Guild Wars 2

Speaking from personal experience, I think the answer is definitely yes.

I would say that in terms of mechanical skill, I’ve made much bigger improvements from doing spvp/tpvp than by doing WvW.

WvW has its own meta though. There are a lot more builds and a lot of them are just as cheesy as the builds one regularly encounters in spvp/tpvp. The large scale fights require a skill set (if that’s what you want to call it) that can really only be developed by doing large scale fights.

I would say use sPvP to learn your class inside out – you will realize a lot about your strengths and weaknesses early on, but if you want to really be good you have to be very strategic. You need to know not just your class but the other ones as well. Which animations signal which moves and how that will impact you. Strategy is critical, esp when you play as a warrior because the high HP and base DPS will make most ppl think you can just run around button mashing.

Warriors imo are a class faced with a lot of challenges, and while they’ve come a long way – I’ve very rarely seen them beat mesmers and necros. Theives can give them a hard time, and ele mobility is a pain to deal with. I think it comes down to knowing the other class well enough to time your bursts so you can capitalize on openings and mistakes.

But this is just my exp. I roam on a mesmer/thief and I used to raid with one of NA’s top guilds as a warrior, and I believe if there’s 2 or more ppl with a warrior then that’s when they truly shine.

I’m really bad at sPvP too. I can’t imagine how sharpening up your 1v1 skills would benefit you in WvW unless your running roaming around looking for 1v1 fights. Which in case, why not go for sPvP instead? Doing that in WvW is usually followed by getting run over by a larger group.

Yes, you can learn to 1v1 better by playing PvP, however there are a few things to keep in mind. You should play a build that is similar to the one you will use in WvW. Playing a highly specialized build like bunker guard or decap engi which only focuses on sustain will not help you as much as playing a roaming type build. You will be able to get way more fights in the same unit of time in PvP than you will in WvW, so your overall skills will improve faster by playing PvP. PvP will also teach you the most important thing which is to anticipate the enemies actions. Example the enemy is a warrior so you know he has stability, you learn to check his effects bar and wait until stability goes away before using CC. You see an enemy guardian has a knockback skill in the downed state so you use blind block and invuln to ignore the effect. The biggest thing when fighting other players is to understand what kind of abilities they have and how to respond, and you can learn most of this in PvP (to the extent that enemies use the same skills and tactics).

Also please look at custom arenas, there are lots of 1v1 servers where people go exclusively to 1v1 and not capture points. You can practice fighting specific builds and classes if you have trouble with them.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I’m really bad at sPvP too. I can’t imagine how sharpening up your 1v1 skills would benefit you in WvW unless your running roaming around looking for 1v1 fights. Which in case, why not go for sPvP instead? Doing that in WvW is usually followed by getting run over by a larger group.

When Phelps is pulling rubber bands 100s of times in a row during workouts he doesn’t ask “why do I need to do this? This is completely different from actually competing in swimming at Olympics!”.

Intensity and your personal skill exposure in sPvP trains your “muscules”. Different game modes may require you to use these “muscles” differently, but being in shape helps regardless of tactical landscape.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I’m really bad at sPvP too. I can’t imagine how sharpening up your 1v1 skills would benefit you in WvW unless your running roaming around looking for 1v1 fights. Which in case, why not go for sPvP instead? Doing that in WvW is usually followed by getting run over by a larger group.

You should roam with a good roamer and see what the best part of WvW is. There is no better feeling than winning a 1 v 3 . If you are good at 1 v 1 you will have 0 problem surfing a zerg. As for why not just spvp, solo roaming is much much harder than 5 v5 spvp and way more fun. Also as someone else pointed out spvp is more about bunkering and hold a point where roaming is all about killing and killing fast. I can’t really explain it without writing a book just follow a good roamer for 1/2 hr and you’ll see what I mean.

Pvp and wvw builds are diferent. But you will learn to react and move. In wvw survive and move is everything. In spvp you spike down enemys and hold litle points

PvP is better for learning small scale combat. Does knowing small scale mechanics help you in large scale? One way to find out.

I’ve gone back and forth between WvW and sPvP a decent bit, and I’ve found that sPvP translates extremely well into WvW roaming, while WvW roaming on the other hand isn’t quite as beneficial. But certainly it still helps!

Regardless, all that Allie said is true

Allie Murdock.8152:

It definitely helps you to learn how your class works against others.

Even in a zerg, when you’re engaging another zerg, it can easily turn into a bunch of small skirmishes as people start to spread out.