1.Know when to quit ranked! Sometimes you just gotta quit while you’re ahead or behind. Evenings are typically stronger than mornings and in T3 sapphire and T5 emerald I strategically quit while I was ahead, did some unranked, then did ranked again in the morning, sometimes even getting a couple of two pip games. This is an excellent way to get reward track progress and not risk your pips. You could still lose, but your pips will be secure.
2.Know when to stronghold! If you have a tempest or mesmer you can queue up for stronghold, preferably with a specific team advertised in the LFG such as “only need two, druid and tempest” and with the threeQ won’t likely get two thieves or warriors (though I did get two thieves earlier on solo with disastrous results). There’s just one straightforward goal: get lord. No holding points, no risk of lord kill meaning catchup, and the summoned lord contributes to the main goal.
3.For crying out loud read metabattle! When you get lots of team chat begruding thief or warrior a lot it’s time to listen. There’s a reason why these classes are complained about and blamed for losses. Modify weapons and traits according to your style but don’t deviate too much. When people complain about certain classes being overpowered it’s time to take notice. Would you rather be run over by an overpowered class or be on even terms with them?
4. You should also git gud! Seriously, we all have lots of room for improvement somewhere. If it doesn’t hurt your FPS too much (more on that in the next bullet point) then use Shadowplay or Bandicam and review your rotations and situational awareness. I notice I play better with a cool head than panicking. Sometimes you just have to learn when to let someone run away too, could be a diversion for a decap.
5. Optimize for the best possible FPS! If you get 60 FPS on the highest settings then ’grats, but some of us with 4k monitors and very old graphic cards (GTX 670 here already have money set aside for a Pascal GTX 1070 equivalent or 1080 if the 1070 just gets GDDR5X instead of HBM2). A lot of PvE is playable at 25 FPS but PvP is a whole other game. Did you get caught in a dragonhunter trap? If you had a better framerate you would have seen the tell better and dodge out of it.
6.Teamspeak. If you don’t like your voice then MasqVox is a good program for disguising, just don’t set it too extreme. You either level the playing field against other teamspeak premades or have an unfair advantage over PuG’s.
7.Keybinds! Use your mouse to move and set AoE fields to target. Set target self to a mouse button for healing fields.
Etiquette:
Never vote Temple! Seriously, usually it’s one or two people that vote Temple and we all hate them. Like a gentlemen’s agreement not to use Akuma please don’t vote Temple.
Only queue ranked if you have HoT. You’re just gimping your team for those of us who have HoT. A possible exception could be made for dagger/dagger elementalist though staff tempest is simply better since it has attunement overloads and access to auramancer.
It’s tough out there between all the manipulation, smurfing, sandbagging, and an already flawed MMR system incompatible with leagues so may as well maximize your chances in the face of all that.
