GuildWars2 Xbox360 Config

[Tyrian Mollusk]

This post has instructions and necessary game settings for my Steam Input configuration to play Guild Wars 2 with an Xbox 360 controller. It's here because Steam Input stuff has no other home and you can't properly document a configuration. I'll edit and post here when I share new versions, so you can subscribe to the thread if you care.

To use, either add the normal GW2 client to your Steam library as a non-Steam game or install the game from Steam, load the configuration, make the necessary settings in the game ('Setup', below), and whenever you start it from Steam, you'll have controller play. I also use a mouse/trackball for inventory and menus, but the config does have its own mousing support.

Here is the configuration link (paste it into your browser and it will open in Steam):
steam://controllerconfig/1284210/3025702379 (Steam install)
steam://controllerconfig/2306085804/3025724094 (non-Steam install)
[v6 2023-08-25]

Master documentation now here:
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2853314602

Setup

RECOMMENDED GENERAL OPTIONS

• AoE Loot on Interact: checked
  
• Use "Show Ally Names" Key Bind: checked
  
• Ground Targeting: Fast with Range Indicator
  
• Double-Tap to Evade: UNCHECKED (checked will kill you)
  
• Lock Ground Target at Maximum Skill Range: checked
  
• Move Inventory Compact Option: checked

REQUIRED CONTROL OPTIONS
Movement

• walk: shift-r
• swim down: c

Targeting

• previous enemy: ctrl-tab
• next ally: .
• lock autotarget: ctrl-shift-.

User Interface

• pvp panel: shift-p
• mail dialog: shift-o

Camera

• toggle action cam: ctrl-singlequote(')

Mounts (must unlock each to see the option)

• raptor: shift-x
• springer: ctrl-z
• skimmer: ctrl-x
• jackal: shift-z
• beetle: shift-ctrl-x
• griffon: shift-ctrl-z
• warclaw: shift-c
• skyscale: shift-ctrl-c
• siege turtle: ctrl-c

Mastery Skills

• Start Fishing: alt-NUMPAD_6
• Summon Skiff: alt-NUMPAD_7
• Set Jade Bot Waypoint: alt-NUMPAD_. (decimal)
• Scan for Rift: alt-NUMPAD_0

Miscellaneous

• show enemy names: singlequote(')
• show ally names: semicolon(;)
• stow/draw weapon: ctrl-backtick(`)
• Activate Chair: alt-NUMPAD_1
• Activate Musical Instrument: alt-NUMPAD_2
• Activate Held Item: alt-NUMPAD_3
• Activate Toy: alt-NUMPAD_4
• Activate Tonic: alt-NUMPAD_5

Templates

• Build Template 1: ctrl-NUMPAD_1
• Build Template 2: ctrl-NUMPAD_2
• Build Template 3: ctrl-NUMPAD_3
• Equipment Template 1: NUMPAD_/
• Equipment Template 2: NUMPAD_*

Play Summary

First off, some preparatory mental adjustments. You'll want to think of the four face buttons and Start as a group together (A, X, B, Y, Start), and do likewise for the four d-pad directions and Back/Select (Up, Left, Right, Down, Back). This will help things make sense. We use two main shift-key sets, one focused on more immediate combat keys (Right Trigger), the other on utility keys (Left Trigger), and you'll be using both of those and the unshifted layout simultaneously, so everything that helps the mental mapping take hold is important.

After you start the game, when you first get in character, you'll need to press BACK+LB to toggle the action camera on. You won't need to do this again within a session, because any time a dialog, panel, or menu comes up, the game automatically switches to mouse mode. Once you close whatever it is, it will be back in action camera for you.

Without any modifiers held

• Move with the left stick and aim/turn with the right stick (holding LT or RT won't change this, of course)
  
• Jump with A, Interact with X, Dodge with B
  
• Heal with LB
  
• Highlight enemies and interactables by holding RB (this works with LT or RT down as well) (game default changed to highlight everything all the time, so you can turn that off to reduce clutter and pop names when you want to see them)
  
• Tap Back for Escape, which closes open windows/dialogs or brings up the system menu if nothing is open
  
• Hold Dpad-Down to dismount or get off a chair

With RT held

• Face buttons and Start are your weapon skills (1-5)
  
• LB swaps between your two equipped weapon sets
  
• Dpad and Back are your profession skills (F1-F5, how many varies by class)

With LT held

• Face buttons and Start are your utility slots (7-9), special action (-), and elite skill (0)
  
• Dpad and Back are your mounts (these all need to be unlocked through play, and require expansions)

Remember the Special Action! It doesn't come up that often, but when it does you will need it. That's part of why I put it between 9 and Elite, to help keep the spot in mind when suddenly searching for it :)

With Back held

• mouse with RS
  
• mouse click with triggers and RB (Right trigger is primary, Left trigger is secondary, and RB is alt-primary, for setting map waypoints)
  
• LB toggles the action camera (note that any panel, dialog, or other such active UI element will switch the game to mouse cursor from action cam while it is open)

With Start held you can toggle various panels

• Map on Dpad Up
  
• Hero/Character panel on Left
  
• Inventory on Right
  
• Contacts/LFG on LB
  
• PvP on X (useful for trying out level 80 versions of a class without leveling!)

Hold Start and then also hold a trigger for various secondary and novelty commands. For example, tap X to /say "Thank you". Usually works, and is useful after a revive :)

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Detailed Configuration

All states: hold Start then also Back to reset controller configuration state when Steam bugs out and buttons are performing the wrong actions (very important)

Main layout -- Unshifted
LS: Movement
LS-Click: If holding forward, activates auto-run until you move backward, otherwise toggles walking
RS: Camera/Aim
RS-Click: Highlight enemies/interactables (hold longer for more names)
Back: Tap for Escape; hold to shift for mouse set
Start: (shift for menus/panels set)
LT: (shift for utility set)
RT: (shift for attack set)
LB: Heal (6)
RB: Highlight enemies/interactables (hold longer for more names)
A: Jump / Swim Up
X: Interact
B: Dodge
Y: Mount Ability 2 / Swim Down
Dpad-Left/Right: Target previous/next enemy
Dpad-Up: Call target; hold to lock autotarget
Dpad-Down: Take target; hold to dismount or get off a chair

Attack layout -- Hold Right Trigger
LB: Swap weapons
RB: (unused)
A, X, B, Y, Start: 1,2,3,4,5
Dpad-Up, -Left, -Right, -Down, and Back: F1,F2,F3,F4,F5

Utility layout -- Hold Left Trigger
LB: Skiff; double-tap for fishing
RB: Stow/draw weapons
A, X, B: 7,8,9
Y: Special action (depends on context, not always available)
Start: Elite skill (0)
Dpad and Back for Mounts: press Right: Raptor, hold Right: Beetle, press Up: Springer, hold Up: Skyscale, press Down: Skimmer, hold Down: Turtle, press Left: Jackal, hold Left: Warclaw, press Back: Griffon

Mouse layout -- Hold Back
LT: Right click
RT: Left click
LB: Toggle action camera (you'll need to do this at session start)
RB: Alt + left-click (in map, set navigation marker at cursor)
A: Left click
X: Interact
B: Ctrl+right-click
Y: Ctrl+left-click (in map, paste waypoint at cursor into chat and send)
Start: Escape
Dpad Up/Down: Mouse scroll-wheel up/down (camera zoom, map zoom)
Dpad Left/Right: Page Up/Down (change map layers)

Menu layout -- Hold Start
RS-horizontal: Adjust map zoom
RS-vertical: Change map layer
LB: Contacts/Looking for Group panel; hold for Mail panel; double-tap for Ranger Pet panel
RB: WvW panel
A: (unused)
B: Chat panel; hold for logout dialog (F12)
X: PvP panel
Y: Guild panel; hold for Party dialog (note: this UI does not work with action cam and captures keypresses, so you need Escape to close it)
Dpad-Up: Map
Dpad-Left: Hero panel
Dpad-Right: Inventory panel
Dpad-Down: Trading post panel; hold for Wizard's Vault panel

---Below here are extra things you don't strictly need but are handy or fun---

Controls layout -- Hold Start, then hold RT
A,X,B: Build templates 1,2,3
Y: Swap between equipment templates 1 and 2 with Y (you may need to press it a couple times, to get the game in sync with its toggle)
LB: double-tap to switch controller to racing mode
RB: Hold to scan for rifts; double-tap to place temporary Jade Bot waypoint
Dpad-up: "Tonic" novelty
Dpad-left: "Toy" novelty; hold for "Musical instrument" novelty
Dpad-right: "Held item" novelty; hold for Fishing
Dpad-down: "Chair" novelty; hold for X/dismount (re-pressing Chair does not exit it)

Social layout -- Hold Start, then hold LT
LB: (unused)
RB: hold to Toggle mentor mode (if unlocked)
A: Say "Go"
B: Say "Burn"
X: Say "Thank you"
Y: Say "Hold"
Dpad: two-step quick-emote table:

                           UP       LEFT       RIGHT   DOWN
just press and hold        agree    shrug      ponder  disagree
press, then again and hold cheer    wave       thank   sleep
press UP, then             dance    salute     bow     kneel
press LEFT, then           laugh    beckon     talk    sad
press RIGHT, then          surprise crossarm   point   threat
press DOWN, then           cry      cower      upset   sit

Racing layout -- Double-tap LB from Control layout, or use beetle auto-switch config
LS: Camera (Mouse) (use to steer)
LS-Click: Toggle autorun (R)
RS: Movement (WASD)
RS-Click: Show names
LT: Drift (C)
RT: Forward movement (W)
LB: Endurance refresh (7); hold for heal (6)
RB: Show names
A: Jump/boost/trick (Space)
B: Drift (C)
X: Boost (V)
Y: Endurance refresh (7); hold for heal (6)
Dpad-Up: Map (using Start or Back will clear race mode)
Dpad-Left: Attack dismount
Dpad-Right: Beetle; hold for Raptor (useful for quick remounting)
Dpad-Down: Dismount; hold to wing-dismount
Dpad-Down and Dpad-Left both return to normal control mode, as does Back. If you are using the automatic race mode switch on beetle mount, there is an interim control change until you let go of Dpad-Right to smooth the transition when mounting while moving.

[Vepar]

Nice! I did something simmilar for my config. Lots of layers and action sets.
But i don't really like to play with that action cam thing, plus the whole game is going down the drain fast so...

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Thanks. I actually wanted to play it as an ARPG, and found action cam works surprisingly well. Also, the dev has announced working on a full expansion following the current "living story" season, so things might be looking up again. Regardless, my partner and I enjoy playing and have a lot to do. We just recently got our Griffons, at long last, so once the mastery ranks there are done and all its features work, I'll be able to see if we need any control changes to fly it properly...

[Stahler]

Thank you for your controller config. I really like it so far, however, I could't figure out how to target enemies?
Can you help me with this? Thanks in advance :)

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Thanks for saying so! I prefer just aiming myself with action camera mode and the right stick, but there's some targeting on the un-shifted dpad. I'll need to check my notes if I didn't label the buttons in the config.

Edit: Yeah, they're there: dpad left/right for previous/next enemy, up for call target (hold up to lock autotarget), and down for take target. How is that? I never get around to trying a targeting style, so I don't know how it feels or what it needs.

I could add a double-tap or hold on down for maybe next or nearest ally (can't really add to the others, because of reducing the button response that goes with adding extra functions). I could also change down to a quick-menu type deal, so you'd press down, then press another dpad direction, but it wouldn't work well for anything that needs to be done repeatedly...

[gart]

Hi, thanks for doing this. I'm a newb to the game and to messing with steam controller mappings. My first question is, your instructions say to map D to about face. But that's a movement key, so that doesn't make sense to me. ?? thanks

Edit: I kept looking and noticed you really did want to unbind some stuff too, so I just trusted and did what you said, and this looks like it will work well, thank you so much.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Yeah, unlike a normal WASD, GW2 has side movement on 'Q' and 'E', with 'A' and 'D' mapped to turning rather than moving. Those turn keys are pretty much useless, so I bound them to other things.

It would probably ultimately make more sense to set WASD up properly and put my A and D binds on Q and E, but I was trying to keep the default bindings in place and minimize moving around things that the devs already bound to keys.

[gart]

So I discovered builds and it seems like one might want to switch between them to use different skill lineups for different situations. Would you consider adding a switcher? At best I know how to do slight modifications but I have no idea how to add a whole new function like that. Either way, thank you, this makes playing from the couch so great! :)

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Well, you can't switch builds "in combat", so while not having quick-switch options mapped leaves one using the cursor (or keyboard) to swap from the hero panel, that's just something of an inconvenience, not something where you'd need to do it fast on controller to use the feature at all. That makes it a little more back-burner for me.

It's also a lot of mappings, since it'd need to do both builds and gear, so they'd need to be somewhere less than obvious, which raises the question of whether players would use them enough to keep in mind the inputs to use them, or it just ends up some weird arcane thing they end up not actually using because they just forget how. It also requires players to use whatever game bindings I pick, since build/equipment switches are all unbound by default, and I really have no idea what people commonly bind those to.

And then you have other things vying for inputs... I wanted to add novelties, but that takes five to six more random bindings, and giving someone squad markers would take as much as twenty more! It's just such a mess of things, and like templates, stuff I'd like to support people using properly but don't really use myself, so I don't have a good feel for what makes sense to handle.

I could add it in one of the secondary mappings I was working on, like how I have quick-chat. For example. you would hold Start, then hold RT, then three face buttons for builds and swap equipment A/B with the fourth. 3 and 2 is all you get without paying into their absolutely ridiculous template monetization, so might just support that much and call it enough.

I was going to try to work squad stuff into that Start-RT layer, but I still don't have experience for that (again, no intuition on what makes sense to put where) and I suspect someone leading a squad just needs accept that they're augmenting with keyboard/mouse anyway, with all they have to manage, so kind of a wash putting work into controller stuff there.

I'll ask and see if I get some reddit response on what people tend to bind templates and novelties to. That would at least give me some confidence picking bindings to do something with, if there's any reasonable consensus. I've had a couple ideas I meant to try to see if I could work around Steam's problems blocking my quick-emote stuff, so I could get back in there and try some things (it's not a config that's easy to just jump in and edit...).

[Tyrian Mollusk]

OK, I've added templates and gotten some other things to what seems as close to solid as Steam will let me get, so a new version has been uploaded here:
steam://controllerconfig/guild%20wars%202/2372054875 [2021-01-23]

IMPORTANT: If you were using this before this change, you will need to add the following to your control bindings:
Miscellaneous

• Activate Chair: alt-NUMPAD_1
• Activate Musical Instrument: alt-NUMPAD_2
• Activate Held Item: alt-NUMPAD_3
• Activate Toy: alt-NUMPAD_4
• Activate Tonic: alt-NUMPAD_5

Templates

• Build Template 1: NUMPAD_1
• Build Template 2: NUMPAD_2
• Build Template 3: NUMPAD_3
• Equipment Template 1: NUMPAD_7
• Equipment Template 2: NUMPAD_8

There are now (well, they were there last time too, but now they hopefully can be useful) two more secondary layouts for less core commands. You get these by holding START and then also holding LT or RT. You can let go of Start once to have the trigger down. The layout will go back to normal once you release the trigger.

Start->RT ("Extra Controls") has templates, novelties, and a mentor mode toggle.

Start->LT ("Gimmicks") has some simple chat lines, a substantial set of emotes (all default--no premium/unlocked emotes), and a mentor mode toggle (yes, same button in both secondary layouts--I got tired of remembering which I put it in). While you can't chat as easily as if you grab your keyboard, you can have a whole conversation worth of emotes. I don't know... It seemed a cute thing to try and do, so I wanted to see if I could get it working.

It's a two-step quick-emote system on dpad, where you press the dpad once to select the set and then a second time to select the actual emote. You can also hold the first press, or you can hold the second press if its the same direction as the first press. I tried to make some euphemistic sense of the various emotes and dpad directions, with right things being forward-y and left things being back-y, etc. Maybe it will work for someone else. Maybe no one will ever even use it anyway, so it doesn't matter if it makes sense to anyone else :)

Well, it kind of works. There are quirks (you can't walk and emote at the same time) and sometimes it just doesn't get caught by the chat window properly, so the game opens a bunch of windows. One time I even had something get stuck held down. No idea how that was managed, since I don't have such a thing in the config.

Alright, so here's Start->RT and its "Extra Controls":
Build templates 1,2,3 on A,X,B
Swap between equipment templates 1 and 2 with Y (you may need to press it a couple times, to get the game in sync with its toggle)
Toggle mentor mode with RB
If you have a Chair novelty assigned, you can activate it with dpad-down
Tonic on dpad-left
Toy on dpad-right
Held item on dpad-up
Musical instrument on hold dpad-up

Here's Start->LT and its 'Gimmicks':
Toggle mentor mode with RB
Say "Thank you" with X
Say "Go" with A
Say "Hold" with Y
Say "Burn" with B
Dpad quick emote table:

                           UP       LEFT       RIGHT   DOWN
just press and hold        agree    shrug      ponder  disagree
press, then again and hold cheer    wave       thank   sleep
press UP, then             dance    salute     bow     kneel
press LEFT, then           laugh    beckon     talk    sad
press RIGHT, then          surprise crossarm   point   threat
press DOWN, then           cry      cower      upset   sit

Everything else should work the same as before.

[gart]

Hah, I just decided to check in on this thread and whatdya know. Thanks for doing this I'll be trying this out shortly. One modification that I did make myself was to make the left stick plain click the primary mouse click. This makes it fairly easy to click and hold to scroll the map for example. This is so useful to me, thanks so much. I'll let you know how it goes :)

[Tyrian Mollusk]

But then how will you effect your stately walk while doing escort events, without LS-click walk toggle? ;)

Speaking of the map, I should have listed in the controls that with Start held, RS left/right will zoom and RS up/down will change levels. I'm a trackball user, so I tend to just mouse when it's more convenient, even playing on controller.

[gart]

Hey, it might be my imagination, but on two different controllers I seem to be doing a lot of jumping instead of attacking in combat? I'm not sure quite what the factor is yet. (Talking about RT + A)

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Hmm, seems like it's behaving like I expect when I just tried it. Is it behaving differently than it was before for you? Careful you aren't holding A as you let RT slip. RT and LT are set to 'hair trigger' to not keep you from dodging quickly, so as soon as you release them even a little, they are full off until you move them back inward again. That can be a bit touchy. Pretty sure I didn't make changes to how RT or LT work.

[gart]

Originally posted by Tyrian Mollusk:

Hmm, seems like it's behaving like I expect when I just tried it. Is it behaving differently than it was before for you? Careful you aren't holding A as you let RT slip. RT and LT are set to 'hair trigger' to not keep you from dodging quickly, so as soon as you release them even a little, they are full off until you move them back inward again. That can be a bit touchy. Pretty sure I didn't make changes to how RT or LT work.

Sorry, I figured it out. Calibrating didn't help, but my controllers can run in native or emulated mode, and I guess these got switched at roughly the same time. (Cleaned my controllers with ISO because they had that old matte coating that eventually gets sticky..). So native mode seems to have eliminated this problem for me. Sorry for the false alarm!