People talk about having mains in TF2 all the time, but I want to know - what class have you put the most hours into? What have you put the least hours into? Would you consider the class you put the most hours into your main, or at least one of them? What do you like about your most played class and what do you dislike about your least played class? (Note: you can access your playtime stats by opening your inventory from the main menu and click the "stats" tab at the top.)
My most played class is Pyro. I picked up Pyro right when I started the game, off the advice that it is quite easy to start playing Pyro and so it would be good for a noob - which is true, undeniably, but there's a lot more there if you go looking. I enjoy the support aspects of Pyro; extinguishing flames, spychecking, reflecting projectiles away from teammates, causing enemy Snipers to flinch, and the like. It is undoubtedly satisfying to hold down those two magic keys, (W+M1) and watch enemies melt, and it's equally satisfying to point-blank reflect a rocket with perfect timing to kill the Soldier who got cocky. I would consider Pyro one of my mains, alongside Medic and Spy.
My least played class is Soldier. This one comes as a surprise to a lot of people because rocket jumping is one of the first things people think about when you discuss TF2 mechanics - the truth is, when I first tried this class I lacked the mechanical skill to pull off good jumps, and by the time I had cycled through the rest of the roster I had other classes I liked to play more. There's nothing wrong with Soldier, it's just my playstyle and mentality that has it as my least played. I have at least picked up the skills to jump (I've gone through a Jump Academy course or two), and I'll pick up Soldier if we need some good midrange damage that Pyro can't provide.
I'm curious to see the pairs of most/least played that other people will have. I wonder if there's any correlation?
I also haven't played in a very long time, but I had 600 hours in the game, so I feel qualified to respond. I used to almost exclusively play control point maps btw, and I was the type of person who played the objective super hard.
My class with the most hours was soldier, and it was the most by a long shot. The next highest class was like 50% of the hours I put into soldier. I liked soldier in general because of the rocket jump mobility and the firepower you got from the rockets. My favorite loadout was the original for primary weapon, because I liked how it shot from the center of your screen, the default shotgun, and the rail spike melee weapon for the bonus to control point capture.
My class with the least hours was spy. I just didn't really like slinking around to try to take people out from behind when I could just blast them in the front with a ton of rockets instead. The only time I'd really use spy is when my team got down to the last control point, and the other team was entrenched really well in their base. Then I'd switch over to spy and do kamikaze runs of disabling their sentries.
There is a certain exhilaration to playing Spy and weaving through the enemy team while invisible - it really makes you paranoid, playing any other class, that literally any empty space could contain a Spy at any time.