Guild Wars 2

1. do you circle strafe during fights?

2. do you play with a programmable gaming mouse?

A ‘no’ to both and I’ll also say that most encounters are pretty easy.

There are some good encounters in the game for high level PvE (Grawl Shaman at high level Fractals), but the majority of it can be done very easily.

1. Yes. Why wouldn’t I?

2. Yes. Why wouldn’t I?

PvE is fine.

1: Yes, it’s a pretty good thing to learn to do…

2: Well it has two thumb buttons, but that’s it. I have push to talk on the 2nd one and my heal on the first one. Logitech g9x

1. Yes. Sometimes anyway.
2. No.

I don’t say PvE is easy. I say it is not too hard.

Meta PvE (excluding fractals and some Arah bosses):-

- banish target against a surface
- use wall of reflection
- everyone stack
- keep stability and protection up
- dodge red circles
- rinse and repeat

It’s ridiculous how most mechanics can be ignored. People keep shouting nerf when all that needs to happen is decrease the health of bosses and increase the damage done by getting the mechanics wrong.

Current design philosophy seems to be lots of health = difficulty.

When was the last time you said to yourself while in PvE “wow, that guy is an awesome player”? If the answer is “never”, then PvE is probably too easy.

Yes.
Yes. (3 Buttons for F1, F2 and F3)

darkace.8925:

When was the last time you said to yourself while in PvE “wow, that guy is an awesome player”? If the answer is “never”, then PvE is probably too easy.

I say that every time I watch my character kick some booty

Oh, and to answer the OP…

Yes & Kinda of

1. Depends
2. Yes, only two buttons though.

Open world PvE for me almost doesn’t even consist of strafing anymore. Just timing my interrupts, immunities, and deciding what I can and can’t soak up. On my elementalist alt, there’s barely even a reason to dodge anything that -isn’t- at least champion level. Even then, I only really have to dodge the OHKO nukes.

On my mesmer however, I strafe and dodge pretty much everything.

Special shout out for the guild bounty bosses – Some of them are really neat. I don’t know how to fight them yet, so they’ll probably get easier in time, but for now they’re a real blast.

Yes and Yes.

Ease and tactics of pve depend on your profession and play style as well.

It’s way easier once you are 80 with appropriate gear and weapons.

1. No. I hate circlestrafing of any sort in any game, but mostly hate it in PvP not PvE.
And in GW2 it’s much less effective than in other games because in PvE you can only avoid slow, narrow-radius melee attacks that way, and in PvP it’s totally useless due to auto-facing.

2. Yes.
I feel bad for those people that need to hit 800 buttons with just their left hands, and their right hand has to do little to nothing.
It’s inefficient to play like that because you overload your left hand and don’t use the potential of your right one.
I load both hands equally so that the chance for mistake is low/non-existant and my reaction times and effectiveness are maximized.

I also wonder why in hell are mob not dodging.
I’ve only seen bandits dodge, and not all of them.

1. Not really circle-strafing, but I’m constantly mobile. Even on my warrior, I’m moving around, dodging, pulling back and switching to a ranged weapon when I need to recover then rushing back into melee when I’m ready to unload again. That’s how the combat system works — you can’t just trade blows with your opponent like Rock’em Sock’em Robots until someone’s head pops off.

2. I play with a 5-button mouse. Side buttons are programmed simply to Control and Shift; middle-button is programmed to “F” (Use/Activate). I don’t think that gives me any kind of advantage — it’s just more ergonomic for me. I also use custom keybindings to remap all my skill keys to more convenient locations, using Shift and Control as modifiers so every key has three functions. I do not click directly on the skill buttons. I think using keybinds DOES give me a very distinct advantage in terms of reaction time over clicking my mouse pointer on the skill buttons.

I find open world PvE fairly easy because I have a firm grasp of what I can and cannot handle, have no issues with retreating from a losing fight, and can avoid most fights that I don’t want to engage in. I’m not going to charge headlong into a pack of 50 centaurs just to make it “challenging”.

In dungeons, I find the greatest challenge often comes from other party members who are either disorganized, won’t communicate and/or are hellbent on a very specific strategy and can’t adapt. If you play with a well-organized team, the dungeons go very smoothly. If you play with a bunch of skritt-brained yokels, you’re doomed. Also, the dungeons don’t seem to be as much about observing what’s happening and reacting in real-time (playing skillfully), as they are about knowing what’s going to happen and being prepared for it. Granted, you still have to know what you’re doing. But when someone tells you before you enter a dungeon “Be sure to bring these skills and traits… we’re going to get ambushed when we go into this room, so everyone hang back and let the thief trigger the fight then stealth out… and when the boss does [THIS] then you do [THAT]”… it may not be “easy”, but it’s certainly not a challenge.

1. Yes, whenever it is useful
2. Yes, but all I do is to bind CTRL to the thumb button so I can use CTRL+ 1-5 for heal, utility and elite skills