Guild Wars 2

Dear Arena Net, dear developers, dear community,

I come here to you in search of answers to my grief and sorrow as I do not believe that the matching up system and ranking is working as intended.

Since the start of the Competitive Ranked sPvP I have met very few victories but a plethora of losses, on a daily basis. In the beginning I have been placed in the Gold 1 bracket and now, somehow, I went so low as to Silver 1. This caused me much frustration and grief as all the losses to which I was witness, were not my fault as a player. Contrary, every match I managed to get at least one top stat, from kills to revives to offense.

In every match that I am a combatant and lost, I have seen everything from lack of direction, structure and a modicum of strategy, which means that I am either in the wrong bracket OR I am matched up with the wrong kind of competitors. To give you an example:

I play a Mesmer build, taken from the Metabattle site, the Power Shatter Chronomancer, to which I tweaked some aspects, like Scepter instead of Sword for better illusion spawn and blocks. With this character I managed to lose EVERY SINGLE MATCH in which I have participated, and trust me not from the lack of trying. I still got one or two top stats, but to no avail. A loss is a loss. The score in these matches varies wildly from 500 to 100 and something or 500 to 70 something, so on and so forth

I also play a Burn Guardian with enough sustain to keep it going and to my surprise, I had some won matches but mostly I have been met with gruesome losses. Thus I have tried to find any and all reason for these losses, in my person and as such I learned rotations, watched Youtube videos of Tournament plays, listened to Tournament champions and overall I believe I have been a good student and something stuck to me.

But still the win to lose ration is below 50%. To be more precise, as of this moment it is around 46% which indicates that your matching up system not only works poorly, but it does not work at all.

My experience thus far is one of a toxic community, bad competitive players with no strategy whatsoever and considering that this is Ranked I am talking about, the quality of gameplay is in the gutters.

I am now at the 26th lost match and I am closing in very fast to Bronze. I have stopped trying and I play to get some rewards out of it and get my achievements for the Ascension backpack, which as things progress I will either get frustrated and drop this project altogether.

Considering the above and if it is not too much to ask, I want an OFFICIAL ARENANET answer regarding the Ranked competitive play, the way players are matched and why is it possible for a player to accrue 26 (that is TWENTY SIX) consecutive lost matches.

TL;DR – The Ranked system is in the gutters, the players I am matched up fight like headless chickens with no direction or idea to whatever they are doing, and I don’t see the 50-50 win loss ratio which the theory behind postulates.

Have you ever thought that you’re the source of your loses? You taking scepter in a power Mesmer build says a lot.

It really just sounds like you’re playing classes you like but aren’t very good at and the results are as such.

With that Mesmer I get Top Kills at least once in three matches, mate. I know what I am doing.

This is a post that is ostensibly written to sound reasonable. However, with just a cursory read it can quickly be determined that the author is just another player who refuses to admit their own failings and feels that reading about the game, choosing a metabattle build, or watching youtube videos is enough to autocorrect terrible playing. It isn’t. Also, the fact that they are playing a power shatter mesmer build and not realizing that it makes you nothing but a liability for your team is quite telling.

Then mister Wisdom impart with me the wisdom you so ostensibly display and tell me what Mesmer build should I try. Make yourself useful.

Balasar.9137:

With that Mesmer I get Top Kills at least once in three matches, mate. I know what I am doing.

Hahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahaa

Hey brother. I also play an off meta build. And I often get heckled by my team before the match even begins. Sometimes people will afk a match before it starts when I don’t respond to their heckling. So I understand. Do what is fun for you and if it’s fun for you I’m sure you can find a way to make it work for you.

With that said, every loss is my fault. I don’t blame teammates ever. I don’t blame the system. I just blame myself. I think of what I could have done differently. Now if you’re losing 26 matches in a row, my first guess is that you’re ranked higher than your skill level and eventually you’ll be placed in a bracket where your wins and losses are closer to 50/50. 26 matches is a lot to lose in a row. The one constant thing in all your matches is you. It’s gotta be your fault you’re losing 26 times in a row.

Balasar.9137:

I have been placed in the Gold 1 bracket and now, somehow, I went so low as to Silver 1.
In every match that I am a combatant and lost, I have seen everything from lack of direction, structure and a modicum of strategy,

thats normal, dont worry.. they only way to get up the ladder is either by cheating or win trading..

this whole system is rigged and the matchmaker is just a random generator to keep the waiting time low by filling the teams up with the bottom of the copper swamp.

i started gold 3, and now im silver 1.. 10:1 lose / win ratio is normal..
even if i go afk for 3/4 of the match, i will still end with 2-3 achievements in most attack, most killed and or heal/rez/def

i came to accept what this so called “ranked season” is, a cesspool of cheater, exploiter and pve player who dont give a kitten and just want to afk farm the chests for another useless legendary item.

so be it.. im watching my movies and series while running around brain afk in ranked, getting my achievements and dont even care anymore

dont let you tell anything else, like from hot boy and stuff.. they just dont want people to mention how corrupt that system is, because they probably are exploiting it for them self. also im sure the amount of bots is raising.. either that or gw2 has some brain decaying effects.

Balasar.9137:

In the beginning I have been placed in the Gold 1 bracket and now, somehow, I went so low as to Silver 1

were not my fault as a player. Contrary, every match I managed to get at least one top stat, from kills to revives to offense.

In every match that I am a combatant and lost, I have seen everything from lack of direction, structure and a modicum of strategy, which means that I am either in the wrong bracket OR I am matched up with the wrong kind of competitors.

I still got one or two top stats, but to no avail. A loss is a loss. The score in these matches varies wildly from 500 to 100 and something or 500 to 70 something, so on and so forth

watched Youtube videos of Tournament plays, listened to Tournament champions and overall I believe I have been a good student and something stuck to me.

your matching up system not only works poorly, but it does not work at all.

a toxic community, bad competitive players with no strategy whatsoever

Video by Crinn detailing how to handle Ranked.

Look, if you lose 2 matches in a row, stop and take a break. Losing and continuously queuing makes you upset and affects your performance, and you make bad decisions. You should also queue dodge if you keep running into the same minefield of supposedly bad players.

These lose streaks shouldn’t be created in the first place. The most I’ve had was 4 losses in a row and I can feel the tilt in me by the 3rd game; I felt completely silly because there’s no point in PvP if you don’t have a cool head, you’re not winning/learning and you’re not having fun.

Balasar.9137:

With that Mesmer I get Top Kills at least once in three matches, mate. I know what I am doing.

Top stats mean jack skritt most of the time, a mechanically correct Thief that successfully +1s whole game and escapes before prolonged fights might not even get a single top stat, but he has one of the highest carry potential in the game. It’s been a few years and I really haven’t seen “I got top stats steefu” in a long time.

It’s always about the build isn’t it? Sage amulet Mesmer with Sword/Shield + Staff is setup the way it is because every weapon in the meta build has a function. Do you understand the utility Sword brings? If you run Power Shatter, are you aware of how well it performs compared to other specs (read: not great)? Context is important.

Balasar.9137:

Then mister Wisdom impart with me the wisdom you so ostensibly display and tell me what Mesmer build should I try. Make yourself useful.

I suppose you also learned to be passive-aggressive from our Youtube content creators?

You have to be aware of how good you are compared to other people. Saying you’re good in an isolated environment gives no significant value. Being unable to gauge your ability relative to others is how you get disappointed.

Before you critique other people, examine what you can do better in your games. After that, evaluate your team but be aware you can be biased and harsh instead of objective in your analysis, because you want to take the blame off yourself.

Juidodin.5829:

dont let you tell anything else, like from hot boy and stuff.. they just dont want people to mention how corrupt that system is, because they probably are exploiting it for them self. also im sure the amount of bots is raising.. either that or gw2 has some brain decaying effects.

Sure, everything’s everybody else’s fault. If they win they cheat if I win it’s cuz I’m gud. Ranked is pretty evil yeah, I’m not sure why if you hate it so much you keep coming back to it. Using Balasar’s example, doing it for a backpack that signifies the things you hate is just silly to me.

The rating system isn’t an auto-win track. You’re facing living breathing players, and each game has the potential for a different outcome. For every loss you get they worked for it and won. There is no “I deserve” in here.

It’s really simple. If I’m always around 1400-1500 and I fail to climb into Plat 2, and my win-rate is always around 50%, it means that’s where I am relative to other players. It means I do not have the ability to climb further at the moment and I belong here in Gold as long as I don’t fix my issues. If I don’t even recognize what issues I have, then I have a much longer way to go.

How far do you guys want to go to weasel out of a loss?

Level headed people around here. Let me answer as much as I can, as I am preparing to end the shift.

I know the utility of the sword and shield, but I am at the wits end trying around five different mesmer builds. I am now trying the sixth with as much Healing and Vitality and condi clear I could cram into it. I do jack kitten damage, but hey! one cannot have the cake and eat it too. That being said, at least I survive 2v1 and can hold a point until reinforcements come. Which never happens.

A self-analysis and reflection has been done, comparing myself to the good players when I win and with the bad, when I lose, but I couldn’t find a real objective gauge to tell myself “yes this I need to change” or “yes I have learned something new”. More often than not, I was left bitter and angry, especially when I attempt my best and for reasons outside my actions, I lose. Thus the passive-aggressive attitude.

Considering that I am a better and more competitive player when I drive the Guardian, I began to play some matches with it and I noticed a trend: I get better Top Stats, I play more aggressively but the win rate is unchanged. Which for me is a mystery.

As far as I am aware, the basic strategy in Conquest is this: someone goes Close, the rest go Mid, someone calls the target and then everyone present focuses fire. As basic as it can get, but except me, no one calls targets, except me no one caps or fights on point and except me, no one defends. And although sometimes my team gets a hefty 100 point advantage we end up losing because cat. Seriously.

Now, thanks for all useful and great advice, but its like putting a plaster over a bleeding wound. Sure its may stop the bleeding for now, but if you remove it, you’ll get bloodstains everywhere.

A Sage ammy Mesmer is a duelist with mobility in Portal. You want to push advantageous 1v1’s and win them, put a Portal down at far and make backcaps to screw with enemy rotations. They also have utility in a corrdinated team using Moa and giving invuln while rezzing. Your Shield 4 is important. Shatter constantly to pressure, keep in mind your clone respawn traits.

Matchup is important, for example you should know that Power DH is hard to fight with a Sage setup. Games are ever-changing, this is not PvE where you can predict perfectly. You have to be actively making decisions. For example if you try to push far but there’s a bunker sitting there (classic mid-low tier rotations), leave him there and get a free 4v5 elsewhere. You got 1 stomped on the mid fight and you can see the fight being lost, can you push far early and get a decap? If not, can you put down a Portal, leave and backcap later? Did a class you have favourable matchup with push in, and are you sure you can win the 1v1?

If you can’t learn anything from a loss, that’s considered a “true” loss. Don’t be afraid to ask what to do in certain situations, and bit by bit you can extrapolate these methods and have better mentality dealing with difficult decisions. There’s only so much you can infer on your own, ask on the forums and ask other players, this is an interactive, online game.

Stop pointing out the mistakes in other people, you can’t change those (fools don’t learn, is why I’m trying to change yours). Don’t wallow in self-pity, this cold world is devoid of people who want to hold your hand. It’s too early to be giving up on improving yourself.

If you want to get better, plop into a duelling server or find a friend who’s clearly better than you and duel. Best way to make everything instinctive and get your burst down. Failing that, play a class that requires less mechanical skill to do ok (a ways from the skill ceiling tho), like Necro, Ranger. Then when you have a friend who wants to carrry you, you can try to duo queue.

Lots of convoluted response in here. Let’s get a couple things straight:

• Chronomancers need to be using swords. Regardless of if they are using power shatter or chronophantasma.
• It’s good to point out what players can do to get better but stop telling the OP that losing 26 matches in a row is his fault alone. If he were that bad of a player, the match maker should never have carried him in to a position that would set him up for a 26 game lose streak. For this to happen, the OP would have had to undergo some of the worst and most inaccurate placement matches that I’ve ever heard of.

I’ve always played solo queue, and made tactics and advices in chat regarding team setups and believing noone in my team will win a 1v1. It doesn’t really work in high gold/platinum, but it does in low leagues, and you get less frustrating and closer loses usually if people do follow up. Typically :
- No 1 vs svanir/chieftain , no solo lord at 150 points
- Keep 2 points, no 3
- If your team is starting to wipe on middle fight and opponents aren’t pressured, run quickly to far point
- Outnumber opponents

@Balasar

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude.

Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.

TLDR: GGWP

Philkafou.7481:

@Balasar

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude.

Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.

TLDR: GGWP

Pretty much says it all.

@Balasar keep us updated and keep your head up.

I changed my build around a lot this season and now I’m winning a lot on my thief. I also realized that I was not playing thief properly in PvP when the season started because I was so used to roaming in WvW, and in previous PvP seasons, I played elementalist. Now that I play the class right in PvP with +1 and constant decap and moving to where there’s an opportunity, my team wins a lot more often. I still end up with players that seem to have gotten placed higher than they should have, but it’s best to work with them and give advice in chat rather than what lots of people do, which is flame them. The advice to stop playing after 2 losses to take a break is a good one, and it’s something I started doing as well. If you lose and enter the queue right away, sometimes you get placed with some of the same people you just lost with, and at that point, everyone is on edge and you may still have frustrations with some of them as they do with you.

Look for me in game and I’m happy to duel with you if you want to practice against a thief or to just bounce some strategy ideas off of.

You are losing cause you chasing and killing ppl but you are forgeting big red or blue circles that brings you points actually.

Stop mentioning top stats. They really don’t matter.

Power mesmer is bad unless you can play it very well. Which, from the sound of it, you can’t.

Also, using scepter instead of sword does nothing but harm you. Use sword if you insist on playing power.

Don’t play power, play condi mesmer. You’ll do better.
__________________________________________________________________

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the best method to improve: go to a dueling server.

Once you’re in one, duel the best players in the servers (the ones that seem to win every single 1v1 they have). This almost always guarantees that you’ll lose extremely hard, but will offer a fantastic learning opportunity in exchange. Eventually, you will get better.

For reference, I was about 25-20 in Plat 3 when I was quing for lolz. Once I actually started trying, my record went to about 70-30.

There’s a world of difference between having a good build, and actually being good with it. Like having a Ferrari does not automatically make you a race track class driver.

Is this build and profession what you actually enjoy playing as? If yes then work on tweaking it to plug the holes (after so many losses you should know what’s your weakness) and other then that play, play and play some more to get experienced and comfortable with it.

That’s how i got my offmeta core necro build that was between bronze & silver last season to silver – gold this season.

@Balasar: Ok I will answer best I can…

First some people here don’t realize what a “SILVER” Match is, unfortunately this season my alt got placed in silver, and as F2P account took me sometime to climb the ladder to gold… The reason is not only the player base, but also how the games are organized (rotation) in silver.
Silver you much like to face pistol pistol teefs, burn core guardians, full trapper DH, condi rangers, any class that does high damage is a good class, just because ppl doesn’t know how to deal with it.
1 person alone that knows how to interrupt a pistol pistol thief, or that knows how to avoid traps, might not be enough when you have your “Meta” DH protaling inside the trappers just because he wants to kill someone… Or your teef going middle and stealing a trapper… Once you lose 1 person you lose 25% of your DPS that is what silver is all about… And you prolly snowballed the game… (Cause they respaw and walk directly to middle – ALONE- to die all over again).

Other very usual form of lost is to win Middle, 2 goes far, all 4 other team respaw, they kill all your 2, kill all together middle and stand still with 2 points until game is done just snowballing… (I have seem games where even 5 from other team sit middle).
The push far strategy would be very useful in a high rank game… In silver, is pretty much giving the other team the oportunity to 5 vs 4 your team (depends on the map) and then just kill you far in 2 / 3 vs 1. Or they push far in 5 again…

Each map has a best approach to that… Just create map awareness.

Mesmers are sort of liability is this game, like playing 1 less. Wins who kills more in the middle (and snowball), and ppl really lack any sort of survival (just get into trappers, stay into fire rings, even sit into plaguelands) it’s something that even a meta build cannot prevent (meta is done to a specific rotation and gameplay)…
Therefore your build is first not suitable for the game in silver (even sword), my suggestion give up mesmer… mesmer Is a game changer when your team has sustain in the middle… in silver teams just lack that… your team will keep dying before you can finish your burst in the GS (this was my assumption). If your team dies this way, means also the enemy team dies same way… So prepare a build to do exactly what works, do damage in the middle…

>The easier way I found to get out of silver and carry my team is to really create middle sustain… being by DPS >(Core burn guards) or teefs where you can move free in the game, since my alt is a F2P I had to arrange myself with vanilla necro what was really hard I prepared a high mobility build, used carrion amulets and other stuff to increase burst damage (that’s the only thing that matters in silver)… Ppl just don’t know how to avoid damage… they evade for anything (even autoatacks)… and lack any sense of team play (there is no focus… you really cross with ppl with autotarget on… )

So build your game to play as silver gamers play the game, and if you are any good you will be able to carry most of the matches… sometimes you will cross uncarriable teams, but life goes on… just move on…

Hell I even used minions to get rid of DH traps in games before my team arrives so I can keep them alive… Just assume the worst…

phokus.8934:

Have you ever thought that you’re the source of your loses? You taking scepter in a power Mesmer build says a lot.

It really just sounds like you’re playing classes you like but aren’t very good at and the results are as such.

You don’t need to play meta builds to win/carry matches, I run staff GS mesmer and win most my matches in plat 2. However the match quality is so lo that some teams have such bad people they are seemingly predetermined to win. I’ve barely played this season because of the boring matches.

Timiok.1048:

phokus.8934:

Have you ever thought that you’re the source of your loses? You taking scepter in a power Mesmer build says a lot.

It really just sounds like you’re playing classes you like but aren’t very good at and the results are as such.

You don’t need to play meta builds to win/carry matches, I run staff GS mesmer and win most my matches in plat 2. However the match quality is so lo that some teams have such bad people they are seemingly predetermined to win. I’ve barely played this season because of the boring matches.

Sure you don’t but having an optimal setup sure does help.

Cal Cohen.3527:

Can you tell me which account you were playing on when you lost 26 games in a row? Looking at the match history of this account I see the longest losing streak is 11 games, and you’ve also had a win streak of 12 games.

Unless I’m too hungry to think I see some serious roasting comin our way… I like it well done, Sir!

That Anet burn tho…

Seriously though, this guy posted the same type thing a year ago. He sounds like a toxic player with an over-inflated opinion of himself.