Guild Wars 2

So I’m probably going to get mocked for this but I’m kind of against a wall here. I’m just going to vent and hope maybe someone with more experience can explain to me the problem I’m having, but if you don’t like people complaining skip this one.

Admittedly, sPvP isn’t my “main” game mode, I play it when I have time. I discovered it late in my GW2 experience and started to mess around with it. So I try to bear in mind that even though I have 450ish games played, that’s really not very many compared to the vast majority of my opponents. In short, other people have failed more times than I’ve even tried.

It would be like if I discovered later in life that I really like to play basketball, but the only teams to play against were in the NBA.

The truth is, I’m much, much better than when I started trying this thing. In most games I play I go through a cycle:

1. Terribad
2. Just plain average bad player
3. Baddie who makes a really good play once in a while
4. Gud

There’s a fifth tier, actually being so gud people know who you are and you can just Youtube/stream/win tournaments for a living, but I never intend to get there. I thought I was at #3 working toward 4, but suddenly I’m back at #2.

I do think I’ve at least permanently moved out of “Terribad”. I occasionally go against people who are still in that strata and I wreck them. I take no pride in this, these people are just learning like I learned and anyone who applies himself and takes his learning lumps will eventually move out of this phase. It just is what it is.

So my first 100 games or so, I was just losing. Badly. I figure I lost about 65-70 percent of the time. Then as I started to suck less, I turned that trend around. I think about the time I got to 250 games, I was about 50/50 win/loss (as I got to be just the average bad player I started to roll terribads and thus got on some win streaks).

But now that I’m closing in on around 500 games, I’m actually getting worse. I’m only winning between 48 and 49 percent of the time.

I just don’t understand it. I occasionally make some really great plays, like winning a 2 v 1, or contesting a point against 3 players for an extended period of time, and sometimes I can even beat a better team by out rotating them. The other day, I won a 4 v 5 (as the 4). I’ve never done that before, I thought all right, I have finally turned a corner, I’m starting to figure this game out.

Nope. Next match got stomped so hard. How the hell does the same player do so good one match and so bad the next, it makes no sense.

It seems lately, I just can’t stop an elementalist. Or a mesmer. I used to have even fights against most others. Now it’s like 50% of them I fight against evenly, the other half the time I might as well have been afk for all the good I did. What’s weird is I can have both of these experiences against the same opponent.

I realize that’s part of the problem, I’m playing a very easy to counter profession. The mechanics of the engineer are good but the counterplay is far too obvious, there’s no reason you should ever lose a fight with an engineer 1 on 1. It’s very easy to understand and counter, it’s not like the other professions where you have no idea what traits they even have most of the time. So I cut myself a little slack and keep trying, realizing the meta inevitably shifts.

I do this weird thing where I have like 3-5 games where I’m just awful and can’t manage to do anything, then suddenly I get a game and I just suddenly become competent again. Then I’ll be bolstered, play a couple of games and barely win those, then it’s back to loser city again.

I don’t mind losing a close match where I can tell it just came down to they made more good plays than we did, that’s cool. I learn something from the experience at least.

But the blowouts where you lose by more than 150 points just don’t teach me anything at all. It’s incredibly frustrating to see all the Phoenix and Dragon banners when I’m barely Tiger and wonder why the hell am I in the same match as these people. It’s cool that other people are much better than I am, but it doesn’t help me or them to pit us against one another. I don’t learn anything and they don’t get a good game.

Anyway I don’t know what to say other than it’s sometimes a frustrating experience here lately and I don’t understand how I can get better, just to suddenly get worse. It would be like learning to do some basic algebra, then you suddenly realize you can’t do addition any more. Trying to suck less has never been so frustrating and I’m just venting.

1. engi is not as good as prepatch anymore (sry, they were as faceroll as it gets)
2. eles/mesmers are broken atm
3. wait for leagues, hopefully matchmaking will be bit better and you will be facing oppnents of your level

5 doesn’t exist in guild wars at the moment. maybe like 4.5 exists.

I’d tell you just to endure it. At the moment there are many factors that can ruin a game, as well as winning you a game.

I’ll start with my advice: don’t mind if you win the game or not. As I said, there are some factors that can ruin you a game even though you are worth winning it. You can be really good and lose on a 200-500 perfectly. You should just focus on your gameplay and look for things you could have done better, just like “oh I should have dodged that” or “I should have rotated to mid this time”, et cetera. Things like that will help you improve although you are losing.

So now the factors I think affect the outcome of the match:

1. First of all, the current Queue system. I.e. premades. Sometimes you will find a premade of 4-5 players. Which can be fine, the matchmaking balances it so they have a lower MMR, but the problem lies on the fact that sometimes those premades have voice communication, which makes it really easy to focus down an enemy or to coordinate through the map, improving greatly rotations. Problem you cannot do anything about it.

2. People’s attitude and bias. I hate this one. Some players will just rage from the start of the game given a certain enemy composition, self team composition, premades on the enemy team, losing the first teamfight, looking at a non-meta build, et cetera. Premades on the enemy team won’t always mean losing, nor off-meta builds.

Non others but players can ruin a game with their attitude. Against this problem, nobody can do a lot, but it’s recommendable to talk with the team, try to light the mood, keeping a good environment and, if possible, talk with the about any special strategy, initial split or team composition. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. (Lately I find myself losing more to player’s bias than matchmaking being bad).

3. The “curbstomping” problem. I haven’t played a lot lately, so I can’t tell if this still happens (or really happened at all back on the December changes), but the basic idea of this concept: matchmaking works on team’s average MMR, so to shorten queue times, it will mix high MMR people with low MMR people against mid MMR people. (1-2-6-6-9 vs 4-5-4-6-5 as an example, with MMR of 1 being bad player and MMR of 10 being good player). This leads to some matches being difficult for newer players and veteran players, that is, leading to frustration.

You could be both the high MMR player in your team as well as the low MMR player. Which is at some extent unfair, but oh well. When I had 500-600 matches I tried Solo Arena and I used to get paired with really high MMR players, for whatever reason, thing that scared me a lot! (with this I mean that initial MMR for new players is tricky and can lead to bad matches).

4. Free To Play was announced not long ago. New players have been flooding the game and possibly the “initial” MMR every person gets is way too high for a new player, which leads the matchmaking to create bad matches based on no information about the newer players. This is only a suposition on my part, of course, as we have no real information about it (I believe), but either way, it could be the case.

5. The Metagame. Sometimes conditions will reign, other times bunkers will be the way to go or raw direct damage will be the optimal. Every player is different and every player can adapt and make plays more easily in one of those metas. I personally would hate a direct damage heavy metagame, while I would do better on a soft bunker/dps meta (just as the Celestial meta pre 23rd June patch was).

Sorry for the wall of text! Just keep playing, enjoying the sPvP of this game and if you ever get too frustrated, just call a friend or two to play and have a good time with them or simply stop playing. Heck, even try another class or build and just have fun! I can’t say much more than this, as all those factors are not controllable.

All of this is too long could someone summarize please

Tontonino.9736:

All of this is too long could someone summarize please

The OP said he feels frustrated because he thinks he isn’t improving because he’s losing some matches feeling he’s not useful enough and getting paired with possibly higher MMR players (I guess this is a decent TL;DR).

I answered him that it apparently happens “thanks” to many factors, listing 5: the queue system, player’s attitude and bias, the “curbstomping”, F2P player’s influx and the Metagame.

Is this summarized enough for you? :P

Game Win / Loss ratio really doesn’t mean anything in this game. I’m about 50/50 as well, but that is just because my win and loss streaks average out. Right now I am on a big win streak but once I hit the next bracket who knows.

You can’t control your team mates, and even 4 phenomenal players can’t carry one bad player against a 5-man team of above average players. Also, the way the game is scored is wonky… you can carry your team and get a low score and be replaceable and get a high score.

As for your 1vX situation, you will have good days and bad days… and some builds will always beat other builds ceteris paribus. When it comes to higher levels of play it often comes down to one noticeable mistake that determines the victor.

Poliator.7021:

Tontonino.9736:

All of this is too long could someone summarize please

The OP said he feels frustrated because he thinks he isn’t improving because he’s losing some matches feeling he’s not useful enough and getting paired with possibly higher MMR players (I guess this is a decent TL;DR).

I answered him that it apparently happens “thanks” to many factors, listing 5: the queue system, player’s attitude and bias, the “curbstomping”, F2P player’s influx and the Metagame.

Is this summarized enough for you? :P

Yeah thanks bruh

Best advices to OP I can give:
1. burst or land crucial sprlls/skills after a dodge, meaning WAIT for the Dodge until it’s over then attack. Seldom do players double dodge.
2. Pick your fights, learn to leave BEFORE things grt out of hand.
3. Learn enemy spells and the way each profession cam burst you and avoid accordingly (I.e. if a guard gs pulls you, wait for whirling wrath and elixir s); proper dodges can win you 2v1s but there is no such thing as a proper dodge unless you successfully avoid big CDs

At over 3000 games, I feel similar to the OP. I go play GW1 when it just gets to be too much.

How I play in the morning: An undead abomination from Orr would probably roflstomp me.

How I play after coffee: Did I just win against 2 people?!

How I play in the next match: Why is the bunker guardian trying to recap a node against 2 signet necros??? /cry.

There’s a lot of things that affect how your match goes, don’t worry, it’ll work itself out. Win some, lose some, it’s all about the experience.

I feel you OP. I used to be like you. Getting stressed over by my losses. I started PvPing 2 years ago when my main(elementalist) was underpowered. But I persevered. haha
Now 4k games at 55% winrate. I just don’t care anymore. HAHA The system is trying to balance your winrate to 50% you see. I got 20 winning streaks once. Then got on 20 losing streaks after.

Just keep playing. 400 games is not a lot. You still have a lot to learn. Try playing other classes. Know their strengths and weakness and learn how to counter them on your engi. Or better yet, if you like the class keep playing it. Hahaha

Best of luck!

" I’m only winning between 48 and 49 percent of the time."

Assuming reasonably balanced teams (I know bit of a stretched assumption) that is pretty close to what it should be given random players (I guess you’re solo queuing since you are just speaking about yourself).

I meant to come back and say thanks to a lot of the constructive feedback here, sorry I didn’t get to it sooner but work’s been crazy.

Yes I am mostly solo Q-ing. I mainly WvW, and I don’t get to SPVP every day though I try to play at least one game every day if I can help it.

It’s really weird going between the two modes sometimes. In WvW, mesmers just melt my face, in SPVP, I can actually win over them sometimes. In SPVP, two people can instakill me in 3 seconds, in WvW, I can tank the damage from a 40 man blob for at least 10 seconds before dying. Really messes with your head!

I’m starting to do a leeeeeeetle bit better at the moment. I found it helps to “moonlight” on other professions sometimes just to have a different set of expectations. I’ve been doing a little tiny bit of necro here and there and am surprised by how I didn’t completely suck, so that kind of made me realize I have learned some fundamentals at least that translate well.

Also it seems here lately I’m doing better on getting matches that aren’t just stupid. I’d say probably 40% of them “feel wrong” at the moment, which is a lot better than a couple weeks ago when I was really frustrated. And I’m not going to lie, it helps that about 1 in 3 of my “lopsided” matches, I’m on the side that buries the other. That isn’t good either, but human nature being what it is, it’s easier mentally/emotionally to be on the side that kills it.

I think that MMR thing is more evident to me when I’m on a team that buries the other team. It seems every time that happens, there’s one guy on the opposition that’s just ridiculously hard to kill, but it doesn’t matter because if you just keep him busy you’ll win by coverage.

RE: 48-49 percent win rate is sad. Most people who SPVP and try at all seem to have 60 even 70 percent rates :p I would be happy just to do about 55-60%.

I accept I’m not going to be in the top 10 or even 25 percent of players, kudos to people who are, it’s just I realize I just don’t put the effort into being that good.

I’m hoping the new MMR fix will help, if it works like they seem to think it will, matches against closer ability levels to my own would be nice.

And it helps to realize I’m not the only one who feels a little flustered sometimes. I think what keeps me going is that every fifth or sixth match, it feels like everyone’s about the same ability level, and the score often comes down to the wire. That’s the best. Why can’t it be like that all the time? XD