Guild Wars 2

Justine.6351:

Nah I like a good solo challenge but this fight is a joke. It’s pretty obvious it was tested on something with 30k hp, 3k armor and easy stability like warrior. Infact ya it probably was only play tested on warrior. If anything this fight just shows how weak plain old stunbreaking in this game is.

I ended up just graveyarding it. Pretty sad really.

Done it on a full glass cannon tempest with no support utilities and no food.

I guess what’s considered a “good solo challenge” depends on the individual.

I do however think that jade bow was a bit too much.

Did it on a full glass cannon tempest.

Jade bow was a bit too much (died twice to it, of which once was while in loading back in so I don’t count that one), other then that it was a simple fight as long as you keep moving.

Faux Play.6104:

First off thanks for the feed back. I agree with most of it. However, I’m a little disappointed that some of you couldn’t pick up on the [/sarcasm] tag and the fact that I put a question mark in the subject line. Perhaps your thread awareness needs some work. xD

Unfortunately this is just a part of human nature. Rarely will you see someone who tries to rise above the basic animal behavioral patterns. Seems to me that the guy you are having back-and-forth also misses the mark somewhat.

I, for what it’s worth, would reiterate what alemfi.5107 said and also add a thank you for not being another knee-jerk reactionary, which are apparently not exclusive to the “elo hell” camp, and also helping us disperse this false narrative and self-victimisation (even if your efforts are somewhat muddled through no fault of your own).

Xaylin.1860:

I wouldn’t take this result too literally considering people tend to overestimate their own performance. There is plenty of research on this topic.

Oh, I didn’t reach any conclusions, I just pointed out some numbers that were interesting to me.

The survey itself is bound to be flawed in many ways.. just one example is that over 90% of the answers came from reddit (only 30ish came via forums) and the difference between forum and reddit replies is interesting (and if I had a bigger sample I’d even dare to include some of my own speculation as far as reasons for discrepancies between the forum and reddit goers. Of course neither reddit nor forum is a valid representative of the player base as a whole, but having widely different perspective between them tells me that these numbers may well mean absolutely nothing as far as the player base as a whole goes. Still, a good topic for a gossip methinks.

Last, a couple of choice quotes from the participants:

MMR decay system. It should be faster for legendary but lower at the lower ranks. An alternative system for non legendary players is to have no MMR decay but you can’t go into ranked matches after not playing for a few days unless you play x number of unranked matches.

Current meta and balance at plat is actually very good.Every class is actually pretty viable, DPS and bunker are fairly balanced between eachother as well. However, I understand that at lower ratings this is definitely not the case, as there is a massive difference in skill ceiling and floor between various classes. SoloQ carry potential for self-sufficient and DPS classes (warrior, DH, thief, druid) is far higher than highly team reliant classes (necro, ele). The main issue with GW2 is its massive learning curve. It’s far too steep for most new players to even understand what goes on in high rated games. Without this understanding they can’t mimic pro players even if they tried, unlike games as league / … that are much easier to watch and follow. (Hence alot of people stating there is too much CC / condi / … spam going around because they simply do not know what to dodge)

there are to many hidden things that influence pvp like weapon stow or sometimes even jumping given an addvantage cause skills are executed inother way as desinged or even worse gamer Keyboards where you can spam more than one or 2 skills at once

Right, apparently I didn’t count on the amount of people who’d take the survey, and apparently there is a limit of a 100 responders per survey on surveymonkey free account which led to my scrambling for patching up the whole endeavour as best as I could.

In the end I’ve decided to scrap the attempt and do the whole thing again on another platform, while learning from the precious feedback I’ve received on the presentation issues and my oversights.

While this survey was not as successful as it could’ve been (while in some areas being more successful then I could’ve dreamed) there is still quite a bit of interesting data that were the result. Feel free to extrapolate whichever conclusions you wish from data but be careful of the cognitive bias
Now, without further ado, the results (only 216 out of 480 responses were recorded, the rest are lost behind a paywall):

How often do you play PvP?
I’m new to GW2 – 1
Rarely/never played PvP before this season – 18
I only play during PvP seasons – 113
PvP is my preferred game mode – 47
I’m exclusively PvP player – 9
Other – 28 (vast majority commented that I forgot to include casual active PvP players, those who do dailies, reward tracks, a couple of matches a day for practice etc.)

Interesting numbers: amount of people who favor PvP as a game mode (almost 26%). From all of the players estimates I’ve personally never seen a number that reached that high.

How many ranked/unranked matches have you played?
Less than 500 – 65
500-1000 – 47
1000-2500 – 58
2500-5000 – 34
More than 5000 – 12

Which of these reasons best describe your motivation for participating in the current PvP season? (first number is "somewhat important, second is “very important”)
Obtaining ascended gear – 80 63
Obtaining legendary backpiece – 50 59
Trying to get the new titles – 56 15
Playing with friends – 67 39
I just like PvP – 75 103
In the Other category the most mentioned reason is missed/unclaimed achievements with 6 mentions

This question could’ve probably been phrased better and given better presentation (for example forcing a response per column).

Average rank obtained in seasons 1-4 (don’t count seasons you skipped/missed)
Amber – 7
Sapphire – 11
Emerald – 22
Ruby – 69
Diamond – 31
Legendary – 46
Didn’t play – 31

Interesting statistics, especially Ruby threshold theory that is once again confirmed.

Current league placement
Not ranked – 13
Bronze – 18
Silver – 67
Gold – 73
Platinum – 42
Legendary 4

This one was a bit surprising to me. The bell curve is quite a bit skewed.

Do you think your current league placement is an accurate representation of your skill level?
300+ below – 26
100-300 below – 65
Accurate – 117
100-300 above – 9
More then 300 above – 0

Again a surprise considering how much presence on forums people who aren’t satisfied with their own placement have. Notice the massive discrepancy between people who think they are below their deserved rating and people who believe they are above it. A whooping 10:1 ratio.

Which do you think are the issues with the current PvP season?(here I’m showing only the “major issue column”
Build diversity – 84
Placement matches impact on leaderboards – 82
Non-Hot build inferiority – 78
Class stacking -78
Class balance – 73
Top players with multis – 71
Lack of different modes – 67
MMR – 54
Default rating of new PvP’ers – 44
Limited/unsatisfactory maps – 43
Lack of team que – 26
Duo queue – 25
PvP tutorial – 22

Interestingly enough, while silver ranked players are unsatisfied with their placements, they mostly quote build issues (stacking, diversity, HoT build superiority etc.) as their primary concerns. On the other hand, it’s the gold players who are primarily concerned with new player rating, MMR and other issues I’d have thought were something silver ranked players would’ve considered more important.
Apart from that, it seems that Skyhammer is no longer the bane of everyone’s PvP experience :P And it looks like the population is willing to let go the issue of premade advantage over pugs (or at least that seems to be the case in the lower brackets).

tl;dr version:
Survey is closed until further notice, details and results below.
I’d like to thank all participants and people who offered feedback and suggestions.

It has been 3 weeks since the 5th PvP season started, a long enough time for majority of active participants to form their opinion. And indeed, we’ve seen players express quite a few differing opinions and divisive arguments over various aspects of the new ranking system, new reward tracks, various checks and balances, matchmaking and a number of other issues. So far, at least on surface, it seems that this season has garnered the most interest, whether the cause was the sheer number of changes, or the success of their implementation.
Since we don’t have access to any sort of official statistics I’ve tried my best to build a version of a survey that could at least offer some sort of an idea where the player base in general (or rather forum/reddit goers along with some other fringe groups) stands on various perceived issues that the new season brought with them.

Unfortunately, the range of tools available to a free surveymonkey account is understandably rather limited, so the survey itself is not nearly as detailed as I’d have preferred it to be.
However, it is my hope that, if there is a large enough of a sample size, I could do a follow-up survey that’d help provide more focus to what the surveyed player base considers the biggest issues and maybe even provide a valid idea or two that could help ANet in planning future seasons (or maybe fixing issues they agree with before this season ends).

I’ve tried my best to remove any sort of bias and be as broad and inclusive as possible, but there is of course a chance that I’ve erred somewhere or missed something. Feel free to provide feedback in the survey itself as well as in this thread.

Nice summary, Lucius.2140.
Now you just need to go through every new PvP forums thread and every HotM instance and spam the links to your OP.

A noble gesture, but there is really no need for you to give your prize away since the fault, if there is any, doesn’t lie with you.
Besides we don’t really know who is in the “third place” since we don’t know the correct answer to the tie-break question and we don’t know if Trinibaje.7683’s answer was correct.

I completely agree, and I voiced my concerns about the system as well. Unfortunately I did that only when it became an issue so it was too late to change it. And yeah, bbear and I discussed about changing it if there’s another hunt.

Right, it’s Monday morning my time and close to midnight Pacific and I haven’t heard anything from Bbear. Since my partner truly seems to be MiA, and I have incomplete information about the tie break result (one of the answers was wrong, don’t know if other participant submitted theirs and if he did if they were correct), I’ve decided to split the 2nd place prize equally between Trinbaje and Dejavu.

I hope you will be satisfied with my ruling considering the circumstances, and my apologies for the delay.

Hey, guys.

I’m the other Wyld Hynt host. The reason for the hold up is because Bbear won’t have access to the game ’till the weekend. Expect to hear from either one of us tomorrow or Sunday at the latest.

Sorry for taking so long and congrats to all the winners.

The blame will just be re-distributed to other usual suspects and a year or two down the line everybody will forget about the poll and it’s results, and the same topic will creep up back into the rotation of the things that are absolutely the worst according to your average forum wine user.

I mean, I get it, I’m sick of reading and listening the same crap as well, but I’m afraid this doesn’t do any good long term.

As far as exposition goes:

original –
NPC: There’s disturbance in the air, communications are FUBAR.
NPC: That’s why you won’t be able to use the communication device Taimi gave you.

better way –
NPC: There’s disturbance in the air, communications are FUBAR.
PC: I see. I wonder if I can reach Taimi.. looks like I can’t.

A minor detail, I’m sure this slipped off the radar during the developement.

charchar.2149:

Yeah I’ve been having a great time with warhorn/scepter Ele learning the ins and outs of the traits, runes, utilities, etc. My other spvper is hammer & mace/ shield condi resistance boon viper Rev. The meta morons can be awful during games blaming you for losses. There’s a lot more to a loss then the variant of class you play.

A good player can roll a shadow arts thief without an amulet and do something with it. A bad player can roll a meta symbol guard or meta gyro engineer and do nothing with it. So I do agree that there’s more to playing the game then using a meta build. In fact, I think that much was obvious from OP.
That being said, good players usually don’t roll shadow arts thieves.

Hammer is a bad choice for a condi reve. If you wanna pew-pew stick to the power build or even better, swap to a LB druid/trapper guard for more team support.
If you wanna stay condi try using S/A instead. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with increased pressure and survivability
While meta might have some negative connotations it also stands for builds that have synergy between weapon sets, traits and utilities.

Finally reached legendary title. Took me some ~250 matches from emerald (skipped last season, a major mistake considering regressive matchmaking).

I will always remember my last match which was quite exquisite.. and the people who participated.

As far as team comps went we had in my team:
-MM/support necro
-PU WvW style mesmer
-me on a meta medi guardian (with procession of blades, started using it halfway through the grind because why the hell not)
-a power ranger who was convinced he could run into trap field and take on a guard and a thief on his own
-rifle warrior

And on the oposite team there was:
-full trapper guard who only knew how to stand in the middle of point and pew-pew with his longbow, he literally didn’t care for anything else including stomping/ressing, bless his simple heart
-pistol/pistol thief
-another MM necro, but this one was some kind of a hybrid with GS, because why not
-meta reve, believe it or not somebody still rolls with tried and true builds, what a nerd
-meta medi guard

This is the kind of people I expect to see in diamond/legendary! People who aren’t afraid to go outside of comfort zone and test new and exciting (if not useful) builds! People who aren’t afraid to make their Japanese ancestors proud and dive into certain death with no regards to anything else! People who are capable of playing hundreds of matches and still stick to their own game style whatever anyone else does/thinks/says!

Call this tongue in cheek post. Call me facetious. But please, ANet, for next season, just allow people to get the shiny title and rewards by playing 400 custom arena matches and being able to breathe.

@Bbear.7830: This whole idea sounds amazing to me. Definitely more worthy of high quality rewards then my simple “find me’s”
To be perfectly honest I’m glad to have some role in this idea of yours.

As for the matter at hand, I just did another simple “find me”. This time in Blazeridge Steps (I wanted to do it in Queensdale, but the population was really small, so for now I’ll stick with the daily map rotation), and I must say I’m much more satisfied then with my LA runs. I’ve offered 5×5g and got way more traction for the event then I have in my 500 ectos to 4 people in LA one.
To boot, I’d like to think that the chances of catching the kind of people who actually need the gold is higher here then in LA.. and not to mention my usual massive task/massive reward challenges I did with some of my acquaintances.

Right, first up, thanks for the suggestion @Danikat.8537, I will make sure to check them out.

Second of all, @Bbear.7830, this is an amazing idea! And thank you for doing it If you don’t mind I’d like to add 100 gold of my own to your honey pot, and, again if you don’t mind, I’d like to “steal” this method off ya and use it in my next giveaways.

Unfortunately tho, I think the message will only be lost in this thread. I’m afraid we’ll have to find another way to advertise this “community event”.

Lastly, I did another, “modified” game last night based on the input from the thread, and managed to give out some ~420 ectos to 3 different people, with 7-8 participants in total. Nothing to write home about, but the messages of gratitude and some messages of support from participants/audience did make it worth while. The winner took 250 ectos home and told me that was the last thing he needed to finish the legendary.
Again, thanks for constructive suggestions people!

Right, thank you all for answers, input and support! I already have several ideas on how to improve on some things based on your replies.

The thing is, I get that LA is not a homogeneous mix of people who are waiting for me to provide them entertainment. There are your afk’ers, TP traders, “TP traders”, mystic forgers, regular crafters, fractal heroes and many other kinds of people who don’t have time or inclination to participate in such an event. And yes, I count in sceptics in that group as well :P

I’d like to say that I did put some effort in the whole event (maybe even too much effort considering people rarely like to read more text then you can fit in a single twitter message). And I also offered tips on demand to make it easier for people to find me.. but the thing is not a single person even cared…
I think I did my best to prove this was not just a spur of the moment joke but an actual event.. but there is always room for improvement, so we shall see how the next event goes.

Again, thank you all for your replies. Will keep you posted.

Played the game since the launch and amassed some wealth. I started giving it away to friends/acquaintances/people who answered my challenges.

Here’s the thing tho, today I tried to organize a “find me” contest with stacks of ectos as reward during prime time in LA and managed to get one joke answer in total :/

I always asked for some sort of a challenge before giving away stuff, but if 90 or more gold doesn’t motivate anyone ingame what exactly does?

In short, how the hell do I make people in the most casual MMO ever to get off their bum and do something interesting for a nice reward and fun experience?

Great proposal. Yesterday I didn’t even watch the stream most of the time, just had it in background.. in fact it took me several minutes to realize the stream has ended due to the suspicious lack of commentator chatter…

There is however the issue of GW2 engine still being quite outdated as far as recording and replaying of competitive matches goes.

Ithilwen.1529:

What disturbs me is the reactionary mindset. People “belong” in lower tiers and aren’t good enough to advance? I’m seeing quite a few posters maintain this in the face of any argument or evidence.

But there is an argument to be made. We all know how the system should work.. and there is evidence that it does indeed work.
For example, if you compare player quality in legendary/diamond league with sapphire or emerald you will witness without a doubt a major difference in skill level. And that is the main purpose of the current system.

On the other hand, as you say aptly, reactionary mindset claims that the system doesn’t work and for that they offer anecdotal evidence and personal views..
For example, there’s another thread on front page where another person is complaining about the matchmaking, and provided a screenshot of him running an extremely sub-par build and having an atrocious win rate (below 40% IIRC).
Worse still, when he was confronted about these things he maintained his original stance while showing profound lack of knowledge about the game mode itself.
I’m almost positive that said person will continue with his crusade on matchmaking without ever taking a break and asking himself if there might be some other culprit for his current predicament.

jessiestiles.9437:

The entire scientific method is testing predictions. I was under the impression he was dev involved with the new system. Nevertheless he’s acting as a spokesperson for anet on this issue.

You didn’t test predictions. You just assumed they were correct because they supported your model. Disregarding the leagues and personal progression through them (and other factors) throws a major wrench into any sort of calculations.

For example, in my case: I started playing on day one. Getting through amber was a PITA because all matches were very close and difficult (don’t get me wrong, each and every match was beautiful, but I didn’t want to have to take a shower after every tier or two in amber). I played dailes for next couple of days and then ran through amber and most of sapphire till I caught up with front end players. Then it was a slog of win/loss streaks (mostly due to newbie guildies I played with) till I got to ~ruby3. Then I took a couple of days break, after which I caught up to the better players again. Been playing dailies ever since, till today when I raced through last 4 tiers in diamond.

So, I hope you can see how in my particular case going straight by the numbers of wins/losses will drastically affect any results.

jessiestiles.9437:

Evan was expecting the matches to be less volatile by this stage in the season regardless of your division. So we’re not considering division. It’s also a random sample of 100 games which confirmed my hypothesis. And you agreed solo games are lopsided. Now you are saying ruby games are much more lopsided.

Wait what was your point again? Legend is ok so therefore matchmaking is fine. That’s a really biased viewpoint you have there.

You can’t make an objective study about any subject solely based on someone’s predictions. That’s a logical fallacy called “appeal to authority”.
Now, that’s a really biased viewpoint right there.

IMHO main issue is ruby, since that’s where all “bads” will eventually get to.. But there’s a difference between “i am making new totally awesome build you guy” or “i’mma rush lord at start” or “i’mma leave in the middle of teamfight because reasons”.. And making those distinctions is another story.

Offtime queue (early morning):
Over 450: 0
400 – 450: 0
300 – 400: 5
200 – 300: 3
100 – 200: 1
Less than 100: 1
Highest Score: 374

Primetime queue:
Over 450: 0
400 – 450: 5
300 – 400: 1
200 – 300: 2
100 – 200: 1
Less than 100: 1
Highest Score: 449

Generally, I measure “good games” as being above 350 pts for losing team, and all but one of my 300+ games were like that, so I’m quite satisfied with matchmaking.

Being in diamond myself, I’ve never experienced a 10 minute queue, regardless of the time of day or number of people I queue up with. The longest queue I can remember during this season was at the end of ruby, queuing up with a premade, in the late morning and it was about 9 minutes long.
I don’t doubt that legend queue times are long.. I’m assuming most people take a break once they reach the rank and get their wings.
But 30 minute long queues in ruby and 1 hour long queues in diamond is something neither I, nor anyone of my friends has ever experienced.

I don’t know about the player base, but being in those same queues and not seeing anything close to the times you mention tells me somebody or some people is/are lying through their teeth.

BrotherBelial.3094:

ANet said, all new accounts get average MMR. So if you have never played PvP in your life, you will be put with people with average MMR. Now if you have played PVP and you are playing on another account, then it show’s that having average MMR makes it easy for new accounts to climb quickly. I’m not taking anything away from the guys skill. just saying, that giving new accounts average MMR means that they will/could drag down other players who have been playing for some time.

And therein comes the brilliantly simplistic league mechanics. He’ll be teamed up with other people who are in his MMR range, who are also stuck at the same pip range as he is. If he’s a slow learner he’ll reach emerald, and if he’s a prodigy he’ll be in ruby and beyond in no time.

BrotherBelial.3094:

So some people this season same as last, have been “carried” to divisions where they don’t belong, and are now screwing matches up for players that are now stuck in a loop with them, because they can not drop out of where they don’t belong, but also with out the system as it is, a lot of good players would never get to where they need to be because of the volume of players that take part in the league at the start.

Fortunately tho, the player pool is a bit larger then what your assumption makes, and the cases where this outcome is true are few and far between, especially taking into account how many matches one needs to play, even if one never loses a game.

JTGuevara.9018:

Let’s not congratulate OR hate on him. Leeto merely exploited an ATROCIOUS league system that was DESIGNED for people to grind to legendary.

You are right. That’s why you and everybody else ended up in legendary as well.
Oh, wait.. you can’t get out of sapphire :/

I think it’s a conspiracy. OP is clearly a PR plant by ANet officials, and all the people who are progressing are just lucky. The lizard people are behind it all!

I tip my hat to you.

Veneratio.1980:

I joined. After 4 days of the snowball of hell and being stuck in Sapphire t2. Met 4 guys in exactly the same position. Good players on the wrong side of the mmr coin.

First match. Down 110-20. Lost mid fight to start had home decapped too. WON
Second match. Down 220-150. Won mid but lost home and far. Scattered a bit over the map. Regrouped. WON
Third match. Lead from start to finish. Played as a team and for the first time in days pvp was fun for us all again.

After all being on losing streaks to start those 3 wins gave us all a tier up. Yay!

Now essentially, this was 5 people who didn’t know each other the same as any other pug but the big difference was attitude and communication. When we were losing the was no kittening and finger pointing. Only instruction and positivity. And god those comebacks were sweet.

There is hope yet.

This is a lie and a shameless self promotion… Everyone knows that the only reason I’m stuck in Emerald is because ANet has stupid algorithm that always teams me up with bad players because they don’t want me to reach legendary.
I called them out on it and Colin had to leave the company.

#MMR_fuel_cant_melt_steel_pips

(also bump)

Just as claytonmorby.3751 said, it is a thing but the more matches you play the less of an impact it has on your overall MMR.

Do daily league pvp’s for the duration of the league and MMR snowballing becomes a non-issue.

Sample is not fully representative at the moment, but it is getting closer to equilibrium with every day. I doubt that in just a couple more days you’ll still see people who report 10 consecutive blowouts and such, bar some outlier cases (eg. people who’ve had long breaks, completely new pvp players, offtime queuers and such). In fact, there is a thread with some emeralds claiming they’ve already settled.
I’d venture a wild guess that most volatility is now in upper ember and throughout most of the sapphire.

I do agree that the system will initially cause some ragequits, but such is the nature of the beast.. My suggestion to those who get frustrated and flustered is to take a break for a few more days and come back when the system fully populates its leagues.

I mostly disagree with the message, but great poetry non the less. Bravo!

Torafugu.1087:

A lot of people don’t play 1000 games, more like 100 over the entire season. Less if they aren’t seeing any progress. We can already see large number of people giving up.
Also, there are a number of scrubs that get carried up and they won’t ever drop down because they cannot lose a division.

I didn’t mean over the course of the season, I meant in general. But 100 games is still a good sample size.
And scrubs don’t really matter. Even if you are the worst player in GW2 you could still, given enough persistence, farm up to ruby division. After that you’ll be teamed up with/against other people who can’t get any further (and occasional late comer who will still stomp you out). If a scrub has inflated MMR eventually he’ll start losing his team matches, which will bring him back down.

EDIT:
@melcor.1094: It’s a simple normal distribution.. It works the same way market researchers work, as in they don’t need to phone every house in the city in order to know how most of them would feel about their new product, they just need big enough sample size.

I’m just saying that after 1k games whether you started as being carried to your rank or were a victim of a bad set of circumstances doesn’t really matter.

Torafugu.1087:

No, the correct solution if you are stuck in a loss streak is not playing at all. this prevent your MMR from going down further. This put you at an advantage over people who dig themselves further into the MMR hell when you decide to continue.

That’s true. But given a big enough sample size (which you should get if you actively play entire season) it won’t really matter in the end, apart from some initial frustration.

What most people don’t realize is that whatever the case is, eventually one will settle in his own MMR bracket.

The more the games you play the better you will be placed, and yes that includes the 20-0 loss streak, because those losses have much less significance on your total MMR ranking then matches you win or lose playing against a team that is in your MMR bracket.

Ok, I started an in depth analysis of all the mistakes you made but it ran up to some 500 words by the time I reached 2:13 mark, so I’ll just keep it short and give you some tips.

From match 4:
-Learn your class and build. You are misusing most of your skills. Some examples: elixir gun 4 is a blast finisher, you can use turret to heal but then you either have to destroy it (20 sec cooldown) or pick it up (15 sec cd), static field is a great combo with either skill 2 or skill 3 on hammer or both, use bullwark gyro when entering a nasty fight, don’t use your ulti when you are just about to die, it won’t save you, don’t dodge while in elixir S, you are invoulnerable… the list goes on and on.
-Learn when to engage and disengage. Being able to leave a fight with 1k hp (mostly due to opponents being almost as incompetent as your team is) doesn’t mean you should suicide on next enemy you see
-Learn other classes builds. It shows that you are entering each and every fight completely unaware of what you should expect from your enemy.

It could all be summed up with “practice makes perfect”. Before joining a ranked arena try out your metabattle build in unranked, check out some other skill/trait variants and see if something fits more your play style, watch a stream or two (doesn’t necessarily have to be engineer, you can get ideas from other classes as well). Improve your action times (especially when casting AoE’s, standing there for 2 seconds turning camera and aiming while being pounded to dirt is painful to watch).
Lastly, don’t blame MMR formula. You are teamed up with bad players but you are, honestly, as bad as they were, at least in this particular instance. If you are in it for the wins you should heed my advice and use next couple of days training your skills and grasp of the game before returning to ranked. That way bigger number of more skilled people will leave your division and you’ll have an easier time winning, and you’ll have more skills of your own to show to further help you with your climb.
Hope this helps.

rojoka.5976:

i recently went into another flaw of HoT when i grinded HPs for my alt mesmer (taking the solo HPs and the ones where i could find other people around).
VB and AB went very smoothly. i was even able to do the meta in AB. those maps are at least accessible and populated.
then i entered TD and ran into a big problem. from the entering point there are only 2 ways out of the starting area. both are very tight and heavily populated by groups of 3 mobs and several veterans standing near each other and patrolling the area. when i entered TD with my first char there were people around and we could fight our way thru. but as soon as one have access to the further waypoints no one uses the wp in the entering zone.
new chars/players have to solo their way thru, which is really hard with the mob density, the patrolling veterans and fast respawns. my mesmer ended up with agroing multiple groups making it impossible to advance to more populated areas.
nearly all content (if you call high mob density content) is group oriented or favours some classes (my ranger could fight his way thru without to much troubles where my mesmer has runs into problems).

Teleport utility has 1200 range, and you have access to multiple invisibilities, cc’s, ports, blocks, invisibilities, aegises and invoulnerabilities.

Whether you are gs zerky, set-it-and-forget-it phantasm or condi mesmer doesn’t really matter with the amount of options you have.

If you pulled more then you can handle mesmer is probably one of the easiest classes to lose aggro on.

Mirta.5029:

Freeelancer.2860:

Don’t PvP leagues provide just that? Or for that matter achieving maximum level of mastery that requires allot of gold medals from adventures?

I guess you could say that someone doesn’t play PvP, cannot adjust to new difficulty, finds most activities too bothersome etc. but is that really a problem with the game?

PvP leagues are accessible to all I believe, not to those with the expansion only.

PvP leagues were a feature that came with expansion-ish. And try to get anywhere meaningful without the specializations. But, yeah I get your point.

Mirta.5029:

And the problem with masteries is that they slow down to a complete slog. So while yes, achieving a mastery must feel great, but when you have to spend months on it at a casual pace, you’re more likely to give up.

Actually, I’m just starting to work on masteries, and I’m already lv130+. No big deal, no problem, not an issue whatsoever.
And that whole critique sounds like one guy from this thread saying something along the lines of him being a beta player and an avid dungeoneer who is currently working on finishing his dungeon armors but will stop playing the game because of HoT.. Sounds more like he should first start playing the game in order to stop.
There’s a difference between being casual and going on a hiatus in order to join a Shaolin monastery and contemplate one’s existence.

Mirta.5029:

It’s also why ascendeds and legendaries feel like such a far off goals that you give up without even starting. With exotics you could run dungeons and tell yourself “there’s 1/3rd of a top that I’m holding in tickets!” and then it’s not so bad.
Because they’re gating the legendaries behind actual raids anyway, I suppose some good progression for casuals would be if they made a casual raid, or a dungeon, with a weekly lockout, that guaranteed that after a certain amount of tickets you’ll get your ascendeds. And it doesn’t matter how long it would take. You could say that you have to run this instance 4 times to get gloves and 6 times for the top for example. It doesn’t matter that it would take you well over half a year to deck out a single character in ascendeds. You could do some gameplay and tell yourself “I’m holding 1/4th of an ascended glove!”.
The main idea would be – less grind, more progression more often. The same way that for example if the skill progression was “kill this for this skill” instead of “amass this amount of points” it would feel better.

Ok, I’m getting mixed signals here.. You want less “grind stuff”, more “do stuff” which I guess is an argument against masteries, albeit a very weak one, but doesn’t stand at all for legendaries because they already follow the pattern you want.

Anyway, legendaries are now close to where they were supposed to be from the start. They are there to show someone’s achievement and commitment and, unlike most of the things in this game, they are not supposed to be participation awards. Yes, people who log in once every 3 months or can’t find space button on their keyboard will have a hard or maybe even impossible time getting them, but new legendaries are not made to participate in the race to the bottom and that’s perfectly OK.

Mirta.5029:

IndigoSundown.5419:

If you have no desire to play through the HoT content again, why do the HoT Masteries matter to you?

I really needed to respond to this. If OP is too casual to raid, too casual to get a legendary, what is left for the OP in this expansion pack to do?

There’s nothing wrong with horizontal or vertical progression. However people want meaningful progression.

The thing is, “meaningful progression” is as loaded term as is “casual/hardcore”, “new content” or “grind”. I enjoy, to a degree, all aspects of the expansion and I see plenty of meaningful progression for my character/account.

Mirta.5029:

It means one where you can see fruits of your labour fairly often (for example gaining levels, or climbing the gear ladder in a traditional MMO), or one that is challenging but relatively fast to achieve if you know what you’re doing.

Don’t PvP leagues provide just that? Or for that matter achieving maximum level of mastery that requires allot of gold medals from adventures?

I guess you could say that someone doesn’t play PvP, cannot adjust to new difficulty, finds most activities too bothersome etc. but is that really a problem with the game?

^ IMHO that looks more like false analogy then a straw man. And I don’t wanna get into an off topic discussion about logical fallacies so I’ll just say this :

because the laziest thing anyone can do in a forum is set up a straw man

“citation needed”.

Anyway, on topic: I’ve repeated several times, but divisive nature of man is such that middle ground is more of a no-mans land… The event was too hard, but both maddoctor.2738’s posts put the spotlight on some major issues with the event as it currently is.

Bottom line, I think that people would still try for TD meta even if it weren’t lobotomized, and frankly, I still don’t understand why anyone would agree with let alone defend the way it is currently implemented (which is why I started the whole thread in the first place).

Again, why does it have to be one way or the other?

The facts of the matter is that Gerent was probably too hard for most pug groups out there. As I said, the times I’ve done it we had more then half of the map being experienced players using TS for communication.

But that doesn’t mean it should become just another world boss fight. I think this quote speaks volumes about the ridiculousness of the fight in its current form

maddoctor.2738:

The worst part are the lane achievements. If you play “properly” you cannot get them because the Gerent dies in Phase 2 more often than not, and to get the achievement you must reach Phase 3. It’s pathetic that you must “slow down” in order to get an achievement.

And didn’t ANet themselves repeat multiple times that they don’t want failure to be the one thing required for anything? Purposefully hampering your self in order to achieve something is counter intuitive, which is another thing ANet speaks frequently about.

DoctorDing.5890:

The imminent arrival of gliding in core maps did make me pull out my finger and go into HoT to unlock gliding but I can’t say I enjoyed the experience. It felt more like playing Metal Gear Solid than Guild Wars, sneaking around hoping most of the mobs didn’t notice me. I died and died and died again but I’ve got gliding now so the rest of HoT can return to its slumbers in the box of unfun. Life’s too short to spend game time on stuff I don’t enjoy.

Look, I get it. TD is probably the hardest map ANet has ever published. But I’m going to share with you an anecdote, take from it what you will.

Today I was getting my Revenant specialization, for which I was hunting some champions. Halfway through killing one of those an elementalist joined me and was downed a few seconds later. Ok, I’ve wasted several cooldowns to bring him up, no big deal, except he falls down again 2 seconds later.. Repeat 3 times till some veterans made me choose between letting him die or dying with him. WP was fortunately close enough that he managed to get back into fight less then a minute later and sure enough the scenario repeats itself with me dying along with him when I underestimated the adds.
Next try some other people joined him and we managed to kill the boss without a hitch.

Now, I know that watching big red 5k-10k damage pops on your screen is awesome, but if you wanna play a glass cannon ele you’d better either learn to dodge or get arcane shield and other defensive utilities/traits. Or, you could go the sensible route and gear up for your skill level. Not everyone is top tier PvP 360 no-scope, and that’s perfectly fine, ANet’s got you covered.
Alternatively, bring a friend and face roll pretty much anything GW2 throws at you.

Mortifer.2946:

I prefer it this way. This map is very annoying for the majority of the player base. If they know there is a meta that is easily doable, at least they go in there and you always have someone to play with.

Does it have to be one way or the other? Is there no middle ground here? I don’t think so.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Supposedly, there was a bug that was causing the Gerent and events to scale up too much, making the event twice as hard as it should be. There is evidence for this, as Nuhoch Lane in particular was hit the hardest by having additional players.

After waves and waves of complaints about the event being too hard, the “bug” was fixed. Which is unfortunate, because I went out of my way to write a zany guide on how to do the thing, all for it to become nearly obsolete.

Well, I was on Nuhoch lane, remembering that one was the hardest.. Bosses HP is at least 3 times lower then it was before, goo pools have improved visibility (which is nice, that was one of my biggest gripes) but they don’t expand and are basically stacked one atop another making them useless.. I think even the timer for the rocks is higher then I remember, I didn’t have to dodge even once.. I could go on but pretty much everything apart from sporelings guarding the nodes has been reduced to non-issue..

I mean, I get it, the fight was a bit too hard. Last time I participated, we needed at least 50 organized people and a full map to finish it. But this is ridiculous..

Yes I realize I’m late for the party, I didn’t play PvE for quite a while.. and I also realize that this is a “casual” game for casual people, that’s one of the reasons I like it.. and I also realize that the event might have been a bit too hard for your average Tom, kitten and Harry to complete…

But did you really have to lobotomize it and marginalize it to the point it became yet another “spam 1/press f/spam 1/good job, here’s your participation award, everybody’s a winner” world boss?
From being too hard to becoming probably the easiest meta event in new maps? Could someone explain this to me, because all I got so far from my friends and map chat was knee jerk white knighting?

Cameirus.8407:

ok, nerf map pops for teq to 15 people and then do it….because thats the issue here with TD, not the event mechanics, but the absurdly low map populations.

It’s a known bug that ANet is aware of. As such it’s not really a valid critique of the event itself. The current “solution” is to keep spamming that join button and eventually you’ll join the map…

fellyn.5083:

Because it’s so easy to just find and organize 80+ people. Doesn’t change the fact that the fail conditions are too easy to achieve and affect the entire map. Unlike every other meta event in HoTs.

Did it with 60 community randoms + several assorted pugs, with 2 minutes to spare. I was on Nuhock lane (supposedly the hardest) and we finished even before that. Assuming other lanes are easier (as I said, only done this 2 times, and both times on Nuhock), I’d estimate you’d need ~50 dedicated people to be sure you’ll succeed.

I do agree that this event is harder then the rest, but if ANet revamped the pod chamber in DS that might quickly change.

fellyn.5083:

That was the excuse a week or so ago and the same for the other metas like Tarir and DS. But we’ve gotten those figured out and they get done pretty routinely by now.

TD on the other hand just has so many different ways it can fail, and they fail far too quickly as well.

And that was the same excuse back when Teq first came up. But lo and behold, several months later everyone and their mother are succeeding that event.

As far as TD goes, it took me one commander explanation and two runs to figure out the “hardest” lane, and now I can do it whichever way you like blindfolded. It’s quite an easy event, if you are willing to go the “extra mile” and actually familiarize yourself with the event.
There is nothing wrong with the event itself, the problem is motivation and knowledge of pugs. They will learn much more slowly and will take much more time to adapt their play style, but they will if they wish to succeed. It may take a week or a month but eventually pugs will learn the bare minimum of what needs to be done to finish the event.

My suggestion to everyone who is passionate about beating TD is to either be patient or find (or organize) a group of like minded individuals.

Bug still persists with newest build.