GW2 Class Specific PvP Tips

**Elementalist**
Elementalist is an extremely versatile class that can bring lots of heals and damage.  It tends to be lacking in easy, hard interrupts but makes up for it by bringing tons of cripples/chills and very powerful zoning moves.  It can also have arguably the fastest map mobility in the game, leading to excellent roaming potential.  When building your Ele, you generally want to focus on one of a couple of builds:
If you want to do damage, they’re much more suited to crit/power builds than they are condition builds.  This isn’t to say conditions aren’t viable, but every single ability hits hard and you generally want to focus on fire/air (instead of earth, which brings bleeds) attunements for your damage.  This is because most of your utility abilities are in water and earth, and so you want to be able to switch to those attunements on command, not have them on CD because you were rotating through them for damage.  Generally, I would recommend using either runes of the Ogre (for pure damage) or runes of Divinity (for damage/tank), and then going 30 points down arcane, and focusing primarily on air after that.  Even if you plan on doing most of your damage in fire, lightning tends to bring some stronger traits, as well as the precision/crit damage stats which are very important.
If you want to play support, you are one of the most powerful AoE healers when you run a staff.  I wouldn’t recommend focusing on support when dual wielding.  It could work, but I had trouble with it, and don’t have much experience with it.  I’ll cover the support build in depth in the Staff section.
Elementalists have a few ways to ensure stomps, primarily Mist Form (you must start the stomp and THEN use Mist Form) and Armor of Earth.  They are also by far the worst class when downed themselves, so be very careful not to drop, as chances are you won’t make it back up without a lot of support.

The Elementalist can only use three main hand and two off hand weapons.  These each lend themselves well to very specific playstyles, so I’ll go through them in order.

*Staff*
The Staff ele is an ele that has decided to focus on big AoE potential.  Fire is all damage with one dodge, which is the only burst mobility for a staff ele.  Water brings three heals, a big AoE chill, and a strong but unreliable AoE nuke + vulnerability, which lends itself well to support builds.  Air is all about the CC, bringing a blind, knockback, and AoE stun, as well as an AoE swiftness that dispels movement impairing conditions.  And finally, Earth brings a lot of general utility, having an AoE cripple, a ranged immobilize, a projectile reflect, and auto attacks that weaken.
If you are playing a DPS Staff build, I would recommend going with http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.7.0.0.0.16.0.0.0.2.9.22.0.24.2.2.6.5.0.0.20.26.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.65.68.64.10.20.0.0.30 as a sort of bare bones build, adding onto it with whatever else you find necessary.  It does not focus much on killing power, lacking traits such as more damage to burning foes or foes with <25% health.  This is because the Staff build is supposed to provide a lot of AoE pressure, which means that it’s hard to focus one person down, a role that is better left to single target, high DPS/high burst characters such as Thieves.  Instead, this lets you put out tons of AoE damage on a point, as well as some reasonably solid heals.
If you want to be a support, you should definitely focus on pumping out AoE heals like crazy.  You are by far the strongest straight up healer in the game.  This is the build I run on mine: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.7.0.0.0.13.0.0.0.2.9.17.11.24.1.1.8.0.0.0.18.0.0.33.0.0.46.50.0.65.68.64.0.10.10.20.30.  I would avoid straying too far from this, though swapping out runes and such for a bit more passive tank can work if you feel like you’re being focused down way too fast.  Some key points in playing this build: Armor of Earth lets you get off stomps/revives with ease, as well as making your heals uninterruptable.  Your elite is incredibly powerful, but somewhat random.  If you use it in water attunement, though, the elemental will heal for 6k+, sometimes 10k+.  Both the greater and lesser water elementals drop fields that chill people, which also work as combo fields.  Worth noting on a support build is that the Fiery Greatsword elite damage (I believe) does not scale with any stat, so you can use it to turn into a reasonably potent DPS mid-fight.  I haven’t tried this myself, though.
When playing the Staff build, try to idle in air or fire when possible.  This is because at the start of fights, you’re mostly flinging damage spells around, so you don’t want to, for example, be in earth > switch to air for damage > get focused by a ranger > try to switch back to earth for magnetic aura, but have your earth attunement be on cooldown.  A very important trick is that certain moves will continue going after you finish casting.  Specifically, Lava Font and Meteor Shower (from fire), Static Field (from air), Eruption and Unsteady Ground (from earth), and Frozen Ground and Healing Rain (from water) can be casted before a fight even breaks out and still be useful.  This gives you an effective 7~10 weapon skills either out on the field or ready to be cast, compared to the 5 that other classes have.  Because of this, whether you are DPS or support, you can put out lots of heals and damage without sacrificing anything you’re your main role, which makes the staff a pretty potent weapon.  You have more combo fields than probably any other class, so you should drop these often and ideally in such a way that ranged allies will shoot through them, or drop them on top of a primary target like a Thief spamming heartseeker on a squishy so they get as many bonuses as possible.  Finally, remember that the auto attack from air bounces, meaning if you have two people next to each other, it will hit the first one twice, which leads to very high damage on that target.  Aside from these strategies, playing a Staff ele is mostly straightforward.  Just be sure to get good and landing Static Field (air skill 5), as it’s an extremely powerful AoE stun, but it can be hard to position it just right.
*Scepter*
In my honest opinion, there is only one obviously powerful Scepter build, and that’s the omgwtfburst glass cannon build.  For it, you go Scepter/Dagger, and run a build that looks something like this: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.2.0.13.0.16.0.24.0.2.9.20.22.24.2.2.24.5.0.0.18.21.26.0.0.0.0.0.0.65.68.64.10.30.0.0.30.  Fire and Air are primarily used for damage, though Air is also great for map mobility.  Water can be swapped to in order to clean a condition with Cleansing Wave and toss up Frost Aura, but you shouldn’t stay in it for long.  Earth gives you a great long range blind and you should keep Rock Barrier up as much as possible, but you mostly switch to it for access to Earthquake, which is extremely potent.  If you’re a baller, you can also land Churning Earths on people for 7k+ burst damage and really solid bleeds.  It’s hard to get off without running Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth, and/or Arcane Shield though.
This is the standard roaming burster.  You need to be in the most important fights or find squishy targets and pick them off in a 1v1.  You are not an amazing duelist, but if a fight goes poorly you can get out immediately with Ride the Lightning.  Your maximum burst combo is Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, one Flamestrike or Ring of Fire if they aren’t burnt from a crit, Fire Grab, immediately switch to air, Ride the Lightning -> Updraft at them, and hit them with a Lightning Strike.  It’s rare to land all of these moves perfectly, but if you do, your target should have to pop big defensive CDs to survive.  Aside from that, abuse the crap out of dodges since Phoenix gives you tons of endurance, make sure to stay out of the line of fire and jump in to pick off primary targets.  You are most potent when combined with high CC allies who can allow you to land your full combo on command.  Just remember, you must use your arcane moves during your combo (they have no cast animation, so toss out the nukes whenever).  Arcane Power is best used to pump up Dragon’s Tooth, both hits of Phoenix, and Fire Grab.  If you have trouble surviving though, or using Arcane Power to its maximum potential, swap it out for a defensive CD (usually Lightning Flash).  And finally, always always always abuse the
crap out of line of sight.  You should only be visible if you have to be on a point, or if you’re killing someone.  Otherwise, try to stay out of
the line of fire, as you’ll go down faster than any other class in the game.
*Dagger*
I have only run one successful dagger build.  This is similar to the Scepter/Dagger build, where you are primarily a DPS roamer, but you build a bit tankier and go for high sustained DPS in exchange for the burst that the Scepter build has.
I regretfully do not have much playtime on daggers at all, so I am not nearly as experienced with it as I am the other builds.  As such, I have to refer to some other great Elementalist players.  Here is the video from which I learned to play double dagger Ele: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4HrGzJEgZ8.  His build no longer works as of launch, however, you can run something similar along the lines of http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.16.0.24.0.2.21.20.9.24.7.7.24.5.0.0.21.22.27.0.0.0.0.0.0.61.65.69.10.30.0.0.30.
Overall, the double dagger build has a straightforward "pick a target and kill them fast" playstyle.  The most difficult aspect of your DPS rotation is making sure you hit with all 3 hits of Dragon's Claw consistently, which comes with practice.  Aside from that, simply never forget that you can use Shocking Aura/Frost Aura while stunned, and that you have three great gap closers (Burning Speed, Ride the Lightning, and Magnetic Grasp).  Stay on your target and you'll hit hard and fast.  Just make sure you do a good job at dodging and positioning, because you're still squishy and you're hitting in melee range, so you'll drop like a rock if you mess up.
One dagger build that I've been meaning to try is a tanky, high CC, Dagger/Focus build.  This is the kind of thing I'm looking at: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.18.0.24.0.27.0.3.9.22.11.25.8.8.22.0.0.0.0.0.0.33.0.0.48.50.0.65.69.72.0.5.15.20.30.  The idea is that you're very difficult to peel off of your target, as well as hard to focus down and kill, and you bring constant stuns and immobilizes on the enemy's primary DPS.  However, I haven't tried it yet, so if you do run it, let me know what you think about it!
**Mesmer**
Ah, Mesmer.  The 1v1 king of PvP right now, that also brings tons of team fight pressure in the form of damage, conditions, condition removal, and illusions to mess with enemy targeting.
Mesmers are powerful casters that should focus their build primarily on dealing damage, as their support comes more in the form of powerful effects on their skills that don't scale with healing power, and they don't need to build tanky since they have so many dodges, invulnerabilities, clones, and stealths that they're extremely difficult to focus down.  I'll cover two main builds for mesmer, one which focuses on phantasms for dealing damage, and one which focuses on more defensive condition based play.
*WTF Phantasm Crits*
This is the more common build these days, and relies on phantasms that crit for 4~6k+ for heavy, consistent DPS.  There are a couple of builds you can use here, but there are some common themes.  These include:
- 20 points in Dueling.  These traits bring some serious DPS.
- Swords.  Double swords should be standard on this build.  Sword/Pistol may be strong as well, but I wouldn't advise it myself, at least not while learning the build.
- Ether Feast (heal), Decoy, and Signet of Illusions.  These three moves are very very important for a few reasons.  Firstly, Ether Feast is by far the strongest Mesmer heal, is easy to use, and difficult to interrupt since you can stealth or use distortion before popping it.  Decoy is standard on every mesmer build, it's seriously broken for all that it can do for you.  It allows for stealth stomps, stealth revives, getting out of stuns, dodging projectiles, etc etc.  It's also the only way to get an instant clone up to instantly use Diversion on a target if you need to interrupt a heal, stomp, etc.
Here is the build I use: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.8.7.3.0.14.33.33.0.16.180.196.186.0.0.2.2.24.528.0.0.542.544.0.0.0.0.575.571.0.588.0.0.10.20.5.25.10.  The 3rd utility changes between Phantasmal Defender, which gives insane tankiness, Null Field/Arcane Thievery, which are some of the best boon control moves in the game, Portal Entre, which I only use for specific strategies in premade tournaments, or Illusion of Life, which can be good if you have another mesmer covering Null Field already (though I very rarely actually use this one).  The elite will almost always be Moa Morph, as that's a move that lets you dominate any 1v1 as well as totally shutting down enemy elites, but Time Warp I'm realizing is extremely powerful for large group fights and can make a high DPS team totally unstoppable until it ends.  As a side note, Moa Morph is 100%, without a doubt, the single best move against Guardians.  Not only does it remove all of their healing, leaving them sitting on like 15k health for their tankiness, but if you hit them during one of their Tome elites, not only do they lose access to all their super awesome Tome moves, they're immobilized until the Moa Morph ends!
When playing the build, the most important thing to remember is that you want to be putting up phantasms constantly.  Even if it means you have to sit behind line of sight, keep casting phantasms on the most important target.  When you have 3 going, you can sometimes get lucky and get 3 crits in one round of attacks and burst someone for 15k+ without putting yourself in any danger whatsoever.  Combine this with a Mind Wrack, and you're looking at 20k or more damage almost instantly.  Your Blurred Frenzy and Illusionary Riposte are insanely good for dodging big hitting abilities like Heartseeker or Hundred Blades.  If using a Staff like me, lay down Chaos Storm/Chaos Armor/Phantasmal Warlock as you're running into a fight, then switch to after you're out of cooldowns on your swords, or if you're totally safe and want to get more Phantasms up.  If you're using something different, for example Scepter/Pistol, then you'll want to switch pretty much any time your weapon CD is up as your non-sword weapons will still do a lot of damage.
Some fun little tricks: if you can't stomp someone who's downed, put phantasms on them and focus anyone who tries to revive them.  This negates the downed target's healing, and lets you put out a ton of pressure since you'll be attacking basically without fear of reprisal.  This strategy is most powerful when Chaos Storm is up, so you can drop it around the target, or when you're running a Pistol on your other set of weapons, so that you can interrupt people who try to revive the downed character.
*Defensive Conditions*
This build focuses primarily on idling in staff to put out tons of conditions and boons for little effort.  It's NOT a build that can focus down a target and get easy kills.  This isn't to say that it doesn't deal a lot of damage, it does, just that damage is in the form of putting DoT conditions on many enemies at once.
Running a staff is the only requirement for the build.  I would suggest running scepter as your 2nd weapon, with your favorite offhand; I use focus, but an argument can be made easily for sword, pistol, or torch.  Pistol and torch tend to be more aggressive weapons, and sword tends to be more defensive, while focus is a nice balance.
I cannot reiterate enough times how versatile this build is.  Here is one version of it, but I strongly advise experimenting and figuring out what you do best with.  The staff is just so fundamentally strong that it can be taken so many different ways and still perform extremely well.  Here is one build that I use to some success: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.8.7.2.0.18.36.33.0.36.180.184.0.0.0.5.5.29.0.0.0.542.545.0.560.565.0.0.0.0.590.592.0.0.25.25.0.20.  You can very viably run without the crit chance, opting for pure condition damage, or a more defensive/support focused spec.  The only real solid advice I can give is to focus on condition damage over condition duration, as that way you can avoid dealing with condition cleansing moves more easily.  As far as utilities go, literally any utility except maybe Mimic can be very strong.  In particular, Signted of Inspiration/Midnight, Mantra of Distraction/Concentration, Blink, Arcane Thievery, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Null Field, Feedback, Veil of Invisibility, Decoy, and Mirror Images are all very strong picks.  The others can be good too, as long as you pick them in the right situation.  For example, Illusion of Life is much less potent on a tanky/healing/stall team than it is on a high DPS team.  For your elite, all 3 are good, though I am partial to Moa Morph myself.  However, if you already have a Moa mesmer, or if you don't feel like it's necessary, the other two are both amazing spells.  All three can be used well aggressively or defensively, adding even more to the versatility of the mesmer class.
When playing the build, you basically want to annoy the enemy team's casters as much as possible.  You thrive in large team fights, as opposed to the phantasm build which is primarily a duelist class.  This isn't to say you aren't good at dueling, you are, but due to the AoE nature of the majority of your abilities, team fights give you much more for your money.  Just remember, it is your job in a fight to get the revives, the stomps, the interrupts, and the boon removal.  What's nice about this mesmer build is that you can focus on the support aspect of a fight and still do solid damage.

**Necromancer**
The necromancer is the status effect king of GW2.  Regardless of what build you decide to run, you will play mostly like an aggressive support, focusing on dispelling boons and applying conditions and hard CC to as many targets as possible.  Lich Form is an incredibly powerful elite for DPS, capable of critting for 8~10k+ if you build for it, while Plague Form can spread tons of conditions around a fight instantly and generally put on a ton of pressure.  Add onto this the fact that you're tied with warrior for the highest health in the game, and death shroud is one of the most effective tanking abilities in the game, and you're an extremely difficult to kill, high damage, high control target.
A couple things to note about the necro:
- You CANNOT stomp or revive in death shroud
- You CAN use death shroud while CC'd, and Fear as well
- You do not have solid moves for guaranteeing stomps, this is a role better left to allies when possible
- You have terrible map mobility unless you run Spectral Walk, which uses up a precious utility skill slot
- When running wells, you are one of, if not the hardest class to assault on a point
- Your interrupts tend to be high CD, which makes you more reliant on allies like Thieves and Mesmers who can bring a ton of interrupts by themselves
Necromancers are extremely good at holding points in small groups of 2 or 3 people and they can dominate skirmishes of that size.  Larger fights are still good, but you want to make sure that you don't get focused down when you're low on life force.
Similar to the mesmer, you can opt for big, power based DPS or high condition damage pressure.  Unlike the mesmer, though, your condition damage is much more consistent and brings poison, making you the ideal class at pressuring guardians and other healers.
*Power Build*
Here is the build I run as a power necromancer: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.7.1.0.18.33.24.0.33.106.108.119.121.130.2.2.24.306.302.312.0.0.0.0.0.0.350.353.0.366.367.0.30.0.0.20.20.  Other options include more wells for better point holding/solo play, spectral walk for map mobility, and potentially an axe instead of a dagger (though I wouldn't reccomend it in most situations).  The dagger/focus combo is extremely powerful and is what you want to be in most of the time.  The reason you run a staff is because it's the best weapon that has an interrupt on it, and the other marks are nice for zoning and holding points.  If you choose not to run a staff, you definitely need to fit in a warhorn offhand, so that you don't lose access to your interrupt.
When sitting in dagger/focus, there are a few things to remember.  Dark Pact is a very potent immobilize, lasting 3s before any condition duration increases.   Reaper's Touch can swing fights in your favor that go for a long period of time and should be pressed practically every single time it's available.  And finally, Spinal Shivers is, in my honest opinion, the single most powerful move in the game given its extremely low cooldown.  It is a 5s that removes 3 boons, which is absolutely ludicrous.  If nothing else, learn to use this ability properly (or at least, don't forget about it!).
The build is fairly straightforward.  Just remember to use all of your cooldowns, especially Spinal Shivers and Doom (aka Fear, on the death shroud).  You're pretty tanky and do a lot of damage along with nice dispels, so just keep up constant pressure on important targets like healers and ranged DPS, and you'll win most fights pretty easily.
*Condition Build*
The condition necro build is extremely similar to the power necro, but you run a scepter mainhand, and the way I play it focuses more on wells.  Here's the build I usually run: http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3822009tcmh8884u100u0kk56h7h8hlhmhphr.  There are so many variations on this build, but your core is scepter/focus + staff.  I wouldn't recommend switching either of these sets of weapons personally, as scepter is your primary condition applier and brings poison, the focus is just plain game changing, and the staff works better with your build than dagger/warhorn or axe/warhorn does, given the longer range and condition based CC.
When it comes to runes/sigils, one thing I will say is that condition duration is pretty important so that you can keep up poison almost permanently.  Leaving no holes in your poison applications makes it very tough for most classes to get a full heal off against you.  Condition duration also affects your fears, chills, and your cripple, as well as all of your wells.
As for playing the build, the way I do it is a pure team fighter/point defender.  You can kite off the point thanks to ground targeted wells and keep up a lot of DPS from range.  Other than that the playstyle is similar to the power build, just less tank in exchange for your range.  Play around with it, necromancers are so good at every different form of pressure that it's hard to identify just one strategy.  You'll find yourself doing a lot more over the course of a fight than, say, a scepter ele who's just trying to blow up a squishy, or a guardian who's trying to keep people off of his point, etc etc.
**Other Classes**
I do not play any of the other classes, but here are (in my opinion, of course) some nice resources for them:
Thief: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/45902-lowells-ultimate-spvp-thief-guide-wip/
Amazing guide, nothing else to say on the class
Engineer: http://www.twitch.tv/alphacollective/b/330213173
Some tournament engineer play from a very good player.
Also, you can look around for stuff from Teldo, who was one of the first popular engi players and might give you a good starting point.
Ranger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-D6ayijVjg
Miiiiiiiiiight help?  I know very little about playing as the class, but Genip is a strong player.  I will go ahead and say that I don't believe power builds are strong on ranger, but condition builds are incredibly potent, especially if you mix in some spirits.  I will possibly update this as I learn more about them.
Guardian: http://www.teamparadigm.net/guides/Guardian/6/Azshenes-Guardian-Guide/
A good guide that will teach you a good number of guardian builds.  Guardians are arguably the best class in GW2 right now (as in, the one you should/will see the most in tournaments), and there is so much to the class that it's hard to convey it all through text.  If you're interested in guardian, my best advice is to try out all of the builds in 10+ games each to see what you're comfortable with, then find a group and play it as much as you can in tournaments, because they change so much more than any other class between tournaments and hot join games.
Warrior: Not sure of any specific guides or videos, but worth noting are the hundred blades build which focuses on looooots of crit and crit damage + a greatsword + their quickness utility, and this build: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.2.11.4.0.16.5.31.0.32.27.38.39.48.52.1.1.41.0.0.0.0.0.0.106.115.0.121.128.132.138.145.0.0.0.20.30.20 which brings a lot of support and healing, as well as some ok damage.
I'm so sorry that I don't have more for the non-scholars, but I hope some of these resources help.  Make sure to check out sPvP streams on http://www.twitch.tv/directory/Guild%20Wars%202, and specifically, I really like all the streamers from team Alpha Collective: http://www.twitch.tv/team/alphacollective.  Most streamers should be very informative and fun to watch, so find some you like and watch/support them! :D