Guild Wars 2

Today has been the most frustating PvP matches I had,.

How exactly do you beat a team with 3-4 ham/x warriors on them? They contained points the whole time. Stunlocked the beejeezus out of us. The Stunlock was only the the icing, I run a full glass cannon build and there was an instance that 2 mesmers were attacking a single warrior and the damage mitigation was unreal.

I see a lot of immune signs, 0 damages and by the time enudre pain was gone, warrior was back almost a full hp. Healing signet was crazy.

This is not a whine/nerf thread. But how do we win a situation like that? I know PvP is a team effort but the team effort was irrelevant at that time.

It seems to me that it was a level-gap kinda scenario for me and my team for numerous maps. I was also barely doing damage.

I run an lockdown build too, i remove stability via disenchanter/arcane thievery, but before you know it, after 1-2 interrupts it was back up again.

*Also, alot of you guys have owned warriors(signet/hambow/ham/x) in the past, but when skilled also players also play it i feel it is close to impossible to win.

A team with alot of warriors combined with guardians is a tough tough fight for me. Honestly I play hotjoin/xPvP everyday, and this was the most frustrating to win. I do get top stats for my team tho, but meh..

So…What tips can you share? and what are the odds of winning?

PS: Please give advice that is close to reality, everything sounds good on paper but it is hard to apply on the fly.

Thank you very much.

The problem is two fold. Your team build is probably lacking in some areas and your team strategy against this type of team was lacking. Here’s a checklist. Do you have on your team:

1. A lot of poison on the team. (Poison really hurts Healing Signet’s effectiveness. It’s also fantastic at stopping people from ressing as quickly)
2. Ability to remove boons fairly often
3. Heavy burst characters
4. Someone who can easily hold a point (2 is enough)
5. Lots of stability
6. Reliable ways to stomp enemies (Stability, invulns, special stomps)

That’s all you need to defeat a team like that. The one thing that a warrior lacks is the ability to remove boons. So if you stack up on stability and capture even just one point, they’ll NEVER take it from you. Ever. They suck at decapping and they can’t kill you very easily in team fights.

Also remember that a warrior doesn’t have to be dead to be losing. In fact, you could probably win a game if you did literally no damage with any of your skills. If you can strip the stability and knock them off, the point is yours. A team build that like is mostly inactive. They WANT you to keep on fighting them forever while they hold the point. So keep on moving. Warriors aren’t that fast (At least not Hambow). Especially with two mesmers, you can collapse with a well placed portal EASILY. Suddenly, that 1-2-2 split has turned into a 1-4-0 split and mid is an EASY take. Outnumber them as often as possible.

If you post your general team build, I can give you some more specific tips that you can do. Until then, quick story:

We once did a team build that consisted of five warriors. We got into a match with some pretty good players and we were CRUSHING them. Seriously. The map was khylo and it was about 480 to 200. We decided to be kittens and just hold home. Unfortunately, they collapsed on us perfectly, decapping the point. All other points were lost because we left them. So they stacked 3 people on that one point and had someone annoy anyone going for the other points. We couldn’t kill ANYTHING and we couldn’t CAP anything. This was a team of Hambows and Mace/Shield/Hammer warriors. Nothing. Once you decap a team like that, they are SCREWED.

Just another note, a lot of teams get together and kind of brush off the specifics of their builds. Like a mesmer will join and say “I’m shatter” and everyone’s happy. Thing is, there’s a huge difference between that mesmer taking Moa vs Mass Invis, Portal vs Decoy etc etc. If no one on the team is taking a res skill, you’re going to have a much harder time in game. My team is full of res skills. Our warrior dropped Signet of Rage for Banner. Our mesmer takes Illusion of Life and Mass Invis. I take Elixir R. Making sure that your team build has everything it needs to stomp, res and kill is vital. Don’t skip it.

I’ll pm it to you. Do you ever get the feeling that there are times when we are underpowered? Just sometimes.

It’s just new. We’re so use to the fight being against people just like us. A bunch of easy targets that can murder you and some that hold a point. Kill the weak then the strong blah blah. But some teams are different. Some being all minion masters to cause chaos. Some bring all bunkers to go for the slow win. Some are extremely mobile and outnumber you at every fight. It’s all about figuring out where they are weak and exploiting that as much as you can.

Play smarter, not harder.

Endure pain lasts 4 seconds, 5 if traited. If you blow all your burst into endure pain, you’re going to have a bad time. You can afford to wait 5 seconds with your burst to make it effective.

In general, a Mesmer is a hard-counter to a warrior. If you’re fighting a team with 3/4 warriors, they have 2 options. 1. Leave a point unguarded and ensure that the warriors never get a face to face 1v1 against a Mesmer, or 2. Risk a 1v1 occurring. Both of those choices have vulnerabilities. Play with them and use them.

Although it may seem like there’s a lot of stability, there really is incredibly limited access to that boon. At most you’d have 1 util, 1 trait, 1 activation of Lyssa, and maybe one application from a nearby guardian. Mesmers are the best boon strippers in the game. If you’re in a lockdown build, you’re 30 into domination. Trait shattered concentration and boon strip your heart out.

If the problem that you’re facing is that you simply can’t beat the warriors in an on-point fight, then that’s a different matter unrelated to the tpvp setting and type. Almost any Mesmer build can really rip apart almost any warrior build, so that’s simply a matter of skilled play. If the warriors are massively better than you, then you’ll obviously lose, but there’s no special tactical tips that can change that…that’s just how the game works, better players defeating worse ones.

@ Gates, Hmm. Nice point. Dude,, I guess all mesmers here in the forums, especially the the frequent ones must be good in pvp. You guys make it sound so easy, haha. But deep inside, I just hate warriors, they do big damage, regen a lot of health, high def, stunlock you to death, It’s like a GM in disguise but only using 50% of his powers.

@Pyro

Hurts but I guess you are right. The stun lock always gets me, if I use stun breakers for utils, i end up lose my dazes on my utils, so evading would be the best way?

Helpful hint, don’t get close to them. They tend to hurt when they get close. Try to find a warrior to 1v1 in a 1v1 server if you can. Any time I’m having trouble with a build or class I go to a server and try it out. It helps A LOT.

StickerHappy.8052:

Hmm. Nice point. Dude,, I guess all mesmers here in the forums, especially the the frequent ones must be good in pvp. You guys make it sound so easy, haha. But deep inside, I just hate warriors, they do big damage, regen a lot of health, high def, stunlock you to death, It’s like a GM in disguise but only using 50% of his powers.

Then it’s ultimately a playing skill issue. Try playing a warrior, or at least browsing the wiki to really understand what all their skills do and how they do it. Try frequenting some of the dueling rooms and picking fights with warriors to gain experience. They may be many things, but unbeatable is not one of them.

Edit: Stunbreakers are pretty key against warriors, but dodging is more important, the stunbreaks are just for when you mess up. Warriors have really well telegraphed skills, so if you learn those telegraphs, you can effectively dodge/evade most of their disables.

The other day our tPvP met “only” 3 of them in the same team and they where almost unkillable. Constant stuns (you sort of run out of stunbreakers), as soon as one went down then bam warbanner.

That said, the way to win is by map movement, not actually trying to duel them. In 2v1 the Warriors will fall, due to mediocre damage. Just dont let them get on the capping point.

Stun warriors are annoying up close as it’s nearly impossible to tell when the long stun is going to happen and when they get that one in you’re pretty much doomed so I would advice always being as far away as possible from them and try sneaking up on them. Other than that warriors aren’t that difficult and die pretty quickly if you play smartly. Just keep practising and learn what their abilities look like. To be fair on the warriors if they didn’t have the stuns they’d go back to being completely unviable again.

StickerHappy.8052:

I guess all mesmers here in the forums, especially the the frequent ones must be good in pvp.

Well I’m not, and I certainly sympathize. Some very good advice in this thread, though.

The thing I’ve found is that these guys are fairly useless individually and get quite difficult when they gang up, as you experienced. The key then is to avoid the gang. They only have 5 players, just like you.

This is where “time-waster” characters can be useful. If you have one defensive type that can harrass and annoy a point with two warriors on it, that leaves a 4v3 for the other points. Unfortunately it’s hard to do even that. I can manage it with my mesmer sometimes, but not if the warriors are good.

Not sure I agree about warriors not being able to decap on points, Gates. Warriors have plenty of tools to move people off points and mesmers have very limited access to stability.

Overall, call me a whiner, but I do feel that warriors are still overpowered, due to their combination of easy access to damage, CC, heavy armor, high HP and regen. But of course, whining won’t help beat them.

Qaelyn.7612:

Overall, call me a whiner, but I do feel that warriors are still overpowered, due to their combination of easy access to damage, CC, heavy armor, high HP and regen. But of course, whining won’t help beat them.

OP, but still beatable

In theory. But given equal numbers and equal skill levels of players, a swarm of warriors will beat a swarm of almost anything else. That’s pretty much the definition of being overpowered.

It’s quite noble to declare that one will never whine about other builds and so forth, and as I said, it’s certainly more practical to work to find ways to overcome them rather than complaining on the forums. But I think recognizing that certain classes are currently overbuffed and others underbuffed is just being realistic.

There’s a reason that PvP is stuffed to the brim with stunlock warriors and it’s not because people like a challenge.

Since there is alot of knowledgeable people here:

How the kittening hell do i deal with condi warriors with a “standard tourny utility layout”? besides them being beyond stupid and bad(aka the normal warrior population nowdays)? Pin down+impale alone is enough to basicly kill a mesmer with zerker neck and they can do it more often than i can mass invis or null field.
Hambows i can deal with sort of unless i’m being stupid and try to hold the point. but them sword/sword+longbow condi warriors(especially you kittens with shamans).

Qaelyn.7612:

In theory. But given equal numbers and equal skill levels of players, a swarm of warriors will beat a swarm of almost anything else. That’s pretty much the definition of being overpowered.

It’s quite noble to declare that one will never whine about other builds and so forth, and as I said, it’s certainly more practical to work to find ways to overcome them rather than complaining on the forums. But I think recognizing that certain classes are currently overbuffed and others underbuffed is just being realistic.

There’s a reason that PvP is stuffed to the brim with stunlock warriors and it’s not because people like a challenge.

They probably will at low levels of play, but at high levels, a bunch of warriors is easy to beat, or at least out cap. Simply get them off the point. Their push CC is awful. They have basically 1 skill to push you off point with, 3 if they wasted utilities on it. Of course it’s overpowered as the skill required is much lower than a more balanced spec, but it’s far from unbeatable. It just requires very different and advanced tactics.

Vuh.1328:

Since there is alot of knowledgeable people here:

How the kittening hell do i deal with condi warriors with a “standard tourny utility layout”? besides them being beyond stupid and bad(aka the normal warrior population nowdays)? Pin down+impale alone is enough to basicly kill a mesmer with zerker neck and they can do it more often than i can mass invis or null field.
Hambows i can deal with sort of unless i’m being stupid and try to hold the point. but them sword/sword+longbow condi warriors(especially you kittens with shamans).

Don’t show em your face. Keep moving and stay far away from them. You have a lot of stun breakers and psuedo stun breakers. Use them.