Guild Wars 2

We’ve seen this sentiment (thread title) pop up a lot, lately in reaction to the ESL announcement — that is, that ANet should balance the game not around top potential, but around the “average player.” What do you mean? What is an average player? Are you talking about people that stand in traps, random dodge, never disengage, lose to burn guards? Are you saying that the average player is a bad player? This may or may not be true, but there are a couple problems with the idea of balancing the game for them.

Let’s be honest, this is what a lot of the HoT changes were. Seven of the nine elite specs’ special skills are AoE, meaning they added some 40 abilities where you don’t even need to face the right way, to say nothing of profession mechanics. Add to this the ever shorter cooldowns, tons of cc, and most professions’ inherent survival, and it becomes clear that the point was to adjust the skill floor such that a player who mashes whatever button looks shiniest at the moment can feel like it’s contributing to the fight. This wasn’t a good design decision, and while it has not gone away, a lot of changes since the release of HoT have been moving away from it.

The bigger issue is that this theoretical “average player” who has such a hard time with everything is someone who simply isn’t paying attention to positioning, cooldowns, rotations, etc. The fact is you cannot balance a game around someone who doesn’t want to learn how it works. There is no way to set the numbers such that this player doesn’t fail the test. If you run back and forth across a Purging Flames and then burn to death, this isn’t the condition’s fault.

A lot of players — not just the pros — can handle the issues that appear in forum complaints. You have to put in the effort. Plenty of posts read like “buff red checkers because black checkers are op.”

To answer the OP’s question simply: Two reasons.

1. In order to kill an enemy, a Power build has to keep hitting skills and keep in contact (to the extent that you will be in range of the enemy’s skills). A Condition build can load its enemy with condis and then leave — stealth up, disengage, kite. The enemy dies without you having to be there.

2. In order to deal damage a Power build must invest in Power, Precision, and Ferocity. A Condition build needs only Condition Damage. Pre-HoT, this was necessary, as a Condi build killed you so slowly that it needed to be tanky in order to live long enough to win. With the HoT changes, it’s another advantage for Condi builds.

So, in addition to the psychological aspect you bring up (it is annoying), that’s the perception in a nutshell: A Condition build requires less effort and investment than a Power build.

I’d say a lot of the current problems have to do with the manner in which ANet decided to push for the viability of Condition builds in PvE and PvP. I think there is a better way to have done it, but we can save our opinions for another thread.

I realize that this is the web and people will intentionally misinterpret anything just to be argumentative, but I did not want to write four paragraphs of explanation to clarify at what conceptual level the declaration was to stand, specifying considerations of case and context, since all the words in the world will not stop nerdiness. Obviously you obey the mechanics of the fight. I raided back when those things mattered and I raided until nearly every mechanic could be ignored if you burned fast enough. You know what I meant and it’s accurate. You’re up against a timer; for any standard encounter, DPS carries.

This is why unless and until they make more complex, non-standard encounters, optimal groups will be based around maximizing dps.

Assuming Revelation requires combat like other swap sigils, then it doesn’t counter a stealth opening unless the user tags someone stealthed with aoe, then runs into 240 range of the stealthed group and swaps weapons — at which point your target just chose itself.

It could be a counter to the stealth res, though you’ve still got to complete a stomp (figure you were cleaving already) through the swirl of cc. It’d help anyone who can proc a swap effect via stance change mid-stomp, but otherwise a teammate has to do it.

May be wrong, but I frankly don’t see much reason to take the sigil over better alternatives. I certainly wouldn’t want to try to coordinate who’s going to run/use it at the beginning of a match. With the 18s cd, it’s just good enough to possibly be useful, but not so good that it’s mandatory, which I think is their design intent.

Greater Nullification: With boon generation as it is right now (a lot of it being constant and pulsing), this seems terribly weak.

Revelation: It’s fine. You’ll get revealed if the person has weapon swap off cd and is on the other weapon set and is willing to swap just for a reveal and isn’t blinded (presumably) and you’re in range. Currently, Scrapper and Herald each have an aoe reveal on a 20s cd; while the Herald’s is stance-dependent, the Scrapper’s is always on the belt (part of engi-beats-thief design). This was the deathblow for SR in PvP, but it hasn’t made stealth useless.

Paralyzation: Given all the hard cc around, the 3% bonus damage might be overkill.

Not bad. I see some actual decisions to be made in this list, as opposed to the current state of things.

I notice there’s no chill at all (both Hydromancy and Ice are missing). I understand that chill is both powerful and annoying, but it’s also important for some folks’ survival. Perhaps a Doom-style sigil (1 charge on swap) could work? Then again, that might be too weak to be viable.

Will boon removal and condition transfer use a priority system, last-in-first-out, or be random? Will they trigger when the requirements aren’t met (e.g. Purity when you have no conditions)?

I can understand Generosity being tough to balance. As an on-crit sigil, it would be more useful for power builds with little condi-clear (I ran one on Rev staff against some matchups), and 15s would probably be too long. Equipped on a condi build, however, the low, on-hit demand means 15s is just right if not too short.

“Sigil of +Confusion”: Disorientation? Muddling? Befuddlement?
“Sigil of +Torment”: Torture? Torsion? Not much use?

It’s fair to want to see more variety, but this is not a situation unique to GW2. In any raid encounter where the objective is to burn the enemy’s HP before it burns yours, you are dealing with two levers: outgoing and incoming damage. As any veteran MMO raider can tell you, when trying to overcome an encounter, the answer is always, always more dps. The faster the bad guy dies, the fewer times you will encounter mechanics, the more efficiently you will handle changes, the greater the room for error, the less strain on the defensive raid members — the easier everything is.

This is due in part to the fact that the boss’ damage is fixed. The tank/healers generally have to account for X damage in any given window; once they are statistically able to do this, all they can ask is that the rest of the group reduce the number of windows.

As others pointed out above, a Druid’s healing is largely incidental. The issue is that Anet bundled a zillion useful buffs onto one class, and (originally) didn’t expand this or other effects (e.g., Phalanx Strength) to the full raid, so you needed one of these per party. Other games had buffbots, but you could run one of them in a group of 25 and it worked (the downside there being that you only needed one person in a guild to have that spec — and hope s/he was a regular).

In order to encourage a mentality of “bring the player, not the class,” others (Blizz) spread buffs/debuffs around, so that instead of needing ‘such-and-such spec’ you just needed to check off that someone was bringing that spec’s formerly-unique buff. This did mean some homogenization of classes, and it can be tricky, but Anet could probably achieve something workable by distributing utility a little better. To be fair, though, it cannot be overstated how forgiving GW2’s raiding is, and how you can really complete it with any arrangement.

In the end, you can’t have it both ways. If they make an encounter that absolutely needs a dedicated healer, then they are restricting raid composition in a way they seemed to be opposed to doing. Unless and until they do that, then it’s fair for people to expect everyone to be focused principally on outgoing damage. I say again that part of the fault lies with the fact that GW2 had no framework for raiding before HoT, and no ramp up to it, and thus very few people seem to find themselves in raiding guilds, where you can run whatever everyone agrees to run. The fact that so many people appear to be relying on pugging for top-level, end-game content speaks to a highly disorganized scene.

True Shot has a damage coefficient of 2.0. Puncture Shot (the auto-attack) has a damage coefficient of 0.85. They share all other damage modifiers. (The former is also a guaranteed projectile finisher that pierces; the latter a 20% with a bounce.)

An exotic longbow (exotic being the weapon strength used in PvP) has a min-max variance of 160 points, the third highest after rifle and axe, but not much higher than pistol and hammer. The game features rng and there will be some difference between a lucky and an unlucky roll. That said, this variance represents a difference of a few hundred damage on a non-crit.

Assuming a standard build and no boons, in order to average 1800 damage from a non-crit True Shot, your target must have an armor of ~2800 (at long range) or ~2600 (at close range), which few builds run. (Notably, that same target would take ~770 damage from a non-crit Puncture Shot.) You’re probably shooting someone with Protection (or other damage reduction) or when you have Weakness.

I haven’t had a lot of time to play since patch. Is the DH F1 change working well? I was one of those people that considered the skill — 1/4 second cast, fast projectile, unblockable, pull interrupts evade — to be a bit too good given all those factors, but “slightly under 0.75 seconds” struck me at first blush as a tick too far, kind of like when they decide that some crafting recipe that needed 2 bits was cheapening a material, and the obvious balance would be 3, but instead they make it 4, so the price goes way up, which is a thing you run into if you spend any time in pve, which I started to do after they eliminated wvw, but in any case…

So you say it’s working out, eh? Good.

I wouldn’t mind the roots/entangle skills as much if they weren’t so buggy. I still get stuck-bugged, or have melee attacks fail to damage the roots, and all the other annoying little things. If I were allowed to eliminate one thing from this game, it would probably be the pulsing immob abilities. The passive trait that triggers from any attack without the caster even having to set it up is just bad design.

Still, it’s part of what gives druid its role. Power ranger has been a pain for necro for a long time. I don’t like it, but it seems to be the design intent.

Was this Unranked? Often after a patch people will flood into unranked to try their latest theory, and since unranked makes teams from just about everybody in the pool with no regard for rating, you’ll get a lot of people who are easily overwhelmed . . . or who are just messing around. Heck, I just won some matches as shoutbow. Doesn’t mean it’s back; it just means unranked is a clusterfrag.

For what it’s worth, there were a lot of downs in teamfights, but at the same time, I watched a lot of people stand in damage, eat huge bursts, and basically never disengage. So, again, I’d say it’s either the unranked spectrum or a matter of people not caring if they die because they’re pushing whatever build they cooked up to see where it can go.

If this was Ranked, I’m not sure what to tell you, but it could still be people goofing around. I didn’t notice that I was taking any more damage than before. I could be mistaken, because this patch was 90% whatever-you-call-powercreep-when-it’s-in-overdrive, so all I can say is that I did not observe the same thing at all.

AZ MILITIA.3942:

I vote yes nothing worse then getting 3 thievs on same team.

Then maybe the explanation wasn’t clear to you. With the proposed change, the system would try to avoid 3 thieves on the same team, but sometimes it would still happen, and then you’d be stuck with it.

Lucentfir.7430:

I’d understand if deflecting shot was tab targeted like true shot, but it’s a skillshot, and heavy light itself is the only reason for it to knockback which is a GM trait. By removing the unblockable affect from DS itself it’ll basically make the weapon unreliable, not being unblockable means it makes it reflectable, destroyable, and a singe block or aegis will nullify it meaning no pierce. And you eliminate the reward of hitting your skill shot via setup pushing through ToF or getting breathing room from people coming into melee range. If you want Rev to actually pressure DH, making phase traversal giving you 2-3s of unblockable attacks will do it. Though I’m curious on how standing still with Shield 5 or throwing up staff 3 is helping you pressure someone.

I had considered the “skillshot” aspect, and it’s a fair point — it’s nice to reward something that requires a little more attention than the normal attack — though the skill demand is somewhat diminished when it’s point-blank range. Still, the fact that the change would make Deflecting Shot less powerful is kind of the point. The question is if this would hamstring DH against other foes.

Look, I’m not trying to start a “my class vs. your class” silly forum argument, so there’s no need to get defensive. I don’t main either class. I can say that because of the Heavy Light change rev shield is essentially dead weight against a DH (actually shield 5’s usefulness is rather limited overall at this point). Mobile blocks, like staff 3 and sword 4, however, allow the rev to stay on top of the target, rather than ceding ground because of traps or symbols (and they also blind and chain into an immob, respectively, but that’s again a case of HoT skills doing everything).

Re: projectile shutdown. It was even worse in earlier seasons. I agree it’s an issue and it’s one reason guardian was a no-show for a couple seasons. I’m not advocating a return to that. If anything, I’d say it highlights the back-and-forth power-creep in the design of HoT skills and weapons. I could certainly be underestimating Deflecting Shot. I was simply suggesting a simple change that could effect a shift in the playing field.

(I realize with a patch about to hit, this may be irrelevant, but I thought of it a while back and figure it may still be worth discussing.)

Long Version: I’m not one of those people that’s going to complain that DH is a world-beater, but I will say that DH is fairly strong right now. As we’ve seen in the past, a profession flourishes in part when its counters are on the wane (e.g. mes when thief was in the tank). One of the counters — not a hard counter but a definite advantage-disadvantage case — for DH was power rev. Rev started out way too strong and received some needed nerfs, but these coupled with DH buffs have made rev a bit weak and the match-up is a lot dicier for the rev than it was in the past.

There are lots of small causes, but I’d suggest that one significant change was that to Heavy Light (the DH grandmaster trait). When it was passive and range-limited before, it could be difficult to control for the DH and would often proc on an auto-attack. In July, it was instead tied exclusively to Deflecting Shot (Guard LB3), meaning DH now has an unblockable knockdown on a 10s cd that adds a blind for a kick in the shins and grants stability as a cherry on top.

Of course, the number of “kitchen sink” skills in HoT is legion and the matter for another post, but for our purposes, this particular skill really screws a rev. As long as the DH has a bow out, you can’t reliably block. You can’t block a trap, because you will instead get knocked down into it and eat all the damage you were trying to avoid. You can’t sword 3 the traps, because it bugs out half the time, and even when it doesn’t, if the trap touches the rev, it now applies slow and the rev sits there in the wind-up animation and gets destroyed. This means it’s hard to pressure the DH, and if a rev can’t apply pressure, it’s not doing anything.

I’d suggest removing the ‘Unblockable’ aspect from Deflecting Shot. It already pierces, so one can hit multiple targets. Plus, active ‘unblockable’ skills were not really part of the guardian’s kit (they had passive lines and such).

I played a bit of DH last season, but not a ton. I’d want to hear from people who played it a lot (or are otherwise knowledgeable) at a high level. Would this be too much? Would this be an indirect buff to warrior? Would this make scrappers a complete DH nightmare? Or would this not do much at all?

Short Version: Remove the ‘Unblockable’ part of Deflecting Shot so that Revenant can better pressure DH.

As others have said, get rid of the “[Profession] Win” daily. Half of your problems will disappear right there.

People still seem to be grasping at nonsense. Having 3+ of one profession on a team is a bad thing. Nobody with any sense does it on purpose. The matchmaking system throws a team together and sometimes it happens. The ability to swap prevents stacking. If people want to play the latest flavor of noobstomper, they’ll just queue as that, not swap to it.

The ability to adjust team composition to give one’s side a better chance of winning is a part of this game’s strategy. Without it, players are at the mercy of the matchmaking system even more than they already are. In order to mitigate this, you’d have to diminish the impact of counters, which means profession homogenization, which is bad. This game encourages you at every level to make and play alts. Why discourage employing the fruits of that?

What would be the point of this? “Class-stacking” isn’t a rational tactic anyone pursues; it’s a flaw in the matchmaking system. Having too may of one type on your team is typically a negative and people swap precisely to avoid this. Sure, it was a problem back when d/d cele ele was rolling everyone, but despite the complaints, balance has been a lot better since those days.

Measures to restrict team balancing by profession also assume either a complex algorithm that can scan your stats/traits and decide what it is you do, or it means remaining committed to the idea of every profession having only one viable role, which would seem to run counter to the theory of future elite specs (or is ele going to have another support spec and necro going to have another poor-out-the-damage-then-die spec, etc?).

I’d recommend playing all professions (at least in hotjoin) just to get an understanding of their abilities, but focus on becoming better at few, like you (OP) seem to be doing. Here’s a quick list of counters. Note that this assumes people using the popular/meta builds (meaning these are all HoT specializations). There are quirky builds that will go against the standard match-ups, but you won’t see them much, because they’re not as strong otherwise.

Condi Mes
. . . is strong against
Revenant: For all its avoidance, a rev lacks condi-clear and stability. They might be hard to immobilize, but you can stun them. Plus, they use a lot of skills and rely on movement, which means your confusion and torment are killing them.
Necromancer: Necro lacks avoidance, meaning they have to eat at least some of your shatters. You kite them and whittle them down. Most Necros will avoid 1v1s as a rule, anyway.

. . . will stalemate
Engineer: Blocks, avoidance, condi-clear, but minimal ranged pressure.
Elementalist: You can kill an ele, but it will take a while.
Druid *: Sort of. You can avoid dying, but you will lose the point, which leads to an important item: Mes can avoid dying rather easily, and can handle itself in a lot of 1v1s, but has a limited window in which it can comfortably contest a point.

. . . is weak against
Guardian: Blocks, blinds, AoE denial. You won’t land enough shatters to keep up sufficient pressure. You can get away, but you won’t take a point.
Warrior: Warrior has large windows in which condis don’t hurt, and in which it does a lot of damage (clones die). This isn’t the worst match-up, but it’s not fun.
Thief: THIEF! Thief kills mes. You cannot hit it; you cannot escape. Sad day.

Also note: Mesmer has one of the strongest burst set-ups in the game in moa. If you can learn to land a moa at the proper time, you can win a lot of fights.

Power Warrior
. . . is strong against
Engineer: Scrapper generally relies on standing close and going blow-for-blow. Warrior takes less damage and deals more.
Necromancer: Not as horrible for the Necro as this match-up once was, but still painful. Warriors are hard for a Necro to kite and have lots of cc. Wait out shroud and then use the following 10-second window to stun/destroy.

Power Warrior has a few match-ups at which it is at a disadvantage, but few that are truly scary. Good play is about knowing whom to pressure in a team-fight, where to rotate to press an advantage, and when to disengage to survive.

Power Engineer
. . . is strong against
Thief: Reveal, damaging block, quick cc, AoE, hard hitting attacks. The only thing a thief can do is get away, which they will generally opt to do.
Guardian: You reflect the arrows, block the burst, deal your own burst when its defenses are down.

. . . will stalemate a lot of people. You’re largely a support build, there to rez the Necro.

. . . is weak against
Power Warrior: See above. It tears through your defenses.
Necromancer: It will corrupt your precious boons, ignore your blocks, interrupt your defenses, and make your day bad. This is one of the few 1v1s a lot of Necros will eagerly take.

Not sure what you mean by “defensive and offensive rotations” for DH. Are you talking skill use or map rotations? For the former, check metabattle/watch good players. For the latter, it depends on team comp and game state.

Yup. Lost a couple matches yesterday; figured I’d make it up before the end-of-season today, since last season ended — what? at midnight? or reset the next day? Logged on when I could, got into my match, blew away the enemy, and then . . . nothin’. Apparently the season silently ended shortly after my queue popped. Classic ANet.

Stand The Wall.6987:

if you reward blowouts you encourage match throwing / bribery. I’m guessing this isn’t a normal thing encountered, but it would encourage such behavior nonetheless.

It’s possible, but we already have bribery for throws now. I’m not sufficiently familiar with the practice to know if people who throw now do it with subtlety or if they outright tank. (Actually, I thought there was a fair bit of intentionally dc’ing, but again I’m no expert.)

“I’ll pay you to lose big” vs. “I’ll pay you to lose” are still the same problem. This does remind me that the system will have to be vigilant about 4v5s, so one can still gain rating from a win, but not too much.

Stand The Wall.6987:

also if you are going to reward big wins, big losses should be accrued as well yes? this might be fair, but people wont feel that way.

Yes, that was the idea: Tie the adjustment to the score disparity — not so much that losing is the same as winning, but so that you are rewarded for trying. For example, if adjustment averages around 15 points right now, maybe a close game changes rating by 8-10 and a blowout changes rating by 15-16. You still want to win, but since this is supposed to be rating how good you are, it reflects how well you’ve done against your opponent, and not just win/loss.

Vicariuz.1605:

so what are ur thoughts on some one in my situation

soloq to legend 3 times this season, currently at gold 3 (because it religiously puts people who are allergic to winning on my team OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER the same people, THE SAME LOSSES)

With only that information, I couldn’t say for certain. No matchmaking system is perfect, and there will be exceptions, but I don’t want everyone to start telling themselves that they’re the exceptions.

One of the issues is that the season is limited. Over an infinite number of games, most everyone would find his/her level. In a shortened season, one bad day can drop you through the floor and you might not have the time or inclination to regain your “true” rating. Given that mmr is always changing, you’ll tend to hover around where you belong, but streaks can catapult you higher or plummet you lower. Again, it’s not perfect, but it’s working pretty well.

Addendum: One of the reasons a lot of people are skeptical about the complaints posted in the forum is as follows, and I mean this in full seriousness and honesty as a person who’s spent enough time to become at the least a solid scout of talent.

When there is a person throwing a temper tantrum and insulting its teammates — in teamchat to those teammates, or in mapchat or say-chat for the benefit of the other team — in almost every single case, that person is the weak link costing the team the game.

I’m not kidding. I’m not saying this to make people feel better or worse. It’s what I’ve seen over thousands of games. The corellation between raging and sucking is nearly 100%. So when you come to forums and rage about your teammates sucking, a part of us is forced to consider that you might well be the problem.

One of the contentious exchanges in this forum featured someone asking if s/he should be expected to carry bad teammates in order to advance tiers. In a word: Yes. Here’s why. (You can skip to the summary if you’re afraid of words.)

Summary: There is a broad range of ability in any given division. If you are so much better than the competition that you can carry your team to victory sufficient to climb tiers, then you belong in the higher tier. Once you are at a level that you cannot carry, then you have in most cases found where you belong. You might be a good player for your tier, but you’re still in the right tier.

Short version: Make end-of-match rating adjustments affected by final score.

Explanation: I held it as one of the few things S1 got right that one’s pip gain/loss was a product not simply of a comparison of mmr between the teams, but also of the closeness of the game (unless I was misinformed). That way, even in a badly-imbalanced match-up, one could actually be credited for hanging in there.

I might be biased because, looking over my results, I have a lot more blowout wins and close losses, and maybe I’m an exception, but it does become frustrating when you lose 500-490 and it’s the same as if you hadn’t tried at all.

I am not suggesting a major adjustment — just a few points this way or that. For example, if one would be expected to drop 15 rating, but the game was within 50 points, maybe s/he only loses 10 rating.

The problem with a perpetually-modular mmr system is that its constant adjustment suggests that you are never at your correct rating. But if you’ve got two teams that come into the match with close ratings, and the final score is close, why should one side end up +15 and the other -15? Isn’t it possible that the gameplay was indicative of balanced teams?

Concerns: 1) We must recognize that final score is not always reflective of performance. Sometimes a game snowballs; sometimes one side becomes overconfident and relaxes. Still, we should expect that a lot of close games are not accidents.

2) I am not a top-level player. My understanding is that a lot of people in the upper echelons were annoyed that a victory would net them some 4-5 rating and a loss would cost them 18-20, this frustration compounded by the fact that the matchmaking system sometimes gave them rather outclassed teammates and put them against top-tier talent. Making it so that they don’t suffer as much for these losses might be nice. On the other hand, I am not sure if this wouldn’t mess up the ratings changes at the higher levels.

3) There would have to be a corollary, in that winning a close game wouldn’t net as large a reward as winning a blowout, else it might throw the ratings system out of whack. People might not like this.

Bonus: The idea that keeping it close would dampen the sting of loss might decrease the incidence of tantrum-sitting at spawn that has become rather epidemic in the middle ranks.

1. Harping on the quality of the comparison is obtuse; that’s not the relevant part. The point remains that player ability trumps theoretical optimal dps of a spec.

2. This saw about preferring a bad player on an “easy” profession is crap, like the argument about only taking the one approved composition because of reliable results. Bad players will do poor dps, fail the mechanics, and die. You will not be able to rely on them for damage or for whatever else the profession is supposed to provide. Have you ever watched a raid video where people are running dps meters? You don’t see consistent, test golem-level dps in a typical encounter. Dps specs do more and support specs do less, but the dps requirements of GW2 raiding are low, and you are better off taking the better player every time.

3. If you want to get technical: The pure Sc/T DH dps rotation is 6 buttons. While this isn’t a lot, it is 1 more button than the Herald dps rotation.

Pregnantman.8259:

If a gold skill level player streamed his journey would end at gold, if he is silver skill level it would end at silver etc. It may take shorter or longer to get there, as luck isn’t nonexistant. But this shows that whoever you are, you will reach where you belong if you keep playing.

Everyone, read the above words again. That’s what this whole thing says. You will find your level.

The fact that when you queue with higher-mmr friends you can do all right does not make you as good a player. Back before most of my guildies quit, I would sometimes queue with some of them who were better players than I. We would be matched against very good players. The fact that I could hold my own and we could win did not mean that I was a very good player; it meant that I was good enough not to be a glaring liability. The fact that Kevin Durant and Andre Iguodala both play in the same league doesn’t mean they both contribute equally to the team’s ability to win.

Nothelseth climbed out of Bronze with an 80% win rate. This means that despite being among the best, he lost 20% of his games at the bottom tier. If you are naturally a Platinum-level player, perhaps you escape with a 72% win rate. If you’re gold, maybe you make it out after winning 65%. It may take longer, but the point is that your superiority and greater contribution to the winning effort will, over time, result in victories.

The system is automated. It can only operate with the results it generates. It will take time to smooth results toward accuracy. If you are streaking up and down around a certain point, this is probably you stabilizing toward your actual level. There may be a handful of edge cases where the system is not working. Whoever you are, you are almost certainly not one of them.

There may be times in your life when you face injustice, negative discrimination, or misfortune that unfairly demands more of you than of others and troubles your progress through life. These times will not be in the mmr system in a bloody video game.

This is getting surreal.

In order to prove that MMR is based on randomness, you would need to provide enough information to show that over a long period of time, there was no discernible pattern. You posted just your W/L record.

To suggest that winning and losing is based entirely on one’s teammates borders on the insane. Each person on your team has four teammates, not just you. Every one of you contributes in some way to the final result.

There will be variance between one’s current rating and one’s “true talent.” At any given moment, your exact rating may or may not reflect your exact skill relative to others. It could be the system’s error; it could be a change in you, since “true talent” is just an idea and not a material thing. However, over time, your rating will trend toward alignment with your ability relative to others in the pool. For the majority of participants, once the system can successfully match them with individuals of similar skill, records will trend toward .500.

All this complaint suggests is that the system is working properly. If you are sitting at 1350 with a 60% win rate, we can expect one of two things: Either you’ve streaked above your level and will correct back down, with your record stabilizing toward .500; OR you have yet to ascend to your level and will continue to climb until you reach it, with your record then stabilizing toward .500.

Given sufficient time, most of the population will see this take place. The reason the top players stay well above .500 is because there are not enough players at that level to consistently create balanced matchups, so the system must match them against weaker players in order to fill out games.

The reason a lot of the rest of us stay above .500 is because the season is short enough and participation sporadic enough that the system is not able to perfectly guage all participants, so a person will ride a hot streak above its level and get beaten back down, or ride a cold streak below its level and surge back up. The more games people play, the more accurate ratings will become.

There is a small element of luck and team assignment affecting small samples, but it is by no means the basis of MMR.

Ok, i am sure you are going to say to get gud" but i and reglar players csan’t carry people this bad, and so i its like i see the sdame players every game over and over, and in like 5 seconds everybody is died mid or in the tunnels, what do I do.

also this mode needs more maps. Where are we like under DR somewhere in the drainage or are we in the sewers? and if we are in the sewers what are we running around in at the bottom. who holds a festval turnament in the sewers anywa?

I tell me teamates “stick 2gether, dont throw your fireball when they have the swrly winds, dont die” but they do and i have to solo like 1v4 or 1v5 or howver many people are on the other team and of course i die but its not my fault. i am basically a legend of dragonballing but these noobs they don’t evn belong in bronze they beLONG in the sewer, they drag my rating down. end of game i have like 12,13 kills but its not enough we lose 500-200.

i cant even find the leaderboards but it doesnt matter becose i should be at the top and i’m not becose of bads. gg, anet. ANyway this is why i am quiting to play weeb gazongas battle adventure when it comes out of second beta.

On class-swapping:

I may be biased, because I am one of those people who tries to make sure I’m up to my skill-level on 3-4 classes every season, so that I can swap pre-match for better team balance, or to create/avoid counters.

With the matchmaking system as it is, locking people to the character on which they queue would create a lot of problems. If you’re going to lock people, you must also change the way the system builds teams to avoid being dealt, at equal skill, a bad hand. This means longer queues. Plus, they’d have to think of another daily to replace the profession win, and who knows how long that would take?

(Yes, we’ve all won games where the matchup was against us, but if we aim to have teams balanced by skill, and we progress toward that, then you’ll reach a point where you lose by dint of team composition RNG, unless the team-building system is also adjusted, not only to prevent stacking, but also to recognize roles . . . which then gets you into the system recognizing builds, map requirements, etc.)

Actually, it occurs to me that there is a tidy comparison to make, encounter-to-encounter. It’s a single data point, so it doesn’t answer everything, but it should serve as a decent illustration of the point.

Slothasor is Grobbulus. Grob was a boss in Naxxramas, the first raid of WLK (the second expansion), which was on the easy side, as it was designed to get people back into raiding after the end-of-expac downtime, and to introduce new raiders to the concept. That said, Grob was in the Plague Wing, after Patchwerk and before Gluth and Thaddeus, which I think was considered one of the tougher wings, so relatively speaking it was harder than most of the other bosses in the same raid.

Note that this being the first raid of the second expac, this is going back about 8 years, so my memory of the encounter is apt to be a bit hazy, and there will be a lot of “iirc” here.

Grob was a gigantic, fleshy science-experiment monster man with machine parts and a nozzle hand. He was in a big, rectangular room with a few alcoves, and a ramp at the far side, which was either inaccessible when he was alive or else messed with the fight if the person with aggro ran up it.

The standard strategy was for the main tank (MT) to kite Grob around the room by backpedaling, while melee followed on the boss’ heels. I seem to recall that the boss had leashing issues, perhaps due to multiple attacks or his slow AA speed, but in any case it meant he would stagger a lot and sometimes would turn and spew green juice at the melee instead of the tank, so you had to be on your toes.

Throughout the fight, one or two people would periodically get infected with a bomb. You had a few seconds to run back the way you came and drop the bomb at the edge of the path. It would leave an expanding circle of poison that would eventually dissipate (or maybe they didn’t disappear and this was the soft enrage mechanic). (Some groups dropped in the center of the room, but usually that was where you had your healers stand, so it was easier for them if you had the sense to make it to the edge.)

There were also adds that would spawn — oozes — though I don’t recall the triggering event — probably something the boss did. The oozes would aggro onto the healers or perhaps just track toward the boss. In either event, the off-tank(s) (OT) would probably have to pick them up — from range, if I recall, because I think they did a bunch of damage if you were in melee range — and ranged dps had to burn them down. Maybe people also snared them.

There was some other mechanic to the oozes that escapes me. Maybe if multiple ones got together they joined and became a big problem, or maybe that was a different fight entirely.

I seem to recall disliking the fight and it taking a while, which probably meant that Grob had the special ability Damage Sponge, like most of the Plague Wing mobs.

By comparison, Slothasor’s room is filled with poison and interactive mushrooms. You are more or less required to kite, rather than figuring out the strategy. One person acts as MT and kites while everyone else sits on his backside. You still have to watch out for the spew (flame breath) but it’s not buggy (outside of sometimes not rendering).

You get a bomb debuff that drops a poison circle, but you have a special action that allows you to drop it, though there is also a timer (right?) (the Grob one may have been cleansed by healers, but I think it was just on a timer).

The adds can be a pain on Sloth, too, though you can manage their numbers with pulls and cleaving/epi. Eventually, they become numerous and more difficult, functioning as the soft enrage. You will have one person transformed, a feature not found in the WoW encounter, though you could argue that this makes a special-case OT.

Sloth has the shake and condis abound, which you can try to avoid, or can dedicate some attention to removing, kind of like a WoW healer, at the cost of dps, like WoW raid composition decisions.

Notably, Sloth has a very low dps requirement; it’s all about the mechanics. I’d say there’s more personal responsibility in Sloth, but there’s also rubbing downstates. Because all GW2 encounters have to be tuned at a single gear level, Sloth’s low dps requirement makes it a cinch once you get the dance down, much like a WoW encounter once you out-gear it. Sloth can be fun, though I don’t like to pug it. Grob was a chore, but that was probably because our guild was pretty experienced and Naxx wasn’t much of a challenge. Maybe this helps compare the two.

I raided in WoW through Cata and then left. I’ve heard the design mentality changed somewhat since then (or continued in the direction in which it was already trending). Tried a few other MMOs but only entered endgame pve in one and it was awful.

When I came to GW2, I frankly found the pve to be quite lackluster. By the time I arrived (later 2013) it was just speedrun dungeons and 1-spam world bosses. If it weren’t for the glory days of WvW and the solid PvP system, I probably would have left.

This may come off as harsh, but I think the major stumbling block with raids in GW2 was the fact that the majority of the pve playerbase was acclimated to simplistic and unchallenging content. This meant two things: First, that the level of committment necessary to perform optimally was minimal; and second that there was very little in the way of pve guild culture. Plainly, a lot of people aren’t very good and they’re not aware that some content demands more of them.

This wasn’t a problem early on. The emphasis on a relaxed, casual, grind-free approach cultivated a playerbase many of whom could be satisfied with a thoughtless romp. You just showed up, stood in the right place and hit the buttons, and left. This is fine, but it does not prepare people for raids; nor, perhaps more importantly, does it build guilds. A successful raiding “scene” can’t really rely on pugs. People will sour on the whole deal very quickly.

The raids are very well done. They use a lot of what is unique about the GW2 group combat system to create engaging group content, although they could always explore further down that avenue. They are not particularly challenging, and I’ve always viewed it as weak design when the player is required to find some way to introduce more challenge. That said, it’s a fine speed for a lot of tastes — such as a retired raider turned into a casual scrub and pvper like myself.

Most of the struggle comes from the fact the community was not trained for raiding, and while high-level Fractals might provide some of the style of content necessary to introduce people to the idea, there is no clearly presented flow (such as in WoW, which basically told you: “do these dungeons, now do these, now do this attunement, now get this gear, now raid”). Additionally, the time it takes to grind up AR means that people who join the game now and want to get into raiding aren’t likely to spend time in T3/T4 Fractals before trying the raid.

I could come up with specific “raid encounter comparisons” like the OP asks, but I’ve already used a lot of space. I’ll just say that there’s only so much one can do with endgame pve in the current MMO model. The rule is always: Don’t stand in the fire; and the answer to a challenge is always: More damage. That said, I think GW2 could take advantage of some of its neat mechanics (like combos, bundles, transforms, etc.) to create encounters that are more than ‘burn the badguy’ but don’t veer into gimmickry.

And to the guy complaining about there being a cast time on the Mallyx stunbreak: Off the top of my head I can come up with about a half dozen stunbreaks in the game that have a cast time. The stunbreak is instant and always happens. If you are disabled again while the skill is being cast, the skill goes on full cd. This doesn’t matter to Pain Absorption because it has no cd.

So people don’t agitate themselves with wild accusations of bias, I will note that I’ve played a few hundred games on Revenant since its release. It’s not my main, but I played it a fair bit over a couple seasons.

Here’s what I expect happened to a lot of players: When Rev was released, it was overtuned — certainly not as OP as I’ve seen happen with new release classes in other games, but it was definitely stronger than most professions. It could do a little of everything and it could do it all very well. Don’t forget that the S1 condi build had arguably the highest sustain of any non-bunker and it did so with a completely offensive amulet. They had to remove Durability runes from PvP mostly because of Rev.

Rev was very strong, and that made it kind of easy to play. You didn’t necessarily do well if you didn’t know what you were doing, but you could make a lot of mistakes and still recover. Put a rev in the right hands and the damage pressure was hard to top.

Rev started receiving much-needed nerfs, and suddenly some people who thought they were very good at the profession found themselves unable to perform. The core mechanics could no longer carry you; you had to make the right choices. They didn’t see it that way; they saw it as the profession being nerfed into the ground — i.e., the standard finger-pointing of the medium.

I’d say that right now rev’s major liability is compositional dependence, but that isn’t unique to rev. There are certain matchups that are just bad news, and the more you solo queue, the more likely you are to be stuck in a bad 1v1 to try to save the game.

I’ll say here as everywhere: Rev was obviously designed around having one weapon set. The addition of the swap was based on uninformed feedback. You could undo a lot of the nerfs and create some real choice and balance if rev only had one weapon set.

I’m not going to argue that the Berserker traitline isn’t in need of tweaks (and, frankly, everyone could use fewer passive procs), but these sorts of cross-profession comparisons are always going to be flagged as apples-to-oranges. These skills aren’t going off in a vacuum, and even a point-for-point health-to-healing analysis ignores all the other variables in play.

Rebound isn’t that great, no doubt, but that’s by intent. All ele elites kinda stink; it’s one of the design choices the developers made and to which they seemed determined to stick, like necros having no avoidance skills. They balance around this idea and while there are always ups and downs, ele has not in recent memory suffered much for having elites that stink.

For what it’s worth, Rebound has a very high healing coefficient (1.5) and, as noted, affects multiple targets. That’s worth something. Given warrior’s other survival tricks, it could be suggested that Dead or Alive (which has a paltry 0.04 coefficient) heals a bit much, but it’s probably a lot closer to ideal than it might seem. After all, once all your other tricks have expired, 5k health is also more or less a one-shot.

Roughly the amount on the chart, still. Their damage numbers weren’t changed.

I don’t recall ever running out of Energy and missing out on a Precision Strike, but I didn’t play it much. I assume you’re suggesting Mallyx for the elite? It’s not much extra damage, and you’d be giving up Equilibrium, Elemental Blast, and boons — probably a wash.

Herald does mid-level dps and brings useful cc and boons. It’s still fine. You just won’t find a spot in the average pug because the community’s not exactly the thinking type.

Yeah, I would like to know why either of you are in a 1v1. Is this in a dueling arena?

First, I would suggest that if you’re still learning how to PvP, or how to play a profession with which you’re not familiar, you find hotjoin matches or queue Unranked. Ranked play expects you to be playing at your skill level as a player, and if you’re using something unfamiliar, you’re hurting yourself.

As point 1b, if you’re using the meta build but have changed it, then you’re not using the meta build. You’re free to play as you like, but that’s the build people use for a reason. It’s also built with a specific role in mind.

Mesmer’s map mobility is second only to Thief. Portal is one of the stronger profession-unique abilities in the game. In a typical, regular-folk-level, 1/4 split, Mes is top candidate after Thief for taking home, because you can leave a portal for retreat/to prevent a decap, or leave a portal mid and decap far, or in any other way just play the map.

As a corollary of the above, Mes’ contribution to a teamfight is ok, but it’s not superb — especially a big team fight where there’s going to be lots of condi clear and AoE to waste your clones.

Beyond this, it sounds mostly like a matter of learning rotations and where you’ll be effective. The number of situations in which it is strategically advantageous to fight until you might die are exceedingly few and will pretty much only be the result of the other team foolishly or desperately overcommitting. Don’t rely on having foolish opponents. If the fight is lost, disengage.

As a Mesmer, you are mobile and have lots of survival tricks. Not dying is the least you can do.

It’s a team game mode. Watch the map to see how you can support the team. If they’ve given up on mid and have retreated home or pushed far, you can help cover home or help win that far fight with a quick chicken to let your team regain map control. If you’ve got map control, you can often do more for a win by applying map pressure than by applying damage pressure.

You will have bad teammates from time to time, but don’t assume the weak link is never you.

Do not go beast on Druid.

This may have been addressed somewhere, but I didn’t find it. This actually originated a couple weeks ago.

Viewing the second tab of the PvP panel, which lists the current season statistics, I seem to be missing a couple results from the record. That is: on the left-hand side it says Games Won: X, and on the right-hand side, under Wins is X-2.

I noticed that when I lost a 4v5 in which the DC was gone long enough that there was no penalty (no rating loss), it counted as a Game Played (left) but not as a Loss (right). I thought that perhaps the missing wins were the result of having won 5v4’s, except that to that point, I had only been in one game where the opposing team had a long-term DC . . . and that game counted as a Win under both counters.

Now, I’m a regular player who won’t come close to the leaderboards, so my W-L record is only visible to me and my dead guild and doesn’t mean anything, but I figure that if it can happen to me, it can happen to someone in the heart of the competition. Anyone know what causes it?

Valuing the Rev simply for its mobility misses a large part of the game. Rev is a mobile, burst-capable class, but it is at the bottom of the thief>mes>rev food chain, true. While it might be nice if the balance team had been able to achieve a sort of triangle of superiority (such as: thief beats mes; mes beats rev; rev beats thief), such a view ignores the fact that Revenant offers a lot more in a teamfight than the others do.

Thief can +1 a small engagement, but has little place jumping into a 4v4. Mes can try to land a chicken through the ability spam, but you’re not keeping up condi pressure like a necro. Meanwhile, a Rev is spamming boons and putting out significant damage.

The balance isn’t perfect and never will be, but Revenant (really, Herald) was too good at too many things and a toning down was necessary. If anything, my major issue with its current state is that the counters seem too extreme; you either wreck a profession, or are at a severe disadvantage, and it makes a Rev’s ability to play the map limited by team comp. This used to be the case with a lot more professions, but the balance team has softened hard counters up rather well over the life of the game, which is generally a positive.

Drop The Bass.9516:

I did some tests couple of weeks ago. My build is different than yours. I’m not really sure if it’s worth maxing out torment duration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRLgJ2n7bmQ

So far I only tested it on Matthias. Your druid can swap Stone Spirit for something else like Sun Spirit. It kinda works but I wouldn’t play it over any other dps class.

You’re probably right regarding Torment duration. One of Condi Rev’s other weaknesses is that unlike a lot of condi setups, Rev has no trait-line or utility bar access to bonus condi damage, so I did consider giving up duration for more damage. (Of course, I was making the set for my Warrior, so I wasn’t playing around with too many different stat arrangements.) May also explain why you got more out of Devastation than I did (or I just screwed up).

I should have been more specific: For Druid buffs I used only Spotter, Glyph of Empowerment, and Grace of the Land x2 — no Spirits. I figured if I had used a Spirit and had a little more practice I could probably hit 20k. So, again, it’s not terrible, but it is inferior to the alternatives.

Conclusions
Naturally, a moving target generates more Torment damage. I was aided by the fact the golem’s path is predictable and so I could lay the fire fields appropriately. I assume the Large hitbox increase is due to Mace 3 hitting multiple times (it did).

Is it good? Not good enough. Bear in mind that given the Energy usage of your rotation, you cannot afford to keep up Facet of Nature (F2) (though you can keep up Fury during your Glint phase), and lacking Devastation means no Assassin’s Presence. You are bringing nothing but DPS, and your DPS is severely lacking compared to other pure DPS specs.

Is there any boss where it could be viable? Well, it does its best damage against a mobile enemy with a big hitbox. (Insert shruggy/smiley stick figure.) You could use it at VG, but you can use anything at VG, so that doesn’t mean much. Maybe Matt (is Abom phase large enough to be Large?), but it wouldn’t be great. Sloth has a low dps check and the Pain Absorption could save people from mistakes, but I’d worry you’d inadvertently kill your friendly slubling. Trio, maybe: It’s a lot of AoE for clearing adds, but not much CC; the ramp up is fast, but the top end is low. Escort, maybe, for the same reasons as Trio. Not really great for anything.

Post Script
The story doesn’t have a sad ending, at least, since I had actually decided to make a condi set for my PS (already have Power), so before I completed it, I gave it a detour through experimental rev land. Hope this helps somebody out there make an informed decision. Have fun.

Condi Rev Test: I waste gold so you don’t have to!

Since the release of HoT and raids, I’ve periodically encountered people asking about Condi Rev for instanced PvE. It’s always very easy to explain the theory of why it would be bad: Condi Rev’s main sources of condition damage are 1) Torment, which only does appreciable damage to moving enemies, and 2) Burning, from a fire field which only achieves maximum effect if the enemy stands in it. Self-defeating! Additionally, a Condi Rev can spam Confusion, which doesn’t do much to mobs because they don’t use skills as often as players. In other words, Condi Rev was designed around PvP.

Still, there could remain some curiosity about the numerical facts. Is it truly bad? How bad is it? Is there any situation in which it might become viable? Never fear, I am here to sort of answers these questions!

Standard caveats: I am not a PvE hero, so secondarily this means that this was kind of expensive for me, but primarily it means: 1) I may make mistakes in rotations, 2) I only ran a few tests — much of the optimization was through theory-crafting.

This is the build.

The Rotation
There is technically a rotation, but I’m not going to write out a zillion steps, so just treat it as a priority system with regular legend-swaps. Basically, you go:

Glint
Facet of Elements -> Elemental Blast
and
Mallyx
Embrace the Darkness

In between swaps it’s four skills with this priority:
1. Searing Fissure (Mace 2)
2. Echoing Eruption (Mace 3 — if you can land multiple hits)
else Temporal Rift
3. Temporal Rift (Axe 5 — unless Mace 3 will only hit once)
else Echoing Eruption
4. Auto-attack chain

I found interrupting the AA chain for Searing Fissure to be a dps gain. I found interrupting the chain for other skills to be roughly neutral, or possibly a dps loss. In other words, the auto-attack chain sucks.

Popping your Mallyx heal to activate the Balthazar 6 bonus may be a dps gain, but bear in mind that your rotation is very Energy-intensive, so popping your heal on cd in Mallyx could run you out of Energy you’d need to use a better skill. I tried using the heal on two tests and it did not produce noticeable improvement.

The Test
All tests used four boons: 25 Might, Fury, Quickness, +1
All tests used Alacrity, as well as standard buffs (Warrior, Druid (2 GotL)). Golems had 25 Vulnerability.
I tested both stationary and mobile golems. As you know, once you pick mobility, it defaults to 1M HP and you can’t switch it, this means stationary golem dps is probably more reliable. All results are the average of multiple tests.

The Results
Stationary 4M HP: 17,107 DPS
Moving 1M HP: 18,232 DPS
Large hitbox 4M HP: 18,279 DPS

I was regularly keeping up 10+ Burning, 30+ Torment (high 20s to low 40s), 5-6 Poison, and 3-4 Bleed (ok, maybe Earth isn’t any good). After my food ran out I tried dropping Herald for Devastation and running Jalis (for Hammers) as the other Legend. There was no significant gain over pre-food tests with Herald.

Far and away the worst part, however, is that when confronted with this scenario and Braham’s compounded petulance, the Commander backs down and apologizes to the twerp. This is the Commander. Do we need to run over the resume?

Among other items: saved the homeland, saved one or more Orders, retook Claw Island, united the continent, spearheaded the attack on Orr, killed Zhaitan, more or less singlehandledly took care of an entire jungle’s worth of problems, went into a bloody dragon’s brain to stab it in the dreambeans and save the world again. At no point has the Commander suggested that s/he is the sort to take backtalk from a subordinate whose major contributions, other than endangering everyone with recklessness, are spamming Shield 5 on cd to knock enemies out of AoE and dialogue such as “Aarrggh!” and “Grrr!”

We can stand up to the greatest threats the world has ever known, but not a useless sack who’s responding to his mother’s death not as would someone in a world that turns on violence and death, but as would a modern pampered brat?

So, yes, Braham was given the lines of a gigantic jerkwad in an attempt to sour the audience on him in anticipation of his next actions, and, sure, a lot of people would gladly make a deal with the Mists to trade son to get mother back. But it’s a cheap manipulation; it’s inauthentic. It only works on a superficial level. If you already disliked him, you still dislike him. If you already didn’t care, you still don’t care.

P.S. If Aurene is only ever going to be as smart as a dog, then what we’re doing is fine. If she is expected to mature into an intelligent being, then our methods are going to create a nightmare.

P.P.S. Speaking of which, the Nightmare Fractal is pretty ballin’.

I don’t intend to be cruel. I understand that the standard is what it is and the writers must write such that the dimmest among us can catch everything that’s happened. Still, at least two glaring issues are made ever more apparent in the latest LS chapter.

1. At this point, I must assume that it is done to pad the chapter’s run-time, because the writing outright attacks the notion of conservation in dialogue. Characters take a dozen lines over a minute and a half to convey what could have been said in ten words. For those of us — presumably the vast majority — who already understand the situation, please let us at least skip the audio portion (since we can read it faster).

I understand that you’ve hired the very nice voice actors and want everyone to enjoy the fruits of the exchange. If everything were just a bit shorter and sharper, we wouldn’t want to skip it.

2. Again, I am aware that you want the message to reach everyone, but there is a lot to be said for subtlety. Pushing characters to extreme expressions of emotion so as to turn the audience to or against them ends up depriving anyone of consistent personality, and it comes off as desperate and silly.

Let’s look at the case of Braham getting mad at the Commander because of the Icebrood (are they called Svanir now? I thought Svanir was some crazy dead dude) elixir mix-up. It is exceptionally forced, and it doesn’t make any sense.

Mystic Forge Stones
Integrated Fractal Matrices

(On Blood Rubies/Petrified Wood, I prefer the currency (wallet) suggestion that includes Unbound Magic vendor for conversion.)

This has been said several times. It’s a design decision. A necro can put out tremendous offensive pressure, so this is balanced by their fragility. One can sacrifice damage for survival, but as the necro cannot build for team support, if you do this you’ve just become dead weight.

Sometime during seasons one of the big pvp guild folks posted charts in which they pointed out that necro was top tier for organized play, and a borderline disaster for solo queue. If you’ve played necro, you know this to be true. You can’t rely on teammates supporting you or peeling for you in solo queue, so entering a game as necro, even with favorable matchups, is a huge gamble. I played necro (my most played pvp class) only a handful of times this season.

Part of the problem is that while other professions can be balanced around weapon and utility selections, a necromancer always has shroud, meaning no matter what other build choices you make, you’ve always got an offensive kit. Thus, the profession works best built for offense, which it does very well, and we’re back to the top.

I could be mistaken, but I do not recall personal contribution being counted in S1. Rather, the system in S1 was set up so that pip gain/loss was weighted by expected outcome. Thus if a team that the matchmaking system expected to lose badly managed to keep the score close, the participants on that team would not lose a pip (or could even gain one).

Personal scores on the scoreboard do not accurately reflect individual contribution to the match’s outcome. While it may be reasonably suggested that when your personal score is equal to or greater than all your teammates combined, you probably did more to help, even in a loss, making that part of the system would probably encourage people to make bad decisions in order to inflate personal score.

In short, the individual was not graded separately from the team, and adding in such a system with the current scoring would probably backfire.

It’s like this. In the last patch, DH was buffed such that one can use a build that has very good sustain and high damage output, but which isn’t that difficult to play, putting it on par in that regard with Herald, Chrono, Scrapper, Berserker, and (outside of a teamfight) Reaper. (And Druid and Tempest only lack one thing, each.)

While DH has some glaring weaknesses that make it fairly easy for certain builds to handle and which prevent it from seeing much top level play, it’s very effective against people who don’t pay attention to things like positioning, cooldowns, boons, and conditions.

Worst of all, DH was only recently buffed to this point, after spending a season or two languishing in the seriously suboptimal tier. This means that if you play it now, you’re picking the “flavor of the month,” whereas someone who plays something that’s been OP for half a year was already cool.

The current season’s matchmaking is awful. So were the prior seasons’. Perhaps S4 seems worse because of recency bias, or perhaps because we were told it would produce even matchups and things have been just as lopsided as before.

As an illustration, through my first 100 matches this season, there were nearly three times as many games in which the losing team failed to score 100 points (11) as there were games in which the losing team broke 400 points (4). This is discounting 4v5’s.

Granted, score differential may not be the best way to determine how evenly matched a game was. Plenty of us have seen tight games that snowball in the final minute, or close games in Foefire that end with a Lord kill. Still, when people are told to expect close matchups and they keep seeing games end 300+ points apart, they begin to question the matchmaking. I’ve kept track of a slice of games for each season so far, and while it is just a sample (and I think I must have thrown out my S2 and S3 results, so I only remember them roughly), S4 has had the largest average point differential for me over these samples. Nothing conclusive, because we’re talking about a stretch of maybe 40-60 games (and it’s only one player’s perspective), but if you play casually, that’s a fair chunk of the season. Teams don’t seem to be well-matched.

There is a surprisingly broad range of skill levels present in this game mode, and games end up poorly matched not simply when we see them unevenly distributed across teams, but when you have points too far present apart in one game. There are three possibilities:

• Matchmaking selects from too broad a range of players,
• Matchmaking rating is inaccurate,
• Or both.

The first probably happens to shorten queue times. I know I would tolerate longer queues for better games, but that would mean only a few minutes more at my level. Some people used to sit for an hour; some still do.

The second is a factor of mmr being based on itself. Adjustments after a win or loss are only correct if the initial assessment was close to correct. If the initial mmr used to make the matchup was way off, and adjustments are made based on W/L (and perhaps differential), then it’s just compounding the problem.

So, would we accept longer queue times? Can we come up with a scoring system that accurately reflects skill? I’d suggest this is what we’d need for better matchmaking.

Having the same issue, although not at the end of match — happened as soon as I zoned in (twice) and then once mid-match (after the mid-match crash, I stayed disconnected and sent the report thing). I am using the Windows client, though I do run the 32-bit version for better performance.

I’ve begun treating these bunker druids like the new P/U — they can only beat you if you fight them — and walking away. It’s just a rotation of cc/passive immob/F2, staff3 and kite, stealth and kite, heal heal heal. It’s not that they are OP; it’s that they don’t sacrifice much for their sustain, so in theory one can eventually kill you . . . or you can fight it until you fall asleep.

If the druid is decent it won’t die 1v1, but it can’t really catch most professions so much as keep you in combat while it chases.

Choppy.4183:

I’m inclined to think pegging a pet’s stats to the ranger’s gear choice is something worth exploring. I agree that the pet’s damage is factored into the ranger/druid’s own damage balance, but I don’t see the rationale in divorcing that damage from gear selection.

If a druid sacrifices damage for tank, then it’s reasonable to expect the same of the pet. Similarly, if the druid goes all in on damage, the pet should see a corresponding increase to its damage at the expense of its defense potential.

The tanked druid with full damage pets just seems too forgiving for bad play, imo. I don’t think the class is OP though… I think it’s generally in a good spot (great in some circumstances, useless in others).

This is pretty much where I am as well (except for the end; I’d rather see balance around standards of better or worse, rather than supreme or garbage). Having one profession whose gear/stat selection doesn’t affect a major portion of its play is a bit bizarre. Then again, Ranger/Druid is the lone pet class, and pet classes are pretty universally victims of bad design, where they are given bonuses that break the system because they’re saddled with this clumsy device.

For those people invoking DPS: This is a PvE calculation. It matters in that setting because you are attempting to grind through a raidboss’ hitpoints within a time limit (or at least efficiently). PvP encounters, where the combatants’ HP totals will go up and down, are much more about burst. It doesn’t matter what the pet does over the course of a whole fight, but rather within one crucial window.