Courtyard is one of the most complained about PvP game modes in Guild Wars 2. It is not uncommon to see multiple threads about Courtyard on the front page of the PvP sub-forum as people ask for separate queues. If I understand things correctly Courtyard was removed from Ranked because the so called “pros” couldn’t handle actual group fights.
While I would argue most of those who are for the removal of Courtyard are simply “whiners” that is not a universal truth and there are many legitimate complaints about the map itself and whether or not it actually even serves its intended purpose well as a team death match. This ties in with the major complaint that people who actually like the map (and the main one I hear in TeamSpeak) that Courtyard is always either a face roll or a wipe with very few games where it goes back and forth and could be anyone’s game until the last second.
There are ways to reliably turn Courtyard around as the winning team often makes very basic and exploitable mistakes that open the pathway for an underdog victory. My theory is players are unaware of these mistakes as they buy the one dimensional meta strategy sold by forum hucksters and if they are, are just to weary to make the effort because turning a wipe into a victory is a difficult endeavor with no guarantee of even reversing the opponent’s momentum let alone turning the mistake into a victory.
I will start with the most basic exploitable mistake which – ironically – is perhaps the easiest to exploit and yet exploited the least in my experience. Being pushed into your spawn. Common sense tells you being farmed at spawn is a guaranteed loss but it is a gamble the entire time the opponent is there. They open themselves up to AOE and burst because they thing you will jump down one at a time. Most of the time if you group up you can push them out and even do a full wipe. You may be forced into their AOE but they are forced to face tank yours as well.
There are cases however where the enemy group is more then capable of handling that… maybe they have excellent rez coordination – who knows. You can find yourself in a position where you can’t exploit their over eagerness. These groups are teams with high synergy that need to all be near each other and that is their greatest weakness.
(I can confirm this strategy works against pre-mades in PuGs by the way). Be the sacrificial lamb, push your way through them and string them along… there are a lot of corners and if your team mates aren’t a bunch of bone heads they will be able to kill the team one by one and do at least a partial wipe.
This partially resets the fight because you’ve created a situation where you always outnumber them. It isn’t a guaranteed win from there, but those smug kittens aren’t going to have the satisfaction of a 500-0 win by camping the spawn zone.
Other major mistakes people make:
1 – Crossing bridges.
2 – Going for stomps instead of rezes when a stomp would be impossible (and vice versa).
3 – Splitting into two groups which you can bomb the middle of in the pillars.
4 – Following the trap guy underground.
Simple but game-changing techniques for PUGs:
1 – Mark low and vulnerable targets.
2 – If there is a complete or partial wipe that is soon to be complete group up before leaving, no matter how far from spawn it happened.
The beauty of Courtyard is that one kill can turn the entire game around. It creates a snowball that the opponent not only has to completely reverse in order to stop.
Happy Killing.
We are not friends.
sad but true..