Profession that does well without weapon swapping?

[Vicus.5841]

I am curious if there are professions that do well without weapon swapping. One that could still do raids/fractals in PVE. I have read that thief Daredevil staff requires no swapping but was wondering if any other professions do well also. I do not have much experience with professions at the high level. I'm not interested in PVP . But I love many things about this game, story, world, freedom, but having to weapon swap to maximize dps for me is something I don't enjoy. I know it really gives a lot of freedom to the min/maxers but for me I guess I am just simple.

Another side question, is there a profession where the basis of it is to just use abilities while they come off cooldown. I've never done well where you have to stack these three debuffs before applying this offensive Dot, ect. Trying to find the right class for me. Since there are so many options that I don't even know where to start, would love some assistance.

Thxs

[Donari.5237]

Well, neither of those things will make you as effective as possible (I'm not even a min-maxer saying this) but yeah, DD does pretty well sticking to just one weapon set for the most part. Like, I mostly pistol/pistol on mine for anything not needing a ton of cc, but the staff is there to mix it up in melee. That's the more important thing for me about swap, not doing more dps, but having melee/range options depending on what I'm fighting. I wouldn't suggest Engineer or Elementalist for you, though technically those don't have weapon swap; however, they do have all sorts of water/earth/fire/air or kit bundle swaps and require a lot of keyboard piano playing to accomplish it. Not simple :) Oh! Revenant can do pretty well sticking mostly to one weapon type (no idea if that's raid viable).

For just using on cooldown, I'd suggest Greatsword Reaper with Shouts, with dancing in and out of Shroud optional but highly advised. You still need to use some judgement, eg saving your stun break shout for when you are cc'd, or your big cc-breakers for when the enemy has a blue bar, but for the most part you use what you have as you have it. (May want to do GS4 -before- you GS2, to get the extra spin benefits). GS/Shout Reaper has a ton of intuitive flow of skills and rapid cd's on the Shouts to offset the slower movement of the GS.

[Sagramor.7395]

Could give Condi Renegade a shot since you wouldn't be swapping off Mace/Axe. There would be swapping legends, but that doesn't change your 1-5.

[Toolbox.9375]

I think Staff Elementalist can do pretty well camping Fire Attunement, right? It's been a long while, I'm not sure if that's still the case. But that's pretty straightforward.

[BunjiKugashira.9754]

@Toolbox.9375 said:I think Staff Elementalist can do pretty well camping Fire Attunement, right? It's been a long while, I'm not sure if that's still the case. But that's pretty straightforward.

While that does work in open world, in fractals and especially raids you are expected to do more than that. A LOT MORE than that. Staff Weaver is one of the most difficult to play and most easy to fuck up builds you can play. Most people can't even pull half the dps numbers of the benchmarks on the training Golem. Once they enter real combat the dps drops by another 90%. Staff Weaver is really only for people who have the time and dedication to train this build. I've seen first time Dragon Hunters (scroll leveling) pull more dps in raids than ele main players.

[mercury ranique.2170]

No profession does well without weapon swapping. Specially if you also just want to press keys when you can. Swapping weapons, timing skills and dodges and knowing what to press when is what makes a good player. To be honest, even in open world pve it is a bad plan as you will annoy others not knowing when to cc.

Having said that... maybe look into a an holosmith using trait photonics blast module. You only have to enter photon forge, but it ends automatically switching back to the regular set. You still need to look into cc and know not to use it when fighting breakbar foes, but it comes somewhat close to what you want without turning in a terrible player.

[AliamRationem.5172]

I did my first character (thief) to 80 with just a melee weapon set. I really enjoyed dagger/pistol and it was no trouble at all to level this way. Unfortunately, when I reached the expansion content I found that having a ranged backup option saved me a lot of unnecessary death and hardship, even if I still relied on my favored set 90% of the time.

As I learned more, I found that having a weapon swap also gives you somewhere to go when your primary weapon set is all on cooldown. And now I also appreciate that every weapon has at least something about it that you're really going to want. For example, I think staff is pretty terrible on mirage. However, the phase retreat skill is just an absolute life-saver. So although I only really use staff for when I can't safely get up close to use axe for better damage, any time I need to get out of melee range in a hurry it's swap + phase retreat!

If you find that too complex, I find it gets easier if you practice using a secondary weapon set until you're comfortable with the skills. From there, adding a simple button press to swap between two familiar and comfortable weapons is a lot easier to figure out.

[Kelthien.8593]

Good question!So Staff eles like people say are a good choice, though the attunements are CRAZY complex.

I'd also suggest something like a warrior, Power-rev, or even a Deadeye for some game modes, as they swap weapons but usually only dependent on Range (ie- use one weapon set for 'far away' and another for 'up close').

Finally, look in metabattle for the Condi DPS Scourge build. I think it weapon swaps, but it always keeps the main hand scepter. Even though you're swapping, you only need to manage 2 new offhand skills instead of a full 5.

[Vicus.5841]

Thanks for all the info. I don't plan to be a horrible player (Already know I'm not) but I played engineer for few hours and realized that the weapon swapping is out of control. So instead of spending hours on each character, I wanted to draw my focus more on ones that fit my playstyle.

[Despond.2174]

Thief Staff DD is probably the best viable set-up for no weapon swapping but generally you're going to have to weapon swap to get the most out of each build.

Staff ele is a great balance because to get the most out of it the attunement swapping takes skill while juggling not dying, but you can also just camp 1-2 attunements and still do ok. High skill for a premium DPS increase while lower skill variation for a moderate solid DPS output - that's good balance.

[Silmar Alech.4305]

Elementalist, Tempest or Weaver only uses the staff (or other fixed weapon set), but attunement changing is essentially weapon swapping, because all 5 weapon skills change, so this profession doesn't qualify for the OP. Elementalist with attunements is like swapping between 4 weapons. Staff Weaver is weapon swapping on steroids! It's as if you have 12 weapons to swap, and you can swap main hand and off hand individually. It's even more difficult than the engineer with its weapon kits, who also has access to only one weapon but has to constantly swap between it and his weapon kits to do somewhat decent damage.

[STIHL.2489]

Well if you are just into things like Open World, Personal Story, and Living Story, I would suggest Engineer/Scrapper. Unless you use Kits (which you don't need to do, another strong class is Revernant, while you can swap.. you don't really need to.

[Samnang.1879]

staff elestaff druids

[sticx.5823]

Ele or Engi don't weapon swap... =)

Of course there's atumenet swapping, holo swapping, kit swapping, etc..... You would be extreemly hampering yourself by trying to play any one class without any swapping.

[Lexi.1398]

If you're looking for something with not much complexity, it doesn't get easier than revenant. While there is legend swapping + weapon swapping, you don't really need to do much- you can pretty much cheese the legends with dwarf + whatever the legend for the damage build you want, which is usually dwarf/demon without elite specs (dwarf is the only solid self-heal rev gets really). As far as weapon swapping goes, again, you usually won't need to swap weapons most of the time. Rev also gets access to a viable healer build (ventari) so you can play some diverse roles if support is up your street too.