank” archetype. Before my time with MMOs, I typically played Thief type classes. I remember making an Assassin in Baldur’s Gate and my main in Diablo II was the Necromancer, both of which would be considered “DPS” by today’s standards. Along the way, I’ve played many an RPG and many an MMO, and yet the one constant remained: I love tanking, and I love throwing up the big numbers.

Fast forward to the MMO I’ve spent the most time with, Everquest 2. I tried every class at one point or another, but my initial main ended up being a Paladin. My secondary character who ended up becoming my main was a Brigand. Noticing a pattern yet?

I’m currently playing ESO as well, and my main is a Templar, built mostly like a Paladin.

It’s pretty clear that I really enjoy Tanking, and I really enjoy DPS. But then I think to myself, “I would really like to try playing a healer, or a pet class, or a caster/utility/support to level cap.” The trouble is, I naturally play in a style that is straight forward. I enjoy the leadership role that a tank falls into. I enjoy absorbing tons of damage and making the rest of my team look good. I also enjoy being the stealthy backstabber who puts up big numbers and rules the DPS charts. It’s not that I haven’t tried, though.

In Rift, I mained a Cleric. However, Clerics in that game at the time were considered the best tanks, but also did a damn good job of healing. I played both roles throughout some of the dungeons and even did some ranged spell DPS in the battlegrounds. Rift is clearly a game that gives you options, whereas others are more limited in build paths. When I played WoW during WotLK, I did manage to play both spell DPS and a pet class in my Warlock, but when I went back to the game more recently, I rolled a Paladin, because it’s part of my comfort zone.

It doesn’t matter how hard I try to be that cleric or that wizard, I always fall back into the roles of Tank or Melee DPS, and I feel like those are my inherent roles.

So what do you guys think? Do you have trouble getting out of that comfort zone? Do you always play healer even though you long to try a different class? I’m not sure why it happens like this, but I think our personalities have a lot to do with our class choices. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or feel free to write a blog post retort.

No matter what class you’re playing, have fun, and happy gaming!

#classes #gamemechanics