Guild Wars 2

Over my career I’ve noticed (even high ranked players) often do not use simple mechanics or tricks in pvp.
(If you already know these feel free to comment with your own.)

Dodge is your best friend, it’s often a surprise when for a whole fight I don’t see the other player evade, if you time it correctly you could win the fight.

Use terrain to your advantage, a shadowstepping thief eating your health? Long range attacks killing you? Just move to a place where they have no line of sight, boulders, hedges, all can save you.

Move out of aoe, I see this often when I drop my chaos storm on someone and they don’t even walk out of it.

Traps, especially DH, just dodge out or wait until the owner has moved away.

Learn the other classes, figure out the animations, a well timed block or evade has saved me many times from Moa or the like, each class performs specific “Casts” that are a dead give away for the attacks or skills.

Look at what’s the meta, you don’t need to play by it but so many players I see just copy-paste builds and don’t know how to play the class other than the specific rotation they pulled off Metabattle.

Do not try and solo the whole team at mid, I often see this far too often, one teams gets mid first and 3 or so guys stay there because the enemy team keeps coming one at a time and feeding them, take a couple seconds (maybe stay on home) until a teammate or two walks off WP and rush mid together.

Objectives are more important than kills, I see players leave a point that they were capturing because the enemy they were fighting ran away.

If you are going into ranked bring a class you know, you don’t have to be Meta.
But I cringe when I see someone in ranked say “it’s my first game on class X.”
Please, go and play a handful of matches in unranked first.

Do not be salty, do not name call, this is unhelpful and distracts teammates who are trying to win the game.
Yes you may be playing with a player who doesn’t know the first thing about the class but standing at WP and calling him a “Kitten-kitten who should kitten a kitten.”
Will not get your team points.

Do not lose hope, I have seen teams make a comeback from having half the points than the other team.

Remember, you can easily learn the enemies playstlye, like I’ve managed to pull a defensive player into the open or place a offensive player on the defence, forcing someone to play in a style they are unfamiliar or not experienced in can be the difference between free kills or a long time in the deadbox.

Do not run around off points looking to backstab an unaware player, this is useless to your team.

Develop a simple plan in the pregame, for instance, the glass build gets home and the rest head mid. And you do not need half your team capturing home, more people on a point won’t mean a swifter cap. Meanwhile your team will get eaten in a 2v5 at mid.

Learn each effects, boons, or conditions icon, this can be useful. Have blind? Stop casting your hard hitting attack and auto a couple times. Target has stability? Maybe knockback isn’t a good choice. Warrior has endure pain? Drop a condition bomb instead of a power attack.

Learn each classes weaknesses, for instance thieves are squishy, while the necromancer has low stability acsess.

Learn each classes advantages, like thief has more dodges than other classes or warriors have multiple direct-damage reductions.

And please, if something kills you its not OP don’t run to the forum without thinking,
“Mesmers can have invulnerability up 100% of the time!!” No, just that they often save it for when they see you charging a powerful attack.
“Thieves can dodge everything and are immortal!!” Time your burst and it’s game over.

(I may edit to add more.)