Guild Wars 2

In hoping to join some sort of ESL or equivalent pvp event, I and my friends have started practising pvp together and result is we are quite enjoying it lately. We decided to record a match together to get feedback from the pvp experts here. We know we are not so pro but looking to do better of course so after you watch my video please let us know what could go better? Where is more room for improvement as a team?

Our team composition so far is:

D/D celestial ele (myself)
Shoutbow war
Shatterer Mesmer
Power Ranger

We are expecting a good thief as our 5th mate to complete the team.

Please note that, this wasn’t our worse or the best performance but a normal average match to give out an idea.

Looking for some healthy feedback and encouragement…

In addition to getting feedback here, I’d encourage you to hit up some players in-game for scrims. On NA at least Backpack has in the past offered to help newer teams and give his views on what constitutes good play, and on EU MiM Sam had a similar initiative going a while back. After today’s tryharding for the WTS qualifiers is over, top teams might welcome a change of pace and getting involved in an effort such as this. Can’t hurt to approach them and ask politely.

Also, props for a manly comp. Zerker Thief-Mesmer-Ranger is man-mode stuff.

Only thing I have seen in this video I can say anything about is the ele should consider kiting out of points earlier and keeping themselves alive. Sometimes it is better to concede points and reinforce other teammates while your CDs come back.

Although I play Ele as one of my off classes, I am no Cmc or Phantaramen, so can’t really give advice on rotations.

Edit: Not a top player, but I do understand gameplay quite a bit.

First of all, i’m glad people are trying to make new teams, spvp scene needs teams for sure.

There are a lot of areas where you can improve, personal skill, teamfight skill, movements, ts communication etc. I’d start with a more clear idea about the base composition (classes) and roles (bunker/roamers ).

i agree your rotations feel like there spur of the moment instead of people knowing where they should be and there role on the team. Also not sure which one but your 1 bunker away to me. EU has had 1 pure bunker which hasnt been the norm for most pvp teams and Obviously the abjured rule na and if your seriously competing you have be able to stand on a point a little longer vs those teams.

Just my opinion, loving the team grind though

As a player who regularly plays in Go4Cups and ESLs in EU, here is what I think.

You need to call numbers. At no point did you guys call out where all 5 members of the opposite team were and this led to some bad calls unfortunately.

You need to defend your capped points (with a caveat that you must match numbers if they push 5v4 on a point)

You need to stop going for NPCs. The only time when NPCs should be taken is if you know exactly where all 5 members of the enemy team is and you are not required on point defence. This only occurs when the enemy team has died or if you have really good bunkers on point.

Examples where mistakes were made:
- 1:00 = You chased the thief despite only seeing War/Thief on the map. This meant 3 unaccounted players – one of which was likely to go for a decap on close.
- 2:03 = Call was made to push far despite not calling where the enemy team was (which was most likely on the way to close). This led to full cap. Also, instead of pushing far with 2, one should have gone close asap to keep it neutral.
-3:59 = Again, close point was left open despite not calling numbers leading to a decap.
-4:52 = You were told to push far but there was a Guardian following you. This led to a 1v1 on their capped point. Although you pro’d it and won the 1v1, this is not good because it is risky, takes time and stretched your defenders out thinly. A top team would have collapsed 4v3 on Mid or Close and you would have lost it. You should have just stopped the far push and returned to defend Mid/Close.
- 7:42 = Your Warrior died leaving you 2v3. Instead of standing on the point awaiting certain death, your team should have either kited off point giving up the decap but surviving until your War returns or rotated out of Close to Far where you got a decap. Wiping was the worst outcome cos it means the enemy team can overwhelm a 2nd point while you spawn.
-8:27 = I think you realised but dont engage when 2 teammates are downed. It’s like suicide.
-9:23 = The call to go for NPCs meant you went from a guaranteed winning position to possibly throwing the game. It caused you to die on close, get Svanir stolen and lose far. A good team would have decapped far and stolen Chieftain.

Hope this gave you guys points to work on. Feel free to forum msg me or contact me ingame if you have any questions.

p.s: Congrats on the game-win.

Edit: Re comp, I think Power Ranger / Thief/ Mesmer is a bit too much burst and not enough survivability. Saying that, my team is famous for playing indie-non-meta builds so I fully advocate playing what you want but you will have to rotate very well with your bursts and focus targets down together.

Like the others mentioned, some of the best things teams can work on his coordination of skills, CC, burst, etc. A great way to do this is to do 2 v 2s and have people in separate TS channels calling out NEARLY everything and have the 5th just be in one channel and critiquing the calls that are made to try to help those 2 optimize their skill use. Likewise, attacking your bunker 2 v 1 with your DPS helps them survive and helps your burst coordinate damage on targets.

Your proposed comp is going to be tough to play very well. It is a comp that I have tried (- ele + guardian) and we had to rely on our DPS taking targets out really fast. The best way to do that are portal plays and stealth plays. Alternatively, your thief can just be REALLY GOOD at backcapping to force a psuedo – 4 v 5. Likewise, there are strats you can do that favor such a bursty comp. Example: Forest: Stealth 4 out the side gate and rush towards mid. With swiftness you arrive at the entrance from their home node are to the mid node area (separated by the stone wall on henge side and the wood one on mines side). With 3 dps and your bunker on the way to mid you guys should be able to insta-kill their bunker running towards mid. From there you can either portal your ranger up to backside keep or you can leave a portal mid and push into far or something.

Good luck!

If you are interested in being competitive, depending on if you are EU or NA there are amateur tournament options:

NA: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Academy-Gaming-Weekly-PvP-Tournaments/first

EU: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/EU-Bi-Weekly-Tournament-of-the-Gods/first#post4768485

There are also these tournaments in NA which I believe should be middle ground between the AG tournaments and the ESLs (as well as the 2 v 2 weeklies):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/NA-Mistpedia-Weekly-Tournaments-Signups-Information

If you really want to you can just sign up for ESL but I wouldn’t recommend jumping right into that and possibly facing off against top teams RIGHT AWAY.

SobeSoul.6910:

Only thing I have seen in this video I can say anything about is the ele should consider kiting out of points earlier and keeping themselves alive. Sometimes it is better to concede points and reinforce other teammates while your CDs come back.

Although I play Ele as one of my off classes, I am no Cmc or Phantaramen, so can’t really give advice on rotations.

Edit: Not a top player, but I do understand gameplay quite a bit.

Couldn’t agree more with your points. I was the ele in video and I couldn’t escape well from far enough lolss… I know our team should have defended far with me but well it didn’t happen, that’s all we have to work on mainly.

Thank you everyone for your comments. There are a lot of points which we already realized and I’m gonna discuss it all with my friends.

@chungiee.8764: That’s exactly kind of feedback I was looking for, you pointed out such minute details of our match. Thanks a lot for offering help, if you are on NA, I might get in touch with you. :-)

@ Eurantien.4632: 2 vs 2 sounds good to me, thanks for giving out these links. Also, I don’t think ESL is for NA peeps so I’m gonna look into Mistpedia I guess?

Btw, I know of some popular youtubers (EU mainly) or people involved in pvp at a higher level, sorry to say but they don’t care much about new teams, I don’t wanna take names here but all they care about is we should watch their youtube videos. It’s disappointing but I wouldn’t say all are like that but the ones I know of. Anyway, so we are better off working on the points you guys have mentioned plus experience comes handy as we play more and more right?! I’m hoping to participate soon in a 2 vs 2 NA cause we are very much encouraged to participate in some kind of pvp event now a days :-)

Diva.1476:

@ Eurantien.4632: 2 vs 2 sounds good to me, thanks for giving out these links. Also, I don’t think ESL is for NA peeps so I’m gonna look into Mistpedia I guess?

We host most of our tournaments on EU but we also have the Go4 series running on NA, you can check out all our tournaments here: http://play.eslgaming.com/guildwars2/global

The best advice I can give to most ele’s like yourself diva is to use your water attunement as efficiently as possible.

To do this just make sure every time you switch to it to heal you use all the healing you need to get to full life (or as close to it as you can) and then immediately switch out of it to another attunement. Don’t forget about that water evasive arcana! You switch out of it immediately so you have another opportunity to switch back to it later. If you are under heavy pressure and happen to get stuck in water attunement because your other attunements are all on cooldown you did something wrong along the way. Make sure to have another attunement available so you can switch out of water and prioritize it the most.

I haven’t read most of this thread so I don’t know if others have suggested this. Ignoring the monsters on forest and concentrating on the nodes is the right move a large majority of the time. At a high level most teams most often only go for monsters if the game is very close like 450-450 so then whoever gets the monsters wins. Sometimes, however, if you just recently got kills and you are sitting on 2 nodes and don’t have the confidence to push far, killing your monster can be a nice and safe prize while you wait for the enemy team to rez and do their next push. Most teams prefer to push far though. It’s maybe the riskier move but much more rewarding provided your team can make the move correctly.

Hope this helps, have fun.

First things first, Phantaram is an ele pro so anything he says to you regarding ele would be wise to take into consideration. (just a thought now i’ll go into what I think could help)

One of the things you can do if you want to get better is watch tournament games on youtube. There are some really good games with the abjured (#1 team in the world) and The civilized gentlemen (#2 last I checked). Both of them have very coordinated gameplay and just watching really can help you learn how your roles can be filled by your team members.

Maybe I’m just stubborn but I find that comp to be a little risky of a choice considering the meta at this point in time. (especially shatter Mesmer) Reason for that is a big part of the meta uses conditions and Mesmer has very limited condi removal. Now don’t get me wrong it’s still absolutely amazing when played well (see lord helseth and supcutie for proof) and can be a very deadly force but it can also be huge risk (really comes down to how good the Mesmer is and how well your team can cover the class’ weaknesses.)

Once the thief joins you all for gameplay one of the things I’d recommend just from my experience playing the game (which is decent but not anywhere near professional yet) is to either swap out the ranger or the Mesmer for an engineer, necro, or additional elementalist depending on the capabilities of your team mates. The engineer with a cele build or a condi build could provide some strong damage and crowd control to help dominate points. Necros can do the same with condi spikes and fears to rip apart the dps or condition players on the other team, Another ele would give you the ability to theoretically bunker all 3 points with your team. And each one of these classes gives you the option to send someone to the far point at the beginning of the match.

Which brings me to my next topic(y) thing:
When you see high level teams compete there is usually someone on their team sent to the far point to try to take it in a 1v1 for their team while the rest of the enemy is distracted at the mid point. I’d recommend finding someone on your team to assign that role to and have them train in 1v1 servers with the team and any random people they can find. (a good example of this is phantaram who, from my understanding, trains in 1v1 a ton and is now one of the best 1v1 players in the game)

Now for gameplay mistakes:
You’ve mostly figured it out or others have told you that it’s better to give up a point and put pressure on another than fight 1v3 or 4 on a point. (1v2 is okay if you are at the level where you could win that otherwise its probably better to pull out as you are no good to your team dead)

Number calling and targeting for coordinated bursts will take your teamfighting ability to the next level as you will be able to take out key players on the enemy team (if you continue to use a Mesmer, moa is a good skill to use in a team fight because if used on a bunker or opposing thief you can coordinate a burst and take them out of the fight completely swaying the fight in your favor).

I’m not sure there’s much more for me to add so I hope I’ve been helpful to you and I wish your team luck with your pvping

Brix.8461:

Diva.1476:

@ Eurantien.4632: 2 vs 2 sounds good to me, thanks for giving out these links. Also, I don’t think ESL is for NA peeps so I’m gonna look into Mistpedia I guess?

We host most of our tournaments on EU but we also have the Go4 series running on NA, you can check out all our tournaments here: http://play.eslgaming.com/guildwars2/global

Thanks for the link, I’m gonna check it out

Thank you so much guys for such detailed comments! I always thought I was good enough since I could kill most of my friends in a duel until I posted this and got some reality check here lol I’m glad I did this otherwise I could never get an in-depth feedback of what could be improved just by watching various youtube videos tbh.

@Phantaram.1265: The main advise which you have given me I can only imagine how much it is going to help me sustain more and do better for my team as well, I should definitely watch out my attunements CD more closely and try to keep 1 attunement ready to switch just after using water and using water to it’s full healing abilities, I can’t believe such details seem so small and unimportant but it actually plays a bigger role in improving the quality of our overall gameplay and give a much better result than we expect. Tysm for your inputs, Phanta!

@Ario.8964:
While all your points are valid and worth considering, I have a few things to discuss:
Going for Beast or not has always confused me, it seems more confusing and RNG based than going for the lord in foefire tbh which still has some good chances of getting lead or win depending when we rush for lord. I may have not understood it properly but here is the thing, for example, we have our home and we got mid as well after wiping them (skipping beast in starting), now we have time and we are alive, now if we go for beast (let’s say 2 of us), we have risk to lose mid (which happens a lot with pugs play) BUT if we don’t go for it, enemy team might get both the beasts and get back to our same score, you understand my point here? Thing is, the match before this match which I recorded had the same issue, their thief kept stealing our beast and theirs too and even though we held 2 points most of the times in that match, we lost the entire match by a few points. Too bad I wasn’t recording that one else you would have better idea of what I’m talking about. I really want to have a good understanding of when to take beast and when not and WHY not, which could give our team a huge advantage at our level games. Of course for top tier gameplay, it’s totally different, you guys also need to realize that while giving out suggestions, our opponents and teams are totally of different levels, even though we use your builds, we can never follow your hardcore mechanics cause it simply won’t work for us, our thought process, our skill level could never ever match what we watch in those sponsored matches. For example, for you guys, decapping/ capping is most priority and your team members are very well aware of their roles, our mentality is mostly stuck at killing opponents, we do TRY to defend our points but often lose and then recap etc and it keeps going on for both the teams, I’m just trying to give out a picture of what I see in pvp matches so you experts can give out tips accordingly cause imagine if we follow as you guys do, with our limited knowledge, it’s not gonna work out and will mess up more right? So solve the beast mystery for me considering our level play style so we can do better in our normal pvp matches and take advantage of it in best possible way! Also, please suggest a good team composition considering our ranger can only play ranger and I love playing d/d mainly so what would you suggest four our Mesmer and shoutwar to change to? If at all. And tysm Ario, I appreciate your detailed input!

I think I understand what you’re saying your issue is, but if I get it wrong feel free to let me know as I’d like to give the best advice possible to give you guys the best results.

First topic you brought up was going for beats in forest.
The way I see it, you can go for a beast as long as there are certain conditions your team has already filled to avoid a steal:
1) Own home and mid points
2) Make sure you know where all their players are
3) Don’t have everyone go to the beast. leave some to hold and distract if the enemy goes for a cap on either of the points.
4) Keep panning/looking around as you fight the boss to avoid someone slipping past your team and taking the boss
5) If the match is close or you are at 450 points then feel free to go for boss

I hope that covers most of the mystery of boss rushing. If you have any more questions about that let me know.

Now for comp:
Keep yourself as a d/d ele
If you have a shoutbow warrior keep that as he can bunker mid solo for a good time once he has played a bit
If your ranger can only play ranger then keep him as ranger but in the meantime if he is willing have him learn some other classes as not only does it make your comp more versatile, it helps him figure out how to counter specific things and figure out what to watch for on enemy team
If you are getting a thief keep that as a thief is invaluable when played well (especially for boss stealing against lower level teams that rush at the start of the match)
Your Mesmer has a few options in the way of a more balanced comp:
1) engineer (cele rifle build) for some good all around damage and team support via heal turret with aoe cc from crate
2) necro (terror build) for aoe cc and condi spikes on squishier players
3) second d/d ele gives a ton of good benefits with aoe damage, cc, support, and dueling abilities in the case that they go home or push far solo at the beginning of the game

All 3 of the classes I mentioned should allow you to push far and start out the game with all around pressure on the enemy team. If you can outplay them at first and force them to play your way then you will be able to win. The strategy you want to implement is have you go home as d/d ele has strong 1v1s if the enemy pushes far, have 3 go mid (those would be the shoutbow warrior, power ranger, and thief) and then have 1 go far (necro, engi, or second d/d ele) make sure that whoever you assign to push far has strong 1v1 abilities and can consistently win against other specs that are common in pvp.
Now this strategy will be changed slightly in maps like forest where you have the thief go position themselves to steal the enemy boss if they rush it and then head mid to help the fight.
I understand these are hard to do, but if you can practice as a team more and solidify your strategy and get really good at it you will easily be able to beat man teams you will face unless they are big tournament teams that can outplay you with the same strategy. (not sure that made sense).

I hope this helps, if you have any more questions on anything feel free to ask and I will answer to the best of my abilities.

I think people touched on most of the things I had in mind already, so just a few things:
Improve mechanically – I only saw what you did, but learning what each skill does might be a good start, for example you’re running away from a fight, yet not spamming your autoattack to get the benefit of the healing signet (that’s ~400hps). Your earth 2 blocks projectiles and is also very useful overall, yet you never seem to use it. Try this rotation: out of fire → earth → 3 – 2 – 3 (while in fire field for cancel on 2 aftercast and obtaining fire aura for maximum might uptime as well as protection on auras) and then either use your 4 or don’t, in which case you should switch to something like water to complete might stacking with 3 or something.
Also try fiery greatsword for more mobility and rotate your attunements to get swiftness and mobility while running between nodes as well.

Ario.8964:

I think I understand what you’re saying your issue is, but if I get it wrong feel free to let me know as I’d like to give the best advice possible to give you guys the best results.

First topic you brought up was going for beats in forest.
The way I see it, you can go for a beast as long as there are certain conditions your team has already filled to avoid a steal:
1) Own home and mid points
2) Make sure you know where all their players are
3) Don’t have everyone go to the beast. leave some to hold and distract if the enemy goes for a cap on either of the points.
4) Keep panning/looking around as you fight the boss to avoid someone slipping past your team and taking the boss
5) If the match is close or you are at 450 points then feel free to go for boss

I hope that covers most of the mystery of boss rushing. If you have any more questions about that let me know.

Now for comp:
Keep yourself as a d/d ele
If you have a shoutbow warrior keep that as he can bunker mid solo for a good time once he has played a bit
If your ranger can only play ranger then keep him as ranger but in the meantime if he is willing have him learn some other classes as not only does it make your comp more versatile, it helps him figure out how to counter specific things and figure out what to watch for on enemy team
If you are getting a thief keep that as a thief is invaluable when played well (especially for boss stealing against lower level teams that rush at the start of the match)
Your Mesmer has a few options in the way of a more balanced comp:
1) engineer (cele rifle build) for some good all around damage and team support via heal turret with aoe cc from crate
2) necro (terror build) for aoe cc and condi spikes on squishier players
3) second d/d ele gives a ton of good benefits with aoe damage, cc, support, and dueling abilities in the case that they go home or push far solo at the beginning of the game

All 3 of the classes I mentioned should allow you to push far and start out the game with all around pressure on the enemy team. If you can outplay them at first and force them to play your way then you will be able to win. The strategy you want to implement is have you go home as d/d ele has strong 1v1s if the enemy pushes far, have 3 go mid (those would be the shoutbow warrior, power ranger, and thief) and then have 1 go far (necro, engi, or second d/d ele) make sure that whoever you assign to push far has strong 1v1 abilities and can consistently win against other specs that are common in pvp.
Now this strategy will be changed slightly in maps like forest where you have the thief go position themselves to steal the enemy boss if they rush it and then head mid to help the fight.
I understand these are hard to do, but if you can practice as a team more and solidify your strategy and get really good at it you will easily be able to beat man teams you will face unless they are big tournament teams that can outplay you with the same strategy. (not sure that made sense).

I hope this helps, if you have any more questions on anything feel free to ask and I will answer to the best of my abilities.

Thanks a lot, Ario for yet another detailed comment. It makes so much easy to comprehend your message. About beasts, yes a lot of things are clearer now, mainly gotta keep an eye on each of the enemies like where they are, also, going for beasts when it’s safe but point holding remains priority. Rest I guess will depend a lot on the situation also.
About team comp, no our ranger cannot play any other profession as she has played only ramger in pvp and it won’t be easy for her to learn a new profession now. So I guess we can stay as it is, only shatterer mesmer could change to one of your suggested options and hopefully we will get a 5th one soon, the search is on going.

Tysm once again for your time and tips, much appreciated