Guild Wars 2

You are right i just didnt work on it that much. The theme of movement was started with the topic of the thief. But i will write morw about the current comps.

but what you are wrong with is that tcg doesnt run 2 bunkers. They run 3. Guardian is fullbunker, a warrior is always bunkerish if he is not zerker, same goes with DD ele which is also not a softtarget.

basically a bunker is something that is hard to kill. Which elem and warr are atm. So in my opinion tcgs comp is 2 bunkers (1 fast to defend close → ele, and one slower to win 1v1s → eviscerate warrior, guardian and 2 high mobility classes.)

if you run 3 highly mobile classes you will probably start to have teamfights and situations where one of the roamers has to 1v1 something in enemy favor.

basically the good comps atm are:

bunker (cheesmodeish)
with 1 thief
movement team (mesmer thief).

but still i think the guide still fits. Its still one of the best options to have at least 2 somehow tanky classes for each point and a guard and the rest is somewhat optional.

but ill write something about that later

This is a very cool thing i missed such a site since launch. I always loved the GW1 build website.

because it didnt exist i kept a list of the current metabuilds on my stream. I always keep them updated since months so maybe it helps and you can add one of the builds;

twitch.tv\djangogw2

Then again the same comp with two thieves will have an advantage vs all movementteams but will have a disadvantage vs all bunker teams.

and bunker teams (cheesemode for example) are very very forgiving. You can easily comeback after a whipe and if a movement team makes a mistake against you its very hard to comeback after that.

so if you want to start playing with friends and have good success play bunker. If you want the best possible but also one of the hardest unforgiving teamcomps play movement team

First of all there is no best comp ever. There is probably a best comp for each meta tough. And engi and necro are definately not top tier atm.

the best comp if we assume everyone plays perfectly is probably the movement team we see so often lately. Guardian, ddele, eviswarrior, mesmer, thief.

if played good you win vs every bunker comp because you just ourotate and outnumber them. If you play vs a team with a thief your thief has to be better than theirs then you can outrotate and outnumber them again easily. And if we asume that both teams are equally skilled you still have the advantage to outrotate. And if you play vs the same build its 50:50 (if all play perfectly).

its one of the hardest teambuilds to play and really not forgiving if you make mistakes. If you play it well its the most rewarding and you can win everything. (bunkercomps should have no chance if you rotate good)

if you are interested about very long theorycrafting about this theme read my thread about teamcomps. Its linked at the bottom of the new to spvp sticky.

to talk more about the comps:

you need a guard. Then its also good to have the possibility of one bunkerish class on at least 2 points (because a guard should roam and you win the game with 2 points). DD ele and Warrior are the best for this role atm. Then the other 2 are somewhat optional. In my opinion a good thief will always dominate the meta and a team with thief shouldnt loose vs one without if all play on the same level and its just about rotations. (for example lunchbox is a really good team, but they often loose compwise because they have to fight fights they dont want to, becaude the other team is faster and can rotate more efficient.) then a really good mesmer fits perfectly in the meta because he is also very fast and he wrecks bunkers. Even 1v1 he is a problem for most bunkers.

for me it’s like this:

Play soloqueues, get skyhammer 3 times (I leave in skyhammer or go afk) dishonorable

—> switch to second accont same procedure.

I can always play without skyham and I’m happy

I do one track in about 1-2 days. But I play alot

But seriously: If you want rewards… don’t play pvp

I leveled all my characters with pvp, just because I only enjoy pvp in this game.

My recommendation:

Just play what you like, the rest will come automatically.

there is no report afk and there will never be. Anet cares a kitten about pvp. get used to it

I would rather have each map 1 time than these “random” things.

Seriously out of 15 games I had:

first 4 on spiritwatch
2 on skyhammer
legacy
3 on spiritwatch
5 on spkyhammer

is this normal? I feel like many other players say the same

remove downstate is a terrible idea and would only work when you implement healer classes.

If there would be no downstate you would see even more bunkers.

so no thanks

Make 2! (two!) soloqueues.

one with skyhammer and spiritwatch only

and one with the good maps.

thank me later

I bought the only skin reward day 1 via gold earned by pvp. So they might as well implemented a reward track

I agree with turret engi being op.

Still it’s not usefull in tpvp unless you build your whole team around it. It’s underwhelming in teamfights (if you say otherwise you really haven’t played it. I tried it top 100 tpvp. It’s insane in 1v1s but slow and you have to build around that, or you are just a minionmaster sitting on a point while your team looses the other points 4v5)

And other than that build engi is in one of the worst positions atm (trust me I’m one of the only engineers left in top 200 of tpvp).

The problem is the highsustain highdmg builds ALL of them. They render spikebuilds void.

The best meta was where paradigm played engi,mesmer,ele,ranger,guard and car crash ele,thief,necro,engi,guardian.

Basically everything was balanced ok (shaves would have been good) except warrior was underwhelming. But the meta was so much more interesting with spikes etc going on.

At the moment where good teams (like paradigm) who played their classes almost to the max were forced into OTHER classes should have been alarming. Before the necro doomfire update you could basically play your class and if you played it to the max even warriorteams did well (plastic fantastic). After it, Phantaram had to reroll, Xeph had to reroll, Teldo didn’t want to but it would have been better too

That point should have been so alarming that they should have reverted the updates. (as you saw car crash did well with a necro eventough it was stated as underwhelming they won and where one of the best teams around)

You know what? they probably won’t implement a thing

they care a kitten about pvp^^

Hey Dude good questions, I will help you

I’m a quite experienced PvP player (playing since Beta, was in 3 good teams, currently around top 100 but not that active)

first of all check these links out:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ul7cz/supcuties_comprehensive_pvp_shatter_guide/
- guide for shatter mesmer

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/A-guide-to-spvp-reworked/first
- my guide on teamrotations (pvp tactics)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Guide-2-is-up-Veteran-moves-guide/first#post3394688
- super’s guide on teamrotations

- helseth’s guide on kiting

Then I would recommend you that you pm me (infamous django) I will show you some tricks and kiting spots.

- “Guardians/Warriors hurting me for insane amounts of damage while being extremely tanky and regenerating all the damage I do to them.”
- def guards hurt you because of retaliation. Warriors shouldn’t be able to regenerate your damage. (it’s explained good in supcuties guides)
But one of the best tipps i can give you is not to stand on a point. You are not a class to do that (unless it’s absolutely necessary, for example your team has 490 points and only 1 point and you are the only one to defend with 2 enemies inc)

- “Hammer users stunning and locking me down again and again and again, to the point where i use up all my dodges and stun breakers and just accept my fate.”
- Don’t let them reach you, don’t fight them on a point. Your team gets more points if you win the 1v1 and cap the point afterwards.

- Thieves that come in out of nowhere and 3-shot me, or disappear into thin air when I manage to ambush them (usually only to come back after they’ve healed up and kill me anyway).
- That sadly is reality. You need to kite like a boss and even then it’s hard.

- Rangers winning pretty much every 1v1 I attempt against them.
- Rangers are extremely tanky. But a shattermesmer is one of the only classes who can kill fullbunkers 1v1. After some time you just can’t outheal it anymore. (you really need to NOT fight on points).

- Most other classes being able to run away with a bunch of dashes if I gain the upper hand in a duel.
- I get the feeling you are moving wrong with mesmer. PM me I show you how you should move on the map and what your role is

- Enemies always knowing who I am and who my clones are. Am I not being elusive/tricky enough or are they exploiting a counter-mechanic like targeting the real mesmer with Ctrl+T?
- It’s easy when you get the feel of it. Good players know almost always where you are. You need to make some good stealth and kites for them to loose you. Dodge backward, hide behind your illusions (they tank the dmg on you) and just attack from afar. The key is not not to be seen but not to be hurt.

- Enemies dodging my burst or going invulnerable during it almost every single time I perform it (I’m on a shatter build right now).
Maybe your build or you are bursting to obvious. PM me we will look at that

- Starting games – am I the only one who has no idea what to do at the beginning of a new sPvP game? Do I go to the nearest capture point? Follow my team? Take a secondary objective?
- read my guide watch the videos and pm me^^

- People leaving the team. It seems that whenever the enemy team has a decent score advantage, people keep leaving the team, forcing the game to get autobalanced after a while. I find it hard to win in an outnumbered situation, and while I know I can’t stop players from leaving if they deem the game to be unwinnable, I don’t quite know how to make the most of what I have and try and scrape the game back on its feet.
- Stop playing hot join. If you seriously want to get better and seriously want to start pvp don’t play hot join. Play soloqueue or get a team.
Good players only do hot join when they are waiting for a real game or if they don’t have time for another match, or just to test the burst on a build. It’s not serious, therefore nobody cares about 4v5s and winning or loosing.

tichorum.2415:

You think ranking up is slow now? Should’ve played pre-April 15th patch, then, lol.

wow dude. you really didn’t read my post.

I think ranking up now is fast. Therefore I also think the old rank system could be reimplemented.

And for those saying: “skyhammer farmers blabla”. The pvp community knows which players are good and which earned their ranks. When a r70 minionmaster with a name never heard of sits on close afk everybody knew what was going on

btw I can also imagine the old rank system would be better for the players in china. They will leave fast if no endgame is implemented soon. (give it also to us please..)

Also we should use the hype GW2 has in china to finally make pvp something good. It has so much potential but currently it is still at beta state with 2 new maps (about 5% of its potential)

Before the rank update I just passed rank 65, so I was one of the higher rated guys. Ranking up was kittening slow, but still that number grew and it somehow motivated me to play. And it somehow was a nice feeling to have the highest rank in a soloqueue for example.

As it is now. Players 10 ranks under me before have the same rank as me. Which is OK I guess.

But the only problem with the ranksystem was r70-80. The rest was OK. r12 Phoenix was something special in GW1 because it was so hard to reach. Here rank is obtainable by everyone. Nothing special about dragon when everybody has it.

Well that left aside. I know that that decision wont be changed (like many bad decisions but that also left aside).

What pvp is really missing is something that motivates me.

- I have no possibility to rank up anymore (r80 max).
—> I would really like to have more ranks for the hardcoreplayers to show that they have more experience than a normal player.. And to be serious I like a number to see my progression.

- The chests are more annoying than rewarding
—> It gives alittle gold, but when you have almost every skin the rewards are just underwhelming. PvE is much faster.

- Leaderboards
—> Soloqueue is so random with 4v5s etc. I don’t care about that leaderboard. And teamqueue should be teambased.

Before the rankupdate I played more. Now literary the only thing I can achieve by playing is getting better at it nothing more. Rewards don’t do nothing for me (I don’t need gold anymore..), rank I have maxed.

The only fun I have is coming online and playing with my team. But gamewise we also don’t get rewarded for doing that. It’s just the social aspect that keeps me in this pvp

skyhammer is the biggest kitten in the game (afterwards followed by spiritwatch). Let them rot in hot join.

I seriously know NO player who likes that map and doesn’t want it removed.

And I agree… I want the old rank system back. But not going to happen. Anet will continue to kitten us in our butts

seriously? In all the things you could balance the first that comes to your mind is engi?

you seriously have no idea of pvp.

So much to listening to the wrong players..

and to be ontopic: dont expect anything in balancing for the next year

if you never played you start at about rank 300 so playing vs them is not the problem.

MMR is also not bad its bad because so less ppl play.

We need these kittenty maps removed. I rather play teamqueue alone than soloqueue

1. remove skyhammer

2. remove spiritwatch

3. esports

Atm it’s only gray.

Please make it dyable I would be so happy!!

there are basically 3 things to sustain.

1. Get away (need high mobility)
2. Have passive sustain (cleansing ire, healsig, stances, knocks)
3. Have blocks and evades.

The problem with blocks like elixir S and others is that mostly the invul is useless. The few more seconds you life mostly are pointless (UNLESS your team is able to kill somebody with those 4 seconds plus). You may have recognized this as Ele or Engi or whatever. “I’m invul now but I will drop after it runs out”. Basically to avoid dmg you need mobility or sustain (passive).

The meta which many people see as the coolest had almost no passivity. All builds focussed around the decision: “will i deal damage? or will i defend myself?”. And while you defended yourself you coulnd’t do dmg.

So there are 2 possible solutions to balance this game:

1. Attack or Defend

Get rid of passive skills. Design every skill so that you have to decide: either I deal no damage but get less or I deal damage but also receive damage.
(that would mean you would need to erase passive skills on warriors and eles and rangers mostly)

2. Be passive or run
Embrace passiveness and focus the balancing around passivity and mobility. Basically you design classes so that they either have high self sustain (passive healskills, passive condition remove, passive damage) OR that they have the mechanic of attack/defend but with high mobility to get away.
(if you look at this option and from this perspective ele and warrior are somewhat par and on a good level. So you need to bring the other classes up to them [mainly engi and necro]. Either more sustain (passive! not blocks or something) or more mobility. Or something from both.

The first option would be the coolest. But that’s not going to happen. So let’s talk about the second. I won’t get too concrete because it won’t change anything anyways.

But basically you need to be able to decide:

- Am I a self sustaining bunker which is insanely strong in 1v1s and 1v2s and in general. (warriors, eles)

- Or Am I really bad at self sustaining but deal insane damage and am insanely fast so that the OP bunkers can’t reach me.

And basically these two options will form all the possible builds of every class. (it’s somewhat like this at the moment)

The fact that this game has no healer makes only a few teamcompilations really workable in this conquest mode.

To win a game you need to win:

bigger fights (3v3,4v4,5v5,)
small skirmishes
1v1s

basically there are only about 3 different teamcompilations:

1. Bunker teamfight compilations (without thief, for example 2 warriors, d/d ele, staff ele, guard)

2. Teams with a thief (should have a hard time vs bunker comps if played good)

3. movement teams (1 mes 1 thief)

I know there is more to that but I wont talk about this here.

So the fact that you have no healer means you have to sustain yourself. Means avoiding, blocking, neglecting, reflecting, interrupting damage on yourself.

Basically passivity is everything! The builds which deal damage while sustaining yourself are the best and will always be. The only other option if you are not as sustainable is to have more mobility to get away.

The team who sustains the more wins more it’s simple as that (assuming you rotate about as good as your opponent)

Let’s look at the current meta builds and why they are good and why certain classes are not so good at the moment.

Thief

Highly mobile. The thief has so much evade that he doesn’t really have windows where he has to decide “will i attack now or will i defend?” you just hit for a split second and evadespam again. So “passive” evading while dealing dmg. (I know it’s not really passive)

Warrior

Insane passivity. The heal is completely passive, you don’t need to do anything, it’s just there. With hambow you can neglect damage on the opponent (knocks) while dealing damage to him.

Eles

(not glasscannons). D/D eles and Staff eles have amazing sustain. Also everything somewhat passive. Heal is passive on usage, rest is on attunement switch.

Mesmer

Not passive. That’s why you have so less good Mesmers. You need to decide “will i attack” or “will I defend”. It’s somewhat viable due to max range spam and high mobility. The problem are thieves. You basically need a thief in your team to protect your mesmer. (the mesmer can’t disengage because he will loose vs the thief and then get stomped offpoint)

Ranger

Also has much passivity. Pets deal dmg, basically you can focus on evading and you win mostly. The problem with ranger atm is that he looses almost every 1v1 (vs eles and warriors which dominate the meta)

Necromancer

He has passivity but honestly not as much (a few traits). While fear is too strong (deals insane dmg while neglecting dmg) the necro is insanely weak. He has some kite mechanics (which don’t really work if there is no Z-axis). What makes him somewhat viable is that he can win 1v1s vs eles and thieves and mesmers and possibly also vs warriors plus he can survive pretty long vs 2 ppl with deathshroud and epidemic.

Engineer

Also has some passive skills but also not really much (burning is passive and bomb with evade). The problem with engi (and with necro) is that he has a huge windows in “defend or attacking”.

i could actually see them do that. Ignore thousands of delete skyham threads and then they delete all the other maps

just joking delete hammer

good work and nice effort. Since you call it “tactical guides”. I would really like to see some movement talk. Maybe a commentary of a match of your team.

new chapter:

6. Predicting after the opener and watching the respawns

since many ppl think the old thread (and therefore this) should be stickied and it’s just ignored (I also wrote Josh Davis which is saying he will add to his new to spvp thread if somebody wants to contribute.. but no answer).

So everybody who thinks this should be stickied, can you write Josh Davis a private message?

they’re not. please remove.

seriously I wrote a GM with a PvE problem and I got my weapon back in like 2 days. I suppose that many other players wrote that week with same issues…… and it takes ages to give rewards to about 200 ppl?

So there once was a really nice blogpost which sounded promising. But I and all other players feel that that were just lies to keep us on a leash.

The pvp ready up is a joke with ppl talking about cow finishers and nothing interesting happens.

The update was good tough (except for the rank change which is a joke). But you guys need to have more courage. Why not remove skyhammer and spiritwatch from soloqueue, every player I know would rather play raid on the capricorn competitive than these maps.
why not add the deathmatch map to soloqueue?

will there ever be new gamemodes in pvp? or did you abandon this? how is the future of pvp?

It’s just always ifs and “when it’s ready”. You guys are just not open enough. I understand that something can throw you back, but then you don’t say “when it’s ready” you say “the new map will come out 2 months later or so because we still have problems with the mesh and balancing”… for example. At least then we know that something is happening.

For the PvP community you are just a bunch of guys releasing PvE updates and throwing some sugar all 6 months so we keep playing this game. I feel like getting kicked in the butt since beta (and now I wished I hadnd’t played that much pvp, then I would be r80 AND have my legendaries like others I know)

when????

I also did an attempt on that. It’s not that elaborate but with the “new to pvp start here” thread it should be enough =)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/A-Guide-to-sPvP-0-Beginners-Guide/first#post3326168

you can also ask me ingame if you want

Final words

Thanks for all the kind replies on my old thread. I will respond to every question you have (here or ingame).

If builds are not up to date anymore visit my twitch
http://de.twitch.tv/djangogw2
I always try to keep an update list of all the meta builds!

Also I’m offering coaching for teams. COMPLETELY FOR FREE! I accept donations tough
I will help you build your teambuild, talk how you should move etc. Unless i don’t have to coach you 2 hours per week (lets say 3-4 hours ONCE).

I would also like if some other experienced players have inputs regarding this thread.

Thank you for reading

And ask me anything you want ingame: infamous django (or on my twitch chat)

8. OK Django, but what if we loose?

if you loose there are a few possibilities from which regrouping is probably almost the best. I think i will do this for each map. Regrouping also depends on your and the opponents composition

1. Forest of niflhel

9. After reading all this… what should we play?

Ultimately I recommend you to play what you like the most and try to make that work.

what you certainly need is:

1. A guardian
2. A rather tanky dude for one point (can be any build/class)
3. A rather tanky dude for the other point (can be any build/class)

And then you just decide what your tactic should be.

do you want to have movement team and outrotate enemies? play with fast classes mesmer/thief or even others

do you want to outbunker everone? add more bunkers

do you want to win big fights? add dps guards, necros

do you want to win small skirmishes? play classes which are good in 1v1, 2v2 etc.

Basically what I need to say is, that a Movement Team is probably the best when played perfectly (with mesmer and thief). It’s very hard to beat and nearly impossible to beat without a thief (5 bunkers). Altough it’s much harder to win with it because you need to be very good with rotations and if you make mistakes your whole team can wipe easily.

so:

- play what you like to play

- if you want to have more success as a starting team (not much experience). Play a bunker comp. The movement teams which are good are all around top 100 (and there are about 3). So you can come really far with a bunker comp (movement teams will counter you at one point tough)

5. Predicting the opponent movement/opener and what to do after you have won

so it’s not that hard. Think about what compilation the opponent is running and how he needs to play to win. In certain comps you can almost 100% accuratly say that they wont push your close for example.

But another problem most teams have is what to do after a win.

One of the most important things you should always remember and keep in mind is:
„If I move on a point where no opponent is, will my team be outnumbered?“

Only move if you have to (because you will die otherwise) or an opponent is down.

If you won a midfight. Rather you push your opponent and zerg at their spawn OR you possition your team in between the 2 points you have and move where the opponent does. This mostly bears 1 problem „Oh kitten they are stealth THEY ARE HERE! I’m dead!“ and you are outnumbered. So I would let 2 bunkers sit close mid and push far with 2 or something so they are forced to regroup over that (leave after they come, unless you can win 100% certainly.)

6. Predicting after the opener and watching the respawns

If you listen to Maylo’s stream for example you will hear that the good teams always call out what is stomped and when it will respawn. Your team NEEDS to do that too!

For example a Thief is stomped mid, the guy who stomped him says: “Thief stomped mid respawn in 15”. And when the 15 seconds are over again! “Thief should have respawn now”.

Basically. You have a 4v4. You kill the Thief. Then you have these 15 seconds in which you have a 4v3 after this your Thief or another class should watch where the thief moves after his respawn.

You should always do that with each opponent. The best thing would be that you send a class to scout who is very mobile (thief or mesmer or both). And basically you always send someone back who can defeat him.

I will bring a match we played on temple for example. The opponents weren’t good, but also not that bad, but we were only able to defeat them to zero because of our movement on the map.

Our comp: Ele, Thief, Engi, Warrior, Guardian. Theirs: Warrior Warrior Guardian Ele Thief

We pushed far with Warrior And Ele. Our Thief capped our close and Engi went mid. Our guard was assigned to go mid or far depending on where the opponents would go. They defended far with 4 ppl, so he went far. Our thief could cap close without enemy inc and was mid quick where we 2v1 finished the ele. Then we pushed towards farpoint to have 15 seconds of 5v4. After the ele had respawn our thief pushed after him. Because he couldn’t win the 1v1 I pushed with him and we killed him again. (Our 3 PPL on far were all pretty tanky and rezzing very good! to survive thief and 2 warrs, otherwise this wouldn’t have been possible).

Then they sent out their thief with the ele. The ele rushed close while the thief decapped mid (because I pushed with the ele). Our thief went after their thief and we won both 1v1s.
I then watched both points and they pushed again in stealth this time (ele and thief).
I then went mid and let our thief stay above. Only the thief went mid. I instantly left mid for close to trade with our thief because we have won the 1v1s previously. Both close and mid got decapped but our trade let to the two 1v1s again which we won again. And the game was over 500 to 0.

If there are 5 enemies on the map you should have always even fights, EXCEPT you have hardbunkers who can hold more ppl (2v3 for example).

And don’t forget one rule: Don’t sit on the points and wait for the enemy if you wiped the whole team, go in front of their base and zerg em!

7. The thief

The thief is top tier. And he will always be. The reason is his mobility. A team with thief vs another without has always a problem. You need a thief to counter the other thief. No class can go after him with his mobility.

The only chance of winning vs a team with thief without is winning the fights. But vs good teams thats not reliable.

I would say that in two equally good teams the team with thief would win. Just because of the decaps going on.

Mobility is “almost” everything!

4.4.1 Teamcompilations with 4 bunkers

4.4.1 How can you win?

4.4.2 What does the build look like?

4.4.3 Mapspecific tactics?

4.4.4 how to counter?

4.5.1 Teamcompilations with 5 bunker

4.5.2 What does the build look like?

4.5.3 Mapspecific tactics?

4.5.4 how to counter?

4.3 Teamcompilations with 3 bunkers

4.3.1 How can you win?

4.3.2 What does the build look like?

4.3.3 Mapspecific tactics?

4.3.4 how to counter?

4.2 Teamcompilations with 2 bunkers

4.2.1 How can you win?

4.2.2 What does the build look like?

4.2.3 Mapspecific tactics?

4.2.4 how to counter?

4. BUILD YOUR TEAM

Okay we talked about general strategies in spvp, about dmg and about the roles which there are.
In this chapter I will talk about bunkers and how you can build your team around them.

So gather your friends in ts who you want to start pvping with. Look at the classes and then what build you could make.

All the possibilities of rotations and also strategies come from how many bunkers (hardtargets/strong 1v1 classes) you have.

If you are experienced you can predict the opener of an oponent or predict which situation you have to provoke for them to have a problem.

There are 5 possible teamcomps basically (with 1 bunker 2,3,4,5)

I will talk about how you can win with your build (movement rotations)
The classes you should probably use or are using
mapspecific openers and tactics
ways of countering your build

4.1Teamcompilations with 1 bunker

4.1.1 How can you win?

4.1.2 What does the build look like?

4.1.3 Mapspecific tactics?

4.1.4 how to counter?

3. ROLES IN A TEAM

Based on the above I will talk about the different roles now and give some standard builds as guidelines. So think about what your role should be.

3.1 The Guardian

3.2 The closepointdefender

3.4 Hardtarget Teamfighter – Secondary Bunker or hardtarget roamer

3.3 The decapper/invader

3.4 Softtarget Teamfighter/Roamer/Sweeper

There are many more possible builds this is just a general overview. Don’t just copy you can also build your own build. Just remember which role you want or have to fullfill.

2. GENERAL STRATEGIES REGARDING FIGHTS/DAMAGE

Leaving the capturepoint principle aside let’s just think about strategies for the best possible team regarding damage and the fights. So if you are thinking about a build with your friends keep this in mind:
Because you always need at least 1 bunker (guardian) Let’s look at the other 4 players.

There are 2 types of damage:

• Powerdmg
• Conditiondmg

And in my opinion 2 mindsets on fights or on starting a fight:

• We win fast. (you need insane burst and movement. The only chance of winning a fight vs really good hardtargets with only softtargets is to outnumber and spike them quickly. Use your movement.)
• We bunker. (You just have so much rezzing ability and safestomps while still having enough dmg, that you win.)

Which leads us to 2 different types of targets:

• Hardtargets
• Softtargets (usually glasscannons high dmg)

I’ts usually better to have more hardtargets. You die less fast and you have more options to rezz or stay on a point.

Depending on the setup you can say if a team is good in teamfights or needs to fight small skirmishes.

2.1. Balanced Team. 2cond-2power

2.2 The condition team 4 cond / 3cond-1power

2.3 The powerdmg team 4power / 3power – 1condition

In general you can say that every combination regarding damage works. The problems then start when we talk about rotations. For example the 4 condition team would simply be to slow vs a team with mes and thief.

After a big kind resonance on my old thread and ppl complaining about it not being up to date I rewrote/worked the whole thing here for you!

Here is the link to a somewhat beginners guide (it’s not that good yet).
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/A-Guide-to-sPvP-0-Beginners-Guide/first#post3326168

Introduction

This guide is aimed at everyone who is interested in spvp. I will explain how a good teamcomp looks and also talk about rotations (how you move who on the map).
I want to give starters the possibility to make a good teambuild together with their friends based on this guide

1. GENERAL STRATEGIES REGARDING CAPTUREPOINTS

All teamcompilations have one goal: to be most efficient on a 3 point capturesystem (thanks capt. Obvious).
But actually think of it:
You have 3 points (+ secondary objectives..) which give you 1 point per 2 seconds each. So the team who has more points (nodes) over time wins the game. Simple as that.
All the teamcompilations come from different mindsets regarding the 3 point principle.

1.1 Secure 2 Points

1.2 Secure 2 but invade far

1.3 Just win fast

1.4 Bunker them

thanks for all the kind feedback!

I will rewrite this to make it less redundant and update the builds in a new thread. Commin up soon

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Nice post, but what about full-fledged three point play with small skirmishing builds like in the old days? It seems many have drifted away from this as a viable strategy but as ApeX has shown the last month, is not the case.

I’m not sure if I understand “full-fledged” correctly. But if I do you are wrong.

Everybody drifted TO full-fledged three point play.

I try to break this down. In the old days it was pretty common to have 2 bunkers and 3 bursters.

Now almost everybody (and almost every good team) plays about 4 really good small skirmishing builds. The problem is, people now know how to play this 3 point capture system. So the meta is this bunker meta.

All the dominating speccs are insanely good small skirmishing speccs:

Warrior – Warriors are probably the best in small skirmishes. The surviveablity combined with the damage and the ability to rezz somebody and safestomp just wins 2v2s

Ranger – Also the same, surviveablity, dmg, support and rezzing!

Thieves – Insanely fast, high surviveablity, high dmg, interrupting rezzing, very strong in 1v1 because of the interrupt and evade spam

Necros – Really good in 1v1 and in Small skirmishes, have 1 safestomp/rezz.

Additional to this all these builds are also very strong in teamfights, because good small skirmishing builds have to be hardtargets, and hardtargets are good in teamfights because they don’t deal that much less dmg than glasscannons AND are hard to kill AND you have more ppl able to rezz AND stomp safe.

The thing is you can’t really always push 3 points. It’s just not possible. Sometimes you will loose and you won’t be able to push on 3 points again, you will have to regroup and you will be forced in teamfights. So you HAVE to take a guardian. You won’t be able to only provoke small skirmishes.

This all aside. I think all the balancing in the world can’t shift away from this bunker meta. What really would help is phantarams idea of increasing the points gained with kills (to 7 or even 10). This would make bursty setups viable.

yeah what would also fix it is a tournament with rounds (like ha in gw1)

you list your team with 5 players
you cant change your teamcomp/trait distribution (only weapons, skills etc. like normal before a game)

This tournament then goes for 5 rounds or so. With the first map being deathmatch, then capturepoints, then whatever….

for example.

Then decapper would just be bad

to make it short. Decap engi is not really nerfable with trait nerfs. Because then you also hurt the survivability of all other engibuilds making decap engi the only viable specc. Plus there are so many traitcombos which would work for decap engi.

A simple change in map layout could fix this. Just make a wall like on waterfall on each close and farpoint for each map. VS decap engi almost every class can in the “corner” because he doesn’t deal dmg.

This wouldn’t hurt normal flame/bomb engis because vs them you can’t just stand in a corner. They could still decap

(btw legacy is unbalanced, wf is much easier to hold)