Guild Wars 2

Perfice.4097:

So I was having a conversation today I figured I would share with the Guild Wars community.

I was talking about the new expansion earlier today and apparently Balthazar is a “blatant rip-off” of Ragnaros from WoW.

Can anyone explain to me in what way they are a rip-off? Other than the obvious fire powers I don’t see in what way they could be considered similar in any way.

EDIT: When asked the person responded with;

“He’s huge, has a GIANT FLAMING LEGENDARY WEAPON, summon FLAMING MINIONS OF DOOM! Is ANNOYED THAT HE’S NOT THE BEST OF HIS KIND! he TAKES HIS FIGHT TO THE MORTAL REALM….Ragnaros ripoff.”

They also added “I love GW2 but I just recognize an obvious rip-off when I see it!”

Ragnaros? Isn’t he the huge fire elemental boss from the end of the Molten Core raid? Or is he back in some other form in a more recent expansion? I haven’t played WoW in awhile, but the human god of fire and war doesn’t seem similar to the Ragnaros I recall in any way besides the fact that they’re both associated with fire.

But if you want WoW ripoffs in GW2, you don’t have to look far. Mordremoth – the jungle dragon that operates in a dream world? Really? That’s not in any way similar to the Green Dragonflight and their Emerald Dream is it?

How about the music? I could swear I’m in Ironforge when a certain track plays (sorry, I don’t know the names of any of the songs).

zoopop.5630:

Warcry.1596:

Shaogin.2679:

Dropdown.7460:

Yup. One less customer and one less PvP player in an already shallow pool.

Pretty sure Anet could lose every PvP player and not care due to the much much larger PvE playerbase. PvP is just a side mode. This is a PvE game.

Ithilwen.1529:

TDM and defending have both been tried, with poor results.

There are non-meta things that work. I play a vanilla PU Mesmer with some success. I think it’s partly because people have trained themselves to respond to specific builds and “rotations”.

My PU build doesn’t do what a Mesmer is “supposed to” do. No one streams it. Hence… many players don’t know how to respond.

That’s one of the dangers of having such a defined “meta.”

To be fair, don’t you play in Bronze or Silver? I suspect the success of your build has more to do with the quality of your opponents rather than the element of surprise.

Yeah, don’t make it sound like Legendary is some prestigious thing. Or like Bronze is terrible. The skill floor between these is probably quite small.

I’m in Platinum for example, and I don’t think I deserve to be. Especially since my duo partner is a Silver tier player and she is a bigger reason for the success than I am.

that’s because ranks don’t really mean much in this game, i was placed “bronze” and climb to gold in under 30 games. I still dont beleive i belong in gold but in plat, Most of my friends are plat level and don’t have the knewledge i do in terms of 1vs1, or 5vs5 and agreed that i belong to a hire level “rank”.

Matter fact i met a friend in my guild whos new to spvp and was placed silver and after a week of playing with him can tell he doesn’t belong in “silver” his understanding of the character he plays plus ability to listen to calls places him above most silver players already.

Rank is noting but luck and title based for bragging rights, they hold no real purpose or reward for anyone to even care. people get the “badge” and instantly believe their pros because they got 20 games played in rank. The elo system in gw2 is easy to beat, and out play.

I’d say the rating system is pretty accurate. The placement system, on the other hand, is not. And how could it be? You only play 10 games! However, the more games you play, the more accurately your rating will reflect your skill level relative to other players.

You’ll know when you hit your skill ceiling because you’ll find it difficult to climb any higher and a challenge to maintain your rating when you do. Bad luck happens and you’ll sometimes lose rating for reasons beyond your control. But if you belong at that level, you’ll inevitably gain it back.

People want to complain about matchmaking because it doesn’t always produce fair matches. But when you play hundreds of games the luck factor becomes ever smaller. Everyone else is dealing with the same thing, and your rating is ultimately a reflection of relative skill within the context of 5v5 conquest.

Take a look at win/loss ratios. Aside from the players at the very top or bottom of the spectrum, most players who have played hundreds of games have close to a 50/50 win/loss ratio. And unless you believe that the system arbitrarily decides that you’ve been on a win streak too long and throws you bad matches in response, the obvious explanation for this is that you eventually hit your ceiling and stop advancing. The more time you spend at this point, the closer to 50/50 your win/loss ratio becomes.

Call me crazy, but I think the system works. Bad matches/luck and all.

Crinn.7864:

Zuko.7132:

Lol if you think menders is good for an offensive build we need to have a long talk XD Power is fine. Only 560 precision so about 30% crit chance. No ferocity. No condi. Menders is a great sustain amulet. Damage? Not so much.

I’ve seen several core eles in platinum running mender’s builds generally focused on 1v1 (basically doing the same role as scrapper) FA Mender’s scepter is particularly nasty in that it’s practically impossible to win a 1v1 against because it’s damage is sticky and it’s nigh impossible to kill.

The Ele community needs to realize that you don’t need “zomg huuge crits!” to make a strong build.

I think it has more to do with the fact that nobody really needs an ele to be a damage dealer than the limitations placed upon the class by stat selection. Very few classes have the option to fill the healer role in PvP, and ele is by far the best at it.

We’ve all seen plat level staff or scepter elementalists filling a primary damage role. It’s not that it can’t be done. It’s that the class just tends to bring more to the table as a healer in PvP.

At least, that’s my take on it.

sokeenoppa.5384:

Celestial elementalist (e-spec) everything melts and you cant die

Chances are one of the other classes can do it without the effort/expense of acquiring celestial gear. But I definitely agree that celestial ele is very strong for solo play. It’s difficult to die when your heals are so strong and you have the health and resilience to make mistakes and shrug off the hits even from champions. And the damage output, while nowhere near that of full glass is still more than sufficient to beat the timers on hero point challenges.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Shaogin.2679:

Reaper Alim.4176:

I’ve placed bronze every since the new Ranked League.

Wow, this actually explains the tone in all of your posts.

Ok and yet you ignore the fact that I placed Gold Tier 2 this season. Attack my arguments not me.

Nothing really changed in my skill level…… Actually I’ll honestlly will say I’m a lower skill then prior seasons. However the 1st season I decide to delete some randomess from my match I get place Gold 2 off of the rip?

Lol, you can said I’m a bad player all you want. however Rating is going to put me above alot of players this season. And I haven’t really played sPvP since season 5. For the obvious reasons and headaches.

So did I just get good from not playing? Or have the MM just been screwing me this whole time. As I’ve complained about in the past…. People Throwing most of my matches……. People not giving a single care on my team….. Highly unfair match ups to boot……

But yeah throw the whole you was bronze so you was just bad type thing. I’ll just laugh.

Now that I’ve got to see the system from both sides of the stick. My prior thoughts have been completely confirmed. ||| This game has one of the worst Match Maker systems I have ever played in a Rated Video Game. |||

Yall can attack me till the cows come home. It just will not change the facts of what people are complaining about. I just stopped bothering complaining, and moved to a actual PvP game. And barely bother with GW2’s sPvP unless a friend or such begs me to join them, and I’m feeling in a Yolo mood at that time.

Good Day

Getting placed gold 2 doesn’t mean much if you then proceed to drop back down to bronze by playing the minimum number of games required for the season. For example, I placed 1207 after winning 6/10 in placement. My friend won 4/10 and placed 1247. However, after placement I climbed to platinum 1 and he fell to silver 2.

Placement is only 10 games. It can only be so accurate. That’s why your rating gain/loss is so high initially, to account for the fact that you probably aren’t placed with 100% accuracy based on what is essentially a snapshot. The high gain/loss in the matches following placement help you get where you should be more quickly. And the more matches you play, the more your rating reflects your skill level.

Bad matches happen. Sometimes they happen in streaks and it feels like matchmaking is totally broken. I feel you. I had a 10+ loss streak yesterday, falling from 1557 down to 1430. Literally my match history showed 100% red! And most of those games weren’t even close. Bad luck? Sure. But today I’m back in platinum with match history showing 8/10 wins.

Bad luck can drop your rating in the short term, but eventually if you belong in a higher tier your skill will make the difference in enough matches to bring your rating back up. It’s not due to luck that I was able to climb to platinum 1 while my friend who placed higher than I did initially fell to silver and can’t climb out. Luck explains our placement results, but not where we find ourselves at the end of the season.

I’m leaning toward purchasing the ultimate version. The extras aren’t all that important to me, but I am essentially getting them for free with the price of 4000 gems. And I’d like to show my support for ANet anyway, as I’m definitely excited about the new expansion!

First glance looks like this new elite will be a ton of fun! My favorite thing about ele has always been the fast cycling through attunements to access the skills you need. Tempest, while powerful, slows all of that down with the extremely slow overload casts. It looks like weaver will do the opposite: you’ll be swapping a lot more often both because your best effects are no longer locked into slow overload casts and because you’ll need to double-swap to access the 4 and 5 skills. It also adds that extra layer of complexity with the dual attunement gimmick. Very cool!

It wasn’t clear to me from the video how that 3s GCD will come into play, though. If I need to access the 4 and 5 skills for an attunement that I’m not currently in, how does that work? For instance, let’s say I’m in fire/water and I need air 4 and 5. Do I swap to air, become air/fire, initiating the 3s GCD, and then after 3 seconds I am able to swap to x/air and use air 4 and 5? Or is there some way (outside of fresh air or other conditional abilities) to avoid that 3s wait time? It occurs to me that the whole fun of elementalist is being able to swap to get at those abilities quickly, and the quicker you are the better!

I hope it won’t end up feeling clunky! It does look like a lot of fun!

What are they going to do? The fact is, match making in gold tiers seems more or less as it should be. At platinum, things get wonky. And it’s no secret why.

If you look at the top 250, the top span 1700-1900 rating, while the bottom 200 span 1600-1700. The number of players who can compete with those in the 1800+ range is so small (we’re talking like 20 players here) that if they put some sort of rating cap into play, these players would literally never be able to get a match.

We don’t know how many players fall into the platinum 1 range. It’s safe to say that it’s significantly more than the 200 or so that fall into the 1600-1700 range. But how much more? Double? Triple? Even if it were triple, the combined platinum and legendary tiers would still consist of fewer than 1000 players.

So let’s say you have 1000 players total at platinum 1+. What percentage of players can we expect to be in the queue at any given moment when another player (you!) joins the queue to find a match? Even if it were as high as 10%, that means you still only have a pool of 100 players available in the queue to cover a span of 400 rating points.

Further, that 4 times as many players are squeezed into a rating range half the size of the span of the top 50, seems to indicate that the relationship between rating points and player skill is not linear the higher you go. In other words, the difference between a 1600 rating player and a 1700 rating player is likely less than the difference between an 1800 and a 1900.

So not only is the system forced to match these players with players of lower rating. It is forced to make the poor assumption that rating points represent a linear skill progression. No doubt those screenshots you provide show teams that are roughly equal in terms of average rating, but the result is anything but!

The cure is to get more players into PvP. Ideally, the top 250 shouldn’t span 300+ rating points. But there simply aren’t enough players for that to happen. They could perhaps attempt to compensate for the apparent gap between top 50 players and the bottom 200 by applying some sort of weighting to players above 1700 rating when accounting for average team rating, but it’s an inelegant solution that likely wouldn’t be fair to those players just as the current system isn’t fair to those of us in platinum 1 who get stomped by guys like Edison, never having had a chance.

Honestly, I don’t see how you fix this. And if whatever you did was a change to the calculation across the board, it would likely have an adverse impact on a larger number of players who play in the lower tiers, where matchmaking is much more as it should be. I played in gold 1 – platinum 1 all season. The gold tier matchmaking felt very competitive to me, with the vast majority of matches decided by fewer than 150 points. We shouldn’t do anything to break that. It’s working as intended, as far as I can tell.

FrizzFreston.5290:

AliamRationem.5172:

Ayrilana.1396:

I found the LS3 story to be just fine. It may help to play it again in a single playthrough as you’re likely forgetting things which are keeping it together.

I think Anet is going towards elite specs as being the core of a build similar to how elite skills were in GW1.

I’d have to say the story really wasn’t fine. In my opinion, it was going well until the last two episodes. At that point, it became completely incoherent. By the final episode I literally had to go to the forums to even discover who the major players were and why I should care.

Show Spoiler

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Silly me thinking Lazarus was simply Balthazar’s disguise, used to manipulate the white mantle and throw us off the trail while he grabbed for power. Then I find the final boss of the story is…the real Lazarus? What happened to Balthazar? Who the heck is Livia and why am I swearing oaths to the Shining Blade to help her? Apparently, I needed to play GW1 to understand this plot twist…yet somehow that was a good way to finish the season?

In any event, I don’t see how they could possibly do worse than these last couple of episodes of LS3. So I expect the PoF storyline to be an improvement and I’m looking forward to it.

I will definitely be purchasing the expansion…and sooner than I expected it! Awesome! The mounts look promising. The elite specs look like they will definitely introduce a very different feel to each class. All in all, I can’t wait! It’s time for another expansion!

Surely, most of the reasons are explained in the game itself. Balthazar has been part of the human storyline since the beginning. Humans revere the gods, so it’s just as shocking as the sylvari being dragon minions. Though I did also feel that this felt more of a side story rather than something that was mainstream. Basically adding another storyline on top of our storyline just to make it more complex. A story that is completely from GW1, or is partially locked behind raid content to understand a bit more of.

But yeah, it’s not really bad story writing, it’s just so that the previous game still has alot of impact on this game. Which is great for people who played both games. Less so for those who only played gw2.

Maybe that makes a coherent story to you, but I’ve really been scratching my head the past couple of episodes. Up until the random plot twists I was enjoying it. To each their own, I suppose. My friends who played GW1 seemed to like it. It just made no sense to me and I didn’t appreciate having to go searching the forums for an explanation. Poor way to end the season, in my opinion.

Ayrilana.1396:

I found the LS3 story to be just fine. It may help to play it again in a single playthrough as you’re likely forgetting things which are keeping it together.

I think Anet is going towards elite specs as being the core of a build similar to how elite skills were in GW1.

I’d have to say the story really wasn’t fine. In my opinion, it was going well until the last two episodes. At that point, it became completely incoherent. By the final episode I literally had to go to the forums to even discover who the major players were and why I should care.

In any event, I don’t see how they could possibly do worse than these last couple of episodes of LS3. So I expect the PoF storyline to be an improvement and I’m looking forward to it.

I will definitely be purchasing the expansion…and sooner than I expected it! Awesome! The mounts look promising. The elite specs look like they will definitely introduce a very different feel to each class. All in all, I can’t wait! It’s time for another expansion!

Hot Boy.7138:

you climb out of any bracket by being better than the people on your team and the people on your opposing team. People in silver will make mistakes that is expected of silver tiered players. If you don’t belong in silver, you will be able to make up for their mistakes and win the match still. if you can’t do that, then you won’t move up. A big issue i see with people stuck in a bracket is that every loss is never their fault. it’s the fault of everyone else on the team. And sometimes that’s the case. But you should never look to blame others for why you loss. instead think of what you could have done differently to win. How you could have overcome those mistakes. And also, step outside yourself realize maybe you are also the reason the team loss, or at least a part of it. Just think of what you could have done differently. Blaming others is the biggest detriment to growth.

I’m someone that has worked my way up from silver to platinum at least 10 times this season alone. When i play my mesmer, I can consistently make it to platinum. When i get my alt classes, i drop back to silver. Always. It’s just where my skill level is at on those classes. So it is possible to make it out. That is how you do it.

This is good advice. You can’t expect to carry every match. Chances are if you could do that, you wouldn’t be asking how to climb out of silver anyway, right? But if you’re consistently playing better than your teammates, you will start to climb. Bad luck is only factor in the short term. Play enough games and your skills will make the difference in enough matches that you’ll start to climb.

If that isn’t happening after playing many matches, you have to admit that luck probably isn’t what is holding you back. You need to do something differently. If you’ve tried tweaking your build several times and nothing seems to work, then you need to take a closer look at how you can refine your game.

I started at the bottom of gold 1 in this, my first season. I found myself stuck at the top of gold 1 for weeks, seemingly unable to break out of it. So I tweaked my build, using the meta build for inspiration. Suddenly I found myself climbing gold 2. When I hit a wall again, I started to find players I worked well with to duo queue. And I climbed again. Now I’m bumping around at the top of gold 3/bottom of platinum 1.

So what’s next for me, since I seem to have hit a wall in low platinum 1 (1534 rating, season high so far)? Well, I’m new to PvP and I only know how to play elementalist (and only d/d at that!). So I figure my next step is to learn some new weapon sets (focus, specifically, as that’s the meta), watch some videos, and talk/play with more experienced players.

I take every opportunity to talk to players higher in rating than myself. For instance, yesterday a higher ranked platinum player called me out during a loss. I didn’t get angry about it. Instead, I whispered him after the match and asked for constructive criticism. He calmed down, apologized for calling me out, and gave me some good advice including specifics on how my class should be played and where I might have made some mistakes during the match.

I also joined a teaching opportunity that was posted on the forums. It was a couple of top 250 players in voice chat, answering questions and sharing tips including positioning, kiting, even things like spots you can use line of sight or get up on top of things that can obstruct attacks or prevent teleport skills from reaching you.

Above all, just do your best to be patient and look for opportunities to learn. Getting angry and blaming your failures on factors that are out of your control does nothing to help you improve. Remember that!

Shaogin.2679:

What rank are you? And how do you know you are playing against platinum players? Do you also know what rank your teammates are?

It’s not hard to tell. The amount of points you gain/lose gives you a hint. For instance, if you’re in gold 3 and you get blown away in a near-shutout and only lose 5 points when a typical loss costs you more like 14 points, you can be sure there were players on the opposing team that were FAR above you in rating.

Worse, you can also be sure you had some higher rating players on your team who never had a chance due to poor matchmaking, and yet lost quite a lot more points just because you were on their team!

You have to figure that if there are fewer than 250 players in the 1600+ rating bracket, and only a small fraction of that number competing at any given time, the higher you go the more you will have to deal with poor matchmaking like this.

It’s a shame because, in my experience, matchmaking throughout the gold tiers is actually quite good. It feels competitive and close-ish games (within 150 points) are the norm. Very few games fall far outside of the average range in terms of points gained/lost.

I don’t know what they can do about this. If they put a lower ceiling on rating such as limiting it to within 100 rating points, players at 1900+ will find they will never get a match even if they hang out in the queue for hours. And because there is such a significant difference in skill between a top 10 player and a top 100 player, when they do get matches it will likely end up very lopsided anyway.

Since it seems matchmaking works fairly well (at least in gold), I don’t see that there’s much to be gained from rocking the boat for them. So what do you do to resolve this problem? I just don’t know.

Swink.5172:

Well, No PvP content = no purchase from my side. I put my time & money elsewhere since pvp is a main focus for me but clearly not for Anet, never have been and never will be.

+ the new elite specs imo. Boooring and just feels like the pushed what ever crap someone could come up with, having that guy saying “I think this is cool” over and over in the video did not make me think its “cool”. Sorry Anet but. Bad try.

Yeah? And you saying it’s going to be boring before you’ve even tried it carries even less weight. In every case they clearly made an attempt to drastically alter the class mechanics with these new specs.

This is not more of the same. It could still turn out to be terrible, especially where power creep is concerned. But there’s no way to tell any of that from the video provided. Personally, I think it deserves a chance. If nothing else, it will bring something very new and different to each class. What more could you want as a starting off point for a new specialization?

Ayuruk.3980:

Hi all gonna make a tempest healer. What stat spec should I be going? Cleric? Zealot?

PvP healer = mender’s

PvE healer = magi’s

WvW healer = minstrel’s

As far as I know, ele in PvP is almost always played as a healer. In WvW they can be zerg healers or tanky damage dealers as roamers. In PvE, metabattle lists a staff raid healer, but I believe most groups prefer to bring ele as a damage dealer and leave the healing to classes that can still get the job done but provide better damage/support in the process.

kdaddy.5431:

No, im not upset with the game. I simply dont like the meta and the speed of PvP. Im simply pointing out the ethics of the game.

Take away the salt that some of them are showing right now. Some of the comments are about how they lost X or did X.

Talking about how MT cant win X. They still won the tournament so even the community has serious salt towards the players.

Im not the only one who see’s it. I understand that Jebro can ban them, i understand why Anet perma banned them but my question is simply why and why now?

Aeroxe did the same thing on the thread where Anet banned them, other players have been caught cheating in Pro League, during the seasons, X players have been known to use hacks which are taken down from the forum, people who smurf etc etc etc etc.

Aeroxe simply asked the question of why a life time ban when people who did the same thing got a 1 season ban.

Alot of people are saying NOW Anet wants it to be taken seriously and i just dont believe it. I seem to be missing what everyone is upset with.

In Seasons 1-4 you saw terrible players get legendary titles. Smurfing to create advantages with alt accounts from all these Pro players.

In S5 threw S7 you saw the exact same thing and, you guys say to report it to Anet. Im sorry but the same people who get reported for legit hacking, legit quitting etc etc etc.

They got the smallest slaps on the wrists if anything. Anet has done next to nothing to protect the integrity of the game.

So just from my point of view Anet created this type of atmosphere in the game. For me it doesnt matter that they took PvE players accounts and got them a tournament win.

All i saw was 2 teams play and 1 team won and everyone got upset. I dont understand why everyone is upset when this type of behavior was acceptable for nearly 3 years. For me i thought we had all adjusted to the ethics and morals of GW2.

Translation: As long as I don’t get punished for it, it’s ethical.

It sounds to me like you understand perfectly well why ANet did what they did. Why pretend otherwise?

Lyger.5429:

Saiyan.1704:

Lyger.5429:

Hmm as I mentioned before the perma-ban seems a little excessive and sudden. Why not go for 6 months to a years time. Even more high profile competitive games do this. Furthermore, if Anet wants to fix the scene they need to actually start dealing with some of the complaints that have been around since forever.

I read an article where an espurts player on Overwatch got banned simply because he was using vulgar language on stream. It wasn’t even sPvP manipulation or any other type of Tournament manipulation.

I applaud Anet for having the aptitude to say, “we’re not taking your kitten anymore.”, to an event that was heavily disrespected by these players. Same to Jebro who immediately replied to the investigation and banned these players from entering future prize winning tournaments.

You mentioned Overwatch, even Blizzard’s policy is to go for 6 month bans. Unlike Blizzard, ANet can’t afford to lose pvp players.

They can’t afford to condone this sort of behavior either.

So the “MASSIVE” change, if I’m reading you right, is to simply revert back to a pre-HoT season? Get rid of HoT additions, bring back the pre-HoT amulets?

I guess I was hoping for better than that. If all we can do is look back to the glory days, then I don’t think literally trying to return to them is going to save us. I have higher hopes for the next expansion introducing new elite specs that may help to balance out the lopsidedness having only 1 elite spec for each class introduced.

I notice they don’t give us a lot of options for toughness. With the exception of the Paladin amulet, toughness is never seen paired with any other defensive stat, and in that amulet it’s not a primary stat.

I’ve only played PvP this season, but I figured the reason must be that pairing up primary stats like toughness and healing power might produce unreasonably tanky healer classes.

Consider the ele meta. The build clears condi like it’s nothing. If it could also absorb significantly more power damage it might be impossible to kill such a healer within a useful time frame.

Azukas.1426:

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Lmfao. What exactly do you think is wrong with my integrity? I think I’ve been incredibly consistent in not putting up with this kitten since the launch of the game, including kicking my own teammates from my weekly tournaments in the past for playing with ineligible players on alts.

And now we know for sure where the inside argument to ban the abjured came from.

Can’t beat em ban em eh Olrun?

As an Admin you needed to take a stance of neutrality and that’s why your integrity is in question.

Jebro Ban Jeffies & Olrun’s team as well it’s the right thing to do, and will save UGO’s integrity to the game.

Thanks

p.s. There’s still be zero defining proof posted anywhere on the web. We’ve seen a video of a inferior team lose the finals and someone asking for a VPN. Zero REAL proof. Besides no one cheated in the grand scheme of things.

You should stop using the word “integrity”. You clearly don’t have the slightest understanding of the meaning of the word.

Terrible. I had no idea who the main characters in this storyline were and, after completing it, I still have no idea what any of this has to do with finding Balthazar. I literally had to go searching the forums for an explanation of who the main characters were and why I should care. As a season finale, I am simply shocked that the writers thought this would be a good way to wrap up. You blew it. Plain and simple.

Dschromm.1673:

Hi guys,
I’m a casual player and have played every episode of LW story since season 2 so far. But with the start of season 3 after HoT I lost connection to the storyline(s). All of the sudden there were chakk, two rival elder dragons, lazarus, the white mantle, aurene, balthasar, the-eye-of-something… tbh, I’m confused as a skritt may be when solo. Would someone be so kind and explain to me what happened during season 3 and why?

what is tyria focusing on? killing the elder dragons? doesn’t sound like it. war with the white mantle? maybe… i dunno. balthasar threatening tyria? defenetly, but why?

please help and thanks a lot!

Dschromm

I just posted something similar. Didn’t notice this until afterward.

I’m with you! What the heck is going on here?

Did I miss something? I don’t remember this Livia person being mentioned at any point in the current storyline. In fact, I don’t recall hearing her mentioned anywhere at all in the various storyline elements of GW2! Who the heck is this person and why are we working together?

Lazarus. Okay, I understand that the mursaat are bad guys, but I have no idea what they did except that they seem to have a less-than-friendly history with humans. I thought the reason Lazarus just sort of disappeared after being so prominent in the first episode of season 3 was that he wasn’t really Lazarus at all, but Balthazar in disguise. It still left me wondering who Lazarus is, but as he wasn’t strictly relevant to the story I was willing to let it go.

Now here I am killing Lazarus as the final encounter of season 3? Why? At least tell me who he is and why I want to kill him! As far as I could tell, by the end of the last episode all I got out of the entire thing was a brief moment with the Eye of Janthir to show me where Balthazar went!

I guess I am just left wondering why I care about any of this. Weak finish to the season, in my opinion. I guess it’s a good thing I’m excited about the next expansion, at least.

Agreed. I crafted incinerator and love the look of it, but the projectile animation is the same thing. Why is my elementalist throwing daggers? I would much rather use the standard animations.

Can we have an option to disable the projectile effect on legendary weapons? These animations where our characters throw the weapon itself are really lame.

Fluffball.8307:

aikatara.3462:

I also die a lot in larger mops but I feel that my solution to that problem is to use the appropriate skills to keep them in bay (or attack them) and use them FAST. Throw everything at them as soon as I approach the enemy. Have a good rotation and know it very well. To really, really know which skill does what. And to be FAST to avoid attacks.

A bad player in glass gear is tomorrow’s elite player. Any player in tanky gear is next year’s player in tanky gear…

So far, I’ve yet to meet a full glass ele that can solo effectively against even some of the easier HoT HP challenge champions. Usually what I get when I question such “elite” players is: Why would you solo that? Yet you’re answering questions for players who are asking about how to survive in SOLO PvE. If you don’t play solo or bother with soloing things, then why answer by talking down to players who wish to do exactly that and don’t care about your raids and other forms of organized group PvE?

I don’t want to assume you’re like the others, though. Why don’t we define what your priorities are so we can better determine what you mean when you say you “solo” in full glass? What do you solo? Can you solo something difficult? How about the mushroom emperor or mushroom queen in TD? Can you solo those in full glass? How about something a little easier like the inquisitor HP or the chak champion in the southern part of AB? I’m probably not “elite”, but I can solo those in celestial and definitely not in full glass. What about you?

Soothsayer.9206:

Cheats and cheaters don’t exist in online games, therefore it can’t be true for people to experience cheating in GW2. All these people who experience cheating (in various forms) cannot possible know what they are talking about either, because I don’t notice or experience what they are experiencing, and, therefore, it has to be untrue. Same old worn out and faulty logic. I don’t believe there are cheaters behind every screen either, but I do know they exist, both by experience and by the experience of others.

I find it very disingenuous when people come to threads and denigrate what others are seeing and experiencing.

Here’s an example outside of GW2; recently Valve banned 40k accounts for cheating. Therefore, if you don’t think it happens here in various forms, even here in GW2, then you should do a little research. Anyway, here’s the article on Valve:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/10/valve-bans-40-000-cheating-accounts-after-the-steam-summer-sale/

Okay, but wouldn’t you agree that there’s a vast difference between “bots/cheating exist” and “bots/cheating are pervasive and the game is unplayable as a result”? I don’t doubt that this issue exists, but in nearly 150 games played this season I have never seen anything to indicate bots or match manipulation. Heck, I’ve barely even seen the kind of poor matchmaking players on this forum claim is constant! I can remember 1 match where the rating gain/loss was so far outside of the norm as to indicate I was placed along with players far above/below my rating.

I’ve played from gold 1 to plat 1 and this is my first PvP season. So I am not saying it doesn’t happen, but in my experience of ~150 ranked games at these rating levels, it is a non-issue that has barely shown itself, if at all.

D/D auramancer (mender amulet, W/E/T). Offensive enough in the right scenario:

First season for me. My thoughts on incentives and other things I’d like to see:

Better stats. PvP players love to crunch numbers. Give us more detailed stats. For instance, I might like to know how my average contribution to team heals vs.other players of my class matches up within my rating tier and compared to other tiers. The more access the better.

Exclusive rewards, yes. But not just for the guys at the top and not just for playing games. How about rewards when you advance to a new rating tier for the first time? It may not be an accomplishment for legendary players to reach platinum, but everyone has their level of play.

Duo queue with someone you work well with. It may take some losses to find people to duo with.

If you really are gold caliber then duo with someone who is around 100 points higher than you are now. You should win more than you lose and because of the rating differential, you will gain more for your wins and less for your losses. But do keep in mind that the situation is reversed for your teammate. So you’d better bring the wins!

Cynz.9437:

Just gonna post same thing as i posted in other threads:
1. MM attempts to create matches with short queues. High rated player (e.g. legend) queues, MM looks for players in similar MMr and puts team together. Then it looks for a team that could be in the same rating. However given low population (changes to game did their best to alienate players from pvp) it cannot find players in same range. So it throws whatever it can find (e.g. silver) in second team and treats the match as even. Which results in blows-out obviously.
2. The rank gain/loss system is based on assumtion that MM always creates even matches so it awards/deduces points based on player MMr vs avg MMR of enemy team. It does not take into consideration that it was complete blow-out match.

This has been going on for seasons now. Among with other changes (removal of carrots), it led to even less players pvp’ing if at all -> lower population -> more blowouts. Nobody enjoys sitting in uneven matches and losing huge portion of points for it and gaining nearly nothing for wins. Everyone realizes it but the devs by the looks of it.

The current system pushes players into quitting, exploiting and only indicates your capability (and your duoq) to win 1v3 fights in every game (only way to climb atm). The system is obsolete as it simply does not serve its purpose, imo.

I haven’t had the same experience advancing from gold 1 to platinum 1 this season. I keep hearing it’s a platinum level problem, where the player pool is too small and matchmaking feels like random chance. But I must not have reached that point yet.

So, for now, I’m not seeing it. But if I make it to platinum 2, I’ll be sure to let you know if my experience changes.

I’m not a great player. I’m too new to be a great player as this is my first season and I only know how to play elementalist. I miss things in fights that more experienced players undoubtedly consider obvious. I don’t fully understand the nuances of rotation.

Tonight I made a few other plat players rage because I missed a mesmer portal that apparently would have given us the win had I taken it. Why? Because I’m new and I’ve never played mesmer, nor have I played with a mesmer and it’s rare below plat level to find good mesmers that actually use their portals effectively. I simply wasn’t looking for it and so I missed it, costing us the game.

But you win some, you lose some. And in either case, you learn some. I try not to get discouraged when I go on a losing streak. It’s disappointing, especially when your team never had a chance. But I don’t question it. I know that I’ve had plenty of games where the other team never had a chance. As well as plenty more that were hard-fought victories or close losses. It’s the nature of the game.

You didn’t say what your rating is, but somehow I doubt you’re at 0 and literally never win a match. Keep your chin up. The other day I spent all day PvPing and finished on 7 losses out of 10, erasing what little progress I had made into gold 3 and dropping me back into gold 2. For my first 50 games I couldn’t get out of gold 1. And then today I went 9 for 10 and finally broke into platinum (before losing a couple of games and dropping back into gold 3!). These are the ups and downs of PvP.

Keep at it. It’s supposed to be difficult. If all you ever fought were “scrubs”, what would your rating really be worth anyway?

InsaneQR.7412:

Everything sounds pretty good to me, except the water dagger 2 and the magnetic leap suggestion. They look rather unneccesary.

I didn’t think the magnetic leap suggestions through. I just hate how slow the leap animation is and would like to see that changed somehow.

Not to downplay your concerns, but if your friends can’t play the game for long enough to burn their birthday boosters or earn 3 mastery points worth of experience, how do you intend to play with them? They obviously barely play the game at all.

I agree that earning 186 mastery points to max them all out is a bit of a grind. However, few of the available masteries are strictly necessary simply to play and enjoy the game. If you’re a completionist who simply enjoys completing objectives, then there is no call to complain about grind – you’re doing what you enjoy doing! If you couldn’t care less about completing every objective and simply want to enjoy the game, then the mastery system is far less of a grind.

I really have no sympathy to spare for MMO players who want everything right now but can’t bother to log in for more than an hour every couple of weeks. The game should not be designed around such players.

Ralkuth.1456:

I think the first thing many will notice is the multi-classing you have going on.

I don’t think that’s the best way to play; get familiar with 1 class in the current meta first. Unless you’re way up in the divisions you don’t need to worry too much about counter-comping, you’ll contribute more if you are familiar with your class mechanics, and rotate according to your role.

Even if you’re not the best player mechanically, know what classes/builds you can push into and survive (this changes with the meta). Actually, just stay away from the matchups you can’t win.

I also tend to get into lose streaks, but I made a rule to bow out at 2-3 consecutive losses and take a break (and also queue dodge). If I get a close loss with good players on both teams though, I queue back in immediately, because the games will be exciting.

I don’t disagree with matchmaking problems because we all experience the cross-division matching sometimes. It’s great to discuss here hoping ANet will somehow reconfigure their MM algorithm, but that’s not everything.

We lose because the enemy team played better. If we think we don’t belong at a certain rating, then we have to learn from mistakes and try to improve. Don’t be so fixated on winning and neglect learning.

Lately I’m busy so it’s one game a day…

Posting my current stats as a very ordinary player. Cheer up man!

AliamRationem.5172:

Am I frustrated? Sure! I spent all day playing PvP and got basically nowhere. But it felt competitive. I didn’t feel I was losing to bad matchmaking for the most part. The competition just felt tougher than usual to me and I think the record reflected that.

You have basically found your 50% win:loss rating then. Still playing Ele? How’s that going matchup wise?

These games are the best to learn from because some can be soooo close, and you will be disappointed with yourself for this poor rotation, I should have landed that, this is bad play on the stomp etc etc… the best experience you can get. Because the difficulty is not insurmountable and if we can fix those clutch mistakes and overcome the challenge, we improve noticeably.

In contrast to blowout matches vs legend/plat players in top teams (the gems of the queue system), where most of the maneuvers will fly over your head as you get destroyed remorselessly and can’t even make out what happened (well an exaggeration but you will be quite a few steps behind).

Absolutely! There were definitely a couple of games where I made the wrong choice such as protecting a point for too long when I could have made more of a difference elsewhere. That one choice could easily have made the difference between a win and a loss in a <100 point game.

I’m not discouraged. This is my first season and it isn’t the first time I’ve hit a wall. A few weeks ago I was stuck in gold 1. Now I’m regularly pushing into gold 3. I think if I keep practicing and tweaking my build/strategy I can still make platinum this season. Also, as I said, it was a particularly competitive day and I did not perform anywhere near as well as I’m used to in terms of W/L.

So yeah, I’m not done yet! I feel pretty strong with ele. It makes a huge difference I can see in the games I play. And I’m going to just stick with it this season and see where it takes me. I wish everyone else could have the same experience I have with the matchmaking system. I don’t understand how it works, but it clearly works and produces competitive matches much of the time for me.

Forget jumping puzzles. I want SAB world 3 and 4!

The competition was stiff yesterday. I played over 30 matches and ended up only a few points higher in rating than I started (which was a low point to begin with!) and ended on a particularly bad streak, losing 7 of my last 10 games.

However, looking at that 10 game history I noticed that only 1 loss was straight up bad matchmaking (duo queue gold 3 players matched against platinum/legendary players and losing 502 to 12 for a whopping -6 rating points!). 5 out of 6 of my other losses were all within 100 points and could easily have gone the other way.

Am I frustrated? Sure! I spent all day playing PvP and got basically nowhere. But it felt competitive. I didn’t feel I was losing to bad matchmaking for the most part. The competition just felt tougher than usual to me and I think the record reflected that.

Daddicus.6128:

If by “Maguuma” you mean “Maguuma Jungle”, then I don’t think I can offer much help.

However, if you mean “Heart of Maguuma”, as in the four Heart of Thorns (HoT) maps, then there’s no solution. Sadly, those areas are just too overpowering. ANet made some minor changes to correct this problem, but nowhere near enough. So, you have to work on perfecting your characters instead:

Get all ascended gear (plus runes, infusions, and sigils), and know how to dodge and how to run away. And, never attempt to take on two mobs at once while solo. If two aggro on you, immediately turn and run away, preferably using an area-effect chill or cripple to slow them down. (Exception: if there’s another player nearby helping, keep fighting unless it’s three mobs.)

Eventually, you’ll get good enough to recognize too-powerful mobs (of which there are far too many). Then, you can avoid them.

Also, try starting one of the five Living Story Season 3 maps. They’re a tad easier than the four main HoT maps. And (with the exception of the fifth map, Draconic Mons), the mapping is orders of magnitude more playable.

Or you could just build tankier? People always seem surprised that if you deviate from “zerk or go home” you can live longer even if you aren’t a total pro. For instance, try something similar to the PvP build for ele and it’s hilarious how difficult it is for enemies to kill a class that is considered in contention for the “squishiest” class of all.

Stats and traits really matter in this game. Try something different if what you’re doing isn’t working.

Devilman.1532:

In Ranked PVP you play an auramancer as anything other than what its intended for everyone will hate, curse at you a lot and question the lineage of your mother. Don’t be that guy.

That depends. I do quite well (gold 3 1440 rating is my high point so far this season, up from gold 1 1207 placement) using a modified auramancer build. I typically go for less condi cleanse (unless up against a total condi bomb team), more direct heals/support via auras (powerful auras), and more damage output by using dagger off-hand and harmonious conduit to ensure better overload success rate.

I wouldn’t say it’s common to top damage with this build (although it does happen in some matches where I had no chance of that using the d/f meta build), but I can burst quite effectively in team fights while also providing strong healing to my team.

Just played two matches before work and got top damage and heals in both games, although the second game my team seemed pretty lacking as I was somehow able to pull 34% team damage (380k) and 57% heals (685k). But I went 15 and 0 and we lost by less than 100 points. Not bad, considering. And I certainly didn’t see anyone throwing any hate my way!

So, I guess it depends how “offensive” you want to be as an auramancer. If you stay focused primarily on healing but want to at least represent some sort of threat beyond that in team fights, I think you can pull that off by deviating slightly from the meta.

You talk like being in gold is a bad thing. Where do you get that idea? Looking at the leader board, the bottom of the top 250 is in platinum 1…only about 80 rating points out of gold. How “bad” are you really if you’re in gold 3 given that?

I’m not saying I necessarily disagree. From a self-serving point of view, I average just below 2 top stats per game for my entire ranked/unranked PvP career. So I’d obviously benefit quite a lot if my losses were essentially halved! But then again, are top stats a good indicator?

If you’re the only healer, aren’t you pretty much guaranteed to get top healing? If your team is getting no kills and you get 1 kill, did you really do anything? Revives? And who hasn’t had one of these…

I find power warriors to be the most dangerous. Checking the combat log and seeing arc divider crits for 8-12k (depending if they are using boon strip to remove protection) is discouraging. And apparently that’s AFTER a power nerf!

OriOri.8724:

Cyninja.2954:

Personally I think arenanet might take a step back from pet classes with all the afk farming getting out of hand lately.

If they think AFK farming is a serious problem (and it seems like they do) then they need to look at why so many players feel compelled to afk farm in the first place, and why it picked up so heavily after leather was handled in such an atrocious manner with HoT, and then address the root of the issue instead of just addressing the symptoms

So, since they addressed the leather issue by dramatically increasing the drop rate from the leather farm, why hasn’t AFK farming disappeared? Oh, that’s right. If you allow people to gain something for nothing, people will do it. The obvious solution is to do like other games do and simply remove kill credit from enemies the player themselves didn’t contribute to in any way. Problem solved with minimal impact to players who actually play the game and earn their rewards.

HeadCrowned.6834:

Mesmer is great with it. Both access to invisibility and instant (moa) burst can be very influential on the game. A good mes/thief duo is able to outrotate the enemy team.

Good point. I hadn’t considered using another mobile class. A good mesmer with those portals and the ability to burst would be a potent match.

Don’t quote me on this as I’m not a PvP expert, but I think thief works best when they do their own thing (i.e. decap and +1). So trying to pair up with them and provide support directly to them during a match isn’t usually productive.

Given that, your best bet might be to go with some sort of bunker or team support so that you can help win team fights and hold mid while your thief does what thief does best to keep the game in your control.

Maybe ele? A good ele support healer makes a world of difference in team fights.

steelheart.7386:

Post you game logs so we can see. Not doubting you would just like real evidence. The problems with the matchmaking go beyond w and l. I generally do pretty well but its not fun at all to win 500-200 or greater and scores like that happen a lot and when I do lose a lot of the time its similar type scoring and I didn’t play any differently from when I won by that margin. Also, I think some of this could be perspective you might actually think that 1/4 to 1/3 of the games being blow outs it totally acceptable well many would disagree with that.

That’s my match history right now. It looks to me like only one of those matches was a total blowout (And that for a 15 rating loss! Ouch!)

Having said that, I recently changed my build and have been duo queuing with people I trust where before I was going it alone. Previously, I placed low in gold 1 and never progressed to gold 2. Since making the changes a few days ago I’ve been steadily climbing ankitten ow at 1389 rating (up from 1207 originally). As you can see from the 70% win rate, I think I still have room to grow here.

If I’m reading the complaints correctly, I can’t agree that it was matchmaking holding me back previously or that it’s matchmaking in my favor allowing me to suddenly progress where I had been stuck in gold 1 since the beginning of the season.

So, on the surface it appears the matchmaking system works. However, it was also mentioned that it breaks down when there are insufficient players. I haven’t reached plat rank yet (but I hope to!), so I have no direct frame of reference for that. But looking at the leaderboards it seems obvious that there are too few players at plat and above.

If I had to guess, there are probably far fewer than 500 players in platinum. How many of them are actively in the matchmaking queue at any given time? It can’t be enough to avoid meeting the same players over and over and pulling from lower ranks to fill slots.

I don’t know what you can do about that. Making PvP more attractive via rewards unfortunately won’t attract the type of players you need to resolve this issue. Only offering the gameplay this type of player wants will do that.

I’m not trashing GW2 PvP. This is my first season and progressing through gold so far has been a blast, with all of the ups, downs, crushing defeats and epic wins I expect from PvP. I find myself wanting to keep playing and see how far I can go with my personal rating. But I don’t want to reach plat and end up complaining about terrible matchmaking ruining the experience.

It’s a shame so many PvP players are so caught up in their precious rating that they’d rather just give up than play for the love of the game. Even worse when you consider that comeback victories happen literally all the time and they’re usually the most exciting matches you’ll have.

Just play. Losing is not the end of the world and you never know what might have happened if you afk out or sit in spawn talking trash instead of going out there and trying to win.

All Matters Fecal.9560:

How are people denying that bots are a thing?! That’s mind boggling.

It’s painfully obvious who is a bot and who isn’t. Do some googling and you’ll see it exists and it’s readily available to any kitten out there.

I’m sure it exists, but I can’t imagine it’s effective for advancing your rating. I’ve only played in gold tier, and I haven’t seen anything that looked like botting. It sucks that people do this, but shouldn’t the bots make it pretty easy for any player who is actually playing the game to advance past the tiers (bottom of bronze, I assume?) where this is a thing?

epoc.7941:

AliamRationem.5172:

Faux Play.6104:

epoc.7941:

The problem is a rating system based on a overall W/L ratio alone isn’t enough. At least not to me. It STILL doesn’t accurately portray an individuals personal skill.

The system is glicko 2 based which is more than win loss ratio. It factors in how well it knows the rating of you and your opponent (deviation), and the rating difference between you and your opponent. Keep in mind that you are unlikely to get your deviation below 60. What that means is the system is 95% sure you are within 2 deviations (+/- 120) of your current rating.

Interesting.

Whatever it’s doing, it seems to work. I placed gold 1 after winning 60% of my placement matches. Then I spent the next 40 games stuck in gold 1, unable to advance but also not dropping into a lower tier.

Tonight I made some pretty significant changes to my build and suddenly I won 7 out of 10 games and came within less than 30 points of winning on two of my losses! After all of that fruitless effort, tweaking my build allowed me to break into gold 2 for the first time.

It will be interesting to see where I start to hit that ceiling again. But I expect despite the obvious mismatches the system produces, I will end up in a place where I find it difficult to advance but also not dropping back down to a lower tier. I think this is what you should expect from good matchmaking. At the rating you belong, you should expect stiff competition and a win/loss rate that keeps you more or less at that tier.

How the system does that despite mismatches is a mystery to me. But so far it appears to be working, in my opinion.

For starters congrats on making gold 2. I’ve been in gold 2 myself from the moment I got my ranking. But last night I actually dipped below it for a bit because I just couldn’t win a match and it wasn’t bc I was playing poorly it was because the players inwere playing with were making really really lousy decisions that Wild cost the match…and so my score dropped not because I failed but bc my entire team did. In a system where both the team and individual effort is shown I wouldn’t feel so bad about losing bc my stats or ranking would show I’m still a good team player. Feel me?

In other words what I’m saying is if I were to tey to get recruited by a team for a tourney they might have a prwjudce against me based on my teir yet that really is just a reflection of my team w/l and not my ability to play in a team. And that riggbthere aucks.

I’m not suggesting that losing streaks due to poor team play can’t happen, but it seems to me that over a large number of matches the system seems pretty accurate. If I had to illustrate how that works (in my mind, because again I don’t really understand how it does what it does), the basic idea is that as I drop below my rating level I start to win more matches again. Sure, I can still lose due to factors beyond my control, but the matches overall tend to become easier as my rating drops and if I play enough games my rating will start to increase again.

Faux Play.6104:

epoc.7941:

The problem is a rating system based on a overall W/L ratio alone isn’t enough. At least not to me. It STILL doesn’t accurately portray an individuals personal skill.

The system is glicko 2 based which is more than win loss ratio. It factors in how well it knows the rating of you and your opponent (deviation), and the rating difference between you and your opponent. Keep in mind that you are unlikely to get your deviation below 60. What that means is the system is 95% sure you are within 2 deviations (+/- 120) of your current rating.

Interesting.

Whatever it’s doing, it seems to work. I placed gold 1 after winning 60% of my placement matches. Then I spent the next 40 games stuck in gold 1, unable to advance but also not dropping into a lower tier.

Tonight I made some pretty significant changes to my build and suddenly I won 7 out of 10 games and came within less than 30 points of winning on two of my losses! After all of that fruitless effort, tweaking my build allowed me to break into gold 2 for the first time.

It will be interesting to see where I start to hit that ceiling again. But I expect despite the obvious mismatches the system produces, I will end up in a place where I find it difficult to advance but also not dropping back down to a lower tier. I think this is what you should expect from good matchmaking. At the rating you belong, you should expect stiff competition and a win/loss rate that keeps you more or less at that tier.

How the system does that despite mismatches is a mystery to me. But so far it appears to be working, in my opinion.

If you want complex playstyles, engineer and elementalist are probably your best bet. But you may want to learn the basics first.

If we’re talking open world PvE, you could always just build tankier until you feel more comfortable with the class. There’s no reason you have to limit yourself to full glass just because you do it with other classes or people tell you it’s the only way to go.

Remember that ele has strong healing and damage mitigation available to them, as well as the ability to compensate somewhat for damage lost by might stacking in solo play. You should be able to find your comfort zone with this class. It doesn’t necessarily have to be “squishy”.

I think 120 seconds is a bit long for this ability. However, I notice you avoided mentioning that you can trait to reduce this skill to just over 80 seconds. Can mesmer do the same with wells?