Guild Wars 2

I really am an old man, late 50s, who plays with his older brother. We’ve been playing MMOs since EQ (about 16 years) to stay connected.

We’ve played GW2 on and off since launch and came back with the release of HoT (open world PVE). For me, and I think for him, we’re finding content to be much harder.

My brother is wedded to his bowbear so I feel like I should be ranged to support each other with boons. I’d like something other than another Ranger so I’my trying my Ele (all Berserker exotic with mostly scholar runes). However, I’m pretty much a glass cannon without the cannon dps. I’m about half way into the Tempest elite and gaining HP mostly via WvW.

I’m kinda asking the impossible but would value thoughts on a build that will support a player like me (casual, slower reflexes). Thanks for any thoughts.

You can’t even get Social Security and you think you’re old? Bah. As your elder, let me give you some advice junior. For PVE, the easiest way to go is necro minion master, especially after you get the Reaper skill “rise”. If you like playing El, then staff is fine, with fire, water, and either earth or arcane, depending upon how much you like to dodge to use evasive arcane. After you get tempest, I like the auramancer build (checkout metabattle for some builds) for support. In PVE, I like glyph of storms, arcane wave, and feel the burn if you are a tempest or cleansing fire if not, all for area of effect damage. Arcane wave is also a blast finisher for your water fields from staff 3 & 5 when in water. I recommend celestial armor over the zerkers, and runes of the traveler for the speed boost. Also, I like reassigning the dodge key to the space bar, which is much faster for me to hit.

I suggest getting a multi-button mouse to reduce the stress of frantically clicking buttons to execute skills.
HoT maps are usually much more punishing (more Condis, more CC), so going pure glass canon will get you killed a lot unless you are smart or/and fast.
Since you play WvW, you should have Badges to get some Soldier stat armour/weapons to swap out for a few Berserker pieces for more survivability.

I am quite successful combining my tempest with a trapper ranger.
And if you play WvW with low reflexes earth camping with scepter can be anoyingly successful. But you won´t kill fast unless you do good team combos.
The ranger(Druid) pins the target and puts a fire flield on it. You release rock barrier and shoot from range.

This is not to hard to play. You use fire and earth most. I used this gear for a long time till geting compftable. I even used giver weapons before getting viper.
It´s WvW complinant. In PvE i also use glyph of storms.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdn0XC9XiVYCOOA8RgFBAbIIMDSiBBgQZR0N1+aztA-TFCGABut/g46BWR9HpUipnSQjfAAMp8AgTAw6gDAGwszO7szKFQfrBA-w

It´s a build to try out. I personly go arcane and now swap alot but this one doesn´t need more then fire/earth to do good enough and still supports.
I used exotic and rabid not knowing what you can afford. The build is much better with viper armor but the more you take the squshier. You might need precision oil if going viper!
Not the clasic staff thing :-). But much more dangerous in 2:2 fights when you are not a fast switching pro ;-).

For pure PvE staff ist a clasic.