Guild Wars 2

Hello I’m DonYawnful and I have a serious problem, I am an altoholic and it’s been bothering me quiet a bit lately. I started playing the game back during launch and have acrued many level 80 characters and a small group amount of low levels I’m currently sitting at 9 characters of which 7 are level 80. The goal is to start focussing on one character and work towards making it my “main”. As in most time played, use others for silly stuff or WvW and PvP. The thing is I have a real hard time choosing and a hard time sticking to my guns. This is where you guys come in.

I’d like you to tell me your personal opinion on who, of the characters i’ll list at the end of this post, I should main. Help on sticking to a main is also something I’d like to get! So here’s the list of characters and interesting tidbits about them.

Morga Whiteraven – 80 Guardian – My freshest level 80 (second guardian).
Lotus Consilida – 33 Thief – Don’t like thief that much tbh.
Amalia Whiteraven – 22 Elementalist – Still haven’t gotten the hang of this proffesion.
Dalla Whiteraven – 80 Mesmer – Used this gal the most, most time played.
Sif Whiteraven – 80 Engineer – 98% map completion, doesn’t get accepted in dungeons.
Blackberry Salad – 80 Ranger – My first level 80, has undergone many transformations.
Xanzza of Statics – 80 Guardian – My second 80 and first guardian. Femsura
Lina Greyborn – 80 Warrior – Master of war and cupcakes
Don Yawnful – 80 Necromancer – My namesake but I really picked the wrong race (asura)

I’m looking forward to your replies and help! (Please don’t ask why I have two guardians it’s a long story)

I’d say you should choose the mesmer because she’s the one you play the most already and that’s pretty much what a main character is.

All the other stuff, like being the first priority for new gear or fun stuff or being the one you play other game modes on is usually just a logical extension of that.

Ask yourself a few questions:
Which profession do I enjoy the most?
Which Profession do I want to fully master?
What am I trying to put into the game and get out of it?

How you answer these questions will help you choose one to main. Try not to switch characters unless there is an important and valid reason for it. For example, your group is getting wiped continually in a dungeon because of the lack of a certain skill set found on another character, would be a valid reason. I like the way my female characters “assests” bounce when she jumps so I’ll play her, is not.

With many of the games aspects now account wide, there really isn’t much of a reason to play alts anymore, unless you need a certain skill set for a paticular situation.

Blackberry Salad.

Why? Simple, he is your firstborn. Salad is healthy. Blackberry Salad sounds delicious on top of that! You already finetuned him (aka “transformations”). You haz pets.

Happy to help!

Why do you have two guardians?

I tend to swap between characters myself, what I found helps me is to have a character designated for a certain type of game mode. I tend to find it tedious to have to swap builds for every mode and to have to carry 8 different sets of gear (exaggeration) in my bags. So what I have is a “Main” for every type of game mode. I still occasionally play my other 7 characters in all game modes but nowhere as much as my “Main”
So what I have is:

• Guardian for PVE (unless I’m in AC then I use Ele)
• Warrior/Ele for WvW. I tend to swap back and forth depending on what the guild needs that evening
• Ranger for sPVP. I tend to play Ele and War in spvp a lot too but its somewhere like 60% Ranger 30% Ele and 10% war.

Hope that helps.

Why do you feel you have to have a main?

I have over 20 characters, two at 80, several in the 60s and 70s and the rest up and coming. My main is which ever I feel like playing at the time. A character can sit on the side lines for months and then I suddenly get the feeling that I would like to play one and it takes priority for a while until I feel I want to play something else.

As exotics are fairly easy to get and ascended gear isn’t that much better you don’t really lose out. It also means that I have a character for every occasion I am interested in and every play style I feel like with out having to switch everything around.

Don’t have a main, just have fun.

Oenanthe.6549:

(…)

Don’t have a main, just have fun.

Aye. There is one character that I like to think of as my “avatar” but otherwise, especially with some of the recent changes I don’t see much need for an actual “main” anymore (for myself, I’m most likely missing something).

Agreed, the primary reason for a “main” is to have someone that gets your resources when those are limited (e.g. the gas mask which only one alt could have before the Wardrobe came, or ascended gear, etc).

I have 12 80’s, and am close to my 13th 2 guardians, 2 warriors, 2 necromancers, 3 mesmers (the nascent 80 is one of the 3), 1 elementalist, 1 ranger, 1 thief, 1 engineer. Plus 2 low low low alts that are not going to get leveled. My thief is my main for RP (and for LS) though the guardians are getting a lot of face time; one guardian is my main for dungeons and fractals; the rest are rotated in as RP plots require.

Since your alt descriptions don’t include personality, I’ll guess you don’t RP. That means you really just need to go with what gives you the most satisfaction in play. Mesmers are very fun, and very useful in dungeons, same with guardians though you aren’t likely to get dps satisfaction out of the latter. In world PVE, Mesmers are great at long distance tagging. But every profession has something to offer and someone who will tell you it’s the best one to play. Go for what you can most naturally do (for instance I find Engineer highly awkward with having to use utility keys instead of weapon swap).

And have fun!

Thanks for all the responses, personality quirks were omitted because I didn’t think it was important. (I don’t RP much anyway) I gave my Mesmer another whirl today and I remembered why I played her so much. (It also helped that I found out that she actually held all my ascended trinkets which I thought I lost haha) Once again thanks for all the responses, here’s a little image of the fun I had today.

I must admit I’m also a little puzzled as to why people feel they need to have a main. I have 5 “mains” that I play roughly equally, and I enjoy them all.

I understand the need to identify a ‘main’ as an altaholic myself (all 15 finally level 80), but I by no means play my ‘main’ the most. My main is just the one I first identified with, completed most of the content with, and now just give the best I can to first. But as others have said, just play whichever one you feel like playing at the time, since I’m pvping as of late I’m putting my main in the drawer (a ranger) and pulling out thief and necro. It sounds like your mesmer or engi are candidates for ‘main’, but you should only take it as giving your ascendeds to them, there’s not much need to upgrade to ascended unless you run fractals, but since there is a small stat difference I personally try to make my main the strongest he can be.

Zaxares.5419:

I must admit I’m also a little puzzled as to why people feel they need to have a main. I have 5 “mains” that I play roughly equally, and I enjoy them all.

Well the main reason I want to identify and stick to a main is playtime. I used to be able to play a good 3 days worth every week (72+ hours) without much consequence. Gone are those days however and I find my playtime slowly dwindling due to school, friends and other real life things. This is by no means a bad thing but it does mean I have to be conservative on whom I spend my playable hours. Doesn’t mean that I enjoy any of my others alts any less.

To the last poster I have decided on Mesmer for PvE/sPvP and my Engineer once she gets world completion will be a WvW/tPvP user mainly.

Zaxares.5419:

I must admit I’m also a little puzzled as to why people feel they need to have a main. I have 5 “mains” that I play roughly equally, and I enjoy them all.

For me there are two reasons:

1) I’m a casual player (a few hours a day, and only every other day) and I don’t like farming so it takes me a relatively long time to get anything. This means I have to prioritise resources and having a main helps me to do that. If my main needs new runes that becomes 1st priority for my gold and anything I want to buy for other characters will wait until I’ve got that. She’s also 1st priority for single use items, for example before they became account bound I’d always give new dyes to her, the other characters only got them if she already had that colour.

2) A lot of people will get to know you by your character name rather than account name, since this is what shows up in chat. Having one character you usually play helps with that because it makes it easier for people to remember. (The other option is to have one word that’s in all your character names.)

This is why I say it makes sense for your main to be the character you play most. It would be silly to give the best gear to a character you rarely use, or to expect everyone to call you by a name they rarely see you using.

You don’t have a problem…..there is another player on here complaining about the fact that he cannot have more than 64 character slots…..THAT’s a serious problem.

I have one LVL 80 of each class (not quite, my Ele is still LVL 70) and 2 additional slots that I use for various farming activities (BL keys, Silver Doubloons, etc.). I would be hard pressed to say which of my LVL 80s is my “main” and per above, don’t really care about it as I enjoy playing all of them. See no reason to choose one.

Brother Grimm.5176:

You don’t have a problem…..there is another player on here complaining about the fact that he cannot have more than 64 character slots…..THAT’s a serious problem.
.

Is it weird that i remember that post? lol
I was like uhhh… I will let someone else take care of this one…