Guild Wars 2

Below are some things that I felt like I wanted to bring up to the community and see what others think on these topics as well. Thanks for reading.

The Current and Future Queue

Why are unranked and ranked queues separated? First, I don’t think more inexperienced players are always choosing what they “should” be choosing, so I’m not sure the practice/play/compete concept is working as intended. Second, all it truly accomplishes is separating the player base into people who sort of care about the leaderboard and people who don’t. How many bad match ups could be prevented by having both pools of players together?

I heard at one point that team queue did not have Spirit Watch and Skyhammer because top teams disliked the maps. But whenever I watch members of The Abjured on Twitch (some of the top players that stream in my time zone), they always queue in unranked. It’s not true of all high end players, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference to them. And why would it? Isn’t this an old idea?

It makes far more sense to me to have queues specifically for stronghold, courtyard, and maybe conquest, and then a mercenary queue with higher rewards that can be pulled into any matches. Or, when you queue, have an option to select the maps and modes you want – your own wait time is determined by how flexible you want to be. This way, players are not arbitrarily fractured among ranked and unranked, and instead separated only by what modes they actually want to play. You could give rank points to everyone, not just those “Competing” instead of “Practicing.”

These aren’t perfect suggestions but I think both are better than two of the same (but slightly different) queues.. Two queues worked when it was solo and team, but ranked and unranked seems silly in practice.

Class Balance in Regards to the Current Meta

Among the top classes (ele, engi, warrior), all can make great use of swap sigils, cele amulet and might, as has been discussed plenty of times, but they all also have very easy access to burning. It’s harder not to apply burning than it is to apply it with these specs.

Among classes mostly in the meta (ele, engi, warrior, thief, guardian) all have a heal that is uninterruptible, or nearly uninterruptible. Except for engineer, all of these classes have easy access to useful combo fields or finishers, or both.

Among classes on the fringe of the meta (mesmer, Necro, ranger) all have easily interrupted heals, and none of their strongest builds can fight on point for long, if at all. Only rangers have some finishers (including projectiles) and there are no truly useful fields in any of these classes. Mesmers have utility with portal, but that is mostly all of the utility present for these 3 classes. None of these classes have strong defensive trait lines.

Stronghold

While I’m not one who will bemoan PVE in PVP, I think that Stronghold is toeing a fine line with the PVE elements it introduces. There are already classes that are weak in PVE and – surprise! – some of them are also quite weak in PVP. While I know little of how balance changes, Revenants, and specializations will shake things up, I do hope that this is something being considered with HoT. As an extreme example, I’d hate to see Stronghold groups with “No Necros” being advertised.

Birthday booster

Currently, the birthday or celebration boosters add a 100% bonus to WvW rank, magic find, experience and gold, but only 10% to PVP reward track progress. To me, this means that the time spent under the effects of those boosters are more rewarded elsewhere and it should be the opposite. I can’t exactly foresee a crashing the economy over some dungeon armor and random loot bags.

1. I’m glad some people have the decency to do unranked first and we don’t have all new players in ranked.

2. Everyone hated those maps, people still do. The frquency of getting them in unranked is WAY lower than before because it was pure rng and you have a say in it.

3. Not enough people for separate queues for TDM, conquest, Stronghold.

4. Eh, that’s now how it works. Thief doesn’t might stack, guard doesn’t either, cele engi not really. Engi’s heal is interruptable (gotta predict when he’s gonna heal, usually after block). Some of your points are valid, but not all. Also, the meta is shifting a bit, people are trying different comps and it’ll even more with new specs. Should probably wait after xpack release.

5. Possibly, I don’t quite enjoy the look of Stronghold.

6. No, it shouldn’t be 100%. You complete reward tracks easily anyway.

About the uninterruptible heals: that is kind of the point. For example, Ether Renewal is amazingly strong for the condition removal it offers. It is also really easy to interrupt, that’s why most favor the signet. The turret heal is interruptible, but it’s the only one with a built in condi removal, that’s why engineers take it (otherwise they could take the uninterruptible healing kit). Withdraw and Hide in Shadow are both excellent, and you see more tanky thieves (mainly WvW condi thieves) take HiS, but Withdraw is just more adapted to the squishiness of the meta builds. Mesmers and necromancers are almost forced to take the easy to interrupt heals, because there is no better alternatives.

Queues
Combining ranked and unranked has its merits. It creates a larger player pool, which would improve matchmaking and lower queue times. That would bring more players into PvP and keep them around more often. The downside is the psychological effect, which is hard to quantify. When ranking is at risk, a lot of people become apprehensive about competing if they don’t feel that they can give it their best.

To answer your question about top players doing unranked: the leaderboards are meaningless to them unless they queue as a full team and unranked has slightly faster queues. You get crappy maps from time to time, but that’s not a big enough detractor. And since a lot of top players are solo or partial queuing, the matchmaking isn’t too horrible; no worse than ranked at least.

I don’t see why you suggest combining queues and then splitting them again. That’s defeating the purpose. Splitting by game mode just fragments the community and creates animosity. Stronghold is really popular right now mainly because it’s not released yet. Wouldn’t it be better to keep both modes together, maybe giving a preference to Stronghold for the first month or so, and then see where the community goes?

Balance
There’s a lot more at play, but what you mentioned is a part of why the “cele meta” is around. Other professions and builds are kept out because of the rigid amulet system and thieves dominating other zerker professions.

Birthday Booster
100% magic find doesn’t dramatically increase the amount of items you earn. If you doubled PvP rewards, you would get double the items in the same time. 10% may be a little low, but it’s not completely out of whack.

First, thank you for the responses.

Laraley.7695:

1. I’m glad some people have the decency to do unranked first and we don’t have all new players in ranked.

Some people get it right, but plenty others don’t. I played a ranked game yesterday and someone said, “sorry for any newb mistakes guys, it’s my first game!” Its complained about often enough that is is certainly happening. I think unranked makes sense in theory, and I like the idea, but with the way it’s working now, it’s completely meaningless. Top players are in unranked over ranked, new players in ranked over anything – it’s not working.

Laraley.7695:

2. Everyone hated those maps, people still do. The frquency of getting them in unranked is WAY lower than before because it was pure rng and you have a say in it.

Then the maps should be removed from competitive queues. They were experimented with and it wasnt received well. They get limited votes. Clearly they aren’t popular. Why keep them for unranked? Just remove them and combine the queues, then.

Laraley.7695:

3. Not enough people for separate queues for TDM, conquest, Stronghold.

By that logic, are there enough people for the 2 queues we have now?

Laraley.7695:

4. Eh, that’s now how it works. Thief doesn’t might stack, guard doesn’t either, cele engi not really. Engi’s heal is interruptable (gotta predict when he’s gonna heal, usually after block). Some of your points are valid, but not all. Also, the meta is shifting a bit, people are trying different comps and it’ll even more with new specs. Should probably wait after xpack release.

I never claimed that these are the sole reasons these classes are in different positions, these are simply all facts about the classes. Thief can blast fields for stealth, or might, or whatever, because they have blasts finishers, and smoke fields. Hammer guards have a blast every few seconds on that weapon. Eles and warrs are blasting all the time through normal gameplay – but then you have 3 classes with no group blasts or desirable fields – the same classes that are at the bottom of pvp. Coincidence? Surely it doesn’t help, and could be addressed.

Laraley.7695:

6. No, it shouldn’t be 100%. You complete reward tracks easily anyway.

I never said it should be 100%, only pointing out the disparity Wvw ranks are completed easily enough, but they get a 100% boost. Why only 10% for pvp rewards? Remember that reward track points and rank points in PvP are not the same thing, so this only changes the rewards, not the speed of ranking.

Sorel.4870:

About the uninterruptible heals: that is kind of the point. For example, Ether Renewal is amazingly strong for the condition removal it offers. It is also really easy to interrupt, that’s why most favor the signet. The turret heal is interruptible, but it’s the only one with a built in condi removal, that’s why engineers take it (otherwise they could take the uninterruptible healing kit). Withdraw and Hide in Shadow are both excellent, and you see more tanky thieves (mainly WvW condi thieves) take HiS, but Withdraw is just more adapted to the squishiness of the meta builds. Mesmers and necromancers are almost forced to take the easy to interrupt heals, because there is no better alternatives.

That’s precisely my point – you need to take these hard/impossible to interrupt heals. They provide a huge advantage in risk/reward compared to something with a long cast time and obvious animation. The real point of my post isn’t to try to nerf other heals – it’s to try to expand realistic options to necro, mesmer and ranger. Actually the real point is to look at all these similarities as ways to realistically even the classes out.

Roe.3679:

Snip

I understand your point and I’m aware there are people not getting the point of ranked/unranked. However, I think my games would be even worse if those two were merged. I also think it would be unfair for people who just want to play casually, people testing builds or just messing around. When I want to learn something new, some class I haven’t played much and I’m not too confident with, I just go to unranked because I don’t wish to bother people in ranked with me not being experienced on that class and I’m pretty sure others do, too. How about removing hotjoin instead? It’s rank farming anyway, people can leave always, we can’t go there between queues anymore. Obviously people would be able to keep private arenas for practicing, 1v1’s etc.

I worded it wrong. Most people hate those maps, some people (usually new) enjoy some of these maps the rest of the community doesn’t want to play on. I’m not so sure about removing them completely since Anet wanted everyone to have a choice of maps he likes and we already have only a few decent maps.

While I think there isn’t enough people to have separate queues for Stronghold, conquest and TDM, I think there is enough people for ranked and unranked. The problem with mode specific queue is that it would divide the community completely. From what I’ve seen, not many people like TDM in gw2 and it’s really badly deisgned, so the queues would be really long for those who enjoy it. If the same happens to Stronghold, we might as well remove those game modes.

I understand what you mean with the finishers, however I don’t think it’s why those classes are out of meta. The celestial meta doesn’t all depend on might stacking, of course it helps but it’s not the only reason why those classes are not in top tier. Necros really lack survability at the moment or any ways to negate damage, they have zero access to vigor for example. Mesmers have been being pushed out of meta by thieves for a long time. And yeah, rangers are just…well, not very good for team purposes.

Yes, it could probably be more than 10% but I don’t really see a problem there.

About the heals, that’s exactly the point, though. You have to sacrifice some things in order to gain other. Mesmer’s shouldn’t be having too much of a problem to get their heal off as they can cover it with distortion or stealth. It’s like if you play staff ele with ER, you have to either use your stab, position yourself well or just pray not to be interrupted. I do think Consume Conditions could use a bit lower cast time, though.

I was typing the other half in when waiting for a match to start and probably rushed it too much, I’m sorry.

Exedore.6320:

Queues
Combining ranked and unranked has its merits. It creates a larger player pool, which would improve matchmaking and lower queue times. That would bring more players into PvP and keep them around more often. The downside is the psychological effect, which is hard to quantify. When ranking is at risk, a lot of people become apprehensive about competing if they don’t feel that they can give it their best.

To answer your question about top players doing unranked: the leaderboards are meaningless to them unless they queue as a full team and unranked has slightly faster queues. You get crappy maps from time to time, but that’s not a big enough detractor. And since a lot of top players are solo or partial queuing, the matchmaking isn’t too horrible; no worse than ranked at least.

I don’t see why you suggest combining queues and then splitting them again. That’s defeating the purpose. Splitting by game mode just fragments the community and creates animosity. Stronghold is really popular right now mainly because it’s not released yet. Wouldn’t it be better to keep both modes together, maybe giving a preference to Stronghold for the first month or so, and then see where the community goes?
.

The way I see it, the community is already fractured. Plus, when stronghold was announced, there were dozens of posts about how it needed a separate queue from players interested in stronghold, but not conquest. How many in game players does that represent?

I’m also fine with the idea of one queue to rule them all – in fact, I personally prefer it – but if we’re going to fracture the community as it is now, it should be over something more meaningful like game modes instead of leaderboards.

This suggestion really revolves around a few things: the weak and nearly meaningless leaderboards, the lack of requirements to enter ranked games, etc. So maybe this suggestion is way out of line, and handling it another way is actually best.