A Main For Shadowlands

Before we know it, the new World of Warcraft expansion will be upon us. It is roughly six weeks away and my mindset has just not really been prepared for that. This post is going to be a little bit of a reprise of a twitter thread from last night, but I have been mulling over what exactly I wanted to play as a main for this coming expansion. I’m actually looking forward to Shadowlands because it seems to be a move back to the sort of storytelling that I particularly enjoy in World of Warcraft. I am happiest when we are focused on big threats and not the stupid red versus blue narrative that has been fed to us over the years. Since making the switch to Horde, I have become even more disillusioned with factional conflicts in part because there is zero nuance there. Not everyone is going to be a rampant nationalist, and there is very little room in that experience for anyone like me that just could not care less about fighting the other faction.

I’ve been on a bit of a mental journey as I unpack the various phases I have had in World of Warcraft. I largely think of myself as the character I pulled my name from… Belghast, but in truth I have hopped around quite a bit between lots of different “mains” throughout the years. In Vanilla I spent most of my time as a Dwarf Hunter named Lodin, and this was in part because I had a death in the family and when I came back to the game found that everyone had leveled well past me. I started playing the Hunter largely due to the extreme solo capabilities and the fact that I could catch up to my friend group relatively easily. I stayed playing the Hunter because a friend and leader of the Late Night Raiders really wanted to replace a frustrating hunter, and that created a neat slot for me to fall into. Once I started accepting gear I largely felt obligated to keep playing this thing.

Towards the end of Vanilla, I wanted to play a Warrior Tank and my friend Ailah wanted to roll Finni her Holy Priest. We leveled the duo together and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. As I hit the level cap and started to get gear, I found myself tanking for lots of the LNR “alt night” activities like Zul Gurub and eventually started tanking Molten Core and Blackwing Lair for NSR aka No Such Raid. With the death of Late Night Raiders and the gear reset that came with The Burning Crusade I made the transition from Lodin the Hunter to Belghast the Warrior with relative ease. This was ultimately my main for all of Burning Crusade and the vast majority of Wrath of the Lich King. This will probably always be the character I identify with the most, because I did decide to transition from using Exeter as my internet handle to Belghast.

Near the end of Wrath of the Lich King I was feeling really burnt out from the position I had found myself as being responsible for not only the Guild but as the primary tank for Duranub, our non-guild based raid. In an attempt to freshen things up a bit I switched over to maining the Death Knight that I had been playing with on the side and chose to do so sometime during the tail end of Trails of the Crusader and beginning of Icecrown. I loved how Blood felt, and I really enjoyed DPSing as Unholy… so it gave me two fun things to do and the Warrior more or less took a back seat to helping other teams out as needed. As I entered Cataclysm I found myself disillusioned with the game more than any particular character, but Belgrave served as my main all the way through Pandaria.

I remember getting into the beta of Warlords of Draenor and not liking at all the changes that had been made to Blood Death Knight. I can’t put my finger on it, but something just felt off. At this same time Blizzard did some true nonsense and introduced Gladiator Stance… aka DPS with a Sword and Shield which has long been a fantasy of mine. So you can absolutely bet that as I came back to the game to play the new expansion I was focused heavily on dpsing with a shield. I even got back into raiding again and did so all the way through us clearing Heroic Blackrock Foundry. I also played as Belghast for most of Legion up until the point that I started to dabble heavily with playing Horde Characters and ultimately made the transition there. Even then I rolled an Orc Female Warrior also named Belghast and just transitioned from one Bel to another.

With the launch of Battle For Azeroth, I had every intent of playing Belghast the Orc as my main. I even leveled her to 120 first, but I was not happy in the least with the state of Warrior tanking. So I rapidly poured effort into my Demon Hunter alt and quickly got it up to cap and started tanking dungeons on it. Belblight served as my main for pretty much all of BFA, but I have to admit while it was super enjoyable to play around on, it never really felt like “me”. It was a crazy fun thing, and felt extremely overpowered… but I missed the sword and shield game. There is just something about that fantasy that will always be significant to me… I like bashing things with a big plate of metal.

Towards the end of BFA I went on a mission to level as many Horde characters to 120 as I could, and of these… my favorite is Belgrace my Blood Elf Paladin. I am not sure exactly when it happened, but I started to view the WoW Tank Paladin as one of my other favorite classes the Diablo III Crusader. There are so many parts of the kit that feel similar, and once I made this connection playing as a Paladin started to feel more natural. The only healer I have ever enjoyed playing was a Paladin back in Vanilla, and I have always has an affinity for playing Retribution as DPS. So in theory Belgrace seems like a pretty likely option for who I am going to main going into the expansion.

The funniest part about this decision is that back in Vanilla I had ever intent of maining a Paladin. I loved the class in beta and duo’d it a lot with a Holy Priest. Then I found myself deeply disillusioned with the change from the strike system to the seal system. I was stubborn as hell and wanted to level as a Paladin Tank, meaning that I really needed to be leveling with other people. When the death in the family hit, it just became too damned hard to progress at a reasonable pace so I latch onto the hunter and that was that. I did push the paladin up, and this is a picture of Exeter the Paladin killing Twilight Keeper Exeter and dinging 60 shortly afterwards. The frustrations of trying to tank as a paladin during the Seal of Rage era ultimately lead me to create Belghast the Warrior. It just seems like the cycle has completed that I now look at playing a Paladin once again as we move into this new expansion.

Now the only real choice is which covenant to play as on which characters. Right now I am trying to decide if I want to main Revendreth of Kyrian. Style wise I am drawn to Revendreth, especially as a Blood Elf Paladin. However the Kyrian Paladin ability seems like it would be damned solid for tanking and generating AOE threat. Also the Kyrian armor feels mighty Paladin-ish. The only Covenant that I have no real draw towards is Ardenweald. The whole Druid and Night Elf vibe is just not me, so I am going to resign that to my third string alts. Right now I am more or less expecting to at least level three classes on the first pass and here are the tentative choices.

• Belgrace – Paladin – Kyrian
• Belblight – Demon Hunter – Maldraxxus
• Belghast – Warrior – Revendreth

I have no clue what I will play for characters after that, but the Night Fae abilities for Hunter and Warlock both seem compelling so it is likely going to be one of those two. The main reason why I am going Revendreth as a Warrior is that Condemn seems really good. Since Protection warriors can execute once again, it seems really good that this can be used as an opener and a closer at the same time and refunds some of the rage as well as applying damage reduction. I absolutely expect to charge in and condemn immediately. Demon Hunter and Maldraxxus is largely just a choice of giving him some really badass looking armor, and the brand applied seems pretty solid as well.

So as we sit on the precipice of another World of Warcraft expansion, what are your thoughts? Are you planning to also shift things up and choose a new main, or are you going to keep doing the thing you have always done? Drop me a note in the comments.