Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’ve toyed with a number of builds and professions, and though I enjoy them all, the game is very-much designed for young folk with fast reflexes. I just tried CoF last night with a PUG and died 10000000 times. It was fun, but I could’ve helped my group more, I think, should I have had a good, easier, ranged build (I ran it as an 80 D/F Necro).

Any suggestions? It seems all Elementalist builds require a boatload of weapon swapping and dodging, which I just don’t think I can manage much of. And Engineers, though, fun, also appear a bit too…complex for this old man.

Thanks for the advice.
Oy.

Ranger seems a logical choice, There’s not as many buttons to hit and long bow is reasonably effective. You can assisst with spotter and frost spirit. You’re right in that to play many of the engineer builds you’ve got to have some serious ADD.

or you could face roll a guardian build and take the traits that do things like remove the groups conditions with shouts. That’s what I have my GF run and she’s always the last one standing.

Oy, I’m no expert but I am an older (50+) player. I have been levelling a Ranger lately and have had success with the Longbow/Greatsword setup. Granted, I’m not at 80 yet, so there is that.

Regarding Engineer play (it’s my main), I run Rifle/Grenades with a Berserker setup. While pressing “1” with the grenades gets a bit tiresome, it’s a relatively easy build for me to play. Other than grenades I also use the healing, elixir gun (mostly for condition clearing) and Supply Crate. Is it an optimum build/setup? Probably not. But it works for me.

Good luck!

I have old-woman reflexes myself, and I seem to do pretty well with Mesmer Greatsword (I swap to other things for close-in work, eg one of my mesmers also has sword/sword). My Guardian is also available for a lot of group support but very low dps, so I don’t PuG with her.

I agree that Ele and Engie are overly demanding on the keyboard use, but I do love me some Mesmer action and I make full use of the F1-F4 options. Maybe it would suit you too.

Play a Ranger with Longbow/Shortbow. It seems to me you want something fun to use that helps a group that allows you to stand back away from harm. LB Ranger is for you!

Go with 6/4/0/4/0 for your traits. 1,8,13. 4,10. 3,6. You will get dmg+that much needed survival for being old! Wear Berzerker’s armor with Trooper Runes! Use Berzerker’s jewelry. You can also switch a trait so that you have farther range if you like. Just stand back and shoot stuff! If you find you are getting stiff because you are old and standing in one place to long, switch to shortbow and get up in the action for a bit with the whippersnappers! Don’t do it for too long though. You may pop a disc in your back and no one wants that!

Enjoy!

ranger profession offers a lot of great ranged pew pew builds, but the most “easy laid back” ranged build /class that comes to my mind would be a guardian.

Guardian staff- scepter/focus/torch would be the most easy ranged class.

You can hit a lot of mobs and tag monsters to get loot, as well as party wide buffs and heals.

Tho it might not be the most viable and some groups would question you siting on your staff all the time in dungeons… since it doesnt do much dmg

Power Ranger, Staff/scepter cond necro, Mesmer GS (based off previous comment, I don’t have experience there), Range War, and possible more will open up with the mastery system.

Anything range will give you a nice reaction/buffer time.

Well, I dunno…I’m 51 years old and my main character is my engineer, I’ve never had any problems playing her. Of course, that may in large part be because I use my flamethrower kit the majority of the time and all you have to do with that one is, most of the time, hammer 1 to barbecue your opposition. I also do well with Mesmer greatsword.

I’m also going to say Longbow ranger. It along with the Sword is the current meta for ranger but just a pew-pew longbow ranger with maybe a Greatsword for backup would be best for you. All you have to know is avoid using the skill 4 knockback unless you actually need to knock something back.

Greatsword has an auto-attack that evades and it’s abilities are easy enough to use.

If you don’t want to reroll, Condi-nerco if probably your best bet otherwise but I don’t know much about it.

I’m also going to advise against Guardian Staff. Most of the other builds are fairly powerful and a few even the speedrunners use variations of but people will not like it when your run a Guardian Staff outside of loot stick farming mobs in the open world.

Don’t be so rough on yourself.

When I first started playing I would pop some of the tankiest gear and still end up dead on the ground with my fellow comrades over and over. Several jumping puzzles would take me almost an hour to finish.

While yes, I’m in my mid twenties, the point still stands. You get better at the game the more you play it.

I would advise against ranger for dungeons as a starter class as you really need to focus on swapping your pet, and that’s a potential distraction. Warrior and Guardian are the easiest classes, and melee is generally easier than range in dungeon groups these days. It seems ironic, but ranged players cause chaos. If you get downed while in melee, there will be 4 people nearby to rez you up.

If this is for pug dungeons I simply cannot recommend longbow or shortbow ranger for pugs. It’s probably one of the most despised combinations for players to see who pug. Dungeon pug meta is stacking…ranged with pet no less will not really be amicable to that meta.

Have you thought about a PS war?

If your end goal is to complete some of the hard content like dungeons I also would recommend against LB/SB Ranger. It sounds to me like your main challenge is knowing when to use active defenses (blocks/evades/etc). Your reflexes might not be as good as some others so you may never be soloing dungeons, but I think you should focus on learning the encounters. To do this I think PS Warrior is a great suggestion and I would throw Guardian in there too. PS gives you a role to play in the group while warrior is very forgiving even in full zerk gear and Guardian, though a bit more active during a fight, has plenty of things you can do to keep up blocks and blinds adding in condition cleanses even without requiring perfect timing. I think you will regret trying to go mostly ranged because it is really hard to share buffs and rez people when downed, not to mention that certain bosses will do different attacks when people are ranging and that can impact how your group deals with an encounter. Many groups won’t want someone in there ranging everything because even though your character may live a bit longer the overall group may have a harder time.

I’m going to agree with Ranger with one or two bows, but let’s talk pets for a minute.

If you’re doing a dungeon run, they may not want your pet running around. So, you have to put it on passive to keep it from causing problems. That doesn’t mean it’s useless, though.

There are a few pets where the F2 skill causes it to do an AoE buff. Fern Hounds give Regen, Jungle Stalkers give 5 stacks of Might, and Brown Bears have a cleanse.

If you’re going into a dungeon, I’d strongly suggest having these three pets to choose from. None of them are very hard to get, thankfully.

For dungeons I would recommend warrior. Decent dps and survivability, and exceedingly simple to play. Your main role is to stack might and whack things. Phalanx Strength warrior has a fair bit of vitality from traits, so you can go full Berserker on gear if you want.

Ranger offers the best ranged dps with the LB and 6 points spent in the Marksmanship trait line, but pet management in can be a hassle. However as Palador mentioned pets can be very useful. Greatsword or Sword and Axe/Warhorn are a good alternate weapon for the fights that PUG groups usually insist on stacking for.

I have to concur that the Warrior is probably the best profession for a more button-mashing-free dungeon experience.

At my age, I’m not all that keyboard, mouse agile either. However, I use a Razer Nostromo game pad to compensate. I have a Thief (S/D), Elem (D/D), Ranger (GS/SB), Engine (P/P) and a Warrior (GS-Ax/Ax) and the Warrior is by far the easiest to play in dungeons and pve. Ironically, my warrior is also the most difficult to play in PvP as I’m always trying to chase people down. XD

Oyjord.2508:

Hi all,

I’ve toyed with a number of builds and professions, and though I enjoy them all, the game is very-much designed for young folk with fast reflexes. I just tried CoF last night with a PUG and died 10000000 times. It was fun, but I could’ve helped my group more, I think, should I have had a good, easier, ranged build (I ran it as an 80 D/F Necro).

Any suggestions? It seems all Elementalist builds require a boatload of weapon swapping and dodging, which I just don’t think I can manage much of. And Engineers, though, fun, also appear a bit too…complex for this old man.

Thanks for the advice.
Oy.

Granny here, and I love playing my Hammer/Greatsword guardian. The guardian has good survivabilty with heavy armor, protection, aegis… Plus I kill things pretty quickly. It’s good for me and my old people reflexes.

Rangers with Longbow/Greatswords work pretty well in a group. Let your pet take the aggro first then shoot it from a distance.

I have a pyrotank build on my engi and it doesn’t seem to need much in the way of twitch reflexes. I use a flamethrower and PTV gear and 0/6/4/4/0 traits. I can take quite a few hits and my damage isn’t small. It’s not a maxed out damage build by far but it’s fun to play.

For a while I had a hammer warrior that used zerk/assassin gear and signets. I think I maintained an average 75% crit chance on that build. A bit of a glass cannon but he could really smack things around.

I also saw a tanky shout warrior build a while ago that used shouts and sentinel gear. Couldn’t hit worth kitten but it had around 30,000 hp and the highest toughness I’ve seen ever.

Condi necros with a focus on life stealing can be very hard to kill. I think they use dagger/focus and staff with wells.

Hey Oyjord,

old lady gamer here, not only that but I also have an arthritic wrist and use a bizarre combination of arrows/mouse for movement and am a partial clicker!

I play Ele and Engineer pretty much exclusively ( they are a lot of fun) and I think its doable for you too – they don’t have to be played as frenetically as you think so long as you par down your choice of kits/weapons and possibly avoid Dungeons ( or lower peoples expectations of you).

For Engineer stick with rifle and have grenades and elixir as your kits – think of grenade as a situational tool for cc rather than your go to weapon as it will wear your wrist out, use elixir and rely on your rifle skill that punts you out of melee combat.

For Ele just learn 1 weapon well for now – staff, yes it will handicap your abilities as an Ele but there are so many it can get overwhelming and again wear your wrist out! staff can cope with most things the game will throw at you I feel….

If not the consensus appears to be a Guardian, I would avoid Ranger and Necro as the AI on pets is dire and is just another thing to control.

Good Luck

Most skills on eles are situational, you don’t really have to switch attunements that frequently (specially for staff builds). S/D on the other hand can really hurt your brains depending on dungeon group and challenge. While I’m using staff I usually sit on fire attunement for almost all the fight, and switch if I need to slow down enemies, or knock ’em back, etc.

Warrior used to be my go-to class for taking on content, learning it, and then playing it with other classes since it is pretty easy to use.

These days however, Ranger is my go-to class for this. Greatsword/Longbow Ranger, especially when traited for Piercing Shot, is so darned powerful, it walks over most content. Utility skills give permanent speed boost, and with the right traits you can deal 20+ vuln on any enemy you attack. It just melts most enemies.

Vukorep.3081:

ranger profession offers a lot of great ranged pew pew builds, but the most “easy laid back” ranged build /class that comes to my mind would be a guardian.

Guardian staff- scepter/focus/torch would be the most easy ranged class.

You can hit a lot of mobs and tag monsters to get loot, as well as party wide buffs and heals.

Tho it might not be the most viable and some groups would question you siting on your staff all the time in dungeons… since it doesnt do much dmg

It depends on the content – a lot.

Yes, it’s easy to use the lootstick (staff) to tag mobs and if you are full zerker, you can do 2000-3000 damage per hit X 5 mobs which isn’t terrible but it’s not ideal.

However, in pvp and fractals, it can be a very demanding role and a good Guardian knows when to pop a blind or an aegis, etc.

I’m not that far from 50 but I grew up playing video games and I think the twitch requirements of GW2 are pretty moderate. What does get me is playing classes I’m not familiar with and getting the skills confused or not remembering which is which, etc.

I think that is more about familiarity and just the muscle memory you build when you main one class for a while. The one exception might be Elementalist – it can get pretty demanding, especially the D/D builds.

Am 60+ years old without the lightning fast reflexes that a lot of younger and more skilled players have. Like others posting above, I run a ranger build using longbow and greatsword…with generally good results (considering I run mostly with guild mates and friends). I have also done pretty well in dungeons with my guardian using greatsword, scepter/focus, and staff depending on the situation.

What I find helps most, though, is when the group is flexible, understanding, and not tied to the speed run approach.

Rangers running bows tend to be problematic. Even a liability at times for bosses that have player-targeted instant death skills.

Guardians and mesmers don’t require much by the way of reflexes to use well, and more along the lines of knowing what skill to use on which boss, when. It’s kind of an intellectual difficulty, rather than a twitch reflex one. Warriors in PvE don’t really require much skill to do survivably well in, but at the same time don’t really offer much by the way of progress either.

Stay away from thieves, elementalists and engineers as they require very fast reflexes and pretty good coordination to master. Grenadier engineers in particular cause RMI even for younger players, and sadly aren’t even as effective in most dungeons as bomb engineers, which autoattack works on. The most effective builds involve swapping between 3 kits + 1 weapon to avoid cooldowns, however, which make them really, really difficult to play.

Guardian ranged options aren’t really very good though, so while I’d still advocate going melee mode for dungeons, a mesmer has good damage at both longer and shorter ranges at the cost of having to know when to use what illusion, when to shatter them, and which shatter effect to use. Would recommend Greatsword/Sword-Sword for now, since both S2 and S4 give you a temp save if you’re low on evades in melee. Keep an Illusionary Defender out to soak up 50% of all the damage you’d receive as well.

Staff mesmers are also good for soloing champions out in the world. Its damage isn’t very good, but using your chaos fields properly with the clone spam you’re allowed with it makes it very effective against AI, so you shouldn’t die very often. I learnt all the evade frames and animations from soloing pretty much every single champion in the game (except the Krait Witches) back before megaservers hit on a staff mesmer, and while I use entirely different builds now, it’s kind of the experience from that time that allows me to do what I do now. It’s not very easy to learn any animation form if you’re dead after the first attack, after all.

Lol I love the amount of nub bearbow play being encouraged here. Rangers while fine in open world are a very bad choice. To play them effectively, which is something I hope you are looking for, Rangers are very tough and require you to swap weapons all the time, more so then ele.

Even though you’ve dismissed elementalists I suggest you give them another look. With staff they have the highest damage in game (which is ranged btw) on anything more than two targets and they provide a ton of group utility with staff alone like earth wall that prevents foes crossing it, lightning field to trap enemies, great heals and water fields and a constant fire field with lava font with which you can just give someone a lightning hammer in dungeons and let them give might to everyone.

As far as your reflexes are concerned, unless you have been debilitatingly injured I wouldn’t worry about being a few milliseconds slower then your younger peers.

OP here. Thanks a TON to you all for the great suggestions. I have a lot to consider now (which is great fun).

I think I’ll try out a GS Mesmer and PS Warrior first, based solely upon all of your suggestions. Then maybe a LB Ranger and Staff Guardian. Finally maybe I’ll try a Staff Ele if I’m feeling brave.

Now to look up some builds for all of the above….

Thanks again! Most helpful thread evar!

Oy.

Vert.5041:

Lol I love the amount of nub bearbow play being encouraged here. Rangers while fine in open world are a very bad choice. To play them effectively, which is something I hope you are looking for, Rangers are very tough and require you to swap weapons all the time, more so then ele.

Even though you’ve dismissed elementalists I suggest you give them another look. With staff they have the highest damage in game (which is ranged btw) on anything more than two targets and they provide a ton of group utility with staff alone like earth wall that prevents foes crossing it, lightning field to trap enemies, great heals and water fields and a constant fire field with lava font with which you can just give someone a lightning hammer in dungeons and let them give might to everyone.

As far as your reflexes are concerned, unless you have been debilitatingly injured I wouldn’t worry about being a few milliseconds slower then your younger peers.

I am missing fingers on my right hand and I can dodge better then the majority of the population! I agree with everything you say by the way, ranger is absolutely harder than ele considering all the timing and effort that goes into playing a ranger. Although I don’t ever support bear bows, I can see why it’s such a viable option for casual players to play. If strictly open world or wvw I don’t see any issue going full pvt bear-bow…

Oyjord.2508:

OP here. Thanks a TON to you all for the great suggestions. I have a lot to consider now (which is great fun).

I think I’ll try out a GS Mesmer and PS Warrior first, based solely upon all of your suggestions. Then maybe a LB Ranger and Staff Guardian. Finally maybe I’ll try a Staff Ele if I’m feeling brave.

Now to look up some builds for all of the above….

Thanks again! Most helpful thread evar!

Oy.

If you do go mesmer, don’t be afraid to stand up in there with sword. By that I mean at least give it a shot, you have “Blurred Frenzy” on a very quick 12s(9.5 traited) reuse, that’s a 1.5s evade, really powerful.

I would suggest mesmer though, as it’s strength often lies in the planning vs simply the reaction. Knowing what to bring and where/how to apply it is much of what a mesmer does. I’m not old but I have slow reflexes and I find mesmer to be a very reasonable play style for me… though I’ve gone to have fun with Engi/Ele, it’s a lot of finger movement but it becomes muscle memory eventually.

Jerus.4350:

If you do go mesmer, don’t be afraid to stand up in there with sword. By that I mean at least give it a shot, you have “Blurred Frenzy” on a very quick 12s(9.5 traited) reuse, that’s a 1.5s evade, really powerful.

Sounds interesting, will check it out, thanks!

Old lady reflexes here. I love mesmers – have 3 level 80s (only have 1 of each of the others). My current favorite weapons are Greatsword and sword/focus although I had fun before with a staff shatter build. Edit: yes definitely try out using a sword main hand. Love ranged with the GS but even more using sword for melee.

What has helped me was remapping the keys. I find the F keys (used for shatters on mesmers) very inconvenient on my keyboard. So moved them to x, c, v and b. Moved swap to z (since tlde is configured for speak on my Teamspeak 3 and ventrillo). Moved dodge from v to g but use double-tap w, a, s and d for dodging. Dodging is very important for my mesmers since I have them traited to create a clone on dodge.

Edit2: Also I use w, a, s and d with the right mouse button for movement, although I’m not sure if that’s optimal or not. Just what I got used to and can’t change now.

joe.7684:

Well, I dunno…I’m 51 years old and my main character is my engineer, I’ve never had any problems playing her. Of course, that may in large part be because I use my flamethrower kit the majority of the time and all you have to do with that one is, most of the time, hammer 1 to barbecue your opposition.

Hmm, I might have to look into this. Thanks for the advice.

I’d recommend a scepter/focus (or torch) and staff guardian. Very forgiving, moderately decent DPS (enough for pugging) and has very high support and bunker capabilities..

I just want to make a quick note about a lot of the obvious non-meta recommendations. If one is intending to pug dungeons, using the fore mentioned will vastly increase odds of other players acting rude towards you and/or kicking you from pugs.

I’m not trying to be mean just pointing out the reality of what might happen.

I just want to say, don’t let your slow reflexes make you feel forced to stay in more comfortable/easy builds. Learn your tools for whatever profession and learn the fights and you will find that your understanding will allow you to greatly increase your effectiveness. For example if you sat in scepter guard you’re going to be doing pretty horrible damage in many cases. You could greatly increase that by going with GS/Sword against many enemies that are blindable and still be nearly untouchable. Watch that condition bar and keep a blind going, you have Virtue of Justice, Sword2, Focus4, and GS3, rotating those will keep a blind up pretty much constantly.

You can play smarter, not harder No reason to hamstring yourself into the more comfortable but less effective builds when you have the option to play intelligently and just destroy things.

I have pretty slow reflexes for a gamer, and even I was able to solo lupi, the one really tough tell is the kick, so I just ranged the first phase till the kicking was over, then moved into melee and ran my rotation using my skills and got him down without much trouble. And, at this point I can even handle the kick because I’ve gotten so use to him that I can anticipate it coming. He’s no longer a reactionary fight but a resource management fight for me now that I fully understand him. I say this just as an example of how intelligent play can get you through things even if your reaction times are slow.