Looking for advice between a couple builds for a handicapped player

[sutasafaia.4872]

So I finally decided to update the game for christmas, got the xpacs, and have generally been having a blast playing with my fiance. However, as a handicapped player, I've been trying to find really easy builds to play that will still let me enjoy the game without pain to my hands. I've more or less settled on three of them but could really use some advice from more experienced players. They will likely be obvious to most people since it doesn't take long to hunt them down when searching for answers but getting some feedback would be nice to compare them. I've messed with a bunch of LI builds over the years, never gotten very far though, since when I do sit down to play even those can be tough on me sometimes...yikes.

Anyway, did you guess Mechanist and Reaper? Amazing 🙂 The other possibility I was playing with was a flamethrower scrapper but heck if I know how that will turn out.

Mostly I'm just trying to find out which is easier to play compared to each other, as well as which you think would still be capable of soloing champs and the like. 

I already have the mechanist (only 3 maps away from getting my first 100% core exploration) and obviously it's pretty easy. Celestial setup, condi, alacrity support, and basically just let the pet tank and do its thing. Feels a lot like a traditional pet class from any other mmo and it's been a breeze ~99% of the time other than sometimes chasing it around and staying in its hug zone to keep buffs active. If the enemies decide to ignore my pet I do sometimes run into trouble but the constant barrier spam helps a lot. I will say that as much as I enjoy the skills on the mace I tend to find pistol better since melee seems a lot harder for me than range. That is likely just me having a hard time with my hands though and it's something I am working on.

Reaper I don't have yet, necro is only 78 and then I have to camp wvw for a while to save up hero point tokens, so I have no idea how this one feels at all and need the advice of other players to compare it to engi. I planned on doing a marauder and zerk+valk accessory setup for it, and was going to replace the usual soul reaping traitline with blood to get more tanky and barrier generation. But I have no idea how this would compare to the mechanist for ease of play or at soloing at all.

Both the mechanist and reaper are signet based to keep buttons down to a minimum.

And then there's the scrapper. I see it mentioned a lot so figured I would at least say it's in the running so people can maybe tell me if I should be staying far away from this build or not 😛 I do like the idea of getting an outfit as close to a space marine as I can and camping the flamethrower like a heavy flamer... might not be a very good build though.

Anyway, sorry for rather long post and thank you in advance for the help. It's fun to be back. Also, since it may be relevent somehow, I have done basically nothing in any zones outside of core so far. I am attempting to clear every map as I go and see the story in order and I do know it gets harder once I get to the HoT stuff.

[Chiral.8915]

Pretty much every profession has a low intensity build out there that can put out decent dmg or healing with very little keyboard input. 

@MaselMMO on youtube has a number of low intensity build videos that are updated to the most recent patch. 

With regard to necro specifically, reaper and scourge are so strong right now that you can essentially facetank and one key most content in open world and the easier strikes/dungeons. 

[Phyb.6704]

Reaper can be low intensity but a Hizens celestial reaper for pve is probably one of... if not the best to solo pve content with. Matched maybe by celestial revenant. However this celestial reaper would be shooting off 1 utility then 2 weapon skills then shroud into shroud 5 then shroud 4 then shroud 2 and 3. Then basically back out and repeat. Weapon would generally be greatsword. You stack 80-100 bleed stacks and do quite a lot of self healing well doing around 20k dps. This reaper will require 1 utility skill being used. You can however have the the healing signet, life force regen signet and then two summons if you want to decrease the intensity. 
Power reaper is very low intensity however has FAR less survivability then Hizens celestial reaper build. Its not bad however your not soloing champion open world bosses like you can with the celestial reaper build. 

Celestial revnenat is about the same. They are by no means weaver but still will require some activity.

There is also herald builds that are pretty low intensity since the buff ward life is pretty chill.

The biggest thing you want to stay far.... FAR from is elementalist and expeically the weaver elite spec. 

I think it matters more what content you want to do. If you want group content or you want to be a solo king that takes down open world champion bosses solo. Or if you just want to roam around and do events. Different low intensity builds will be good for each. Generally though fractals, raids and such are not low intensity in general. 

I do think a power herald or even a power / healing herald though not meta is proabably the lowest intensity you will find and still get around in pve. That or a power reaper. Just not the best builds for open world but you will be fine as long as you dont go trying to solo a boss. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I don't know your particular tolerances, but I've found that the best build when my hands hurt is the auto attack rev.  Using this thing is incredibly easy.  Start in Assassin Stance, turn on Impossible Odds and Facet of Nature, then just... auto attack.  When you run out of energy, swap to Dwarf Stance, turn on Vengeful Hammers, and then auto attack until legend swap is off cooldown, then go right back to Assassin Stance.  

That's it.  If you want even less activity, Facet of Nature is optional here.  You can use more sword skills if you want to do more damage, but the outlined tactic has strangely high damage for very little effort.  I have Thrill of Combat and Dance of Death equipped for self sustain, but if you're finding yourself to not be in any particular danger, you can change the traits to Notoriety and Swift Termination to do more damage.  If you wanted a less selfish version, you can equip a boon variant.  For that version, while in Dragon Stance you turn on every facet but the elite one, and you'll give yourself and all of your teammates a lot of boons.  It requires more button presses, though, but it is probably the superior version until you unlock Jade Tech Overcharge buffs.  Once you have the Jade Tech, you'll automatically get full boons upon entering combat, making the boon variant build redundant in the overworld.

There is a third variant, though it is much more active: The Bunny Lord.  The dodge on vindicator does a lot of damage, and the Sigil of Stamina refills the dodge upon killing an enemy.  The side-effect of this is that, while fighting groups of enemies, you'll effectively have infinite energy and will dodge continuously until they're all dead.  Now, this requires many more inputs, as you'll be pressing the dodge key very often.  Depending on your setup, this will stretch your hands across the keyboard, which hurts some people (coughmyselfcough) more than others.  This comes with the advantage of doing even more damage, while also hitting a lot of enemies and making yourself nigh invulnerable while fighting groups of enemies.  

The only spec that compares to auto herald's combination of effectiveness and ease of use is Mechanist.  There's a lot of ways to play it, but the easiest two are to use the rifle (uses rifle #2 and rifle #5 regularly), and also to equip Bomb Kit and just hold down the auto attack button.  The bomb version uses the Explosive Temper trait, but it has really good cleave on it.

[idpersona.3810]

https://accessibilitywars.com/ is a great resource for handicapped players.

[Angesombre.4630]

On 1/4/2024 at 8:46 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

There is a third variant, though it is much more active: The Bunny Lord.  The dodge on vindicator does a lot of damage, and the Sigil of Stamina refills the dodge upon killing an enemy.  The side-effect of this is that, while fighting groups of enemies, you'll effectively have infinite energy and will dodge continuously until they're all dead.  Now, this requires many more inputs, as you'll be pressing the dodge key very often.  Depending on your setup, this will stretch your hands across the keyboard, which hurts some people (coughmyselfcough) more than others.  This comes with the advantage of doing even more damage, while also hitting a lot of enemies and making yourself nigh invulnerable while fighting groups of enemies.  

The vindicator has become more annoying to play with the F2 requirement. So it's been a lot less practical since November 28, as you're now obliged to use F2 all the time. If they'd left "Song of Arboreum" as before, I'd have said okay, but not anymore.

[Andres.6753]

There's this amazing video by BB Bacon Boy. He made a very useful tier list.

I main Ranger/Engi and I love how Mechanist feels compared to other classes. I play it kitless with rifle and signets. Still super strong and, if you add Celestial gear, super tanky for most open world content.😄 

 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

2 hours ago, Angesombre.4630 said:

The vindicator has become more annoying to play with the F2 requirement. So it's been a lot less practical since November 28, as you're now obliged to use F2 all the time. If they'd left "Song of Arboreum" as before, I'd have said okay, but not anymore.

With the Sigil of Stamina you don't need to worry about maintaining Vigor with Song of Arboreum.  

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

The answer is rifle mechanist. Set all mech skills to auto cast and use auto attack on everything.

[Phyb.6704]

On 1/2/2024 at 11:12 AM, sutasafaia.4872 said:

So I finally decided to update the game for christmas, got the xpacs, and have generally been having a blast playing with my fiance. However, as a handicapped player, I've been trying to find really easy builds to play that will still let me enjoy the game without pain to my hands. I've more or less settled on three of them but could really use some advice from more experienced players. They will likely be obvious to most people since it doesn't take long to hunt them down when searching for answers but getting some feedback would be nice to compare them. I've messed with a bunch of LI builds over the years, never gotten very far though, since when I do sit down to play even those can be tough on me sometimes...yikes.

Anyway, did you guess Mechanist and Reaper? Amazing 🙂 The other possibility I was playing with was a flamethrower scrapper but heck if I know how that will turn out.

Mostly I'm just trying to find out which is easier to play compared to each other, as well as which you think would still be capable of soloing champs and the like. 

I already have the mechanist (only 3 maps away from getting my first 100% core exploration) and obviously it's pretty easy. Celestial setup, condi, alacrity support, and basically just let the pet tank and do its thing. Feels a lot like a traditional pet class from any other mmo and it's been a breeze ~99% of the time other than sometimes chasing it around and staying in its hug zone to keep buffs active. If the enemies decide to ignore my pet I do sometimes run into trouble but the constant barrier spam helps a lot. I will say that as much as I enjoy the skills on the mace I tend to find pistol better since melee seems a lot harder for me than range. That is likely just me having a hard time with my hands though and it's something I am working on.

Reaper I don't have yet, necro is only 78 and then I have to camp wvw for a while to save up hero point tokens, so I have no idea how this one feels at all and need the advice of other players to compare it to engi. I planned on doing a marauder and zerk+valk accessory setup for it, and was going to replace the usual soul reaping traitline with blood to get more tanky and barrier generation. But I have no idea how this would compare to the mechanist for ease of play or at soloing at all.

Both the mechanist and reaper are signet based to keep buttons down to a minimum.

And then there's the scrapper. I see it mentioned a lot so figured I would at least say it's in the running so people can maybe tell me if I should be staying far away from this build or not 😛 I do like the idea of getting an outfit as close to a space marine as I can and camping the flamethrower like a heavy flamer... might not be a very good build though.

Anyway, sorry for rather long post and thank you in advance for the help. It's fun to be back. Also, since it may be relevent somehow, I have done basically nothing in any zones outside of core so far. I am attempting to clear every map as I go and see the story in order and I do know it gets harder once I get to the HoT stuff.

What handicap ?
You can also get the foot "buttons"
Some streamers use them much like loop pedals for music. It lets a streamer for example swap audio or screens in obs by tapping with a foot. 
If it is a hand problem that over use causes pain and the feet are ok then this could be an idea so you do not have to deal with as much restriction and pain.
I know this is not exactly what you asked but I have known many that found this to improve their quality of life so I wanted to drop it.