Where to Start for PvP as Someone New to the Game Mode

[rrusse.7058]

I wanted to ask those that are familiar with PvP on what their thoughts are on a few things pertaining to the PvP game mode.

1. In your opinion, what are good professions / builds and roles one should start on to begin their journey into PvP?

2. What in your opinion are some of the most important things one should practice and learn about PvP besides one's profession / build / role?

3. What is something you wish you knew / did when you started out on your PvP journey?

The reason I wanted to ask these questions is simply because I personally want to try getting into it as it is the one game mode I have neglected playing the most. To add to that, we are likely going to get a good amount of new players with the realease of End of Dragons as well as with the Steam release and these could be things that completely new players would want to know as well.

At any rate, thanks for reading, would love to hear your thoughts.

[Guirssane.7082]

Honestly just read https://guildjen.com/beginners-guide-to-gw2-pvp/

It has everything you should know. And some more advanced guide as well here https://guildjen.com/category/gw2/pvp/pvpguide/

Edited January 17, 2022 by Guirssane.7082

[Widmo.3186]

Dont start 🙂
And about getting lots of new players, its really pink glasses point of view. Especially with current advertisement of ANet. Atm most MMO PvP players that are looking out for new games to try out are keeping an eye on Lost Ark, thats the most promising one. If EoD is gonna bring some new players, its gonna be PvE ones.

[Avatar.3568]

1. Play what you feel most comfortable with, there are builds for every class, but testing out some classes might be not wrong, I was playing guardian in pve before i played pvp, and still after 9 years I can't play guardian in pvp but I directly got a taste with Ranger back than 

Ps: you can test out against other players in the ffa. 

2. Learn to Dodge correctly, a lot of players are using Dodges for basically nothing (me included) using the Dodge to avoid incoming damage sounds simple but doing it is not that easy. 

Learn to read the minimap, try to outnumber enemys on the enemy captured points and don't outnumber on your captured points (only your mate is very low), try to never be more than 1 player as your enemy has (2vs1, 3vs2, 4vs3, 5vs4) most of the time is a simple "we are more players" enaugh to win the fight, but to many players on 1 point are giving the enemy the chance to still gain the map Control. 

Last thing to train, don't watch at your teammates mistakes, try to find your own mistakes and how they affect everything else in the match. Or even better look what you can do to help your mates to win. 

3. Dying on node doesn't Archiv anything (outside the last 5 points) holding a point against way more enemys, has nothing to do with honor its just stupid, leaving the fight will let you have impact somewhere else (far or close), instead of getting 3 more points from holding the node but than dying, giving 5 points the enemy and let you be on 15 seconds respawn timer. 

42 minutes ago, Widmo.3186 said:

Dont start 🙂
And about getting lots of new players, its really pink glasses point of view. Especially with current advertisement of ANet. Atm most MMO PvP players that are looking out for new games to try out are keeping an eye on Lost Ark, thats the most promising one. If EoD is gonna bring some new players, its gonna be PvE ones.

If you want to play lost ark, than gw2 is the wrong game, what a stupid comment

[rrusse.7058]

1 hour ago, Avatar.3568 said:

Last thing to train, don't watch at your teammates mistakes, try to find your own mistakes and how they affect everything else in the match. Or even better look what you can do to help your mates to win. 

Thank you. Your entire post is very insightful but I personally believe this point here is what many players, not only in GW2 but all competetive games should try to embrace. There is little one can do to control others besides critique or flaming which only yeilds as much results that the other person is willing to give in the first place.

Perhaps I will just work on practicing what feels right for me and work on map familiarity, mini-map, rotations and my matchups. I suppose these are all things that come over time. I also want to make sure I don't fall back into old habits. Admittedly, I did play some PvP back in 2014, but the school of thought from what I recall was "Fight on node."

1 hour ago, Avatar.3568 said:

3. Dying on node doesn't Archiv anything (outside the last 5 points) holding a point against way more enemys, has nothing to do with honor its just stupid, leaving the fight will let you have impact somewhere else (far or close), instead of getting 3 more points from holding the node but than dying, giving 5 points the enemy and let you be on 15 seconds respawn timer. 

However this is a very good point, I will keep this in mind and try to have a "Survive and rotate." mindset.

2 hours ago, Widmo.3186 said:

Dont start 🙂
And about getting lots of new players, its really pink glasses point of view. Especially with current advertisement of ANet. Atm most MMO PvP players that are looking out for new games to try out are keeping an eye on Lost Ark, thats the most promising one. If EoD is gonna bring some new players, its gonna be PvE ones.

Well, that's a valid opinion but I want to consider what people want to do in and around PvP for Guild Wars 2. If Lost Ark is a superior PvP game that's fine but that might be something best left to be discussed on their forums as well as subreddits and the like.

2 hours ago, Guirssane.7082 said:

Honestly just read https://guildjen.com/beginners-guide-to-gw2-pvp/

It has everything you should know. And some more advanced guide as well here https://guildjen.com/category/gw2/pvp/pvpguide/

I've read and watched some of their guides. It's quite extensive and I agree that it is probably one of the best places to start.

I suppose I just want to see and hear what others think besides what some of the more dedicated members of our community thought.

[voltaicbore.8012]

Just to add my 2 copper to this discussion: In my experience, what really separates the great players from the rest of us is map knowledge.

For instance, the really high-tier players can run a fairly glassy, damaging build - but they can still hold 1v2 and 1v3 around a point because they know the kiting spots. This makes them extremely hard to hit or pin down, and that becomes a problem because either your team (1) wastes a ton of time chasing and not killing, or (2) rotate out and give up the node to the expert kiter.

Unfortunately while (2) is 99.9999% of the time the right answer, it is extremely difficult for most people to accept it. Even worse, even after your team chooses option (2) and rotates into different objectives, your team might still lack the right composition to pull it off. So if this expert kiter on the other team is trolling your home node, and your team wisely decides not to rotate into him, you all might still have a very bad comp when it comes to pushing far while holding mid.

The last bit I want to add is, don't be that guy who says to his team "hey dudes I was holding 1v3 for X minutes, why are we losing the map still?!?!?" Realize that if you can hold a 1v3, there could easily be someone on the other team who is also good at holding 1v2 or 1v3, immediately negating the advantage your 1v3 ability brings.

[Zexanima.7851]

Quote

1. In your opinion, what are good professions / builds and roles one should start on to begin their journey into PvP?

Here is what I did when starting and do when returning to the game from a long break. Your mileage may vary. I pick up a profession that sounds interesting, pick a skill/passive that I like then make a build around it. I test it, if it doesn't seem fun then I scrap it or if it does then I tweak it. Then once I've made a few of my own builds (this could take an hour or it might be across a few days) I check out the meta builds. Make sure to look at different sources and not just one (say, metabattle). Rinse and repeat for every profession. Why do I do it this way? It allows me to get a deeper understanding of the professions and why things are meta. I also just find build crafting to be fun.

What is "good" to start with depends entirely on what role you want to play. In some cases a good starting build might not even be a meta build because when starting I think it's much more important you find a build you enjoy. Then as you get better you'll probably start to gravitate to more meta options. Others in this post have already provided good resources on popular builds. 

Quote

2. What in your opinion are some of the most important things one should practice and learn about PvP besides one's profession / build / role?

I actualy was brainstorming with some people about some advice you could copy/paste into chat before a match starts. I think that would be good here. 

1) Don't fight outnumbered. If our respawns are staggered or we're trickling in regroup and push out as a team. 

2) We only need two nodes to win so if we can't win team fights on mid focus side nodes and split their resources. 

3) Keep an eye on enemy respawns/map locations and rotate accordingly. Do not sacrifice team fight potential to help in a 1v1.

Quote

3. What is something you wish you knew / did when you started out on your PvP journey?

PvP in this game is fun, but it's not good. While this games mechanics lend themselves well to PvP, it wasn't designed with small scale (sPvP) in mind. I'm not saying don't play pvp or don't try to climb in competitive. Just keep in mind that the more "serious" you try to take PvP the more frustrated you'll likely be. 

On the more game-itself specific stuff, I wish I had spent the time to learn all the professions earlier. This really helps you in fighting them in the long run. You know what to look out for and what their win condition is vs you. Plus, you might find a new profession you really like! It will take time to learn everything but it's worth learning if you want to improve. Enjoy the process of learning it to! Don't rush, take your time and enjoy playing wacky/crap/meme builds. 

[rrusse.7058]

7 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Unfortunately while (2) is 99.9999% of the time the right answer, it is extremely difficult for most people to accept it. Even worse, even after your team chooses option (2) and rotates into different objectives, your team might still lack the right composition to pull it off. So if this expert kiter on the other team is trolling your home node, and your team wisely decides not to rotate into him, you all might still have a very bad comp when it comes to pushing far while holding mid.

The last bit I want to add is, don't be that guy who says to his team "hey dudes I was holding 1v3 for X minutes, why are we losing the map still?!?!?" Realize that if you can hold a 1v3, there could easily be someone on the other team who is also good at holding 1v2 or 1v3, immediately negating the advantage your 1v3 ability brings.

Thanks for sharing.

Map familiarity does seem extremely important. From the footage I have seen, veterans know the map very well and they seem to almost glide across areas of the map geometry with ease. This seems to allow them the ability to avoid using cooldowns all while avoiding most if any damage at all.

On your last point, I did consider the idea that chat just be turned off but that doesn't seem conducive to a team based mode. Shouting at teammates over "Why...?!" isn't very productive.

[Zexanima.7851]

4 minutes ago, rrusse.7058 said:

Thanks for sharing.

Map familiarity does seem extremely important. From the footage I have seen, veterans know the map very well and they seem to almost glide across areas of the map geometry with ease. This seems to allow them the ability to avoid using cooldowns all while avoiding most if any damage at all.

On your last point, I did consider the idea that chat just be turned off but that doesn't seem conducive to a team based mode. Shouting at teammates over "Why...?!" isn't very productive.

To add to this, these players that can do this usually spend time just running around the map outside of matches. They'll load into an empty lobby in the match finder and then just run about the map and experiment/practice. "Can I jump from here to there? Will this skill close this gap? Can I port to this spot?"

[rrusse.7058]

6 minutes ago, Zexanima.7851 said:

On the more game-itself specific stuff, I wish I had spent the time to learn all the professions earlier. This really helps you in fighting them in the long run. You know what to look out for and what their win condition is vs you. Plus, you might find a new profession you really like! It will take time to learn everything but it's worth learning if you want to improve. Enjoy the process of learning it to! Don't rush, take your time and enjoy playing wacky/crap/meme builds.

Awesome advice all around, thanks. I see people talk about other professions either here or on the subreddit talking about how profession 'x' or 'y' is "busted" because someone did this thing and it seems unfair. That might be the experience when on the receiving end sure, but more players should consider "What did they do and how?" rather than "This seems unfair."

That way they can achieve all of what you so adequately put.

I also like your advice for general matches:

11 minutes ago, Zexanima.7851 said:

1) Don't fight outnumbered. If our respawns are staggered or we're trickling in regroup and push out as a team. 

2) We only need two nodes to win so if we can't win team fights on mid focus side nodes and split their resources. 

3) Keep an eye on enemy respawns/map locations and rotate accordingly. Do not sacrifice team fight potential to help in a 1v1.

As @voltaicbore.8012 mentioned, there are just going to be some players that are just better than you and your current skill level. 1v1 is a lost cause right? But a single skilled player doesn't win the match right?

[SlipLihte.1307]

Welcome to PvP! Sortof.

 

It sounds like you have already done some research, but if you haven't come across it yet and have a lot of time to watch videos, I have a few suggestions below that might help.

 

The first is from Mukluk Youtube (see video link below), a nice overview in a few minutes. The second is Vallun's playlist on rotations, which will take it up another level but there is a lot there. The last is from MightyTeapot. I don't recall ever seeing any PvP guides from him, but he has vids on the monthly ATs and comments on the games as they go - you can learn quite a bit about the decision making, roles, rotations and matchups this way.

 

I would suggest browsing around on their channels for PvP related content, there's a lot to learn.

 

On a personal note, I will just say that there is a lot about PvP that is currently not working so well (mostly related to the number of players, presence of bots, and the way players are matched). Unfortunately, this has the knock-on effect of making a couple of people a little salty. Best to ignore this and try to take the positives where you can.

 

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by SlipLihte.1307

[Zexanima.7851]

46 minutes ago, rrusse.7058 said:

As @voltaicbore.8012 mentioned, there are just going to be some players that are just better than you and your current skill level. 1v1 is a lost cause right? But a single skilled player doesn't win the match right?

It's all situational, but in general, you're right. If you have won a team fight there is value in going to assist in a 1v1 but that's always secondary. You don't want to be fighting a 1vX as the "X" unless it's a clear, quick win. In the case that you're the "1" in the 1vX, it's only worth fighting if you're sure you won't die. Even if you don't kill anyone, as long as you don't die you're giving the rest of your team the numbers advantage. A single player can win the match, but that depends on the team their facing. Let me give you a couple scenarios of when this has been the case. 

1) We were up against a team that had a very skilled burn guard. He rotated to our home (where I was) right off the bat. I capped the node but he kept me busy and was very good at kiting with terrain. It was a losing fight but overall not a big deal if I did as long as our team won mid. Since this guy was fighting me they should have had the advantage, at least for a while. The issue came up in that when my team lost mid and then rotated to help on respawn. By this time I was downed and 2 people rotated in to fight him. One of them died to trying to get me up, the other was having no real impact on the fight. Then by that time the rest of their team has rotated into this fight. They continued to fight into him the rest of the game. In this case, if you know for a fact you can't beat them just go do something else even if that means leaving people to die. They can't be everywhere at once, specially on a build that isn't very mobile. Usually you can figure out a few seconds into a fight if it's worth the time or not. 

2) In this case it was a VERY good thief. Not only were his rotations on point but our duelist (fire weaver) could not beat him home so we were constantly down a player and getting decapped. This is a bit of a different case in that, you can't out rotate a thief unless you are also a thief.  Trying to +1 a thief is also pointless as they will just port out and go do something else. We lost this horribly all due to him. In this case our thief should have done better at following him around the map instead of trying to fight for their home node. The rest of the team, besides just being better mechanically, could not have done a whole lot about this.

All in all, there are just some matches you'll be completely out classed in. Instead of tilting and giving up it's better to try to make it as close of a match as possible. It's a great opportunity to see how they play and what they did right and what you did wrong. 

[rrusse.7058]

7 hours ago, SlipLihte.1307 said:

On a personal note, I will just say that there is a lot about PvP that is currently not working so well (mostly related to the number of players, presence of bots, and the way players are matched). Unfortunately, this has the knock-on effect of making a couple of people a little salty. Best to ignore this and try to take the positives where you can.

 

Thank you very much for the links. I do watch some of their content already but I hadn't looked into MukLuk's or Teapots PvP content yet.

I have also read about the botting, player pop. and match making issues as well. I try to take them with a grain of salt as oppose to being salty since I haven't done enough PvP recently to really make any judgements. I will give those a watch though!

7 hours ago, Zexanima.7851 said:

All in all, there are just some matches you'll be completely out classed in. Instead of tilting and giving up it's better to try to make it as close of a match as possible. It's a great opportunity to see how they play and what they did right and what you did wrong. 

That's sound advice. Your examples also make a lot of sense. Things can quickly snowball and become untenable if you and your team cannot or do not respond appropriately.

[ramorambo.6701]

1.

Start with the class you feel most comfortable with, gw2 pvp has a really high skill ceiling, it's better to start with something that you actually feel comfortable with

2.

-learn all the classes and their meta builds ( you can find them either on hardstuck.gg or on metabattle / twitch chat command of some streamers)

-learn the kiting spots (search on youtube gw2 kiting spots guides)

-watch some good pvper (notoriousnaru, boycerino, sindrener, benzoabuse, zenyus to name a few. they all have vods and are good players)

-find your optimal options (keybinds, type of targeting etc. i believe you can find guides on youtube)

-have fun and go invisible status ingame if people start to flame you in whispers

 

o/

Edited January 18, 2022 by ramorambo.6701

[shadowpass.4236]

Here's an up to date beginner's guide to PvP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsn8fcW_Ujs

It'll teach you everything you need to know to get started.

Edited January 18, 2022 by shadowpass.4236

[rrusse.7058]

1 hour ago, ramorambo.6701 said:

-watch some good pvper (notoriousnaru, boycerino, sindrener, benzoabuse, zenyus to name a few. they all have vods and are good players)

-find your optimal options (keybinds, type of targeting etc. i believe you can find guides on youtube)

-have fun and go invisible status ingame if people start to flame you in whispers

Watching the best does seem like a good idea, even if one cannot emulate exactly what they do, it does seem like getting into PvP is partially a mental state as well. Seeing as some people might need go 'invisible' as some members can be unbecoming in chat.

1 hour ago, shadowpass.4236 said:

Here's an up to date beginner's guide to PvP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsn8fcW_Ujs

It'll teach you everything you need to know to get started.

Thank you for the resource. This also looks like a good place to start as well seeing as it has timestamps to find exactly what one might be looking for.