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The 10 most common errors and misconceptions of Conquest PvP


Falan.1839

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The 10 most common errors and misconceptions of Conquest PvPWhen playing ranked as a high tier player, who also competes with and against top teams in ATs, often you will realize mistakes in ranked. Some of these are simply mechanical shortcomings, non-viable builds, or errors of judgment made in the heat of the moment. Others are simply due to a lack of practice and skill, while more issues have already been covered by several of guides written on these topics, so I will not treat them any further here. However, there is also the case where people (often, but not exclusively) from lower divisions significantly deviate from the playstyle you would see in optimized teams and do it out of full conviction. This goes back to several misconceptions and myths about ranked that proliferate in lower leagues and are often held as universal wisdoms there, while being seen as an error by almost every high level player. I will discuss these misconceptions here and give a short explanation why they are wrong.

1)“Don’t push far” Probably not as common as it used to be due to the proliferation of Twitch streaming from high level duelist players streaming their gameplay on Twitch, but still heard now and then. Now the issue with this statement is that it CAN be true, but isn’t universally. The point is that it strongly depends on your comp. Splitting 1 close and 4 mid for teamfight is probably the most common split in this meta, but in Ranked and Unranked Qs with non-optimized teamcomps your split heavily depends on your team composition and its suitability. The main teamfighting trio is FB/Scourge/Rev, now often with an additional Holo. If you have a comp close to this, investing into the teamfight in mid with 4 people is a good idea. If however your comp is heavy on bruisers and duelists like Warrior, Weaver, Chronomancer or Scrapper, it is probably a better idea to push for 3 nodes and try to create as many 1v1s as possible. Also roamers often can showcase their full strength and contribution when there is several different fights to plus. Pushing 3 nodes is also a good idea if the enemy team is heavy on very defensive bruisers (again Scrapper, Weaver, Chronomancer) and you fear you lack the damage potential in your team to kill these quick enough. If you expect a very slow, bunker heavy game it is probably wiser to not give a freecap on close to the enemy at start, because it might be the only cap generating points for quite a long period into the game.

2)“Thief close”One of my personal favourites. I am still at loss about where this originated, but I keep reading it. I suspect it might have to something with trollish thief builds like Staff DD or Dagger/Dagger Condi CD being common in lower tiers. However, most thief builds viable in high tier (almost exclusively SD core as of the last patch) are notoriously awful duelists and should not be sent into 1v1s. They can take a few matchups (Mes, Rev, Mirror Matchup), but are absolutely awful in others (Holo, Scrapper, Warriors and Rangers in all their forms). The strength of Thief is in rotations, resulting in either +1s for quick kills or decaps. Sending it to cap close and risking it to be drawn into a 1v1 sacrifices this strength. Either the thief will fight a bad 1v1 and possibly lose, or be smart enough to disengage and create a number advantage in mid. However, even in that case close will be instantly lost, and that is not a desirable outcome whatsoever.

3)“Fight on Points”Another favourite of mine because of its absolute counter-productiveness and possibly the most common one out of this list. Nodes generate the major point gain in Conquest, so obviously holding them is generally a good thing to do. However, this is frequently taken to extremes by lower ranked players, resulting in the outcome that “fight on point” becomes “die on point”. And that is simply an awful play, unless your team is already at 490+ points and holding the node with your downed body for a few more seconds will save the game. Otherwise, you are ALWAYS better off to kite and resustain instead to win the fight and THEN cap the node (and ideally even more of them) back for your team. Some skills put enormous pressure on a small node (for example the Scourge Elite Ghastly Breach), and diehard tanking on the node is safe way to get yourself and your team wiped immediately. Also pursuing enemies fleeing from a teamfight is obviously worth it if you get the kill in a reasonable amount of time and the same goes for picking up enemies between nodes who have moved out of position. Not fighting on node is even more relevant in outnumbered situations, most commonly in 1v2. Unless your attackers are either extremely bad or play extremely low dps specs, you will not survive a 1v2 when you just facetank on node. However, you still easily generate value while kiting, as soon as you keep two people busy, resulting in a 4v3 for your team on the rest of the map. If then one guy leaves, you can repush the 1v1 (once your cooldowns are back to sufficient extent).4)“Don’t plus me”This is basically the polar opposite of our number one. Whereas “don’t push far” is usually uttered by those who are deeply skeptical of any solo effort to contribute to the game, it is usually the overconfident duelist heroes of this game that dish out this one. It stems mostly from overconfidence and disregard for the team, just assuming that you will have to carry the game alone anyway and your team will be of zero help. However, generalizing like this is bad. A good and cleanly executed plus one, either turning a losing 1v2 into a winning 2v2, or a stalled 1v1 into a quick kill 2v1 can be of immense value, and is actually the main occupation of every thief. “Don’t plus me when you don’t have impact” is the more accurate version. Obviously 2v1s that go on for too long and don’t result in a kill are terrible and will put your team at a significant disadvantage. But generally forbidding +1 is bad advice.5)“All defend Lord”A map specific one for Legacy. When your base gets pushed, and your lord is under attack this often leads to panic plays, resulting in too many people being sent in to save the situation. However, this will often result in a complete loss of map control. Generally since the revamp of the map, the Lord and his NPCS are fairly durable and do a decent amount of extra pressure on the guy fighting there, which means sending equal numbers to the lord will almost always be enough to save it. So: 1 guy pushing it? Send one guy to defend. 3 guys going for it? 3 defenders it is. But never more, as the raven said.6)“All to Tranq”Another map specific one, this time for Temple. Obviously the bottom buff, which fullcaps every node for your team can be a huge gamechanger and hence of enormous value. However, overcommitting it can be deadly. The channel time of this buff is very long, and there is sufficient room for kiting in the “cellar” of the temple. This makes it very easy for specs who combi sustain and mobility (Druid probably being the best example, but many others are capable) to contest this buff outnumbered. Even if you run into trouble, it is usually easy to send in another player for contest, which can make it extremely painful to have your whole team fight there in order to get it. I have seen plenty situations where the team downstairs was basically farming kill after kill, but still losing the game because 2 or 3 nodes were meanwhile ticking for the other team and they never managed to cap the buff. Sending all your ressources to Tranq is usually a desperation play when you need a quick turnaround at the end of your game, similar to lordrush.7)“I’ll go Treb”Fortunately not very common anymore, but still seen once in a while in lower divisions. This is probably the easiest and least controversial one. Don’t. Treb. Ever. Even after the revamp the treb is still extremely, clunky, slow, terrible to aim and easy to dodge. Your team will simply fight 4v5.8)“All push”Momentum after a wipe is generally a good thing, and is not intended to say that you should not push far in case of a won teamfight. However, there is fine line between pushing your momentum and overcommitting. Often, pushing into far will not be done in full force, since one guy is still capping, or even a second one still watching close. Overcommiting on far pushes are the best way to throw a game after a won teamfight. Often, it is entirely sufficient to have one roamer decap far and just keep the rest of the team defending close and mid. Pushing far with the full team can be valuable, but you should always consider a retreat before you fullwipe. If you lose one guy while the enemy is still in full force – just disengage, regroup, repush. Don’t fight until everyone is dead.9)“Move out of base immediately”Arguably not voiced explicitly as often as the other errors, but very commonly acted on. The meta right now is extremely snowbally, meaning that fights get decided by fast paced teamfights, and the winners of those teamfights then swarming out and winning the whole map, wiping the remaining players off the map and establishing full map control. In this situation it is absolutely crucial to stay in your base after a fullwipe until your WHOLE team has respawned and is ready to move out TOGETHER. Running in one by one and getting slaughtered is a safe way towards loss, yet frequently seen even in high platinum games.10)“Always bleed out downed enemies”This is a tough one. Also not often said explicitly and also not generally wrong, but I think it is worth mentioning. I do not intent to say that bleeding out enemies is generally wrong. Obviously it is a good way to prolong your enemies respawn time and hence create an advantage for your team. However, it comes with a very big BUT. Res traits and skills are very common in this meta. The main culprit here is the Firebrand’s Signet of Mercy, but also the Blood Magic traits from Necromancer, Gyro scrappers, Search and Rescue, or even the traited Geysir Rez from Tempest. So, bleeding CAN be a value play, but the value you get from 5-10 seconds more enemy downtime does not really stand in relation towards the problems you create if you miscalculate and allow an enemy rez. Too often I see careless bleeding attempts resulting in a rez, or even a selfrez, because people either don’t pay attention or underestimate the rezpower of some builds. So, limit bleeding to situations where you are absolutely sure the situation is under your full control, for example when the enemy team has completely fullwiped and no potential rezbot is still alive, or you know for sure that every potential resser is so far away from the downed body that he can not possibly reach it in time. In cases of doubt – stomp or cleave! A good way to ensure cleave while not wasting too much time and already moving on with the next rotation is also soft cleave, as in you drop the downed to ~20-30% and then leave while leaving a few conditions, pulsing AoE (such as guardian symbols) or AI (ranger pet, mesmer clones) on him.

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Good list, but I'm going to be controversial about the one that you think is least controversial and say that treb is underutilized by most people in the game right now. It is extremely niche but if you are coming off of re-spawn and there is an intense team-fight going on taking a few seconds to lob some boulders can turn the tides of a rally war much more quickly than running all the way over to the fight. While this is situational it is almost never done so I say it is underutilized, can agree that camping treb for prolonged periods is bad.

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@ArthurDent.9538 said:Good list, but I'm going to be controversial about the one that you think is least controversial and say that treb is underutilized by most people in the game right now. It is extremely niche but if you are coming off of re-spawn and there is an intense team-fight going on taking a few seconds to lob some boulders can turn the tides of a rally war much more quickly than running all the way over to the fight. While this is situational it is almost never done so I say it is underutilized, can agree that camping treb for prolonged periods is bad.

It can work through the sheer element of surprise, but once people are aware even in teamfights they will either dodge or move out of the circle. So I'd say in 99% of all imaginable situations it's a terrible idea.

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I would add:

"I died 1vX, therefore I am doing my job, and my team sucks for not taking rest of map"

What this demonstrates is a complete failure to understand the concept of a "snowball". The reason you are outnumbered is probably because your team just got beaten somewhere else on the map, and then the enemy team had free players to send over and plus you. Your team didn't lose with a numbers advantage, they probably lost with even numbers, or even a numbers dis-advantage, and then that is being carried over on to you. You weren't fighting 1vX for the entire time, just the 10 seconds before you died. Your team aren't afk on mid while you fight valiantly 1v3, they're all dead respawning.

Its on you to recognise that your team just got beaten elsewhere, and that therefore you will probably become outnumbered, and therefore need to back off and regroup. 99% of the time, if you die, there's something you could have done to not die, you just didn't recognise it quickly enough.

Obviously if you've been fighting 1v2 for 5+ minutes, your team really should be able to take advantage of that. But 99% of the time I see this being said, the person saying it was only fighting outnumbered for maybe 20-30 seconds, which is nowhere near time for your team to take advantage of, especially if they're coming off respawns.

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:I think treb is fine to hop on for a few secs to waste some dodges/ cds. a few seconds doing this is likely to be more valuable then a getting somewhere a few seconds faster, depending on the situation ofc.

Especially if it’s a mobile character like a thief, ranger or mes doing so, you can lob some boulders and then be at the team fight quickly to help.

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The reason for „Thief close“ is (or better was a long time ago) that the thief is the fastest of the team.

He can run close as fast as possible, cap it and then help fight mid.

The faster close is capped, the faster it becomes a 5vs4 in mid.

Does that make sense? No.But thats the reason.

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I'll be careful about categorizing "Fight on points" and "Don't plus me" as misconceptions only.While these principles should not be followed blindly in all situations, I see them being reminded more often in situations when they make sense rather than when they don't.Myself, I will use the "Fight on points" when the team is being trolled by the enemy team into a team fight in the middle of nowhere when they have 2 or 3 points capped, it happens maybe not in Plat but i see it regularly in gold division.I use "Don't plus me" when I am pushing far to decap, get into a 1v1 eventually and remove some pressure on the other nodes.

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@"Ragnar.4257" said:I would add:

"I died 1vX, therefore I am doing my job, and my team sucks for not taking rest of map"

What this demonstrates is a complete failure to understand the concept of a "snowball". The reason you are outnumbered is probably because your team just got beaten somewhere else on the map, and then the enemy team had free players to send over and plus you. Your team didn't lose with a numbers advantage, they probably lost with even numbers, or even a numbers dis-advantage, and then that is being carried over on to you. You weren't fighting 1vX for the entire time, just the 10 seconds before you died. Your team aren't afk on mid while you fight valiantly 1v3, they're all dead respawning.

Its on you to recognise that your team just got beaten elsewhere, and that therefore you will probably become outnumbered, and therefore need to back off and regroup. 99% of the time, if you die, there's something you could have done to not die, you just didn't recognise it quickly enough.

Obviously if you've been fighting 1v2 for 5+ minutes, your team really should be able to take advantage of that. But 99% of the time I see this being said, the person saying it was only fighting outnumbered for maybe 20-30 seconds, which is nowhere near time for your team to take advantage of, especially if they're coming off respawns.This is also very true. Some people can't really differentiate between being farmed the whole game by 2 people and actually holding up 2 or 3 enemy players.

I see players pushing far or mid just to die alone against 2 or 3 after like 20-30 seconds then spamming the teamchat about how the team is useless.

At the same time it's very situational how long of keeping 2 people busy is "useful". You really don't need to 1v2 for 5+ minutes to make it useful.

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There's also "1v1s" don't matter.

Like okay, if you're always calling your team mate for help, your other team mates are going to be outnumbered. if you don't kill the guy in time.

That's why 1v1 builds that have sustain are ACTUALLY impactful in conquest (soulbeast, spellbreaker, etc) because matching numbers matter. And then you get morons who say "it's a team game" everytime they fail horribly or just don't know what conquest common sense is because they need someone to hold their hand because bad players.

Or they're like plussing and can't kill within a couple of seconds and ends up making the other 3 people outnumbered. Pretty annoying, can't ever get rid of those people no matter what you do.

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@Falan.1839 said:When playing ranked as a high tier player, who also competes with and against top teams in ATs, often you will realize mistakes in ranked. Some of these are simply mechanical shortcomings, non-viable builds (...)

I want to add two points I have experienced with this.First of all: Solo Q isn't an AT. In tournaments you have premade teams and especially the teams in the finals often know each other and can synergize much much better than any random team in Solo Q. This enables some very different approaches and decision making which wouldn't be a good idea for solo-Q.

Second (because it affected me a lot in the past and sometimes still is): Don't automatically assume a player is bad or the match is unwinnable because someone plays a non-meta build. I've been playing non-meta builds for quite a while and actually solo-Q'd my way up from silver 1 to plat 2 with a build everybody said was not viable. And there are quite a few ppl in the leaderboard even who don't play builds that are considered meta.Game and map knowledge such as terrain abuse, LoS-ing, knowing your opponents rotations and tool kit, rotations and decision making in general are huge factors. Also actually being able to play your build is more important than the build itself imo as long as it's not countered by the enemy comp or something like that.My most extreme experience with this was on Foefire where we had a lead of about 350:200 without any sign of the enemy turning it. All of a sudden someone then notices my off-meta build, just afk camps at the base, flames me for my build and claims that we can't win with me in the team. Well guess what? We indeed lost after that.

@Falan.1839 said:1) “Don’t push far” 2) “Thief close”This quote brings me to another point regarding thief: It annoys me how many ppl constantly roam to far with a thief in the team and then blaming the thief for his rotations. Most people somehow don't realize that by roaming to far they pull enemies to the node which actively prevents the thief from decapping. Most of the time them roaming off results in a loss in mid because they leave the team outnumbered and they can then start an uneven fight on far as well (like 2 ppl engaging into the off-roamed guy). Because of point 9 in the list the match usually then continues with just losing outnumbered fights since the enemy team snowballs which renders the thief completely useless in this situation since he can't decap with at least one guy camping on a node while also not being able to +1 any fight because they aren't even to begin with.

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@Falan.1839 said:

@ArthurDent.9538 said:Good list, but I'm going to be controversial about the one that you think is least controversial and say that treb is underutilized by most people in the game right now. It is extremely niche but if you are coming off of re-spawn and there is an intense team-fight going on taking a few seconds to lob some boulders can turn the tides of a rally war much more quickly than running all the way over to the fight. While this is situational it is almost never done so I say it is underutilized, can agree that camping treb for prolonged periods is bad.

It can work through the sheer element of surprise, but once people are aware even in teamfights they will either dodge or move out of the circle. So I'd say in 99% of all imaginable situations it's a terrible idea.

A good answer. Downed bodies are notorious for their dodging ability.

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@Sampson.2403 said:What about calling a target to allow a plus 1 teammate, like a rev or thief, to key 'assist target' and get the LoS teleport burst off. I feel like this never gets brought up in any pvp guides.

I think calling targets is always a right thing to do. But usually it's a flip of a coin whether your team uses the target (or even focuses it) or not. May be some people stopped doing that because the targets were ignored too many times.

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@Yannir.4132 said:

@"ArthurDent.9538" said:Good list, but I'm going to be controversial about the one that you think is least controversial and say that treb is underutilized by most people in the game right now. It is extremely niche but if you are coming off of re-spawn and there is an intense team-fight going on taking a few seconds to lob some boulders can turn the tides of a rally war much more quickly than running all the way over to the fight. While this is situational it is almost never done so I say it is underutilized, can agree that camping treb for prolonged periods is bad.

It can work through the sheer element of surprise, but once people are aware even in teamfights they will either dodge or move out of the circle. So I'd say in 99% of all imaginable situations it's a terrible idea.

A good answer. Downed bodies are notorious for their dodging ability.

Yeah and obviously there is a burning need to treb them instead of stomping/cleaving which is actually faster and allows you to still participate in the fight afterwards. I'm slightly amazed that the point with treb is the most contentious here. I have over 10.000 games played and the ranked ones were at a level which is today ~1650-1840 Rating (EU) and I don't think I can recall a single game where treb actually contributed something useful to a fight.

Also I am aware that there MIGHT be very special situations where some of these ideas are actually a good idea (as for example dying on node when you only need to bunker 5 more points), however in ~90%+ of the situations the advice is bad and it is mostly these situations that I keep reading those words of wisodm in, and that's why I have included them. Obviously for example if 5 people are pushing your lord while you own all 3 nodes "All def Lord" is actually a very good idea, but it just rarely ever happens that way in Qs. This goes for several points.

So I am not going to answer comments saying there MIGHT be very few hypothethical situations where the listed orders actually make sense.

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@"alwswannafly.3428" said:we need beasts !

I was thinking about that one, but since the meta has become so fastpaced (in teamfights) and snowbally that picking the beasts after wiping the enemy in teamfight is actually fairly common and done by high level players I chose not to include it. Obviously timing is everything and prioritizing beasts over the actual fights is still awful, but it felt hard to generalize it, so I left it out.

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sad to see that even though pointed out by high ranked player, the least controversial one: the treb, people reply with it being useful

as for 2) in gold games opening splits are pretty much exclusively 1-4 so if a thief goes close im totally fine with that.mid fights is over before any rotation has taken place, and i'd rather not have a thief “Fight on Points” at the opening fight in mid.

10) happens quite often in plat+ games, i've selfrezzed numerous times and also failed to secure kills. Bleeding out is always good but a requirement is map awareness. The other day i was dueling top player, very focused on it and killed him off node. Me being all smart and stuff capping the node while letting him bleed out only to get him rezzed by a random mesmer (so don't just focus on signet, blood rez, gyro, etc either). In the end i didn't cap the node at all and has to give up completely.

the one that bugs me the most is the "1vx and dies" usually within 10 seconds and goes berserk in team chat

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@"Falan.1839" said:

Yeah and obviously there is a burning need to treb them instead of stomping/cleaving which is actually faster and allows you to still participate in the fight afterwards. I'm slightly amazed that the point with treb is the most contentious here. I have over 10.000 games played and the ranked ones were at a level which is today ~1650-1840 Rating (EU) and I don't think I can recall a single game where treb actually contributed something useful to a fight.

Also I am aware that there MIGHT be very special situations where some of these ideas are actually a good idea (as for example dying on node when you only need to bunker 5 more points), however in ~90%+ of the situations the advice is bad and it is mostly these situations that I keep reading those words of wisodm in, and that's why I have included them. Obviously for example if 5 people are pushing your lord while you own all 3 nodes "All def Lord" is actually a very good idea, but it just rarely ever happens that way in Qs. This goes for several points.

So I am not going to answer comments saying there MIGHT be very few hypothethical situations where the listed orders actually make sense.

Don't be so serious. You did not need to respond in the first place, I was just poking fun at you.

Anyway, the comment I was responding to completely ignored @ArthurDent.9538 's point, which was about a niche situation where you are coming out of respawn, and there's a downstate race on the mid node. As you can't get there on time for cleave or stomping, your only option to participate in that downrace AT ALL is to treb it once or twice. Like said, it's very rare.

Rule 11. There are niche exceptions to almost every one of these rules.

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A good list. Obviously a big issue with teams in general is the inability to communicate. People don’t trust one another and when things go poorly they rarely want to admit the other team may be better than them/their team.

I’ll comment on the 1vX. If you are 1vX voluntarily then you shouldn’t die or rarely do so. You need to be oriented around a specific objective besides holding off multiples. Don’t assume their team is 2v1ing you because they are bad. If they can afford to fight you 2v1 your team is likely getting snowballed elsewhere.

Once, I took a 1v2 (carefully) to hold them at far just long enough for my team to respawn/take mid. I wasn’t going to decap or to die bravely. As soon as I could I left the 1vX to help my team at mid kill a few more then I dropped back to far to decap.

Often, I’ve kept an eye on far and watched them take it. As soon as they are heading back to mid fight I stealth up and use my mobility to reach far. They hold the node for a few seconds.

The biggest problems people have are giving up important nodes without a fight and not knowing when to give up on a node.

That and not playing a bunker and yet doing no damage.

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