Guild Wars 2

I also echo the desire to reduce the heal per second for this ability. I am fine with it scaling with adrenaline to say 75% of current heals per second.

that forces the warrior to use their f1 or have much better sustain.

Sorry queen for the last post. Constructive mode ON:

- Proir the spectral nerf necro was fine against focus fire as you can see in the twitch link above. Currently the SArmor and SWalk has an ICD and makes them pointless against multiple opponents. Sometimes i feel it weak against fast hitting too.

- Not only the block removed and flow through to our normal HP, its bugged as i found out here.

- Theoretically we have an awesome uptime on stability, but in reality its bad. Only available if you spend 30 points in a trait line where you wouldnt heavily invest and for that you need to choose two mandatory traits for that. Mind you, DS isnt a stunbreaker.

- After the insane nerf of putrid mark (cough bug cough fix it cough), necro loss a huge condi removal potencial, especially in group enviroment so its an issue in all game modes.

- Ehm, yeah, DS skills needs some tweak. Dark path as a gap closer / chase ability just sucks hard and make our non-existent mobility and lockdown ability (lol) more pathetic.

And on a side note, i would love to see some discussion here from non necro players too, because as i see above, everybody see our DS overpowered, meanwhile it disappears in 1 second ingame (from 100% life force do insta downed, yeah it happens still). I know, im a noob, but if more experienced players get this up every other day, then its an issue i think.

ps: fix the skill lockout asap!

Tricare.2946:

Reported you for tricking me with your title.

hehehe i win!!!!!!!

The entirety of this post deals with WvW and sPVP/tPVP play. I don’t dabble with the mysterious pixel mosters you call “PVE”. Anyways, I just got back from a wonderful experience with the mesmer class.. had a terrific time. But i knew it was a matter of time before i went back to me ol’ necro. Funny how playing a new class makes you realize everything missing with your old one.

I hear over and over again that necromancer is the “attrition” class. I was like “heck yeah it is! I’m gonna look that word up because I have no kitten clue what it means..” Turns out google knew:

at·tri·tion
??triSH?n
noun
1.
the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure

That kinda makes sense to me.. Yeah. necro. attrition class. Condis and locusts and mass condis and epidemic plagues. Yes.

BUT WAIT..

a TRUE attrition class doesn’t just deal out the damage, but is able to stay in the fight using defensive tools such as stability, invulnerability etc. I mean, what good is your attrition when you’re getting stomped because a warrior looks at you and you’re stunned knocked down and wondering what you did the night before?

Let’s see where the necro stands with some of these defensive tools:

-Condi clears:
Necro has a ton of these.. Try to beat a necro with conditions and you’re most likely asking for a quick and painful death.

-Death shroud:
YES! death shroud allows us to take an extra 14k damage before we die.

-Invulnerability:
Nada.

-Stability:
None. (unless you’re willing to go 30 points into a tree that has another sweet GM trait you would probably rather take than 3 measly seconds of stability.)

-Ability to stomp those we attritionize to death:
Nope. Unless you want to waste a 3 minute cooldown on a very useful elite skill. (every class except necro has a consistent option for stomping downed players. That is not debatable.)

-combo finishers?:
We could REALLY use some love here. There is nothing more fun than getting a big fire bubble of death on your dude because you jumped through a flaming circle. You necros wouldnt understand.. wait I’m a necro too.. kitten it.

I think I’m about done complaining.. This just kinda felt good to write. I’ll probably play necro still and just see how long i can attritionate people until I die and they run away laughing.

I encourage you to post comments such as “L2P” because as I read them I’m like “wtf are you talking about, I already love to party”.

Torment is just harsh physical or mental pain, something that most classes are arguably capable of inflicting. Thief, Mesmer, and Warrior, the others that get the condition, are very capable of inflicting one or the other, no more or less so than a Necromancer: Thieves through poisoning them, Mesmers through illusions, Warriors through sticking a sword through them.

Love your idea, also want something like sacrifice hp for lf and lf for hp

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t think there are any core base issues with the Necromancer.

I don’t agree with that part. One of the things I have a problem is that we cannot heal during deathshroud. It means that going deathshroud is not always a good option especially in siphon builds (which includes MM). The dodge in exchange for life force will allow us to avoid damage while still using our healing abilities.

I’d love to see SOMETHING!
Something that kept up with ‘vigor’ that wasn’t the vigor buff.

I’d really love to see more Life Force manipulation. (Things like this, or heals in DS, or give buffs to allies after draining life from others.)

I think the most fun ideas I’ve heard, is… Leeching/siphoning endurance from others. Tho as it’s a pvp balanced game, I can see it not being enough to effect another player more than 1 dodge per 5mins, and only give us a extra dodge per 3mins. :-/

It’s not bad, sort of a half measure to ultimate mitigation like invulnerable, blocks and aegis.

Other classes get more out of dodge because of better mobility and stability. Without those things you are still liable to be ping ponged or locked out of your dodge by stuns.

But certainly be better than what we have now, which is nothing.

I honestly like the idea especially since you can use life force without using death shroud (which isn’t that good), but don’t let those dodges activate traits that involve dodges ottherwise it would be OP. (ex: mark of blood on dodge)

I think it’s really interesting, so kudos for thinking it up.

These are builds that I use in spvp. Try them out if you can and let me know what you think. Also, I’m going to be doing a video showcasing each.

Scarecrow
0/4/4/4/2

Lich Bomber (Video)
2/0/6/0/6

Core skills are aoe damage and utility, DS is a switch-blade for crit dps, and Lich does a combination of both.

The ideal rotation would be after you get your radiation field proc, go into a bone minion-spectral grasp-bone minion secondary and even your S3-S4 to stack a bunch of weakness/poison; switch to a/f and stack vuln before going into DS or Lich. A/F should be your current set for DS or Lich. If you bypass a/f and go straight into DS/Lich you can get a couple of rapid fire shots from their aa.

Hi people,

I have a suggestion that you may find interesting and wich could improve Necromancers for higher lvl of content.

Right now Necromancers are in a very bad situation, while they are true beasts at dealing damage with conditions and have plenty of vitality and life recovery in some case, they do lack the tools to mitigate bigger spikes of damage in both PvE and PvP (especialy PvE). They also have other problems with power builds and combo support, but I won’t speak about these issues.

Necromancers used to be capable to mitigate spikes of damage with Deathshroud, but this got removed and they now take everything that bypass Deathshroud right into their healthpool. With limited (and situational) acces to Vigor and Aegis, their ways to prevent damage are now limited to 2 dodge rolls, deathshroud, protection and life recovery the 3 last of those beeing useless against high level Boss content with OS mechanics.

My idea is simple, keep the Necromancer the way it is right now but add him a new inate perk called Soulbound Recovery, wich would allow him to dodge at the expense of 32,5% of his base life force when the Necromancer is out of stamina. The Necromancer would of course keep his ability to enter Deathshroud but would get extra options to expense his ressources.

Why 32,5% base lifeforce? Well I think first it is a pretty considerable ammount of lifeforce and that same quantity would allow people wich invest 30 point into soulharvest to get 130% total life force and dodge 4 extra time in a row instead of 3.

Edit : Or instead, sinds Andele explained me how Life Force Pool worked decrease the effective Life Force cost for a dodge.

While 4 extra dodge rolls sounds very unbalanced, do not forget Necromancers would actualy need to fight to generate enough lifeforce to dodge an extra time.

What do you people think about this idea?

Shadow fiend:

Attack speed:
35 attacks in 1 minute – 1,7s attack speed

Damage:
Without traits:
335 dmg – 365 dmg ~ 350 dmg (tooltip 147 dmg)
Haunt:
490 dmg – 540 dmg ~ 515 dmg (tooltip 147 dmg)

With ToM:
439 dmg – 480 dmg ~ 459 dmg (tooltip 163 dmg)(ToM correct)
Haunt:
648 dmg – 688 dmg ~ 668 dmg (tooltip 163 dmg)(ToM scales with it)

DPS: 204
DPS with VM + Bloodthirst + TOM: 329

Healing per second: 0
With traits: 50 hp
HP gain in 1 minute: 3010 hp

Note: You can command fiend to blind enemy while you are stomping enemy to prevent the interuption of it.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Flesh wurm:

Attack speed:
15 attacks in 1 minute – 1,7s attack speed

Damage:
Without traits:
783 dmg – 853 dmg ~ 818 dmg (Fought it be more)(tooltip: 238 dmg)

With ToM:
1020 dmg – 1180 dmg ~ 1100 dmg (tooltip: 325)

DPS: 204
DPS with VM + Bloodthirst + TOM: 230

Healing per second: 0
With traits: 6 hp
HP gain in 1 minute: 360 hp

Note: Wurm teleportation is completly useless becouse you can’t use it like mesmers portal to get back to target lokation from distance, but you can use it to get on the walls like engineers jump shot.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Flesh golem:

Attack speed:
48 attacks in 1 minute – 1,25s attack speed

Damage:
Without traits (Chain 2x normal attack + 1x stronger):
(2x)560-600 ~ (2x)580 + 980

With ToM:
(2x)720-820 ~ (2x)770 + 1220

DPS: 570
DPS with VM + Bloodthirst + TOM: 820

Healing per second: 0
With traits: 67 hp
HP gain in 1 minute: 4128 hp

Note: Criple efect scale with players condition durration, stability from charge scales from boon durration.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Build: Blood fiend + Bone fiend + Shadow fiend + Bone minions(x6) + Flesh Golem gives us:
DPS: 1737
Hp/s: 539
Loose 6 conditions in 10 seconds. (If minion summoned one after another: loose 1 condition every 1,66 sec)

Final thoughts:
- Blood fiend auto attack doesnt scale from healing like tooltip says
- All tooltips have wrong information with damages
- Flesh wurm is weakest minion (in terms of dps and damage), only helps that it’s ranged
- ToM is most usefull on high damage minions, also buffs their active skills damage, should be moved to adept line.
- Nowadays 0/0/30/30/0 is easiest and most usefull core to minionmancer, 20/0/20/30/0 for more burst
- Minions actually better than other summons (spirit weapons, turrets, elementals) but in my opinion worse than ranger spirits. Minions are usefull becouse of many utility traits which other summons lack.
- Minions and all summons scale from: Condition damage, Condition durration and boon durration.
- Minions can crit but it doesn’t scale from players cricital chance (Furry works with them)
- Life leech shlould heal minions too.

Blood fiend:

Attack speed:
20 attacks in 1 minute – 3.0s attack speed

Damage:
Without traits:
223 – 245 ~ 234 dmg (tooltip : 73 dmg)
DPS: 78 dmg

With Training of the master:
295 – 320 ~ 306 dmg (ToM, correct)
Note: ToM increases minion Leech damage by 5%

Vampiric master leech damage: 81 (tootltip : 74)
DPS with Vampiric Master + ToM: 106 DPS
DPS with Vampiric Master + Bloodthirst + ToM: 137 DPS
—————
Healing:
Healing per hit : 926 (tooltip : 510 heal) – 0 healing power used
Healing per hit scaling from tooltip: 0,65 (in reality: DOES NOT SCALE FROM HEALING POWER!)

Health per second
Without traits: 308 hp
With traits (86 hp leech) : 337 hp
HP gain in 1 minute: 20220 hp

Taste of Death: Heals like tooltip says (3960 , scaling 1.0).
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Bone fiend:

Attack speed:
20 attacks (x2) in 1 minute – 3.0s attack speed

Damege:
Without traits:
135(x2) – 151(x2) ~ 143(x2) dmg (tooltip : 196 dmg)
Every 10s:
378(x2) dmg + 4s cripple (scale with condion durration)

DPS:142 dmg

Damage With ToM:
179(x2) – 194(x2) ~ 186(x2) (ToM 30%, correct)
Every 10s:
435(x2) dmg + 4s cripple

DPS with VM + Bloodthirst + TOM: 244 DPS
————-
Healing per second: 0
With traits: 57 hp (86×2 hp per 3s)
HP gain in 1 minute: 3440 hp

Rigor Mortis is bugged, if we cast it right after the minion attack it wont triger, so try to cast it right before his next attack.
Note: All attacks are projectile finishers (x2), so they are very effective with all sort of combo fields.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Bone minions:

Attack speed:
40 attacks (20 per minion) in 1 minute – 3.0s attack speed

Damage:
Without traits:
150(x2) – 170(x2) ~ 160(x2) dmg (tooltip: 49)
Purid explosion:
1480 – 1680 ~ 1580 dmg per explosion (tooltip 489)

With ToM:
198(x2) – 215(x2) ~ 206(x2) dmg (ToM, correct)
Purid explosion:
1940 – 2210 ~ 2130 dmg per explosion (ToM scales with it)(tooltip: 574)

DPS: 106
DPS with VM + Bloodthirst + TOM: 207

Healing per second: 0
With traits: 57 hp (86×2 hp per 3s)
HP gain in 1 minute: 3440 hp

Note: Bone minions doesnt have a lot of HP, so when you see them dying better detonate them to additional burst.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Played warrior for a couple of months and thief before that.
I recently got back to my ele which i made on my very first day of playing
at headstart. I thought PvP was a bit unbalanced; some classes had a definitive edge but nothing major.

Well, after coming to the realization that I have to play my keyboard as if I wanted to play ‘Circus Galop’ to be as effective as other classes can be with 1/4 of button presses. I wanted to express my respect for every elementalist who decided
to stick to his profession despite being overshadowed by every other profession in the game, having no team fight support other classes can’t do better and laughable survivability/sustain, with staff being a freekill1v1 and rallybait in teamfights.
Less options to disengage than other roamers and being forced at least 20 points in a particular traitline for almost every build that wants to be remotely useful.

That’s all. Thanks.
http://youtu.be/BdUy70dh8LY?t=8s

I don’t know if this topic has been brought up before, many GW1 players will know what I’m talking about. The set up behind this form of pvp was a series of maps where you were pitted against different teams to ultimately fight it out in the hall of heroes. Once your team captured HoH you had to defend it. You had relic runs, king of the hill, priest respawn etc. This was possibly one of the best features in guild wars 1 I can’t believe it was removed. What will it take for Anet to bring this awesome gameplay back to the game?

The other thread was getting kind of bogged down by other things, so I decided to draw out some of the agreed upon points for the sake of clarity, into one, easily backed suggestion that we can all get behind, and hopefully get more dev attention thereby.

Arcane Brilliance is now 900 range.

Arcane Wave reverted to pre-patch.

Why: Arcane Wave change may feel better for some ranged players, but it cripples the instacast speed of Dagger builds, while really helping nobody.

Staff: Usually wants the blast finisher on themselves anyways for fast heals/group buffing. More likely to use Brilliance if they need the ranged blast finisher, as they have better built in condition removal and can sacrifice ether renewal.

Scepter: Arcane Blast is built for them. Their might stacking is best in the game already already, and Scepter is designed to be more about single target. Out of everybody they need another blast finisher the least, and again, have stronger condition removal built in, and can thus use Brilliance better if they want it.

Dagger: All fields are placed immediately on the player. Arcane wave used to be immediate response. No matter how “used to it” we get, holding and aiming is going to be slower than just tapping. The weakest build atm, D/D offensive burst, just lost the ability to BurningSpeed/LightningFlash/ArcaneWave. For those of you who don’t play this combo, it relies on casting Flash mid BS, Arriving at Target, and Waving for might and damage before BS hits. Its a core combo, and now its gone. You could wave afterwards, but you’d also lose the might for your true instant FreshAir/Hydromancy/RTL follow up. Unless you think you can aim faster than you can activate 0 Cast Time skills.

TL;DR:
Arcane Wave now feels clunky for D/D Burst, which is also the least able to use Brilliance and the most in need of true 0 time instant activation.

We know it feels good for scepters, but ask yourselves if you really need another ranged blast finisher, and if Arcane Blast really isn’t good enough for you.

Arcane Brilliance is now 900 range.

Arcane Wave reverted to pre-patch.

Regardless if you agree with the rest, if you support these changes, please leave a note here.

I’m a strong believer Positive low percentage growth…
Yesterday maybe 10k people played pvp; that’s 9k more then all of the past 6 months..
If 500 stick around that’s good enough for me for the first phase of rewards…
Next phase in two weeks another 500?

We don’t need 10,000 people running around screaming howto2capdoe? Every day..
Small Steady positive growth as Pvp adds more features and is made more fun to play for a more wide demographic of people is the only way.

Flumek.9043:

They made the signet bad, so it would draw atention from weakening shroud nerf. I think they got us

They learned from the Putrid Mark fiasco. Instead of just stealth nerfing things, they tell us about the nerf, but do something else so enraging that it takes our attention away.

Kind of like when my dad told me the best way to get over the pain of an injury is to hurt something else worse so that pain makes you forget. Solid advice.

Okay, so; just some heal math I sent to one of the devs, in case anyone wanted some easy-to-compare numbers.

“The problem is:
Passive wise, we’re looking at 325 healing per second under OPTIMAL conditions (that optimal condition being, getting hit, which… isn’t very optimal in the first place), whereas the warrior’s base is 392 every second on the second with no draw backs. Alternatively, the Mesmer one which is about 330 hps with 3 illusions, which in spvp is relatively easy to maintain on most popular Mesmer builds, and this would tick every 3 seconds without any counter restrictions (meaning you can actively gain hp over time if you avoid being hit/kite).

Then, for the use.
The cooldown is way too long (35 seconds untraited), but we’ll assume the signet is traited for the heal. It’s a 4000 heal for a 28 second cooldown on the highest HP pool class in the game with the fewest defensive measures. The “use” portion, while it has a few failsafes can still fail to mark a target under certain circumstances, aside from the long cast time for the very weak beginning heal. After that, due to its 1 second ICD, you can manage to steal over 5 seconds 1.2k more health. That’s a 5.2k heal on a 28 second cooldown, 35 second cooldown untraited, in which time, the signet passive obviously isn’t working. This is the same for any party member, this “support heal” at best can give 1.2 healing to others (or slightly more with healing power, which, not many necromancers run healing power because in most cases our scaling with healing power isn’t worth the investment). This leads me to 2 secondary gripes:

1. Life stealing is not a support role. Life stealing is a tanky/aggressive damage niche. Put yourself at risk/the thicket of battle to BENEFIT (not try to get hit and die because you’re not healing enough). It really should support life stealing traits (which the passive doesn’t even improve with bloodthirst), and be for life stealing necros, which are not support necros.

2. Say someone did want to support. This isn’t the heal to do it with.
With 1500 Healing power:
The “on hit” heals for 692, realistically in 5 seconds (Assuming the target doesn’t move at all…) you get 4 siphons off, for 2768 healing, from 1 main target and best case scenario.

Well of blood, traited can be a 32 second cooldown heal that instantly heals the necromancer for (Again with 1500) 6400. This also triggers an instant heal for 725, so right off (and for .25 second fewer cast time) the necromancer heals themselves for 7152, and 725 aoe in the well, and then that amount every second for 10 second and provides a light field.
Assuming best conditions, this is an AoE heal for 7957 healing with a long light field and a self heal for 14375."

To me it’s not what the class itself but the interactions between classes that made GW1 a better game. They tried to to take that concept and strip it down into a spam fest of field and finisher. Maybe it was the dual profession, maybe it wasn’t.

In GW1 we had abilities that played off of one another that the current combo system couldn’t dream of. Splinter ranger? Echo SS? 55/SS? Amazing examples of interdependent skills creating something fun, noticeable, and game changing. Blasting fire fields is not fun. The beauty of GW1 is that each class had a role beyond DPS, Heal, and Tank, but did so in a way that personalized the classes to an unimaginable degree.

Whatever profession I brought, I had a very individual and specific duty, and most importantly, I could see my output. I could measures effectiveness. I knew why I was there and what my group expected of me that couldn’t be provided by any other profession.

What we have now is a failed attempt at encouraging diversity through allowing any build to be trivial. No. Create content that makes me want to depend on others because they bring something different to the table.

That is how you encourage build diversity. Sorry if I went off topic.

So i want to make it super clear that this is not a QQ post. I love my Necromancer and overall I don’t think we are in a bad spot (go ahead and flame me)

Ahhh to the matter at hand, GW2 Necromancer suffers from an identity crisis. The “idea” was to make Death Shroud out gimmick but its just not interesting enough. In GW1 you had some great choices to make and they really effected your play style. Obviously Minion Masters were better but even placing that aside your Blood tree felt much more like a “Necromancer”

In GW1 you were constantly sacrificing your HP in place of your MP, then you had a Life Steal effect to kind of balance things off, It created a balancing act and every ability felt more important.

Curses created one of a kind effects that would punish your enemy’s for making certain actions, I like conditions in GW2 but the necro doesn’t bring anything unique to the table, there is no reason that abilities couldn’t cause non condition effects as well as existing effects.

What was your favorite part of GW1 necro and how is the GW2 necro different, are there any areas where GW2 necromancer beats GW1?

Quick background about myself, I am predominately a PvP player, and have spent over 90% of my time in this game in SPvP playing every class. Lately I’ve taken a like to necro and mesmer. So here are my thoughts on the latest ninja nerf:

Whilst necros can still have huge impact in teamfights, I feel that their overall “team support” has been kitten by this nerf alone. In order to help cleanse conditions off allies now you must either pray to the RNG gods and take Plague Signet or force your entire team to sit in Well of Power for 5 seconds letting the enemy team bombard that small area for that duration, hoping you’ll clear 6 conditions that won’t be reapplied in half that time. I do agree the skill (Putrid Mark) needed a nerf, but I think the wrong aspect of its functionality was hit.

My proposed ideal functionality is the following:

• Transfer 3 conditions from each ally in the mark’s area to the enemy nearest the center of the mark when placed. Do not transfer any conditions from the caster unless he is also inside the mark’s area.
• Remove the double Blast Finisher bug.

That way, necros still have viable team support against conditions and Putrid Mark is adequately nerfed.

I’d like to hear what you guys have to say about this.

JonPeters.5630:

Scarran.9845:

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Currently what is the difference in me spending 20 points in Death Magic and taking Flesh of the Master? Am I not receiving the same benefits? As I get Protection of the Horde as the minor trait at 15 points and I get Flesh of the Master 20 point major.

The difference would be that we would be adding a new 15 point minor as well that you would be getting for free that would have similar power to these. If we took any two major traits that had synergy and merged them they would be overpowered. No difference here.

I’d like to offer a dissenting opinion.

Protection of the Horde (PotH) is so weak that I’d assert it is not worthy of being a 15 point Master minor trait. As such, adding it to a master level trait would only provide a modicum of value. Let’s use an example:

Necro with 30 points in Death tree vs Power Warrior using a main hand sword.

A Necro with 30 in Death with no minions has 2136 armor, based upon the numbers from gw2skills.net Let’s assume the necro has no other toughness, so we can see what the maximum damage reduction from PotH provides.

Let’s say the warrior attacks with “Sever Artery”.

According to the GW wiki, damage is calculated as follows:
WEAPON DAMAGE * POWER * SPELL_Coef / armor

A Warriors MH exotic Berserker’s sword has 905-1000 damage, so let’s just use 1000 for the sake of argument. Also, let’s assume the warrior has 3000AP (that’s a LOT of AP).

1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 2136 = 842 damage

Now, let’s assume the necro has a full minion payload of 5 (ignoring the 5pt adept trait since it’s terrible). This means his 3 utility slots, elite and healing slot are all filled with minions. That’s an additional 100 toughness.

1000* 3000 * 0.6 / 2236 = 805 damage

That’s a 4 % damage reduction, and that’s the best possible situation.

Now let’s assume the necro loaded up on toughness, and picked up amulets and runes with toughness. Now the necro would be sitting around 2945 armor:

0 Minions: 1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 2945 = 611 damage
5 minions: 1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 3045 = 591 damage

That’s 3% damage reduction.

I contend that this in no way sounds overpowered for a Master Level trait:
Flesh of the Master: Increases pet health 50% and reduces damage taken by 0.8% for each minion you control.

For S&G’s, let’s take a look at the Mesmer defensive Master level trait:

Chaotic Dampening: Increased toughness while wielding a staff or trident. Reduces recharge on staff and trident skills.
Toughness: +50
Recharge Reduced: 20%

That’s only different by 50 toughness, which is roughly equivalent to a Necro that runs with 3 minions out.

Sounds pretty comparable to me.

Edit: forgot bone minions give 2 minions instead of 1. However, those are low-hp pets that you are supposed to blow up, so let’s just assume we blew one up. :-)

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.

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.

Speaking of minions, why not allow the Flesh Golem to swim? I haven’t seen anyone bring that up yet.