Guild Wars 2

I am bad at 1v1. And when I say bad, I mean, really, really bad.

To be fair, my contribution to a large zerg also is questionable at best, and I am an albatross to any small group.

I am reminded of this every time I run into anyone else when I am alone in WvW. I play a warrior, which is a class that I know in the hands of a good player should be able to hold its own against any other class in a solo fight. But I will die to literally anything, unless the other person is worse than me in every way (which is unlikely in practice, since if they are that bad they probably just run away before I ever see them).

I am wondering if spending some time dying over and over and over in sPvP every day would make me any better at 1v1 and team fights in WvW. Or is the meta different enough that the setups and skills don’t overlap much? Will I learn as much (eventually) from just sticking to WvW, or should I consider “cross training” in sPvP to try and develop some sort of “fundamentals” as well?

Welcome to GW2.

All of us had to start somewhere.

If you have yopur armour,build,traits,keybinds all set up , you can start straight away at WvW.

The best way is to roam with a buddy or in a small group. You do not need sPvP to be a star player.

When many of us started in GW2 during beta, we had no clue what traits and builds were good ,etc. Now you have that (Just ask for help from the warrior board if you do not have one.)

It took many folk 3 months to start to know what to do. GW2 doesnt have a steep learning curve and not every player is as good as another player even with the same exposure.

The important thing is to roam, make friends, go in small groups and improve from there forth.

Compared to other MMOs with 3 sided warfare, gw2 isnt hard. But no sweat. Go have fun and dont give up.

Worse case scenario, maybe melee tank isnt your thing, some love magic, and that might be your hidden talent.

Good luck and have fun

-Fuz

In WvW you spend a lot of time just running around looking for that good fight, so it takes longer to learn the mechanics. Not to mention, gear scaling and certain food/runes/sigils in WvW makes things even more imbalanced.

In spvp, you are instantly in the action and it’s more centered around small fights, so you get to know each classes flaws and counters much easier because of the constant fighting. Everyone has the same gear choices and it’s much more balanced in stats. You are fighting on equal ground. However, there are certain builds that work in one and not the other and in different situations.

I would say keep practicing in wvw. Spvp is very different from wvw. You may not be able to accurately re-create your build and that stats will always be different. Spvp could be good practice but just doing wvw will be the best imo

For reference, here is my build.

Nothing fancy; based roughly on the standard Warrior front liner / melee trainer or “worker” build I found on intothemists and a couple of WvW guild sites. I tried to pick something that is as widely used and simple to operate as possible. Doesn’t mean I’m any good at running it, obviously. I do manage to not die a bit more often than I did when I first started, so there’s that.

Yes. 1v1 and 2v1 fights almost always boil down to timing and situational awareness. The builds between the two frequently do not transfer but many of the skills certainly do. sPvP is also an accelerated way to learn counter timing against other classes. After enough time, you will begin to see the patterns fighters use in their skill progressions.

Another and often better method is an organized WvW fight night. Show up, bow to your opponent and proceed to wail on each other until someone goes down. Repeat until your fingers bleed.

warriorjrd.8695:

I would say keep practicing in wvw. Spvp is very different from wvw. You may not be able to accurately re-create your build and that stats will always be different. Spvp could be good practice but just doing wvw will be the best imo

There are a lot of factors to what value you get out of Spvp… if you like roaming you get a lot of value out of recognizing skills, builds, and tells from people you are fighting, which is something that is critical in spvp to be successful. Aside from that I would agree with what you are saying.

There are a lot of good spvp builds (like Decap builds) that make no sense and provide no value at all in WvW, beyond trolling people. The stat cap is also quite different.

Large scale fighting gets practically no value from spvp, as the metrics are completely different.

Small scale fights yeah it will help. Large groups no. In all honesty if your not good and your looking to get good, the best option is to play alot of WvW. Try to find some pub commanders who are willing to share and learn. As you get better, try to find a WvW centric guild. I personally feel that the best way to truly get good at WvW is to start with small scale fights, preferably solo roaming. It will teach you alot of the core fundamentals that alot of zerglings and guildies just never figured out.

The best thing to do is find some people who you can play regularly with and who can give advice, both allies and opponents. Whether this is in WvW or sPvP really doesn’t matter, the important thing is to be able to get feedback, and to be able to watch closely what your allies/opponents do to succeed. sPvP is probably easier to set this up in, but if you can make some good contacts on another server to get sparring matches with then doing that will be far better than random matches in hotjoin.

Almost nobody in GW2 learnt what they know just from looking at the traits and thinking really hard. 99% of what everyone knows comes from looking at what their allies do, what their opponents do, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t work.

Another very important thing is to try playing other classes. If you don’t know what tricks your opponent might have up their sleeve, then you can’t know what the right thing to do is.

I would also add that if you have the capability to record your gameplay to watch it again later, that is by far the best way to improve. Often you lose a fight and think “wtf just happened, I don’t even know what…..”, but then you watch it back and it’s quite obvious what happened and what you did wrong.

Fuzzion.2504:

Worse case scenario, maybe melee tank isnt your thing, some love magic, and that might be your hidden talent.

My gear was the same when I first started in WvW, except that I went with longbow / rifle at first. I managed to hang in the back and die closer to the end than the beginning of most fights. I picked off a few kills here and there and sometimes managed to land pin down and stop a target from getting away while others finished them off.

But, other than when burning down champs with the rifle, it felt like a super cheese build, and I felt like I was adding almost nothing to most fights. I also had zero chance of beating anyone that actually engaged me (which, to be fair, is not really any different now).

Our guild uses a custom arena to teach new players how to fight. We have our best players for each class as sparring partners. We set up a rotation and each trainer / sparring partner goes into voip with the trainee. After three rounds of the trainee being downed the trainer will discuss key skills that are being used to defeat the trainee and the specific responses that should be used. We also set a observer above the fight to comment. Once the trainee has defeated or survived a match with a sparring partner then they move to the next trainer. This allow people the opportunity to see the strengths of each class and how to counter or avoid the most dangerous aspects of them.

Ragnar.4257:

Often you lose a fight and think “wtf just happened, I don’t even know what . . . .”, but then you watch it back and it’s quite obvious what happened and what you did wrong.

To be fair, most of the time when I’m on the winning side of a fight I say the same thing. Especially in large team fights, I hear what the commander is saying and try to follow their lead, and I try to stick close to the blue triangle, but it’s always such a huge furball that for 90% of the time I have no idea what is actually happening.

Heezdedjim.8902:

Fuzzion.2504:

Worse case scenario, maybe melee tank isnt your thing, some love magic, and that might be your hidden talent.

My gear was the same when I first started in WvW, except that I went with longbow / rifle at first. I managed to hang in the back and die closer to the end than the beginning of most fights. I picked off a few kills here and there and sometimes managed to land pin down and stop a target from getting away while others finished them off.

But, other than when burning down champs with the rifle, it felt like a super cheese build, and I felt like I was adding almost nothing to most fights. I also had zero chance of beating anyone that actually engaged me (which, to be fair, is not really any different now).

If your running a rifle in a zerg/guild, its pretty much a cheese build. The only reason for running a rifle is to assassinate enemy eles, but that isn’t really widespread because warriors can bring so much more to the table with other weapon sets.

Yes.

Despite the gear/buffs/food/landscape differences between the two, sPvP will teach you the basics of timing your skills/dodges effectively, and the basics of movement and positioning as defensive tools. Oh and using obstacles (trees, rocks, buildings etc) on the map as defence against ranged classes/skills.

You won’t learn anything from zergball 1 mashing and tagging downed players for loot (don’t get me wrong, I love this)

SPvP will definitely make you a better player.

Heezdedjim.8902:

For reference, here is my build.

Nothing fancy; based roughly on the standard Warrior front liner / melee trainer or “worker” build I found on intothemists and a couple of WvW guild sites. I tried to pick something that is as widely used and simple to operate as possible. Doesn’t mean I’m any good at running it, obviously. I do manage to not die a bit more often than I did when I first started, so there’s that.

I would try a different build/traits, and use different sigils(you know they do not stack right?). And also use different weapons., I never see any war running with axe/warhorn.

a ptv shout warrior build wont do a thing to any decent roamer, find a roaming build and another gear set

Depends on what you want to do in WvW. sPvP will help you mostly with small scale combat, though you have to recognize that you wouldn’t be running the same build. General combat skills will translate, though (for small scale). For larger scale WvW combat, the sPvP skills you acquire will still transfer a little but but not quite as much. In terms of WvW tactics and paths to go and other things to do, sPvP would not translate in any way. I’d suggest just sticking to WvW unless you already have a very good feel for WvW overall at which point it’d be okay to try some more sPvP to improve your combat skills.

thaooo.5320:

SPvP will definitely make you a better player.

Not really at WvW though. Its very different fighting against someone in WvW and someone in sPvP. The meta builds arent even close in stats, especially for the extremes you will meet while roaming (such as theives in full zerker stealth builds). The tactics you counter them with in sPvP is impossible in WvW because you’re going to be dead before you realize it.

The only real way to become better at WvW… is playing more WvW. Mastering a profession mean going through each and every build. Mastering your enemy mean going through each and every of their builds. If you’re really bad at 1v1, cant kill anything and you’ve already gone through your profession at depth… Just stop torturing yourself. Pick another and try again.

If you plan on doing hardcore wvw skill groups than yes it would. Especially when skill groups run in sizes 10-15 where you’re facing groups 2-3 times your size. At that point, there is pretty much no room for error from anyone, which is why someone who is spvp savy will already have enough combat sense to keep up the momentum and not screw up. People who just jump right into wvw don’t have this combat sense, because all they do is really run with the blob, unless they are roamers, which is similar to spvp style combat. However if you plan on just following whatever zerg is running that day, then you don’t need to worry about 1v1 type fights.

Trying to roam if you’re new, fresh etc. imo is worst idea ever. There are any players on WvW who just try to get somewhere and don’t want to fight, there are “havoc” teams, small-party roamers, eople who are very clueless and provide no challange. On the other side, you may find players which are almost professional roamers with strong meta builds/stat creep who will probably swoop you like a mop on the floor.

Yes, the best place to learn about your class vs. player, get basics of combat, try out new builds and stat combinations without a need to waste money (!!!) is sPvP.

For start, If I were you, I’d look at all traits and weapons, their cooldowns, wiki things you don’t understand. Then try to make your own builds. They may not work perfectly, but you’ll try all the stuff out. Jumping right into most popular meta build will teach you nothing about class itself. Look at the forums, ask for help vs. each class if needed. Start from hotjoin, focus on learning other classes, popular specs.
If you’re curious about certain player, you can always jump into “spectator mode” and inspect his gear, traits etc. by clicking on his name and icon near it. You can try spectating in 1v1 custom arenas after.
It should give you basics of gameplay. Then, just ask around and conatact players who do a lot of WvWvW.

SkylightMoon.1980:

If you plan on doing hardcore wvw skill groups than yes it would. Especially when skill groups run in sizes 10-15 where you’re facing groups 2-3 times your size.

I watched the video that was posted about that guy Sacrx hitting 250k kills. I just . . . wow . . . yeah. I do not have any ambition to ever run with a group at that level. Even watching the video and not being in the fight at all, I can’t understand more than about 1 word in 10 of what the guy is even saying, let alone what he’s trying to do.

Listening to some people on TS yesterday, one of the commanders said Sacrx actually calls almost nothing except basically “here” or “on me,” because the players he runs with are all so good already they don’t need to be told what to do, and half the time they don’t even need to be told where to do it; so most of it is just him yelling when they screw up.

My goal is just to get to the point where I’m no less useless than the average warrior in a team fight on even numbers.

There are a couple of guilds that I see running groups almost every time I am on, so I think I’m going to try to find one that takes new players, tries to run some organized groups, and does stuff like fight clubs to help people skill up.

The couple that I have run into so far (on SoR) that people say welcome new players, or that I’ve heard making open invites on TS are Hel and HIRE. Both seem to have some good commanders, among those I have run with. If anyone knows of other guilds on SoR that might be a good fit I’d welcome any other suggestions.

Dawdler.8521:

thaooo.5320:

SPvP will definitely make you a better player.

Not really at WvW though. Its very different fighting against someone in WvW and someone in sPvP. The meta builds arent even close in stats, especially for the extremes you will meet while roaming (such as theives in full zerker stealth builds).

And that is exactly why sPvP helps to become a better player.

In sPvP the fights are quick to come by, in wvw a good fight is relatively few and far between, meaning you can practice at a constant speed in sPvP.

In wvw, there are people looking for map completion, people looking for dailies, people running to their zerg, and seasoned roamers. None of these are ideal for learning the basics of self reliant combat.

Instead of a new player being 2 hit by some cheese thief, in sPvP he will be able to learn how to deal with it on a progressive level.

SPvP has no stat creep, no food, no borderland bloodlust, no guard stacks, which means a player can focus on learning the core of the game/classes, and then worrying about the pve/wvw stat creep later. Trying to handle everything at once as a new player is a futile attempt.

Yes the builds can be different (slightly), but that means nothing when it comes to learning the basics of the game.

SPvP also allows for ease of testing different builds. If you want to test a different build in wvw you’re going to have to get new weapon and armour stats and runes, all of which are costly or time consuming, sPvP is instant.

You won’t ever find a good roamer in wvw who does not play sPvP, they go hand in hand.

The answer is YES. You need to use the filter to play matches that has 5 or less players on each side. Do this and it will make you better at WvW. But know that skills and gear in spvp are not the same as WvW so it’s not a direct transfer. For example thieves are a lot tougher in WvW than they are in spvp. But if you are starting out spvp is the best way to climb the learning curve.

I will say for myself, playing sPvP for sure helped me improving my skills and my build, a lot will come here and say that a good build for sPvP may not be good on WvW, thats true but you can make a lot of tests there, not the same stuff but very similar.

And if you have time and patience try all classes, play then all, learn how each one works… it will help you a lot, sPvP helps you with that as you dont need to level a classes to have all skills and traits.

sPvP is a good place to learn small fights really well, but also consider dueling. It’s pretty common to find players dueling in Obsidian Sanctum in the large arena area.

The benefit of this is that you can get a good feel for your durability/damage potential since you’ll be playing in your WvW gear instead of sPvP gear.

Best advices I can tell you is
1) record yourself playing – analyse the videos
2) get with a friend either in sPvP (if on same server), or in WvW/EoTM, if on opposing servers / opposed colors.
Duel together while on vocal and after each match, discuss what you both did. Maybe ask your friend to do a slow motion of his bursts explaining each step as he does them. Helped me tremendously when a mesmer guildie did this with me. Still getting killed by them :p, but at least I understand how and have a fair chance.

3) Duel in OS – depending on the servers, many there are pretty nice and helpful, we’d group, duel, then we say what we think the other did great / bad… really helps too.

4) For zerg – Know the basics.
With duels, you will learn how to better use your skills instead of burning through them. In zerg, you need the same reactivity in placement and skills/dodges use. But since you are not reactig to what a songle ennemy is doing, reading is on another scale (eg: pop stability when something will stop you – immunity when you have to stay in ennemies AoE’s, and so on)
You will need practice to get to really stick to the commander, and as an heavy, melee, this is the most important part of playing in zergs. I often advise to beginners to just not lose sight of the tag. If they can’t do that and hit, just don’t hit… bad at the beginning, but more beneficial in the long run…

About not understanding what goes on in fights, the more vids you look at, the more fight you take part in, the more you will understand.

The basic mechanics are a pre-combat buff phase, where the bus stacks might (gardians, staff#4 + combo [fire field and explosions]).
Then the buses collides, and the commander will try to get people to burst (get as much damages out as possible) on a precise point to kill some ennemies.
After that there is a small heal phase (combo water/explosion), rebuff phase and back to combat.

All through that, you will have different classes doing different things (gardians passing in tome, wars using rez banner, casters harassing the ennemy bus in the repack/heal/buff phase, and so on)

The more experienced the group is, the faster the buff/burst/heal phases are chained. At some point, like with RG, the phases are all on the fly… might, heals, burst, all are there almost all the time, with no distinctive phase, so it might not be as easy to get to understand as a newbie.

TL;DR version
Improving personnal skill is going to help you in zerg by the better use of you skills, but reading of when to use skills in bus is far from the same as in duels.
You have better chances to get buffs and heals, thus survive, by sticking to your lead all through combat.

Heezdedjim.8902:

I am bad at 1v1. And when I say bad, I mean, really, really bad.

To be fair, my contribution to a large zerg also is questionable at best, and I am an albatross to any small group.

I am reminded of this every time I run into anyone else when I am alone in WvW. I play a warrior, which is a class that I know in the hands of a good player should be able to hold its own against any other class in a solo fight. But I will die to literally anything, unless the other person is worse than me in every way (which is unlikely in practice, since if they are that bad they probably just run away before I ever see them).

I’m with ya and feel your pain brother………

I’m kinda’ in the same boat with my warrior it started out as a very glassy build and my first experiences in WvW were bad, 1v1 I got killed quickly and left me going wtf warriors are suppose to be easy winners, well glassy builds will get you killed if your inexperienced, granted if I could get a couple good hits in before being downed I could win some fights in a 1v1 setting, but 1v2 or 1v3 I was just a loot bag waiting to be taken.

While I’m studying builds for my warrior I started playing my GS mesmer who was pretty much built from scratch to run in WvW last year, she needs a little updating but has worked out pretty well, survivability is like night and day, sure she is more of a ranged fighter but much more forgiving for me to play while I learn tactics and in a 1v1 fight I can hold my own and win most of the time, the funny thing is playing my warrior it seemed like I was one of the first picked out of the crowd to kill but the mesmer I can hang back do a lot of ranged damage and get loot bags dropped at my feet… pretty sweet, but I do still die, it’s to be expected that while learning you are gonna’ die a lot and it’s ok as long as you learn something from the experience and it makes you a better player.

The one thing I’ve learned is that what has worked fine in PvE doesn’t really work in WvW, be it builds or tactics, sure dodging/rolling is basically the same but fighting a enemy player vs a npc be it vet or champ can not compare with a live player on the other end of a fight, experience counts but your gotta’ die to get it.

Heezdedjim.8902:

I am wondering if spending some time dying over and over and over in sPvP every day would make me any better at 1v1 and team fights in WvW. Or is the meta different enough that the setups and skills don’t overlap much? Will I learn as much (eventually) from just sticking to WvW, or should I consider “cross training” in sPvP to try and develop some sort of “fundamentals” as well?

YES

PvP is the best way to get better. the fights are slower due to damage reduction allowing it to be easier to get the basics down. It also allows you to learn the class basics for nearly every class. Here are a few things you should try while training in sPvP

keybinds: mess around with these see what works well. personally e is my heal and q is my dodge because those are the things I don’t want to be slow at using.

Conditions: seeing them and removing them when necessary. Often when fighting a condi class you must be able to remove conditions well. ie Engineer you have rocket boots and healing turret as your only condition removal and have cripple, imobilize, chill, bleeding and poison on you. (I hate necros that do this) Your first reflex may be to use healing turret in panic then removing only 2 conditions, but with practice you learn rocket boots will clear all the chill cripple and immobilize and then you can use healing turret to remove the other two conditions

dodging: practice getting out of red circles to avoid huge AoE damage and whenever you use a dodge make sure it says evade at least once, if not you basically wasted a dodge.

Surviving: failure to survive in a zerg fight rallies enemies so even when full glass spec always know how to position yourself in comparison to enemies to survive (use line of sight for attacks and stuff).

Stun breakers: sometimes when you are out of dodges you get stunned and the enemy gets free damage on you this is when you should use stun breakers.

for all of these things start in sPvP and then go to WvW and do them, you will be a better player.

sPvP is a good way to learn how all the classes work at a basic level and start to learn a few really well.

Fights in WvW, whether it’s 1v1 or 20v40 are quite different though for many reasons.

1. Equipment stats are much higher in WvW, most notably precision, critical damage, condition damage, and condition duration. Battles with thieves that crit every hit with fury and have over 100% critical damage, necros and engis that have over 2000 condition damage and 60%+ duration. Warriors and guardians can easily spec to have over 3,000 armor while still having considerable attack power. Whatever the balance is with sPvP equipment, it simply does not exist in WvW is what I’m getting at.

2. In 1v1s, there’s nothing to prevent the other player from simply running away if they are able, so that’s one of the reasons thieves and warriors are so popular for roaming, because they can run away or close on runners easily. Then there’s the stealth mechanic that doesn’t quit work either with no trade-off for cap point contribution like sPvP, and confined paths where it’s easier to control refuge.

3. In large battles, player skill is almost a non-factor. It’s way more important to listen, stay on the leader, use your skills correctly when called for, and not die. The only individual skills you’ll even notice in the blob of particle effects are things that are completely obvious like earthshaker, wards, big ol’ bomb, a huge stack of marks, etc. Even then you will mostly be using skills reactivly.

Heezdedjim.8902:

For reference, here is my build.

Nothing fancy; based roughly on the standard Warrior front liner / melee trainer or “worker” build I found on intothemists and a couple of WvW guild sites. I tried to pick something that is as widely used and simple to operate as possible. Doesn’t mean I’m any good at running it, obviously. I do manage to not die a bit more often than I did when I first started, so there’s that.

that’s not a 1v1 build, it’s tanky support.
Also, traited/geared for shouts but you only have one on your bar (suggestion – replace Berserker Stance with a shout).

Try a mix of zerker in there, starting with your weapons – eg Kodanroar is pretty cheap on the TP (looks pretty good too tho will likely clip depending on your toon).

Alacrity.4312:

Also, traited/geared for shouts but you only have one on your bar (suggestion – replace Berserker Stance with a shout).

Good point. I should probably swap back to using Shake it Off + For Great Justice, which was the original utility setup I had for this build. I switched to using the two stances to try and make me more likely to survive a push through an AOE wall without dying to mass condition spam. But maybe I just need to be smarter about using my cleanses, between the warhorn skills and two shouts with Soldier runes, I guess that should be enough to clean off almost anything.

thaooo.5320:

Dawdler.8521:

thaooo.5320:

SPvP will definitely make you a better player.

Not really at WvW though. Its very different fighting against someone in WvW and someone in sPvP. The meta builds arent even close in stats, especially for the extremes you will meet while roaming (such as theives in full zerker stealth builds).

And that is exactly why sPvP helps to become a better player.

In sPvP the fights are quick to come by, in wvw a good fight is relatively few and far between, meaning you can practice at a constant speed in sPvP.

In wvw, there are people looking for map completion, people looking for dailies, people running to their zerg, and seasoned roamers. None of these are ideal for learning the basics of self reliant combat.

Instead of a new player being 2 hit by some cheese thief, in sPvP he will be able to learn how to deal with it on a progressive level.

SPvP has no stat creep, no food, no borderland bloodlust, no guard stacks, which means a player can focus on learning the core of the game/classes, and then worrying about the pve/wvw stat creep later. Trying to handle everything at once as a new player is a futile attempt.

Yes the builds can be different (slightly), but that means nothing when it comes to learning the basics of the game.

SPvP also allows for ease of testing different builds. If you want to test a different build in wvw you’re going to have to get new weapon and armour stats and runes, all of which are costly or time consuming, sPvP is instant.

You won’t ever find a good roamer in wvw who does not play sPvP, they go hand in hand.

You are correct

thaooo.5320:

You won’t ever find a good roamer in wvw who does not play sPvP, they go hand in hand.

You are wrong here – I have been roaming very effectively for 1+ years and I have like 3h total in PvP(it seemed so boring with lower stats and everything standartised). But I am one of these 1% people that look traits and theorycraft really hard for a long time, as someone said it. If you want to get better in 1v1 in WvW – go to the Obsidian Sanctum arena and duel there and if you get rolled by a player/build you find intriguing, party them and try to chat about pointers and builds. Usually the ones that go to the OS are actually the ones confident in their 1v1/small scale builds/abilities anyway. However if you want large fights – this is learned by experience, nothing else helps.

Shout hammer war isn’t fantastic for smallscale play. It can be good with the right group comp, but a healway guard will typically outshine it in groups<10.

If you want to get beter at smallscale play, you have to spec for smallscale and practice it, you can’t expect to move flawlessly between 25+ to <10/1v1. It’s a whole different ballgame.

One of the best things you can learn to do to have a better chance in smallman play is learning to dodge. What to dodge, when to dodge, how to dodge are some really basic things that a lot of players simply don’t know how to do.

The more you support sPvP, the less chance WvW has of getting the attention it deserves.

WvW and Spvp are similar and different to each other. Because they are similar, practicing in Spvp or WvW will in general make you better at general pvp and pve combat. However strategies and type of combat (especially in terms of group size and between servers) varies more in WvW than in Spvp. Although very basically every objective is a capture point in both game modes. So when it comes down to it, knowing how to use a build and profession is ultimately more important in overall combat for determining relative success.

The most important thing is: Practice Makes Perfect.

Play around and practice with builds until you find a set up that fits your play style. Its much easier to test out builds in spvp, but not everything is the same in wvw/pve.

Don’t get discouraged if you find that you die allot. We all have died while playing at some time.

I agree that its important to make friends for wvw- it will go a long way to making the game more fun.

Yes, spvp will help because when you die you won’t spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find another fight to practice with.

Only if you find some good duelists in wvw then that is better to practice, because you don’t have to worry about limited time and pvp conquest mode.

wvw:
- More camera panning
- More running (towards and away from fights)
- More time spent doing nothing and wasting food/util buffs (I just had to say it)
- on the upside you can focus and enjoy fighting for what it is, and not have to worry about points/score.

Combat can be very “extended” over long distances and varying terrain, which is very different from spvp – fighting while using freelook and judging the environment to outflank (or escape from being flanked) is a very different skillset from spvp (although it partially translates over in terms of judging which point/direction to go for based on enemy positions on the minimap).

spvp:
- instant action.
- less need for freelook, particularly when fighting on a point.
- builds are not representative of what you might run into in wvw (for example ridiculous point bunkers)

Spvp is the fastest way to improve. I leveled my necro with tomes only, and played only TeamQ with him. When I hit 80, I geared him and know I completely destroy people in WvW. Granted, I already knew how to play and know the weaknesses of many classes, but still, it took considerably less than on my engi, which I lvld through dungeon swapping and was (and still am XD) a complete crap at WvW.

Definitely go to sPvP. You get in more fights more quickly. As others have said though, you will need different specs between sPvP and WvW.

On a separate note though, you don’t really need to have 1v1 skills to enjoy WvW. Run with a group.

Yes. You learn to focus on one target in pvp and survive without any “influence” from certain wvw buffs.

At least for me it made me better than the average wvw warrior.

And you can experiment builds in pvp w/c is expensive outside pvp.

The only difference in pvp and wvw is in pvp you might feel a bit more squishy than normal.

I decided to start down this road by first wiping out all the keybindings and working out a new set based loosely on Taugrim’s guide.

The only thing I copied straight from his suggestions were the based W-E-R keys + mouse for movement and D for dodge.

The rest are laid out to put all the stuff I am constantly fumbling for onto a set of keys I can easily reach without ever leaving the movement keys or stopping moving. So auto-attack is on 3 and dodge is on D, where I can reach them directly whatever way I am moving. The other weapon abilities are laid out on 1-2 and 4-5, with the burst skill on T. Q is weapon swap, A is heal, S stun break, F stability, etc.

I think I read somewhere that getting a set of keybinds that work will literally “change your life” in terms of the way you play. And I have to say, that feels pretty true. Compared with the default layout, where I have to stop to hunt and peck all the time, this layout makes moving while doing everything else feel really natural, to the point where it’s actually easier for me to do things while moving than while stopped.

I haven’t got it all down quite yet, so I spent a while farming oakhearts in Queensdale to retrain my fingers for the new setup. As target dummies go, they’re at least good for some dodge and anti-CC practice with their annoying stun / knockdown / knockback / immobilize spam.

After I get used to the new key layout enough that I’m not hunting for things anymore, I think I may give some sPvP a try to see if I can develop some actual skills. Even though I don’t expect all of the tactics and setups to translate from sPvP to WvW, I think the fundamentals and better situational awareness will help.

I also like the idea of making some alts of other classes to try out in sPvP and get a handle on how they work from the other side, so I can start to get a better idea exactly what other classes have to work with, and how I would use it if I were them.

You can always go to Obsidian Sanctum for duels in a WvW context. No stacking sigils and no bloodlust buffs, but you can use food.

Practice here is excellent. You get to fight against really good duelists and learn how to counter different classes and builds.

Welll….

Personal combat skill in WvW is non-existent, so long as you are zerging, which the majority of the players seems to be doing.

I’m a decent PvP player, in the sense that I am good killing other players, but I don’t care a fart about point capping as it is in SPvP and TPvP. I learned things in PvP, but most of my 1v1, 2v2, 1vX experience comes from World vs. World small scale roaming.

Sure, in PvP you’ll get more duels, BUT everyone runs standard bunker builds, that are overpowered one way or another. If you want to hone your dueling aka. real PvP skills (as opposed to zerging or SPvP), then I advise you to ask a couple of friends from your guild (or maybe is there some cross-server dueling guild??), and fight them with your world vs. world builds.

Do not use the overpowered bunker builds, because they do not work in WvWvW, only in TPvP. Practise using builds you are planning to use in WvW.

Oh yes, on the topic of training…

If you want to be a pro on your class… pay attention to a couple of things:

• Your build:
  - what are the weaknesses (eg: conditions? sustained damage? burst damage? crowd control?)
  - what are the strong points (eg: good at applying condis, bursting, deception, control…)
  - what is the most succesful use in every situation
  - make sure you have high mobility (extremely important in any roaming situation)

• Enemy classes:
  - The best way to learn to fight other classes IS BY PLAYING THEM YOURSELF.
  - Learn weaknesses
  - Learn strong points (eg: when you fight a thief, continuously change direction to avoid backstabs)
  - Try to predict enemy at all times: what utilities is this player using, did he trigger, is he out of stunbreaks, is he out of condition removal?

• General:
  - Disable autotargetting, disable promoting targets, enable fast-targetting in options
  - Use your tab key or ctrl+click to target enemies
  - Dodge whenever you can when taking damage, but don’t waste your dodges if you don’t need to
  - Time your damage mitigation so you can soak up damage and render the enemy player useless after he spilled all his skills
  - Know when to run, every build/class has a counter, if you meet it, don’t let yourself be taken down like a rabbit.

Sirendor.1394:

- Disable autotargetting, disable promoting targets, enable fast-targetting in options
- Use your tab key or ctrl+click to target enemies

Thanks for all the above.

I’m curious about the targeting behavior because I didn’t realize the game had a couple of these features; fast targeting in particular. I found this page about targeting, and I wonder if anyone actually uses “manual targeting” (aiming by view with nothing selected). I didn’t know the game would do that. It sounds like from your suggestions that tab target or click to target is what most people use, rather than manual aiming.

I also see how disabling auto-target and promote-target will allow movement skills to be used for actual movement without accidentally onto a rabbit every time.

Never selected any manual targetting option, but it’s usually what happens with ranged weapons when no automatic targetting options are used.
Especially when using bows (ranger), I’m not always targetting the ennemy, wich allows me to fire in their general direction/ where I think they are going, in order to hit them (if firing at them, they just have to sidestep to avoid it)
But most of the time I click target

Really the best advice is don’t give up. I have fought 1 v 1 vs every class. In the hands of a good player every class is amazing, yes even rangers. Know that if you lose it’s on you to do better. Get a better build or play better. Chatting with players who beat me has been the best thing to improve my play. To that effect you’ll notice the good players will almost always willing to chat and give points. Once you get good pay it forward help out other players who are learning.

Dunno if it’s been said, but as you are learning don’t be ashamed to go full-bore survival. Logic being you don’t learn anything when you are dead. I do this for every aspect of the game – make sure I don’t die first, then as I learn what works I dial down the survival and dial up the DPS.

As far as structured goes it will certainly help for all the reasons already listed, and it will help you hone situational awareness, and reaction times more quickly than WvW alone can. It cranks your brain into a higher gear that will help you in every aspect of the game. Be warned though, getting used to the action in sPvP and WvW can make the PVE part of the game (if you like that part) deadly dull.

Heezdedjim.8902:

Sirendor.1394:

- Disable autotargetting, disable promoting targets, enable fast-targetting in options
- Use your tab key or ctrl+click to target enemies

Thanks for all the above.

I’m curious about the targeting behavior because I didn’t realize the game had a couple of these features; fast targeting in particular. I found this page about targeting, and I wonder if anyone actually uses “manual targeting” (aiming by view with nothing selected). I didn’t know the game would do that. It sounds like from your suggestions that tab target or click to target is what most people use, rather than manual aiming.

I also see how disabling auto-target and promote-target will allow movement skills to be used for actual movement without accidentally onto a rabbit every time.

Glad to help

Practice makes perfect. Roaming is the best way to go about it. Having a friend come with you may help, but I enjoy the “always the hard way” standard. This is personal preference, but I’d rather learn a game on it’s hardest difficulty than on easy mode. So I would suggest flipping camps/sentry’s, killing yaks, tapping keeps, scouting/upgrading towers and chasing away anyone who threatens you.
You’ll get the hang of it. The key to winning any fight is knowing your limits. Don’t get greedy trying to squeeze in that last stab when you have a sliver of health left. Pull back and attack from a distance or kite them until you can heal again.
Also, in WvW, there’s really no such thing as a fair fight. I prefer to have some honor in my encounters, but not in WvW… Win by any means necessary because at any second an enemy zerg could roll the both of you or your enemy could just keep resetting the fight until they win. So do what gets you that kill and don’t feel bad about it ( :

You should have made it a poll. And the answer is yes.

sPvP has much more fights/min, is much more personal and you don’t have a fat shield of stat creep/food/bloodlust to carry you around. So the key words are ‘personal practice’. General situation awareness, getting rid of tunnel vision, timing your actions, fight pace based on your CDs, countering opponent actions, thinking constantly about your and opponent’s builds and tactics, predicting their next move – all this plays into you getting better in any other game mode.