Hi, I'm coming from a sucesfull pvp Guild Wars career. I have been in the top 100 numerous times, and i'm looking to jump right in to DR pvp.

I'm confused about the whole pve/pvp world. If i wan't to get right into pvp, should i just create a character on a pvp world? How do i go about doing that? I've read that it automatically levels you to like 101, but that its very gear dependent or something. Also is there a irc channel where you guys hang out? All help is appreciated.

Firstly, welcome, Balin, to DR and to the forums.

Your characters can jump from server to server, so it doesn't matter where you start out. If you want to concentrate on pvp, w5 is the place to go; you can pve there as well. Gear is a good place to start, yes. The last couple of patches have seen a lot of changes to pvp matching, rating, balancing.

The best way to find info about all of this is in announcements/patch notes forums and then the pvp forums. You will find lots of info.

Other than that, experience is the best teacher.

do you have to be a member to get in the top 20 for pvp? Also i was wondering about how long it takes to get to level 100.

Not necessarily, but unique (purple) and mythic (rainbow) gear is easier to get as a member.

How long it takes to get to 100 just depends on how often/how efficiently you play. Generally speaking, I would estimate something like a couple months to a few months to get to 100, but there's a lot of room for variation.

If you just grind through the levels, you can probably shorten your run quite a bit, but there is a lot to see, experience, and mess around with in the game. PvP isn't going anywhere, so you might want to take some time to 'smell the roses.'

I think the record time for making Level 100 is 6 days of playtime: about 144 hours.

No you don't have to be a member to make the "top 20" and the leader board and ratings are both brand spanking new anyway. Gear is very important, but really just a novelty without skill.

There is vast amounts of information on building here on the boards, browse through the pvp threads, i'm sure you'll be able to get some good info.

As for getting to level 100, if you don't spend a lot of time farming or trading or goofing off in general, 7-14 days, in game time. And you don't have to be level 100 to be a good pvper, since everyone is rebalanced to 101.

While that may be true, Level 100s are capable of farming for Rainbows for as long as they want without leveling, and they also have access to tiered Rainbows as well as higher ranks in their skills; which can matter a lot when you are speaking of skills like BSoL. But yes, you do not need to be level 100 to be a good PvPer. There are good PvPers that are around level 10.

For PvP, go with low lvl pvp alts with 90%+ power. That will garentee a good amount of wins and very high chance of vicorty.

Reason, low lvls get more hp (if built correctly). Take crackerst for example, as a warrior, he gets around 6k hp without the nerf. In the arena he gets 70k hp (I accidentally sold one my gloves so I'm kinda in trouble). Crackersd on the other hand has 6k hp also (at lvl 40). He only gets 30k in PvP arena but does more dmg per second and can use henchmen (like bill).

So get a main and a PvP Alt and you'll be on the leaderboard in no time.