Guild Wars 2

I’d nerf it a bit differently: All skills that are cast while CS is active could have their cooldown reduced by some number between 60 and 90 seconds. In exchange they can make the duration of CS a bit longer. Keep in mind, that players can force you out of CS. So skills with a shorter cooldown are still recharged instantly, it can still be used on elites, but there is a limit.

As outlined here, the current league system has lots of issues. So let’s think what could be done better.

A proper system should have three properties: First, matches should be fair with equal chances for both sides. Second, league position should represent a players skill. Third, people should be allowed to improve. No system that handles MMR and league position separately is ever going to fulfill those goals. If games are fair, good players are fighting other good players and we have the season 1 issue. If good players are allowed to rise faster, matches have to be imbalanced. This is what we have now.

Some trade-offs between these goals exist. This includes placement matches. But even then we need to balance between those objectives later on.

So instead of keeping MMR and league position separated, they should just use a system similar to chess. Every player has an elo number (= MMR). This is translated into a description like Candidate Master or Grandmaster. It’s a little more complicated, but this basic idea can be used for GW2 as well: Translate a players current MMR into a league position. Say your current MMR is 1359 for example. This means your are in Emerald, tier 3, pip 3. Now as your MMR is updated, so is your league position.

For this to work, further adjustments are necessary:

• All safeguards in the leagues have to be removed. You can just as well go back from Emerald to Amber as you can from Legendary 2 to Legendary 1.
• The tiers and pips in leagues should be normalized. For example, every division could have 5 tiers and every tiers could contain 5 pips.
• While MMR should not be completely reset between seasons, it should become more volatile and decay.
• Rewards should be given out at the end of the season based on the current league position. To get them, however, a certain amount of games has to be played during a season. If less games are played, the rewards are proportionally lower.

I’m certain there are more details that need to be considered, but those are hopefully the most important ones.

Appendix: This also allows for meaningful usage of the time between seasons. During this month people could be matched exclusively against players of their current (fixed) division to determine the best player in this division. Based on the final rating bonus rewards could be given out.

Currently it’s like throwing a loaded coin that is becoming heavier on the side you don’t see every time.

Copying this from reddit:

The key idea of the new matchmaking system is explained in this blogpost:

We’ll search for other players that fall within your pip range (which can extend outside of your division depending on where you’re currently placed) and pair you up with teammates who have a similar skill level to your own. We’ll then find you opponents within that same pip range and pair them against you, regardless of their skill level.

As I understand it, the algorithm works in two steps: First it creates teams containing players of similar MMR and similar league ranking. Then it matches two teams against each other if their league ranking is comparable. This has several consequences:

• Many games are decided before they even start: Since MMR does not matter when matches are determined, it is common that the worst player in team A is still better than the best player in team B. You might just as well skip those games and grant one pip to team A and take one pip from team B.

• MMR is stabilized: If you are a below average player, you are matched with equally “bad” players. Your opponents, however, are likely to be better than you. So you will probably lose more games than you win, which lowers you MMR even further. This in turn gives you a harder time in coming matches and the cycle continues. The same thing happens if you are an above average player. You are matched with equally good players. Your opponents are likely to be worse than you. Therefore, you will win more games than you lose and your MMR is going to rise.
  This means the system heavily relies on your past performance instead of on how good you are now. Imagine the worst player of GW2 and the best player would swap their accounts. For whatever reason they both played several thousand games, so their MMR is fairly stable. What is going to happen? The bad player is going to get carried by others provided he jumps the train early enough. The good player on the other hand is having a really hard time because of his bad MMR.

• Inactivity is rewarded: Because of the above reasons it is often better to not play. Say you are an average player with too much free time and grinded your way to Ruby so far. Let’s also assume that most other people in this division are pros at the moment. Now you are better off not playing ranked, because the probability is high that you will be matched against a better team. This is going to hurt your MMR which is obviously bad. So you should rather wait until more people make it to Ruby and the pros are in Diamond. Then you will have an easier time and your MMR is still where you left it.

So while this system offers people with high MMR a fast way to climb the ladder – especially with the winstreak bonus – it also comes at a high cost. And given how simple the matchmaking is now with the team building and team pairing phases separated, the advertised 4 minute reduction in queue times does not seem like that big of a surprise either.

It appears to be a difficult problem to balance between even matches and getting people into the league they belong to as quickly as possible. But there have to be better ways of doing it than this. An MMR reset and placement matches before the start of the season might work.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Both of those tables are inaccurate. I just got my official wiki account, and I’ve slowly started to update the matchmaking page. I will try and update the ladder point tables today.

What happens if your odds of victory are say 50% and your team scores 0 points? None of the score thresholds are met in this case, so if I understand it correctly the table does not reflect this.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Checked the code, it appears to be effectively random.

Hmm, I’m not sure if I like this. Would it be possible to make him immune to conditions at 0.01% health, so that there is always a clearly defined last hit on him?

This is probably totally intended, but in makes no sense: All mastery vendors (Itzel, Nuhoch, Exalted) sell Obsidian Shards for 25 map currency + 2450 karma. Meanwhile the vendor in the Balthazar Temple sells them for only 2100 karma – no other currency required.

X-Post from Reddit:

I was quite close to buying the Magic Carpet today, but then I remembered how all the toys I bought are scattered across my characters or gather dust in my bank. World of Warcraft (yeah, sorry about that) had an elegant solution, the Toy Box . This is a panel similar to the one for skins and finishers for all toys in the game. This could include everything listed here as well as musical instruments , tonics or other gizmos like the Flames of Kryta or How to Dance, Volume 1.

Not only would probably more people buy toys on the gemstore (I certainly would), but they can also add more of this stuff as loot in game. Some collection achievements can be added on top. People who bought multiple versions of one item are obviously a problem and those cases would justify a refund.

There is a checkbox if you don’t want to queue for stronghold. As for other maps, you’ll have to wait.

The GW2 subreddit has a wiki page for returning players: Reddit

I had the same issue about 3 times after upgrading to Windows 10 about a month ago. Even choosing the lowest graphics settings did not improve the performance, just a restart helped. It feels like there is a memory leak on the graphics card or something. I have an NVIDIA GeForce 650 Ti Boost.

I hear you man, I got a Black Lion Chest Key dropped on my revenant. I threw it away though, because I know I would have got some node for my home instance or a permanent contract.

I can confirm this. I had the same bug on my necro in Verdant Brink.

Try turning “Light Adaption” off in the options, maybe that helps you.

You have no way to move items or gold from beta characters to your main account, so this is not exploitable.

Can you already change to this skin — if so, how? — or did you just look at it on the wiki page?

I made a screen at pretty much the same spot yesterday.

The legendary wyvern at the end of the Faren event chain should have some kind of sweep attack with his tail. Right now you can stand behind him and take no damage whatsoever.

From the blog:

During daytime, we’re showing two new outposts and a big pile of events that go along with them. Are they fun? Do they tell a compelling narrative that helps bring you into the world? Do the events feel meaningful, challenging, and interesting? The nighttime component of Verdant Brink will be relatively similar to BWE1; we look forward to sharing the expanded version of the night experience in future beta events.

So night is not the most recent version.

Since Unhindered Combatant can move you out of Shadow Refuge, how about the distance increase only applies to jump-dodging? All the other effects can still trigger on every dodge.

Karl McLain.5604:

We’re iterating in quite a few areas for this specialization, including Rebound. Here’s the description of the latest implementation we’ve been testing over the last few days:
“Shout and infuse your allies with arcane energy. Allies who would take lethal damage while this is active ignore the deathblow and are healed instead. If the effect expires naturally, grant an aura based on your current attunement.”

I like this version a lot better. The only problem might be, that you take fatal damage, get healed and go down right away again. Since Mist Form is an ele skill, I’d propose to move the 6th bonus of vampirism runes here (scratch it on the rune). So the effect would heal affected allies to 25% health and proc Mist Form on them. This provides a stunbreak, an opportunity to reposition, stealth up etc. and it offers more counterplay than the passive rune proc, because the ele can be interrupted while casting it.

Khenzy.9348:

Wow! This is surprising to me, I was just about to post the lack of an aura from the Warhorn and the only one that came to my mind was exactly the addition of Magnetic Aura to Sand Squall. :O
But, when I was thinking that, I realized Sand Squall is an incredibly overloaded skill already. It provides protection, it extends boons and is a blast finisher. Sand Squall is going to be used mostly to blast something, wasting the strategic use of that aura most of the time. Please consider the addition of Magnetic Aura to Dust Storm instead, with blinds for melee and proyectile reflection from the aura it now becomes a really decent defensive skill, the current iteration of only blinds is really poor, the addition of this aura would give it the push it needs. But either way, this change is really good.

Great idea. +1

If you compare this to PvP achievements for example, 2500 dolyaks appears to be fairly reasonable. For all people that want a counter, they can still add an infinite achievement that awards superior blueprints, gear and badges every further 500 kills. Other achievements can be treated similarly.

There can still be a selected few achievements like Ultimate Dominator that take a much longer time to get; so if you want to show your dedication to WvW, you can pick those titles. But those have to be the exception.

Also, everybody saying that they got more than this already so it should be something like 25k kills should keep in mind that the game has been out for 3 years already. Imagine how long it would take you if you started from scratch instead.

Jessica Boettiger.2563:

Thanks for the reports! We’re working on a fix and hope to get it out ASAP.

Jessica Boettiger.2563:

We’re working on a fix and hope to get it out as soon as possible. Thanks for the reports!

This time I totally agree. Daredevil seems to be one of the coolest specs revealed so far.

What map where you playing on? I had the same thing happen to me on Tuesday right after the patch and I saw Magic Toker’s team DC yesterday (everybody except him) while he was streaming. Both times Foefire was played.

Branden Gee.2150:

So, essentially what you are asking for is a way to have options like “Receive Whispers”:

• From All
• From Friends and Guild Members
• From Friends
• None

This seems like a reasonable feature request.
If Player A is on Player B’s friends list, but Player B isn’t on Player A’s friends list, how does that interaction work out?

Would this also extend out to things like mail?

(Please note this does not mean that this will happen, won’t happen, is planned to happen, and or not planned to happen)

I think it should work similarly to blocking, just that it is whitelisting instead of blacklisting. So if player A is blocking player B, player A can still talk to player B, but not vice versa.

Nokaru.7831:

The sodium levels of some of these replies would be most lethal if consumed.

“Sodium, atomic number 11, was first isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807. A chemical component of salt, he named it Na in honor of the saltiest region on earth, North America.”

Back to topic: I love how well-rounded Chronomancer, Reaper and Berserker appear. They all have an awesome core theme and skills, traits and mechanics are build around it. This is how it should be done and not by starting with skills and then trying to glue them together somehow.

You can do a lot of stuff with heroes. How about Master Architect Gunther from Guild Wars 1. As a slight derivation from his role in Fort Aspenwood, he could rush the supply depot and return to repair a gate. If he’s still not killed, he would go to the supply depot again and repair the other gate.

The only thing that should be changed is to remove the PvE level of people from the party UI. It only leads to verbal abuse and hostility within a team and more often than not this is what’s loosing the game and not some guy who has 3k hours on ele and made another level 2 character just for PvP. Also, with Tomes of Knowledge you can get to level 80 without playing a class at all. So how do you know the “experienced” people in your party really know what they are doing?

From the blog:

To rise a tier, you must earn pips. Winning a match guarantees you a pip, and in some cases you won’t need to win—you’ll simply need to beat a required score threshold if you’re matched against a team outside your skill bracket.

For example, division one has three tiers with five pips each. When you win five matches, you move up to tier two.

So it seems that you can get one pip max per game, but you don’t need to win every game.

Dishonorable Mention

In order to help keep league play fun for all players and reduce the number of people who quit, go AFK, or get up to other shenanigans, we’ll be updating and reinstating the dishonor system. The dishonor system gives a timeout to players who disrupt others from having a great match. For more information on the dishonor system, check out the blog post here.

(source)

Edit: It’s probably impossible for Anet to decide whether a person disconnected because of their internet or if they did it on purpose. So the best they can do is to add a grace period where no penalty occurs.

The only thing that should change is burning damage. Burning should still deal the same high damage per tick it currently does, but the duration of each stack should be slightly reduced and in some places the number of stacks should be reduced. This way there is still a difference between bleeding and burning — similar to GW1.

Edit: Adding the Deep Wound condition from GW1 could also be a counter to eles. It reduced the maximum health by 20% and healing by 20%. The healing part is already covered by poison in GW2, but a reduction of maximum health can hurt quite a bit because you cannot heal beyond that point. It does not necessarily need to be a condition, it could also be an effect. Say 10% less maximum health for 4s. This would fit necro quite well.

I have the same issue on one of my characters. If the headpiece is not hidden when I load on a map, the Flame Eye will be displayed in addition to my actual headpiece and it will stay there even if I hide the headpiece. If the headpiece is hidden when I load on a map, no headpiece is shown — neither my actual one nor the Flame Eye.

Yashuoa.9527:

Behellagh.1468:

Casually, 1-1.5 hours per level once out of the growth spurt when you first create your character. Hardcore without the crafting short cut, I’ve heard 24 hours of game time to get to the cap.

In PvP everyone is level 80 by default with full access to all or nearly all traits and skills as well as choice of gear. PvP tests skill, not gear, they try to balance the play going even as far a making all animations and character size the same.

So you have access to everything in pvp once you enter heart of the mist?

Pvp is basically you can try all classes maxed out in abilities, gear etc. without having to go through some gearing or lvling process?

There are a few sigils, runes and amulets that you need to unlock once per account with gold. Everything else is accessible right off the bat.

Overload Fire: It should be a growing AoE. At the beginning it has a 180 radius, but as you keep spinning you suck in more and more air which extends the radius up to 360. In the same way, the number of targets could be increased every tick. Similarly the temperature in the fire tornado could rise, thus increasing the damage or the duration of the burning stack every tick.

Water Overload: This skill should grant you and up to four allies around you a buff that increases incoming (or outgoing ?) healing by 33% for the next 8s. So while you are giving up most of your healing other people in your group benefit from it.

Air Overload: How about a stacking buff to precision or ferocity every tick (or hit ?). You get the greatest benefit at later stages in the channel.

Earth Overload: This one is fine, it has some good defensive potential and can be used for the cripple and immob as well.

1. Tempest (Overall): 3
2. Traits: 2
3. Warhorn: 4
4. Overloads: 2
5. Healing Skill: 3
6. Utilities: 3
7. Elite Skill: 1
8. Animations & sound effects: 3

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/10124128

Junkpile.7439:

Why sPvP eles don’t have enough skill play S/D?

It’s not about skill. If you want to win a tournament, you obviously play the team comp that you think gives the highest chance of winning. But given your signature, you are trolling anyway.

The first matchup of orng vs. The Abjured was way more fun to watch than the finale. It’s like orng lost focus in those last games; they did so many blunders.

It does work for me (Wash the Pain Away, Flash-Freeze, Shock-and-Aftershock), you just have to wait half an hour before the buff actually activates. But then it does not work with Cyclone.

Edit: When I removed the trait Imbued Melodies, the recharge on the warhorn skills gets reduced correctly.
Edit 2: Similarly the trait Tempestuous Aria is the culprit for shouts not recharging more quickly. If you remove that trait, it should work. I wrote a bug-report for both of these.

Ignavia.7420:

I have similar issues since I upgrade to Windows 10: The FPS went down considerably, most notably near the Mystic Forge in Lion’s Arch. The settings are the same as before the upgrade. Even if I change to Best Performance, I get only about 35 FPS there. Also, my drivers are crashing every other time when I minimize the game.

Specs:

• Intel Core i5-4670K
• 8 GB RAM
• Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256 GB + Samsung SSD 850 Evo 500 GB (GW2 is on this one)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 TI
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit (clean install)
• Driver: GeForce Windows 10 Driver 353.62 (installed via GeForce Experience)

To add to this, it’s even worse in Verdant Brink. I currently get about 17 FPS on the lowest settings.

I have similar issues since I upgrade to Windows 10: The FPS went down considerably, most notably near the Mystic Forge in Lion’s Arch. The settings are the same as before the upgrade. Even if I change to Best Performance, I get only about 35 FPS there. Also, my drivers are crashing every other time when I minimize the game.

Specs:

• Intel Core i5-4670K
• 8 GB RAM
• Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256 GB + Samsung SSD 850 Evo 500 GB (GW2 is on this one)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 TI
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit (clean install)
• Driver: GeForce Windows 10 Driver 353.62 (installed via GeForce Experience)

It would be nice if the fire overload was a growing AoE. Every pulse the tornado gets a bigger radius and affects more people. Say the first pulse hits only one target, while the final form hits ten targets. The overload has a longer channel than Meteor Shower and a higher cost, but it does way less in the current form.

The water overload should give you and allies around you a buff that increases incoming healing for some time. It locks you out of water, so it should give you more than just a little healing and condi removal.

Have a look at this thread.

Ventari/staff revenant is going to offer substantial healing.

Of course Eir is dead, she just reconciled with Braham.

Just buy it on the trading post (I’m not saying bugged events should not be fixed).

How will this work if new fractals are ever going to be added? Are you just going to be adjusting the schedule?

Could you get your rewards and do you still have the titles Traveler and Guild Warrior as well as the respective achievements?

On three out of my twelve characters the achievements do not display correctly. Points and titles are unchanged, however. There are also some unlocks (finishers, LS season 2 …) missing and the traits need to be relearned. It seems like those are exactly the three characters I logged into already today. I’m sure about two of them and I know that I did not play any of the others. So maybe it’s just a syncing issue?