Do you pick your class for the fantasy of the class or do you pick it for how the class mechanics work?
Example: Do you play a warrior for the plate wearing hero with nothing but skill and grit or do you play warrior for the rotation, spells, and damage numbers? ( Replace warrior with your respective class )
I imagine it’s a bit of both but who knows.
Both.
I couldnt play a class i didnt enjoy just because i love its fantasy.
And i couldnt play a class i love the mechanics of if its fantasy is unappealing.
How a class feels to play is higher priority for me, but ultimately both are very important.
I picked my first character (a rogue) based upon the class fantasy of playing a stealthy assassin. I later picked my DH because I like their back story and the ability to glide looked awesome.
Pally. Cuz thats what I connect with. I made my paladin to look like me as much as a Blood Elf can. And this shaman. It is because the shaman class is what I am best at. Second best at a paladin.
Pretty much everything Moritz said.
For the class fantasy usually. Warrior, DK, and Paladin more specifically. But this expansion I random rolled my race/class/spec and I’m loving enhancement play style. If I could be a human or elf and use swords, it’d join my favorite classes. I love the Shaman class fantasy.
Both. Some specs are fun to play. And playing that spec on different races can be fun. Especially with transmog. And other customizations.
I am cute kitty mew mew mew!
I pretty much never take mechanics into account.
Class mechanics.
Thematic is nice, but the best thematics aren’t going to outweigh garbage gameplay. (Looking at you Shadow Priests).
Both. Certain class fantasies appeal to me more than others but if I don’t enjoy how it feels to play then it won’t get far with me. Shamans are probably the prime example of this for me. In theory I love what they’re about. Try as I might though they’ve never been able to scratch that itch enough for me to be a main. I thought it was going to happen for dragonflight with enhancement. It sounded amazing from what I was hearing from the beta. But when I finally came to play it myself it still just feels a little too imprecise.
I created this character back in 07 I believe. Coming hot off the WC 1-3. When it came to the warrior class… Orc was the only thing that came to mind.
Gameplay > Fantasy.
Fantasy is in the back of my mind and kinda weights my decisions between classes I know I enjoy, is all. Like, I don’t enjoy the fantasy of Death Knights or Monks, so I either don’t make them (I don’t have either over level 20 atm), or struggle to convince myself to log into them even if I’ve already started and was having fun mechanically.
Kinda hard to differentiate because I just also don’t like how DK and Monk play mechanically either though lol. At least not enough to put a lot of time into them.
I play dk because i wanted to. You dont need a reason.
For me it goes something like:
Character name > transmog > play style > class identity
I don’t enjoy shadow without the Sepulcher tier bonus, but here I am playing my priest.
Both.
But over the last six months or so I’ve been leveling up characters in all the classes, sometimes multiple characters in a class that happen to be a different race (Alliance and Horde). I’ve made some I had never made before, like Outlaw Rogue, Demonology Lock and Destro Lock, Survival Hunter.
I just like experimental with all the things.
But which one or few to play the most once Dragonflight drops will ultimately be decided by a combination of factors. I like the identity of it, but I also like the mechanics. I’ve also been noticing that some of these classes slay and others feel like they’re almost made of paper. I’ll probably be picking from the group that slays.
I usually start with an idea for a character of a type of class, not the buttons I will be pushing as that class.
Fantasy and mog. I always try to level one of each type of armour so I can collect them all, but I pick a class that I like the fantasy of and can get into.
100% for the “class fantasy”. The only time I have ever strayed from that was just in Shadowlands Season 4, where I found BM Hunter to be way easier to play.
Always class identity. Gotta stay classy