Such as in Hoelbrak, where you could pretend the wooden beams are the only safe thing to walk on and use the right mouse button to rapidly turn yourself to face the next direction you want to travel. One way to practice precise mouse turning is to find some marks on the ground in-game. Keyboard turning slows you down in comparison to someone who uses mouselook to rotate the camera, and will make some movement strategies like moving in a circle much trickier.
You will be holding down your right mouse button and moving the mouse to turn your character, whereas holding down the left mouse button will rotate just the camera when you move your mouse.Įven if you are not used to these controls, it is worth taking the time to learn how to move around this way. If your keys are on the default settings, please go to your keybinds and change A and D to strafe left and right. This guide will be assuming that you will be using the keyboard to move and strafe, and the mouse to move the camera to look around and to turn.
If it all feels like too much to take in, throw this out and just wander around the GW2 world and enjoy yourself playing in a way that suits you best.)Ģa: WASD Movement, Mouselook and Strafing (I write this under the assumption that you -want- to learn and improve, that learning these concepts are interesting, and that you’ll have fun seeing yourself get better at the game and not die so often. Pick a concept, try it out in game, practice with it until you get it, then pick something else and work on that. Heck, I didn’t write this guide in a single day. Rest assured that just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, you aren’t expected to know all of this by heart in a single day as well. The overall goal is to teach concepts – not the specifics of any one encounter, but general principles that can then be recognized and applied in new situations. It’s meant as more of a step-by-step tutorial or an encyclopedic reference, for you to pick a section that you may be unclear about, read for understanding, then jump into the game to practice and familiarize yourself with the concept. There are a lot of concepts I wanted to touch on, to highlight that combat without the holy trinity does not mean that there is no depth, or that it’s all too confusing to puzzle out, and this guide ended up being a very dense tome.
This guide is not meant for reading through in one sitting, though you can try. Fundamentals of Combat and Doing DamageĪ) The New Trinity – Damage/Support/Control B) Comfortable Keybinds for Dodging and Other Utility SkillsĬ) General Options and Targeting PracticeĬ) The Shapes of AoE Skills and Melee CleavingĤ.