The default key bindings in Guild Wars 2 are adequate, but a few changes can significantly enhance your experience. These come from personal experience as well as advice from Guild Wars veterans. We have a feeling that once you try a few of these out, you’ll be wondering how you ever played without them.

Putting Weapons Away

Oddly enough, this action is not bound to any key by default. After assigning it a key, you will be able to use it to exit a fight more quickly, or make a necessary escape. Note that this will not get you out of combat immediately, but allows you to evade combat. I personally map this action to the ‘T’ key, next to auto-run (‘R’).

Attacking With ‘Shift’

No secret here, just a personal preference. Mapping an attack skill to the shift key lets you quickly initiate an attack on the selected target without having to use the mouse or taking a finger off of the movement keys to press the numbered keys. This makes more sense if you recall, in Guild Wars 1, using the space-bar to initiate attack. Back to GW2, assuming that you already have the ‘switch target’ action bound to ‘Tab’, you can easily select and then attack targets using the new binding. I personally bind my auto-attack skill to the shift key and it is by far my most used custom key-binding. It is important to note that I am not advocating the REPLACEMENT of the default key-binding, rather an ALTERNATE key-binding, that maintains the default function. Another option is to bind the attack action to an extra button on your mouse.

Quick Turning With ‘Q’

I chose to map the 180 degree “Quick-Turn” action to the ‘Q’ key since I never used it for strafing anyway. Having it right beside the forward (‘W’) key comes in handy when you need to quickly face the other direction without taking the time to whip the camera all the way around.

Reverse Camera With ‘Scroll-Wheel Button’

Also known as the “Get Away Cam”, binding the backwards glance action to the click of your mouse’s scroll wheel allows you to quickly check behind you. Very handy for WvW and PvP.