Guild Wars 2

I’ve only been playing this game since late November and I got it with the intent to play PvP in hope it would be like my time when I used to play the original Guild Wars.

I am by no means great, I’ve started to come to accept that I might not even be average and I’m honestly not sure what to do next.

After playing seasons 1 & 2, I thought I was really prepared to come into this season and do well. I knew Legendary was probably out of the question, but was hopeful I could get close.

Now – I’m in Ruby with zero pips after going through yet another loosing streak over the last two days. I’m currently below 50% win rate and if it keeps trending the way it has I imagine I’ll hit winning 1 out of every 3 games by the time everything is said and done.

This has been really frustrating and I’m really at a loss on what to do. Do I continue to ride out the season? Do I just pack it in and what for next season? Or is it time to just admit I’m really not that good and maybe this game isn’t for me?

I think the sad part is I can’t even really see for myself if there’s been much improvement. I tend to lose a lot of 1v1s no matter what profession I play and I always seem to be hitting the wrong skills at the wrong time it seems, and it’s hard to objectively say how well I did or helped the team when a vast majority (easily 75%+) of my losses have been complete blowouts and my few wins lately coming against teams that are reaaally bad.

So yeah…thanks for reading this. Any thoughts, tips or ideas is certainly appreciated.

I’m a big boy so I can handle the truth.

Thanks all!

Commit to one, max two different professions. Hit unranked until you feel competent at winning 1v1, or in case of support professions -> not dieing in under 3 minutes per fight.

Then go back to ranked.

I lose 1v1s to good players but in general 1v1 doesn’t matter too much if you’re climbing the ladder since most the fights will be team fights and the good 1v1 players are all in diamond/legend.

What you can do is, make sure you have survivability so that you can at least stall 1v1 until you get backup. If you have to, get off the point and wait for backup/heal up, especially if it is 2v1 and you can’t hold just run if you can.

Make sure you’re running a “proper” meta build since those generally have a wide array of damage/condi cleanse etc put in which is crucial for PvP at mid-low levels where you can’t always rely on team mates.

Try and learn multi class, ele/necro/engineer/rev are all good starts if you’re average at PvP since they can change the tide of fights. Make sure you understand what the comps are on both sides so you can supplement the classes (eg. if there’s 4 necro on your team, don’t get on a necro too, an ele would be helpful).

Know when the fight is lost. Often people in Ruby commit heavily to mid and keep wiping mid feeding points. When you know the starting fight is over (eg. 2 wiped mid and you have 2 vs their 5), start disengaging and decap far if you can and tell your team to go far with you to shift the fight there. Generally lower skilled players don’t watch the map very well and over rotate (zerg) points so all you have to do is decap them back.

Know your counters. If enemy team has a condi thief, roll an engineer since they can easily counter the condi thief. Engy > DH. Necro > ele etc. Obviously these are generalizations and sometimes you can still lose with counters if they’re better players.

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions. Hit unranked until you feel competent at winning 1v1, or in case of support professions -> not dieing in under 3 minutes per fight.

Then go back to ranked.

Does Unranked do ANYTHING to reset your MMR so you can at least start getting average teams over bad teams?

Also, what do you do if the 1 or 2 professions you have practiced with (Mesmer/Ranger) got nerfed to heck this season?

Mediocre played multiclass will never “change the tide”. Thats where you and about 90% of all players in pvp are absolutely wrong.

I won matches with 4 thieves or 4-5 dhs. Ive lost matches where everybody logged to a perfect setup.

Its all about individual skill. And yes, proper rotations, watching minimap… all part of that “skill”. Profession however, is not.

Kylden Ar.3724:

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions. Hit unranked until you feel competent at winning 1v1, or in case of support professions -> not dieing in under 3 minutes per fight.

Then go back to ranked.

Does Unranked do ANYTHING to reset your MMR so you can at least start getting average teams over kitten teams?

No, and why should it. If you improve, your mmr improves. If you dont improve, your mmr doesnt improve.

Yasi.9065:

Mediocre played multiclass will never “change the tide”. Thats where you and about 90% of all players in pvp are absolutely wrong.

I won matches with 4 thieves or 4-5 dhs. Ive lost matches where everybody logged to a perfect setup.

Its all about individual skill. And yes, proper rotations, watching minimap… all part of that “skill”. Profession however, is not.

I guess it depends on your opponent’s skills. Obviously the higher you go, the less likely you can help with an off class you’re not as good at. But in ruby, I’ve heard people just swap to eles so they have 2 ele and ‘bunker points’ and the enemy can’t do anything about it.

When your opponents are kinda bad and your team is also kinda bad (aka ruby t1) you can just turn the tide with a better comp. I mean yes better skill would also turn the tide but not everyone has the skill and sometimes even mediocrely played classes can do wonders for the team.

I can decide wins in ruby t1 with any kind of pure offensive build.

Why? Because enemy team will log to something defensive. No mediocre ele has enough sustain to survive focus fire of a viper nec or power rev. Or both.

If you want to be able to help out by swapping to better suited profession for comp… then go with two different roles, and there with professions that can be stacked without loosing too much.

Ele + Necro/War
Ele + Eng/Mes/Rev
Eng + Necro/War

Ele is actually atm the best profession to learn “on the side”. Because with ele you have a fallback profession if your teamcomp got too much offense, but at the same time… rotating with ele is absolutely easy. You stick to your team. Thats it. No thinking involved. If they split up, you choose the one group with more necros/revs/dhs. Done.

Rotating your skills on the other hand… is not so easy. I see a lot of eles panik-clicking skills… wasting cooldowns and dieing to that.
Also, you have to know when and what to dodge, where to stand on point etc.

So, yeah…. ele actually makes your team really suffer, if its a bad/mediocre player behind it.

Hey there! Props to you for staying positive despite your frustration.

The current pip system is deceptively not noob friendly letting many people get an almost free pass to division 4 only to be met by seemingly undeserved loss streaks.

I made it to Ruby pretty easily, right? That probably means I’m pretty good!

Sadly this is not always the case; the current Ranked system is not a good one for new players to learn the game well. The good thing is that you’re not lying to yourself.

As some above me have mentioned, stick to Unranked queue for now. Despite the fact many ragers in Ranked will try to insult you by saying this, I assure you: we are not!

I would recommend you focus on 1v1s first (mostly by always capping homenode and fighting anyone that pushes you). Don’t camp the node once it’s capped, if nobody pushed you at the start, it discourages people from fighting you on it, and you won’t learn matchups like that!

Alternatively you can push far from the start, you might die a lot at first, and some people might chew you out for it, but worry not, you are in unranked; have some fun and practice your mechanics.

One last thing, every time you die, even if it was your teammates fault, always analyze your situation and think: what mistakes did I make during that fight? What can I do better next time?

Be analytical and objective, and I’m sure you’ll improve in no time!

Once you feel very comfortable with most—if not all—your matchups, feel free to try Ranked again.

Best of luck!

Since just before the halfway point of last season I switched over to Ranger as my defacto ‘main’ (previously was guard) and I’ve been running it ever since, so I’m well versed in the meta setup. Sometimes to switch things up I’ll switch off my bunker druid spec to a more offensive (Marks/WS/Druid) one if I see we have another bunker (i.e. ele or someone that wants to stick with bunker druid) on the team.

I know it’s been knocked down a peg this season compared to last, but it’s the one I’ve logged the most time with (besides Guardian), so I still plan to stick with it.

I have been trying to play other professions too, but I can see where switching up professions too much may be a problem and I’m probably doing a disservice to my team since I don’t know the others as well as I do ranger.

I feel competent most of the time, but there are just some games I’m left scratching my head wondering what else I could have done. That may be another part of my issue – recognizing what I didn’t do as much as what I did do.

Maybe it’s back to the salt mines, I mean unranked for me!

Thanks for all the positive responses guys! I’m glad to see not everyone in the PvP community is jaded :P

Acandis.3250:

Hey there! Props to you for staying positive despite your frustration.

The current pip system is deceptively not noob friendly letting many people get an almost free pass to division 4 only to be met by seemingly undeserved loss streaks.

I made it to Ruby pretty easily, right? That probably means I’m pretty good!

Sadly this is not always the case; the current Ranked system is not a good one for new players to learn the game well. The good thing is that you’re not lying to yourself.

As some above me have mentioned, stick to Unranked queue for now. Despite the fact many ragers in Ranked will try to insult you by saying this, I assure you: we are not!

I would recommend you focus on 1v1s first (mostly by always capping homenode and fighting anyone that pushes you). Don’t camp the node once it’s capped, if nobody pushed you at the start, it discourages people from fighting you on it, and you won’t learn matchups like that!

Alternatively you can push far from the start, you might die a lot at first, and some people might chew you out for it, but worry not, you are in unranked; have some fun and practice your mechanics.

One last thing, every time you die, even if it was your teammates fault, always analyze your situation and think: what mistakes did I make during that fight? What can I do better next time?

Be analytical and objective, and I’m sure you’ll improve in no time!

Once you feel very comfortable with most—if not all—your matchups, feel free to try Ranked again.

Best of luck!

What is this? A nice, positive post from Acandis? Am I dreaming?

Simple solution: Team Up.

Starbreaker.6507:

Since just before the halfway point of last season I switched over to Ranger as my defacto ‘main’ (previously was guard) and I’ve been running it ever since, so I’m well versed in the meta setup. Sometimes to switch things up I’ll switch off my bunker druid spec to a more offensive (Marks/WS/Druid) one if I see we have another bunker (i.e. ele or someone that wants to stick with bunker druid) on the team.

I know it’s been knocked down a peg this season compared to last, but it’s the one I’ve logged the most time with (besides Guardian), so I still plan to stick with it.

I have been trying to play other professions too, but I can see where switching up professions too much may be a problem and I’m probably doing a disservice to my team since I don’t know the others as well as I do ranger.

I feel competent most of the time, but there are just some games I’m left scratching my head wondering what else I could have done. That may be another part of my issue – recognizing what I didn’t do as much as what I did do.

Maybe it’s back to the salt mines, I mean unranked for me!

Thanks for all the positive responses guys! I’m glad to see not everyone in the PvP community is jaded :P

Here’s one thing that will improve your gameplay by a lot:
Record yourself and re-watch each match directly afterwards. Oftentimes, especially in the beginning, you wont recognize or remember your own mistakes because you only reacted all the time. Recording yourself will help you analyze and find your mistakes.
Stay objective, watch what enemy did, how you reacted, look for wasted skills or dodges, look at minimap to see what enemy team did while you were fighting, look at the time it took you to fight.

Starbreaker.6507:

I think the sad part is I can’t even really see for myself if there’s been much improvement. I tend to lose a lot of 1v1s no matter what profession I play and I always seem to be hitting the wrong skills at the wrong time it seems, and it’s hard to objectively say how well I did or helped the team when a vast majority (easily 75%+) of my losses have been complete blowouts and my few wins lately coming against teams that are reaaally bad.

Somebody already mentioned it, but if you can’t pick up your mistakes in real time, record yourself. It’s easier to see mistakes when you don’t need to react and you can re-watch the event over and over. Adjust accordingly. But don’t fall to overanalyzing, sometimes there’s nothing you CAN do. Sometimes you can do everything right but the rest of your team melts on points. You have be able to distinguish the difference.

Secondly, learn the maps and how to rotate in them. PvP is not all team fighting and 1v1’s. Most of the time when you watch Pro League matches, the team with better rotations wins. Do you know the buff timers on temple? Do you know when bosses spawn in Forest? Do you recognize when a mid-fight is lost, and you should rotate to far? Feeding the enemy’s midfight is not wise.

My win rate this season has been around 60%, maybe 65%. Now I’m in Ruby my winrate has dropped off to about 50%. Honestly, that might just mean I am roughly where I’m meant to be in terms of skill. The same thing may have happened to you. That’s no reason not to keep on playing!

Hi Starbreaker,

How many matches have you played overall? It might take quite a while before you figure out your full keybind and the best order in which you should use your skills. Some tips:

- Focus on playing one profession; I read that you play ranger. I play that too, just stick with it for a longer period of time.

- Try to find a guild that accepts beginning PvP’ers. You can practice with them, and they might give you a good opinion on what you could do better.

- Winning 1v1’s is actually quite important. When you have your own combo’s working well, then try to observe what the opponent is doing; dodging certain attacks is essential.

- Try to flee from a fight that you estimate as an upcomming loss. Often it is better to give a capture point away and stay alive than dieing on the point a little later. You could spare for example Staff #3, Sword #2 or Lightning reflexes for such situations.

In general, patience is key to learn what is best, what capture node you should go, what fights you should or should not participate in, etc. Don’t focus too much on gaining pips, they’re not so important. That’s business for later. Ruby is good enough to learn a lot.

Furious.1283:

Yasi.9065:

Kylden Ar.3724:

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions. Hit unranked until you feel competent at winning 1v1, or in case of support professions -> not dieing in under 3 minutes per fight.

Then go back to ranked.

Does Unranked do ANYTHING to reset your MMR so you can at least start getting average teams over kitten teams?

No, and why should it. If you improve, your mmr improves. If you dont improve, your mmr doesnt improve.

… which comes to my question and it hasn’t been answered anywhere: How do I improve my MMR?

I feel I’m stuck in my MMR and with the feeling I will never improve.

This whole thread gives you the answer. Drop out of the race for legendary, go back to training school (aka unranked), commit to max. 2 professions, record your matches, correct your mistakes.

When you go back to ranked after that, you will see that you are way more capable of improving your mmr.

There is no way to improve your mmr without improving your skill. Ranked isnt the place to improve, especially when you hit your limit there. You will destroy your mmr by trying to improve your skill.

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions.

This, so much this, playing too many professions will affect you in PvP quite a lot. When doing the profession achievement, dont actually play the 3 or so classes Anet wants you to play, play your main then switch to a different class at about 400 if the match is not too close

fact that you didnt just blame the MM for not winning makes your better than all of the QQ poster in the forums, /clap

Ragion.2831:

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions.

This, so much this, playing too many professions will affect you in PvP quite a lot. When doing the profession achievement, dont actually play the 3 or so classes Anet wants you to play, play your main then switch to a different class at about 400 if the match is not too close

I can absolutely recommend this. You dont need to cap / kill anything to advance this achievement, so just switching at 400 is more than enough. Best map for this is actually khylo… but forest is good for this too.

As others have said, pick a class and master it. Play unranked to get use to it. Once you are winning more fights than you are losing, try ranked again, also learn how to read the map. Proper rotation is key to wins. No point in running to middle if everyone is downed. Don’t go running into a lost fight.

To be honest, it sounds like you are focusing too much on what your teammates do wrong, instead of trying to learn how to adjust your gameplay/rotations to win in spite of what mistakes your teammates make.

Its the lauded “what could I have done better to improve winning chances”. A close loss in unranked is as much worth learning wise, as a win.

Yasi.9065:

Starbreaker.6507:

Since just before the halfway point of last season I switched over to Ranger as my defacto ‘main’ (previously was guard) and I’ve been running it ever since, so I’m well versed in the meta setup. Sometimes to switch things up I’ll switch off my bunker druid spec to a more offensive (Marks/WS/Druid) one if I see we have another bunker (i.e. ele or someone that wants to stick with bunker druid) on the team.

I know it’s been knocked down a peg this season compared to last, but it’s the one I’ve logged the most time with (besides Guardian), so I still plan to stick with it.

I have been trying to play other professions too, but I can see where switching up professions too much may be a problem and I’m probably doing a disservice to my team since I don’t know the others as well as I do ranger.

I feel competent most of the time, but there are just some games I’m left scratching my head wondering what else I could have done. That may be another part of my issue – recognizing what I didn’t do as much as what I did do.

Maybe it’s back to the salt mines, I mean unranked for me!

Thanks for all the positive responses guys! I’m glad to see not everyone in the PvP community is jaded :P

Here’s one thing that will improve your gameplay by a lot:
Record yourself and re-watch each match directly afterwards. Oftentimes, especially in the beginning, you wont recognize or remember your own mistakes because you only reacted all the time. Recording yourself will help you analyze and find your mistakes.
Stay objective, watch what enemy did, how you reacted, look for wasted skills or dodges, look at minimap to see what enemy team did while you were fighting, look at the time it took you to fight.

Are there any particular programs you’d recommend for recording?

On a side not I stumbled across someone that was looking for advice on recently played matches and found it was someone I’ve played against a handful of time and I got to see myself.

Boy did I cringe after…

I realised two things off the bat -

1.) I blow dodges at the wrong time too much – although sometimes I accidentally do it from double-tapping my movement key on accident

2. I have bad use of my Glyph of Equality and either I don’t have it when I need a stun break or I manage to daze without any purpose (like not team follow-up or not interrupting an important skill)