Guild Wars 2

I’ve been a PVE player all along (I have 3 80’s) and now I think I want to try some PVP, but I can’t find much info on how to get going in it. Wiki is pretty weak, and youtube tutorials I found don’t really address these questions. Its rather frustrating and frankly makes me reluctant to try it out.

Specifically:

1) I don’t want to just jump in to a game and be the utterly clueless noob who has to learn the map on the fly. Is there a way to learn the maps beforehand?

2) What is “hotjoin” vs solo queue vs solo arena? (I know solo queue was added awhile back, and might be what I’m looking for, but there is nothing called “solo queue” on the PVP Browser. There is “solo arena”, but the wiki says “arenas” were previously called “tournaments”, which I assume means tpvp, which I thought was for more advanced pvpers.)

3) When I’m on the PVP Browser, as a noob what filter should I be using (All/Standard)?

Thanks in advance.

copy a meta build of your prefered class, learn the mechanics and maps in hotjoin, you won´t be the only noob there.

solo q and team q are rated, so stay away from it until you feel confident with the mechanics/maps

Check Twitch, learn the tricks and priority list of top players, what decisions they make in which situation, does it orth pushing far or not, does it worth leaving a point for a buff or not, when to stomp over res and so on.

Only play hotjoin to learn the maps, hotjoin only teaches you wrong things. After you’ve learned your class and maps, try soloque, ask more experienced ones what to do, which position to take at start, and so on. But think on your own too. You will make terribad decisions for a while, but that’s unavoidable, after a while you will learn from it.

1) hotjoin: do what you want in those.

2) solo q = solo arena. People asked for a solo queue and they named it solo arena, but we still call it solo queue.

3) ideally you will want to play 5v5 in hotjoin, as 8v8 leaves little room to learn combat matchups/basic roaming.. This would mean making a custom filter and setting the max number of players to 5 per team. This might make finding 5v5 matches easier.

Note to ANet: make a clear ‘join 8v8’ and ‘join 5v5’ for people like this guy.

Phaeton.9582:

Note to ANet: make a clear ‘join 8v8’ and ‘join 5v5’ for people like this guy.

Or rename hotjoin to “Mini-WvW” so people wouldn’t be so confused about what is PvP and what isn’t.

Thanks all! Great advice – just what I needed

Find a big Norn or Charr Warrior or Guardian. Follow them and support them. If they are good… you will profit.

Another thing that could help is make a sorting to grab the size you want while not showing you any empty ones. Just play with the custom sorter until you find one you like.

Relentliss.2170:

Find a big Norn or Charr Warrior or Guardian. Follow them and support them. If they are good… you will profit.

You mean do a “cmc” and get top 10 by attaching yourself to Juaraz?? :P

Op just play a lot of hot join to learn how your class fares against other meta builds so you know what you should or should not fight,
Btw theres no reason to not play soloq right away unless you bought the game like yesterday and youdont know where is your dodge button.
If you are new to pvp then id assume that you dont care about your rating and that you wont be going for an initial win strike to get ridiculous win ratios and then stop playing like most top players did..so just play it !!
If mmr works you ll get new pvp players in your game and you should be fine but since starting mmr seems to be a bit high,harden up and get prepared for a bit of rage until you lose your first games..
If you know what you should fight and how, both 1vs1 and in teamfights the rest are simple maths and map awareness.
Unfortunately no amount of hotjoin games is gonna prepare you for the real thing but at least is no where near the complexity of a moba in terms of map strategy(imo).So dont wait till you are “perfect” to go in tpvp..This is a casual game afterall and if people rage too much they are oblivious to how bad competition in gw2 is atm and how many things are missing for it to be “worth it”

If you want to join hotjoin games to get an idea of what to expect in PvP fights, that’s fine, but if you want to learn the conquest game mode just jump into solo queue.

People may or may not rage at you but solo queue isn’t a tournament format. It offers you a way to play proper conquest matches without having a team, and it’s the best place to learn how to play it.

If you ever aren’t sure what’s going on, ask and hope someone answers.

1.
Kyhlo – Each team has a treb that can do major damage but can be evaded. When the treb is destroyed a repair kit spawns that can be run back to repair the treb.

Foefire – Each team has a gate in front of their base and an NPC lord in the back of their base. Killing the other team’s lord gets your team 150 points.

Temple – Buffs spawn, I’m pretty sure at regular times. The most important ones are Stillness which spawns direct center of the map that doubles point gain per objective held, and Tranquility which spawns below Stillness (either fall down the holes to either side of Stillness, or take the tunnel from the middle point) which flips all three points to your side.

Forest – An NPC spawns on either side of the back path. Killing it results in some points and a buff. It’s very possible to steal the kill.

Spirit Watch – An orb spawns in the center that can be run back to points. Running it back to your point scores some points, running it back to the other team’s points neutralizes it.

Skyhammer – In front of point B is a portal leading to a platform that controls the Skyhammer cannon. Unlike the Kyhlo trebs, the cannon cannot be dodged/blocked. Beware that many people on the platform run specialized map builds designed to knock you off. Be very careful, or if somehow they didn’t notice you enter the platform, knock them off instead of attacking them.

2. Solo arena is solo queue. Don’t worry about the word tournament being thrown around in there. It’s just a way to play proper conquest matches without a team. Hotjoin has a lot of 8v8 servers and most people don’t really bother with the objectives, they just zerg around for fights.

3. Don’t. Again, highly recommend solo queue. It’s the only way to learn, and everyone else will just have to deal with it.

Don’t go into solo arena without doing a lot of hotjoins. Hotjoins may not teach conquest well but you’re going to get farmed if you go into tournament pvp. You won’t know what’s going on at all.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

1) I don’t want to just jump in to a game and be the utterly clueless noob who has to learn the map on the fly. Is there a way to learn the maps beforehand?

2) What is “hotjoin” vs solo queue vs solo arena? (I know solo queue was added awhile back, and might be what I’m looking for, but there is nothing called “solo queue” on the PVP Browser. There is “solo arena”, but the wiki says “arenas” were previously called “tournaments”, which I assume means tpvp, which I thought was for more advanced pvpers.)

3) When I’m on the PVP Browser, as a noob what filter should I be using (All/Standard)?

1. You can find an empty hotjoin server to explore the maps with no enemies if you want.

2. “Solo arena” is solo queue. It is very different from hotjoin. In hotjoins, people can join and leave at any time. Teams will usually have to be “autobalanced,” which means the game puts some players from one team onto the other because people left the match.

Solo arenas (usually) start with exactly five people per team. No one joins or leaves mid-match. Solo arenas also use matchmaking based on leaderboard rating, as opposed to hotjoins, which have no matchmaking and only make a feeble attempt to find a room with some opponents of similar PvP level when you click “play now.” Of course, anyone can select your room manually and enter it, so it doesn’t do much good.

3. If you want to practice in hotjoin a bit, using “play now” theoretically has the best chance of being a “noob filter.” In reality, that doesn’t always work out.

As some others have suggested, solo arenas are the best way to learn to PvP. If you want to try to get really high on the leaderboard, you might want to wait until you’ve practiced a lot to join; but honestly you’ll get better faster by just jumping in to solo arenas.

Thanks for the additional advice.

I’ve been trying out spectator mode in the hotjoins (didn’t realize that was available) and that has been very, very helpful to get a feel for the maps and to follow around people of my profession (necro) to get a sense of their tactics and those of the opponents. I’ll do that a bit more before jumping in.