Guild Wars 2

I’m relatively new to the SPvP scene, I liked it a bit at launch but haven’t played it since year one before this season. I decided to do some ranked this season and got to around lower/mid gold, which I was happy with because I like the little emblem. My girlfriend and I went on a 10 day vacation and when I came back I was all the way back in bronze. I knew about decay, but I didn’t think it would be so extreme. I don’t, however, completely understand decay, and was looking for some clarification.

I have been told repeatedly that just playing ranked matches will remove the decay quickly and bring me back to my original rank, but keep getting put in matches with players who immediately argue with each other and sit at spawn or just rage quit altogether within the first few minutes. I’ve very rarely had that issue before the vacation, so it’s kind of strange. I’m noticing that even though I’ve had several games that were 4v5s within the first few minutes, my decay is staying where it’s at, but my original rank is decreasing. I understand that losing matches lowers my rank, but I can’t help what’s going on in my games. Being forced into a significantly lower rating has really diminished my motivation to play the game lately as I’ve put a lot of effort into getting to where I was in Ranked.

I know I’m not a great player, but gold 2 felt pretty good, and really rekindled my competitive spirit for the first time since the game came out. If I was to stop Ranked PvP altogether until the end of the ranked season, would my new decayed bronze rank be my final rank, or would my original gold 2 (now gold 1 after several D/C or Ragequit losses) be my final rank? It seems like an awful lot of effort to go through to have it all removed by a vacation.