Guild Wars 2

Heyo everyone! We’re here today to announce the GW2PvPTV 2v2 Tournaments! This is something that we at PvPTV have been organizing for a bit, and were just about ready to start! Starting on the first official date, we will be having these on a weekly or biweekly basis giving you guys plenty of opportunity for competition. The first tournament will be held on the 23rd of November! Starting at 2PM EST Anyone is welcome to sign up. The tournament will have 16 teams and run on the following format:

• All matches will be fought in the cave on Temple of the Silent Storm
• All games will be played on NA servers
• All games Best of 3
• Grand Finals will be Best of 7

We’re also proud to announce that this tournament will have regular prizing provided by ArenaNet! The winning team members will each receive one 2000 gem card and second place team members will also be receiving one 800 gem card.

We have a set of rules that players must follow. Please keep in mind these rules only apply to this specific tournament (2v2 #1) and that the rules may change for future tournaments. Please make sure to abide by them to ensure maximum flow and fun for all competitors:

• Teams may not consist of the following compositions:
  * Double Bunkers (see below rules for clarification on this)
  * Any Class Stacking
  * Minion Necro and Spirit Ranger (on the same team)
• If a team consists of any of the previously listed compositions they will be given approximately 10 minutes to change violating parts of the composition. If they cannot complete this task in the time allotted the team will be disqualified.
• Once a player is stomped, he or she may not rejoin the fight or join the spectator team. Players that do this will be disqualified.
• Players may not make use of any form of Hacking, Mods, or Game Exploits as defined by the Guild Wars 2 User Agreement
• No Purposefully avoiding combat (otherwise known as delaying/stalling). Admins will decide when and if players are stalling. First offense is a warning, Second offense will give your opponents one point, Third offense is Disqualification. Example of stalling would be abusing stealth or other mechanics to clear combat and regain health.
• Each team must be standing at opposite ends of the cave when the round begins
• If a player willingly leaves the cave (bottom of the staircase), The opposing team will be given one point. Being CC’d onto the staircase does not count so long as the player promptly returns to the main battleground
• Players have 5 minutes to change builds between rounds. We recommend players have multiple characters of the same class prepared so that they may be ready to switch in a timely manner if they wish.
• Admins will determine bunkers on a build by build basis, but as a general definition it is defined as being able to soak up, negate, or redirect massive amounts of damage while having a much lesser focus on damage output. For example a 0/0/10/30/30 Cleric’s Amulet Guardian would probably be considered a bunker, but a stealth focused mesmer would not. Please keep in mind that this is a very loose definition, and once more admins will have the final say on if a build is a bunker or not.
• Admins reserve the right to change/alter the rules at any time

And that’s about it guys! Sensotix and I are looking forward to casting this and seeing some intense action! The tournament will be live on PvPTV . If you would like to sign up, all you need to do is fill out the form at the bottom of this post. We will be choosing teams randomly to give everyone a fair chance to compete. Good luck to all and were looking forward to seeing you live!

SIGNUP FORM

Should your PvP experience influence other parts of the game? This is not to say you would change the dynamic of “everyone is equal” pvp.

Consider the following as examples:
1) PvP wins provide points for WvW seasons.
2) You can level your characters in pvp all the way to 80.
3) PvP is a way to get key crafting materials, new rune sets etc that you can use outside of PvP.

Is the problem with PvP that it sits totally outside the rest of the game?

One more time, the upcoming update includes a ton of content for PvE players and none for the those of us that enjoy the competitive aspect of the game even though we paid the same amount for the game.

That made me think:

so far, how many updates were for pvp players and how many for the pve crowd?

PVE: October 2012, November 2012, December 2012, January 2013, February 2013, March 2013

PVP: October 2012, November 2012, February 2013, March 2013

It wasn’t so bad, but after march Anet clearly changed their mind about pvp development:

PVE: 1st april, 30 april, 14th may, 28th may, 11th june, 25th june, 9th july2, 23th july, 6th august, 20th august, 3rd september, 17th september, 1st october, 15th october, 29th october, 12th november

PVP: 30 april, 11th june, 9th june, 6th august,

Also “custom arenas” were announced in 3 different patches I ommited the repetitions

All in all:

PVE only patches: December 2012, January 2013, 1st april, 14th may, 28th may, 25th june, 23th july, 20th august, 3rd september, 17th september, 1st october, 15th october, 29th october, 12th november

PVP only patches: none

Hey guys, I wanted to announce it here since a lot of PvPers probably never check the Guild Recruitment forum. I made a new sPvP-only guild that is hopefully going to be able to bridge that information gap that a lot of new PvPers are experiencing. I’m hoping that this guild will become the major community-wide resource for teaching and learning about sPvP. If you’re an experienced player and would like to teach, or a newer player that wants to learn, check it out!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/recruitment/NA-sPvP-MotM-Mentors-of-the-Mists

PM me on the forums or write me an in-game mail to join — all levels of experience are welcome (including none)!

Great tips. I want to add a few more:

Only One Person Per Point for Full Cap Speed : I guess this is a hot join habit that some people don’t shake when moving up into Solo Q. It only takes one person to get the full cap speed on a node, so don’t follow someone to a point and sit on it with them if it is uncontested, especially in the beginning of a match.

Map Awareness: This is crucial to success in Solo Q. Since there isn’t much communication going on (if at all), it is still very important to know where your teammates are at all times. With the addition of enemy markers showing up on the mini map, you can see when your home point bunker is outnumbered and in need of help, or when an opportunity to decap far point arises.

Teammate Health bars : This goes along with map awareness. Pay attention to your teammates health bars at all times. If your mid point bunker is alone and is <50% health, that is your cue to get to mid and assist him ASAP.

Don’t Run into Outnumber Fights : This is just silly but I see it all the time. Example: There are 3 enemies that just finished downing one of your teammates at home point and you just spawned, DO NOT run into that point solo. You will die, you give the enemy team 5 more points, and you earned yourself an additional 15 seconds of not helping your team do something useful while you wait to respawn again. This is where map awareness also comes into play. I’ve seen the argument: “But I am keeping those people busy while the rest of the team can go cap/decap other points.” Wrong. It doesn’t work that way. You are just giving the enemy team an opportunity to regroup on you and make a push somewhere else.

Don’t Rage Quit: Just don’t.

This thread is intended for sPvP beginners. My tips might seem obvious, but they are mistakes I see made over and over again by beginning and intermediate players (as well as myself!).

If anyone else has basic tips they would like to see added, let me know!

Tips for fighting:

1. Stay Moving: I cannot count how many times I see inexperienced players come to a complete stop to try and execute a skill combo. If you watch high tier players, it’s easy to notice one thing: They never stop moving unless they have an overwhelming positional advantage. Stopping moving while fighting is giving your opponent license to unload any skill he wants on you.

2. Watch Your Opponent, Not Yourself!: Watching your action bar instead of watching your opponent would be like trying to win a fist fight while looking into a hand mirror. To become proficient at fighting, you need to feel comfortable enough with your action bar and your keybinds to be able to be watching your opponent while you execute your skills.

3. Learn Your Specific Build: This point ties into the above points. If you haven’t played a lot with your build, you will have to look at your action bar to know what skills you can use. That puts you at a great disadvantage. Playing a build for a long time helps you to learn to nuances of it to a greater degree and be more effective.

4. Keybinds Are Important: It’s essential to find keybinds that are comfortable and work for your playstyle. These keybinds should allow you to be moving at all times while using any skill in your kitten nal. You also need to learn them well enough so that you never need to look at your action bar.

Tips for beginning tPvP:

1. Don’t Stand On One Point: Although capping and aggressively guarding one point seems like it might be a smart thing to do, it’s almost always preferable to be moving from one point to the next helping your teammates. The goal of conquest is to create uneven fights by winning 1v1s and 2v2s and then pressing your advantage to other points while your opponents are respawning.

2. Know Your Role: Knowing your role basically means knowing what your build and you are best at. Builds like spirit ranger and condition necromancer are best at mid fighting and home point defense due to their low mobility and AoE/support abilities. Highly mobile classes such as thief, warrior, and engineer are great for decapping points and briefly aiding the middle might. You would never want to fight at mid all game on a thief, but on a bunker guardian, that would be perfectly acceptable!

3. Far Point Is Dangerous: Unless you are sure of what you are doing, running far point is almost always going to be a negative for your team, especially if you are a beginner. Far point is always going to have passing enemy respawns and you will be isolated from the rest of your team. Losing a 1v1 on a far point allows the enemy to send one extra person to attack another point and can potentially wipe your whole team.

Every player with a little intelligence had already known from the first day, that Hotjoin will be the cancer of PvP.
It created a big mass of people having no idea about the concept of conquest. It created a zergfest, a brainless grind. It created skyhammer farmer (the reason why people instantly call you a skyhammer-farmer if you have a rank above 50). You took away an indicator of effort and skill with hotjoin. Rank is meaningless, due to the fact hotjoin exist.

One of the worst decisions you guys made in PvP.

Hotjoin

- Anet’s default servers should be removed and replaced by Normal Queue, the button to Queue should be the ‘’Play Now’’ Button in the browser, the same Button should be copied and pasted to the first page of the PvP menu. (Below Heart of the Mist button)

- The Normal Queue should have an ‘’Hidden MMR system’’ that balances teams while not making the players feel like they are evaluated. (It’s like writing for fun vs writing a test.)

- The Normal Queue should allow players in the same party to Queue together. (Similar Feature than League of Legends)

- The Normal Queue should instantly Queue right at the end of each match, similar to how hotjoin switches maps. (This is to give the players the convenience to never always have to Re-Queue.)

Solo Q

- Add Roles to Queueing, such as ‘’Home Defender, Bunker, Roamer’’

- Two of the same classes should not be in the same team.

- Add very Instructional Videos about every single role, as well as tips for rezzing, and stopping enemy rez. (Emphasize that Home Defenders should not always sit on home)

- Make leaderboards available in-game.

- Make Solo Q rewards significantly better depending on your position.

- Reduce the amount of Dishonored stacks required from 5 to 3. (This will help reduce the frequency of 4v5 while not punishing D/cers too much.)

EDIT: 11/17/13
Since our great Justin so nicely asks, I’ll give out suggestions for rewards that I’m sure most dedicated PvP’ers would love.

Rewards for Leaderboard positions.

- An Idea would be to add a new prefix for the current PvP titles (example: ’’Master’’),
the master prefix would be awarded to the player in function to his/her Leaderboard position.

Example: A player that has won 150 rated games with a warrior gains the ‘’Champion Legionnaire’’ title, this could be used as a requirement for the title ‘’Master Legionnaire’’ which would require 150 rated wins while in the top 200 in either Solo Q or Team Q leaderboards.

- This system could also be used with the current rank titles.

Example: Assuming PvP score titles would be changed to total rank points earned, instead of total score points earned. A rank 40 could upgrade his ’’Ransacker’’ title to the ‘’Master Ransacker’’ title by being able to acquire 150 rated wins while in the top 200 in either Solo Q or Team Q leaderboards. (This could help distinct the farmers from the legit players.)

- Weekly reward chests for player participations in rated games, players that have played ~30games would be eligible for the weekly reward chests, these chests would contain a different reward depending on player ladder rank.

Example: Gold Chest for players in the top 100 (Team Q gold chest would contain greater rewards), Silver Chest for players in the top 300 and Bronze Chest for those in the top 500. These chest would give large amounts of rank points as-well as giving away a unique currency used to buy VERY RARE SKINS, like PvP legendaries. (PvE rewards could also be a great addition to this, like gold or gems or extra laurels)

EDIT: 11/18/13

LeaderBoard Ranks and player Names

- Similar to the world completion star an Icon displaying LeaderBoard ranks should be added to the player names.

Example: A sword aiming downwards should be added on the left side of the Player’s name, the sword should be very small to avoid names from being cluttered, colors of the sword would represent the LB ranks, gold for top 100, silver for top 300, and bronze for top 500, probably red for top 1000. (Team Q Icon would be Cross-Swords instead of a single one, Team Q Icon should also overwrite the Solo Q as it is more important.)

Why?: To make players travelling in the PvE world become more interested in PvP, and allow PvP’ers to show off what they achieved. This could help populate SPvP!

Note:These are simple Ideas that I believe would only do good for Gw2’s PvP, tell me if I should add something, or if you think something in here would be bad for the game.

So.. waited 12 minutes for a soloq.

Noticed a player on my team just running in circles in the spawn area. He was just admiring the guy using the treb.

I asked “What are you doing? Are you a Rank1?”
(no response)

Later on, he follows me around the map like a lost kid in the mall, just watching me kill people.

Afterwards scoreboard showed he was a rank1, in a team of 30-50s.

He finally responds “what is rank1”

I told him "You should try doing hotjoin matches first before tournament/arena. "

He responds “I don’t know how”

—-

tl;dr PvP UI/System is not intuitive for new players. Yea, there is a PVP instructor in the mist, but few actually talk to him. Also, the PVP menu icon at the top lets new players stumble into arena queue without knowing what it is.

This isn’t meant to sound inflammatory and it’s not at all a hate message. It’s a show of supreme dissapointment at how the custom arena idea has been implemented. Custom Arenas were supposed to be something everyone could enjoy (I assume) and a way for people/guilds to play with their friends without the complications/zerging of hotjoin or the “seriousness” of tournaments. Instead, we got something more like this…

- Anet: Hey guys! Custom Arenas finally dropped, enjoy!

- Me: Haha nice! I can’t wait to fina-… wait. These cost gems?

- Anet: Yep! =D

- Me: But.. Um, I play 95% PvP. I don’t have much gold to convert to gems.

- Anet: Oh that’s OK. Half the cast of Street Fighter can’t even afford shoes. You’ll get used to it.

- Me: Er, well.. Does that mean we’ll be getting a chance to earn Gems from Tournaments again? That’d be awes-

- Anet: Nope. =D

- Me: … OK, how about gold? It’d be awesome to know that I still have some form of
progression for my character in PvE bec-

- Anet: Nope. =D

- Me: …. Should I even ask if Laurels-

- Anet: Ha! Yes! You can use your Laurels to buy Unidentified Dyes which you can then sell for gold! We strive to make it easy and seemless for players to blahblahblah.

- Me: …

- Anet: …Just pay us the ’effin cash, dude.

- Me: Fine! Here! /creditcard

- Anet: Thanks! You are now the proud renter of a Custom Arena! You blahblahblah

- Me: Um.. Renter?

- Anet: Yep. You can now buy time cards every month for MORE gems to keep your custom arena open.

- Me: I. Have. To. Pay. A. MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION!? FOR A FRACTION OF THE ENTIRE GAME!?! THAT DOESN’T EVEN GET HALF AS MUCH CONTENT AS PVE!?!?!?!

- Anet: That’s a lot of exclamation points and question marks.

- Me: OK, well I guess I can afford to keep this going for a month, then take a break, then come back to it when I-

- Anet: Actually.. If you don’t pay on time, you lose the arena and have to buy a new one.

- Me: /weep

- Anet: There’s sparkly-luxury-tissue paper in the Gem Store too. =D AND a self-playing-pity-violin!

Please please correct me if I’m wrong about this. It feels really backwards that the people who focus mostly on PvP, and thus don’t have much cash, have this carrot dangled in front of them. Its not so bad for guilds, obviously, but still. What was the intention behind this Custom Arena system?

hooma you are nice troll…..even with full DS war can kill you in stuns….

Ranks 1-20 need to not be allowed to Queue up for ranked play.

Well you know, ranks doesn’t mean anything right now. A lot of ppl has farmed their glory. Sometimes r10 people are better than r50.

@Tranasa

I was in one of your games. And there’s something that affraid me, about the necro “conception”. There’re a lot of builds that are neither tank or condi. And personnaly, I’m hybrid or Off-tank. I’m not designed to tank a point, or to dps a lot. My gameplay is based on supporting my allies. I can defend or I can dps, but i’m not a full tank or full dps. THAT WHY I didn’t say I was a “tank”.

In my opinion hybrid builds are very usefull, you can do everything.

But it is the same with the other class, for eg people think 90% guardians are bunkers, sometimes it is not.

I am totally agree, there’s a HUGE lack of communication in soloQ. People don’t know other the other play etc… Atm i’m not enjoying soloQ either.

people rage less

NO, people rage more (imo).

Seriously, though, lots of great communication and timely responses coming from this guy. Glad to see such care to put into the server-side work these days and keeping a close eye on the PvP community. We can be an unruly bunch sometimes, so kudos!

If I have the unlimited version, is it possible to NOT require to type the whole name just to delete it.

Thanks.

~A paying customer who is purchasing the infinite stomps that is annoyed of deleting all the limited ones that I get from chests.

Justin ODell.9517:

Michael.7382:

I ASK, WHY I AM MATCHED WITH PPL WHO ARE RANK 1 OR 7 OR FULL TEAM OF UNDER R20 THAN DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT TOURNAMENT PLAY WHILE MYSELF BEING R50+ WITH 3.5K TOURNAMENTS AND 2.2K HOURS OF PVP PLAYED?

You’re MMR is on the low end, which may be an accurate representation of your skill…

1v1 owned by Anet.

Oni Link.4621:

PS: If you are not using a VoIP program for team queue then you are playing in a soloqueue-like environment. So what is the point of playing team queue? The biggest advantage is the higher communication between members.

Team Queue is currently the only rated queue that allows you to play with friends. Also, in addition to this, there are foreign players who might shy away from speaking and trying to understand english speakers in VOIP, but enjoy a good organized team match nonetheless.

For those reasons, I’d say team queue should offer as many features to compensate for the lack of VOIP as solo queue does. And for those who use VOIP: nothing will change for them, so outside of UI cluterring, why complain? :P

you could generally tell who was fighting where by looking at player health bars/conditions and positions of friendly players on map.

Overall a good change. Still needs a bit of refinement though.

I strongly disagree with the suggestions that it decreases team queue skill though. Really how hard is it to tell people who you are fighting? Removing this need reduces the noise clutter allowing other things to be coordinated instead. There is a definitive limit to how much information can be sent over voice chat. Now we have information of enemy positions + increased ability to coordinate skills and discuss strategy = more information available for a player to make use of → Higher skill cap. People just need time to adjust and for the game to have more skills that rewards coordination.

Now with Mesmers it could use more refinement. Eg. Depending on the number of mesmer clones summoned the size of the icon shrinks. Should make it much easier to discern number of players without giving away the mesmers position.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s not my place to be giving design reasoning behind changes so I can try to get one of the guys to give a statement on this but the way I see it is that this change helps lessen the gap we have in player skill level. It’s an awesome quality of life improvement to team coordination and it’s going to help matches remain more competitive across the board. Team’s using voice comms will still have an upper advantage but I think that reducing the amount mal-rotations happening is a positive change.

Here’s my simple suggestion: Put a single Mesmer marker at the average position among all visible copies of the Mesmer. So, if the real Mesmer was at (1, 5), and there were 2 clones, one at (2, 7) and another at (3, 3), it would show the Mesmer marker at ([1+2+3]/3, [5+7+3]/3) = (2, 5).

Gorni.1764:

Mash Hog.5672:

Change the icons to small dots of the opponent team’s color. (Much like in WvW)
It would be nice knowing what class the opponent is, but there is already a LOT of clutter on the mini-map.

This way you can make a dot for each mesmer clone.

One thing is for sure though, if you want to keep the icons, you need to make them a LOT smaller.

this sounds reasonable but it would be misleading when you see 3+ dots on a point and think that there are 3 players but in fact it’s only one mesmer.

I thought of that, maybe we can have miniaturized dots with each color being a different class.
Purple: Mesmer
Blue: Guard
Green: Necro
Brown: Ranger
Ect…

This way we can have multiple purple dots for mesmers and clones and still not have them get mixed up with other classes.

First of all, this was a pretty big change to the way that Solo q and Team q work, and I’d be interested to know in what parts of PvP this has been implemented, for now I’m going to presume its across the board.

Hotjoins: I feel like this just clusters the map in an 8v8 and makes it very hard to see where you can actually make an impact, in 5v5 its mostly fine and makes sense for new players to see that kind of thing.

Soloq: This has the potential to be a massive bonus by breaking down the barriers posed by limited communication to open up the possibility of better play, here to me it makes perfect sense.

Teamq: At this level, I feel like its too much pandering to the game. Communication of who and what is where is a crucial part of the team arena, and if I for instance know that the thief is at far point, I’ll quite happily come to mid as the homepoint bunker. The thief himself might be being cautious and my team mate might not even have noticed him at this point, I feel its reduced the skillcap in this area of play.

Now for my gripe: I went into my first Solo queue game since the patch and I was rushing far on Forest. I looked to see what was happening across the rest of the map, and I couldnt tell at all what was happening on mid. Considering I had 2 people with me on far, I swore I could see at least 5 people at mid, which really confused me. Turns out that mesmer illusions showed up on my map as separate entities, hence me thinking there were about 4 on their team when in fact it was only one.

I’m not sure if this is working as intended, but if so it clouds and already hectic UI tool that you no longer even can zoom in to reduce the clutter, making it much harder to discern where the enemy are, but more importantly where your team mates are if they are fighting across all points.

I feel it was in a better place when you knew exactly where your team mates were personally, than this confusion, but it would be good to get some feedback on this!