Guild Wars 2

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

Missing a queue pop if you previously had 0 dishonor would only result in 3 minutes of being unable to queue for PvP. But before this happened, you had an abandoned match (you dropped from a match in progress) 1.5 hours before.

This causes the penalty to ramp up, hence the harsher penalty.

There is no reliable way to tell if someone dropped intentionally or not, so there will always be dishonor if you disconnect.

There really shouldn’t be any dishonor for missing a queue pop. Maybe if you miss 2+ in a row you can give dishonor, but if my average queues are 3-5 minutes long, and you’re telling me I can’t afk in that time because i have to sit and monitor the queue or I’ll get dishonor.

I understand giving dishonor if you AFK in a game, you negatively affected the outcome of a match, but unless you’re trolling the queue by declining every pop, you’re not affecting anyone in a negative way. In fact, declining a match just because someone is at my door and I need to go see what it is, is better than having to accept the match, and then having to AFK for an undetermined amount of time, because I didn’t want to get dishonored.

The only thing I had issue is the double castes tomes, as you said.

Where with core and hot, we had instant/short cast oh-crap buttons, we now have to cast 3/4s only to gain more abilities that have to be casted before we can get any utility out of them… This is fine with something like f1, but a huge detriment with f2 and f3.

I implore the balance team to make the time activations instant, and this spec will be fine. It only feels a little underwhelming because of how strong holo and scourge are, but once don’t get toned down, everything else will be fine.

Please do not make the mistake of nerfing the op stuff while simultaneously overbuffing the specs that felt underwhelming because other stuff was op.

Just make these small QOL changes, nerf the op stuff appropriately and all will be well.

I agree that separate divisions don’t have sufficient incentive to climb out of (specially in non legend/plat) tiers since anyone not in the top 250 gets essentially the same end-of-season reward: zilch.

I’ve long been an advocate for there to be unique end of season rewards based on your division, and I think it’s the proper way to incentivize progression for the more casual population.

That being said I 100% disagree with your idea to lock ranked until you have X amount of games played. Sometimes people wanna try out something new in an environment they know will challenge them, that’s why they mess around in ranked.

I actually think the system does a decent enough job of keeping people where they belong skill wise, (up until you hit plat3, the lack of high level population makes matchmaking a nightmare). So, if you lose a couple games because someone on your team didn’t know what they were doing, chances are you’ll also see that person on the opposite team and you’ll win a couples games off them—but if you lose again, then you were the common denominator.

So, the only problem I see with the current Ranked system is that there isn’t enough incentive to win games. As long as you spam games, everyone can farm the pip reward track and get tons of gold anyways and it doesn’t matter if they end up bronze cause they can hide their badge anyways.

I would like to see weapon or armor skins that are unique to the division you placed in, but after 3 years of asking, I’m giving up hope it will ever happen.

Bound and vault are not the problem, both can be avoided with relative ease, and vault can easily be interrupted.

Having a dodge roll like lotus that can damage at a comparatively large range is a problem, however.

In any case, condi thief is certainly beatable with a number of builds: ele, dh, condi mes, flip necro. It’s all about timing your skills during their dead frames. Which, sadly, most top 250 NA players can’t do.

The build is certainly over-tuned and needs to be nerfed, but the crux of the problem isn’t with the “damaging dodges,” as you claim.

Skittledness.5106:

it was scummy and they knocked all out of decent teams that deserved higher rewards by knocking them out earlier than they shouldve in the tournament by a combination of doing the minimum qp in order to knock out higher seated teams and also by the unexpected factor of unrecognizable pvers playing on a top tier level and getting the jump on people.

Obviously the fact that they won should be enough evidence for everyone to agree that it was Abj.
But the “solid” evidence youll need to actually take action is up to you after repeated offenders continue to make a mock out of you.

I find it interesting that you’re only ratting out the team that beat you and choose to ignore the blatant accountshare going on in your team (talking about Kraalle playing on Helio’s account).

Basically, you’re ok with cheating so long as it’s in your favor, but you’ll cry a river when it’s against you.

Rewards should scale with #of participants. No point in awarding 50g to winner if they got a bye to the semis because only 5 teams signed up. At the same time getting only 5g when you had to fight your way through a bracket of 60+ people is quite simply poorly thought out.

I agree with your other points, for the most part.

Though I would suggest adding a cooldown to individual participation. If you where on the team that won the tournament, you are not allowed to play in the next scheduled AT ( in +8 hours ). This way, we see a lot less of the same people grinding away and getting easy gold.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

The bracket is set up before the first match even starts, based on QP. If QP is equal, then it’s random.

Winning quickly has no bearing on your next match.

It would be nice if the match history tab showed a dynamic bracket instead

Let me first say, I’m a huge fan of thief, and anyone that knows me, knows I play this class a lot. I am not asking for this change because I am getting kittened on by all the thieves in hotjoin or whatever.

Having a daze component as well as no ICD to pulmonary impact makes getting resses vs a thief absolutely impossible.

This change shouldn’t have made it out of the giggle phase of testing.

I am saying this as objectively as I can, remove the daze component of this skill. It is not healthy for the game.

yea it kinda sucks, but statistically it happens to pretty much everyone.. so it evens out over the long run.

the loss forgiven on DC should’ve never been implemented in the first place, tbh.

the only time a loss should be forgiven is if there are mass DC’s because of actual server issues.

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

The ONLY way this change should happen is if you take a lot of advice from good players. I mean like get Karl and Evan into a discord with at least 10-20 good players to explain everything that would HAVE to change for balance to be healthy.

Can you name 20—even 10—“good” players that wouldn’t abuse the opportunity to whisper sweet nothings into Karl’s ear just to get him to buff their class (or their team’s comp) and nerf other kitten??

I sure as kitten can’t, and while you may call me trash/bad/whatever I am easily the most unbiased player I can think of when it comes to balance.

Having PZ/abj/ZZZ or any number of other biased tards having a direct line to the balance team is one of the biggest reasons things got so out of hand in the first place…

I would name examples, but I wouldn’t wanna embarrass Phantaram anymore than he already should be.. (oops)

That being said, here’s what I think…

• If this change went out tomorrow, everything else the same:
  • everything would go to kitten, we go right back to bunky meta..
• If this change is paired with a nice sustain nerf to every bunky build (yea, EVERY build, Paul, not just the ones you don’t like),
  • then we have a chance at making the game more skill-based, and maybe (JUST MAYBE) make the game fun to play again..

SO yea, let’s not pretend that being good at 1 (maybe 2) classes is all it takes to understand balance.. You have to understand (not just know what the buttons do) all 9 classes, and their mechanics to be able to confidently (and properly) balance the game.

Now, the size of that list is probably (let’s be honest) less than 4, and I don’t think any of them actually care anymore…

I’ve long been an advocate of diminishing the effects of RNG, so I like most of these changes.

However, as we’re all well aware, sustain in this HoT meta is ridiculously high. While this aggressive change would’ve been fantastic in the pre-HoT game, I hope that it is paired with a very careful (and equally aggressive) sustain nerf. Otherwise, we’ll be right back to 5 bunky meta.

That being said, I have a few comments about some of the proposed sigils.

Sigil of Nullification
Your next attack after you swap to this weapon while in combat removes a Boon from your target.
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)

As long as this effect has neatly defined (and publicly viewable, please) priority table, this is a nice change. If it is going to be either RNG, or LIFO, then it will be absolutely worthless.

Sigil of Revelation
Reveal nearby foes when swapping to this weapon while in combat (240 Radius).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)

This is pretty neat, but I really want to see the radius reduced to 130, and I would hope the Reveal debuff is capped at 1s (2s MAX). Reasons for this are simple, 240 radius is actually really large for an effect as strong as this (ie. instant cast reveal on 9s CD). However a radius of 130 (melee range) makes it so that it must be utilized with more tact (eg. you KNOW you’re about to get Backstabbed, OR you need to reveal a downed body for your ally to finish his stomp animation).

Sigil of Lethargy
Your next attack after swapping to this weapon while in combat slows your target (2 Seconds).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)

This is honestly really strong and I would prefer for it to not be in the game. Given how little bonus damage you’d get from other sigils now, you can easily get away with 3 or 4 out of 5 people in your comp to play double hydro/lethargy and easily freeze an enemy in place.

The problem with this is that it is virtually impossible (I’m not exaggerating) to distinguish accidental from deliberate DCs…

Adding a mechanic that doesn’t punish DCs can be easily abused.

Eg. Suppose we go with what you said and make it so as long as I DC out of combat, there’s no penalty when relog…

Ok supposed I’m pushing far while ooc but my homeboys at home are calling for help.. what’s faster? Trek from far to mid to home, or reblog in 5s and go from base to home?

This is something that SSD technology very easily facilitates.

As such it is just better to have the penalty for everyone, even if some of the cases are not deliberate.

I agree Jeff, but you can’t balance the game around the 1%.

The simple fact is, builds whose skill-floor is SO LOW they effectively boost a player’s “apparent skill,” (i.e., they can compete in tiers far above what their mechanical skill would otherwise allow) should be looked at and adjusted.

Same reason hambow got the nerf-bat a couple years ago. Was it OP vs “top-tier” players? Of course not, those players will always learn to play around fotm builds anyways.

But we see this stuff happen every time some OP build is discovered! Try to think of a player who had single digit winrate until turret engi was discovered. They were probably seen around high-tier matches a lot of the time. Add them to your friend list now; I gurantee you they’re stuck in gold or silver.

Rarnark.5623:

While you’re here:

Are there also skill changes for warrior, necromancer and ranger coming next week as well? The skill balance preview didn’t include them so i assume they won’t be receiving changes on this specific patch?

So you’re goal was to remove Herald from the meta game and that’s pretty much it? You know how blatantly offensive and disrespectful that is to all the people who practiced that class. Also you’re barely touching mesmer and elementalist?

What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to actually ‘balance’ the game? “Shaking things up” is a discouraging term to hear from a balance team.

Dear lord, you’re so melodramatic.. revenant damage is still going to be the highest consistant power dps.

SotM needed a nerf. A med/low CD with 1s evade, and chain CD, and you wanted it to keep doing up to upwards of 15k damage, with all that utility??

And sword #2, a spammable nuke that can easily do 8k+ damage… Come on, how could you possibly post here (and everywhere else on the forums) expecting people to take you seriously?

If you really practice the class as much as you claim, you will find a way to be effective with the changes.

How’s it going? I hope everyone has a wonderful day in PvP today!

Josh Davis.6015:

We’ve been talking about personal score a bit. I’m personally of the opinion that it isn’t representative of a player’s effort in a given match, and it also can be incredibly misleading and potentially lead to bad gameplay habits (5-capping home).

If you were to redesign personal score, what would you do? Does it track different types of stats? Would you want your personal stats displayed to other players?

I don’t see the point in keeping track of any score other than K/D/A.

In the event of a tie (to keep with the current system) award the team with the highest cumulative KDA ratio the victory.

However, I still think that’s a bad way to handle tie-breaker. I would rather force neut all points and play out til the next full-cap or stomp, whichever happens first.

To tackle a few replies here.

I like the idea of unlocking a “Legend only reward track.” This would certainly cater to the casual population as well as those HC that care about golds and shinies. Though, I still very much like the idea of a division with a competitive amount of slots available.

The issue of having a small number of slots then heavily incentivizing grouping up to assure spots on the Masters Division is an interesting one. Obviously, we are no longer at a point were splitting Solo/Team queue is a good idea—I think the population in higher divisions would suffer greatly if that happened. Perhaps, it could be a Solo/Duo only division such that any game played with a roster of size 3+ does not count towards your placement.

Aeroxe.8140:

… I’m not intelligent enough to see the entire picture…

Chin up Aeroxe! You’re plenty intelligent.
——————————————————————————

Yea so, this is actually an issue that’s plagued the game since very soon after release.

Many teams that played in Beta or as the game came out soon realized that the core infrastructure of a competitive game just wasn’t in place. They quit, and most never even tried to come back. A few of them come back every now and then, but none of them stick around for that long.

As many have said, PvP just isn’t that much fun right now. I think the game is plenty fun when you have the opportunity to play it in a competitive setting, but the elements that should make a game fun for the casual crowd, aren’t really there.

Furthermore, there isn’t a clear cut path or progression from casual-hood to competitiveness. This is actually a pretty big issues, but one that I’m not even sure can be addressed properly anymore.

Back in 2013 when the tournament infrastructure was still in its youth, ANet hadn’t yet decided to start throwing money at the game, but the game was fun to play, and fun to watch. Despite the fact that those of us that played back then weren’t all that good at the game, builds were very active, and there weren’t my efficient passive builds in the meta.

Shortly after the first cash tournament, something went wrong and the game started introducing more and more passive play with each coming balance patch. 3 years later, the trend still stands as we see the most commonly played builds in the competitive setting are those with the strongest passives. Quite frankly, this isn’t all that fun to play—or play against—and it certainly isn’t fun to watch.

As a point of fact, the Masters of the Mists tournament with a total prize pool of $500 had nearly 10k concurrent viewers on twitch, while PL struggles to break 3k, with 40 times the prizepool. This should strongly signal that money isn’t the reason so many people played and watched this game, it was just fun!

Active play and counterplay is challenging, rewarding, and fun. This whole play around the passives meta that has been steadily brooding over the years has to stop—and soon—if we want the game to start realizing its potential.

There are other issues to be tackled, but I don’t think any of them compare to this; you can have a perfect competitive infrastructure with an infinite e-sports budget, but if you game isn’t fun to play, not many people will play it.

All that being said, massive props to Grouch, for fighting so hard every day to build the competitive infrastructure we have now. Let’s hope the other departments can do their part

Astralporing.1957:

Acandis.3250:

I don’t quite agree with this, if you have every division holding a roughly equal number of players, higher divisions lose prestige immediately. What’s the point of being a top 5% player if you’re being queued with the top 20% of the population.

The point? Not having 30 mins+ long queues.

This isn’t so much a lack of population problem, as much as it is people stopping to play Ranked as soon as they hit Legend, since there’s no more to achieve.

Let’s be real. Many players dipped out as soon as they got Legend rank this season (and in seasons past). As such, Legend queues have been worse than ever this season.

This is largely because if you’re a casual player, there’s nothing to do once you hit Legend; grinding for Legend x19 doesn’t hold any allure whatsoever.

However, if we were to add another division—call it Masters Division—where there can only be 50 or so players at a time, this would undeniably keep Legends in the game and queuing, thus helping queue times over all.

At the end of the season, the ~50 players in the Masters Division are awarded a special stat-less backpiece (cape pls?) or armor/weapon skin, for actual prestige.

Thoughts?

PS. This isn’t just about queue times. When the top players of the population are leaving the game once they get Legend, and tell their friends they only play for a couple days to get Legend, then they leave the game until next season, this is spreading a hugely negative rep for GW2 PvP. Adding a Masters Division is something that must be done, to ensure the continued success of the game.

Yannir.4132:

The thing is that you would need to come up with a totally new league system for this to actually work. When there are no safety nets in place, the starting point for all players(let’s call it 0-point) needs to be in the middle instead of at the bottom. And since legendary divisions basically climb up forever, there is no mid-point.

If we were to remove Legendary divisions beyond the first one, the 0-point would be somewhere around early to mid ruby.

This is a valid point. A slight rework would be necessary. I have proposed in some other posts that if the first few games award hidden pip so that after 5-10 games you are placed in a division according to your performance.

Yannir.4132:

PS. Someone mentioned PvP noobs in ranked. Back when I started playing PvP(around August 2015), there was a minimum requirement of PvP rank 20. Has this been removed or something?

This is still a think, but rank 20 is someone anyone with enough time can achieve in a day. It is simply not a good enough mechanic to filter new players.

Yannir.4132:

PSS. I’m not in favor of this proposal, because MMR has a tendency to give win-lose-win-lose streaks even in amber. So some people can’t rise to even sapphire simply by soloQing. The grind is not as easy for everybody as many ppl seem to think. I do think, however, that you should be able to drop tiers in sapphire already.

The whole point of having a “Legendary” reward after reaching Legend is that the grind isn’t easy, and the reward holds some prestige. What we’re seeing now is that the grind is actually fairly easy, and the rewards don’t hold much prestige.

Exedore.6320:

Ideally players should be distributed evenly among divisions with amber having a little less.

I don’t quite agree with this, if you have every division holding a roughly equal number of players, higher divisions lose prestige immediately. What’s the point of being a top 5% player if you’re being queued with the top 20% of the population.

Exedore.6320:

• Number of Divisions Ruby and Diamond have many more divisions than Amber, Emerald, and Sapphire. Once the player base distributes itself, the number of players in each tier will be roughly proportional to how many pips it has out of the whole.
• Pip Creation New pips must be generated at a healthy rate. By “new pip” I mean adding pips to the total pool – games where the pips gained and lost by all players does not sum to zero. The bonus win streak pip is a “new pip” because it adds a net +1 to the pool. Division and tier boundaries also add new pips because the net pip change for that game is positive. New pips are distributed to players over time and passed up divisions and tiers. If pip creation is too slow, players feel they can’t progress. Too fast and everyone gets to legendary. In the current system, the first 3 tiers generate a proportionally large number of new pips, which allows players to cruise to Ruby. But then pip creation drops off and players feel stuck. A smoother curve is needed.

I agree largely with this, there are too many pips being handed out for free. It’s not good for anyone.

Exedore.6320:

I would recommend fixing it this way instead:

1. Remove the league currency from crossing tiers.
2. Reward league currency for ranked wins. Higher tiers get bonus currency. A reasonable cumulative daily cap would be needed to prevent bots from farming it in amber.
3. Add more stuff to the league currency vendor. Maybe some of that PvE or WvW exclusive stuff. Some things may need locked behind a minimum tier.
4. Include an item which can be converted to gold (probably indirectly through the TP) for players who routinely reach legendary and will have everything after several seasons. Maybe the ability to buy PvP reward potions (daily limit).

That way, everyone can get something; better players obtain it faster. Less skilled players need to pick and choose and save up. And there’s also no obligation to grind dailies. It also feels less frustrating to be stuck in a tier looking only at bigger goals.

By making the reward system less tied to tier progression, it allows the ranked tier system to be more skill based than a progression system.

This is a fair solution, though it doesn’t fix the main issue with the Legend division which is: there’s no prestige tied to it. What’s the point of grinding Legend x17 times when you don’t get anything out of it? I know many players that stopped queuing for Ranked once they hit Legend this season, the system holds no further allure past that point.

Highlie.7641:

Acandis your math is off

You lose 3, then you end your losing steak (+2 pips)
you win 2 more games (win streak) (2 + 1 +2)
You are at +5 pips.

Yes, you are correct. Fixed.

Weerus.3701:

Your solution doesn’t fix the problem of joining a season late, when everything you would end up being teamed up with is..

I don’t think you finished your first sentence so I’m not sure what issue you’re referring to.
Personally, I don’t see any issues with joining a season late. If anything, the later in the season you play, the easier the games in lower division will be—in the current system.

Weerus.3701:

And with no bonus pips after loose streaks you would effective be trapped in certain division being forced to grind trough xxx matches to cross that division. Nothing left for you in ranked till the end of the season.

I don’t understand your issue here. Evan has explained there is no MMR skip when crossing division thresholds; your games aren’t getting any harder to win once you cross to the new division.

The only reason people think they’re losing a lot more when they get to Ruby, is because suddenly people that could safely advance a tier by getting a few lucky games in a row and then tanking a bunch of games without dropping a tier, can actually drop to a lower tier, now. So naturally, Ruby 1 & 2 becomes the mystical “MMR Hell”.

Breaking your lose-streak won’t make it any easier for you to get out of this artificial Ruby black hole, but I could see how it might help you in Emerald and Sapphire.

Either way, it is a bad mechanic seeing as someone who loses 3 in a row, and then wins 3 in a row should be at a 0 net pips, but in actuality ends up with +2 net pips.

This seems all well and good for helping players slowly advance out of Emerald and Sapphire, where there is that 4 & 5 pip safety net every tier, but it is creating artificially horrible matches for 99% of players that make it to Ruby.

However, it is important to understand that spoonfeeding people out of lower divisions doesn’t prepare them for the quality of matches they’ll be placed in in higher divisions.

It is much better to create a system in which players are placed and held at their proper division until they have improved enough to advance. That way, every division will have mostly even matches—instead of what we see now, which is mostly uneven matches, across every division.

—Reserved for incoming TL;DR version—

Hello friends, my mission on this thread is to clearly expose and explain why seemingly lopsided matches have been plaguing players these last 2 seasons.

Rather that offer speculation about why certain decisions were made, I will be very deliberate about what the actual issues are and offer some suggestions as to how to fix them for future seasons.

Problem 1: No Pip Regression in Low Divisions. This is actually at the core of why matchmaking seems so bad. Here’s why:

There are currently players that can make it to Ruby (and beyond) winning a very high percentage of their games—they are either very skilled or getting carried, the how doesn’t matter here.

On the other hand, there are people that are getting into Sapphire for free simply by spamming games, even if they have a 25% win rate. Some of those players (though, not all) can eventually make it into Ruby, again with embarrassingly low win-rates. This is due to the fact that once you cross a tier in Sapphire, you can lose an unlimited amount of games but only need to gain 5 pips to cross the next threshold.

Now, it is my understanding, that the matchmaking algorithm currently tries to match you with plays within ~15 pips of you and then looks at MMR. In a system where every division is mostly populated by similarly skilled players, this would be perfectly fine. But this is not the case.

When you mix these two very different kinds of players in the same matches, bad things are bound to happen!

—DETAILS BELOW. Skip to next marker if not interested—

I’ll exaggerate here, as I don’t have access to data, but Ruby tier 1 & 2 host players ranging from 33% (speculation) to 100% (factual). This is a HUGE issue. To see this, we craft the following:

Let’s say the average 10 players in Ruby have the following MMR spread (from -50 to +50):
{ -25, -43, -8, -13, +2, +14, -30, -11, -17, +39 } Case 1
I have picked these numbers as 70% are C players, 20% are B players, 10% are A players.
Now, this isn’t always the case as A players are actually much more rare than 10% of the population, so you may actually more commonly see this spread:
{ -25, -43, -8, -13, +2, +14, -30, -11, -17, +15 } Case 2

A good match for Case 1 is to split the teams into:
{ -43, -30, -25, +14, +39 } vs { -17, -13, -11, -8, +2}
with average MMRs being: (-9) vs (-9.4).
(There might be a better match, but I didn’t spend to much time thinking about this)

In this case, we’ll very likely see Team 1 win, as their A player will probably be able to 1v2 and created good opportunities for his team to take advantage of—which is necessary, because they probably wouldn’t win an even fight.

What happens when the A player isn’t there? Case 2:
{-43, -30, -13, +14, +15 } vs { -25, -17, -11, -8, +2 }
with average MMRs being: (-11.4) vs (-11.8).

Despite the fact that Team 1 is favored to win here, their top 2 players aren’t that much better than Team 2’s top 2 players. Furthermore, Team 1’s bottom 2 players will probably be double capping every node and keyboard turning.

This is the type of game where Team 2 lucked out as they’re sort of similarly matched, but Team 1 is all over the place. It really isn’t fair to the top 2 players of Team 1 that they got matched up with players that (quite frankly) should not be in their division.

As you can imagine Case 1 games are actually pretty rare, with most games being Case 2 games.

This is what’s happening in all these Ruby games that then has people convinced that Ruby is inescapable!

—END DETAILS—

Even certain “good” players will have a very hard time in Ruby tier 1 & 2. Not because they’re bad, but just because they’re not good enough to carry the kind of players that shouldn’t be in that division.

Solution: All that being said, my suggestion to fix this is simply add pip/tier regression to every division.

Bonus Suggestions:

• Sufficiently large lose streaks should drop a player down 1 division.
• Ending a losing streak should not award an extra pip.

Problem 2: No rewards for any division except Legend.
A huge reason of why people get upset that they can’t get out of Ruby, is because the only division that shows that you did something worthwhile in PvP is Legend.

Although each player might have a sense of pride and accomplishment for making Diamond (and for some people Ruby) after a PvP season, they’ll have nothing to show for it because there’s nothing worth obtaining unless you made Legend. .
And please don’t tell me that the vendor backpieces are the nice eye-candy for the lower divisions, because I don’t think I will ever see willingly display that on their character.

Solution: We need something that is pretty, that isn’t embarrassing to display on our characters, that shows our accomplishments at the end of the season.

It doesn’t have to be something unique every season, it can be something as simple as a cape colored with a scheme according to the division you achieved that season, which when combined with other copies of itself in the mystic toilet, produces a cape of the same color scheme with a nice silver/gold trim.

Examples:

• If I reach Ruby during Season 1, I obtain a Ruby themed cape. If I reach Ruby during Season 2, I obtain another Ruby themed cape, which I can combine with my first one to create a Ruby themed cape with silver trimming.
• If I reach Sapphire during Season 1, and Ruby during Season 2: I get a Sapphire cape, and a Ruby cape, but they cannot be combined.
• If I collected 2 silved trimmed capes of the same PvP tier, they can be combined to get a gold trimmed cape of that tier. (Ie. If you get Legend all 4 seasons, combine all your capes to get a nice gold trimmed Legend cape).

I realize this post is a bit long, but I think it highlights some issues which are paramount to fixing matchmaking.

To re-iterate, I think the current matchmaking algorithm would work perfectly, if there was pip/tier regression in every division.

The system is almost in working order, it’s just a matter of making these small changes for the future seasons, so that PvP may be more enjoyable.

Thanks for reading,
Ac

Hey there! Props to you for staying positive despite your frustration.

The current pip system is deceptively not noob friendly letting many people get an almost free pass to division 4 only to be met by seemingly undeserved loss streaks.

I made it to Ruby pretty easily, right? That probably means I’m pretty good!

Sadly this is not always the case; the current Ranked system is not a good one for new players to learn the game well. The good thing is that you’re not lying to yourself.

As some above me have mentioned, stick to Unranked queue for now. Despite the fact many ragers in Ranked will try to insult you by saying this, I assure you: we are not!

I would recommend you focus on 1v1s first (mostly by always capping homenode and fighting anyone that pushes you). Don’t camp the node once it’s capped, if nobody pushed you at the start, it discourages people from fighting you on it, and you won’t learn matchups like that!

Alternatively you can push far from the start, you might die a lot at first, and some people might chew you out for it, but worry not, you are in unranked; have some fun and practice your mechanics.

One last thing, every time you die, even if it was your teammates fault, always analyze your situation and think: what mistakes did I make during that fight? What can I do better next time?

Be analytical and objective, and I’m sure you’ll improve in no time!

Once you feel very comfortable with most—if not all—your matchups, feel free to try Ranked again.

Best of luck!

Amineo.8951:

People push “meta” stuff too much, one thing that should be done is removing class stacking, it hurts diversity so much, see Overwatch for example, people have enough of fighting 2 McRee every match and it also doesn’t make any sense.

Also the level of skill in this game system is laughably bad, I might make a video of my 4 years old nephew playing an Ele or Warrior and see him winning most of the time because of how little effort you need with the “meta”.

This is far too unrealistic an expectation to ever be realized.

Besides, you have to realize that the meta game is defined by what is good in the competitive scene where highly coordinated teams can pull off certain things that 5 randoms wouldn’t be able to.

Even if you were to enforce a “meta” comp in every game, it wouldn’t change the fact that if you get matched vs a better group, chances are they can run 5 thieves and still win the game.

The core of the issues stem from having too many unprepared people being funneled into a higher division than where they should be placed. Thus you see people with enormous loss steaks which end up blaming teammates or comp.

Trust me, in Yolo Queue, comp is the least of the deciding factors of a match’s outcome.

Lucius.2140:

—snip—

I don’t quite see the point in making such a radical change. The current pip system would be perfectly fine if simply there was regression at every tier & division.

As for the wings, obviously the change can’t be implemented mid year, as there would be a lot of people upset about it.

What could be done, is implement pip regression for next year, so that whatever reward lies in wait at the end of the long grind actually reflects some PvP skill.

Now, that being said, a huge issue with the current system is that there is no sense of accomplishment for reaching any division until you get The Ascension.

This means that, although someone may have started going 0-40 in Amber division and actually struggled to get to Emerald (but eventually makes it there), has nothing to show for it. In a way, this system is saying: the only reason you should do PvP is to get the Legendary backpiece, no other division accomplishment matters.

And don’t try to tell me divisions already have their own rewards via the vendor backpieces, because those things are ugly and nobody would ever be caught dead wearing them.

LordKage.9135:

@Acandis Let’s keep the back piece PvP only since it was design for us but lets remove the division cross achievement which will allow anyone to get it from any division.

Upon further thought, I don’t see the point in doing this (or even doing away with PvP exclusive acquisition of the backpiece).

Reason being: playing a few seasons and merely getting Ruby should get people enough tickets to purchase all 4 vendor backpieces in order to obtain the ascended tiered piece.

This is certainly a good enough alternative for those looking to PvE/WvW with a decent stat backpiece, in the absence of having to grind for other alternatives.

It is, indeed, nice to have a shiny backpiece at the end of a “Legendary” journey, to have certain bragging rights over other players.

Though, I must reiterate my opinion of the pip system, once more.
The current method of getting to Legend rank is a total joke and I hope it is revamped in the future to come, so that it may actually hold some prestige linked to a semblance of skill.

@Falselights, bad matchmaking is very much tied to the current pip system. Currently the system allows virtually anyone to make ruby for free (granted, the sapphire division makes it a bit more difficult for the truly challenged), which is why ruby matchmaking is so bonkers right now.

Just picture, someone who made it to ruby going 20-0 getting matched with 4 other players who all made it to ruby on a 40% WR. What do you think will happen? This is obviously a bit exaggerated but it is actually what is happening in matchmaking precisely because of this pip system.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

I think it’s funny they say it’s due to load screen times but they have no problem allowing people to swap classes by logging out and in which causes longer load screens.

This is something they’ve tried to get rid of in the past but I can’t remember it ever having been received well.

Regardless, I for one would do a lot for PvE if I didn’t have to stay in the mists 30-60 minutes waiting for my queues to pop. It’s unreal.

Bump for weekday visibility.

So for the last year or longer, I forget, we’ve been restricted to not being able to queue from outside hotm. The reason being, so that load times don’t screw teams over, iirc.

Would it be a terribly difficult thing to:

• Hold the countdown timer until everyone is loaded into the map.
• Reduced the timer to 1:00 min to compensate.

So guardian is in a difficult place since it relies heavily on your team also being able to do damage, since yours is not as high as other DPS classes.

That being said, DH is actually a fairly good build for a lot of 1v1s, and very useful in teamfights.

Here’s what I use, and it is quite effective.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAT8dn8cCdDhVDBWdC8DhlEiSe5j+sPb/+vA8aZDgEA-TJBFABEcRAEvMgc7PAwTAAA

I will say this: playing DH in this meta requires far more work from your part than it will for other players to beat you. Be smart about how and when you use your CDs.

Ithilwen.1529:

snip

This highlights precisely why there should be pip and tier regression in every division. With the added possibility of dropping down divisions after sufficiently long losing streaks.

Sarrs.4831:

Why not have it anyway? I see no problem with having full pip loss for every division while also locking legendary progression behind it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the game having difficult goals for players and putting legendaries behind that goal.

This is obviously the preferred method. I was merely suggesting a compromise.

I have edited my original suggestion as it appears that a lot of people do care about having a PvP exclusive skin that “shows they’re skilled.”

However, I stand by my warning from ~1 year ago that reaching Legend rank requires merely abundant resources (whether that is time to grind hundreds of games with a ~40-50% WR, OR enough gold to buy a boost from better players—this is a very popular method that a lot of people have employed), in the absence of considerable skill.

—OP
This is a 100% constructive and thorough post on the state of PvP and what can be VERY EASILY done to fix it for everyone. As such, I will not reply to any trolls.

—body
As I was perusing some GW2 streams today, I found (as its not surprising) a young clicker playing some PvP. This is perfectly fine, there is nothing wrong with being a clicker if you simply want to be a casual.

However, the system currently in place convinces even casual players that they have what it takes to be competitive, as they have so easily reached division 4 (out of 6) by simply logging on and spamming a few games. Why is this bad?

This is bad for two main reasons:

• Unskilled players will all be funneled into low tier Ruby and find it “inescapable,” and will be further frustrated by the fact that no matter what they do, they may never see that shiny legendary they so desperately want.
• Certain somewhat “higher” skill players who are perhaps not skilled enough to carry 4 clickers, but certainly skilled enough to be in (a balanced system’s) division 4 (out of 6), will also be frustrated as their games will be almost entirely determined by the teammates they are assigned by the MM algo.

Divisions 1-3 were (presumably) designed so that (For lack of a better word) noobs don’t feel frustrated that they can’t win, and there’s a sense of a nurturing learning curve as losses don’t count against you.

In terms of someday obtaining a legendary, this isn’t a terribly bad system. But, in terms of playing with and against people of (or near) your own skill level, this is a horrendous system.

OK so, that’s what it is. What could be done to fix it??

—Step 0
The crux of the problem is caused by having a seemingly “obtainable for everyone” legendary at the end of a long grind (similar to the PvE model). However, this is something that could very easily go away.

PvP players don’t really care for the exclusivity of the skins available (save for the Glorious Hero set; it’s nice to see people that actually win tournaments get rewarded).

• ANet could just as well make the ascneded and legendary backpiece obtainable through PvE means, and PvP players (for the most part) wouldn’t care about this.

—Step 1
Ok, the people that care for that, now have an option at grinding their legendary another way. With that out of the way, we can easily restructure every Ranked Division to have pip and tier regression in events of a loss.
This is crucial to having a system that actually works for matching similarly skilled players together.

—Bonus Step
A bonus suggestion of mine, would be to:

• Start every player at the beginning of a season at something like mid Division 2 with hidden pips.
• Wins/Losses during your first 5 or 10 games count for 2-3 (maybe a little more) pips, depending on streaks.

This way, the system is less grindy at the start when you’re getting started, but you can still turn it into a grind at high Legend if you care to be on that Leaderboard.

—TL;DR

• Add pip and tier loss to all divisions.
• (bonus) Reward/deduct more pips for the first few “starter games,” at the beginning of every season.

I’m glad you all figured out virtual dong size is one of the primary criteria I look for.

Carry on.

Hello young ones.

I am looking for a druid or revenant player to fill up my roster.

How to apply? Fill out this form in either reply here, or send me a PM via this forum.

Over 16?
Proficient Classes:
Tournament Experience (eg. AG, ESL, 2v2s, etc…):
Time Zone:
Availability:

And attach the following:

• Screenshot of your PvP Home tab.
• Link a recording of a recent match of yours playing your class of interest.
  • This can be a solo queue, team queue, or a tournament game, but it must be from your point of view!

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me here, or in game.

Look man, if you are stuck in a division with regression it only means one thing, you’re not good enough to advance to next division.

Some facts:

1. There have been plenty of people that have made it out of ruby with and without copy paste builds.
2. One person can carry this game. If you are good, force 1v2s, win them, and you put your team in a favorable 4v3. Sometimes they won’t win those favorable situations, just means other team is better.

If you’re really arrogant enough to claim that you should always win your matches and it is indeed your teammates that are bad, I invite you to record some of your gameplay, upload it to YouTube, and prove to us that it isn’t you who is the terribad that can’t be carried out of a division hundreds (if not thousands) of players have already climbed out of.

Or you know, you can not post evidence and keep complaining, and blaming teammates, that will surely get you to legendary in 16 days.

Evan Lesh.3295:

What would be fair?
Last person to apply the condition that dealt the killing blow? Spam condies.
First person to create a stack that dealt the killing blow? Be the first to apply condies and keep them up the entire time.

IMO, fair would be:
Look at the condition that killed it,
Whichever player contributes more to the damage of that stack should get credit for the kill.

Ie. Say boss is dying to 20 stacks of bleeds
Player A applied 15 stacks, but has really low effective condi damage
Player B applied stacks, but has really high effective condi damage.

In this scenario (without looking at the specific numerical analysis), player B contributes more DPS to the stack of bleeds that kills svanir, than player A.

Therefore player B gets the credit for the kill.

I don’t imagine this will need too much reworking of the code since the engine already looks at the condi damage of each source per stack, dynamically.

EDIT: In case someone had this same issue, I rolled back my drivers to the Win 7 version and gamed work perfectly fine after that.

Windows 10 64-Bit
GTX 460 SE v2

I have Windows Update turned off.

Any time I open the game, whether it’s Fullscreen, Windowed Fullscreen, or Windowed, it works fine for a few seconds, then my display driver crashes non-stop until I force close the game. If I don’t close it, my entire system will freeze up, forcing me to force a reboot.

No error code from GW2, this seems to be strictly an Nvidia problem.

What I have tried:

• Clean Install of all Drivers
• Only install Graphics and PhysX driver
• Run with /clientport 80
• Run in compatibility mode, both Win7 and Win8
• Run as administrator
• I have also tried all the above with the 2 previous drivers in the Nvidia page (353.62 & 353.30)

Not really sure what else to do other than wait for Nvidia to roll out new drivers.

Any help would be appreciated.

Shinzan.2908:

Acandis.3250:

it should not come as a shock to any of you when you see a player with 10% winrate walking around with that PvP exclusive legendary backpiece.

I’m fine with this, skins and such should be earn able by anyone who puts in the effort, it’s a PvP exclusive because you need to do PvP to get it. Give leaderboards/titles/badges to those who care about win rates.

PvE legendaries also don’t require skill, just playing enough.

I honestly wouldn’t have a problem with a skin being awarded just for putting time to grind, IF (seriously don’t just stop reading after 1st clause) and only if leaderboards & badges showed skill and not grind to acquire.

I couldn’t care less about a legendary backpiece.

Unless it was a really nice looking cape hint hint, anet pls.

All that being said,

My prediction for average player skill distribution along the Divisions, when Leagues come out, is the following:

• Divisions 1-3:
  • These are the casual divisions, players that don’t play that much, will be among these 3, with trashcan players being stuck in D1, and much better players being in D3.
  • It is entirely possible some D3 players will be much better than higher division players, but they just don’t spam nearly as many games.
• Division 4:
  • This is going to be the trash tier division. Anyone that plays all day will easily make it into this division. If you are skilled, you’ll advance to D5+, if you are not, you’ll stay here forever, as you can’t decay.
  • Do not be surprised when you notice that players in this division will be noticeably worse than players in D1-3.
• Division 5:
  • This will be the 40-50% winrate division that have the time (and patience) to spam games all day. Most, if not all of these players are considerably better than D4 players.
  • Most of these players will eventually make it to D6+.
• Division 6:
  • I’d like to say, this is were the best of the best are going to be, but for obvious reasons not all the top players will be in this division.
  • This is the division that will be inhabited predominantly by those who farm Team Queue during the graveyard shift. Willing to wait 20+ minutes for a match that will take ~5 minutes, just so they can get that easy win and make it to the top of the League.

With that in mind, I expect at least 50% of the playerbase will be D5+.

So, yea, I really don’t think Leagues will hold any prestige whatsoever. Just another grindfest.

There are 2 simple ways to abuse the League system as it stands.

1- The “Elo-Boost/Job” Method
Suppose I am a young PvE pleb and so far, I’ve only done PvP for my dailies so that I can earn a spot on that shiny PvE leaderboard, and maybe get some more mats for my 18th legendary. Well, dang, Leagues are coming out, and there’s a new legendary that I can grind for… How am I to do this, if I’m not that good?
Simple! I’ll pay a young PvP master to boost my account to Legendary Division. From there, I can either pay him further to grind the backpiece for me, or I can move on to Method 2.

2- The “Always Fight vs. Bads” Method
Suppose I am a young PvE pleb, but I don’t have enough $ to pay a young PvP master to boost me. What am I to do?
Simple! No matter how bad I am, there will always be people that are just as bad, if not worse than me. Knowing this, I know I can easily get to next division by winning some games, then before winning any game, I go on MASSIVE lose streak to make sure my MMR stays TANKED so that I can get more easy wins to get into next division.
Rinse and repeat.

Enjoy your free Legendary, boys!

In short, this iteration of the League system is meaningless from a competitive PvP standpoint.
The sad truth is, in this system MMR and League status will be completely independent of each other. As a consequence, it should not come as a shock to any of you when you see a player with 10% winrate walking around with that PvP exclusive legendary backpiece.

This is yet another system in which dedicated PvP players (competitive and casual alike) are being ignored as devs, yet again, cater to the PvE and grinder population.

Dislaimer: GW2Drama does not in any way endorse any of the above mentioned strategies.

It would work if F2P accounts would:

• Not be able to generate, earn, or receive gold.
• Can still receive or purchase Gems from Trading Post.

Though, nowhere near his level of proficiency, I ran several iterations of the previously infamous SB/SB thief AKA “Glaphe Build,” and I had quite an entertaining time.

Here is a quick highlight of the power of this build, as I 1v1 famous NA ESL player: Stalagta.

http://www.twitch.tv/acandis19/v/8988299

If you are out there Glaphe, I hope this makes you proud.

PS. for those of you that have a little bit more time to kill, here is a snip of a full game with a variant of the build: http://www.twitch.tv/acandis19/v/8987479

wait… really?

Predicted Trait Spreads:
I’m only going to outline trait spreads, without more detailed info on how runes/sigils/weapon skills are changing, I don’t care enough to speculate about new builds.

Also, I’m mostly focusing on power meta builds, I don’t care too much to craft builds for any upcoming future meta I can’t predict.

Ele:

• d/X- core - You will always take this, no matter what.
  • Fire/blind spec
  • Air/lightning rod spec
  • Earth/bunky spec
• s/f- fresh air

Engi:

• rifle

Guard:

• scepter/focus+X
  Valor – Swap III for II depending on playstyle.
  You can also swap Radiance for Zeal if you want to play symbol based build.

Mes:

• shatter - Dueling has variable options depending on playstyle.
  As a last tree, you can take any of Chaos, Inspiration, Illusions, or Chrono depending on playstyle. All of them have solid options.

Necro:

• power wells
  blood magic – swap VII for IX if playing with coordinated team
  soul reaping – swap I for II, and/or IV for V, and/or VII for VII depending on playstyle.
• condi
  blood magic – swap VIII for IX if playing with coordinated team
  soul reaping – swap II for I AND VII for IX if you feel your comp would benefit from having additional burning.

Ranger:

• power lb
• condis
  There might be some sleeper trap build in here. But spirits got shafted.

Thief:

• d/p crit strikes
  Deadly Arts – swap IX for VIII depending on playstyle.
  Trickery – swap II for III depending on playstyle.
• d/p bich build
• s/d DA
  You can swap out DA for crit strikes if you don’t feel like playin an OP bich trait.
• cruuk build

Warrior:
I didn’t spend too much time on warrior, but this is Hman’s sword/horn+hammer build.
You can swap out Discipline VIII for IX AND pick up a bow, if you feel hammer has too much counterplay.

Have fun.