Guild Wars 2

Background first; question on bottom

Weapon swapping drives me nuts. I can see how the game has been built to incorporate weapon swapping on a regular basis, but I don’t like it. I hate having my keys remapped in the middle of a fight and I constantly miscast skills as a result. I’ve avoided an Elementalist because I figure they’ve got the same annoyances x4.

I like engineer because constant swapping isn’t manditory. If you avoid a weapon kit your other skills are still stong, and the game doesn’t force you to swap your weapons.

My mains are a Guardian and Mesmer. I would like to choose a weapon(s) that I can stick with on that character and not feel like I’m kittening myself by not constantly swapping weapons in the middle of a fight. I’m happy to swap weapons in between fights or when fundamentally different playstyles are required. (So I don’t mind using one weapon for one fight and then use a different weapon for another fight. It’s the swapping weapons in the middle of a combat rotation that messes me up).

So with all that in mind, what are good weapon sets for a Mesmer or Guardian (or maybe Necro) that can maximize effectiveness without having to swap weapons constantly?

technosatyr.3784:

I would like to choose a weapon(s) that I can stick with on that character and not feel like I’m kittening myself by not constantly swapping weapons in the middle of a fight.

Impossible. You want to discard HALF of you weapon skills, and still have the same efficiency as player who use them? Is like you want to use only 3 of your equip slots and have the same stats as players who use all 6. I don’t mean you would play bad, but you would play worse then when you play with fully using your toon abilities.

Well ranged/melee combo is the best bet if you don’t want to switch it in mid combat. If retreating from melee and changing to ranged is acceptable to you.

put the same weapon(s) on both, then swapping doesn’t change your keys.. of course, you still have to deal with the cooldowns when switching to the other set…

Hmm, not sure what build you’re running, but I can’t think of many situations where I’ve seen a build that encourages constant weapon swapping without some change in events.

I mean, in PvP, many people will have an offensive primary weapon and a defensive or ranged secondary weapon.

I don’t play a mesmer or guardian as a main, but I would suggest looking at your weapon sets and determining the strengths and weaknesses of them, then pick a set based upon what gives you an overall good balance. For example, a lot of warriors will use a 2 handed weapon to bring out big damage, but will then swap to a 1h weapon with a shield so that they can block when they are getting focused.

Also, a lot of melee characters will have a melee primary weapon with a ranged weapon to swap to for situations where they can’t reach an enemy or when it’s just not safe to get too close.

Try staff on your mes and GS on your guardian. Keep in mind that you will probably be limiting your effectiveness by not utilizing your swap.

Agreeing with Dahkeus, it’s often a good idea to have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon. If you don’t like weapon swapping mid-fight, then use a ranged weapon for a while and then switch to melee, dive in and stay there until the fight’s over. I do that on my warrior, although I also switch back and forth mid-fight.

In general, weapon swapping is beneficial for almost any character, even if in my experience I didn’t learn to make good use of it until I’d played for a little while. But if you want to avoid it, that’s your choice, hopefully you can find a good build that allows you to limit the situations in which you would swap. Personally, my main is an elementalist, so I’m biased the other way – by level 80 I was used to swapping constantly!

yeah. at the very least have a melee and a ranged set. you wont have to swap on the fly so the skill shuffling will be minimal. but you can still pull/ fight large boss battles at range if needed.

For example: most mesmer builds that focus on illusion damage are built around frequent weapon swapping to get around ability cooldowns. usually something like “clone and phantasm on weapon 1, swap, phantasm on weapon 2” to try to get the high-damage phantasms out ASAP. Or “use */pistol to make a duelist, then swap to staff to cast chaos storm right before the phantasm’s next attack”

My guardian tends to run sword + shield and I seldom have a reason to swap during most PvE fights.

I primarily use scepter/focus on my Guardian, with sword/shield when I want to port over to the enemy and beat on it. The cooldowns are so long for useful buttons on sword/shield, though, and the scepter zapping so fast and peppy, that almost all my time is on the main set.

You’re right that Elementalist gets extra confusing. I don’t mind the swapping, though, once you really learn a weapon set’s 5 keys it’s not that hard to add another 5. I don’t tend to go to other weapons at all though I keep them up to my level in case I have to use a hammer (the Lovers) or a staff (CM bandits in the hall).

When I first started, I also hated weapon swapping, but as I progressed in the game it became one of my most vital assets. As you grow as a player you will learn to love weapon swapping, and the diversity it brings to your character.

Weapon swapping is amazing, as is attunement swapping.

Perhaps you should remap what button swaps for you. I cannot think of any time where I’ve had my weapons swap without me intending it, in a fight or otherwise, but it sounds like that is a problem for you. So check your bindings. If you really hate it, put it somewhere you won’t likely touch.

It is just kinda truth that swapping is required to maxed out you effectiveness. Idea is to have two different ways to fight and melee/ranged combination is kinda usual. Also elementalist requires to swap between elements to survive.

Try learn it. It doesnt take much effort and u will se that u will love it. I.E you start to from range with thief. Damage enemy and soon dive in with melee weapons and rip enemy as much as u can. If u lose too much health, swap back to ranged and kite enemy.

This is only example how swappinh offers different ways to fight in game. It is required if u want to be good and negative some “oh-kitten” situations

tmlo.1586:

It is just kinda truth that swapping is required to maxed out you effectiveness. Idea is to have two different ways to fight and melee/ranged combination is kinda usual. Also elementalist requires to swap between elements to survive.

Try learn it. It doesnt take much effort and u will se that u will love it. I.E you start to from range with thief. Damage enemy and soon dive in with melee weapons and rip enemy as much as u can. If u lose too much health, swap back to ranged and kite enemy.

This is only example how swappinh offers different ways to fight in game. It is required if u want to be good and negative some “oh-kitten” situations

I’ve tried since release to incorporate it into my normal fights and my brain just can’t handle it. I’m perfectly fine with using some skills in one situation and other skills in a different situation, but constantly swapping back and forth during long fights drives me nuts. I really wish they’d set it so you couldn’t swap weapons at all during combat, or at least put all your skills on cooldown so you can’t avoid cooldowns just by swapping. Or have the cooldowns be the default when you swap weapons, but every class has a trait in there somewhere that mitigates the penalties for swapping, so the people who like it can incorporate it into their play if they want. I think it’s that I feel forced to use this mechanic on EVERY character type that’s bothering me. Part of what I like about this game is how all the classes have their own distinct playstyle.

Part of it is practical: I have to keep the weapon swapping button somewhere that I can reach as easily as any skill, which makes it that much more likely I’ll hit it by accident. At the moment it’s using up my Q key..which ticks me off cause if I didn’t have to try to accommodate weapon swapping I could have another ability in easy reach. And whenever I use it I have to keep track of what weapon I’ve currently got. I can’t just hit Q and swap to weapon set 1 and Shift+Q to shift to weapon set 2; it’s ALWAYS a “change what you currently have to something else” button. Not to mention there’s no way to arrange the skills one way for one weapon and another way for another weapon. My personal pet peeve is guardian greatsword vs sword. They both have a gap closer move that blinds the target at the destination…but they’re bound to different keys. I can’t just hit 3 and know that I’ll perform a gap closer move; I have to assess what weapon I currently have out and then figure out which key I need to press in that weapon. I wouldn’t mind the swapping nearly so much if I could rearrange the skills for each weapon so I could keep similar functionality in the same spot between weapon sets.

Part of it is thematic: I like the idea of being a one-handed swordsman (I like foci that are really small and hard to see so I can pretend they don’t exist) and it really screws up my connection to my character to have to put away my sword and pull out a giant club that throws out little balls of magic EVERY fight just to maximize my cooldown effectiveness. I mean how many times did Gimli, in the middle of fighting an orc, put his axe away, pull out a rifle, take a few shots, and then put the rifle away and pull his axe back out? How often did Jaime Lanninster start out a duel by waving a club at his enemies while holding a cowbell only to actually pull out his sword a few seconds later?

::sigh:: I don’t think I can avoid it as a mesmer without kittening myself. It’s obvious that they designed the phantasms around the idea that you can get out two of them in a couple seconds by abusing weapon swapping, and sticking with a single weapon is just shooting myself in the foot.

Sadly, with the Guardian you’re kittening yourself as well, though not nearly as bad as you would be with the Mesmer. I normally run mace/focus * Greatsword but there are and when I can’t get enough regen in or need that gap closer switching between the two sets lets me get to where I need to be. Truth is once I got used to swapping my effectiveness and more importantly, my survivability, substantially increased.
I can respect the desire not to switch, in which case I say just go with what you’re happy with. If that’s Sword/Focus, then with the right traits, that’s a perfectly viable.
Sword has a ranged auto attack, a blink (control) and a ranged blocking attack. Focus has a blind/bounce heal and a pretty good shield, so I’d stay away from symbol builds and perhaps focus on condition removal and shouts for support if you ever get into a party. While the Scepter and Staff are our “ranged” weapons, a good party will have 4 other members that will dwarf your ranged capabilities no matter what you do, so lean into supporting them while they kill it and you should be fine. (imho though, you should at least pack a scepter on the alt. key just in case)

Another thing I noticed (sorry I know this is turning into a book) you said swapping is mapped to ‘Q’. I say ouch, that’s a strafe key… the default ‘`’ key would be better for the purpose of getting it out of they way… wouldn’t it?

Please don’t use Gimli as a reference. He isn’t an MMO character, he doesn’t abide by those rules. Nor does Lannister.

Frankly, I think you should play a warrior with a build that doesn’t have much weapon-switching, like sword-axe and then a bow in the back for keep defense.

Besides, you want fantasy realism in a world where dragons can be killed by light arms fire?

My suggestion would be to pick a class and stick with it. It’s cool to try out different classes to find what you like, but eventually you might need to pick one. You are probably struggling with the skills right now because you don’t have your skills set into your muscle memory. Once you find two weapons you like and a class you like, you’ll only need to memorize 10 weapon skills (assuming you’re not ele). If you don’t get the hang of it you will be kittening yourself.

My other suggestion, pick a warrior with rifle/GS and use all signets for your utility and elite =)

actually for a mesmer try a staff condition build, as your staff clones then will be better dps than phantasm really, and it have insane survivability as well then. With the staff cd+summoning cd trait the staff clone summon have only a 5sec cd so even if you use that alone it only 15 sec to have 3 up. or you can throw in a mirror image utility or the clone on dodge trait and you have 3 clones in no time

Ranged / Melee on weapon swapping only for my toons. 2 completely different applications though, so I’m not sure exactly why you are having problems with it.

SARobb.8365:

Another thing I noticed (sorry I know this is turning into a book) you said swapping is mapped to ‘Q’. I say ouch, that’s a strafe key… the default ‘`’ key would be better for the purpose of getting it out of they way… wouldn’t it?

I believe I moved strafe to A and D because I can’t recall the last time I wanted my character to turn around with a keyboard key press.

I did try having weapon swap on the grave key, and it was a disaster. Would swap while trying to hit the 1 to start an autoattack (I’ve got a wierd shaped keyboard for my wrists and have to move my entire hand to be able to reach the grave key)

The suggestion to use a staff condition Mesmer build isn’t bad; that’s what I’m running at the moment and it’s worked pretty well. I swap to Torch when I want to Blast my Chaos Storm. I just wish I didn’t have to go through an awkward mechanic like weapon swapping to get those other skills. Would much rather have “this button casts the Prestige. If I’m not equipped with a torch then this button does nothing”

I’ve deleted this text like three times cause it just turns into me whining instead of trying to find a constructive solution to my issue. It sounds like the consensus is “if you don’t like weapon swapping your best option is to learn to like it; you’ll be kittened without it”

Thanks for taking time to respond everyone, the other perspectives have confirmed a conclusion I didn’t want to face.

Hey Techno,
Although I do feel your above conclusion is correct, you could always try a “Stop Hitting Yourself” build on your mesmer with Septer/Focus or Septer/Torch.

It’s not the most optimal for DPS, but it’s tons of fun especially in WVW and you can pretty much avoid using the swap if you want to.

Just try a build like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRArd8flwzyqHVzqGa9IxJFMf5oec9qbdSKKNqB;TgAAyCsoqxUjoGbNuak1A
or this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRArf8dlwzyqHVzqGa9IxpCMH1jrXdrT6RpR9rB;TgAAyCsoqxUjoGbNuak1A

And you’ll have fun stacking confusion all over the place.

If you really don’t want to weapon swap play a dual pistol elixir engineer.

^ or this. Simple, eloquent and to the point… lol

I’d probably say staff for Mesmer. I haven’t played my Mesmer too much, but the staff was the only weapon that felt like I could just run around and stay in without too much worry or if I was feeling lazy.

Guardian, with a scepter build or staff build to avoid having to switch for ranged. You can make a pure hammer or GS build, but the lack of range might hurt in some situations.

For Necro, the choice is definitely staff, as it has so much utility and is range. It can stack conditions (although not the best) and hits decently with power builds (though it’s slow). It’s pretty much the standard to run a staff as one of your weapons in any necro build and it has many traits to enhance it’s performance. However, you will never do the most dps if that’s what you want to do, as those fall to other weapons. You’d best be served going support.

Leave the other weapon slot empty and it wont swap. Better yet you can put your swap button where you cannot accidently reach it.