Guild Wars 2

A little bit about myself, I’m a PvE player that quit a few years back (during the time ArenaNet introduced the ascended item-gating thing) and recently came back and bought HoT because it seemed interesting, both the game-play and story.

And I’m lost for sPvP. Completely lost. There’s just so little information I have no idea what to do at all.

I queued and played 2 games where my team lost horribly. (Stronghold mode, I believe, couldn’t access Conquest mode till level 10) The sticky here doesn’t mention it, and googling didn’t yield any decent results either, just information from the wiki. Perhaps it didn’t help that the only class I’ve had experience on was a Thief… which is supposedly really useless in sPvP (or so they claim in the Thief forums, though I have no idea how the situation actually is)

There’s also no way that I can pop into a map just to get a feel of where everything is and what I’m supposed to do. I can play against AIs for games like LoL or Dota to try stuff out without being a burden but I can’t do it here; my team is playing 4v5 simply because I’m still trying to figure things out.

Is it just me?

It’s really not that complicated. Just keep at it and you’ll figure it out.

Well I know I’ll figure out eventually, it just doesn’t feel right to me to do it at the expense of ruining it for 4 other players. Unless they’re real-life friends, then I have no qualms hahaha.

Thankyou for your well thought out and constructive feedback. I’m sure just as soon as Anet gives a kitten , they’ll do something about it.

:p

Jks. Good job on highlighting a couple of serious issues from the perspective of a newbie. To answer some of your stuff..

• Yes Thief can be “problematic” for teams in PvP. It can also offer some things too. Since you’re playing unranked, play whatever you want and git gud.

• Stronghold aint to hard. At start you have 5 supply. Go spend it at the doors below your spawn area. Supply can be gained from the middle of the map (and denied to the enemy). Your objectives are to break the gates leading to the enemy lord, and you need the NPC’s to do this. You have to protect your own land/gates/lord, but ultimatly you want to kill theirs. Finally, on the map mist essence will appear. Channel this for strong NPC’s, and points which lead to victory.

• Yes there needs to be some sort of stickied explanation with some kind of visual on youtube, properly produced. Don’t know if there is.

• Yeah it’d be great for people to be able to roam around an empty map to find everything.

Thief is in a bad spot right now against high skilled enemies or in a competitive environment, but it’s absolutely fine for new players.

Conquest is very straightforward: hold points to gather score, and win the game. Each map has a different gimmick to it that gives you other ways to get score, but focusing on the points should always be your top priority. Prioritize that at the start and you’ll learn the maps while really helping out your team.

Stronghold is a bit more complicated, but simply sticking to your lane and using the supply you get to spawn doorbreakers is perfectly ok for a beginner.

If you mean not knowing what to do with your class, no worries. I’d suggest checking out metabattle.com for a thief build and practicing it on AI opponents inside the Heart of the Mists: they are slightly to the north from where you enter. Eventually you’ll want to modify your gear and build to suit your needs, but it’s perfectly fine to start out with an enstablished build.

I queue with 2 thieves yesterday and we did fine. It’s a different mentality than jumping directly into a fight. Vault can deal an absurd amount of damage so you can gank people well in SH if your team can chain CC. Obviously, a Reaper or Herald is a bit more easier to play due to them having both the damage and sustain, but Thief has unmatched mobility. Especially in SH, there is no point to stand on, so it actually opens up a lot more build for Thief.

Sunshine.5014:

I queue with 2 thieves yesterday and we did fine. It’s a different mentality than jumping directly into a fight. Vault can deal an absurd amount of damage so you can gank people well in SH if your team can chain CC. Obviously, a Reaper or Herald is a bit more easier to play due to them having both the damage and sustain, but Thief has unmatched mobility. Especially in SH, there is no point to stand on, so it actually opens up a lot more build for Thief.

if you have two thieves together in TS or voice chat, and you focus the same target and roll around assassinating people on points it is a complete pubstomp. rotate your aoe stealth and continue to focus the same target and there is almost nothing they can do.

Hakata.6742:

A little bit about myself, I’m a PvE player that quit a few years back (during the time ArenaNet introduced the ascended item-gating thing) and recently came back and bought HoT because it seemed interesting, both the game-play and story.

And I’m lost for sPvP. Completely lost. There’s just so little information I have no idea what to do at all.

I queued and played 2 games where my team lost horribly. (Stronghold mode, I believe, couldn’t access Conquest mode till level 10) The sticky here doesn’t mention it, and googling didn’t yield any decent results either, just information from the wiki. Perhaps it didn’t help that the only class I’ve had experience on was a Thief… which is supposedly really useless in sPvP (or so they claim in the Thief forums, though I have no idea how the situation actually is)

There’s also no way that I can pop into a map just to get a feel of where everything is and what I’m supposed to do. I can play against AIs for games like LoL or Dota to try stuff out without being a burden but I can’t do it here; my team is playing 4v5 simply because I’m still trying to figure things out.

Is it just me?

No, it’s not just you.

The learning curve for sPvP is very steep, for all the reasons you mentioned. You have to figure out the gimmick for each map, know where your teammates are going, know where your enemies are going, and all while getting better at your chosen build. To be honest sPvP in this game is not very welcoming to new players and you have to accept the fact that you will get your @$$ handed to you a lot, and for a long time, until you get better.

You’ve also chosen to play a thief. As a thief main myself I will tell you that thief is the most unforgiving class in the game in sPvP. You can make maybe one mistake per fight, at most. However if thief is what you like then keep playing it and you will eventually get better.

Keep playing, keep tweaking your build to improve it, and try to learn from your losses. You WILL get better but not until you’ve been thrashed many times.

Good luck.

Its gw2. Game wont explain kitten to you, will punish you for playing and dont even try going pvp as thief, you will only drag your teammates down.

Pvp is complicated. I’m sure the majority of you already know that spvp isn’t just about “what do you do on this map?” But also what do you do against this class? How can your class contribute? Where should you be attacking? What should you be defending? Should I help this team mate? How do I get out of this bad situation? Etc. The list goes on and on.

When you pvp, you need to automatically understand that you are obviously fighting against other players. These players will play their class of choice and are for the most part, aiming to win. Just like with anything else in life, if you go in there and you don’t know what you are doing, your most likely gonna fail or have a bad time. Could Anet better explain pvp? Yeah, they could. But could you also do the reseach? Yeah, you could as well. Could you ask a fellow gw2 player? Yeah, you can do that too. I mean, how do you think current pvpers got it? Most of them originally, started with either the same or even less information then you have.

Here’s my advice; learn your chosen class in and out. A class you believe you will have success with and want to play. Learn the abilitis of all other classes so when you die, your not like wtf just happened? And, also learn to counter that class with the one you’ve chosen.

Join a hot join match, maybe a pvp daily one and just run around the map so you can get better familiarized with the map. Most people there, are there just for dailies so they won’t attack you.

Join a 1v1 hot join server, say that you are new and wanting to practice fighting one on one. Depending on the people there, they will help you.

Watch live streams on twitch of people fighting, and ask them questions. If the streamer doesn’t answer you, maybe the chat will. Oooooor, you could just Yolo it and try to figure everything all out on your own by trial and error. You have plenty of options, now you just gotta do it. Good luck.

Dont listen to @Dragon.8762, You want real pvp? Go character creation, make Guardian spec him as dh, win game. As DH you need to contribute less in fights to win than ur enemies to survive your burst. Its perfect class for starters, offers almost no punishment for playing bad, rewards for both u playing and enemies missplays(they didnt dodge in 1/2 sec so they should be dead!)

As guard you dont need to bother to understand map or enemy class or thier strongpoints. JUST smash buttons feel like hulk!

Mefiq.7039:

Dont listen to @Dragon.8762, You want real pvp? Go character creation, make Guardian spec him as dh, win game. As DH you need to contribute less in fights to win than ur enemies to survive your burst. Its perfect class for starters, offers almost no punishment for playing bad, rewards for both u playing and enemies missplays(they didnt dodge in 1/2 sec so they should be dead!)

As guard you dont need to bother to understand map or enemy class or thier strongpoints. JUST smash buttons feel like hulk!

Obvious troll is obvious. I’ve mainly been playing ranger and rev this meta and don’t have many problems with dragon hunters. Why? Because I researched the class. I looked at all there traits, what amulets they usually bring, and runes. I know when they are on a point, more then likely they layed their traps there.

Knowing this, you can quickly evade them. On rev you got unrelating assault which will trigger the traps and evade all of them, or just dodge at the right time with the stability on dodge trait. On a ranger, you can just hit them from afar while pet triggers the traps. Plus, with all the hate they have been getting lately there is a high chance of it getting toned down before leagues. Sooo learn to play. Many people and classes can defeat it.

Its not troll, not at all. As ranger you can signet of the stone, once it runs out DH will teleport to ur kitten while blocking every ur cc attempt. or they will just pull you into traps forcing you to run while they shot you in the back, Face it bro you have 1 signet of the stone, they can instakill your pet with 1 set of traps, reaply them while blocking you EVERY SKILL pull you in and kill you so fast you wont even know when its christmass. FOR REV is even funnier, most revs have 0 range so DH is outranging them. if they close up to UA they will end up near you(guess what dh will drop under ur ass?) And insta dragonmaw you. while pumping tons of cc. OFC you will heal on Herald, and then pray next 30 sec he wont kill you, but guess what? HE WILL REAPPLY traps right after your sweet heal ends, pull you in and kill you so fast! For real i played DH like 3/4 days. Only problem i had was other DH and some scrappers. 0 problem vs thief 0 problem vs mes TOTALLY 0 problem vs Rangers or revs. REVS are so funny cuz thier trait LOCKS them in place on 25% hp so i can just DROP EVERY Trap on him there. Remember EVEN if you block dragonmaw YOu cant block cage it leaves, and this cage is so small you wont be able to perform dodge roll in in so no stability for you. Only skill that will save you is Shiro Evade, that guess what? will put you in range vs DH that crits for 9k every 4sec. No mather how dumb Guards try to deny that dh is op as f there are things that are just too hard to deny. There should be NO UTILITY SPELL that INSTAKILLS enemy, for real, i saw dh kill cheftain in 1 sec! HOW THE F, Even on rampage with pure zerker warrior you wont kill mob in 1 sec. but kitten that DH is balanced. Its enemies fault they dont see future and always know when he droped traps. Try to deny that its best class for newbs in pvp to WIN game, ITS CLASS that always FORCES enemy to counter play. You dont need to know kitten about them, they need to know every single of your cd to not die from traps…

First off, idk what or why people keep saying “Kitten.” It doesn’t makes any sense to me. Are you trying to swear but don’t actually want to swear?

Anyways, I rather not get off topic of what the OP is posting but, if I just said I don’t have much problem with dragon hunters, then most likely I don’t have much problem with dragon hunters. Everything you just said is situational at best especially in an spvp match where you will have team mates. Are ya gonna win? Maybe. Are ya gonna lose? Maybe.

Are dragon hunters really powerful? Yes they are. Will they get nerfed, idk because it hasn’t happened yet, but my hunch says yes. And even if a guard didn’t bring traps but instead ran a pure burning build or meditation build, or a pure support build and they played their class really well, your gonna have to counter play regardless just like any other class that brings something really powerful to the table. Does dragon hunter traps cause you to counter player even harder? Sure. But its not impossible.

I believe they replace swear words with kitten automatically. I don’t intend to re-roll another class just for sPvP, though I am levelling a Necromancer on the side because I love their hybrid condition damage build.

So for Stronghold, essentially you’d want to secure objectives than go for kills? (for a beginner at least)

Thank you to all of you who gave me help and suggestions, I’ll try to ‘git gud’.

Hakata.6742:

I don’t intend to re-roll another class just for sPvP.

You know every toon is boosted to 80 with every skills unlocked in spvp right?

atreyu.9624:

Hakata.6742:

I don’t intend to re-roll another class just for sPvP.

You know every toon is boosted to 80 with every skills unlocked in spvp right?

Yup, but I’m just too unfamiliar with the skills of other classes at this point and I do want to play PvE on those characters as well. I’ll give them a shot eventually, there’s no rush for it.

Once you get the Conquest mode the “New to PvP” sticky at the top of this forum might be helpful. This site also has some information that you might find useful:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/30tid8/top_10_things_every_spvp_player_should_know/

Devs want that new players play revenant. They made everything to push the new playerbase in that direction.

Hakata.6742:

atreyu.9624:

Hakata.6742:

I don’t intend to re-roll another class just for sPvP.

You know every toon is boosted to 80 with every skills unlocked in spvp right?

Yup, but I’m just too unfamiliar with the skills of other classes at this point and I do want to play PvE on those characters as well. I’ll give them a shot eventually, there’s no rush for it.

You need to play the other classes in order to understand how to counter then and just so you know what kind of build on what class you are fighting.

Jump into an empty Hotjoin map to orient yourself without the other players. Hotjoin servers are on the left side of the pvp window a few tabs down.

1v1s with TS so you get feedback are stupid useful. especially if you have a pool of people of different skill level and different mains to fight.

I’ve helped train a lot of people with this method.

Thief takes too much time to be rewarding. If you’re a casual player I would recommend Revenant because the class is new, and most people don’t know what their skills do, which gives new players a fighting chance. It puts you on the same playing field as other Revenants and professions. It also has a lot of passive survivability, that makes sPvP really forgiving, which a thief will never give you.

In the end you’re playing the game to have fun and the choice is yours. My best advice would be to play with what you’re comfortable.