Guild Wars 2

I don’t usually post on forums, but the ones for Guild Wars 2 seem to be very helpful, so I thought I would make a topic for my specific needs.

I’ve had the game since it came out, but haven’t played a lot at all (on and off every few months.) I avoided playing when the game came out because of the chaos of having 20+ players in an area. (Now that seems like a bad idea because of the difficulties I’m having.)

I’ve come from games like WoW and EverQuest 2, and when GW2 came out I really wanted to like it, but recently I’ve hit a wall. I can’t seem to get anything past level 10-20 (even hitting 10 is a battle because the difficulty seems to ramp up at 5.)

I have issues with my hands that prevent me from using more than 2 fingers on my left hand. Usually it is only my index finger that stays on the keyboard, while I use my right hand for the mouse (I have a Naga mouse and can hit the 1-5 buttons on its numpad, but hardly anything past that.) So I wind up mouse turning, using my right thumb for 1-5, dodging with my left index finger, and just clicking my utilities and f1-f4. You can see how problematic this can be for something like an elementalist—apparently they’re supposed to stance dance.

I’m not sure if it’s my class choices that are making this game so frustrating for me, or something else. I understand how the game thrives on having people cluster together and help each other out—and most of the time people are too busy killing mobs to talk, which is good—but I’d really like to be able to play by myself if no one’s around. I don’t have a group of friends to play with and I’m not used to group play in itself.

Since playing a warrior I have learned how to recognize when to dodge (although I still do die a lot, even if I avoid those attacks.) Although I enjoyed all classes in the other games I played, my preferred play style was survival focused, burst damage, and, if possible, self-healing/health stealing. I also liked pet classes.

Here’s my impressions of each class, even if I was only able to play them for a bit.

Warrior: Not bad, but as far as mains go I’d prefer something else. Can dodge, still do die a lot. I like the great sword.

Guardian: Could be better than warrior, although I’m not big on support. Haven’t played this much and hear that the healing’s not enough to stop me dying.

Engineer: Weapon kits confuse me (am I supposed to use those or my actual weapon skills?) Seems like it’s kind of hard to level, probably not a good choice for my main—but correct me if I’m wrong. Eng. is my second most played class going by levels.

Ranger: Could be very good for me due to the pet and when I played one, it was easy for me to stay away from mobs generally. I like the idea of having the pet tank.

Thief: I haven’t played this at all, except for the start sequence, where they did a LOT of damage. My sole friend who used to play had a thief as his main, and constantly died at mid-high levels, almost being one-shot. Because the class seems to have a lot of mobility/positioning requirements, he advised me not to roll one.

Elementalist: Above friend rolled this recently and likes it much more. I liked it until level 7, where I began to die chronically. Stance dancing is going to make it unplayable (unless I remap the keys to say, ZXCV, which is still going to be very hard.) I can survive with the conjured fire axe, but it doesn’t last forever.

Mesmer: The class mechanics confuse me, and I doubt the clones could act as tanks (although they might work as deterrents, like the necro below.) I doubt it’s as hard as I think it is, but I’m unsure on it.

Necro: This is what I originally wanted to roll as my main. When I had one, I did not fully understand how to play, so it might be easier for me now. It seems to have everything: interesting from a lore perspective, pets, health stealing, and death shroud. I am still not sure if it would serve me at a high level though.

Even with the above information, things like kiting and so on might still be a problem. Too much moving during combat and having to move out of fire while still DPSing was one big reason I stopped playing WoW. I’ve heard only a little about dungeons, but based on the above I’ll probably never try them. I have no interest in PVP or WvWvW

I’m sorry for the fact that this post is all over the place, but I would appreciate any information people could give about what profession would be best to start with, or any builds/traits that will help a profession fit my needs. I suppose I also could use some advice on how to level between hearts (ie, did one heart and the two over there are 2 levels higher and result in me dying fast.) I’d really like to enjoy this game.

ild recommend warrior easiest class to play and even if you just auto-attack

I’m certainly not one for advice normally as I consider myself completely rubbish and picky (but thats another point entirely!) Anyhoo, I would suggest a ranger for the reasons you yourself said, once you get used to controlling the pet (admitedly it’s only a couple of keys which you could re-map if it helps) they are very enjoyable. I have never done a dungeon so can’t comment on that (but looking around the forum, rangers seem to be shunned in that respect) but if it comes to it then gimme a shout and we can bumble our way round one together, that sounds like a lot of fun
Good luck with your choice, but give the necro a go too, heard they are quite enjoyable too, release the minions!

The problem with a lot of professions is that they’re not universally easy to level. Memsers are great at the end of the game, but harder to level at early stages. I think the ranger is probably the best bet for you.

For one thing, short bow rangers #1 skill, their auto attack, is pretty kitten good, even if you don’t use any other skills. And as you said, pets can tank for you.

Hope you find something you can play!

Warrior with axe .. has the best auto-attack as far as i know.

Seems to me like your best choice would be condition dmg tanky necro with minion horde.

Or you could build bunker. That way you will have time to click + move out of fires. Ofc you wont do as much damage as berzerkers, but you wont also die.

Necromancer have two health pools + plague makes you moving fortress (base power is doubled, base toughness quadrupled, and base vitality tripled). My lvl80 necro has a bit over 45k HP on plague, ~25k on normal form and she isn’t even yet fully PVT (power, toughness, vitality) geared.

Nemesis from necro forum has nice bunker build called The Abomination. Here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-tutorials/first
This is his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_bIqwtB-fw

The Abomination build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNAodWjMaV6haea87JAZGY/80DuHXc4D5C-jwxAoLioRyBIFaIaZvioxWOLiGryGT9SEVLEggxA-e

Two pictures, one from instance and other from wvw:

If you are mouse-moving then all you need at speed on the keyboard is 1-0 and the space bar for jumping. The 1 is almost superfluous if you have it on auto-attack. You might be able to remap the 1-0 (maybe even onto a numpad peripheral, I had one of those for an old laptop and it just plugged in USB) for easier access without so much hand movement. Now, thinking on the 8 professions from a key-mashing perspective:

Thief (dual dagger/dual pistols for me): Mostly 2 3 4, and 6 for heal, along with ~ for swap. I save 7 8 9 for when my elite is up and fire them off in sequence. Not always, sometimes I toss a utility for situational reasons, and if I’m in a dungeon or ore-running in Orr I swap in other skills that need different timing. But you’re looking for something to get you through the basics of play. Downside of Thief: very squishy. The weapon skills themselves do most of your dodging for you, but you need to use regular dodge a lot as well. I have a Naga HEX and use my right thumb for all that stuff.

Guardian: (scepter/focus and sword/shield for me) – A lot of 2 to 5 as well as ~ for weapon swap, also a lot of F1-F4 and 6 to 9, with my elite saved for when my party has a lot of people low on health. Traited and statted right the guardian is the least squishy you’ll find and doesn’t need nearly as much dodging other than getting out of red circles. Otoh my guardian dps is nearly nil so fights do take longer solo and it’s hard to get credit in zerg events.

Warrior: (Greatsword/Rifle for me, yeah, I know, but she’s mostly been for RP) – 2 to 9 get a lot of attention, as does 0 for elite and F1 for burst skill. I haven’t fooled with banners but they either need planting/collecting or get used, at which point you have a different set of 5 skills to deal with on 1-5. Not as much dodging needed but you’ll suffer in melee if you can’t dodge at the right times.

Necromancer (Staff and Dagger/Horn) – minion builds are bah-humbugged by many and I have found signets more fun. The staff is a fairly steady 2 to 5 sequence but is all ground targeted so you need to be able to put your cursor where you want the marks to land. With my skills I don’t hit 7 so much (it puts aoe damage where I’m standing, and I do try not to be next to the mobs), I use 8 and 9 a lot, and on my elite I have to move by the mobs and spam something, usually 2 to blind them so they don’t hit me while I plague them. I find myself doing a lot more standing still and casting on the necro.

(cont’d)

Mesmer (greatsword and sword/pistol) – A lot of movement, a lot of 2-5 and F1-F4 (I focus on F1 and F2, with F4 for emergencies). Also constant use of 7 to 9 because those are making my clones and phantasms, as are my weapon skills, and ~ because swapping lets me toss out even more clones and phantasms. It doesn’t feel frantic, there’s time to consider which button to use when, but you do need the whole gamut.

Engineer (lower level, he’s 51, right now on pistol/shield, with grenades and flamethrower and an elixir) – I’d find this difficult with limited key presses. I may just not be comfortable with the profession mechanics yet but he gets a lot of frantic key presses plus instead of a nice convenient ~ I have to jump my fingers over to 7 and 8 to swap out kits, and ~ to go back to pistol/shield. Plus which kits you have determine what your F1 to F4 do and you really need to use the F1 to F4 keys a lot. I haven’t tried turrets, mines/bombs seemed far too awkward to implement, and elixir gun too situational. But unless you’ve tried out a low level build that is viable for you, I’d say this profession is likely to frustrate you too much given your keyboard issues.

Ranger — I’m only level 20 and not fond of pet classes, I can’t say how this will work out for you. At least the only function key you really need in haste is F2 for the animal’s special ability, and sometimes the pet-swap key too if you lost the pet. Which btw means watching the animal’s health as well as yours and using heal even when you yourself are fine. So far it’s a lot of 2 to 5, and 6, and my utilities for emergencies.

Elementalist – Only level 30, I bogged down on her soon after launch, partly because she is so very squishy (and also due to guild issues that are irrelevant here). A lot of keys to dance with as you noted. You do need to keep going between attunements via F1 to F4, then you have the 2 to 5 in each one, and utilities mixed in. It’s more ergonomically laid out than the Engineer’s needs, but you can’t just hit 2 or 3 keys and get anywhere. I did just start another Ele as an RP shill, I only got him to 12 so he could wear the outfit needed, but I made him dagger/dagger and he felt a lot tougher than my staff elementalist. Which may be the weapons, may be the lower level, and may be me understanding the game a lot better than I did last September.

I hope that gives you some ideas, and that you do find some effective and fun profession you can manage.

You also might want to read through this post from a month or two back. A great write up on some possible hardware solutions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/One-Handed-Gaming-A-guide-and-story-of

Thanks for the input, everyone.

I have one slot free so I’ll try a ranger when I wake up from going back to sleep. Getting my necro back will mean deleting my warrior or someone else and then remaking them when I get another slot (Gems market doesn’t take Discover any more, and given money at low levels and the total coin price for 1000 gems, it will be a while)

I do have a Razer Nostromo keypad but I don’t use it very much—I can hit maybe 4-6 keys on it and I’d have to figure out how to map swap, motion and space to it as well, which almost totally negates its usefulness since that’s 6 keys by itself.

I derive most of my fun in MMOs from being an alt hoarder, but given the way that leveling is in this game, and the fact that any class can do any role, I might as well just focus on one to two characters.

I’ll take a look at that build, too.

Engineers take a lot of ‘attention’ to be good at them. You can not just auto attack and Akitten. I would not recommend this class if you are having issues with a lot of key presses and the such. This class depends on a lot of switching kits and tossing elixers to be useful and productive.

I would say the same goes for Elementalist. I hear they also require quite a bit of attention to be good with.

The warrior is, from what I hear, the easiest class to play. Doesn’t take much from the player to be an asset to a team or be productive in the game. I’m sure it still takes more to be an expert, but even beginners of this class can be very successful.

Note: my response offers that the problem may be hardware, not class selection.

Both my hands have arthritis ( likely from too many years typing and mousing. ). I have been using Logitech G13 game pad for quite some time. It makes playing much easier.

http://gaming.logitech.com/en-us/gaming-keyboards/g13-advanced-gameboard

The left-thumb joystick for turning and dodging works fine with right-hand mousing. I typically use 2 fingers to key skills on the game pad.

The G13 has a footprint large enough to fit my hand. The Razer Nostromo feels quite small.

I hope you find a workable solution. Good luck to you.

I was able to get in game several hours ago on a ranger. I’m not to the point where I have skills yet (something came up and I had to log) but even at level 4, it does feel WAY steadier than anything else I’ve tried. I enjoy both long bow and axe/axe and the pet does a good job of keeping mobs off me. Even if I do happen to pull a lot, I can hold my own, probably because I gemmed every piece of gear, even my trinkets, with +Toughness. I’m starting to realize that gems make a huge difference. I can handle 3 mobs at once that are one level higher, and I’m not sure if it will stay that way—but it is nice. When I get traits I’m probably going to go for a defensive or Beastmastery build.

It seems like the ranger is going to be a good choice for leveling and farming resources on, which I can use to help out with the other classes to a limited degree.

With respect to hardware, there’s probably not a lot I can do. I probably should have been more specific and said I have cerebral palsy, which means I’m in a wheelchair and too short for foot pedals (although they have been suggested several times). The thread does have some helpful bits, but:

—Voice commands would ordinarily be helpful, but it’s not great for movement, and the lack of reliable support in OS X would mean having to use something like Dragon, which is outside my means. Add to that the fact that I usually have Skype or some form of VOIP running…

—I tend not to be able to move my thumb down far enough to the 7-12 buttons on the naga, because my hands are small—and I have the DPI set extremely high after so many years of clicking, which causes the mouse to move when I hit those buttons.

I’d probably have the same issue with a G13 as I do with a Nostromo and even a regular keyboard: I can’t tell keys (eg, Q and R or 1 and 3) apart very well, especially since I really only use one finger on my left hand. My previous post referred to two: I can use my middle finger with the Nostromo to press down the button I lay it on, but I can’t really move it side to side fast enough. Moving it down to access the keys on the lower 2 rows is even worse (and slightly painful, because the joints in my fingers will suddenly pop and get “kinks” in them.) The thumbstick on the Nostromo is nice in theory—but it’s 8 way and at a strange angle, and I can’t move my left thumb delicately enough to differentiate between diagonals. If I turn diagonals off, the strokes won’t fire half the time. If I map them twice, the keys stutter.

It’s hard to describe my hands—I have all five fingers on both, but they always tend to curl up, and I cannot move or raise anything but my index fingers independently (they will all move). It is too bad that this game does not natively support gamepads, as I’d just plug in my PS3 controller to my Mac and use that. Analog movement, which would REALLY help me dodge, seems to be missing from most games. Using a controller would resolve the issue with differentiating keys, even if I had to use the triggers as a modifier.

I would NOT recommend a Mesmer. After clocking in hundreds and hundreds of hours on a Mesmer, it is really, really, really, really NOT friendly if you aren’t fast/reactive.

Hopefully Combat Mode 2.0 will come out and be endorsed so you could use it to help, try looking for Combat Mode 1.1, it won’t change a lot, but it may help you and you might enjoy yourself a bit more.

I would recommend the ranger. The guardian used to be my favorite before tinkering with the ranger. If you invest trait points in your pet, it will tank or damage (depending on pet type) extremely well. Controlling is easy as clicking attack (or pressing F1), using special abilities (most are situational) at F2, and return/swap. While the pet does the dirty work, you can hang back and shoot with a Shortbow/Longbow paired with a greatsword as it is the most forgiving of ranger melee weapons.
The pets have been buffed, and although their damage is said to be coming down I believe they’ll still be viable when traited. Their AI, although still a bit idiotic at times, is a VAST improvement over what it was.
Bunker is great in the (ugh) “meta,” and may suit you well with its heals. Even as a bunker the pet will provide great amounts of damage when traited.
Good Luck! GW2 is glad to have you!

Hello Kaynarael!

I am slow on clicking so somehow understand your issues.

I would advise you to use tanky ranger (toughness, healing power are the best stats for this on a ranger) with two bows if you are comfortable to switch weapons. As pets I would recommend bears who are hard to kill and can be used as “tanks”. For utilities you can use traps for increased cc.

Using longbow and shortbow gives you 3 skills for crowd control and you will usually be at range. You will almost never wait for cooldowns because of switching between bows. The latter means decent dps output.

I would also recommend to reassign keys 6789 to zxcv and left alt to switch weapons.

Necro is very hard to kill at higher levels but is not easy to level early on. Its a good choice, however. You can gain a few levels by crafting.

Thief is very mouvement dependent and needs fast clicking. Thief is squishy as hell and generally is not a good class for PVE.

Ele is the most difficult to play. If you fell in love with it, play staff.

Guardian is easy to play and need neither much nor fast clicking. Weapons for pve are greatsword, staff, and scepter+torch. Traited for retaliation its very hard to kill and generally easy to play.

Two more things. I have a logitech G600 mouse. It’s basically like your naga. However, the scroll wheel can be clicked right and left. It’s very easy and gives two more assignable keys. I would recommend that mouse to you.

Finally, you can level up with crafting. You will need gold for that. I am willing and will be most happy to send you some gold/mats if you want to gain 20-30 levels with crafting. Feel free to send me a msg here and I will gladly help

Cheers,
Yassa

Don’t buy new hardware.
With the current hardwar you should be more be able to play the game.

I do believe that keybinding is more important though. The most important one would be the dodge key. My suggestion would be to make the scrollwheel the dodge key (scroll forward is dodge forward, scroll backwards is dodge backwards. This means all movement can be done with your mouse.

Also remember that your mouse can also click on the skill icon’s. I mostly use that for my f-skills in the head of battle.

Guardian, thief and warrior are very movement depended. So not the best go imo.

Ranger is very nice, but asks you to use the function keys a lot for pet management. This can be difficult for you

Mesmer is nice cause of the CC, but the way the skills work it is rather dissorientating and need actually a lot of mid battle movement (more then usual)

Ele: lots of use of F-skills

Necromancer: The use of minions means you have some good CC wich means you can be less mobile. You can use several skills that doesn’t ask you to move too much early on and you only use F1 to enter and leave deathshroud. This might be a very good option for you

Engineer: The engineer can be the least mobile profession off all. With the rifle you can keep a single enemy away from you forever. The utility skills (7, 8 and 9) can be used for turrets (press once in battle) and to activate a kit. Kit’S replaces your 1-5 skills with a totally different set. Specially the flamethrower would be a good balance for you in combination with the rifle. Rifle very good at CC but kills one enemy at a time. Flamethrower, still some nice CC, but also very great AoE and condition dealing (burnging). The F-keys are only used to blow up your turrets witch you mostly do outside of battles.

On your ranger, run bears and devourers as they are pretty good tanks.
And the armored fish underwater.

Think about a condition BM build using short bow and axe+torch (or war horn).

Perhaps use a flight controller joystick for the left hand. All your movement is there in the stick. Flight controllers typically have 4 thumb buttons on top, plus a thumb hat switch that has 8 positions (up,down, sideways and diagonally, although up down and sideways are easier to use), plus the trigger, all can be software programmed, at least the Logitiech can. If you need more buttons, program a crtl and alt on the mouse and now you have that many more sets of buttons on the joystick. (trigger, crtl trigger, alt trigger etc.) I wouldn’t bother with hotkeying the skills, use the mouse pointer on screen. It’s plenty fast enough that way.

I got to level 9-10 today! Something about the ranger also eliminated the “can’t do content 1-2 levels higher” issue. It might be the fact that I’m obsessively jewelling for toughness. (I’ve been going precision on my gear instead of Vitality so I still do some damage. My pet tends to take more damage than I do, as I still don’t have traits yet. Haven’t figured out where to get other pets such as bears.

The content seemed to fly by as opposed to lagging, and I was about level 8 before I even bothered with the personal story (something I like doing, but I typically have a hard time leveling to meet the requirements.) Right now I am using axe/axe (for some AOE) and longbow single target.

Instead of dying in about two hits, mobs only really damage me if I deliberately don’t do anything. Three or four mobs is a challenge but I can put up a good fight for several minutes (previously impossible!) and I can typically recover from being downed, instead of being downed every fight. I think this is the first time I’ve actually enjoyed the game since buying it.

Using a joystick is an interesting idea, but I haven’t even looked at one since I was about seven years old. I might look at it a few months from now, as I have a friend who takes care of my hardware needs, and after the Nostromo did not work as expected, I don’t want to ask for input hardware again for a while.

I’m glad Ranger is working! You can get a wide set of pets in the Norn starter area, a bunch in Hoelbrak itself and more at the very start section with the various animal-theme sections.

Check out http://www.guildwars2-pets.com/ and click the pet locations line at the upper left for a really good guide. It doesn’t always tell you exactly where the juvenile is but it gets you very close to start looking.

As you progress and start gaining traits, check out the Ranger forum and take a look at Faux’ RRR build. It’s centered around the rangers incredible ability to stack regen and maximize the usefulness of the pet. I think its a play style you will enjoy, and even without quick twitch access to all of your skills it can be very forgiving even in PvP because of its survivability.

As a gaming mouse, I personally use the Corsair Vengeance mouse… 9 buttons positioned around the thumb in a circle provide quick access to my 2-0 keys, and the 2 additional buttons next to the right mouse button are programmed to swap pet and trigger the pet special ability. Middle mouse button (wheel) swaps weapons, and the only thing I really have to do on the keyboard is dodge, jump, tab, target and recall pet when needed and spam F to pick up loot bags… none of which needs more than 1finger really.

Good luck in your adventures!

Whichever class you choose, if you have trouble hitting all the skill buttons, I highly recommend the Logitech G600. I don’t have a physical handicap, but since I have a lapdog who likes to accompany me on my adventures, I spend a lot of my time in GW2 playing one-handed. I can do almost anything with the buttons on the mouse, though I could do even more with it if I could retrain myself to hold the mouse differently and remap more of the buttons.

Also worth noting, the elementalist (with the possible exception of the engineer) is the most attunement-swappy of the classes. Probably the one class that would exacerbate your problems the most.

I think you’d enjoy Necromancer since you like health-stealing and you need the extra healthpool that the necromancer has. With a minion army you won’t need to click a whole lot and you only need f1 for deathshroud. So no stance dancing.

pickpocket.2071:

ild recommend warrior easiest class to play and even if you just auto-attack

Warriors need to rely on fast movement and evading in end game,something the op is unable to be doing,and you wont be going far with just aut-attacking…My best guess is that he should go with the strongest range class so he doesnt have to move around alot and can rely on kiting mobs without taking dmg.

I didnt read all the posts.. but..

I just wanted to mention that it may be more productive to set up your hardware in a way that suits you more than picking a certain class. Many of the classes use the same buttons.

One idea is that you can actually purchase hardware which is more fitting to you. The razer naga is a decent mouse, but it doesnt sound like you can take full advantage of it because of ergonomics. It may take some testing, but you could try out different mice and see if one like the G500 (my current favorite), G600, Naga Hex, etc allow you access to more usable buttons.

You can also look into getting something like a Logitech G13. I bought one after using a nostromo variant and have never regretted it. It is one of the most useful and adaptable devices I have ever bought for a computer and it brings new meaning to the word “accessibility” for those of us that have some issues. It will allow you to use just your thumb for all WASD type movement as well.

The last suggestion would be to work your keybindings in a way that suits you better. If you can only use two fingers on your left hand, that is more than enough to access 10 skills even on a regular keyboard. Ill explain;

One finger can be used to access a shift type button. The other is used to activate keys. For illustration, lets just say those keys are Q, W, A, S, Z, X (if you look at your keyboard it will make sense). Obviously, it doesnt particularly matter which key is which, just that they fit your needs. You could even keybind Shift, Alt, and Ctrl to the thumb buttons on the Naga to access even more skills. I think it would be best to try to use the mouse for movement unless you have found another setup that works better for you, like the joystick on a G13.

So, this gives you access to five skills with one finger. Then, you can use the other finger to press Shift, and it will allow you to use the same keys, but keybind them to different skills (keybind example: Shift + A, Shift + Z).

I think that using a combination of hardware and clever keybindings, you might find that you can play every class. Though, obviously, some are a bit more intensive than others (even just different builds within the same class).

In open world pve condition thief with runes and food that extend condition duration. Apply caltrops and d/d number 3 for bleeds. Be an Asuran for racial poison field. Shadow refuge then just stand there while they all bleed out. So group them up, bleed, poison, turn invisible then watch them bleed out.

I have a four button foot pedal that I find helpful but am only using two of the buttons for strafing.

Just saw you are liking the ranger. Its on my list of things to do for sure. Good luck.