Guild Wars 2

Over the last couple weeks I have been taking screen shots of the score board at the end of each sPvP match, and then compiling them. This should be interesting.

A couple quick notes:
1. I play a warrior, so those statistics are most likely screwed.
2. I play most at night anywhere from 7pm to 3am eastern.
3. This is not a class balancing thread.
4. This is not a class balancing thread.

Let’s start with some raw stats:
NS = number of times seen
BOS = number of times seen with the best overall score in a single game
BTS = number of times seen with the best score on their team in a single game.
Average = average points scored per player

Ranger:
NS: 70
BOS: 6
BTS: 11
Average 106

Mesmer: NS: 76, BOS: 4, BTS: 9, Average 93

Warrior: NS: 97, BOS: 9, BTS: 16, Average 112

Thief: NS: 60, BOS: 1, BTS: 7, Average 113

Elementalist: NS: 61, BOS: 4, BTS: 6, Average 104

Engineer: NS: 64, BOS: 6, BTS: 9, Average 100

Necromancer: NS: 50, BOS: 7, BTS: 11, Average 127

Guardian: NS: 62, BOS: 3, BTS: 7, Average 103

Some Interesting Facts:
Most played class is the Warrior. That is most likely because I play a warrior and therefor there is at least 1 warrior every score board. But, even without that, I do think that it is the most popular class.

Least played class is the Necromancer. This comes to no surprise because every is saying that they are no good.

Highest average score per player is the Necromancer Wait what? I thought they were no good? and yet they have an average of 127. The next highest is the Thief coming in at 113.

Lowest average score per player is the Mesmer This is hard to believe because I think they are the best class. But I think I know what is happening here…Since everyone talks about how good they are, you have a lot of “Bad” players PvPing with Mesmers hoping to have the edge.

More Stats on the way in a bit! Check back in a couple hours!

Proof of scores: http://www.mediafire.com/?87w3oeirqw35he3

Percent of players getting the highest score overall
example: of the 70 rangers seen, 6 of them were seen with the best score, or 8.5% of the time somebody is playing a ranger.

Ranger: %8.5
Mesmer: %5.3
Warrior: %9.2
Thief: %1.6
Elementalist: %6.5
Engineer: %9.4
Necromancer: %14
Guardian: %4.8

Some interesting Facts:
Necros are on top the most As Angry Flying Squirrel said two posts down, I think Necros have a talented player base, because they scare away newer players. All this goes to show, at least to me, is that Necro is indeed a perfectly fine class to play.

Thieves are only on top 1.6% of the time I think this may have a lot to do with how Thieves played. They do best bursting down players in between capture nodes, so I’m thinking they miss a lot of neutralizing and capture points. And yet, they have the second highest Average score at 113 points. No doubt this is because of their ability to kill other players 1v1.

Wolfe.3097:

this is taken in spvp matches.

in spvp its not as simple as kill the other guy

you get glory for lots of things.

a thief, excels at killing someone,a nd then is weak for a while. they have no real aoe (which is easily abused in spvp).

its simple, some of these classes can simply accumulate glory better/faster then others, this doesnt directly correspond to its power level as many players percieve power.

Right, But we are looking at points only. Because there is no 1v1, 2v2, or any form of deathmatch, there is no need to look at how “powerful” a class is. Rather, we look at how the class performs in points, (nutrualize, capture, participating in kills).

Even still, this does not show how the Class performs, but more likely what kind of players play the classes. This can easily be seen when looking at the Mesmer, supposedly one of the best classes. It is easy to tell that many new, bad, and fotm people are doing sPvP as mesmers.

oh kitten…. the games is fine!

what do we talk about now ?

Very cool. Nice work.

Like you said some of the lower scores on what is considered the best classes might be due to so many new players rolling them because of the fotm. This goes opposite for Necro’s, where newer players run screaming away from them and so only the better players are left standing.

Also keep in mind. You can go into spvp and not put points into any traits and still do well. You just have to learn how to play in the background. Final score has nothing to do with how balanced the classes are.

You should be removing yourself from these statistics. Not that score is indicative anyway. Roll with the zerg from point to point and tag everything, top scorer. Add another column: number of times that class appears on the winning team. Also remove khylo from your analysis if these games are pickups, anyone can top score on the treb in 8v8.

Great idea, but much more numbers needed.
Thanks!

Thank you so much!
Big props! and i think this will really help people see how balanced this game actually is.

But as a statistics major I will always hope for larger sample size XP

Have you been doing this between servers?

The reason I ask, is if the data is taken only from a few servers than the data is likely wrong.

For instance, if you took 10 of those games from the same server (going back to back), the classes make up is likely to stay very similar from game to game. Moreover, it could account for various rankings. One good player in multiple games would skew the average points for that class.

Cool data collection,

btw. shouldn’t it suffice to subtract 39 Warriors from that sample to make it somewhat representative?

Anyway, the discrepancy between Necromancers reputed performance and the actual performance shows an interesting element in MMOs.

The more popular a class, the more likely it is to perform “average” in larger samples. Unpopular classes will on average, fair better than more powerful classes because they tend to be played by more dedicated players rather than rerollers.

QSpec.4298:

Have you been doing this between servers?

The reason I ask, is if the data is taken only from a few servers than the data is likely wrong.

For instance, if you took 10 of those games from the same server (going back to back), the classes make up is likely to stay very similar from game to game. Moreover, it could account for various rankings. One good player in multiple games would skew the average points for that class.

Very good point. This could easily skew the data.

QSpec.4298:

Have you been doing this between servers?

The reason I ask, is if the data is taken only from a few servers than the data is likely wrong.

For instance, if you took 10 of those games from the same server (going back to back), the classes make up is likely to stay very similar from game to game. Moreover, it could account for various rankings. One good player in multiple games would skew the average points for that class.

The games are from a couple weeks worth of playing. I usually only play 2 or 3 matches at a time. I am on the Stormbluff Isle server.

Krozzy.4608:

QSpec.4298:

Have you been doing this between servers?

The reason I ask, is if the data is taken only from a few servers than the data is likely wrong.

For instance, if you took 10 of those games from the same server (going back to back), the classes make up is likely to stay very similar from game to game. Moreover, it could account for various rankings. One good player in multiple games would skew the average points for that class.

The games are from a couple weeks worth of playing. I usually only play 2 or 3 matches at a time. I am on the Stormbluff Isle server.

The world sever does not matter, he was talking about witch of the pvp servers you play on.

@Angry Flying Squirrel,
hmmm.. how do I tell?

Krozzy.4608:

@Angry Flying Squirrel,
hmmm.. how do I tell?

…By going into different servers. For example, you could take statistics only for forest, and then leave the server and join another ongoing forest match. This way you won’t have the same people counted.

Krozzy.4608:

@Angry Flying Squirrel,
hmmm.. how do I tell?

I don’t think you can unless you pick one. If your just hitting play now, you would not know. I think the real problem is playing games back to back. This will very much skew your data as many of the same players will continue into the next game. Better but more pain in the butt option would be to leave after each game and enter a random pvp server each time, that way your getting true random (well as much as you can). Or just count the first game but not the following (will take longer but the data would be more accurate).

There is also the problem that many players will in fact leave a game before Raid on the Capricorn starts. As many hate that map.

It is not assumed you would pick “play now” as lots of us, well me for sure, don’t use it as all it does is put us into an empty servers.

this is taken in spvp matches.

in spvp its not as simple as kill the other guy

you get glory for lots of things.

a thief, excels at killing someone,a nd then is weak for a while. they have no real aoe (which is easily abused in spvp).

its simple, some of these classes can simply accumulate glory better/faster then others, this doesnt directly correspond to its power level as many players percieve power.

Yeah, I understand what you mean, But I don’t usually play more then a few matches back to back. I don’t smoke in my computer room so I usually leave the server for 10 minute break every 3 matches. (PvP makes me chain smoke, lol)

Wolfe.3097:

this is taken in spvp matches.

in spvp its not as simple as kill the other guy

you get glory for lots of things.

a thief, excels at killing someone,a nd then is weak for a while. they have no real aoe (which is easily abused in spvp).

its simple, some of these classes can simply accumulate glory better/faster then others, this doesnt directly correspond to its power level as many players percieve power.

Right, But we are looking at points only. Because there is no 1v1, 2v2, or any form of deathmatch, there is no need to look at how “powerful” a class is. Rather, we look at how the class performs in points, (nutrualize, capture, participating in kills).

Even still, this does not show how the Class performs, but more likely what kind of players play the classes. This can easily be seen when looking at the Mesmer, supposedly one of the best classes. It is easy to tell that many new, bad, and fotm people are doing sPvP as mesmers.

If these games are 8v8, you should also consider dropping the bottom 2 from each team, as they’re likely to be late joiners, skewing the stats in favour of least played classes.

That’s a good idea Mammoth.

Score in SPVP doesn’t mean anything…

The only thing that shows is that you were in a lot of battles killing ppl, and even more, if you do aoe dmg and someone kill it u recive 10p and 25p for a kill u didnt do, just because u do aoe dmg and do some dmg to that player your score goes up.

I know that because i play a ranger trap/dot class, and i do aoe dmg. Its happen a lot, i puts some traps but some bleeds, poisons… i can leave and watch my score pump up.

Thats why necros are a good score class, they have a lot of aoe dots, but that does not necessarily mean it is a balance class.

In other words, SPVP for me its just, play a few games kill some ppl and go and play another game. The score its just incentivate to zerg and kill ppl in a map that is balance for 5v5 played by 8v8 where the 16 players are only thinking how i got more kills than my partners instead of winning the game.

My point fo view and thats why im not playing it.

Looking through my own screenies, one odd thing that stands out, if you have 3+ thieves on your team, you lose :P

Anyway, got some more data for you. Took only the first game in any sequence, dropped my own stats and Khylo (left in the bottom 2 scorers, will fix that when I have more time if you want). Didn’t take everyones score to average, just # of times top overall and team scores. Numbers are NS, BOS, BTS. 36 games, classes presented in order of how likely each individual member of that class is to top score overall:

Necro: 34, 5, 5
Guardian: 45, 5, 11
Elementalist: 59, 5, 8
Thief: 89, 7, 15
Mesmer: 69, 5, 11
Ranger: 45, 3, 7
Engineer: 48, 3, 6
Warrior: 68, 3, 9

I still don’t think these numbers are as valuable as number of times seen on winning team over number of times seen though. A couple other things that were interesting:
1. In my games, every time a necro topped his team score, he was also the top overall.
2. When I stopped playing necro and started playing ranger (ensuring my team always had at least one ranger), guardians simply stopped topping scores for the other team. Before that, there were 2 guardians getting BTS for every 3 guardians appearing.

It’s very clear that our sample sizes are too small though, looking at the large difference in our NS for different classes, i.e 2.5 thieves per game for me.

Dude you have to take yourself out of your sample. All the other players are random in terms of your sample except you have +1 warrior every single game. If you weren’t in those games, and your data is good, you would have had players selecting the slot you were filling at the same rates as the other 9 slots. You played 39 games so 97 – 39 = 58.

That would make warrior second only to Necro as being least popular not the most popular as you assert.

As scoring system is broken your results mean nothing. And what about leavers?

Another issue with the scoring system is that it encourages massive control point flipping and roaming to get the highest of scores, this means that sPvP scoreboards play out largely different than tPvP ones. A Guardian sitting on top of a point may not have the highest scores, but if he keeps that point for the whole game, he’s doing well for his team.

I feel the scoring system has faults and does not necessary give you the information you need. If anything, you should collect statistics of how often each class shows up within a 5v5 tPvP team over a lot of tPvP matches.

You shouldn’t include your own team as that may skew statistics, just make tally marks each time you face a new team. Each time you face a new team, your sample size goes up by 5 and you can then easily see the what fraction of the total do classes make up of teams.

It won’t be evidence to argue which classes are OP, but it’ll give you a clear indication of which ones are more used more.

I did a similar thing but only looking at class popularity. I never included myself to remove that bias (I am a Necro), and I only did it once every 10 matches because the same people will often flow over from match to match and so you need to make sure you have an independent sample. I found that Guardians/Thieves/Mesmers were the most popular, with Necro, Elementalist and Engineer the least popular. No surprises given that Necro and Ele are thought of as weak and the top three were thought of as OP.

TLDR

All that work and you couldn’t make a pie chart in excel or something?

Krozzy.4608:

Lowest average score per player is the Mesmer This is hard to believe because I think they are the best class. But I think I know what is happening here…Since everyone talks about how good they are, you have a lot of “Bad” players PvPing with Mesmers hoping to have the edge.

No. The reason is that mesmer has no mobility and in this game you get a lot more glory if you can move fast from point to point to cap. Mesmer is too slow, and standing on one point nets no glory.

ManCaptain.3154:

Krozzy.4608:

Lowest average score per player is the Mesmer This is hard to believe because I think they are the best class. But I think I know what is happening here…Since everyone talks about how good they are, you have a lot of “Bad” players PvPing with Mesmers hoping to have the edge.

No. The reason is that mesmer has no mobility and in this game you get a lot more glory if you can move fast from point to point to cap. Mesmer is too slow, and standing on one point nets no glory.

i think both of you got the point and a mix of that gives the result

btw are results from hot join or from tournaments? result could differ a lot

QSpec.4298:

Have you been doing this between servers?

The reason I ask, is if the data is taken only from a few servers than the data is likely wrong.

For instance, if you took 10 of those games from the same server (going back to back), the classes make up is likely to stay very similar from game to game. Moreover, it could account for various rankings. One good player in multiple games would skew the average points for that class.

sPvP is cross sever you could face anyone from your regain on any sever.

Taking them self out of the data would mess it up what if they are the best player. They are a player just like anyone else.

There is always the flaw of the fact that some build go for more point then other builds. But the data is still good its nice that you didn’t add the worst played people think it says something but it doesn’t really.

TeaDoa.5968:

QSpec.4298:

Have you been doing this between servers?

The reason I ask, is if the data is taken only from a few servers than the data is likely wrong.

For instance, if you took 10 of those games from the same server (going back to back), the classes make up is likely to stay very similar from game to game. Moreover, it could account for various rankings. One good player in multiple games would skew the average points for that class.

sPvP is cross sever you could face anyone from your regain on any sever.

Taking them self out of the data would mess it up what if they are the best player. They are a player just like anyone else.

There is always the flaw of the fact that some build go for more point then other builds. But the data is still good its nice that you didn’t add the worst played people think it says something but it doesn’t really.

No they are correct. You are bringing in a huge bias if you include yourself in the data since there will always be one warrior in the data set especially if you are good and keep winning. YOu needed to not include yourself and if you won then you simply don’t include that data or take the next highest person. Including yourself, statistically speaking, was a big no no.

As my most played character is a Mesmer and 2nd most played is a Necro, from a tPvP perspective:

I always get 250+ points on my Necro because I play an AoE Mark condition/Support build. I get points for everything that happens basically.

My Mesmer is a single target build, I don’t get as many points with him even though IMO, I perform a lot better.

Points mean little in terms of who is actually contributing to winning the match. I’ve seen plenty of times where every member on the losing team had higher points than the highest on the winning team.

Interesting data actually.

Edit: pointlessly telling OP data was skewed after OP already acknowledged this removed.

It would be awesome if someone else continued this project. Make changes as you feel. I have a very very busy couple weeks ahead of me and not much time to play.

Thanks for all your input!

Krozzy.4608:

Least played class is the Necromancer. This comes to no surprise because every is saying that they are no good.

Highest average score per player is the Necromancer Wait what? I thought they were no good? and yet they have an average of 127. The next highest is the Thief coming in at 113.

This is fairly easily explained: the few necros playing tend to be good. You barely ever see bad players playing necro because it is not very rewarding for a bad player. It is basically the inverse of your mesmer analysis.

Also points are generally skewed towards classes with AOE and necros have good AOE. Which probably explains a portion of the inflated score.

Krozzy.4608:

Over the last couple weeks I have been taking screen shots of the score board at the end of each sPvP match, and then compiling them. This should be interesting.

A couple quick notes:
1. I play a warrior, so those statistics are most likely screwed.
2. I play most at night anywhere from 7pm to 3am eastern.
3. This is not a class balancing thread.
4. This is not a class balancing thread.

Let’s start with some raw stats:
NS = number of times seen
BOS = number of times seen with the best overall score in a single game
BTS = number of times seen with the best score on their team in a single game.
Average = average points scored per player

Ranger:
NS: 70
BOS: 6
BTS: 11
Average 106

Mesmer: NS: 76, BOS: 4, BTS: 9, Average 93

Warrior: NS: 97, BOS: 9, BTS: 16, Average 112

Thief: NS: 60, BOS: 1, BTS: 7, Average 113

Elementalist: NS: 61, BOS: 4, BTS: 6, Average 104

Engineer: NS: 64, BOS: 6, BTS: 9, Average 100

Necromancer: NS: 50, BOS: 7, BTS: 11, Average 127

Guardian: NS: 62, BOS: 3, BTS: 7, Average 103

Some Interesting Facts:
Most played class is the Warrior. That is most likely because I play a warrior and therefor there is at least 1 warrior every score board. But, even without that, I do think that it is the most popular class.

Least played class is the Necromancer. This comes to no surprise because every is saying that they are no good.

Highest average score per player is the Necromancer Wait what? I thought they were no good? and yet they have an average of 127. The next highest is the Thief coming in at 113.

Lowest average score per player is the Mesmer This is hard to believe because I think they are the best class. But I think I know what is happening here…Since everyone talks about how good they are, you have a lot of “Bad” players PvPing with Mesmers hoping to have the edge.

More Stats on the way in a bit! Check back in a couple hours!

Proof of scores: http://www.mediafire.com/?87w3oeirqw35he3

I am one of these Necromancers. I believe the reason we seem to be the highest is due to our high survivability. I would say after awhile of doing spvp I realized one of the best builds to make is the condition damage necro, paired with the 2 teleports we have for slot 7 and 8, with the 9,000+ 39 second bleed we can inflict taking the place of slot 9. Using the wurm to teleport away from enemies works really well, and using our spectral teleport, it gives us 33% swiftness for 30 seconds, and we can use a teleport within the first 10 seconds to return to the original area we casted this move.

Once those are used up we can use our death shroud to soak up damage(it’s really easy to fill this up fast and we use it as a second healthbar). Then after that, if you are using the elite skill that turns you into a cloud of poisonous gas, you can then blind enemies for 20 seconds straight. So in a 1 v 1 dual, you can easily survive for a minute, especially if using condition necro you can cast all your stuff on the enemy, and teleport away 2 times, use your second health bar, poison/bleed them again, then make their attacks miss for 20 seconds straight(the move can be cast every second and applies blindness for 1 and 1/4 seconds each cast)

So I believe necro might be the best point defender who can kill faster than a guardian or tank elementalist, on account of all this, and if you are fighting 2 enemies, you can swap out a skill for slot 7 8 or 9 and it spreads your bleeds/poison/chills/weakness to all enemies near that enemy within 600 range.

Glad someone is actually posting the data here.

A lot of people worry about ‘this class is op’ when in casual play it really isn’t. My biggest gripe is popularity issues between classes less than function ones. This just means that some classes need some added flair or more representation for their popularity to kick up a notch.

Thieves and Mesmers are obvious in their popularity mainly because of the issue that they’re ‘trickly’ classes and players love to believe they’re smarter/better than their opponent, when really it’s just the mechanics playing into their hands. I’ve no such ego on my classes. Each class I play adheres to a ‘character’ I have created for various reasons in my life, or, I make a new character persona to fit them.

Whether I do well or poorly is rather irrelevant in that context. Only time I’m really worried about ‘serious play’ is tPvP, and only then, in practice for paid tournaments – which the game will get adjustments before that occurs anyways.

Last night I played games in which I was the only Mesmer for quite a while, yet the thief population was bloated. However, the team with the most thieves were also consistently losing against more balanced teams.

It’s slow going but things in sPvP are starting to settle down, though tPvP still feels like they have to play every exploit (When it isn’t true.) Overall though, even with people complaining here, I feel as if people are realizing some classes are not as broken as they initially seem.

Not that there won’t be adjustments, just that these adjustments are not as huge as people rant about.

OP’s numbers are meaningless. He ran 30+ games with the same players approximately 60%+ of the time. Effectively these are stats for 10 games played, and he includes himself in the stats.

No meaningful conclusions can be drawn from this data, and ArenaNet already has the data for all games played. QED – thread holds no value.

^ Oh just shut up. Go be a debby downer somewhere else

As a Necro, I approve of these statistics.

Interesting, but frankly score in spvp hinges too much on player behaviour instead of performance. The best Thief in the world blitzing everyone he sees is going to lose out to a dude just farting from point to point and running in to stomp.

You can turn the entire tide for your team with uber support and control the whole match, and get kitten for your efforts. See: Bunker Banner Warrior.

average score is not a good statistic due to how points are tabulated. For example guardians, engineers and mesmers are most likely class to be bunker spec’d and sit on points to defend them which = least amount of points. necros are typically roamers attacking, defending and killing npcs and surviving long enough to get the points despite not doing much overall to help the team, just a last to be targeted/die kinda thing. So to say necros are fine they average the highest points is bad logic.

nm thought this was tpvp… spvp, even worse, and explains the discrepancies even more. most theifs are running around just skirmishing and blowing people up ignoring objectives which is less points than node flipping.

Sprawl, I completely disagree with your assessment on how necros play. If a necro is solo roaming, he’s doing himself and his team a diservice. In my experience from tpvp, a necro’s greatest strength is in team fights, where he can help spread and control conditions, tipping the fight into his team’s favor. Also, I find that my guardian and my necro seem to get fairly similar point totals in tpvp, since as a necro I’m generally assisting at points rather then completely roaming and capping points.

More on topic, this is a good start Krozzy, though there are a few things that other people have already hit on to improve the accuracy of the data, it’s still a fairly decent representation, and I applaud you for the time you invested.

and what is the purpose of the statistic in a casual, relaxed, farmfest, zerg, environment?
or you did those stats in tournaments?

This is interesting i started playing spvp not long time ago as a ranger got fairly good at it then i switched to warrior>thief then necro thieves are boring, at least for me warrior are interesting but not that appealing to me on the other hand necros are so strange at first it was hard until i got used to them now that i got a graps of how they work its so fun to play and most of the time im in top players and as someone said before necros are excelent in team fights they can turn the tide around.
Interesting statistics there even tho is in public games appreciate the effort there.

thejoshknight.4697:

Sprawl, I completely disagree with your assessment on how necros play. If a necro is solo roaming, he’s doing himself and his team a diservice. In my experience from tpvp, a necro’s greatest strength is in team fights, where he can help spread and control conditions, tipping the fight into his team’s favor. Also, I find that my guardian and my necro seem to get fairly similar point totals in tpvp, since as a necro I’m generally assisting at points rather then completely roaming and capping points.

More on topic, this is a good start Krozzy, though there are a few things that other people have already hit on to improve the accuracy of the data, it’s still a fairly decent representation, and I applaud you for the time you invested.

roaming in terms of assisting teammates at points, therefore he is getting more flips and more kills than other team mates who are solo roaming going for steals or bunkering.

Interesting stats, but it doesn’t surprise me actually. My friend and I both talked about how we score a lot of points on the “crappy professions” compared to when we play mes/thief ect. We have a phrase called “roadfighter” because you see a lot of mesmer/thief players just trying to kill people in the middle of nowhere since they can, instead of on points. When I play a conditions necro or trap ranger for example, my build just sort of sucks for dueling people in the open and to get the most out of my character I want to hit multiple people with conditions and put traps/marks, use epidemic ect on a heavily trafficked area like a capture point. When I play my backstab thief I just kill anyone on sight because frankly I can. It just comes down to actually playing the game properly (playing on points and fighting over secondary objectives instead of playing deathmatch.

That’s some awesome data mining. I no doubt believe Anet has done this themselves, so it’s pretty cool to see a player doing it and sharing the information. Mad props to the OP.

Those stats are interesting, but not all that surprising. I’ve suspected the same regarding Necros myself for some time. It’s usually black and white whenever I bump into one; the person is either extremely good or extremely bad.

Great data. As far as the discrepancy between apparent power and score, I have a few suggestions.

Necros are decently high damage class with good survivability. As a pet necro, it is more frequent that you will spring back to life scoring killing blows and not giving points for your own death then with most other classes.

Thieves excel at killing. With a group that runs as a zerg, they do really well popping in, killing a person for high points, and popping out. This could explain the high numbers but low frequency of these numbers.

Mesmers are a low damage output, but difficult to kill class. Many mesmers take advantage of their class by playing support or controlling points. Important to victory, but low on the point board.

Warriors are really good at squishing newer players. In a random spvp situation the likelyhood of seeing inexperienced players is inflated, as well as the warriors score.

All this means is that Necromancers are the best at tagging kills and Mesmers/Thieves are the worst.