1

Beginner’s Guide to Guild Wars 2 PvP

GW2. New to PvP. Comprehensive guide to all the core components of the Guild Wars 2 Player vs Player game mode. 2023.



PvP feels really good in Guild Wars 2 because the action combat system promotes fluidity of movement and the lack of a hard trinity of roles allows players to play what they want to play. The main appeal to me about GW2 PvP is its barrier to entry, which is almost nonexistent. I enjoy creating new characters and being able to PvP on them instantly without needing to grind for gear or level them up to be at the same effect as my other characters. At the same time, there is such a high skill ceiling that allows you to express yourself and can be very addicting to keep improving.




You can play PvP as soon as you leave the tutorial at level 2 by clicking on the PvP icon in the top left menu and using the PvP panel. Players are scaled up to maximum level in PvP and have access to the same stats as everyone else, so there is no need to grind PvE to become stronger in PvP. This also means that every player has the same opportunity to win as each other. The only thing that matters is your skill. Some classes may be stronger than others, and some classes counter others, but for the most part it is fairly balanced.


What Class/Build Do I Play?


One of the most common and important questions people ask is what class they should play. Everyone has a different agenda, preference, and playstyle. If you want to win, generally playing the class you are the best at will provide better results in the long run than just playing a flavor of the month for some quick wins.

That being said, if you are new to MMO PvP and don’t want to jump in the deep end, there are certain classes which are generally easier to play. Ranger, Necromancer, and Guardian are all very straightforward. Engineer, Warrior, and Elementalist can be more punishing to play and have more skills or mechanics to learn so they are more demanding. The hardest classes to play are Revenant, Mesmer, and Thief because they rely more on their game knowledge, timing, and positioning.

If you care more about theme and class mechanics than ease of play, this guide will list off some basic characteristics and the different ways to play each class.



Because GW2 PvP is so accessible and because learning how to play against every class also includes learning how to play them, there is no excuse to not try out multiple classes. The following playlist shows the mechanics of each class to help you pick which one you want to play or learn how to fight.



Getting Started


Once you have chosen your class and have completed the tutorial, you can enter the PvP lobby. There will be many different locations you can check out. The three most important ones are the vendors by the Market Waypoint, which is where players go to access services and rewards; the Free-For-All Arena at Arena Waypoint, where players can spar with one another in a low pressure environment and get warmed up before a match; and the practice golems by Siege Training Waypoint where players can practice their skill combos on AI or theorycraft their builds.



The vendors in the north offer a bunch of the essential services like bank and trading post access. There is also an important weapon vendor, Evan Fleshgore, who will sell you base level weapons for super cheap. This is important because PvP-only players will need a physical weapon to use in their build, but since the stats don’t matter they can use anything as long as it is the weapon type they need.



To create a build in PvP, there are two different places on the UI you must visit: Equipment and Traits.


Equipment


Equipment is available through the top tab on your hero panel which can be accessed by default keybind ‘H’ or by clicking the shield icon in the PvP lobby menu. All classes have access to the same equipment. For this part of your build you will need to set up four different things:

  • Amulet
  • Rune
  • Weapons
  • Sigils


For PvP, you have a single amulet that comprises most of your stats instead of individual pieces of gear adding up. This means there are less combinations of stats than in PvE or WvW, but it is also much simpler and easier to balance. Your rune also gives a little bit more stats and then some unique effects.

Weapons determine which skills you have on the left side of your health bar. These weapon skills usually interact with your class mechanic and can vary in functionality because of that. Then finally you want to find some sigils for both of your weapon sets. These are only active depending on which of your weapon sets you are currently wielding.


Traits and Utilities


The other aspect of your PvP build is your traits and utility skills, which can be found in the tab below equipment.



Each class can use only 3 trait lines at a time and has 5 core trait lines they can choose from. Depending on how many expansions a player has bought, they can also use elite specializations. The bottom trait line can be swapped to an elite specialization which drastically changes your class mechanic and gives new traits. Only one elite specialization can be used at a time.

The five skills to the right of your health bar are your utility skills which include your heal skill, three slot utilities, and your elite skill. Generally you will want to have a decent amount of condition cleanse, two stun breaks, and a little bit of a mobility and sustain on your build.

The Guild Wars 2 combat system has been designed very intelligently around Boons and Conditions which simplifies most of the skills into a combination of these effects.



Builds with a lot of boon access have good sustain, and builds that give others boons are especially useful in larger fights. Conditions are useful for locking down your opponent and reducing their effectiveness. Likewise, they can do the same to you. Bring condition cleanse to allow you more freedom to move and use your skills, of course at the cost of whatever you’re giving up for it.

Creating your own build can be fun, and I recommend doing this to learn your class, but there are many resources out there to give you build ideas. Check out the PvP Builds Section if you want to try some.



PvP Game Modes


There are a few sub-game modes available in PvP.

  • Unranked Conquest
  • Ranked Conquest
  • Automated Tournaments
  • Unranked Stronghold
  • 2v2/3v3
  • Custom Games

Most of these can be accessed from the first tab of the PvP Panel. At first, you can only play unranked and custom matches. Pick your preferences right below the queue buttons.



Conquest is the main game mode of Guild Wars 2, which involves capturing three points around a map and the first team to reach 500 points wins. It allows different roles to achieve victory through different methods whether it is through acquiring kills, winning objectives, or defending capture points. Check the Rotations and Roles guide to learn more about conquest PvP.


Stronghold is much less supported than conquest, but resembles MOBAs like League of Legends or DotA because there are multiple lanes that minions can be summoned on. It also has elements of Guild Wars 1 GvG because each team must break through gates to reach the enemy lord and whoever kills the enemy lord first wins.


Deathmatch 2v2 and 3v3 are usually only available through custom games, but sometimes the ranked off-season will include a matchmaker for deathmatch as a mini-season for 2 weeks. If 2s or 3s aren’t active at the moment. check out this video to see what they are like.



Custom Games can be found on the bottom tab of the PvP panel. Here you will find servers that automatically run conquest matches, but won’t wait for teams to be balanced, so you can just get in and play without a care. Also there are servers that can be run by players if they buy and keep paying for them. These custom servers can be used to run community tournaments, create new game modes like King of the Hill or Draft Picks, and many are used as dueling or 1v1 servers. A dueling server is a nice place for players to get comfortable with a class or build in a more private, controlled, and low-stress environment. These servers are designed to never begin the match, so instead of focusing on the objectives you can just focus on learning a matchup with another dueler.



In unranked you can queue with 5 players, but once you are able to play ranked there will be a limit on the number of players you can queue with. Ranked becomes available when you reach rank 20, which takes on average 54 games of unranked to reach. Once you are able to play ranked, you can compete for rating and obtain improved rewards. A season of ranked will last around 8 weeks.


Automated Tournaments require 5 players to queue in for a series of conquest matches that determine the winner based on a swiss-style bracket followed by an elimination bracket. The swiss rounds will match teams against each other with similar win ratios over the course of the tournament. Teams that lose matches during swiss rounds are not out of the tournament, but the the matchmaker will recognize this. So if a team has a score of 2 wins and 1 loss, they will most likely go against another team with a 2-1 score. The teams with the highest scores after the final round (determined by the number of participating teams) will move on to a single elimination bracket of 8 where teams that lose are kicked out. This composes the Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and the Finals.



Daily Automated tournaments reward more gold than ranked matches, but you also gain Qualifying Points which allow you to participate in the Monthly Automated Tournament. Every member of your party must have gained 100 QP each month to enter the Monthly AT. This tournament is much more competitive as it is less frequent and has the potential to give very exclusive rewards to the first place team.



To see some examples of automated tournament gameplay and the coordination required for that level of play, check out the playlist below:



Rewards


Other than playing for fun, there are some decent rewards you can get from playing PvP.

Reward Tracks give players the choice to progress rewards toward PvE map rewards, allowing them to substitute PvP for grinding a PvE map. These progress in both unranked and ranked. and can give tons of unique skins.

Pips are the main method of receiving rewards in Ranked PvP. Winning and being higher rated yields more pips than losing or being lower rated. Once you reach a certain amount, the Pips translate into gold and PvP currencies which can be used to get PvP-only skins or ascended, or even legendary gear from the league merchants at the Market in the PvP lobby.



Transmutation Charges will allow you to change the skins of your gear that you’ve saved up in your wardrobe. PvP is the easiest way to obtain these charges, since you get them very frequently from the reward tracks. With a decent amount of PvP, you will never have to worry about spending money on the gemstore to buy these.

For more competitive PvPers, the ranked ladder gives specific titles for reaching a certain rank at the end of the season. Otherwise, you can work towards legendary gear which will have stat swapping potential which is only useful in other game modes and a unique skin.

The Legendary Backpack:

Credit to Mukluk for the video.

PvP Legendary Armor Guide


Settings and Keybinds


Sometimes a player can only be as good as their keybinds and settings will allow them to be. Getting a good set up early is important so that you don’t learn the game in an inconvenient set up and struggle to relearn it. Keybinds and settings will ultimately come down to personal preference, but there are some general tips for improving your experience.



Interface Settings



One of the most important settings to enable here is Show Skill Recharge so you don’t have to guess when you can use your skills, you can see the actual number of seconds until it is available. Show Target Health Percent is useful for skills that have different effects based on thresholds of health. Also Thick Health Bars provides better visibility of your teammates and enemies that aren’t currently targeted.


Camera Settings



  • Making your Field of View largest is good for awareness, but can be harder to see enemy animations. Find a good balance of vision and focus.
  • Disabling Camera Shake will allow you to see more clearly since it adds an extra shake that can be distracting.
  • Enable Camera Teleportation to allow you to see your new location after you teleport faster.
  • Enable Free Camera so that you can move your camera independently of your character. This helps improve your awareness and mobility greatly, as you can rotate your camera and scan the area without being forced to sacrifice your movement.

Combat/Competitive Settings



  • Disable Double-Tap to Evade so you can find a good keybind for this integral mechanic.
  • Set Ground Targeting to Fast with Range Indicator or Instant. This allows you to use ground targeted skills in one key press. Instant is faster because it fires the skill as soon as you press the key and it allows some ground targets to be retargeted mid cast. Fast with Indicator allows similar speed because it fires the skill when you leave go of the key, but unlike instant still allows you to see exactly where it will go because the indicator remains.
  • Disable Autotargeting so you can use leap skills without a target to move in a direction away from the enemy. Also leave Melee Attack Assist and Promote Skill Target off to give you more freedom to aim your skills.
  • Enable Lock Ground Targeting at Maximum Range so you can always quickly extend your skills as far as they can go without having to be precise.
  • Enabling Allow Skill Retargeting can let you change targets mid cast and change the direction of a skill for quick, reactive maneuvers.
  • Standard Enemy Models is something I personally don’t use, but has a lot of value for helping people learn certain animations. It makes all enemies of a certain class have the same look, so you don’t have to learn how an animation looks on 5 different races. Also it can help increase your frames per second to have standard models. However, for anyone not playing the game super competitively it is more pleasing to see players use their original skins.


Keybinds


Just like your settings, the actual keys you need to press can be arranged in a way that makes better sense or is more optimal for the way you will be combining them. Getting efficient keybindings early on will help you to get good muscle memory that is not only easier for you, so you can conserve on effort, but also expand the potential maneuvers you can perform. Keybindings differ for everyone depending on what build they play mostly, because certain skill combos will be arranged differently on the skill bar. Also your hand size will change what keys are more accessible. I play many classes and found these key bindings to be the most convenient for me. It is possible for you to optimize the class mechanic skills better. My suggestions are based on QWERTY keyboards.

WASD is the most common movement key arrangement, but some people like to use ESDF to free up more keybinds. Personally, I don’t think so because it creates more distance between your Tab and Shift Keybinds. One important thing is to rebind Strafe to A and D rather than leave them bound to Turn Left and Right. Using your Right Mouse Button is a more precise and fast way to turn your character, and Strafing is the best way to compliment this when moving your character. If you still want keyboard turning possible, put those actions on your arrow keys which are out of the way, since their accessibility isn’t important in the situations I would use them in. Rearranging your movement keys like this frees up your highly valuable Q and E keybinds for other actions.



Dodging is one of the most important keybinds in Guild Wars 2 because the whole game is balanced around it. You evade attacks while in the 3/4 of a second dodge animation regardless of your positioning, so it is a very powerful ability that every class has access to. I like to bind this to my mouse so I can quickly press it at any time regardless of what skills I am using.

Another good keybind is About Face, which is mostly useful with the free camera option to allow you more independent movements. You can manipulate your character much more quickly by using the About Face with Free Camera in this sequence:

  • Unlock your Free Camera by holding the left mouse button
  • Face the camera in the direction you want to travel to or away from
  • Use the About Face key to make your character face toward the camera
  • Use movement skills or your W key to move forward or backward while being able to see in any direction.
  • Hold right mouse button to align your character with the camera again

Healing skills being on “6” were a bit out of the way for me. I changed mine to G because they are such important skills to have quick access to. Most of my utilities are near my movement keys. My profession skills are not very optimized because I main Thief which only requires two binds for profession skills. However, if you play Engineer or Ranger you may want to rebind your 5 profession skills. Shift + 1-5 can be good or Z X C V B. Find something that is comfortable for you.



Call Target and Take Target are two important keybinds to use to focus and communicate targets with your team. If you have extra buttons available on your mouse, I highly recommend using these keybinds there, because you can be pressing your skills while switching targets.

Finally, I would suggest getting used to using the Stow/Draw Weapons keybind. It allows you to cancel your skills which will put them on a small 4 second cooldown instead of putting them on their full cooldown. Use stow if you know your attack will not connect. You can also bait out resources from your enemy if you stow a large attack that they will want to dodge.



Keybind Templates can be found in the bottom right corner of the keybind tab. You can Export a file onto your computer which will remember your keybindings and then Import them later. This can be convenient for swapping between classes that have very different playstyles so you can optimize your keybinds for each playstyle.



User Interface


When you enter into a conquest PvP match, here is what it looks like:



Guild Wars 2 combat is very action oriented, so you have to look at the enemy character to see what they are doing, but there are also many User Interface elements that can tell you plenty of information.



  • Party Window

You can see how your team is doing around the map without being near them by glancing at the party menu. If there are more conditions than boons on your team, they’re probably in need of help. You can also use the party window to target your allies to highlight them and make them more easy to spot in a large fight if you need to find them. Also you can use the party window as a quick check to see which team you are on if you forget. There is either a blue or red background to the window depending on which team you are on.

  • Chat Window

Chat is largely useless in PvP. You should refrain from typing too much because much of the communication must be done immediately, and if you type you aren’t playing. However, if you must, keep it concise and helpful. For example, “the enemy weaver is squishy, focus it.” or “can someone watch home? I need to support team fights”. The best way to win is to motivate your team without distracting them.

  • Score

The scoreboard is very important to your play. Seeing which nodes are captured by which team will influence where you go. Also knowing how much time is left in the match and what the score difference is will affect your playstyle. If there isn’t much time left and you are behind, you should play more riskily and aggressively.

  • Enemy Class

Learn these icons well because like any RPG how you play depends on what you are up against. These icons will also reveal to you some of the enemy’s build. Seeing the engineer icon means that they are not using an elite specialization. However, seeing the Scrapper or Holosmith icons (which are the two elite specializations for Engineer) tell you what one of their trait lines is immediately.

  • Enemy Buffs

The most important boons to look for on the enemy are resistance, protection, aegis, and stability. Unless you can rip the boon, save your condition burst for after they lose resistance or power burst after they lose protection. Wait until stability ends to CC the target or they will ignore. Aegis will block the next attack so remove it with something fast and low investment then go for a bigger attack.

  • Objectives

Seeing the exact capture progress of the node you are nearest is useful in close fights where each tick matters and managing the capture progress can be timed delicately.

  • Mini Map

The mini map is a tool that allows your team to communicate without ever typing. Make your mini map as large as possible to see where people are. If your team has vision of an enemy, you will see them on the map. You can make quick calls on the map by holding shift and then left clicking on the map to ping, or holding shift and right click to draw on it. Don’t obscure the map so others can read it, but sometimes giving a little arrow in the direction of a node where enemies are approaching can make a big difference. Putting a target mark on an enemy also automatically pings their location on the map, alerting allies to their location. Also you can see downed enemies on the map even if they are in stealth.

  • Combat Text

You will see what numerical interactions you have with others through the text that appears near that interaction. Damage you deal will show up in white. Critical hits have a red background to them. Healing you receive or give to others is green. Barrier you receive or give to others is blue. Damage mitigated by barrier is yellow.

  • Skills

Get comfortable with skill rotations and cooldowns by practicing in between matches so you don’t need to constantly look at your skill bar.

  • Buffs

Check your conditions often to see whether or not you need to condition cleanse. If you have confusion on you don’t use skills unnecessarily. If you have a lot of damaging conditions on you, cleansing is important. If there are a lot of debilitating conditions on you, consider waiting until some of them drop off to cleansing the rest to avoid cleansing short duration cover conditions. The priority of condition cleanse can sometimes be unreliable but generally the conditions to the left get cleansed first.

  • Endurance

On top of your health bar is your endurance. Dodges are essential to survival, so keep an eye on how many dodges you can afford to play around.


Combat and Downed State


The most important part of any of the PvP game modes is understanding the basics of combat. Even if there is more strategy going on, the pursuit of killing players and denying enemy players from killing you and your team is at the heart of Guild Wars 2 PvP. The full extent of the complexity of GW2 combat is much further beyond the reach of any guide, but all new players should learn how to play around the Downed State.

Essentially, players have two health bars. When a player loses all of their health, they go into the Downed State. In the downed state they have double their original health but cannot use any of their movement keys and only have access to 4 skills based on their class.

When someone is downed, they can be finished off fully by putting more damage into them, called cleaving, and depleting their second health bar, or by stomping them using the Interact Keybind defaulted as ‘F’. Allies can also revive you by pressing ‘F’. Playing around stomping and being stomped is an important aspect of PvP because if players are downed on both teams, the team who finishes the first downed will Rally or essentially be revived if they have damaged the downed enemy. These are when the most clutch moments happen, so understanding how to secure stomps or when to cleave is essential to winning close fights.



The 1 skill does ranged damage for all classes, spam this to help pressure your opponent so your team can have a greater advantage even if they can’t revive you. Do not continue spamming this if you think a player is going to stealth and revive you, it will reveal you and alert the enemy to what is happening.

The 4 skill is to bandage yourself. This slowly heals you but is interrupted by any damage received. Only use this if you are sure that no enemies are around or you will keep yourself in the downed state longer. It is usually better to just let yourself bleed out because you will respawn faster which is a much more controllable position. However, if your team is nearby and you feel they can revive you, bandage to help them.

Likewise, leaving enemies in downed state can be advantageous to you because you have more control over their position and stomping them out makes them respawn sooner. Be careful not to be too greedy with this. If an enemy can potentially revive them, you can be punished hard. Bleeding enemies is dangerous if you are unsure of the situation or the position of other enemies. Look at the map if you are bleeding enemies. If you are still unsure after looking at the map, play it safe by stomping or cleaving (dealing damage to stationary targets) out the downed bodies before moving on.

The 2 and 3 skills differ per class. Generally the 2 skill helps you to survive longer and prevent stomps. It can either CC which will interrupt enemies from stomping or cleaving you, allowing your allies to revive you, or it will move you, making it harder for enemies to successfully stomp or position you in a safer spot to be revived.

The 3 skill is not immediately available when you go down. It takes 8 seconds to become available. These abilities can vary widely based on the class. Check the specific class matchup guides to learn how to handle each class in downed state:




Map Mechanics


Each conquest map has three capture points. There is one node near each team’s spawn and one node in the middle. These are usually referred to by players as home, mid, and far nodes. Standing in the node grants progress towards your team capturing it. If players from both teams are within the node it cannot progress either way. Stealth or invulnerable players cannot capture nodes, but evasion does not prevent capturing. When a team fully captures a node, they generate points over time. To prevent this, the enemy team must stand in the node when the holding team is not inside it to decapture it. Decapturing a node is much faster than capturing a node.

Killing the other players is the simplest way to ensure you can capture a node. Kills themselves are worth only 5 points, but they are a means to capturing a node which can yield many more points. Each map also has a secondary objective which can interact with the primary objective nodes, or give points directly.


Legacy of the Foefire


This map has a very distant respawn point from the nodes, so it makes the map easy to get momentum on since players who die take longer to return to the fights. The middle node is the biggest node out of any node in the game, which makes holding it very easy, so players should not relinquish their capture easily.

The secondary mechanic is a Guild Lord. Players must break open either the front or back gate to enter the enemy base. The gate cannot be critically hit or gain conditions. There are soldier and caster minions that protect the lord. The casters put up a projectile reflecting field and heal the lord, and the soldiers stun and immobilize. It is suggested to kill the casters before attempting to kill the lord. The lord will also cast a heal skill when it gets low, healing it for about 50% of its health. You can only interrupt this by breaking the lord’s break bar. A break bar is broken by using multiple CCs or movement inhibiting conditions.

Killing the enemy lord grants your team 150 points. This is a very risky play because it is right at the enemy respawn and you give up presence on the other points to go for an objective that might not succeed. It is recommended to only go for lord as a way of ending the match. So if you have 350 points, killing the lord will end the game and it doesn’t matter if you lost everything else. Killing it at 250 points will leave you with a lack of momentum on the map and you may struggle to finish the match. If you are already winning the game, killing the enemy lord is not recommended. It is generally a comeback mechanic.


How to use the map to your advantage.

Battle of Kyhlo



This map favors classes with ports because of its verticality. Also the middle node is very small so fights around it can be more decisive.

The secondary objective is a trebuchet. This fires a large unblockable shot where the player manning the trebuchet chooses to fire it. This is slow and will have a large red circle and NPCs will alert you verbally that it is coming. It deals massive damage and knocks players back. However, in general it is better to have a player in a fight than someone on the trebuchet because of how easy it is to counterplay. It may be useful on the middle node because it is so small and easy to target but only if a large fight is happening there.


Surviving using the terrain of the map.

Forest of Niflhel



The spawn points on this map give lots of access to both sides of the map, making rotation easy. The side nodes have lots of terrain near them, empowering duelists to survive outnumbered on this map. The middle node is also very defensible because of its elevation.

The secondary mechanic is that two beasts will spawn north of the side nodes after 1 minute of the match starting. Killing a beast will grant your team 25 points and give all living players a buff of 50 to all stats. If both teams are fighting a beast, only the team which scores the final hit on the beast will gain the reward. Each beast respawns 3 minutes after it died.

Deciding to go for these can be risky because it is not guaranteed you will get the kill, and during that time you are occupied your allies are without your help. Prefer to kill beast only if you have time to do so such as in the following situations:

  • You are defending a node and enemies are not assaulting it yet, but you don’t want to go to the other side of the map to help your team
  • Your allies are rotating out of a side node and you all can easily kill the nearby beast together
  • You have a very high DPS build that can finish the beast quickly

How to traverse and survive the map.

Temple of the Silent Storm



Temple has very close respawn points toward the middle node. Also the middle node is very low elevation, with lots of high points surrounding it. These two facts combined make the middle node very easy to assault and it is therefore not as valuable for a team to hold on to. The secondary mechanic is that buffs spawn at two different locations. There is the Stilness buff and the Tranquility buff.

Stillness multiplies the value of each capture point by two. So if you own 1 capture point, you generate points at the rate of having 2, and if you own 3 gain 6 per tick. If you own no nodes, Stillness gives your team no value. To capture Stillness you must go to the area between the two side nodes where there are holes in the ground at specific times listed below. Capturing the buff requires you to channel it for a few seconds, but any damage you receive will interrupt the channel. The buff lasts for 25 ticks.

Tranquility flips the entire map’s capture nodes into the favor of the team who captures it. So it will instantly give your team 3 capture nodes upon channeling it. It also chills and knocks back any enemies standing on the nodes. This buff is accessed by falling down the holes by Stillness or taking the stairs from middle. This buff takes several seconds to channel, much longer to channel than Stillness.

The buffs spawn at specific times, so remembering their timing is important to your rotations. Be sure to check how much time is left in the match on the scoreboard when you are able to so you can plan for the future.

  • 11:30 – Stillness
  • 8:30 – Stillness and Tranquility
  • 5:30 – Stillness
  • 2:30 – Stillness and Tranquility

Surviving using the terrain of the map.

Skyhammer



The jump pads around each node make killing players who use them very difficult on this map. Simply jump on them to use them. The middle node is very close to respawn points, but it is an easily defended node.

The secondary mechanic is the Skyhammer. Every 3 minutes a portal will open beneath middle node which takes players to the Skyhammer. There is a fourth node that spawns and the team who fully captures it first will enable the Skyhammer’s attack. This attack shoots each node on the map twice with a massive unblockable attack. With good timing you can dodge the attack, but it is risky because of how long the animation is and you can get stunned.

It will decapture each node on the first strike that lands if that node is owned by the team who did not fire the hammer. Because it is hard to kill players on this map and the secondary objective only stalls captures, games on this map often time out. Every point matters so play very strictly with the points on this map.


How to use the map to your advantage.

Revenge of the Capricorn



This map is by far the largest, making classes with mobility very strong on it. However, this is balanced by the map’s secondary mechanic.

The Bell favors strong team fighters. Every 3 minutes a fourth node will spawn in the middle of the map. The first team to fully capture this node rings the bell and gains a point bonus. Depending on how many times your team has captured the Bell this match the points increase by 25. Your first bell capture will be 25 points, then 50, 75, and 100. Even if the bell is not going to give you many points, preventing the enemy from capturing the bell is important to stop it from scaling.


How to use the map to your advantage.

Eternal Coliseum



The side nodes are very secluded on this map because of the large dividers between them and the middle node and the one-way ledge that opens towards the side nodes. Builds without large leaps or ports have to think twice about jumping down the one-way ledge to the side nodes. The secondary mechanic is two Artifacts that spawn every 3 minutes. The Sword of Reaping spawns at the south and the Shield of Life spawns at the north. These buffs are accessed much faster with ports, and are captured by channeling them for a few seconds. Channeling can be interrupted simply by damage.

The Sword of Reaping provides the entire team a 20% power and condition damage buff, and the player who captures it becomes empowered further. Whenever an enemy goes down that a player with the Sword of Reaping has dealt damage to, a reaper will spawn and finish the enemy after a few seconds. This can only be countered by stealth or Elementalists Vapor Form. This buff lasts 90 seconds.

The Shield of Life grants 5,000 health and 100 toughness to all allies for 90 seconds. The bearer of the Shield of Life gains a second life if they go down while wielding it. They will be revived to full health within seconds, fast enough that it will counter the Sword of Reaping. Instant stomp abilities like the Daredevil elite Impact Strike can finish foes if they perform them before the revive occurs.

There is also a third mechanic that exists permanently on this map. Whenever a player scores a kill they gain a stack of a buff that does nothing. Whenever this buff reaches 7 stacks they can use their Special Action Key to give their entire team regardless of location a bonus of 50 to every stat for 90 seconds. This buff and the stacks are lost upon death.


Surviving using the terrain of the map.

Djinn’s Dominion



This map’s secondary mechanic is a node that spawns every 3 minutes. Take the Lamp in the center of the map to the Djinn’s room. The team that fully captures the node first gains a Special Action Keybind skill for their whole team. These skills are high impact but not generally enough to warrant investing time into them. Only go for it if you are waiting to reset cooldowns anyway.


How to traverse and survive the map.

There are many things to do in Guild Wars 2 PvP, but as it is an MMO all of them will be better with friends. I suggest joining an in-game guild or a social media platform community on Twitch, YouTube, or Discord.

When you are ready to improve your skill and performance in PvP, consider reading these two guides:




This guide was written by Vallun as exclusive content for GuildJen. For more guides, builds, and GW2 PvP topics by Vallun, visit his YouTube channel or ask questions when he is live streaming at twitch.tv/vallun.


One Comment

Leave a Reply