Guild Wars 2

1. Going 1/3/1 is a high tier gameplay because:
a. It requires coordination of classes to ensure you have bunker/support against burst
b. It requires that the 1 can cap/kill on their point quickly to rotate to support mid quickly.
c. It requires that the 1 at far will pull off if the 3v4 is going poorly to potentially create a play at mid

2. 4/1 is the standard split because:
a. It is the strategy that most average/casual players know the most.
b. It allows for a better rotation to far if you win mid or to support home if home gets +1’d.
c. It help support players who may not be the best at their classes since they are more likely to die in large team fights.

Most people, when losing a mid fight, don’t know how to properly rotate back in AND get frustrated with the loss which can demoralize the team. In my opinion, it’s always best to get the most kills at open in average rated games and then snowball caps AFTER you win the team fight. If you control when your opponents spawn then you can control where they will be when you need to rotate. It gains you nothing to get 2 caps on far/home but lose 2+ team mates to mid and have to rotate off mid.

So this will take mesmers out of meta.

I’ve been running shattered aegis builds on my Guardian/DH since the beginning of Season 2. It did pretty well. My question to the forum users is why it isn’t considered decent? You have fine condition clear, you have blocks for days, and you do about 1-1.5k of AOE per block. Using the fragment of faith traps on hit/skill, you get a ton of blocks and it can be given to allies.

I feel like the only play style for DH is just to nuke the point but there are other ways to do aoe that can sustain you far more than just traps. People can dodge the traps but if you have aegis up, they still have to hit you.

Just my .02

Simply put:

Unranked is set to make sure you have a 50% win/loss ratio. Ranked is like survival of the fittest. So yeah, people are going to have different opinions of each queue depending on how they define competition.

Fishball is right. Statistically, higher MMR players will be put with lower ranking or newbie teams in Unranked because the match making program is looking to make comparable teams with the same average MMR so any combination of MMR is possible on the same team. In Ranked, it was just based on your PIP level so at some point, higher MMR players would only face high MMR players.

So while a few people got to legendary by grinding, it wasn’t like it was throwing sapphires or ambers on your team. Also I believe I read last season that Unranked MMR decays so if you didn’t play for a few months due to Seasons, your MMR tanked a bit which hurts higher tier players.

However, Unranked is basically Hot Join and I think that’s the complaint. It does keep queue times low though..

Losing Divisions is fine if you reward people for playing. However since you don’t get rewarded again for losing a tier, would you get your tickets for crossing the same tier again? If there are no rewards, will that entice people to continue playing if they continue to fall tiers or can’t get through certain tiers?

Good or Bad, the legendary backpack brought more people to PvP. However most good to average PvP’ers will have the backpack already or at least by the end of S3 so the reward will be gone. So what does that leave you with? Reward tracks? Hardly great.

If you are going to lose tiers then you need to review how people are rewarded in PvP. You can’t just say “lose tiers” without another option. If you say that, then you will basically kill any new playerbase we got and without people in low tiers in rank, there will be no one for good players to over come to get to higher tiers.

I don’t believe that we will be able to keep many people just for the sake of PvP. Those people are die hards. We need people who want to come for PvP because it’s equal to the reward of PvE just different mechanics. I’d be for division loss if there was another reward path. Otherwise I’ll just keep to unranked for my dailies.

When sPvP first began, the issue was that TS servers were open so people could find your IP from off the TS server. Once they knew it, they could DDoS it. IP addresses don’t change often so once you know it for awhile, good chance is it will stay that way. The only thing that you can control is doing a release/renew from the router connected to your ISP and hope you get a new IP address. You also need to secure your entire TS server so people can’t find your IP.

VPN’s allow you to extend your LAN to other systems but it won’t prevent a DDoS since your router is always external facing. Also, make sure your IP address is never in a screen shot or stream that you are doing. Then it becomes public domain.

ShadowHunter.5173:

@ThiefZ why would I have to play one of 2 meta builds to kill a scrapper? Its rediculous how powerful they are against most classes and builds, I play a condi druid variation and fighting scrappers can be a nightmare sometimes ,even when I dish out 3~5 Condi’s most of the fight.

Why do I need to bring tons of condition clear? Because most of the classes being played these days bring tons of conditions.Why do I have to bring projectile defenses? Because most of the builds these days use projectiles…

So if you know that you will face classes with projectile defenses then make a build that allows you to rotate between when the projectile defenses are up. If you can’t beat the scrapper, rotate to another point. That scrapper is only on one point so you rotate to one of the other two.

The entire point of rotations is that you rotate out of the fights you can’t win and to the fights you can. Not every build will counter ever other build. There is no ace in the hole. So you can’t fight a scrapper big deal. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of a build should allow you to pick and choose your opportunities. So pick the matchup you want. If you find that there is NO matchup that you can win, then you have a build issue.

Scapper is countered by conditions. While it has some clear and a transmute, it isn’t enough to deal with condition mesmer or necros who bring good condition pressure. Fighting a scrapper with Paladin is going to be hard because they have high toughness and CC. Best to allow the passive pressure of conditions to help you.

EDIT: When I fight a scrapper on point with a paladin class (say DH), it’s always a draw. When I fight on reaper, it’s a pretty good chance of winning.

Second week in a row on Projectile hate. I honestly like projectile defense due to the amount of projectiles I have to deal with. At a very high level, if the goal of PvP is to hold the point and you can attack someone from range without any counterplay, then there needs to be a way to force someone to have to fight on point. Projectile hate is the goal to ensure that you are forcing ranged attacks onto the point. Sniping in GW2 takes coordination and skill but it can be a very high pay off.

If we remove projectile defense, there is no ranged counterplay except for teleports.

Going to have to disagree with OP. There are only two, maybe three builds in play now that use Marauders or Viper amulets. Those are the only amulets that define a true condition build. The only two classes that utilize those builds which are necro and mesmer. However, since they are always found in PvP, you have to build around facing them (no templates). So you are forced to bring condition clear. However, there are also a ton of paladin classes which means you ALSO have to bring skills that give you protection. However I fail to see threads complaining about having to bring that boon.

The issue isn’t really conditions themselves. It really is a solo queue issue. If you are able to bring the right classes and builds to a match, you can forgo the clear if you work well with someone who can do area clear. However, since in solo queue you can’t be sure AND we don’t have templates, you are forced to build around it. I really don’t see anything wrong with the meta at the moment in terms of OP’s question. I do still feel that condition/power shouldn’t be a primary stat with both defensive stats but that’s another topic.

Seriously, I don’t know how many matches I have been in these days where people go far and then yell at their team when they lose 3v4 at mid. The opening fight at low MMR levels is part of winning the game. It allows you to get momentum. I have been in several games where the team agrees to 4/1 split and 1 person goes far and home. Going far at open is a coordinated play. If you don’t say “far” then you put your team into a 3v4 disadvantage at mid.

Going far is viable in these scenarios:
1. You KNOW you can win a 1/1 on far. Killing the far defender means that they will pull off 1 from mid to their home. If you don’t kill it, they don’t peel. Period. They can continue to fight mid in a 3v4 and then go back and 2v1 you.
2. You don’t have enough sustain for mid so you go 2 home and 3 far. This comp is good when you have multiple thieves who can rotate fast and kill lone defenders. It forces them to rotate to you.
3. On TS so that you can coordinate rotations and fights.

Maps: 3/1/1 is fine when one goes treb on Khylo, home always goes beast on forest, go far when you don’t have enough aoe or pressure for Legacy mid. It’s a big point to hold.

Communication is key and too often I have seen people whine and complain about their team mates when they fail to know what a team comp can do. When in doubt GO MID WITH YOUR TEAM.

Projectile hate is fairly balanced because this is a projectile meta. Without it, p/p thieves and longbow rangers would be way to strong.

Eh, I always thought that if you aren’t going to have a defensive stat as a major category on an amulet then having two primary damage stats on an amulet shouldn’t have any defensive stats.

High damage play should = high risk play. Meaning that if you are going to run vipers or say Berserker then it should make you be careful how you play. If you give a class with access to conditions, damage, and might a good amulet with major power/condition and secondary defensive stats then you will cause problems with those being meta classes just for the amount of pressure they can put on a player.

Just my opinion but it seems I am the minority.

I updated proposal 3. I believe tying the PvP rewards to base PvE content is a safe route to go. I also think we need to do something with tickets and purchasing/unlocking reward tracks is a good incentive to save and use those tickets.

For shards of glory, they are coppers right now but when they first came out they were silvers. I think they failed as a sink for Legendaries. Personally, I would remove them from the TP and make them a currency and then have them replace globs of ecto in PvP so you can get the accessories you want by using them. You could also sell a booster for reward track and pvp level exp with glory as the currency. Also maybe sink your tickets/shards into finishers from past sales/seasonal content.

This however is all based on items/loot being the reward structure. I think that one of the above posters had a good point about Trophies. The trophies in pvp are what exactly? A badge seems to be it since the backpack is grindable. Since the skin for the backpack is what is motivating the PvE crowd, you need to award finishers as a trophy for high rank. If you get to legendary, you should have a nice finisher with the badge. If we are also looking at rewards for actual skill, then you need to bring back individual leaderboards and rewards for Top Player and Top Player by Class for the season. Again, I would say they should be finishers and loot/gold/tickets.

I think the league reward structure needs to change and here is why:

If I get to Ruby and I can’t make it out, the system has said that this is where I belong in terms of skill. If I have already completed the achievements I can get for the season, there is now no difference between ranked and unranked. I have basically “capped” my reward progression. So how do we keep people playing in rank for reward IF that is their incentive rather than just playing for fun?

1. Reward track progress boost per tier of play
Reward people in each tier with a multiplier for getting through the reward tracks faster. So Amber would be a 1x multiplier, Emerald would be a 1.25, Sapphire would be a 1.50, Ruby would be 1.75, and Diamond would be 2x multiplier. You can tweak the numbers but this would mean that you would complete reward tracks faster based when playing ranked over unranked.

2. Allow shards of glory to purchase non HoT ascended weapon chests. Make it high like 5k or something. That way you can farm ranked for shards and since ascended items are account bound, you don’t mess up the Trading Post

3. Introduce 3 legendary reward tracks that you can unlock each time you hit a Legendary rank. So you hit Legend x1, you get one unlock. You hit legend x2, you have another unlock. You can make one the Sunless reward track for Sunless weapons, you could make another the Cultural Reward track for cultural armor skins, etc. Obviously they would need to include non HoT content since you have a mix of HoT and nonHot players.

This would allow people to earn new skins that are expensive by playing the game their way and most of them are account bound so they won’t mess with the TP.

TLDR: Increase the incentive to play ranked by making reward track grind easier, make shards of glory more useful, create legendary reward tracks that reward with some of the higher rewards from the base game.

EDIT: Rather than deleting item 3, I’ll just propose this:
Allow new reward tracks as stated above for Legendary but instead of rank, have them be unlocked by tickets. Since legendary players will have tons of tickets anyway, you could tie it to that which would also allow players to save up their tickets. Legendary players would unlock those reward faster. Also, instead of it being a “Sunless” track, you can make each reward track tier be the same as a boss chest with the last chest being a Sunless chest. The RNG would still be the same.

Current S2 matchmaking takes your MMR into account to find a party, it then finds another party that is within 15+/- pips. Is the issue because there is no party to post against or is the issue that it can’t find 4 other players with your MMR within your division?

If the issue is that your MMR is too high and can’t find players in the range then matchmaking should just put you with other players of the same division regardless of MMR.

If the issue is that there is no party 15+/- your current pip level, then you have a playerbase issue.

If you have a playerbase issue because legendary is not rewarding, then my advice would be to create a legendary reward tracks that you can unlock for each Legendary division you complete.

Example: I reach legendary x 1, I can choose to unlock the Legendary HoT reward track that has the best HoT rewards (skins, items, currency) which can be done multiple times or I can choose the Legendary Dungeon reward track that gets me dungeon armor at more frequent intervals than before from any dungeon, or the Legendary Crafting Track that get’s me keys, ascended crafting mats, etc.

If the issue is that even with a good reward track, people aren’t playing. Then you have a balance/gameplay issue and that would take more time.

Tldr: Increase rewards to get people to play and review MMR at high levels to default to division after a set time frame to increase the find party range.

It seems like there will be multiple means to get stats or legendary items however skins are always locked/gated content. HoT gates skins to tokens, dungeons, fractals, pvp, gem store. I don’t see why we are having the issue in the PvP forums when gating skins/equipment is a GW2 concept for the entire game.

velmeister.4187:

Erik Waananen.6089:

Sardath.8524:

- the MMR of average/bad players shouldn’t be lowered as much when losing against a team of a significantly higher MMR

I can confirm that the Ranked matchmaking system already works this way, and worked this way for Season 1 as well. The matches in which you lose against opponents that are much higher rated than you do not adjust your MMR significantly.

Thanks for responding/clarifying. That makes sense based on season 1 game play and what Evan explained.

At the start of the season when MMR was reset, everyone had same MMR because it was reset. How did this work in the initial set of games? Did you use some kind of confidence factor based on win-loss history of players to determine MMRs after first set of games were played by the players?

It’s pretty evident something was amiss.

MMR was not reset, only your S1 rank. The issue was that MMR for average and new players was calculated as about the same. This meant that for average or below MMR players it only SEEMED like your MMR was reset but it wasn’t, MMR was inflated for new players. MMR is used to make your team so that is why it seemed like MMR was rest.

MMR was NOT reset between Seasons.

Erik Waananen.6089:

Sardath.8524:

- the MMR of average/bad players shouldn’t be lowered as much when losing against a team of a significantly higher MMR

I can confirm that the Ranked matchmaking system already works this way, and worked this way for Season 1 as well. The matches in which you lose against opponents that are much higher rated than you do not adjust your MMR significantly.

Sardath.8524:

- they need to add a preseason to fill the gap or to place people in the ladder based on the previous season

We are continuing to explore ideas for the upcoming off season period, as well as ways to improve overall match quality for Season 3, as we know that there are frustrations for many players (particularly during the start of the season) with regard to matchmaking for Season 2.

You need to change the MMR for new players as well as how you start the season. You can’t have one without the other since the two are intertwined.

He’s being sarcastic however here’s his post from another thread:

“The problem last season was that the matches kind of were decided by who got less bad players in the team. This also leaded to the fact that bad players got massivly carried in higher divisions. You barely noticed any difference between ruby division and legendary division after a few weeks.

This season the matches in diamond/legendary division are so much harder in my opinion – simply because of the fact that a lot of people who aren’t that great can not get carried up to this divisions that fast."

What the OP forgets to realize is that because MMR for new and average players is the same, Season 2 is the same as the example in his first paragraph for new players. It comes down to who got the real average players and who didn’t. That’s the complaint. You can go on and on about how people are whining, or complaining, but if you complained last season about carrying folks then you come off as a hypocrite when you make a troll post about the whining this season.

Basket,

In S1, they used the same MMR matchmaking as Unranked. This season they are taking similar MMR to make a party. The issue is that average MMR players are ranked with New players because they are given average MMR. If you want an ladder that’s skill based but you continually get matched with low MMR players and have to carry them, is that necessarily fair? Isn’t that what some of the higher MMR players were complaining about last season?

So everyone is saying some people have to win and some people have to lose but if the system is putting you with a handicap when you don’t need a handicap, I don’t think it’s a fair system. At least we could agree on that, right?

My thinking now is that as people quit and as people are stuck in their divisions, the higher tiers are going to start seeing some issues with games and queues. Maybe it will all work out but either next week will be great or it will be continuing complaints about matchmaking and additionally queue wait times.

Burn, please read this post from Evan:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Simple-question-HOW/first

The issue is about how MMR, which is still used to put a group together, was inflated for new players to average MMR levels. The amount of new players being matched with the average players was causing frustration because they weren’t able to play and average players couldn’t carry. While the volatility of a new player’s MMR is high, thus pushing them down, enough new players matching with average players will drag an average players MMR down with enough losses. This is causing MMR loss for average players and forcing average players to be better at carrying.

Literally, average MMR players are forced to carry new and inexperienced players. We have to do this more than higher MMR players because they get placed with higher MMR groups. So the issue is that Matchmaking for a party, that uses MMR to make that party, is not fairly representing new players MMR.

EDIT: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pvp-league-season-two-changes/
“pair you up with teammates who have a similar skill level to your own” this is inferred to mean that MMR is used to make parties.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Hour-long-queues

I’m not the one spreading the false information bud. It’s happening to other players. You might have fine ones but you have someone admitting to grouping with lower tier people to get better q times.

It’s the system’s fault because average MMR players were being mixed with new players who didn’t know how to play forcing people to have to carry them, just like last season. However it’s not working well and dropping player’s mmr.

I would also say that people should post their Season 1 vs Season 2 data.

So you have people that are quitting because they can’t rise up and rank, then you have people with 30 minute queue times in Ruby and up. So we’re saying that this season is better…in what way? Because if the argument is that people aren’t carried, I no longer see that as a valid complaint.

You know that if we all wait, and let things settle, everyone will be waiting and not playing which will further hurt things?

I think we’re all assuming we’re either in the majority when we post regardless of side and no one can prove that this is not the case without Anet letting us know.

I think that, and I could be wrong, that the new system does very well in rewarding skilled players with a good starting MMR or good players with good teams. I’m sure those people are having fun.

The issue has always been with average or below players. Those will have some issues because MMR is not calculated well.

A third note, if the system can not help to promote a healthy win/loss ratio where there is a true sense of progression, then this is what will happen: Amber and Emeralds will cease to exist which will make sapphire more challenging since it will only be able to pull from Sapphire or Ruby (+/- 15 pips rule). This in turn will create frustration with Sapphire/Ruby players and their matches. So the true answer to the whole Amber/Emerald mess is in a week or two to see if we have a healthy Sapphire and Ruby league or if we get Q time complaints or match complaints because the system failed to help promote play at low levels.

Divisions have no bearing on MMR. MMR is based ONLY on the win/loss of the games you played and how the system expected you to do against those opponents.

There is no solo queue in this game. We’ve asked for it but it doesn’t exist. The only thing that does is a full 5 solo players will not face a full 5 premade. Any other grouping will face a 5 man.

Sardath.8524:

Kayberz.5346:

Most of the people complaining about the matchmaking seem to want everone to have their own personal reward track to legendary. The arguments like “the pros should have to face other pros from the start” or “good players shouldnt be farming win streaks at the expense of bad players” are just bullkitten.
The system isnt pairing rubys against ambers, its matching you with people in the same division, if your losing consistently in low divisions, im sorry, but your not as good as you think you are.
What do you expect? For the system to match bad players against other bad players in their own seperate “baddie mmr” matchmaking all the way to legendary while ACTUAL good players instead have to face ACTUAL good players to get to legendary?
The league divisions does not scale according to your PERSONAL mmr, its the same for everyone. The players in each respective division will be there because they won against the players in the previous divisions, its not like anet is just giving “pros” free pips when they queue, the people still have to PLAY the match and WIN, and they do, against players in their same division.
If your still struggling to get out of amber/emerald at this point, its not just “bad matchmaking luck” its probably you.

This guy gets it.

Incorrect. New players are given an average rated MMR so if you are Average you will be matched with new players. So matchmaking is throwing average players and new players together on a team (because they share the same MMR) and then getting placed against teams that are +/- 15 pips. So, the issue at the moment is that the average team MMR is not actually pairing people with the same MMR as explained by Evan. So the expectation that you, as an average MMR player, will be matched with like minded or experienced PvP’ers is not true. So the expectations that people are being matched with like minded pvp’ers is mistaken. Now, all those average people have to adapt to a lower team rating than they were used to. I would say that it’s a valid complaint. Now that average players have a handicap, you add on that you are facing worse or better opponents is further different than unranked or season one matchmaking and it makes for more salt.

What I have been reading across all these forum posts is that people with higher and top MMR don’t see that the issues they have last season of carrying lower tiered players to legend is impacting average players this season. If you didn’t like having to carry lower MMR people last season then you should have some sympathy for average players this season who have to do the same thing.

I guess what I have to say is, look at Helseth stream from unranked. That’s what it’s like to be an average player. Consider that MMR was wiped but only for average and below. That’s what is being done to put parties together.

I read through most of this. I played for the last 3 years and I would say my MMR is average. However, after 40 losses and 10 wins, I get half my pips through loss streaks, I would say that I am very disheartened. The issue here is that since the party algorithm uses people with your similar MMR, you get matches with average players and new players. Which means that average players, who already aren’t the best, have to carry new players. I’ve seen also class matchmaking with 3 thieves on my team or 3 necros against premades and balanced teams.

It kept happening all weekend. So the answer is, group up! Well, ok, I put out to 2 of guilds I am in, anyone need someone? No response. I’m tired. I see people go beast or go lord rush or walk into aoe’s. I see lack of stomping and tons of issues. I see people who leave point when it’s 2v1 and we have the person down only to look at the map and see my party down and the person who was down rezed by a teammate.

So now my mmr goes down because I have more losses than wins so I continue to have issues. I could go to unranked but the queue times have gone up because people are playing ranked. It’s great for people to give solutions but in the end, if I could get paired with people that know how to play, I would be thankful.

The issue at the moment is that unskilled/new players get matched for teams with average mmr players because all new players or players who had significant MMR decay will be grouped here.

If you assume that the average playerbase is, by definition, average (since higher skilled individuals have a smaller pool to play against thus long q’s) then the people who get hurt the most are new players and average players which becomes the majority of your playerbase.

So the reason you see these posts is that the higher skilled people are reaping a larger reward but the average people are not reaping their average rewards because that group has to carry the new players too while the higher skilled don’t.

It’s a bad system and it is not rewarding except for (I will make this up) 35% of the playerbase.

EDIT: For clarity

Just a thought.

When you start playing, there is no +/- 15 pips. There is only +15 pips. So that means it is going to be harder to climb if by default there is no one below you to help boost you up. It basically means you MUST duo/team queue to get out of the pits of amber.

Personally, I think that they need a better tutorial. They need to teach people how to rotate and they need to teach them about map mechanics.

Think about it this way, in PvE they have instanced content. There is no reason to not require people to enter an instance where they have 4 other classes with them to fight against 5 other AI builds just to learn splits and rotations. The classes you fight in HoTM are no where near as aggressive or demanding as players so they don’t really know what they are in for when facing real players.

The truth is that fighting the lord in HoTM is probably closer to a real fight than anything else in that map. Give them a PvP achievement for going through the tutorial with a nice skin and then let them play.

Looking at what Anet has posted and looking at the debacle that is Amber at the moment, the reason that most of us are mad is because our MMR is average. As stated by Evan, all new players start with average MMR.

So the scenario at the moment is that you have average PvP’rs who are “Ok” but know their rotations and you have average MMR PvP’rs who have NO idea what to do and believe that this is death match.

So if you are on a loss streak, it’s probably that there are a bunch of newbies as well as a bunch of averages and the sorting hat is putting most of the new players on your team. As others have said, you have people that don’t know their builds and don’t know the meta, and don’t know rotations. You also have bad class stacking. On my teams I saw multiple DH (4 at one point), thieves, warriors, mesmers and on the other team I saw a balanced group of rev, necro, engi, thief, druid. Party balance is also key to winning.

What I will say, it must mean that the PvP is actually healthy at the moment but the question then becomes: If this experience is what we are giving new players out of the box, is it really an experience that they are going to come back to or after 10-15 losses will they just quit or go back to PvE.

I think that ANet really needs to review the idea that MMR should begin for new players at average and lower it ALOT so they can be matched with similar skill sets.

If we continue with this meta, it will be less about the fights and more about rotations and where you can +1 the node. Not to say that it’s not strategic but since people pick the path of least resistance, ganking sides will be more prevalent. Also, with the loss of defense, AoE continues to become better. Bringing more AoE to provide more area pressure instead of direct damage will bring us into a meta where if you get to the point first to setup the burst, you win. Which is exactly where we were with getting to the point first and bunkering the longest to win. Defense is a valid form of counter play and we are having less options to counter burst which is less counter play in general. AoE needs to be reviewed and other skills to see where damage can be shaved to bring more diversity to team compositions.

As was stated in reddit. What happens when the one person in the premade leaves the group while in the match and then DC’s? Is the party roster saved when the match starts or only reviewed when the match ends?

If it checks when the match ends, then leaving the group will save the lost pip.

Healix.5819:

Thiefz.3695:

But when I see other players using means of travel that are locked out for me just because I haven’t grinded enough exp, makes me go back to other games.

Sounds just like every other MMO where you haven’t reached a high enough level or reputation yet. For example, gliding would have been a level locked mount and wallows would have been a reputation grind to unlock shortcuts through that faction’s territory.

Personally, by the time I got around to the areas blocked by masteries in AB, I already had them all. I however legitimately explored the maps, probably spending at least a day’s worth of play time in VB alone and since I started each day by doing a few adventures, experience was never a problem.

I really didn’t buy GW2 back when it was released because things were gated. Especially exploration. Just because other MMO’s do it doesn’t make it right. A gate is a gate and to do it to exploration seems pretty lame as the OP states. If people want to grind for Achievements, Raids, etc. That’s fine. Gating exploration of maps and participation in generic events is pretty lame. There really isn’t a defense for it. Especially now that you have to find full maps. Telling someone to pop a tag and run it assumes that A. People have a commander tag and B. that they understand the map. If they are going around the map for completion, 10 bucks gets you that they don’t know all the map mechanics yet.

There are more seasons left to the year. You are ok if you missed the first season.

I’m going to agree that I find things gated in HoT which is difficult to swallow. I have played since beta and after picking the game up after X-mas, it took me a month to complete VB. The fact that you need to look for maps and that there is no good way to get exp without those trains is very frustrating. Also, the fact that you need masteries because several things in AB are gated makes it hard when you haven’t even completed some of the masteries from VB. So you are in a constant state of trying to catch up. It isn’t that the content is bad per se, I don’t have much trouble with events or exploring. But when I see other players using means of travel that are locked out for me just because I haven’t grinded enough exp, makes me go back to other games.

I had very short Queue times last night, almost instant. Each match was a blow out. I feel like the MMR setup wasn’t taking into account groups and their MMR ranking. Some of the pairs on my team had no coordination or viable builds while the teams on the other side had groups with good team comps and rotations. It would seem then that the MMR for groups was under inflated for some and not inflated enough for others. Can I guarantee that was the issue? Nope but since getting back into Unranked, I have had poor matches all around against far better compositions and players.

Shattered Aegis DH. If you have a team you can work with, the damage output is very nice. Constant AOE shatters is fun.

You could look into shattered aegis builds. However fragments of faith gives you the greatest DPS AOE so you would still need DH however you would only run one trap. Conversely you could go back to medi/burn guard since power/condi/tough/vit is now a thing.

I play guardian and engi mostly. Do you know what this is going to do for my burning burst builds? I"LL BE META FOR ONCE!

Do you like to burn things? Do you also like to hit people in the face with your weapons? Well have I got some news for you! Starting in only a few short weeks you can have it all! We’re going to give you power and condition damage with little to no draw backs!

You might say to yourself, “What’s power without critical chance?” It’s ok, we have traits/runes for that!

“Yeah but I want more! 1050 Power and Condition is too low for me!” It’s ok, we can give you power for your condition damage or condition damage for your power! IT"S A WIN WIN!

“Yeah but I need to hit ALL my enemies with the pain train, not just one!” That’s OK! Many of our clients have AoE Burns for days. You’ll be riding high as your enemies curl up like over cooked bacon!

“Well that’s great and all but people can cleanse these conditions too!” Good news for you! We took away options that would help them live through that by lowering toughness, vitality, healing, and removing runes and dodges! Heck, we took away things people didn’t even use JUST TO MAKE SURE!

Act now and you’ll get a free years supply of Tucks Medicated Pads!

If there wasn’t such a thing as hybrid classes that can do good amounts of damage and good condition damage, this wouldn’t be an issue but when you give people equal weapons without one being being a primary and the other a secondary, you are creating an imbalance. I’m not saying anything new but hey, I’m not original.

Can I ask a question since we are discussing mesmer bunkers? When I bunker and I play against a chrono, I can easily counter their CC and condition damage with elixirs on my engineer. Since I never go invuln, all I have to do is wait out their rotations to slowly decap and cap the point. This is in a 1v1. I see where Chrono’s are great in team mid fights but 1v1, I find that chronos are easy to beat and can not maintain the point against better bunkers. Unless I am facing some bad chronos. If I see a Chrono take home, I usually cringe.

What is the exact rotation/combination that makes them OP?

I have noticed a lot of changes to my matches as well. One side will be all ruby with maybe a diamond and the other side will be ruby, sap, emerald,amber mix. I get that you get placed based on the highest person in your group as per the most recent snap shot but it also seems like when that happens, it forms a team based on any range of ranks within that pairing. Almost like the group rating equals 1 or two tiers higher than the lowest rank. So basically, not only does the “party” get’s upleveled but the “team” get’s downleveled.