Guild Wars 2

What do you think it is and why? By mechanically intense I mean the necessity of pressing the most buttons in the best order with the best timing in order to be successful.

Depends on what you are up against. Any hard counter you face will naturally be more difficult.
inb4 teef hard cuz

Imho Ele and Mesmer. Ele has to press the most buttons in the right order to optimize everything, but can be effective even without doing everything correct. A Mesmer has to “press buttons in the right order” to be effective, but doesn’t have to press as many buttons to mechanically optimize their play. Engi is probably up there (triple kit).
Again this is IMO

Elementarist and Engineer would be the top ones by a good margin.
Elementarist need to keep switching attunements to be effective.
Engineer kits and toolbelt also force you to press tons of buttons, specially if you want to combo between kits.

PS: Mesmers need precise button pressing but not much quantity of button pressing, as in skill intensive but not mechanically intensive.

Belzebu.3912:

Elementarist and Engineer would be the top ones by a good margin.
Elementarist need to keep switching attunements to be effective.
Engineer kits and toolbelt also force you to press tons of buttons, specially if you want to combo between kits.

PS: Mesmers need precise button pressing but not much quantity of button pressing.

Eles and thieves and possibly Mesmer’s, ele #1 though. Nobody respects engineers because they’re easymode so I’d avoid rolling one if you have any pride

Well… the only profession that really fits the criteria exactly is engineer with 3 kits (a very specific setup). Not all engis use 3 kits though.

Next would be elementalists, who always use 4 attunements but it’s much easier to rotate through attunements than kits in my opinion.

Then thief, where they may not have as many buttons to mash, but their timing needs to be perfect at all times in order to not die (unless they’re running a tanky condition build lol).

After that, I’d say mesmers and guardians, who could potentially wipe their whole group out if they time a skill wrong, especially in PVE. (Mesmers fighting lupicus with a poorly timed feedback, for example).

I guess it really depends on how you play though. If you’re in a premade team and you have a specific role in the group, then any profession could be mechanically intensive and require perfect timing to coordinate with teammates.

Ranger. No class has to micro manage horrible AI at a godly level in order to maintain viability at top tier.

Cam Ron.4170:

Belzebu.3912:

Elementarist and Engineer would be the top ones by a good margin.
Elementarist need to keep switching attunements to be effective.
Engineer kits and toolbelt also force you to press tons of buttons, specially if you want to combo between kits.

PS: Mesmers need precise button pressing but not much quantity of button pressing.

Eles and thieves and possibly Mesmer’s, ele #1 though. Nobody respects engineers because they’re easymode so I’d avoid rolling one if you have any pride

Agree with this list.

At least in SPVP.

PVE wise:
For Ele rotation is something like this:
Dragons Tooth → Flame wall → Pheonix →Arcane Wave → Earth Attunement → Magnetic Wave → Arcane Brilliance → Water Attunement → Comet → Lightning Hammer → Air Attunement→ Auto till 1 charge left → Fire Attunement and repeat

Engi is pretty intense too for maximization:
Grenade Barrage → Flamethrower→ Napalm → Flame Blast instant detonation(must spam the button till it blows up) → Elixer gun → Acid Bomb & weapon swap spam to cancel jump -> swap rifle → Jump shot → Blunderbuss → Grenade kit → Shrapnel Grenade → Freeze Grenade → Grenade spam (no auto attack) → Shrapnel grenade and repeat.

Compare this to say my Guardian doing:
GS 2 → GS4→ GS3 → GS5 → auto → GS2 → Swap Sword/focus → Focus5→ Focus 4 → Auto till swap is ready and repeat.

Or Warrior:
Put face on keyboard and start to roll

Depends on build and game mode. Sometimes ele is really intensive, other times I play staff ele in PvE which has a DPS rotation consisting of 6 abilities plus an auto, all of which are very easy to manage.

Mesmer and Thief for most skill intensive.
Ele and Engi for most mechanically intensive.

just because a profession has more buttons to press doesnt mean it’s a harder to profession to play (see: ele and engineer).

if anything mesmer and thief are by far the hardest to play mechanically.

Thief should be the only class on this thread.

I find it very hard to play warrior without getting sick.

since when pressing more buttons = more intensive…

By the OPs definition, I would say Mantra Mesmer is the most mechanically intensive profession, since you have to know when to use your multiple mantras and watch the entire fight around you while still using your other abilities in between mantras at the right time along with just surviving and good positioning. Being able to weave mantras in between casting other abilities at the same time is no easy feat, especially when having to press 2-4 different buttons at the same time for almost the entire duration of the fight.

Depending on your playstyle, Engineer or Elementalist. I found Elementalist leagues easier than Engineer because Elementalists are pretty easy to heal up with. Engineers must look at the situation ahead of them, and use the right set of tools for the task. Elementalists have various combos, and you need to choose which one you would be best for the situation.

Mesmers and thieves come next. Mesmers have problems with conditions and thieves, and generally have to worry about surviving all the time, but their main attacks are pretty easy to pull off. Thieves require a lot of timing to play now; there is a great deal of risk when playing one, but for the most part the playstyle is rather simple in comparison to kit-focused engies or d/d elementalists.

Everything else does not even compare, aside from bunker guardians at the highest level of play.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. I get such a bad feeling in my head whenever Hotjoin heros and PvE players run around saying ele and engi are hard. I’ve played every class, and I can play every class at a decently high level, Ele and Engi are incredibly easy to be effective with. Cele engi ALL YOU NEED TO DO is knock back immob, nades spam, toolkit block, EG for heal and then rifle spam. Sure you can do other stuff but your only 2% more effective! and spamming buttons isn’t hard when your supplemented by perfect stats and blocks every 20s. Ele is even more faceroll because it has so much recovery it doesn’t even matter if you make a mistake, you get hit by evis you can 1. Heal it off, 2. RtL away and then Heal it off, 3. facetank it with perma protection and heal it off anyway, 4. Dodge it but heal through his autos anyway. So easy to play. Sorry for rant, I just get so frustrated when people call the most faceroll classes hard to play. Hardest classes mechanically right now are 1. DP thief by a LARGE margin, 2. Sword Shatter Mesmer, 3. Ranged Shatter Mesmer, 4. SD thief.. Maybe.. 5. Every other Zerker? 6. Everything else is faceroll.

-Teef Teef Teef Teef

If we are talking only about the mechanical intensity – d/d Ele(always press buttons for SoR maximization) or nade engi(just no auto 111111111). All other “hard specs” (shatter, thief, etc.) more about skill than buttons.

Eurantien.4632:

Ranger. No class has to micro manage horrible AI at a godly level in order to maintain viability at top tier.

Hi. Have you met Mesmers?

BM ranger. If you want to deal damage, you gotta work AGAINST you mechanics design to make it work. Which involves a combination of spamming F1, F2 and F3 coupled with utilities, weapon skills in addition to dodging the enemies attack and dealing damage yourself.

Naturally, this only applies to those who want to be good. Bad players or against bad enemies, you can dump 6 into BM and AA spam while pet runs about and land a nuke every full moon.

Esplen.3940:

Eurantien.4632:

Ranger. No class has to micro manage horrible AI at a godly level in order to maintain viability at top tier.

Hi. Have you met Mesmers?

Mesmers is more about positioning then button smashing and working against a mechanic. All mesmers do is spawn illusions around enemy, wait for the right moment, CC and shatter. Rinse and repeat.
In wvw, mesmers just spam stealth and summon phantasms to win, correction, now they also spam scepter AA.

Sounds like you haven’t actually played Mesmers.

kaikalii.4198:

What do you think it is and why? By mechanically intense I mean the necessity of pressing the most buttons in the best order with the best timing in order to be successful.

For pressing the most buttons in the best order I would say either Spamgineer or Spamamentalist. Both professions have nearly twice the skills at their disposal than the other professions do.

Thanks.

Multi kit engineer, with medkit + grenade kit (possibly also bomb kit + elixir gun + rifle). Ele comes close second.

I would say Elementalists are harder to manage than Engineer really, since you have to work with rotations, gotta remember when to use specific skills and because you have cooldowns on your attunements…

Engineer might be a close second, but you can more easily “panic switch” between the kits, granting you quicker acces to a needed utility at a specific time, unlike Elementalist who just has to kiss the ground when he’s getting ranged and has his Earth attunement on cooldown

Still, more skills to manage does not make it mechanically a harder profession… If anything, I would not be joking if I were to say Support Guardians, since they have to do something no other class is capable off – watching debuffs, using utilities for the sake of your team’s survival rather than your own, while still having to manage your own lifebar…
Managing team > Managing class imho…

kaikalii.4198:

What do you think it is and why? By mechanically intense I mean the necessity of pressing the most buttons in the best order with the best timing in order to be successful.

Condi nade engi.

Watch me stream, you shall see what it is to be espawts

Prysin.8542:

Esplen.3940:

Eurantien.4632:

Ranger. No class has to micro manage horrible AI at a godly level in order to maintain viability at top tier.

Hi. Have you met Mesmers?

Mesmers is more about positioning then button smashing and working against a mechanic. All mesmers do is spawn illusions around enemy, wait for the right moment, CC and shatter. Rinse and repeat.
In wvw, mesmers just spam stealth and summon phantasms to win, correction, now they also spam scepter AA.

The typical perception of a mesmer. But! lockdown mesmer is all about timing, I would say an interrupt build would increase offense, get boons, root someone down, only if you interrupt something.

3 Kits Engineer, and the fun part is, it’s not frustrating at all.

Agree with Eurantien and WoC, Ranger is mechanically intensive on any spec if you’re looking to get optimal performance and mantras is just very involved full-stop.

Grenade Kit Engineer.

That the spec gives you carpal tunnel is one of the big issues with it. And no, I’m not joking, it’s a serious problem.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

I would say Elementalists are harder to manage than Engineer really, since you have to work with rotations, gotta remember when to use specific skills and because you have cooldowns on your attunements…

Engineer might be a close second, but you can more easily “panic switch” between the kits, granting you quicker acces to a needed utility at a specific time, unlike Elementalist who just has to kiss the ground when he’s getting ranged and has his Earth attunement on cooldown

Still, more skills to manage does not make it mechanically a harder profession… If anything, I would not be joking if I were to say Support Guardians, since they have to do something no other class is capable off – watching debuffs, using utilities for the sake of your team’s survival rather than your own, while still having to manage your own lifebar…
Managing team > Managing class imho…

Thing with engi compared to ele you have to think ahead. Engi have limited condi removal, generally only 1 stun breaker and no access to stab(most meta builds). So engi have to micro manage while planning there damage mitigation ahead of time rather than reacting to it after the fact.

vincecontix.1264:

Thing with engi compared to ele you have to think ahead. Engi have limited condi removal, generally only 1 stun breaker and no access to stab(most meta builds). So engi have to micro manage while planning there damage mitigation ahead of time rather than reacting to it after the fact.

Hehe, well I do not want this to turn into an endless cycle, I am sadly opinionated since I played a lot more Ele than Engineer, so you cannot take my word for it

Then again, my real point sticks, I find it way mechanically harder for a profession when it does not need to watch it’s own cooldowns or the opponent it’s facing, but rather your whole team, debuffs, boons and your own lifepool, and if those selfish Celestial builds did not slowly became more powerfull, I’d say that support classes, such as Guardian is a lot harder… Some people say it is quite easy to play a Support Guardian, but a good one will always disagree, and quite frankly, I am one of the worst

Engi definitely most intensive, ele its just cycling through 1-5 in each attunement, its actually really easy to do well with elementalist unlike engineer where you have to quicky combo between kits while actively react to enemy. Ele can screw up alot more due to having more invuln/stunbreak/stability/sustain. Other classes are just lol, not even worth mentioning

Eles and engis have the most buttons, but you must to press perfectly every key with every profession to be good

Hence why I said that keeping track of your teammates and yourself is far more important than how many buttons you must press to peform well…

Eventually, if you do it long enough, you can play an Engineer or Ele as if you would play a piece from Mozart, and that’s the thing; you get used to it…

Surely, “you must press the most buttons” but this does not equal the same amount of effort a support class truly has to put in – remove the wrong conditions at the wrong time and you did not screw up yourself, but your whole team if it ends badly…

Bhawb.7408:

Depends on build and game mode. Sometimes ele is really intensive, other times I play staff ele in PvE which has a DPS rotation consisting of 6 abilities plus an auto, all of which are very easy to manage.

Staff Ele is certainly the exception, but I think staff ele, while great DPS is leaving your team wanting when compared to the othr rotations that stack so much might. Of course if you have that covered, then yeah, staff FTW, easy and great damage. So it’s nice that Ele has that option. Engi you could probably go bomb kit but you’d still want to work in the flameblast and acid bomb, which are a pain to pull off.

Ele, specially now that the class has no elites worth using.

Power necro -> Activate Lich Form, then hit 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1….

…Oh wait…

Esplen.3940:

Eurantien.4632:

Ranger. No class has to micro manage horrible AI at a godly level in order to maintain viability at top tier.

Hi. Have you met Mesmers?

Ya, mesmers don’t have to skill cancel horrible AI in order land their AI skills and win fights.

Every class just has to worry about their own skills. Ranger has to worry about their own and their pets. Otherwise that fear, that kd, that whatever, will be wasted by blocks, dodges, out of range, etc. unless skill cancelled well. Skill cancelling the pets to bait dodges is also the ONLY way to actually have a chance at winning 1 v 1s or even 2 v 2s. Unless your opponent is really bad.

So for pure mechanics I’d say ranger is hardest. Followed by thief or engi. I don’t think most buttons correlates with most mechanically intensive. Throwing big aoe at circles isn’t hard.

Mesmers are up there, but I would say they require more awareness than being the most mechanical. I think eles are the most mechanical.

OP specifically asked for “mechanically intense”, and not “skill intense”.
Thief, ranger and mesmer can be skill intense for sure (but that is more subjective), while eles are mechanically intense for sure and engs can be very mechanically intense too, but not necessarily skill intense.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

If anything, I would not be joking if I were to say Support Guardians, since they have to do something no other class is capable off – watching debuffs, using utilities for the sake of your team’s survival rather than your own, while still having to manage your own lifebar…
Managing team > Managing class imho…

I would agree with this after playing a Support Guardian. Sadly, they are going the way of the dodo now that Celestial Engineers, Elementalists, and Warriors no longer need their support.

Thanks.

Engi/Ele Pick your posion.

-keep in mind i have limited hours on the other classes

People say engi and ele… which I don’t really understand. I get that they can be “mechanically intensive” because of their vast number of buttons, but that being said almost everything they do is AoE. In a 2 v 2, an engi just throws nades at someone and because of their AoE nature are pretty likely to hit the other guy as well. Ele, is kind of similar, especially staff. A large majority of skills are AoE. Oh, you wanna cc your target? Earthquake just knocked them both down. Sweet skills.

While on other classes that are purely single target, you don’t have the leisure luxury of AoE hitting more than 1 person. You have to do things like, focus a guy, see ele swap to earth to CC, swap target interrupt earthquake, swap back, etc. A lot of classes have to do a lot of target swapping in 2 v 2s to maintain success over the engi. A lot of players don’t do this which is why engineer + x has been the best 2 v 2 ever since the celestial buff. Because they are just easier and more effective given their lower “mechanical intensive” nature. Mean while, we have other classes that have to make choices. Because they can’t cc both people in the 2 v 2 at the same time, or even dmg both of them, they must do things like lock 1 down, while focusing the other, (straight stunlock/burst on 1 target doesn’t really work in the meta) which makes classes that are forced to do this target swapping more “mechanically intensive” imo.

Which would put engi and ele on the bottom of my list, then war, then guard, then necro, then mes, then ranger (since the ranger has to control 2 things to be effective). Not really sure where to put thief.

Eurantien.4632:

People say engi and ele… which I don’t really understand. I get that they can be “mechanically intensive” because of their vast number of buttons, but that being said almost everything they do is AoE. In a 2 v 2, an engi just throws nades at someone and because of their AoE nature are pretty likely to hit the other guy as well. Ele, is kind of similar, especially staff. A large majority of skills are AoE. Oh, you wanna cc your target? Earthquake just knocked them both down. Sweet skills.

While on other classes that are purely single target, you don’t have the leisure luxury of AoE hitting more than 1 person. You have to do things like, focus a guy, see ele swap to earth to CC, swap target interrupt earthquake, swap back, etc. A lot of classes have to do a lot of target swapping in 2 v 2s to maintain success over the engi. A lot of players don’t do this which is why engineer + x has been the best 2 v 2 ever since the celestial buff. Because they are just easier and more effective given their lower “mechanical intensive” nature. Mean while, we have other classes that have to make choices. Because they can’t cc both people in the 2 v 2 at the same time, or even dmg both of them, they must do things like lock 1 down, while focusing the other, (straight stunlock/burst on 1 target doesn’t really work in the meta) which makes classes that are forced to do this target swapping more “mechanically intensive” imo.

Which would put engi and ele on the bottom of my list, then war, then guard, then necro, then mes, then ranger (since the ranger has to control 2 things to be effective). Not really sure where to put thief.

Everything has to be given a scope in which it applies. You’re obviously talking 1v1/2v2 PVP, things will be different.

In a PVE environment (which I specified when I said engi/ele as again, I feel that the question was very open ended and needs a scope applied).

Go fight Lupi with an Ele, pull out Scepter/Focus.

Do this rotation and cancel it for swirling winds/obsidian flesh if needed as well as dodging in between and picking up where you need to be.

Dragons tooth → Flame Wall → Phoenix → Arcane Wave → Earth → Magnetic Wave → Arcane Brilliance → Water → Comet → LH → start auto → Air → AA a while, swap fire at about 5 charges left and drop hammer at 1 charge left and repeat the sequence.

Do that and say you still don’t understand why people are saying Ele and I’ll bow to you as a master of the game and take whatever you say to be true. But fact is for PVE Ele/Engi are as intense as it gets with constant swapping setups and quick actions.

And inb4 the “pve is easymode”

Ah. For PvE. Probably so. Most classes just stand there and auto for max DPS.

Eurantien.4632:

Ah. For PvE. Probably so. Most classes just stand there and auto for max DPS.

I don’t think any do that but… yeah…obviously you’re a PVPer and not really interested so no reason to go into it. But, know that everyone has optimal rotations, some involve a lot of AA, some a lot of tying your fingers in knots.

Even Necromancer which has one of the easiest general DPS rotations for PvE can’t just auto.

But for the OP, it depends on what you consider mechanically intensive. Is pressing a lot of buttons in a pre-memorized rotation intensive? Or is it more intensive to watch your positioning and waiting for that instant burst combo? Do you need it to always be intensive, where buttons must be pressed constantly or is a small quick rotation good enough? Also are you going to include things like using stow weapon?

Reality is that even within only mechanically intensive there are a lot of different mechanics. Its hard for someone people to manage ele/engi because of the amount of buttons and need for fairly consistent rotations of some skills while others need to be saved for certain situations. Other people don’t have issues with that.

Engineer. ABSOLUTELY engineer.

If you dont believe me, watch this:
http://www.tinyurl.com/immortalengineer

Engineers come packed with incredible utility, IF you can use it correctly. It’s an incredibly high skill cap for a multi-faceted class with access to almost every field type in the game.