How to reach legendary.
Intro:
Hello everyone. I decided to put together an overall guide on how you can reach legendary by yourself in soloq while also explaining what I did to get there this season. In season 1 I only managed to reach diamond because I was put off by the bunker meta. I did reach legendary in this season however, although It did take me a while since I didn’t have too much time ( school and so on ).
For me personally, this season has taught me a lot about conquest pvp. I learned a lot about how to rotate and what to do, which has always been my biggest issue when playing conquest. With the current build I’m using, im very good at killing 1 or 2 players in a fight. My build is essentially made for 1v1’s, but it can be used to 1 up on fights too for a fast kill.
I have played any kind of pvp in this game ( spvp, wvw roaming etc ) with the purpose of improving my own mechanical skill and becoming extremely efficient at killing one other player, and I have practiced a LOT to achieve this. Now you might think this probably wont work for conquest. And yes, that is true but only if you play full premade vs full premade.
So here’s my first advice on how to reach legendary and then ill go on to explain how, in detail.
Step 1:
Be good at actually killing other players, because that is what you do in pvp. I know conquest is not team death match, but you still need to be able to kill other people more often than not. Do NOT play a support role if you plan on reaching legendary in soloq.
What you need to do is to “carry”. basically you cant rely on your team mates to win for you, and just help them out. No. you need to contribute as much as you possibly can, and no, in soloq that does not always mean making sure your team mates win the team fight on mid.
You must never expect your team mates to be of any good, so play a very independent build, but obviously this depends on your build and what it is good at. If your build / style is about winning the team fight, then you should obviously have some things that will benefit your team mates.
And this is the thing about most players in spvp. They quite literally just suck at fighting. They cant 1v1 at all, and if you cant 1v1, youll also have trouble in 2v2, and sometimes even 3v3.
Most players play just conquest, which is why they are so bad at this. If you play conquest and try to stay In team fights most of the time, you will never learn how to fight by yourself. All you learn is how to contribute to the fight that is already going on.
Step 2:
If players on your team are criticizing you, don’t always ignore it.
I know, most of the time people are just trying to find something or someone to blame their own mistakes on or whatever, but sometimes you can actually learn a lot by just thinking about what it is that they said. Another very good thing to do is to whisper whoever gave you advice etc. and ask about details and what you did wrong. Sure, maybe not everything they say is 100 % correct, but that does not mean you should just ignore all of it and pretend nothing is ever your fault. It IS! It is impossible to fully master any kind of pvp, because we are not playing against AI who have the best solutions to everything, we play against other players. You can never learn too much, so stop pretending youre the best and everyone else is wrong. Im not saying they are always right, but they are not always wrong either.
Step 3:
If you have your own strategy ( for example I always tend to go for Far at the beginning of every game )
But your team mates say otherwise, make sure to rethink your strategy for that game. When playing ranked, don’t just hit ready. Wait and ask your team mates questions about what to do, and why. Try to think of the best solution etc. and go with that. In my case, sometimes ive ended up going mid and fight with the team instead of going far because we made up a plan that overall would be better for that specific game.
Step 4:
if you are not someone who is going to fight in team fights constantly, its okay if you don’t reroll to another class.
If you, like me, don’t plan on fighting in the bigger 3v3 or 4v4 fights most of the game, its okay if you don’t reroll, even though your team mates want you to. If you plan on doing the smaller fights, its much more important that you can play very well than being a class better suited for your team mates plans.
Most of the time, skill is more important than the class. I know there are exceptions, but you don’t see most people reaching legendary just by rerolling class every game to suit the team’s need with average skill.
Step 5:
Like I already said, don’t play supportive builds, and bunker is exactly that.
Theres a low skill ceiling for bunkering. All you have to do is not die, ress your team mates, rotate correctly etc. but in the actual fight, being very skilled at playing bunker is not gonna help you much.
However, if you are good at killing people, you can contribute a lot by killing their bunker very quickly.
That’s about It for the detailed explanations of the steps, and now ill just explain how I reached legendary myself.
When the season started, I decided to try getting to legendary just by playing the build I always play with: marauder longbow druid. I had practiced a lot with this build in 1v1’s already, so yea. I wanted to see if I was able to do it.
My strategy was to go far at the beginning of every game, kill whoever was capping it, cap it myself, then go mid or wherever my team needed me to be. I would seek out fights that were small on purpose, so that I could make more of a difference. ( if I help 4 other people in 1 fight, they will only be 25 % more in numbers, but if I help 1 other player, its 100 % more. ) of course you cant always do this, but that was what I would do if it was possible. Remember, conquest is 100 % situational, so its very hard to say what youd do throughout an entire game. All you can really do is plan things at the beginning of the game.
Rotate around, fight where ever Im needed, decap points, etc. etc.
After a while, I realized that with my skill level, I would be more effective if I had more dmg, even if I sacrificed survivability, so I threw out my marauder amulet and replaced it with Beserker. This enabled me to deal even more dmg, and therefore people would die faster. I don’t know why, but most people think that the bunker meta is still alive, so they all play hybrid builds. This is not the case, as I have found that every time my team consists of mostly dps builds, we’ve completely destroyed the enemy’s full hybrid / bunker team.
Why? Because no single player can react quickly enough to survive a burst by 2-3 dps players at once, and then 2 players can run off to another node and quickly kill whoever is there. You need to kill people in as little time as possible, and conquest is all about time.
At one point I attempted to play another build which was better for team fights, but I realized I just wouldnt be able to contribute as much because I was much better at fighting with my original build.
TLDR:
1: Git gud at 1v1’s, know your character. This will help you in all areas of pvp.
2: help people help you.
3: learn how to rotate in different situations.
If anyone has other things to add, please do so.
Quote from user Salamander.2504 about rotations:
“If you know they have a thief/whatever that likes to decap your home all the time, you can wait on point until you see them on the map and can account for their position. Once you’re confident they aren’t headed your way (i.e., the thief is fighting on far), you can rotate to mid if there is a fight there, or sit inbetween home (with LOS) and mid to remain flexible.
Rotating is important to prevent outnumbered fights for your team, but over-rotating to feel like your “doing something” costs so many games. It’s not good form to camp home, but do remember to swing back to get LOS on your home ~15 seconds after you wipe any of the opposing team, so they don’t decap on respawn. Realistically someone should always have eyes on home in some fashion, whether it be a portal+ map awareness or direct LOS+decent mobility. I call this “short-stopping home.”
Before you rotate into any ongoing fight, check the healthbars of your teammates. You don’t want to rotate into a losing/heavily outnumbered fight unless you’re confident that you can turn the tide. If you’re going to die, die on point, but if you can help it, it’s better to just disengage/rotate out to prevent a team-wipe.”
(edited by bigo.9037)
