Guild Wars 2

So there’s an incredibly easy way to get to legend at the moment, which involves match manipulation (I wonder if ANET cares, given it’s been around every season thus far). Not that hitting Legend is difficult this season (in terms of requisite skill) via conquest, but it does take a lot of grind and frustration given the current abysmal matchmaking (unless you’re underrated significantly in terms of MMR, then enjoy sailing to Legend).

Get 9 friends, and have two 5-queues for Stronghold. You’ll be matched against each other, since the game mode is essentially deserted, and a 5 man queue can only be matched against another team queue (so no chance of getting matched against the most common stronghold players, the random soloqers who don’t know they can uncheck Stronghold).

Win 3, Lose 3. Repeat enough times, and congrats on Legend!

And as an added bonus, you have short queue times!

I’m not advocating doing this, as it’s blatant match manipulation and (hopefully) ANET will take action. Of course, since it’s been possible for every single season up to now, I’m not so sure. At the very least, more people attempting match manipulation in this way will hopefully force those players to actually have to try and play some stronghold matches to win (which probably isn’t as awful as being banned, or having to play Conquest with this matchmaking, but at least it throws a tiny wrench in their plans).

but how do you get through ruby and diamond with this ?

hmm
say at
0/30 ruby

group A 5 players lose 3 games, 0/30 ruby
group B 5 players win 3 games, 4/30 ruby

group A – win 3 games, 5/30 ruby
group B – lose 3 games, 1/30 ruby

group A – lose 3 games, 2/30 ruby
group B – win 3 games, 6/30 ruby

group A – win 3 games, 7/30 ruby
group B – lose 3 games, 3/30 ruby

well, its gonna take a lot of games i think.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

but how do you get through ruby and diamond with this ?

hmm
say at
0/30 ruby

group A 5 players lose 3 games, 0/30 ruby
group B 5 players win 3 games, 4/30 ruby

group A – win 3 games, 5/30 ruby
group B – lose 3 games, 1/30 ruby

group A – lose 3 games, 2/30 ruby
group B – win 3 games, 6/30 ruby

group A – win 3 games, 7/30 ruby
group B – lose 3 games, 3/30 ruby

well, its gonna take a lot of games i think.

Not as many as you think, comeback bonus after losing 3 straight is +2 pips, +1 pip from second victory, and +2 pips for the winstreak. So for every 6 games you play you will end up at +2 pips (5 pips from 3wins -3 from 3 losses). Yes its still a grind but people will do it just like how people wintrade dailies in personal servers and Anet does nothing about it. Also lots of people have multiple accounts so you don’t exactly need 10 players, just 10 accounts, they don’t even need to have HOT. Also if you have multiple accounts you can change the rosters so your main account is always getting wins.

Right, it’s a “slow” process, but not as slow as you think.

After the first round of 6 games, you gain a net 2 pips for every round after that.

Let’s say that every Ranked conquest game gives you a 50% chance to win, and after 6 games you net 1 pip on average due to how those wins are structured. So you have ~10 minute games, with 5 minute queues. That means you gain one pip every 90 minutes.

Let’s compare this to the Stronghold manipulation method. For 6 games, you’ll get a net 2 pips (after the first round of 6, anyway). Queues are, let’s say, 1 minute. Games are, let’s say, 5 minutes. That’s 36 minutes for 2 pips. And this is an overestimate of how long it takes to win Stronghold as a 5-queue with no opposition, as well as an overestimate of actual queue times.

Which makes this method 5 times faster than our Ranked Conquest example. Even if our Ranked Conquest example could be greatly sped up via luck, and via being underrated in terms of your MMR, I doubt it’d approach the speed of this manipulation. Especially since queue times (currently) get much longer as you approach Legend, but if you’re manipulating Stronghold with 10 players, your queues are still basically instant.

I’ve known about this for a while as it’s very similar to the WoW Ranked Battlegrounds wintrading to 2200rating and buy weapons/elite armor And WoW with tons more resources did nothing to stop there wintrading fiasco, I fully expect Anet to do nothing about this even if it becomes rampant (except delete threads about it). It’s even easier in this game to wintrade because if your que’s don’t pop at the same time, you dont even have to click decline and get the CD timer where you can’t que again, 1 person/account just leaves party and it cancels, then the account rejoins party and you can que right away again. It’s a very easy system to beat that will likely be exploited much more this season because of the changes to the MMR system making legend grind take longer.

Why would they alternate back and forth after 3 games? That’s a lot of pip loss. That’s 6 games for every 2 pips net gain each side, 90 games total. If they allowed one team to blow from the bottom of ruby all the way to diamond, that’s 15 games. They’d use the safety barrier of diamond to boost the other team. That’s 30 games total, no pip loss. Not only that, since the games are rigged, they’d probably blow through them very quickly and finish at least one division per night.

They should probably cut it from ranked if only exploiters are using it.

SneakyTouchy.6043:

Why would they alternate back and forth after 3 games? That’s a lot of pip loss. That’s 6 games for every 2 pips net gain each side, 90 games total. If they allowed one team to blow from the bottom of ruby all the way to diamond, that’s 15 games. They’d use the safety barrier of diamond to boost the other team. That’s 30 games total, no pip loss. Not only that, since the games are rigged, they’d probably blow through them very quickly and finish at least one division per night.

They should probably cut it from ranked if only exploiters are using it.

hmmm you are right, but how will the diamond team vs the ruby team after wards ?

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

SneakyTouchy.6043:

Why would they alternate back and forth after 3 games? That’s a lot of pip loss. That’s 6 games for every 2 pips net gain each side, 90 games total. If they allowed one team to blow from the bottom of ruby all the way to diamond, that’s 15 games. They’d use the safety barrier of diamond to boost the other team. That’s 30 games total, no pip loss. Not only that, since the games are rigged, they’d probably blow through them very quickly and finish at least one division per night.

They should probably cut it from ranked if only exploiters are using it.

hmmm you are right, but how will the diamond team vs the ruby team after wards ?

You talk like there is any 5 queues for SH.

This is anet’s way of popularizing stronghold :^)

I only have one question. Where do I sign up?

This type of shenanigans has been going on for the entire league. The topic is misleading as you’ll be just as likely to get matched in Conquest with a full premade. Better to leave both Conquest and Stronghold checked and Q at the same time. Was it in season 2 I was stuck in a rut of getting in a match with two 4 man teams. There were characters with names like, “I lose more”. Then in the next round I was on the other 4 man and watched this player swap to a character that was named something like, “I win more”. Again, it’s nothing new…. sadly….

DeWolfe.2174:

The topic is misleading as you’ll be just as likely to get matched in Conquest with a full premade. Better to leave both Conquest and Stronghold checked and Q at the same time.

Yes, but people actually queue in teams for Conquest. So you’re much more likely to have queue pops that are not from your other team.

Additionally, it’s much faster to win Stronghold than it is Conquest.

If you’re doing this, there is literally no reason to have Conquest checked in your preferences, and every reason not to have Conquest checked.

Zui.9245:

DeWolfe.2174:

The topic is misleading as you’ll be just as likely to get matched in Conquest with a full premade. Better to leave both Conquest and Stronghold checked and Q at the same time.

Yes, but people actually queue in teams for Conquest. So you’re much more likely to have queue pops that are not from your other team.

Additionally, it’s much faster to win Stronghold than it is Conquest.

If you’re doing this, there is literally no reason to have Conquest checked in your preferences, and every reason not to have Conquest checked.

If all you care about is getting to legend sure. But I hope that some people actually play the game because they like it. If I had to play stronghold to legend I would shoot myself…

This remind me of those Daily Achievement custom arenas where players trade wins to either complete their reward tracks or to grab their daily class achievement.

I see a lot of WvW guilds trying this and a few PvE players. It would be funny if this catches on where there’s other 5 man groups trying this strategy but breaking it due to this thread.