Guild Wars 2

Take 2 players.
They duel.
One is melee. The other is ranged.
At 180 range they can both hit each other.
At 300 range one hit the other, the other has very few skills that will hit.
At 600 range one can hit the other, the other can’t hit until their back at 180 range.
At 900 range one can hit, the other can’t hit until their back at 180 range.
At 1200 units one can hit, the other can’t until their back at 180 range.
At 2000 units one can possibly hit, the other can’t until back at 180 range.
At 200 perch height one can hit the other can’t.

Observations;
Range is its own defense. Range has more opportunities of strike than melee.

Conclusions;
Anti projectile/reflect/deflect skills are needed to put range vs melee weapons on an even tier.

Result;
We have multiple ranged attacks and types in straight, piercing, rebounding, unblockable. Ergo we need multiple forms of projectile hate from blocking, deflecting, reflecting.

Overall deduction;
All’s fair in love and war.

This is seriously the most posted about division tier.
I, myself noticed SappT3-4 is where the progression/learning curve suddenly becomes a lot steeper for mid range MMR players.

It is the part of the progression curve where each player has to lift their game in terms of overall map awareness. Teams that have the majority of players who can do this will move forward, however if you find yourself on a losing streak, the MMr tumble you take in this division/tier will really punish you with what future players it pairs you with.

My advice, duo/trio que tier 3-4 and try to keep your wins above your losses, otherwise your MMR is going to tumble and you’ll find yourself often being paired with final tier emeralds rather than division 1 rubies.

I suspect this area is where the progression curve goes from a gentle incline into a much sharper transition and steeper incline. It seems to be the soft ceiling where average/good players will begin to struggle and where average/good players with strong map awareness and communication skills will progress.

The player helseth post a video ages ago about what it is to carry through smarter rotations and decisions. Even one person using more advanced thinking in a team can make an impact difference by being where they will give the most benefit slightly before they are actually needed.

It means preferred builds you may like running and are comfortable with now need to give way to builds that allow to be where your needed when your needed, or even better..slightly before your needed.

Guild wars 1 Nightfall release.

10 professions.
1320 skills.
Multiple elites for each professions.
Build templates baked into HuD.
Fully customized HuDs.

Alliancee battles.
Hall of heroes.
Heroes ascent.
Team arena
Random arena.
Hero arena.
Guild vs Guild.

PvP rewards were equal to farmers income.

Not to mention the earliest decider of skill; when you had a team, you kept that team. If you won 10 consecutive matches, you got a point. After 20 points you got your first low level title.

A.I builds were viable. I.E minion masters just won’t thrive in most PvP area’s.

Whatever you unlocked in PvE you could use in PvP. Whatever you unlocked in PvP you could use in PvE.

WarHawk.1892:

So is “Low Skill Floor” + Good “1v1’er”

The 2nd of which is definitely not true. Unless you’re willing to admit that it is skillbased to which you counter your own arguement toward Krysard. Reaper is not a 1shot class similar to Mesmer or Thief bursts. They were always meant to be better in teamfights as that boosts their shroud and because they have access to a lot of AoE that spreads the damage around.

Reapers are not doing more damage than other classes in PvP. That is a fact, you can just as easily roll Revenant, Mesmer, or Dragonhunter and reach those 1million damage marks.

They became “meta” at this current time due to a few small tweaks: elementalists lost the invulnerability to conditions from Diamond Skin, Warrior’s beserker stance was kittened, and a boost to Scepter3 with Torment. That is the nature of balancing PvP in all games, and all it would take to shift the meta again would be to update Warriors for example who can cc-lock the necro (This class like most classes also has more than one form of stability and a multitude of stunbreaks).

But all we’ve done here is take the time to list things that may or may not be valid about Reaper. I am going to use warrior again on the basis that the majority of PvP’rs would agree they are currently exempt from the meta and actually may need a small buff somewhere with Beserker’s lackluster PvP performance:

13+ Stun/Daze Skills
Beserker Stance and its Pulsing Boons
2 Endure Pain(s)(Direct counter to Raw Damage players)
Potentially unable to be Immobilized
Able to revive up to 5 players with Battle Standard
An array of Leaps/Gap Closers to escape or pursue opponents
Healing Signet -Look never hit 6 again no skill involved healing!
Massive single target damage (“cough” – Gun Flame)

We can make any class sound good. But the fact is Anet doesn’t always need to nerf something because it became meta (For the tiers up to Ruby until which competent people start running cleanses again and dont just clear the first 4 conditions on them [cripple, vuln, blind, 2bleedstacks, ect] but wait until there are damaging conditions). Shifting the meta may simply involve buffing a single class or skill elsewhere in the game, same regarding dropping a class from the meta.

You’ve pretty much summed it up. When you selectively list attractive skills any profession has, you can illustrate it as being an awesome profession.

Dahkeus.8243:

Grr…posted a whole reply, but then the forums bugged out.

Anyways, there’s 4 points I think you could improve on, after watching the video:

1) Disengage from +1 fights sooner. You stuck around way too long both times you +1ed a side fight. The first one, fortunately, didn’t cause any issues and you only wasted a little bit of time against a DH who your teammate could have easily finished off. The second one resulted in you getting swamped at far and then getting downed.

2) Watch enemy movement better. You were slow on the home +1 fight since you didn’t have your camera pointed towards the enemy base, which is why you didn’t see them crossing over. You also got swamped at far because you never looked towards the enemy base and didn’t see their backup arriving.

3) Be more strategic with your knock backs. Save your knock backs for enemies who try to revive or for other clutch moments, such as enemies using a heal or enemies that are almost dead. You missed several opportunities because you blew this cooldown early in the fight.

4) Utilize perches better. The best place to be for mid fights as a longbow ranger is on the ledge between home and far. This will keep you out of harms way, allow you to more quickly +1 home, and will also put your ally in a safer place when you S&R. Also, you didn’t utilize the higher ground at the far point. Because of this, you took a lot of extra damage, missed some shots, and got feared when you used S&R.

I agree with the above feedback.
The points mentioned here are all very valid.
The only things I would add would be;
1) Ranger was a wonderful selection of traits that proc on pet swap. You appear to favour bristleback. Choosing a second pet that off sets your ‘fire from a distance’ approach, and will head onto a node or a target will assist in keeping a melee pressure on a target or node pressure.
2) If you find yourself in a moment of where you’re standing somewhere not doing anything and are now playing catch up to get to a position to assisting, take that brief moment to hold down shift and map draw numbers of enemies on nodes on the map quickly. Not a lot of players make use of this function. However having someone quickly scroll 3 on home 1 on mid and 1 on far quickly lets your team know where the opposition is at a glance. or even a 2 with a quick arrow leading from their base to your home would allow the home point defender to know action is coming their way.

Hansen.3264:

it will be so much easier to ballance a game if it had one class pr team. i know its not adressing stuff and bla bla it might be posible to create a meta where every class and multiple builds/class have a place. BUT then why dont they, its clearly been 3 years it all shifts up and down.

no class stacking would be a huge inprovement in all aspeckt ecept que times

Because Anet seems to adhere to the philosophy of imperfect balance.
Each patch certain professions, weapons etc get a stronger nudge forward in order for them to overcome the previous professions, skills, weapons that were given a stronger nudge last patch. However this philosophy and approach only works well when players are given lots of resource and options to create builds from. However gw2 as a whole doesn’t have any where near the same amount of resources and options gw1 had. With 10 professions and each profession having to 1320 skills, and each player being able to mix any 2 professions, and then blend them in various ways through skill tree point placement meant you had this diversity of resource. However in gw2 because of this lesser amount of resource it instead creates power creep. Whoever creeps the highest each patch become the apex hunter..then next patch the apex hunter gets slightly nerfed and the under dog gets buffed, and then nudged a little more to create a new apex hunter.

Hansen.3264:

yes people can swap. but people play what the like and have a feeling for. Atleast casual people do.
Even if classes were more ballanced, i still belive it would still give better matches. THere will always be “meta” most effective allaround build that people most lickly would choose. and the no class stacking would be a easy thing to implement right now, and then ballance of that.

Exactly.
“People play what they like and have a feeling for.” So in other words if 2 people both preferred to play the same profession, and that profession had diversity so they don’t have to be carbon copies of each other, and those professions were fairly balanced against other professions..then what your saying is stacking wouldn’t be an issue. However if 4 people preferred to play the same profession (Let’s face it, we’ve all seen 4 necro teams) But players could see the asinine nature of doing this, and could easily swap to any other profession they have and load a build template quickly, and still be reasonably balanced against other professions, then profession stacking wouldn’t be an issue.
By simply hard coding “There can be only one.” All your doing is increasing que times, having players never get games (Ele/necro/scrapper) because there is no shortage of them with them being over tuned currently.

Ergo..balancing professions to be more in line with other and having greater diversity to each profession is a better long term goal than hard coding a rule that will only slow things down, tick people off and make the game worse overall.

You’ve missed the bigger picture.
Profession stacking wouldn’t be an issue if the professions were balanced closer to each other and each profession had more diversity. It also wouldn’t be an issue if players weren’t so head strong about refusing to swap professions in order to achieve a better composition. Your example only illustrates the player community attitude. There is no reason for 2 DH and 2 scrappers. They would have better diversity and options if one of the DH swap to something that had team swiftness and boons and one of the scrappers swapped to a stronger and more direct DPS profession.

The other team doesn’t need 2 thieves and would benefit swapping to a corruption reaper and it doesn’t need 2 warriors and would benefit swapping to a bunker druid.

There is no real reason to stack professions. The game doesn’t force teams to accept the compositions they are given. It is the players who accept it and refuse to change, or swap.

If each profession were more closely balanced players wouldn’t need to alt swap as regularly or feel disadvantaged moving away from their ’fav’s-flavour of the month-mains.’ If it meant better diversity The only part the game has to take responsibility on is not allowing players to quickly swap professions and having build templates available and not currently having some elite line better tuned. Everything after that is player side, and there is nothing the game can do about that. No one forced into keeping the stacked professions, they had a minute and a half before the match started to do something about it. There is even a voice that says out loud….“Last chance to…”

’Simple. It’s too passive and easy. You can simply apply, and re-apply conditions whenever you choose, there is no immunity,…."

Resistance boon. It make you resistant to conditions.
Hoelbrak/melandru runes.
Transfer via generosity sigil.
Transfer via skills I.E plague signet
Cleanses..lots of cleanses..cleanses every where…

“it’s too passive….you simply apply and reapply whenever you choose.” It can’t be passive and active at the same. If your applying whenever you choose, it is active..if triggers without you doing anything, it is passive..

Granted some professions deal with conditions better than others, this is why you can swap sigils, traits and professions before a match starts depending on what the other teams composition is.

Hope this helps.

Here is some feedback for you.
This pearl of wisdom comes from years of competitive play in gw1, and still applies in gw2.

An average warrior is average.
An average elementalist is average.
An average necromancer is average.
An average mesmer is bad.

Because of mesmers squish factor, and also because they have time sensitive skills that will interrupt if they hit at the exact moment, but do nothing if their a fraction out of time they require a certain savvy to keep alive and be effective. They also have some skills/elites that when used in a masterful way will entirely dominant a match situation.

The point is mesmer is, and can be fun to play..but also to get the most from them they require some esoteric thinking. They also benefit from a fast internet ping.

Even though you’re doing your best to win and help your team, and at times doing a above average job, as stated above mediocre and average game play on a mesmer is overall bad.

Take the time in the off season to play a lot of other professions and their elites. Look at what they are good at and not so good at. Generally speaking many of the things a lot of the professions are good at, mesmer can make them better..many things others are not so good at mesmer can do well. Focus your return to mesmer after playing other professions to excel at what mesmer does best. These things would be;

1) Savvy portal plays
2) Moa morph problem targets when it is going to ruin their game play and ruin their teams.
3) Get interrupt timing down when you see key skills being cast.
4) Master hotkeys. This will make movement, disengagement, targeting a lot easier for you.
5) Focus on movement to get to situations where you’ll make a difference. Mesmer can move fairly fast in between nodes when you know how.
6) Learn pick out people who aren’t very sharp at dealing with mesmers.(They waste time attacking clones.) If you have to 1 vs 1..make sure its that person.

Good luck. Just remember if you want mesmer as your main, you’re going to have to put in extra foot work and practice to be skilled with them.

Sapphire t3-4 seems to an area a lot of players start getting very mixed results.

You’re not the only person who has noticed this.

In my first 40 games I was sitting 36 wins-4 losses. That got me to tier 4 sapphire. At this point it took me some time to escape it. My recorded looked like win-lose-win-lose-win-win-lose-win-lose-lose-win-lose. Eventually some of my guild were experiencing the same thing at the same division/tier, so we grouped and coasted to ruby.

This is an anecdotal at best, but having a win rate of 87ish% at T4 sapphire one would think the MMR would have placed me with the ‘better’ players according to what people believe currently. However once I had the double loss (still would have been on 86ish% win rate) I was being teamed with people who would double cap home, not communicate pre match, wouldn’t alt swap, continuously pushed far to lose, never made use of mini map assistance I ping them…basically all the stuff that frustrates you when you know the match is winnable with co-ordination.

I don’t seriously believe the MMR places ‘Winners with winners’ and ‘losers with losers’ perse". I suspect from the limited evidence, that sapphire T4 is where MMR system struggles to make better matches. We could refer to sapphire T4 as the skilled, but casual tipping point. It is here that a skilled casual player now needs to lift their game considerably to consistently have a solid win ratio.

The big problem is a player lifting their game massively still can’t successfully carry 2-3 other players who’s mindset is still that of the skilled casual who’s game tactics aren’t evolving.

The evolving/grouping players move on, and this leaves a pool of low MMR sapphire players to battle it out. So what happens when a low MMR sapphire team gets beaten by another low MMR sapphire team?..one teams MMR drops even lower, and the other teams MMR still remains low. This forms a bigger issue in that nobody is now enjoying the sapphire T4-T5 experience..it has literally become the bad vs the ugly for many matches where luck or fluke becomes the biggest deciding factor, because as stated above..an evolving player can’t carry 2-3 others who just aren’t learning that the division curve just got steeper. Loses will slide you down that steep curve faster, and wins only push you up that steep curve marginally.

this is what players are calling MMR hell. It is also the area anet should look at when making changes for future seasons. It is probably the area where tiers can now be lost would be a good implement so it begins to break groupings of players up. The casual will titter totter at low sapphire, the evolving and progressive players will move beyond it and eventually these two players types won’t end up being a mixed group with each other anymore.

Easiest match to carry. However you need 2 people willing to change for the win. For example on legacy of foefire;

You change to mesmer.
Another person swaps to ele or druid.

Run a 2-3 split.

Send bunker+support to home.
let them swarm mid.
you+ 2 others push far and annihilate their home defender.
before home defender is stomped drop portal and begin to move towards mid. Send one person to attack door. When they split to capture their home use decoy and blink to start uncapping mid. When they begin to contest home drop portal and bring your team to mid to cap and outnumber anyone on mid.

At this point they have either send someone back to base because it under attack. If they do, have that person disengage and stay at stones throw from far. If they don’t send someone back, then crack the lord a few times before disengaging to cause confusion that lord is under attack.

When their home defenders cap home and begin to move back to mid..have the person who just pushed lord early to decap far or join at mid if you feel you have a chance.

Keep using portal to move your team around from mid to far.

Eventually when they regroup and try to have some strength in numbers have one of the 2 home defenders move forward to the broken gate and push lord again. Either they’ll send someone back, in that case disengage, if they don’t try for an early lord play.

necro’s aren’t that mobile. Their biggest offense is chill which has a max duration so spamming it won’t make them more effective. One agile mesmer with portal or thief can exploit their poor mobility to the point they find it difficult to keep 2 points contested in any serious way.

They push mid..you portal to far
They defend their home..your home defender push mid.
They push your home..you push mid and far
They try to push far and home..you capture mid and threaten base.

One mesmer can entirely ruin a mostly full/full necro team simply by not trying to fight them at all unless you have them outnumbered and just positioning yourself so they are always having to move without much assistance from swiftness.

Here is Mike..he has played 50 games. He has won 46 of them and lost 4 and is in tier 5 sapphire and about to cross tier 6. Mike only has limited time he can play each day.

Here is Izaak..he has played 200 games. He has lost 102 of them and won 98 and is in first tier ruby. Izaak has a few hours he can play each day.

Mike, even though on a solid winning streak will be paired with a number of sapphire players and maybe an odd ruby. Izaak will be paired with mostly ruby and maybe an odd sapphire.

Izaak is being carried by his slightly better team, even though he loves to push far and usually isn’t too successful at it.

Mike doesn’t like to push far, he prefers to protect mid and be mindful of what is happening on home. Mike does what he can to carry with straight forward solid tactics.

Mike has a great MMR, but not many matches to confirm his status.
Izaak has a terrible MMR, and a lot of matches to confirm his status.

The System decides Mike and Izaak should face each other. They are within pip range of each other. So Izaak will get a carry by the system assigning him other good ruby players, because that is his division and likewise Mike gets an assist by being placed with some good sapphire players and a some what struggling, but ok ruby player.

The end result will either be;
Mike’s mostly sapphire team wins by countering Izaak’s persistence in pushing far. The other players on Izaak team have been let down by being placed with Izaak and his mindset that far must be pushed at all costs.

or

Izaak team carry him. With better win histories than Izaak and more experience than Mike’s team they adjust quickly to carry Izaak and Mike gets beaten by a team he shouldn’t be facing quite yet. However the system saw a connection between Mike and Izaak because they were close to each other in pip range and everyone else got pulled in because they are some where within a 15 pip point spread of each other.

This is where the system struggles. Izaak can’t lose divisions even though he loses more than he wins. Mike can’t get an opportunity to accelerate up to be with better teams because he has to progress through all of sapphire division first.

I understand why they made the system this way, but example like this expose how easily the system can make flawed decisions when it only takes a couple of variables into consideration.

This..this right here is why I ended my season.

It is a credit to you that you are seeking advice. I hope you gain some pearls that allows you progress and better your play.

However, at ruby division the team overall didn’t communicate well at all. I suspect there was no sigil or amulet swaps pre match/alt swaps. It appears players have progressed their way to a division that they shouldn’t be in.

It becomes immensely difficult to carry when you have what I call 4 average/bad players. They play a solid average game in 1 vs 1 situations, and they feel that is important and vital to success, however they don’t make use of the mini map, don’t make solid rotation decisions and they tend to run builds that are more orientated on the selfish than the selfless.

My best advice overall would be start duo/trio teams.
Communicate solidly about what role each of you will take.
Discuss when/circumstances which one of you will peel to support home.
Don’t focus on far until your team is very solid with each other. Just focus on holding 2
Design builds that work well with each other.
Have alts ready to go when you come across team comps that will hard counter you.

This is my biggest disappointment with this season. A lot of players have progressed to a level where better builds won’t win for you, or better play won’t win for you…you now need superior communication and tactics if you want to win consistently, yet so many players won’t say a word pre-match or do a thing to improve tactics or game plan.

If you can’t get a semi team together, play unranked, because your match quality moving forward will be of unranked quality all the while your tanking your MMR for any future seasons.

This is basically where I am at. I won’t play ranked anymore until 2 of my guild mates are there in my team. I have just become too frustrated with trying to habitually keep an eye on too many average/bad team mates that refuse to communicate or even make an attempt at being a team.

Interesting. Although anecdotal, tier 4 sapphire is when i went from 87% win rate to 51%. The amount of win-lose-win-lose I had in that tier was insane. I ended teaming with 2 others from guild to move beyond that. They too distinctly remember tier 4 sapphire being a tipping point of heavy win/loss ping ponging. We all thought it was us, but once we teamed we started getting 500-180 wins..tier 4 sapphire is the magic line when players need to communicate now and most don’t and their organisation becomes terrible.

Obviously I can’t prove it, but tier 4 sapphire seems like the soft ceiling where the MMR makes a decision about whether it thinks you deserve you progress now, or are just fodder for others it thinks should progress.

The only thing that sticks out is that you’re another person of about a dozen who found tier 4 sapphire massively troublesome.

I am lucky I guess. I get the Good Bad players. They can effectively one vs one. They know their build well. They have dropped in some party support traits. They are reactive to tells and everything you want…they are good players.

What makes them bad is they pay no attention to the mini map. They always greedily push far when it is obvious the enemy is about to respawn, they rarely double back to support home. They try to steal beasts before securing their own, and they refuse to alt swap or even sigil swap at beginning match to make better composition..and my favourite of them all..they give everyone the silent treatment all match and refuse to communicate in anyway.

I started season on 85% win rate…I’m now down to 48% win rate. I swap, I alted, I support..but I can’t carry 3 other players who have a mind set of , “If i keep playing..i’ll eventually win.” Now all i get is good bad players. I hope one day I begin to get average good players again..they are average at what they do, but good at being part of a team.

Supported.
At very least, make it so each professions key binds remain the same. If I swap quickly pre match, it is a nuisance to have to go into options to change binds from revenant to an engineer for example. Having my key binds set for each of my professions would allow me more time to communicate why I am swapping and for what purpose…that’s assuming I get a team that communicates.

NeXeD.3042:

what facts have been provided?

the burden of truth should be on those that make the claims, people can post screenshots of game scores but they probably dont tell the whole story.

as much as alot of you want to believe the people winning are deluded into defending a flawed system one could argue the same for the other group, but what group is more likely to go to the forums to voice their disapproval?

people on these forums dont understand those complaining are most likely the vocal minority.

Glicko 2 is a system that was designed for world chess tournaments, counter strike and other games that have over a million players world wide. The system assesses player skill with a percentage of deviation that is considered reliable. The playing pieces in these games do not change over time. The rules of these games do not change over time.

Guild wars 2 doesn’t have a large fan base.
The playing pieces in the game often change.
The rules remain the same, but the objective change depending on which map you’re in.

If you take 2 players who have never touched gw2 and got them to play for 5 hours each and then pitted them against each other, we should see each player has a 50% chance to win or lose. If we make one player a corruption reaper with snap ground targeting and the other a sword/dagger thief, with experience and confidence we can say the necro is heavily favoured to win that 50%. We can also confidently say if the thief narrowly loses they have done well with a profession that isn’t meta and has a steepish learning curve to it. However the system will recognise the necro as better and the thief has worse.

The system itself cannot account for these details, therefore it is fair to assume match making will be imperfect. These imperfect moments are what is being called MMR hell..

The necro gets moved up and can’t hold there own anymore vs better players and the thief doesn’t progress at all and gets placed with others on low MMR which means most of their matches will be only slightly better quality than a hotjoin match.

MMR hell only disappears once you’re on a winning streak, playing meta only professions and builds. Which this unto itself defeats the entire purpose of having a league in the first place. If it were called meta build season 2, then I’d understand.

This is why tier 5 sapphire-tier 3 ruby is being referred to as MMR hell zone.

Too many builds have carried lack lustre players there, and too many ‘could be good’ players never got there because they ran builds outside the meta.

Hopefully this gives anet some idea of how many players are losing pips, despite having a team member disconnect during a match.

I’ve had it happen to me personally 3 times now.

I believe the idea was that if you have a player disconnect, and your team loses the game would be counted as a no contest and you wouldn’t lose a pip.

4500 games. Just had a match of where I 3 vs 1 their home..2 vs 1 on other nodes..at end of match I asked how many matches everyone had played. The people who did answer replied less than 50 matches.

How did i get this team, and why am I playing this team?

This was the match that made me think time to form an alt account..or just quit this game for good. My matches started out fine, but have now steadily become the worst pvp experience I’ve had in any guild wars game.

You’re having the same issue has me.
You get placed against inexperienced players and white wash them….no fun…
You get placed against more experienced player..lopsided..no fun
You get better players…still win..fun zone
You get placed against those better than you..close loss…fun zone
You get slightly lesser players again..win..kinda fun zone
You get placed against much better players now and lose terribly…no fun..

Where you are currently is you either get lesser or better players, but rarely equal. There is not enough of a community of players that the MMR can form a team of equal rating..so you either get much better, or much worse depending upon any win streaks or losing streaks you’re on.

Take it from me. If you go on a long losing streak, don’t pvp at all for 2-3 days.

Most of my matches now are either
4 x ruby 1x sapphire vs 4 sapphire 1 x ruby

or

4 x diamond 1 x ruby vs 2 diamond 3 x ruby

There just isn’t enough players for the MMR to make a match quickly with relatively equal players quickly. The match maker works fairly OK..it is the tiny player base it has issues with.

If your MMR ever dips below 50% because of losing streak, then I suggest uninstall and find a new game, because you’ll be placed with players who tend to lose more often than they win. Hence why your seeing players who are not knowledgeable about meta builds, they fight off point, they don’t rotate and I bet ya 100%, they never, ever communicate at start of match or switch to alt professions to try and make their team stronger.

You’ve been lumped in with the potato’s my friend..and that’s where you’re gonna stay until a MMR reset.

Also, to be blunt, if your frustrated at being stuck on same tier for 2-3 days..I know many who have been stuck on the same tier for the last 2 weeks now…or have dropped down tiers.

You have to remember glicko 2 system was designed with the idea in mind of having not just ten of thousands of players, but hundred of thousands of players. Gw2 just can’t meet those numbers so the rating deviations between players can be more extreme than what the pvp team would have wanted.

Littlefeather.8623:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Already a number of respected players in organised PvP has posted about how to carry and the importance of tactics..which kinda lends itself to the idea that good players, regardless of who they are placed with will still win regularly and therefore don’t need to the assistance of also being given the lions share of the higher tier/pip players in their team. Whereas the less organised player will give a better match if they have slightly higher quality players around them. It would suggest this is a better way of forming better quality matches.

So from tips and guides of solo q players who attempt to carry make you infer that solo q carriers will “sill win regularly”?

Correct. That is the inference.
The guides/tips/advice are from players who soloQ and are now in legendary. The assumption is that they wouldn’t be there if their methods of carrying didn’t work.

Communication is above all the biggest factor to winning.

That is an issue with Pvp..so many players don’t communicate in anyway. They sit there silent at start, they don’t agree quickly on who priority targets should be be. They don’t communicate about what splits should be run, they don’t communicate about best tactics when snow balling is happening, If it is not going well they don’t communicate a change of direction is needed…they just don’t communicate in anyway.

For what it is worth in 85%+ of my matches, I may as well been playing solo.

We rush mid and no one is there…I draw an arrow from their base around the back side and ping our beast/home…my team pushes far…next thing you know I am swarmed by 3 of enemy on mid from behind, our beast gets stolen and home is being attack..and there is 3 of my team standing on far…They saw the visual communication, ignored it and as a team we are now 100 points behind right from the start of the match.

Any player who is worth their salt, but only plays casually will know what I am talking about. People they probably should be playing with have already risen to divisions above them and they left with average players who have a soloists mentality, who keep losing because they don’t communicate, so therefore their rotations are all wrong and they get run in circles.

I am no pro, just good..but good players rightly should see things like this happening, communicate it and go for the obvious counter instead of walking right in to the enemies grand plan.

It does have counter play.
1) Stability
2) They have terrible heals. Survive the up front damage and disengage if you see green.
3) Corruption..that many boons even if they don’t want them. Its begging for it.
4) Its called cripple/chill/terror or any condition for that matter. Let’s face it, rev’s just aren’t good with dealing conditions.

Your looking at one thing that one weapon does strongly, but not at the myriad of weaknesses. It is kinda one of those things, I didn’t see people complaining that unrelenting assault doesn’t work if they are close to a wall or obstacle..they only QQ what upsets their play style, and not what is genuinely not working or broken.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Cynz.9437:

So simply put you got farmed by players you shouldn’t be facing anyway.

Unranked matchmaking is different. It is still based on MMR so you will face enemies around your MMR there.

What is the point of putting all the high MMR players in one team and match them with low MMR aka bad players? This would skew the MMR ratings, unfairly inflating the MMR ratings of the winning side and unfairly lowering the MMR rating of the losing side. Meaning that a long loss or win streak at the beginning of season 2 could have a very long lasting effect. In other words some players get carried far with the inflated MMR which gives them better team mates and those who are very unlucky at start, have almost no way to recover, unless they suddenly develop ESL level of skills (not going to happen) or make a full premade.

I really cannot understand why Arenanet lets this blow out super high burst meta and awful match making continue. I like even games, not total blows, even when I am on the winning side. Maybe it is just me but I think there should be challenge, tight games and come backs, but not too many utter blowouts.

Sighs, still waiting Arenanet to fix WvWvW. Remove all that HoT and pve junk (SMC air strike, banners, shrines) and bring back the original maps without any of the new gimmicks. I am really sad the of state of this game. I would actually pay money to get the original pre-June 2015 game back (and be happy without any of the new stuff, even though gliding is cool). I also think spvp was better without all that power creep. Let’s call it GW2 Classic.

i thought this AI was corrcted this season.

It was previously as example
Team A Team B
1 x Superior player 1 x Good player
1 x Good player 1x Good player
2 x Average players 3 X average players
1 x inexperienced player

Resulting in that team B had the better hedged bet. As much as the superior player will try to carry Team B good players will target the weak link in the inexperienced player and blow the match out by them being the weak link.

The MMR this season aimed for;
Team A Team B
4 x good players 3 x good players
1 x average 1x average/casual
1 x better than good player

The aim was to balance matches more evenly.

However the issue seems to be that the MMR when it finds too teams tends to put players of very similar pips/divisions all in one team (tier 6 sapphire) vs Players of similar pips/divisions (Tier 2 sapphire) together. As long as they are in pip range of each other it is considered reasonable fair. However as much as anet has stated this, it still has an element of where the MMR already has a percentage chance of which team it expects to win. Ergo it will favour the team it expects to win by placing all the higher tier/pip players in that team. The result is you have a self fulfilling prophecy.

Already a number of respected players in organised PvP has posted about how to carry and the importance of tactics..which kinda lends itself to the idea that good players, regardless of who they are placed with will still win regularly and therefore don’t need to the assistance of also being given the lions share of the higher tier/pip players in their team. Whereas the less organised player will give a better match if they have slightly higher quality players around them. It would suggest this is a better way of forming better quality matches.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Fluffball.8307:

I’m curious if anyone who is a better than average player is stuck in emerald, or if it’s a vocal minority of inexperienced players who think they’re better than they are (Dunning Kruger ).

Is there anyone who is in that situation that can somehow show the community that they are indeed a good player (perhaps community tournament wins, a 65% win ratio over thousands of games, YT highlights, etc.)?

Let’s ignore ruby because that is where most players are supposed to wind up.

Hopefully this isn’t seen as an attempt to belittle anyone, I honestly wonder if anyone has fallen through the cracks or if people are just upset they can’t climb higher than their skill and experience allows.

Let’s ignore ruby? This is where MMR hell IS because you can grind it before that and will be the nexus of new players pairing with low/average experienced players.

Not totally.
I have solid players in my guild who have started the season late. They are top tier sapphire and now on 20-25 losing streak. You can’t grind to ruby when you’re losing over and over again. My current win/loss kinda shows what they are experiencing by starting late.

First 80 matches: 74 wins 6 losses
next 40 matches: 8 wins 32 losses 17 consecutive losses.

As stated in another thread, I am above where I was expecting to be as a casual player. I aimed for top emerald to mid sapphire (That being the middle ground) Most of my matches were played at the end of the first week of leagues. I cruised through to top tier sapphire..a couple losses and moved on to next division.

This is what players are complaining about. Most of my first matches were lop sided or white wash.

Most of my later games were losses and have been humiliating white washs (500-37) With my few win wins being lop sided (500-167)

Out of 110 games only 3 were of the games within 20 points of each other.

I am now finding when the match starts no one talks, no one targets, no one quickly alt or gear swaps, no one pings, home defense can’t 1 vs 1, many martyrs throw themselves at mid for 1 vs 3.

The quality of matches has become regrettable. So on note that I stopped my season. With no 100% MMR reset at end of season, why should I tank myself? when there is no real reward to play and risk ruining my next season.

It is not about getting good..is entirely that players are getting MMR hell and ppl who started early season and were dedicated grinded winning streaks to ruby early and this in the long run has lead to lesser match quality because they can’t loss divisions. Getting good is one thing, the real fix is people can loss divisions and each season MMR gets entirely reset for a fresh start.

I apologize if my comment what not doing justice to your situation. It was not my intent. I merely make a difference between ruby and what exist before because of the safe guards that exist making ruby a bottle neck where you being paired with ppl of your level can be quite a journey considering the vastness of actual skill range that exist as opposed to what the MMR might lead you to believe.

Its a forum..you weren’t rude, each players experiences should help make the game better if the feedback is used usefully.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Fluffball.8307:

I’m curious if anyone who is a better than average player is stuck in emerald, or if it’s a vocal minority of inexperienced players who think they’re better than they are (Dunning Kruger ).

Is there anyone who is in that situation that can somehow show the community that they are indeed a good player (perhaps community tournament wins, a 65% win ratio over thousands of games, YT highlights, etc.)?

Let’s ignore ruby because that is where most players are supposed to wind up.

Hopefully this isn’t seen as an attempt to belittle anyone, I honestly wonder if anyone has fallen through the cracks or if people are just upset they can’t climb higher than their skill and experience allows.

Let’s ignore ruby? This is where MMR hell IS because you can grind it before that and will be the nexus of new players pairing with low/average experienced players.

Not totally.
I have solid players in my guild who have started the season late. They are top tier sapphire and now on 20-25 losing streak. You can’t grind to ruby when you’re losing over and over again. My current win/loss kinda shows what they are experiencing by starting late.

First 80 matches: 74 wins 6 losses
next 40 matches: 8 wins 32 losses 17 consecutive losses.

As stated in another thread, I am above where I was expecting to be as a casual player. I aimed for top emerald to mid sapphire (That being the middle ground) Most of my matches were played at the end of the first week of leagues. I cruised through to top tier sapphire..a couple losses and moved on to higher tier next division. With my current losing streak I have settled down, but I can’t drop out of my division to be where i expected to be as a casual player who doesn’t partner and doesn’t use any VOIP. Because lets face it..if you do alt swap/gear swap/use mini map..but dont partner/VOIP etc..then you should be in sapphire and with no shame..but getting to high tier ruby has a pure soloist shouldn’t be your natural order and I am ok admitting this.

This is what players are complaining about. Most of my first matches were lop sided or white wash.

Most of my later games were losses and have been humiliating white washs (500-37) With my few win wins being lop sided (500-167)

Out of 110 games only 3 were of the games within 20 points of each other.

I am now finding when the match starts no one talks, no one targets, no one quickly alt or gear swaps, no one pings, home defense can’t 1 vs 1, many martyrs throw themselves at mid for 1 vs 3.

The quality of matches has become regrettable. So on that note that I stopped my season. With no 100% MMR reset at end of season, why should I tank myself? when there is no real reward to play and risk ruining my next season.

It is not about getting good..it is entirely that players are getting MMR hell and ppl who started early season and were dedicated with time grinded winning streaks to ruby early and this in the long run has lead to lesser match quality because they can’t loss divisions. Getting good is one thing, the real fix is people can’t loss divisions and each season MMR gets entirely reset for a fresh start.

Agreed.
The system making decisions about what your MMR is killing the game for me. I never expected to get to diamond or legendary. I felt as a skilled player who only plays casually now (very casually) that mid sapphire would be a fair goal. I don’t partner, I don’t use any VOIP etc..however i surpassed that goal and now I’m in MMR hell. There is no reason for me to keep playing. Either my MMR will tank out entirely and next season I will be trash tier as far as the system is concerned and there is no reward that makes that worth while. It is better to quit while a head.

the game feels I am meant to be in top tier sapphire/bottom tier ruby and I agree that is pretty much where I should be. So petty rewards etc aren’t incentive enough for me to tank my MMR considering each season they don’t MMR reset. Good players will always rise..great players will rise further…average players will have their results, but currently I am paired with enough grinders that my win/loss is now 50/50 so it is time to resign the rest of the season so PvP in the future remains competitive and fun me. No current reward is incentive enough for me to continue.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

The idea for match making this season actually works as intended if you begin play on day one of a season opening, keep playing about 10 matches a day and don’t skip any days of play. However, the idea for match making this season is broken and completely dysfunctional concerning players who begin play late in the season or who aren’t able to play often.

Let’s say you were Legendary division during season 1 or even Diamond. If you had logged in and played all day during the first day of season 2 and each day after, you would have been able to ride the rofl stomp match making wave while all of the other players of your MMR were still with you in the early divisions “this means the match making would be working as intended and will place you in stronger teams to quickly put you back where you should be”. But if you were unable to log in for the first two weeks of season 2 or only able to run a couple matches day, you will eventually find yourself stuck in the Ruby division with only Ruby level MMRs to que with, while the others of your actual MMR have transcended back to Diamond/Legendary. This means that you will be in contestation vs. these many possible situational problems that Ruby level MMRs make, that Legendary players do not, as you try to climb out of the Ruby hell: “the first division where you can lose tiers due to bad matches”

• Rolling teams of: Warriors, DHs, Thieves, Mesmers vs. a better meta stack.
• Players refusing to swap or plainly not knowing how to play more than one class.
• Players insisting on playing that Warrior because they are working on achievements.
• Players making detrimental errors in rotations that throw a match instantly.
• Players that simply refuse to listen to any common sense what so ever.

These situational problems heavily decide match outcomes. No matter how good of a player you are or how hard you can carry, no one can carry a team of: Warrior, DH, Thief, Mesmer against: Rev, Rev, Tempest, Reaper or a team of players who refuse to listen to common sense /t chat calls.

The above Ruby hell situations are something that high MMR players who began play on day one, rarely had to experience if they experienced at all, as they rode the MMR wave with others of their high MMR. This means that they end up back in late Diamond/early Legendary, where players are much more reasonable and match outcomes end up being much more skill based than “situational factor based” because players who are good, that try hard, are willing to swap and generally play for wins before achievements/dailies.

The point being is: that a good player who began his run a bit late in season 2 is heavily punished with this current match making. He should eventually be able to climb back to his old positioning but it’s going to take a hell of a lot longer than if he would have been able to ride the MMR wave from day 1. A good player who began play on day 1 and kept up in progression with others of his actual MMR will not nearly as often be expected to carry a match of bad players as the good player who began play late, who is now stuck in Ruby hell. The good Ruby player will be expected to carry teams of intermediates almost each and every match, through their bad decisions in builds played and apathy towards communication, something that we all know is exceedingly difficult to do in GW2. Most of the time he won’t be able to do it and his match outcomes will not be decided by his ability to carry a team or the actual skill of his team mates in general, no his match outcomes will be like a gamble, majorly decided upon which team has the better comp. This will ultimately damage his MMR and keep good players in bad places.

• This is where the real MMR hole exists. It is the Ruby division specifically.
• The real answer? We need to completely remove the pip division system and return to an actual MMR system again and do it right next time.

You’ve nailed it and I am your perfect example.
Games played: 4400+
Season one: Didn’t play at all based on feedback. Spend time with new elites across 8 professions.
Season 2: Started late and only play 3-4 games every 5 days.

I white washed opponents from amber all the way to last tier sapphire. At that stage I moved away from the game and only got in a scarce handful of matches over 7-8 days. I was often surrounded by similar players. legendary/champion status..got swap to alts easily, would change runes sigils accordingly.

However after my some absence I am now teamed with players who refuse to communicate, constantly push far and lose..and I have even had 4 players stand on home at the start of the match.

So why has my team mates so dramatically dropped?

I have not been playing, yet they have grinded to be within pip range of me. I am no Pvp god, or even dazzling..but I don’t do unwise plays. So now they are within pip range of me, but their MMR is worse than mine. Hence my MMR attracts better teams for me to play and them to struggle with.

The best solution is that emerald and sapphire can lose pips/tiers and divisions.

This way grinders won’t eventually push themselves into divisions and tiers where they are no longer competitive and just canon fodder for opponents.

There is a lot of lopsided scores and a couple handfuls of entire blowouts. A half dozen of close finishes.

Good work, but it does also act as more evidence for those who feel the MMR does create heavily favoured vs unfavoured matches.

Your asking the same question everyone else is. Long win streaks of whitewash matches followed by win-lose-win-lose-win-lose-win-win-lose-lose-win-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-the matches are rarely 500-480+..mostly 500-180

Its like the match maker thinks I am too good for the pip I am on so gives me a white wash victory with players who all communicate at the start, define what they do and make use of mini map..then it decides I am not good enough to be one pip higher so I get teamed with players who don’t communicate, don’t run competitive builds, reviving is an after thought only if they have time and ignore the mini map completely.

I started out liking the season, now like everyone the MMR system is just playing mind games with me.

If no life force, treat as normal.
If full life force, leave them alone. They’ll only chew your time up. There is no shame in not being able to defeat a profession that has been made child’s play to operate and defensively one of the strongest 1 vs 1 professions at the same time.

I disagree. I think the overwhelming amount of necro’s. The ever present tag team of healbot ele and support druid node camping. The push me-pull me lopsided matches. Good players with a MMR assignment they shouldn’t be on being teamed with players far less experienced than them. Teleport hacks here and there. The long wait times with nothing to do are all far superior reasons why people aren’t enjoying PvP this season. All the gripes from last season without a mesmer scapegoat to take it all out on.

Riku.1093:

Basket of Boxes.1976:

This thread is one of two things:

1: Someone trolling (which was my initial suspicion based on the first post not matching the screen shot at all).

or

2: Confirmation that most of the people complaining are not nearly as good as they thought

The problem isn’t skill. The problem is that regardless of the variables, I shouldn’t be losing every single match I play unless I’m actually a bot or trolling.
New screenshot. Video coming within an hour. Stay tuned.

Looking at what you have presented I can see some facts:
1) You hotkey your skills. A sign of a player who plays at a good/higher level.
2) You have 560ish matches with warrior as your most dominant profession and legacy your most played map.
3) Your pie chart shows some colours, so therefore you have some awareness of what to expect when facing others.

My advice based on that would be;
1) Make use of the mini map if you don’t already.
2) Have an alt ready if your team already has necromancers. At first players disliked necro heavy teams. However most have adapted now and play the sides when they see necro’s cluster on mid.
3) Your MMR is probably well below what you believe it is. Some of those scores are not just lopsided, but utter blow outs.
4) SoloQ is the realm of those who don’t speak or communicate, this advantages players who have strong rotational awareness and can adapt quickly to know where over laps can occur.

Final assessment.
Focus on carrying through rotations. Make your prime goal not to hold home, or mid..or threaten far etc..make your central goal ‘who you can assist immediately to either keep a node, decap a node, take a node.’ become focused on what players are doing something intelligent and less focused on any one node.

Thieves have said for this for a long time. They have no sustain in team situations.
Warriors have had it truly terrible.
Scrapper is hyped as good at sustain, but pair it against any other sustain build and its stale mated. You could watch a scrapper/druid duel go for days. That in my mind equates to it not being melee at all. Melee implies you can down a target in melee. Scrapper can only do this with assistance.

That leaves rev, still currently the most coherent and best melee profession, and unsurprisingly the heavy profession most often used.

Down a necro and there is another one there to take its place.

Rocket charge is a three part attack chain. It can be dodged or interrupted. If you remove the 3 stages of leap finishers and reduce it to one, then the damage coefficient instead of being spread across three strikes will instead apply to its first single strike. All you have essentially done is create a leap finisher that can hit like a truck.

Rapid regeneration only heals on 107 on swiftness and 470 on super speed. If both are active then it doesn’t add them together but works off of super speed only. In order to keep super speed you need to drop perfectly weighted. If you drop perfectly weighted you need to take rapid regen and forget mass momentum. If you take rapid regen then you need to take final salvo and forget adaptive armour.

There is no point in taking perfectly weighted unless your also going to take mass momentum and applied force.

If you take rapid regen regen then you also need final salvo and shocking speed.

This is one of the few trait lines in a profession in gw2 that actually supports either;
a) an aggressive play style
b) a defensive play style.

You can’t have both, unless your happy to entirely kitten yourself.

Engineer is neither strong or weak. The bigger issue is that other builds that would make short work of them don’t have the damage numbers for the tools they have that would challenge an engineer.

Any time a player makes the investment in a profession they need to have certainty that it will remain consistent. This universally better for the game and the player. However number tweaks should be part of a healthy balance patch. This ideally would apply to every profession every patch.

I am neither for, or against engineers but I don’t think changing skills entirely in any profession is the key to balance. We all saw what happened to warrior and mesmer when the decision was made to entirely change skills in order to balance them..they lost their player base, became unfunctional to use, ended up with traits being placed in deeply bizarre skill tree’s and now are not represented in any significant way in ranked matches.

Not sure about the engi block/damage thing.

Chrono blocks give them de ja vu.
Shield master can reflect
Thief/ranger blocks can knock down

Not sure if the Op feels having this baked into the weapon is the problem? Because if doing damage or attacks from blocks is the issue, then there is plenty of examples in game of blocks that can do damage/debuffs.

profession stacking isn’t the problem. Balance is. All players want to win, so they naturally gravitate to professions that have more of the tools that they need to do so. Currently some elite lines are simply better than others. This is why you see the same professions (all running elites) far more represented than others.

If the professions were more tightly balanced to similar to each other, and it was only their play styles that set them apart, then you’d see a lot more diversity.

Also, it can’t be stressed enough that each profession has to have a ‘fun’ factor. I duel main warrior and necro. I have done so from the start of the game. I have 8 of the 9 professions open to me, and each with hundreds of games..but necro/warrior dominates my stats. Currently I play scrapper. I am not in love with the profession, but warrior offers nothing to team situations and necro has been made completely child’s play to master, so scrapper it is for me.

The sad thing truly is that when you play 8 out 9 profession regularly you know that the top 4 dominant professions (scrapper/reaper/herald/tempest) All have a hard counter to them that is just lacking the teeth to get the job done. An old school hammer warrior would make should work of a scrapper/reaper..but today it is so under powered by comparison after all its nerfs its tools aren’t enough without having the damage numbers to match. The same can be said that the old school shout builds in warrior and/or guardian could effectively nullify a murder of necro’s..if only they had the abilities they use to. Thief could eliminate necro, if only it could survive the Aoe/cleave damage in team situations….the old D/D cele ele could stale mate a herald..etc etc

That is where the real problem lays. Elites have been overtuned. Core professions diluted too much. No real inter-profession balance…no specific play styles…

As a result this is the symptom of the problem..people will choose the go to meta professions because if they don’t, they just aren’t being as competitive.

Thieves ask for sustain, got stronger auto attacks.
Warriors ask for clunky adrenaline fix and actual burst..they got stronger heals and rifle.
Guardians ask for redesign of out dated traits..got traps..
Mesmer ask for actual builds..got nerfs..

What each profession needs is not being addressed in a long term way and instead everyone is being various degrees of everything making the profession pool fairly murky. So people choose what is the strongest and most clear cut of professions, which is invariably each professions elite line. As stated some elites are just better than others..that simple.

Improved on screen information shoutcasts.

1) Player X is on a rampage means nothing to me.
2) Player X is making it rain allows me to know my team is manning the treb. They’re effective, but an overlap maybe occurring off treb strike zone.
3) Player X is summoning..would allow me to know that someone is going for mist champion. I can check mini map to see how many others are challenging.
4) Player X is supplying the field (after they have run X value of supplies) would allow me to know the runner is being unhampered.
5) Players X+Y are storming the castle would allow me to know how many people are pushing gates.
6) “Their inner gate is down..now’s our chance…” allows me to know what to supply.

More in game shoutcasts makes soloQ’ing a better experience. No player wants to disengage to quickly type when they’re soloQ’ing…it is a key feature that makes teams with a VOIP that much more effective. They have this information being relayed to them by all their team mates.

There is something worse than losing streak.

Try being 2 pips away from next division and having;

Win-win-lose-lose-win-lose-lose-lose-win-lose-win-win-lose-win-lose-win-lose-lose-win-win-win-lose……

One team is favoured. One team is not. What your asking is akin to why Mike Tyson had so many first round knockouts. He was the heavily favoured. He was matched against heavily unfavoured.

The results were as expected.

As he said himself when asked if he felt he was being matched against boxers who were not of his calibur, “I do what any champion should do when fighting a lesser guy..I dispatch them quickly.”

Ergo..you get blowouts.

Limiting profession stacking isn’t an cure, because it doesn’t address the root problem. Some profession(Elites) are simply better. That is why players elect to use them.

Balance the professions in Pvp so they each represents a balanced play style and you’ll see some diversity in teams. While some elite spec’s are currently so strong, you’ll see those stacked continuously.

Better balance=more diversity=less likely to see the same professions over represented.

zxstanyxz.8769:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

It is its own tactic..overwhelm the screen with tons-o-minions. The druid/ele keep everything steadily healed. If any player goes down the druid withdraws to the side of node and search and rescues.
.

if you are aware of this, as soon as the ranger uses search and rescue you target the ranger and focus/aoe them and the downed body and you will likely down the ranger whilst they try to res

or else knockback the ranger right away and stop the res

but yes this tactic can be very useful as the minons will soak up some of the aoe on point as the aoe cap is still 5 targets

“focus” You’re assuming every player in Sapphire/low Ruby is actually fast and efficient at moving to a called target. You have also forgotten rebound on the ele if they’re smart. If all that fails them, no doubt there will be a ton-o-unblockable marks to negotiate first before the stomp.

Like I said, its shrewd and some what effective at mid level players..however I am not 100% confident it would still work at higher levels.

As soloq player who is casual these days I knew having previous Pvp experience I should aim for sapphire/ruby. This is a fair representation of what a player who soloQ’s, doesn’t use voip, doesn’t partner can reasonably expect. I knew if i wanted to get to top tier ruby/diamond I would need to play a lot more matches per day, have alts ready to swap out to, have sigils/builds ready to change to and preferably one person I can partner with at some stage, or a guild with players I can team with.

Now that I have gotten to where I thought I would be matches are win-win-lose-win-lose-lose-win-lose-win-lose-win-lose-lose-win-win….which is what i expected being a soloQ player who is casual, but comes from a strong Pvp background.

Don’t set yourself unrealistic targets and then want safety nets. Either accept you now need to play more, team more and develop more alts for specific team compositions or accept you’ve gone as far as you go with the time you have and the dedication your willing to input.

It wasn’t until top tier sapphire and low tier ruby that I began to see this.

2x MM
1x Druid with search and rescue for clutch moments
1x auramancer/healing support.

They overwhelm mid.
Never push far.
Keep one on home and back that person up when they need it.

It is its own tactic..overwhelm the screen with tons-o-minions. The druid/ele keep everything steadily healed. If any player goes down the druid withdraws to the side of node and search and rescues.

Shrewd. Effective at that level of play. Not sure if it would work at divisons/tiers higher that top sapphire/low ruby.

In a single word..annoying.

I agree with OP. The best thing for me personally was random arenas/team arenas in gw1. Having your key binds so you can keep your eyes on screen at all times and know what your doing without having to look allows to look at what your team is doing and take advantage of it. When I am pitted against someone of good/experienced skill the difference between why I don’t get downed and they do is that I moved to be in water fields, blasted lightning fields, used leaps through smoke fields..they just doggedly chased me. They fixated too much on me, and not enough on what was happening around them. I am a lot harder to kill when I am standing in a smoke and water field at the same time. Either target another or pull me out, otherwise your putting skills on cool down and only getting minimum results from it.

“My win rate on Thief this season seems to be about 70-80%. But I’ve only had time for about 30 games total and got to sapphire.”

At this level thief is viable. However, I hate to break the news to you but,…The higher tiers of sapphire will challenge you as a thief player. Once you enter ruby thief will not shine for you as much as it did in the first 3 divisions. If you enter Diamond then solo’ing becomes more and more difficult to progress at a steady pace and a organised team is now needed to maintain competitiveness and progress. Most organised teams aren’t looking for, or want a thief because they are too made of crepe paper in group engagements and they offer little in group dynamics. It is the same issue with warrior. They are not bad perse’…but as matches become deeply more competitive and organised they don’t offer any group dynamic. This is where thieve’s win out in starting/mid divisons,…they have much higher mobility and better tactics for 1 vs 1 decapping, however the need to do that quickly disappears once you get to the final tiers of sapphire. In short,..once team organisation becomes needed to progress then thief becomes redundant.

choovanski.5462:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F4E2HhF92vQ

I’ve played a varient of that build. taking CI and mace+torch, sword+shield and signet of stamina over zerker stance. it’s alright. better than gunflame vs people who can play, but playing another class is the real way to go.

This build is fairly solid. My advice is create an engineer. Hotkey all of their skills and keep playing engi/scrapper until you have all of the keybinds memorized to the point you can find them quickly on the keyboard without looking. Keep playing engineer until you can competently win and survive Aoe/cleave situations. Then return to warrior. Accurately hitting keybinds and keeping your eyes on the screen makes Pvp on melee professions a lot easier in the long run once you have trained your fingers to be nimble. However, once you have gotten use to engineer, you may not wanna go back to warrior.

Try and figure this one out…
I have played 4700+ matches. These matches have been played across all forms of PvP. Hotjoin-unranked-ranked.

I am currently rank 80/legendary champion with some professions at champion (x)

I didn’t enter leagues last year based on the feedback in the forums. Instead I played a lot of unranked with HoT coming out and up skilled my understanding of what one could do with the new elite lines.

This year I have entered leagues, but only casually. I only play 16-18 matches per week at absolute most and have only just left amber. (started leagues about 5-6 days ago.)

However before season 1 myself and my guild leader decided to help teach new members about PvP. To do this we entered as a team with team speak. We knew we would lose a lot, but the point was just to introduce new players to PvP. We played around 50 matches and lost about 42 of them. We were ok with this all things considered.

In moving through amber I started with 3-4 match losing streak, then went on a 6 match winning streak, lost again, then winning streaked into sapphire. My first 3 wins were a single pip, my remaining wins were either double pips and a few triple pips.

As a player I can safely say my MMR is completely unknown to me and as a casual player these days I don’t expect to get to diamond or legendary, probably mid tier ruby is where you’d expect a experienced casual player to get to at best.

This is kinda my issue..without me, the player knowing accurately where my MMR sits, I have no goal to set my sights on. I don’t wanna be fighting new players all the time,..but I dont wanna drag my team either because I am not 100% committed to PvP. I simply like over time to land where my current skill and commitment to the game should have me. This way the 1-3 matches I play per day on average are fun games. The rest of the time I will run fractals, play round with builds in hotjoin..take ones that are viable to unrank to see how well they do before entering them into ranked.