And Things I’ve Learned in PVP
Lately there has been a bit of chat about the lack of a pvp tutorial, so I thought I would get the ball rolling with a few thoughts & observations from my own experience. These are in no particular order:
Conquest
- Points are called “Home” (or Close) nearest point to base spawn (Except on Legacy of Foefire where home could easily be mistaken for far), “Mid” the middle point which we all fight over, and “Far” the oppositions home point
- Press “B” while you are waiting for the match to begin to see the composition of the opposing team. Eg: if there is a thief on opposing team chances are they are going to try to steal home. Be prepared.
- Splits are how your team will divide up among the points. It is denoted as #near(or home)-#mid-#far. So 1-4-0 would mean 1 player at Home and 4 to Mid, 0 to far.
- Rotation, in simplest terms, is about knowing where to go (or not go) and where you can be most helpful for your team. See here for more: http://qqmore.net/video-guide-rotation/
- Secondary map mechanics are exactly that….SECONDARY. Conquest is about capping and holding points. Trebuchets, Lords, beasts, buffs etc can help you advance a lead, but will do you no good if you can’t cap and hold points.
- Call & focus targets. Healers & condi damage you want out of team fights asap. Use the target function (default is Ctrl+T) to call targets and focus them down as a team. If someone else calls a target first focus on that. Divided efforts mean you are more likely to lose team fights.
- Fighting on/Fighting off point. More often than not you want to fight on point. It will help you hold a point longer, or keep it contested and stop opposition from earning. Fighting off point can be strategically useful, if it stops the opposition from decapping or contesting. But fighting off point, just for the hell of it, generally not a good idea. There is Courtyard Deathmatch if you just wanna kill peeps.
- Multiple teammates standing on an uncontested point don’t cause it to cap any faster. Capping a point is the same speed regardless of how many of you stand there.
- When protecting capped points, it is best to stand half way between two points and not on the capped point. Eg: don’t stand on Home if it is capped, stand halfway between Home and Mid. This puts you in a better position to assist your team at either point when necessary. Standing on an uncontested capped point while your teammates 4v5 the rest of the map is not helpful.
- Sometimes a quick decap is better than a full cap, particularly on far and enemy is respawning
- Sheathing your weapons cancels skill activation. This action is not bound to any key by default. (Weapon swap can do same thing)
- Rez your teammates, when you can. Rezzing isn’t always possible. Sometimes it is quicker to stomp the downed enemy and let teammate rally. Other times you will need to disengage.
- Learn when & how to disengage. There is no good reason to stay 1v3 on mid and die, when you could go far and +1 a teammate. This sort of falls into learning rotation.
- Safe stomping is when you use a block/interrupt etc so downed player cannot be rezzed before you kill them. It is helpful to use even if you are not the one doing the stomping (think teamwork)
- You can interrupt enemies attempting to stomp your teammates. Additionally, if you have an AoE attack, dropping it on a downed player is usually a good idea.
- If you are downed, do not activate your bandage skill (#4 downed skill) unless you are absolutely sure you are going to recover. This just otherwise increases the time in which you are out of the fight.
- If you are going to go down and your opponent hasn’t capped a point, usually you want to down on point as it will contest it for the duration of your down state.
- Personal score does not directly affect the outcome of a match. So don’t stress over your score, contribute to the team.
- If you don’t know something, swallow your pride and ask. I’d rather someone ask me a million dumb questions than make a 100 noob mistakes.
This list is by no means exhaustive (or perfect).
Edited 30/9/16: include more tips, more logical order.
My toons: Loki Thunderstruck, Loki Livewire,Loki Spellbound, Loki Meanstreak
Find pvp players: https://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars2PvPTeams/
Find pvp players: https://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars2PvPTeams/
(edited by MissCee.1295)
