Guild Wars 2

TopBadge.3569:

Why not just have a 5 man only queue you could even make it a league for pvp guilds.

A sort of Guild War if you will…

I would like this although I am sure the fear is that dividing the ranked player base will increase queue times and drive players away.

But I tend to agree with you. I think this would actually bring more players to spvp.

Rodzynald.5897:

As for this little quote, I’ve learned that if the enemy is good (which doesnt mean that they just kill your teammates), they won’t let you outrotate them. If they do, they were just a comp with huge damage but zero strategy. Besides, it takes cooperation which if your team is [whatever you might call it] then you alone won’t outrotate while the rest of the team gets snowballed becasue they explode on contact, even if the enemy zergs.
And why? Because your team doesn’t cooperate or doesn’t know how to cooperate.

You took my quote out of context but maybe you misunderstood my point. I was strictly saying sometimes the opponent is just better at actual fights. I’ve been in plenty of matches where one team was constantly getting wrecked in any major clash, but still won because the other team wasn’t using a winning strategy.

I was not trying to say every time you lose its because the other team is just plain better as the entire rest of my comment should have made clear.

Delweyn.1309:

No it’s much more simple than that. When you lose, iy’s at 99% when your mate lose every fights. So you ahave always the feeling to be alone and every where you go there a 2 ennemies or more.

Lot of times this isn’t due to your teammates just being worse in a team fight, sometimes its just the snowball effect and your teammates (or yourself) making bad decisions.

I see a lot of times where the team loses mid and then everyone slowly trickles back into the middle fight one at a time. This just keeps happening so teammates are always dead and always facing extreme odds.

I think a lot of this problem is how people freak out if you have “too many” at home or how you must always be at a point. So people die and immediately run into the nearest fight rather than standing back and trying to regroup. Sometimes its better to let that one teammate die in his 3v1 instead of charging in and both of you dying in the 3v2.

I have been in a 2v2 off point (fighting over svanir) where we lost the beast but nearly had one opponent down so should have been able to kill both. Instead, the mesmer I was with just ran off and I died to a 2v1. Instead of gaining 10 points and getting the numbers advantage until they respawned we gave them 5. Her response to me asking why she left? “No point fighting off point.” Ok. I agree you should avoid fighting off point, but its better to fight off point than to give up unnecessary deaths or miss out on easy kills.

I’ve seen countless times where someone running from one point or another gets caught from behind by an enemy. Instead of turning and fighting they franctically try to escape to the nearby point so they can fight on the point, even if its a 1v1 and there is no teammate at the point you are running to. Typically, they die. But at least they didn’t make the mistake of fighting off point!

Other times your opponent is just better. They’ll win every even team fight because their team comp is better or their skill is. This can still be won if you out-rotate them and avoid massive brawls unless you have the advantage.

Agreed. While I think some people are crazy for thinking the bad MM is targeting them specifically (you know who you are), there is no doubt that the focus on super fast queue times is hurting sPvP overall (which is not something I would have expected to ever say).

Long queue times are probably just as bad, but I think the current system needs a tweak. Start the range off smaller (only players within… 200-300? basically three tiers, one above, yours, and one below so G2 gets matched vs only G1, G2, and G3 players) and only extend it after a certain amount of time passes (with a notification of some sort).

I feel like they could do a lot to improve the matchmaking and still keep the queue times relatively short. I’ve played plenty of pvp games (MMO or others) with 5min-10min queue times. Over 10min starts to get annoying, over 15min starts to get unplayable. But current system has it at 1min-3min and great as that is, its only great if it isn’t providing frustrating matchups.

mrauls.6519:

It seems almost impossible to climb past 1700 as a solo queuer… Once you hit 1700, you gain about ~10 MMR a win, but you lose 17-20… Maybe add a shrine of the MMR God in the mists. I’ll pray to it daily.

/rant

I think this is due to you being more likely to be matched with and against lower ranked players. So you gain less MMR for a win because you are beating up weaker players. And lose more MMR for a loss because you are losing to weaker players.

Problem with that is its a team game and one player is going to have a hard time to carry if they get matched with bad players. I think someone suggested instead of the MMR gain or loss be based on personal MMR it should be based on team average MMR. So if you as a 1600-1700 player get matched with a bunch of 1500s and lose to another team that averages the same then you’ll only lose 12-13 (seems to be my average so I assume it is the average). It is reasonable to lose more than you gain when playing against lower ranked opponents. But it kinda sucks to require a .666 win rate at least to break even in a 5v5 game mode. Especially when the match making pulls from such a wide range.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Targaryen.9536:

Hi im getting really sick of all these condition builds. its getting old.

Agreed.

Any other game in the world understands that DoT should always be secondary to power burst in terms of DPS, conditions should always be secondary to power. It should never be the case that a build focused on conditions (DoT) outbursts a power build. And yet here we are…

I don’t think most other pvp games have as much access to condition (dot or debuff) self-cleansing. Only way to make conditions even remotely playable is to make them shorter duration with how cleansing is in this game. Also, its only more bursty than power if you don’t manage your cleanses well. If you panic and blow all your cleanses right away then you leave yourself open to getting them all reapplied and you have nothing you can do about it.

Personally, I would like to see it where Condi are slower damage but maybe more debilitating and get rid of most (all?) passive condi cleanse. That leaves you with limited active cleansing abilities that you have to purposefully choose to bring with you. So condi are less bursty but also harder to cleanse.

Targaryen.9536:

Hi im getting really sick of all these condition builds. its getting old.

Honestly, I think its reasonably balanced. Power seems to be more prevalent at higher tiers because players know how to manage their condition cleansing with weapon swapping and a utility or two or trait or two depending on the class/build.

Mid tiers it seems to be going out of style as players get more effective at condi cleansing. But that means it can still be pretty effective as a surprise burst.

Low tiers it can be pretty effective but that’s often a l2p issue. When I first started I went a lot heavier condi cleanse because I couldn’t deal with necros or thieves or whatever. I wasn’t effectively swapping or using my other cleansing abilities. Now I’ve dropped the “converts all condi to boons” utility because I am better about cleansing different ways. It can still catch me if my abilities are down but that goes for anything.

If you find yourself getting wrecked by condi builds it might just mean you should make an adjustment to your build or think about your playstyle. I’ve found that most condi builds have a massive initial burst that if you time your cleanses right you completely negate and then they are SoL.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Omcrazy.4756:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Let’s just see how you feel after you’ve experienced your first mandatory 20 game lose streak. You’ve been playing almost a month now, it’ll happen soon.

I’ll report back if it does. I’ve already had a streak where I lost something like 15 out of 20, but I am well aware I played poorly in many of those losses. It was followed by an 8 game win streak in which I played as a scrapper and not a very good one for about half of them but was lucky enough to get carried.

Oh I think you already did report back.

• 15 game lose streak
• Turns into 8 games of getting carried win streak
• Took less than a month to see an anomaly occur within the match making

Your argument is that Anet has something built into its MM that actually targets specific players to purposefully give them unfavorable chances so it can bring their rank down.

And you don’t think that sounds crazy?

Probability (luck) is often streaky. And my 15 weren’t a streak of 15 straight losses. Just a lot of losses. ANd my 8 wins weren’t 100% carries. A number of them I was probably the carry. But I definitely play worse as a power scrapper than a dh meditrapper.

Now, I am not saying the MM is perfect. I actually think it has a lot of problems. The range that it pulls from is way too large. Silver or low gold should never play with plat. There is also the issue of how you can reach one rank as one class then play a different class that you might be worse at in the same class. And the issue that the legendary backpack achievement forces you to do so.

Personally, I think most of this would be fine if the MM didn’t pull from such extremes. But your claim that the MM is actually targeting players in an attempt to bring down their ranks specifically is just tin foil crazy.

For the record, I went on multiple win streaks over the weekend. Some were quality matches, some it seemed like it was against a team with 1-2 bots (at least so went claims in chat). There are problems in spvp, nefariously evil match making is not one of them.

Faux Play.6104:

When you get an Elementals that keeps leaving contested node fights to go get the beast on forest and loses it to a p/p thief every time it is hard not to get upset. I think what is contributing to people’s anger is two things:

• Teams have too big of an MMR spread on them
• Reset at the start of the season + new players from WvW/PvE have introduces quite a few newer players that aren’t as experienced at the sPvP format.
• The game format is pretty complicated without any good instructions for how to play it properly. e.g. The mechanics page on the wiki doesn’t even tell you how long it takes to decap a point to neutral and how long it takes to cap it from neutral.

The MMR spread is by far the biggest issue I think. I mean, lets say I am brand new to pvp because all I do is solo pve map completions or something. Fine. I decide its time to pvp and I go on metabattle and find a build and off I go to pvp. Get to 20 and start my ranked placement.

This is all fine. Nothing wrong with new players and ranked placement is meant to be done so you can be placed. But if I am a lower tier player I should be landing in bronze or silver at most. Instead, you might be landing higher if you get lucky and get carried. Or maybe you land in silver where you belong. But then when you queue up you get matched with golds. Maybe even platinum. Now you are dragging down your own team while being forced to play against people with a lot more experience and/or skill.

I would like to see a lot less range to matchmaking. It seems like Anet is going for as short queue times as possible, which I get. Long queue times hurts pvp and is frustrating. But I would much rather longer queue times than get matched with or against players significantly better or worse than me.

Wonder if a possible solution is to cap the range up until 5min-10min or something (most of my queues are 2-3min). At 5min-10min it expands and it gives a message telling you so. You can choose to drop and requeue to start it over or keep queued and hope for the best. Obviously, this would extend queue times, but it might also improve the experience for players and bring back or in more players. Especially since you can queue while doing other things.

Exedore.6320:

Omcrazy.4756:

Premades have been rolling PuGs in pvp since MMOs had pvp.

And in how many of those games were the teams matched based on rating? Guessing next to none. And in that case, the pre-made groups doing PvP are generally going to be better players as well.

Voice comm is a significant advantage over pinging a mini map and frantically typing something in chat in the middle of the match which may or may not be seen in the middle of a fight.

But this assumes you or another member of the team know what to call out. Again, you’re trying to substitute better individual skill and knowledge as an aspect of a team.

Being able to build a balanced team knowing what everyone can play is another advantage (although less significant). But knowing what your teammates are capable of? Huge. Knowing who can win their 1v1s or who you can trust to decap and +1 mid instead of sit on far and camp it is a huge advantage. I don’t believe for a second you don’t recognize this.

Again, you’re assuming highly skilled players who can recognize this and adjust.

What’s funny is its almost completely guaranteed that the only reason you are so adamant about allowing 5-man teams is because you recognize the advantage and you want that advantage.

Nope, but thanks for adding another excuse to the list.

I want to see ranked be 1-5 players for the following reasons:

• I like to play with my friends (note the plural)
• Team-based gameplay (revives, focus fire, etc) is more fun
• Less toxicity.

Higher tier pvp isn’t the only place that would be affected. This would affect all tiers, and yes, the peasants at the bottom tiers matter too. I noticed how you conveniently ignored my comment regarding bots and farmers. Because without a doubt PuGs would get all of them since neither are likely to bring a premade to bot or farm. Not to mention all the lower tiered players would get pulled into the PuG side because the premade side is full and the MM searches too wide.

Your team-based gameplay comment just points to how premades are more effective than PuGs from solo or duo Q. You think you have this amazing point that “if they are good they would be playing like a team” but communication is one of the biggest advantages to playing like a team. I get downed in a corner while my two teammates nearby are fighting which do you think is likely to result in a revive faster? Me saying “down” or me waiting silently for them to notice or possibly typing in a chat box and hoping they see that while fighting? If my team sees home getting capped by an unknown number of assailants, which do you think is more effective? Me seeing its just one thief that my guard can handle 1v1 so calling it and letting my teammates go elsewhere? Or letting my team come and see for themselves and deciding whether or not they want to join (likely joining unnecessarily).

Your comment about me assuming the players will know enough to know to call out… not sure that makes any sense at all. That’s not some skill that’s clicking a push-to-talk button and speaking. Its communication. Something a premade has better access to over voice comms. If you take the same mediocre team, the team with access to voice comms and who have played together in the past as a team is much more likely to call out than the team of complete strangers who would be forced to ping the mini map or type in chat. This is common sense. You know this. You are just ignoring it to try and push your point.

Your reasons for wanting it are completely valid. Totally reasonable to want access to 5-man ranked so you can play with friends and enjoy pvp with better team-based tactics and communication and to avoid toxic players or bots or pip farmers. But you saying its fair to soloQ or duoQ is just dishonest. You are literally being dishonest to try and push an agenda.

I think we have a couple issues honestly.

1 – Range of matchmaking forcing players that are low gold (maybe even high silver?) into matches with Plats. Sucks for both their plat teammates and the low ranked players that want to face someone closer to their own skill level.

Possible solution? – Cap on range of matchmaking or at least extending the time before it widens.

2 – one rank for all classes. Top tier players are expected to be able to fill multiple roles so you can’t really separate them. But as an example, I am much better as a DH meditrapper than I am as a power scrapper. So when I play scrapper I probably belong in S2 or S3. When I play DH Meditrapper I probably belong in G2. You can say “well, only bring your best to ranked” except for….

Possible solution? – No clue. Each class has its own rank that you queue at but you can switch to a different class if it is within the allowed range?

3 – Legendary backpack achievement basically forces you to play multiple classes, and a reasonably significant amount. Especially since later tiers of the achievement are locked behind completing all 11 of each setting. So I can’t get all my “rank points” or “top stats” or whatever until I’ve gotten my multiple profession achievements. I would love to be able to spend this season as DH meditrapper and then spend next season as an engineer or ranger or whatever, but if I do that then I have to wait months just to unlock

Possible solution? – Don’t force me to complete all 11 tier 1 achievements before I can start working on the later tiers (some let you, some don’t).

Theoretically, the problem of players bringing trash builds and therefore playing like trash shouldn’t be much of an issue because they likely won’t actually be any good so should be ranked low enough that it won’t bother the meta players. Except we have the above three points causing issues and bringing those players in.

Personally, I don’t agree with the mentality that you have to follow the meta. Yes, the meta is meta for a reason, but you can be competitive with a different build or otherwise you wouldn’t be ranked up there. If you are good enough to play in plat with a non-meta build then you are good enough to play in plat. Maybe you are holding yourself back from being Legendary by not play meta (maybe) but the plat players you are with should have no cause for complaint.

Exedore.6320:

Nope. It’s an excuse.

Except for the very top tier of players who actually coordinate skill use and preemptively arrange res and cleave, there is fundamentally no different between a full team queue and group of solo players. Here’s the common list of excuses and counter-arguments:

• The team queue may plan their build roster, but the solo players have over a minute to coordinate swaps. If you want to be good at PvP, you need to be able to play a few roles.
• The team queue may have voice comm, but if they don’t use it to coordinate burst, res, or cleave, then it’s not really offering a significant advantage.
• The team queue may employ team tactics rather than “solo queue mentality”. But that’s the solo queue players’ fault for subconsciously avoiding teamwork. In a team-based game, team-based tactics should reflect increased rating.
• Team queue gives top players an easy way to get to the top. They’re on top now; nothing changed.
• Team queues can inflate the rating of lesser players. This is only true to an extent. Except for a group of top players, it’s difficult to be able to carry someone significantly worse, and the top players are penalized heavily on losses. If the elevated lesser player goes off on their own or with a less able group, they’ll drop quickly to their proper placement.

So ya, try some more. I’ll be happy to refute them.

Premades have been rolling PuGs in pvp since MMOs had pvp. The fact that you are trying to claim they are on equal footing just shows you to be disingenuous. Is it a 100% guaranteed win? No, obviously. But it is a significant advantage, especially considering the current bot problem and weird matchmaking. Bots and players just farming points without caring about wins or improving would always end up on the PuG teams. The only time there would be competition would be against another team of 4 or 5, maybe 3 if the team got lucky to get 2 decent solos or a duo.

Voice comm is a significant advantage over pinging a mini map and frantically typing something in chat in the middle of the match which may or may not be seen in the middle of a fight. Being able to build a balanced team knowing what everyone can play is another advantage (although less significant). But knowing what your teammates are capable of? Huge. Knowing who can win their 1v1s or who you can trust to decap and +1 mid instead of sit on far and camp it is a huge advantage. I don’t believe for a second you don’t recognize this.

What’s funny is its almost completely guaranteed that the only reason you are so adamant about allowing 5-man teams is because you recognize the advantage and you want that advantage.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a separation of solo Q (maybe including duo) and team (3-5). But to say there is no significant difference? You are just spouting trash to try and get what you want. Have you thought about a career in politics?

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Let’s just see how you feel after you’ve experienced your first mandatory 20 game lose streak. You’ve been playing almost a month now, it’ll happen soon.

I’ll report back if it does. I’ve already had a streak where I lost something like 15 out of 20, but I am well aware I played poorly in many of those losses. It was followed by an 8 game win streak in which I played as a scrapper and not a very good one for about half of them but was lucky enough to get carried.

Godfather.9058:

It sounds like you are quite high rank. I am not. Didn’t even reach rank 20 to play competitive mode. This is the situation down here.

Well, honestly, not high at all, just gold 1 which is probably slightly below average overall. I didn’t experience many (any?) AFKers myself when I would join unranked play but I haven’t played since the pvp season started so it could be during the season it happens more in unranked. Other people have complained about AFKers in ranked as well but it often seems to happen after the AFKer has been “called out” for being bad, so I suspect it is simply trolling in response to being flamed.

If you have people afking out of the blue for no reason then that is another thing entirely.

Tea.2740:

Used a 80 boost on a guardian and Idk where to start lol. Is the soldier gear given to me good enough or should i swap it out for some other stat? Which brings me to the typical question of how to build. I’ll be mostly doing pve things as I hav eyet to complete HoT and living stories 2/3. Also which weapons are best for soloing vs team things lik wvw or fractal/raids? Thanks

Soldier gear is good enough for HoT solo pve. Check out Saiyan’s zeal sybolic build (basically metabattle’s symbolic build with zeal instead of honor with sword/shield and scepter/focus) or the more meta dragonhunter build for conquest/wvw roaming to start. Those give good survivability while still maintaining good damage output.

I definitely agree that if you win or lose your team’s overall or average rank should be taken into account. And close matches should count less or more than lopsided ones.

I also suspect the MM pulls too widely too quickly in an effort to get short queue times which results in teams made of fairly varied ranks. I’ve seen some suggest there are good lists and bad lists where lopsided teams happen more frequently, and that is just tinfoil nonsense. But I definitely think its possible to see someone in plat get paired with a gold while the other team gets a legend, etc.

But that match making should even out over the long run. Statistically, streaks are going to happen. Both win streaks and loss streaks.

From my personal experience, I got placed in G3 and those 10 games I looked like I was a true beast. Winning every 1v1, lopsided wins or close wins with me basically carrying. Then I started playing in G3. Yeah, definitely out skilled, I did not belong.

I landed in G3 on a ride of somewhat lucky matchups. Then got kicked out of it due to both me being ranked too high and some bad luck matchups. Since I have basically kept it at .500.

Really, only the top 250 should be expecting to have higher than a .500 win rate because they are basically forced to play against people of lower skill (because there are fewer of higher or equal skill to play against). In general a ranking system should eventually stabilize to where you are competing at your rank. For me, that’s right in the middle of G1. I sometimes rise or fall on the back of streaks but, in general, it evens out to .500.

People seem to think that they should have a win rate over .500. But that isn’t how ranked competitive play works, in any game. Being above .500 likely means you were ranked a bit low or are just riding a lucky streak. Being below .500 likely means the opposite.

@Trevor Boyer

Your entire rant reads like an elitist that thinks because they’ve been playing the same game for x number of years that means only their opinion is valid. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that you are one of the many many toxic players who verbally assaults teammates then wonders why they aren’t winning.

You are right that I’ve only been pvping in GW2 for a month or two now. I actually played a decent amount in year one so I am not exactly a new player, but I am relatively new to GW2 pvp and especially playing Guard. But I’ve been pvping in one form or another for a few decades now, and at the end of the day the behavior I see in GW2 pvp is much like similar behavior I see in any other pvp game. Namely, bad communication leading to losses. Toxic behavior leading to losses. Players who lose blaming outside influences and if it happens enough assuming there is something targeting them specifically because…. who knows. Unlucky I guess.

I think you grossly underestimate the number of players that will continue pushing themselves in a loss streak. “Can’t end on a loss” is a mentality I’ve seen a lot of people have. My comment to take a break was not meant to be condescending. I typically play in 5-15 game streaks as my free time allows. I will often see the same people play match after match and they get more and more aggressive with each successive loss. They start playing worse and then they start flaming their team worse. Then they come on forums and rant.

Not a lie about lack of AFKers and I seriously doubt the MM is advanced enough to say “Hey, that Omcrazy, we like him, lets not match him with AFKers.” But one thing I don’t do? Flame my team. How many times have you seen this scenario:

Player A is horrible and making you lose the game
Player B tells him he needs to L2P and is costing us the game
Player A tells his team he doesn’t care about winning and AFKs or trolls the rest of the match.

Yeah, every pvp game I’ve ever played I’ve seen something like this happen. GW2 isn’t unique. I have no proof but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest that someone who rants on the forums about how unfair the spvp is and how the system is intentionally bringing their rank down will also likely be someone who flames teammates for every perceived mistake. Toxic players are much more likely to experience people throwing matches or AFKing.

Now, it could very well be that MM is spreading itself too far in an effort to shorten queue times. So your plat players are getting matched vs legends and golds. I seriously doubt there is some nefarious AI behind it that is targeting specific players to keep their rank from climbing too much. And yes, posts have 100% been making this accusation, yours as well, you even claimed I must be on some kind of “good list” which is a ridiculous statement. Honestly, that’s tin foil trash and if you honestly believe that I don’t know how you haven’t quit support a game like that. They would invest in that sort of system for a game mode half these forums claim they don’t care about? Its just crazy.

But, you could certainly be right about poor match making. The solution is to extend queue times before it opens up the search and to even cap how much rank distribution they will allow. But that will have the downside of dramatically increasing queue times.

And honestly, as a player with thousands of hours of experience, how much effort do you put into trying to be a leader for your team? 150+ matches and less than 10% have had teammates make helpful suggestions about tactics or strategy. The vast majority of suggestions I do see are filled with vitriol. That makes players less inclined to listen to you. You have been playing since year 1 and have thousands of hours in spvp. Are you communicating with your team and trying to direct the team as a more experienced player? Or are you just assuming everyone must know everything and if they don’t its the MM out to get you again?

This post got interrupted and I’ve lost track of my points so I’ll just end it there. I am not trying to say you are a bad player. I am not trying to say I know everything there is about GW2 pvp. But I have enough experience in pvp in general and some points remain constant across all team based pvp games. GW2 seems to have a lot less quality communication than I see in most.

Roarshack.4902:

Omcrazy.4756:

Roarshack.4902:

Omcrazy.4756:

lighter.2708:

Roarshack.4902:

I have had the exact same experience over the last two days. I was 1663 and ive dropped almost a hundred points due to being matched with low rank players. I have to win two for ever loss.

Sly.9518:

The loss and gain of rating solely based on your personal rating vs the Average rating of the opposing team.

if it is true, you are teamed with low rating people and your team gets dominated because overall out skilled and yet you are still losing more then 15 points each match, seems wrong to me

I don’t disagree with the idea of taking the entire team’s average into account when determining how many points are gained or lost. But I can’t say I know how they do it one way or another.

I will say one thing though, be careful just assuming your losses are due to being matched with lower ranked players. Yes, some might be. But why assume its only your team? Who is to say your wins haven’t been against teams with lower ranked players? Whose to say your losses where you have a low skill player the enemy team doesn’t also and they just did a better job hiding that fact?

Arrogant to assume your successes are due to your own prowess but your losses are due to something outside your control.

My success is due to working with team who know what to do vs losing with team with no sense of how to win or work together.

Suggestion: If your team doesn’t know what tactics to do to handle the match maybe try to explain using reasonable language. Be a leader. And early in the match when there is still a chance to turn things around.

And maybe your success is due to your enemy being a team with no sense of how to win or work together and your losses are due to an enemy team that know what to do. That’s my point. Always assuming your wins are entirely due to your efforts or your teams is arrogant. Just as often as you are getting garbage teammates your opponents are likely as well.

Lord knows when I see the enemy trickling into mid one at a time vs 3 of us I don’t think my win is because I am superman.

All your doing is discrediting my ability as a player. I know what good players look like and bad players. No amount of direction help if your team doesnt know how to rotate or what points to ignore, or simply not looking at their map

Not trying to discredit your play itself. Although I do get tired of the mentality that anything good is because you did good and anything bad is because somehow the world has it out for you. Do you not see how that’s a little egotistical?

But you are wrong about giving direction not helping. If you can do it in a constructive way it should help more often than not. No, it won’t make that thief suddenly start winning his 1v1s or that squishy guard stop exploding at mid. But it might help if you suggest the thief runs away when he sees someone bunkering on the point. He might think he is helping by occupying the enemy (I’ve seen people say this) when he is actually just feeding them.

I am not saying that trying to give direction will suddenly start winning every match. But 90% of the matches I play the most communication you see is “thief home rest mid” at the beginning of a match and then flame and toxicity if the game goes poorly. In 150+ matches this season I cannot think of a single time where someone has suggested something without having to add something insulting to it. Most of the time its just silence.

CrashTheGrey.1492:

Alatar.7364:

I have never addressed or responded to posts about how Anet targets people to bring them down, because when someone actually thinks/ believes that, then there is absolutely no chance to reason with such person.

I completely agree with the Scenarios and Opinions that you have stated, but truth is that this is a purely Human factor and it is never ever going to change because people are of many personalities and characters, even the most curious thoughts are to be found amongst us.
Funny is that I have seen tons of posts where OP/ people actually blamed Anet for toxic people as well. This alone is a proof that anything is possible with human mind, thus there will forever be toxic people same as people willing to help out.

Toxic people exist in any competitive game in large amounts…. However.

ArenaNets multiple failures to properly balance and support PvP content has arrived at a much smaller pool of players to be matched with. Match quality has suffered because of this smaller pool of players and this does plenty to really bring out the toxicity.

ArenaNet’s power creeping, the ESL drop… Consistently this company has caused people to discount PvP as an absolute joke. It doesn’t stand up to other titles. In addition to simple toxicity, there is a giant sense of apathy.

I’ve seen this mentioned before. That GW2’s pvp doesn’t match up well against other similar games. I’ve played a lot of MMOs over the years What pvp is actually better? I’ve seen mention of some being better mechanically like maybe BDO (never played) but from what I’ve heard its extremely p2w so…

Partially just asking so I have some ideas for what MMOs to check out with friends. We tend to pvp exclusively.

From my perspective GW2 is pretty reasonably balanced and has a pretty high skill ceiling. Yes, top top ranked teams might gravitate to certain classes more than others. That’s how any game goes with different classes, its impossible to perfectly balance everything. But it seems a lot better than other popular MMOs I’ve played like FF14 and WoW. Most classes are fairly well represented (except Revenant).

Roarshack.4902:

Omcrazy.4756:

lighter.2708:

Roarshack.4902:

I have had the exact same experience over the last two days. I was 1663 and ive dropped almost a hundred points due to being matched with low rank players. I have to win two for ever loss.

Sly.9518:

The loss and gain of rating solely based on your personal rating vs the Average rating of the opposing team.

if it is true, you are teamed with low rating people and your team gets dominated because overall out skilled and yet you are still losing more then 15 points each match, seems wrong to me

I don’t disagree with the idea of taking the entire team’s average into account when determining how many points are gained or lost. But I can’t say I know how they do it one way or another.

I will say one thing though, be careful just assuming your losses are due to being matched with lower ranked players. Yes, some might be. But why assume its only your team? Who is to say your wins haven’t been against teams with lower ranked players? Whose to say your losses where you have a low skill player the enemy team doesn’t also and they just did a better job hiding that fact?

Arrogant to assume your successes are due to your own prowess but your losses are due to something outside your control.

My success is due to working with team who know what to do vs losing with team with no sense of how to win or work together.

Suggestion: If your team doesn’t know what tactics to do to handle the match maybe try to explain using reasonable language. Be a leader. And early in the match when there is still a chance to turn things around.

And maybe your success is due to your enemy being a team with no sense of how to win or work together and your losses are due to an enemy team that know what to do. That’s my point. Always assuming your wins are entirely due to your efforts or your teams is arrogant. Just as often as you are getting garbage teammates your opponents are likely as well.

Lord knows when I see the enemy trickling into mid one at a time vs 3 of us I don’t think my win is because I am superman.

lighter.2708:

Roarshack.4902:

I have had the exact same experience over the last two days. I was 1663 and ive dropped almost a hundred points due to being matched with low rank players. I have to win two for ever loss.

Sly.9518:

The loss and gain of rating solely based on your personal rating vs the Average rating of the opposing team.

if it is true, you are teamed with low rating people and your team gets dominated because overall out skilled and yet you are still losing more then 15 points each match, seems wrong to me

I don’t disagree with the idea of taking the entire team’s average into account when determining how many points are gained or lost. But I can’t say I know how they do it one way or another.

I will say one thing though, be careful just assuming your losses are due to being matched with lower ranked players. Yes, some might be. But why assume its only your team? Who is to say your wins haven’t been against teams with lower ranked players? Whose to say your losses where you have a low skill player the enemy team doesn’t also and they just did a better job hiding that fact?

Arrogant to assume your successes are due to your own prowess but your losses are due to something outside your control.

Shirlias.8104:

Not Even close to lol imho :d

I’ll agree. LoL is probably the worst ever (DotA 2 likely no better but I don’t play) and they’ve done a lot to try and make it better. They get pretty aggressive with punishments.

But outside that MOBA genre with matches that can be decided within 10 minutes but take 45 to complete I find the toxicity in GW2 is pretty up there.

Most of the time I don’t see even an attempt at correctly tactics before the flaming starts. I mean, its one thing if someone tries to suggest different tactics and is met with defensiveness and aggression. But the vast majority of time I see someone suggest a teammate do something different the “suggestion” is filled with “noob” and “uninstall” and “idiot” etc etc. Like, come on.

150 matches this season and I’ve yet to see more than 1 or 2 situations where this has happened.

Yes, players feed the opposing teams but sometimes its just because they aren’t very good but think they are. I’ve played with one burn guard in particular that does nothing but rush mid, burst a lot of damage, then gets downed and stomped which revives the one guy he managed to burst down. Over and over. Then flames teammates for not being as good as him.

Doesn’t mean he is purposefully feeding. Just means he is bad and ignorant. Can’t report someone for being bad.

How many of these AFKers you so frequently get do so after they’ve been flamed by their teammates for not being good? Most pvp games I’ve played that has people purposefully troll their own team it is almost always because they got flamed by their own teammates for mistakes or poor play.

lighter.2708:

Omcrazy.4756:

Out of curiosity, how do you know your teammates are 1500? .

because i asked nicely and they told me?

You do this for all your teammates? When do you do this? Before the match? Whisper after the match?

I’m just wondering because so many posts complaining about the MM like this but are they really taking a poll every match? Or is it like one or two particularly bad players they are asking then blaming all their losses on MM?

Saltiness and Toxicity.

This seems like a huge problem in spvp. I browse through these forums and I see post after post accusing Anet of having some nefarious matchmaking conspiracy that is targeting specific players to force their rating down. How does this not sound insane to anyone else? This is tinfoil cap at its finest.

I see posts talking about how horrible of a problem AFKers are. In 150+ matches this season I haven’t seen more than 1. That 1? He got flamed by some toxic teammate so he quit. Do I condone that? No. But every time I see people posting screenshots of how someone Akitten on their team it seems to include somewhere that they got “called out” which usually means verbally abused because they aren’t playing at a level their teammates believe they should. Toxicity making a problem worse? Go figure.

I also find about half my matches, win or lose, where people just freak out over every perceived mistake.

Why are there 3 at home? Flame teammates. Nevermind that there were 3 defending home because there were 3 attacking home and the alternative was to give them an easy kill and cap. Player rushes mid 2v1 or 3v1 and manages to down a player, then complains that his teammates can’t stomp or “where was everyone” because he couldn’t be bothered to actually hold back and regroup. We could be ahead by 150 points and one teammate gets ganked by a thief and a stealthed engi and someone is bound to blow up over it. Even when the criticism is fair its stated in an unnecassarily rude and off-putting manner. Your thief keeps dying 1v1 on far and you want to suggest he rotates elsewhere and avoids those 1v1s? Suggest it politely, or at least calmly. Don’t call him a noob and tell him to uninstall and why do you keep dying 1v1.

I’ve played a lot of different types of pvp games in my time. GW2 has been one of the worst as far as toxicity goes. Folks that get like this over a video game need to sit back and reassess their priorities. Maybe go take a break.

I don’t understand how people come to the conclusion that MM is purposefully stacking teams. What are you basing this on? Because you lose?

150+ matches this season so far. Yet to get more than 1 AFKer or idler on my team. Most of the time I see people complain about AFKers it turns out that person was getting flamed for being bad. In my experience with ANY pvp game the quickest way to get someone to troll you or stop caring is to flame them. Be careful what you ask for about pvp police, as far as I can tell Anet does very little to punish toxic players but maybe they’ll start. I would love it if something actually happened when I report a player for being toxic.

Stacked MM in this game is not a problem, as far as I can tell. I’ve gone on win streaks and loss streaks and sit right around a total .500 win/loss rate (maybe a little lower but I had a really bad series of games earlier in the season, my fault mostly).

What is a problem in spvp is saltiness and toxicity. People see one mistake and then flame that person into the ground all game, ruining team cohesiveness and making that player less motivated to really try all that hard.

Out of curiosity, how do you know your teammates are 1500? Seems like you are seeing this happen repeatedly so I have to assume there is some way to determine your teammates’ rating. Or are you just assuming their rating because you feel like they are playing at an inferior level?

I am actually under the impression that you lose more rating when your average is higher than the enemy. So if your teammates are that much lower than you then it should be dragging your average down and you shouldn’t be losing as much, unless the opponent has a similar rating or is even lower.

Honestly, I like having a mix of big and small maps, changes things up. I am a Guardian so I lack mobility in general. I partially make up for that with a rune of the lynx. My favorite map is Coliseum.

As far as team composition goes, I almost always have someone with a decent amount of mobility on my team. Usually a thief, sometimes a mesmer, occasionally the fastest is a ranger. But every team in the past 150 or so I’ve played this season has had one of the three on it. Team comp isn’t always great (sigh 2 thieves?) but most of the time it can be worked around with tactics and communication (non-toxic preferably).

Seems like tactics and communication are the biggest problem I deal with. People decide they are going to do something no matter what (the Guard who always rushes mid no matter how many are there and where his teammates are, the warrior who goes to cap home at the start when we have a thief because he is tired of dying mid, the mesmer who rushes far repeatedly only to feed points because she can’t win the 1v1 vs the bunker Guard and then gets +1ed instead of rotating). People see mistakes and instead of trying to lead the team they just flame the team for not being good enough.

Streaks can be caused by a number of things.

For one, you’ll often play multiple matches in a row. This often means you are going to have some of the same players in multiple matches in a row (people end and immediately requeue often as not). If you happen to have a bad team (whether composition or bad players or whatever) once then you can get it again, or at least part of it.

Second, multiple losses leads to frustration which leads to mistakes. You could very well be playing worse on loss #5 than you were on loss #2. You are getting frustrated and desperate and starting to make mistakes. Or getting toxic to your teammates and now your teammates are more likely to play poorly or stop caring. I know I have NEVER played better due to toxic comments. I never quit over them but they never help, either.

Combine those two and you have a recipe for loss streaks.

And you really might just be ranked too high to start. I got placed into G3, I do not belong in G3. I was clearly playing against players better than I. I know nobody likes to think this is the case, and its not always obvious. But just as often as you are getting horrible teammates dragging you down you are probably getting good teammates holding you up. Its arrogant as anything to blame your win streaks on your own abilities but loss streaks on some nefarious matchmaking conspiracy.

And sometimes streaks just happen. Chance and randomness do not follow specific rules for how often they occur. While it isn’t probable that you will just get unlucky and get a 10 loss streak it is certainly possible. Especially if we assume the more losses you get more likely you are to continue getting losses due to the above points.

Best I can offer is if you find yourself in the middle of a loss streak then go take a break. Or play a couple rounds on unranked. Gives it time for the matchmaking to mix up a little more and maybe for you to cool off and get a bit more level headed.

Can’t stand Forest or Foefire. It actually offends me that Foefire is listed as my “favorite” map when I never vote for it . I hate it’s mid and how ranger friendly it is (I know, l2p, blah blah, still hate it).

That being said, I would rather play a map I don’t like as much then deal with longer queue times because everyone has different maps blacklisted.

bladezero.9470:

Ralkuth.1456:

Ranked and Unranked both count as “rated” matches so if you just want to fish for a daily win you can queue Unranked with a premade. It’s a mad world out there.

Ranked has pips for the reward boxes, and although not always, the matches tend to be more balanced with similarly skilled players, and thus some would prefer it and find it fun.

Not if the player is farming the 3 Ranked daily matches required for The Ascension. This absoultely requires ranked.

Yes, but that wasn’t what this post was about. It was specifically about the daily. You can 100% get the daily through unranked matches.

Just adding my 2 cents that 2 queue max is definitely better than the alternative. I could see creating a 5v5 specific ranked mode but that creates its own problems (further dividing the playerbase). Honestly, a good duo is often enough to swing a match, if you are complaining about not being able to carry a team solo why don’t you bring a buddy? And if you are still getting wrecked with a buddy then the problem might not be your random teammates…

Nobody wants to solo queue against 4 and 5 man premades. Just isn’t fun. They have the automated tournaments for 5 team premades. I wouldn’t disagree with making them happen more often and more rewarding (maybe, I haven’t done so can’t judge).

Same happened to me. I realized it was because I got placed too high. Likely G3 was a bit higher than you should have been placed is all.

I made adjustments, got better, managed to stop the massive 75% loss rate and now instead of G3 I hover around the G1/G2 area with about a .500 win/loss rate. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what you should be if you are in the correct rank.

Sometimes a loss can’t be helped. But the times you get a horrible team comp or matched with horrible players should even out with the times your opponents get horrible team cops or horrible players. Its just how random goes.

I also suggest promoting a healthy team environment by avoiding toxic language when talking to teammates, even if they are doing something you think they shouldnt. Make suggestions, not demands. Be polite, not insulting.

And just realize that sometimes luck happens in streaks.

That’s reasonable, but my experience as a solo Q is its still about 50/50. I just wouldn’t expect too many people will want to do unranked pvp right now.

I would take it as an opportunity to learn and improve. Most Ele I see in ranked are pretty tough to take down. Check out metabattle builds and videos and builds in the forum, etc. Not to say its your fault you are getting rolled, sometimes bad matches happen and there is nothing you can do about it. Especially in unranked where the skill levels can be so variable.

But I wouldn’t say pvp sucks because you can’t find a group. I just think people are less likely to want to sit in the LFG tool just so they can build a PUG (with randoms they don’t know anything about) and then join an unranked match (in the middle of ranked season) with that PUG. If you do find people who are willing to spend the time sitting in LFG to find a group, they are likely to be more picky about who they let join. Not sure why they would autokick an elementalist, but maybe that was just that one time and they kicked you for other reasons (ie, had a friend logging in to join or

Also, another thought. After an unranked match you have an opportunity to join up and queue with teammates (left side of the score screen). If you find yourself with a decent team or a team you want to play more with, suggest they group up at the end. Now you’ve got yourself a little premade.

Axl.8924:

I made a group for unranked in the lfg section and there was nobody, and reason was because i was told that i shouldn’t be calling out in map asking for group because i won’t find any or it will be for ranked.I actually did find one once and i said specifically for my druid on non ranked match and it was a thief for ranked.Granted:I had fun.

Solo Q or look for an spvp guild to play with (or friends). I don’t believe the LFG tool is used very much for spvp unranked matches. A) Ranked season is currently going on so serious pvpers are typically playing ranked (solo or duo only) and there is already matchmaking so why make a point of bringing an LFG tool built PUG? You’ll get a PUG just by queuing.

If you don’t have people to partner with just soloQ, that’s what a lot of people do. It won’t really hurt you in unranked. You’ll occasionally get wrecked by a 4 person party or something but more often than not you will only see duos or trios at most, and 50% chance they are on your team.

I’ve literally never been vote kicked or seen it done, didn’t even know it was possible until this post. This leads me to wonder about the answer to my next paragraph.

True, people are fairly unresponsive, but… I still typically see some responses to a hello. Maybe not the entire team, but 1 or 2. Only exception is when the person is being obnoxious. Are you being obnoxious? Are you really just saying hi or are you saying something annoying like “hi guys, please don’t suck like my last team” because thats a quick way to get ignored.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

aaaaaand another one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/My-Season-Experience/first#post6738557

Boy this sure seems to be happening to a lot of people. I mean could you even lose 10 in a row if you tried? Even if you AFK’d every match, you’d get a couple matches out of 10 where your team was able to 4v5.

I find this phenomena pretty odd.

I’ve gone on lengthy loss streaks, I’ve gone on lengthy win streaks. I find it amusing that everyone complaining about MM seems to assume their win streaks or high win percentages are due to their own person skill while their loss streaks are the MM out to get them. Pretty arrogant if you ask me.

Personally, I find that the ones complaining about bad MM and their teammates are often the most toxic players on a team. Had a teammate last night who had legitimate complaints. Warrior kept camping home and dying to their thief, our thief wasn’t rotating sides. But what is his response? Immediate toxicity and rage. All while being a glass burn guard who kept suiciding mid vs 2 or 3. So naturally the team as a whole starts doing worse after he starts ranting, toxicity always hurts the team. I’ve seen games with 150+ point swings often enough, but I’ve never seen a swing when the teammates start getting toxic. Fivefinger Deathpunch I hope you read this and know that you are a terrible teammate, I don’t care if you got top stat for damage.

If you think you legitimately know what you are talking about when it comes to strategy why don’t you actually try explaining. And when you explain don’t be a complete kitten about it. Its not all that hard to reach gold without knowing the proper rotating techniques on conquest.

And keep in mind some players are better than others. Don’t assume everyone on your team can win a 1v1 against anyone on their team. Plan that they’ll need a +1 until proven otherwise.

Finally, what you think you see is not always what happens. I’ve been in matches where we’ve gotten yelled at for having 3 “camping home” yet that entire time we were fighting for the point. Guy accuses us of needing 3v1 because that’s what he sees when we are actually leaving the point while stomping the last foe. No, idiot, we’ve already killed the 1 or 2 others, the 1 you see on the mini map is just the final one left alive.

Rhaegar.5120:

what traits would you chose for DH without LB?

Probably 111, at least for pvp with no bow.

Piercing Light = more traps and slow, great for pvp.
Hunter’s Determination = solid anti-CC
Hunter’s Fortification = important condi cleansing and damage reduction

I would probably got 123 for solo pve, assuming no bow.

Hit up metabattle for fractal/raid guides.

EDIT: This all being said, I still like to use LB. Just can’t camp it. My issue with Scepter is you really need to get in close for your hits to actually land on a moving target. So close you might as well be melee. Its good, I’ve used it a lot, but I am not a fan of it at range. Its more just something you use while waiting for your swap to come off CD.

LB I can often get a few big hits in on people before they realize I’ve rolled up on them, maybe even dropping an LB5 if they are preoccupied. It either traps folks who are trying to stay on point, or it forces them off point and out of their own traps and wells and other mess. The trick is not to sit in LB forever. Your burst comes when you get in close. I love to roll up, LB2, LB5, LB4, LB2, swap to sword, Sword2 in close, ToF, Shield5, Sword3. Even if the combo doesn’t fully connect, if the enemy is focusing on your team that LB5 really messes up their day.

Never ever force an LB5 because you are a sitting duck. Only when you can safely get away with it. Also, kinda risky to swap back to LB when you are at range.

So, I’ve only recently gotten back to GW2 and have been mainly playing sPvP as its addicting as hell. Been running a zeal symbolic build (credit to Saiyan) and landed in Gold 2, worked my way up to Gold 3 and a couple wins out of Plat, and have lost something like 75% of my matches since, falling down to G1 and nearly S3.

Pretty sure its because I am bad. And in light of that I have been looking to see about improving my play. Mostly I am sure it is a L2P issue, but I am also questioning builds. After much perusing I’ve kind of fallen on the following three that seem popular and effective.

Burn Guard – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRAse7fnkICVDhlDBeDB8DhlGiKb+uv9Tu5L+n/aYXgAA-TZhAQBwY/hxUGwjHEAA8EA24JAAA

Meditrapper – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAseTn8cCVDhVdCedC8DhlGiSe4T+o/aYXgAIL+uv8D-TpR6gAz7P0UGY/IAQ/AAAOBA6HCAA

Zeal Symbolic – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRAse7dn8cCVDhVdCeDB8Dhl5BT++1/GgVNgFQA46e9DqBA-TZR6gANlBAODAVPAg59HyPIAAA

For my own performance, I typically top at least damage and one or two other stats.
That made me think I was playing well. But my concern with the zeal symbolic build is that while I may be outputting a lot of damage overall, its mostly slow and lacking in burst so players are healing through it.

Was wondering if anyone can give specific advice on which of these three you’d prefer and why. If you know of gameplay videos or gameplay tips that would be a huge help as well. Trying to get better but all the videos I find tend to be pretty old. And a lot of times they don’t even appear to be doing anything more impressive than what I do.

My modem doesn’t allow me to change my DNS servers but my PC does. Did not solve the problem.

I ended up getting a VPN (PIA) and testing that. Base ping went up (average 55 before now average 75) but the spiking has gone away.

Seems like ATT was sending me on a weird journey during prime hours (for my area) because the tracert seemed longer in the evening than during the day. VPN added a hop or two but thanks to some kind of tunnel actually cut down more so the total hops were less with the VPN.

Saiyan.1704:

Windows Defender for me already lists Guild Wars 2 as a green check mark. Are you saying there’s something else that we need to manually add?

If it shows in your allowed list then I would have to assume it is something else. Mine literally wasn’t showing in the list of allowed apps. But my windows defender must display differently than yours because I get no green check marks. Just a list of apps with an optional box next to them you can check and then two more on the other side for Private and Public (that I checked).

I assume you have tested the ping outside of GW2? My go-to is usually to open the command prompt and type “ping www.google.com -t” (without the quotation marks) and then I see if I end up with packet loss or latency spikes. If you see drops while pinging google then its likely your side. Refresh signal from the ISP might do the trick in that case.

Your server overload comment is interesting. I never thought about the possibility of one instance or another having a higher latency. Will have to keep an eye on that.

Also, for what its worth I am usually sitting in the 20ms range in other games. GW2 is always in the 50s or 60s (also fiber connection).

On another note. Not sure if it would cause lag or not but my CPU was hitting upwards of 90% utilization while running GW2, which was bizarre. I noticed I was often running an FPS of over 100. Setting the FPS cap to 60 has helped keep the CPU utilization lower.

Been getting almost constant lag spikes since the patch about a week ago. Ping anywhere from 250 up to 900 off and on throughout the night. I set my FPS to max at 60 thinking that may be the problem and it did seem to solve it for a night or two. But seems to have been coincidence because its been pretty bad for the last few nights.

GW2 is the only place I am spiking. Pinged google and stayed constantly in the lower 20s. Checked my ping in rocket league and diablo 3, all stable and low. If it were my side I would see the spikes in something other than GW2.

Honestly, this is unplayable which sucks because I was really looking forward to PoF. Glad I didn’t prepurchase because there is not chance I can play with this for any length of time.

EDIT: OK. Anyone having this lag spike issue needs to check their firewall and make sure its allowing the GW2 client. For some reason it wasn’t automatically included in the list of apps allowed.

Windows Defender (windows 10) – Open Windows Defender and click Firewall & Network Protection. Click Allow an app through firewall. Click Change settings and then Allow another app. Browse to the Guild Wars 2 folder and select Gw2-64 or whatever your GW2 client is named. I checked both private and public.

Did this tonight and played an entire spvp map without a single spike. I’ll follow up on this post if it starts happening again in the next few days.

It’s to the point where I can barely function in combat. But only seems to be the case in spvp (have not tried wvw lately). Will have to do some basics like power cycling the modem and really see if it’s happening elsewhere but it has been really frustrating.

Anyone else experiencing a ton of lag spikes in pvp since the patch? As far as I can tell it isn’t happening anywhere else but not really sure.

Ok, thank God I am not the only one. I couldn’t tell if I was just fat fingering and self interrupting.

Meditrapper and Symbolic builds seem to be the main meta builds. Meditrapper seems to be more burst damage, Symbolic is more bunker.

I’ve been running Saiyan’s zeal symbolic build for a little while and I like it a lot. Slightly less tanky and team support but more damage, especially with teammates.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/PvP-Symbolic-DH-Zealer-Build-Update/first#post6659425

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Dragonhunter_-_Symbolic

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Dragonhunter_-_Meditrapper

I dunno about all these complaints about Guard. Maybe its in a good spot, maybe not.

All I know is despite how bad I am at sPvP I can still win most of my 1v1s on a side point. Granted, I am only in silver because I just started. But it doesn’t feel weak at all from that perspective.

I’ve had a lot of success with Saiyan’s zeal symbolic build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/PvP-Symbolic-DH-Zealer-Build-Update/first#post6659425

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRAse7dn8cCVDhVdCeDB8Dhl5B76e9DqBy3v+3AsqBsACAA-TpR6gA5HEgqHAQTZg59HoPCAAnAAA

Replace DH with Virtues until you get it all unlocked. I am not some unstoppable god but I am able to solo champs pretty easily, rarely lose any health unless I am stupid and stand in the fire. Replace Purification with Litany and Test of Faith with Judge’s.

Meditrapper also works well.

EDIT: FYI I am decked out in basically all Power, Vitality, Toughness. What the insta-80 came with.

Honestly, I am surprised they are willing to nullify lost points for a D/C at all. Game starts off a little rocky there will 100% be people who decide to just d/c so they won’t lose rating. By making it less punishing if you lose via D/C you make it more likely to have false D/Cs as soon as someone perceives the game as being “lost”. And anyone who has played something competitive will have experienced people claiming a match is lost well before it really is, often in the opening 1/3 of the match.

“Thief didn’t cap home, GG” I am sure most have seen something similar. If that guy isn’t punished for D/Cing but is punished for playing through and losing then it isn’t hard to imagine him D/Cing and going to watch some tv for a bit. Preserving his rating.

I only played SWTOR pvp a few times so I won’t go at length about that. It didn’t strike me as anything special, tbh.

I did just come from WoW. I could literally solo 1v3 or 4 in a BG as a DH tank and just button mash. No thought needed, half the time I might not even know what was going on in my screen. Button mash and survive. If you are comparing WoW rated BGs then you should try comparing it to GW2 ranked sPvP with premades. Don’t compare rated to random soloQ or unranked.

WoW Arena was more interesting, but it mostly comes down to synchronized CC and bursting damage.

And you want to talk about broken? Go look at the leaderboards for WoW arena. Restro Sham, Resto Sham as far as the eye can see. I would guess they outnumber every other healing class combined by at least 2:1. There’s like 2 warlocks in the entire top 100. Is there even 1 Hunter? Most classes only have one specific build they can run in arena (even less build diversity than GW2) and be effective.

As for GW2. If every class is broken but has weaknesses then no class is broken… What do you want, every class plays exactly the same? Why have classes at all? Different classes having strengths and weaknesses but all having viable builds and important roles to fill sounds pretty balanced to me. And as far as I can tell most (all?) classes have multiple viable builds for different types of play. Its not about making “cheesy” builds, you just don’t know how to combine trait lines and weapon choices and sigil/amulets effectively to make your own build (neither do I, thats why I look at other builds and adjust for me).

I’ve been pvping in MMORPGs for a good 15 years. GW2 might not have the best pvp ever but its a cut above most.