Guild Wars 2

Anyone else found this? I’m playing thief and really struggled getting out of the last 2 tiers of emerald due to unbalanced matchmaking and general low standard of play from certain individuals. But when I got into sapphire things suddenly started getting better – I progressed 3 tiers in a single days play with multiple 5 win stretches. I feel that I could have kept on going all the way to ruby If I didn’t need to sleep :p

Why is this? My build/playstyle hasn’t changed. I play a daredevil thief build with dash for mobility.

I noticed that there were many more guardians and revs about in sapphire for 1 (both sides), with more bunkers overall, and people were just better at tactics e.g. rotations. I was therefore able to put my thief to good effect without worrying about my team wiping in 10 secs at midpoint. I had time to get into position to +1, so that we had much better control of the battlefield and often made 3 cap. I could also do stuff like snipe npc, cap spirit etc without my team wiping in the meantime.

Maybe thief just made for higher tiers :p

Was struggling getting through Emerald.
Cutting through Sapphire like a hot knife through butter.

I can confirm these observations.

And I’m playing a greataxe warrior.

if your skill level is around, say, rubi, the higher the division, the better players you are going to be paired with, and you won’t be forced to go out of role to help your failing teammates.

Once you reach a division that matches your skill level, you are going to start suffering again.

My rank % is around 80 (different from win/loss) and I just got two pips in T3 emerald. Since it isn’t realistic to win 13 games in a row I can expect to claw out of emerald in maybe 30 games. With that rank % I think I should be sapphire anyway (I say think because I don’t know the intended leagues for the intended percentiles but I think diamond is supposed to be top 1,000 with legendary being top 500) but matchmaking is a bit wonky I normally soloQ but go on the occasional team.

Tl;dr: Sapphire is easier for you but I don’t know if it’ll be easier for me :(

Let’s say it’s easier concerning teammates. This is understandable since probably 60%( 30% being in amber) of players from solo queue are in emerald, so basically you can be teamed with anyone against anyone..

My last 3 foefire games, i had game lords( leave mid abandonned to suicide close or far, push lord at 320-250 and lose the game) while opponents had 5 people that could keep points.

Emerald is basically random arena, and sapphire should be full of players that at least know the basics, so it’s obviously " easier "

Well if I queue as a druid and forget revenant for the time being I might make it to sapphire faster. If I queue druid then my team will always be guaranteed to have a healer with decent crowd control.

I agree that sapphire is easier because you get teammates that are less bad at this game. You still get bad teammates though.

Emerald is horrible. I actually had a game where we got beat 500 to 0. At one point I fought 1 v 3 for 3 minutes at home. And in that time my team, with a 4 v 2, got NOTHING. How is that even possible? How can you not even get 1 kill in a 4 v 2 for 3 minutes?

I have noticed this too, I was stuck in emerald for a week playing at least 15-20 games per day with an awful win rate, featuring one run where I lost 20 out of 21 games. Now I am in sapphire, I have played 6 games and all were fairly comprehensive victories. I do agree that this is probably because the teammates are much better because before the game starts I see a fair amount of organisation and good communication throughout the matches now. I never saw this in emerald.

Yes, and my suspicion is Ruby may be better than Sapphire, as we won’t encounter so many soloers that are attempting to manipulate their MMR to get easy games. I think the leagues are promoting fantastic matches at the higher levels. I am level 4 in sapphire now, and am getting really good games (win or loose).

I had a really late start…. and I’ve been struggling to make it out of emerald, and have lost that last pip ive needed to make sapphire a couple times now….

Every time its due to some d/c or some braindead guy who has no idea what he is doing.

I only hope things get better in sapphire…. and I can sort of feel what you are saying already.

The problem is that everyone starts in the gutter…pro players and filthy cashews and must claw over eachother to progress.

The only way around this is to team q through amber and emerald.

Experienced solo q’ers get screwed by getting matched with the gutter trash until they start getting matched with better teammates.

It’s like running a marathon…. and you know you are faster than everyone else….. but you can’t physically run through someone….. so you have to jog behind 7 slow people till you muscle your way past them.

A really dumb system….. and we should maintain our league position for next time around so this crap doesn’t happen again.

This year is “year of the ascension” maybe next year will be the “year of playing in the division where you actually belong”

Wow, I am glad I see people having the same experience, I am not mad after all…. it took me almost 5 days if not a week to get through last 2 tiers of EME, especially tier 4. Games were random, no balance, was having crazy loss streaks (8 losses in a row izy). When I finally made it out EME, I blazed through SAP in 1-2 days. Games were super entertaining and much more balanced, people generally knew what to do. Now I am at ruby and I am looking forward to see what awaits.

Yes I find this. It took me forever to finish Emerald, and look at my winning streak since I’m Sapphire, I only lost 1 match.

Ha glad it wasn’t just me! Things got tougher again 4th tier sapphire but I’m now only 2 games away from ruby. Games are a lot more fun although elitism/thief hate seems to be more of an issue than before.

Emerald so far has just been whether or not my team can be carried.

Most games they’re pretty lacking but the enemy team isn’t that great either and I can carry hard enough to get the win.

Sometimes my team is just completely terrible and no one could carry them. I’m talking teams that have no idea how to rotate, no idea how to play their class, and have absolutely terrible builds. People that run into a fight 2 v 2 and just immediately die 3 seconds into the fight as a mesmer.

I disagree
My experience in Sapphire has been the worst of all season. I’m stuck on T3 since friday, with still 0 pips, around 30 to 40 games done

i’ve played only yesterday in Sapphire but i’m finding a lot more difficult.
I win 2-3 pips and then lose 2, i got a couple of disconnections too and in at least 3 games i got someone who wanted to lose to tank his MMR.
I hope to play a little bit more tonight and see what happens.

Aenesthesia.1697:

if your skill level is around, say, rubi, the higher the division, the better players you are going to be paired with, and you won’t be forced to go out of role to help your failing teammates.

Once you reach a division that matches your skill level, you are going to start suffering again.

Thats not how it should be (you should never struggle) what should happen is you start winning only half your games and you won’t advance when you hit your skill level. What happens in the first two leagues is you can easily have 5 to 6 games losing streaks that have nothing to do with your skill level if you solo queue. I am perfectly fine with winning roughly half my games if they are competitive. In theory if these leagues worked correctly you should always find your level and win roughly 50%. The second league if you solo is ridiculously broken imo.

Yeah, emerald and the first three tiers of sapphire left a bad taste in my mouth about this season’s league. I can understand people being new, but which players are newbies who just graduated from amber, and which are mmr tanking and just pretending to participate, that’s the troubling and infuriating thing.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I had a really late start…. and I’ve been struggling to make it out of emerald, and have lost that last pip ive needed to make sapphire a couple times now….

Every time its due to some d/c or some braindead guy who has no idea what he is doing.

I only hope things get better in sapphire…. and I can sort of feel what you are saying already.

The problem is that everyone starts in the gutter…pro players and filthy cashews and must claw over eachother to progress.

The only way around this is to team q through amber and emerald.

Experienced solo q’ers get screwed by getting matched with the gutter trash until they start getting matched with better teammates.

It’s like running a marathon…. and you know you are faster than everyone else….. but you can’t physically run through someone….. so you have to jog behind 7 slow people till you muscle your way past them.

A really dumb system….. and we should maintain our league position for next time around so this crap doesn’t happen again.

This year is “year of the ascension” maybe next year will be the “year of playing in the division where you actually belong”

here’s an update after i hit sapphire…. things going very smoothly so far.

Emerald is just horrible. I’m in a constant cycle of two steps forward, two steps back, without fail. It’s just a terrible system. They need to redesign it so that you no longer lose pips for bad matches.

Well I hit ruby tier 4 then went into a horrific streak of bad luck so am now tier 2. The losses were the result of terrible team play, people rotating badly, going yolo outnumbered. Whenever I say anything regarding tactics I usually got reply kitten thief reroll etc. I’ve taken a break as it’s just too toxic and frustrating. Might get together a premade and try that but not in a hurry pvp left a bad taste in my mouth.

I miss the last pip of sapphire from 2 days, tried both premade and solo queue, doing only ranked 6 hours per day and keeping a ratio of two wins and two defeat.
Sometimes we got completely destroyed by a team of full ruby and lost 2 pipes in a row, I believe it would be more fair if they get rid the two pipes at once kittening.

I would have agreed with you until I hit tier 3 of Sapphire and BOOM been on a disaster train since. Something similar happened to me in Emerald where I had a string of bad games around tier 2.

While going higher levels may offload some of the useless players. You can’t ever get away from Anet’s match making. They still manage to find bad players for you.

The genius that is MMR in Leagues, I guess it means its lining up some win streaks for me soon -.-

I’m on T1 of sapphire. Going much harder then emerald for me. Emerald was 10 wins or 15 loose streaks (wich means easy tier crossing overall).

Sapphire is, win ,loose, win, loose, loose, win, loose, win, win, loose ,loose, etc; Haven’t crossed tier 1 yet because of this.

In sapphire, for some reason, SoloQ works way better then TeamQ (perhaps cause all TeamQ’s are tank, CC spam, still good damage meta build users).

My biggest gripe in sapphire is the number of DH’s. I once was matched against 3. They put traps, and you know they gonna pull you but animation of when is pretty hard to predict, then poof, you are pulled by their F skill. Some Dh’s choose marauder amulet, and then their traps wipe you in few secs. Later in the game i beat that same DH 3 times, but alas, the opening score advantage was to big.

Enjoy Sapphire while you can. The way league progression is designed , everyone and i mean everyone will eventually get to Sapphire just by grinding. So Sapphire will the big blob of players of very widely varying skill levels. Right now the players who play a lot of games every day are up in sapphire while the casuals are still languishing in emerald or even amber because either.
1. They are just not good enough to rank up fast enough
2. They dont play many pvp games per day or not even every day so will take some time.

But have no doubt they will be in sapphire at some point. Heck the true grinders will be in ruby also and i would say in another month ruby may not be that good either.

The inability to not drop divisions is a serious flaw in my opinion where people can literally grind all the way to ruby and then relax knowing they cant drop back down.

Spartacus.3192:

The inability to not drop divisions is a serious flaw in my opinion where people can literally grind all the way to ruby and then relax knowing they cant drop back down.

They drop down to the beginning at every new season. So even if they manage to get up to division 3 or 4 by grinding (which takes time) the percentage of time they actually spend in those higher divisions is quite small compared to the time they spend grinding their way up.

Shikigami.4013:

Spartacus.3192:

The inability to not drop divisions is a serious flaw in my opinion where people can literally grind all the way to ruby and then relax knowing they cant drop back down.

They drop down to the beginning at every new season. So even if they manage to get up to division 3 or 4 by grinding (which takes time) the percentage of time they actually spend in those higher divisions is quite small compared to the time they spend grinding their way up.

Ahhh didn’t think about that. Thanks for clarifying.

I still think it should be something like if you lose 5 or 10 games in a row you drop a tier or even a division if you are at the bottom tier of a division.

true for me. I soloed sapphire in no time at all. Mostly because you don’t get people do really dumb kitten rotations . Ruby is gonna be a rude slap to your face though lol…

Easy answer is: anyone can get to emerald. You literally can’t stay in amber if you play at all and win any matches. However, not everyone can get out of emerald. Because you can finally start losing pips even if you can’t lose tiers.

So, in emerald, you get matched with amber players, we’ve been in this system long enough that bad players are bottoming out in emerald, and as you lose from having bad players on your team in emerald, your MMR shrinks and you’re stuck in the quagmire of all the bad players in emerald too.

Yes. Tier 4 of Emerald is significantly harder to pass than any other tier in Emerald

Same here. I also play thief. I think it comes from two factors. Emerald players are terrible, and are really hard to carry, especially with a thief. Once you reach saphire, they can at least hold themselves in a 1v1 waiting for you to +1, and they usually don’t go duel on far instead of letting you decap. However, they are still bad enough than a thief can still do a lot of work by decapping (noone watches points in saphire), and FOTM bunkers die relatively fast (I believe most bunker mesmers I encountered never played mesmer prior to HoT).

Ohoni.6057:

Emerald is just horrible. I’m in a constant cycle of two steps forward, two steps back, without fail. It’s just a terrible system. They need to redesign it so that you no longer lose pips for bad matches.

I found that getting a team (at least one or two friends) really helps passing through emerald. You can go back to solo queuing in saphire.

Also ruby is even easier than sapphire too.

It can only be considered harder because of the absence of checkpoints, but my w/l has only improved.

SoPP.7034:

I would have agreed with you until I hit tier 3 of Sapphire and BOOM been on a disaster train since. Something similar happened to me in Emerald where I had a string of bad games around tier 2.

While going higher levels may offload some of the useless players. You can’t ever get away from Anet’s match making. They still manage to find bad players for you.

The genius that is MMR in Leagues, I guess it means its lining up some win streaks for me soon -.-

I feel ya man I been tier 3 sapphire for days.. 4 pips up 4 pips down, never fails..

ruby isn’t better, it turns full aids with people running 4-5 bunker builds per team

2 days into ruby so far and I want to gouge my eyes out playing solo que vs the 2-3 tempest 2-3 mes comps

TheBlackLeech.9360:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I had a really late start…. and I’ve been struggling to make it out of emerald, and have lost that last pip ive needed to make sapphire a couple times now….

Every time its due to some d/c or some braindead guy who has no idea what he is doing.

I only hope things get better in sapphire…. and I can sort of feel what you are saying already.

The problem is that everyone starts in the gutter…pro players and filthy cashews and must claw over eachother to progress.

The only way around this is to team q through amber and emerald.

Experienced solo q’ers get screwed by getting matched with the gutter trash until they start getting matched with better teammates.

It’s like running a marathon…. and you know you are faster than everyone else….. but you can’t physically run through someone….. so you have to jog behind 7 slow people till you muscle your way past them.

A really dumb system….. and we should maintain our league position for next time around so this crap doesn’t happen again.

This year is “year of the ascension” maybe next year will be the “year of playing in the division where you actually belong”

here’s an update after i hit sapphire…. things going very smoothly so far.

update….. I just hit ruby….. getting through sapphire took about 1/10th the time it did to get through emerald.

One full nights worth of playing.

I’m also experiencing this – a large majority of my matches have been solo-queue, with only a few being with a pre-made or one other person.

Emerald T4 and T5 were a nightmare – gain 3 or 4 pips, then go on a massive losing streak. I lost maybe two matches in Sapphire, and I’m rolling through Ruby (currently on T3) with minimal losses compared to my wins.

I’m stuck for like 1 week in sapphire tier 3 =_=
I get 2 pips with 2 wins, then lose them both in one match or in the next losing streak.
Playing condi thief/tanky druid build. I used to play pvp all day long, but now I barely play 1 match in a day…

I had the complete opposite. Emerald was a walk in the park, while im stuck at sapphire tier 3 at the moment. It’s horrible.

Same for me as Monica. Are the ‘easy in sapphire’ guys perhaps a dragon hunter or reaper? Those profs, stacked seem to win 70% of time (i’m often matched against them).

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Same for me as Monica. Are the ‘easy in sapphire’ guys perhaps a dragon hunter or reaper? Those profs, stacked seem to win 70% of time (i’m often matched against them).

So play one of those.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Same for me as Monica. Are the ‘easy in sapphire’ guys perhaps a dragon hunter or reaper? Those profs, stacked seem to win 70% of time (i’m often matched against them).

I was indeed playing reaper when I sliced through Sapphire like a hot knife through butter.

Nah I was on thief. Ruby is kittening me off its full of terrible players who don’t know how to rotate who clearly only made it to ruby as they are playing ‘meta’ builds eg condi rev mesmer tempest etc. You can tell they lack experience with noob moves like fighting off point etc. Really frustrating when they always try to blame me as thief, you just can’t carry them

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Same for me as Monica. Are the ‘easy in sapphire’ guys perhaps a dragon hunter or reaper? Those profs, stacked seem to win 70% of time (i’m often matched against them).

Stacked reaper sucks if you hit any team with DS tempests or large amounts of condi clear.

can’t really say sapphire is easier than emerald. emerald made me hate this game much less than sapphire is doing currently.

hope I reach ruby fast then I can play stop playing after daily matches

Finding Sapphire way more fun than Emerald.

Though I also noticed that if play between 5- 10 pm my matches are generally more balanced than if I play before that. Sticking to that time frame has made pvping much more pleasurable.

Darknicrofia.2604:

ruby isn’t better, it turns full aids with people running 4-5 bunker builds per team

2 days into ruby so far and I want to gouge my eyes out playing solo que vs the 2-3 tempest 2-3 mes comps

LMAO

Its funny you say this… because last night I played a match where everything seemed pretty normal until the enemy team attempted to push our lord.

It ended up being a 5v5 on top of our lord….. and it stayed that way until the end of the match….. nobody died on my team or on the enemy team, and the lord had full hp the entire time…

It was then I realized that everyone was playing bunker/celestial and, I would compare it to two little kids trying to shoot eachother to death with nerf guns.