Who to target in arenas?

well this is kinda what i do:
1) look for monk and try to atleast keep him busy or if team coops then i announce to attack him, if its just useless or there is no monk i move on
2) look for warriors/assassins, if its a hammer warrior, i dont even try...
3) mesmer/ele, mesmers sumtimes might be easy but sumtimes are just unpredictable, eles just might suck or sumtimes kill u way before u kill them
4) rangers, some might have sum sort of block so i ignore them, if not i just kill
5) necros, my last choice simply becuz they own me lol


I dont try to target rits becuz they are just impossible to kill and they summon their spirits, so i try to stay out of that area, same with dervishes, theya re kinda hard to kill...

In pvp, around 90%+ of monks don't carry a rez. Therefore, if all their team mates are dead, they cant bring them back to life. The key to pvp is pressure. If you start bashing a monk right off the bat, they will have full energy and no dp, and if you are a warrior, you will probably have no adrenaline. Attack professions who have the potential to really mess up your monk- eles, necros, sins, mesmers, and other warriors. Switching targets while a monk prots your current one can essentially make him waste his energy. If you teammates call a target, they are probably nearly dead, and they need help finishing the job. As for the "impossible to kill" targets, as long as you have a competent monk to heal you, you should be fine

I'm a huge fan of nailing assassins first in RA/AB.
They generally suck and are easy to kill, but chances are your team mates suck as well and will be killed by them; in short they're a high threat target.

Rangers are the class I leave for last, if the opposing ranger is worth his salt I don't really stand much of a chance.
Serious, a good Ranger is tough, not quite immortal... but close. Nat Stride/Troll/MTouch is godmode.

Who you should target depends on your skill set, their skill set, and the relative bane to your team or boon to theirs.

Unless your team is focusing on someone in particular, keep switching. If you find someone who's causing problems and you can deal with them, focus on them.

the question is not who to target first, that absolutely doesn't matter. The key points is when to switch, to which target, and when to unload your adrenaline (and hopefully kill).

It takes quite a bit of experience / game knowledge to recognise prot being applied to your target. Basically, stuff like Prot Spirit, Shield of Deflection, Guardian, ... are easely spotable.

Just keep an eye on your damage and your hits. If they suddenly start blocking, or the damage drops, SWITCH.

as a sole warrior, you can probably kill someone who's at 50% HP (depending on how much total HP he has of course). If you switch properly, stuff will get into that "zone".

Once you see an unprotted target with a considerable HP loss, kill it (or at least try to).

The key to switching is that prot does nothing if the target isn't attacked, so you basically maintain your DPS and the monk's waisting energy ...


one exception : overextending low AL targets (like assassins that shadowstep WAY out of monk range) can simply be killed on the spot (frenzy away and unload). By the time the monk reacts and reaches them, they're usually dead ...

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I got flamed for not spiking a monk with SoD on him, so it could just be your teammates that are noobs. Switch targets as you see fit, Stormcloud basically summed it up. As an assassin in arenas, I basically always spike the enemy Assassin first. Easy target, always goes for your monk >.<

Assuming nothing unusual, my targeting priorities begin like this:

Mesmer
Monk
Necromancer
Assassin
Elementalist
Ranger
Other melee types

I worry most about Mesmers because, as I play mostly casters, I know that an alive mesmer on the other side means my warrior on my side is the only character who can do anything more than stare at her own butt... Until I kill that Mesmer, I'm essentially playing solo.

I worry about Monks because they're relieving the pressure my team is trying to put on the other side.

I worry about Necromancers because either they're hexing the heck out of my team, or they're got an army of minions and taking those away from the other side is always a good thing.

Assassins are easy kills, but they move like heck. They do some hefty harm to my side, but usually the others on my team can gank them when they come in for a hit. I get the ones that know how to play after I've dealt with the the things that have kept them alive that long. I find that even if I use a skill to run super fast, I waste more than half my time in chase mode doing no damage if I go after an assassin. Better to let my Air elementalist or Ranger take it out.

Elementalists do a lot of damage as well, but they are usually sitting ducks and I can take them down in a few seconds, if I'm slow. If I've already killed their mesmer and they haven't killed mine, my team will have killed their elementalists before I can even reach them.

Rangers... Always a judgment call on how dangerous these will be, so I just let them live until this point in the analysis unless I see they're being a little too effective. Or they get in my way when I'm chasing some assassin and I see a quick 'opportunity kill.'

Warriors, dervishes, etc... are all doing the same thing to my side I'm doing to theirs. I can either put them at the top of my list, and spend the entire fight whittling down through their armor... or I can leave them for last and just hope I'm better at my job than they are at theirs. Or, if I'm really lucky, they're spending their whole effort running after me while I work my list above... meaning that by this point in the battle they will finally gank me, but I will have already done so much damage to their allies that it won't matter.

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