Curse

d3kst3r · Feb 22, 2006, 02:10 PM // 14:10

*PvP skills not as in those you bring on your skillbar but infact those that can be used at any time by the player in order to help him in various PvP situations

Dodging

An elementalist once spammed Stone Daggers none-stop at X. However X kept running up and down and not a single one of those daggers managed to strike him. He only paused every so often to cast spells. The enemy elementalist's build had been effectively countered.

The art of dodging is used against projectiles by the player to avoid being hit by moving projectiles. The beauty here is that it takes anywhere between 0.5 to 2 seconds for projectiles to travel through the air. To dodge them simply run up and down in a perpendicular direction to the movement of the projectile itself. Make sure that your player is roughly 4/5 of an aggro circle away from the shooter itself. Once you learn to dodge projectiles you can taunt archers, wanders and stone dagger spammers to your heart's delight and it costs nothing to do (unlike most stances).

Kiting

A mesmer with very low armor once fought a fully decked out warrior. The warrior chased the mesmer but the mesmer kept using Clumsiness whenever the warrior was in striking distance. Needless to say, the warrior could not hit the mesmer even once and was killed.

The art of kiting is used to infuriate and kill warriors. In simple terms, kiting is like flying the kite where your enemy is the kite. An instance of kiting would be that a warrior is chasing you and you're a ranger with very little armor. To both do damage and avoid melee attacks you use Poison Arrow every so often and Oath Shot + Pin Down to keep the warrior away from touching you. One of the most essential PvP skills for rangers to learn.

Reading the Battle

In the Competitive Arenas there was once a team of four strangers. One of them was a warrior named Y. While the other three members of his team were attacking a monk, Y decided to attack a ranger. The monk nearly died several times whereas the ranger was nowhere close to death. Even despite that, Y continued to attack the ranger oblivious to what he could have done to kill the monk.

Most often than not, battles are a mass of utter confusion and chaos. Good PvPers however have the ability to read the flow of the battle through experience and intuition. However an easier way of reading the battle would be simply pressing the Tab key a few times every so often. Remember that there may be a more vulnerable target than the one you're currently after and doing a "Tab scan" every so often can achieve a great deal.

Weapon Fast-Switch

There once was a warrior called Z who tried to kill a trapper. This trapper had no stances and could have been disrupted extremely easily however the warrior kept trying to rush at the trapper with his axe. This was met with many Barbed Traps, Dust Traps and Flame Traps. Eventually the ranger kited the warrior to death. If the warrior had brought a wand then the ranger would not have been so fortunate.

The common rule is that warriors use melee weapons, rangers use bows and casters use wands. However for experienced players, that is not the case. Always bring as many weapons as you can bring to the combat and have the F1, F2, F3 and F4 keys ready at all times. For instance a warrior's main weapon may be a hammer however his secondary is a sword and shield, third is a wand. He will switch to a wand and start hitting his foe to gain adrenaline and then switch to hammer to spam all his adrenaline attacks at once for devastating damage. When he's running for his life he'll switch to sword and shield for that extra bit of defense.
For rangers, I tend to use a Flatbow when the target is far, far away and I need to get a Poison Arrow on him. As soon as the battle becomes close I switch to Shortbow immediately.

Recognizing Builds

In the Competitive Arena, a mesmer named Z saw one of the enemy monks continually spamming Protective Spirit on himself at the start. At this site he immediately threw -10 HP per second degen worth of hexes on the monk. The monk died in five seconds.

Being able to recognize a build from a simple glance is something learned over time rather than a skill and as a result may be the hardest for some and the easiest for others. For instance seeing an Ele/Mo would bring a good chance that the Ele was a healer. A Me/W would be recognized in most instances as an Illusionary Weaponry user and thus the player would have a strip enchant skill ready. A monk spamming Protective Spirit none-stop on themself would have a strong chance of being a 55 HP monk and so on. Before any fighting takes place, be sure to Tab through your foes and have a good idea of what you can expect.

Use the Environment (and your Teammates)

A mesmer named XY once went up against a group of 4 rangers in a Competitive Arenas map that involved a tall hill. He went down the hill and used Distortion to block all the rangers' attacks then he went to the top of the hill and slightly behind. The four rangers fired franticly, all their arrows blocked by the hill as the mesmer cast hexes on them to his delight.

As you can see a hill, a wall or even a corner will defend against any projectile attack 100% and does not require any mana or an extra skill on your skillbar. Another example would be when you are getting chased by a warrior, remember those traps that the trapper placed on the bridge at the start and lead the warrior across that bridge. Or simply run through a large crowd of team mates, their body blocking will slow the warrior down in some cases. Using team mates as body blocks is also an effective way of kiting.

Recognize Skills

A necromancer monk named X once had Backfire cast onto him. He simply used none-spell skills like Vampiric Touch and Barbed Signet and was able to function without any problems.

Being able to recognize the properties of a skill simply by glancing at its display picture is a powerful skill. Backfire is a popular example. It seems that 30% of people will suicide from backfire, 40% will stand around and do nothing and wait for it to end, 20% will attempt removal and 10% will actually do the smartest thing which is use none-spell skills. Another example would be Fragility. As soon as you see Fragility casted on yourself then be sure to get heavy condition removals ready.

Use Those Wands!

There was a team of four casters who fought another group. This caster group believed that their combined hexes were so powerful that they relied fully on them to get kills. However their opponents would always be left with about 90 HP and then suddenly get healed to full HP. What the caster group neglected to do was to add the damage from their wands since they believed wand damage was negligible.

With the above example, say you do 18 damage per hit with a wand. That may not be much but over time if you hit your foe 10 times you've effectively done a staggering 180 damage. Over time this stacks up and may mean the difference between "almost killed" and "killed". It seems that up to 80% of casters I see do not use their wands. If a team of 8 casters all used their wands and each did an average of 10 damage, that would be 80 dmg every 2 seconds just from combined wand damage. Over the long run that's a lot of free damage that they've missed out on.

Body Blocking

There was once a Tombs team that were so well organised that the enemy team could never have access to their monks and Ghostly Hero's had a hard time capturing the Altar. In Relic maps, the bodyblocking was able to increase the time it took to get to capture the relic by a staggering 12 seconds which led to the relic holder being killed before they could reach the hero.

Bodyblocking is pretty self explanatory however there are a few advanced ways to use it. As you know most people who play will go on Auto Pilot (target a foe and press spacebar). If you have a monk in your team and you see a warrior rushing towards them at the start, simply standing infront of a warrior at a crucial corner will cause the warrior to stop moving entirely and just stand there doing nothing (I used this often in the lava map in Competitive Arenas using the bridge as my corner). Also if you have three well co-ordinated players and a corner you can prevent a griefer from running and trap him against a wall.
Another form of body blocking is with the use of Spirits. Eg. two or three spirits placed along a bridge could block warriors from crossing it unless they destroy the Spirits. Very useful for Relic maps in tombs although rarely used.

Warrior Spiking

A hammer warrior named B would always wait until every single one of his adrenal attack skills were charged and then he would spam them all in a single instant and call it to his team mates. This lead to the target being knocked down none-stop for 12 seconds.

More commonly known as Adrenal Spiking, it's where warriors wait for full adrenaline on all attacks and then "spiking" them all at once. It both suprises the target off balance and has a much higher "dmg per second" than simply using an adrenal skill the moment it charges.

Don't Autopilot

A warrior named Z had a very simple play style. He'd simply pick a target, press spacebar and press the number keys to use skills. Needless to say he ran through every trap, kite, body block that was thrown at him and was unable to read the battle at all.

There are two types of players in Guildwars. One which I call the Autopilot who simply presses Spacebar to attack and just hits numbers. The other is the Dynamic player who strafes through traps and body blocks, does Tab checks, does Adrenal spikes, body blocks and even dodges. Autopiloting is both dull and repetitive but most importantly, it can get you killed pretty fast so don't do it and you will have a much richer gameplay experience.

Breaking E-denial

Courtesy of twicky_kid.

You should have 4 weapons slots for your caster. Slot 1 staff with +5 energy head (most likely). Slot 2 15/1 energy wand with 20/20 off-hand. Slot 3 15/1 wand and 15/1 off-hand. Slot 4 empty.
When you are facing e-denial you want to fight with the empty slot. This will lower your energy pool. When you are about to cast switch to a weapon that will cover the minimum energy cost. After casting switch back to empty slot. This will make your energy go into the negatives but your energy regen is still at work. When you get hit by e-denial it cannot lower you past 0. If you are at 0 energy already then it does nothing.
Use your weapon switches wisely and watch the clock for recharge times. Then you expect when you are going to get hit by the mes. If it is a ranger then you want to stay on the empty slot period.

The Dead Have Eyes Too

There once was a tombs team of 8 players. One of the players named Z was the first to die. But instead of lie there and wait for Rez, he called targets that were nearly dead, called vital skills that the enemy were using and overall helped co-ordinate. Eventually this team won due to good co-ordination.

Remember that even when you're dead you can still call targets and do Tab scans that benefit the team. In fact when you're dead you have less to worry about and can have a much clearer view of the battle (unless the enemies are out of visual range of course.

Those are a list of some of the advanced PvP skills. Have fun :P

Makkert · Feb 22, 2006, 02:15 PM // 14:15

note that wanding while being Blinded from the Dust Trap won't make a big difference

.
Also when dodging, having more range between you and your attacker (i.e. ranger) makes easier dodger then when you are close to him. At least, so I've read, and it makes sense.

I miss some things like teammovement, but this is not bad.

d3kst3r · Feb 22, 2006, 02:20 PM // 14:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makkert

note that wanding while being Blinded from the Dust Trap won't make a big difference

.
Also when dodging, having more range between you and your attacker (i.e. ranger) makes easier dodger then when you are close to him. At least, so I've read, and it makes sense.

I miss some things like teammovement, but this is not bad.

Yes true but that was just a very general example. If the ranger was only using Barbed Trap then wanding would have worked. There are hundreds of variables to consider in PvP.

Ole Man Bourbon · Feb 22, 2006, 05:46 PM // 17:46

Interesting stuff. Thanks.

SnoopJeDi · Feb 22, 2006, 10:22 PM // 22:22

In a handful of the maps, if you get real close to the "gate", you can hold control and view opponents, and click on them. Getting info here can really help, because you can call a monk even before the match begins.

Good guide.

Thom · Feb 22, 2006, 11:24 PM // 23:24

This isn't quite advanced, but hex/condition recognition is key. Being aware of what hexes are on you can calling those which are important (and aren't covered). Life siphon is the waste of a removal skill much of the time as is bleeding and sometimes poison. While complete hex/condition control would be nice, it isn't reasonable. Knowing which hexes are going to really hurt you and which you can ignore is important.

If you are a lone warrior and you get hit with Empathy, take a quick glance at the health bar and decide whether you want to call for a removal, fight through or just cast for a bit. Same thing with Mindwrack, diversion and even Backfire on casters.

Inureface · Feb 23, 2006, 03:20 AM // 03:20

You should mention body blocking, pretty useful when you have a griefer and they make the mistake of backing against a wall or something.

d3kst3r · Feb 23, 2006, 03:31 AM // 03:31

Griefer's are a one-off problem usually and result from your team not being properly equipped with the right skills to deal with a running problem. I could name dozens of skills that counter griefers (degen hexes, movement slows, heavy spike dmg, knock downs, traps etc.). But body blocking does have many uses which I should update.

Sekkira · Feb 23, 2006, 03:34 AM // 03:34

No, this isn't advanced. But it's amazing the amount of people that don't know this when they come into high level pvp. Then they wonder what's going on when their opponent uses these tactics against them and they fail miserably.

d3kst3r · Feb 23, 2006, 03:37 AM // 03:37

I find most players just target an enemy, press Spacebar and go on "auto pilot." You can usually tell the Auto Pilots since they're the ones who chat during the battle and walk into every trap, hex, kite that's thrown at them.

Fluffyx · Feb 23, 2006, 03:51 AM // 03:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by d3kst3r

*PvP skills not as in those you bring on your skillbar but infact those that can be used at any time by the player in order to help him in various PvP situations

Dodging

An elementalist once spammed Stone Daggers none-stop at X. However X kept running up and down and not a single one of those daggers managed to strike him. He only paused every so often to cast spells. The enemy elementalist's build had been effectively countered.

The art of dodging is used against projectiles by the player to avoid being hit by moving projectiles. The beauty here is that it takes anywhere between 0.5 to 2 seconds for projectiles to travel through the air. To dodge them simply run up and down in a perpendicular direction to the movement of the projectile itself. Make sure that your player is roughly 4/5 of an aggro circle away from the shooter itself. Once you learn to dodge projectiles you can taunt archers, wanders and stone dagger spammers to your heart's delight and it costs nothing to do (unlike most stances).

Kiting

A mesmer with very low armor once fought a fully decked out warrior. The warrior chased the mesmer but the mesmer kept using Clumsiness whenever the warrior was in striking distance. Needless to say, the warrior could not hit the mesmer even once and was killed.

The art of kiting is used to infuriate and kill warriors. In simple terms, kiting is like flying the kite where your enemy is the kite. An instance of kiting would be that a warrior is chasing you and you're a ranger with very little armor. To both do damage and avoid melee attacks you use Poison Arrow every so often and Oath Shot + Pin Down to keep the warrior away from touching you. One of the most essential PvP skills for rangers to learn.

Reading the Battle

In the Competitive Arenas there was once a team of four strangers. One of them was a warrior named Y. While the other three members of his team were attacking a monk, Y decided to attack a ranger. The monk nearly died several times whereas the ranger was nowhere close to death. Even despite that, Y continued to attack the ranger oblivious to what he could have done to kill the monk.

Most often than not, battles are a mass of utter confusion and chaos. Good PvPers however have the ability to read the flow of the battle through experience and intuition. However an easier way of reading the battle would be simply pressing the Tab key a few times every so often. Remember that there may be a more vulnerable target than the one you're currently after and doing a "Tab scan" every so often can achieve a great deal.

Weapon Fast-Switch

There once was a warrior called Z who tried to kill a trapper. This trapper had no stances and could have been disrupted extremely easily however the warrior kept trying to rush at the trapper with his axe. This was met with many Barbed Traps, Dust Traps and Flame Traps. Eventually the ranger kited the warrior to death. If the warrior had brought a wand then the ranger would not have been so fortunate.

The common rule is that warriors use melee weapons, rangers use bows and casters use wands. However for experienced players, that is not the case. Always bring as many weapons as you can bring to the combat and have the F1, F2, F3 and F4 keys ready at all times. For instance a warrior's main weapon may be a hammer however his secondary is a sword and shield, third is a wand. He will switch to a wand and start hitting his foe to gain adrenaline and then switch to hammer to spam all his adrenaline attacks at once for devastating damage. When he's running for his life he'll switch to sword and shield for that extra bit of defense.
For rangers, I tend to use a Flatbow when the target is far, far away and I need to get a Poison Arrow on him. As soon as the battle becomes close I switch to Shortbow immediately.

Recognizing Builds

In the Competitive Arena, a mesmer named Z saw one of the enemy monks continually spamming Protective Spirit on himself at the start. At this site he immediately threw -10 HP per second degen worth of hexes on the monk. The monk died in five seconds.

Being able to recognize a build from a simple glance is something learned over time rather than a skill and as a result may be the hardest for some and the easiest for others. For instance seeing an Ele/Mo would bring a good chance that the Ele was a healer. A Me/W would be recognized in most instances as an Illusionary Weaponry user and thus the player would have a strip enchant skill ready. A monk spamming Protective Spirit none-stop on themself would have a strong chance of being a 55 HP monk and so on. Before any fighting takes place, be sure to Tab through your foes and have a good idea of what you can expect.

Use the Environment (and your Teammates)

A mesmer named XY once went up against a group of 4 rangers in a Competitive Arenas map that involved a tall hill. He went down the hill and used Distortion to block all the rangers' attacks then he went to the top of the hill and slightly behind. The four rangers fired franticly, all their arrows blocked by the hill as the mesmer cast hexes on them to his delight.

As you can see a hill, a wall or even a corner will defend against any projectile attack 100% and does not require any mana or an extra skill on your skillbar. Another example would be when you are getting chased by a warrior, remember those traps that the trapper placed on the bridge at the start and lead the warrior across that bridge. Or simply run through a large crowd of team mates, their body blocking will slow the warrior down in some cases. Using team mates as body blocks is also an effective way of kiting.

Recognize Skills

A necromancer monk named X once had Backfire cast onto him. He simply used none-spell skills like Vampiric Touch and Barbed Signet and was able to function without any problems.

Being able to recognize the properties of a skill simply by glancing at its display picture is a powerful skill. Backfire is a popular example. It seems that 30% of people will suicide from backfire, 40% will stand around and do nothing and wait for it to end, 20% will attempt removal and 10% will actually do the smartest thing which is use none-spell skills. Another example would be Fragility. As soon as you see Fragility casted on yourself then be sure to get heavy condition removals ready.

Use Those Wands!

There was a team of four casters who fought another group. This caster group believed that their combined hexes were so powerful that they relied fully on them to get kills. However their opponents would always be left with about 90 HP and then suddenly get healed to full HP. What the caster group neglected to do was to add the damage from their wands since they believed wand damage was negligible.

With the above example, say you do 18 damage per hit with a wand. That may not be much but over time if you hit your foe 10 times you've effectively done a staggering 180 damage. Over time this stacks up and may mean the difference between "almost killed" and "killed". It seems that up to 80% of casters I see do not use their wands. If a team of 8 casters all used their wands and each did an average of 10 damage, that would be 80 dmg every 2 seconds just from combined wand damage. Over the long run that's a lot of free damage that they've missed out on.

Those are a list of some of the advanced PvP skills. Have fun :P

Lots of warrior hate in these strategies. Most are about killing warriors, which saddens me. Because everyone should already know that the warriors weakness is his dependancy on his mellee weapon. We need tactics against other classes.

I dont agree that a warrior bringing some sort of ranged weapon into pvp will solve all his problems. To put it simply Ranger with a bow will take down a warrior with a wand/staff faster. Even if they have a primarily trapper build. Your best bet as a warrior would be to bring skills that dont miss, end stances or hit through evaded attacks which would make trapping useless. Unless the trapper brings mantara of resolve which will have him end up not having enough energy to finish his second set of traps.

Also you have to watch that your opponent doesn't use the environment against you. EG: trapping you against a wall.

Just my thoughts to improve this

d3kst3r · Feb 23, 2006, 03:57 AM // 03:57

I ain't really biased against warriors since I can play every class in the game and have all the skills unlocked. However warriors just happen to be by far the easiest build to counter. Don't forget I also offer plenty of tips against Rangers and projectile eles (dodging, using environment etc.)
As for rangers using bows to take down wars using wands/shields, you have to realize the wand is not primarily for damage, it's for when the target cannot be hit by melee and more importantly, to gain adrenaline which is especially useful for hammer wars since hammers are the slowest weapon in the game.

drowningfish999 · Feb 23, 2006, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Very nice, thanks for posting.

Loch · Feb 23, 2006, 04:41 AM // 04:41

Quote:

In the Competitive Arena, a mesmer named Z saw one of the enemy monks continually spamming Protective Spirit on himself at the start. At this site he immediately threw -10 HP per second degen worth of hexes on the monk. The monk died in five seconds.

There's an easier way.

It's called "Vampiric Gaze".

d3kst3r · Feb 23, 2006, 04:42 AM // 04:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

There's an easier way.

It's called "Vampiric Gaze".

You sure Vamp gaze bypasses the 5 dmg barrier?

Sekkira · Feb 23, 2006, 04:57 AM // 04:57

Yes, Vampiric Gaze is life stealing and not actual damage.

d3kst3r · Feb 23, 2006, 04:59 AM // 04:59

Nice, I'm dying to give that a try.

Vermilion Okeanos · Feb 23, 2006, 08:36 AM // 08:36

Strategic spirit placing and blocking is also not mentioned....

Medion · Feb 23, 2006, 10:21 AM // 10:21

Quote:

As soon as you see Fragility casted on yourself then be sure to get heavy condition removals ready.

Doesn't removing the conditions make it only worse?

Tio Mat · Feb 23, 2006, 12:51 PM // 12:51

Very nice guide D3kst3r. I like the way you explain your points, with examples. Sure it leaves many tactics out but there's no guide that can consider all aspects of the game.

Thank you for your effort.