If the “Traditional” MMO is about grinding stuff to show off how much you’ve been grinding, I’m not sad to see it go.
The problem is that GW2 has, more or less, become this type of game. See the following examples:
1. Cosmetics: you either have numerous microtransations to keep purchasing cosmetics from the gem store, or you grind gold to convert into gems.
2. End game content: Its a grind to get gear that is deemed “meta” enough for Raids….which in themselves are a grind and long-drawn dungeon crawl. In contrast, many modern games have meaningful gameplay (that gives you more substantial rewards) that take 20-30 minutes to complete.
3 PvP: The forum is littered with complaints as to how hard it is to grind to the next tier of prestige. For many people it is apparent their only goal is to get to “Legendary” because it is prestigious….and they are just resigned to grinding to obtain it with little regard to how fun the gameplay may actually be.
4. 3. Legendary weapons: I don’t think this one even needs explanation.
I might be wrong here, but a big chunk of the traditional MMO population plays for the addictive feeling of progression and prestige via achievement/grind…..NOT for the gameplay or story. And with more actively engaging games (FIFA, CoD, Destiny, etc.) offering the same progression and grind, people are starting to gravitate away from MMORPGS (WoW, Elder Scrolls Online, GW2, etc.).
I don’t understand what you are saying now. You claim gw2 and wow are traditional but then you say traditional players are moving from said game while saying those other games are more traditional. So, is wow and gw2 traditional?
_
I’m saying that:
1. Many people play traditional-mold MMO’s (GW2, WoW, etc.) for the addictive feeling of prestige and progression in an online community (makes them feel more special about their achievements)
2. Other games with more engaging and easy-to-pick-up gameplay (action games, sports games, etc.) are now offering the same prestige and progression with an online community setting.
3. These other new games are now attracting would-be MMO players (teenagers, up-and-coming gamers who are driven by the addictive feeling of prestige and achievement) and detracting from the MMO population.
A game genre needs to maintain its population in order to stay successful. As players get older, they have less time to play and need new younger players to fill their places. There does not seem to be a lot of young eager players looking to join these traditional-mold MMO’s, which is why I say they are dying.
For every 1 player joining a game like GW2, you probably have 20-30 joining CoD, FIFA, Destiny, etc. Heck, even PC games like LoL, Counterstrike, and DotA are offering prestigious cosmetic items in tiers now, some of which you have to grind or have a certain skill ranking to obtain….
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Traditional MMOs are one of the most difficult and expensive kind of game to develop. *The most vocal members of an MMO community are the same ones who will rip through the content that took years to develop in a matter of weeks and then complain that there’s nothing to do. Devs can’t satiate them and never can. We are now a culture of binging and speed running. Story is fairly unimportant to this crowd as any text or audio will simply be clicked past. * Audio that cost money to create, that bloats game’s footprint yet not having it would be panned.
This is the type of personality (ones who, if they joined MMO Market, would act like your description) is exactly the type that the new breed of games attracts. For example, an Ultimate Team sports game that has a better version of a player released every 2 weeks will keep its userbase feverishly playing to try and get enough resources to get the next new shiny card. And when next year’s version of the game is released, they’ll gladly start this process again.
It requires very little dev work and keeps people hooked like no other. The devs will then spend most of the resources pouring into the next year’s iteration of gameplay, which just refreshes the treadmill again.
Games with yearly refreshes (drastic gameplay updates, but requiring you to start your collection of items over again) seem to be doing very well in today’s gaming market.
Want more proof? All of the gold selling websites for MMO’s are now thriving on FIFA ultimate team coins, NBA myteam currency, Madden Ultimate team coins, etc. The fact that there is a huge market for in-game items (pertaining to a gear treadmill and increasing prestige) highlights a greater convergence between MMO concepts and modern action games.
I might be wrong here, but a big chunk of the traditional MMO population plays for the addictive feeling of progression and prestige via achievement/grind…..NOT for the gameplay or story. And with more actively engaging games (FIFA, CoD, Destiny, etc.) offering the same progression and grind, people are starting to gravitate away from MMORPGS (WoW, Elder Scrolls Online, GW2, etc.).
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You described all games that are primarily or solely console games. MMOs are almost entirely on PC.
Final Fantasy XIV is widely considered an MMO also on PS4….and its userbase pales in comparison to that of Destiny, The Division, and any of the Ultimate Team sports titles.
ermm…
gw2 and wow aren’t exactly traditional mmorpg
I would argue that compared to many “MMORPG-like” games released today, they definitely are traditional.
There are simply too many available skills and movements associated with an MMO like GW2 – jumping, too many skill slots, skill spamming, animations, etc. Any problems with these can lead to exploits, imbalance, and a the development of a heavy “meta.”
Companies with much deeper pockets (ie. Valve and Riot) have trouble balancing games like DotA2 and LoL, which only allow for 4 skills and basic 2D movement on a map. And despite their best efforts, there are still many balance issues and a “Meta” that arises for every patch.
I admire Anet’s original vision, but what they are aiming to achieve with PvP (esport) is clearly a near impossible task. They could triple their dev team/resources and still not even come close.
I disagree—we know they’ve already come so close in the past. Remember the post-june 23rd patch, post sept. 29 patch (d/d ele nerf), pre-hot balance? There was a solid ~1 month of fantastic balance.
Not sure, if I remember correctly I saw just as many moaning threads then as I do now.
A clear shift of paradigm in the gaming industry over the last decade is that games have gotten more “action-oriented.” Gone are the days of slow dungeon crawls and long repetitive encounters. They’ve been replaced by quick time events, reflex-based action sequences, and shorter boss fights. These games are “exciting” and capture the attention of large parts of the gaming population, which as a result gives them triple A budgets and high production values.
Let’s be real here:: one of the biggest selling points of an MMORPG is for progression within a communal environment. You grind (often through repetitive gameplay) to obtain great items and show them off to online crowds, which makes you value and appreciate your achievements even more.
However, as the new breeds of action games have risen to prominence, they’ve also started to integrate RPG elements (such as legendary weapons, cosmetic purchases, etc.) to keep their userbases captivated and give them a sense of progression. These userbases are often huge and, as more games become integrated into an online-dependent environment (ie. Destiny, The Division), they have in essence become similar to MMO’s. The key difference is that these games are now striving to integrate gameplay designed to appeal to masses as the driving force to obtaining MMORPG-style achievements….thus taking away from young gamers who would have otherwise joined the traditional MMORPG crowd.
Even sports games (which admittedly are LOTS of fun) are introducing MMORPG elements. The Ultimate Team Mode in FIFA and Madden (you build your own team based on cards from packs, which you purchase through in-game currency or real money) makes almost a billion dollars every year for EA. This game mode appeals with the same addictive “progression” and “grind” you get from MMORPGS, but with more unpredictable (almost entirely PvP) and fun gameplay. With the type of production values and budgets that a massive corporation such as EA has to milk their cash cows, there is no way that small, traditional MMORPG companies can compete and captivate young audience to play their games and satisfy their addiction for online RPG progression.
TLDR: MMO concepts integrated into games aimed at capturing up-and-coming gamers (shooters, action games, sports games) are taking potential new users away from traditional MMORPG’s. As a result, MMORPG’s such as WoW and GW2 are dwindling and dying out.
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As already mentioned, the weapons itself are no problem, those could be easily added, but the collections tied to the precursor and legendary are the tricky part.
You can see from those 3 new weapons all the issues of events that bugs and block the progression of he journey, events that are chained to the failure of previous events, balance of required items and the impact in the economy, all that seems to be a huge problem with the apparent spaghetti code of the game where if a change in one thing can and probably will break other thing that seemed to have no relation.
So the back end for GW2’s questing system is poorly design….oh dear.
(Not saying its an easy task to create a smooth API for integration….I understand that this is something that scales directly with available resources, which Anet doesn’t seem to have a ton to work with)
There are simply too many available skills and movements associated with an MMO like GW2 – jumping, too many skill slots, skill spamming, animations, etc. Any problems with these can lead to exploits, imbalance, and a the development of a heavy “meta.”
Companies with much deeper pockets (ie. Valve and Riot) have trouble balancing games like DotA2 and LoL, which only allow for 4 skills and basic 2D movement on a map. And despite their best efforts, there are still many balance issues and a “Meta” that arises for every patch.
I admire Anet’s original vision, but what they are aiming to achieve with PvP (esport) is clearly a near impossible task. They could triple their dev team/resources and still not even come close.
The problem is that they spent 3 years developing a legendary journey system that was inherently unsustainable. We asked for a way to CRAFT precursors, instead they gave us a convoluted mess that takes months and months to code, troubleshoot and QA.
If they had given us the crafting method they mentioned 3 years ago, they would have not been this problem.
For instance the model, effects and animations for the current 3 legendary weapons were developed over 2 years ago, and required no work for HoT. The journey and quests are the problem.
Ah, so the bottlenecks aren’t technical…that’s good to know.
I was going to say – if the issues are technical/graphical in nature, these developers should be fired for incompetency. But If the issue is deciding on how the “journey” or “crafting process” should be done, then its more understandable.
I have some development experience myself, and I’m not sure what the bottleneck is when it comes to adding cosmetic items such as legendary weapons or armor.
Does it go into design of the requirements to obtain these weapons? Rendering? Particles? Clipping issues?
Please forgive me for ignorance here, but if GW2 has a decently coded API for weapon modeling and allowable animation boxes, shouldn’t this process be very quick?
5k+ MMR Dota2 player here (top 0.5%)….so I’d think I understand a bit about PvP and esport mechanics.
The simple fact of facing premades, duo/triple queues as a solo queue player is ridiculous. In DotA2, queuing even as 2 puts you in the team MMR bracket, which makes the solo queue environment much more enjoyable.
Right now, as a solo queue in GW2 I’m facing teams that have three people porting in to contest caps, and people who are port swapping to sustain a point contest in case someone runs low. This type of organization should NOT be something you see from solo queue matches.
Furthermore, I’ve noticed there are a few builds with high DPS that have ridiculous sustain (such as Tempests, Reapers, DH, etc.) The game mechanics here are grossly imabalanced in terms of skill cap required to play a few roles. DotA2 has had its fair share of imbalance (heroes such as Storm Spirit, Bloodseeker, Terrorblade, etc….all of which were subject to nerfs), but the skill discrepancy between builds here is noticeably worse than anything I’ve seen in DotA2.
I usually play GW2 casually in between other games (have over 1000 games played), and have gone from a 60% solo queue win percent to 55.5% within the span of two days because of this ridiculous matchmaking. Getting stomped 200-500 against organized teams every game is not fun….and the games I do win I’m barely winning 500-490.
TLDR: GW2 PvP is not an enjoyable experience because it in no way feels fair…especially to the Solo Queue player.
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I think people are really failing to see that the dps difference between Assassin’s and Commander’s is so small. Its actually quite imbalanced as to how good Commander’s is in comparison.
Imbalanced? Hardly.
Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but asking a support class that spends half of its time casting spells to give up 1/28th personal dps in exchange for 13.8% better party support is a ridiculously good deal.
I think people are really failing to see that the dps difference between Assassin’s and Commander’s is so small. Its actually quite imbalanced as to how good Commander’s is in comparison.
In a Raid situation, maybe, and only if you’re Chrono taking. Otherwise, again, you’re costing someone else points to overcome your Commander gear’s toughness.
As far as boon duration goes, it’s a balance. And honestly, Mesmer/Chrono is about thinking outside the box with all the tools we have. We can CS to multicast skills as well as effectively shortening Cooldowns on skills that have CD’s that last longer than CS (TW, notably in this case). On top of that, we have Signet of Inspiration that can act as a Boon duration hack. Grab the trait that casts Signet of Inspiration on a Phantasm cast, and you’ll be able to cover a lot more players more frequently.
Now, if you’re claiming that the “new meta” extends outside of Raids I would have to disagree. Most encounters (if not all) in PvE outside of Raids end with plenty of quickness/alacrity to spare. In which case why would we need an extra 13.8% boon duration that doesn’t get used when I can get back that small bit of DPS for ourselves and our Illusions?
However, any encounter lasting longer than 40-50 sec will scale much better with the increased boon duration. This effect multiplied when you have allies close by or are in a party.
Lastly, the 90 dps difference is so miniscule – it makes no difference on mobs that die in 3-4 hits anyways. It literally means that a mob that dies in 28 hits will instead die in 27 hits (see OP for calculations), and by then the extra boon duration will have more than paid off (especially in your example case when you likely wont have a Revenant around for the extra 50% boon safeguard).
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Commander’s is better than Assassin’s. I’d suggest making that, especially if you want to be Meta for all group-based events (fractals/raids).
Se thread here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Commanders-Armor-now-meta/first#post5856561
Furthermore, if you were to factor in Chronomancer Runes on either armor set (for the quickness stacks that you can then spread with Signet of Inspiration), you can achieve the following with with each armor set:
Assassin’s: Runes+Revenant+Food -> 70% boon duration
Commander’s: Runes+Revenant+Food -> 83.8% boon duration
The extra 13.8% can add on another 6-8 seconds of quickness throughout a full rotation, which may end up being the difference between achieving 100% quickness uptime and not. This isn’t even mentioning all of the other boons that can be spread as well, such as Might, Protection, Regen, etc.
Knowing how chaotic things get in raids, I’d much rather have the extra ~14% boon duration as 1/3-1/2 of the time the Chronotank isn’t even attacking at all (instead we are casting wells, blocking, dodging, pulling, etc.). The 90 personal DPS lost in Commander’s is literally unnoticeable.
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Ok, so those are the two options:
Assassin + Leadership + Tankstuff:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjiMAKgirOZn2qFtLSjsD-TxBBABAcSAyTvQXK/GV9n+3fIgHAwZKBJFAgDjA-eCommander + Leadership + Tankstuff:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjiMAKgirOZn2qFtLSjsD-TBCBQBdR5BCV/5MKBxiSMAcSAyjeh+t/QAeAAkCYghRA-eSo to get to the same toughness, compare the stats etc. Commandership got a bit more damage with the same tankyness, yet the main problem there is the boon duration. 43.8% is a terrible number. You’d require 46% boon duration to get all the 0.25sec quickness to the next second. So you’d lose a few quickness tics with that equip, unless you go for the boonduration food and an overkill. But wait, there’s this option too:
A HUGE mix, but in the end guys – it’s all the same, just the 2nd option doesn’t work that well. So either go full leadership + tank trinkets + dura food, OR the last one strange ultra mix, so you can save yourself the leadership runes for 600 crystalline ore :P
greez!
The first build (assassin), you have a +20% boon duration food. So please subtract -20% from the number shown. The second build (with commander), you don’t have it.
This means that Assassins alone gives 0% boon duration, while Commander’s gives 13.8% boon duration.
I removed all items except for armor, and here are the final stats:
Assassin’s: 0% boon duration, 1565 power, 33.48% crit chance, 183.07% crit damage – individual DPS: 2768.39 DPS
Commander’s: 13.8% boon duration, 1634 power, 30.86% crit chance, 162.53% crit damage – individual DPS: 2673.224
Individual DPS generated using DPS calculator: (http://jsfiddle.net/GNEFd/10/embedded/result/)
Seeing this, I would GLADLY sacrifice 90 DPS for nearly 14% extra boon duration for the party. That’s potentially 3+ more autoattacks and a couple of skills per person. The 90 DPS lost is peanuts in comparison.
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Unless you’re Tanking, Commanders should be avoiding as Toughness will interfere with the dedicated Tank causing that player to tack on toughness that surpasses yours (commander armor alone is puts you at ~1200 toughness).
^this
The problem is, Chronos are always the tank in higher end groups….at least for VG and Gors.
I can definitely see the extra boon duration being helpful in Gorseval and Sabetha (at least from the Commander’s armor alone…this will put you close to 100% with food+rev).
Furthermore, I can see Commander’s being beneficial in 5 man fractal instances that may not have optimal team setups….here you need as much boon duration as you can get.
Perhaps Commander’s/Chronomancer setup would be a good balance for both worlds?
Dont want to start a long quote chain, but two points:
1. If boon duration can exceed 100% , there is no doubt that commander+ leadership is better. This should be tested out.
2. As far as SoI goes, it is not better in a standalone setting. You almost need the 50% boost from Herald as it solely depends on the amount of quickness you can stack on yourself. If you only have 0-20% (dep on food), you are at most spreading 1-3 secs of quickness to everyone else (which can easily be replaced by a Well of Action).
Just a general reply to everyone. If you think you need more boon duration you can add sigil of concentration into the mix. That’s 100% with food and herald. However this isn’t always even needed since chrono has a lot of other ways to get quickness. Furthermore, sigil of concentration is better than running runes of leadership, and while the toughness from commanders is nice, it would be better to run something like knights.
The thing is that the +50% duration from Herald is far from guaranteed. There will be times where you don’t have the boost…especially in chaotic raids that involve split tactics (ie. Gorseval).
Furthermore, in fractals or other 5 man dungeons, you aren’t guaranteed to even have a Herald. The extra 30-60% in addition to food is a HUGE boost here. Sure, you do maybe 10% less personal DPS, but your party’s DPS experiences a huge boost with all of the extra boon uptime from Commander’s/Leadership.
Nearly all of the meta Chronotanks I’ve seen in raids (ones with Eternal titles) are running Commander/Leadership.
No. Assassin’s/zerk is still meta, if you need toughness gear grab a piece or two of knights. You get boon duration from other sources that don’t cost as much personal DPS ( food, sigils if needed, herald etc )
like, how does this zerk/sin personal dps discrepancy measure up to the difference in team dps, team utility, etc, from the extra +/-30% boon uptime?
Furthermore, having commander’s means you can go full zerk/sin trinkets because commander’s gives you the toughness boost you need to separate from the rest of your team in raids (as chronotank).
No. Assassin’s/zerk is still meta, if you need toughness gear grab a piece or two of knights. You get boon duration from other sources that don’t cost as much personal DPS ( food, sigils if needed, herald etc ). And chrono runes are better than leadership with SoI which is really good.
As far as armor goes, I would gladly take Commander’s and sacrifice the ferocity from Assassins/Zerk for increased boon duration for the entire party. We are talking about the difference between 70% (food/rev) to nearly 100% (food/rev).
Seems like Mesmers are really being utilized for their boon potential in any type of group content (whether its 5 man or 10 man).
This being said, unless you solo farm, Commanders seems to have replaced Assassin’s/Zerk for nearly all content. (This is especially true for Chronotank roles in raids)
Edit – I did some calculations and compared Assassin’s vs. Commander’s stats: In order to ensure best comparison, I removed all items except for armor, and here are the final stats:
Assassin’s: 0% boon duration, 1565 power, 33.48% crit chance, 183.07% crit damage – individual DPS: 2768.39 DPS
Commander’s: 13.8% boon duration, 1634 power, 30.86% crit chance, 162.53% crit damage – individual DPS: 2673.224
Individual DPS generated using DPS calculator: (http://jsfiddle.net/GNEFd/10/embedded/result/)
Seeing this, I would GLADLY sacrifice 90 DPS for nearly 14% extra boon duration for the party. That’s potentially 3+ more autoattacks and a couple of skills per person…making the 90 DPS lost seem like complete peanuts. And for those who dont know what 90 dps is – this means that a boss that dies in 28 solo hits from you will instead die in 27. In fights this long, the boon duration and party benefits have already exponentially paid off.
It is pretty clear to me that Commander’s is better than Assassin’s.
Lastly, having Commander’s means you can also go full Zerk trinkets, as Commander’s natural boost in toughness should be enough in Raids to suffice as a tank (the most “meta” use for Mesmer). This is unlike Assassin’s, which needs toughness trinkets mixed in. Ultimately, this means that Commander’s personal DPS could end up matching that of Assassin’s in raids, while simultaneously outputting higher boon duration.
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If you are looking for a lower tier player to queue with to reduce queue times, please feel free to add me.
I don’t have the time to grind solo and face premades (tired of facing these as a solo queue player), and would like to utilize my playtime more wisely and join the premade bandwagon.
Here are my PvP credentials:
Emerald Tier
~60.5% overall winrate over 1000+ games
~60% winrate unranked
~56.5% winrate ranked (dropped over 2% since I’m facing mostly premades now)
Champion Hunter, Champion Illusionist – can play Druid and any Mesmer variant proficiently
Note: Everything achieved almost all exclusively solo-queue – at a casual pace over 3 years
Other PvP credentials:
5k MMR DotA2 player (semi-pro level)
Before I get started – I’ll state that bunker mesmer is ridiculously good in organized play, as its two biggest strengths (teamfight support and open utility slot [ex: portal]) are best maximized here. However, the purpose of this thread is to talk about solo queue play, where the two aforementioned strengths rarely come into play.
As I’ve been moving up the “solo” ranked ladder, I’ve really found Bunker Mesmer to be hindered by the following obstacles:
1. The meta has caused everyone to bring builds with sustain – DH’s, Revs, Druids, etc. A bunker mesmer is not great at winning enemy-captured points, nor is it good at being a +1 on point assault that quickly spikes down an enemy of most classes. In the time it takes to effectively assault a point, the other team (usually an organized premade) outcaps you.
2. Teammates rarely utilize your wells to full advantages. You’ll see friendly thieves, DH’s, Revs, etc. all dodgerolling away from your wells and you just facepalm.
3. In this meta, chances are your team will already have 2 “bunkers.” I have seen way too many minion Necros or DH players (even in ruby/sapphire+) just stand on points and not move. If your team gets outmaneuvered and double capped, you are screwed.
If your team has any players who refuse to cap lightly guarded far points (highly likely with PUGs), you are screwed because of limited mobility and your lack of dps.
4. This is the key – due to poor matchmaking, over half of the teams you face are premades/guild teams. They simply feed on brainless PUG teams that zerg and don’t emphasize mobility and communication.
Building off of these points, I’d say that Bunker Mesmer is worse for solo queue than any build that has sustain but outputs better DPS. This isn’t to say it can’t be effective, but it doesn’t help solo players who want to have high impact vs premades.
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Yup. I ran a self made tanky condi build and rekt the soloq for 15-0 wins/losses and then it started to get hard, not because i was not able to destroy people 1v1, 1v2 or even 1v3, but because it took some time to do so and you simply can not trust your team mates to win at least equal fights on their own. So i switched back to the power-shatter-like one and play as a Thief. Which feels like a Thief but is way more teamfight friendly on mid points and such. Also, mesmer 1shots are still the best looking ones!
Yeah, and more importantly power shatter allows you to run both portal and blink without sacrificing too much. Its not nearly as reliant on utility skills as an Alacrity bunker is.
Traiting for power block allows you to have huge impact with an on-point assault with a double gravity well and GS shatter combo, followed up by tides of time and and blurred frenzy, followed by a cry of frustration. In many cases, this causes almost half of the enemy skills to go on long CD and for them to crumble almost instantaneously.
Now this is obviously not a build that is run very often anymore in ESL or organized play, but for solo queue PUG games it has huge impact.
It also seems like today’s meta encourages sustain-heavy builds that have bunkering qualities (such as reapers, DH, etc.)….I often find myself on a team full of tanks and the team doesn’t deal well with rotations or mobility (especially when the other team is a premade, which is starting to happen very often in ranked….blame poor matchmaking for this).
I’m finding that as I move up the ranked ladder, power shatter still might be best for the sheer mobility and utility you can offer as a +1 on any point and connecting between far spread objectives.
I would obviously say that Alacrity Bunker is better on an organized team….but its simply not as mobile. Power shatter is especially effective with PUGs that cannot be trusted to cap uncontested points or +1 quickly and effectively (a.k.a. thief players who decide to 1v1 off point when your team is behind).
Furthermore, Bunker gives up a lot of DPS and only tends to scale better in large teamfights or if you already have a point captured – all of which is only more effective in organized, coordinated play rather than with random PUGs.
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According to gw2efficiency.com, I’m a 57% ranked and 60% unranked player. All solo queue. Champ illusionist, champ hunter, 1156 total games played.
Got to emerald tier as a solo queue, matches seemed pretty normal.
As soon as I hit emerald though, I start getting premades on the other team. I have experienced the first 5 match losing streak in my life.
The games weren’t stomps (pretty close in score) , but in each game you could literally tell the other team had edges in communication.
Sucks losing 5 man guild teams 500-480, while your team is all PUGs. Sucks that players of lower skill level have an edge because of this matchmaking system.
So does this mean that across the entire GW2 population, only 10 people are using the LFG tool?
Doesn’t look good for the game’s population.
The amount of people using the LFG seems very small….only like 10 people are LFG are advertising.
If this is across the entire GW 2 population, this does not bode well….would be more understandable if this was limited by server only.
On a serious note, the first boss (Vale Guardian) is definitely beatable in full exotics.
I was in a PUG team yesterday of mixed exotics/asc and we beat him with over a min left on the timer. We didn’t even have an optimal setup – we had two chronos and two rangers, rofl.
Theres really no point paying for a Vale guardian kill run though, as the whole point of doing raids is to get legendary armor – and for that one must kill every boss since it’s tied to collections.
I might be wrong, but I think each boss drops a plain Legendary Insight (the crafting material needed for legendary armor)….so you technically could just use Vale Guardian but it would take 3x longer.
The rewards are really crap. Its not even worth paying 10G for Vale Guardian kill….its not an impossible boss either.
The raid should be about having fun – and boy is the combat in these raids a lot of fun. Huge props to Anet for taking advantage of GW2’s diverse combat system with these raids.
Paying for a “raid carry” imo is kinda of missing the point. Furthermore, the likelihood of one screwup destroying the entire run means that even for experienced teams it takes 2-5 tries before success….nobody wants to wait that long.
Finally – at the moment it is virtually impossible to 9 man the 2nd or 3rd bosses. Idk how you could possible sell these.
What really sets GW2 apart from other MMO’s for me is the active combat system (jumping, dodging, gliding, etc.)
These raids really make you utilize good timing, execution, etc. to their full effect.
Props to Anet! Finally a PvE mode that doesn’t get stale…even after hours and hours of play.
I’ve beaten Vale Guardian 3x within the past 2 days with PUG groups, and gotten Gorseval to 5-10% within 3 hours with another PUG. People are getting better and better at understanding the mechanics and execution.
Once more knowledge on these bosses spreads (ex. meta builds, cookie cutter compositions), the entire raid will be PUG-able within a few weeks
boosters……you forgot boosters
I might be ignorant here – Do you mean the discontinued Glory boosters that you can no longer obtain?
Heroic Booster=+50% xp in ALL game modes
I believe the changed the other boosters to do this as well.
Edit: Just checked, the other boosters do the same.
Exp =/= rank gain. Exp boosters dont work in pvp.
Yep, I think the only thing that ever boosted PvP rank was those glory boosters…and those have long been discontinued.
So my assumption holds true: either the OP played for 21+ hours straight while winning every single game……or (gasp) could he actually be lying??
boosters……you forgot boosters
I might be ignorant here – Do you mean the discontinued Glory boosters that you can no longer obtain?
So, you copied a “meta” build and that allowed you to go to from R5 to R30 within a day.
You gained 134,500 rank points (in other words, got 90 wins) in one day.
Please, share your secret with us. If everyone else is using these builds, how were you able to win so much?
My ballpark estimate for a minimum amount of time to get that much rank is 18 hours, unless you have a ridiculous win/loss ratio (I’m talking 90% plus), which I doubt.
Thieves are annoying, while Chronomancers are deadly. Condi Reapers are annoying (although they can kill you), but power Reapers are a more serious, immediate threat. You didn’t even mention the other strong contenders here, such as Dragonhunters with invisible, bugged traps; tough-as-nails Scrappers which can still hit pretty hard; and Heralds who expect to win using just Coalesce of Ruin and Unrelenting Assault, along with their assorted invulnerabilities and two healing skills. Heartseeker thieves aren’t even a drop in the bucket here. Before you complain about balance, you should probably play a little bit more (or a lot more, actually).
Your time estimates are a bit off.
You can usually get off 4 games per hour if you are lucky (not hindered by queue times). Assuming a standard 50% W/L rate and 100 in-game rank points per game, you’d be getting (1500/win)2 + (500/loss)2 + (100pts/game)*4 = 4400 rank points per hour.
134,500/4200 = 30.5 hours to go from R5 to R30.
Now, assuming that the OP is a God and wins every game, you’d be getting (1500/win)4 + (100pts/game)4 = 6400 points per hour
134,500/6400 = 21 hours to go from R5 to R30.
So, the only way the OP could have ever made it from R5 to R30 within the span of a day is if he literally played without sleep for the entire day, only stopping to take bathroom and eating breaks, and won virtually all of this matches.
Based on this logic, we can safely conclude that the OP is a God and has an infallible understanding of all aspects of the game, including balance…right?
In addition, it sounds 100%, definite, without-a-doubt reasonable that someone who dominates every single game would post messages raging and moaning about game balance…..right?
(edited by Good Tofu.9376)
So, you copied a “meta” build and that allowed you to go to from R5 to R30 within a day.
You gained 134,500 rank points (in other words, got 90 wins) in one day.
Please, share your secret with us. If everyone else is using these builds, how were you able to win so much?
(edited by Good Tofu.9376)
Not saying that other classes don’t have easier builds…but for Ranger (compared to what I remember from the past), this build is pure faceroll in terms of game impact for your team
I copied the “celestial avatar” build for Druid from metabattle
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Celestial_Avatar
Profit.
People who complain about mob difficulty (aside from a few select HP’s…which aren’t a huge deal once you get 4-5 people organized) need to just stop playing.
GW should not be a game for you to press 1 and autoattack through. I literally autoattacked my way through the vanilla campaign, and was delighted to see that I had to press a lot more buttons and strategize a lot more in the HoT campaign.
Grind not bad - elite can be done in 8 hrs
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Good Tofu.9376
Oh wonderful!! Do you truly mean I only have to spend 8 hours ignoring all content except hero challenges to unlock an elite spec…… That will be so great because since it is an elite it will be so much better than my normal profession…… right?? I mean it is an “elite”…. so it will be worth all that time right?? So to sum it all up. I want to make 7 of my alts to be elite specs… That would mean 56 hours of ignoring content just to play the new specs…. What is elite about these specs???? They are on par with regular professions. This fake character progression is really idiotic.
I got Chronomancer and it is ridiculously fun. You lose some survivability (ie. invisibility and no reduced damage taken from not taking chaos line), but you can really optimize for mobs and henchmen.
I flip between Chrono and regular stealth running depending on what I want to do in PvE, and its quite fun optimizing a build for a specific task or mission.
New content is great. I want challenging mobs – GW2 PvE literally bored me to sleep. You can literally press 1 your entire way through the GW2 core game.
Grind not bad - elite can be done in 8 hrs
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Good Tofu.9376
The core content is actually really fun too. I didn’t even really notice much a grind at all.
The only trouble was getting groups together to do some of the harder HP’s, but right now most zones have people willing to tag along (as well as guild members).
Grind not bad - elite can be done in 8 hrs
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Good Tofu.9376
My journey:
I already had map completion, so that was 200 HP right there.
The last 200 HP took roughly 13-14 hours or so…and this was with me messing around with other stuff and doing story mode too.
Masteries needed for last 200:
Gliding – 2
Mushroom jump – 1
Exalted – 1
That’s it. This easily could have been done in less time if I had just optimized for getting elite spec instead of exploring and doing story missions. (I have no regrets since the new content is quite enjoyable)
Getting full elite alone could have easily taken only 8 hours or so if you really wanted to do it quickly and ignore everything else.
Also, since masteries are account bound, my druid (also 100 map completion) is literally going to take like 2-3 hours to get full elite.
(edited by Good Tofu.9376)
The new maps are among the most beautiful I’ve seen in any game, let alone MMO.
There is a considerable amount of thought that was placed into each Hero point’s location….and for that I highly commend Anet.
However, some of the champions that you need to kill at these Hero points are simply not solo-able (or even doable with a 2-3 man group). Furthermore, it is incredibly difficult to coordinate a larger amount of people to reach certain Hero points in order to complete them.
I’ve spent quite a bit of effort and reached nearly all of the “remote/hidden” Hero points in the first map, but got absolutely demolished once I activated them.
If these points (or at least the hard to access ones) were made more doable for a 1-3 man group, it would make the Elite leveling system go by much smoother.
(edited by Good Tofu.9376)