Guild Wars 2

PvP Leaderboards F.A.Q.

Q: Do leaderboard names follow the same naming rules as the normal game?
A: Yes they do. If a name on the leaderboards is deemed to be inappropriate, your account will be removed from the leaderboards until that character has been renamed. Once renamed, you must then play at least 1 game to re-appear on the leaderboards.

Q: How is rank determined? Is it by wins? Win %?
A: Rating is used. This rating takes into account your rating, your opponent’s rating, and then adjusts your post-game rating accordingly. If you win against a very low ranked opponent, and you are a highly ranked opponent, you will gain fewer points than if you defeated someone above you in rating. It is possible for a player to have a higher rating even if they haven’t played as many games as another player – # of games does not guarantee a high rating.

Q: The boards have my ranger listed, but I played my warrior more, why isn’t it ranking me by my warrior?
A: The rankings are account based, not character based. We use your most recently logged character as your current leader board name.

Q: How often do the sPvP leaderboards update?
A: Currently, once an hour.

Q: Are the leaderboards character based or account based?
A: They are account based. The most recent character played is shown on the leaderboard, even though the ranking is account based.

Q: Are player ratings shown anywhere?
A: We do not currently display player ratings.

Q: Do matches in the PvP Browser affect my Rating?
A: Your rating is not based on public play matches, only tournament/ranked matches.

Q: Does leaving a match early affect my rating?
A: If you leave a tourney/ranked match early, yes, your rating is impacted as if you sustained a loss. Once you finish another match, this “loss” is then factored back into your rating.

Q: My rank is jumping around a lot, what is going on?
A: A few things can be happening. The leaderboard will only show your new rank once it updates, which currently happens on the hour. The system is also trying to figure out how good you are and put you where you need to be for good matchups. The more you play, the more “confident” the system becomes about your placement. Early on, you may jump around more until the system has more info on your performance.

Dropping out of games early can also cause your rank to fluctuate a lot. When you drop a game early, you are assigned a loss. If you do this multiple times, then you are giving yourself loss after loss. Once you successfully finish a game, the system assigns all your old losses back to your rank. Once the leaderboard updates again, all these losses “catch up” to you, and you may see a big drop in your rank.

Also keep in mind that other players are also playing and gaining or losing rating. It may be that although you have moved up a few ranks several other player have moved past you in ratings. The net result may be a drop or increase in ranking.

After reading reports in this thread, we spent more time investigating our rewards system. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we verified that all loot tables are indeed working correctly in the game. Since then, we continued receiving reports that there seemed to be an issue, so we extended our search to all systems that created opportunities for you to get items from loot tables. Here we found an issue that we were able to verify was consistent across everyone who reported problems:

The rules by which you qualify for credit for an event or for experience when killing a mob are different rules than those used to help determine if you qualify for loot. Some of these were set up to be unintentionally restrictive, and as such you could kill a creature with a lot of health (this was most noticeable on champions) and not qualify for loot, despite qualifying for all other credit.

For the February Flame & Frost: The Gathering Storm release we will be repairing this issue to ensure more players are capable of earning loot credit for kills. This should fix the issue such that you got credit for killing a champion, but received no loot from it. Once fixed, all champion mobs will correctly always drop 1 blue or better loot item, and all veterans will have a chance of dropping loot better than regular mobs as outlined in the November release. Please note, it is still possible to kill a creature and not do enough damage to qualify for loot (which is the only way you won’t get loot for a champion), it is also still possible for veterans to not drop loot at all, since they simply have better odds of dropping loot than normal creatures but no guaranteed drops.

On top of this, we’re also updating some of the loot in various areas of the game for the February release that should make specific areas more rewarding. We’ll cover this is in detail with the February release notes.

Thanks very much for all your feedback and reports, that information has proved incredibly useful!

Keeping an eye on something means we’re watching it, seeing how it plays out, and making sure we don’t make knee jerk reactions (nerfs or buffs).

Having said that, Dagger/dagger Ele needs help. Some defensive Ele specs are too good. Some of their sustained damage is too low, while some spike builds are pretty rough. Keeping an eye on it means we’re not going to nerf/buff it without thinking very carefully about it – that’s what my first update was about.

We’re also keeping an eye on Thieves, both in regards to damage output and sustained defense through stealth.

We’re also looking at the balance for all the downed skills for all classes. Some are riding the high end of the power curve, while others feel weaker in comparison.

Anddddddddddd we’re also looking at buffs/nerfs to all classes as apropos – I’m just not listing every single one. For many classes this means that we want them to have different builds that are equally viable, and making sure that no single build outshines all others in efficacy. Also, this means that JUST BECAUSE I DIDN’T SPECIFICALLY CALL OUT YOUR CLASS in a post, that DOES NOT MEAN WE’RE NOT LOOKING AT IT.

Communication in-and-of-itself is a complicated thing, and the inherent complication of human communication is further exacerbated when it’s done via a web-based medium. We’re trying to do our best to communicate with you, so please understand that just because I say “keeping an eye on something”, that doesn’t mean we are nerfing X from orbit with a Nerf nuke – as it’s the only way to be sure. It simply means we’re keeping an eye on it.

/salute