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Can't play with others


Ardyth.9286

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With a lvl 80 Guardian with builds for both Dragonhunter and Firebrand, I had visions of finally breaking out of solo PVE. I joined a guild, thinking I would participate in guild missions, and the Raid Academy to train for raids. I worked on my keybinds so I could become more adept at moving and combat using just the keyboard, practiced endlessly on low-level NPCs to coordinate my finger movement, tried to memorize Snowcrow rotations, etc. It was an abject failure. After watching raid training videos and joining a guild mission for all of 20 seconds, I realized I can't play with others in such settings. Maybe it's my age (60-ish), maybe my brain is slowing down, maybe it's an issue with extreme visual overload, but I find I simply cannot press keys fast enough in a particular order nor can I figure out how to move and attack at the same time using just keys. Hell, I can't even keep up with a group. I can't wrap my brain around things like "when Sword of Justice is on cooldown, hit them with Whirling Blades followed by Mantra of Fire, then go back to Sword of Justice..." (this is a made-up example) while dodging and strafing. It's just too much.

So, I've decided to stick with solo PVE. It's my comfort zone, and I'd rather be able to relax and have fun than try to measure up to someone else's expectations. What a relief!

I did learn how to kill swarming pocket raptors with Firebrand AOE, so that's something...8 )

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I know how you feel, I've restarted several toons trying to find a profession I can play/enjoy and still (maybe) be competitive at some later time. So far, not so good. I've now restarted my necro after giving up on my ele. I was/am hopelessly slow and lost. :anguished:On the bright side, I love this game and enjoy the PVE part. I've recently joined a guild and hope to contribute when I get a little more experience and skill. Will I ever be "meta"? No. Will I have fun? Yes.I'm 53 with a set of "bad hands", and I'll never get the keyboard to cooperate with me fully, but it is a game and the idea is to have fun.Enjoy your time and play the way you want. I do know there are several guilds out there willing to train and help those who don't play (nor may ever) at the highest levels, and I feel I'm in one, so if you feel the need to have that help or group involvement, don't hesitate to try that again as well.

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I'm in Embers of Everlasting [FIRE]. You can find the recruit post on the looking for guild page, there's a full section on how to request an interview to join. You can also contact Cerioth.7062 (Guild Leader). Please make sure you read the post to make sure we would be a guild you'd be interested in joining. They've been very inviting so far, although I admit I haven't been very social yet. They genuinely seem to be a very good group to work with and learn from.Good luck.

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Guildwars 2 has a lot more to offer than just fire and ice. The gap between solo Open World PvE and Raiding surely is wide, but there is a lot in between. The entire focus on pre-designed rotations which have to be memorized and exectued as correctly as possible is an overkill for most of the content. In Raiding and similar content it has its authority, it is the most efficient and fastest way of playing that content with as little risk to fail as possible.

DungeonsNot as outdated as they may seem at first. It is still viable content with plenty of useful rewards. Still an option to gear your characters, unlock nice skins and make money. Thanks to the powercreep of the past years, everything goes. As long as you do not end up in a speed-clear group, you can play the class you want with the skills and move-set you feel comfortable with. Opposite to Raids, this content does not utilize time-limit fights. You can balance your character and find the perfect solution for yourself, weighting damage-output and survival. Players can use the mentioned optimized builds and rotations, but it does not give any real advantage. The speedrunners often ignore most of the NPCs and even some of the bosses, which results in a massive drop of loot. But if you run the Dungeons with a normal group, you can have a lot of fun and experience the pros of group-content without feeling the stress and pressure you have mentioned. You may come across some optimized players who live by the raid philosophy though, they almost 1-shot everything. Watching this is quite ridiculous. Like bringing a Lamborghini to a bike-race. This content was designed without any of these abominations in mind. It works great with normal builds and normal groups.

FractalsEspecially T1 and T2 are very player-friendly. Difficulty and loot increase with the increase of the Fractal Level, but within those two tiers you are pretty much on Dungeon difficulty. It is a little tougher, but the mechanics are still quite forgiving and allow improvisation.

Joining a guild which has a relaxed point of view on this is definitely a good idea. There are guilds out there which fit into that description and do group-content frequently. After 8 years, I highly recommend guild-runs over so called PUG runs (using the LFG). Dungeons are a perfect point to start, especially the Story Dungeons. Then try on the basic exploration paths and probably give the first fractals a try. The group-content is definitely worth trying. Just make sure to make small and easy steps. If you feel overwhelmed, slow down a little. Pick a class you feel comfortable with, which you know well and utilize its abilities by intuition.

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@"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said:Guildwars 2 has a lot more to offer than just fire and ice. The gap between solo Open World PvE and Raiding surely is wide, but there is a lot in between. The entire focus on pre-designed rotations which have to be memorized and exectued as correctly as possible is an overkill for most of the content. In Raiding and similar content it has its authority, it is the most efficient and fastest way of playing that content with as little risk to fail as possible.

This.

Don't get discouraged by initial failure. It is very important to understand: top tier performance as often demonstrated in guide or tutorial videos is almost NEVER needed, and very often not demanded in guild settings (depends on the guild though, but more relaxed and mid tier guilds will certainly be understanding) and often only required when explicitly asked for in case of high performance groups. Suffice to say, a vast majority of groups are not high performance even if the gap from open world content might make it seem that way initially. There are also simplified builds and rotations which reduce the stress and requirements as to "twitch" reactions.

What helps here is finding similar minded people, often age related but not exclusively. We have members of 50+ in one of my more casual guilds and they are always welcome in raid and fractal content. Granted often they focus on 1 class and it takes a while for them to get used to fights, but that is never an issue. What helps here is being open and honest when applying to a guild in order to see if it is a fit. There are a ton of age XYZ guilds as well, so maybe trying to fit in one of those might help.

Good Luck @Ardyth.9286.

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I'm only in my 30s but I have bad RSI from 20+ years of programming, neuropathic damage from diabetes, and other disabilities. Yet I still manage to do alot of endgame content, such as Fractals, even on piano-key classes like Ele, which I main.

The secret is to play with friends. The skill ceiling in the game is actually much lower than other players would let you believe, they chose to just make things harder for others so that its easier on them; performances like fast clears come at the expense of exhaustion of players who struggle to keep up. Many of us would rather take 10-15mins longer to clear an instance without having to hurt ourselves doing it.

There are many levels of play between "casual" and "elite". Its not just black and white.

As for your issue of trying to play only with the keyboard, no one does that. The players you see playing "only with keyboard" have gaming mice and have a large amount of their keys reconfigured to mouse buttons. For your average player, its sufficient to use your left hand for WASD, 1-5 and F1-F5 skills, and configure your mouse for your 6-0 skills or just click them, which is fine.

All that matters is you're moving and casting at the same time, no matter how you accomplish that. The purpose of it is just to avoid area attacks from bosses, so you don't get downed easily. I've seen players do it with floor pedals from steering wheels, because they had only one hand to play with. One of the best players I've ever known was completely blind.

Find what works for you, and run with it. Do the best that you can, and ignore everything and everyone else. Eventually you'll migrate towards players who are more than willing to have you in their team.

Almost all wins in this game are just knowing the encounter, and have very little to do with personal ability.

I also recommend trying out WvW. Its stressful at first, but if you find a good group to follow, it can be more rewarding than high-level PvE, This is because when players make mistakes and wipe in PvE, they tend to get very upset, and often become toxic towards their group. This rarely if ever occurs in WvW; players wipe hundreds of times a day and just respawn at the waypoint and try again.

Its completely different when the point of the game mode is basically to die.. with style.

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I find it very difficult to use WASD and then move my fingers to 1-5 attack keys and back to WASD. It is not intuitive for me, although my gamer son has been trying to teach me. I've always used the mouse to move while keeping my fingers on the attack keys. I'll keep at it, though.

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@Ardyth.9286

try move using left+right mouse keys (somethink like joystick)

i'm not using wsad at all, only q+e+r, rare s (no need any binds)

as q+e are similar to a+d but are closer to your 1,2,3,4,5

from your descryption, i think you have similar gust like me, maybe q,e,r gona be better for you as welland that style alowing you react 1s faster then wsad user

I'm 23, and i did hardest content posiblei play scrapper healer, scraper dps, holo dpsas alt i play scout,thief and hfb/qfb on way

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@Ardyth.9286 said:I find it very difficult to use WASD and then move my fingers to 1-5 attack keys and back to WASD. It is not intuitive for me, although my gamer son has been trying to teach me. I've always used the mouse to move while keeping my fingers on the attack keys. I'll keep at it, though.

Try swapping movement keys to ESDF. This makes 4 and 5 a little more accessible while also freeing up A and W for keybinds. Don't use anything to the right of the 5 key (unless maybe you have large hands?). You might find it a little easier this way.

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When I was about to have hand surgery I got myself a Stinkyboard and had jump and autorun mapped to two of its four areas.

I cannot recommend enough getting a solid foot-pedal type input for the computer if you have hand problems. Because my left thumb is still pretty much stuffed, even 3 years after the hand surgery, I still tend to use the Stinkyboard for jumping. My muscle memory has transferred to my foot!

I've also keybound weapon swap to my mouse. Little fingers/hand with poor left hand means that I kept hitting the tilda accidentally, and going onto weapon swap cooldown.

They're not making it anymore :( but this is what it looks like to give you some idea of a comfortable footpedal thing: http://www.stinkyboard.com/support)Here is an alternative that was suggested in a Reddit forum: https://shop.3drudder.com/eu_en/3drudder-pc-vr.html

I found that shifting some actions to my foot meant that I had less mental pressure on using my hands. I don't know if the same will work for you though, YMMV and all that. You can choose what you want to map to the control. I have an acquaintance with one, and they mapped their WASD keys to theirs.

Good luck!

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I think I have same problem (even though I'm in my 40s, not 60s). Started playing GW1 when I was 30, and it was cool and fun, GvG, some hardcore... But then I found out that I just couldn't catch up with game dynamic, especially in GW2, when movement became much more important. Probably I'm slow and lazy, I don't know.So I got gaming mouse (pretty cheap A4Tech J90) with many buttons -- I use it for healing, targeting, elite, mount, run, weapon skill 1 autoattack, dodge, jump. It doesn't make me pro gamer, but helps a lot -- sometimes I run through regular PvE content barely touching keyboard.

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@"Ardyth.9286" said:I find it very difficult to use WASD and then move my fingers to 1-5 attack keys and back to WASD. It is not intuitive for me, although my gamer son has been trying to teach me. I've always used the mouse to move while keeping my fingers on the attack keys. I'll keep at it, though.

If you feel comfortable using the mouse for movement only, there is an option for doing this always. You can do it with a regular mouse, but one with a few more buttons works better for this. In certain situations and with a couple of builds, this may even outclass a regular WASD user.

We utilize the About Face shortcut. Engineer, Thief and Ranger mains probably know best about this feature while the other players may not even know this thing exists. About Face switches your movement by 180 ° = you turn around.fqCWtn6.jpgOn a mouse-only setup for movement, you can bind the mouse-wheel click on the About Face shortcut. You always have a finger on the wheel anyway, so turning around can be done quickly. If you have more buttons to use, Dodge and Move Backwards can also be bound to such a button. Then you can pretty much ignore WASD and completely focus on your skillbar (with the other hand).

What is the regular purpose of About Face?A few classes in this game have some special movement skills that work like a dodge backwards. Examples:

So if those classes want to use the skills to move forward, they just press About Face, use the skill and press About Face again.

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@"Ardyth.9286" said:I find it very difficult to use WASD and then move my fingers to 1-5 attack keys and back to WASD. It is not intuitive for me, although my gamer son has been trying to teach me. I've always used the mouse to move while keeping my fingers on the attack keys. I'll keep at it, though.

I'm an older gamer, too, and won't ever be doing Raids or other high end/rotation executing roles. And that's okay.

I've been using a Razer Tarterus since the days it was known as a Nostromo N52, all through GW1.

https://www.razer.com/sg-en/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer-tartarus

That lets me use the thumb button for movement and map desired skills to the keypad. I put 1-5 on the lower row and click on the screen for 6-0. I play a lot of different characters, so would never have muscle memory for which skills are on 7-8-9 anyway. Then I put important skills like swap, mount, F1, F2, F on the next keys. The top row has map, guild, inventory, etc. Jump and Dodge are on my trackball's extra buttons. Pretty much, my hands remain on the game pad and the trackball for combat.

I won't say that it doesn't take getting used to. If I try to use a keyboard for GW2 now, I'm lost. Same kind of thing. But being able to move in any direction with just the thumb makes a huge difference. Oh, and my keyboard has a set of programmable keys along the left edge. I mapped the different mounts there. It's easy enough to move my hand from the Tarterus to punch one of those.

Also in a little NA guild [FoW], and recently my older and less experienced brother started playing. Yeah, been working on basics like jumping :) So add me to friends and you can add us as a guild as well. We use Discord.

[edit] If anyone wants a copy of my setup, just holler.

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I suggest making a build that heals, tanks and supports other players, then you can just do your own thing and not really care that much about dodging because of high healing and mitigation potential.

Then the game is mostly about being close enough to teammates to share boons and heals, which is a lot easier to manage than playing a high risk damage dealer.As a support tank, you can even decide where the whole crew is gonna fight at and don't have to chase anything at all.

Support gameplay is also more about reacting to things happening instead of doing skill rotations endlessly, which imo is funnier and lets you improvise a lot more.After a few practice runs, you will actually know when damage spikes happen and can prepare for those in advance :)

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@Tiilimon.6094 said:I suggest making a build that heals, tanks and supports other players, then you can just do your own thing and not really care that much about dodging because of high healing and mitigation potential.

Then the game is mostly about being close enough to teammates to share boons and heals, which is a lot easier to manage than playing a high risk damage dealer.As a support tank, you can even decide where the whole crew is gonna fight at and don't have to chase anything at all.

Support gameplay is also more about reacting to things happening instead of doing skill rotations endlessly, which imo is funnier and lets you improvise a lot more.After a few practice runs, you will actually know when damage spikes happen and can prepare for those in advance :)

Interesting suggestion. I will look into this.

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Finding a good setup (mouse/keyboard) and a customized build is important (I would die in few seconds with a dragonhunter, against a tough boss), but I also think your jump from solo player to raid was probably too high all at once (if, like it seems, you never tried dungeons and fractals before).I'm not young anymore, and the age is enemy of my reflexes, but I can say that I'm able to do more things now than when I started to play GW2 (I immediately gave up on the idea of playing fractals t4, complete the towerclock jp, or take that Kingslayer achiev). But practice can greatly improve the performance, despite the age. Maybe you won't be able to use the super-duper build of snowcrow (I didn't even try), but you can find a decent build for you as well.

I suggest you to try some basic fractal, and try to go higher, when you feel ready. We have this event right now, so people expect to find new players. It's a good way to practice your rotations/controls in group, before jumping into raids.But most important, have fun! If you don't like to play in group because of the other people, just don't do it. But if it's only because you're not able to use efficiently your skills, then practice! (or change class when you play in group, that can also be a solution).

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My advice: You stress too much about skill rotations and performing "adequately" - no wonder you feel that you "underperform", can't contribute to the group or can't keep up with your teammates even in simple content like guild missions.

Just relax and play, forget about rotations. Once you feel comfortable with your character's profession, things like logical skill sequences and combos will happen automatically, because you will know your character inside out.

Remember: It's just a game.

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@Ardyth.9286 I'm in a Guild where I am one of the youngest players (I'm 35) and I play along side people of 10 years and up my senior. I know 2 people are also 60-ish. So don't let age be your deciding factor, you are as old as you feel you are!!! Getting a gaming mouse will be your absolute best investment. In case you didn't know, holding down your left click and right click button together makes your Toon run forward. If you wish to stop, you simply leave the the left click button. This will eliminate the need to use a "run forward" button completely. Most gaming mouses have two extra buttons on the side. So your mouse buttons are as follows: Left click is mouse button 1. Right click is mouse button 2. Your scrolling wheel is mouse button 3 (remember you can also press on this besides just scrolling with it.) Then the side buttons are 4 and 5 respectively. You can set your first 3 attacks, keyboard 1, 2 and 3, to mouse buttons 3, 4 and 5, and eliminate the use of keyboard buttons 1, 2 and 3 completely. I use a very cheap mouse, the Zelotes T-90, which works out to about $20-ish. So really not expensive and it works very well so far.

But as far as your age is concerned - I think it's super awesome that you are into computer games to begin with, my dad is in the same age group and he is completely technologically disadvantaged (to say the very least) Unfortunately there are a lot of trolls and bullies in the game and you should never ever let these kinds of people stop you from enjoying the wonderful world of Tyria. Have fun and relax, there are many other players like you that prefer a slower pace compared to a "go fast" and "get it done NOW" kind of situation. And strongly consider getting a gaming mouse, there are literally thousands of options available.

Have Fun and I hope my comment helps you :) Peace Love and Unity <3

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