advice for a new player to spvp

[Iceman.5912]

Hi, all, I'm a raider that's bored (I'm guessing there are a lot of us) that would like to try my hand at spvp. I have very little knowledge, but I'd like to eventually get to the point where I'm a competent pvper, able to hold my own in ranked queues, and eventually be a part of a team that's able to also hold their own in ATs. I'm looking for advice on the best way to go about learning and improving my play.

My current thought is to choose a class, learn the basics of it and play the "meta" build for a bit so I'm familiar with how it works, and then move on the next class. The idea is that when I eventually face that class it would benefit me to understand what they are trying to do on their end. After getting a decent handle on all classes I would choose one that I like and try to focus on that. Then work my way up ranked to the point where I feel comfortable in the game mode, and look to join a team for ATs.

Does that seem like a reasonable plan? Any specific classes I should learn first? Or don't need to learn? Any videos/guides worthy of watching? Appreciate any help or direction you provide.

[Schwahrheit.4203]

Count dodges, land burst.. oh wait you can't do that anymore.

Looks like you're just gonna have to spam evades while attacking like everybody else, and play the broken classes. Whatever they are now.

[sephiroth.4217]

jump in and have fun basically...

rank doesnt matter, unranked doesnt matter and ATs have no where to practice with a semi competitve 5 man queue system so once every 6 hours you can get farmed by the players who have practiced together for years before the removal of team queue.

good luck too if you chose to go super serious but best bet is too just jump in and have fun, learn while youre having fun.

[Alatar.7364]

Ok, now that the rather depressive posts above are out of the way, the best thing you can do is play yourself, play and play and play.However, Streams and Streamers can still be useful, on the Metabattle in almost every builds page is a list of Streamers at its bottom. You can watch those, find their old videos most likely. Yet, personal experience will simply not be beaten by watching someone's else videos, as I said quite a few times before on the forums; the very best way to learn the profession is keep playing and failing. It's rather painful and possibly long process but nothing will help you more then learning from your mistakes. In very rare instances, those mistakes become not-so-obvious to notice, so that's when you might find use in the Streams where you might stumble upon it. Also watching streamers can help you figure out combos that you didn't think about yourself, "tricks" if you'd like.I strongly suggest joining a PvP Guild to help you along the way, however gotta admit that there is not much of those left.

When you'll be playing sPvP you will have to figure out that often, being good at rotations is better than being good at your profession, so a full-time experience of PvP will require you to learn much more than playing the profession, that simply comes second. Anyway, roles of professions determine lot of the rotations.Proper/needed rotation during the match is practically always highly situational, like when to bail on Close or Mid, or when to regroup, etc. However, if you'll stick to PvP there will come a time when you'll recognize practically every situation and will be able to adapt, again some Streamers might be useful for that. Just need to learn both the profession and rotations, whether situational or role-based.(Fun fact: at low levels of PvP, playing proper rotations will probably bring you salt from your teammates and lost matches due to inexperienced players, you'll have to chew threw that with nerves of steel and sigh cliche "believe in your self")

Regarding the professions you want to focus on; you can of course play whatever you like, but if you mean it with learning PvP then you'll have to accept the fact that it might take quite some time, so most logicaly you should start with easy to play professions and not try to push it too fast. It would be best to start with Warrior and Guaridan, disregard current builds whether they are OP or not and leave professions like Elementalist, Thief and Mesmer to the end of your quest. One might say that Ranger is also easy to play, but I think in current meta it already needs to be played properly to "feel easy" unlike Warrior and Guard who both are more forgiving if you make mistakes.There is not a profession that you don't need to learn if you wanna try and be good in PvP. People will also tell you Necro is easy, while true to some extent, the very last thing you want right now is to be constantly focused by enemy team while you are still trying to figure out what even to do, which is not so easy.

I'd think of more but at this point I don't remember all of what I included in the post or not, so you'll have to ask =D

EDIT: Also search Forums often to look for stuff you need answering or want to know more about, yet definitely filter out all the complaints, many of them are very much validated, but reading what's "broken and op" is not what you want to focus on at start.

[Peutrifectus.4830]

tbh, learning how to duel/fight/support is one thing but I think it's more important to learn how to move around the map. Where to start, where to move next etc. You'll hear it referred to as rotating.

For example, in my last game our ELE went to the nearest node alone whilst 4 went mid. we lost the fight at mid and 2 of them went to 1v2 our ELE. Instead charging mid one by one and feeding into 3 fresh players, we regrouped at close, outnumbered the two trying to get hold of our slippery ELE 5v2 then went 4v3 against the rest whilst ELE legged it to decap the far node....

Best advice for a new player is watch the map, see where people are, what their health is like and think where you can be the best impact. Going to help 1 guy who is outnumbered 3 to 1 and dying fast could result in you getting 3v1'd whilst he's down, losing a further 5 points to the enemy. Ofc if you're specced and competent in securing rezs whilst outnumbered then crack on, hehe.

I could go on but bottom line is, there's an aweful lot more to PvP then learning telegraphs, dodge counting and burst landing (not to say that's not important too but you get my drift ;))

[Stand The Wall.6987]

yep you and others got it. play all the classes meta builds, watch videos of good players. learn what counters what and what sort of match ups you can expect when you rotate. remember what your class role is and rotate accordingly. if you know you cant win a fight then don't fight it. vallun and sindrener (both thieves) are good at rotating and they will talk about it in their videos. youtube is your friend. above all don't get arrogant and think you know everything (besides the occasional hiccup ofc, no ones immune), it will stump your learning curve and you will get no where fast. when you watch videos of top teams going at it (you really should) constantly ask yourself where certain classes are rotating and why.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

@"Iceman.5912" said:Hi, all, I'm a raider that's bored (I'm guessing there are a lot of us) that would like to try my hand at spvp. I have very little knowledge, but I'd like to eventually get to the point where I'm a competent pvper, able to hold my own in ranked queues, and eventually be a part of a team that's able to also hold their own in ATs. I'm looking for advice on the best way to go about learning and improving my play.

My current thought is to choose a class, learn the basics of it and play the "meta" build for a bit so I'm familiar with how it works, and then move on the next class. The idea is that when I eventually face that class it would benefit me to understand what they are trying to do on their end. After getting a decent handle on all classes I would choose one that I like and try to focus on that. Then work my way up ranked to the point where I feel comfortable in the game mode, and look to join a team for ATs.

Does that seem like a reasonable plan? Any specific classes I should learn first? Or don't need to learn? Any videos/guides worthy of watching? Appreciate any help or direction you provide.

Good plan, welcome to the mists.

[Tyga.7056]

We have a PvP Discord, that functions as platform for questions like yours. PvP Guides, Videos, Class Coaches and Guild recruitment. Feel free to join and ask any question you want on your way to achieve your goals. We need many more players like you! Discord: https://discord.gg/dz4Wxd5

[Bloadsoaked.6792]

what is this discussion? there is lit. no time investment to create a pvp char. if u want to, dont look up metas and figure out the best build for u own. hf o/

[Tehologist.5841]

I keep an extra slot for pvp. Allows me to try all the classes. I just start a character and use the template builds. Requires no thought at all and gives you an idea of how arena net feels class should work.