Guild Wars 2

VIDEO VERSION OF THIS POST IS HERE: https://youtu.be/QgS5x4c1faM

PvP may not be as popular currently as it was last season, or at any other time. With people upset about the ascended gear change, that’s no surprise. You’d think only the people who really want to PvP or are any good at it then would remain, but you’re wrong. Today I’d like to give you the top 7 tips, in my opinion, and from the top of my head, that will help you improve in PvP and become a better PvP player. These may not be THE top 7 tips, but I think they are very important and crucial to remember and understand.

1. Don’t die. Or try not to as much.

I am not saying don’t die at all, since that’s very difficult, but try to control your deaths and avoid dying as much as possible. Each death gives the enemy team an additional 5 points, and we’ve all had games where we’ve lost by 5-10-15 points. If we would have died 2-3 times less, we could have won. Try to have some healing, defense, and support skills in your build to help you and your team from dying too much. Otherwise have a strong aggressive kit that you know you will win in a 1v1. Follow the rest of these tips and you’ll die less too.

2. Look at the map, and understand it.

So many people either don’t look at the map, or look at the map but don’t understand what they are actually looking at. Before you make a move to attack or defend a point or objective, look at the map. Are you going to be outnumbered? Does the rest of your team already have it under control? Could you be useful somewhere else? Is it a dumb idea to go middle, when there’s 3 enemies there, and one of your other team mates already died being the only one there? Look at the map and take note of where your team and the enemy team is, and then decide what you want to do.

3. Look at people’s health bars, and decide what to do.

If you see a team mate struggling in a 1v1 to defend a point, help them. If you see a team mate killing another person in a 1v1 to defend a point, help someone else or stay on the point you are now and defend. Looking at health bars can help decide the state of your team and where you’re needed. It can also help decide when to use heal skills, condition cleanse skills, boons, and other supportive and defensive abilities. When your team is full health, there’s no point in using your heal skill because no one needs it. Don’t just spam all your skills, and hope for the best. Look at your team and you, and make a decision on what skills to use.

4. Fight on point.

PvP ranked games are based on a conquest style game type. You capture a point and hold it to gain points. If you leave the point, you risk the chance of losing the point. If you’re going to help defend a point or try to gain another point, fine, leave the point. But if you’re leaving to fight someone in a random location, why? You may risk dying, and then on top of that even losing your point. Fight within the boundaries of each capture point and you’ll be much better off. Not only that, but the players that know how to play PvP will be at those capture locations, so if you die you can get revived. If you need help, they’ll help you. No one is going to help you if your stuck at your base fighting someone trying to waste your time.

5. Decapping is good, you don’t need to fully cap every point.

While it is better to fully cap every point you can decap from the enemy to gain your team points, if it’s not possible don’t force it. If you decapped a point already, you made progress, you accomplished something, you’ve helped your team by stopping the enemy team from gaining points from the capture point you just decapped. If you see 2 enemies coming at you and you know you won’t win the fight, run away and help your team somewhere else. Worst scenario is they cap the point back, but if you stay there, and they kill you, not only will they have gotten the point, but also another 5 points from your death. if it’s a close game, decapping can also be helpful as it stops the enemy team from gaining points and gives you an edge to keep defending and rack more points up.

6. Know when to run, and know when to fight.

If it’s 3v1, don’t try to be the hero and revive your team mate, you may just die right along with him. If you see 2 enemies coming to your point, don’t just stand there and let them kill you, if you have no sustain or a good way to keep your health up, rather just run and be helpful somewhere else. I am not saying run from every fight, but I am saying make smart decisions. There’s plenty of times where you can fight and get some kills, but if 3 people are middle, and you’re the only one going middle, what’s the point? Know when to back off, help, run, or stand your ground.

7. Don’t be a jerk.

Everyone’s playing PvP to have fun, and improve. Sure there might be some trolls who don’t care and want to ruin your day, but for the most part that’s not the case. Instead of bashing people and telling them they suck and should uninstall or “go back to PVE”, help them, and give them advice in what they could do better. If you’re helping one person with some valuable information, they could learn that and then pass it on as well. Sitting and complaining and bashing won’t help you win any games; and besides we’re all still human here, and it’s all still a game. And if a match ends, and you have nothing positive or nice to say, then just leave. Having you stay there to talk trash, be negative, or make snarky comments without even saying GG, makes you look like an kitten , could get you reported, and makes the whole point of PvP not even fun anymore. Be respectful.

There are plenty of other tips that I could have given here as far as objectives go, team comps, pinging, and the such, but I felt these are all the general, basic, and most important for any player, new, old, skilled, unskilled, guardian, mesmer, bronze, or gold. You could be the best mesmer in the world, and know how to 2v1 or even 3v1, but if you don’t know how to work with your team, how to cooperate, communicate, and make decisions based on the map and your team’s status, you’ll lose more than you’ll win.

PvP is about how well you can work with others, and how well you can observe what the other team is doing and act to counter it. PvP isn’t about you… that’s what the personal story is for.

Thanks for reading, and hope you found it helpful! Feel free to leave your own tips down below and further suggestions or questions.

maniamsmart.7981:

4. Fight on point.

PvP ranked games are based on a conquest style game type. You capture a point and hold it to gain points. If you leave the point, you risk the chance of losing the point. If you’re going to help defend a point or try to gain another point, fine, leave the point. But if you’re leaving to fight someone in a random location, why? You may risk dying, and then on top of that even losing your point. Fight within the boundaries of each capture point and you’ll be much better off. Not only that, but the players that know how to play PvP will be at those capture locations, so if you die you can get revived. If you need help, they’ll help you. No one is going to help you if your stuck at your base fighting someone trying to waste your time.

imho this tends to contradict with your first tip of not dying when it comes to newer players. With so many professions that do well in confined spaces it seems like a particularly bad idea to confine yourself to a tight space. I see a lot of players make this mistake, they play on the point and refuse to move which leads to inevitable AoE/Melee cleave deaths.

my two cents, fighting close to the point and killing the attacker then retaking the point generally does better than refusing to move from it.

I wasn’t going to say anything since it’s supposed to be a super basic guide, but I think angrypastry makes a good point that this could be reworded. My success rate and understanding of PvP hit a major breakthrough once I realized fighting on point was not a good idea. I had to reinterpret this advice that is constantly told to new plays.

I think it should be stated “for FOR a point” not “fight ON a point”.

If you watch the old tournaments, proleagues, or any top streamer (not many left) you’ll see they prioritize staying alive, keeping teammates alive, getting kills, and THEN holding the cap. If you have a point neuted and your opponent is limping away at 5% health, go kill him and come back to the point rather than let him go +1 another fight at full health. If your ally is 1v2ing slightly off point, go win that fight and then cap the point. If he dies, you die and lose the point. Etc., etc., etc.

Staying alive and helping your teammates is almost always going to give better results than idling on a point or dying. Especially with the prevalence of trap dragonhunters.

At the low end, death rates are often a major reason for losses rather than tactics/builds.

A single death costs 5 points but the real killer is the downtime which I would guess at 15 points.