Guild Wars 2

This is the game that made me decide to take a few days off of ranked PvP.

Especially weak was the 2v2 lost at far and I tried healing the necro but he popped shroud before I could heal his base health.

The video has no audio but I did use eye of the storm when I saw teammates knocked down or immobilized. From the dodges and interrupts I’d say my reaction time is decent but knowing when to disengage or rotate something I should work on especially with Lord involved. I didn’t want to leave mid hanging but really wanted to go to base when our base was attacked.

At the 8.25 fight mid an enemy (engi?) peels off heading to your close. At that point it was a 3v1 mid and you could have rotated leaving the remaining ele to stalemate or ele+necro to kill.

At 8.30 an enemy warr is seen at lord. Meanwhile most of your team is still kittening around 3v1 mid and 2v1 (or 2v2 can’t see very well) close. Someone should begun moving once the warr appeared on the minimap.

Only at 8.50 does your team begin to rotate to lord. A necro arrives just as your lord dies. At that point you shouldn’t have continued into your base to kill the warrior but had someone push far so they can’t get the points needed to close out and hope for the best.

tl;dr bad rotations all around in the last 1 1/2 mins cost you the game.

(I didn’t watch the first 7 mins btw)

I have to agree with Ubik. At around 7:15, there were 3 or 4 of you guys just sitting mid, and you had the far point capped, but unguarded. In addition they were off respawn. A rotation there would have secured you the game. Also are you using water attunement for damage….?

For now, i think what you are lacking the most is mechanical skill and awareness. Once you get a good awareness, you should work on rotations.

I don’t know if ele is your main, but here’s some advice regarding mechanical skill :
- never blow your water overload without a good reason
- if not under pressure, focus on reducing the pressure on your teammates (heal, condi clear, shocking aura share, peel)
- if both you and your teammates are not under pressure, use your cc on the focus target to lock him down and allow your damage dealer to kill said target / be aggressive and try to do maximum damage with fire #3, fire overload, air auto and air overload.
- only use shocking aura when under pressure or when a ally is under pressure
- use obsidian flesh to secure stomp/res
- never stay in water attunment for extended period of time if you don’t need water overload

A good way to get better mechanical skill is to watch top players. Infortunately, i’m not aware of any good streamer playing ele at the moment. If you had any other build than healbot ele, i’d say 1v1 with players around your level is a good way to improve, but i guess 2v2 should work fine.

When it comes to awareness, it’s mainly map awareness :
- you should closely watch your minimap on every occasion, especially when you’re exiting a fight.
- before joining a on-going fight, look at the healthbar of your ally to see if they need support (if they don’t, go elsewhere) or if they’re basicaly dead (if they are, don’t throw yourself in a 1vx and go elsewhere)
- if you don’t know where the enemy is, look for them on your minimap and look around you. Most decap happens because players just don’t look around. (i recommend binding your ‘look behind’ key as it is insanely useful in these occasions)

I won’t go into too much detail on the rotations but here’s a few things that may help you :
- don’t 2v1/3v1 on a point you own (as an ele)
- if your enemies get killed, try to guess where they will go once they respawn and prevent them from decaping/+1 ing a fight

A good thing to get better is, everytime you die, try to analyse why you died and what you could have done to survive.

I’ve gotten some consistent dodges and interrupts so I think my mechanics are at least decent. If you burn too many offensive cooldowns you’re just going to get dodged and be left with weak pokes.

Not 2v1’ing is good but you need to have escape options to get away. I look at the map it’s how I knew that necro was downed lol! Should’ve looked at healtbars and + 1’d the necro’s fight with the warrior then 2v1 the ranger. Still, I feel awesome beating him even though he kept going down quickly. I don’t think that’s his main or he got overconfident and ran berserker’s with a vanilla spec. For the most part we outplayed their team but the warrior carried them especially by soloing lord. Warriors are a mixed bag either they’re way easy to deal with or you’re really going to be in for a fight against them (applies to any class).

I like to look for trouble areas in the teamfight and offer my support there.

I have to agree with Ubik. At around 7:15, there were 3 or 4 of you guys just sitting mid, and you had the far point capped, but unguarded. In addition they were off respawn. A rotation there would have secured you the game. Also are you using water attunement for damage….?

I wanted to go far but was afraid of the respawners running us over and didn’t want to leave teammates hanging after seeing some head home. But if I went I’d overrotate but by then far was getting decapped and mid was hit. I duel decently on the build but feel stronger in teamfights. The water autoattack gives some light healing and inflicts vulnerability meaning my other teammates’ damage output increases as the vulnerability stacks go up. I primarily use water for chill, triggering combo fields, some healing, and interrupting big skills or especially rezzes since rezzing is very committal but will camp it for autoattack since attunement swapping is a commitment. If swapping to air is a judgment error and I just realize it then swap to earth then air will be on a cooldown, locking me out of those skills in case I’d need them in that window.

Just going to type down everything I see that you could improve on, in order as they come up as I watch your vid.

• Overload Air at start so you can put some swiftness on your team.
• 2 Ele, 2 nec, Ranger comp. You or the other ele (preferrably you) should have gone home.
• You’re an ele, the tankiest member of your team, yet you’re trying to play chicken at mid at the start. Just jump on that point, and start contesting it.
• at about 0:55 you see someone leave mid and go towards quarry. You should have followed them. Alternatively, you should have gone far for a cap.
• randomly used water overload, when you had 2 eles, and the last guy was full health.
• you waste a lot of time trying to sit on point, when the other ele is already on point. Go train that necro.
• You’re also randomly spamming lots of dodges for no reason at about 3:10
• Again, just sitting on point doing nothing.
• 3:45’ish why would you just stay in water. Switch to air asap.
• 4:00 just bail from this fight. Why are you even trying to fight a druid 1v1 on a node he owns. (wtf he died lol. Still, don’t bother fighting druid 1v1 as an ele normally.)
• 4:30 not sure why you’re trying to doublecap here.
• good awareness of the necro going down.
• 7:10 not quite sure why you went quarry side. You know theres an engi there already by looking at minimap. Should have gone towards WF.
• 7:30 you kinda just did absolutely nothing for about 30s. Should have gone and hit a gate or something if you’re that bored.
• 8:50. Should have gone far, neut/cap. Could have won the game with this.

I think the biggest issue you have would just be general awareness and tunnel vision. There were many times when you could have gone far for a cap, or gone home to sustain a 2v2 but you just sat at mid and did absolutely nothing.

Just in general, it seems to me that the overall strategy you employ, and general decision making is far too defensive-minded. Everything from your use of skills, to just general player movement. Try to be a lot more aggressive with your playstyle. Push far whenever you suspect its empty, and punish the opponent for leaving it empty. Leave your node, and train down an opponent who you counter to put pressure on them. etc.

Another thing that could perhaps provide immediate results would be for you to start calling targets. Doesn’t matter if you call the right targets or not, but just call whatever target you thing you want to kill.

And while there were many cases of obvious mechanical-play issues, I don’t see those as a major reason why that match was lost.

Overload Air at start so you can put some swiftness on your team.

Another ele did that and I sometimes do but considering how I like to camp I should probably do so anyway to take into account how I probably aren’t going to open with it. If I overload they’ll have information and overloads take a while to charge so I could get dazed out of it or my attunement stability exhausted. If I’m too inefficient that runs the risk of getting exploited.

You’re an ele, the tankiest member of your team, yet you’re trying to play chicken at mid at the start. Just jump on that point, and start contesting it.

I’m running Mender’s which is squishier than Cleric’s. I have enough active defensive such as EotS and Ligthning Flash (mobility) and Obsidian Flesh (mitigation) though these are on long cooldowns. I had some matches before where I’d get focused then I’d have to disengage and return to the node.

at about 0:55 you see someone leave mid and go towards quarry. You should have followed them. Alternatively, you should have gone far for a cap.

Looking back I should have. Just didn’t want to leave mid hanging but realistically the opposing team would’ve lost the node anyway.

randomly used water overload, when you had 2 eles, and the last guy was full health.

Wanted to aurashare and ensure everyone around got healed up and cleansed. The cooldown is decently short.

you waste a lot of time trying to sit on point, when the other ele is already on point. Go train that necro.

Yeah that’s a bad habit. I’m afraid of overcommitting since it’s a traditional weakness. I was also waiting for people to go to another point where my presence wouldn’t lead to an over rotate. You don’t need four guys to beat two. But in general I agree it’s something I need to work on.

You’re also randomly spamming lots of dodges for no reason at about 3:10

I’m traited to cleanse chill and burning upon dodge. Whether it’s Druid or Tempest chill screws me over sometimes as critical skills have 0.x time left.

4:30 not sure why you’re trying to doublecap here.

I was wondering the same thing at the moment lol! Maybe because I thought the warrior was nearby. So I ran back towards mid then saw on the map the Necro getting downed.

I call out targets regularly. The chat is too fuzzy to read given that Youtube tends to have bitrate loss so I’ll upload a screenshot.

I’m used to be under heavy pressure so I played in a way that stemmed from that habit instead of a more regular pace. There’s a certain mindset for when you have advantage and when you’re at a disadvantage. Sometimes I’ll ask how would a pro-leaguer react to my play to try avoid getting steamrolled, but the question in hindsight is silly since if I definitively knew I’d be Legendary already. Can’t imagine a scenario with the optimal reaction if we don’t have the skill or game knowledge to know what it is. There are lots of potential matchups at different parts of different maps with their kiting obstructions, vantage points, escape shortcuts, 1v1’s, 5v5’s, 4v3’s, etc., so there are a lot of factors to take into account.

There’s also the conundrum of be proactive and force reactions, or try being an optimal reactionary myself. If you use a move it’s on cooldown, but they can be reacted to by being mitigated and dodged, which would leave me at a slight or even major disadvantage depending on how important and committal the move is. If it does hit however the onus is on me to keep up the pressure, but subsequent pressure can be blocked or mitigated. This isn’t Street Fighter where I can use hit stun to string combos but rather opponents can keep on trucking unless hit with a CC, and even then stability mitigates that. I’ve noticed that the more passive mitigation (toughness and vitality) someone has the more aggressive they can afford to be. Imagine fighting a champion in PvE, they have loads of HP and a breakbar whereas you the player only need one CC ability and can be two shotted. He has all the leeway in the world to be aggressive whereas the player needs to exploit certain windows for their aggression and not overreach since overreaching tends to get punished. That’s the other thing I’m afraid of, overreaching. I do overly aggressive stuff and get punished for it. I’m trying to find the balance.

Thanks all for the advices.

Edit: While not intentional I noticed another mechanical mistake! Needlessly wasting Obsidian Flesh on that 3v2 stomp when he was securely cleaved down enough where even if I’m interrupted he’ll get finished off anyway.

Agemnon.4608:

This isn’t Street Fighter where I can use hit stun to string combos but rather opponents can keep on trucking unless hit with a CC, and even then stability mitigates that.

No, but you might want to stop focusing so much on combat because from what I can see, that honestly isn’t the issue. Think more about strategy.

Consider this. A “hit stun into juggle into combo” would be going to an empty node they own, full capping, and then bunking 1v1 or 1v2. Their whiff, they left their node open. Your jab into stun, you went far and neut. That juggle/combo, keeping a node they want neut/your color for a long time. This is especially important if your team does not have a thief or similar that will pressure far.

Additionally, its a PvP game. You need to be proactive, all the while keeping defense in mind. Even a “perfect defense,” will only work against an idiot, and in a pug, unless all the players are top notch and know exactly what they’re doing (which at your level of play, they do not.) it will be hard to accomplish. Instead, you need to consider punishing the mistakes of your opponents a lot more often. What you’re trying to play, in terms of fighting games, is a turtle strat with a character that doesn’t even have poke. Yes, when playing against bads might work, but the higher you go, the less effective it becomes.