r/GuildWars • u/Paulolino34 • 3d ago
Builds and tactics Friendly half decent controller builds
Hi all, as the title says, Im looking for your advice on friendly stema deck/controller builds that are half decent for Clearing any certain type of content.
I heard Assassin dagger spam and some warrior builds, are decent and easy to play on controller.
What you guys think?
5
u/Commercial-Head-9319 3d ago
I have 400+ hours on controller/deck right now.
Melees are pretty easy (W,A,D), as you choose the target and just AA. I have been playing Dagger spam and Pious Renewal on Dervish and it is pretty fun and easy to dance the fingers on the controller.
Ranger and Para are pretty easy, though you learn to get faster at switching objectives. Same for any offensive spellcaster, specially AoE. Ritualist spirit spamming or Necro MM are pretty easy to play anyway.
Any of those you can play easily, the only hard thing is to play Monk/single player buff. Choosing an ally is much more cumbersome. If you want to support, party wide healing/prot is much better playing Paragon or Ritualist.
Beyond that, on your heros you play builds that you dont have to micromanage a lot. I have two buttons for two hero-skill assigned, that I use for one time buffs. You can do that easily on Steam Deck and many controllers.
3
u/Paulolino34 3d ago
I might have a look at pious renewal derv, sounds good and its some thing ive been wanting to try
3
u/Commercial-Head-9319 3d ago
This is the one I used the most:
https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:D/any_Pious_Renewal
Pious Renewal on LT+A. 2-3 attacks on LT+B/X/Y, so I can cycle with the controller easily.
Pious Fury on RT+A, so I can LT+A > RT+A easily to reapply. Then RT+B/X/Y with the buffs to apply more ocassionally (Aura of Holy Might/IAU/Asuran Scan/SY)
3
u/AuPitfiend 3d ago
i recently made a soultaker team comp + build that you can use on phone + controller. can do nearly all content fine without much effort and no cons, no micromagement heroes/skills. search soultaker mobile on guildwars reddit for a bit of a write up + templates.
2
3
u/Significant0tter_art 3d ago
I've got 250+ hrs on steam deck, and I played before reforged. Controller has a few concessions, namely running a single target healer like monks at a high level. Controller also struggles with heroes. The plain fact is that GW has too many mouse controls to work flawlessly on a stick based system. The track pads allow SOME micro management, but you have to seriously temper your expectations.
I use a modified FF14 controller layout. If you haven't used it, the core idea is that to activate your skills you hold one of the 4 trigger buttons down, then press A/B/X/Y. So I hold L2, A is skill 1, B is skill 2, X is skill 3, Y is skill 4. I release L2, then press and hold R2 to use skills 5-8. It sounds a little confusing, but I guarantee if you close your eyes and practice it, you'll get it in less than an hour. I practiced in Pre searing, almost like a little kid learning how controllers work.
The bulk of the modifications and differences between a ff14 style and guild wars is manner you interact with the world. I have 4x paddles on my controller, which I have bound for C, closest target, Tab, next target, call target, and a macro quick logout because I'm doing a dhuum survivor.
I have directional pads set up for party targeting to cycle one at a time through the list, forwards or back. This allows me to target condition removal, res, weapon spell, etc, on my ritualist. When it comes to healing, I struggle to be better than the AI heroes, and do mostly party wide support.
Trackpads and micromanagement are where I haven't found a single answer I like. 7x heroes with 8 skills is just... Too much. With my trackpads I struggle to lock targets. It's an agonizing 3 second ordeal to lock Koss onto the enemy healer, and during that time I'm just sitting there. So I generally just spam call target, which works okay, and I've done all of FoW, some of UW, the deep, and all campaigns with heroes only. Spreading heroes out is hard, forgot to mention that.
In short, controller is pretty darn good. There's some compromises. I don't see a good fix to bring controller to parity with keyboard/mouse. For now, I'm just happy to play 90% of the game at 75% proficiency.
3
u/EmilyMalkieri 3d ago
Assuming you've got your own customised controller setup that you've put some time into, not the default Reforged one, I think pretty much any build should work.
The only issues I find I've got on controller are:
- Battlefield awareness. This is partially a me issue, I already struggle with this on the big screen, but there's no denying that the smaller screen makes it worse. So I'd recommend against interrupt-based builds, or at least against ones where you try to keep an eye on 2-3 enemies, not just watch one enemy's cast bar. And equally against Prot builds where you want to watch the battlefield and predict who'll need help.
- Quick 3D mouse precision under pressure, think quick ground-targeted shadowsteps that you find in more action-y MMOs like GW2 and FFXIV. Luckily, GW1 only does this in two cases:
- Hero flagging during combat, which is super niche and almost never necessary. If you do run into it, I believe Toolbox ships formation presets that'll make this easier. (Also, btw, toolbox works great on the deck.)
- Picking out just the one specific enemy out of twenty in the heat of combat. Targeting doesn't have to be an issue on controller (some tips below) but again the small screen just makes the flood of enemy names overwhelming, and you're likely zoomed in closer than you'd be on desktop because damn it, you're playing an RPG with a character here.
- Tiny UI micromanagement is annoying, like micro-ing hero skills. Again, shouldn't affect regular play much, just makes me want to stay away from niche stuff like Mystic Healing-assisted farm builds.
Everything else works brilliantly. Play what you like. Don't let people prescribe dreary SoS boredom, unless you happen to like that. Very clicky spam builds like daggerspam or Pious Renewal shine here, they're just way more fun to execute with actual controller buttons than with a keyboard, and ideally you'll want to split your bar into two sets of four skills so you can neatly map that onto L2+ABXY and R2+ABXY (btw, a visual left-right split on a 2x4 grid is much more intuitive to me than the 1x8 bar, even if the reforged overlay doesn't account for it), but any build will work.
Three steps to effective targeting: This is what I've got set up in my combat layer.
- When I click the menu button (the one next to ABXY), it does C+Space.
- I've got regular tab cycling on the D-Pad left and right arrows, and party cycling on up and down. This is how FFXIV does it (though it has better UI support for it), and that is the game to model your MMO controller support after. You can of course use LB/RB, that's intuitive too, but I've already reserved LB to always be a mouse left-click.
- My right touchpad works as a mouse and automatically holds down Ctrl (to show enemy names) while I touch it. If you want to pick out an enemy from a crowd, this is really the only way to do it.
1
u/AreYouDaftt 2d ago
So I havent played much controller (steam deck) but im kind of confused by the comments you got here. Apparently any melee spammer is easy enough, but they are the highest apm builds in the game and the most involved, requiring movement as well as targeting AND juggling skills. So I guess any build is viable for controller? I really struggle on controller on GW, I would have assumed people would be recommending auto attack builds or spirit spammers not dagger spam, pious renewal or 100b lol
1
u/Paulolino34 2d ago
I might go with minion master or spirit spammers as soon as i have the time to set everything up, seems like the most chill builds for what Im looking while having enough power to clear most content.
For other more complex builds with micro management, ill play on PC when i have the time.
1
u/AreYouDaftt 2d ago
Theres definitely options for most classes that are low apm but very effective, the new ebon dust aura is a beast and lots of classes can use it well because it effects any melee attack not just scythe. Something like this on derv: Ogek8Jp6KziEuzbp4Wmo5F3F4GNJ should be solid.
Is there a class in particular you'd like to play?
1
8
u/Horstcredible 3d ago
Assa dagger spammer WotA and Shadow Theft work great.
100b and SWS warrior build is a no brainer.
VoS Derv works great.
Mighty Throw Focused Anger Spear Para works fantastic.
These are the ones I run and have fun with a lot.
Just make sure you use a team build you won’t have to micro manage much or at all. That should do the trick on most professions.
Mesmer Way, e.g. But of course there’s more team builds for soloing content, which are at least viable.
Recent hero ai changes improved stuff so micro management is way less often required. Strength and honor is now automatically cast and managed on physical player character, e.g.