Guild Wars 2

Hi there

I don’t know whether this belongs here or into the players helping players subforum, but I thought it makes more sense here. I’m not that dedicated to pvp, I just like to play a few rounds every now and then. I’m having trouble deciding which decision would make more sense for my team (yeah, even in spvp, which is the only thing I do, I want the team to win, preferrably with me in the top 3 players ;-) )

Story time
I’m a big bad warrior, having a sword and warhorn equipped and roam the lands until I find a nice vista where stay a while and mark my territory. While I make sure nobody would think this site belongs to anyone but me, a thief jumps out of nowhere (well – he would if it wasn’t delayed, but I see the effects which is enough).
I try to escape his cowardly, backstabbing attacks and turn to fight back, sometimes I’m to slow and the mists have to give me another chance. Most of the time though, my lightning fast reflexes kick in, I even take the time to shout something defiant and convince my body to ignore the immobilizing poison (or whatever he used). I dodge away from his spastic attacks, pull out my axe and mace and knock him on the noggin – as the great justice demands, of course. Then I start pounding on his despicable hide. when he realizes he’s got no chance against such a mighty and supreme warrior, he hides in the shadows and escapes with his tail between his legs.

what do I do now? to follow the thief, read on with option A , to proceed to cap your point, read on further down paragraph B

A) I pull out my sword and warhorn again, and call on the hunt! I follow him, jump at him whenever I can and use every skill in my repertoire to throw him out of the mists, only real heros belong here. Unfortunately, the hunt seldom succeeds – too many shadows and nooks for a coward to hide in. By now I’ve run far across the lands without seeing him anymore and the nice little spot I found before still lays unclaimed.

B) I laugh at the fleeing coward and proceed to stand strong, proving again that this space is mine. Soon after I get the rewarding feeling that this area now belongs to me! I turn around to find my next victim or strategically important area.

ok, enough story (sorry, got kinda carried away there…).
which option would you chose? doesn’t only affect thiefs ofc, every enemy which is more mobile than you or has tricks to escape puts you in the same dilemma to a certain degree (only as long as they’re visible, my leaps and cripples etc are much more effective)

should I go for the points or the (unsure) kill? the points are pretty much a sure thing, but killing an enemy puts him on cooldown for a while. and if I let him live, he usually shows up again soon after, most of the time, when I’m already fighting with someone else. and I can’t even win every 1v1, 2v1 are a sure death for me.

Question: when an enemy runs away after you showed him who’s boss, do you hunt him down or prioritize capping points over a kill you might not get? Which helps your team more? (locking him down essentially from attacking somebody else or getting the points as quick as possible)

if you’re really trying to win and there’s a nearby point that you can neutralize or cap that’s what you should do. a capped node will generate as many points as a kill in a very short amount of time, and neutralizing a node will deny that same amount of points to the enemy.

reasonable excuses for chasing the thief:

1. he appears to be running toward an undefended point you own
2. he is running toward an undefended point they own and you were going that way anyway
3. he is running toward an area that is safe for you (like toward your base on foefire) and you don’t want to go for the cap because you see (or sense) enemies coming to defend and don’t want to get caught alone
4. you’re in an 8v8 and you feel like it

In a team oriented play such as sPvP. The beefy warrior would hold the point and have his own roaming class (thief or whatever) go after the miscreant.

I think u know the answer to this one urself

I enjoyed reading this. I would tend to say stay on point, but this can be very situational. If your team can verify that the other four opponents are elsewhere, than chasing down the thief might not be such a bad idea. just make sure he doesn’t sneak around you.

Go cap the thief will be back…

thrice.9184:

Go cap the thief will be back…

yeah, after thinking about it, this was, what my brain told me to do. but if you continue the thought.. the thief/ele/mesmer will be back. it will be at a time of his choosing and not yours, which makes pretty much the whole fight, thanks to current mechanics.. I really dislike the burst possibilities generally, but this situation really depends on it.. if you leave a burster alive.. he will chose his fight and by choosing he probably will get the upper hand.. thus, killing him early on will eliminate his burst potential from the fight you will have in half a minute or so… the very short res-cooldowns tend to make this decision less decisive (if he were unavailable for 2 minutes or so after death, there would be no question)..

I’m still indecisive about whether to pursue enemies until I kill them (even if it costs myself points and I only lock down one other player) or if I just should ignore such players and hope them being alive a bit longer doesn’t have much of an influence…

this all ofc depends on whether I can kill them – I don’t pretend I can everytime.. but often enough to make me wonder..

so yes, I know, for personal points, its clearly a go cap the point.. but if I ever was to engage in a tourny.. what’s the best way to help the team? locking down an annoying burst dmg dealer, or just getting the points while leaving enemies roaming freely about?

If it is a sure kill go chase him down and if he doesn’ t have any team mates near leave him downed while you cap the point (this situation is ideal and will keep him out of the fight for a long while but can be riskier than just taking the point and defending.

Always have capping as your priority, kills are not that important.

ok, marked nurt’s post as the answer, as it gives a rule of thumb as well as reasons to deviate from it.

MindlessRuff.1948:

If it is a sure kill go chase him down and if he doesn’ t have any team mates near leave him downed while you cap the point (this situation is ideal and will keep him out of the fight for a long while but can be riskier than just taking the point and defending.

thats actually a cool idea. killing him quickly just leads to a respawn, while this can disable him a lot longer while I still get the point. the risk of him standing back up again is to be considered, but as long as he doesn’t get support from teammates its pretty manageable.

in my (limited) experience, there’s no such thing as a sure kill though. especially with thiefs or mesmers.. they have great ways of retreating, even if they blew their burst combo and didn’t get me, while I still have most of my skills at my disposal, I can’t always catch them (especially invisible thiefs, if they play halfway smart). the duration of stealth is so high, it’s usually not possible to find them before they can use the terrain to their advantage to hide.

sometimes they also seem to travel enormous distances while downed & invisible, up to a point where I simply can’t find them anymore.. I did check the skills and apart from the smoke bomb to disappear and the teleport it shouldn’t be that hard to find them again, but sometimes even if I wait for a long time (like while I’m capping the nearby point) they won’t reappear ever – meaning they stayed invisible for the entire time it took them to heal up.

so yeah, apart from the satisfaction of killing one of the more annoying classes (don’t underestimate it – after a few times of them instadowning you out of stealth while you are low on health and stomping an enemy you just beat, you need some way for payback ;-) ), it’s probably a better idea to cap the points.