Guild Wars 2

I’m an average player at best, old and slow, so I have to work harder. One thing I’ve been working on is keyboard layout. I ended up getting a G13 (because of the hat stick), but a regular keyboard can work pretty well. My mouse is a plain old MS IntelliMouse (5 buttons).

The G13 has 4 rows of keys, 7 each for the top 2 rows, then 5, then 3. From top to bottom they’re mapped:

Top Row: Call Target; Take Target; 7; 8; 9; 10; ESC
Second Row: 1; 2; strafe left; move forward; strafe right; TAB; Map
Third Row: 3; 4; Switch Weapons; Run; Inventory
Bottom Row: 5; SHFT; CTL

There’s also a 4-way hat and 2 buttons by the thumb. The hat is F1-F4, buttons are Jump and Interact.

Mouse-3 (scroll wheel) is voice, Mouse-4 (under thumb) is Dodge, and Mouse-5 is 6 (heal).

I don’t use Turn Left, Turn Right, or Move Backwards.

The layout is designed so that I can keep my 3 non-pinky fingers on the 3 movement keys and, without interrupting movement, still:
-hit the most used skill keys (1-5) with my pinky finger (plus Call Target and Take Target)
-using my thumb I can switch elements (hat switch), Jump and Interact
-Dodge and Heal (and voice) using the mouse hand (plus the usual Mouse-1 and Mouse-2)

I do have to use the movement key fingers for 7-10 (which are located right above the movement keys) and TAB (immediately to the right), but they’re very close and easy to hit with little movement disruption. I only need to use one of the 3 movement fingers for these, so I can still do 2 of the movements at the same time.

The other keys (Map, Inventory, Run, CTL, SHFT, ESC) aren’t generally needed in combat.

I dropped Turn Left/Right, and also Move Backwards (for now anyways).

The above lets me stay mobile while casting non-stop.

A standard keyboard can do all the above, except the 4-way hat for F1-F4, by moving the movement keys to D (strafe left), F (move forward), and G (strafe right). This gives you enough pinky-reachable keys for 1-5. The G13 is a lot more friendly tho for this.

I only have a 5 button mouse but I manage fine (I wouldnt mind a mouse with more buttons though).

1, 2, 3, 4 : attunements
e, f, q, mouse4, mouse5 : weapon skills
r : heal
x, c, mouse3 : utilities
~ : weapon swap
laft : elite
lshift : dodge
z : interact
w, a, s, d : movement

mouse4/5 are the mouse thumb buttons and mouse3 is the scroll wheel button. I generally put a ground targeting utilities on mouse3 like lightning flash.

the only thing i dont really like about my current setup is that x and c for utilities are not 100% comfortable

12345: weapon skills
WER: strafe left/forward/strafe right
Mouse 4: heal
Mouse 5: push-to-talk
QAZ: utilities (789 respectively)
FVCD: fire, water, air, earth
T: interact
(Mouse 6 or X: Elite, though X may be a good alternative place for heal)

I’m playing on an Apple keyboard, and the function keys are a) half-sized b) too kitten far away, so with the attunements more localized to where my fingertips are I feel a lot more comfortable (and I started swapping attunements much more fluidly once I changed them.)

I still have move backwards on S, but I only use that these days for precision/orientation in jumping puzzles.

Razer Naga set to NUM setting on the bottom (maps Naga thumb grid to 1 to 9 and 0, +, -)

Weapon skills – thumb grid 1-5
Heal/Utilities/Elite – thumb grid ALT +1-5
Attunements – Keyboard number row 1-5
Dodge roll – C
Look behind – V

Everything else is default, Mouse 3 (scroll wheel pushed in) is PTT.

I have my attunements in F1-F4.

Weapon skills in 1-5

Then I have the Heal, Utitilies and Elite all in my mouse.

I have esdf for movement.
Mouse scroll press for skill1, mouse thumb buttons for 2/3, w and r for 4/5
q,a,t,y for attunements
< for heal, shift for dodge
I still need to bind utilities (couldn´t be arsed as there is no need in pve for quicker access) and some other but i do have 4,5,6,c,v,b and ctrl left to bind.

My layout (with naga)
Tab:fire
Q:Water
E: Air
R: Earth
Click wheel: swap target
-/M11 : Dodge
=/M12 : about face( turn 180)
E and D : strafe left/right

i reccomend using a naga or similar mouse but do not bind skills to it