GW2. How to Rotate in PvP. What is Rotation? PvP Roles. Know your role. Decision-making and How to Rotate in Conquest PvP. Guild Wars 2.

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Knowing how to rotate is important in Guild Wars 2 Conquest PvP because each map’s primary objective consists of three capture points which give you the points required to win, and a secondary objective which usually interacts with the primary objective. So there are potentially three to five objectives that players can contest at any point in a match and five players per team to contest them. Rotation is about getting as much out of these objectives as possible at any given time. To avoid wasting time, players must move quickly between the objectives and react to the enemy’s movements between the objectives. Those who know how to rotate effectively will win more because they provide their team more presence, giving them an advantage in more situations.

However, this can become quite complicated with 10 players per match all playing different builds and roles. For example, if you are running a necromancer that needs support to deal its damage, you want to participate in large team fights to get that support. If there are three points, you can’t always be supported wherever you go unless you only stay at one node and never rotate. You may end up alone sometimes because the enemy team forces you to split up by attempting to capture points split up around the map, and you may be assassinated by high burst classes or bruisers who don’t need support. As you can see, matchups and compositions are very important in deciding where you should go and how to rotate as a team.

Classes and Roles to Understand PvP

To understand how to rotate, you must first understand the basic roles that all classes can play. These are not absolute roles. Some classes can play multiple roles which makes them versatile, and others may specialize in a role that isn’t mentioned. All classes can play all roles because there are many build crafting choices, but often the most optimal builds for certain roles will depend on the current balance. For now, these are the four roles that you should learn to understand PvP.

DPS – Aggressive pressure to win objectives and get kills
Support – Defending nodes and fighting 1v1s
Duelist – Defending and keeping their team alive
Roamer – Aggressive target burst and map control with mobility

The Roamer and Duelist prefer downscaled situations so they want to be in smaller fights. Duelists want to be in 1v1s and Roamers want to be focusing an isolated target. DPS and Supports want to be in team fights where they can benefit from dealing AoE damage or from healing multiple allies.

Roamers and DPS being more aggressive means that they often want to assault objectives, either decapturing them quickly or pressuring enemies off of them, but will struggle to hold these for long by themselves. Supports and Duelists are survivable enough to actually stand on these objectives in fights without dying, so they can take more defensive positions to hold objectives they already own.

These roles are not absolute, and not every build is stuck to one role, but thinking in this way can help make the decisions of rotation much easier.

DPS – The Damage Dealers

Damaging classes (or DPS) put tons of pressure on the enemy and get through their defenses whether it is through area denial, boon removal, or focused single target damage. Because they have so much damage, people will often try to focus on them so to relieve that pressure, which can make them reliant on Supports to survive being focused. A well played DPS that can survive or has support from its team can get plenty of value from its damage over time and therefore turn the fight in their favor.

DPS can sometimes engage in 1v1s, but because they are not as mobile as a Roamer or as survivable as a Duelist, they are at a high risk of being outnumbered. If the fight somehow goes out of their favor, they usually will die as a result and can be punished very easily because of this. They prefer to be with allies because Duelists can stun enemies so they can land their damage, Supports can give them the ability to sustain fights long enough to get their damage out, and Roamers can finish off the targets that they pressured.

Examples of DPS Builds

Power Renegade PvP Build

Condition Reaper PvP Build

When playing as a DPS, where you go on the map is decided by many factors such as where your team is, where the enemy team is, what objectives are available, and what matchups you are favored in. Your decision-making can be simplified to this priority system

Don’t Die
Get Kills
Keep Team Alive
Objectives

A dead DPS does no pressure on the map, so they should always prioritize kiting and giving up objectives if they must to survive. Afterwards or in the process of surviving they should always be progressing kills for their team so that their Duelists or Supports can capture the objectives. It is ultimately the job of others to capture, not the DPS because a DPS is an easy target when capturing objectives. However, if a Duelist or Support are being attacked near an objective, a DPS should help to pressure the enemy team because this will prevent your team from dying by halting the enemy pressure on your team.

A more detailed guide on the specifics of the DPS role

Support – The Anchor of the Team

Supports can heal and give boons to allies. They increase the survivability of their team exponentially, often enabling DPS classes to play much more aggressively or to directly buff their damage. However, supports can’t achieve much by themselves because they don’t do enough damage to pressure off of objectives. They may have plenty of healing, but without the damage of their allies, they can easily be focused.

In Guild Wars 2, Support skills are mostly Area of Effect so there is much more value from someone supporting a larger fight than a smaller one. Because Supports thrive in larger fights, it is only advised to capture nodes when your team is nearby. Getting caught defending a node by yourself as Support is a bad situation unless you know your team will arrive soon. For this reason, you should allow your Duelists, Roamers, or DPS to capture nodes, that way you know you will never get stuck by yourself. It is indeed the lowest priority of Support to capture nodes.

Examples of Support Builds

Support Staff Tempest PvP Build

Support Luminary PvP Build

When playing as a Support, stick with your team because your team needs you to survive and by yourself you will not survive. Use this priority system for simple rotation decision making.

Keep Team Alive
Don’t Die
Objectives
Get Kills

The highest priority of a Support is to keep their allies alive. For this reason, dying to keep your team alive may be beneficial, since you can much more easily die if they die anyways. With no counter pressure from your team, it is easy to run out of cooldowns and health, allowing enemies to easily finish you off. However, you should still always practice surviving as much as possible. Although you can contribute to your team securing kills with CC and buffs, it is generally better to capture nodes if and only if your team will not die while you are doing so. This means that you should stand on nodes after you have discerned that the fight is won, or when you can do so without dying or letting your team die.

A more detailed guide on the specifics of the Support role

Duelist – The Objective Specialist

Objectives on the map do not scale up with how many players contest them. You only need one person to stand on a node to contest or capture it. This means that the most efficient way to capture an objective is by sending as few players to an objective as necessary. If there is no enemy to contest that objective, it is free, but enemies will contest objectives, and this creates 1v1s or team fights depending on how important that objective is.

Duelists specialize in 1v1 combat or small-scale fights in order to win as many objectives as possible while investing as few players into that objective, making them the efficient way for teams to split up. A Duelist will attempt to capture the nodes on the sides of the map because these are often where the smallest fights are. They may try to split the enemy team up by capturing as many nodes as they can and forcing the enemy to contest them. They are hard to focus and often prefer to be focused if it means protecting their team. This means that while they may not necessarily rotate around the map often, they still need to know where to rotate to put pressure in the right places on the map.

Examples of Duelist Builds

Condition Mirage PvP Build

Power Strength Spellbreaker PvP Build

Their rotational priorities can be simplified to:

Don’t Die
Objectives
Get Kills
Keep Team Alive

If the enemy team attempts to contest them on the node, Duelists usually run survivable builds to hold the nodes as long as they can. Ideally, they will fight the other team’s Duelist in a 1v1. If it’s a favorable matchup they can gain control of the node and continually earn points for their team, or if it’s an unfavorable matchup they can try to outmaneuver the other Duelist by capturing other nodes. They can also attempt to stall multiple players from the enemy team in an outnumbered fight, hoping that their team will get a numbers advantage on the rest of the map. The more aggressive a Duelist plays around nodes, the more attention they will get from the enemy team at the risk of their life.

Duelists either have strong single target damage to pressure their 1v1, melee presence to be able to hold objectives, or Area of Effect damage to scare enemies off of a capture point. This means they are dangerous up close but have trouble getting kills on players who choose not to stand on the nodes with them or have high mobility. Duelists also lack the same presence to swing team fights that a Support or DPS have because their builds are usually meant to sustain longer fights or are too selfish.

A more detailed guide to the role of the Duelist

Roamer – The Play Makers

Roamers are not as strong as DPS for killing heavy Support builds. They often deal most of their damage in bursts so they can swing a team fight instantly, but if they don’t see results soon they will trail off in effectiveness. Roamers also don’t have as much survivability as a Duelist or Support, so they can’t stay in fights very long. They often require coordination or focusing on low targets to get their kills.

Roamers specialize in mobility and disruption and require good timing to do their job. They cannot beat a DPS/Support combo, but they can force them to split up by creating uneven fights. For example, if a Roamer and a Duelist are in a 2v2 vs. a Support/DPS, they have a low chance of winning so instead the Roamer leaves for another fight. This gives the Support/DPSthe option to:

Chase the Roamer which they will have trouble catching because of mobility
Stay to 2v1 the Duelist who is made to waste their time and survive outnumbered
Split and leave the DPS to 1v1 the Duelist which is often a bad matchup for the DPS
Split and leave the Support to 1v1 the Duelist which is almost always a bad idea unless the Support is not needed elsewhere and they can hold the node

Roamers often cannot be 1v1 Duelists, but they can appear in more places than a Duelist can. They do not play the objectives as well as the other roles, but they make it hard for the enemy team to play their roles optimally, giving their allies significant advantages.

Examples of Roamer Builds

Power S/D Daredevil PvP Build

Power Galeshot PvP Build

A Roamer’s rotational priority might be simplified to the following:

Don’t Die
Get Kills
Keep Moving
Objectives
Keep Team Alive

Because you want to be moving around the map to create pressure, death is the worst outcome because you lose all pressure while you are dead, and even if you can’t win an objective you can threaten multiple objectives at once due to your higher mobility. This forces enemies to think reactively to where you could go, because they don’t want to arrive late to the objective you choose to go to, which makes them play sub-optimally in the situations they decide to go to.

Ultimately your job is to get kills your team so they can win the objectives, but sometimes you can’t secure kills when enemies play to survive or matchups are unfavorable. Going for objectives such as decapturing nodes may split or waste the time of your enemy so that you can create better situations for your team. In other words, if you can’t get a kill through brute force, try to create a situation where enemies are isolated or without support so that you can get the kill.

A more detailed guide on the role of the Roamer

Opening Splits – Where to Go at the Start

Once you get into a match, take a look at your team and the enemy team using the PvP Panel (default keybind “B”). Most teams will send one person to the closest node or home node at the start. No more than one person is needed to cap a node, so unless they get attacked you can go somewhere else. A Duelist is better suited for this job because they can do it by themselves and if they get attacked by someone it usually won’t be their whole team since it takes longer for their team to go to your node than to mid.

The other 4 players can split up between the middle node and the furthest node from their spawn called the far node. If there are multiple Duelists on your team it is a good idea to have one go home and one go to the furthest node from your base (called far node). If the enemy team decides to collapse on your far-pushing Duelist, it may put them in a lot of danger, so it is usually best to have your most confident and survivable Duelist go there so they can carefully decide when to push or to regroup with the team.

Make your minimap as large as you can so you can take in as much information as possible to make the proper decision of how to rotate. These decisions will change constantly as people move around and your team loses or wins fights. Knowing the enemy rotations by predicting what they will do before they do it will allow you to react much more quickly. Although you can’t see enemies on your map unless they are visible to one of your team members, you can make predictions based on where they used to be and what the state of the map is.

Example A

The image above (Example A) shows the perspective of blue team with a big fight at mid, and a 1v1 at the far node. Blue’s Warrior has the far node captured so that situation is mostly favorable to them since Warriors generally can play Duelist role. The rest of Red team is at mid node while Blue’s Thief and Mesmer are running towards the mid node as well. The fight at mid may be unfavorable since allies are arriving later and they may be Roamer builds with less effect in team fights. Depending on your role, there are two choices you could take.

Go home and capture the node since the rest of Red team is at mid and the fight could be lost. This might be the better play if you are low on pressure at the mid fight, such as if you are playing a Duelist or Roamer.
Stay mid and try to win the fight or prevent your allies from dying. If you are a Support or DPS, this is especially important because you want to keep your team together so that your Duelist who is winning their side node does not get collapsed on.

While it looks like forfeiting the mid node and capturing home to try to play for the side nodes could be the best option, that also depends on your team. Looking at the mini map above shows that the team wants to invest in mid. Rather than disagreeing with your team and losing the synergy of coordinated fights, it is sometimes just better to play with your team and hope for the best with suboptimal rotations than to rotate properly but against your team’s wishes.

Example B

In Example B the entire Blue team except for the perspective player are fighting off of the node. They are likely getting a kill, but the enemy team has the far node and are capturing the other two nodes. While this may seem like a bad map state, Blue team has momentum if they get the kill on the player they are chasing off of the node because they can split up and attack the objectives with a numbers advantage. However, the one player perspective at middle node can see the enemy necromancer is there contesting it. Once again there are some options here.

Stay mid and pressure the necromancer before your team arrives to get their cooldowns out faster and allow your allies to secure the kill sooner. Necromancers are generally easy to focus when they are outnumbered, so this kill should be quick. This is the most predictable move since your allies are closer to far node to capture that, and you are already at mid node. If you are a Support, DPS, or Roamer this is a good option.
Go home to contest the enemy capturing that node. It seems that the enemy has chosen to split up while your team has chosen to stack up. While winning one fight is good, you generally need to win two nodes to get more points than the enemy. Seeing your allies stacked up might signal to you that your team needs someone to go capture nodes by themselves to get more control on the map. If you are a Duelist, then this is a good option. If you’re a Roamer/Support you may also consider this since enemies may not easily reinforce this objective since it is closer to your spawn. You can prevent them capturing the node until your team mates who are gradually flipping the map arrive at home.
Go far to capture the node and fight whoever appears there. If your team is all stacked up, then it must mean that they wish to do so with their Supports/DPS. If that is the case, then it is likely neither of those players want to capture the far node after they chase their kill, even if they are close to the node. By capturing this, you allow your team to keep progressing around the map together with what synergy they have. Instead of forcing one of your allies to capture far alone and split them while also potentially facing enemy respawns due to the proximity to their spawn location, you can put yourself in that situation to stall their respawns and give your team more time to flip the map objectives. If you are the only Duelist on your team, this is the better option.

The safe play is to let your team do what they already intend to do, which seems to be staying together. You might help them do what they want to do by staying mid and preemptively pressuring their target or by capturing nodes so they don’t have to. Splitting the team further by going for the home node, even though it seems like an easy win, might be too greedy of a play and will ruin the momentum your team has gained.

These are just general ideas of where to go, and in more coordinated play these become much more reactive, strategic, and targeted toward certain plays and counterplays. For the most part, the above-mentioned splits will work in ranked queues. Just remember that often there are no right or wrong rotations, only trade-offs of resources. You are in a race to 500 points, so not only do you need to get to 500 points, but also you need to prevent your enemy from reaching it before you.

Matchups Affect Roles and Rotations

When deciding where to go, much of the decision is based on who you will meet at that location. Make the mini-map as large as you can and frequently look at it to know who is where. Just because your build is not optimal for a certain role does not mean you won’t sometimes assume that role. For example, thieves should rarely fully capture a node by themselves because they often do not run builds that can defend the node. However, a thief who suspects that no one will push a specific node in a while can capture it for their ally who will then defend the node. Likewise, Supports should not invest in defending a node by themselves, but if there are signs of teammates arriving soon they may want to do so.

If no one on your team can play the role of a Duelist, it can often be better to avoid 1v1s and split your team into groups of 2 or 3 instead of 4 and 1. There is no need to fight by the enemy’s rules. Force larger fights that make it awkward for the enemy to perform their role optimally. If your team wins fights that they have an advantage in, they can then snowball. Killing players removes them from the map while they are respawning, allowing you to outnumber the enemy and get more and more kills like a snowball rolling down a hill. Be careful, enemies respawn 15 seconds after they have fully died. Remember if you can’t win a fight there is no need to take it. Just because the enemy owns your node doesn’t mean you need to take it back immediately or fairly. Help your allies win their fights and they will help you win yours.

It is usually better to over-commit to something and win it than to under-commit to multiple things and lose all of them. If your team needs someone to do something but no one else will do it, you can try to fill that role. However, if things don’t go well, you would rather try something else. Getting practice at something can be useful, and often failing is necessary for improvement, but there are trade-offs to every rotation you make.

Having said so, the best method is to evenly ration your resources and get the most value out of them by putting them in the right place at the right time. The specific outcomes of each matchup change with the balance and the skill level of each player. Much of it comes down to knowledge, experience, or simply playstyle, but the basic mechanics of each class can be learned in the specific class matchups guides below:

Guardian
Revenant
Warrior

Thief
Engineer
Ranger

These are by no means absolute, and just because a class has an optimal build does not mean it can’t play a different role with a different build. The beauty of Guild Wars 2 Conquest PvP is the diversity that is created by the flexibility of roles that classes can play either by build or by rotation. You may know how to rotate, but may not always do you have the luxury to rotate into favorable matchups. Learn how to survive and kite for when the situation is not favorable.

Once you feel like you know where to go and how to play your role, read up on my guide on How to Carry Your Weight in PvP.

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How to Rotate and Knowing Your Role – PvP Guide