Guild Wars 2

Hello. I play solo in ranked arenas, and lately it happened quite few times to be with a team where one (or even two!) people were camping the home point. Not just engineers with turrets but all professions, it just seem that some people think that this is a good idea. The way I see it , it results them to spend most time doing nothing to help the team as they just standing there with no enemies around and the rest we are 4v5. Most of the times I tried to politely suggest that this doesn’t help I have been called noob, idiot, that I don’t know what defence means , useless because we couldn’t keep the middle point (it was a situation 3v5 because the other two were just standing on home point) etc. Is there some kind of tactic that I don’t understand because to me that more damages than helps the team

You should have told them “Rotation > Defense (afking at home).”

You’re absolutely right: it’s a terrible tactic. I play the game only since the beginning of 2014, so I remember clearly what learning the strings of conquest is like. It’s an evolution in three phases.

1) The “zerg”, or “hotjoin” phase. PvP is about killing people, so you run to every point where a fight is happening, even if it means jumping on the far node when 3 foes are on respawn. Slightly (but only slightly) more experienced players will then tell you things like: “dude, you need to stay on the nodes, l2p WvW scrub”. Which leads the new player into phase 2.

2) The “sedentary” phase. You understood that nodes are important, so you begin camping on them. Even when you’re a thief. If you don’t want to improve, you then crate an engineer, slot turrets and go to the top on the LB. If you want, you finally go to the final phase.

3) The “rotations” phase. You learn what your build can do, where you should be, and what to expect from your teammates. A lot of progression is yet to be made at that point, but no matter how good or bad this type of player is, we all have fun playing with him, because it’s the only way it really feels like you’re in a team game.

You just happened to be teamed with someone still in phase two.

I’ve lately ran into more who insist on home camping than before – even when telling them go rotate, I usually get other teammates who side with the camper. Granted It was just 3 games in the past few weeks. Meh.

In solo Q, it is very difficult to coordinate who goes home and does what. Even then there is issue with different maps having different distance from mid to home node, and then the party’s composition, and then the opponent’s comp. It also depends on whether your team is winning the mid fight, how many opponents are at mid, which classes are at mid, and so forth.
Without communication, sitting at home watching mid/home node is the safest method because it would guarantee you at least 1 node. Now in case of turret engi, since they can’t do anything without their turrets, the situation is completely different. But in case of cele classes such as shoutbow, d/d ele, and cele engi, they should go mid and help out after capping in an ideal case.
But again, without communication, party comps, and player skills in equation, there is no perfect way to describe rotation in every single situation. Nowadays with people only want to play mesmer/thief/ranger on solo Q matches, I’m actually happy to see some people going home instead of me.

You need to learn and gather more experience if you think sitting on home is a good idea. All maps in ranked rotation allows you to see crossers if you pay attention to respawns. A lot of players don’t do this. It’s also detrimental to hold back a player for team fights and crossing over to their home point. It’s also a good way to set them up for the ability to zerg.

If you don’t camp home then Garden of Spirit will cap it!

They just don’t know about the 4v5 problem, or the 3v4 problem if there is a fight at far point. Maybe they will learn, maybe not.

Personally, I find “1v1, no help far” heroes way more useless and annoying to play with.

When I queue alone, I’ll sometimes be forced into a role I shouldn’t have because random comp lacks better candidate or simply teammates are not clever enough. So sometimes I’ll do the dirty job as profession really not into point holder’s job like Necromancer and then find myself stuck, because if, on khylo for example, you leave close undefended as such slow and immobile profession to help your random team at mid, even a blind, slow-thinking thief will notice it and manage to run through the map and decap it even though you’re already on way back.

Soloq has it’s own rules. People usually care for their own performance, not efectiveness of entire team.

As you win more and mmr gets higher, you will see less and less people who do that.

lighter.2708:

As you win more and mmr gets higher, you will see less and less people who do that.

Do we? Can’t/doesn’t the MMR match us with lower players if our total/team MMR equals or is close to the opposite team’s?

lighter.2708:

As you win more and mmr gets higher, you will see less and less people who do that.

That’s not true because then you get matched up with people with lower MMR and force to carry them. The only thing you can do is find a team and practice over and over or somehow get into pvp circle of high players.

I lost far more matches because people ‘rotate’ too much than because of someone stayed at home all match.

Rym.1469:

Personally, I find “1v1, no help far” heroes way more useless and annoying to play with.

When I queue alone, I’ll sometimes be forced into a role I shouldn’t have because random comp lacks better candidate or simply teammates are not clever enough. So sometimes I’ll do the dirty job as profession really not into point holder’s job like Necromancer and then find myself stuck, because if, on khylo for example, you leave close undefended as such slow and immobile profession to help your random team at mid, even a blind, slow-thinking thief will notice it and manage to run through the map and decap it even though you’re already on way back.

Soloq has it’s own rules. People usually care for their own performance, not efectiveness of entire team.

You do realize if you’re not a shoutbow or ele you’re not really supposed to be holding down points in team fights?

Engineer (non-turrets) can only bunk a node for certain lengths of the time against a lot of stuff before having to let something go neutral to continue fighting. Think most other stuff falls into the same boat.

My issue with 100% bunking home is if your team happens to lose a fight at mid and gets wiped it allows snowballing. If a thief happens to decap/cap home and you win the midfight it is easier to get back.

Teams lose so many matches by giving the other team free neut or full cap on home point. You always have to defend your home point (except sometimes when they zerg it).
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean sitting on it. But you still have to keep an eye on it and defend it in time.

Oh well; matchups can be terrible at times. Sometimes you even have a terrible streak of matchups. Like today (well; today as in this evening/night) I’ve lost most of my matches and couldn’t really do much about it.

Example 1: Foefire. I was outnumbered no matter where I went. We lost hard, and I had no clue what my team was doing. On the other hand, our opponents even had a Warrior from oRNG in their team (I hope I’ve spelled that right). Meaning me, a guildie +3 clueless people got matched up vs 1 WTS-winner +4 people who seemed to be quite good actually (their ranger for example was pewpew but he seemed to be quite smart about positioning and stuff).

Example 2: Temple. We are leading. At one point we even had all three capture points (iirc). At one point, I was running to mid who was in enemy hands, and all three of the opposing players ran to ferocity when I simply walked past them and freely capped mid (meaning they must have been… bad xD). I also got us stillness. Yet, we somehow magically managed to lose.

Ooooooor then (generally) those matches with 3 turret-engies in the opposing team. Or 3 pewpew-rangers. Not much you can do; even less if you have people in your team who die super-quickly all the time. Or like another recent matchup where you have a 2vs4 on home that turns into 1vs4… the whole thing went on for like a minute or two actually (most of it 2vs3 and then vs4 of couse… I’m not claiming to hold my own alone for long vs multiple opponents xD)… but then you look at the map and your opponents STILL have the two other points capped… and you just wonder what the heck is the rest of your team doing. T_T

Note to all: If you insist on just staying on a point all game and not moving, at least do it on mid or far. Ideally far since most pug opponents will tunnel vision on that point all game.

I don’t know about home, but I’ll rush far point and camp that because 90% of the time the enemy is dumb enough to come and try to 1v1 me for 60 seconds while I already own the point.

And frankly, its fun to have people come and throw their (soon to be) dead body at you over and over because they saw a “pro” do it.

Not sure if this a trolling post or not. That being said it seems the same ones that complain about someone guarding a point are the same ones that complain when no one does.

Yup do as opener says. I love those free decaps of your home point:>

SobeSoul.6910:

My issue with 100% bunking home is if your team happens to lose a fight at mid and gets wiped it allows snowballing. If a thief happens to decap/cap home and you win the midfight it is easier to get back.

An understandable concern. But if your opponent has couple of competent brawler (well-rounded sustain and damage builds) in mid and a thief with sufficient map awareness, the thief will decap your home (with or without capping) and quickly get back to mid to assist their group. With high sustain celestial meta dominating pvp, it’ll take couple of good zerker fighters to remove those sticky brawlers before the thief gets back. Ofc there will be change in strategy based on your comp, for example if you guys have too many glass cannons then opponent thief will try to take out those instant pressures before leaving their brawler to handle the rest. Such strategy are usually used because thief has superior mobility but alright team fight capabilities, particularly in 3v3 or above. Its better to utilize a profession’s strength right?

Elia.7193:

Most of the times I tried to politely suggest that this doesn’t help I have been called noob, idiot, that I don’t know what defence means , useless because we couldn’t keep the middle point

I think I know which player you have met. Ignore her she is a troll. Even her being in the top of the grind-list which is called leaderboard does not mean she knows much about pvp.

Lexiceta.4156:

Not sure if this a trolling post or not. That being said it seems the same ones that complain about someone guarding a point are the same ones that complain when no one does.

Surely is not trolling, is discussion about tactics

Shylock.4653:

Elia.7193:

Most of the times I tried to politely suggest that this doesn’t help I have been called noob, idiot, that I don’t know what defence means , useless because we couldn’t keep the middle point

I think I know which player you have met. Ignore her she is a troll. Even her being in the top of the grind-list which is called leaderboard does not mean she knows much about pvp.

It seems that lately happens more often than before, people camping at home point and if I comment about it, sometimes they agree and rotate but most of the times they either ignore either getting frustrated and start calling me idiot etc. Well i guess is part of entering solo , that the team will not always agree but it would be nice if could agree at least on basic thinks like rotation and not camping on a point when there is no enemy around

Royal.2693:

Teams lose so many matches by giving the other team free neut or full cap on home point. You always have to defend your home point (except sometimes when they zerg it).
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean sitting on it. But you still have to keep an eye on it and defend it in time.

Many soloQ games have been lost by going nuts deep into mid only to get 2 capped despite killing everyone. By the time you get back to home, they’re off respawn and now your team is in a very bad position.

To me its always been simple.

If you have 2 points and home is one of them, camp home.
If you have 1 point and that is home well then kitten it, if you have to camp it the match is already lost.

It’s a map awareness problem. If you play against or with certain players, you also learn their rotation habit and predict their actions as well. That would call for tactics such as watching beach, escorting home, pushing far for side nodes or backcapping and rotate. The higher the pvp level, the more often you see players going for snowballing and playing three nodes. If your team has competent fighters, prioritize team fight over defending nodes and rotate as soon as your team is able to kill an enemy. Match the numbers elsewhere. If your team has decent bunkers, prioritize rotations: bunkers go to where the big team fight is while one team member can roam around to watch over two other nodes or spawn camp. I rarely see a whole team overcommiting on side nodes. Even if there is a stalemate 5v5 at mid, at some points, one would rotate and backcapping the enemy team’s home to force rotation. Normally the match is in your favor when you win team fights at mid and force it at the enemy’s home point.

Seems to be some confusion, as to how the game is played in regular ranked games the player objective is map impact i.e. capping, decapping etc. However in tournament play the player objective is kills, kills lead to caps. When you play a tourny style solo against a reg ranked team you will probably lose kills mean less than map impact. In this enviroment guarding a point is a good idea not to mention a safe one.

Actually when it is all solo players or a lot of fairly low rated players having someone sit on home close to all match is a pretty valid strategy. All talk of rotations and hedging and stuff like that go right out of the window with some people in solo queue and noobs. If you can control home for the whole match you most likely be able to control one of the other two points for enough of the match to win. Also, with solo’s and partial groups far gets rushed way more often then with full teams of experienced players. With experienced layers the middle point is the most important point but in my experience with solos its not that important at all in a lot of matches. Sadly solo queue is like a different game a lot of the time. I wish I could make some of these noobs sit on home all match they can’t do anything else right and at least they would provide fog of war so the better players/rotators would be able to see what is hitting home instead of running around in the middle of the map or far point dieing over and over again and rallying people with deaths and doing other foolish things. The way some of you talk I question if you play much rated arena solo at all…….

You camp points if your comp is bunkerish and the enemy has many mobile burst builds like thieves, pewpew rangers, mesmers etc.

Lexiceta.4156:

Seems to be some confusion, as to how the game is played in regular ranked games the player objective is map impact i.e. capping, decapping etc. However in tournament play the player objective is kills, kills lead to caps. When you play a tourny style solo against a reg ranked team you will probably lose kills mean less than map impact. In this enviroment guarding a point is a good idea not to mention a safe one.

No top team has a player AFK at home all game. It is about rotation, not AFK. You should know that.

Elia.7193:

Hello. I play solo in ranked arenas, and lately it happened quite few times to be with a team where one (or even two!) people were camping the home point. Not just engineers with turrets but all professions, it just seem that some people think that this is a good idea.

If it’s not a turret engi then it’s probably just a turret engi doing their daily for another profession.

Camping home point isn’t a bad idea really. But when it comes to spawn camping, that’s just horrible.