Guild Wars 2

I like to try new builds on pretty much every profession. However I am having a hard time actually doing that.

• Ranked Arena: Obviously not the right place.
• Unranked Arena: I had thought this would be ideal. But people there are determined to win – being called “useless” was the nicest being said to me, if my build didn’t work out.
• Practice Arena: No, not possible. Either my team zerks the one with less people. Or I’m in that team, being focused by The Zerk.

I had hoped Unranked would be the place to play to have fun, without the constant 4v5 and the zerking. I wonder if the current premade-problem in Ranked is the reason for more “serious” solo players being in Unranked.

Where do you test your new builds?

Depends on what you need to test it for.

If you want to test out how the survivability or disengaging feels like, practice is fine. Bonus is that you don’t have to wait. I prefer unranked.

Also there’s a big difference between trying out new tweaks and jogging your memory on why a 4-Signet thief doesn’t ever get used, for example.

You can tell if a build has any business seeing the light of day before you get to conquest maps. Try the rotations on practice dummies and Profession NPCs first. If you make sure the builds pass the test, then you won’t get yelled at by your teammates for being useless, at the very least.

AlbertoUlkesh.4517:

• Ranked Arena: Obviously not the right place.

Thank you for this.

Just had a ranked match where the guardian on my team ran a spirit weapons build, and admitted in /t he was testing it.

He spent 80% of the game in downed state and needed constant rezzes, did 0 DPS (his spirit weapons were getting stuck instead of moving and attacking enemies) and never gave stability when needed (probably didn’t have any). Ended up costing us the game.

I think the best place to test new builds is in hot join, you can find 5v5 matches there where people play to win, even if it might take a few joins / quits to find such a match.

I’ve been wondering the same thing lol. If you ask me, I think the best you can do is just test your build on all of the profession NPC’s, then jump into a hotjoin and get a general feel for what it’s like with other players and on the actual maps (mobility, survivability, damage to actual players, etc.) After you feel more comfortable with your skills, as long as you know the jist of how PVP works as a conquest game (or death match if courtyard), you should be fine. Just consider what your build’s strengths are and where your character would be most useful on the battlefield.

Also, even if you play perfectly you’ll still have people raging about how useless you are lol. I had a guy in my last match calling me a noob for losing a 1 v 3 and saying how I needed to l2p, even though the enemy team was premade and we were all pugs lol. If you’re able to cap points quickly, bunk points against multiple players for a decent length of time, or help down and finish enemies quickly then you’re doing a good job, but if you’re dying 10 seconds after leaving spawn over and over again without accomplishing anything then you may need to rethink your build. (Either that or you were up against a premade or in a 4 v 5 lol.)