Guild Wars 2

My grenade-tossing, bomb-lighting engineer is about to hit 60, and I absolutely love him. He’s my favorite character in Guild Wars 2, and possibly my favorite MMO character of the last few years. As a long-time healer who was forced to find a new role for this game, I really love what his area control and ranged AoE damage bring to a team.

But the grenade kit is killing my hand. After a dungeon or a long session of sPvP, my left hand is sore (and sometimes slightly tingly) for days. I’ve dealt with repetitive stress injuries in my hand before and it’s pretty clear: it’s time to find something different.

Fortunately, based on where the pain is located and when it happens, I can be pretty sure that it’s tied directly to the grenade kit. In fact, I think it’s actually tied to spamming the basic “Grenade” attack (Hotkey 1). So I should be able to keep playing. I just need a new approach.

I’m looking for a new spec or a new profession. Here’s what I’m after:

1) Area control, like cripple, chill, and knock back. I want to control where my opponents are and limit how they move.

2) AoE damage, preferably ranged and consistent. I guess that’s its own form of area control.

3) An auto-attack, so I can rest my hand between cool-downs (instead of spamming “Grenade”)

Right now, I’m leaning towards a trap-specced Thief or Hunter. I may also try replacing engineer’s rifle with a pistol and shield, but I’m not sure how well the pistols will work with my current focus on explosives and power.

If you think pressing the one key will make your hand sore, wait till you enter the world of constant thief dodging….

Bard.7215:

If you think pressing the one key will make your hand sore, wait till you enter the world of constant thief dodging….

I am a little concerned about that, but I still think it would be more comfortable than filling my cool-downs with Grenade spam. I am amazed at how fast an engineer can throw grenades. It makes them really effective at AoE damage, but it also encourages some really bad health habits.

Edit: But thank you for the warning. I will watch for that when I experiment with the thief.

Just a thought that would probably go against the ToS since it’d be an automatic looping mechanism, but it should be trivial to set something up that intercepts a keypress and mashes 1 repeatedly until disabled, effectively giving it the same effect, but with less hand-strain. Maybe check in with staff about that?

Check this out, signa:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Good-News-For-Grenade-Kit-ers-Who-Don-t-Like-Button-Mashing/

I’m having fun with grenade spamming atm, makes me go into a state of adrenaline rush before I swap kits when they get close.

Perhaps they should allow the ability to reset itself if the user holds down the key.

I just use a macro that presses ‘4’ (1 for most people, I use 4) over and over while I hold it down. It can be a bit awkward at first getting the timing right (the skill can’t go any faster, so if you have it press too quickly you just get loads of queued ‘nades) but afterwards it’s nice not to have dying fingers.

Bard.7215:

Perhaps they should allow the ability to reset itself if the user holds down the key.

That can be achieved with macro software. Check the link in my previous post.

Try this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0piYH5ShF17IxoHkuziGki6nXRKyflB;ToAg0CnoUyokQJrSOlkKNs4YB
Its little hard to handle but you will be quite superior:-)

Engineer – Only profession that can kill people in real life.

Buy a MMO mouse and your problems are solved.
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/gaming/mice-keyboard-combos/g600-mmo-gaming-mouse

You might give a long bow / trap ranger a try.

Or a flamethrower build on your engi. It’s less key intensive, does ok damage, is not long range, but still not full on melee, and has a lot of area control with the right utility / weapon choices.

If you have the money, I recommend a Logitech G700 mouse. Hella comfortable with lots of well-placed, fully programmable buttons. I have 1, 2, 3, and 4 right above my right thumb and I just tap it to throw grenades. Also I use fast cast ground targeting. Rather than 2 clicks to drop an AoE, it’s only 1 click. It’s half the clicks in half the time! All those clicks really add up. Without it, throwing 100 grenades means clicking 200 times.

Time to get a macro keyboard/mouse to do the spamming for you.

I wouldn’t recommend anything by Razr as they have poor build quality and extremely buggy software.

Karast.1927:

You might give a long bow / trap ranger a try.

Or a flamethrower build on your engi. It’s less key intensive, does ok damage, is not long range, but still not full on melee, and has a lot of area control with the right utility / weapon choices.

I agree. Flamthrower still gives mass AoE damage, (not long range though) and with firearms trait 30 you’ll enter ‘juggernaut mode’ which gives you +200 thougness!
Gives some nice survivabillity.

I dont run nades often but when I do i double click 1 then rest a sec. You still have to hit it regularly but you get a little break for your hands that helped keep me cramp free. so 11 break 11 break 11 break, with the queue system and cast time you’ll find that your spamming nades the same as 1111111

Go to options and enable the cast ob mouse target feature.

Theres a Guild Wars 2 Combat Mode mod out there that’s pretty neat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tjK5OI2oAQ

It’s not entirely perfect, but it could help you from pressing 1 a lot and change that to the mouse instead.