Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Add Reply
Guide to structured PvP
Topic Started: Aug 22 2012, 10:35 PM (94 Views)
Stormfolk
Member Avatar


I found this on some other forum, might be a good read.

Guide to structured PvP

Building your character basics:
Guildwars 2 has a very flexible character customization system. Any class can be be a built as a tank or as a frail glass DPS cannon. Certain classes excel at certain roles more than others. With the absence of the holy trinity, the roles in Guildwars 2 are divided into three catagories: Support, Control and Damage. Your build should be proficient in two of those categories.

The first aspect that affects your stats is your profession, here are the base numbers at hero level 80.
Base HPs: 1pt vitality = 10hp
Warrior, Necromancer 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist 10,805

Base Armor: 1pt of toughness = 1armor
Warrior, Guardian 2127
Ranger, Thief, Engineer 1980
Elementalist, Necromancer, Mesmer 1836

Toughness reduces the damage you take from a direct hit, but does not reduce damage from conditions (malice). There is an ongoing argument whether toughness or vitality is better. Let me try to explain why. The value of toughness can be better realized the longer a fight goes on (against normal damage) since heals do not scale with vitality and the damage reduction of toughness increases the value of each hp point. Pure hp can prevent you from being one-shotted but high DPS to the hero will negate any benefit from an initial high HP value. Also, many builds have extra offensive capabilities against low % hp targets, if you are heavy on vitality but low on toughness you will hit these % thresholds earlier than a build with the same effective health but distributed between vitality and toughness. On the other hand you need to have enough health to be able to survive and escape an enemies burst combo.

Your level 80 base in every stat is 916. The largest contribution, and the biggest point of item specialization comes down to your amulet. Here is a list, although it is not complete it should give you an idea of how big of a stat difference it makes http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amulethttp://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amulet (1936 total stat points on 3 stat amulet) . There are also jewels which accompany your Amulet but provide less stats http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jewelhttp://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jewel (275 total stat points on 3 stat jewel). Your 70 trait points turn into 700 stat points with up to a max of 300 pts of a single stat coming from traits. The final aspect is your armor enchantments which in general provide a combination of stats with different total effects.

Your equipment choices are going to be based on the objectives of your build and your weapon choices. In general, the farther the range of your weapon the less defensive stats you will need. Another generality in this game is that melee weapons do more damage than ranged weapons, so if you are planning on using a high damage melee weapon you can get away with hybridizing stats more and still having very effective damage. Every class also has defensive abilities available from their utility skills, the more defensive utility skills you are using the less you will need to utilize defense in your stats. In general I think every build should have at least 1 stun or condition break. Avoid thinking that you will need to function as a tank/healer/DPS but more as someone who will assist fellow players with Conditions, Damage or Support.

http://www.gw2build.comhttp://www.gw2build.com


Boons and Conditions
Boon and Condition are this game's buff and debuff system.
Stability is probably the strongest boon overall, granting you immunity to all crowd control effects, roots and snares still effect you. Fury, Protection and Vigor are strong boons. Swiftness is good for running around. Might needs multiple stacks to be worthwhile. Regeneration and Retaliation are somewhat weak.
Boons stack in duration and not intensity. This means that if 2 people are using abilities that grant group swiftness for 15 seconds at the same time they will give your group swiftness for 30 seconds.

Poison and Weakness are 2 conditions to be on the look out for, while poisoned you have 33% reduced healing and while under weakness 50% of your attacks do 50% damage and your endurance regeneration is reduced. If you don't have condition removal available try to wait out the poison before healing if you can. You can somewhat counteract the effect of weakness by using abilities that either do condition damage or are based on cround control effects which are not as effected by the damage reduction. If you notice yourself blind make sure you burn an auto attack before using other abilities.
Burning > Poison > Bleed give condition damage, but burning and poison stack duration while bleeds stack intensity (multiple stacks).


Condition Damage vs Direct Damage
I would say that with all the condition removal abilities available direct damage is more viable especially since it tends to have higher burst. With that being said I think condition damage builds can be viable but need to make sure they aren't slamming themselves into a brick wall by fighting their counter. There is also a maximum of 25 stacks of bleed which puts a bit of a limit on the number of condition builds that can be on a team.


General Combat
Combat in Guildwars 2 differs in a couple significant ways from general MMO combat. A difference that many MMO players will notice is that you can activate your abilities when you are out of range to use them. This means you need to have a very good awareness of game range to not waste valuable abilities. Another major difference is that the animation matters, regardless if you were in range when you began your ability, if they are not in range/being hit by the animation they will not be effective. An important implication of this is that you can not simply judge abilities by reading their descriptions since it does not disclose the length of the animations. Judging the true effectiveness of abilities comes down to actually practicing with them, and I would recommend getting a good feeling for how your abilities work in conjunction with their animations before entering PvP. While this is not true in all cases, most utility abilities tend to be instantly activated and have either no or extremely limited animations.

If you are using a channeled ability like your heal, and then get interrupted by an enemy or dodge and break the cast, that ability will have roughly a 5 second cool-down before it can be used again. With some large channeled abilities like elementalist's meteor storm you are able to dodge roll near the end of the channel and it will not interrupt it.

There is a setting to activate "fast targeting" for ground targeted abilities, allowing you to use your ability and apply it to where your mouse cursor is rather than having to use your ability and then click the area. I recommend this option for anyone using ground targeted abilities.
There are also hotkeys to look behind you and turn around but they do not have a set key by default. Take the time to go into your options menu and select hot keys for all keys that you would find useful in combat.


Dodging
While I wrote a lot about toughness and vitality earlier on, the key to survival in Guildwars 2 is avoiding damage. You can evade many attacks simply by moving out of the way or out of range of the attack. But when you need to avoid a big burst immediately, it is all about dodge rolling. You are able to dodge roll twice on a full endurance bar although there are several traits available to the various professions giving them ways to get more endurance or get the vigor boon for quicker endurance regeneration.

Getting good at dodging really comes from experience. The more that you play the more you will start noticing the distinctive animations of powerful enemy attacks and be able to react before they hit you. Knowing your enemy is very important, a burst class like an elementalist or warrior are probably going to try to drop their combo on you as soon as they get in range. A more sustained damage class (like ranger) is probably going to hit you with 1 or 2 range finder hits before using a special attack which you want to avoid. Obviously people will mix it up and play differently but the more experience you get the more you will notice the distinctive animations and the setups that different builds like to use.


Downed State
The downed state adds several new aspects to the game. Every class has a basic attack and a heal, they have 2 other abilities with 1 normally being an escape type move to counter being finished off. You do not get points for downing an enemy until you have stomped them or otherwise killed them in the down state. If an enemy and an ally are both in a downed state near one another, if you stomp the enemy your ally immediately rallies, while if an enemy beats you to it and stomps your ally you will soon find yourself in a 2 against 1 situation. If you are in a team fight, generally the person with the most hps and toughness should be stomping since performing a stomp leaves you exposed for 4 seconds.

Certain professions have methods to interrupt your stomp and good players will try to cc someone stomping their ally. There are a few tricky ways to get off stomps. If you use stability there is no way someone can stop you short of turning you into a Moa, the same goes for reviving an ally. Elementalists can stomp or revive without worry while in mistform. Thieves and Mesmers can stomp while invisible. Warriors and Rangers can use their quickness abilities to get quicker stomps. While these moves involve using what is likely a strong ability with a moderately long cool down, getting the stomp when an enemy and an ally are down can determine the outcome of a game.


Control Points
It takes 4 seconds to turn a point neutral, 14 seconds to capture it. You gain 1 point every 2 seconds while it is under your control. Dying is the equivalent of giving them 20 seconds of control while also leaving your team outnumbered. Consider those numbers when deciding whether to hold off a point in a hopeless fight or trying to retreat.


Cross Profession Combo
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cross-profession_combohttp://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cross-profession_combo
Blast finishers are by far the best way to make use of combo fields. Blast on poison/water/ethereal are very good defensively.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · PvP · Next Topic »
Add Reply