Guild Wars 2

So, I’m a bit bored of the zerginess of WvW, I’m staring off at my tv while farming Orr events….tell me about PvP

I’m not really looking for a team to join up with, I’m more curious about the Hot Join and what it is.
Forgive me for not just jumping in and finding out, but I’m at work and felt like making a thread to ask about it all.
I don’t see a Sticky Thread offering a description of the PvP aspect to us sPvP/tPvP newbies, although the list of helpers is pretty nice.

First off what’s the difference between sPvP and tPvP?
Are there better and worse builds for PvP (when I say PvP I’m leaving out the WvW aspect completely.) I play Guardian and Mesmer mostly.
I have seen the term Bunker Build many times, are these just the toughness builds that stick around and defend whatever is supposed to be defended in PvP?

Mainly, what are the PvP Faux Pas? What am I going to get yelled at by doing or not doing? I would prefer to have some understanding of the etiquette involved before kitten ing too many people off as the one thing that makes me not want to take part is over indulged elitist jackals ruining the experience because a new person is trying to learn.

Anyhow, thanks for any helpful advice/hints etc.

Hm, so sPvP encapsulates both hotjoins and tpvp. tPvP equates to tournament PvP, where you actually go to the NPC to queue up for a match. Hotjoins are the servers you can easily hop on to play.

The only game mode is capture point. There will always be 3 points on a map you can claim. When you claim the point, you get +1 point per second for each capped point. You play to 500.

Hotjoins include 8v8 and 5v5. tPvP is only 5v5 and it uses a hidden rating system to match you up. Ideally this pairs you up with similar skilled players.

Playing Hotjoins does not affect your leaderboard rank. I’ll let someone else cover builds for now. :X

Uhh, let’s see…

Hotjoin a.k.a. Zergjoin is kind of like WvW, you mostly run around with a group, AoE whatever stands in your way, capture points and move on. Ofc it’s possible to run around solo, but there’s always possibility you’ll run into enemy zerg.

Overall, it’s a place where you mostly farm glory (pvp currency) and rank (pvp ‘level’), test and practice with new builds.

tPvP, or Tournaments are ranked games where teams of 5 people, with very specific composition (usually teams have at least one of each: guardian, mesmer, elementalist, plus 2 other classes (anything but Warrior)) executing the strategy to outplay the enemy team and win the match.

As for builds, for Hotjoin pretty much anything goes. I often see people running around without runes or sigils and still doing ok by just spamming random skills.

For tPvP there’s rather limited pool of viable builds for each class. It’ld take too much space to write about them all, so I’ll just point you to → http://sittingonacouch.com/category/gaming/ . They have a lot of helpful podcasts and videos suited for PvP newcomers.

Thank you both
15chars

Tips for hotjoin: (Do these before tournaments to learn what’s going on. It’s not fun having a rank 1 on your tourny team)
-Hotjoin is a kittenshow, people don’t care about winning much, and will often run in large groups to farm kills. Just be aware of that going in, I prefer 5v5 matches for that reason.
-Some people use hotjoin for dueling. There’s private servers that having dueling in the title, but people still use other servers sometimes. It’s courtesy to let them do it. Just try to notice if lots of people are standing around or not capping objectives before you start wailing on them.
-People will rage for whatever reason. Just ignore it.

Tips for actually winning:
- Play the objectives. All maps have 3 capture points which should be straightforward, but then some other gimmick objective. Look up the secondary objectives for each map: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Structured_PvP.
- Points are typically referred to as near, mid, far, relative to your spawn point.
- Rez your friends. A team that rezzes eachother quickly can often overcome a superior team.
- Only rez downed players, not dead.
- Only 1 person is needed on a capture point to capture it. Don’t sit on the point with your friends while the enemy gets everything else.
- Don’t get greedy. It’s better to defend 2 points then have everyone rush

Lastly just try to play smart. Dieing on a point can be ok if you really need to stall the capture, but in general don’t pick fights you can’t win. If the enemy is defending a node with a ton of players, go somewhere else or wait for backup before engaging.

Edit: One last thing. Before going in, just copy a popular build. Once you really understand why it works you can experiment on your own, but you’re not going to have much reference for how good you’re playing if you don’t know what a good build is capable of.

@Allie: That’s a nice calendar! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while actually, because I sometimes lose track of what is going on. This is the first time I see it though. Perhaps I missed something, or would it maybe be a good idea to put the link in a sticky somewhere on the forum too?

If you want to learn some collective information on sPvP tips, here is a nice thread to checkout: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/sPvP-Tips/page/2#post2085040

Brigg.6189:

- Only 1 person is needed on a capture point to capture it. Don’t sit on the point with your friends while the enemy gets everything else.

This should be a pop-up every time you join a match. Every time I do a hotjoin 3/5 of my team stop on the near point to cap it. QQ

Some very nice and helpful responses. Thank you all for being helpful and not trollish like I see in a lot of other places.
I will be pleased to be steamrolled by you all in PvP as I learn the ropes.

:) Learn your and the opponent classes’ skill on hotjoin, but for tactic and what real PvP is, rely on tournaments only.

Gl!