Guild Wars 2

Thanks for this guide, it is really helpful, I hope i can get my friends to look at this too. By the way just one thing I looked up the decapper engi build and it has a shaman’s amulet !?! isnt that out of date now?

yeah the decap engi build is probably not the best

But it’s a gay specc so I won’t post the best possible decap build in my opinion ^^ don’t want even more decappers around!

something else for this:

Moving the Guardian – on how much points do we play?

I see this way to often with guest guards, enemy teams and in soloqueue.

GUARDS DONT GO AFK MID!

As a guard you are practically a defensive roamer. You shouldn’t stay on a point (unless the enemy comes to you, or you are the only one left and the point is needed desperately).

In general you should always roam your guard to the teamfights. This also brings us to compilations again.

Teamcompilations with 1 bunker

Teamcompilations who only have 1 guardian or bunkerish class have a really hard time. Lets say condi engi, thief, mesmer, ele (dmg). You have only 1 chance to win:

- Kill them faster than they can kill you

Because you can’t sustain when the fight gets long. And you are probably bad 1v1 (speccwise) and you can’t effectively move your guard.

This teamcomp is probably not that good and really hard to play. You will start loosing when the enemies get better.

You would probably have to play 2 or even 3 points. (Try to spike a point with 3 dmg dealers, while other caps close and guard goes mid) and then try to snowball them.

Teamcompilations with 2 bunkers

Lets say you have a spiritranger, a guard and 3 squishy dmg dealers (ele, thief, mes).

This comp is probably better. You don’t really need the damage from 4 dmg dealers, because in a 3 point game the team with 2 points captured over a higher amount of time wins. So 2 bunkers makes sense right?

it does, but it’s still not that effective. VS good teams you will notice, that the team who has the guardian in the fight wins (assume it’s an even fight 2v2, 3v3, 4v4).

Why is that? Guardians offer so much support AND damage. Burning, condition remove (which is active support but also a damage buff, because a good guardian will remove your weakness and chilled so that you can deal more damage). Heal, rezz and safestomps.

So you need your guard in the teamfights. Which is a problem in a 2 bunker comp, because if you play 2 points you need to probably move your guard sometime and then a squishy has to defend.

You would probably also need to play on 2 points in this comp, but start with playing on 3 points. Maybe spike far with 3 and then quickly support close mid with the other 2 while one caps. While the game is going on you should play on 2 points and only decap far fast if you can afford it (an opponent is down and stomped so your team doesn’t have any disadvantage in numbers).

Teamcompilations with 3 bunkers

Ok to be serious now the good comps start. Every good comp in my opinion needs at least 3 bunkers.

With 3 bunkers and 2 DPS you should play on 2 points. Why you ask? because your guardian should be a ROAMER!. Basically you need 1 bunker at each point while your guardian roams with the 2 dmg dealers to the fights. Far can be quickly decapped.

(for example ELE plays like this)

So basically: send 1 close – 1 mid (or far or wathever combination) and then move quickly with guard and the 2 dmg dealers to the fights.

Teamcompilations with 4 bunkers

This is best to play on 3 points. Why? because you can have a bunker on each point and a guard + dmg dealer supporting it. Cheesemode plays this comp. They have 3 really good 1v1 classes with high sustain a guard an a thief.
They all play classes which are really good in small skirmishes (stability stomping, safe rezzing etc. just wins 2v2s)

Teamcompilations with 5 bunker

This is possible. Mostly people send a decap engineer far and then just outsustain the other points (mostly with 2 warriors),

Possible Combinations

with these combos keep in mind the first part of the guide regarding power/conditiondamage spread on a team.

Also the in my opinion not so good variants are in brackets ().

1. Bunker Teams

1. Guard +
2,3,kittentermes, dmgEle, DmgEngi condi or (power), (100bladesWarrior), dmg Guard, Powernecro, Thief, (powerranger), trapranger

2. Bunker Teams

1. Guard +
2. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, (DecapBunkerengi), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele)
3,kittentermes, dmgEle, DmgEngi condi or (power), (100bladesWarrior), dmg Guard, Powernecro, Thief, (powerranger), trapranger

3. Bunker Teams

1. Guard +
2. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, (DecapBunkerengi), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele)
3. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, (DecapBunkerengi), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele) – if you took spiritranger or necro, dont take 2
kittentermes, dmgEle, DmgEngi condi or (power), (100bladesWarrior), dmg Guard, Powernecro, Thief, (powerranger), trapranger

4. Bunker Teams

1. Guard +
2. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, (DecapBunkerengi), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele)
3. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, (DecapBunkerengi), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele) – if you took spiritranger or necro, dont take 2
4. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, DecapBunkerengi (it now is a good option), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele) – if you took spiritranger or necro, dont take 2
5 Shattermes, dmgEle, DmgEngi condi or (power), (100bladesWarrior), dmg Guard, Powernecro, Thief, (powerranger), trapranger

5. Bunker Teams

1. Guard +
2. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, (DecapBunkerengi), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele)
3. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, (DecapBunkerengi), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele) – if you took spiritranger or necro, dont take 2
4. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, DecapBunkerengi (it now is a good option), (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele) – if you took spiritranger or necro, dont take 2
5. Spiritranger, Hambow, Eviscerate, TerrorNecro, DecapBunkereni, (SecondGuardian), (Bunker Warrior), (Bunker Ele)

i’d probably run this specc with 2 warrios, guardian, spiritranger and decapengi

Is meditation guardian viable then?

Do you know if these fights were streamed? Linky?

Thedenofsin.7340:

Do you know if these fights were streamed? Linky?

Just check some of the vods on Blus stream; http://www.twitch.tv/blu42/profile

Why is this post not stickied??

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Nice post, but what about full-fledged three point play with small skirmishing builds like in the old days? It seems many have drifted away from this as a viable strategy but as ApeX has shown the last month, is not the case.

I’m not sure if I understand “full-fledged” correctly. But if I do you are wrong.

Everybody drifted TO full-fledged three point play.

I try to break this down. In the old days it was pretty common to have 2 bunkers and 3 bursters.

Now almost everybody (and almost every good team) plays about 4 really good small skirmishing builds. The problem is, people now know how to play this 3 point capture system. So the meta is this bunker meta.

All the dominating speccs are insanely good small skirmishing speccs:

Warrior – Warriors are probably the best in small skirmishes. The surviveablity combined with the damage and the ability to rezz somebody and safestomp just wins 2v2s

Ranger – Also the same, surviveablity, dmg, support and rezzing!

Thieves – Insanely fast, high surviveablity, high dmg, interrupting rezzing, very strong in 1v1 because of the interrupt and evade spam

Necros – Really good in 1v1 and in Small skirmishes, have 1 safestomp/rezz.

Additional to this all these builds are also very strong in teamfights, because good small skirmishing builds have to be hardtargets, and hardtargets are good in teamfights because they don’t deal that much less dmg than glasscannons AND are hard to kill AND you have more ppl able to rezz AND stomp safe.

The thing is you can’t really always push 3 points. It’s just not possible. Sometimes you will loose and you won’t be able to push on 3 points again, you will have to regroup and you will be forced in teamfights. So you HAVE to take a guardian. You won’t be able to only provoke small skirmishes.

This all aside. I think all the balancing in the world can’t shift away from this bunker meta. What really would help is phantarams idea of increasing the points gained with kills (to 7 or even 10). This would make bursty setups viable.

any map any game most points come from caps held, therefore bunker is the meta for this game mode and always will be. power classes are needed to kill bunkers, and the rest of the game all comes down simply to effective rotation.

+1
Can a mod stick this thread please?

Great guide, Too bad everyone now plays these meta builds, making most games predictable before start..

The spvp patch can’t come soon enough..

Bump for the potential new influx from the feature patch.

BUMP
Yes, this needs a bump. Tell pve heros to read these guides on the gw2 forum instead of insulting them.

Yeah, this guide is very helpfull. I’ve been playing PvE with some casual hotjoin PvP mixed in. I didn’t want to play more organized games of sPvP because I feared being a nuisance to my team. Now, thanks to the sticky “New to PvP? Start here!” and this guide I’ve been able to play 2 solo arena matches without utterly sucking (And thanks to the tips my team mates gave me when I told them I was new to arenas and asked for advice). I have to say both matches were really fun. 1 won, 1 lost, the second one being an awesome game (500/497).

I think this kind of guides should be stickied (By the way, thanks for the bumps. I hadn’t seen this guide before). And last, let me ask something… is there any site/wiki/whatever with all this sPvP info available (and updated)?

Read it!

“new to arenas and asked for advice”

That’s the kind of beginner who can learn and is worth teaching.

Keep this on the first page.

Thank you for bumping

I was looking for this thread on google… And forum search doesnt work… Wasnt able to find it for weeeks :’(

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

I appreciate the community coming together to help the community. Thanks OP for taking the time to write this up and the rest of the community to help grow this thread. If we help each other we can not only make each other better, make games less toxic, and grow the community at the same time.

+1 on threads like this.

A wild guess is the community would appreciate a sticky as it would help it grow moar than dat lip service.

Sticky pls + try to put something like this into an ingame tutorial!

Just keep in mind the classes/builds listed may have fallen out of meta. This should get a touch up before sticky consideration since the new patch shook a lot of this up (namely the absence of ele in the post).

very nice post now we just need to have newbies come to forums and read this

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

I appreciate the community coming together to help the community. Thanks OP for taking the time to write this up and the rest of the community to help grow this thread. If we help each other we can not only make each other better, make games less toxic, and grow the community at the same time.

+1 on threads like this.

yeah but matchmaking still suck.

why can’t we have a matchmaking based on match played?

Really need to ask this… Is this and the other Django guide going to be stickied, either alone or merged? (Or is some dev going to post this kind of information in a new sticky post?)

I think this can be really helpfull for new PvP players

Think we need Grouch to add this to his “New to PvP” sticky under guides.

+1 OP!
/15chars

thanks for all the kind feedback!

I will rewrite this to make it less redundant and update the builds in a new thread. Commin up soon

why, WHY
are theese django guide thread still not stickied?

Where is the stickiness for much needed threads in these trying and changing times?