Guild Wars 2

That’s the man! That’s how a true hero operates.

Thank you.

Well, that’s too bad.

NA Hero,

OK, all the chest pounding aside, are you man enough to talk about how your build and your playstyle helps you carry weak teams in SoloQ?

How exactly do you go about it?

Bhawb,

Smart and execute everything in the chain perfectly, repeatedly, with no timing mistakes.

I just read this one today. It’s a necro freeze build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Bear-Exposure/first#post3187960

Caffynated is correct. The matchmaker sorts by MMR and then deals the 10 players to the two teams in a specific pattern designed to keep the 2 teams as equal in strength as possible.

RoRo,

This only shows time played (and possible Skyhammer cheating). No MMR is shown.

Jalmari, if the minions do not hit, you do no damage.

If he is in stealth, the minions stop tracking him.

When he reappears over there, the minions take a while to get to him. And he stealths again right away.

Interesting, but warriors who can clear conditions don’t get chilled much. Right?

I have been doing well with my MM necro (Alien Captain on Jade Quarry).

But last night I had a stealth thief that just took me down with no trouble every time. like clockwork. He was a little Asura dagger pistol thief who was invisible so much of the time that my minions never hit him much, and he just wore me down steadily to a certain death. Every fight.

Very frustrating. I did use death shroud 4 and 5, but I had trouble hitting him enough to build up any life force.

You guys seem to think only the fighting skills you enjoy are worthy of respect and value.

Let people play how they like.

Some people like a class where they have more time to think about larger strategies and less about micro-managing a fight mechanic.

Some people like Street Fighter. Others like chess.

Much of winning or losing in sPvP is out of your control. You do control some of it, but you cannot be everywhere at once and you cannot win it alone. It is a team effort.

This can be very frustrating when you seem to randomly lose, and randomly win, no matter how hard you try.

Got it. Good thinking about the treb. I have learned something here very useful.

Acaro.4067:

An easy ToDo-List:

1. Make a split between ranked/normal games. Ranked will have very precise matchmaking with possible longer waiting times, normal is just for fun. This also prevents the current solo queue from turning into a flame war as people want to move up in ranks.

2. Introduce new shortcuts that allow solo queue teams to communicate with each other, similar to LoL, stuff like “I´m on the way to this checkpoint” “Help (me) over there” etc

3. Make the solo-queue into a solo/duo- queue and change the normal queue into a premade-team only one, also introduce ranked and normal there.

4. Give us divisions and PvP seasons

5. GW2 PvP == eSport

6. Sucess

;)

What makes this easy to do?

Bhawb,

I was wondering…why leave the treb with a little bit of health rather than destroying it?

Is that so they don’t repair it, and if you came back again you can kill it with a hit or two?

And what two buffs on Spirit Watch were you talking about? I may have missed something!

Oblivion.8307:

i think it’s pretty easy to carry a majority of games with necro/warrior/spirit ranger

I don’t think it’s “pretty easy”. I think it’s nearly impossible.

I have tried. But when your team is kittening around streaming 1 by 1 into the enemy zerg, you cannot be at all three points at once. And wherever you are not, you lose the capture point.

Thanks, Bhawb. I follow your posts here with interest, and I was happy to see that you replied to help me.

So as I join SoloQ with my MM, I should try to defend home point, rotate to mid to assist, and destroy trebs and take down NPC creatures.

Does that sound about right?

Or follow a spirit ranger around and let my minons use his buffs. Sound good?

What things does a minionmancer do best in sPvP?

Where is he weak?

Wintel.4873:

Laserbolt.6731:

And when there are only 4 players with a rank greater than 20 in the queue waiting to play SoloQ? Then the higher ranks just do not play for an hour or so?

Then the system has to make an exception, duh.

Duh?

There will be exceptions every match. Which is what is happening right now.

I am really sure that in 6 weeks the old top 100 will NOT typically be in the top 100.

Maybe we will remember this discussion after New Years and see.

Yes, Glicko rating must be just an approximation for a team-based game. It will probably take a long time for random fluctuations to be worked out of your MMR. And even when your MMR is fairly accurate, the low population means you will still not get the even matches you would if there were thousands of people waiting in the queue.

Player 995 had a 70% win ratio when I looked a little while ago.

I notice two things on the soloQ leaderboard 24 hours after the reset:

1) The win-loss ratios are all in the 55% to 45% range with almost none 70% or higher.

2) I find almost none of the old “Top 100” players on the board.

I am not sure that waiting for MMRs to “settle” is going to be all that helpful for them, if they are waiting for that. They will still be placed on teams with low players, because of the low PvP population.

And when there are only 4 players with a rank greater than 20 in the queue waiting to play SoloQ? Then the higher ranks just do not play for an hour or so?

BDR,

Rank is not always = MMR. One of the low ranks on your team could have an MMR close to yours, if it is an alt.

Justin ODell.9517:

No, the latest matchmaking changes will not produce matches like this.

Yes, I can see now that it won’t. The 10 players would be sorted from High to Low MMR and then dealt back and forth to teams in such a way that the 1800 player would not be paired with so many really low players.

So that’s a relief.

data.4093:

So what you would do is go back to high ranks vs low ranks? And syncing?

No, not at all. I am just keeping expectations realistic so people don’t become discouraged. When the PvP population grows larger again, it will get really good. But that will take 6 months, I am guessing.

I am really glad to see the changes.

Even after the MMRs “settle”, you still have to play with whoever is queued up at the moment and time of day when you are. And you can still get teams like the following hypothetical match, where a top player has an MMR near 2000:

Team 1
MMR 1,800 *
MMR 400
MMR 190
MMR 185
MMR 150

AVG MMR = 545 (expected to win)
=========

Team 2
MMR 750
MMR 700
MMR 700
MMR 320
MMR 205

AVG MMR 535

The 1800 MMR play will probably lose, and will have his MMR lowered some, as I understand it.

So I am guessing that the leaerboard will be constantly changing week to week…UNLIKE how it has been.

Do you recall if there were any 1s or 3s on the opposing team?

So glad that the PvP area seems to be under a new development team that has apparently been given the go-ahead by management to try some things. There is an obvious drive and interest on the part of Josh, Justin, and Tyler to get it done before PvP just fades away. It feels like PvPers are now in the lead in PvP development and design.

Logging in late does what then?… other than keeping everyone’s MMR the same…as opposed to lowering it for everyone on the 4 team who did nothing wrong.

It would be set at the start of the match.

Qaelyn,

Actually MMR is used for the match. Not PvP ranks. There may be some correlation with skill and PvP rank, but due to the Skyhammer free rank exploits that went on for months, a high rank doesn’t really mean you played well or have any PvP skills.

A low rank has more meaning. But even there, some higher rank people had a second account they use for testing SoloQ…and it is typically quite a low PvP rank.

It’s REALLY hard to have your rating depend on a team of random strangers, some of which are not very good yet.

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

Laserbolt.6731:

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

Everyone had the same odds at leaderboards

Err. No. They didn’t. Read the boards and understand why they changed the matchmaking. Then you will understand.

Huh? So we didnt all started at point 0 when Anet released the leaderboards???

If you read back on the LARGE number of threads explaining this, you will see that ArenaNet admitted the flaw was this: If you were lucky to land on a good team in the first few matches, your MMR rose. THEN, in your next matches the matcher would find 5 people of a similar high MMR, put you on a team with them, and then look for the next set of MMR and form a second, most often much LOWER MMR team to play against you. (Thus being given a chance to improve their ranks. The PROBLEM was, there were so few people playing that the GAP in the average MMRs was WAY too big and the weaker team would almost always lose.)

Because higher MMR players typically had a better team from them on, they tended to win, and rise in the ranks and were always teamed with better players.

People who were unlucky enough to lose their first several matches always landed on lower-ranked teams and usually lost, sinking further.

Would it be possible to invalidate any MMR changes in a 4×5 match? In the scoring code:

if ((count(T1.size + T2.size) < 10)) exit //MMR adjustment;

Thanks for the info.

I was just thinking that there ought to be a “test of skill” you can undertake to be allowed a place on a better team for a few matches.

Or alternatively, high-MMR players could volunteer to be on a team of three higher MMR placed alongside two people who want to try to get out of the basement, for a 6-match series against a higher MMR team.

The Higher MMR players would win receive some sort of useful reward for being the “surrogates”!

I was just placed on two losing teams as my first two matches. I am scared that I will plummet to the dreaded GLicko2 basement with players who do not try or don’t know how to play.

Since the new matchmaking system 1) finds 10 people of a similar MMR and then deals them into two equal teams, and 2) changes your MMR based on the AVERAGE MMR of the team you faced.

Will it take weeks and weeks to sort itself out?

Say that everyone starts at say a 500 MMR (on a 1 to 1000 scale).

On the first matches, the winners MMRs only go up very slightly, and loser MMRs only go down very slightly.

Right?

And if you won your first, you are likely to lose the second match. There will be few “streaks”.

So…how long will it take until MMRS are sorted?

Josh? Tyler? Justin? Any guidance you can give?

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

Everyone had the same odds at leaderboards

Err. No. They didn’t. Read the boards and understand why they changed the matchmaking. Then you will understand.

When people stop GW2 sPvP…. what other competitive games do they go to that have everything they want?

Dota is not really like GW2 sPvP. It doesn’t feel as immersive to me. It’s more like moving chessboard pieces. I don’t feel like the character is “me” in those games.

And first person shooters give me motion sickness, so those are out.

Very very happy to hear this. I look forward to trying soloQ again.

Your decay was all erased. They will be changing how that works next patch.

Your rank would be reset in a week or so anyway. They are resetting the SoloQ Leaderboard.

Once the leaderboards stabilize, under the new system it should be very difficult to rise quickly on the leaderboard. The reason is that you are assigned to a team of random players, and the win depends mostly on what these other random people do or do NOT do.

Ignore the people who say you should carry and rise in a week or two to the top, and that it has been done. You have to be a pretty amazing player at many builds (which you switch to in the beginning of a match) to carry a team that strongly.

We are so accustomed to only rising in level in MMOs we forget that a Glicko2 MMR system is designed to give you tough games where you have only a 50% chance to win.

If it were 1v1, then maybe you could win all your matches. But you have 4 other random, usually lower-level people you must depend on.

I am happy ArenaNet is mixing up the SoloQ teams so that higher-skilled players are no longer grouped together against low teams.

But now many of these higher-MMR players are complaining that this is just not as enjoyable as being on an “elite” team, winning the majority of your matches, and becoming “famous” on a leaderboard for everyone to notice you as well.

So, they are complaining and many will probably leave. Many have already left to play some other game.

What they should do is make a team and play Team Queue. That is what it is there for: serious, team-based players.

SoloQ is becoming more a set of lower-ranked, casual, less knowledgable players. There is less sophistication in strategy, less teamwork, and more hot-join-like chaos.

But that is the population that is available right now.

infantrydiv.1620:

Although the leaderboard is pretty bad, I’d suggest reexamining your gameplay rather than blaming the fact that you have a bad rating entirely on the leaderboard system.

It’s been very well established that the matchmaker is against lower-MMR players.
There are not enough people playing to match you against people of your skill level in soloQ (and the more skilled players tend to play more, so there are more of them playing at any given time)… this means it forms a top-rated team first, then collects typically much lower MMR players to play against them to get a “chance” to raise their lower rank. (And good luck with that).

SO…you tend to be put into the wrong “bracket” over and over when you are a lower MMR player.

I think the OP was pretty honest about his gameplay. He sounds solid to me.

I would hope that in a couple of months, after they adjust some balance of classes that they say they are working on…that they will fix the matchmaking programming so it will have people of similar MM rank fighting each other…not fighting against a team of all significantly lower MMR players.

And then reset the leaderboards to start all over again. And also institute a significant decay, so that only active players are on the leaderboard.

Right now it seems SoloQ at low levels is nearly identical to hotjoin. People often don’t care if they win the match and do not try to win the match.

If you DO want to win the match, having two of those people on your team is extremely frustrating.

For that reason, I am just doing hotjoin until something changes in SoloQ…because in hotjoin I really don’t care all that much about winning either, since it is so random. I just practice skills and techniques and different classes.

There is a lot of thought behind why some professions have higher heath pools. This is a complex system. Some professions need higher health pools because they have less defense naturally and cannot build it as high with traits and gear.