Guild Wars 2

it was not good, burst in wow, but i’m not going to talk about wow.

it’s just, in gw2, i cant see any “burst phase”. all boons are 3-5 sec and so are all stuns.

one of the key skill in wow pvp was to be aware of enemy cooldowns and know when to cc, that’s where the edge of high skill was.

is this mechanics present in gw2?

ps: still trying to learn animations for spell telegraphs

Yes, very much so. Honestly though, until you’ve played around with the classes yourself, you’re going to have a hard time recognizing these burst phases unless you have someone walking you through it as you go along. It took me a long time, as well as having multiple classes that I played for a while, to understand where and when you burst your target down. Each class is different and they all have different phases.

Some abilities off the top of my head. If at all possible, avoid using any offensive skills when these take place. Save your burst for when these abilities are not active and the target you are fighting is at approx 50% HP after these effects go off. Use your CCs and stuns at this point to prevent a heal if you can.

Warrior raises his shield. This will block all attacks for 3-4 seconds unless the skill in question says unblockable. There is also endure pain to consider. Damage immunity for 5 seconds, but it has no animation. Its simply a buff, a very obvious and easy to recognize buff, under their HP bar. If traited, warriors can automatically activate this skill once every 90 seconds at 25% HP.

Engineer raises his shield. This will block all attacks for 3-4 seconds unless the skill you are using says unblockable. Engineers shrink and become tiny. They will avoid everything for 3 seconds.

Mesmer becomes blurry/fuzzy. This effect is very subtle though. Mesmer is immune to everything for 2-4 seconds. Unfortunately, mesmers can do this every 8 seconds if using a sword main hand, so timing is everything.

Necromancer goes black and shadowy. Necromancer is in death shroud and… actually, ever mind. Go ahead and burst this. While they are protecting their HP in this form, they still take full damage to the “green bar”. If you knock them out of this form you will deny them several key skills for a long time and they actually become weaker as a class.

Guardians are probably the hardest. The trick with them is to have the ability to strip boons. When their protection drops, hit em hard. Guardians actually have a small HP pool, and the only reason they’re so tanky is because of protection and healing traits. They put aegis on themselves periodically. Aegis will block one attack unless the skill you are using is unblockable (will not remove aegis though). Just auto attack this off if you notice it.

Thieves, about the only thing you can do is hit them as hard as you can as soon as you see them. If they go stealth, chances are they’ll just come back out of it at full HP. The trick with them is to CC them ASAP and burst them as soon as you can. Most thieves will be traited to go stealth automatically every 90 seconds at 25% health though. Thieves are incredibly squishy though so its not hard to do this if you can avoid their opening Basilisk Venom stun (stun break this ASAP and dodge away).

Rangers, if using Troll Unguent, have a 15 second window where they are not regenerating. Try to make yourself familiar with the Troll Unguent buff icon and save your bursts for when that buff disappears. Troll Unguent cannot be removed, so don’t bother trying. Troll Unguent will last for 10 seconds. Keep hitting though, as you don’t want them to completely regenerate. Just avoid using your burst during this as they usually end up healing through it.

Elementalists take practice. Most will start in fire attunement. What you want to do here is wait for elementalists to switch into their water attunement, let them blow their CDs there, and when they switch out of water attunement, burst em hard. They can only go into water once every 10 seconds or so, but even the water attunement skills have a longer CD than that. You must familiarize yourself with the attunement swap graphics. Each attunement has a very obvious and flashy graphic associated with it when they enter that attunement. The glowing affect around the elementalists hands will change based on attunement as well. You’ll also hear a voice que from the elementalist, such as, “Feel the flames of Balthazar!” or, “Rock Solid!” or, “Storm Powered!”. Each race and sex will have their own unique voice over for this switch. The voice over will say something obvious to the attunement they’re going into, however. Your best bet here is to just make a level 1 elementalist, take it to the mists, and swap attunements for a bit to familiarize yourself with what they look like.

I think thats everything, but I’m probably missing a lot. It really takes a lot of practice to get to know these effects well. Best bet is to just dive in and keep trying. If you’re having issues with a certain class at some points, or noticing something odd when only a particular class is around you, try explaining the situation on their subforum (politely, or you’ll get no response) and ask for pointers. Most people don’t have a problem explaining to you why you lost and what you can do to avoid it.

Yup. Although often you’ll want to coordinate a burst against a player just to force their main cooldown (such as elixir s, mist form etc), leading to multiple ‘burst phases’.

You’ll just have to learn the class animations by either playing the class, or facing against them. Examples.

Greatsword Mesmer raises his hand = Illusionary Berserker incoming. Dodge that.

Mesmer has a pink glow in between his hands = Moa incoming. Moa looks very similar to Mantra casts and its only a 1 second cast, very hard to dodge, but you need to dodge it.

Warrior switches to shield, he probably has an Axe. Get ready to look for an Eviscerate. Dodge this and its game over for the Warrior, sadly.

Player has low health and raises his hand, he’s casting a heal, interrupt this.

Thief – Stay mobile, if hes stealth, don’t let him get a backstab on you. Try to stay away from him so he can’t get a Cloak and Dagger off. Thief is probably the hardest burst to dodge.

Remember different weapons do different things, so you’ll have to pay attention to what weapon set the player has out. It’s difficult to tell fighting an Asura, and very easy to see on every other class.

How do you feel in group fights? I’m starting to think different skills must be taken into account in tpvp fights: unless you are in 1v1, can you really read the action of all your enemies?

It may be in those fights things such as builds and strategy (decide whether to revive someone or down an enemy, for example) become more important.

It happened to me that, fighting on a point, I could use skills such as 100 blades and hit people without setting it up with cc.

Just asking, I personally don’t know if even good people tendo to fail readings enemy movement in these situations.

redslion.9675:

How do you feel in group fights? I’m starting to think different skills must be taken into account in tpvp fights: unless you are in 1v1, can you really read the action of all your enemies?

It may be in those fights things such as builds and strategy (decide whether to revive someone or down an enemy, for example) become more important.

It happened to me that, fighting on a point, I could use skills such as 100 blades and hit people without setting it up with cc.

Just asking, I personally don’t know if even good people tendo to fail readings enemy movement in these situations.

As a mesmer, i act almost exactly the same in group fightd as i do in 1vs1: jump in the fight and burst while evading, jump out. Then repeat untill we won.
The only difference in a teamfight is that im not the only one dealing damage, and i have to pay attention to what my team is doing.
Example: an engi is magnet pulling someone and going to follow up eith confusion, i use Ileap(immobilize) and burst. This way the pulled enemy has to use defensive skills and take contusion damage, or dies to my burst.
Sometimes i pull thr enemies together with temporal curtain and burst all of them at the same ime, causing alot of panic on the whole team if done right.
Reviving in team fights… It would probably mean i get downed aswell, but i usually letnthe bunker revive and CC and apply boons etc.
Always keep an eye out for fleeing teammates/enemies or if theyre low hp. You can pull them back in the fight (like a grenade engi throwing on the point) or you van burst them down while theyre vulnerable.
When an rnemy in a teamfight goes down theres several things i can do: i can wait unill someone shows up and revive them, then ican burst or interupt the revivor, but theres the risk of them having stability or not dying to your burst if theyre bunker. Or i can pop distortion/stealth and just finish them.
Overal, i feel quite comfortablr in team fights, there may be more enemies than me, but theres always my team mates to back me up. Its just a matter of knowijg what you could do with your build and practice!
This is all with a team whom i trust and know ofcourse.

Happy team fighting,
Alissah

Oh and all those tells are much harder to see on tiny asuras which is what most players play in PvP, because apparently Anet devs had never played PvP in an MMO before designing this game.

@Kravick.4906 thx for such detailed reply buddy. I’m doing what you said – lvling all 9 professions. I’ll keep an eye for all those spells and their animations.

@Phaeton.9582 I like idea and several smaller bursts rather then (wow style) single make or break burst (or CC chain).

Being aware of cooldowns is super important, EVEN More important because if you get good at fighting classes you can dodge key abilities. Every class has a handful of go to moves that if you dodge successfully your odds of winning vs them goes up an awful lot.

All good suggestions here. Another key one, especially for any classes that put regeneration or heal over times on themselves, save a poision for when you notice this buff on them. That way you reduce the effectiveness of the heal by a massive amount (33%)!

gesho.9468:

it was not good, burst in wow, but i’m not going to talk about wow.

it’s just, in gw2, i cant see any “burst phase”. all boons are 3-5 sec and so are all stuns.

one of the key skill in wow pvp was to be aware of enemy cooldowns and know when to cc, that’s where the edge of high skill was.

is this mechanics present in gw2?

ps: still trying to learn animations for spell telegraphs

Every class is different and every fight is different. You’ll find that knowledge of classes and deciphering builds via utilities/weapon sets is extremely important. Once you can do that you’ll understand what that person is intending to do and how to beat him.

I’m not too familiar with WoW, but GW2 fights can be anywhere between 1v1s and 5v5 team fights. High level play revolves around strategy, rotations and winning fights. What you mentioned in your original post is probably the most basic of skills required to play well.

I dont feel like people playing an asura have an advantage in combat… After you identified their build and have enough experience to predict their movements and actions, size just doesnt matter. Seeing thr animations is only for knowijg if your predictions were right.
I think thr “burst phase” is even more harsh than in WoW (talking about 1vs1 here). In gw2 if you fail to mitigate a perfect burst, t can literally be over in 2 seconds. Unless youre uber tanky i guess… But in y oppinion bunkers dont have a place in 1vs1s.
I know some very good players who play asura. I also know some very good players who play norn.
I havent played WoW but ive seen some duels and team fights there… It all seems very slow compared to gw2, even the bursts, thats just an oppinion ofcourse.

Considering I have very low reflexes, I just build my characters so that they can resist bursts from single enemies.

When you have more than 2700 armor, over 2000 hp (on warrior I have 25k) or protection procs, you are pretty much unburstable.

If you manage to still get high damage, you are a pro builder.

And you deserve to kick those stupid glass cannons where sun doesn’t shine.XD