Guild Wars 2

I have been playing as a staff ele for a long time. Ele is the only class I find appealing and I have spent a long time in wvw to become what I feel, very competent. Unfortunately, early on I found switching attunements to be very difficult using the F keys, and I rebinded my entire keyboard to facilitate changing elements with my thumb so I don’t have to take my fingers away from the attack and movement keys. This new control scheme now feels very natural, however I made a few oversights in the keybind and would at this point (It’s been more than 4-5 months) like to change back to the normal keyboard layout with only a few minor adjustments. (The truth is I would get confused when moving to any other game, as I don’t even use WASD movement anymore.)

I anticipate after making this change it is going to take more than a few days to adjust, however, at the same time, I am thinking of switching to a D/D build as I would like to see if I could be a decent damage dealer, and I would just like to switch things up a bit. In addition, I usually spend all of my time in wvw so while I am getting used to D/D and keybinds it could be quite hectic.

1: Does anyone have any suggestions for activities I could do, in wvw or anywhere else in the game, to adjust to a (drastically) new keybind?

2: Does anyone have any tips for elementalists moving to D/D from staff?

D/D requires most of the time faster attunement swapping than staff. Requires faster gameplay and better reactions due to being melee (IMO)

My main tip would be gear. Swap some PVT gear in for WvW so you are more survivable. PvE makes no difference if you know how to dodge well.

The other thing is know the basic combos of:
Earthquake + Lightning Flash
Burning Speed + Lightning Flash
Updraft + Lightning Flash
Firegrab + Lightning Flash
Updraft + Burning Speed

And so on.

I have realised that I don’t have the dexterity to even play this game. Let alone as a D/D elementalist. I honestly can’t figure it out. I don’t know if its because I am primarily a console gamer and I just get lost on the keyboard and im just dumb, or if its a GW2 thing. I mean every other D/D elementalist must have to deal with this so surely its not a problem, but maybe thats why I never see any.

As I said before I feel that I am a competant staff user, one hand on the mouse for ground casting, thumb on utility and attunement switches, fingers on weapon skills and occasionally take fingers off weapon skills to reposition.

How am I supposed to do all this while constantly moving? _ Maybe I have just forced myself into bad habit. I think the reason I ended up messing with the keys in the first place was because I couldn’t move from WASD to the F keys and move back again without getting lost.

Can you just give me a controller?

I just use my completely revamped keybinds (esdf for movement, skills around it and on mouse), it´s not that confusing when jumping between games really. If it is, just bind the movement in those games to other things aswell. Correcting few keybinds and getting used to them is far easier than getting used to whole new layout.

Yeah. I use 1-5 as normal, WER are my movement, D for dodge, ASFG for attunements, ZXCV for utilities and elite, Q for heal, T for interact. But I find that even with that I have a tendancy to stand still while I focus on attunements and throwing out as many spells as I can as fast as possible >_> I am a terrible gamer.

EvaPilot.3816:

Yeah. I use 1-5 as normal, WER are my movement, D for dodge, ASFG for attunements, ZXCV for utilities and elite, Q for heal. But I find that even with that I have a tendancy to stand still while I focus on attunements and throwing out as many spells as I can as fast as possible >_> I am a terrible gamer.

You can move (forward) with your mouse when holding both r/l clicks

I´d say it´s not the keybinds that make you stand still, those seem reasonable if you´re used to them. Ofcourse you can finetune your setup if you think some things are hard to reach. Personaly i like to use mouse buttons a lot (2xside and middle), and use ctrl as a modifier key to get another 3 buttons for my mouse.

I wonder if I can bind attunements to the mouse wheel. That would simplify things a lot. I don’t think other classes have to deal with this many keys >_>

you seem like an ideal candidate for a razer naga

I find my razer orb weaver to be invaluable… Even though I still fat finger a number of times, it can’t be compared to using a regular keyboard….

EvaPilot.3816:

Yeah. I use 1-5 as normal, WER are my movement, D for dodge, ASFG for attunements, ZXCV for utilities and elite, Q for heal, T for interact. But I find that even with that I have a tendancy to stand still while I focus on attunements and throwing out as many spells as I can as fast as possible >_> I am a terrible gamer.

I have found a setup that works for me, but I haven’t gone into WvW really, so I don’t know how this will work for you: WASD for movement, 1-4 for attunements, N for dodge, and all 10 skills in order are E, C, shift, V, B, R, T, G, Y, and tab. That way they are all near to my movement, the only downside being that I have to shift around a lot of other keybindings.

I have found a set of keybinds that I am comfortable with and allows for comfortable movement even when casting. I still keep getting lost but I have decided to stick it out. I have also decided to stick with my current staff build until I am comfortable using the new layout before I move onto D/D so I can pull off combos more naturally.

Hey eva once you become used to the keybinds I suggest you work on combos so it becomes fluid with your combat. After you get the hang of that you need to be doing tpvp because that is generally where the more skilled players are. Learn about each class and their weaknesses and try to use that against them.

Haha. You are not the only one. I have been playing elementalist for quite a while as well and still not getting used to launching the full combo. D/D elementalist required quick finger.

But after a while, you will slowly get used to it. Even now I still occasionally miss churn earth + lightning flash combo. But I have decided to remove lightning flash.

Recently I watch glitchboy in twitch.tv and decided to go for arcane lightning trait and just rotate 2 arcane spell instead. So now I have less combo to worry about.

my fingers NEVER leave the movement keys, ever. Even when I stop to type, I don’t move my left hand’s position (I use ESDF, not WASD)

The function keys are way too far away. I have the attunements bound to middle mouse, 2, 3, and 4 (the 1 key is too far to reach without moving my hand). and I use my 4 side mouse buttons along with A, W, R, Z, X for skills. and B (elite skill)

I wouldn’t be able to play this game either with the default keybinds

Here’s what Taugrim has to say about keybinds for GW2. Check out some of his D/D Ele WvW videos while you are there.

http://taugrim.com/2012/06/27/guide-to-guild-wars-2-keybinds/

Everytime I change keybinds (whether it is a minor change or a major one) I make a new character to go along with it. Even if I end up deleting that character at level 35 (once I am used to the new keybinds) it served its purpose.

Cheers!

To get the full potential out of dd/sd, start by switching up ur keybinds. f1,f2,f3,f4 is just too far away. It’s a weird transition, but get use to it and it’ll be a blast. Start off by making fire ‘E’, lightning ‘R’ play around with it and when u get comfortable find keys for the rest. Knowing the class, getting right traits, gear is just half of the issue imo. Just my 2c

Is this for PvE? D/D ele doesn’t require any special keybinds for PvE since you’ll be in Fire attune 99% of the time anyway. Just make sure you have an accessible key for dodges and just auto-attack and cast Fire Grab on cooldown.

99% of the time in fire as dd? na..