I’m sure everyone knows people who only play characters of one type, whether it’s the healer who comes equipped with a pally main and shammy and druid alts, or the tank with one of each type, or the pet-lovers who play hunters and warlocks.

The trouble is, once you’ve played a character to the level cap, and spent time and thought and practice on how to be the best darn whatever-you-are you can be, it can be very easy to fall into a rut of always thinking like that character.

I’ve known a number of rogues who rolled a druid alt, feraled it up, and were deeply unhappy that their druid couldn’t Vanish, or pick pockets, or open locks – no, my friend, you’re not playing your druid. You’re trying to play another rogue. And you know, if that’s the play experience you want, more power to you! Roll another rogue! Heck, I’m levelling a new babypaladin at the moment because I haven’t played Ret since about patch 1.8 and the class has changed amazingly since then, and I want to see how Retribution plays now. There is nothing wrong with having multiple characters of one class.

But if you want to enjoy your alts, stop worrying about the ways in which they are similiar-but-inferior to a class you’ve loved before. Look for the ways they’re new and different. All the classes are basically balanced, on a broad scale – each class has advantages and disadvantages, and a unique playstyle. Blizzard did not save up all the cool toys and give them to a single class; each class has one or more factors that makes it unique, and therefore potentially fun. Stop thinking about all the things that your new class is lacking – things you used to rely on or enjoy with your last character. Instead, look at what your character can do in a way that’s unique to them – try and think about how Blizzard made their choices.

“Okay, all the cloth-wearing classes need to be able to DPS solo without a tank, but how do we make them different? Okay – mages are the squishiest, so we give them Frost Nova, a way to snare mobs at range and then cast at them from a safe distance. Shadow priests can heal themselves in a pinch, but they can’t rely on that, so let’s give them a way to mitigate the damage they wind up taking anyway – we’ll give them Vampiric Embrace. And warlocks don’t have shields, and don’t have snares, so they’ll need other ways to keep the monsters away from them – let’s give them Fear, and maybe a pet that can tank (until they do too much damage).”

When you’re playing your warlock alt instead of your mage main, don’t bemoan the fact that you don’t have Frost Nova or Sheep or Ice Barrier. Look at what you do have – Fear, a voidwalker, a succubus, Drain Life. Learn how to play the class you’ve chosen to try out – if you’re truly unhappy that it’s not more like a mage, then delete your lock and roll another mage! No-one expects everyone to enjoy every playstyle – heck, I still can’t make myself play a warrior for 20 levels or more – but it’s unfair to any class to expect it to be just like the last class you enjoyed, and to blame the class or the devs when it isn’t.