Guild Wars 2

Stuck in Ruby 0 pip land-3 weeks and running

First random match of the night. I generally only play ranger when no one else is playing support.

Serious advice appreciated, more general than ranger specific preferred.

And no, I don’t think I deserve legendary, just better than the equivalent of sapphire.

And please don’t turn this into a MMR hell discussion, yes I won this one, but I tend to go about 5-10 games of losses for each win.

I’m sure more qualified players will probably give you detailed advice, but one basic thing I noticed is that you back peddle a lot. Like autoattack and back peddle, never strafing around to the side or kiting. You’re very linear. Either running forward, or backpedaling or dodging backwards. I’m sure there were a few times when doging forward, or to the side would’ve helped a lot more than just dodging backwards.

Also your camera view seems really narrow, and you don’t really swing it around to check behind or to the side. You should check out free camera, or at least use it to look around when you’re just running straight at a point. It sort of limits your awareness.

what is the point to upload a win and ask for advice on losing games?

By far the biggest flaw i saw in that game is that youre tunnel visioning. Fixing that is your main key to succes. Ill pour that in to an example to explain what i mean with that:

At 1:50 your team started wiping their team. You stay around and stomp 2 downed ppl with 3 and ended up duocapping an empty point. During the next 20ish seconds you didnt look once in the direction of their base.

Someone blinks waterfall on the minmap so you leave mid and mid nearly gets decapped since you are totally unaware of the incoming opponents @ mid.

Ideally u want to be aware of where all opponents are. To know that you need to look around. On the minimap AND in game. Watching you play feels like driving a car with just a front window.

babayum.1895:

what is the point to upload a win and ask for advice on losing games?

Well the other games I recorded tonight had people raging after the mid fight so there’s no real point in uploading a 3v5 or 4v5.

And I appreciate the other advice. Part of the reason I did some of those things is that I don’t trust people to win fights even if we have the plus 1, in my matches we seem to lose those about half the time and even fights 75%+ of the time. So tbh, I’d rather lose mid and win far than watch far wipe, and then get rolled mid. I’ll try to work on it though.

Tenebria.7239:

And I appreciate the other advice. Part of the reason I did some of those things is that I don’t trust people to win fights even if we have the plus 1, in my matches we seem to lose those about half the time and even fights 75%+ of the time. So tbh, I’d rather lose mid and win far than watch far wipe, and then get rolled mid. I’ll try to work on it though.

Your mindset is wrong,

Dont get me wrong…i dont trust anyone. But i dont give up points for free to engage in a 2v1 at waterfall that might take 30+ secs to finish. Unless there is noone inc…..but u didnt look around so u didnt see that inc opponent that was 2-3 secs away from mid.

Playing this game correctly is anticipating what will happen before it happens. So knowing that resses are inc after a wipe and positioning yourself or moving in a direction where u can cut off their supply or reinforce your own.

Lower rated ppl tend to move after they see teammates fighting on point. U need to read the map and look around to see inc before they reach nodes.

There’s some good advice here. Your problems arise mostly from a lack of map awareness. Also, try to change your camera zoom more often and look around more.
I think you have a certain mastery of your class, which is good. However, you need to stop running backwards. Unbind the key for all I care.

Don’t stop recording games: reviewing your own games and practising self-assessment will definitely help you learn.

- make yourself familiar with your staff skills and use them more frequently. In the video you mainly use it as a blink and apart from two situations only stay on longbow all the time.
- same goes for your celestial avatar.
- when you get the message “obstructed” don’t just stand there and keep pewpewing, change your position so you can hit the enemy.
- you fight a lot from outside the point and don’t even bother to hop in and contest when the enemy is capping. Especially the graveyard is big enough that you can stand in the circle while still evading aoe without trouble.
- 2:05: why waste your elite when all enemies are already dead and you just stand there?
- 2:43: very poor positioning, you don’t only keep standing at the edge of the fire field, you even walk right into the middle of it.
- 3:11: why use longbow 3 at that moment? You are under no pressure so there’s no reason to stealth and it actually prevents you from capping the point.
- 6:00: your teammates are low, now would have been a good moment to make some use of your staff skills and support them! But you just stand there and autoattack, waiting for your mate to go down so you can teleport him to you. And of cause the enemy follows directly because you didn’t use your immobilize. And because you are standing outside the circle once again they can cap while you are rezzing.

I think in that match you were lucky that the enemy didn’t pay much attention towards you so you could just stand next to the fight, pewpew a bit and use search&rescue once in a while. You claim to play support in the first post but I don’t see you supporting much (apart from the rezzes).
Which build are you using btw?

But hats off for posting the video and asking for advice, shows you really want to improve so you are already on the right track.

people need to upload losing matches not winning.

Grr…posted a whole reply, but then the forums bugged out.

Anyways, there’s 4 points I think you could improve on, after watching the video:

1) Disengage from +1 fights sooner. You stuck around way too long both times you +1ed a side fight. The first one, fortunately, didn’t cause any issues and you only wasted a little bit of time against a DH who your teammate could have easily finished off. The second one resulted in you getting swamped at far and then getting downed.

2) Watch enemy movement better. You were slow on the home +1 fight since you didn’t have your camera pointed towards the enemy base, which is why you didn’t see them crossing over. You also got swamped at far because you never looked towards the enemy base and didn’t see their backup arriving.

3) Be more strategic with your knock backs. Save your knock backs for enemies who try to revive or for other clutch moments, such as enemies using a heal or enemies that are almost dead. You missed several opportunities because you blew this cooldown early in the fight.

4) Utilize perches better. The best place to be for mid fights as a longbow ranger is on the ledge between home and far. This will keep you out of harms way, allow you to more quickly +1 home, and will also put your ally in a safer place when you S&R. Also, you didn’t utilize the higher ground at the far point. Because of this, you took a lot of extra damage, missed some shots, and got feared when you used S&R.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

people need to upload losing matches not winning.

Why does it have to be a losing video to comment on an individuals play? Makes no sense.

Locuz.2651:

Tenebria.7239:

And I appreciate the other advice. Part of the reason I did some of those things is that I don’t trust people to win fights even if we have the plus 1, in my matches we seem to lose those about half the time and even fights 75%+ of the time. So tbh, I’d rather lose mid and win far than watch far wipe, and then get rolled mid. I’ll try to work on it though.

Your mindset is wrong,

Dont get me wrong…i dont trust anyone. But i dont give up points for free to engage in a 2v1 at waterfall that might take 30+ secs to finish. Unless there is noone inc…..but u didnt look around so u didnt see that inc opponent that was 2-3 secs away from mid.

Playing this game correctly is anticipating what will happen before it happens. So knowing that resses are inc after a wipe and positioning yourself or moving in a direction where u can cut off their supply or reinforce your own.

Lower rated ppl tend to move after they see teammates fighting on point. U need to read the map and look around to see inc before they reach nodes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/MMR-system-Thank-you/first

This guy says otherwise, he say you should hard carry your team mate even if they lose a 4v2 fight.

Something i notice in your video and also in videos of other “stuck” players is, that their (your) impact in fights seems pretty low. And if the teammates then die it is easy to call them bad, yet they were basically fighting outnumbered even if it technically was an even fight.
In your video your team is clearly better than the enemy, so most fights are still won, but if that’s not the case it is up to you to make a difference.

As already mentioned, mender druid is more a support build than a dps build, yet you spend (too) much time trying to kill stuff with your lb, which is not very efficient. You make rarely use of your staff heals (and in close range staff even deals more dmg than lb auto) and CAF (especially caf 3 is a great skill you simply don’t use) and also don’t use your pets and shouts well (with the exception of Search and Rescue). Now, that’s all class specific things, so i can’t tell if this is also an issue on other classes and it isn’t completely terrible gameplay either, could be much worse actually :p

Few other things (some got already mentioned):
2:05 – 2:25 Double capping mid, while there is already a fight going on on far. 20 seconds of completely wasted time.
2:25 – 3:25 Usually you shouldn’t +1 a bunker vs bunker fight on a capped node as a bunker/support build. It takes too long and your team will be outnumbered elsewhere. In this case it wasn’t a big issue because you killed the ele relatively fast (won’t happen if it was a decent ele) and you got a dh there too, so numberes were equal.

4:23 You should have stomped the downed necro immediately instead of finishing the rez (your pets continues rezzing anyway). But yes, i know, there was not much time for decision making and i’m pretty sure, most would have done the same mistake (including me).

4:40 CAF 3 maybe could have prevented the enemy rez. Instead you tried to cleave with CAF 5 which doesn’t deal much dmg on a mender build (+ you had weakness on you).
After they got the rez the fight is pretty much lost and you should disengage. You were too slow there and got killed.

6:00 Going mid there was risky. The fight was already lost and you are outnumbered. You could have secured close instead. Luckily the enemy didn’t continue to pressure you after they killed the rev, so you could survive and win the fight afterwards with the help of the respawned teammates.

8:10 Getting the rez on the mesmer and then leaving immediately was good. If you would have left CAF earlier during the second rez, you could have stealth him, making it harder for the enemy to stop the rez. Unlike necro’s shroud CAF doesn’t protect you from dmg, so there is no benefit from camping in it without actively using the skills (which you didn’t do only there). You still managed to get the rez, so it was not an issue there.

Buffalo Bruiser.3567:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

people need to upload losing matches not winning.

Why does it have to be a losing video to comment on an individuals play? Makes no sense.

hard to comment what OP did wrong when the whole game, they are winning. all u can say is maybe u can do this or do that. when enemy is destroying u, u can see all ur fault and team fault is why is that happening.

volpenvieh.3201:

I think in that match you were lucky that the enemy didn’t pay much attention towards you so you could just stand next to the fight, pewpew a bit and use search&rescue once in a while. You claim to play support in the first post but I don’t see you supporting much (apart from the rezzes).
Which build are you using btw?

I perhaps worded it poorly. I switched to druid because we had no support players. What I was trying to say is that I only play druid when I have to switch to it because the team comp lacked sustain/support. Recorded it anyways cause I had limited play time and needed a video, the other matches I had teammates rage immediately after mid fight so no real point posting games where people are actively trying to speed the loss.

Normally play mez or dh but before players switched we had 3 mez,1 thief, 1 rev. Didn’t think that was gonna work and didn’t think that 2 mez 1 thief 1 rev 1 DH was much better. Another mez swapped to scrapper at the same time I went druid so that seemed to help out.

So I play druid rarely, it’s pretty much the MB build for lb/staff SNR, I think two of the sigils might be changed.

Even though it’s not something I play all that often, I still wanted feedback.

Zoom is out the max it goes, is there another setting I can tweak? Agree that I should rotate the camera more.

Honestly I’m not comfortable with staff at all same with CA, much more used to GS but trying to pick it up. I’m not a good (relatively) ele player so druid was kinda all that was left. I used to play the LB/GS but advice I was given is that switching to the mender/SNR build would be a better choice.

Also

Winning your 1 v 1 or holding a point 1 v 2/3 doesn’t mean kitten
Even if you’re successfully doing the above, if your team mates are losing their fights, it pretty much means you’re not carrying. Even if you’re doing a fantastic job winning a 1 v 3, if your team mates are losing the 4 v 2 and losing the other points then you need to join the team fight to help them. It’s a team game so play more like a team and help them.

Is the advice from another thread that I’ve been trying to follow, not trying to disagree with anyone, but still have no idea what to do? I agree I should have looked and seen the other player coming mid, but say I had, do I stay or go?

Also forgot to ask, is this consistent play with sapphire/t0 ruby? I’ve been told some things (varying greatly about what tier I belong at) and would kinda like to know? And are the mistakes I make on par with double or triple capping home at start? I mean I hope they aren’t, but someone did tell me that.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

Buffalo Bruiser.3567:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

people need to upload losing matches not winning.

Why does it have to be a losing video to comment on an individuals play? Makes no sense.

hard to comment what OP did wrong when the whole game, they are winning. all u can say is maybe u can do this or do that. when enemy is destroying u, u can see all ur fault and team fault is why is that happening.

Polite response: I only had about an hour. 4v6s would show absolutely nothing. I wanted to get some advice so I posted what I had, I’ll try to record some other matches, but I’d rather some advice than no advice.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

Buffalo Bruiser.3567:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

people need to upload losing matches not winning.

Why does it have to be a losing video to comment on an individuals play? Makes no sense.

hard to comment what OP did wrong when the whole game, they are winning. all u can say is maybe u can do this or do that. when enemy is destroying u, u can see all ur fault and team fault is why is that happening.

OP never asked what they did wrong. Simply asked for advice based on their play in uploaded video. Plenty are finding that video sufficient for providing advice based on that videos performance, and plenty of solid advice has been given.

Nobody should be uploading loss videos in the forums simply based on the evil, immature, unwarranted abuse that has been going on for those that have.

You can still win improperly. Happens all the time.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

You can still win improperly. Happens all the time.

You can’t lose improperly though. Never ever happens.

Good on you for posting a vid and asking for advice. That’s more than 95% of people here are willing to do.

You played the longbow much better than the staff. I would either work on using your staff skills or go zerker lb/gs. If you stay back and pew pew you will be doing almost twice as much damage and be better able to control the match. Getting the opponent down faster will offer just as much support. You can still take S&R with that.

On staff the 5 skill will work well vs. ranged skills, and blasting the water field is a good heal. The 4 skill will pull off conditions and offer a snare would have worked well to help your crippled engineer track down the opponent at 3:10.

That shout build is designed to pull conditions off of allies on each shout, but you aren’t playing that close to the team so it isn’t running at full effect. For example in the first fight the Rev. was getting focused down with conditions and you ran by him on your way to stomp someone, then popped your shouts when you were out of range of him. Also, the staff had skills that could have helped him on the way into the stomp.

Try to rotate more aggressively.

There were a lot of times when you team had clearly won the fight and there was no point you hanging around to leisurely stomp your enemies when your team mates had it covered. Once the fight is obviously going to be won you should already be looking to rotate elsewhere on the map where you might be needed.

I’d also try to strafe more and backpeddle less. Backpeddling really is slow.

This is more of just a basic thing to do, but when you have 350 points it’s most of the time safer/easier to just go for their lord. If you send 1-2 people it’ll take 2-3 of theirs to stop the push and you’ll either get a triple cap to finish the game off, or more likely just kill the lord.

Tenebria.7239:

I perhaps worded it poorly. I switched to druid because we had no support players. What I was trying to say is that I only play druid when I have to switch to it because the team comp lacked sustain/support.

[…]

Honestly I’m not comfortable with staff at all same with CA, much more used to GS but trying to pick it up. I’m not a good (relatively) ele player so druid was kinda all that was left. I used to play the LB/GS but advice I was given is that switching to the mender/SNR build would be a better choice.

Please make yourself more familiar with the build or ask someone else to relog. There’s no point in playing a build that you aren’t comfortable with just for the sake of the group setup. At your current skill level you’re really not offering much support for your team so you could just as well play your main class.

I didn’t get all the way through and I don’t play Druid very much but I noticed a few things you could do to improve. For one, strafing is your friend. Use that more than back-pedaling. I’ve almost just rebound my S key to something more useful since I almost never use it to walk backwards and then usually when I do it is not in a match.

Another thing, don’t stand in fire!

I noticed on the fight at waterfall you just stood in the lava font and then after that the DH set down his traps right in front of you and you just stood there waiting for them to get set off instead of dodging or strafing. A lot of times you just walk right into AoE for no reason, like at one point on the quarry node you were going up to the point and walked into AoE and then out of it again so that you could go around to get up the ramp. With 1500 range you have no reason to walk into AoE.

The other thing I noticed is you rarely use your staff which I find much better than the bow. I don’t know if you are running some kind of glass cannon since I was paying more attention to your movements than the numbers but most people want their Druid for heals and the staff provides damage and healing to allies. I know Eurantien plays glass cannon but I have played with him before and he takes Ranger to the next level when he plays. You’re clearly not on his level, which is ok, but if you aren’t you should be focusing on support more and damage less but if you do want to play glass cannon then play that. Don’t build for heals and then play like a damage role.

Dahkeus.8243:

Grr…posted a whole reply, but then the forums bugged out.

Anyways, there’s 4 points I think you could improve on, after watching the video:

1) Disengage from +1 fights sooner. You stuck around way too long both times you +1ed a side fight. The first one, fortunately, didn’t cause any issues and you only wasted a little bit of time against a DH who your teammate could have easily finished off. The second one resulted in you getting swamped at far and then getting downed.

2) Watch enemy movement better. You were slow on the home +1 fight since you didn’t have your camera pointed towards the enemy base, which is why you didn’t see them crossing over. You also got swamped at far because you never looked towards the enemy base and didn’t see their backup arriving.

3) Be more strategic with your knock backs. Save your knock backs for enemies who try to revive or for other clutch moments, such as enemies using a heal or enemies that are almost dead. You missed several opportunities because you blew this cooldown early in the fight.

4) Utilize perches better. The best place to be for mid fights as a longbow ranger is on the ledge between home and far. This will keep you out of harms way, allow you to more quickly +1 home, and will also put your ally in a safer place when you S&R. Also, you didn’t utilize the higher ground at the far point. Because of this, you took a lot of extra damage, missed some shots, and got feared when you used S&R.

I agree with the above feedback.
The points mentioned here are all very valid.
The only things I would add would be;
1) Ranger was a wonderful selection of traits that proc on pet swap. You appear to favour bristleback. Choosing a second pet that off sets your ‘fire from a distance’ approach, and will head onto a node or a target will assist in keeping a melee pressure on a target or node pressure.
2) If you find yourself in a moment of where you’re standing somewhere not doing anything and are now playing catch up to get to a position to assisting, take that brief moment to hold down shift and map draw numbers of enemies on nodes on the map quickly. Not a lot of players make use of this function. However having someone quickly scroll 3 on home 1 on mid and 1 on far quickly lets your team know where the opposition is at a glance. or even a 2 with a quick arrow leading from their base to your home would allow the home point defender to know action is coming their way.