I’m pretty pvp noob too (though, I guess not as bad as I thought? I’ve been winning some duels against people who should have been better than me. Maybe because I’ve played a lot of other pvp games in the past).
When I first was persuaded to try pvp by a friend, I felt the same way: I couldn’t deal damage, and everyone else could. So I ended up flat on my back, and they were barely dented.
messiah’s in-game advice is worth its weight in gold for a noob, I’d wager.
Still, as I’ve been progressing, I’ve noticed a few things in that regard:
1. Perceived damage is a combination of your burst and the enemy’s defense. Your burst isn’t any weaker, but if your enemy is better at timing their defense than you are at timing your offense, most of your burst is getting evaded/blocked/line-of-sighted/invulned/blinded. Even more common, your enemy is good at timing their condi cleanse, and you need to get better at baiting the cleanse before you unload.
2. Perception in GW2 PVP is HARD when you’re new. It’s really just difficult to get used to knowing what you’re looking at. Is that person channeling? What just hit me? Being able to see what’s going on is 90% of the battle, at first. Plugging the appropriate response into what you’re seeing is the next step, but you can’t get there until you can see it.
3. Teamwork is #1. I’m sure you know this, but you have to grok it. If you’re 1v2, it can be more than just double the difficulty, because 2 people pass boons to each other, make rezzing from down a possibility, and synergize with different ability sets. Don’t play alone unless you have a specific purpose, like cutting off stragglers, putting point pressure on the enemy team, or holding up 3 of the enemy team for 20s while your team stomps 2 points or grabs Tranquility. This applies to your hitting with pillows perception, because if your side was outnumbered in any of those fights, there’s a good chance you literally were doing less damage because of their team support.
I’m not good enough to have much more general advice, but these three lessons each improved my play dramatically.
Oh, and don’t be a scrub. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub
Came across a guy in hotjoin the other day who was just killing all his teams, over and over, because he hated how everyone was “zerging” him, and how his skills are just too good for us to take him one on one, so he refused to play with his team. His repeated running off alone got him killed over and over, and left his team high and dry every time.
(incidentally, I did manage to catch him in a 1v1 and destroyed him, so his skillz weren’t very good either, but his scrub attitude would have sunk him even if they were).
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