Guild Wars 2

DaveGan.8065:

Nightshade.5924:

Which is the point of USING A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS.

~lot of nonsensical blabbering~

Your “STATISTICAL ANALYSIS” assumes some strong correlation between “not dying” and “being overpowered” in the context of Conquest PvP.

The rest of us have been connecting our palms to our foreheads while trying to tell you how false and misguided that assumption is.

In other words, we don’t really doubt that you’ll find mesmers (and thieves and other classes with decent disengage) don’t die that often. Nor do we care, because Conquest PvP is not about 1v1 duels.

PS: You think 10-20 seconds of respawn time is bad? DPS a mesmer til he is forced to disengage your point, and he’ll have wasted almost a full minute despite not dying: 15 running to his far point to fight you, 30 seconds fighting on a point you own, and 15 running back to some other fight.

First, you’re forgetting about the 10 to 20 seconds it’s going to take YOU to run back to the point. Second, you’re avoiding the issue that IF you’re dead, the OPPOSING team temporarily has a numerical advantage. An advantage that could be used to, oh, I don’t know, seize a point? Maybe two points?

And I don’t know what PvP YOU are playing, but in my experience PvP is a SERIES of one on one or two on two duels. Every now and then you’ll run into a team that’s running around as a zerg, but it’s pretty rare so far as I’ve seen.

MUCH more often I’ve been on the receiving end of being by myself and being attacked by two players at once. And either keeping them off the point until I get help from a teammate or getting burned down.

I am continually mystified by the insistence of many of my detractors that KILLS are NOT important. Just what reality do you come from where having 5 players active and able to capture a point when the other team has three players respawning is NOT important? I quote… “Quantity has a quality all it’s own”. Numbers matter. Anyone saying otherwise… LOL. I hope you’re on the opposing team!

Nightshade.5924:

Shockwave.1230:

Why do you want numbers about the masses? The statics will be different as skill rises.

If you look at ANet’s balancing tendencies they balance around high tier pvp mostly. In High tier conquest thieves and mesmers are perfectly manageable.

In fact your statistics about the masses of the game are more likely to reveal that mesmers and thieves when played have more deaths per match, because they are higher risk.

Regardless of what the actual stats about the masses say though, it doesn’t matter, because the classes are balanced in high tier.

Additionally, you shouldn’t demand things in this manner. It’s better for you to learn the classes mechanics and understand what the vulnerabilities are, be that playing the profession yourself or getting a friend who plays it to talk to you about them and dueling them. That’s what anyone who wants to learn how fight something would do. It’s also way more logical than looking for an excuse to change how a profession plays for that entire playerbase just so one person gets appeased.

Which is the point of USING A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. It balances and smooths the overall results by looking at EVERYONE, instead of focusing on an elite group of highly practiced players OR examining a bunch of players who only have 10 games under their belts. This takes SKILL, PRACTICE and EXPERIENCE OUT THE ARGUEMENT. And instead makes it about the particular class’s combat survivability under any conditions.

And once more….. 1000 PvP matches. That’s how many I have played as of my log off today. ONE THOUSAND. Sure, it’s probably not a patch on someone who LIVES for PvP and plays it exclusively. But it’s more than enough matches to LEARN how your own classes work and MORE IMPORTANTLY observe how to take down ANY and ALL opponents. OR, as in the case of mesmers, possibly identify an issue that ONLY a statistical review of defeats and defeat related numbers CAN CONFIRM OR DISPROVE.

I say again… let’s see the numbers. And see what they tell us. Let’s have concrete EVIDENCE and let’s STOP SPECULATING.

cheers.

The point you’re missing is that the statistics about the game as a whole don’t matter when the game is a primarily being balanced around high tier pvp.

Whether the majority of people struggle while playing as mesmer, whether they are successful playing mesmer, or whether it’s in similar to any other profession has no bearing on anything, since in high tier pvp (what ANet has been balancing the game around) it’s not over powered.

Additionally, your whole premise that kills or deaths is the be all end all on whether a class is balanced or not is quite simply incorrect, as it goes for most absolutes.

ANet’s mode that they are balancing around is conquest, and kills and deaths per match aren’t what the primary way of winning is.

Further, your idea of the metrics is also flawed because mesmer’s play a berserker roamer role, which means they will have both more kills and more deaths than professions that play a safer roamer build or bunker role.

Your hard numbers on kills or deaths mean nothing without proper context, by themselves they are simply numbers.

The best way to determine if something is balanced, is to measure it at various tiers of play. Again ANet chooses to balance around top tier pvp.

Nightshade.5924:

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

The most entertaining thread I have read for long time.

And OP, if 20 people here telling you’re wrong and no one supports your point, don’t you think it means you’re wrong, purely statistically?

Seeing as we have NO N U M B E R S to support or deny anything said here, I can safely say NO. A GOOD statistic involves, at a minimum, 10,000 test subjects. Millions is MUCH better. So at a minimum we’re about 9,980 people short of any statistical conclusion.

Rule of thumb: n > 30 is large
Central Limit Theorem

Please don’t misuse statistics and try to confuse everyone by inserting random buzzwords. That’s something to be left to Christians and politicians.

I hope you’re on the opposing team!

Given the skill and experience you’ve displayed with your losing hotjoin record and QQ in this thread, I will happily take my chances against you.

Shockwave.1230:

Nightshade.5924:

Shockwave.1230:

Why do you want numbers about the masses? The statics will be different as skill rises.

If you look at ANet’s balancing tendencies they balance around high tier pvp mostly. In High tier conquest thieves and mesmers are perfectly manageable.

In fact your statistics about the masses of the game are more likely to reveal that mesmers and thieves when played have more deaths per match, because they are higher risk.

Regardless of what the actual stats about the masses say though, it doesn’t matter, because the classes are balanced in high tier.

Additionally, you shouldn’t demand things in this manner. It’s better for you to learn the classes mechanics and understand what the vulnerabilities are, be that playing the profession yourself or getting a friend who plays it to talk to you about them and dueling them. That’s what anyone who wants to learn how fight something would do. It’s also way more logical than looking for an excuse to change how a profession plays for that entire playerbase just so one person gets appeased.

Which is the point of USING A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. It balances and smooths the overall results by looking at EVERYONE, instead of focusing on an elite group of highly practiced players OR examining a bunch of players who only have 10 games under their belts. This takes SKILL, PRACTICE and EXPERIENCE OUT THE ARGUEMENT. And instead makes it about the particular class’s combat survivability under any conditions.

And once more….. 1000 PvP matches. That’s how many I have played as of my log off today. ONE THOUSAND. Sure, it’s probably not a patch on someone who LIVES for PvP and plays it exclusively. But it’s more than enough matches to LEARN how your own classes work and MORE IMPORTANTLY observe how to take down ANY and ALL opponents. OR, as in the case of mesmers, possibly identify an issue that ONLY a statistical review of defeats and defeat related numbers CAN CONFIRM OR DISPROVE.

I say again… let’s see the numbers. And see what they tell us. Let’s have concrete EVIDENCE and let’s STOP SPECULATING.

cheers.

The point you’re missing is that the statistics about the game as a whole don’t matter when the game is a primarily being balanced around high tier pvp.

Whether the majority of people struggle while playing as mesmer, whether they are successful playing mesmer, or whether it’s in similar to any other profession has no bearing on anything, since in high tier pvp (what ANet has been balancing the game around) it’s not over powered.

Additionally, your whole premise that kills or deaths is the be all end all on whether a class is balanced or not is quite simply incorrect, as it goes for most absolutes.

ANet’s mode that they are balancing around is conquest, and kills and deaths per match aren’t what the primary way of winning is.

Further, your idea of the metrics is also flawed because mesmer’s play a berserker roamer role, which means they will have both more kills and more deaths than professions that play a safer roamer build or bunker role.

Your hard numbers on kills or deaths mean nothing without proper context, by themselves they are simply numbers.

The best way to determine if something is balanced, is to measure it at various tiers of play. Again ANet chooses to balance around top tier pvp.

So this would identify the REAL problem. If, as you contend, ArenaNet IS in FACT basing PvP around the top 10% of players, well, there you have the problem in a nutshell.

Class balance should be designed around the aggregate, NOT the exceptional. Based on overall statistics, on what an average person can do and do well, Not a narrow and select group of chaps that probably play 8 hours a day, are under the age of 30, and most likely live and breathe ONE particular class.

And again YOU seem to have missed the CONCEPT of being outnumbered. Let me ask you this… have you ever queued for PvP and suddenly found yourself on a four man team? Well? Did YOUR four man team BEAT the five man team? Yes or No?

So again.. it would SEEM that KILLS VERY MUCH DO MATTER. If you’re DEAD, you can’t hold a point. You can’t kill an opponent to STOP them from taking a point or killing a teammate. For 10 to 20 seconds, YOUR team is 4 against 5. And it takes about 20 seconds to capture a point.

So YES, kills in PvP are pretty much an absolute. You can’t take or hold points w/o them. And I submit that if there are ANY classes that are SIGNIFICANTLY harder to kill than others in PvP, that is a problem.

Aereniel.7356:

Nightshade.5924:

Wooords

Brilliant! 8/10 for trolling, and shame on me for being oh so very slooow on the uptake. Honest to god I took you seriously at first. Needs moar caps, tho. Carry on…

I’m not sure what you mean. I’m very serious. My personal research, me scribbling notes on my pad, has shown me a disturbing trend. The only WAY I’m ever going to find out if I’m imagining things is to GET the DEVS to accede to my kill counter suggestion, OR play about 5000 matches myself. Which is another 3 to 4 years of PvP at the rate I compete.

Nightshade.5924:

So this would identify the REAL problem. If, as you contend, ArenaNet IS in FACT basing PvP around the top 10% of players, well, there you have the problem in a nutshell.

Class balance should be designed around the aggregate, NOT the exceptional. Based on overall statistics, on what an average person can do and do well, Not a narrow and select group of chaps that probably play 8 hours a day, are under the age of 30, and most likely live and breathe ONE particular class.

And again YOU seem to have missed the CONCEPT of being outnumbered. Let me ask you this… have you ever queued for PvP and suddenly found yourself on a four man team? Well? Did YOUR four man team BEAT the five man team? Yes or No?

So again.. it would SEEM that KILLS VERY MUCH DO MATTER. If you’re DEAD, you can’t hold a point. You can’t kill an opponent to STOP them from taking a point or killing a teammate. For 10 to 20 seconds, YOUR team is 4 against 5. And it takes about 20 seconds to capture a point.

So YES, kills in PvP are pretty much an absolute. You can’t take or hold points w/o them. And I submit that if there are ANY classes that are SIGNIFICANTLY harder to kill than others in PvP, that is a problem.

ANet still makes balance contributions around lower tiers (Blackpowder nerf for example), but top tier has been their primary focus as it should be, because players can simply learn to play in order to overcome obstacles when having lower skill.

Being outnumbered is not the same thing as kills or deaths. Kills and deaths only contribute 5 points to a score, the majority of points come from caps in a match. You’ve lost context for what I posted, which was that kills aren’t the primary contribution to winning a match. Holding points is more important than kills, winning fights is more important than kills. Kills are just often times a byproduct of winning a fight. Thief is a prime example for this, thieves will often lose fights by running away from a point instead of dying.

If you get kills you’re likely to be able to outnumber, but you can get kills and still not capture a point, you can get kills and still end up dying yourself. Kills aren’t the be all end all even though they are important. But all of this is just supplemental reasoning anyways and holds less weight.

The most important point is that stealth professions play the role of roamer, which means they are involved in kills and deaths more often. This is one of the primary reasons your metrics arguement is flawed, because you want to look at the metrics without context and find any reason to justify your opinion that “x” is unfair, when the reality of mesmer and thief being balanced is staring you right in the face in the form of teams on similar footing having comps consisting exclusively of these professions aren’t viable vs a more balance composition.

Nightshade.5924:

Aereniel.7356:

Nightshade.5924:

Wooords

Brilliant! 8/10 for trolling, and shame on me for being oh so very slooow on the uptake. Honest to god I took you seriously at first. Needs moar caps, tho. Carry on…

I’m not sure what you mean. I’m very serious. My personal research, me scribbling notes on my pad, has shown me a disturbing trend. The only WAY I’m ever going to find out if I’m imagining things is to GET the DEVS to accede to my kill counter suggestion, OR play about 5000 matches myself. Which is another 3 to 4 years of PvP at the rate I compete.

Good, good.

Aereniel.7356:

Nightshade.5924:

Aereniel.7356:

Nightshade.5924:

Wooords

Brilliant! 8/10 for trolling, and shame on me for being oh so very slooow on the uptake. Honest to god I took you seriously at first. Needs moar caps, tho. Carry on…

I’m not sure what you mean. I’m very serious. My personal research, me scribbling notes on my pad, has shown me a disturbing trend. The only WAY I’m ever going to find out if I’m imagining things is to GET the DEVS to accede to my kill counter suggestion, OR play about 5000 matches myself. Which is another 3 to 4 years of PvP at the rate I compete.

Good, good.

You DO realize that the moderator is going to come along and delete this, right? Personally I think that’s a shame, ‘cause it’s pretty funny.

DaveGan.8065:

Nightshade.5924:

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

The most entertaining thread I have read for long time.

And OP, if 20 people here telling you’re wrong and no one supports your point, don’t you think it means you’re wrong, purely statistically?

Seeing as we have NO N U M B E R S to support or deny anything said here, I can safely say NO. A GOOD statistic involves, at a minimum, 10,000 test subjects. Millions is MUCH better. So at a minimum we’re about 9,980 people short of any statistical conclusion.

Rule of thumb: n > 30 is large
Central Limit Theorem

Please don’t misuse statistics and try to confuse everyone by inserting random buzzwords. That’s something to be left to Christians and politicians.

I hope you’re on the opposing team!

Given the skill and experience you’ve displayed with your losing hotjoin record and QQ in this thread, I will happily take my chances against you.

I must admit that I am perplexed. First you say not to confuse everyone and use random buzzwords, and THEN you post two links to pages that most normal people will be totally lost on. If you haven’t taken serious statistics courses, most of those pages will be pure gibberish.

However, while I acknowledge these concepts are used in manufacturing, especially in aeronautical and vehicular, we have here the ideal sort of situation. We already HAVE millions of players to perform a statistical analysis with. We HAVE a system that is already partially set up to acquire the numbers and facts that we need. To not do so would be irresponsible, IMHO.

As for my win / loss record, consider the following. I pug and only pug. I have neither a legendary (minor) nor ascended gear (still minor) to give me any gear advantages. Every time I queue up I am playing w/ four strangers, w/o any comms besides typing, usually running around in some sort of disorganized fashion despite any suggestions other players, like say myself, might have.

Despite all of this, I still am on a winning team 47% of the time. And now I wish I had kept track of ALL the times I’ve been stuck on a four man team or had a copout chappy in the spawn. Too bad THAT’S not tracked. On average I’d say that it happens about once a week, so hmmm… that’s at least 50 losses due to people being slackers?

Like I keep saying… facts. Numbers. Evidence. Hard data. I’d like to see it.

Don’t feed it

On the 1% chance you aren’t trolling…

Nightshade.5924:

I must admit that I am perplexed. First you say not to confuse everyone and use random buzzwords, and THEN you post two links to pages that most normal people will be totally lost on. If you haven’t taken serious statistics courses, most of those pages will be pure gibberish.

The difference is that you threw around buzzwords to the whole crowd while I linked some basic concepts to you, someone trying to maintain some image of statistical expertise.

We already HAVE millions of players to perform a statistical analysis with.

Plenty of analyses have been performed. Just not the one you want. I’ll even grant you that the death numbers you claim is true. But because the correlation is extremely suspect in the larger context of conquest, confirming your numbers will do nothing for you.

gear advantages. Every time I queue up I am playing w/ four strangers, w/o any comms besides typing

Until 12/2, so was everyone else. Also, no PvE gear in PvP

I still am on a winning team 47% of the time.

And a losing team 53% of the time.

Basic stats time! With a sample size 1000, your average is 0.47 wins per match with a standard deviation of 0.4993. A 95% confidence interval of [0.44, 0.5] means we are almost 95% sure you are below average...in hotjoin…

And now I wish I had kept track of ALL the times I’ve been stuck on a four man team or had a copout chappy in the spawn.

Probability time! Let’s assume you don’t have a tendency of AFK/ragequit yourself. There are 9 slots for the other players in the game. 5 of them are on the other team! So you are 25% (5/9 vs 4/9) more likely to have an AFK on the other team than your own!

That is, unless the single common denominator (you) in those 1000 games is the one causing your teammates to AFK…

OP revealed himself when assumed he needs to level mesmer up to 80 before he can play pvp. I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses default pvp build. Anyway I hope this thread will be closed and OP can take a deep breath

if it dodges, it can die.
/thread

Just a couple of observations on some of your previous points:

1) Having exotic gear makes no difference in spvp
2) You don’t have to get to level 80 to do spvp
3) Your scenario of 2 engis holding one point with a guardian and 2 other players taking the other points is rad
4) Stop playing with our minds

Vieteriukko.6075:

OP revealed himself when assumed he needs to level mesmer up to 80 before he can play pvp. I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses default pvp build. Anyway I hope this thread will be closed and OP can take a deep breath

Why would YOU shortchange your teammates by bringing ANYTHING less than a max level toon to PvP? Why would YOU play PvP w/o every single attack and ability slot ready to bring it? Why would YOU bring a toon to PvP w/o the ability to test every combination of attacks and builds, to be able to find the one that best fits your playstyle?

The very suggestion that YOU would do anything of the sort proves that YOU are a weak link in a PvP team.

Yasha.5963:

Just a couple of observations on some of your previous points:

1) Having exotic gear makes no difference in spvp
2) You don’t have to get to level 80 to do spvp
3) Your scenario of 2 engis holding one point with a guardian and 2 other players taking the other points is rad
4) Stop playing with our minds

Try playing PvP w/ rare equipment only, and see what difference it makes. Trust me, it does.

The eng scenario is particularly effective in the Orb and Lords scenario, and to a lesser extent in the Chieftain one. Not very effective in Skyhammer or Khylio?, unless you can control the hammer consistently and can keep the enemy treb as a pile of kindling.

The problem comes in convincing your team mates to try it your way, AND having a second eng or good bunker on your team that’s willing to do it. The four times we did it my way, we won. The others, not so much.

Why would ANYONE shortchange THEIR teammates by bringing ANYTHING less than a max level toon to PvP? Why would ANYONE play PvP w/o every single attack and ability slot ready to bring it? Why would ANYONE bring a toon to PvP w/o the ability to test every combination of attacks and builds, to be able to find the one that best fits your playstyle?

The very suggestion seems rather limited and shortsighted, IMHO.

If you believe that item quality and character level has any impact on spvp then I think we need to start at the very beginning.

SobeSoul.6910:

If you believe that item quality and character level has any impact on spvp then I think we need to start at the very beginning.

If he isn’t trolling then I genuinely feel bad at this point

nightshade is a troll. or else he is new but thinks he’s smarter than literally everyone else.

Narkodx.1472:

SobeSoul.6910:

If you believe that item quality and character level has any impact on spvp then I think we need to start at the very beginning.

If he isn’t trolling then I genuinely feel bad at this point

Well. Had a chat w/ my guildies. It seems that you can indeed take a lvl 2 toon into PvP, and have full access to ALL weapon abilities powers etc.

I personally don’t recollect it always being that way, but then again I personally have ONLY ever brought lvl 80 toons into PvP. So that I could have in game experience in fractals, dungeons, WvW, and general play. So that I would already be very familiar w/ the builds available and what I personally liked.

Seems to me to be a strange way to run a railroad. “Shrugs”

Nightshade.5924:

I’ve been playing PvP for over a year. And I’m finally to the point of saying enough. Enough of mesmers killing me all the time. Enough of mesmers taking two or three players to kill. Enough of losing time and time again to teams w/ stealth player
superiority.

There already is a counter category that tracks how many kills a particular account has. What needs to happen is this. The Devs NEED to create a “killed” tracker. There needs to be a counter that tracks each and every “death” in PvP. By toon type category. Then a breakdown should be done in regards to percentages and frequency.

Then after a month the results need to be analyzed and ideally, published for general consumption. I am SICK AND TIRED of people saying that “oh, look at the playoff boards. You don’t see any mesmers there…” What MY individual experience tells me is that neither my warrior, my engineer, OR my necro can routinely KILL a Mesmer.

In FACT, I almost NEVER kill a Mesmer by myself. Unlike warriors or guardians, which my eng routinely eats for breakfast. Unlike rangers, necros, engs and thieves. Mesmers are the one class that in PvP that I perceive to be bulletproof.

So this will not only settle the argument of Mesmer invincibility once and for all, BUT should ALSO should show that STEALTH classes have an UNFAIR advantage in PvP.

Nuff said.

IDK I kill mesmos all the time in pvp. and thieves. I will agree with one thing tho that stealth is widely abused and overused in pvp and wvw. it’s a mechanic that does give an unfair advantage to classes that cannot use stealth. there’s no counter to it other than popping all blocks when enemy goes stealth. sadly the block goes into cd before the stealth expires. I would be happy if stealth were removed from the game entirely but then all the teens would cry about it. after all cant get any easier then attack, hide, attack, hide, attack, hide, attack, hide.

Nightshade.5924:

Yasha.5963:

Just a couple of observations on some of your previous points:

1) Having exotic gear makes no difference in spvp
2) You don’t have to get to level 80 to do spvp
3) Your scenario of 2 engis holding one point with a guardian and 2 other players taking the other points is rad
4) Stop playing with our minds

Try playing PvP w/ rare equipment only, and see what difference it makes. Trust me, it does.

Why would ANYONE shortchange THEIR teammates by bringing ANYTHING less than a max level toon to PvP? Why would ANYONE play PvP w/o every single attack and ability slot ready to bring it? Why would ANYONE bring a toon to PvP w/o the ability to test every combination of attacks and builds, to be able to find the one that best fits your playstyle?

The very suggestion seems rather limited and shortsighted, IMHO.

Haha, you are a master at this, I bow to my troll overlord. Thank you for bringing some humour into my day.

Nokturnal Lunacy.3186:

Nightshade.5924:

I’ve been playing PvP for over a year. And I’m finally to the point of saying enough. Enough of mesmers killing me all the time. Enough of mesmers taking two or three players to kill. Enough of losing time and time again to teams w/ stealth player
superiority.

There already is a counter category that tracks how many kills a particular account has. What needs to happen is this. The Devs NEED to create a “killed” tracker. There needs to be a counter that tracks each and every “death” in PvP. By toon type category. Then a breakdown should be done in regards to percentages and frequency.

Then after a month the results need to be analyzed and ideally, published for general consumption. I am SICK AND TIRED of people saying that “oh, look at the playoff boards. You don’t see any mesmers there…” What MY individual experience tells me is that neither my warrior, my engineer, OR my necro can routinely KILL a Mesmer.

In FACT, I almost NEVER kill a Mesmer by myself. Unlike warriors or guardians, which my eng routinely eats for breakfast. Unlike rangers, necros, engs and thieves. Mesmers are the one class that in PvP that I perceive to be bulletproof.

So this will not only settle the argument of Mesmer invincibility once and for all, BUT should ALSO should show that STEALTH classes have an UNFAIR advantage in PvP.

Nuff said.

IDK I kill mesmos all the time in pvp. and thieves. I will agree with one thing tho that stealth is widely abused and overused in pvp and wvw. it’s a mechanic that does give an unfair advantage to classes that cannot use stealth. there’s no counter to it other than popping all blocks when enemy goes stealth. sadly the block goes into cd before the stealth expires. I would be happy if stealth were removed from the game entirely but then all the teens would cry about it. after all cant get any easier then attack, hide, attack, hide, attack, hide, attack, hide.

healing, aegis, blocks, dodges, invul are widely abused in pvp and wvw by guards/wars/engis/eles and co. nerf plz

@OP

Sorry you just lost all credibility when you stated that you needed a fully geared lvl 80 to play pvp. And that anything less was hurting your team. I might have been able to get behind the OP stealth, or even seeing some stats, but not anymore. Everything said from that point on became an issue of L2P.

If you cant beat ’em, join ’em…

Spend the money, but a character slot, and check it out for yourself. No one here is going to agree with you, not after that part about having to be 80 to pvp…

/thread. Thanks!

pdavis.8031:

@OP

Sorry you just lost all credibility when you stated that you needed a fully geared lvl 80 to play pvp. And that anything less was hurting your team. I might have been able to get behind the OP stealth, or even seeing some stats, but not anymore. Everything said from that point on became an issue of L2P.

If you cant beat ’em, join ’em…

Spend the money, but a character slot, and check it out for yourself. No one here is going to agree with you, not after that part about having to be 80 to pvp…

/thread. Thanks!

pdavis…. unlike YOU, I am willing to learn. And to admit my mistakes. Scroll up about 5 posts from this response. Have a nice day.

Sooooo it is apparent that you have little knowledge of how PvP works, claim that a mechanic is OP without any real proof of you own other than ‘I can’t beat it’, and refuse to try to learn the class to better yourself? Yeah, you deserve to lose.

Now, once you’re done throwing a tantrum, I suggest you read what people have said here. Chaos, and like 7 others, have made great points in that once a player is stealthed, they can’t hold a point. PvP is about capping points. If a class is able to get away multiple times, great! That’s something that makes them different. However, how is that helping their team? I am an experienced Mesmer and I will say that our best tactic against more than half of the other professions is kiting and ranging the heck out of them. In that time, we are giving up to 10 points because we usually can’t fight on point effectively.

Furthermore, ANet has absolutely no obligation to show any ‘proof’ to anyone who has no intent on learning how to actually play the game. I really hope this is an elaborate troll post because if not this is just sad….

I don’t think deaths/match (or similar) is a good metric for efficacy. If a player runs from a point to avoid dieing, and his opponent stays to capture the point, that’s a victory for the opponent without a kill.

Do kills/deaths affect the outcome of a match? Yes, but it’s one of many many factors. You can’t measure class efficacy based on that alone.

It’s odd that you mention mesmer too, because yes, PU mesmer is one of the best dueling specs, but a poor TPVP specs. Outside of mass invis the spec offers very little to its teammates, and the dps is low enough that it can’t take points effectively, nor can it decap points effectively. It has grave drawbacks playing in the conquest mode despite seeming very strong.

Nightshade, you say you’re willing to learn. Several people have mentioned this, but you need to learn mesmer. Not because you want to be cheap, but so you can learn the strengths/weaknesses. I really think if you do that you’ll have a different outlook.

Holy kittening kitten. Nightshade you are wrong about mesmers. If you are serious about fixing your deficit add me in game I will show you how to kill a mesmer. Eventually you will get that amazing moment in pvp where you kill the mesmer even after he moas you.

Nightshade.5924:

Nightshade.5924:

pdavis.8031:

@OP

Sorry you just lost all credibility when you stated that you needed a fully geared lvl 80 to play pvp. And that anything less was hurting your team. I might have been able to get behind the OP stealth, or even seeing some stats, but not anymore. Everything said from that point on became an issue of L2P.

If you cant beat ’em, join ’em…

Spend the money, but a character slot, and check it out for yourself. No one here is going to agree with you, not after that part about having to be 80 to pvp…

/thread. Thanks!

pdavis…. I am willing to learn. And to admit my mistakes. And I also tend to read the whole thread BEFORE I offer comment. Scroll up about 5 posts from this response, some 30 mins before you threw in your two cents.. Have a nice day.

No, no, I think the mainly incorrect part about your post which pdavis quoted is that you believed you needed exotic gear to PvP to the maximum of one’s ability, and that anything less than exotic would screw you over or just drop your effectiveness.

Gear doesn’t matter in PvP, and this show of ignorance of that seems to have shown vulnerability to your credibility.

DaveGan.8065:

On the 1% chance you aren’t trolling…

Nightshade.5924:

I must admit that I am perplexed. First you say not to confuse everyone and use random buzzwords, and THEN you post two links to pages that most normal people will be totally lost on. If you haven’t taken serious statistics courses, most of those pages will be pure gibberish.

The difference is that you threw around buzzwords to the whole crowd while I linked some basic concepts to you, someone trying to maintain some image of statistical expertise.

We already HAVE millions of players to perform a statistical analysis with.

I still am on a winning team 47% of the time.

And a losing team 53% of the time.

Basic stats time! With a sample size 1000, your average is 0.47 wins per match with a standard deviation of 0.4993. A 95% confidence interval of [0.44, 0.5] means we are almost 95% sure you are below average...in hotjoin…

And now I wish I had kept track of ALL the times I’ve been stuck on a four man team or had a copout chappy in the spawn.

Probability time! Let’s assume you don’t have a tendency of AFK/ragequit yourself. There are 9 slots for the other players in the game. 5 of them are on the other team! So you are 25% (5/9 vs 4/9) more likely to have an AFK on the other team than your own!

That is, unless the single common denominator (you) in those 1000 games is the one causing your teammates to AFK…

Bravo, DaveGan. Are you by chance a stat major? Masters student? Well argued except for one tiny wrong assumption. Which throws all of your good work down the drain.

You ASSUMED a normal distribution. I TOLD you it was SKEW from the beginning. Go ahead. Go back and read it. And SINCE we KNOW this distribution is skew, we CANNOT use this analysis.

As for quitting.. I’ve been DC’d once. I don’t even consider quitting unless the other team has 480 pts to our 200 or less, and we don’t hold any points. To me, if you’re there to PvP, play. Losing might teach you something.

And here’s another example of where knowing ALL of the FACTS and having all of numbers helps. It just so happens that in 32 of the 50 or so matches that I have been short a teammate, the game STARTED with ONLY four us in zone.

That has only happened to THREE teams that I’ve played against. Why this queuing disparity exists, I have No explanation. I just have a notepad and tick marks.

Noah.9654:

Sooooo it is apparent that you have little knowledge of how PvP works, claim that a mechanic is OP without any real proof of you own other than ‘I can’t beat it’, and refuse to try to learn the class to better yourself? Yeah, you deserve to lose.

Now, once you’re done throwing a tantrum, I suggest you read what people have said here. Chaos, and like 7 others, have made great points in that once a player is stealthed, they can’t hold a point. PvP is about capping points. If a class is able to get away multiple times, great! That’s something that makes them different. However, how is that helping their team? I am an experienced Mesmer and I will say that our best tactic against more than half of the other professions is kiting and ranging the heck out of them. In that time, we are giving up to 10 points because we usually can’t fight on point effectively.

Furthermore, ANet has absolutely no obligation to show any ‘proof’ to anyone who has no intent on learning how to actually play the game. I really hope this is an elaborate troll post because if not this is just sad….

I again suggest That You read the whole thread. All of you seem to be missing or ignoring a vital point, quite deliberately I might add.

ONE. THOUSAND. PVP. MATCHES. Yes, it’s not 5000 or 10000. Which in a year would be 13 matches a day and 27 matches a day respectively. Put another way, I average maybe 40 mins a day in pvp vice the three to six hours that I know some people play.

I know how to play. Sure, I have more losses than wins. I’m one player on what usually is a 5 man team. No matter how stellar and awesome a player YOU are, if everyone else is “normal” and TWO of the players on the opposing team are just as good as you are, you most likely WILL LOSE. That’s the reality of pugging.

But I have detected a trend related to stealth heavy teams. Mesmers are my favorite target of comment because they are my unicorn. Irregardless of that, w/o having death stats etc all I have is an interesting theory that I Can Not Prove With Out said data.

And ArenaNet DOES have a responsibility to show evenhandness and equity. Otherwise they are doing just the opposite.

Ok, I just wanna touch on a few things that have come up before addressing your primary question.

ANet shouldn’t balance around high tier play

I see this kind of thing a TON around any PvP game, and if you take it as true that the company wants to grow the game at a competitive level then you need to stop. Because that’s exactly what they should be doing. You don’t balance a competitive PvP game around the 95%, you balance it around the 5%. Example: There’s a guardian build that you can be night unkillable outside of a 5v1 scenario, but the skill floor is so high for it that only the best players can do it. Do you A)Leave it alone, after all the majority of players can’t do it, or B) Figure out the problem and nerf it in the best way you can figure out. By this logic you wouldn’t do anything about it, regardless of the impact it has upon high tier play.

Stealth is OP because it’s (maybe) strong in low to mid tier play.

If you don’t see it at high tier play, it’s not OP, and in fact is more likely to be UP. That’s the name of the game in a setting that’s supposed to be all about playing at that high tier. Seriously. If the top tier players don’t use it, then there’s no reason it should be nerfed without some compensation, preferably something that brings said class/build into viability in high tier play. If stealth (and Mesmers) were actually OP (OP: Overpowered; stronger than other options when played with the same amount of skill) then you would see them all over every tournament. Do you? If you don’t, then it’s not actually OP, and it’s simply a skill issue that you need to work at. Now, could we nerf stealth, and maybe buff the classes that rely on it in some other way? Absolutely. Ask high tier players how to buff the classes that rely on it, and work to figure out a way to incorporate some of those buffs while you target nerf stealth. Boom, good balancing.

Death statistics by class are extremely relevant.

By themselves? No, not at all, because deaths are only one part of the equation. It could maybe be useful if you combined it with data about number of points capped per game, or a similar stat. But by itself it shows very little beyond what classes have lower skill floors, at least when taken from the whole game population. IF you also sorted it out by build, you could perhaps have something of merit, or if you took it only from high tier play. But blanket from the entire community? Worthless numbers from a competitive balance perspective, which is what the game is striving towards.

Countering stealth is a skill and perhaps build issue, not a mechanic issue. It has strengths and weaknesses like every other part of the game, it’s main strength lying in the time it takes to develop the skill to deal smartly with it when your enemy does it. It’s quite possible you developed a play style that get’s hard countered by stealth. It’s not the devs job to change things to suit your style though. It’s yours to take a step back, get some time in either on the class or playing against the class, and figure out how you can change your play style to deal with it, and hopefully get better in the process.

(Quotes are not sourced because they are at best a contraction of statements found in this thread, and at worst me putting together the basic ideas of a post found in this thread.)

Nightshade.5924:

Bravo, DaveGan. Are you by chance a stat major? Masters student? Well argued except for one tiny wrong assumption. Which throws all of your good work down the drain.

Masters, yes, but not in statistics (was just a minor). I should mention that confidence intervals are one of the first things you learn in Stat 101.

You ASSUMED a normal distribution. I TOLD you it was SKEW from the beginning. Go ahead. Go back and read it. And SINCE we KNOW this distribution is skew, we CANNOT use this analysis.

Looks like someone failed high school statistics…and didn’t read that link on the Central Limit Theorem.

“n = 30” is roughly the minimum sample size (rule of thumb) where the sample mean takes a normal distribution, regardless of the distribution of the original sample (binomial in this case).

How big is the sample size with your number of games? Oh, 1000…that’s at least 30, right?

Would you like to embarrass yourself some more? Maybe one-up Mitt Romney and triple-down?

It just so happens that in 32 of the 50 or so matches that I have been short a teammate, the game STARTED with ONLY four us in zone.

And statistically, you should have expected to have seen 60-65 matches of 5v4 (or even 4v4) the other way! But hey, let’s play Confirmation Bias 9000!.

/15 characters rekt.

While part of me wants to just type "this again..." and hit post, there is actually an interesting point here about the use of stealth specifically by mesmers.

First, stealth is a utility. It’s no single class’s mechanic like shatters, attunements, stealing, life force, adrenaline, virtues, pets and kits. Infact, 4 classes have access to stealth. Does this mean that it should be possible to create entire (effective) builds based around or relying heavily on stealth - not for one thing like survival, but in everything? Thieves could do it once, and it was nerfed. Some called that nerf a fix. Building around stealth, thieves could hide indefinitely while in and out of combat, regenerate health at almost a third of the effectiveness of the healing signet in addition to their healing skill, and they could come out of stealth with a very high guaranteed crit. In fact they can still do this albeit to a much lesser extent than before, but people have since finally realised that the build was actually very bad in PvP.

The whole concept of the mesmer, however, is to create clones in order to disorient foes and mask their true location. But this doesn’t really work. We can target the real mesmer, we can track its movements even without a target, we can identify it by the buffs under the name when we cycle targets, and of course we can pick it out by the noticable human-controlled movements, and usage of different skills and evading. Stealth helps them achieve their purpose as a class: lose the target, chance to hide or blend with the clones. Sounds fair? But they can also attack via phantasms while in stealth - which no other class can do. Alright, a ranger can with their pet, but they have no where near the amount of stealth access that a mesmer does - especially if the mesmer builds for it, and this is exactly what we’re seeing in PvP. With the amount of damage the mesmer, their phantasms and their shatters can do, is it balanced to allow them so much access to stealth? Perhaps, but with the near instant stuns and dazes they can pull off and high amounts of invulnerability they have access to all in the same build? Oh, and don’t forget they can deal their best damage from 1200 range away. Typically you either have high damage close up with plentiful effective survival abilities like the warrior, or high damage far away with fewer survival abilities like the ranger. It is a cheesey build, taking advantage of literally everything decent that the class has to offer, which of course makes no sense. Just to be clear, I’m referring to the use of berserkers, sword 2 for blurred frenzy, torch and utilities for stealth, dazing and distortion shatters back at 50% health - basically when the mesmer is out of stealth they are either evading, invulnerable, have you daze locked or stunned, blinkiting, or has the chaos aura everywhere blinding you, and it’s in-out of stealth a lot so it drags out a bit. It’s like giving thieves an extra 6 trait points to pick up critical strikes, acrobatics and trickery all together, or reverting changes to adrenaline and buffing warrior longbow auto attack.

But hey, cheesey is the in thing right now. Evade spamming thieves, turret engineers, celestial stats on every elementalist, engineer, and on some warriors and rangers. Multiple celestial builds in a single composition facerolling to victory. AI to victory. These builds can of course be beaten. It needs to stop being about "I died to it so it must be addressed as OP", and being about reason. If you can reason and argue constructively why something should change, the devs might just pay attention. But then, in time, cries eventually do get loud enough so... I’m rambling, and I’m tired. I probably should have just gone to sleep =P.

I have been playing this game for less than a month and mesmer’s aren’t that big of an issue for me..
Am I OP when I play dps guard and D/P thief?

DaveGan.8065:

Nightshade.5924:

Bravo, DaveGan. Are you by chance a stat major? Masters student? Well argued except for one tiny wrong assumption. Which throws all of your good work down the drain.

Masters, yes, but not in statistics (was just a minor). I should mention that confidence intervals are one of the first things you learn in Stat 101.

You ASSUMED a normal distribution. I TOLD you it was SKEW from the beginning. Go ahead. Go back and read it. And SINCE we KNOW this distribution is skew, we CANNOT use this analysis.

Looks like someone failed high school statistics…and didn’t read that link on the Central Limit Theorem.

“n = 30” is roughly the minimum sample size (rule of thumb) where the sample mean takes a normal distribution, regardless of the distribution of the original sample (binomial in this case).

How big is the sample size with your number of games? Oh, 1000…that’s at least 30, right?

Would you like to embarrass yourself some more? Maybe one-up Mitt Romney and triple-down?

It just so happens that in 32 of the 50 or so matches that I have been short a teammate, the game STARTED with ONLY four us in zone.

And statistically, you should have expected to have seen 60-65 matches of 5v4 (or even 4v4) the other way! But hey, let’s play Confirmation Bias 9000!.

Quote: In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) states that, given CERTAIN CONDITIONS, the arithmetic mean of a sufficiently large number of iterates of independent random variables, each with a well-defined expected value and well-defined variance, will be approximately normally distributed, regardless of the underlying distribution.¹² That is, suppose that a sample is obtained containing a large number of observations, each observation being randomly generated in a way that does not depend on the values of the other observations, and that the arithmetic average of the observed values is computed. If this procedure is performed many times, the central limit theorem says that the computed values of the average will be distributed according to the normal distribution (commonly known as a “bell curve”). End quote.

IT’S a theory. There’s a reason it’s Not Called the central limit LAW. There is an unsubtle scientific difference. And N=30 is a MINIMUM for a reason. Larger is always preferred because it’s BETTER.

And I notice you deride Real World Results. Tsk Tsk. Which is another reason you Can Not apply something like the Central Limit Theory. Not until you can CONFIRM, via a LARGER Sample, that said results are due to normal statistical drift. And not a true skew that you need to find a cause for. Something that’s very important in large scale manufacturing, btw.

And stats 300 was over a decade ago for yours truly. Been a while since I’ve really cracked a book vice doing my job or punching keys on my laptop.

cheers

Nightshade.5924:

IT’S a theory. There’s a reason it’s Not Called the central limit LAW. There is an unsubtle scientific difference. And N=30 is a MINIMUM for a reason. Larger is always preferred because it’s BETTER.

And I notice you deride Real World Results. Tsk Tsk. Which is another reason you Can Not apply something like the Central Limit Theory. Not until you can CONFIRM, via a LARGER Sample, that said results are due to normal statistical drift. And not a true skew that you need to find a cause for. Something that’s very important in large scale manufacturing, btw.

Replace “stat” and “central limit” with “evolution” and you’ll quickly notice what you’re sounding like.

Your W/L record is a binomial distribution with sample size 1000, significantly larger than 30 and a virtual lock for the central limit “rule of thumb”.

If anything, you might’ve had a case by arguing that you’ve improved over time and that we should put heavier weight on your more recent matches. But I’m going to disallow that now because 1.) the n=1000 and 47% win rate uniform weighting was something you brought up yourself, and 2.) you’ve had multiple chances to bring it up and continually failed to do so.

But don’t take things too personally. I said that basic statistical analysis concluded there was almost 95% chance you were below average. You can cling to that remaining 5% if you want, because I don’t have enough data to go after it, and all the data in the world will not be enough to claim it all.

PS: you can stop the bogus appeals to authority. I’m perfectly happy to evaluate your ideas on their merits alone, and I even look forward to possibly learning something if you can manage to stop going Plaxico Burress on your foot.

Kalriostraz.6819:

Ok, I just wanna touch on a few things that have come up before addressing your primary question.

ANet shouldn’t balance around high tier play

I see this kind of thing a TON around any PvP game, and if you take it as true that the company wants to grow the game at a competitive level then you need to stop. Because that’s exactly what they should be doing. You don’t balance a competitive PvP game around the 95%, you balance it around the 5%.

Death statistics by class are extremely relevant.

By themselves? No, not at all, because deaths are only one part of the equation. It could maybe be useful if you combined it with data about number of points capped per game, or a similar stat. But by itself it shows very little beyond what classes have lower skill floors, at least when taken from the whole game population. IF you also sorted it out by build, you could perhaps have something of merit, or if you took it only from high tier play. But blanket from the entire community? Worthless numbers from a competitive balance perspective, which is what the game is striving towards.

(Quotes are not sourced because they are at best a contraction of statements found in this thread, and at worst me putting together the basic ideas of a post found in this thread.)

Interesting, well thought out. I have mentioned adding things like how many times a given class kills another class. Because that is one area that would be an indicator of class on class imbalance.

But I disagree w/ your 5% comment . If the class is just fine in 95% of the game, then it logically follows that IT SHOULD be fine for the remaining 5%. If it is using mechanics that are so specialized or difficult to use that 95% of the players (read customers) cannot play that class well and as a result DO NOT USE THAT CLASS, THAT issue needs to be resolved.

DaveGan.8065:

Nightshade.5924:

IT’S a theory. There’s a reason it’s Not Called the central limit LAW. There is an unsubtle scientific difference. And N=30 is a MINIMUM for a reason. Larger is always preferred because it’s BETTER.

And I notice you deride Real World Results. Tsk Tsk. Which is another reason you Can Not apply something like the Central Limit Theory. Not until you can CONFIRM, via a LARGER Sample, that said results are due to normal statistical drift. And not a true skew that you need to find a cause for. Something that’s very important in large scale manufacturing, btw.

Replace “stat” and “central limit” with “evolution” and you’ll quickly notice what you’re sounding like.

Your W/L record is a binomial distribution with sample size 1000, significantly larger than 30 and a virtual lock for the central limit “rule of thumb”.

If anything, you might’ve had a case by arguing that you’ve improved over time and that we should put heavier weight on your more recent matches. But I’m going to disallow that now because 1.) the n=1000 and 47% win rate uniform weighting was something you brought up yourself, and 2.) you’ve had multiple chances to bring it up and continually failed to do so.

But don’t take things too personally. I said that basic statistical analysis concluded there was almost 95% chance you were below average. You can cling to that remaining 5% if you want, because I don’t have enough data to go after it, and all the data in the world will not be enough to claim it all.

PS: you can stop the bogus appeals to authority. I’m perfectly happy to evaluate your ideas on their merits alone, and I even look forward to possibly learning something if you can manage to stop going Plaxico Burress on your foot.

You continually avoid altering the sample to exclude potential bad data, say like matches that could not be won. Interesting. And you continue to avoid the fact that this queuing problem indicates a potential systemic defect or error that places this discussion beyond the realm of normal statistical analysis. Fascinating.

OH. And in a Real 95% confidence interval, with the original numbers, we have a 47.2 +/- 3.1, making me slightly below or at “average”. With an adjustment to discard potential bad data, a 95% confidence interval calculates to 49.7 +/- 3.2. Which then places me squarely at or above “average”.

cheers.

Struggle with mesmers and thieves? They got a common weakness called conditions.
You had a ranger? Ok, this is how you do it.

Log into ranger.
Put on rabid amulet, axe dagger and sword torch.
Rune: krait
Sigils: geomancy + generosity on both weaponsets
Traits: 26600
Keen edge, sharpened edges, trap traits. Shared anguish, offhand training, empathic bond.
Utilities: fire trap, spike trap, signet of the wild
Elite: entangle
Healing: healing spring
Pets: river drake + wolf

Dump traps on point and swap weapons as often as you can to stack bleeds. When against mesmers, use entangle to lock em down while using drake F2 and condi spam to destroy them.

Warriors will give you some trouble, condi necro can only be beat if using generosity sigils so you can keep sending condies back and forth. Engi will implode, ele will be tough and take time, but can be killed. Just keep spamling sword 3 or dagger4 to maintain poison.

Prysin.8542:

Struggle with mesmers and thieves? They got a common weakness called conditions.
You had a ranger? Ok, this is how you do it.

Log into ranger.
Put on rabid amulet, axe dagger and sword torch.
Rune: krait
Sigils: geomancy + generosity on both weaponsets
Traits: 26600
Keen edge, sharpened edges, trap traits. Shared anguish, offhand training, empathic bond.
Utilities: fire trap, spike trap, signet of the wild
Elite: entangle
Healing: healing spring
Pets: river drake + wolf

Dump traps on point and swap weapons as often as you can to stack bleeds. When against mesmers, use entangle to lock em down while using drake F2 and condi spam to destroy them.

Warriors will give you some trouble, condi necro can only be beat if using generosity sigils so you can keep sending condies back and forth. Engi will implode, ele will be tough and take time, but can be killed. Just keep spamling sword 3 or dagger4 to maintain poison.

Shssss…don’t promote that build its very annoying to deal withm

Nightshade.5924:

You continually avoid altering the sample to exclude potential bad data, say like matches that could not be won. Interesting.

I knew you’d go there. Again, if you want to remove 50 games for 4v5 due to AFK/DC, probabilistically there will be about 25% more games (62.5, we can round down to 62 just for you) where you had a 5v4 advantage—remember 5/9 vs 4/9? But instead of 50 games of 4v5 and 62 games of 5v4, it would actually be more like 47 games of 4v5, 59 games of 5v4, and 3 games of 4v4.

If you keep arguing for “real” data, then I’m perfectly happy to take out your unfair games, so long as we can adjust for your confirmation bias (the 5v4s you conveniently ignored) as well. So from your record of 470 wins and 530 losses, we can remove 47 invalid losses and 59 invalid wins.

That puts you at 411-483, or 45.97%…
N = 894, avg = 0.4597315, stdev = 0.4986548

New 95% confidence interval…[0.4270, 0.4924]

GG WP…removing unbalanced matches from your record has made you even worse. Now I can remove the “almost” in “we can be almost 95% sure you are worse than average”.

cheers

Cheers indeed. Someone’s going to be drinking a lot.

EDIT: I just noticed this again…

a 95% confidence interval calculates to 49.7 +/- 3.2. Which then places me squarely at or above “average”.

Plus/minus goes both ways. The interval [46.5, 52.9] still averages under .500, and I’d still come out slightly ahead betting you were below .500 than betting you were above.

Nightshade.5924:

I’ve been playing PvP for over a year. And I’m finally to the point of saying enough. Enough of mesmers killing me all the time. Enough of mesmers taking two or three players to kill. Enough of losing time and time again to teams w/ stealth player
superiority.

There already is a counter category that tracks how many kills a particular account has. What needs to happen is this. The Devs NEED to create a “killed” tracker. There needs to be a counter that tracks each and every “death” in PvP. By toon type category. Then a breakdown should be done in regards to percentages and frequency.

Then after a month the results need to be analyzed and ideally, published for general consumption. I am SICK AND TIRED of people saying that “oh, look at the playoff boards. You don’t see any mesmers there…” What MY individual experience tells me is that neither my warrior, my engineer, OR my necro can routinely KILL a Mesmer.

In FACT, I almost NEVER kill a Mesmer by myself. Unlike warriors or guardians, which my eng routinely eats for breakfast. Unlike rangers, necros, engs and thieves. Mesmers are the one class that in PvP that I perceive to be bulletproof.

So this will not only settle the argument of Mesmer invincibility once and for all, BUT should ALSO should show that STEALTH classes have an UNFAIR advantage in PvP.

Nuff said.

You can try my current PvP build (in signature) since I use it I didnt met Mesmer what was able to kill me 1v1. I have archived few very angry whispers from so called Legendary Champions:-P

GUYS you’re having a Stats War over a SINGLE person’s PERSONAL average with THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THAT PERSON xD You’re making Confidence Intervals – do you know what they are? They say that you are “95% Sure the true Mean sits in this bracket” YOU ARE USING THE POPULATION MEAN TO CALCUATE IT xD You already know it…

Nightshade.5924:

Mesmers are the one class that in PvP that I perceive to be bulletproof.

[…] of Mesmer invincibility once and for all[…]

Yep. Everyone and their mother is rerolling D/D Ele, Cele Engi and Roflolwarriors in tPvP because mesmers are so OP.

I will say it once again – Mesmers Thieves and Clones/Stealth are noob checks for PvP

At one point in time we all thought they were OP

Nightshade.5924:

Interesting, well thought out. I have mentioned adding things like how many times a given class kills another class. Because that is one area that would be an indicator of class on class imbalance.

But I disagree w/ your 5% comment . If the class is just fine in 95% of the game, then it logically follows that IT SHOULD be fine for the remaining 5%. If it is using mechanics that are so specialized or difficult to use that 95% of the players (read customers) cannot play that class well and as a result DO NOT USE THAT CLASS, THAT issue needs to be resolved.

How doe it logically follow that because it’s ok at 95% of skill level, that it has to be ok for the top 5%? I also don’t believe I said anything about not using the class at all, I was transferring a specific happenstance I’ve seen a number of times in games like LoL and SMITE into a GW2 example. Where a champion/god is rarely seen in bronze to ~platinum play, but is often seen in challenger and above and does extremely well there. Or a strategy is barely seen in solo Q, but is highly prevalent at tournaments or similar situations. Simply because of the difference in skill level. Highly competitive games like Marvel Vs Capcom have things that take a high degree of skill to pull off, but are expected that you can do if you plan to compete at a higher level.

How about we take your statement then. Let’s say DPS Guardian is a very solid pick, and is seen in plenty of team comps at high level play, but the degree of skill required to play it is such that it’s seen played effectively in very few if any casual/low tier games. This is healthy! This is a natural happening in a game that has varying degrees of skill. The main thing that now needs to be taken into account is if it makes the game more fun to watch. Which has nothing to do with balance at all, but is an incredibly important aspect to consider in any game striving to be an esport. Now, does that mean they should just leave it alone? No, but something like this should be low on the priority pole compared to something that’s dominating high tier play, or dominating low tier play and never seen in high tier.

On the flip side, let’s say DPS Guardian is seen very little in high tier play, but it dominates and destroys in low tier play because countering it requires high degrees of skill and/or coordination. This much be approached much differently. You need to try and figure out what it is that makes it a skill ‘hurdle’ in dealing with, and decide if you actually need to adjust it. Is the skill something required for high tier play? Well, perhaps you work gently to reduce the skill level you need in that. You need to figure out why it’s not an issue at high tier, what could be adjusted to bring it up to high tier, and combine and mix the two, likely across a few patches, in order to bring it in line with where you want it to be. Most importantly though is that this needs to be done slowly. If you do it too quick you risk running into the ‘nerf bat’ trap, where it falls off the map for all levels of play because it just sucks now.
Although to be honest, most game companies will just end up nerfing them into the ground and they’ll vanish from any tier of competitive play until they do something more. This was a common occurrence in the early life of plenty of MOBAs.

In general though, you need to balance around high tier play. Your priority for fixes has to go: OP across all tiers > OP in high tier play > UP in high tier play > OP in low tier but it under performs comparatively in high tier play > UP in low tier play > UP across all tiers.

This is all about the health of the game at a competitive level, making the options as varied as possible at high tier, and ensuring the game is fun to watch. Those three things need to be kept in mind for any game trying to have a competitive scene. Of course by far the hardest part of this will become figuring out just what is ‘balanced’ because that varies greatly by skill level. But that’s why it’s best to balance around what your top players can do. Because everyone else can always get better, and in fact are presumed to be striving to do just that. It also gives you a pool of players with more experience in your game than any other. In other words, a resource for balance that more companies should look into tapping. But that’s an issue for another thread.

This thread just needs to die already. I came in at the beginning and ended up actually helping another “Replier”. If he can’t take what we have given him to improve, there is no help. I also am still not sure this whole thing isn’t a troll maneuver. Guess I just won’t come back into here

Nightshade.5924:

pdavis.8031:

@OP

Sorry you just lost all credibility when you stated that you needed a fully geared lvl 80 to play pvp. And that anything less was hurting your team. I might have been able to get behind the OP stealth, or even seeing some stats, but not anymore. Everything said from that point on became an issue of L2P.

If you cant beat ’em, join ’em…

Spend the money, but a character slot, and check it out for yourself. No one here is going to agree with you, not after that part about having to be 80 to pvp…

/thread. Thanks!

pdavis…. unlike YOU, I am willing to learn. And to admit my mistakes. Scroll up about 5 posts from this response. Have a nice day.

You apparently missed my several posts talking about how to deal with mesmers, what to look for and how to work with it. I am more then willing to admit when I make a mistake, and to learn from it.

But even with that mistake, it shows that even with your experience with PvP, there are still some things that you don’t know, which is fine, but when other more informed members of the PvP community, who actually do know what they are talking about are saying that it’s not OP, that it’s not in high tier PvP, that while it is an annoyance, it is not OP it would be a sign of wisdom to heed their voices and advice. Instead you’ve disregarded them, insisted that you are correct, and continue to assert that you are correct, and make demands that Anet reveal certain metrics in order to validate your point, which has been proven wrong several times already.