The goal of this thread is to serve as a crash course for people who are just starting to play GW2 or are seriously thinking about picking it up.
Now, the very first thing you need to know about GW2 is that, to my knowledge, it does the WORST job introducing you to itself. Seriously, I've never seen such a brilliant game fail this badly at introductions. So, when you first make a character and jump into this world, you need to be prepared that GW2 will mostly be giving you the cold shoulder for a bit in terms of almost every bit of its design, especially where tutorials are concerned. Yes, it has some helpful tooltips and a couple other small things, but for the most part, the game leaves you to figure it out for yourself. Don't let the game discourage you though! Give it time and chances are, you'll find a lot more to this game than meets the eye and methods to their madness.
The second thing I want to discuss, which actually somewhat ties into the first, is the combat. Specifically, the combat controls. You'll probably feel overwhelmed at first with what you need to work with. Constant movement, dodging, profession skills, normal skills, healing skills, utility skills, and weapon switching should all be made use of by the time you graduate to level 80 (max level). That's a WHOLE lot of keys there. But for right now, I don't want you to worry about all that yet as there's a couple disclaimers I'd like to point out as well.
For one, the game is rather easy as far as normal PvE is concerned. The everyday enemies in this game are very well designed. They're tough enough to keep on your toes a little, but forgiving enough to allow a lot of freedom in how you take them out and they leave a good amount of room for mistakes. Another thing is that when you're first starting out, you won't need to be complex in your attack patterns at all. At levels 1-3, give or take, you can safely just walk to the side while spamming the same skill over and over. Actually, you can probably just stand there. After this though, the game will slowly add more skills and abilities to your repertoire and you will slowly be expected to make use of them.
It's also highly advised (by me) that you make yourself comfortable with dodging by enabling double-tap dodging if it's not on already. Veterans of Unreal Tournament will have a VERY easy time of getting used to dodging in GW2 since it controls very similar. Remember though, dodging should only be used WHEN YOU NEED IT. At the same time, this isn't UT where you can and are expected to spam dodge.
As to the controls, I know it's probably tempting to change them, but for now, if you're confused as to how you should set the keys up, you really shouldn't. You should get used to how it's currently set. If you're an elementalist though, I would recommend moving the Profession Skill keys (these control which element you're attuned to) to Z, X, F, and G for Prof. Skills 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively. Map the Guild key to something else if you like (I use J personally). Use your Utility and Healing Skills through your mouse. Use your Weapon Skills through the keyboard.
Also, I would highly recommend changing in your General Options menu the Ground Targeting setting to Fast with Range Indicator. You position the cursor in the middle of your screen and then hold the right mouse button to aim your skills.
After that, there isn't much else to say besides some small helpful pointers. For one, if you go in your inventory and click on the cog icon on the top bar, you'll see an option for depositing collectibles. Use this often to clear room in your bag for more stuff and, of course, as a quick way to store collectibles away in a handy place. To set a waypoint on your map at any time, simply hold Alt and left click the point you wish to set your waypoint on. To ping a spot on your map or draw on it, hold Shift and left or right click to do each respectively. To put a link to a location or item or other relevant things in the message you're typing, simply hold Shift again and click what you need linked.
And don't forget to meet new people! Make connections. Socialize. Your friends/guild mates will help you along the way, show you new things, and generally make your play experience much more enjoyable. This is an MMO after all. Make good use of that fact. And that's it. Hopefully I didn't miss anything important. If so, be sure to let me know.
Alright then, I'm out.
