Guild Wars 2

This is not a whine post.

I am almost intentionally falling from platinum to bronze because I’m trying to complete the profession achievements for the backpiece. My high point MMR was about 1700, and I’m at 1200 and falling FAST. It’s not literally intentional, I just can only play 1 profession. My sincere apologies to those in the way of this stupid task but I’d like the WvW versatility of this backpiece.

What I’ve noticed is the mechanical skill level is not dramatically different. I can win like 60% of my matchups on my classes I don’t know how to play, and I do often encounter people who react intelligently.

1) The huge difference, is the lower I go, the more people over rotate. If we win mid, 4 players go far, or 3 go home to help the 1v1 there.

2) If you believe you are a gold/plat player stuck in lower divisions, go far at start. You can win the matchup 100% of the time if it’s not a hard counter and 75% of the time if it is, and due to people not knowing how to rotate to fix losing home, you should auto-win the game.

That’s really it. Honestly I think the theme of “knowing how to rotate” has been absorbed by new players and then sort of over done. People think if they’re not running at full speed to another point they’re not rotating well enough. The days of 2 years ago where someone camped home for the entire game have been educated out of people, but with a weird consequence.

I still see people camping so its not completely gone yet :P

I would add 3) a node is not worth you dying over it. If you are low on health and you are outnumbered with no backup coming, just leave the node and try to reset. Kite off of node and drag 1 or 2 people with you, it’ll keep them from stomping you quickly and then going to your teammates to outnumber them.

Also 4) learn how to stomp and cleave. Learn how to stomp downed people without being interrupted and if you can cleave do it! Make those rezzers pay for trying to get their teammate back up! If you do this right you’ll have not just 1 dead person but 2 or 3.

I agree totally. After a certain point, mechanical skill means very little and the real skill comes from your rotational knowledge. Rotations are by far the hardest thing to learn in this game and they have such a big impact on your ability to win. They take a very long time to learn and you will have mastered your class long before you can rotate perfectly with it. Being in the right place 100% of the time will carry games very hard.

The example I can think of in EU is when I play against sindrener/zan/misha. Mechanically, I am pretty much as good as them (maybe 10% off) and I can do great in duels against them all. BUT what makes them so much better than me and almost all others is that their rotational knowledge is exceptional. They know exactly where to be every second of the game. Even if we win fights we still get outrotated and lose games. This is the secret to their unbelievable win rates.

So yeah, rotations do have a much larger impact than actual skill so if you think you are a good player stuck in gold/silver, work on your rotations more than anything else. All the mechanical skill in the world can only get you so far.

I remember my first season (2) I would just rush far at start on my druid build I use for wvw roaming and troll 1,2,3 people so hard that it was impossible for my team to fail the opener.

Nowadays in silver/gold it’s get glass hammer rev and crush the noobs at mid with hard unblockable damage.

Yes i totally agree with what you guys said. Especially the dying on node thing. Alot of players seem to think that standing on node during the first mid fight just to contest it is the only way to go even though he is eating all the AoEs, range attacks, bombs etc. and gets 100-0 in seconds. Alot of people seem to think that it should be a fight to the death and running away / kiting is not in their vocabulary.

JahCool.3812:

Yes i totally agree with what you guys said. Especially the dying on node thing. Alot of players seem to think that standing on node during the first mid fight just to contest it is the only way to go even though he is eating all the AoEs, range attacks, bombs etc. and gets 100-0 in seconds. Alot of people seem to think that it should be a fight to the death and running away / kiting is not in their vocabulary.

I learned this on reaper, the first team to put players on mid node is not really the team that has the best chance to cap and hold it. I stopped rushing node because my reaper was getting bug crunched, took me like 20 losses to figure that out sadly.

I am ranked around 500 to 600!

It is clear to me that the match result is pretty much determined by the amount of profession stacking – try winning against 3 rangers with 3 Smokescales roaming together between points only 5 seconds apart, same applies to almost any pet class – rather than the skill or knowledge or map tactics of the players.

Result is that the match outcome is random as the profession stacking on joining is random – hence the so-called Bronze Hell.

The other factor – on EU servers – is the language variation/problem. It is all very well grouping people randomly but any idiot knows that is they all speak different languages you’re not going to get much team work. SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ANET!

Not sure if this was mentioned, but having some semblance of an idea on what youre supposed to do in a team fight is also key. I dont know how many times I see rangers and DHs attempting to rapid fire/true shot a warrior in melee range and then complain that the warrior takes no damage and does too much in return, doing almost 0 to CC and kite away. Understand your role and how youre meant to conduct yourself. If you want to play thief, then by all means, play thief, but please know how to rotate and outnumber fights.