Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty new to MMOs and I’m not a huge fan of the default controls for GW2. I was wondering if people could post their control schemes so I can try to find one that doesn’t have me keyboard turning and clicking on my abilities to activate them. Right now I just have a regular $20 mouse with just one button on either side of it. Any advice would be helpful! Thanks in advance:)

I use my mouse to move, with my 2 mouse buttons logged on to my f1-4 (for f3&4, it’s just alt+mouse button 1&2). I use shift for my 6 skill and my utilities are alt+1-3

I use a Logitech G600 Gaming mouse with 18 additional thumb buttons and a ring finger button.
I have set my utility skills from 6-0 on the first 5 buttons and weapon kit switch on the ring finger button, so I can use my left hand for moving and the weapon skills.
It’s pretty fast and the logitech mouse is very reliable and robust, but only for large hands.

This is mine, I have a microsoft mouse with two buttons on the sides.

WASD as usual for moving forward/backward and strafing (I turn with the mouse).
123 for the regular 123 skills
Q and E for the 4 and 5 skills (on the sides of W so I can hit them easily with W, and since I can also move forward by pressing both mouse buttons, no need to stop moving to hit them)
ZXC for the 678 skills, I can hit those with the thumb or any of the fingers I have on ASD without lifting the hand.
The two extra mouse buttons are for healing and elite skill (I mapped them to 4 and 5 as well just in case)
F1-F4 for class mechanics (I can easily reach those as well)
F for interact, V for AoE loot, I can reach both easy (F being to the right of D, plus it has a small grove on most keyboards so I can reach it by feel easily, V just by moving the finger down from F)
< (to the left of 1) for weapon swapping.

I use Razer Naga mouse so have skills 1-10 on 1 through 10 on mouse buttons, then use mouse 11 for dodge and mouse 12 for weapon swap.

WASD for normal movement, Q to withdraw and put away weapon , E for interact and loot, X to target next enemy, Z to target previous enemy and Tab to target nearest. 1-4 (above QWER) for profession skills, C for character panel and I for inventory.

With this setup I never have to remove my fingers from the WASD keys while in combat.

SOUTHPAWS UNITE! Here’s something for the lefties out there.

I play with my mouse in my left hand, and use the numeric keypad with my right hand. Using my mouse’s software, I’ve mapped the left side button to CONTROL and the right side button to SHIFT (i.e. not the primary left and right buttons, but the ones on the sides of the mouse — buttons 4 and 5). And the middle button is loot/interact.

- keypad 8, 4, 6 and 2 (up, left, right, down) for movement; 7 and 9 for strafe
- 0 = jump
- plus = target nearest, SHIFT + plus = next target, CONTROL + plus = previous target
- minus = accept called target, SHIFT + minus = call target
- enter = swap weapon
- 1, SHIFT + 1, CONTROL + 1 = skills 1, 2 and 3
- 3, SHIFT+3 = skills 4 and 5
- 5, SHIFT+5 = skills 6 (heal) and 7 (usually my condition removal / stun break)
- period, SHIFT+period, CONTROL+period = skills 8, 9 and 0
- asterisk = autorun, SHIFT+asterisk = toggle walk/run
- arrow keys (next to the keypad) = the F1 – F4 skills (warrior burst skill, ele attunement swaps, etc)

Remember, all these are on the numeric keypad, and I’ve got SHIFT and CONTROL mapped to mouse buttons 4 and 5. It seems really weird at first (especially if you’re not left handed), but if you look at how it’s laid out it’s actually very ergonomic (for us southpaws at least).

I’m also left-handed and my set-up seems to be a simplified version of Maximum Delion’s layout, which requires a bit more effort to use because I rely on reaching the number pad with my thumb to move.

I have my skills on the number keys, 1-5 as normal, but then 6 (heal) is on 0 because it’s a big button that’s easy to reach when I’m starting to panic and 7 – 0 are on keys 6 – 9. Then I have next target on the decimal, dodge on the number pads enter key and weapon swap on +, and F1 – 4 along the top. I use the arrow keys to move (strafe rather than turn left and right) and the mouse to control the camera and turn. I also have F mapped to an extra button on my mouse for easy looting.

It sounds confusing but the picture attached gives you an idea of what the number pad layout looks like. With my fingers on the pad, my thumb on the arrow keys and my left hand on the mouse I can do everything I might need to do during combat without constantly shifting my hands around.

I’ve got a whole other set-up I use when not in combat, but that’s still a work in progress and a bit of a mess so probably not worth going into now.

Speaking generally I think the important thing is you want to minimise how much you’re moving your hand on the keyboard in combat, because when you’re doing that there’s a good chance you’ll lose track of which keys your fingers are over. But it’s really up to you how you do it, and everyone seems to have their own preferences. IMO the best approach is trial and error – whenever you find yourself struggling to find a button or remember where it is take the time (when you’re not about to die obviously) to ask yourself where you expect it to be, or where it would be more convenient and then try moving it there. Sometimes you might have to move other things to make it fit, but eventually you’ll end up with a set-up that feels completely intuitive to you.