Guild Wars 2

You and Your Alts

Hi there, I’d like to get to know how you play your chars or alts, or why, if you play only one character for all game modes.

For example, from most played to least:-

Guardian (main): map completed, dungeon pugging, low level fractals, guild missions, living story, occasional pvp, WvW with guildies, geared ascended

Warrior: geared in ascended, daily dungeons, speed runs, tequatl

Mesmer: speed runs, jumping puzzles, world bosses/temple events

Ele: dungeons, WvW zerging, dailies

Ranger: pvp, mule alt, harvesting in Orr, champ train

lvl 75 Warrior: mule alt, parked at harvesting nodes

lvl 3 Thief: new char

Feel free to share more in specific.

rojak.1894:

You and Your Alts

Hi there, I’d like to get to know how you play your chars or alts, or why, if you play only one character for all game modes.

For example, from most played to least:-

Guardian (main): map completed, dungeon pugging, low level fractals, guild missions, living story, occasional pvp, WvW with guildies, geared ascended

Warrior: geared in ascended, daily dungeons, speed runs, tequatl

Mesmer: speed runs, jumping puzzles, world bosses/temple events

Ele: dungeons, WvW zerging, dailies

Ranger: pvp, mule alt, harvesting in Orr, champ train

lvl 75 Warrior: mule alt, parked at harvesting nodes

lvl 3 Thief: new char

Feel free to share more in specific.

From most played to least:

Lvl 80 Thief (main): sPvP and WvW, only has Asc. Rings, everything else is exotic.

Lvl 80 Warrior: sPvP, WvW and PvE (barely, only PvE I do is Guild Missions, Living Story bores me.). Has Asc. Rings and Amulet, everything else is exotic. (Also has T3 Cultural)

Lvl 57 Guard: She’s been that level for a couple months now. Used this alt to get ideas on how to counter bunker guards in sPvP.

Lvl 5 Mesmer: Main reason I made this alt was to reserve a name, but also to figure out the mechanics of mesmers so I could kill em’ more efficiently in sPvP

Lvl 20 Ranger: Only a Lvl 20 because of that scroll that advances a character to level 20. Made an attempt to play a Spirit Ranger in sPvP but found it boring.

My main motivation for leveling my alts in all honest is to dress them up. I love going to the pvp locker and mixing armor sets until I find something I love (although it can be very hard sometimes). Now that they’re all level 80 and mostly all pimped out I just play whichever ones gameplay I crave the most. Currently craving thief coming off necro.

I try not to make any of them my main and give them all equality. My necro is map completion, engi is commander, ranger is legendary… Etc.

Warrior: 80 Full Zerker only leveld for CoF – 1

Since im a WvW player and dont do other kind of content stoped playing my guardian after have some ascended trinkets, no backpack , now playing thief (easy mode) and making some daylies for ascended trinkets but in another account.
Ascended weapons is way to expensive to reach craft lvl and craft gear for players that only do WvW, trying to aquire laurels for some trinkets atm.

Guardian 1 (main): Norn, lvl 80, female. I use her for everything except serious pvp. She wears zerker gear currently which works surprisingly well.

Engineer: Leveling her, currently 45. Human, female.

Guardian 2 (former main): Human, lvl 80, female. She is the tanky edition of a guardian with lots of pvt. I use her sometimes in wvw.

Elementalist (much former main): Norn, lvl 80, female. 100% world completion. My first GW2 character. I use her in fractals.

Guardian 3: Human, male, lvl 80. I experiment on him with builds. Rarely played nowadays.

Warrior 1 and 2: Both human, female, lvl 80. When coffing were all the rage they were heavily used. One of them is still used sometimes in dungeons.

Mesmer: Asura, female, lvl 80. Mostly used in pvp and for jumping puzzles.

Thief: Sylvari, female, lvl 80. Still figuring out what to do with her.

All are clad in exotics, my main in as much ascended as possible. No legendaries. All characters save my main are parked at a jp chest.

Warrior: My main, primary powerhouse and the toon i expect to be able to reasonably go thru contents. PvE only.

Ranger: Secondary PvE, also my favourite solo jumper for puzzles.

Mesmer: WvW Roaming and group puzzle jumper, coz i love porting ppl up.

Engineer: Recently tweaked to be PvE viable but mainly for WvW

Guardian: I’m still looking into this.

I play whoever is interesting me at the moment (I usually change every couple of months) with the exception of guild related missions, in which case I use my thief,, because he’s my only character with Map complete.

I can’t really ‘rank’ my characters from most to least played because I rotate through them pretty often. I played for 2 or 3 hours last night and I was on 4 different characters in that time. Two where maxed, two were still in the process of leveling.. I just sort of play whatever I feel calls to me at the time…

Guard – Main, wvw rank 380 (only thing I do.)

Mesmer/Theif/Ele – All 80, all fully geared. Mostly for roaming or off-times when I’m pugging.

My main War: everything (World bosses, fractals, WvW, PvP, dungeons)

As for the rest of my alts, I treat them like I treat any non-main MC in an rpg. They get the scraps and anything good gets funneled to my War

Necro: After I leveled her (daily/map completion) she’s been sitting in a dank cave next to a ghost pirate
Ranger: Lvl 74 (leveling through daily/LS/map completion) once get gets to 80, he can join my necro in the cave
Ele: Lvl 74 (leveling through daily/PS/LS/map completion) again, once he gets to 80 he’s getting sent to the cave
(alt) Guard: Lvl 5. he’s banished to my home instance to mine candy corn and quartz for me daily.

If character slots ever go on sale again, I’ll get a mes, a guard (that I plan on playing), engi, and thief (in that order). And do the same leveling of them with the daily/LS/PS. And when they’re done they get to go in the hole.

For the little I play PvP (just enough to get the monthly), when I get my 200 warrior wins, I’ll switch to a different class.

To be fair I do have some random exotic gear sitting around for most of them, and I do have different builds planned for them, so I’ll have access to different things if necessary. I don’t care how viable they are, I just choose a build/skills that I find fun on them.

War: sword/shield & lb (knights & rabid gear)
Ele: staff (water & arcane, haven’t decided on a stat set yet)
ranger: sb & axe (or sword)/warhorn (maybe pure condition, haven’t fully decided yet)
Necro: staff & focus/warhorn (MM or maybe wells, haven’t finalized gear yet but she will have a princess scepter to guide her reanimated corpses)

I have a level 80 of every profession except engineer (working on that one now). I don’t use any of them for anything specific. I just play each one as I feel the need to change things up. I will use anyone of them for any content. The only thing that affects which one I use, is which one has the area mapped that I want to go play in.

Lvl 80 Ranger: Map completion, pve, dungeons or anything requiring somewhat tanky play.

Lvl 80 Thief: WvW roaming, some pve, weaponsmithing 500

Lvl 80 Mesmer: WvW medium to zerg play, some pve

Lvl 20 Ele: Mule parked at LA Bank loaded full of bloodstone dust and other ascended mats XD

LS and dailies on all (except for ele)

I have 4 level 80’s but only play one so in other words I do not.

I have an 80 Mesmer, Engineer and Ranger
and I have another Mesmer in her 50’s, an Ele in her mid 30’s and a Necro I just started at almost 40.
I pretty much log onto whoever I feel like and do what I feel like.
No favoritism at all.
My 80 Mesmer probably gets the least play time but that is because I played her non stop till January this year and she needs a break

I’ve hit a point of “why bother” where alts are concerned. Need to get two crafting disciplines up to 500, and two or three more in the short term future. What little wvw rank I have is tied to one character. Map completion is tied to one character (sadly, my first character, who I don’t play because the class is in such a sad state.)

Most played -> least played.

Guardian – WvW, a dungeon or two now and then, world bosses if I get online exactly at reset so they’re not ghost towns. (90%+)

Warrior – when I’m too lazy to want to think, and still want to wvw/dungeons. (~5%)

Ele – log in, look at what the class could be, try not to cry, then curl up and cry anyway. (Once a week.)

Ranger – log in, wonder how the literally thousands of suggestions to fix the class get ignored, log off, probably go play something else in disgust for a while (biweekly)

Spare slot that has had one of each of the other classes on it, and the playsyles aren’t my cup of tea.

EDIT: of the spare/deleted chars, thief was probably the most entertaining, but I found I was behaving in a way I didn’t like in myself. (abusing a set of mechanics to basically troll people in wvw).

80 Guardian 1 Asura: WvW main w/Commander title, rarely dungeons
80 Warrior 1 Norn: PvE Dungeon & Living Story main, WvW alternative
80 Mesmer Sylvari: PvE Dungeon alternative, WvW alternative, Keg Brawl character, go-to jumping puzzle character
80 Engineer Charr: WvW alternative, made to look cool & play open world content with friends
80 Necromancer Human: carries account name, WvW alternative,
sub 80 Elementalist 1 Norn: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Elementalist 2 Asura:made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Guardian 2 Sylvari: SPvP main, made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Warrior 2 Human: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Ranger Charr: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Engineer 2 Sylvari: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Thief Human: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Necromancer 2 Human: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Thief Asura 2: made to look cool & play open world content with friends

I think that about covers it for now. I like the open world content this game launched with (and hasn’t received any real support since). I also like the potential for cool and unique sets of armor which you can view most of in my sig.

All I did for a long time was WvW and Keg brawl exclusively, but since the former is suffering from a lot of problems and I’ve since had no motivation to level any more characters to 80 to play Wvw and ArenaNet basically took Keg brawl out of the game…

Doing dungeons to get gold → most of my gold goes to alts getting expensive weapons like Sclerite or equipping them in some combination of cultural and exotic armor sets or buying gems to get more character slots.

Mostly these days I am pretty lazy about it so I just do dailies that are applicable to them. Its actually pretty decent experience for a low amount of work. Especially if you are doing kills/events. I just keep them spread out to specific zones I don’t normally travel to on my main on a regular basis like Ascalon and such.

3rd Ranger, human female (clone of previews 2 rangers) ex main: WvW/PvP focused. Purely leveled inside the Crown Pavillion.

Mesmer (main) human female: Leveled her as a PvE toon and then became my WvW fav. Fractals lvl 30+, guild missions, dungeons and everything that requires some map completition.

Thief, human male: Leveled him as an attempt to have more WvW options, but haven’t really been able to practice with him and get any better.

Warrior, norn female: Just using her in WvW to jump in the hammerwaggon. Purely leveled inside the Labyrith. Proudly hit lvl 80 with 1% map completition.

All of them have ascended trinkets. No ascended weapons on any, and it’ll probably never happen.

Oh and forgot my lvl 8 female norn guardian, who carries all my stacks of bloodstone dust and empyrial fragments I’ll never use.

Mesmer: Fractals, wvw, some times dungeons.
Thief: Used him for everything forever, officially retired until new weapons are added.
Guardian: Dont use him at all. First 80 and only class I just cant get into. For some reason I just dont enjoy Guardian.
Elementalist: Dungeons, sometimes open world events.
Engineer: Champ trains, WVW
Ranger: Trying on female armor. Complaining about how weak I am in LA map chat. Sometimes living story so I remember this character even exists. Renaming my pets in chance that one day it might be permanent. Constantly equipping with new runes and sigils only to later salvage them because I dont use the character.
Necromancer: My last 80, doesnt have celestial trinkets yet so I havent used her since I hit 80 but I cant wait. Will be my dungeon and wvw toon with Mesmer.
Warrior: Dont use him at all. Sad because hes a charr and thats my favorite race but I dont use Warrior because everyone else does

I position my 8 characters around the world to speed up whatever I am doing and save on traveling/wp costs.

Warrior – Currently doing sPvP/dungeons
Guardian – WvW/dungeons/fractals
Mesmer – Kessex Hills (LS)/Jumping puzzles
Ranger – Does Invasions/open world stuff
Engineer – Labyrinth/Halloween/jumping puzzles
Necro – Trading Post
Ele – World events
Thief – Trolls other players in WvW JP/PvP/WvW (when I am in a bad mood and want to inflict it on other players in game…lol)

All 80 exotics/ascended

Don’t have a main.

The way I rank my characters is mostly the order I created them. I don’t have one I play more often, in general I try to keep their playstyles different from each other so I can have different options when playing, and gear them according to that order:

Guardian: Hammer/staff tanky DPS/support. Full ascended trinkets, gets first dibs on the first ascended weapon I craft (unless of course I get lucky and get an ascended weapon drop with stats that aren’t good for him)
Mesmer: Scepter-pistol/staff condition damage DPS. Full ascended trinkets.
Warrior: GS/Axe-mace standard zerker warrior. Rings and amulet are ascended, next in line for the next commendation bought ascended trinket.
Engineer: Flamethrower specced, amulet and one ring ascended, next in line for next ascended ring I buy.
Necromancer: Early leveling (about 27 or 28), so still not sure what will he end up being.
Elementalist: Currently a banking mule (replacing the necro in that role that he filled until recently)

Lvl 80 Guardian – Living Story, Armorsmith/Weaponsmith crafting
Lvl 48-ish Ranger – Huntsman/Leatherworker crafting
Lvl 35-ish Elementalist – Jeweler/Tailor crafting
Lvl 26-ish Thief – Chef/Artificer crafting
Lvl 11-ish Engineer – just trying to finish Charr personal story, then will be deleted and replaced with a Norn

Don’t get to play every night, and no more than a few hours when I do, so I spend 99% of my time doing Living Story junk because I don’t want to miss out and sneak a little crafting in here and there when I have the mats. Want to WvW, finish map exploration, maybe start on a legendary, but the release cadence for Living Story just doesn’t leave me the time. I really wish they’d slow it down.

lvl 80 necro: finished personal story (asura infinity ball <3), slowly going for map completion which is lots of fun on the first char, tried pug dungeons and HATED it as a necro, joining wvw to see if there’s a competent leader on the map at the time or go roaming for a bit until I’m kitten ed of with all the blobs, recently discovered spvp – not sure i like it yet

lvl 23 engi: wanted to try engi for the grenade build, but it’s just no fun leveling up again. Only thing going for this char was the norn/drunk accident story (loved it!!), but I figure that’s finished now. It’s weird, my necro is at 100+ skillpoints left from all the world completion/wvw, but I can’t find any joy in playing low level chars. Plus i feel disadvantaged for not being some korean 300apm kid

lvl 2 some other stuff: can barely force myself through the intro to get them into spvp

I have 10 characters. None of them are ‘alts’. They’re just characters and I decide which one I want to use at any given time. Soon there will be another (once I get enough gems to purchase it).

5 characters, from favourite and most played to not so liked or played:
1. Ranger (main): I play this everyday, PvE, WvW, PvP.
2. Mesmer (primary alt): PvP, dungeons when people… well… don’t like that I’m on my Ranger.
3. Guardian: Just some PvE stuff and when going to a dungeon and we lack a Guardian (not often).
4. Necromancer: PvE when I want to play with conditions.
5. Elementalist: I really like Ele, but I just don’t play on this one. This is the only alt with no build or a specific way I’d like to play.
All are lvl 80.

My chars and their roles:

80 War # 1 (human female): Fractals 48+, 55 AR, super-high speed runs in CoE, SE
80 War # 2 (asura female): Living story, gathering and dungeons such as CM, AC, CoF
80 Guard (norn female): Fractals 48+, 55 AR, only used in grawl fractals where pugs suck
80 Ele (norn female): Fractals 48, 45 AR. Also use it for nuking zergs in WvW
80 Mesmer (human female): Fractals 48+, 50 AR, and used in dredge/asura fractal for porting through.
80 Thief (human female): Gathering in Orr, temple runs, casual WvW, and bombing in dredge fractals
80 Necromancer (asura female): Tormenting zergs in Lord’s room in WvW
80 Engineer (charr male): Grenadier, super easy TA dungeon runs.
80 Ranger (sylvari female): Dragon bosses

Others:
2 Engineer: Storage for trinkets
2 Guardian: Storage for weapon skins
2 Warrior: Storage for materials

I have three 80s so three “alts”. Because I don’t have a “main”, I don’t really consider my alts as “alts”. I tend to go back and forth on my characters. I’ll play my thief for a couple weeks, then switch to my necro when my thief gets dull and say to myself “wow, necros are so cool” and play the necro for a couple of weeks before it gets dull and then I switch to….

I don’t really consider any of my toons to be alts. Is that weird? They share loot, rewards and playing time. And yes, this means none of them are exceptionally well-equipped.

Leveled a warrior by doing dungeons with guildmates. Sometimes use them for other content the guild wants to do because banners and shouts matter more in a group than solo.

Necromancer is the one I played when I started doing fractals, so they have the highest fractal rank (only 21). Sometimes poke around in other PvE with them.

Ranger I was also leveling by doing dungeons with guildmates. Got to 75 or so, not sure how I feel about the class.

Elementalist was my first, never got good at it. Sometimes I break it out for variety, or when I want to try something new.

Guardian sits in town crafting. I intend to play them more one day.

Just started playing my lowbie thief again. I die a lot, but it’s new to me.

Haven’t played engineer in months. Had fun with grenades, but that much mouse targeting is kitten the wrists.

Mesmer is closest to my ‘main’. I do spvp with them sometimes, and if the guild wants wvw I usually use the mesmer.

Xyrell Naida – Necromancer (sylvari) – my main champ, hybrid condition damage with high crit. I do PVE and PVP, sometimes WVW if I feel like the other two things are lacking in interest for me.

Jal Serrata – Warrior (Charr) – my secondary main. Same as Xyrell, hybrid between condition and crit. I usually just troll about in PVE with him, but rarely play him nowadays since I’ve found necromancer to fit my playstyle a lot more. Plus my girlfriend has a character with surname of Naida so we’re like a little team. :P So that’s a plus.

My other alts are all just random ones that i sometimes play for fun.

Ranger: lvl 80 Ranger…former main, world completion, etc First toon. Just sits at a jump puzzle now.

Mesmer: lvl 80 Human, former main, parked at a jump puzzle, mostly just the weapon skills not fond of and the shatter builds are pretty much dead. Would do more with but currently not especially worth it, possibly when new weapons/skills come around will get more attention.

Guardian: lvl 80 Sylvari, disliked guardians at launch, levelled to 80 purely for fractals (stopped doing those)….jump puzzle

Warrior: lvl 33 Charr…just wasn’t working out thematically, want it to be heavy armor (cultural armor) guardian was already taken (and that doesn’t really fit thematically either) and rifle is a pretty crud range weapon…stopped leveling as a result, hoping third heavy armor class eventuates.

Warrior: lvl 80 Human….basically imagine the nightfall paragon artwork, that’s basically what I went for, lot more fun and thematically pleasing to play. Most PvE content and WvW has two sets of equips for the different settings (wvw/pve) which none of my others do.

Thief: lvl 23 Human….I just haven’t going into playing it, possibly the lack of traits but not finding it especially fun to play, jump puzzle. Will likely level up after…

Engineer: lvl 62 Sylvari, created 3 (or 5) days ago. Was originally an asura but just wasn’t working out for me, deleted the asura for the slot (even though the asura was made during the head start was only lvl 26). Mostly leveled through WvW but is doing the story mode dungeons (I’m missing one and have no idea which, figure might as well do it for the easy exp while leveling) .

Necro: lvl 32 Asura. Liked asura light cultural the most, mesmer was taken so it was down to neco or ele, my choice below didn’t really suit necro, so my Asura is the necro…there’s something funny about his minions being bigger than he is. Haven’t really played much since I’m not especially fond of the weapon choices and was more involved with other toons. waiting to see what happens with new weapons.

Elementalist: lvl 80 Norn at launch, liked light norn cultural armor, necro didn’t fit, went elementalist, currently just sitting at a jump puzzle because even with speed boosts he just seems slow when moving around (and he’s not even the biggest norn height/size)

I have 16 alts, two of each class. 11 out of 16 are 80, and the current average level is 62.6875.

Pretty much, I pick one at a time and level them to 80 through a combination of Dailies, Map Completion and Personal Story. I do not do SPvP. I only do WvW for Map Completion, but that may change once the whole roster is 80 and I feel a little more freedom about how I spend my time. I do not do Fractals, ever. No one, not a single character, currently has or will ever have any Ascended gear.

80 Human Male Elementalist
80 Charr Male Guardian
My “main” characters, most frequently logged into for RP and helping out with Guild Activities, or running dungeons with friends at a very casual pace. If a Living Story feature appeals to me, they’re probably the characters I’m taking to it. But I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened.

80 Human Female Mesmer
80 Norn Male Warrior
These two were seeing a lot of RP, enough that I bothered to get them Exotic Gear after hitting 80, but their respective storylines are currently on hold, so they’ve been sitting on the shelf.

80 Sylvari Male Ranger
80 Norn Female Thief
80 Asura Male Necromancer
80 Charr Male Engineer
80 Sylvari Female Guardian
80 Norn Female Necromancer
80 Human Female Warrior
These have all pretty much sat where they are since hitting 80. They all have pretty cool RP concepts though, and I could see the use of any of them skyrocketing if they seemed appropriate to a storyline in my RP group.

23 Asura Female Engineer
40 Human Male Thief
My current leveling projects, alternating between them depending on mood.

20 Charr Female Elementalist
My next leveling project.

20 Human Female Ranger
20 Sylvari Male Mesmer
These two may never get upgraded to Leveling Priority. If a 6th PC race appears, these are probably the characters I’ll reroll for it, so I’m having a hard time getting invested in them conceptually. Since it seems doubtful I’ll develop a strong craving for more low-level Ranger and Mesmer leveling without a super strong character concept backing it up (or a new race’s Personal Story entries to motivate me), these two will probably just stay at 20 forever.