Tips for PvP in Guild Wars 1

Guild Wars 1 is an action-packed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The game focuses more on the Player Vs Player (PVP) aspect, unlike other MMORPG games that put more emphasis on Player Vs Environment (PVE). There are ten professions in this game, they are: warrior, ranger, monk, necromancer, mesmer, elementalist, assassin, ritualist, paragon, and dervish. As soon as you start the game, you'll be asked whether you want to enter a campaign mode or a competitive mode. The campaign mode features the Player Vs Environment (PVE) playstyle and the competitive mode features the Player Vs Player (PVP) playstyle.

PvP Essentials

Basic Combat & Combat System

“The skills that work well in one situation might often fail in another situation, Keep experimenting.”

Guild Wars has one of the most unique and impressive combat mechanics of all time. The combat system revolves around the profession you choose. Every profession has a skillset with its primary attribute being the definitive trait of that profession. For example, a warrior's profession has strength as its primary attribute and the profession of elementalist has energy storage as its primary attribute. Apart from primary attributes, your character has 8 skill slots. This means that only 8 skills at a time can be equipped. This limitation invites a new aspect of combat and improvises strategy. Note that there are over 1000 skills in this game and you need to choose 8 that complement your playstyle. 

Note: the skill sets can be modified or changed only when the character is in a town or staging area. Once the character enters the battlefield the build becomes unchangeable. This feature requires you to plan the area you are going to fight and the skillsets you're going to use before itself. The skills make up the majority of the combat in Guild Wars. To get a good use of these skills, you will have to make in-game purchases to get supporting equipments providing you better results. The in-game purchase can be made using the GW currency. If you are falling short of the currency, the best way is to get it for real money.

Visit our wbsite GW1Shop to purchase Guild Wars 1 Currency at the cheapest rate on the web. You can also buy various items to give you an edge over other players. 

 Professions

The profession is an important aspect of this game. The profession you choose determines the visual appearance of your character. It determines the type of armor you wear, it determines the weapon you can equip, and it determines the skills you can unlock.

Note: There are different skill sets for different professions. You will have to select the profession of your character at the beginning of the game, later you can choose your secondary profession and unlock another set of skills. Every profession has a primary attribute and only the primary profession can use that attribute to full extent. Your playstyle greatly depends on the profession you choose and has a lot of impact on the competitive aspect of the game. 

When it comes to the competitive player vs player domain, you will have to be selective of which profession you are going to choose since every profession has a different role. The roles played by different professions are listed below:

Warriors

This profession is all about brute strength and they can withstand a lot of damage. So they are a tank and a powerful unit at the same time. Weapons used by warriors apply certain debuffs on enemies that deal damage over time. Sword applies the debuff known as bleed and cripple. Bleed causes the enemies to lose health over time and cripple reduces the movement speed of the enemies by 50%. Axe applies the debuff known as deep wounds which reduces the enemy's maximum health by 20% and reduces the healing the enemy receives by 20%.

• Primary attribute: Strength, provides armor penetration as you levelup.

Dervishes

Although this profession doesn’t have high base armor, but it does have high health. The main role of this profession in Player Vs Player (PVP) is to apply pressure to enemies. As the skills of this profession have an Area of Effect (AOE), this profession is Perfectly suited for fighting enemies that form a group (are densely located).

• Primary attribute: Mysticism, acts as the source of energy management.

Assassins

Not that of a great tank or durable. They rely on stealth. They have critical strikes and the skills of this profession will aid in achieving an early kill or setting up a successful gank. The shadow arts is a defensive skill that allows you to blend and escape a scene causing chaos.

• Primary attribute: Critical strikes, gains energy charges and as you upgrade, it also provides increased chances of critical strikes.

Paragons

They're midline ranged attackers and often contribute to the support role. They do have skills that can resurrect allies.

• Primary attribute: Leadership, whenever a paragon uses a skill, 2 energy stacks are gained per each ally affected.

Rangers

The role of this profession involves dazing enemies to interrupt their spells and incapacitate them with movement speed debuffs, they can achieve this all by staying far from the enemy.

• Primary attribute: Expertise, defensive skills and skills that renew energy are found in this attribute.

Elementalists

The ultimate spell-casting profession. Magic comes in these forms fire, air, earth, and water. The fire magic is the most desired one since it does high AOE damage and applies burning status to the enemies. Air and earth magic are great too since they mitigate the damage your team receives. Water magic allows you to ensnare enemies so that you can stop them from chasing your low health allies.

• Primary attribute: Energy storage, since this profession requires a lot of spell casting, this attribute provides increment in maximum energy as soon as you upgrade.

Mesmers

This profession has great crowd control abilities and they are expert at rendering enemies useless, if a proper build is followed.

• Primary attribute: Fast casting, reduces the time required to cast a spell.

Necromancer

Termed as backline spell casters. This role deals damage through its curses and supports the allies with other spells. This profession can boost the damage of your allies, provide healing and attack speed.

• Primary attribute: Soul reaping, provides you energy from a fallen foe.

Ritualists

Like Necromancers, this profession is also involves backline spell casters that specialize in supporting the team, dealing damage, and healing.

• Primary attribute: Spawning power, boosts the health and increases the duration of weapon spells.

Monks

The primary duty of the monks is to keep the team alive before anything else. Monks can also resurrect a fallen member.

• Primary attribute: Divine Favor, additionally boosts health whenever a spell is casted.

Game Modes

A separate character can be created for the Player Vs Player mode. You can also use the same character that you've been using for the campaign mode. The competitive or PvP aspect of this game allows you test your character's skillset and the synergy of your teammates. There are different PvP game modes.

Random arena

4 vs 4 match, with teams being randomly formed from the players waiting in the queue. Different victory conditions are hosted by different arenas.

Codex arena

4 vs 4 match, with teams being selected by players. Do keep a note that each class has a limited skillset.

Hero’s ascent

8 players per team, continuously battle in different arenas stage by stage like a tournament. Several victory conditions in this arena are deathmatch, capture the relic and altar control.

Guild battles

 A guild lord is a non playable character (NPC) that is well protected by the programmed units and the players of that guild. When two guilds agree on a tactical combat, the guild which defeats the guild leader of the other team wins.

Alliance battles

These battles if won allow your faction to take control over more land. Contains a team of 12 members that are divides into 3 teams of 4 members each.

Competitive missions

A team of 8 is assembled and they enact particular events in exchange of alliance faction that can be spent.

Minigame

Minigames can be both competitive and cooperative they are generally added during ongoing events.

Hero battles

Earlier Player Vs Player (PVP) was known as Hero Vs Hero (HVH). This game was played between 2 human players from different teams accompanied by 4 computer-controlled units. Two for each. This game was removed on October 22, 2009.

Conclusion

Guild Wars 1 was released in 28 April 2005. The games in the MMORPG genre weren't that revolutionary back then. They do have decent graphics but when it comes to the Player Vs Player domain, Guild Wars was the first game to ever introduce a variable set of skills. The fact that the players had to think every time about what their skill set should be before starting any battle is appreciative, features like these allow players to think critically.

The game has two modes, competitive and campaign. This guide focused on the competitive aspect. Note that the PvP demands great synergy from your teammates. For example, Assassins are highly mobile, so if an Elementalist uses fire magic to create an area of fire that deals damage over time, it is very likely that an Assassin could escape it and avoid damage. So here, your team needs to have any profession that has crowd control. Professions like Warriors or Rangers can slow down the Assassins while they are in that pool of fire. Water Elementalist in your team can also ensnare the Assassins and render their escape. The competitive mode of this game requires communication within the team.