Just thought I’d take a break from Final Fantasy Tactics to write a little something and put together a list of useful information about sPVP that I’ve gleaned from various sources including videos, articles, forum posts etc. I’ll explain a few key terms and list most of the pages I check for sPVP stuff.

The emphasis here is mainly on tournament play, meaning teams of 5v5 where strategy is more of a focus and this stuff has the greatest impact. There’s already a fascinating (to me at least) metagame emerging.

As such, some of the information here may be outdated soon but I expect the general flow of matches to change relatively little by release.

First, here's a casted Guild Wars 2 sPVP match that provides a great introduction to the game-type, the map (Forest of Niflhel) and a good explanation of what's going on most of the time.

Secondly, here’s a link to a slightly more in depth video that outlines an opening strategy of a general tournament match on the Forest of Niflhel map. This is currently the only map in the beta that is played in the tournament setting and this strategy only applies to this map.

The focus of the video is the ‘4/1 split’ which means 4 of the players go one way, and one goes the other when the match starts. There are numerous ways to start a match and this is one of many cookie-cutter openers.

One term used in this video is ‘Snipe’ which means to finish one of the two mobs that spawn on the map after the opposing team have whittled their health down (also referred to as ‘Ninjaing’) thus stealing their points.

Here’s an example of that.

It’s worth 40 points if your team kills one, so these so called ‘secondary objectives’ in this capture point game-type are almost as important as the actual primary objectives of the mode.

Following the opening of the match, players vie for control of the 3 capture points on the map and bounce back and forth between capping and holding points and killing the mobs (chieftain & svanir) when they respawn.

Some other useful information about this game-type:

• Reach 500 points and you win
• A player kill is worth 10 points
• Killing the Chieftain or Svanir is worth 40 points
• The Chieftain and Svanir take approximately 3 minutes to respawn
• The 3 capture points are the Mine, Henge and Keep
• Each is worth 1 point every 2 seconds as long as you hold them
• It takes 14 seconds to capture a point and 4 seconds to neutralize one
• Extra players do not speed up capture time
• It only takes one player on a capture point to prevent it being neutralized

Off the top of my head, this is enough general info to get a good idea of what a tournament match in sPVP is and you should be able to follow any casted tournament match or a recorded one with commentary easily.

Finally, here’s a list of the sites I keep up with, the articles I’ve read and the videos I’ve watched that lead to me making this post.

Webpages for general info

• The GW2 Subreddit Mainly as an easy way to find news and videos of the game that are popular enough to make the front page
• The official Guild Wars 2 Twitter account

Some tools for sharing a creating builds

• http://en.gw2codex.com/
• http://www.gw2builds.org/
• http://www.gw2tools.com/skills#w

sPVP Articles

• Imperial Gaming's introduction to structured PVP
• Team Paradigm's profession guides

sPVP Videos

• sPVP Video Compendium Via Team Paradigm forums
• The Team legacy video library
• The GiJesus Shoutcasts
• Guild Source Shoutcasts (Only one video so far but I thought the quality was great so I hope they do more)

All comments & suggestions for additions to the list are welcome and I hope you’ve found this useful.

Hey wow.

@Benny said:

• It takes 14 seconds to capture a point and 4 seconds to neutralize one
• Extra players do not speed up capture time
• It only takes one player on a capture point to prevent it being neutralized

This is pretty much why I found it much more effective to lone wolf during my time in sPvP - I would be getting points for myself and my team much quicker and much more effectively than when rolling with the (usually) groups of 2 or 3 the team usually splits into.

How do you feel about these? In my opinion the decisions made here kindof invalidate the 4/1 split as a 3/1/1 seems much more effective.

@selfconfessedcynic: I agree, 3/1/1 seems like the most effective opening as it can adapt the easiest to what the other team is doing. The ability to deny opponents points with a quick cap of one of their points is vital to winning most games, and by going 3/1/1 you stand a good chance of holding 2 points and getting your boss kill in early.

However, If you open really aggressively with a 4/1 split you can potentially steamroll the other team and have one of your dudes break off from your group of 4 to snipe the opposing team's boss. Potentially you could have 80 points and be positioned to hold 2 control points but it's more risky and could easily go wrong.

Glad you found the post interesting.

I just find it odd that they broke with tradition and made it not cap faster with more people. I wonder what the thought process was...

If you dont make it a speedier cap, then you encourage more splitting and reforming, but is that a more interesting style of play? To me it's much like Anets stance on randomness in PvP - they seem to think it's a big thing they should support, but to me, I like minimisation of randomness and minimisation of risk (for example, in GW1 I preferred pressure builds to spike builds).

@selfconfessedcynic: Yeah you're right, definitely seems spike focused when you're on the offensive and splitting and reforming will be part of organizing a team I think, making sure you leave your guardian to hold their ground, alerting people to danger and enemy movements etc.

I think it's worth checking out some Necro videos though, they're all about pressure and they can hold their own 1v2 making them awesome at holding points and breaking up enemy play to prevent them holding points or taking them. Combined with a guardian they can pull off some kinda sick combos, like a guardian trapping the opposing team in a bubble and the Necromancer spreading conditions like no tomorrow when they've got nowhere to go.

This is just one game type too, there is already a map similar to GvG confirmed which could require a totally different focus.

@Benny: Man, imagine if they had/sold PvP character slots?

You could make characters in those slots at lvl80 which use PvP gear and can't trade with others, but you could play with them in both sPvP and WvW without having to go through the build-up-process.

I'd love to try necro at some point, but to me WvW is king and I'd rather spend that time building up the other classes I want to play - Warrior, Elementalist, Ranger and (maybe) Engineer.

ED: Oh, and I've played Necro for about 20 or so hours during BWE1, so I know that it isn't quite for me, at least not up front.

I can't wait to see what kind of crazy solo builds people come up with to solo your respective mob as fast as you can.

Edit: Also, watching that video on the 4/1 split makes me really want a robust observer mode.

@shinboy630: It's been done, sadly.

1 burst ranger can take down a svanir dude in - I think it was - 15-20 seconds?

@selfconfessedcynic: Well as things are nerfed and buffed, builds will have to be changed. After every major balance update its always interesting to see what the new best build is.

@shinboy630: Agreed : D

ED: and by that I also mean "I cant wait to see if any of the other classes can best the time while everything is still unbalanced"

Also, just wanted to add that I like the fact that adding more people does not increase cap speed. It encourages splits and creative play instead of just rolling as a mob from node to node.

Very nice write-up.

Here is a very interesting opening tactic for the NPC boss map from Matchless Gaming. It's a smoke blast rush.

@selfconfessedcynic: I'm fine with being able to take a level 1 character into sPVP and get full access to all the pvp gear and level 80 (which I think is how it will remain at release)

I think you're right about the ranger yeah, a lot of people have complained about the Ranger because its best weapons are the greatsword / axe & warhorn, the Ranger's strong suit, is melee combat, which I don't think is right.

I plan on maining Mesmer (the profession just 'clicked' with me during the most recent stress test) and it seems like the sword & pistol combo is the standout weapon set in every build. I assume at release and post launch the professions will get tweaked a lot and burst rangers will be less viable, sword mesmers less common etc. so new 'flavor of the month' builds will probably crop up all the time.

It'll be interesting to see how the balancing they do to get sPVP working as intened affects PVE stuff (if at all.)

@selfconfessedcynic said:

@shinboy630: It's been done, sadly.

1 burst ranger can take down a svanir dude in - I think it was - 15-20 seconds?

One of the mods over at guru said he can take him down in 4 seconds (!) with a greatsword ranger (says it usually takes about 8 though). I've tried the build during the stress test (it's your standard glass cannon ranger build) but didn't get any 1v1 opportunities with the boss. It's an incredibly hard hitting build though, so it isn't out of the realm of possibility.

@Benny said:

@selfconfessedcynic: I'm fine with being able to take a level 1 character into sPVP and get full access to all the pvp gear and level 80 (which I think is how it will remain at release)

I think you're right about the ranger yeah, a lot of people have complained about the Ranger because its best weapons are the greatsword / axe & warhorn, the Ranger's strong suit, is melee combat, which I don't think is right.

The longbow is still very popular. It's by far the hardest hitting ranged weapon in the game.

@Benny said:

It'll be interesting to see how the balancing they do to get sPVP working as intened affects PVE stuff (if at all.)

If it gets too extreme I would not be surprised to see them do PvE/PvP splits with skills like in GW1. If they do that, I'd be interested to see what side of the equation WvW falls on.

@UssjTrunks: That's a cool opener too, pretty sneaky sis!

@UssjTrunks said:

@Benny said:

@selfconfessedcynic: I'm fine with being able to take a level 1 character into sPVP and get full access to all the pvp gear and level 80 (which I think is how it will remain at release)

I think you're right about the ranger yeah, a lot of people have complained about the Ranger because its best weapons are the greatsword / axe & warhorn, the Ranger's strong suit, is melee combat, which I don't think is right.

The longbow is still very popular. It's by far the hardest hitting ranged weapon in the game.

Axe/warhorn is also a ranged option btw @Benny , not to be knit-picky and you prob. already know this anywho.

But yes, the longbow looks so good I may even switch from rifle warrior (though those rifle skins are darned appealing, gameplay will win out if I fall in love with ranger/longbow).

I wonder if PvX wiki is going to be revamped for GW2.

@RobbieMac: I hope so, or I may never laugh at anything as hard as I laughed at 'Somalipirateway' ever again.

...and there needs to be one builds site so builds can be properly vetted by as many people as possible.

@shinboy630: There are a few sites being made already, a couple of which are in the OP, but I won't be satisfied until I see GW2 builds on PvX. I'm just used to that site I guess.

I just find it odd that they broke with tradition and made it not cap faster with more people. I wonder what the thought process was...

If you dont make it a speedier cap, then you encourage more splitting and reforming, but is that a more interesting style of play? To me it's much like Anets stance on randomness in PvP - they seem to think it's a big thing they should support, but to me, I like minimisation of randomness and minimisation of risk (for example, in GW1 I preferred pressure builds to spike builds).

@UssjTrunks: This looks pretty good. Maybe getting on Mumble with some folks instead of pugging it will make for a better experience than what I've had so far.