Guild Wars 2

Hey there. I’m a silver player looking for a loose group people to PvP with. I’m willing to take advice to get better, but I wouldn’t fit in with people who take it really seriously. I just want fun people to talk to and coordinate with in voice.

PvX guilds are okay, but understand I really won’t show up for anything but PvP.

Also, I’m so old and boring that I no longer think poop jokes are funny, and I don’t enjoy taunting opponents or lecturing my team.

I’m less annoyed about the 50 bucks than I am the fact that builds I enjoyed creating and playing are now kitten because they’re not the new shiny.

But, you know, call me names or something if that makes folks feel good.

This season isn’t designed to be fun. It’s designed to allow the better players to rise to the top faster. Matchmaking intentionally matches people with teammates of their own skill level, but the other team could be of ANY skill level.

Couple that with achievements that provide incentives for struggling players to keep queuing for ranked, and you have a recipe for lopsided matches.

Varezenem.2813:

I’m against the profession achiements with the current matchmaking. You either play in unranked until you get on a similar level on a new profession/build or you play it in ranked and tank your MMR damaging your teammates and the possibility of having decent teammates in the future.

I hadn’t thought of that, but playing any profession other than your best could lead you to MMR hell even if you’re a good player.

And they gave us an incentive to play extra professions.

Those incentives could be fine in other circumstances, but they don’t go well at all with this matchmaking.

I’m not very good. Let’s start there.

In any elimination tournament, I would’ve been out long ago. In a Swiss tournament, I’d be playing other people as bad as me and at least we’d both have a chance to win.

I finally got to the point where I realized, “Ok, I’m over my head, time to go back to unranked.” The feeling sucked, but the better players do deserve to be rewarded and recognized, and the current matchmaking will elevate them out of the pack like they deserve.

But, wait! I can advance my Daily League Participator just by showing up! So I, and others like me, have an incentive to queue up for ranked, creating sometimes comically unbalanced games that we all have to sit through.

I hope Anet will take another look at the effect of achievements on league PvP. I don’t think “points for showing up” plays well in a competitive environment.

I’m fine with achievements that I can’t do because I’m not good enough.
Achievements that anyone can do, even if they’re terrible, lead to more bad matches, and defies the meaning of the word “achievement”. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Has anyone ever made one?

reikken.4961:

all I do is dodge roll though the triggering of the trap
it still triggers while you’re evading, but won’t do anything to you

Are you saying there’s still a chance to dodge AFTER the animation comes up? Otherwise, how do I know when to dodge?

I have the most trouble on my burn/consecration guardian.

Greets, folks. I’m just back from a layoff, and would like some advice on how to play against Dragonhunter traps in PvP.

The pull/daze/choppity-choppity seems to be too much for any of my defensive skills and traits to deal with.

Thanks!

Floplag.4032:

Sergo.2867:

What’s the counterplay to dragonhunter traps?

A brain?
Seriously there are many ways to avoid them but it begins with dont be leeroy, use your mitigation skills, line of sight, and a number of others pending your class.
If you are a thief its harder as they naively counter much of what you do or need to do, but every snake has to have its mongoose

I don’t understand. How does LOSing help me avoid an invisible trap that is already laying on the ground somewhere?

Which mitigation skills help when Dragon’s Maw traps me, Piercing Light Dazes me, and Procession of Blades starts chopping me up?

I’m just back after a few months away, I have no HoT experience.

Thanks. Message body length must at least be 15.

What’s the counterplay to dragonhunter traps?

I have had this problem for years. Today I tried to search “traps” in the Guardian forum and it told me that didn’t match anything. What am I not understanding about search on this forum?

I play a power d/d/well build in sPvP. My wells feel more like weapon skills any my staff feels like my utility bar. I don’t lean on it, but it solves problems my other skills don’t.

Fear or poison on downed characters, an extra condi transfer, aoe chill to keep enemies on my wells, it’s a 1200 range option.

Don’t neglect the advantage of the marks being precasts that cool down while you wait for the enemy to approach. Troll for stealth, make a point difficult to approach, preset your condi transfer.

I can’t imaging making a PvP build around staff, but it rounds out my one-trick pony power build nicely.

If my condition damage stat goes up or down during a fight due to sigil swapping or whatever, do ticks of conditions already applied change? Is the damage from each tick locked in when it’s cast?

Bump… one last try.

I enjoy Hearthstone sites where the comments section on any particular card includes remarks from players about unexpected uses for the card, or how certain specific interactions work.

Is there anything like this for GW2 skills? The wiki has some detailed information, but it doesn’t have a lively discussion of each skill, tricks for using it with terrain, to counter enemy plays, etc.

Ah. It doesn’t really get to me. In the end, it’s all pixels. Is there any practical difference in a “test” season and a “real” one? I get to play either way, and probably nobody but me will care his well I do in either case.

“Test” season is just a nice way of admitting that they know their leaderboard will need work, and they want data to play with.

Ya lost me there.

A fair enough question, Witcher. I’ll take a another look at my secondary weapon choices. I originally chose the scepter for a ranged option and the torch because FIREFIRE. But the character wasn’t made with PvP in mind. In addition to lots of burning, retaliation and protection uptime, the build has above average staying power. So I continue trying to figure out what it can do in PvP, hence the original question.

Bash, it’s the only symbol on my build. (Scepter, torch, and shield are my other weapons.) So I’m not traited for it. And the regen isn’t free, it costs me over a second to cast it for what amounts to a few hundred healing IF I can stay in the same spot for 4 seconds.

Symbol of Faith looks really bad to me. Long cast time, pitiful damage and healing. Is it worth it to even hit the “2” button? I am playing a tanky point-holder. I think I’m better off auto-attacking and never using this skill.

People dislike maps that render their build less effective. Courtyard nerfs bunkers and decappers because there are no points to hold, Spirit Watch puts a premium on mobility, Skyhammer puts a premium on stability. Since the other 4 maps all favor basically the same builds, people understandably load out for those and loathe the outlier maps.

I found the leaderboard unsatisfying. I am not a very good player. My winrate dipped as low as 34%, and then rose back up to 48% by the end of the season. (Total around 130 games.)

I estimate I was winning at a 60% clip or better as I pulled it back up. Did I get better? Or did I only win more because I was matched against other scrubs? It was embarrassing to see myself ranked in the 93%ile with a losing record, while guildmates I know to be much better players were far below.

The leaderboard seems to be primarily an attendance record, and that’s not very useful feedback for me.

If that’s what Anet wants it to be, okay, fine, I’m on the outside looking in. I can accept that. But I’d like to see statistical measures applied to make a player’s relative skill and success much more important.

Number of games does have a role to play. People who understand statistics better than I do know that the confidence in a measure increases as the number of data points increases. So we don’t want to see someone who’s 9-1 (only 10 played) atop the leader board, but SURELY after 130 matches we can agree that I’m not an above-average player.

I’d like some metric, whether a public leaderboard or not, that shows me if I, personally, am improving.

I’m crippling my team just by showing up, mate, meta or not.

Good idea. This sentence makes my reply more than 15 characters.

If you were going to play three consecrations in PvP on a tanky burning build, which one would you leave out? I do have ground targeting and longer duration/shorter recharge.

If I have two different types of wolves as pets, will their knockdown share the same cooldown, or will they each get a knockdown?

I feel like I’m not getting the most out of Hunter’s Shot. I only use it before stomping certain classes, or in a last-ditch (usually too late) attempt to get out of a fight.

When do you use Longbow 3?

Do you ever do it just to swift your pet?

If you’re a zerk pvp ranger, what percent of the time do you stomp an enemy, and what percent do you just burn them down?

Do you use strafe keys to move sideways and mouse to face?

I’m struggling to get the hang of proper movement with a melee-only bunker.

If you’re running with zergs, your target is going to be hit with a lot of conditions. If you can get your vul in quickly, the other conditions will “cover” it, making it harder to clear.

I say go for and see how it works. I did practically the same thing with chill instead of vulnerability, and it’s been a blast.

How can I be ahead of someone in my guild who has more PvP played AND a better win/loss percentage?

What actually goes into the ranking (mmr?) that the leaderboard uses?

Glyph of Storms in earth is very strong in the right situation. All the blind.

Protection is generally a boon with a very short duration, so it doesn’t surprise me. (/whispers I actually think the duration on might is very generous. Don’t tell the devs.)

With my ele more than any other class, I change my 789 slots on the fly. For travelling safely or entering contested towers, lightning flash, arcane shield, and mist form. (Mix in CCs to thwart pursuit if not immediately entering a tower.)

I also have 10 in earth and aracana for the III skill in each line, which gives me a free Armor of Earth and a free Arcane Shield. Those are, of course, excellent in combat as well as when travelling.

Just want to say this has been a very interesting discussion. I’ve been disappointed that the wiki does not document the elementals’ stats and abilities very well. Can anyone point me to a site that does?

I agree elementals aren’t super, but remember they can be cast pre-combat, so they’re not taking up any casting time. Any damage/boons/conditions the provide versus players are just gravy.

I use fire elemental to help me burn down yaks faster, and earth elementals to tank supply camps while I solo them.* Ice gets the call in a player fight, because I. Hate. Chill. So I figure my opponents hate it too. Maybe I should go with air in that situation, but the electric scorpion annoys me. Bring back my ball lightning!

*Precast the greater earth elemental. Have lesser on your bar only when taking camps solo. When something aggros you instead of the greater, pull out the lesser, then dodge, it will pull aggro.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

they probably are not fit to survive

You mean there’s something worse than experienced players ganging up on inexperienced players?

I don’t want hazing to prepare me for a greater challenge, I want to be able to log in to competitive matches for an hour or so.

I don’t need a gauntlet of terror, I’m not training for the horrors ahead. I just want to have fun and have a chance to get a little better.

Wolf.4739:

The experienced players quickly see who the other experienced players are and team up.

It’s not an experience that is going to encourage new players to participate in sPvP.

Just came from a couple matches of that. Very unenjoyable.

Great replies, thank you all.

I am a mostly WvW player. I just got a guardian to 80 for whom I would like to get the Superior Runes of the Forge.

Do people still do SE? Or will looking for groups be long and frustating?

Is there a website or schedule or something for dungeon enthusiasts? I did some AC and CM last year, but I am toooootally out of touch with how this side of the game has developed.

Thanks for any advice!

Decent idea, I’ll give it a /bump.

Right, I like condition duriation on the ones you mentioned, because obviously, every little additional fraction of a second, it’s still being effective. What I was wondering about, which Arachnid clears up, are things that tick. For bleeding and torment, if the +cond dur isn’t taking me all the way to the next full second, it’s not getting me anything at all.

Thanks for the responses.

I’m looking at things that increase condition duration. It occurred to me that conditions tick once every second (am I right?).

So if I have something that burns for 4 seconds and I add a 20% duration increase, that would be 4.8 seconds. Sounds like that’s not enough to get to the next full second for a burning tick, so it’s useless.

Do burning and bleeding work on a strict tick system like this, or are they actually continuous, only reporting damage once a second for simplicity?

Bumping in hopes of an answer or two. =)

I’ve played since release, but mostly PvE then WvW, so I’m just now getting more serious about PvP.

What are the paired names and icons that appear on the right of the screen?

Is there a way to study the scoreboard for longer (besides just taking a screenshot…) I’d love to be able to look at the score board in peace to try to understand how I’ve done, instead the competition is still active and people are still keeling me when I try to read it.

Is there a reason I wouldn’t show up on the PvP rankings on the web site? Even when I filter by my guild, I see others, some with worse records than me, but not me?

Thanks.

Right, I know siege has a higher cap. ACs are 25 or 50 or something huge, most ballista skills are 10. I’m curious if there’s a list of player skills somewhere. Would be nice to know.

AoE’s affect no more than 5 players normally. I’ve heard people say that this skill or that is not subject to the cap. Is it true that some skills have a cap higher than 5, and is there a list somewhere of which skills those are?

woofie.5603:

Tarnished Coast is bored to tears. we have had 570 + ppt with nobody challanging us for weeks. WvW is the only reason I play and I’ve had a month without any real WvW happening.

Speak for yourself. It’s been a fun week. Maguuma and Sea of Sorrows haven’t given up, and they win their share of battles against us. We’ve had good action on EB, MBL and SoSBL this week, and though TCBL has generally been quiet there have been a few blistering pushes there by our enemies.

Yeah, the result of the week isn’t in doubt, but honestly, there were always a lot of matches where you knew by Sunday night who was going to win.

If you don’t like the matchup system, it’s okay to express that here. But please don’t claim to speak for all of us and please don’t belittle the efforts of our opponents.

Is the regeneration boon too weak to count on as part of a WvW build? Given the faster pace of WvW and the premium on front-loading damage and healing, I feel like regeneration is nearly useless.

Always pop Magnetic Aura before leaving earth attunement. It’ll recharge before you get back to that attunement, and it may save you.