What will I play in Battle for Azeroth?

The time has come to make a decision! I will be starting out maining…

Vengeance!

I’ll still be playing my brewmaster and protection warrior, but someone needs to get leveled first and be the priority, and that’s going to be my demon hunter.

So how’d I make this decision? Well, I wrote earlier about how I needed to try a new main. I love my brewmaster, but besides briefly pushing her aside for early Legion, she’s been my main since 2012. If I want to keep playing this game with my friends (and I do), I needed to try something new.

That left me with a choice between my other two favorite tank classes, warrior and demon hunter. I had been leaning toward warrior purely because they can be all the new allied races. Lightforged draenei are my favorite, and the potential to be dark iron or even kul tiran (even temporarily) is alluring. On the other side, Vengeance got some basic changes that improve upon their Legion gameplay, and they’re also looking more competitive. How would I choose?

Well, the deciding factor is pretty mundane: the buff matrix. My raid team has no demon hunters, but a healthy population of warriors and monks. Demon hunters provide a raid-wide utility of increasing all magic damage dealt. My guild could probably recruit or convince someone to reroll, but why do that when you have a willing tank?

As annoying as it is to see the return of the buff matrix, I have to admit I like feeling needed. Even if I feel like I’m having a bad day full of mistakes, at least I bring some objective value to the raid! And whereas in Legion I felt like I was dragging my raid down by bringing my DH over my monk, in BfA I’ll have a reason to feel ok about playing one, even it it ends up being less competitive in the meta game.

There are some smaller aspects to this decision. I have already played Vengeance in mythic raids, so I already know I’m capable of doing it, whereas warrior has some risk that it just wouldn’t click for me. Vengeance is also looking pretty strong in mythic+, which isn’t my focus but just something I enjoy doing.

Of course, like Legion, this could all change once I see the raids. It’s entirely possible Vengeance ends up being terrible, or I end up hating it. But that’s where I’m starting! Once my DH gets to max level, I’ll probably level my warrior second, then my monk third (I don’t know when dark irons will become available, but I’d love to level her once that is unlocked).