34 replies to this topic

[Ricko]

This question is mostly aimed at the alto-holics out there: What is your opinion of having more than one of the same profession/class?

I ask this because after experiencing all eight classes, there is only four I like thus I have 4 character slots 4. Right now, my only eighty is my norn warrior but I'm tempted to roll a charr warrior mostly for the warrior nature and the cultural armor...

But I digress.

The pro side for me is different looks and perhaps different playstyles. As I said before, a Norn Juggernaut and a Charr Marauder.

Edited by Khalija, 12 January 2013 - 11:11 PM.
no memes

[Little Bird]

The benefit for me will be not having to retrait or re-armor a character if I want to use a completely different build.

[matsif]

Personally, it seems like a waste of a character slot to me, especially considering how transparent some roles can be in the game (one could possibly make the argument that there is only one role - dps).

I have 8 characters, 1 for each class.  5 of which are 80s, one is 69, one is 56, and the last is 43.

Edited by matsif, 11 January 2013 - 10:13 PM.

[Alyssa]

I think its a personal choice, if you think having another warrior for story/cultural armor is enough to justify two classes there is no problem with that. Its not wasteful if you are having fun and feeling you are getting your money's worth.

Personally I have each char slot for each profession, but down the line I want to buy another slot or two to make characters to level to 30 to see other personal story choices I missed. I also re-rolled a few toons already purely because of T3 cultural armor. I never thought I would have any T3 back when game started because of cost, but now that I know I can get it in a decent amount of time I plan my races around just this.

[Highlander of Alba]

well as an altholic from gw1 have 12 toons already and still having fun lowest is 60 sorry  have one at 30 as did not like the look of the other so rerolled it.

[jthamind]

Little Bird, on 11 January 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

The benefit for me will be not having to retrait or re-armor a character if I want to use a completely different build.

this. it's one of the things that bugs me about the game tbh. i really don't know why they can't just have a backup spec thing like WoW has where you just click a button and all your weapons, armor, and traits are swapped.

no, i don't want to have to pay money every time i want to run a different build. i don't want to have to carry my second set of gear around in an invisible bag everywhere i go. i just want to be like "hey, i feel like playing (insert spec here today), i'm gonna do it." instead of going through a hassle. i mean, yeah, you should still have to buy all the gear and weapons for the alt spec, but once you've done all that, it should be a lot easier to switch.

i wouldn't even mind if you had to go to the trainer NPC to change your spec, as long as everything was saved.

that's the main reason i could see rolling an alt of the same profession.

Edited by jthamind, 11 January 2013 - 11:36 PM.

[foggysheep]

I may end up doing this because I need another character to do the priory story line, but i pretty much hate playing any class but ranger and gaurdian

[StormDragonZ]

Some people just can't get it right the first time.

... or the second...

You can see where I'm going with this.

[Omilla]

I have 10 character slots.  8 level 80's of each profession, a level 35 elementalist, and a level 18 guardian.  The reason for the 2 repeaters is I hate respeccing and I hate carrying 90 sets of gear in one characters bag.  So the lowbie ele is to learn and play double daggers (80 ele is staff spec).  The second guardian was to experience a dps build instead of the full support build i used to run on my 80 guard (I have since changed to a more dps centric spec on 80 guard).

My train of thought is that I have the time to level 20 of each class if I want.  And now that I have a max of everything the pressure of getting to 80 asap is over.  I can take my time.  Smell the roses.  Not to mention I tend to make 20 gold or so for every character I level so it pays for itself.  Bottom line is it is your life and your time.  Do what you want.

I would pass on a bit of wisdom to you though.  Several of the professions (Mesmer. Necro, and Thief) I played to level 20 or so and said screw that noise I hate these profs.  I didn't delete them and after a few weeks I decided to level them with crafting.  Those three profs are 3 of my favorites now.  The way a class plays for the first 70 levels or so is not reflective of the way it plays at max.  Just food for thought.

Also be prepared for strange looks from your guildmates when they see you playing your second of any profession.

"Don't you have a level 80 warrior?"

Edited by Omilla, 12 January 2013 - 12:49 AM.

[Steadfast Gao Shun]

My main is a human mesmer. However, I do have a max-sized male Norn Mesmer (fabulous is he~) that I take out in WvW for laughs. I think my answer to you is that if you're having fun with it, why not?

[I'm Squirrel]

Nah, wouldn't do this. I would give it a second thought though if we had unlimited character slots. But seeing as we only have five free ones, it's too much of a waste when theres five races and eight professions to choose from.

[draxynnic]

I can think of several reasons to have multiple characters of the same profession:

1) (stated above) Be able to play different specs without having to pay respec fees, carry around multiple sets of gear on a single character, and so on. (Taking this route does, however, mean that you may have less flexibility to change things on the fly).

2) Different combinations of racial and profession skills.

3) The ability to play more storylines. Up to level 20, there are 15 unique storyline paths you can take, 30 if you want to try each choice in a given arc. Obviously, they converge quickly after that, but playing every single possible piece of story available without piggy-backing someone else is going to require six characters per race - that's almost reaching every possible combination of race and profession.

4) Muling. Most methods of increasing storage space come out at 20 gems per additional slot. An additional character loaded out with bronze boxes or their equivalent (a pretty small additional expense) gives you 20+8x4=52 slots for 800 gems, which comes out at about a 20% discount - and there's probably a balance between box size and box price that maximises the return of inventory space versus price. That you get another character to play is practically a free extra from this perspective. ArenaNet would probably say that buying additional bank tabs or bag slots for an existing character is paying a premium for convenience (that's what they said about a similar observation made in GW1) but if all you want is more places to put things and don't mind doing a little character-switching to retrieve them, additional character slots is actually the way to go.

[Arquenya]

^this

And on the flip side:

• When you do fractals, you have to level each seperately because you don´t unlock higher levels account-wide but per character;
  
  
• (minor) with dungeons it becomes very unclear (at least to me) which character has done what, sometimes resulting in no-one that can enter exploration mode, to be sure you'd have to do it on every character;
  
  
• World completion: it's also per 1 character (if you're interested in that stuff) but the title is account-wide;
  
  
• If there's new gear and weapon tiers released, you have to grind for it for two characters. Same for expansions, you'll have to do everything double. After a while it can get quite exhausting.

Edited by Arquenya, 12 January 2013 - 04:19 AM.

[Ricko]

Thank you for the responses.
I do rather enjoy leveling but with half of the classes, I just feel vulnerable. Leveling the half I don't like felt like double duty.

As for doing everything twice, well isn't that the nature of the beast for not just alto-holics but those with more than one character; you will essentially have to do it x amount of time.? I will rather want do it with a class I'm comfortable with than a class that makes me think twice about taking a vet.

[Ritualist]

8 asura for pvp.
And then other, non-asura characters for PvE (if you are not going to be playing an asura in PvE, of course!) .


Having said that, I don't consider GW2 to be a game where you make a character and then grind years in the game. It seems to work better if you make a character, do the world with him and then simply delete/retire him and make a new character. It seems like vertical progression in this game isn't just more expansive, it seems to be the reason to play. And then once you max out (of course, you will not be wasting your time on ascended crap because of the non-existent benefit), you move on.

[Rifky Rayn]

I was an alto-holic in GW1 and the main reason was, well, armors. What could I do, when I loved both female and male Mesmer armors? It had its flaws, though, since the ability to switch your build in GW1 was a lot easier, so I couldn't just say that this is a domi-Mesmer, and this one is an illusionist, since both types were easily achievable by both characters. But then again, the armor-argument is invalid in GW2, since armor types are not profession-specific. I have a hard deciding if I want to double the professions, but so far I'm going for "no", but that's mostly because of the fact that I haven't tried all the professions and I haven't bought any additional character slots yet. The arguments presented by the above posters seem valid, though.

[Gilles VI]

I got 8 characters now, alot of them are already high or max level so don't want to delete them, but I regret some race/profession/sex choices I made, so I'm gonna roll some doubles.

For example I'm pretty sure I'll roll a Charr Warrior, and Norn Ranger, and a Sylvari Guardian, and a Asura thief.

[Arquenya]

Ricko, on 12 January 2013 - 05:41 AM, said:

Thank you for the responses.
I do rather enjoy leveling but with half of the classes, I just feel vulnerable. Leveling the half I don't like felt like double duty.

As for doing everything twice, well isn't that the nature of the beast for not just alto-holics but those with more than one character; you will essentially have to do it x amount of time.? I will rather want do it with a class I'm comfortable with than a class that makes me think twice about taking a vet.

I agree, I only find guardian, warrior and ranger decent to level, the rest are just fragile canon fodder So in the end I levelled a mesmer by mainly running dungeons because their squishiness is just too much.

But talking form a GW perspective: in GW: Prophecies it was totally viable to have one of each class but after EoTH it was totally undoable to have all titles, skills and well equiped heroes on every one of them - unless you're really a ceaseless grinder with loads and loads of time. So I've become a little more careful with my altoholicism!

[Ricko]

Arquenya, on 12 January 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

I agree, I only find guardian, warrior and ranger decent to level, the rest are just fragile canon fodder So in the end I levelled a mesmer by mainly running dungeons because their squishiness is just too much.

I found my necro rather tough. He's a minionmancer; I aggro'd 5 centaur once but they were so confused with all my minions, they didn't know who to attack while I stood back and aoe'd them down. I also use death shroud as a panic button and since I'm using a staff, I don't have to be so reliant on my blood fiend. If they can down me, Necros still have the spammable lifesteal

[Gilles VI]

Arquenya, on 12 January 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

I agree, I only find guardian, warrior and ranger decent to level, the rest are just fragile canon fodder So in the end I levelled a mesmer by mainly running dungeons because their squishiness is just too much.

But talking form a GW perspective: in GW: Prophecies it was totally viable to have one of each class but after EoTH it was totally undoable to have all titles, skills and well equiped heroes on every one of them - unless you're really a ceaseless grinder with loads and loads of time. So I've become a little more careful with my altoholicism!

Every achiemevent in GW2 is now account-bound, contrary to GW1, so that's a boon for us, altoholici..

[Arquenya]

Gilles VI, on 12 January 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

Every achiemevent in GW2 is now account-bound, contrary to GW1, so that's a boon for us, altoholici..

Unfortunately not everything ....

• On a regular basis I find myself standing in front of a dungeon and no-one being able to enter explorable. I lost track of which character has done what storyline;
  
• Same for FoTM: one at lvl 12, another at 7, one at 3 and the last one at 2. Unlike dungeons, you unlock that on a per character basis;
  
• World completion must be done on 1 single character; you can't unlock half of it on one character and the rest on another;
  
• If I find runes in dungeons, they're soulbound, not account bound. Meaning I can't use them on characters that could actually use them;

Must be more examples where it's per character and not account-wide.

Edited by Arquenya, 12 January 2013 - 06:06 PM.

[Lucas Ashrock]

draxynnic, on 12 January 2013 - 01:55 AM, said:

I can think of several reasons to have multiple characters of the same profession:

1) (stated above) Be able to play different specs without having to pay respec fees, carry around multiple sets of gear on a single character, and so on. (Taking this route does, however, mean that you may have less flexibility to change things on the fly).

2) Different combinations of racial and profession skills.

3) The ability to play more storylines. Up to level 20, there are 15 unique storyline paths you can take, 30 if you want to try each choice in a given arc. Obviously, they converge quickly after that, but playing every single possible piece of story available without piggy-backing someone else is going to require six characters per race - that's almost reaching every possible combination of race and profession.

4) Muling. Most methods of increasing storage space come out at 20 gems per additional slot. An additional character loaded out with bronze boxes or their equivalent (a pretty small additional expense) gives you 20+8x4=52 slots for 800 gems, which comes out at about a 20% discount - and there's probably a balance between box size and box price that maximises the return of inventory space versus price. That you get another character to play is practically a free extra from this perspective. ArenaNet would probably say that buying additional bank tabs or bag slots for an existing character is paying a premium for convenience (that's what they said about a similar observation made in GW1) but if all you want is more places to put things and don't mind doing a little character-switching to retrieve them, additional character slots is actually the way to go.

Frankly, i prefer create my own guild + guild stash, upgraded till max stash. If you have deluxe edition bonus items a max stash is way cheaper than buy gem-slots (and upgrade 20 slot bags for your mule), am i wrong? You can just stay alone with your loner guild forever, enjoying loads of guild bank slots

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 13 January 2013 - 10:48 AM.

[Gilles VI]

Arquenya, on 12 January 2013 - 02:41 PM, said:

Unfortunately not everything ....

• On a regular basis I find myself standing in front of a dungeon and no-one being able to enter explorable. I lost track of which character has done what storyline;
  
• Same for FoTM: one at lvl 12, another at 7, one at 3 and the last one at 2. Unlike dungeons, you unlock that on a per character basis;
  
• World completion must be done on 1 single character; you can't unlock half of it on one character and the rest on another;
  
• If I find runes in dungeons, they're soulbound, not account bound. Meaning I can't use them on characters that could actually use them;

Must be more examples where it's per character and not account-wide.

True but I was talking about achievements, but yes you have a point.
Dungeons is easy, just let someone reroll.
Fractals I agree, I hate the character bound progression..
World completion isn't something you would get on every alt anyway, so don't really care about that.
For the runes, just use the transmutation trick for starter gear. Which is: apply rune to white/blue item, and then transfer it + transmutate it.

[AKGeo]

Little Bird, on 11 January 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

The benefit for me will be not having to retrait or re-armor a character if I want to use a completely different build.

You need to spend that money to re-armor anyway...why not just get an alt set for the same character? 3s50c for re-traiting is nothing...you're not going to be doing it every day.

But, everyone has the right to play how they want. I don't have to understand their reasoning. If they have 5 character slots and don't want to play anything but heavy classes, so be it.

[Sword Hammer Axe]

With how the game is it'd be just a waste imo. But I guess you could get something out of it. Alternately, you can save that slot as a "guest" slot for when/if you have someone over who want to really try the game, thus giving them a chance to make a character from scratch

[LlyranKeen]

I have two rangers. One is all bows and the other is everything but. But, really, the only reason for having two is for role playing.

[draxynnic]

Lucas Ashrock, on 13 January 2013 - 10:43 AM, said:

Frankly, i prefer create my own guild + guild stash, upgraded till max stash. If you have deluxe edition bonus items a max stash is way cheaper than buy gem-slots (and upgrade 20 slot bags for your mule), am i wrong? You can just stay alone with your loner guild forever, enjoying loads of guild bank slots

If all you care about is the storage, you haven't already maxed it, and you don't have reason to hit the guild membership cap in other ways, sure. I haven't looked at the cost of buying influence (I've been making guild upgrades directly from influence gained naturally) but the initial stash is definitely fairly quick and easy to get, and even going to max probably comes out cheaper with the current gem price.

Once you've got max stash, though, a new slot with non-max bags is the next cheapest option (20-slot bags are exhorbitantly expensive for the extra benefit they grant over 15- or 18-slotters). It has to be said, too, that if you're ever looking at the possibility of switching servers, a new slot will come with you while your guild upgrades don't.

[Lady Rhonwyn]

I mostly have multiple of the same profession because there are 5 races.  I want one of each armour level for each race, so, that's 15 characters (still need to fill 3, heavy charr, light human and heavy asuran).  And I don't like some professions.

[Mordachai1977]

My current charactercount is 18, 12 of which are lvl 80 right now.

I began "creating" my characters and finding names for them way before GW2 came out, though my initial planning has changed somewhat.

I have more or less one of each armorclass per race, though i do not have a light armor charr (yet).. I also have 5 humans and 4 norn instead of 3. The times when i have two of the same armorclasses for one race are when i want both male and female versions.

Due to the fact that i find some professions way more fun then others, along with my own personal notion of which class suits what race best.. i ended up with 4 warriors, 4 rangers, 3 guardians, 2 thieves, 2 mesmers, 1 necro, 1 ele and 1 engineer.

I must clarify that for me its all about the story and the paths i take. WvW and dungeons are things that i do participate in, though on a somewhat lesser scale. Levelling characters and finishing their storylines is what i find fun, the same was true in GW1 where, at my peak,  i had 32 characters with all campaigns finished spread over three accounts.. but i deleted quite a few finished characters before that.. and when GW2 was announced i rerolled all my "main" characters onto one account to reserve their names (and i ended up only using one, which was a bit amusing)

[Lady Rhonwyn]

Mordachai1977, on 14 January 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

I have more or less one of each armorclass per race, though i do not have a light armor charr (yet).. I also have 5 humans and 4 norn instead of 3. The times when i have two of the same armorclasses for one race are when i want both male and female versions.

I have 3 sylvari, and only two armour classes.  I have a female thief and a male ranger.  Eventually, I think I'll end up with 30 characters, one for each armour class per race per gender...