Guild Wars 2

I don’t want to seem lazy, but I want a class that has a decent selections; but not so many buttons that I have to start binding ctrl 1 ctrl 2 etc.

I know I should play a few classes, but this is just about the amount of buttons Ill end up with.

I was leaning toward mesmer but its a spellcasting class probably has alot of buttons.

All classes use the same number of buttons. They all have access to 10 skills at a time, 5 weapon skills, 1 heal, 3 utilities and 1 elite skill. No need to worry about ‘too many buttons’. Though some also use F1 – F4 for special class specific things like the Guardian’s virtues or Elementalist’s element swapping.

Using signets will reduce the number of buttons you need. I think there is a viable warrior build using only signets, someone might confirm? Also warriors use only F1 and some builds don’t even use it.

Go with either warrior or guardian. You can have a working build, which doesn’t require that much key presses.

Avoid engineer at all cost if you want to avoid key presses. Playing engineer effectively requires much more key presses than any other profession.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Go with either warrior or guardian. You can have a working build, which doesn’t require that much key presses.

Avoid engineer at all cost if you want to avoid key presses. Playing engineer effectively requires much more key presses than any other profession.

I disagree on this statement.
Engineers don’t need the toolbelt skills (f1, f2, f3 and f4) to be succesfull, just like a guardian doesn’t need them. They are just a nice addition, besides that they don’t have a weapon swap button, actually giving them the same amount of buttons as the guardian.

I only sometimes use my F1 skill on my guardian to give other players a bit of healing. What your ssaying only goes for certain engineer builds wicharen’t more effective as others.

The one with the least amount of buttons is the Thief (only weapon swap, F1, 1 to 0)

Sacrai.6280:

Using signets will reduce the number of buttons you need. I think there is a viable warrior build using only signets, someone might confirm? Also warriors use only F1 and some builds don’t even use it.

This IMO, is the best for your purpose.

-F1 is the only class mechanic button (Mesmer have F1 to F4)
-Class can work very well with signets and there is indeed some signets builds.
-Good health pool and good defense (useful if you want to play with the least buttons as possible as it gives you good survival to balance the lack of those skills).

/Cheers

mercury ranique.2170:

I disagree on this statement.
Engineers don’t need the toolbelt skills (f1, f2, f3 and f4) to be succesfull, just like a guardian doesn’t need them. They are just a nice addition, besides that they don’t have a weapon swap button, actually giving them the same amount of buttons as the guardian.

I only sometimes use my F1 skill on my guardian to give other players a bit of healing. What your ssaying only goes for certain engineer builds wicharen’t more effective as others.

The one with the least amount of buttons is the Thief (only weapon swap, F1, 1 to 0)

Well, I have both a guardian and engineer (I have one character for each profession) and I strongly disagree. Guardians get passive buffs from their F1-F3 virtues, so they have leave them untouched 95% of the time, but engineer is a highly reactive profession. Ask any good engineer player and he will tell you the same.

Tell me an efficient engineer build, which doesn’t require the use of toolbelt skills.

E.g. if you are using medkit, F1 is your main heal. And every utility skill adds another toolbelt skill, many of them being highly useful and powerful e.g. toss elixir B (elixir, big ol’ bomb (from bomb kit), grenade barrage (from grenade kit), surprise shot (rifle turret). In fact I would argue that the toolbelt skill is often more powerful than any of the kit skills. The only problem is that they often have a long cooldown.

The only way for engineer to get a permanent speed boost is to use speedy kits traits, which requires to stow a kit every 5 seconds, while most professions have an easy way to get speed boost e.g. via signet. Add that to the key presses.

Besides most engineer builds require lots of swapping between the kits and main weapons (so basically you need the swap weapons button more often than any other profession). Swapping more often than the infamous 0/10/0/30/30 dual dagger elementalist does.

As others have said, avoid engineers and elementalists especially due to the heavy use of the 1-4 skills and swaps.

I’d vote guardian or warrior. I would suggest ranger, but given how they’re rather weak in comparison to the guardian/warrior, stick with one of those two :P

One important question – are you basing this on experiences in other MMOs or RPGs or have you tried GW2 already and found one or more of the professions too complicated?

Because compared to most games GW2 uses very few skills/buttons, no matter what profession you’re using. Like JustCurious said you can only have 10 skills at a time and other that than you’ve only got F1-4 and moving/dodging to worry about. So you’re never going to be jumping between huge lists of skills or having whole additional skill bars bound to ctrl.

But if you’ve tried the game already and found whatever you’re playing too complicated then I’d recommend playing a warrior. They have viable builds where all the non-weapon skills are signets which generally you can just ignore and their profession specific mechanic (F button skill) just means pushing F1 when it’s charged and you need an extra burst of damage.

My engineer belt uses elixer h as healing (medkit is useless crap imo, specially cause I have the Self-Regulating Defenses-trait active wich resets the elixer h skill when tossed, even though the description doesn’t say so)

So the F1 skill I only use to heal allies, cause I never have a big health issue.

I use a rifle to keep foes at distance during single foe fights and switch to flamethrower during most fights. and off course am traited to make conditions do more damage.
I use two turrets as dummy’s for extra damage and to get agro of me. these are riffle turret and rocket turret. Personally I never feel the need to use f2 and f3 skills that come with them.

The flametrower skill (9) gives incendiary ammo on F4 wich i never use cause when I want to burn my enemy’s I switch to my flamethrower.

Together with armor specs and traits I’m really happy with my engineer. She is quick in killing, and very durable.

Signet warrior is your best bet, only a couple of buttons to press, nothing more simple in the game really…

go try a warrior

i’m a newbie and after 5 days of hopping from class to class trying to see how they feel I ended up maining a warrior

it is pretty well rounded, a perfect class for casuals.
it doesn’t reward skilled gaming though, but it also doesn’t punish mistakes that much.

low risk low reward, but otherwise VERY well-rounded, the lack of high potential is completely overshadowed by ease of use.

I say don’t mind traits and such that much at this point in time. Just cruise through the game, too much math will take away all the fun. Everything will come together in the end.

mercury ranique.2170:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Go with either warrior or guardian. You can have a working build, which doesn’t require that much key presses.

Avoid engineer at all cost if you want to avoid key presses. Playing engineer effectively requires much more key presses than any other profession.

I disagree on this statement.
Engineers don’t need the toolbelt skills (f1, f2, f3 and f4) to be succesfull, just like a guardian doesn’t need them. They are just a nice addition, besides that they don’t have a weapon swap button, actually giving them the same amount of buttons as the guardian.

I only sometimes use my F1 skill on my guardian to give other players a bit of healing. What your ssaying only goes for certain engineer builds wicharen’t more effective as others.

The one with the least amount of buttons is the Thief (only weapon swap, F1, 1 to 0)

Engineers need toolbelt skills to be effective. Some of our utility skills are terrible and only picked because the toolbelt skill is awesome.

As for the OP. All the classes are limited to the same number of skills. Theres a few extra on certain classes but it’s only a hassle if you don’t rebind your keys to something comfortable for you. Using the default number keys is not preferred.

my list for how many buttons you will probably use (I haven’t tried all the professions):
1) Ranger
4) Guardian
6) Engineer
7) Mesmer
8) Elementalist
It does depend on your build and play style

LHound.8964:

Sacrai.6280:

Using signets will reduce the number of buttons you need. I think there is a viable warrior build using only signets, someone might confirm? Also warriors use only F1 and some builds don’t even use it.

This IMO, is the best for your purpose.

-F1 is the only class mechanic button (Mesmer have F1 to F4)
-Class can work very well with signets and there is indeed some signets builds.
-Good health pool and good defense (useful if you want to play with the least buttons as possible as it gives you good survival to balance the lack of those skills).

/Cheers

Using Berserker’s Power and Heightened Focus also gives very good reasons to avoid that F1.

Thanks for the replies. My experience is Rift and WOW. I mained a hunter in wow and it was annoying to come back to the game and have to use mods just to get full use of the class.

mercury ranique.2170:

(medkit is useless crap imo

So the F1 skill I only use to heal allies, cause I never have a big health issue.

I use a rifle to keep foes at distance during single foe fights and switch to flamethrower during most fights. and off course am traited to make conditions do more damage.
I use two turrets as dummy’s for extra damage and to get agro of me. these are riffle turret and rocket turret. Personally I never feel the need to use f2 and f3 skills that come with them.

The flametrower skill (9) gives incendiary ammo on F4 wich i never use cause when I want to burn my enemy’s I switch to my flamethrower.

Together with armor specs and traits I’m really happy with my engineer. She is quick in killing, and very durable.

Each to its own. I guess you don’t do pvp or WvWvW?

It is good that you are happy with your engineer, but I would really urge to try out some other skills. I have a totally different engineer build, which I used to solo the entire pve map content + personal story. I did the same with warrior (with warrior it was easier).

Most of the pve content of this game is easy. Some of the events and bosses on the Orr maps are truly painful to solo. I know they were not meant to solo, but I have noticed that almost all the champion bosses of this game can be soloed with almost any profession, but they you really need to push your build and character to the edge. I like a challenge, so I do crazy stuff like go to Southsun Cove and try if I can take down those big karkas alone or seek out a group event with champion boss so that no other human players are nearby and do it myself.

When I was still <60 level engineer I though medkit was crap and I was also using turrets, but oh boy I was wrong. In fact I use the medkit and it synergises very well with many things e.g. superior runes of altruism (3 stacks of might to you and nearby allies) or superior runes of Lyssa (random boon). And I use the toolbelt skills all the time as some of the best engineer skills are indeed toolbelt skills.

You should look at the engineer subforum to find some amazing engineer builds.