Guild Wars 2

So I have only done pve so far and I think I found a class I really love, but I have questions.

What is the real difference between wvw and pvp beyond servers?

Are pvp builds just as effective for world vs world?

Do you start at level 80 on pvp and if not is it something you can level in?

Is it usually every man for himself or can you do well as a support build to help teammates?

What are fun and viable builds you might recommend for an elementalist?

And what kind of rewards do you earn?

I know its allot of queations but I would appreciate any answers thanks for reading post:)

What is the real difference between wvw and pvp beyond servers?
The builds are different. The playstyles are different. The approach is different. The focus is different.

Are pvp builds just as effective for world vs world?
Mostly for roaming.

Do you start at level 80 on pvp and if not is it something you can level in?
Yes, in pvp lobby, you have almsot everything unlocked, but pvp is not wvw.

Is it usually every man for himself or can you do well as a support build to help teammates?
It depends on the servers, the environment and if you are running with a guild.
Guilds will have more team focused builds while pugging with a pugmander will more likely be selfish builds. Though, you still have to see if the people pugging are from guilds that focus on team focused builds. So, it can be subjective depends on the crowd.

What are fun and viable builds you might recommend for an elementalist?
Usually ele play as staff, because staff rules. The other popular build will be dagger auramancer that runs with frontline.

And what kind of rewards do you earn?
Rewards tracks, badges of honor, proof of heroics, sometimes ascended from leveling wvw, sometimes precursor from guards.

What is the real difference between wvw and pvp beyond servers?
PvP is a fair fight where skill and teamwork wins the day. WvW is where noobs can feel like winners by gathering together to vastly outnumber their opponents.

Are pvp builds just as effective for world vs world?
PvP has controlled builds for balance. There is no balance in WvW, so they don’t even bother to try. Who outnumbers whom is the only thing that determines the outcome of a battle in WvW.

Do you start at level 80 on pvp and if not is it something you can level in?
Your level is maxed out for PvP and WvW, but you have to bring your own gear into WvW. PvP gives you access to balanced and fair gear.

Is it usually every man for himself or can you do well as a support build to help teammates?
There are a few objectives you can sneak around to achieve on your own, but really WvW only works when you’re in a massive mob. No one is going to notice how supportive you are in such a cluster-muck where it’s like 50 v 5.

What are fun and viable builds you might recommend for an elementalist?
Metabattle.com The only thing that is really important in WvW is movement speed. To chase down people running from your group, or to run away when you see a bigger group coming.

And what kind of rewards do you earn?
PvP and WvW both use ‘reward tracks’ for typical random stuff. Unfortunately, you’re forced to play WvW in order to build legendary weapons.

HantuDuppy.8562:

What is the real difference between wvw and pvp beyond servers? PvP is a fair fight where skill and teamwork wins the day. WvW is where noobs can feel like winners by gathering together to vastly outnumber their opponents.

PvP and WvW revolve around flavor of the month builds often unique to each game mode. Both rely on relative luck of getting players around you that actually know what to do in a fight. The only exception is noted with a numbers advantage.

HantuDuppy.8562:

Are pvp builds just as effective for world vs world?
PvP has controlled builds for balance. There is no balance in WvW, so they don’t even bother to try. Who outnumbers whom is the only thing that determines the outcome of a battle in WvW.

Basically a handful of PvE, WvW and PvP builds will be similar but ultimately changes will be made here and there to support the different play styles. WvW has a much larger base of armor/weapon stats to choose from. WvW also supports food which PvP does not. Some WvW meta builds simply cannot be built in PvP and many meta PvP builds do not perform well in WvW.

HantuDuppy.8562:

Do you start at level 80 on pvp and if not is it something you can level in?

In PvE, you use your characters level. In PvP, you and everyone else are always 80 with the same stats and ability access. In WvW if you are below 80, you are upscaled but upscaled players are at a huge disadvantage as they are generally using lessor gear and missing abilities.

HantuDuppy.8562:

Is it usually every man for himself or can you do well as a support build to help teammates?

Three basic styles of play in WvW: Large scale (zergs) prefer builds that support each other or do direct damage. Skirmish is mostly about team synergy which these days revolve around boon sharing. Roaming is typically about escape which is generally mobility or stealth coupled with spike damage or condition sustain.

HantuDuppy.8562:

What are fun and viable builds you might recommend for an elementalist?

In large scale play, staff elementalist is a cornerstone build. In skirmish and roaming, bunker tempest is king.

HantuDuppy.8562:

And what kind of rewards do you earn?
PvP and WvW both use ‘reward tracks’ for typical random stuff.

Less than PvP and certainly less than PvE but recent changes in WvW have helped up the rewards. With reward tracks, players get access to dungeon armor/weapons as well as a specific WvW armorset. Other than that it is mostly trash loot for money.

Sorry Hantu, but WvW is by far and large way more balanced than sPvP. There is absolutely cheese in WvW and such cheese definitely has no counters or is totally broken (though this is mostly a gear/rune/sigil thing going on right now since HoT gear powercreep is total BS), but pretty much anything can be made to some degree functional in WvW while in sPvP there are builds which mathematically and objectively fail to work and cannot work because of the innate imbalances in sPvP by the lower stats and forced hand-holding of character builds via the single-stat amulet system exacerbated by poorly-balanced classes/abilities game-wide.

The only aspect of “balance” in sPvP is that the meta builds are typically balanced to each other, but if you don’t play in the strict meta, you’re looking at having next to zero impact on any given game or fight because the basis for these builds is steeped heavily in mathematics which deems with very obvious conclusions that most builds are strictly not good enough.

WvW, you can ramp your stats to get what you need to scale properly and build your character to achieve a much finer level of granularity in stat selection such that no stats are wasted. Doing so increases viability of less-powerful builds. These may not be ideal, but within a reasonable level of out-playing your opponent, you can create fights which you will win which you’d otherwise not be able to do in sPvP.

Thanks for the info all, especially the last post, thats good to know wvw has room for more styles.