Guild Wars 2 news » The PvP League Begins on December 1

Hello, Heroes of the Mists!

December 1 marks the start of our very first Player vs. Player League season! The PvP League is an eight-week season where players face off to progress through their division, earning rewards and gaining prestigious items along the way. Our previous blog on leagues has most of the details you need, but we have some further information here to get you going.

Getting Started

If you’re a veteran player, all you need to do is queue up for ranked play from the PvP panel. New players will first need to reach rank 20 in PvP by playing unranked. Mode preferences work for league play, so you can choose to play Conquest, Stronghold, or both. To see your progress, division rules, and upcoming rewards, click on the crossed-swords icon at the top of your screen and click the “League” tab.

Winning a match will earn you a point toward the next tier or division. Matching up against tougher opponents can earn you points for getting close to winning and multiple points for pulling off an upset, so it’s always worth it to play your best and never give up!

PvP League Rewards

As you work your way through the tiers and divisions in the PvP League, you’ll earn rewards. All league play will advance reward tracks. Crossing tiers in the league will earn you gold, shards of glory, transmutation charges, and dyes. Crossing into a new division will also earn you PvP League tickets, which can be spent at the League Vendor to purchase unique items for PvP, components for the PvP legendary backpack, shards of glory, and even llama minis! A new division also means a new badge that will show up on your nameplate, letting others know how skilled you are in PvP.

The first set of unique items obtained in League play is the Wings of Glory, a set of wings based on the Glorious armor set that gets progressively bigger and more exciting as you work your way through the series. Obtaining each pair of wings requires the previous tier, so enjoy each one along the way.

The Path of the Ascension

When the PvP League season begins, everyone will have an opportunity to follow the Path of the Ascension to earn the new PvP legendary backpiece. To create the Ascension, you’ll need the Gift of the Competitor, the Gift of Skirmishing, the Gift of Fortune, as well as the precursor, the Wings of Legend.

The Gift of Fortune already exists to craft other legendaries, but the Gift of Skirmishing is new. To forge the Gift of Skirmishing, you’ll need to collect vision crystals, shards of glory, certificates of support (which can be purchased from the League Vendor), and a perfect mist core that is forged from fragments that are being added to the Glorious Reward Track. If you already have all the armor you need from the Glorious Reward Track, you can choose an extra mist core fragment as your final reward instead to help accelerate you on your path.

The Gift of the Competitor is based on completing achievements. You’ll find these in the Competitive section of the achievement panel. Each achievement category related to the Path of the Ascension has a meta-achievement that provides a straightforward checklist of things you need to do to earn it. These achievements require league play, so make sure to jump into Ranked Arena during the league season.

To obtain the Wings of Legend, you’ll need to earn the entire Wings of Glory series. Once you have the full set of four, you’ll be able to forge them into the Wings of Legend.

Once the Gifts of the Competitor, Fortune, and Skirmishing have been collected and you’ve earned the Wings of Legend, you’ll be ready to create the Ascension. In addition to being a beautiful backpiece with legendary level stats, the Ascension will also function as a glider and have some special animations only available to legendary backpieces.

The Ascension is designed to reward investment in PvP by any player and will require more than one season to complete. You don’t need to be the most skilled player to earn it, but highly skilled players will find that they can progress through the Path of the Ascension faster.

Guild Challenger League

To participate in the Guild Challenger League, all you need to do is form a guild team in the guild menu, party up with at least two other members of your guild team roster, and queue up for league play.

The Guild Challenger League (GCL) will award trophies that your guild can display in your guild hall and Guild Challenger League decoration tokens that you can exchange for special decorations only available from league play. Trophies are awarded to the top 250 teams on the leaderboard, and other awards will go out to as many as 1,000 teams, so there are plenty of opportunities to win prizes in the Guild Challenger League.

The Guild Challenger League uses the ELO algorithm for rankings. At the start of each season, ELO will be reset for all guild teams. Your team’s ELO score will decay over time due to inactivity, so if you’re serious about making it into the Pro League or looking to earn a trophy for your guild, make sure to stay active during the league season. Decay will not be active immediately during this first season so that we can collect metrics to tune the system, but it will be turned on with plenty of time to affect season standings.

The Guild Challenger League is a direct path into the ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League for you and your team. At the end of the league season, if you’re in the top five teams from the Guild Challenger League, you’ll have the chance to face off against the bottom three teams from the Pro League in the Guild Challenger Cup. If you’re in the top three teams from this tournament, your team will join the Pro League in the next season and compete for a share of $200,000 USD.

At this time, the Pro League’s map rotation consists of Conquest maps. Because the Guild Challenger League is a path into the Pro League, teams entering into the Guild Challenger Cup will need to be able to compete in Conquest. For this reason, only Conquest matches will count toward progress in the Guild Challenger League. Stronghold has proven itself to be popular, and we’ll be evaluating it for inclusion into more competitive play in the future. Until then, you can still play Stronghold as a guild team for personal league progress, guild missions, or just for fun.

With the Pro League offering big prizes for the top-tier players, the Guild Challenger League offering a shot at the Pro League for aspiring up-and-coming talent, and the PvP League giving everyone something to strive for, there’s a lot going on in Guild Wars 2 PvP. It’s an exciting time to be in PvP, and we’re looking forward to spending that time with you in the arena!