Owena Gaia, sylvari engineer

I don’t play my engineer enough. She is truly awesome . . . now. Whether she will stay that way is up to the whims of ANet’s planners and programmers. Before EoD she was okay but not stellar. Now that she’s running a mech build using a mace and pistol in full Svaard/Marauder, she’s awesome. Do you pick names for your characters that gives their existence meaning? “Owena” means “yew” according to 20000names.com. How perfect is that for a sylvari?

Even back when her build wasn’t awesome she wasn’t ignored. I have a policy of using my entire string of characters,  playing a different one each day. When I get to the end of the rank of characters I go back to the start. EVERYbody get played, nobody is unused, nobody sits because their build marinally sucks. There’s no such thing as a “main” in my stable of guys and gals. Whoever I’m playing that day is my favorite/main. With only eight characters, playing them all in rotation is not a hard chore. Plus I love all my characters. Those that I didn’t love got deleted. I had a mes sylvari I literally could not stand. HATED him. I got him to 80, played him a while and happily deleted his sorry butt, replacing him with an asura I like a lot.

I’ve only missed one of the now deleted band because I was new, stupid and played her (an ele) as a glass cannon. By the time I got done killing Balthazar she was totally divoid of clothing, battling away in her underwear. By the end of PoF I hated her because I couldn’t keep her alive. New players should NEVER be encouraged to play glass cannon. New players should be advised to start characters that are easier to keep alive. Trust me on this, it’s for the best. Rangers. Let all new players play rangers. With twin axes and a short bow. Yeah, that’ll work.

What my glass cannon ele experience taught me is I do really poor DPS when I’m downed or dead. I can afford to do a little less than spectacular DPS and stay alive because I come out with better DPS at the end of the fight for not having lost DPS opportunity while trying to revive myself/laying there lifeless/teleporting out to run back. This is just common sense.

I’ve got some characters I temporarily don’t like very much. It’s not so much the characters themselves as it is what ANet has done to the build in their latest patch. I’m not much enchanted with my mes right now. Of all the mes’s I’ve built and deleted (not really fond of the class in general), I’ve had him the longest and will probably keep him long term. It doesn’t hurt that he’s really cute (Gorrik minus glasses and the total cluelessness). He stays alive okay but doesn’t do enough damage to make me happy. I’m a “slam-bam, die right now” kinda girl and when the build gets messed and I don’t get my kill fill, I’m just not that happy. I’ll continue to fiddle with his build as he comes up for play until I have something I can live with.

Unlike the ele I started with, I love my current asura ele running a weaver build. She kills most things open world with three or four blows and handles mobs relatively easily. She’s in full Pahua/Trailblazer running a scepter and dagger so she’s not a glass cannon. She can toe-to-toe most stuff but could stand to have a little more alacrity. As a result, that lack may push me to a catalyst built . . . eventually . . . maybe.

So, who do you play and why do you love them?