Guild Wars 2

I know that in theory, as I get better through experience, I should win more and my leaderboard position should increase. But in reality, I feel like I’m simply stuck where I’ve been for the last week, ever since the patch brought tons of PvEers into PvP.

I lose about 50% of my matches continuously. Not to brag — because I don’t think I’m an expert player by any means — but I feel I am usually in the top 3 of my team in most games in terms of contribution. But I cannot seem to break the 50-50 barrier.

And my percentile has been either going down or languishing. I’m not moving up, and I’m continuing to end up in games with much lower-ranked players and some who by their play obviously haven’t PvPed much at all.

I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed by others, but obviously we don’t know the algorithms. Is it possible that what seems to be happening actually is? Or am I just really not getting better and think I am?

For me it’s a matter of perseverance and not taking it super seriously. I recovered today from a nasty 5 loss streak and had some extremely close matches today (all within 5 points).

I feel where you’re coming from as I keep seeing myself fluctuate quite a bit. I’ve learned to accept it and keep playing and you really will just gradually climb. For me, the key is consistent playing. I dropped the hardest after not playing for a week (and not only due to decay). Last night I was raging pretty hard after the worst losing streak I’ve had, and I just went 5-0 right now. It’s really uneven seeming, but finding a build that I enjoy and is solid at winning 1v1s and lasting in 1v2s is the most enjoyable and helps me slowly climb.

Don’t give up!

It’s always supposed to be about 50/50. You are supposed to be equally matched with players who can win as easily as you can. So…50%.

The position on the leaderboard only shows the skill “bracket” where you play your 50/50 matches.

L2carry. That’s what solo queue is about.

If you really care about your position in leaderboard, play warrior or guardian (mainly guard). With these two classes you can carry games. Team with better guards and warriors wins.

Thanks for the encouragement Ashin. It could just be, at least in part, a string of bad luck.

As for playing a paritcular class just to move up the ranks, that’s something I might do. I’m experimenting with a bunker warrior right now, I don’t have any familiarity with guardian but may try that too.

It’s not that I care what the number is for bragging purposes or anything, it’s just that I want to get out of this mire where every match at least 3 of the 10 players either leaves or has no idea what to do.

I highly recommend playing Guardian or some other build with some decent sustain and support especially at the lower end of the leaderboard. I’ve had great success with running a symbol based Guardian build that has solid DPS and sustain. I’ve found at the lower brackets of the leaderboard (800-high %) you need to be able to really do everything.

I run a build that I can reliably win 1v1s but can also sustain in a 1v2 incase your teammates aren’t doing anything productive. Being able to do this will greatly turn matches in your favor. Until my horrible match record this week (12-13) I had a win rate of roughly 60% post MMR shuffling update.

If you are winning/losing 50/50, then you have reached your skill bracket. The only way to get out of it is to get better. But, keep in mind that everyone else is also playing and getting better too. Your “rank” is a representation of your skill relative to everyone else that’s currently actively playing sPVP.

Playing more without getting more skilled does not guarantee that you will move up in the leaderboards (unless everyone else quits sPVP, which has happened to some extent).

I’ve thought about guardian, Ashin, but have little experience with them. And to be honest, I find that I can kill most of them pretty easily with my mesmer, which makes me wonder if that’s really the direction I should go.

Love to see your build if you’re willing to share (here or PM, if you wish.)

Kharr, I don’t really think I’ve reached my skill bracket based on my gameplay experience. I could be wrong, but it just seems that way, as I have a lot of games where I play well but still lose due to circumstances beyond my control. That keeps me down in the bottom of the rankings where I am teamed with more people who cause me to lose in ways I can’t avoid, setting up what seems like a vicious cycle.

Ye its about how many carriers your team has, few days ago crawled whole day on like 2 win 1 loose and then in evening got 7 looses in row. Feels like i try to get from 600 to top 50 every 3-4 days.

Qaelyn.7612:

I’ve thought about guardian, Ashin, but have little experience with them. And to be honest, I find that I can kill most of them pretty easily with my mesmer, which makes me wonder if that’s really the direction I should go.

Love to see your build if you’re willing to share (here or PM, if you wish.)

Kharr, I don’t really think I’ve reached my skill bracket based on my gameplay experience. I could be wrong, but it just seems that way, as I have a lot of games where I play well but still lose due to circumstances beyond my control. That keeps me down in the bottom of the rankings where I am teamed with more people who cause me to lose in ways I can’t avoid, setting up what seems like a vicious cycle.

I can almost guarantee that you probably play a roamer and look for 1v1 fights. You cannot hold a point. You cannot help much in a team fight since you do not run team buffs.

This does not help a team win and keeps you on losing teams. And your rank is ONLY about your team wins, not your own play. You MUST influence your team win.

I know about this because I did the same thing for months and learned the hard way.

Go for a more team supporting class/build. A good example is a spirit ranger…with the super buffs they provide to everyone in a team fight.

Silentshoes.1805:

I can almost guarantee that you probably play a roamer and look for 1v1 fights.

No, you can’t.

I’ll assume you meant well but this is not at all how I play. I usually bunker a point and then help out adjacent points when necessary.

Mesmers in PvP are not particularly team-oriented, but I do a pretty good job in most regards. Unfortunately, being stuck in the 30% range of solo queue, I cannot afford to take team-specific traits and utilities because most of the teams I am in are like a herd of 5 cats.

I’ve been trying a defensive warrior, don’t like the style. I tried guardian, that has potential but I have a lot to learn.. and to be honest, I feel like I bunker better with my mesmer than half the guardians I meet.

Was looking at engineer. Ranger is one I’ve never considered before. I don’t know either class though, so it would be a learning curve.

Yeah, I wasn’t trying to be critical, just helpful because I see the situation I described a lot.

People do it because it is not that much fun supporting a “team” that is not very good. So they just look for skirmishes.

i feel the same way. I got to rank 72 during the “pre” reset and I don’t think this was a coincidence. Only the real players played during that time, was playing with guys currently ranked top 100 and holding my own easily. Now i can’t get out of rank 65%….

Several days later it still feels like this is happening. I dueled with a friend and he said he could tell I had significantly improved.. but I still lose a little over 50% of my matches, and barely nudge my leaderboard position (and thus MMR) because I seem to incessantly be stuck on teams with players who don’t listen and don’t talk and don’t act like a team so we lose.

I don’t know if it’s just an incredible run of bad luck or if there’s something funky with my account, but it’s incredibly disheartening.

Team queue, solo queue, doesn’t matter. People either don’t make plans or they make them and don’t follow them. Last game we agree I’m going far point, some other guy follows me anyway. So I leave so he can deal with it, and he abandons it. I go back when I notice this, and again he follows me and we lose the other 2 points.

Every bloody game is like this. I’m getting ready to just give up on it, because I don’t see any way to get out of this mire when I lose my matches all the time over things I cannot control.

Everyone who solo queues has been in those bad matches where your entire team seems to have one goal and that is to tank your rating. Don’t give up on pvp, just keep queuing. Even if for now your rating does not seem to improve, you will get better with more experience.

Do yourself a favor and don’t check leaderboard stats for at least two weeks. Just play, try to win your 1v1s, try to help winning team fights, and enjoy pvp for what it is.

Also, have you considered asking one of the higher ranked players for build advice? If I wanted to play mesmer in solo queue, I’d ask Darnis.

It honestly isn’t worth the trouble.
If you’re playing this game for the pvp, you’re doing it wrong.

I assume you are a mesmer.

Heres your problem you assume your team is always a herd of cats. Then, you are also facing a herd of enemy cats. If you bring more team utility dont you think your allied cats will have more of an advantage to beat the oposing team?

Please post your build so I can be of further assistance.

Regardless of class, build. Every combination of those has its weaknesses and strenghts. When entering a match, acknowledge what does your team have and what does the enemy team have? What is your team lacking or needs to do in order to overcome or atleast minimize the enemies strenght. Try new opening strategies with your team and evaluate how well they work versus certain comps and what went wrong when it failed? When you die, what could have YOU done better?

These are just some tips to help you improve as a soloqr and as a player.

Ulalume.9584:

Everyone who solo queues has been in those bad matches where your entire team seems to have one goal and that is to tank your rating. Don’t give up on pvp, just keep queuing. Even if for now your rating does not seem to improve, you will get better with more experience.

Do yourself a favor and don’t check leaderboard stats for at least two weeks. Just play, try to win your 1v1s, try to help winning team fights, and enjoy pvp for what it is.

This is good advice, thanks. And pretty much what I started doing last night… just going to team queue, assuming I will lose at least half my matches, and working on my own build and getting my rank higher so I have a shot of getting on a team later on. And oddly enough, actually won a few matches.

Quickfoot, I don’t assume they are a herd of cats, they just usually behave that way. As it happens last night I got into a couple of matches where we did play like a team and that was great. I’m just tired of being the only one who tries to play intelligently when 3 or 4 of the others simply want to run around and skirmish (or worse). So I’m just going to go with whatever happens from now on and not worry about it.

I do play a mesmer but it’s a very balanced one, capable of taking or defending a cap point, and I’m also often able to tie up 2 opponents for a long time giving the rest of my team an advantage. I’m not a selfish player.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I assume you are a mesmer.

Heres your problem you assume your team is always a herd of cats. Then, you are also facing a herd of enemy cats. If you bring more team utility dont you think your allied cats will have more of an advantage to beat the oposing team?

Please post your build so I can be of further assistance.

Regardless of class, build. Every combination of those has its weaknesses and strenghts. When entering a match, acknowledge what does your team have and what does the enemy team have? What is your team lacking or needs to do in order to overcome or atleast minimize the enemies strenght. Try new opening strategies with your team and evaluate how well they work versus certain comps and what went wrong when it failed? When you die, what could have YOU done better?

These are just some tips to help you improve as a soloqr and as a player.

In an ideal world I agree 100% with your philosophy.
Problem just is: Do you even get a group you can consider a team?

I usually pug the team q, I have only played solo q 12 times in total I think, but at one point was in group with 3 guards and a spirit ranger.
You should think one of them would get the bright idea of either capping or defending something.

That was not the case. I got to watch my entire “team” chase one enemy player around the map while I was alone against the rest of his team.
All I could do was cap or decap and then run for my life to cap/decap something else.
Most of my other solo q games matched this experience.

At the lower levels of mmr, there is not much teamwork going on at all.
I think you are right in your points, but I think the teamwork is more likely to happen once you raise your mmr, which is what the OP has issues with in the first place.

Reesha.7901:

That was not the case. I got to watch my entire “team” chase one enemy player around the map while I was alone against the rest of his team.
All I could do was cap or decap and then run for my life to cap/decap something else.

This is what happens to me. Many games, I find 3 or 4 of my teammates in a big dogfight somewhere, usually at mid, and I have to try to cap or decap the other points. In some cases, while I am doing this I’m getting berated by some tactical genius on my team who thinks I too should join the big fight rather than “wasting time capping far”. It’s crazy.

Reesha.7901:

At the lower levels of mmr, there is not much teamwork going on at all.
I think you are right in your points, but I think the teamwork is more likely to happen once you raise your mmr, which is what the OP has issues with in the first place.

Exactly the point of the thread, thanks. It’s a vicious circle to some extent.

But there’s nothing I can do about it other than quit or just accept that I’ll be in this quagmire for a long time.

This is part of why a few weeks ago I was looking for one of the “overpowered” builds everyone complains about that can carry a game. I haven’t found one yet that works for me though I still have to try engi, necro and ranger.

Qaelyn.7612:

This is what happens to me. Many games, I find 3 or 4 of my teammates in a big dogfight somewhere, usually at mid

A big fight on mid point is fine though. It is an important node to get hold of if possible.
I found my “team” to not fight on or for any point most of the time. ^^

And then there was match, where one player actually did communicate (rare). Sadly he/she decided, that map chat was the place to tell where he/she was going.

And then there was the match, where 2 people decided to stand afk at the spawn point.

And then there was the match where people kept running in to mid solo and basically working as a point accumulator for the opposing team.

For me, Solo q was a fairly frustrating experience. ^^

The dogfight at mid can be fine if you do it in a way that advantages your team, and if the other players take advantage of it. If 3 players from your team engage 4 from theirs, and the other 2 players on your team guard the side points, you win. The problem is that as you’ve observed, it’s rarely the case that anyone is that organized.

My tip for climbing MMR more easily is to not be a homepoint defender. At start of the match imediately give positions to the majority of people. For example tell the ranger/engi to go close, guard to go mid and the rest mid aswell. You will have more chances at suceeding if you play a roamer and are capable of QUICKLY outplaying your oponent, aswell as using the map awareness to your advantage. Dont assume that if your team is fighting in equal numbers is fine. Go there, quickly call a fragile target, burst it down, help dps downed folks, grab some team utility like null field and portal.

Also, be aware that you just cant win some class matchups and dont waste your time fighting a guy who is clearly not dieing anytime soon. Disengage imediately if the situation gets tough on far, try to a neutralize and back off (for ex. If you are using greatsword and sword main hand, open up with mass invisibility from a corner, get behind them and push them out of the point with GS #5 followed up by a sword immob for a free decap. The same combo can be done with mass invis on cooldown if you use blink to get behind them at the same time you are doing a 180 GS #5. While doing is you generally notice if he is killable in a 10 second time frame or not. If he is, do it and claim the point, otherwise dont waste time, you got the neutralize, it was worth it, get back to mid to help your team on the teamfight

Well I just had a match where someone from the other team said “kitten mesmer” or something in map chat after it was over. I took it good-naturedly and asked him what he meant, and he just said he was annoyed because “YOU WOULDN’T DIE AND KEPT DISAPPEARING”. Heh.

He said he thought I was good, which was reassuring.

And I pointed out that.. my team still lost.

Qaelyn.7612:

Team queue, solo queue, doesn’t matter. People either don’t make plans or they make them and don’t follow them. Last game we agree I’m going far point, some other guy follows me anyway. So I leave so he can deal with it, and he abandons it. I go back when I notice this, and again he follows me and we lose the other 2 points.

Every bloody game is like this. I’m getting ready to just give up on it, because I don’t see any way to get out of this mire when I lose my matches all the time over things I cannot control.

^ This. When people just blindly follow you around, sit on points when they should be moving around, afk’ing on points (Im looking at you spirit rangers), staff eles, guardians pushing far, the list goes on and on. It’s so defeating when you see a party wipe where you see all the green bars turn into red bars in an instant. It’s like you say to yourself, “okay, 3v3 on mid. everyone looks healthy. mid is fine.” Then the next second you see all red bars and facepalm.

I only had ONE game, ONE, today where a necro knew how to watch home point. Bravo, sir.

Yeah, I’ve pretty much given up at this point. My rank keeps going up as I play, and I know I do a decent job.. and my leaderboard position and MMR are stuck and not going anywhere.

I may keep playing to get my rank higher, but I’m already thinking about joining the (very large) ranks of former PvP players. It’s just not fun to constantly lose because of things you really can’t control.

I may give a shot to one of those OP builds everyone complains about. Maybe that will help me nudge out of this. I doubt it though.

I dont know what to tell you Qaelyn, maybe I’m not a good player at all and I just got lucky on climbing the leaderboards? I don’t honestly believe this, because I actually carry a lot of games that my class is good at carrying, like Forest of Nifhel (neutralizing far and stealing bosses, I general steal 2 Bosses per match, that gives my team 50 points advantage), Legacy of Foefire (as a D/P thief you can easily and quickly solo their Lord).

You seem to be under the illusion that many players from other games suffer from which is the ELO Hell. Players said to be stuck in ELO Hell cant get out by their own and always blame their teammates for trolling/leaving/being bad.

Maybe you are in fact better than the MMR you are at, but if you cant carry it alone, you might not be as good as you need to be to carry your other teammates by yourself.

I think it’s possible for someone to be in a place where they would make a solid contribution to a good team but they aren’t strong enough carry a weak one. This happens in real life as well.

Assuming I stick with PvP, I may have to switch to a different class that works better at these levels to try to raise my MMR to a place where this happens less. It’s pretty difficult for a mesmer of any sort to carry a team.

It could just be bad luck.

Or it could be that I suck. shrug

Whatever it is, it’s not fun.

I suppose u don’t wanna or can play in a team, because thats the only thing that u can do to avoid the randomness of playing alone.
Gw2 spvp it’s a team game, meaning, solo queue leaderboards are more or less a huge joke, and solo queue or team pugging is random, there are some systems making it less random, but overall, there is a lot of randomness and u can only avoid that by joining a team.
If u want a nonrandom single player competitive experience, yea, u should probably stop playing gw2 spvp before u get mad.

I wish I could give you some good advice but I’ve never been in this MMR hell, no idea how I’ve missed it. Of course I have some bad games with clueless players in the team and of course sometimes happens they to be 2-3 in a row but it’s an exception, not a rule.

What I do when I have a chain of lost games is to switch the class. I know there is absolutely no logic, but it always works for me. So if I lose 3 games in a row with my guardian, I switch to necro and somehow start to win. Then when start to lose again, switch to warrior. When my warrior starts to lose games – back to guardian. That’s how even if you lose games it gives you some variety and prevents you from doing the same mistakes again and again only because you’re losing your temper.

Come on, don’t give up on PvP, the community needs more players like you

Baldric, there aren’t a lot of people anxious to sign up a newbie mesmer to their team. And I can’t commit to a nightly schedule or whatnot either. At some point I’m sure I’ll find a team that fits, but it will take a while.

Eyia, thanks. I don’t really have another class I feel comfortable with in PvP right now. I know thief fairly well but don’t enjoy it in PvP at my skill level. Warrior I like even less, and guardian seems kind of bleh. I’m trying to learn engi right now.

Having offensive class helps to get out of low percentile, so playing shatter is your best option. Also you could try to command your teammates. Be aware of enemy players positions for free decaps. I have been in 7% after reset and made it to top 25 soloq with a berserker ranger. So its definitely possible to get out of MMR hell.

Baldric.6781:

I suppose u don’t wanna or can play in a team, because thats the only thing that u can do to avoid the randomness of playing alone.
Gw2 spvp it’s a team game, meaning, solo queue leaderboards are more or less a huge joke, and solo queue or team pugging is random, there are some systems making it less random, but overall, there is a lot of randomness and u can only avoid that by joining a team.
If u want a nonrandom single player competitive experience, yea, u should probably stop playing gw2 spvp before u get mad.

league of legends is a team game. You dont hear that their soloQ ladder is a huge joke.

What gives? You know what? The first 1-2 years the LoL community cried a lot that soloQ ladder was not a representation of skill, but now all that QQ is gone and soloQ is pretty much a good indicator of your skill.

I expect the same to happen to the GW2 community.

Don’t know the original song, but that was creative.

Just lost a solo queue match because, despite my repeated requests, nobody would help me take out the trebuchet. I went all the way there myself, barely lost to the warrior manning it, then had to go back again. While the rest of my team just ran around skirmishing and dying to the treb shots.

This is why I cannot win matches, and there’s nothing realistic I can do about it.

Yeah, I’m venting, but it’s frustrating.

Qaelyn.7612:

Just lost a solo queue match because, despite my repeated requests, nobody would help me take out the trebuchet. I went all the way there myself, barely lost to the warrior manning it, then had to go back again. While the rest of my team just ran around skirmishing and dying to the treb shots.

This is why I cannot win matches, and there’s nothing realistic I can do about it.

Yeah, I’m venting, but it’s frustrating.

I designed a build that can smite any hambow to the ground.

Alas, it’s a warrior build. It’s the second most played class, and my main for spvp since it was UP.

However, it’s normal: the same thing happens at all ranks. You try to attack the treb, and then one more enemy comes in aid of the trebber, and you go down. While your allies don’t give a crap, either because they think you can reliably win a 2v1, or because they just don’t think it’s important. Meanwhile, the trebber rains death on all your team. “Pros” scream “More peopel to defend home!”=“Let’s go and feed ourselves to the treb!”.

IMHO 2 people should go and destroy the treb, and one should always be nearby to attack the people who repair it. Learned this the hard way in team queue, with a team without voice chat (so we could discuss our mistakes, even if we couldn’t coordinate well). Someone has to be a dedicated “Anti-trebber”.

Thanks, appreciate the empathy if nothing else.

I tried to play warrior a bit in PvP but haven’t found anything that works well for me, at least not yet. I can usually handle them on my mes but this was a decent one.

Part of the problem is that at the low ranks at least some players/teams pay heavy attention to trebbing but many ignore it, so a lot of folks don’t think taking it out is important. Plus my mes is not a good class for treb killing as it relies greatly on crits and conditions.

What warrior build do you use?

An old love, revamped for the last patch. The initial projext was sword/longbow, but I changed it a bit.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAseSjkOxwpQCPMxBEkCNkLOPSClYKUKsjNE-TsAA1CnI4SxljLDXSus1MsYZxsAA

I need hammer for downed state management: too many times I failed to save a teammate because is wanted to interrupt the stomper with shield 4 but swapped weapons in the rush. Now if I swap weapons I can still interrupt the stomper.

I killed many hambows by just standing in their face and autoattacking (not advisable in other situation, but I think it’s a fitting way to off a hambow). Too much armor for them to handle.

Interesting build, thanks.

Why all the on-crit stuff with only a 22% crit chance though?

Qaelyn.7612:

Interesting build, thanks.

Why all the on-crit stuff with only a 22% crit chance though?

Because the crit builds up to 52% with sword and 42% on hammer, without counting unsuspecting foe. This with fury, which has a decent uptime.

Considering How fast you hit with sword, 52% is enough for the sigil to proc once every 5 seconds.

Cool. Wouldn’t the classic in such a build be mace/shield? Just probing to learn more.

Qaelyn.7612:

Cool. Wouldn’t the classic in such a build be mace/shield? Just probing to learn more.

Well, I find it a bit boring and annoying for the opponent.

I use sword to pump up my damage with Blademaster and bleeds and because very few people expect it. Despite little numbers, it has a good dps and staying power through cripples. And gives you mobility (works better than GS on all those maps that have shortcuts accessible through jumps).

Cool.

Not tempted to go s/s for the nasty torment?

Qaelyn.7612:

Cool.

Not tempted to go s/s for the nasty torment?

Torment is evil. And shield lets me keep a point contested a bit more against overwhelming forces.

Thanks.

So my great adventures in PvP today included…

Losing something like 500-40 in a team queue match against a real team when I got paired with 3 thieves, 1 of whom quit in the middle of a match.

A solo queue loss where 2 or 3 of my team decided to keep running orbs when we couldn’t even hold 2 points consistently (and 1 only because I held it).

Another massive solo queue loss where I, as a mesmer with no direct damage, was forced to keep knocking out their treb (despite my asking for help) because they decided it would be more effective to all swarm mid and then stay there after the point was captured.

I was going to ask if it’s better at higher levels, but it doesn’t matter because I’ll never get there.

Qaelyn.7612:

Thanks.

So my great adventures in PvP today included…

Losing something like 500-40 in a team queue match against a real team when I got paired with 3 thieves, 1 of whom quit in the middle of a match.

A solo queue loss where 2 or 3 of my team decided to keep running orbs when we couldn’t even hold 2 points consistently (and 1 only because I held it).

Another massive solo queue loss where I, as a mesmer with no direct damage, was forced to keep knocking out their treb (despite my asking for help) because they decided it would be more effective to all swarm mid and then stay there after the point was captured.

I was going to ask if it’s better at higher levels, but it doesn’t matter because I’ll never get there.

A bit, but where I am now strategies before matches are rarely discussed, and it’s hard to change it in other situations.

In general, I feel like

1. Never blame your team for losses. Always question yourself and see what you could have done better. In at least 80% of the games you should be able to make the difference and carry the team. Unless you really belong in the rating pool that you are in right now.

2. Never die. If you want to win you have to stay alive and never die really. If you manage to do this right you will notice the huge improvement in your win percentage.

3. Do not play mesmer, ever (in solo arena). From what I’ve read, you can’t take out treb, you are running a non-zerker build. Fact is, that build does not contribute the TEAM enough. Killing someone 1v1 some times doesn’t mean much. You have to make a difference, you have to help the TEAM. I would suggest playing something tanky. Warrior, guardian, spirit ranger, mm necro, etc.

4. Do not expect the team to adapt to you. You have to adapt to them.

5. At the beginning of the match type the tactic in team. Keep it simple though. For example: “1 home 4 mid” “who wants home?”. If you type too much people will think you are a bad player (you will understand when you get to high rating pool).

6. Remember that in most matches it all depends on you and your personal skill, not the team. However, sometimes all is vain.