Guild Wars 2

While not a new player, I’m new to the PvP scene, and seem to be struggling with a few items.

Currently playing a mesmer, I think my rank is now 6 or 7.

Note: Items are not ranked in importance.

1. Monthly Rewards: Do the rewards get better as you rank up? I completed the monthly the other day, and it gave me just 5 of a couple crafting materials, and several pvp salvage kits. This seems to be quite minor in comparison to the benefits of the PvE monthly.
2. Daily/Monthly Variety: The tasks seem to be the same every day. A few more options would be nice, like the PvE daily.
3. Unbalanced Matches : I have only used the server browser/play now so far. The matches are almost always lopsided, with a near shutout, or 500 to 100 points, with me usually on the losing side. While rank isn’t a direct correlation to skill, often the winning team has several 50+ ranks, while the shutout team has 3 or more people sub rank 10.
4. Server Browser vs. Free Tournament – Where is the better place to play/learn? The forums are overflowing with imbalance complaints with the free tourney, seeming worse than the server broswer.
5. PvP Crafting – Interesting read on the wiki, but do you ever really acquire enough supplies to truly craft something? It seems like it will be a long time before I have enough of the correct materials to craft decent looking armor.
6. Community – I’m sure there are nice people somewhere online, but that seldom seems to be the case. Matches are filled with egomaniacs who think the only way to talk to someone is to insult them.
7. Thieves everywhere – Seem to be 50% of the players every game.
8. Female armor- This is a problem in PvE as well. There is maybe 1 or 2 fully clothed armor, with the rest being stripper-wear. I’d like an option that looks decent without having to choose between Monk robes or nipple stickers. Far too often I see some nice looking Male armor set, and think, that would look great on my female toon. Nope! Stripper.

While I have found PvP to be a nice distraction from the main game, it is an extremely frustrating initial experience. From the completely unbalanced matches, to the hostile community, many fixes are needed to properly infuse new blood into the community.

The lack of rewards in PvP is a problem that Arena Net is working on, as well as the overall problem that their are almost no incentives for people to PvP.

On to the unbalanced match-ups you are facing. IF it is hot-joins, what is going on is players are switching teams at the start or early part of the match. To always be on the wining side, look at the top 2-3 players of the winning side at the end of a match, and when you move to the next round, make sure to be on the same team as them (aka switch teams to win).

Players with bad attitudes are always prevalent in PvP games, be it MMO, FPS, or MOBA. Not much to do about this.

Lastly, you see a lot of thieves because they face-roll bad/mediocre players. Try to 1 on 1 every thief you can, maybe even go on some dueling servers and duel some thieves; but either way you want to get good at smashing any thief you see.

Serdoc.7261:

The lack of rewards in PvP is a problem that Arena Net is working on, as well as the overall problem that their are almost no incentives for people to PvP.

On to the unbalanced match-ups you are facing. IF it is hot-joins, what is going on is players are switching teams at the start or early part of the match. To always be on the wining side, look at the top 2-3 players of the winning side at the end of a match, and when you move to the next round, make sure to be on the same team as them (aka switch teams to win).

Players with bad attitudes are always prevalent in PvP games, be it MMO, FPS, or MOBA. Not much to do about this.

Lastly, you see a lot of thieves because they face-roll bad/mediocre players. Try to 1 on 1 every thief you can, maybe even go on some dueling servers and duel some thieves; but either way you want to get good at smashing any thief you see.

I’ve done the switch teams thing a little, but that seems to just cheapen the experience in general. Without proper matchmaking, 90% of games become a stompfest against the weaker team. Very few games seem to be balanced in terms of skill/score.

It is unfortunate that bad attitude is considered the norm for PvP systems. Perhaps if there were harsher more consistent penalties for such behaviour, things could improve.

I do need to get better about beating thieves, but the wonderful HS spam seems to mean I have to have super reflexes for the 8 or so seconds to survive. God forbid if 2 or more decide to call a target and play spam the IWIN button.

EgonVenkman.1907:

7. Thieves everywhere – Seem to be 50% of the players every game.
8. Female armor- This is a problem in PvE as well. There is maybe 1 or 2 fully clothed armor, with the rest being stripper-wear. I’d like an option that looks decent without having to choose between Monk robes or nipple stickers. Far too often I see some nice looking Male armor set, and think, that would look great on my female toon. Nope! Stripper.

7. Yes, thieves are a fairly common class, mainly because it is possible to beat most players simply by holding that heartseeker button pressed down.

8. This is wrong, I can’t put it anyway else, you’re wrong on this, theres plenty of good looking armors that doesn’t show excessive amounts of skin so again, you’re wrong.

Anet pay attention
for every person who goes out of their way to comment on initial experiences, innumerable others simply stop playing.

Lue.6538:

7. Yes, thieves are a fairly common class, mainly because it is possible to beat most players simply by holding that heartseeker button pressed down.

8. This is wrong, I can’t put it anyway else, you’re wrong on this, theres plenty of good looking armors that doesn’t show excessive amounts of skin so again, you’re wrong.

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/human-light.htm

You have a decent argument when it comes to bottoms, but tops could definitely use better diversity.

I always run a mix/match getups anyway, but finding a decent formal-ish top seems impossible.

Compare to the design of these great male ones…
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-karma-temple-male.jpg
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-stand-magician-male.jpg
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-legacy-heritage-male.jpg
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-order-vigil-male.jpg

There really isn’t any great options in similar styles for females.

But clothing options are a personal annoyance, rather than the unflattering initial experience PvP gives.

EgonVenkman.1907:

3. Unbalanced Matches : I have only used the server browser/play now so far. The matches are almost always lopsided, with a near shutout, or 500 to 100 points, with me usually on the losing side. While rank isn’t a direct correlation to skill, often the winning team has several 50+ ranks, while the shutout team has 3 or more people sub rank 10.
4. Server Browser vs. Free Tournament – Where is the better place to play/learn? The forums are overflowing with imbalance complaints with the free tourney, seeming worse than the server broswer.
6. Community – I’m sure there are nice people somewhere online, but that seldom seems to be the case. Matches are filled with egomaniacs who think the only way to talk to someone is to insult them.
7. Thieves everywhere – Seem to be 50% of the players every game.

3. The unbalanced matches are just how hotjoins are. Until Anet figures out a solution, you just have to deal with it. I would recommend joining 5v5 hotjoins. It’s probably the best place to practice.
4. Unless you care about your rank, 5v5 hotjoin is your only option. tPvP is typically premade vs pug, but it can be a very good learning experience because in those matches, players play the actual map and this is where you learn map strategies and counter builds. Just don’t rage quit like some of the baddies out there. I personally don’t care about rank so I play just to learn and have fun.
6. There are always going to be immature, childish, internet gangsters out there that think they’re the best that’s ever lived. Ignore them. The nicer players I find rarely talk during the matches, myself included, but if you whisper me with a question, I’ll be more than happy to answer them. If someone doesn’t respond, just find someone else to ask.
7. You’ll see a lot of thieves in hotjoins and it’s the only place where they’re relevant because all thieves take advantage of the chaos to pick off players who are low on health. In tPVP they’re actually very weak and you won’t see many of them in a tournament setting. They require a CC/DPS partner to be effective. Like someone else suggested, try dueling them every time you see one and eventually you’ll see that they’re actually pretty weak.

Sorry but the clothing thing isn’t a problem, if you like male styles that much roll a male. There are some real issues with armor, especially medium armor that they are all ugly coats….but your just complaining every armor isn’t tailored to your own taste which is nothing but whine.

There’s plenty of non revealing female armor if you can’t find it your not looking hard enough. IMO half the male armor you linked looks stupid…thigh high boots on a guy? really? ROFL.

2. I agree, but it’s easy, quick laurels if you need them before the reset.
3. This is fairly common, and there have been very few matches where the score ends within 100 points for me. That is why i like to play 5v5 because i can truly make a difference by playing smart and actually capping points which a lot of people neglect, which is fine because it’s not tourney play so people are just having fun.
4. Server Browser i would think, that was there for public games before tourneys.
6. That’s how it is in sPvP ego-land, i actually wish it was like WoW where you couldn’t talk to each other in map chat, but there’s not really any Lore deciding that is there.
7. Thieves are thieves, they will ‘steal’ your fun at low rank, but they get easier to deal with later on.

It gets better my friend, back in release i had a lot of trouble finding a proper build in sPvP with my 2 main chars. But when i did, the whole game instantly became fun, you have to know that sPvP is very different than WvW.

Unfortunately, we can’t change the community’s behavior which is why i cant stand playing more than a few matches at a time. Just play for fun and take sPvP as what it is, just a distraction from the main game like you said. If you can ignore the horrible community then go ahead and do tourneys.

u need to play tera if u want to have clothes that u dont look like a kitten

There are so few of us pvping now days…

oh and the community point … most of the ppl that play this game come from LOL or some other kitten game like that so yeah every1 is going to insult u and its never gona be their own fault.

On a semi-related note:

Does anyone know any friendly casual PvP guilds out there? I’m not looking for a super competitive guild. The only real requirement is that they don’t try to enforce a silly “Must always Rep Us” rule. I play with several different groups, and will rep whoever I’m with at the time.

The biggest issue with, aside from aesthetics that don’t suit everyone’s palates is that the difference between light and heavy is very nominal.

Play any build you prefer and head to the mists. Go to the golems stated as light-medium-heavy;

On crit light will take (example) 1100 damage
medium will take 1000 damage
heavy will take 920 damage

The difference between light and heavy is 180 damage on a crit.

This basically means people simply use vulnerability as a means of escalating damage, rather than as a hard counter to negating stronger, more durable armour. Again this is reflected in that all of the heavy armour users traits that there is not a single trait that reduces vulnerability. Instead there is evades that cure immobilize, cripple, blind that are seen as more beneficial for a heavy to have over maintaining their higher scaled armour stat. To compound it, they have invested in toughness score. It is now a situation that a necromancer pumping conditions can use rune of undead in light armour and get a higher toughness score than a guardian running meditations that wears heavy armour. So essentially the heavy armour wearer in this example is now the squishy class and the light armour wearer is now the tank. Go figure.

EgonVenkman.1907:

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/human-light.htm

You have a decent argument when it comes to bottoms, but tops could definitely use better diversity.

I always run a mix/match getups anyway, but finding a decent formal-ish top seems impossible.

Compare to the design of these great male ones…
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-karma-temple-male.jpg
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-stand-magician-male.jpg
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-legacy-heritage-male.jpg
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-order-vigil-male.jpg

There really isn’t any great options in similar styles for females.

But clothing options are a personal annoyance, rather than the unflattering initial experience PvP gives.

My light armor chars all wear the cabalist armor, simply because it looks alot like the mesmer armors from GW1 altho Rubric is also a favourite of mine.
However from the top of my head I can think of a couple of armors with decent top.. well..
Magician
County
Outrider
Acolyte
Rubric
Cabalist
the seer top also looks decent but the pants to go with are just horrible.

Overall tho I’d say if you want a more “classy” chest armor you’ll be looking at either cabalist, rubric or seer, then you if you want to mix and match you will need to work around the horrible cut-offs around the waist that light armor suffers from.

A full rubric set(with helm and shoulders hidden) can look fantastic if colored right tho

Well I’m glad that watering everything down into a mindless AOE spam to make the game ‘more accessible’ and easier to ‘balance’ than GW1 paid off…. oh wait… it kittening didn’t