Guild Wars 2

So while playing PvP recently I’ve learned that, in the particular setup I’ve got going on, any time I enter a fight I can safely say I have my choice of the field when it comes to removing them from the battle. It doesn’t matter what the class is or the build they’re running. Could be a thief, another mes, bunker guard, cele ele, turret engie etc, I know that if I pick them out as a target and do my thing they’re gone from the fight.

Obviously some can be dispatched faster than others and there’s always variation on the process in which it happens. There’s a lot going on in a group fight so factors can change. Regardless I often find myself debating which of the targets on the field I should take out first. The answer is never the same due to things like the circumstance, what classes and builds are present, time of execution etc, but still I’m trying to figure out where my focus is best spent.

I have my own concerns, obviously, such as if a Thief is present. I have the need to remove him before he may notice me and thus tie me up (or take me out). Mesmers are generally soft targets that are good time for money, assuming they can’t slip away. Removing an engie can be strategically sound. Eles can be godlike and need someone to remind them they’re not, especially when they’re apt at ramping up the stakes. Then there’s even Bunker Guards who can sit like a cornerstone to the enemies plans, soaking up so much damage, and generally making things go nowhere.

Is there any advice out there for prioritizing targets in a team fight in a conquest setting? Any experience or thoughts on the matter?

This is a question with no simple answer. It depends on your team comp, the enemy team comp, the map, how they’ve been playing, so many different variables.

Say they have a longbow ranger. If you’re on forest, that’s not such an enormous problem. If you’re on legacy and he’s nuking mid from the hills, they should be your priority target. On the other hand, if your’e on legacy and you notice him not playing well then you pick someone else.

That’s just a quick example. To actually go through and enumerate who to focus in what situation would be unbelievably time consuming and extensive. Suffice to say: it depends.

The one with the lowest HP and if it’s the first clash, refer to Pyro’s comments.

Always the necro. Everybody knows that. Necro has to die first all the time.

Jepp … necros first … that’s da law!

Necro first (as quick as possible to prevent him from building much deathshroud, I usually also wait for him to exit it instead of DPSing shroud down, I do AA a lot which takes a good chunk out), also if I know the enemy necro is power, I never use moa unless he uses lich. Then I moa the lich as soon as possible. Same cooldowns so you’ll have moa up when he has lich up. Next is the least skilled player or someone that is focused easily (engi),
If they’re all equal skill, after the necro I’d always focus the easier and put the hardest target for last. Also most of the time, if he pops signet, I usually knock him out of his position so he has to spend time going back to it or run away to avoid dieing as soon as signet wares off. You can focus the hardest one to kill right away and then kill the others but the hardest one to kill will be back in 15 seconds which is something you don’t want. So usually focusing the easy guys is better IMO.
Also, try to get your team not to stomp the cele classes, try to kill them off point (eles will mist right on it again, if so, try to get someone to knock him back ie updraft, if you have a hammer guard/warrior, they have knockbacks or overcharged) and leave them to bleed there so they’re out for longer giving you more time to cap the points ect.
Also if you know someone is out of cooldowns (you need to track them!) and if someone is low on HP, you put the nail in the coffin and prepare some sort of interrupt to prevent resurrections (chaos storm, illu wave, a few clones up to remove stab), thief should use choking gas to make the rez as slow as possible.

Ranger, Necro, Mesmer, Engineer, Thief, Warrior, Guardian (depending on build), Elementatlist.

That’s pretty much how I call it out but will switch up targets depending on target’s health and overall game flow.

The priore target must be another mesmer, not only because it’s very dps and has poor armor, but because as a mesmer you can faster find real from illusions, Ctrl+T it and do it again if/after enemy drops target after invis. With good targeting mesmer dies in a second

I always prioritize the biggest threats

Thief-Mes-Necro

All other builds/classes can be kited much easier than these IMO

Depends on my team and the match up but lets say its on a premade team vs a balanced other premade team.

Majority of the time I will focus on a called target or a target that is right next to it for AoE splash damage.

If there is no called target I’ll identify the sturdiest looking pillar (usually a guardian or some kind of tanky point holder, also could be an Engi) And proceed to make that players day a kitten storm and force them to support themselves or support their team and go down.

If there is a particularly annoying player on the other team that keeps tipping matches that is Not a tanky support, i’ll tend to swap focus to them when they show up or go back and forth between them and the tanks.

If you bring Moa over MI (like i do) Necro’s are rarely ever a problem. They only build steam if a team is playing well already, and do best at tipping even matches or letting land slides turn into bigger land slides. Necro’s can rarely dodge mid fight, they love to pop death shroud and forget how to do anything but run side to side and hit 1 5 4 3 1 1 1 1 1. A Moa to the face not only means no Death shroud, but less sustain from siphoning ( they also dont regain Life force while they’re a Moa)

So when it comes to necro in a team fight for me its just a Fire and forget with Moa. They’re either focused down by two other players or they run for the hills and leave their team down a man.

My philosophy is basically just to Focus on helping with large scale bursts and then take out the support for the harder hitting and less sustainable players on the other team. That thief might be scarey to me but without that Cele Ele and Engi to cover for it, it becomes much less scarey to my 2 or 3 allies that are also present.

As was previously stated the answer varies greatly based on circumstance. That being said, if I had to pick one class to always target first, it would be ranger. -Priest of Lyssa

Hmmm, when focusing a target, the goal should always be downing someone the quickest and getting the stomp off. I read a few posts here that says the thief is the biggest threat, but his effectiveness becomes null if you can quickly +1 the fight. This is usually my goal. If anyone goes down, you rally off the first target. Everything depends on YOUR Mesmer build and YOUR comp as well as the ENEMY comp. However in the most general sense, here’s my priority list:

1. Necro: their long cast times and general squishiness make for an extremely easy target to interrupt. Every Mesmer has at minimum 3 interrupts at our disposal, so take advantage of this. An important skill being interrupted at the start of a battle while being focused can lead to the Necro’s quick death. They have the same problem with lack of stability that we do. Difference is we have creative evades and the ability to strip the rare time that they pop stability. We are the Necro’s natural counter. It’s not as hard of a counter as Tthief vs Mesmer (nerf please), but all things equal, you should beat the Necro 80% of the time.

2. Ranger: while you can’t kite as well as he can, this is still a great match up for us Mesmers, especially when in melee range. I say we beat rangers 60% of the time. With the current meta, Ranger serves as a single-target zerk staff ele, which is very dangerous.

3. Thief/Mesmer: I put these under the same category, because they typically serve similar roles. Note that thief is obviously your biggest threat, but not necessarily your team’s. The problem however is that targeting these classes can waste time as they will often break targets. You don’t want to spend waste time tabbing through targets while you could be more helpful targeting another player. It’s also a lot harder to stomp them. That being said, if your team all helps to track them down, they are the best threats to eliminate as a Mesmer.

4. Engineer/Ele: The reason they’re last is because targeting them first really depends on your Mesmer build. I’m currently running a Maim build on one of my 3 Mesmers that hkittentered Concentration, iDisenchanter and Arcane Thievery……. So basically, these classes NEVER have boons, and they always have poison on them. It completely shuts down the cele meta. However, in most cases that I play other Mesmer builds, their burst healing and plethora of boons will make them hard to take them down, wasting valuable time in the long haul.

5. Warrior/Guardian: And here we have the Marios of gw2. More often than not, there’s simply better targets to focus on.

Note, you can find a glass cannon on any class. If you encounter those, it may be best to focus them (besides Mesmer/Thief still)! XD

Easier to say which I dont bother focusing at:Heavies and engineers.(mosto fthe times)

remove 1 target as fast as possible. So most of the time mesmer and rangers or thieves. I do target guardians a lot because a lot of the time I can 1 burst combo down 1 when they are not paying attention. I do switch up right away though if the first target prove to be bunker rather than dps. like those condi rangers .

One tip for Necro hunters here:

If it’s Nilfhel and first engagement, keep in mind that well placed Wurm port back will completly stop all your pressure (ports up the ledge, before stairs) so don’t throw everything at once or at least lure the Necro a little bit further, so wurm won’t teleport him vertically.

Similar on Legacy, look for Wurm. Good Necro will be able go negate your first burst almost entirely.

I might add that tunnelvisioning the Necro without the Thief to support may not always be a great idea. With Thief however, tunnelvision all the way.

MailMail.6534:

2. Ranger: while you can’t kite as well as he can, this is still a great match up for us Mesmers, especially when in melee range. I say we beat rangers 60% of the time. With the current meta, Ranger serves as a single-target zerk staff ele, which is very dangerous.

Ranger a great match up? I’d say it’s the second hardest one right after thief. Supcutie ranked it second hardest in the interview as well. And I’m talking at equal skill level here. Power ranger pew pews at 1500+ range with stab 60-70% of your hp in a second. Condi evades your burst and procs constant bleeds while being extremely tanky. If you go melee range you get hit by geo+doom and pet CC. Also dat entangle immob duration…

Smirgel.9460:

MailMail.6534:

2. Ranger: while you can’t kite as well as he can, this is still a great match up for us Mesmers, especially when in melee range. I say we beat rangers 60% of the time. With the current meta, Ranger serves as a single-target zerk staff ele, which is very dangerous.

Ranger a great match up? I’d say it’s the second hardest one right after thief. Supcutie ranked it second hardest in the interview as well. And I’m talking at equal skill level here. Power ranger pew pews at 1500+ range with stab 60-70% of your hp in a second. Condi evades your burst and procs constant bleeds while being extremely tanky. If you go melee range you get hit by geo+doom and pet CC. Also dat entangle immob duration…

I can’t speak for shatter mesmers, as I haven’t played it in a while, but I don’t have trouble against them when I run CI dps, and I only use one of Decoy or Blink. Maybe I’m facing scrubs, but I don’t think they’re that bad. iWarden also helps a lot.

On my assassin’s phantasm build found here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsaRnsISjaWoGeoB3aIR1QObznorLpCUyOfA-TpBCABOcEAA4EAE0+DgXGIvHAQFHCAA I also don’t have any troubles against Ranger. they usually can’t recover from the opening burst and chain stuns from pistol and S. Domination.

When playing on condi shatter, it’s also an easy match up due to the toughness. If confusion works on anyone, it’s pew pew Ranger.

Double Ranged shatter would be difficult I guess, since you are obviously not meant to be in melee. In theory, I still see GS+sword/torch shatter being superior to pew pew ranger.

Smirgel.9460:

MailMail.6534:

2. Ranger: while you can’t kite as well as he can, this is still a great match up for us Mesmers, especially when in melee range. I say we beat rangers 60% of the time. With the current meta, Ranger serves as a single-target zerk staff ele, which is very dangerous.

Ranger a great match up? I’d say it’s the second hardest one right after thief. Supcutie ranked it second hardest in the interview as well. And I’m talking at equal skill level here. Power ranger pew pews at 1500+ range with stab 60-70% of your hp in a second. Condi evades your burst and procs constant bleeds while being extremely tanky. If you go melee range you get hit by geo+doom and pet CC. Also dat entangle immob duration…

And what setup is Supcutie running? Is it lockdown (lo’whatranger?) or shatter (ohkittenaranger!ideadX_X)

Obviously he’s running standard shatter, hence why he would put Ranger as 2nd hardest match-up. lolz

standard shatter is very very glassy, that is why rangers is such a problem because rangers negate the biggest defence of gs/staff build which is range. CI on the other hand should faceroll rangers because rangers only have a few get out of jail free cards that been their sig of stone and invis. But if they are dazzed they are soft as heck will die to 1 burst. CI also screw up their RF which is a main source of damage.

I honestly believe unless you are in a premade , a good one at that you should not run a standard shatter. It’s just too soft. Someone who is crazy good can maybe get away with it, but very few people are crazy good .