Guild Wars 2

The matchmaking is because of the magic of MMO. You can achieve more with a good build than with sheer skill, thus some players who get into a right build and don’t have a reaction time of a potato, will take down their lesser brethren and get higher just because their builds kicked in at the right time to, let’s say, give an immunity or some sort of damage that is sick and pretty much "dragonhunter full trap noob stomp-level".
So as the matchmaking system is concerned, it seems like some of those players are gold or low plat level, so you get paired with them. Indeed, got the same level in numbers, but not in real experience. Thus they die easily to opponents who know what to do and this is how it mostly ends up. That’s why you won’t see many blowout matches in games such as counter-strike because you either know how to rotate and aim, or not. No hidden traits or build OPness will carry you, you have to do it yourself.

Due to HoT (and soon PoF) power creep, the balance of sPvP is really volatile as everyone tries to come up with the cheesiest build possible. By cheesiest I mean the one that has pretty much everything (mobility, sustain, damage etc...) at once. Back before HoT you either went with dps and land that burst well or died, now you can hit it and went into tons of immunities or run away to burst again after a bunch of seconds. As a healer you could only heal and kite instead of outsustain everything and kill something by the way. There was more planning to do instead of going in, blowing all the good stuff to make the enemy die, or take advantage of too frequent access to mobility/invisibility/immunity to safely run away/kite for days.
The matchmaking, although flawed, still tries its best. I am still not pleased with it, but I can’t do anything about it other than buying gems/xpacks and hope for devs to do something about it sooner or later.

Omcrazy.4756:

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.

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.

Don’t worry about it, in current state solo queue is a dice toss or as someone in another thread said "a switch" to win/loss streaks. For two weeks I couldn’t get out of gold 3, about 3-4 matches away from plat. Yesterday I just joined to get some more shards as usual and suddenly I got to win matches that didn’t really test my real abilities. It is because the first two matches were relatively balanced, but the rest of them were just straight out blowouts. I even managed to kill 2 players in the same time a few times in a row, that’s how bad they were. Now I am in plat after riding a win streak of about 8 matches, and again I got back to win-loss-win-loss-win kind of situation with lost matches being pretty much one-sided.
Anyway, if someone claims to get into 250 or lege on solo, and even if they beat you 1v1 it still doesn’t matter. There are too many components in a pvp match that can stand against you, or boost you to either lose or win. One person’s skill is pretty much 10% if it comes to solo que. In the end the real part where there are any traces of real skill and cooperation are automated tournaments, where you get to fight premade vs premade. This is where it counts the most in this game. Ranked is for pve players to farm legendary armour with ladderboard to boost pvp’ers egos.

I prefer marauder’s. Why? Because with retaliation you get at least 100% crit chance and nobody will evade auto-attack. However, with all these boons and sometimes with might stacking runes+sigils one AA hit from hammer is 3k hit. On point let’s add that with protection symbol slam and it’s a second mighty blow.
But yet, it is a one trick pony. It can even carry games sometimes due to it’s out of combat mobility (rune) and teleport mobility. Still, this build shines best when roaming and entering fights. If you find yourself in a situation where you are attacked first, it’s a little handicap. Of course ranged damage is a hard counter when you don’t have teleports and CC’s on you, and power necro with well also can get hard to beat as it forces you to be in melee range.
As for GS, perhaps I am not used to it that much, but it requires a good team or a bad enemy for it to work. I’ve found myself in many situations where my whirling wrath combo was interrupted even with stability (condi corrupt or steal) or just got into a blind wars situation. While with hammer it is a half a second burst that can even change the outcome of a team fight.

MachineManXX.9746:

Just to clarify, I always accept my responsibility for losses. I don’t think there are any conspiracies, even when losing 8 of 10. I usually follow a losing streak with a nice streak of 8 of 10 wins. I try to learn something from every game to try and make myself better.

I also know top stats do not mean much. As has been said, it’s easy and rather expected to get 1, 2 or 3 every game, even if not making a big positive impact on the outcome. I’ve also had games where I know I played well and made big contributions and had no top stats.

The game I posted the screen shot, I didn’t feel I played particularly well. I did what I could to try and win, but losing 500 - 136, things obviously aren’t working very well. I was very surprised at the end of the game to see I had all 6 top stats. It just pointed to me that I was probably rated much higher than the rest of my team and I felt bad that I wasn’t able to carry better.

It was interesting enough to me to take a screen shot. Then the next day I saw this post and my game was an exact fit to this topic. It doesn’t mean anything other than occasionally you will get a strange match-up for whatever reason.

No offense but that is kinda gullible way of thinking. The thing about those matches is not that they happen, because they take place in every game. The issue is that it happens way too often and it is too volatile and punishing to be taken as an amusement. If a hurricane blasts down your barn and you couldn’t do anything about, would you still think "I could have done something to prevent that"?
However, I understand the way of taking the responsibility. Today I had a handful of matches and I can tell that 2 matches that I lost today, were lost also due to some of my mistakes. But, I can easily tell that 6 or so of those matches were just basic roflstomps.
Of course I do not say that I am the greatest player in my team. I might be one of the two or three who are capable, but a deadweight is a deadweight that you can’t carry if your opponent is stacked. You might carry if the enemy has to carry to, but it won’t work the other way around. I had a very underwhelming experience in one match today. Both teams spread out to every point, so as a dude with a nice surprise-burst kind of build on my hands I decided to roam and get into fights for quick downs. It went well, most of the time getting kills as soon as I showed up in 1v2’s that dragged on for too long. The thing is... whenever I choose one point, the other two were capped by the enemy. Once I got home I went to mid, when I got mid we lost home. When I took advantage of taking far, we lost mid. It wouldn’t be that bad if it was a case of teamfights where one side fails or the other. The issue was that, I believe, 3 players in my team kept on dying on contact, like they were balloons showered with needles. Insta locked into a focus of condition/power and crowd control train. In the end I asked myself "what I could have done better to win this". Guess what, I found an answer and it was pretty simple. We would win if I just were on all three or at least two points at the same time.

Abazigal.3679:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

If you are saying that you honestly don’t experience these impossible to win match streaks, this just further supports the idea of control group A and control group B. Because there is an overwhelming amount of players who are experiencing the exact same thing. Lose streaks that come in a wave like clockwork, predictably and well on time. Over the course of a season, the MMRs and ratings should be settling, not becoming more volatile. Nothing makes any sense with that. Anyone who tries to explain and legitimize the lose streaks, is a cop-out apologist in my honest opinion.

Actually i totally agree with you, and this happens in many games, not only guild wars. 10 consecutive wins, then x consecutive loses unexplained, then you start to wonder about the next consecutive wins, .. Mentality is probably an issue, but there is something else for sure.

What i meant is that this is harder to believe for Guild Wars. Surely, you can be totally biaised before the match starts, having a team that, in theory, should lose. But i had many matchs that could have been easily won if people did listen. And an algorithm cannot determine if people aren’t going to listen.

Now this is something I experience. I’ve been to platinum rank 1 or 2 for 3 seasons straight. Now for two weeks I am stuck in high gold, away from platinum by 2 or 3 matches. Few hours ago I gave myself the luxury to get into ranked, after all these hours I end up in the very same spot I started and it was like, 12 or 14 matches, I can’t quite recall now. so pretty much half of them was won and the rest lost. 5 of them were uncarriable blowouts that happened right after I won a match. There was one that I quite remember, where I did a horrible mistake in the end and let Svanir get stolen, so I deserved that one 100% to lose ; – ; and there was one lost because a dude went idle on respawn, trolling us that “he is eating his pizza and won’t play until he gets his first bite”, yeah I even have screenshots of that on one of the threads in here. There were 2 matches that burned in my mind with unbridled rage, as the matches were balanced. Why? Thief. Thief can carry a game but he can also be the one to screw things up. One match I had a thief who despite us telling him to stop rushing far when there is a bunker on the point, he did that anyway. Our fights were going well our whole team blamed the thief because pretty much due to his constant dying, the enemy won with a little gap of 50 points I guess. The other situation was in colosseum, where the thief was a good fighter for +1 but never bothered to grab any artifacts. Sadly the rest of us was kinda sluggish but sturdy so he was our mobility. Because of lack of artifacts, our enemy gained an upper hand, winning a close one. In the end these two matches were gg’s but still it feels so amazingly wrathful to see your rank loss because someone in your team kept on making the same mistake over and over.
However, matches that I won, 3 of them I think, were kind of challenging and we managed to pull it out in the middle of the game to cap and secure points for a safe win. About another 3 or 4 were insta blowouts where we just steamrolled the poor opponent.

Now I see a lot of people telling me to not worry about rating, but my inner try hard cannot agree to that and every match I give my all. I even manage to bait out two enemies to pretty much don’t fight them and still steal a point as a dragonhunter. I know I am capable and I pose a challange to those who play as good as me and are in platinum or low legend. Then how do some people get to have that platinum or legendary rank? Is it really all about how much luck your account has? Before HoT I had more won matches than lost ones. Now I observed an unusual thing. In the end of the last season I first experienced having the same ammount of won matches as lost, now I have a few more losses than wins, and I still keep on improving my personal skill. How am I supposed to understand what is happening?

vorpal.1497:

blowout = large loss of points to discourage players giving up after the first fight.

This right here, this is how you kill PvP community. You do realise that in this game blowouts happen way too often and not because people decide to throw a towel? Sometimes you face against players that are so out of your league that they will mop the floor with you despite your best efforts. Even if they are on your personal level and your team is not, they will still make you suffer and watch how slowly you lose. And what? You see a massive rank loss at that? No thank you, I would leave the crap out of this game if that was the deal.
I bet that if Anet did that, that would end up in a horrific decline in pvp community to the point it would be left to itself.

Brockolosso.8316:

Lets ignore that there is a core hammer guard build becoming very popular right now and that like every second guard in platinum adapted to it
Also Staff Guard with a bunker build is way more useful than several other weapons that arent meta

I’ve been playing a hammer guard for a whole year and a half, and even climbed to diamond/platinum with it twice or thrice I can’t quite remember. But now? I haven’t seen a hammer guardian even one time in this season, or the season before. Are you talking NA or EU? There are more condition/power or condition guards. Sometimes even more than meditrap guards or symbolic guards.
As for bunker staff guard, ele’s support outplays it. Guard bunker is relatively easy to open up and kill in 1v2, this build needs a good team because it lacks STRONG burst healing on demand as ele and druid has. I’ve played it, sounds good, doesn’t work. Unless you like dice toss and go solo with it to be either completely wiped out or be somehow semi-useful, then go ahead

Players who got into legendary with playing mostly as a guard? Rather an exception than a status quo. Lege is full of scrapper/DD/chrono/druid/ele mains. I am hardly convinced if there is at least a handful of guardians in lege who got there only on guard. If they did however, it was rather a strong stream of luck to have a competent team to win with, or not so skilled opponents to fight against.

But this is not like every other MMORPG. Anet likes its conditions to be bursty, what can you say about that? It’s not a bug or OP thing, it’s a feature.

Okay jokes aside, we have power creep now. With every patch and expansion we will get more and more passives and whatnot. The only dangerous condition dealers in terms of burning are guardians, and they do not have any other condis so whatever condition cleanse you use, you will clear it out. They are only strong if there is a mesmer or a necromancer to drop lots of cover conditions so that burn is not cleansed with a fart. If you die to a burn guard, it’s your fault you didn’t have condi cleanse or that you got into a fight with it. Also condition damage is a one trick pony. It can devastate teams but if a condi comp is unlucky and fights a team with a good ele or two decent eles then they are pretty much hard countered unless they can burn down ele’s cleanses before getting killed.
On the other hand however, burn damage is really a dangerous condition and it could see a slap to the face from about -20% to even -40% of the damage. But in this case a burn guardian should get an access, and I mean a real frequent access to more cover conditions while dropping burn so that it is not cleansed with a random sneeze.

Anyway, it all comes down to rather wrong desing that every class can pretty much do what others do but better or worse. This gives broken builds that carry bad players higher in ranks and when it comes to high gold, low plat you get those players that are said to be on your level, but in terms of experience they are toddlers that just deal damage and die after a few seconds, thus losing a match of those who they get to fight with.

Sifu.9745:

I just don’t get it! Why complaining about conditions 24/7 while the only real problem is insane burst of some Power builds? One mistake, just ONE mistake and some builds are able to lay you down within 3 seconds which is unacceptable.
So, please, stop complaining about condi, instead tone down Power burst for about 300% ty. Oh, and add on that additional 300% dmg penalty for some range weapons, like Thief P/P, Ranger bow ... It is way too easy killing people from safe distance.
Just leave conditions alone!

You talk about full zerker builds here, they are squish. If you do that mistake then well... I don’t see a problem. But if they make a mistake it’s almost a free kill if you burst it good. Besides, in age of constant passive procs that save people, you can at least counter some of that burst, dodge it or something. If you let yourself get killed by a power build in a few seconds then it’s an issue of you know what. But on the side note, a power shatter mesmer can get a little annoying at times, but it is relatively easy to kill one once you burst him first.

I wonder then why there are so little top legendary guardian mains, like just a handful of them. While there are tons of thieves/mesmers/druids/scrappers all around the place playing a game of "Let’s carry this match"

That makes you think.

I think OP meant that it is easier to lose than win in solo q now. It is nothing else but a dice throw and it is hard to make a change in an outmatched scenario, no matter how good you are if you get f2p or pve players that have no clue how to fight or rotate.
This is why top players go duo with mesmer/thief/scrapper/druid duos most of the time, it’s the easiest way to semi-carry a match if the rest of your team at least doesn’t die in few seconds when you leave them to fight somewhere else.

What is really bad about matchmaking? Low risk, high reward builds that carry out to gold/low plat level all the low skilled players that are not capable of rotation, focusing target and all that stuff. They get carried and stacked in your team, and everything is well cause in numbers they are your level. How can this be fixed?

Aomine.5012:

Have you been through Season 1 ?
That pip drop on losing is cancer.
No pip gain is pretty bad too .

Pip are now for rewards, not rating.

FrizzFreston.5290:

How are you matched up with people who only play for the giggles if they are so bad. Is my question. :p

It happens on both sides, a bit too frequently. Either I get to fight a player who can be killed by auto attacking or you go crazy trying to fight off enemies on point while about 2 or 3 teammates (if not the whole team) chase a thief or just fight off the point. If some of them at least died on the point that would be greater help

I experience it way too often. Both on my side, and on the enemy part. It mostly depends on who will roflstomp the first 3-4 minutes of the game, maybe less.

Okay, now I start to understand the pvp devs point of view on that whole matter.
Pips for loss? People don’t have to try. No pips for loss? People won’t even try to fight if they see the loss coming. But on the other hand if they give up, don’t man up, they don’t deserve winning ranked and they do not deserve to get the armour then. Go back to unranked/hotjoin and practice if you want rewards from a more demanding mode.
.
.
.
Okay, that’s just my personal point of view. Crude and stupid at the first glance, we are talking about casual friendly guild wars, yeah...
PvE has its elitist content which is raiding, PvP could also have the ranked play. But welp... this is universal truth, someone always will be toxic and unhappy about stuff.

But then how to improve it? As some of you said already, pips based on team points (NOT on personal points). It might lead to teams evening the score so that everyone is happy, but let’s be really honest in here. Would people really waste their time and even out the overall score just to let the one team win in the end... like giving up the fight? I already feel such a deep disdain to those who would agree to that. To just spit on the meaning of competitive ranked play just for the rewards instead of fighting for it.
If that’s how it could end up, give us raid on dungeon difficulty level but with raid rewards so I can go and farm out everything on my own, the same as dedicated raiders do. How about that? Muh casul raidung experienc.

So I’ve been wondering how would that turn out. Just now I’ve had a few conversations with PvE players who came for farming legendary armour like bees to honey. The thing is, one or two players get to win while the rest is just playing for giggles, knowing that they will get pips anyway.
Because of that, unranked and ranked look almost the same with just the fact that ranked gives better rewards. The word “ranked” says that this is where some of us get some fun, but not fun like unranked or pve content kind of fun. This is that fun that we get from losing or winning against an opponent that knows how to bite, to fight back.
Unranked and hotjoin is for giggles, but if we have ranked play, let it be serious. Serious rewards, serious dedication. Because of that it seems that it is easier to get pvp legendary armour just by not caring and farming them pips one way or another, while in other modes you need to try. Raiding? You can’t be lazy, you need to know the strats. So if you have to learn the strats to get into raiding and get that sweet legendary armour, so should players know the value and cost of getting such armour in ranked PvP.

TL:DR
Players get pips for win as it is now. But! There is no pips for loss, or just one pip to tease the losing team to improve. I don’t think that would discourage the playerbase, but improve the quality of every fight.

People once told me that GW2 pvp is good. I bought the game before HoT expansion and I was pleased. It really was more about timing and risk/reward. If you screwed up, either you could rely on your team to save you, or you just died by your own mistakes.
Now I really regret buying this game for pvp content. If it wasn’t for the community I’ve met here, I’d be playing WoW right now which, ironically, I left earlier becasue of pvp. Now it looks better, definitely better than GW. More active skills rather than butt-saving passives that trigger every once in a while.
But I am like a stupid, loyal dog, I still somehow hold some hope for this gamemode. However, it is easier to break than it is to fix. It’s easier to just power creep all that crap, give some stronger elite specs than core and just be done with it. Is it unbalanced? Throw more power creep in it, that’s how it goes now.
Now that the game caters to casual players, the hardcore skilled ones only profit from it. Before HoT and slightly after it (the first seasons) there were more people, good players that could stay in the game and progress, but they didn’t. Let’s ask ourselves this question, why did they leave?

Saiyan.1704:

It requires TOO much skill... you realize how many players haven’t reached Diamond/Plat in 7 seasons or know a single meta build? The skill gap is stupid! Even when we had more players in this game... matchmaking wasn’t any better at all.

Either people are good at 1v1’s and can’t rotate
They can rotate but can’t 1v1.

The skillgap is _much_ _much_ higher than Overwatch that’s for darn sure. Only reason why i’m Plat in soloQ GW2 and not SoloQ Overwatch is because a single class in OW can’t 1v2 / 1v3 and carry the team. The skill gap is half the reason why the consistent top 250 keep playing this game. It’s cause we can remain the top 250 each and every season.

As for this. What to do if I am good in both 1v1 and rotation? Most of the time I know where to go, of course I’ll make mistakes, I’ve done plenty of them and even lost becasue of them, but all in all it’s rather rare of me. I can 1v1 to the point of killing or at least forcing the enemy to leave me be, it is a fact, but there are exceptions. All in all I solo que and my rating appears to be 55% (Fell from 60% and it feels like 50%)

Now I’ll tell you something funny. I’ve been to one of my dude’s place when playing games in a dorm. He asked me if I could help him out to get into plat rank, he was gold tier 2. However, I’ve wanted to test a thing, as he got from silver to gold in a few days. I told him what to do during his games, making him play as I do, skill more or less the same. He got to plat 2 playing solo with my help and I can’t get out of t3 of gold by doing pretty much the same.
At this point I just want to farm shards for lege armour, but my inner tryhard boils in its own blood when I am forced to see my games lost by so many repetitive mistakes of about 2 or 3 players in my team tend to make. There is no salt, I just share tips and suggest some actions that they could do. They either don’t understand (language barrier) or just don’t care. As for most players in 250 "Merciless legend"? As I watch those players it is more of a "Merciless luck". And no, I am not saying that I am the greatest, but I am confident in my skills. I watch good twitchers, I read about meta builds, test them out on my own even if I don’t play other classes that much as I do with my main. I am capable of calling targets, adapting to the situation at hand as much as my class enables me to do so. Changing targets from the one that expects to be focused to the one that is opened from all sides, ready to get bursted down. I am doing well enough as a bunker to at least get into higher platinum level. I ask myself "what I should have done to win that match" when I lost it, and most of the time I really can’t answer it, because even if I did flawless, I wouldn’t be able to win. It’s not the fact that it happened that frustrated me. It’s the fact that it’s so kitten often. I’ve never had anything like that in any other game. There were loss streaks, but like once in a week and not a few times a day.
I am doing much better in many other competitive games for obvious reasons, thus this is my only solid argument to refuse an explanation of "git gud" kind of thing.
In the end of the day, I do not play this game, this game plays me with all its weird shenanigans.

It is universal truth. Mobility is superior to everything else.
It’s better to run away than tank damage, show up in tight situations to rescue someone and stuff like that. This is why we see so many mesmers, thieves and droods in top tier play. Pretty much anything in any competitive game has something to do with mobility if you seek to be playing solo and wish to carry somehow.

Chaith.8256:

Tempest is situational, can carry hard if you have a team that will likely get into teamfights.

That is not carrying. A good support is nothing if the team doesn’t know how to focus or instead of fighting the focused target, runs around trying to get killed which pretty much gets them killed. Everyone carries everyone more or less. And if someone really carries, it’s pretty much a burst of luck or just plain incompetence of the enemy - which is also hardly carrying.
I get the feeling that we tend to overuse the word "carry". It’s pretty much a rare thing that happens from time to time when your enemy makes a mistake and you manage to exploit it. A "carrying" player is just contributing a bit more to the game, but he/she would do nothing if the team wasn’t capable of at least not dying in a teamfight in mere seconds. It all comes down to what people you get in your team and who you fight against. Maybe it’s just me, that "carry" is a bit strong word for what happens in most of current games. I would rather just call it better contribution.

Zoricus.2439:

I don’t think anyone wants to go into a RANKED match and feel like they have 0 chance at winning. I shouldn’t have to accept that, and is the reason for so much salt. What anyone wants is a system that consistently pairs them up with folks of their skill level. That’s how matchmaking should work.
I expect unranked to be a kittenshow, ranked shouldn’t be.

And this is where class balance comes in. There are plenty of low risk high reward builds that are easy to play but hard to master. For example trap dragonhunter. The trap mechanic is strong, but to make it less low risk, there are two options. Either change the traps and give them other utility (which won’t happen), or nerf it so hard that nobody will play it, forcing people to roll something else. Because of such strong builds, some people get carried by metabuilds to a level that once they meet up with those who know how to counter it, they get evaporated in seconds. So this is what Anet means by telling us "matchmaking works as intented" because it kind of works as intended. People on your team that are inefficient got to that point because of easy to play builds that are also easy to counter once you know the weak points and how to exploit them.
So in terms of numbers and system they are on your level. But in terms of real combat experience they are bronze or silver at best. This is, I think, where the real issue takes its root.

Well, if we are at sharing stories I might as well share mine. First few seasons I wasn’t really focused on playing pvp but from season 4 or 5 I’ve always been somewhere near high ruby/diamond and later on high gold/low plat. Last season I did my placement in the middle of the season where I had 8 wins and 2 losses. The funny thing is that about 6 or 7 of those matches were straight out bound to win because enemy was clueless to how to fight and do the objective. That got me to plat 2 and I even reached top 250 but it didn’t register due to not having the minimum games played yet. Once I got the mini games, I was hindered from going back to 250 by some really strange games in which I met a few lads that straight out threw my team’s games even though we all played well, they just left us to 4v5. However, after that I’ve experienced pretty much what you guys. I had to struggle and play only once every 3 days (to prevent decay) because my duo partner at that time wasn’t online most of the time (even duos didn’t change much). Anyway, my ratio seems to be 55% but it felt like 50% , playing games not to climb the ladder, but not to fall from decay. At this point it was a chore, a rather unpleasant experience. Now I am in gold 3 and I had a win-loss-win-loss-win-loss-win-loss&-win-loss-loss so far, being 1 or two matches away from plat 1
I wouldn’t be that surprised if I couldn’t get to plat by losing matches that are relatively balanced (of course it is rare but still) matches that feel like you can win them but it needs cooperation. Becuase that is what some people lack. You sometimes get people who are great fighters, winning 1v1’s most of the time, but their cooperativeness is crippled by their ego or something. So even if you give tips, despite their combat skill their rotation sucks bad, preventing a win. But you can’t state someone’s knowledge of rotation by MMR sadly. Anyway, every single game I lost that didn’t let me get to plat was just a simple roflstomp by enemy team. There were a few situations that could be grasped to win, but it ended up me tanking two people on bell in Capricorn and the rest of the team losing every single point to the enemy team. They were not dead, they were not on bell. They just fought somewhere off point, 2 of them chasing a thief and the rest fighting someone who kept them busy while a mesmer recapped the points. This kind of situation happened. Because of that I lost all sense of value to ranks, I don’t even see legendary players as achievers, but rather bearers of straight luck or exploits. I wouldn’t think like that if it also wasn’t for the fact that I can stalemate or beat some of them on a bunker guard. I watch twitch from time to time, I learn how others plays, what are their behaviour patterns, but sometimes you can’t win. And sometimes it is more than "sometimes" but rather "the usual".

P.S.
Still, gotta farm that lege armour and screw all that. I hope for some better PvE content and start up some raids. At least there you can choose a team and play for serious without any hints of luck hidden in there. If some of you want some better PvP, look for WoW, at least they got it better.

Y’all realise that nothing will be done about it? I am hardly convinced that even PoF will bring any change. The PvP matchmaking quality in this game is long dead and burried. Just farm them shards for lege armour and be done with it.

Ithilwen.1529:

Rodzynald.5897:

Then how to explain top players? If it was pure solo queue, would they still keep at it? It makes me wonder because for majority of players the ammount of lopsided games is sometimes keeping them at 50% win streaks while their personal skill is really good. How to understand that incredibly huge gap between win/loss of top players? that there are about 1XX wins and 4X/5X losses. If it sucks so bad, how do they do it? Are they on completely different level or are they boosted by something?

This question is somewhat convoluted but I’ll try to answer it.

These “pro” players who have exhibited exceptional climbs have pretty much fallen into one or more of these 4 categories;

Playing with a premade and/or smurfing.

Playing at odd hours to get easy matches.

Win trading.

Playing on an alt. By so doing, they come into the game very underrated and so have an easy climb.

So why won’t everyone else do it? If the MMR screws us over, then those “pro” players have to screw the MMR by themselves to keep on high ranks. It appears that nobody would be safe if there was pure solo que due to how dice-tossy it feels.

Then how to explain top players? If it was pure solo queue, would they still keep at it? It makes me wonder because for majority of players the ammount of lopsided games is sometimes keeping them at 50% win streaks while their personal skill is really good. How to understand that incredibly huge gap between win/loss of top players? that there are about 1XX wins and 4X/5X losses. If it sucks so bad, how do they do it? Are they on completely different level or are they boosted by something?

This is what we get for such class design instead of keeping classes in a specified outline, now everyone has access to everything but not everything is good as something else.
Just roll thief or mesmer, find yourself a duo partner who plays thief or mesmer and carry games. PvP balance and matchmaking is a dice toss anyway.

Solzero.5380:

About the berserker situation I already wrote a workaround for the situation.
IMO condition lost their identity; burn, poison, confusion, torment and bleed are basically the same thing but with different names. It doesn’t matter what you have on you, if it ticks once or twice, you are a dead men. Additionally professions need to have a clear theme around them like war being able to bleed you to death and gaining a lot of might or guardians burning and having aegis and Mesmer and granting quickness. Professions should have a limited set of boons and condition at their disposal, it makes a class unique. As it stands today every profession has access to almost everything.

Well too bad but this isn’t how Anet designs this game. It’s not your everyday MMO where classes are different. Now everyone gets everything or gets one things that is strong as nails.
However, I think it is getting out of hand with conditions. Especially if a mesmer gets into a fight and refreshes 4-5 different conditions with every shatter. You can still evade some shatters and cleanse, but most of the time it takes more time for cleanse to get ready again than a new condi burst. I think that only necro should be a master of conditions while every other condi build is decent at best. But well... we can’t have that, it’s a vicious cycle.

ZhouX.8742:

Go necro, find a top tier elementalist support and you’ll do well.

Literally

I see what you did there. Yes, necro/ele duo is quite a challenging duo to fight against, takes hard balls and good focus to take down either of them.

The trick with MMR is that it works as intended (on paper). But it forces me to wonder why it happens so frequently? During the last week of the previous season I was fed up with stuff that took place and went into some other games. Paladins and HoTS for example, I didn’t have that much of a hard time to get a good team AGAINST a good team as well, I felt the impact. Of course there were blowouts, but the number of these is not as dangerously high as here. I can safely say that more or less 85% of my games previous seasons were lost/won in a hard gap. Either roflstomp the enemy or you get rolled over. I’ve seen how the enemy fought, they were like chickens for slaughter, easy win. But when the tables turned over, I had to struggle to keep a point with one or two other players while the rest of the team was kept by the throat or just killed off instantly.

The problem is not really class balance (although it has an impact). The thing is, lopsided matches happen too frequently. It’s hard to tell if you get to 250 if you really deserve it if you win against scrubs. Sometimes you can’t take advantage and "carry" the game if opponents that you face are on your level and won’t even let you carry the game. Well... first of all I don’t believe that there is something as "carrying" you either have more of an impact in the game or not. If you "carry" you just face dumb enemies who let themselves get played by your rotation/fighting skills. This is not an accomplishment. It is a team game and to win there has to be everyone in it, be it a little work or lot of work put into it. You won’t "carry" if your team doesn’t at least hold their ground instead of dying off as soon as you leave a fight to decap or something.

So in the end, a majority of matches is your team of 2-3 decent players and the rest mediocre/newbies vs 5 decents/3decents + lege duo or the other way around. It is a stream of luck to have a good match where you can easily take advantage of your enemy’s mistakes as well as they can. Just... don’t stack bad vs good. Being bound to lose is making more people frustrated.

P.S.
No I am not playing ranked right now. I’d like to have a peace of mind for some time before I get lost in the salt again.

Seteruss.4058:

Guardian don’t need barriers.
It’s blue and magical and that’s enough :P

But you have to agree that barrier sounds so close to something a guardian could do.
With barriers in the game I think that aegis’ spot might be in danger because even if it might block a one high burst skill (which can still be unblockable), barrier just sounds more appealing, as in teamfights our blocks will be blown away by a random AA or just something that happened to fart nearby and waste our block meant for something harder, while barriers will keep on soakin’ the overall damage.

You are silly, OP. You think like a D/D thief when playing the deadeye spec? Probably you had unfavourable matches or it’s just l2p issue. I have played guardian for 2 years straight in pvp, and I find Firebrand to be underwhelming except for condition damage which also feels a little wonky.
Yesterday I made myself a deadeye. Never played thief in pvp for real, not even a single unranked match on thief and when I went for it on unranked or hotjoin, it was unreal how much of a blast I had, laughing out loud while popping headshots from distance.
It seems like a solid spec for me. It’s kind of risky, but with a good team you can easily take down cruicial targets such as healers, bunkers or hard carriers like mesmers.

If it wasn’t for a roleplaying guild that I am in, I wouldn’t buy it and pretty much leave the game as I am a dedicated pvp player. PvP is love and life, but here it is so messed up that I was on the verge of abandoning this game for good.
Either way, I dig lore, so I will pre-order it because I like some juicy lore to roleplay on along with my guildies. It’s surprisingly a load of fun.

I want to believe

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Armor-type-skins-for-every-class/first#post6702407

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6u962n/lets_think_about_it_armor_type_skins_for_every/

I think it would be nothing but reasonable to make F2 healing as good as celestial avatar. Why? Druid can go for it more frequently than we can use F2. We are locked in close range to support with healing without any chance to disengage so FB’s healing HAS to be strong in order to survive. Druid can heal from both distance and melee range in a very comfortable fashion (long radius, ground targeted skills) and if things turn grim they have a safe disengage every 18 seconds on staff. Magi amulet’s healing can’t outheal the damage that is happening so either there have to be massive nerfs to damage on all specs, even FB’s burn, or F2 needs a buff to healing if we are meant to sustain through all those 8k-10k bursts every few seconds.

Vyrulisse.1246:

I’m not so sure Holo damage is too high honestly. Maybe against pure damage builds like most people are probably running or a lot of A.net’s premade builds but something like a Support Tempest can deal with a Holosmith assault pretty easily. I did it and I’m not great.

It might be true, but it is a one in a thousand example, not a status quo. Majority claims that holo’s damage is too much and it is a fact.

When I tried to get healing mantra and condi convert mantra on my teammate I had to chase him because he was out of range and almost dead with conditions. He died because I couldn’t get to him in time/was out of range. Great support capabilities /sarcasm

The healing in its current state is out-bursted by most of the classes. You won’t heal out anyone with that. It looks good on paper but in practice it is already dead. With courage you will get killed quickly all that because you are in melee range. Why? Let’s say you change from F2 to F3, you get tons of condi to the face and use up all your conver mantra. What else you got? Nothing, F2 on cooldown and F3 only farts stability and 4 seconds of resistance. Oh wait, resistance! Holosmith to the rescue with 14k holo leap crits! No barriers and protection damage reduction is a joke if we look at how much power damage others do. Firebrand’s issue is the fact that it has to be in melee range without any ability to disengage to safety, or do something relevant that will stop the damage (like barriers).

In PvP it is trash, basically necro 2.0 a new focus target due to 0 disengage. In PvE apart from raids everything is decent if you auto-attack good enough and dodge out of dangerous stuff... so map exploring/fractals/dungeons are out of question for SERIOUS gameplay. Raids? It seems promising but healing crown still belongs to the druid, why? Celestial form every 15 seconds or so, staff that heals nicely and a choice... they can heal from distance or in melee. We? We can just go melee and die or let our raid wipe because our mantra cones are too short and too little, as well as F2 healing which seems good, but is very restricted by range and its cooldown. "But we stack quickness" - yeah we do. Guess what, chronomancer does too and even if it might do it not as good as a FB, chrono still has two things that FB does not have. Alacrity and distort, and it’s just as good as quickness itself, think about it.
I’ve been fanboying very hard for Firebrand and now I am utterly dissapointed with it but only on the part of numbers. The concept is good, the tomes, mantras. Seems all chill for me, but the numbers are too weak in the face of what other classes are capable of.

I am still deeply kittened off by the fact that a class that is meant for disruption, conditions like necro gets a better support spec. When I heard "barrier mechanic" my first thought was a guardian. "Barrier" sounds so guardian-like, yet a disease-spreading, condition-spamming scourge gets it for no real depth in it, while still giving them mobility.
WE ARE STUCK IN MELEE RANGE and we have nothing to defend ourselves or to escape pressure. Don’t even mention aegis that can be popped with a sneeze. I would gladly give all our blocks for barriers, that would give us more self-sustain while browsing tomes to give out support.

Those who claim for it to be just cool and alright, have clearly no idea what they are talking about. First try out other classes, compare them, then tell me that FB is just as good as you think it is.

imb4 "but not every spec has to be good for every game mode". Then please nerf 4-5 classes that by their sheer numbers in their current state are already seen as glorious picks for every game mode.

<Cracks knuckles in guardian> Time to def my spec...
Okay I’ll give you that, our burning is stupid high... but overall FB’s so said support is non-existent in the face of how much power damage some classes do (holo included).
The concept of holo is jolly, but the numbers are too high. But... 55k burning in 3 sec? That’s for a target that is stationary, doesn’t dodge and doesn’t know the meaning of condition cleanse. Besides the highest condi damage on FB is achieved on the first condi burst, later on it’s just decent re-stacking of burn. If you let yourself get killed like that it’s just pure l2p.

After making some tests I can safely say that FB is forced to stack quickness to be decent in a fight (in current state of testing). It’s not easy to do if you are build for mantras and tomes, but still FB in pvp has to do twice as much to perform like most classes that just have to get in there and pop a few buttons to melt faces.
However, this is important. It’s not all about how FB is weak, it’s just that some other classes (not every class, just 4-5 of them now) are just plain broken with their damage and speed of their actions. If this will get nerfed to reasonable levels, FB will do just nicely without much interference.

Holo knows that it doesn’t have stab and cleanse. It will go for insta kill when you are busy. Only a stupid one will go 1v1 against a condi or into some CC spam.

Not to be rude but this sounds like a l2p issue right’ere.
Since I went into hotjoin and unranked, nothing but holos, mirages, spellbreakers, deadeyes all over the place. Mirage’s condition application while staying relatively safe from taking damage is strong, very strong, its a straight up mesmer on steroids 24/7
Maybe you should play some more, because I don’t agree with most of those statements.

Well I had to spill my salt on the forum of my fav class, that’s natural. Everyone did that. It is really a matter of numbers and some tweaks that we all have a lot to complain about.
But truth be told, by every concept I’ve seen, these specs (looking at the ideas) are a job well done. All of them bring something new to every class for PvE content and PvP as well so on that end I am happy with that.
But seriously, holosmith’s damage should be gutted... :T

Luclinraider.2317:

It wont do anywhere near that damage on a tanky target with toughness.

The fact in the end though is that these kinds of attacks will never happen in a real PvP match. You will never get to stand there stealthed for 30 seconds to get full malice, and have somone standing next to you doing nothing but spamming might on you for 30 seconds.......

And if you did get this scenario, then I hope I am playing against you and your friends every match because it’s a free win. Ill gladly have one person from my team be 1 shotted if it means 2 people are doing nothing off point for 30 seconds at a time. You’ll lose 100% of your matches doing that lol.

You do realise that deadeye doesn’t have to hunt down healthy targets with all their cooldowns and health? They will pop heads off of tanks or supports when they are semi-weak or during a fight. In this case we won’t have any tanks and supports in pvp because they will end up as ducks to shoot first. Deadeye can safely wait out all blocks and evades or even reflects or just wait for the target to get busy in a fight for insta kill.

Asur.9178:

Meanwhile, deadeye needs to sit around waiting 10-21s for an attempt at a couple of single target shots with large tell so you can reflect it back into their face.

It’s not like you can spam reflection every few seconds except for firebrand’s tome of courage, but even then the guard is locked on a tome and waits for a shot that a deadeye can throw at any second from a distance. Reflection of the said shot would purely base on the target’s luck to somehow throw a reflect/projectile hate and deadeye’s inconvenience to pull the trigger at the same moment.

Ragnarox.9601:

Razor.9872:

**Cries in Soulbeast**

Firebrand trying to cheer you up but his mantra fails cause you are not in his cone.

+1 on that my friend
But for real... with all the melee burst that flies around on top of area denial skills (spellbreaker, scourge) devs, while making firebrand, didn’t really thought about that fact that FB will be shutdown for most of the time in a fight or just focused down due to lack of any form of mobility or strong damage mitigation. For example barriers, geee why don’t we have any barriers?! This sounds like a core ability, the essence of a GUARDIAN - BARRIER come on! It is us who should get barriers if they expect us to go into all that melee burst that flies around without any way to disengage efficiently.
Either that or 360 degree, 600 range radius on mantras. Another way is to keep it as clunky as it is but 900 range (ground target?) OR remake one mantra to grant us a blink of some sort to get out of a fight safely when we are about to get rekt into the ground.

The moment I heard the dev say "more focused support" and "casting" I knew that Firebrand in PvP is going to end up as a chicken meant for slaughter. There will be no FB supports due to how much damage and condi application others can do. I couldn’t outheal the damage of two spellbreakers as a pure support build should be able to withstand 2 players with relative ease, while I got steamrolled to the ground due to how much power burst they could make in an interval of few seconds. Mirage condition application is just unreal. All my conditions were burned out in few seconds and mirage’s condition were nowhere near its end. I was basically out of dodges and blocks while my face was getting pumped with 8k crits every few seconds.
Not to mention holosmith who is honestly so broken in terms of power damage with mixed in condition. When I saw a holo coming my way, even when I healed up he just bursted down my healing in 0.5 second. 10k health went for naught. I was struck with 14k damage in 4 hits with holo leap, and they seem to use it very frequently. I just physically couldn’t heal this in a fight when they focused me to bits. It is good to disengage from combat when you get focused, but FB has zero mobility, we will end up as a new reaper necro, first target to kill. The only you can get is leap from GS or a meditation teleport which already depends on a factor if there is a friend or foe as a target to use.
As for condition damage, Firebrand’s cool and I wouldn’t really change that much. Burn is strong, but it’s the only frequent condi we can drop and it is easy to cleanse with a skill/trait that passively or actively cleanses 1 to 2 condis.
But dang... I am so tilted that Firebrand doesn’t have an access to barrier to tank up the damage we will get in melee range. It is a darn barrier for quality’s sake! Why should a necro get it?
How do they expect us to survive if we are forced to get into melee range with no chance for a quick disengage while most of the classes can do so? Firebrand ends up as a one trick pony that is forced to have a good team to be relatively good. If we are meant to stay in melee range, I would gladly trade block mechanic for barrier. No blocks, let’s have barriers. Now it is just a dice throw when you enter a fight, depending too much on how well your team fights and if they will help you out, because once you burn through the pages of your tomes, you are ready for being slaughtered. The healing is good, but not good enough if we look on how much burst power creep PoF will bring to PvP. This is my experience so far as a support Firebrand. As for condition? It passed the test (however axe feels clunky, especially #3 which only works on stationary targets)

But on the bright side, PvE content will be much, much more fun with this spec, especially with a legendary armour to change stats on a whim. I like that part for sure.

Allarius.5670:

There are lots of ways they could implement it. Maybe it would be "Custom Outfit: Heavy", etc. Changing the outfit could cost transmutation charges or require a new purchase each time depending on just how much they wanted to use the gemstone.

Spot on! If some people get too hasty or impatient they might spend some cash on more trans charges. It’s not like they grow on trees. I wouldn’t even be mad if Anet gave some sort of "ascended transmutation charge" that can only be bought through gems and it needs to be purchased every time we want our character to change the type of armour skins we want to use. But if that’s not enough, we could even go for one black lion ticket - ascended charge for whole ARMOUR TYPE change, not just one piece of armour.
So there would be only two options. Either buy the keys with gems or farm them once a week with a new character. I am certain that Anet won’t implement that without any profit in mind so if it looks appealing both to us and them, it might get into the game sooner or later.

Zoltreez.6435:

okay so here is a short version of what he tries to say...

transmog system should work in a way that you can use any armor type heavy/Light/medium SKINS on any armor type...

you can Transmog your Light armor set on your Ele/necro to one of the heavy armor skins....

Yes, that is it. But to be more clear, I meant whole armor types. Do not mistake it for mixing all armor types at once on one character. For example, it’s just allowing a heavy class to (after paying with trans charges) allow it to use skins of different armour type (but you could still mix different skins of that armour type). So you can have an elementalist in heavy armour, a battle mage. Perhaps a guardian in light armour, more of a cleric. It all comes down to our creativity.

I would like you all to participate in this thread, tell me what you think be it here or on reddit.
Link to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6u962n/lets_think_about_it_armor_type_skins_for_every/

It hit me recently when I was playing WvW and PvE content. "Hey look, that dude looks nice in this armour I think he might be... oh wait, that’s just an elementalist with sentinel’s outfit/warrior with arcanist’s outfit". What am I trying to tell you? That with upcoming PoF we will get some sweet looking pieces of armour that would look so amazing on my character but there is one small detail... he is heavy/medium/light (your choice). So you think "I’d love to wear it but it’s not for my class, but I don’t want to make a new character just for it. I want it on this particular character that can’t wear it!" Some of you do, some of you don’t. But now let’s think deeply about it.

First issue is: This might mix up how we see players according do their class.
My answer: Outfits already "spit" on the fact that classes are different and because of this we all might look the same and nobody cares about it as long as you can see the class icon next to character’s portrait or just judging by the skills the character is using.

Second issue: It might take a long time to implement. "Muh clipping issues"
My answer: We all have it in the game already, every skin on every model. Clipping? I am not asking for mixing different armour types. What I try to say is to allow every class to switch between armour type looks whenever we want to (perhaps at a cost of a bunch of transmutation charges so Anet can get some gems from fashion warriors).

Third issue: It has to be programmed into the game
My answer: I know, I am not a programmer. However, I don’t really think that implementing something mechanic-based into the game can be that time consuming. Coding that is required for every class to switch between armour types for them sweet looks, an icon in wardrobe tab to pay up those tran charges to change if we want our, let’s say, warrior to be heavy/medium/light clad character and we are good to go for the looks we want on whatever toon we see fit.
Now it all looks jolly from my point of view, but what do you think about it?

ilQr.1342:

> your gear looks trash. 1v1 me noob
> getting bothered to duel at random or by some aggressive troll will get on your nerves

There will always be toxic people no matter the game type.

Sheltering people as much as possible and putting them in a safe-space bubble isn’t the way to go. It cuts down on the social and interactive aspect of the community.

This safe-space bubble has already been added to WvW, which is bad choice in my eyes but I digress. (Can’t party invite enemy team anymore.)

Just /block the troll or abuser, no more problems with it.

Ghotistyx.6942:

1. Or just keep it the same and add a healing component to the attack
2. Worse than it is now
3. let this meme die
4. w/e
5. ya

What’s wrong with 2 and 3? Besides, with this change you could nicely chain 3 and 4
As for #2 it would be a safe heal, no risk of projectile hate and you would be sure to land it right among your team for an AoE blast heal with damage for about 7 sec cooldown untraited.

Overall Firebrand appears to be good, as a concept that is. PvE is a completely different game where you can go with pretty much everything and do relatively well aside from raid content. But in WvW and PvP I see Firebrands as something that gets into the fray, burns down cooldowns and then ends up as a chicken ready for slaughter if his support didn’t work out well enough to empower the team.
In every game we can see that mobility > healing/staying power. Sooner or later someone/something will kill you when you make a mistake and if you don’t make mistakes, there will be a situation when you will be forced to a point you will fail if those beside you can’t fight well even with your support. Devs were so bent over granting a lot of things to everyone, but guardians/necros don’t have a good way for FREE mobility (free because I am not talking about guard teleports which need a target so it’s bound to the fact if a certain situation favors you at a given moment).
Druid has a staff with a strong mobility tool that heals along the way, easy access to celestial form for massive ammounts of healing while being able to outsustain enemies. No wonder it is a top pick among high ranks, a strong skirmisher that can always burst heal or escape from a fight on demand without giving out much.

Now I don’t know who is in charge of guardian class, but it really makes me wonder how it was a good idea to implement such short range on tomes and mantras? If that’s the deal, then Firebrand should come with a free +4k health or at least a significant boost to toughness because I already see that red bullseye over my head all the time and with lack of mobility all my boons are going to be stripped by spellbreakers, corrupted by necros, stolen by thieves or whatever. Until now I could do some nice kiting as a DH, sometimes with wings or greatsword, it was a nice combo, a reliable one. Now our survival will depend on how well your team fights. You may boost their combat capabilities with FB but that doesn’t mean the enemy team/side won’t have a FB too who, let’s say, is on the same level as you. As I like to say sometimes "you can’t and you won’t carry a deadweight for too long" (actually "deadweight" is replaced here, I tend to use a rather... juicy word but let’s be nice here)

So in the long run it is a dang good spec as an idea of how it looks. But for quality’s sake, who makes a support in short range? Ventari rev is not an exception, it has a staff which is good now, and the build is more of a bunker than a hard support.

If staff nerf is not reversed, at least make it a strong support melee weapon like rev’s but with guardian themed skills.
#1 First skill chain could be: 1. Hit your foe 2. Hit your foe again and grant vigor (2-3 seconds - more frequent dodges so we don’t have to tank it up all the time) 3. Hit your foe for the third time and grant aegis to you and your allies (OR) Hit your foe for the third time and perform a 600 range cone that heals allies.
#2 Just a burst of heal and damage around you in 600 range
#3 So you tap your staff or smth, symbol as it is, but it follows you as you move and grant superspeed in the last second of the duration of the symbol (2s) (but only if traited - that’s more mobility for staff to kite instead tanking damage to the face against unblockable attacks)
#4 Let it heal as it is now, but now you can move around (at least whirling wrath speed)
#5 Ward’s cool as it is, solid skill.

Actually that isn’t so bad. PoF goes live, there is a ranked season so peeps have stuff to do once they do PoF story or if they are not even intersted in it and want to go straight to new elite specs pvp. But this is a huge risk vs huge reward. There will be lots of people and if MMR manages to make so many one-sided matches as it usually does, many of new and returning players will leave PvP after this upcoming season. But if it all goes relatively well, it might turn this mode into a bright, new path. This is a chance for this mode to get back on a better track.