switching-your-main
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Of monks, mains, and the ability to change
I've changed my main exactly once in all of my years playing World of Warcraft. It wasn't out of need or necessity for a guild -- in fact, I was guildless at the point I decided to switch. And I wasn't really planning on switching so much as I really wanted to play a rogue. I wasn't tied down to a guild, and I figured I could simply have fun with the experience. Over the course of leveling that rogue, I met a group of friends in a raiding guild, and once I hit level 70, they encouraged me to apply. Going from a healing class to a pure melee DPS class wasn't as much of a stretch as you'd think. In fact, I think I almost fared better than most because as a former healer, I keenly understood the importance of staying alive. More importantly, I understood that as a pure melee DPS player who was not a tank or a healer, my priority on most heal lists was fairly low. So it was up to me to keep myself alive and happily stab things. I don't think, however, that I could ever make that switch again -- although honestly, I've thought about it.
Breakfast Topic: WoTLK: The perfect time to switch mains?
It's an exciting time to be playing WoW, what with the WoTLK alpha information leaking out (Thanks for risking your eternal soul to break the NDA, anonymous screenshotter!) and 2.4 being pretty much a roaring success. By now, I'm sure everyone has settled in and is making plans for WoTLK, figuring out which zone they'll go to first, maybe setting aside a bit of money from all those dailies to powerlevel a trade skill. So, I was thinking the other day of one more thing I was planning: switching mains. We've discussed the art of switching mains a bit before, but there's always a lot of hassles to it: there's the concern that you'll fall behind your friends, the concern that your gear won't be good enough, the concern that you'll have to grind your reputation up for certain keys and essential reputation rewards all over again. A new expansion is just the ticket for getting rid of most of those problems. As long as your character is max level at the start of WoTLK, they can catch up on gear pretty quickly just from level 71 greens and quest rewards. Everyone's starting out grinding all the new WoTLK reputation grinds, so no worries that you're behind on those either. Despite being on a relatively "new" character, you'll be able to join your friends in Utgarde Keep right away. So the reasons not to switch mains mostly manage to resolve themselves when a new expansion hits, and the question becomes, do you want to switch mains, and why?
