Guild Wars 2

Dear “Hidden”,

The problem isn’t the players, it’s the system.
For me a soloQ team, 100% randomly matched, should be able to play against other soloQ-ers instead of premades, or at least against premades that are beatable with random ppl.

Second point is that A-Net themselves try hard to get this game as much enjoyable as they can, for casual-players. To enjoy this game as a casual player, there is a proper soloQ required, which is at the moment not the case (though A-Net stated there will be some updates coming this month for this issue).

Third point: ppl should be able to play competitive without a team. The best soloQuers in the world will never reach top100 for a consistent time because they will sooner or later face a premade or get matched with r1 ppl together.

There are many other facts I can lay on the table, but I refuse to write a wall, as everything is covered allrdy in other threads.

So there is no wonder why ppl complain about the lack of proper content.

Acandis.3250:

Batmang.5421:

3. Stop reviewing builds pre match. IMO reviewing player builds comprises competitive value for the players and it takes too much time. That’s what guides and tutorials are for. It could also open up an opportunity for post game analysis. You don’t see casters requesting starcraft players to give their build orders pre game for a reason. If nothing else, they should have a 3rd person that isn’t casting review the builds and give a general summary to the casters so they can comment in game.

Please.

The irony is that they wanted to casualize the PvP and make it more open for new players. Instead it is nowadays even more restrictive than GW1 back its days.
Don’t know exactly what they’re trying to do, but it’s clearly not working.

You’re build is not in any sense viable for tournament play. You don’t have any defense at all. On a second note scholar runes on warrior are as useless as the vaporform from the vampire-runes. Before you even engage a teamfight you will be under 90% for sure. You can consider yourself lucky if by then you’re still alive.
But hey, that 13k killshot was definitely worth it. Escape a teamfight without condition cleanse? No problem at all. Just use whirlwind and rush to get away. Oh wait… cc/slows! Anyway, who cares about that, big numbers always win, am I right?

milo.6942:

classes are too independent

pretty much this. What I recognized too while watching E-sport games like LoL, CS and even Smite, that with just a little knowledge, the observer is able to understand the core of the game and what is happening on the screen.
On GW2 with thousands of animations, hidden traits, runes/sigil procs etc. it’s really hard to understand what is going on for someone that is not into the game. The information on the screen is so full of informations and details, that even for experienced players and shoutcasters many things get lost. Not even mentioning the height difference of the races, which is ridicolous to watch.
Sometimes simplecity is just more enjoyable to watch.

Watchout! Hotjoiners are telling us what the meta is for zerging and make the most points out of a match.

Well, I rarely watch tournaments on twitch, not even mentioning to replay some old games. Would never do that actually. It’s funny to play the game itself, but in my opinion it’s really boring to watch it. And it’s not about the depth of gameplay or lack of strats.
It’s just too obvious what will happen next due to conquest. The only map which brings in some great moments is “legacy of foefire”, cuz of the lord. But the rest of the maps is predictable, static and stale.

It’s definitely on the right way, but the lack of incentive to play this game is not existing. I’d rather play some fractals instead of the same map for 3 days in a row.

Oni Link.4621:

No guys, the OP is absolutely right. There MUST be an option to see all characters as humans. You don’t have to use it, but it there should be. It is not about “I can’t see what an Asura does”. The problem is “why Norns are so easy to read while Asuras aren’t?”.
SPVP should be balanced in EVERY aspect.
You are not forced to use it, but there must be the option for who wants too.

PS: And yes, there is a difference between Asura or non-Asura, just look at tournaments: most of players are Asura. Ugly to play against and ugly to watch, really.

Have to agree with that. Also for Shoutcasting a match it is hard to tell what asuras are actually doing. There is alot of interesting stuff going on, which is rarely noticed by shoutcasters/observers when you have a teamfight going on between 8 asuras.
I think for the future this toggle is needed to enter the e-sport scene.

I have the same “issue”, especially on immo-shatters or bs-combos. I don’t feel like it’s a big deal though.

Yumpi should definitely teach some eles how to use it properly.

Romek.4201:

funny how you guys trie to tell ultima how ele works – had a good laugh

Well many players still don’t know how this utility work, even in the competitive scene. And many eles actually never touched this skill.

Fortus.6175:

Asomal.6453:

Fortus.6175:

A class with at least 2 very viable builds, AMAZING!

meanwhile elementalist only viable one is D/D. EVEN MORE AMAZING!

Do you even S/D ele bro?

yes, and considering that if you want to do damage you need to be melee, everyone would rather use D/D for better CC and no fillers.

Once again, only viable build is D/D, water arcana with 10 in air for BttH

A perfect example of how NA players ignore other builds because in their meta only D/D is played. Definitely a bad sign for competition.

Assassin Sharks.6104:

Honestly, I’ve seen some of the worst ideas ever for punishing players for causing a 4v5. NO system of punishment should be implemented before the queues are split to a Solo queue and a Team queue. If a punishment system is needed after that point let us have a civil discussion on decent options that take into account DCs, DCs who reconnect, patches, whether you even need punishments after the split. Do you need punishments for Team match leavers? Will you need punishments for Solo match leavers? But again all of these questions come down to the need for a Team queue and a Solo queue that are separate from each other for any of the presented solutions to make a difference. Until that point this thread is pretty much useless.

kostbabis.8791:

^but if the ranged damage of scepter is one of best ingame as in its all you need to do something more than tickle ,then why focus is bad?.It offers more defence when you consider that you are in range .
I always thought and feel when i play that s/f is unviable cause it heavily reduces your damage out of proportion for the survaivability it offers.But s/f damage is s/d ranged damage.So i guess the way people here define “viable range damage” makes scepter fall short..Without firegrab,ring of fire earthquake and id even bring ce into the mix i dont think you can consider yourself a serious dps threat.Phoenix requires close range aswell for max effectiveness!
I personally couldnt care less since im in love with d/d atm ! But im pretty sure that air 2 eath 2 and air autoaattack cant kill anything at all alone :P
edit:of course i mean the above combo in repeat ..i dont expect earth – air to even come remotely to 1 shotting people ..lol

Focus is pretty good for defense. Dagger is just stronger due to heavy cc and rtl. And in most situations viabler in 1v1 situations.

Phantaram.1265:

Passing through to dispel the rumor that scepter doesn’t do good ranged damage.

Air #1 and #2 is some of the most viable ranged damage in the game right now. You won’t have to leave attunements till something gets close to you or someone goes down so you can land a bunch of fire spells on their downed body, so you just sit in air attunement until a reason arises to switch. The only reason elementalist use dagger off hand over focus is just because the focus is bad, not because we have to go into melee for some unknown reason.

Honestly if anything elementalists should feel forced into scepter rather than dagger main hand because against good teams you need the ranged damage.

I’m all for buffs to staff though!

At least one here, that knows how viable a scepter is.

how about signet of mercy then?

Treeline.3865:

Today’s tpvp so far:

Match 1: Got matched with rank 1 and rank 5. They were both clueless and we lost 500/12x
Match 2: Good fight, lost.
Match 3: 5th guy akitten (Really anet, we cant write away from keyboard?)
Match 4: 4vs5
Match 5: 4vs5
Match 6: matched with a rank 5
Match 7: Holy crap I dropped far. Lost vs rank 2 and 9. Good game though.

This shows a clear imbalance in the MM-System. Having fun looks different for me.

I would help out the “not that experienced” part of your guild and support them in getting into competitive PvP / show them some tactics and stuff. But I’m not able to represent the guild 24/7. I would do it when I playing tournaments though.

Treeline.3865:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

It’s like saying, we amputate your leg because it hurts. We don’t search for the reason why your leg hurts. But if we amputate your leg, you won’t have pain anymore. Problem solved! Great solution there.

The only reason my leg hurts without talking class balance is 4vs5 and 5vs4 battles. I mostly soloqueue but it happens that I team up as well. On any regular 5vs5 encounter I think it is pretty well balanced. Since they fixed the bug where you could get random rank 1’s on your team I have only been matched against rank 20-50 players and rarely gets completely destroyed. Matches are somewhat even with hard counter exceptions. I have just about never had something like 130-500, 67-500 or [insert any number below 200pts] unless something is wrong with the amount of players in my game.

I don’t have any issues with matchmaking – Not that improvements aren’t welcome, but matching seems to be somewhat fair from where I’m sitting. And by all means if the leavers is going to quit PvP, by all means. More 5vs5 for me.

Edit: Seems we agree that a queue split would be nice though.

I agree with you. But again, you have to ask yourself why someone leave a match. And again I have to say it is mostly caused by an unbalanced match. Before these imbalance is not fixed, it (for me personally) is not the right way to punish ppl. On the other side I know what a pain it is when you have a leaver in your team, I really know it. But ppl don’t quit without any reason. So to solve the problem we have to fix the reason.

Lupanic.6502:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Treeline.3865:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Sometimes I can understand the frustration some players have, being permanently matched against premades. This frustration leads to leaving the game. If the soloQ is seperated and the MM-System contains more indicators than just your personal rating, than you can add a punishment for leaving. But not before.

I can’t. While I can agree that it would be nice to have soloqueue and teamqueue there is nothing wrong with being matched against a premade since your opponents are rankbased. I have been keeping track of my state on leaderboards and watched myself rise from around 50% on the board to my current of 85-95%. You almost never get matched against a well coordinated premade team until you hit 90% in my experience. So if you hit these premades constantly they are either not very good, or your rating is pretty good. I take it as a compliment when I get my face smashed in by a good premade team.

So you telling me that if I’m top200 or top10 (whatever ranking I’d have) I’m just able to play against premades, because there are nearly only premades in this rating-area? Definitely not. It’s also not funny if I play with my team and completely destroying soloQ-ers (50:500), which fought their way up into the ladder just to get a kick into their **** . It’s not fair for them and not challenging for us.
But it’s hard to understand for someone that didn’t played competitive as a team nor as a soloQueuer.

ok, but what is the solution?

I do understand that you do not like to play against a premade team if you play solo. But a player with your skill will crush players with my skill in a soloQ. And if the system checks all available opponents (but no premade teams) for you, you will wait x hours until you have a single match. Because the system has to find opponents for you in the top 100 and they do not play soloQ very often (2/3 of all top 100 players have less then 300 games).

in a soloQ are maybe 1000 player with my skill. Maybe 150 random and very bad teams and only ~10 solo player with your skill. If you play not on prime time, you will wait forever because the system has no chance to find a good matchup for you.

I get your point and this is something that has to be considered for sure.
I think splitting the soloQ from the premade (on leaderboards aswell), would be an idea.

This would also lead into a more competitive soloQ as players who reach top300 by now can’t get any closer because they get kicked back into the top1000 by premades. This would be something for solo-players to create some kind of competitive atmosphere into soloQ. Also for the future, some ppl on top of the soloq ladder would definitely pair together to try as a premade (which leads into more healthy competition).
Another solution, where A-Net is allrdy working on is the issue of being paired together with a r1-10 player, as a r40+ player. I think there are enough ppl to match someone with me whom is atleast r25 or higher. This is not fun for me and not for the beginner, which get a match against a highend premade.

It’s really tough to create something that works and I hope A-Net can find a way.

milo.6942:

that’s reasonable

English is not my first language, so I’m sorry if I didn’t write understandable.

milo.6942:

empathetic, are you saying there should not be any leaver penalty at all?

I’m saying there should be a penalty by the time the SoloQ is fixed and works properly. By this I mean splitted Queues, a working MMR and players on the same level matched together (not r1 with r50 ppls). If this is in, they should be definitely put a penalty in. but NOT BEFORE.

Treeline.3865:

Dirame.8521:

4v5 is caused by people leaving mid-match (could be caused by crashes or people feeling the match is futile) or not even entering the match (afk, crash, bugged out enter buttons etc).

Which is why it will help tremendously to punish these players. If you leave mid match it is the players fault. If you feel the match is futile (and leave) it is still your fault. If you akitten and can’t enter it is your fault (Note: In the scenario a player does not enter the match it should never start – Just kick the players to lobby and put them back in queue. This will fix akitten’ers crashers and bugs where people never get in the game, and while it is annoying to get back in queue it is way better than a 4vs5.)

About crashes.. Well if they happen often you shouldn’t be playing anything that includes a team since you possibly can’t contribute anything. Not saying it’s the players fault that he/she crashes, but that doesn’t mean he/she should take it out on 9 other players.

I don’t see how a simple system to block people from new matches would hurt anyone.

Example:

Player leaves a game.
Player leaves a game again – Can’t enter a new game for 20 minutes
Player leaves a game again – Can’t enter a new game for an hour
Player leaves a game yet again – Can’t enter a new game until daily reset

People who leave on purpose will get tired of this pretty fast. You can still crash your computer a few times without being impaired by the system. It hurts no one but improves a lot of matches.

While I know it is very frustraing to have leavers in a team (for my part, I never leave a match), you should be aware why the player has left the match. Mostly because it is a not even / balanced / fair match. So you want to start punish ppl because the matchmaking-system is not able to create fair matches?
If you do this I guarantee you that many many players will stop soloqueueing, because they get punished for a bad MM-System. I don’t think this is the way A-Net or any person who can count on 3 would solve the problem.

It’s like saying, we amputate your leg because it hurts. We don’t search for the reason why your leg hurts. But if we amputate your leg, you won’t have pain anymore. Problem solved! Great solution there.

Treeline.3865:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Sometimes I can understand the frustration some players have, being permanently matched against premades. This frustration leads to leaving the game. If the soloQ is seperated and the MM-System contains more indicators than just your personal rating, than you can add a punishment for leaving. But not before.

I can’t. While I can agree that it would be nice to have soloqueue and teamqueue there is nothing wrong with being matched against a premade since your opponents are rankbased. I have been keeping track of my state on leaderboards and watched myself rise from around 50% on the board to my current of 85-95%. You almost never get matched against a well coordinated premade team until you hit 90% in my experience. So if you hit these premades constantly they are either not very good, or your rating is pretty good. I take it as a compliment when I get my face smashed in by a good premade team.

So you telling me that if I’m top200 or top10 (whatever ranking I’d have) I’m just able to play against premades, because there are nearly only premades in this rating-area? Definitely not. It’s also not funny if I play with my team and completely destroying soloQ-ers (50:500), which fought their way up into the ladder just to get a kick into their **** . It’s not fair for them and not challenging for us.
But it’s hard to understand for someone that didn’t played competitive as a team nor as a soloQueuer.

Wondering since when Scepter is not a viable weapon anymore . . .

Shadow of Azrael.1205:

A better MM-system will help , but it wont solve the problem completely, there has to be some punishment for letting down the whole team. Even the original guild wars had one why the devs making a mistake in guild wars 2 is beyond my understanding.

Sometimes I can understand the frustration some players have, being permanently matched against premades. This frustration leads to leaving the game. If the soloQ is seperated and the MM-System contains more indicators than just your personal rating, than you can add a punishment for leaving. But not before.

If you replace the guy that has left with another one and give the leaver a time-ban, won’t fix the level of satisfaction of soloQueueing. Your agressive answer prooves me I’m right. So instead of just changing ppl, they actually should optimize the MM-System, so the 10 ppl matched together, can enjoy a balanced tournament.

Evilek.5690:

Mrbig.8019:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Shadow-Refuge is definitely a very strong utility, but makes the game really interesting and not that predictable. I think without shadow-refuge, the thief loose much viability for a team.
But in general I agree with stealth being a problem. It should be decreased slightly in its duration.

I can agree with that.

But you also have to think that shadow refuge is a MUST HAVE for any thief and, as you said, the thief will lose too much viability without it, meaning its a SINGLE SKILL which makes the class viable ( even S/D doesn’t really offer that much in terms of team utility).

It’s pretty much the same with mesmers, forced to bring IoL and Portal + random stunbreaker mostly because other u-skills are , yes strong, but not on par.

With the thief that’s is not even the case: there’s nothing as strong as shadow refuge, you’re basically a moron if you don’t pick it and are severely hampering your team capabilities.

Back in beta an engi could stack 20 + secs of stealth ( now there’s a cap ) with smoke fields+blasts, i believe it’s time to nerf shadow refuge+ shortbow and balance the thief profession better, because currently we’re helded back by these things ( devs will always say, regarding thief sucking, " but hey, they have massive mobility/AoE + massive AoE stealth, they’re fine !!! " when in reality, we’re not).

Shadow refuge has DARK combo field no SMOKE.
Again here shows how people like mystification.

The smoke field was refered to the engineers skill “Smoke Bomb”, which is indeed a Combo-Field: Smoke. But yes you’re right.

The reason why ppl go afk/leave is:
- They are paired against a premade (soloQ v. Premade)
- The 5 players matched together have a huge difference in terms of experience (can’t be that I’m (r54, +2000 tournament wins) matched together with r 1-10 players)

The issue that ppl tend to not play (wheter leave or afk) is a result of a bad Match-Making-System.
Trying to solve the problem based on the consequence is not gonna change anything, it has to be solved right at the origin of the problem.

To get a good gear in PvE is too easy compared to PvP. Take the example of the Flame-Legion-Armor. Do some CoF’s p1 and you have it in 2-3 days max.
In PvP on the other hand you have to reach r50 first, which takes months. All this would become useless just because some PvE’ers join PvP with their gear made in a week.
Besides that I don’t care really how I look.

I think this was allrdy mentioned somewhere, but I want to bring it up again.
If a player use Moa Morph on another player, bring him into downed state and finishs him off, all the Sigils equipped of the finished player stop working. The player is forced to relog to “activate” the sigils again.

As the PvP Guy you are, you should know that PvP is for competition and not esthetics. Actually nobody cares about rank either in this game nor for you gear. Seems like WoW showed you the exact false way why someone should play PvP.

Prestige-Titles and listing top-teams in observer-mode are the way to reward competitive players. Shiny toys aren’t the way.

Maylo.5892:

KarlaGrey.5903:

You can still reroll during that 1.30 min wait time.

I hope you understand, that sometimes, some ppl, like me, have like 1 min. loading time to the Mists and another 15 sec loading to the match, so it gives them zero opportunity to change anything. And i am not even mentioning the fact that many ppl come to the match just 10 sec before it begins..

I don’t know why ppl have problems with this. You play soloQ and get matched with randoms together, lik in the old Random-Arena in GW1. If you want a perfect setup then build a team.

soloq v. soloq is fine and interesting. It creates the potential of great single-player actions, which is rarely seen in premades v. premade. So the soloQ for me, should stay random. Besides that you can adapt your build/change character if it not fits into the comp.

Shadow-Refuge is definitely a very strong utility, but makes the game really interesting and not that predictable. I think without shadow-refuge, the thief loose much viability for a team.
But in general I agree with stealth being a problem. It should be decreased slightly in its duration.

The new subforums are very good. I see a lot more ppl actually searching for a team/player. Also Events can be found really quick, so overlooking important stuff doesn’t happen anymore. Thanks

KarlaGrey.5903:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

It’s good to see the devs found finally the right path to maintain a healthy PvP.

Can’t maintain something you don’t have.

I edited for you.

Stealth.9324:

Let the past sleep for eternity. Let Unrest Soul remain to their sleeping place. There, we can finish this already

Your post was like a piece of modern art. Kinda abstract, unreal and a bit misterious, but interesting and new/fresh.

It’s good to see the devs found finally the right path to create a healthy PvP.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Best. Thread. Ever.

+1000

Oh… I missed the last SOTG. Dide they tell this in there, or did I miss an offical post?

What you mean by 11th?

Pazu.8320:

xDudisx.5914:

Yes if running shout or meditaion we have 2 stun breaker, but ele cantrips has 3 so I dont see a problem for our elite be another stunbreaker

We do have 3: “Stand Your Ground,” “Save Yourselves,” and Judge’s Intervention…. I actually almost always have SYG and JI on my bar in WvW but I freaking hate SY because you rarely ever actually draw any conditions so I just feel incredibly selfish when I hit it. But yeah, guardians are supposed to have a frontline staying power that requires stunbreaks. And thematically, I’d think renewing my focus feels more like a stun breaker than just yelling three words.

we have more than 3, but what he wanted to say is 2 for sthouts and 2 for meditations. Sorry for the correction though

Zenith.7301:

ManCaptain.3154:

S/D thief > everything else

Not really. D/P is better. There are better bunker busters than S/D, while there are no better gib builds than D/P.

TBH, a D/P Backstab burst was, with a bit of reaction, no problem for a bunker. Compared to a S/D that easily solo you in about 30 sec, it’s something to laugh at.

Shatter mesmer is definitely a strong 1v1 class, even more when you are forced to fight on a node/certain area. Allthough it’s easy to avoid most damage, but that needs knowledge of the class itselfs and a lot of practice. Sure it can happen that a mesmer bursts you with his full bf-combo. But this rule apply for every burst-class.

I’d be glad if I were able to edit as good as you did (even when this is just basic-editing).
It looks actually pretty interesting.

The PvP is splitted into two Regions, NA and EU. In both Regions there are different Servers. The Servers in a Region are not splitted into different “lobbies”. This means you face players from the whole Region and not only from a sinlge Server.
In conclusion, you can play pvp with everyone, who’s in the same region as you.

Well, shatter mesmer is like the top-spec in a teamfight. It is absolutely crucial to have a mesmer in the teamfight. He’ll decide it. A necro is also a very strong spec in teamfights due to his AoE, sadly not that viable as the HGH, as bleeding is too easy to be cleansed as to stack up an efficient amount.

Mentioning shortbow as heavy AoE is a bit funny if you look at the pace of his shots. Longbow warrior? mabye if the warrior had some more pressure besides that burning. Also you don’t have permanent access to AoE, due to cooldowns/adrenaline. Not gonna mention the viability of the class itselfs. Staff ele? I should visit WvW more often.

AoE is a big problem due to conquest, due to the map-design around the nodes (excluding graveyard on legacy), due to dps downed players etc.
There is a reason why ppl tend to play AoE-Builds rather than single-target-builds.