Guild Wars 2

I come from a heavy RTS background. sPvP, while focused on avatar vs avatar combat, has some much larger scale strategies. sPvP matches revolve around holding points as long as possible while accumulating points (We all know this). But it seems to me that players put too much emphasis on winning every fight, rather than focusing on winning the game. With this idea of focusing on the points, some “alternate” strategies become very viable, and pretty fun.

Most of what I’m describing works with my builds which are almost always high mobility setups.

I like to do what I think is best described as the art of wasting time. Their time. For example, I will go after a point that 2 opponent team members are on. Why? I’m going to lose the fight for sure. But, if I try to live for as long as possible, then I kept 2 players busy at one point, while on the rest of the points its going to be 3 vs 4, in my teams favor. This is really only effective if I’m good at being hard to kill, but it works for me.

I also like to fight off of points that I have taken. Engage them after I have taken the point, and far away from the point. Which keeps it from being decapped while we move around. Keeping an eye on it is essential, but it works well most of the time. This is most effective if really far away from a point, and keeping multiple opponents busy.

On foefire, I will take a point, then go wack on their gate a few times. Then leave. They get the “we are under attack!” warning, and some of them run off to the gate. Wasting their time.

One of my personal favorites is on forest, in the very beginning, killing their monster. Using thief, SB 5, and shadow step, its fairly easy to get to the other side quickly. Then when their monster is low, steal, and HS away. Works really well, and is VERY satisfying. (I love to say “YOINK!!” afterwards) Also, when its dead, you play hard to kill, and they waste their time trying to kill you, and not taking mid. I pretty much always die, but I can sometimes take atleast someone with me. (Even if this is not the best, it SO MUCH FUN to do it) If its already dead, I will take their home while they focus on mid.

I’ve seen a few other people try some other alternate strategy. I have a zerker thief friend who decaps points then leaves. His initial spike is good enough to take out someone on a point almost instantly, but he is too glassy to risk staying put, so he just ganks people and decaps. I don’t like this one personally, as I like a bit of wiggle room with my HP, but he likes it

Do you have some “alternate” strategies? Please share

Yes, yes, of course. My favorite alternate strategy, when playing spvp, is to run straight to the point and cap it. I find that running to mid in the beginning and putting everything into winning that fight really throws the opponents off guard. This is especially effective when one player on the enemy team decides to avoid mid, for some odd reason.

Another excellent alternate strategy is to wait for an enemy player to get out of position and use that opportunity to create a +1 scenario against the other enemy players. I find the 4v3 battle to be the all time best way to win the game. You’ll usually end up wiping half the enemy team, then it will be 5v2 for a little while. The chances are they’ll never recover from this.

My all time favorite strategy is to decap the enemy home point when their players rotate out of position and hold it as long as possible, or simply decap it and run back to mid (to avoid a -1 fight there…

Archon.6480:

Yes, yes, of course. My favorite alternate strategy, when playing spvp, is to run straight to the point and cap it. I find that running to mid in the beginning and putting everything into winning that fight really throws the opponents off guard. This is especially effective when one player on the enemy team decides to avoid mid, for some odd reason.

On the other hand, it’s equally likely that someone on your team will decide to go far or something and then the 4v3 will be against you…

I guess the OP is talking about strategies that can be executed solo – like what you said about decapping a point after they’ve rotated out…

How are these alternate strategies? Aren’t these just normal strategies that you use when you have the chance?

I like to do things like in the OP. As a heathen Thief that rarely uses a Shortbow, I really like the idea of capping a point, then intercepting opponents before they can get close. I have a much better shot at “holding” the point if I can keep the fight away from it :-P

But I do love to tie up as many opponents as I can. Infiltrator’s Strike can make the situation so silly at times. You could almost put the Benny Hill theme song behind some of my “fights” with the way opponents are chasing me around.

Before the patch, I could run a “bunker” build that would usually take three opponents focusing on me before they could kill me. I couldn’t quite hold a point, but I could keep it contested.

But like in the OP, I also like to go bang on the gate. I’ll usually take it down, then go hit the Lord once or twice, then get back to capping points. If one or two of the opponents do get drawn to defend their lord, that’s really where the Sword shines. I just run around in their base until they get tired of me or we win.

Hehe, and don’t get me started on Khylo and trolling the clock tower with the Sword :-P

Ps. I would love for the Thief to be able to kill or at least control opponents enough so a Thief can literally keep opponents between points. That would be a true role for a roamer.

Archon.6480:

Yes, yes, of course. My favorite alternate strategy, when playing spvp, is to run straight to the point and cap it. I find that running to mid in the beginning and putting everything into winning that fight really throws the opponents off guard. This is especially effective when one player on the enemy team decides to avoid mid, for some odd reason.

Another excellent alternate strategy is to wait for an enemy player to get out of position and use that opportunity to create a +1 scenario against the other enemy players. I find the 4v3 battle to be the all time best way to win the game. You’ll usually end up wiping half the enemy team, then it will be 5v2 for a little while. The chances are they’ll never recover from this.

My all time favorite strategy is to decap the enemy home point when their players rotate out of position and hold it as long as possible, or simply decap it and run back to mid (to avoid a -1 fight there…

lol +1

Archon.6480:

Yes, yes, of course. My favorite alternate strategy, when playing spvp, is to run straight to the point and cap it. I find that running to mid in the beginning and putting everything into winning that fight really throws the opponents off guard. This is especially effective when one player on the enemy team decides to avoid mid, for some odd reason.

Another excellent alternate strategy is to wait for an enemy player to get out of position and use that opportunity to create a +1 scenario against the other enemy players. I find the 4v3 battle to be the all time best way to win the game. You’ll usually end up wiping half the enemy team, then it will be 5v2 for a little while. The chances are they’ll never recover from this.

My all time favorite strategy is to decap the enemy home point when their players rotate out of position and hold it as long as possible, or simply decap it and run back to mid (to avoid a -1 fight there…

Loool so much.

Man, I would love to run with some of you people. As part of the Legendary, I still have to run 3 Ranked matches every day for fifteen days, and more or less 3 times out of 3, I will lose. Why? Because either no one else has a strategy and doesn’t care about them, or they keep parroting the same old tired “1 to home, everyone else to mid” strategy that -as far as I can tell- is a TERRIBLE strat for places like the Forest of Nifhel.

(Seriously. Consider for a moment that not only is mid a terrible defensive position when people can run up the stairs, tag you with conditions and make you chase them, out of eyesight of everyone else’s attacks, or snipe you from the edges up top, where it’s harder to him them, but it also provides terrible routes to both the other points AND the forest animals. Holding mid in FoN to me seems like a terrible waste of time when the side points provide much better access to the forest mobs.)

Shenrezade.2916:

Man, I would love to run with some of you people. As part of the Legendary, I still have to run 3 Ranked matches every day for fifteen days, and more or less 3 times out of 3, I will lose. Why? Because either no one else has a strategy and doesn’t care about them, or they keep parroting the same old tired “1 to home, everyone else to mid” strategy that -as far as I can tell- is a TERRIBLE strat for places like the Forest of Nifhel.

(Seriously. Consider for a moment that not only is mid a terrible defensive position when people can run up the stairs, tag you with conditions and make you chase them, out of eyesight of everyone else’s attacks, or snipe you from the edges up top, where it’s harder to him them, but it also provides terrible routes to both the other points AND the forest animals. Holding mid in FoN to me seems like a terrible waste of time when the side points provide much better access to the forest mobs.)

Hey on that note, how are the queue times? I’m worried about hitting legendary and will struggle to do the 3 games a day thing