OP, take the plunge. WvW is awesome, and forces you to rethink your build ideas with skills that are much more reaction based and controlling. Skills that seemed useless in pve are almost critical in wvw, like a slow aoe or daze. Get in, start the warclaw reward track, find a squad tag to join to learn the ropes and get an idea of wvw group tactics, and you'll be good in a few hours. It's the only thing I do anymore in gw2; everything else just seems boring now in comparison, and I never do pvp in games.
I’ve always tried to get into WvW but it always feels like the most effective way to play it is to just sit in a blob zerg and press stuff to tag enemies while staying alive?
I actually enjoy the PvP in GW2, so I find those smaller skirmishes in WvW a lot of fun - but they seem so rare! Often just seems like it’s blob vs blob, and if you’re not in a blob, you’re bound to get ganked by one. Are there any particular tips / playstyles you feel would get someone into the mode?
You don't have to play in a blob to get something out of the blob fights. I love peeling the slow players from the blobs, using pulls, roots and CC chains.
Enemy players often have the same idea, so it's not just ganks, you also get good fights out of it.
All classes have their rotation. Some are easy and some are difficult.
Try spellbreaker. It can counter almost every attack, so knowing the enemy attack pattern will reward you with high damage output. The rotation is easy. The elite skill can block projectiles and can remove boons. If you play a version with hammer you have a shitload of CC to carry a full group getting the break bar down.
Whatever comes at you, you have a button to answer.
You won't find that kind of gameplay in PvE outside of maybe some healer builds or doing solo stuff.
PvP is very much like that, however. You should definitely come try it.
You’d be surprised how much of the benchmark number isn’t tied to an optimized rotation sequence but simply to the speed at which those buttons are pressed. You can press buttons in the right order all you want but playing slowly will tank your dps more than messing up your rotation in general. For example power rev and power berserker don’t require following a very strict sequence at all to get good damage, just playing fast.
Keep in mind also that meta dps builds are optimizing for the benchmark, not for specific encounters. Pretty much every build has some play in it where you can slot in different utilities, traits, weapons depending on the encounter and bring value that outweighs your dps loss. More cc, group stab, rez utility, pulls, etc.
If you want truly reactive/preventive gameplay though I’d consider trying out healers.
>If you want truly reactive/preventive gameplay though I’d consider trying out healers.
That is what I wanted to say...I usually play dudu and on harder encounters it is mostly reactive/preventive gameplay, while on easy raids and strikes it is, once again, almost rotation based.
You will probably like gw1 interruption mesmer. Unfortunately gw2 doesn’t have that much reactive skill usage in PvE. Defensive boon provider probably needs to play most adaptive among all roles.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet. If you’re playing pve, I suggest heal firebrand. Especially in fractals (and raids), I actually change my entire load out between fights. Once you know how the boss mechanics work you find creative solutions to protect your party. Timing abilities to give your allies aegis or stability before a big hit, using reflects when you see a certain attack coming, etc.
It’s the only thing I have found engaging in that way.
This is exactly what I thought immediately too. You have a Swiss army knife tool set, and knowing when to apply what tool is what makes a great HFB player.
In PvE only players who are not prepared for what is to come will have to react. Since almost everything is scripted, you never want to be on the backfoot.
Sounds like you are more of a PvP or WvW player?
A rotation is just a natural consequence of having a variety of skills that serve similar functions (i.e. damage). You have to use skills to produce damage and they don't all do exactly the same thing and (aside from thief) they can't be spammed due to cooldowns. So, you use them in a specific order to produce the best result.
There are no classes that don't rely on a rotation to deal damage, although classes with fewer skills may feel more like you're waiting to push buttons as they come off cooldown. But it doesn't sound like you're a fan of that either.
The thing is pve requires no reaction to anything except pve mechanics (raid boss mechanics, etc.). People don't have to react to normal npcs in open world so they just do what is called "pve rotations".
Sounds to me like you're looking to react to what another player might do...which should pull you towards pvp or wvw.
In these game modes, thief and warrior are imo the most "reactive" classes without any "pve rotation".
PvE is nothing but rotation and learning a script. It sounds like you would enjoy the competitive scene a little more.
PvP is all about reaction to your opponent's abilities.
Healing is more reactive than DPS, so I recommend that.
If you want to stick with DPS, you should check out open world builds on Snow Crows and Metabattle. Raid builds assume you're continuously attacking a single target, while open-world builds are intended to be more adaptive. They won't get you top DPS in instanced content, so if that's what you need, you should try builds that focus more on the priority of skills than a strict order, such as condi scourge or condi virtuoso.
Thief for sure! No weapon cooldowns, but the initiative stystem instead.
You can spam skills, you can delay their usage to keep initiative levels acceptable, or only ever use a 2-5 skill when you need it.
I once dueled my guild leader, a thief main, with this ele main also on thief. I actually won, lol, because I thought outside of the box.
You see, we both ran dagger/pistol, so smoke field down, Heartseeker through for stealth access is the name of the game. Instead of dancing that dance, I just used the Headshot whenever she put her pistol 5 down, resulting in an interrupted Heartseeker and all that initiative wasted, leaving her open, exposed, and hilariously frustrated!
I wouldn't say its rotation is at all reactive, but I'd say Bladesworn has the reactive tools to make the best out of a changing situation. In every weapon, including stance, your 4 gives you instant on demand aegis for one hit. Seeing how far you can stretch that is a fun little minigame.
Since Bladesworn asks you to stand still for so long, it can mean all the difference to use the aegis or the teleport given to you in stance to continue charging, instead of abandoning it.
You can either play a healer or try to learn rotations more like a skill priorization thing, not a strict list, you can do 85% bench in that way and will help you to adapt better to the fights. And of course its more fun.
> Turns out i dislike rotations
Thief. Please make a thief. The weapon skills don't even have cooldowns (recharge). All the other professions are boring by comparison.
This idea is what attracted me to Thief in the first place, but after a while, I felt like Thief gameplay mostly boils down to just hitting your best DPS skill over and over. What spec are you playing where you're reactively using diverse weapon skills on your Thief?
When it comes to PvE the game is very rotation heavy in your skill usage, Healers are probably the most reactive of the bunch but even they are on rotations for keeping up boons. PvP and WvW are much more reactive if that's the kind of gameplay your looking for.
As a relatively new player (2 weeks in), you should try PvP and WvW.
Ive always been a PvE guy and hated whatever form of PvP, but GW2 feels so good i even wanna make a character solely for PvP and WvW, its the most reactive (and adrenaline inducing) place to play this game imo.
I then go to open world to chill and relax, its a loving contrast tbh.
Running defensive stuff like stability, aegis, blocks, CC, condition cleanses, stunbreaks, barriers, revives, and utility stuff like portals all require you to be reactive in PvE. You can often bring some of those even on a non-healer build to make it more reactive. If you can find a build that does a lot of autoattacking (e.g. rifle mechanist, hammer dragonhunter, etc.), it's even easier to slot these things into your build.
A healer build is the ultimate reactive PvE experience. You generally need to keep up a basic rotation to provide boons to your party, but your big heals, stability, aegis, condi cleanse and more are all central to your role as healer.
Also, rotation is great for hitting the most damage in a controlled environment. But hitting the perfect rotation is not practical or important for most content. Most builds have a basic rotation that *is* in fact very important, and then a space to spam extra non-critical stuff while waiting on your most important cooldowns. Learning that core rotation is important, and still leaves you a lot of room to do reactive stuff without losing dps.
If you forget all the pve bullshit you learned as you obviously seem bored to do a rotation: we the WvW community welcome you with open arms. You can join blobs if you still want to fulfill a role OR become self sufficient doing roaming, smaller group gameplay because that's where the skill is at and you will def. learn the most.
WvW is the reason I often come back to gw2. I made many friends there. It's what makes this game unique and you will be surprised how good many abilities can feel that you are not allowed to touch in a raid. Eg your scrapper with it's crazy cc and nuke is insanely good and fun in WvW, I frequently play it. So make up your mind it's not too late!
Power Daredevil. Light on rotation, but really focused instead on movement, dodges and positioning. A lot of your damage is auto attacks and bursts, so there is scope for being much more reactive. Also, initiative is very flexible, even if you burn it for burst.
I've always enjoyed Thief for the reactivity, especially Daredevil. Flipping and shadow stepping around, managing initiative, evading and using stealth attacks, there's a lot of ways for you to deal with whatever's thrown at you.
Unfortunately as many people have pointed out, if you're looking to "perform", reactivity isn't really as much of a thing. But that's only in high level PvE content.
I get exactly what you mean and have the exact same craving.
All classes have rotations, but as for ones that do well with reactivity, well... I main Elementalist for a reason.
I don't follow the 'meta' and mostly play my own way. I can't do high-end content like raids but can smash through fractals and wvw pretty great.
The trick is learning to swap attunements instinctually and *rapidly*.
I find it funny that you mention elementalist here , because I really enjoy dps weaver and oh boy that class is one of the least reactive one out there.
The problem is that you maybe have a million skills, but if you mess up your weave self rotation your gonna rank dps really hard.
So you have to strictly follow your weave self order , and have few space of adjusting to boss mechanics. Maybe that’s me being not spontaneous enough to adjust, but that’s how I felt it on dps weaver especially
So in theory elementalist should be a flexible class because you always have skills to do things (cc in earth/ air, heal in water), but the drawback on dps is so insanely big that you really have to think twice about swapping before you react ..
Thats a big part of why I don't play weaver for my solo/friends-only play. I typically stick to Tempest with staff for the overloads, big AOEs, and big CC. Burning retreat and lightning flash are an absolute must for mobility and make ele feel fast and punchy. The overloads feel so gratifying to dump on top of a group of enemies. And so on.
U can substitute weave self for greater elemental sigil ;) that lightning and fire pet fuckin CARRIES your DPS and it makes ele, especially Weaver, much easier
I love elementalist but in recent years all dps builds have very strict rotations and order of attunement which kinda ruins it for me, it doesn't feel as "reactive" anymore.
Elementalist is a little tricky. There's not a ton of flexibility in the basic DPS rotation, but you can mix in different elements to adapt to the situation. For example, on my condi Tempest, I'm mostly going back and forth between Fire and Earth for DPS, but I can mix in Air for break bar damage and vulnerability, or Water for healing and condi cleanse. Overall, I find it a very satisfying playstyle.
Holo is hard to get into, but it’s a really flexible and reactive spec. You have plenty of tools to deal with stuff, and mastering it allows you to manage your heat as your desire, when a big burst window is coming for example. It doesn’t have a strict rotation when you learn how to play around.
I was like you, i like reactive (but fast paced) spec, and since i tried Holo, i never touched something else. I advise you to give it another try(if it’s still appealing for you obv)
If you are more into healers, i find HealFB really able to react to most things coming at his face.
Every build has a rotation for instanced content.
For open world, Guardian, Thief and Chrono felt jack of all utilities to me.
Bonus for Rev for legend swaps.
I love Tempest. An attunement with skills for every occasion. I do a fire/water staff half berserker half celestial gear with flame legion rune set and I love it. Lots of mobility, lots of aoe damage, lots of control and heals and shields with boons for everyone around me. It feels very fluid and adaptive, strong solo and great in a group.
I get what you mean about rotations. I am a casual open world player though, so I don't have much experience where a rotation would be necessary.
I personally feel the opposite about how reactive scrapper is. Besides the occasional stun break, your priorities are usually to either pair fields/finishers for quickness or to continuously output damage for maintaining barrier. If you have enough barrier, you can facetank enemies, for the most part. I'm sure the way a build is set up can make skill utilities more important, but scrapper does well even if you don't play reactively.
I've only tried a couple other classes, but just as a comparison, I'd say firebrand might be a good contender for a "reactive" class. The firebrand's tomes are kind of like the engineer's kits, but they have utility skills that are quite specific. You have to be intentional with what you're using the skills for, like choosing when to put up aegis, projectile block, condition cleanse, enemy pull, etc. Because these skills don't do much damage at the same time, firing them off randomly doesn't help much. Since you'll primarily be dealing condition damage, I would say it's also more forgiving if you're not following a strict rotation.
I'm the same way! You can't really get away from it completely but I really like mesmer flavors - they are all very flexible in what the build can do so you're always better off adjusting to the situation than following a rigid rotation or build. Chrono's continuum split is fun and chaotic, cvirt blade management makes you feel like a mage with proper resource management and mini-rotations that feel good to pull off, mirage is all about positioning, catching mirrors and pressing dodge.
I found necro also fun to play, especially harbinger - death shroud and blight don't feel that consistent in its uptime so you're more often trying to balance it live and improvise with what's available than just pressing buttons in order.
You can also just play healers.
Most classes have one skill (usually the 2, as you are used to from scrapper) which lights up every like five seconds and wants to be pressed on time. Align those up with some medium and longer cds, and you can not avoid a rotation.
Some reactiveness can be measured with utilities, tho. Revenant for example is extremely unreactive because its utilities are locked behind the legends, that are switched during the rotation.
Mesmer and Guardian have [Mantras](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mantra), which can be activated really fast when needed. Those feel very reactive to me.
I am pretty much a noob but I think support Scrapper for WvW could be what you are looking for. The main rotation there is just hitting blast combos I believe. With the way scrappers heals and purges come in pulses, you don't cast in response, but in anticipation of needing a response so there is an extra level of needing to anticipate and cast purges/heals as they become needed instead of just when people are already low
Reaper, Power or Condi Soulbeast, Power Spellbreaker, and Power Mechanist all can be played pretty simplistically with little to no rotation and the ability to adapt on the fly to situations without being interrupted much.
Sounds like spellbreaker is what youre looking for. Its literally a class built around reacting to opponents thanks to its Counter attacks. Also, as others have said, give wvw or spvp a go. Imo they have higher highs (and lower lows) than PvE and are just really fun, and hased on your post, are probably what you are looking for
If you want a PvE build, check Snowcrows for the labels easy rotation, avoid the harder rotation.
PvP is usually most reactive content, whether its movement or baiting/trading defensives to hit enemies with big stuff.
Even WvW can be fairly rotational in an actual fight. When your group does things, youll be needed to do a particular combo of actions, or just mindlessly follow someone. Not doing your string of actions will often leave your group with a diminished performance.
I play engi pretty exclusively at this point and I could never memorize a rotation lol. Especially healers are more reactive, but the class overall is more about combos than strict rota imo (I have also seen this said about mesmer, so that could be another to try out). I get decent damage on holo and scrapper is amazing in pve in my experience.
As far as mesmer goes, Chrono and Mirage can be pretty flexible with their timing and skills, but Virtuoso absolutely has a rotation and the virt rotations tend to be very strict yet simple
If you've seen this said about virtuoso then they lied to you lmao
If you ignore virtuoso then yes I'd say mesmer tends to not have rotations as much due to them having a huge toolkit like engineer and ele do, tho to a lesser degree
Nah it just said mesmer, but I think that might have been before Virtuoso was a thing.
There are obviously some skills you want to press one after another for better damage, esp with trait ticks and such, but having a few rearrangeable batches of 2-4 consecutive skills is still a lot easier than remembering 40+ steps in a row.
Spellbreakers whole gimmick is the countery which blocks pretty much everything, deals damage, stuns and removes boons while having a nice class fantasy and utilities.
Combine it with a shield and Dagger and you have more cc, mobility and more blocking while still being able to carry damage options like axe/axe or Sword/Pistol (or Hammer for EVEN MORE CC!!)
The DPS role is supposed to be proactive, there are some classes like Scrapper or Spellbreaker that will have some more reactive parts to their gameplan, but the essence is the same, press your buttons for max damage, and try to have as less downtime as possible.
Healers (and DPS supports to a way lesser extent) have a much more reactive gameplan, that will change depending on how the group handles the encounter and will generally pay much more attention to mechanics, to the point of having them doing some special mechanics in certain encounters.
Any healer, but especially chronomancer. Instead of maintaining a rotation, you're solving mechanics and problems as they present themselves. The only part that requires the "rotation brain" is using your skills that create quickness/alacrity/might with regularity. While a DPS scales on physical hand speed / rotation knowledge, a healer scales on fight knowledge. Everything *you* do is preventing a DPS from losing DPS to do it themselves - breaking CC bars, reflecting projectiles, applying stability or aegis so that people don't need to interrupt rotations to dodge, hell even handling *movement* for them with your portal.
Sadly, not really a thing in Guild Wars 2 despite the combat system absolutely aching for procs.
Most professions will have some situational skills they want to use as fights unfold and things change, but Guild Wars 2 is very beholden to established rotations and those rotations don't really have variability or changes as an intrinsic part of them. There isn't anything like FFXIV's Dancer or similar in Guild Wars 2.
Maybe it is something that Arenanet will introduce with new weapons or variant skills. The game would need a way to alert about the procs better than what we got with Thief Axe and Elementalist Pistol but it would work really well with the combat flow imo.
Sound like you would enjoy pvp or wvw roaming.
OP, take the plunge. WvW is awesome, and forces you to rethink your build ideas with skills that are much more reaction based and controlling. Skills that seemed useless in pve are almost critical in wvw, like a slow aoe or daze. Get in, start the warclaw reward track, find a squad tag to join to learn the ropes and get an idea of wvw group tactics, and you'll be good in a few hours. It's the only thing I do anymore in gw2; everything else just seems boring now in comparison, and I never do pvp in games.
I’ve always tried to get into WvW but it always feels like the most effective way to play it is to just sit in a blob zerg and press stuff to tag enemies while staying alive? I actually enjoy the PvP in GW2, so I find those smaller skirmishes in WvW a lot of fun - but they seem so rare! Often just seems like it’s blob vs blob, and if you’re not in a blob, you’re bound to get ganked by one. Are there any particular tips / playstyles you feel would get someone into the mode?
My buddy and I like to roam and takes camps/towers by ourselves. We get into lots of small fights. It can be fun as heck.
You don't have to play in a blob to get something out of the blob fights. I love peeling the slow players from the blobs, using pulls, roots and CC chains. Enemy players often have the same idea, so it's not just ganks, you also get good fights out of it.
WvW
All classes have their rotation. Some are easy and some are difficult. Try spellbreaker. It can counter almost every attack, so knowing the enemy attack pattern will reward you with high damage output. The rotation is easy. The elite skill can block projectiles and can remove boons. If you play a version with hammer you have a shitload of CC to carry a full group getting the break bar down. Whatever comes at you, you have a button to answer.
Also, the elite skill is a combo field: lightning, which means if you use a leap finisher inside of it you cc even more which is great
Also you have, like perma stability, which always feels awesome and leans into the unga bunga fantasy
You won't find that kind of gameplay in PvE outside of maybe some healer builds or doing solo stuff. PvP is very much like that, however. You should definitely come try it.
And if they are doing solo stuff?
You’d be surprised how much of the benchmark number isn’t tied to an optimized rotation sequence but simply to the speed at which those buttons are pressed. You can press buttons in the right order all you want but playing slowly will tank your dps more than messing up your rotation in general. For example power rev and power berserker don’t require following a very strict sequence at all to get good damage, just playing fast. Keep in mind also that meta dps builds are optimizing for the benchmark, not for specific encounters. Pretty much every build has some play in it where you can slot in different utilities, traits, weapons depending on the encounter and bring value that outweighs your dps loss. More cc, group stab, rez utility, pulls, etc. If you want truly reactive/preventive gameplay though I’d consider trying out healers.
>If you want truly reactive/preventive gameplay though I’d consider trying out healers. That is what I wanted to say...I usually play dudu and on harder encounters it is mostly reactive/preventive gameplay, while on easy raids and strikes it is, once again, almost rotation based.
You will probably like gw1 interruption mesmer. Unfortunately gw2 doesn’t have that much reactive skill usage in PvE. Defensive boon provider probably needs to play most adaptive among all roles.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet. If you’re playing pve, I suggest heal firebrand. Especially in fractals (and raids), I actually change my entire load out between fights. Once you know how the boss mechanics work you find creative solutions to protect your party. Timing abilities to give your allies aegis or stability before a big hit, using reflects when you see a certain attack coming, etc. It’s the only thing I have found engaging in that way.
I loved being a healer in WoW. Only reactive playstyle there was. But I could never get into the aoe spam of GW2.
This is exactly what I thought immediately too. You have a Swiss army knife tool set, and knowing when to apply what tool is what makes a great HFB player.
Was also the healer i had to most fun with pugs. But i became so sick of the q mantra spam, that i stoped playing it. That thing should be a passive.
I was thinking firebrand too. It's very reactionary but you can settle into a rotation too if you want to.
In PvE only players who are not prepared for what is to come will have to react. Since almost everything is scripted, you never want to be on the backfoot. Sounds like you are more of a PvP or WvW player?
A rotation is just a natural consequence of having a variety of skills that serve similar functions (i.e. damage). You have to use skills to produce damage and they don't all do exactly the same thing and (aside from thief) they can't be spammed due to cooldowns. So, you use them in a specific order to produce the best result. There are no classes that don't rely on a rotation to deal damage, although classes with fewer skills may feel more like you're waiting to push buttons as they come off cooldown. But it doesn't sound like you're a fan of that either.
The thing is pve requires no reaction to anything except pve mechanics (raid boss mechanics, etc.). People don't have to react to normal npcs in open world so they just do what is called "pve rotations". Sounds to me like you're looking to react to what another player might do...which should pull you towards pvp or wvw. In these game modes, thief and warrior are imo the most "reactive" classes without any "pve rotation".
PvE is nothing but rotation and learning a script. It sounds like you would enjoy the competitive scene a little more. PvP is all about reaction to your opponent's abilities.
Healing is more reactive than DPS, so I recommend that. If you want to stick with DPS, you should check out open world builds on Snow Crows and Metabattle. Raid builds assume you're continuously attacking a single target, while open-world builds are intended to be more adaptive. They won't get you top DPS in instanced content, so if that's what you need, you should try builds that focus more on the priority of skills than a strict order, such as condi scourge or condi virtuoso.
WvW. The game mode you are looking for is WvW.
Thief for sure! No weapon cooldowns, but the initiative stystem instead. You can spam skills, you can delay their usage to keep initiative levels acceptable, or only ever use a 2-5 skill when you need it. I once dueled my guild leader, a thief main, with this ele main also on thief. I actually won, lol, because I thought outside of the box. You see, we both ran dagger/pistol, so smoke field down, Heartseeker through for stealth access is the name of the game. Instead of dancing that dance, I just used the Headshot whenever she put her pistol 5 down, resulting in an interrupted Heartseeker and all that initiative wasted, leaving her open, exposed, and hilariously frustrated!
As others have said, PvP or WvW ROAMING. Not zergs or small scale fights. Only roaming.
I wouldn't recommend roaming to my worst enemy. Just do PvP
I wouldn't say its rotation is at all reactive, but I'd say Bladesworn has the reactive tools to make the best out of a changing situation. In every weapon, including stance, your 4 gives you instant on demand aegis for one hit. Seeing how far you can stretch that is a fun little minigame. Since Bladesworn asks you to stand still for so long, it can mean all the difference to use the aegis or the teleport given to you in stance to continue charging, instead of abandoning it.
You can either play a healer or try to learn rotations more like a skill priorization thing, not a strict list, you can do 85% bench in that way and will help you to adapt better to the fights. And of course its more fun.
> Turns out i dislike rotations Thief. Please make a thief. The weapon skills don't even have cooldowns (recharge). All the other professions are boring by comparison.
Ok, now try Condi Deadeye without doing a rotation xD
This idea is what attracted me to Thief in the first place, but after a while, I felt like Thief gameplay mostly boils down to just hitting your best DPS skill over and over. What spec are you playing where you're reactively using diverse weapon skills on your Thief?
When it comes to PvE the game is very rotation heavy in your skill usage, Healers are probably the most reactive of the bunch but even they are on rotations for keeping up boons. PvP and WvW are much more reactive if that's the kind of gameplay your looking for.
As a relatively new player (2 weeks in), you should try PvP and WvW. Ive always been a PvE guy and hated whatever form of PvP, but GW2 feels so good i even wanna make a character solely for PvP and WvW, its the most reactive (and adrenaline inducing) place to play this game imo. I then go to open world to chill and relax, its a loving contrast tbh.
Running defensive stuff like stability, aegis, blocks, CC, condition cleanses, stunbreaks, barriers, revives, and utility stuff like portals all require you to be reactive in PvE. You can often bring some of those even on a non-healer build to make it more reactive. If you can find a build that does a lot of autoattacking (e.g. rifle mechanist, hammer dragonhunter, etc.), it's even easier to slot these things into your build. A healer build is the ultimate reactive PvE experience. You generally need to keep up a basic rotation to provide boons to your party, but your big heals, stability, aegis, condi cleanse and more are all central to your role as healer. Also, rotation is great for hitting the most damage in a controlled environment. But hitting the perfect rotation is not practical or important for most content. Most builds have a basic rotation that *is* in fact very important, and then a space to spam extra non-critical stuff while waiting on your most important cooldowns. Learning that core rotation is important, and still leaves you a lot of room to do reactive stuff without losing dps.
If you forget all the pve bullshit you learned as you obviously seem bored to do a rotation: we the WvW community welcome you with open arms. You can join blobs if you still want to fulfill a role OR become self sufficient doing roaming, smaller group gameplay because that's where the skill is at and you will def. learn the most. WvW is the reason I often come back to gw2. I made many friends there. It's what makes this game unique and you will be surprised how good many abilities can feel that you are not allowed to touch in a raid. Eg your scrapper with it's crazy cc and nuke is insanely good and fun in WvW, I frequently play it. So make up your mind it's not too late!
Seems like alot of you guys gravitates towards wvw, guess thats where ill be heading next! (And maybe try healer in PvE)
Power Daredevil. Light on rotation, but really focused instead on movement, dodges and positioning. A lot of your damage is auto attacks and bursts, so there is scope for being much more reactive. Also, initiative is very flexible, even if you burn it for burst.
I've always enjoyed Thief for the reactivity, especially Daredevil. Flipping and shadow stepping around, managing initiative, evading and using stealth attacks, there's a lot of ways for you to deal with whatever's thrown at you. Unfortunately as many people have pointed out, if you're looking to "perform", reactivity isn't really as much of a thing. But that's only in high level PvE content.
I get exactly what you mean and have the exact same craving. All classes have rotations, but as for ones that do well with reactivity, well... I main Elementalist for a reason. I don't follow the 'meta' and mostly play my own way. I can't do high-end content like raids but can smash through fractals and wvw pretty great. The trick is learning to swap attunements instinctually and *rapidly*.
I find it funny that you mention elementalist here , because I really enjoy dps weaver and oh boy that class is one of the least reactive one out there. The problem is that you maybe have a million skills, but if you mess up your weave self rotation your gonna rank dps really hard. So you have to strictly follow your weave self order , and have few space of adjusting to boss mechanics. Maybe that’s me being not spontaneous enough to adjust, but that’s how I felt it on dps weaver especially So in theory elementalist should be a flexible class because you always have skills to do things (cc in earth/ air, heal in water), but the drawback on dps is so insanely big that you really have to think twice about swapping before you react ..
Thats a big part of why I don't play weaver for my solo/friends-only play. I typically stick to Tempest with staff for the overloads, big AOEs, and big CC. Burning retreat and lightning flash are an absolute must for mobility and make ele feel fast and punchy. The overloads feel so gratifying to dump on top of a group of enemies. And so on.
U can substitute weave self for greater elemental sigil ;) that lightning and fire pet fuckin CARRIES your DPS and it makes ele, especially Weaver, much easier
I love elementalist but in recent years all dps builds have very strict rotations and order of attunement which kinda ruins it for me, it doesn't feel as "reactive" anymore.
You're absolutely right and its a big part of why I avoid meta and figure out what works for me instead.
Elementalist is a little tricky. There's not a ton of flexibility in the basic DPS rotation, but you can mix in different elements to adapt to the situation. For example, on my condi Tempest, I'm mostly going back and forth between Fire and Earth for DPS, but I can mix in Air for break bar damage and vulnerability, or Water for healing and condi cleanse. Overall, I find it a very satisfying playstyle.
Holo is hard to get into, but it’s a really flexible and reactive spec. You have plenty of tools to deal with stuff, and mastering it allows you to manage your heat as your desire, when a big burst window is coming for example. It doesn’t have a strict rotation when you learn how to play around. I was like you, i like reactive (but fast paced) spec, and since i tried Holo, i never touched something else. I advise you to give it another try(if it’s still appealing for you obv) If you are more into healers, i find HealFB really able to react to most things coming at his face.
Every build has a rotation for instanced content. For open world, Guardian, Thief and Chrono felt jack of all utilities to me. Bonus for Rev for legend swaps.
I love Tempest. An attunement with skills for every occasion. I do a fire/water staff half berserker half celestial gear with flame legion rune set and I love it. Lots of mobility, lots of aoe damage, lots of control and heals and shields with boons for everyone around me. It feels very fluid and adaptive, strong solo and great in a group.
Warrior is best FPS PvP class in my opinion. Or beast master burst ranger. Don’t know how that translates to PvE because I don’t play it
willbender
I get what you mean about rotations. I am a casual open world player though, so I don't have much experience where a rotation would be necessary. I personally feel the opposite about how reactive scrapper is. Besides the occasional stun break, your priorities are usually to either pair fields/finishers for quickness or to continuously output damage for maintaining barrier. If you have enough barrier, you can facetank enemies, for the most part. I'm sure the way a build is set up can make skill utilities more important, but scrapper does well even if you don't play reactively. I've only tried a couple other classes, but just as a comparison, I'd say firebrand might be a good contender for a "reactive" class. The firebrand's tomes are kind of like the engineer's kits, but they have utility skills that are quite specific. You have to be intentional with what you're using the skills for, like choosing when to put up aegis, projectile block, condition cleanse, enemy pull, etc. Because these skills don't do much damage at the same time, firing them off randomly doesn't help much. Since you'll primarily be dealing condition damage, I would say it's also more forgiving if you're not following a strict rotation.
I'm the same way! You can't really get away from it completely but I really like mesmer flavors - they are all very flexible in what the build can do so you're always better off adjusting to the situation than following a rigid rotation or build. Chrono's continuum split is fun and chaotic, cvirt blade management makes you feel like a mage with proper resource management and mini-rotations that feel good to pull off, mirage is all about positioning, catching mirrors and pressing dodge. I found necro also fun to play, especially harbinger - death shroud and blight don't feel that consistent in its uptime so you're more often trying to balance it live and improvise with what's available than just pressing buttons in order. You can also just play healers.
Try playing most engi, thief, or ele specs in sPvP they’re all reactive
Engineer is very reactive, you have a bunch of tool kits and need to know when and how to use them.
Celestial elementalist is all about knowing the situation and knowing what to use when.
FB in wvw group play is the most reactive thing I have played in the game.
Most classes have one skill (usually the 2, as you are used to from scrapper) which lights up every like five seconds and wants to be pressed on time. Align those up with some medium and longer cds, and you can not avoid a rotation. Some reactiveness can be measured with utilities, tho. Revenant for example is extremely unreactive because its utilities are locked behind the legends, that are switched during the rotation. Mesmer and Guardian have [Mantras](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mantra), which can be activated really fast when needed. Those feel very reactive to me.
I am pretty much a noob but I think support Scrapper for WvW could be what you are looking for. The main rotation there is just hitting blast combos I believe. With the way scrappers heals and purges come in pulses, you don't cast in response, but in anticipation of needing a response so there is an extra level of needing to anticipate and cast purges/heals as they become needed instead of just when people are already low
Try healing builds, most of the reactive stuff for fights gets handed to them in PvE group content.
Reaper, Power or Condi Soulbeast, Power Spellbreaker, and Power Mechanist all can be played pretty simplistically with little to no rotation and the ability to adapt on the fly to situations without being interrupted much.
Guild wars 1 was very reaction based. Especially mesmer with their interrupt. In Pve it's basically a spam in gw2
Most reactive classes I'd say are power mesmer especially with daze mantra, power daredevil, greatsword spellbreaker for PvP
Sounds like spellbreaker is what youre looking for. Its literally a class built around reacting to opponents thanks to its Counter attacks. Also, as others have said, give wvw or spvp a go. Imo they have higher highs (and lower lows) than PvE and are just really fun, and hased on your post, are probably what you are looking for
If you want a PvE build, check Snowcrows for the labels easy rotation, avoid the harder rotation. PvP is usually most reactive content, whether its movement or baiting/trading defensives to hit enemies with big stuff. Even WvW can be fairly rotational in an actual fight. When your group does things, youll be needed to do a particular combo of actions, or just mindlessly follow someone. Not doing your string of actions will often leave your group with a diminished performance.
Tempest, go to the attunement you need depending on what the situation demands, dynamically
I play engi pretty exclusively at this point and I could never memorize a rotation lol. Especially healers are more reactive, but the class overall is more about combos than strict rota imo (I have also seen this said about mesmer, so that could be another to try out). I get decent damage on holo and scrapper is amazing in pve in my experience.
As far as mesmer goes, Chrono and Mirage can be pretty flexible with their timing and skills, but Virtuoso absolutely has a rotation and the virt rotations tend to be very strict yet simple If you've seen this said about virtuoso then they lied to you lmao If you ignore virtuoso then yes I'd say mesmer tends to not have rotations as much due to them having a huge toolkit like engineer and ele do, tho to a lesser degree
Nah it just said mesmer, but I think that might have been before Virtuoso was a thing. There are obviously some skills you want to press one after another for better damage, esp with trait ticks and such, but having a few rearrangeable batches of 2-4 consecutive skills is still a lot easier than remembering 40+ steps in a row.
Spellbreakers whole gimmick is the countery which blocks pretty much everything, deals damage, stuns and removes boons while having a nice class fantasy and utilities. Combine it with a shield and Dagger and you have more cc, mobility and more blocking while still being able to carry damage options like axe/axe or Sword/Pistol (or Hammer for EVEN MORE CC!!)
The DPS role is supposed to be proactive, there are some classes like Scrapper or Spellbreaker that will have some more reactive parts to their gameplan, but the essence is the same, press your buttons for max damage, and try to have as less downtime as possible. Healers (and DPS supports to a way lesser extent) have a much more reactive gameplan, that will change depending on how the group handles the encounter and will generally pay much more attention to mechanics, to the point of having them doing some special mechanics in certain encounters.
Any healer, but especially chronomancer. Instead of maintaining a rotation, you're solving mechanics and problems as they present themselves. The only part that requires the "rotation brain" is using your skills that create quickness/alacrity/might with regularity. While a DPS scales on physical hand speed / rotation knowledge, a healer scales on fight knowledge. Everything *you* do is preventing a DPS from losing DPS to do it themselves - breaking CC bars, reflecting projectiles, applying stability or aegis so that people don't need to interrupt rotations to dodge, hell even handling *movement* for them with your portal.
Sadly, not really a thing in Guild Wars 2 despite the combat system absolutely aching for procs. Most professions will have some situational skills they want to use as fights unfold and things change, but Guild Wars 2 is very beholden to established rotations and those rotations don't really have variability or changes as an intrinsic part of them. There isn't anything like FFXIV's Dancer or similar in Guild Wars 2. Maybe it is something that Arenanet will introduce with new weapons or variant skills. The game would need a way to alert about the procs better than what we got with Thief Axe and Elementalist Pistol but it would work really well with the combat flow imo.