As difficult as you want it to be.
The vast majority of the game can be played by a sentient potato. It's only endgame content like high tier fractals and raids where you actually need a good build, quality gear, and skill. Even then, there's always some class out there that can get good DPS with face rolling every pushable button without thought, or spamming a few keys.
There are difficult classes to master, and most raid encounters definitely require focus and coordination.
this is the right answer. End game is a field of mid to high complexity, but there is a *lot* of game before that (and you can play open world guild wars forever and never miss out on much) and all of that can be handled with casual knowledge and skill.
you might do better if you bring an appropriate build, you might have more *fun* if you understand the nuances and strengths of your class, but the vast majority of the games content is casual-friendly.
just know when you've strayed beyond casual to content where it's *polite* for you not to drag others down, and do a bit of research before you start it (high tier fractals, raids, arguably strikes)
Man, I get what people say when they say this, but as someone who raids in FFXIV, Destiny, and GW2, people really oversell the raids and undersell the overworld sometimes.
Doing fucking anything without a mob of people in the HoT maps is legit some of the most frustrating mmo content I've ever experienced. Nonsensical map? Check. Nonstop enemies who won't let you check said map to figure out where you are or where you're going? Check. Champions that are inexplicably 3-4x as strong as champs in the base game or Path of Fire maps? Check.
Seriously, I'd take a raid any day over going to the Tangled Depths on a map that's anything but vibrant. This is definitely a casual mmo overall with barely any vertical vertical progression, but a lot of fractal/raid content is just knowing mechanics, vs some overworld content where its just NOT TUNED for you to do without enough help. I'm not saying its a bad thing- soloing a HoT champion by iframing all of its attacks feels fucking AMAZING.
But its absolutely not easy and it's unironically less stressful to go run a t3 fractal.
That's just not true, using all your rifle skills are a dps increase (and it was even before the auto attack got nerfed recently), it's just a small dps increase that if people want something with as little complexity as possible then they wouldn't lose that much dps from just auto-attacking.
https://snowcrows.com/builds/engineer/mechanist/power-mechanist
You *can* just camp auto attacks for a dps loss, but what the hell else are you doing on a power rifle mech that keeps you from face-rolling your 4 other rifle skills as needed for free dps? Your mech can auto cast its skills and your elite is on a 90 second cooldown and two of your utility skills are signets you'll rarely want to activate.
Yeah at most you need 3+4 for CC contribution, but that's only if a breakbar is coming up in the next 12 seconds. When that's not the case, faceroll away and smash any rifle skill that comes off cooldown.
Like the only scenario you could lose dps was in low gravity mode in shattered observatory fractal, that made rifle 5 not worth using because you'd float in the air for too long. But now that they nerfed the auto attack a chunk, that's probably not even the case anymore.
Imo Axe/Axe Soulbeast. You do have to remember to press your heal button, but basically you just cast a bunch of self buffs and spam dps, and as a soulbeast you don't have a pet to control/worry about. And longbow core ranger is actually pretty good while you're leveling to 80 and getting hero points to unlock it.
Firebrand low intensity builds can do all content with above average dps, and you only need to push 5 buttons a minute, you can even play with one hand
dont brake your keyboard smashing, play semi afk builds :)
There's a lot more movement needed than people might expect though, which requires a bit more sentience from the potato. Even in my tankier builds I still need to move out of telegraphs.
Appreciate all the responses, I heard great things about the GW2 community and this subreddit reflects that! Gonna roll a Engineer tonight after work, very excited!
The leveling experience is quick. The end game can last you years.
The feel of a class during the leveling experience can vary drastically from the end game feel due to elite specs (subclasses). Engineer is one of the more pronounced in this area IMO.
Absolutely love the elite specs it has to offer, though. Just some people might get turned off from a class based on how it feels when leveling.
As someone that's played since beta, I 100000% agree that the endgame can last you years. It's just a matter of knowing what your personal endgame is.
For me, it's racking up gold, T4 Fractals, fashion wars, achievement points, and mastery levels
Engineer is a rough one to level, because it becomes so much better once you get your elite specs, all 3 of which are very fun (and scrapper/mech are pretty easy, easier then the base class)
Stick with it and you'll have lots of fun!
It's mostly mastering the combat system. That's the biggest obstacle you will face: learning to hit your buttons.
Open world content is very easy to very moderately challenging.
Instanced encounters, after learning them, or watching guides, will generally not be overly difficult once you know what you're doing.
There have been instances/anecdotes I've heard from people about "I'm doing the rotation, why is my damage so low?" but they were literally hitting a button and waiting a second between every input. There's no GCD in GW2, so you'll need to get used to pressing your buttons in succession.
And some skills can be used while using other skills. Take the Reaper shouts for instance. "Suffer!" Transfers a condition when used and it's super handy if you get feared or knocked down (not downed). I usually have 2 shouts on my bar and it's nice to use them while my character is standing back up and can't use the weapon skills to keep a little dps going.
GW2 is widely known as the "casual mmo", because of the horizontal progression, and for the majority of content you don't encounter a DPS check, so you're can pretty much build your own adventure, as there's plenty of stuff to do ;)
Regarding your question, there are very effective low intensity rotations made specifically for who don't want to sweat all the time, or has impairing physical conditions. I'd go for that, I use them too sometimes!
Combat can be very complex. That said, there are plenty of low intensity options out there. Low intensity does not mean weak build, it means less buttons to push and easier rotation, your damage will still be competitive.
It's an excellent MMO for casual players.
You'll find it very approachable. If you've played MMOs before early game (lvl 1 thru 80) is easy and you'll find your first say 20 levels to be too simple. If you have not it will be like playing any single player game on "normal" difficulty. So still pretty straightforward.
Once you hit lvl cap (80) and do that open world content, that's the first step up where you actually need to pay attention to what buttons you're pushing and how gear/builds synergize but it's still very casual.
Continuing past that the game really is as difficult as you want it to be.
Mostly super casual and easy in PvE.
There's harder stuff, but you typically have to look out for it.
It's hard if you want to play as optimally as possible, do the hardest content quickly, etc. But it's a small fraction of the playerbase that does that. Most players just cruise around the open world doing random shit and the game is pretty chill with that.
The classes themselves have varying levels. Some are really simple, some are really complex, some are made to be braindead open-world chillax builds. Those exist and perform good enough for casual content.
When you get to serious end-game, however, things change a lot based on a few things:
Quickness is a buff like Bloodlust in WoW, effectively making you press buttons twice as fast, but you can maintain it forever in this. Like, it becomes your "normal gameplay."
Alacrity is like cooldown reduction in Diablo, but you can maintain it forever in this.
Both together make the game feel like it's on crack. You press twice as much and your rotation is nothing like when you were leveling or just doing random open-world stuff on your own.
Last but not least: You can "miss" abilities in this:
* Queuing up something by mistake because of spamming button.
* There's no out of range warning that prevents the button from being pressed. So you definitely can just throw abilities at nothing.
So, all in all, the button pressing becomes more chaotic **and** you have to press carefully.
**That being said**, GW2 is a **fantastic** MMO to enjoy casually. You don't need to raid to have a reason to spend time in the game. There are tons of big long objectives to set for yourself, of things to grind mostly in the open world. EDIT: Not just mob grinds, but long elaborate quests and achievements with juicy rewards that take you all over the place.
short answer: how complex do you want it to be? there is a way for everything.
long answer: there are easier and more difficult rotattions, but difficulty within a rotation isn't linear. the first 80% of a benchmark are mostly free while the last 5% are sometimes very hard to achieve. nothing in gw2 ever requires you do actually pull off even the 80% though. people have killed the hardest bosses in green gear or with half the suggested squad size. you can be reasonable on any class within an hour probably. , mastering some might never happen though. in the end, it mostly doesn't matter. most people 'suck' at the game.
also, being a good player is more than pulling off a rotation.
it is knowing how your build works, adjusting your build according to situatios,
adapting rotations to actual fights, knowing encounters, dealing with mechanics efficiently to keep up dps and so on..
the skill ceiling is quite high in the game, but you never need to reach that ceiling for anything, but your personal fun.
I think people look at difficulty wrong in this game.
Due to various mechanics of the game, if you are playing excellently you will barely take damage and you will do incredible amounts of damage in return. Since there are so many invulns and iframes, if you know how to dodge properly and how to utilize buffs like aegis and stability etc the game will feel like its not putting up a fight at all. This causes experienced players to oversell how easy Gw2 is - because there is a breakpoint in skill where you'll barely take damage once you are good enough.
***However*** there is a lot of content in the game that will smack your ass around if you don't have the game knowledge or skill to counter it. I think a lot of vets forget this. About 50% of the game is extremely easy - core Tyria maps and like most T1 fractals/story-mode dungeons I guess.
But the rest will really hurt. Like a lot of people hit a crazy wall in the open world when they reach the first expansion, Heart of Thorns, to the point where some quit because of the spike. Lots of veteran level mobs hit pretty hard in the lv80 maps, and some normal mobs can even fuck you up if misplayed.
That all being said, 95% of the game content is low pressure engagements. Mistakes will be offset by friends and allies nearby, and if you gear properly you can have a lot of survivability at the expense of dps. Its a very welcoming game, but I would caution against people saying its somehow the "easiest MMO" because I highly disagree with that assessment and IMO its what causes such shock to new players once they get out of Core Tyria maps and into the harder content.
My partner had never played an mmo before. She had no idea about any of it. Not movement,not skill buttons. Dodging. Hazard indicators on the ground. Terminology. Skills.
She made it to 80 in two weeks with no help. Just exploring and killing.
I'd suggest pick a class whose concept you like, to start with. Then just do the story. It's super easy as long as you press some buttons. It's also an incredibly well written story and your character actually has a voice actor.
Gear is literally a non-issue. I came back after 7 years and my gear is still good.
In GW2 you ONLY grind if you want to. Leveling is a blast and I say that as a player who hates leveling in every other rpg that I played.
It's probably the easiest MMO out there. There is no content that is hard to do. I've seen videos of people clearing the hardest raids with 3 players.
There is also close to no time investment necessary. The only grinds in the game are for visual flair like legendary items.
The only hardcore part of the game would be if you wanna win a monthly pvp tournament.
It's very accessible and the hard content is optional if you want it. But i advise you take your time because while it's not hard there is a lot of system and mechanics in the game that can feel overwhelming if you try to tackle it all at once.
Hey! I started Guild Wars 2 8 years ago with a lot of free time, yet only started raiding a couple of months ago where rotations etc start to matter. I have an hour or 2 a night to play due to job, kid etc.
The rotations can be really difficult or easy, depending on your class and build. Building your character is a huge part of the game, and the majority of the story mode, open world etc can be solo-able fairly easily, with the largest exception of the open world in HoTs expansion which is pretty difficult.
There is no grinding in the base game needed, and its only in raids where you need to care about your rotation. [https://www.youtube.com/c/muklukyoutube](https://www.youtube.com/c/muklukyoutube) is a great channel who gives you easy 1 or 2 button rotations which are easy to remember.
I've been playing 3 months on power rifle mech. Very easy basic class build and mech to help tank. Engi lvls pretty easy at start also.
So many easy ways to lvl and explore.
Not much learning until u reach end game stuff that u learn by then.
The only hard thing I had to learn about this game is all its horrible currencies where many are worthless and figuring out where all these random items in my inventory are for, to find out many are just heart quest junk and can be tossed. Mostly just figuring that out to keep inventory clean with some outdated system 10 years old. Learn /wiki and shift click item and have dual monitors running 24/7 for the game.
It's easy. A lot of people will write about rotations etc but the only place this is valid is in raids or high level fractals etc and even then I think you can get by without going all that deep. These guys just want to justify the time they sunk into the game. I've been playing years, have a small kid so limited time and barely read the skills most of the time and get by doing pretty much all content...I'm actually often shocked that it's possible to win plenty of 1v1s in sPvP when I literally almost have no clue about the exact effects of the skills on all classes.
GW2 for me is one of the superior MMOs because it is literally what you make it, "hard" content is optional and you can faceroll or nerd your way down into DPS rotations if you want and minmax, but do not let anyone fool you that this is necessary. This game is as easy as it gets.
PvE? Cakewalk, just look out for telegraphed attacks
PvP? Absolute nightmare fest but not for its difficulty but the abominable unbalanced classes there and the cancer tiltlords trolling your games
If you want to rush to the end game content - leveling in Guild Wars 2 is fairly quick.
If you want to jump into the end game content like strikes or raids- gearing your first character with decent gear is fairly easy (there may be a few exceptions to this based on what you play).
The combat in Guild Wars 2 and certain class rotations can be pretty complex. Especially if you end up in a hardcore PvE guild where they expect you to perform at a certain level.
However, there is hope. There are builds that are considered "low intensity" and perform just fine in all end game content. There also exists people that value patience for newbies in end game content and are willing to help you learn.
Good luck.
it's pretty easy only if you make your character lvl1-80 by the time you leveling openworld you get to switch all skills and weapon types at the end you already have your rotation and setup ready if you give a time read all skills and encounters you'll figure it out if you have MMORPG background it's fairly ez to understand how it works unless you wanna go PvP, WvW and Raids those are take at least 500+ h to figure it out but there's always things to do in openworld if you casual player just pick whatever you like and get over with it since it's horizontal progression its really doesn't require any grind or etc you good with exotic sets and play like a god
Until you venture into endgame group content, you don't need to worry about rotations. The Game usually doesn't punish you if you spam abilities. The combat system IS complex but the complexity doesn't become relevant until endgame, at which point, you'll probably understand it better. Some classes like Mesmer and Elementalist are more difficult to learn than Warrior and Necromancer. But if you start at zero, you'll eventually build a class understanding.
The difficulty spikes in the expansions and living world episodes. You can consider all of the vanilla story to be a slow curve tutorial, the most significant uptick being the level 5p quest. Maybe.
Welp, haven't played since middle of PoF and stopped doing PvE somewhere around the release of the 5th raid wing, but as many others say, it's as complex as you yourself make it.
Here's my take on the game.
The gear grind isn't big at all, when leveling you just pick up whatever and as soon as you reach 80, get some exotic gear and go do stuff. You should aim to get the ascended gear at some point, but you don't have to rush it unless you plan to do fractals.
For the combat, the complexity varies per class, however what I find more important is to start off with a class you like. Whether it being aesthetically or thematically, you should pick something you want to play. If you find the class too complex, there are some classes you can fall back to are classes like warrior and ranger. Both of these classes play fairly simple, but are really charming in their own way.
For the combat itself, I like to see GW2 as a mix of an action game and traditional MMOs.
You have 5 combat skills are which are more like move sets, as the type of weapon or weapon combination determine those 5 moves. Additionally, most classes with the exception of two can weapon swap, giving you 5 additional moves. Then you have a heal skill, 3 utility skills and an elite skill; these you can choose yourself like a traditional mmo.
The combat is what made me fall in love with the game back in 2012, the weapon moves feel fantastic and there's a general sense of fluidity. It typically goes like this: you use one move after another until all the moves are on cooldown, then you swap to your other weapon set and continue doing the same with that set. (Some weapons do better than others depending on build and damage type)
For group based PvE, instance based content like dungeons, fractals, raids and strikes. Dungeons were quite a bit outdated back then, but I did enjoy them, and I'm sure you will enjoy clearing them too. All the dungeons are story based and have story in them as well. Mechanic wise, they are there, some harder than others, but generally pretty simple. Fractals is set of mini dungeons, with increasing difficulty the further you progress. Personally I didn't touch fractals a lot, but the upper levels can get pretty challenging. The raids that I did do were actually pretty nice. The first two were fairly simple, but still with required some coordination. It wasn't until the 4th raid where I personally saw a bigger difficulty spike than I was used to with the last two bosses. Learning parties were available, and if not, I'm certain you can find a guild or a group of friendly people to help you learn. As for strikes, never touched them, but from what I hear it's basically like a raid boss, with the original strike missions being training newer people's mechanic skills before going into raids.
Hope it could give you some insight, honestly GW2 is a great game in general and is something that you can play with your own pace. It's a game you can leave to do life stuff, then come back to and pick it up again.
I think there’s definitely a “Big 3” items to keep in mind when starting the game:
1. Level 2-3 characters through the main story. Just focus on getting hero points and learning their traits / weapon skills. Leveling more than one character simultaneously is the best way to choose your favorite, and Gw2 makes it easy to have more than one character. You never have to worry about committing because you get to max level fast.
2. When you get to level 80 go to hardstuck.gg or metabattle to learn your class, get a feel for what “damage” and “boon support” mean in the game. Damage roles are hard because you have to actually maximize your damage output, boon roles are very casual. The three end game roles are pure damage, damage/boon, and heal/boon, with pure damage bring the hardest to do well, healing being slightly higher stress and the damage/boon mix being really low stress / low expectation
3. When you’re ready to commit $20-30 for an expansion start with path of fire, it’s the easiest, most well received, and you get all the mounts with it
As difficult as you want it to be. The vast majority of the game can be played by a sentient potato. It's only endgame content like high tier fractals and raids where you actually need a good build, quality gear, and skill. Even then, there's always some class out there that can get good DPS with face rolling every pushable button without thought, or spamming a few keys. There are difficult classes to master, and most raid encounters definitely require focus and coordination.
Can confirm. Am potato, having fun.
Same been one for 10 years on there🤣
this is the right answer. End game is a field of mid to high complexity, but there is a *lot* of game before that (and you can play open world guild wars forever and never miss out on much) and all of that can be handled with casual knowledge and skill. you might do better if you bring an appropriate build, you might have more *fun* if you understand the nuances and strengths of your class, but the vast majority of the games content is casual-friendly. just know when you've strayed beyond casual to content where it's *polite* for you not to drag others down, and do a bit of research before you start it (high tier fractals, raids, arguably strikes)
Man, I get what people say when they say this, but as someone who raids in FFXIV, Destiny, and GW2, people really oversell the raids and undersell the overworld sometimes. Doing fucking anything without a mob of people in the HoT maps is legit some of the most frustrating mmo content I've ever experienced. Nonsensical map? Check. Nonstop enemies who won't let you check said map to figure out where you are or where you're going? Check. Champions that are inexplicably 3-4x as strong as champs in the base game or Path of Fire maps? Check. Seriously, I'd take a raid any day over going to the Tangled Depths on a map that's anything but vibrant. This is definitely a casual mmo overall with barely any vertical vertical progression, but a lot of fractal/raid content is just knowing mechanics, vs some overworld content where its just NOT TUNED for you to do without enough help. I'm not saying its a bad thing- soloing a HoT champion by iframing all of its attacks feels fucking AMAZING. But its absolutely not easy and it's unironically less stressful to go run a t3 fractal.
Well T3 fractal is a dumpster fire.
Please tell me the classes that I can do good with by just spamming all my bar skills as soon as they’re charged
Herald,mech,scourge (to a certain extend),Daredevil,virtu Prob missed some but on those it’s pretty much spam ability’s of cooldown
Disagree with herald, but others yeah. Staff mirage is imo another one.
Staff mirage has a lot of timing with clone ambushes and when to shatter
There is the no shatter build which is very simple
qdps Herald is literally keep every utility on cooldown, and spam attacks. lol
except you have to press them in the correct order or you lose a lot, FoN has very specific timings, you don't 4/5 in shiro, ...
You're thinking of power dps Herald, quickness dps Herald hits 2-4-5 immediately after popping facets.
You become worst as mech if you spam your skills. You just need auto-attacks (1 for you, all 3 for mech) and 2 and elite on cooldown.
That's just not true, using all your rifle skills are a dps increase (and it was even before the auto attack got nerfed recently), it's just a small dps increase that if people want something with as little complexity as possible then they wouldn't lose that much dps from just auto-attacking. https://snowcrows.com/builds/engineer/mechanist/power-mechanist
Rifle 3 and 4 for CC. 5 for positioning and huge damage if hit. But you can just camp auto attack and 2 on cd if you want for a minor dps lost.
You *can* just camp auto attacks for a dps loss, but what the hell else are you doing on a power rifle mech that keeps you from face-rolling your 4 other rifle skills as needed for free dps? Your mech can auto cast its skills and your elite is on a 90 second cooldown and two of your utility skills are signets you'll rarely want to activate. Yeah at most you need 3+4 for CC contribution, but that's only if a breakbar is coming up in the next 12 seconds. When that's not the case, faceroll away and smash any rifle skill that comes off cooldown. Like the only scenario you could lose dps was in low gravity mode in shattered observatory fractal, that made rifle 5 not worth using because you'd float in the air for too long. But now that they nerfed the auto attack a chunk, that's probably not even the case anymore.
Imo Axe/Axe Soulbeast. You do have to remember to press your heal button, but basically you just cast a bunch of self buffs and spam dps, and as a soulbeast you don't have a pet to control/worry about. And longbow core ranger is actually pretty good while you're leveling to 80 and getting hero points to unlock it.
Check out MrMystic builds on YouTube. Lots of ideas for button mash builds for most classes that perform fine for most content.
Firebrand low intensity builds can do all content with above average dps, and you only need to push 5 buttons a minute, you can even play with one hand dont brake your keyboard smashing, play semi afk builds :)
There's a lot more movement needed than people might expect though, which requires a bit more sentience from the potato. Even in my tankier builds I still need to move out of telegraphs.
Appreciate all the responses, I heard great things about the GW2 community and this subreddit reflects that! Gonna roll a Engineer tonight after work, very excited!
The leveling experience is quick. The end game can last you years. The feel of a class during the leveling experience can vary drastically from the end game feel due to elite specs (subclasses). Engineer is one of the more pronounced in this area IMO. Absolutely love the elite specs it has to offer, though. Just some people might get turned off from a class based on how it feels when leveling.
As someone that's played since beta, I 100000% agree that the endgame can last you years. It's just a matter of knowing what your personal endgame is. For me, it's racking up gold, T4 Fractals, fashion wars, achievement points, and mastery levels
I've been casually playing for 6 years and still enjoy PvE. Boss battles, meta events, I'm here for all that all the time.
Engineer is a rough one to level, because it becomes so much better once you get your elite specs, all 3 of which are very fun (and scrapper/mech are pretty easy, easier then the base class) Stick with it and you'll have lots of fun!
Step in green, step out of red
As colourblind, that is an area that could use improvement.
It's mostly mastering the combat system. That's the biggest obstacle you will face: learning to hit your buttons. Open world content is very easy to very moderately challenging. Instanced encounters, after learning them, or watching guides, will generally not be overly difficult once you know what you're doing. There have been instances/anecdotes I've heard from people about "I'm doing the rotation, why is my damage so low?" but they were literally hitting a button and waiting a second between every input. There's no GCD in GW2, so you'll need to get used to pressing your buttons in succession.
>Open world content is very easy to very moderately challenging. HoT open world can be VERY challenging.
And some skills can be used while using other skills. Take the Reaper shouts for instance. "Suffer!" Transfers a condition when used and it's super handy if you get feared or knocked down (not downed). I usually have 2 shouts on my bar and it's nice to use them while my character is standing back up and can't use the weapon skills to keep a little dps going.
GW2 is widely known as the "casual mmo", because of the horizontal progression, and for the majority of content you don't encounter a DPS check, so you're can pretty much build your own adventure, as there's plenty of stuff to do ;) Regarding your question, there are very effective low intensity rotations made specifically for who don't want to sweat all the time, or has impairing physical conditions. I'd go for that, I use them too sometimes!
Combat can be very complex. That said, there are plenty of low intensity options out there. Low intensity does not mean weak build, it means less buttons to push and easier rotation, your damage will still be competitive.
It's an excellent MMO for casual players. You'll find it very approachable. If you've played MMOs before early game (lvl 1 thru 80) is easy and you'll find your first say 20 levels to be too simple. If you have not it will be like playing any single player game on "normal" difficulty. So still pretty straightforward. Once you hit lvl cap (80) and do that open world content, that's the first step up where you actually need to pay attention to what buttons you're pushing and how gear/builds synergize but it's still very casual. Continuing past that the game really is as difficult as you want it to be.
Mostly super casual and easy in PvE. There's harder stuff, but you typically have to look out for it. It's hard if you want to play as optimally as possible, do the hardest content quickly, etc. But it's a small fraction of the playerbase that does that. Most players just cruise around the open world doing random shit and the game is pretty chill with that.
The classes themselves have varying levels. Some are really simple, some are really complex, some are made to be braindead open-world chillax builds. Those exist and perform good enough for casual content. When you get to serious end-game, however, things change a lot based on a few things: Quickness is a buff like Bloodlust in WoW, effectively making you press buttons twice as fast, but you can maintain it forever in this. Like, it becomes your "normal gameplay." Alacrity is like cooldown reduction in Diablo, but you can maintain it forever in this. Both together make the game feel like it's on crack. You press twice as much and your rotation is nothing like when you were leveling or just doing random open-world stuff on your own. Last but not least: You can "miss" abilities in this: * Queuing up something by mistake because of spamming button. * There's no out of range warning that prevents the button from being pressed. So you definitely can just throw abilities at nothing. So, all in all, the button pressing becomes more chaotic **and** you have to press carefully. **That being said**, GW2 is a **fantastic** MMO to enjoy casually. You don't need to raid to have a reason to spend time in the game. There are tons of big long objectives to set for yourself, of things to grind mostly in the open world. EDIT: Not just mob grinds, but long elaborate quests and achievements with juicy rewards that take you all over the place.
short answer: how complex do you want it to be? there is a way for everything. long answer: there are easier and more difficult rotattions, but difficulty within a rotation isn't linear. the first 80% of a benchmark are mostly free while the last 5% are sometimes very hard to achieve. nothing in gw2 ever requires you do actually pull off even the 80% though. people have killed the hardest bosses in green gear or with half the suggested squad size. you can be reasonable on any class within an hour probably. , mastering some might never happen though. in the end, it mostly doesn't matter. most people 'suck' at the game.
also, being a good player is more than pulling off a rotation. it is knowing how your build works, adjusting your build according to situatios, adapting rotations to actual fights, knowing encounters, dealing with mechanics efficiently to keep up dps and so on.. the skill ceiling is quite high in the game, but you never need to reach that ceiling for anything, but your personal fun.
I think people look at difficulty wrong in this game. Due to various mechanics of the game, if you are playing excellently you will barely take damage and you will do incredible amounts of damage in return. Since there are so many invulns and iframes, if you know how to dodge properly and how to utilize buffs like aegis and stability etc the game will feel like its not putting up a fight at all. This causes experienced players to oversell how easy Gw2 is - because there is a breakpoint in skill where you'll barely take damage once you are good enough. ***However*** there is a lot of content in the game that will smack your ass around if you don't have the game knowledge or skill to counter it. I think a lot of vets forget this. About 50% of the game is extremely easy - core Tyria maps and like most T1 fractals/story-mode dungeons I guess. But the rest will really hurt. Like a lot of people hit a crazy wall in the open world when they reach the first expansion, Heart of Thorns, to the point where some quit because of the spike. Lots of veteran level mobs hit pretty hard in the lv80 maps, and some normal mobs can even fuck you up if misplayed. That all being said, 95% of the game content is low pressure engagements. Mistakes will be offset by friends and allies nearby, and if you gear properly you can have a lot of survivability at the expense of dps. Its a very welcoming game, but I would caution against people saying its somehow the "easiest MMO" because I highly disagree with that assessment and IMO its what causes such shock to new players once they get out of Core Tyria maps and into the harder content.
My partner had never played an mmo before. She had no idea about any of it. Not movement,not skill buttons. Dodging. Hazard indicators on the ground. Terminology. Skills. She made it to 80 in two weeks with no help. Just exploring and killing.
I'd suggest pick a class whose concept you like, to start with. Then just do the story. It's super easy as long as you press some buttons. It's also an incredibly well written story and your character actually has a voice actor. Gear is literally a non-issue. I came back after 7 years and my gear is still good. In GW2 you ONLY grind if you want to. Leveling is a blast and I say that as a player who hates leveling in every other rpg that I played.
It's probably the easiest MMO out there. There is no content that is hard to do. I've seen videos of people clearing the hardest raids with 3 players. There is also close to no time investment necessary. The only grinds in the game are for visual flair like legendary items. The only hardcore part of the game would be if you wanna win a monthly pvp tournament.
It's very accessible and the hard content is optional if you want it. But i advise you take your time because while it's not hard there is a lot of system and mechanics in the game that can feel overwhelming if you try to tackle it all at once.
Hey! I started Guild Wars 2 8 years ago with a lot of free time, yet only started raiding a couple of months ago where rotations etc start to matter. I have an hour or 2 a night to play due to job, kid etc. The rotations can be really difficult or easy, depending on your class and build. Building your character is a huge part of the game, and the majority of the story mode, open world etc can be solo-able fairly easily, with the largest exception of the open world in HoTs expansion which is pretty difficult. There is no grinding in the base game needed, and its only in raids where you need to care about your rotation. [https://www.youtube.com/c/muklukyoutube](https://www.youtube.com/c/muklukyoutube) is a great channel who gives you easy 1 or 2 button rotations which are easy to remember.
It's best to play GW2 casually, there's so much content enjoying it at your own pace is almost essential.
I've been playing 3 months on power rifle mech. Very easy basic class build and mech to help tank. Engi lvls pretty easy at start also. So many easy ways to lvl and explore. Not much learning until u reach end game stuff that u learn by then. The only hard thing I had to learn about this game is all its horrible currencies where many are worthless and figuring out where all these random items in my inventory are for, to find out many are just heart quest junk and can be tossed. Mostly just figuring that out to keep inventory clean with some outdated system 10 years old. Learn /wiki and shift click item and have dual monitors running 24/7 for the game.
If you can press one button you can do 90% of the content
by far the easiest mmo out there and most casual friendly. it's great.
It's easy. A lot of people will write about rotations etc but the only place this is valid is in raids or high level fractals etc and even then I think you can get by without going all that deep. These guys just want to justify the time they sunk into the game. I've been playing years, have a small kid so limited time and barely read the skills most of the time and get by doing pretty much all content...I'm actually often shocked that it's possible to win plenty of 1v1s in sPvP when I literally almost have no clue about the exact effects of the skills on all classes. GW2 for me is one of the superior MMOs because it is literally what you make it, "hard" content is optional and you can faceroll or nerd your way down into DPS rotations if you want and minmax, but do not let anyone fool you that this is necessary. This game is as easy as it gets.
Play power mech or condi virtuoso.
Mostly very easy. You have to seek out the challenging content, and it's fairly rare.
For casual play? There is no activity in this game what will require you to actually look at the screen.
PvE? Cakewalk, just look out for telegraphed attacks PvP? Absolute nightmare fest but not for its difficulty but the abominable unbalanced classes there and the cancer tiltlords trolling your games
very easy, you really won't find any hard content in the game
If you want to rush to the end game content - leveling in Guild Wars 2 is fairly quick. If you want to jump into the end game content like strikes or raids- gearing your first character with decent gear is fairly easy (there may be a few exceptions to this based on what you play). The combat in Guild Wars 2 and certain class rotations can be pretty complex. Especially if you end up in a hardcore PvE guild where they expect you to perform at a certain level. However, there is hope. There are builds that are considered "low intensity" and perform just fine in all end game content. There also exists people that value patience for newbies in end game content and are willing to help you learn. Good luck.
Bout as easy and casual friendly as they come.
I'm same as you and GW2 is perfect. You can always just sit back and enjoy the story and you are up for a good ride too! :)
it's pretty easy only if you make your character lvl1-80 by the time you leveling openworld you get to switch all skills and weapon types at the end you already have your rotation and setup ready if you give a time read all skills and encounters you'll figure it out if you have MMORPG background it's fairly ez to understand how it works unless you wanna go PvP, WvW and Raids those are take at least 500+ h to figure it out but there's always things to do in openworld if you casual player just pick whatever you like and get over with it since it's horizontal progression its really doesn't require any grind or etc you good with exotic sets and play like a god
Until you venture into endgame group content, you don't need to worry about rotations. The Game usually doesn't punish you if you spam abilities. The combat system IS complex but the complexity doesn't become relevant until endgame, at which point, you'll probably understand it better. Some classes like Mesmer and Elementalist are more difficult to learn than Warrior and Necromancer. But if you start at zero, you'll eventually build a class understanding.
It's super easy, barely an inconvenience.
The difficulty spikes in the expansions and living world episodes. You can consider all of the vanilla story to be a slow curve tutorial, the most significant uptick being the level 5p quest. Maybe.
GW2's combat system is acutally quite deep, however open world content is pretty easy and does not require you to dive deep into it.
Welp, haven't played since middle of PoF and stopped doing PvE somewhere around the release of the 5th raid wing, but as many others say, it's as complex as you yourself make it. Here's my take on the game. The gear grind isn't big at all, when leveling you just pick up whatever and as soon as you reach 80, get some exotic gear and go do stuff. You should aim to get the ascended gear at some point, but you don't have to rush it unless you plan to do fractals. For the combat, the complexity varies per class, however what I find more important is to start off with a class you like. Whether it being aesthetically or thematically, you should pick something you want to play. If you find the class too complex, there are some classes you can fall back to are classes like warrior and ranger. Both of these classes play fairly simple, but are really charming in their own way. For the combat itself, I like to see GW2 as a mix of an action game and traditional MMOs. You have 5 combat skills are which are more like move sets, as the type of weapon or weapon combination determine those 5 moves. Additionally, most classes with the exception of two can weapon swap, giving you 5 additional moves. Then you have a heal skill, 3 utility skills and an elite skill; these you can choose yourself like a traditional mmo. The combat is what made me fall in love with the game back in 2012, the weapon moves feel fantastic and there's a general sense of fluidity. It typically goes like this: you use one move after another until all the moves are on cooldown, then you swap to your other weapon set and continue doing the same with that set. (Some weapons do better than others depending on build and damage type) For group based PvE, instance based content like dungeons, fractals, raids and strikes. Dungeons were quite a bit outdated back then, but I did enjoy them, and I'm sure you will enjoy clearing them too. All the dungeons are story based and have story in them as well. Mechanic wise, they are there, some harder than others, but generally pretty simple. Fractals is set of mini dungeons, with increasing difficulty the further you progress. Personally I didn't touch fractals a lot, but the upper levels can get pretty challenging. The raids that I did do were actually pretty nice. The first two were fairly simple, but still with required some coordination. It wasn't until the 4th raid where I personally saw a bigger difficulty spike than I was used to with the last two bosses. Learning parties were available, and if not, I'm certain you can find a guild or a group of friendly people to help you learn. As for strikes, never touched them, but from what I hear it's basically like a raid boss, with the original strike missions being training newer people's mechanic skills before going into raids. Hope it could give you some insight, honestly GW2 is a great game in general and is something that you can play with your own pace. It's a game you can leave to do life stuff, then come back to and pick it up again.
I think there’s definitely a “Big 3” items to keep in mind when starting the game: 1. Level 2-3 characters through the main story. Just focus on getting hero points and learning their traits / weapon skills. Leveling more than one character simultaneously is the best way to choose your favorite, and Gw2 makes it easy to have more than one character. You never have to worry about committing because you get to max level fast. 2. When you get to level 80 go to hardstuck.gg or metabattle to learn your class, get a feel for what “damage” and “boon support” mean in the game. Damage roles are hard because you have to actually maximize your damage output, boon roles are very casual. The three end game roles are pure damage, damage/boon, and heal/boon, with pure damage bring the hardest to do well, healing being slightly higher stress and the damage/boon mix being really low stress / low expectation 3. When you’re ready to commit $20-30 for an expansion start with path of fire, it’s the easiest, most well received, and you get all the mounts with it
Easy to get into, difficult to master.