Ranked PvP - A Returning Players Story

Hi everyone. I thought I'd share my experience as a returning player in PvP.Bit of background about myself, I'm a big fan of PvP and tend to always drift towards PvP in all games I play. In Guild Wars 1 I achieved Champion Rank 5 in GvG and Rank 10 in Heroes Ascent.
In Guild Wars 2, I dabbled in ranked in the past but never got into it due to real life getting in the way. Now, I have returned to Guild Wars 2 to give it a real go.

I began this journey by choosing to learn the role of Thief. This was because I wanted a role that couldn't be affected by team mates and relied purely on my performance. I started watching various Twitch streamers and YouTube videos about. I learned that a Thief should be rotating, decapping nodes and +1 fights. I learned various combos and even switched up my keybinds. I practiced a lot in Unranked before daring to get back into Ranked.After enough practice and around 50ish games I felt comfortable with the class and thought now is the time to do Ranked. I did my placement games and ended up in Silver 2. I was happy with this as I knew I still had a lot to learn.For those who have have never been in Silver, its rough. As a Thief I felt I was doing my job. Obviously not to perfection, but felt I was making correct decisions on who I engaged and made de-capping a priority to deny the enemy team points. The biggest thing I noticed at Silver Rating is that lots of players do not understand the very simple concept of not to fight out numbered. I cannot even count the amount of times I had to say in team chat "don't feed mid".

Due to this fact my rating fell significantly all way to the bottom of Silver 1, on the border of Bronze. I knew, something had to change. I decided to do 3 things.1) Find a partner to queue with.2) Learn 2 other roles.3) Communicate with my team more.

Finding a partner.... So I reached out to my Guild and luckily a few players said yes. I had a few players who would team up with me and they all played different roles. I had a friend who played Firebrand, someone else who played Necromancer and another who played Engineer. This meant I could continue playing Thief and allowed me to know that someone can be with the main team and coordinate them.

Learning other roles..... Now I had various partners to team up with and cover my back I knew I had to learn other roles to help benefit the team compilation. I decided to learn Firebrand and Necromancer. This meant if matchmaking pulled another Thief in with me I could easily switch depending on who my partner was. To learn each role I did something similar to what I did with Thief. I watched a few YouTube and Twitch clips but did not do as many Unranked matches.

Lastly, I planned to communicate with my team more. A simple "Hi" at the beginning of a game helps so much. I talked to my team to coordinate who would go close. Let people know "2 on close" etc and team mates would actually respond and rotate.

With all these 3 improvements my rating began to shoot back up. Obviously, I would lose a game here or there but never the less the rating went up. I found that games I lost were quite often down to Toxic players. I often got called noob for 1 bad decision or play and that player would just say "GG" when the other team are only 100 points above. DO NOT let these players ruin your PvP experience.A fun story of an encounter I had like the one above is a player on my team called me a noob Thief and to go play unranked (plus a bunch of nasty remarks). I simply blocked them and drew against them the next 3 games. All 3 games my team obliterated him, with me performing some clean bursts. It felt good....

I am now in Silver 3, about to get into Gold and the Season is not yet over. I aim to get to Gold 3 next season!Hopefully, this can inspire some players of low ratings to make a change in their mindset and playstyle to climb the ranks too!

Im happy some people can enjoy pvp like me (ik about balance). Hope u improve more in the next season and learn more on your build bursts and roles. As you are a decapper and +1er i sujest u some stuff.Read the death panel on left of your screen to know who died and wen did they die. Its bec if like ur team has close and mid and ur teammates are holding mid fighting the enemy team you know who dies and u decied where to go... u go close? Or u go far? Well if u look at map and see ur team is wiping out u should go far bec after ur team dies they cap mid and go close to cap ur node. So going close will result in your death. So going far and decapping and then regrouping with ur team and then getting mid and close back is best option cuz then wen u reach mid one of them went to cap their close point(dat u decapped) and now u outnumber the enemy team 5v4 in mid and win the whole map in few mins. This happens alot to me as a decapper in g2/3.just wanted to give u a lil tip :3

@Arcaniaxs.4519 said:Im happy some people can enjoy pvp like me (ik about balance). Hope u improve more in the next season and learn more on your build bursts and roles. As you are a decapper and +1er i sujest u some stuff.Read the death panel on left of your screen to know who died and wen did they die. Its bec if like ur team has close and mid and ur teammates are holding mid fighting the enemy team you know who dies and u decied where to go... u go close? Or u go far? Well if u look at map and see ur team is wiping out u should go far bec after ur team dies they cap mid and go close to cap ur node. So going close will result in your death. So going far and decapping and then regrouping with ur team and then getting mid and close back is best option cuz then wen u reach mid one of them went to cap their close point(dat u decapped) and now u outnumber the enemy team 5v4 in mid and win the whole map in few mins. This happens alot to me as a decapper in g2/3.just wanted to give u a lil tip :3

Thanks for the tip! Making use of the death panel is something I 100% need to do more often. I can go through a whole game without even looking at it once. Don't judge me!

Yeah lol after practicing and playing more you will be more comfortable with using map and death panel. It will reach a point wen u check stuff automatically and you can decap with a better strategy!

@"Broady.2358" said:Hi everyone. I thought I'd share my experience as a returning player in PvP.Bit of background about myself, I'm a big fan of PvP and tend to always drift towards PvP in all games I play. In Guild Wars 1 I achieved Champion Rank 5 in GvG and Rank 10 in Heroes Ascent.

In Guild Wars 2, I dabbled in ranked in the past but never got into it due to real life getting in the way. Now, I have returned to Guild Wars 2 to give it a real go.

I began this journey by choosing to learn the role of Thief. This was because I wanted a role that couldn't be affected by team mates and relied purely on my performance. I started watching various Twitch streamers and YouTube videos about. I learned that a Thief should be rotating, decapping nodes and +1 fights. I learned various combos and even switched up my keybinds. I practiced a lot in Unranked before daring to get back into Ranked.After enough practice and around 50ish games I felt comfortable with the class and thought now is the time to do Ranked. I did my placement games and ended up in Silver 2. I was happy with this as I knew I still had a lot to learn.For those who have have never been in Silver, its rough. As a Thief I felt I was doing my job. Obviously not to perfection, but felt I was making correct decisions on who I engaged and made de-capping a priority to deny the enemy team points. The biggest thing I noticed at Silver Rating is that lots of players do not understand the very simple concept of not to fight out numbered. I cannot even count the amount of times I had to say in team chat "don't feed mid".

Due to this fact my rating fell significantly all way to the bottom of Silver 1, on the border of Bronze. I knew, something had to change. I decided to do 3 things.1) Find a partner to queue with.2) Learn 2 other roles.3) Communicate with my team more.

Finding a partner.... So I reached out to my Guild and luckily a few players said yes. I had a few players who would team up with me and they all played different roles. I had a friend who played Firebrand, someone else who played Necromancer and another who played Engineer. This meant I could continue playing Thief and allowed me to know that someone can be with the main team and coordinate them.

Learning other roles..... Now I had various partners to team up with and cover my back I knew I had to learn other roles to help benefit the team compilation. I decided to learn Firebrand and Necromancer. This meant if matchmaking pulled another Thief in with me I could easily switch depending on who my partner was. To learn each role I did something similar to what I did with Thief. I watched a few YouTube and Twitch clips but did not do as many Unranked matches.

Lastly, I planned to communicate with my team more. A simple "Hi" at the beginning of a game helps so much. I talked to my team to coordinate who would go close. Let people know "2 on close" etc and team mates would actually respond and rotate.

With all these 3 improvements my rating began to shoot back up. Obviously, I would lose a game here or there but never the less the rating went up. I found that games I lost were quite often down to Toxic players. I often got called noob for 1 bad decision or play and that player would just say "GG" when the other team are only 100 points above. DO NOT let these players ruin your PvP experience.A fun story of an encounter I had like the one above is a player on my team called me a noob Thief and to go play unranked (plus a bunch of nasty remarks). I simply blocked them and drew against them the next 3 games. All 3 games my team obliterated him, with me performing some clean bursts. It felt good....

I am now in Silver 3, about to get into Gold and the Season is not yet over. I aim to get to Gold 3 next season!Hopefully, this can inspire some players of low ratings to make a change in their mindset and playstyle to climb the ranks too!

Thief's top priority is not decap....

Thief's top priority is not decap....

To my understanding the whole point of de-capping a node is to force the opposing team to send 1 player back to re-capture the point allowing you to rejoin your team to create a numbers advantage.I know de-capping is one of the many roles a Thief must perform but please elaborate for me what else I should be doing. I'm always keen to learn more!

@Broady.2358 said:

Thief's top priority is not decap....

No ur good, decap and +1ing is ur role, make outnumbered fights. More decap cuz as it stands +1ing can take to long on thief, ur better +1ing with rev or ranger, something with actual bursts.

In my opinion, although it looks like being +1/roamer brings more impact to your game, I believe that it is actually easier to "carry" when playing duelist build that can hold a node or even a strong teamfighting build.

The reason is that if your team is losing on the map, you can stagger the enemy points but you don't give points to your team. If I can make a Lol analogy, it is like playing jungler where you potentially have impact everywhere to give your team an advantage but if your team loses all lanes you cannot do much.Usually, you even get blamed at the end. Contrary to Lol though, even if you are losing, the enemy do not get XP or gold advantage so it is easier to turn a game around. I really like your comment about not giving up when behind.

As a thief, you want to avoid being idle (although you can full cap some points when they are not defended and your team is not outnumbered).

It is nice to see posts like this and such a positive attitude. Communication is indeed key, best to know upfront that someone going far at the start to avoid committing too hard on a potential 3v4 on mid or being sure who goes close.

With that mentality, you should climb quite easily. I'm not a high ranked player but just focusing on rotating better, communicating and looking for what you can improve rather than blaming your teammates should bring you easily into gold.

Just going to throw this out there. If anyone is interested in teaming up and maybe doing an odd Tournament hit me up in game! Even for some unranked games. The game is always more fun when playing with people.

Thanks for your post! really gonna try and follow your steps and mindset.good luck out there!