Guild Wars 2

After 3 weeks of (almost) daily pvp, 333 matches, and 60% winrate (201w/132l), I’m finally legendary. I’m going to explain how I did it, and how you can do it too. I mostly solo/duo q-ed the whole journey (up till tier 5 diamond), and only had a team after that because it was convenient and faster. I started with relatively high mmr (faced against competitive players regularly) and had a 60% winrate prior to leagues as well. Point is, you can be a new player, or you can be an experienced player, both are able to climb if you are good enough (although a new and improving player has it easier till ruby/diamond). This guide (wall of text, with details) is aimed at players who do not have a regular team to play with (like me), and still hope to progress through leagues.

Now that we’re done with the introduction, let’s get on to the first topic:
-Class selection-
The first step to ‘carrying’ your team as a solo/duo q, is to pick the correct class. From my knowledge, the best class for this is a supporting class. Namely, bunker mesmer, support tempest, heal druid. Note that this is just my opinion, and is not a fact written in stone. Why? Because to win the game, you have to 1. Win team fights 2. Be able to survive 3. Contest/Hold a point A supporting class does all this 3 by healing/giving active defenses and boons to allies and themselves.

As a duo q, it is slightly different. You can either go 2 support, or 1 support 1 dps (preferably revenant). Just don’t go 2 dps.

Also, you might ask, why duo q? Because as duo q, the system treats you the same as solo q. Meaning the chance of running into a premade is lower than as a trio or more. You can also be assured that you have at least 1 other decent member on your team.

Second topic:
-Team composition-
Slightly related to class selection, but you can only consider team composition after you enter the match (duh). Team composition is very important, as it not only determines your opening strategy, but also how you’re going to play the game. First off, you must consider how many point holders do you have on your team? Point holders, to me, are mesmers, tempests, druids, and scrappers. Ideally, you should have no more than 3, and no less than 2. This ensures that you will be able to hold points that you win, and retake points that you lose. If you have too many or too little point holders, either switch or ask your team mates to switch classes.

Third topic:
-Opening strategy-
In this bunker meta, the first fight is the most important. Whoever gets the first cap has the advantage. Therefore, your opening strategy is of paramount importance. Most common opening strategies are 1/3/1, 1/2/2, or 0/4/1, with the number of players on far/mid/home respectively. Let’s talk about 1/3/1, this is the ideal opening strategy if you’re confident in your far and home player being able to win their points, and that you can hold on as 3 in mid indefinitely. Of course, you will have to adapt if your enemy rotates but I’ll save that for later. 1/2/2 is usually used when you expect a single enemy to intercept home, so you send 2 home to kill him off quickly. Following which they are then to rotate to reinforce mid while far is being kept contested/won. For 0/4/1, you zerg mid and expect to win it. Thereafter, you reinforce home and mid which you have both won and hold it for the rest of the game. This is a very risky strategy in high tier matches as you are conceding far to your opponent but generally works well in lower tier matches.

Fourth topic:
-Rotations-
The key to winning the game after your opening strategy. I’ll just start listing them off the top of my head.
-> Rule of thumb is to position/rotate yourself so that it’s an even fight. By even I mean equal number of players, but the matchup should be favourable to yours.
-> Do not fight a losing battle. Going far but there’s 2? Can you hold them on point indefinitely? You can? Good. Go ahead. You can’t? Ask a team mate to rotate over, or peel off to help some other point instead.
-> Ally bunker vs 2 enemy bunkers? He probably doesn’t need your help. Rotate off and win some other point for your team.
-> Ally bunker vs enemy bunker on your point? Leave them there, a +1 would be helping the enemy.
-> Never contest an enemy’s point 1v1 unless you’re sure you can win the 1v1.
-> Keep an eye on the mini-map and account for the number of players. Want to help your team at mid but afraid home will be decapped if you leave it? How many enemies are there at mid and far? If there’s 5, go ahead. If there’s 4, you probably shouldn’t.
-> Don’t get too caught up in killing someone that you forget to rotate. It happens all too often. You kill an enemy with 3 at mid, but home and far is lost and 2 of your allies down. Not a fair trade.
-> Same for team fights, always watch for enemies trying to take advantage of the confusion in team fights to peel off sneakily for a free decap or even a full cap. (You can be the sneaky one instead though.)
-> Don’t overextend. Won 2 points and contesting a third one? Enemy is likely to zerg the point being contested and snowball from there. Peel off and regroup if you can’t win, while keeping an eye for decaps from the enemy team.
-> The opposite is similar. Losts points? Stop throwing yourself 1 by 1 into the fray of enemies and died over and over again. Regroup, zerg a point (preferably home or far), snowball from there. If they send everyone to defend against your zerg, peel for decaps and caps. Rotate.
-> Never give up. Your enemy is as prone to mistakes as you are. A single wipe or overextending on their part may lead to a snowball victory for your team.
-> Communicate! Tell your team what you’re going to do. Tell them what they can do. Be nice. (Of course, all of us, are prone to occasional rage outbursts.)

Fifth topic:
-Map mechanics-
I’m pretty sure this is already available elsewhere on the net, so I’m just going to cover it briefly.
-> Legacy of Foefire:
Never commit to a lord rush unless you have 350 points.
-> Forest of Niflhel:
Never go for the beast after home if mid needs your help. Go for it if you need it to win, or you just wiped the enemy team.
-> Temple of Silent Storm:
Stillness at 11:30, 8:30, 5:30, and 2:30. Tranquility at 8:30 and 2:30. Don’t go for ferocity.
-> Battle of Khylo:
If you’re going to use the treb, don’t send someone suited for team fights to do it.

That’s all I can think of for now. Will edit if more comes to mind. Hope this helped!

Edit:
I forgot to add, if you’re on a losing streak, stop playing. Take a break and do something else. Watch a video, an episode of your favourite tv series, whatever. By doing this, you are 1. Preventing yourself from ‘tilting’ and 2. Q-Dodging your ‘bad team mates’, so you don’t get stuck with playing with the same people over and over again.

Edit 2: Thanks for all the positive feedback, glad this helped!

Edit 3: If you’re about to lose a team fight, please peel off and rotate to a relatively unguarded point.

The problem is apparent when your teammates are worse than the opposing team.

That is the real problem on ruby onwards, it’s not that the opposing team is good, its just that your teammates suck.

And..you have no idea how did they reach ruby/diamond being that bad.

Really good topic

Stuff like this should be IN THE GAME

Sadly, only few people read the forum.

Ps Gratz for legendary, welcome in a world where solo queue doesn’t start

333 games isn’t that much at all. Statistically speaking, it’d take over 2000 games to reach legendary if the outcome of every match is decided randomly.

Good for you though, its quite a feat making it to legendary without pimping out the ambers or playing in full teams a lot. I doubt I’ll make it that far since I’ve been busy this time of year and my interest in this game has finally started to dry up.

Gratz man.

Legendary division in 333 matches with a 60% win rate from solo/duo queue without tanking your MMR and without queuing with an amber for 3 pip wins like all of the legendary division folks are atm is great!

Almost up to ruby with pure solo q… I thought I was cool

But Grats on legend man! You earned it if you were able to solo your way there.

very good write-up, every solo-Q’er should read this.

Here’s the issue.

Ruby onwards your team is gonna suck.

Shovel Face.4512:

Here’s the issue.

Ruby onwards your team is gonna suck.

Mostly outplayed by my own teammates.
And when im on a bad bias , i also outplayed by myself ,too.

Fanta.8049:

Shovel Face.4512:

Here’s the issue.

Ruby onwards your team is gonna suck.

Mostly outplayed by my own teammates.
And when im on a bad bias , i also outplayed by myself ,too.

I forgot to add, if you’re on a losing streak, stop playing. Take a break and do something else. Watch a video, an episode of your favourite tv series, whatever. By doing this, you are 1. Preventing yourself from ‘tilting’ and 2. Q-Dodging your ‘bad team mates’, so you don’t get stuck with playing with the same people over and over again.

Personally, I take a break after 2 or 3 consecutive losses.

This guide is actually fine and make sense, but:

The best counter-argument to this is: mmr was not reset, a small example to this was: I will face the same people regardless of division, meaning the same players that play on esl teams, I will solo into, but it is not their fault because they duo+ into getting faster matchups, so this leave me on the sh** end of the stick.

I see some streamers pull in fast queues at ruby and diamond, then my eyes shine up, (maybe I can get some free wins) not the case, dream is dead. MMR was not reset and the devs are the only people to shame upon it if they have any responsibility (unless management has a tighter hold).

I assume more players will reach legendary, since im still casually playing this game per 5 pips per day at diamond, which is hit or miss, but I will reach legendary soon, won’t bother me.

Shovel Face.4512:

Here’s the issue.

Ruby onwards your team is gonna suck.

Truth, but often, it helps if you maybe lay out a strategy first and explain why. Yes, sometimes the teammates are stubborn and dumb, but often it helps.

A few examples:

- The enemy team had 2 druids, we had non but sm1 said he wanted to push far. I explained that druids are strongest in 1v1’s and weakeat in bigger teamfights and that we should play strictly 2 nodes. The team agreed and we won.

- Enemy team had Helseth on his shatter mesmer and I think 3 pretty tanky builds + maybe a rev and again they wanted to go for 3 nodes: I said Helseth will outrotate us and +1 on every node and they’ll get all 3 of them.

- I also often write in chat when I hold a node with D/D bunker/support-tempest against 2 bunkers of the enemy team that other ppl on the node can leave cuz I will be able to hold and stuff like that.

If you communicate well and precise and explain your decision-making concisely, I feel most teammates will get the point, even if the salt-levels are very high. :P

XGhoul.7426:

This guide is actually fine and make sense, but:

The best counter-argument to this is: mmr was not reset, a small example to this was: I will face the same people regardless of division, meaning the same players that play on esl teams, I will solo into, but it is not their fault because they duo+ into getting faster matchups, so this leave me on the sh** end of the stick.

I see some streamers pull in fast queues at ruby and diamond, then my eyes shine up, (maybe I can get some free wins) not the case, dream is dead. MMR was not reset and the devs are the only people to shame upon it if they have any responsibility (unless management has a tighter hold).

I assume more players will reach legendary, since im still casually playing this game per 5 pips per day at diamond, which is hit or miss, but I will reach legendary soon, won’t bother me.

True, anet kittened up at not introducing mmr reset and calibration. But we cannot do anything about it except grit our teeth and try our best anyway. On the plus side, mmr accounts for only 50% of your matchmaking.

Great wall, and very constructive. Though I’m still in mid-ruby, I can’t agree more with all the points listed, as I experienced the same. Congratulations for your road to Legendary, and thanks for the time spent to share your experience with other players.

PvP Murphy Law #2:

Remember, out of 5 ppl on your team 0 goes to close to hold it. In short – unless you move your kitten there expect fast and easy decaps of close. Once in a blue moon you might get someone who actually bothers to care about capping and staying at close so enemies don’t get easy points.

ReaperJr.5967:

either switch or ask your team mates to switch classes.

I don’t disagree as such, but in soloq even trying to get your team mates to communicate home/mid can be a chore at times.

I’m curious if this was something you acted on regularly or was it more a case of you see 4 DH in your team and ask if they can switch?

SoPP.7034:

ReaperJr.5967:

either switch or ask your team mates to switch classes.

I don’t disagree as such, but in soloq even trying to get your team mates to communicate home/mid can be a chore at times.

I’m curious if this was something you acted on regularly or was it more a case of you see 4 DH in your team and ask if they can switch?

I do so on regular basis. Most of the time, they do switch, after you explain the rationale. Be nice and polite of course.

StickerHappy.8052:

The problem is apparent when your teammates are worse than the opposing team.

That is the real problem on ruby onwards, it’s not that the opposing team is good, its just that your teammates suck.

And..you have no idea how did they reach ruby/diamond being that bad.

Sheer luck. They got carried all the way there, as the system won’t consider personal score, and even if it did, personal score doesn’t really match personal participation, as it won’t count support other than revives, assists, defense or control.

You can prevent anyone from taking your point for the whole match and win thanks to that, and that won’t count unless you defeat enemies by doing so, while it stands to reason personal score should tick for you as long as you are in combat inside a point, preventing decap.

PowerBottom.5796:

Shovel Face.4512:

Here’s the issue.

Ruby onwards your team is gonna suck.

Truth, but often, it helps if you maybe lay out a strategy first and explain why. Yes, sometimes the teammates are stubborn and dumb, but often it helps.

A few examples:

- The enemy team had 2 druids, we had non but sm1 said he wanted to push far. I explained that druids are strongest in 1v1’s and weakeat in bigger teamfights and that we should play strictly 2 nodes. The team agreed and we won.

- Enemy team had Helseth on his shatter mesmer and I think 3 pretty tanky builds + maybe a rev and again they wanted to go for 3 nodes: I said Helseth will outrotate us and +1 on every node and they’ll get all 3 of them.

- I also often write in chat when I hold a node with D/D bunker/support-tempest against 2 bunkers of the enemy team that other ppl on the node can leave cuz I will be able to hold and stuff like that.

If you communicate well and precise and explain your decision-making concisely, I feel most teammates will get the point, even if the salt-levels are very high. :P

One of the bigger missed opportunities for the dev’s of this game was not implementing a usable battle-plan/communication system.

Some kind of easy way to pick leaders, and then implement plans – probably via the mini-map – would make the matches much, much better.

“After 3 weeks of (almost) daily pvp, 333 matches”

On average what is the queue time? Lets say 2 minutes
What is the average time for each match? Lets say 15 minutes
100 Games per week…

To Sum this post up… part time job.

I don’t even want to get to legendary, I want to be demoted to sapphire.

Since I joined Ruby division I’ve witnessed the worst plays SPVP has ever offered to me.
I get matched with people triple-stomping instead of cleaving, condi necros running GS (thank god he wasn’t on my team), people winning all teamfights and yet losing the game ‘cause they can’t even grasp the very basics of the concept of “rotations”.

I want quality SPVP matches, that’s the only reason I want to get into diamond but now it’s just.. meh.

Grats on being able to play spvp 25-30 hours a week and that could be a generous understatment as I probably under counted your average queue time and length of match.

ReaperJr.5967:

-Class selection-
The first step to ‘carrying’ your team as a solo/duo q, is to pick the correct class. From my knowledge, the best class for this is a supporting class. Namely, bunker mesmer, support tempest, heal druid. Note that this is just my opinion, and is not a fact written in stone. Why? Because to win the game, you have to *1. Win team fights

This one is a sticking point for, I want to say, quite a few of us. For example, I am proficient on none of those classes you named, don’t even have a ranger. My mains are Engineer, then Guardian and then Necro. The only class I could possibly provide some support on in this meta is Engineer but that comes with some short-comings that bunker mesmer and support tempest do not have. I’m at the point where I feel like learning Tempest will help me but I’ll be bad on it and there’s nothing worse than being a bad Tempest in ranked. And I’ve seen enough bad Tempests and Mesmer bunkers in ranked as it is, I mean not even the Tempest who provides no party buffs at the start of the match but players who are dying on incoming in teamfights while I’m basically bunkering the point on my DH!

So I feel that yes, support class is probably one of the ways to go, but players who have no business on the classes that are currently the meta for bunker are trying those classes in ranked and making things worse. IMHO it would be better for players to stick to a class they know well.

Thanks for the guide and next season I’ll make sure to no-life the game x 3 weeks while exploiting the most broken classes ever to see the light of day in GW2.

I mean Gratz on legendary and getting there and all, but I feel the best thing your guide shows is what’s broken in this,game now

Veteran PvPers already know all the stuff you wrote about. I mention them because they are the best candidates for legendary division.

What we’d really like to know, according to your match numbers, is how you seem to maximize the number of pips you’ve won while minimizing the pips you lost.

How do you do that while solo/duo queuing? Mathematically, that is the only way to make it to legendary. I know such arrangements is unfair to opponents because if they beat you, their rewards are shorted but if they lose to you, they lose in a very big way.

What do you do when you face ESL teams? Do you face them at all or did you always end up with easier opponents.

TL;DR
Play a broken, cheese bunker spec, think you’re good at a game when all you do is spam cooldowns while sitting on a point.

Frenk.5917:

I don’t even want to get to legendary, I want to be demoted to sapphire.

Since I joined Ruby division I’ve witnessed the worst plays SPVP has ever offered to me.
I get matched with people triple-stomping instead of cleaving, condi necros running GS (thank god he wasn’t on my team), people winning all teamfights and yet losing the game ‘cause they can’t even grasp the very basics of the concept of “rotations”.

I want quality SPVP matches, that’s the only reason I want to get into diamond but now it’s just.. meh.

Careful what you wish for. I’m on T3 sapphire and beat a team of mostly rubies and won two pips.

“people winning all teamfights and yet losing the game ‘cause they can’t even grasp the very basics of the concept of ‘rotations.’”

I hear you. My rev isn’t even a bunker yet I’m forced to stay on the node because I notice everyone else running off to do other stuff. I even see thieves standing on nodes. You’re not a mesmer or ele, just try decapping and +1’ing already.

Just hit T4 in Sapphire and yesterday, I was in a match where 4 of us went mid straight off. We won the fight and ALL 4 split and NOBODY stayed to capped the point.

It was on Niflhel, and I was up on one of the upper ledges, heading to steal their beast. Had to stop and go back to cap it.

Great tips for premades, but 90% of what you’re recommending is team strategy . If you have a team that wants to go do their own thing (most of the time when solo queuing) this won’t work…. You need luck on your side to get good teams to solo queue to Diamond much less Legendary.

How to win, cheese the game, there is no honor or balance in this game.

Cheese it

If I don’t play a cheesy bunker spec what would you advise oh master of pvp? Reroll? Wait for balance patch? Uninstall?

DrMatt.9408:

If I don’t play a cheesy bunker spec what would you advise oh master of pvp? Reroll? Wait for balance patch? Uninstall?

……..

Yes.

Nice write up man. Good stuff hitting legendary as a solo/duo queue player.

Classes for this guide – Bunker

Well then… The rest seems fairly standard. Although you be amazed how “unskilled” ppl are in ruby.

I should’ve ridden that win streak into tier 4 ruby. The next day I lost it all. I think something to do with everybody jumping on who was carried into ruby. Now that it’s the holidays.

I’m back to being skeptical a pure solo’q can’t make it into diamond.

Any tips for playing Tempest? Ele’s been one of my least played class but since my main is mediocre now I seem to have a lot more success with it in solo Q. So any advice would help.
I’m so close to Ruby and having lotta bad luck suddenly. Needed 1 win to reach last tier and lost 2 pips in one game and continued into a losing streak of doom.

Gratz on reaching legendary so fast , i wouldnt expect it form a squer to achive that so fast but then you did play some bove average time a day…

As for tips its sad that everything was said many many times before but very few players ever come to forums before they get pwned or for some other problem they have.

This should be merged with some other posts and stickied to " new 2 pvp start here"

You lost all credibility with me at the outset. If you teamed to make matches faster, that means you teamed with lower tier players, tanking your rating and manipulating the matches.

That’s (allegedly) against the rules. Sorry… no credit due.

Well my 2 main professions are Guard/DH and Warrior/Berserker
I guess I’m kitten!

I guess I’ll make a Rev

mPascoal.4258:

Well my 2 main professions are Guard/DH and Warrior/Berserker
I guess I’m kitten!

I guess I’ll make a Rev

Nah, just roll a Teef.

Guys so what if he played approximately 30 hours per week for 3 weeks to get legend? The point of the post was the useful knowledge he gained and is willing to post on the forum for us. I definitely don’t have the time to play that much but it’s still good to know how he did it.

I do agree that it’s sad to know that you need to play a particulate class to maximize your chances (well I knew that already)

I only play DH or rev since I don’t like the other classes. My other classes are thief and war but I’m not gonna bring those to spvp.

I play gw2 for fun and being forced to play a class that I have no interest in to be super competitive is never gonna happen for me. I’d rather quit.

Thanks to OP for the post and congrats on legend rank.

Heres how i did it.. i cheated & exploited.. & was happy to do it to.. Cuz everybody is doing it & i feel left out & frustrated cuz its broken kitten pro league system. So you should to.. cheat!

lol, well said +1

You all see, ele and druid can do it, other professions can’t, that op they are… kitten, why didn’t I leanred to play those professions, now I have to wait another season to get more loot, and eventually that legendary backpack, after that never PvP

Ithilwen.1529:

You lost all credibility with me at the outset. If you teamed to make matches faster, that means you teamed with lower tier players, tanking your rating and manipulating the matches.

That’s (allegedly) against the rules. Sorry… no credit due.

Here is what the OP actually said:

“I mostly solo/duo q-ed the whole journey (up till tier 5 diamond), and only had a team after that because it was convenient and faster. I started with relatively high mmr (faced against competitive players regularly) and had a 60% winrate prior to leagues as well. Point is, you can be a new player, or you can be an experienced player, both are able to climb if you are good enough "

If you ever queue with somebody without equal or greater pips, Ithilwen will know, and there’ll be hell to pay.

All i read is: dear thief solo players please uninstall game.

Uncheck stronghold if you yoloQ, it’s premade heaven.

Got to diamond with my teef ! Eat that, haters.

ReaperJr.5967:

Edit:
I forgot to add, if you’re on a losing streak, stop playing. Take a break and do something else. Watch a video, an episode of your favourite tv series, whatever. By doing this, you are 1. Preventing yourself from ‘tilting’ and 2. Q-Dodging your ‘bad team mates’, so you don’t get stuck with playing with the same people over and over again.

Edit 2: Thanks for all the positive feedback, glad this helped!

This pretty much. I know a lot of have been on “those streaks” where you are thinking…. wtf did I do to deserve this?

Doggie.3184:

Any tips for playing Tempest? Ele’s been one of my least played class but since my main is mediocre now I seem to have a lot more success with it in solo Q. So any advice would help.
I’m so close to Ruby and having lotta bad luck suddenly. Needed 1 win to reach last tier and lost 2 pips in one game and continued into a losing streak of doom.

Try switching your neck to Cleric. the group heals are great and you can hold a point much better against some of the tougher specs. The extra healing makes all the difference in a team fight which is your strong point.

brannigan.9831:

Grats on being able to play spvp 25-30 hours a week and that could be a generous understatment as I probably under counted your average queue time and length of match.

Did you expect that the highest pvp achievement currently in the game would be attainable by casuals?