Tips and Strategies for Enjoying The PVP Weekend

Alright, since many of you have obviously never PvP'd before, I thought I'd start up a thread of general tips and tricks you can use to maximize the enjoyment of your PvP time rather than just die...and die...and die.

These tips are for random 4's and do not apply to team-based PvP.

Tip #1: Unless you've a Mesmer with very high fast casting, bring Res Signet rather than any other res.

Tip #2: Always bring Res Signet.

Tip #3: Bring along at least one defensive skill. If possible, also bring along a self-heal. You can't rely on Monks in the radom arena.

Tip #4: If you're a Wa/Mo, Paladin build, you can put Mending on someone other than you. You're generally the last one targetted. Put this on a squishy.

Tip #5: Conditions tend to get more mileage than high damage attacks in random 4's. For example, Immolate tends to do more damage than Meteor Shower.

Tip #6: If you bring a pet, spend a few slots of your skill bar so the pet can do something.

Tip #7: Let your group know what your build does at the begining of the arena. A simple "I'm a protector" or "I'm a nuker" will go a long way. If you're playing a complex or strange build, use more than three words to describe yourself.

Tip #8: Simple strategies -- Turtle Up, Follow My Target Call, etc. -- work far, far better than randomly attacking whoever happens to be in front of you.

Tip #9: If you happen to be randomly placed with a Monk who is not a smiter, defend this person (smiters can generally take care of themselves). They'll appreciate it, and your team will have an increased chance of winning.

Tip #10: If you're playing a Monk, remember you have the Smiting line. There's a lot of good, defenisve skills there.

Tip #11: Sometimes adding in a line of skills you rarely use in PvE will just be a remarkable and stunning success. Use this weekend to experiment with little-used skill lines.

Tip #12: Most importantly, have fun! If you're defeated, and eventually it'll happen, congratulate the victors. When you win, and eventually it'll happen, thank the other team for a good game.

I now turn this over to the rest of you to post your own tips and strategies for enjoying the weekend.

cmb

The blind leading the deaf.

or option B, join a gank guild and get 100,000 for doing nothing... they really should have fixed the ganking problems before this, so it doesn't screw up the numbers

well IlikeGW, if there's one thing we can count on ANet to remain consistent on is their lack of foresight, opportunists will be happy to continue profiting off this

Don't get discouraged if your team doesn't have a monk. Usually that means you have more damage than the other team with the monk. Focus all 4 on one target.

My one and only tip: Play as a monk. Your chances of winning increase substantially, and seeing as how a monk is the most influential class in terms of a party's sucess, if you are good at it you can easily win most battles.

Always bring a snare or something to slow down that one last enemy that decides to use sprint. Almost all the classes have a snare so there is no excuse why you have to run around an arena for 15+ minutes.

Fairly typical I suppose. One person makes an attempt at helping PvP noobs (like me) and of the first 3 replies, one is a flame at the poster, and 2 are flames at Anet. Constructive criticism > Destructive criticism.

I've found that using a warriorshutdown build works best, because i've seen FLOODS of W/Mo paladin builds. I mean, every group usually has one or two, cause that's what I've been facing. So I bring along some blind or cripple skill and it's great.

Which brings us to the most important tip of all: don't play a healing W/Mo paladin build in pvp.

Nonono, please do. It's fun to kill them one on one with a ranger.

Seriously, 95% of W/Mos don't know how to deal damage. Which makes you respect anyone actually competent at that build.

Any thread that has the words PvP and mending within it is not a good one. I really don't see how the clueless giving people who don't know any better bad practices from the very start is in any way constructive....

And don't even bother with that 'its randoms though, it works good there crap.' Randoms is like throwing shit at more shit, and whatever lands first wins.

If you want to do constructive PvP get 4 friends together and experiment in the team arenas, while avoiding the bad practices on these forums.

funny that you say that.
i regularly reach team arenas with random groups, and win there!

the fun part about random IS that you get morons, and not-optimzed builds in your team.
you are forced to adopt to every new member, and every set of teammates.
and once you found 3 good ones you can be proud of achieving something with your combined your skill and your 4 brains, and not by maximal abuse of game systems and skill loopholes...

like said before, the people in random arent 100% the best people to pvp, which means you can get a lot of kills, even if 20 faction points per kill isnt to your liking. i got into a really good group that had no monk in it, and we won 10 times in a row before we came across a group that had 3 W/Mos and a Mo/W(whats the odds of that happening?).

Ended up playing for about 30 minutes and gained 1k faction points.
As for tips, i can only provide for elementalists(because i find all other classes boring).

1. Bring aura of restoration. It can help a lot. Make sure to have at least a minor energy storage rune on. Not only does this make yourself a little bit more self sufficient, but it also helps you take down warriors on your own and lightens the load your monk has to carry(if you have one in your team)

2. Bring your best attributes attunement. It gives you back 30% of the mana you use, so if you have 80 mana(which is a good guess with foci and a high energy storage) you'll end up having around 103 energy, without the recharge rate(which means you'll last for a long time in battles)

3. Bring res sig. It makes people mad that they res you but you cant res them. And sometimes in a battle its the difference of who has more res sigs than the other team, because if you're fighting in a random arena, you're not always going to have a healing monk to res you when you die.

4. Bring hard hitting spells. But remember not to lug along 5 spells that require 25 energy and have 60 second recharge times. I'd recommend a spell like one of the burn spells(elites), something cheap and fast like flare/lightning jav, and then bring along 3 spells that have quick recharge times(5-10 seconds) and cost 10-15 energy, like flame burst.

5. chances are, a bunch of warriors are going to gang up on you because your primary is E, and they'll think you're weak. Just buff yourself up, and nuke the crap out of those stupid warriors, with water/air builds(either seperate or combined) go well against raiding warriors

6. Judge who your strongest character is when resurrecting. Say 2 of your teammates are down, don't resurrect the weaker one, unless they tell you they can res the other person as well. this way, you're giving your better people 2 lives instead of the weaker people.

I don't know if it's been said yet, but try to find a group of new acquaintances or friends that you can go with through a number of builds and configurations. Often, the biggest problem in the arenas is running into strangers and ultimately stressing out over whether you're doing your job right, or if they'll call you out on doing a poor job. Playing with understanding friends makes this entire event very, very much more enjoyable.

Tips:

Tip 1, Make a smurf guild
Tip 2, Win about 10 times.
Tip 3, lower your raiting
Tip 4, repeat.

That was just plain rude.

If you consider yourself so all-knowing, why don't you post a better guide for PvP newbies. If you can't, or don't want to bother, you have no right to bash on others that do.

And btw suggesting that people take 3 friends and go to experiment with builds in team arenas is just showing how far you are from the reality. Most GW players are complete PvP newbies. They dont have any idea of what a "build" is, and what skills work in PvP, and which ones suck, despite of being good PvE. They don't also have those 3 friends who'd be willing to experiment together with them.

I sometimes go to random arenas to quickly test some weird idea that I don't feel ready yet to experiment on my guildies, and I'd say 70% of the people in random areas have completely NO clue how to play GW (not just PvP, but GW as such). The OP was directed at those people.

I'd like to say that the two ideas of being new and playing with friends are very much exclusive to one another. I found a group of players very willing to help me out, although I told them specifically I was very new to the idea of PvP, and they stuck it out with me, helping me become a better player. Since then, I've joined their guild, and have been having a blast playing with them. They are in no ways overly concerned with winning, just having fun, and enjoying themselves.

I don't think that's too far-fetched

And believe it or not, it's not too hard to find good friends in this game

I never said a single thing dealing with builds. Learn to read please.

I also don't need to post a guide for PvP newbies, because if you took the 3 seconds to use the search button, you would finds loads of wealth on that exact topic, instead of the same crap on how mending rules or w/mos with healing breeze and 7 defensive stances.

Mending works in random arenas, (and not always though), for one reason and one reason only:

People don't know how to use the target call system. They run in and randomly attack people, leading to sadistically reduced DPS, leading to me regening more hp than they're dealing damage.

It's funny really.

I like healing breeze better though.

Bold stuff is mine