Guild Wars 2

I have played off and on since launch and now coming back I have a lot of time to play. The thing is I love pvp in mmos and this game kills me. I play a necro but looking to switch ( cause apperently i can play this class.). I jump in spvp and just get destroyed without being able to touch people at all. im using good build from metabattle and ones i know and i know my class. but icant kill anyone and i die instantly . What do i need to do to get better or understand this games pvp.

u die instantly coz 95% of the ppl focus necros.. so how about u change class? :P

Lots of people quit the game that try Necro in PvP first.

It’s a cloth wearing class with no life force at the start of a match and generates no pressure at range. The only way to build LF is to fight though so you can’t just wait out cooldowns. Thus, you are forced to either go into melee range without life force or do no damage from afar. It also means that a large percentage of your traits and abilities are useless at the start which frustrates people.

Unless you have a team built around a necro, you hurt your team either way. If you fight, you get focused. If you cc yourself and hide, you build no life force and force your team to be undermanned at the start.

In addition, all your defenses do not scale against more than one enemy. You also have limited mobility and almost no stability.

It’s just not a friendly profession for new players. If they made you a juggernaut with full life force to offset the huge weakness without it, then maybe people would stick it out and keep playing. Currently, you have to just get an organized group and know your one role as a boon corrupter.

i also have an engi and mesmer which both are 80, tho i feel like they arent good for a new pvper either..

“I am the dark mage of death and your respawn is imminent!!! Hahaha!”
“Aww, I fed the enemy 5 pts…again…”

fruitbat.8705:

I have played off and on since launch and now coming back I have a lot of time to play. The thing is I love pvp in mmos and this game kills me. I play a necro but looking to switch ( cause apperently i can play this class.). I jump in spvp and just get destroyed without being able to touch people at all. im using good build from metabattle and ones i know and i know my class. but icant kill anyone and i die instantly . What do i need to do to get better or understand this games pvp.

You are not alone.

GW2 PvP is terrible. It’s;

• too quick, and
• difficult to analyse what opponents are doing, and
• you have to watch the debuff bar constantly
• Add to this the fact that you need to know what EVERY class does and
• the fact that your class CAN’T counter many of the classes
  … and you have the recipe for an awful, anti-fun combat system.

There’s a massive learning curve and no time to climb it before you are beaten by better, more accomplished players on more complicated, “piano-player”, classes.

Jon Peters is to blame. #boycottAmazonGames

Reverse.1056:

u die instantly coz 95% of the ppl focus necros.. so how about u change class? :P

Perhaps Anet should just remove this sack of kittens class and be done with it?

fruitbat.8705:

i also have an engi and mesmer which both are 80, tho i feel like they arent good for a new pvper either..

The level doesn’t matter in PvP

Tiefsee.3647:

fruitbat.8705:

i also have an engi and mesmer which both are 80, tho i feel like they arent good for a new pvper either..

The level doesn’t matter in PvP

So just try different classes/builds til you feel comfortable with smth and from there slowly learn how pvp works. The system has its flaws, but the pvp mechanics by itself are amazing, so its worth it

One of the easiest classes in pvp for a beginner is the warrior and the ranger. learn two tricks and you’ll immediatly into the fight.
Also the revenant can be played, but need a little more skills to be played.

The necromancer have one of the easier mechanic but also the harder to play in pvp, simply why you don’t have any real access to LF at the start of a match (unless you play as MM and summon your pets before the match, then one of them count as a death and give you 10%lf, or an engy don’t make his gyro explode for you, giving you some lf.

The necromancer is a good class, but in sPvP had always been the easier to kill why don’t have any defensive ability that grant you damage immunity, block enemy hits or something similar (only Rise!, a specializzation shout that summon minions that adsorm 30% of your direct damage). That make you a perfect golem puppet to just focus and kill, easy and fast.

if you want to play in sPvP, change class and turn back to the necro when you’ll learned a lot of the other classes and how that game work in sPvP

Don’t let people put you off necro- it is monstrously powerful once you learn how to pvp.

The issue is not the class but actually learning the mechanics of the game. Its going to take a while to do that because you basically need to get an understanding of what every class/build is capable of, as well as understanding rotations, when to run/when to stay and fight etc.

Probably the best way to understand classes/builds is to make a few characters of different classes for spvp. You only need to be level 2 (I think) to get into the spvp area and then you are auto leveled to 80 while playing spvp. Start off by picking a class that annoys you the most or that you find interesting. Try and fight necro’s with that class so you can see the weaknesses/strengths of both classes. Repeat with a couple of other classes.

The easiest class to play without question is going to be DH, even with little knowledge of pvp you should be able to kick some butt.

I think Yasha’s advice about trying all the different classes is pretty good. Overall, the checklist to be a good PvPer are:

• Know your build:* This comes from just playing it a bunch. Know what all your skills do, think about when each skill should be used. What are your condi cleanse skills? What are your stunbreak skills? What skills should you use when you’re being pressured? Those are questions you should ask yourself about your build, and you’ll probably refine your answers over time as you learn your build better.

• Know your opponent’s build:* You can generally get by just knowing all the meta builds. This is where Yasha’s advice comes in handy. Since you’re playing condi necro, you’ll probably want to ask yourself what each meta build’s condi cleanses are, what their CDs are, etc. You’ll also want to know what their key damage skills are.

• Work on your mechanical skills.* This includes things like only dodging your opponent’s key skills. Everytime you practice, consciously make an effort not to waste dodges on autoattacks. Know what animations you want to watch out for and save your dodges for those. Some builds have nasty instant attacks (like Rev’s staff 5), but those attacks often require a setup, so you’ll instead have to watch for the setup and pre-emptively dodge.

Note regarding the above: think of the above steps as long-term goals that you want to consistently work on. Shallow-minded people think all the builds in this game are braindead and take no skill to play. Don’t be one of those people. There’s a long road to mastery, as with most things in life.

• Practice!* Duel other people. If someone really good happens to be dueling in the server, spectate him/her! The key thing when dueling is to focus on improving the above 3 items. If you want to be good at conquest, treat each duel as an actual conquest fight: think about how long the fight is taking and whether you’re actually holding/contesting the point. Don’t worry about winning every duel (see below).

If you want to be super hardcore about this, record your duels and rewatch the footage. It’s really hard to spot your mistakes in the middle of a fight, but really easy to see them when you watch the replay

• Know the matchups.* Necro is generally not a strong 1v1 class in the current meta, which goes with the dueling point above. This is probably one of the reasons why a lot of new players might burn out on necro. That said, get a sense of which builds you’re strongest against and which ones you’re weakest against.

• Learn rotations.* This one’s really hard to learn b/c there aren’t any good in-game resources for it. Also, most of your teammates will give you bad advice and rage at you. A former proleague-level player-child named Backpack made a pretty good rotations guide and posted it on youtube: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPb2jY19oU>;. I think it’s a pretty good starting point.

• Practice in unranked/ranked games.* Now that you have the above ideas in mind, practice implementing them in unranked/ranked games.

• Get some friends and practice teamwork.* There’s also a lot of room for teamplay that’s kind of hard to practice with random pubs. Things like swapping matchups, coordinating bursts, learning the downstate game, etc.

Anyway those are my suggestions for how to improve at this game. It mostly just boils down to practicing a bunch in both duels and ranked/unranked while trying to be really mindful of the above points so that you’re actually improving rather than reinforcing bad habits.

The only way you can get better is to practice in this game. Not only playing a lot of games, but also doing this while trying as hard as you can to learn. Before pvp leagues started, I had about 3.5k games played but I was total trash at pvp because I never played seriously. However now I have almost 7k games played and I am 100x better than in season 1. This is because I actually try my hardest every single game. OP, it is very difficult to improve and games an extremely long time, but as long as you put in the effort, you will get better eventually. Even I would insta die to anything if I played anything other than ranger right now so this proves it really is about how much time you invest to your class as long as you are playing seriously.

Keep playing and you will have a ‘I understand this class now’ moment after about 50 games, after which your play will improve significantly and after that it really is all about practice. It takes thousands of games to get near pro level just on one class so don’t expect to be good very soon but you definitely will get there, OP.

Although necro might be the harder choice to get to know the ways of PvP better. But patience is key here. If you play the condi necro build from metabattle, you got to play carefully and keep enemies at distance (unless you go into shroud).

http://qqmore.net/
> excellent pvp tips here

i would recommend watching class guides & gameplay on youtube. duelling people for practice is really good too. there are servers jusr for duels, & a lot of people will be keen if you just whisper them.

engi is actually pretty easy if you play the meta build from metabattle.com . it’s only got one kit if i remember correctly. the only hard bit is healing turret, but you lean that pretty fast.

as everyone else has said necros, especially ones who down easy get focused all the time. i call target on necros a lot myself.

Yet another prime example showcasing one of the major problems in Gw2 PvP. The deeply rooted and entangled issue of not having a proper PvP tutorial, specifically, no voice of authority that accurately describes what class roles and identities are within the PvP medium.

All the good advice people are giving in this thread, yet none of it is present or even hinted at in the game. The “staircase” that @ResJudicator is describing should be a pathway for learning made clear by the PvP architecture. Game should be telling you to first learn all the skill mechanics of a class then look at mechanics of other classes as well. Game should be telling you that first and foremost you should be practicing 1v1 duels and understand each possible match-up. Game should be telling you that the following step is learning rotations. Game should be telling you to first learn self-rotations or play in a duo before going to perform rotations with a whole team. Ultimately, the in-game architecture should have a stage in place for each one of the learning steps.

Those QQnet videos are the best learning resources that are out there when it comes to the fundamentals of Gw2 PvP. They are very well put together and supported by devs, but they are widely unknown. Instead of a new player having to come ask here, in these forums with a questionable reputation when it comes to objectivity (another symptom of the same big problem), wouldn`t it be better that these QQnet videos were linked-to from a in-game tutorial section/panel/UI/window/text/tip.

qqmore videos should be watchable in game. anet could embed them easily.

Since you have engi try it in pvp – scrapper has some nice damage and good sustain and a good number of utilities to help self/team.

fruitbat.8705:

I have played off and on since launch and now coming back I have a lot of time to play. The thing is I love pvp in mmos and this game kills me. I play a necro but looking to switch ( cause apperently i can play this class.). I jump in spvp and just get destroyed without being able to touch people at all. im using good build from metabattle and ones i know and i know my class. but icant kill anyone and i die instantly . What do i need to do to get better or understand this games pvp.

HOW I LEARNED TO PLAY NECRO

STEP 1: Watch other people play

STEP 2: Make a build that allows you to generate a ton of deathshroud.

STEP 3: Go into hot-join and always go to the outnumbered team, TEST YOUR MIGHT and see how long you last when outnumbered. The more you learn about how deal with multiple enemies, the better you’ll be at being a necro.

STEP 4: Repeat Step 3. You are now better than 85% of people that play Necro.

fruitbat.8705:

i also have an engi and mesmer which both are 80, tho i feel like they arent good for a new pvper either..

I think that the simple thing you can do is to begin with a scrapper ( engineer specialization with hammer ) . It is a strong build , with really good sustain and it is quite easy to use . Probably , among mesmer,necro and engineer, scrapper is the think that give you much rewards in less time. Obviously mastering a class is not fast, but, at the same skill player level i think scrapper is the easiest of the 3 . Mesmer is strong but it is not as immediate as scrapper .

If you can’t keep up with the rotations or the truer purpose of the metabattle build, then of course its not going to appear that helpful or useful. My advice; join a HOT join server in the pvp lobby and ask for 1v1s. Say that your new and wanting to learn how to pvp better. If you get beaten, ask the player how he/she beat you or how you could possibly counter them back.

You pretty much wanna get into as many 1v1s as you can. Read all the descriptions of your skills and figure out your own rotation and how to use them in different situations. Don’t just spam buttons. For brand new players, I’d always highly suggest go PVE first so you can learn the game aswell as learn how to use your class —>WvW so you can get into some large scale group fights with other players —>Spvp for a more of a challenging pvp scenario.