Guild Wars 2

Metaphora.6071:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

There is no matchmaking in Hot Join (PvP Browser) matches. Matchmaking only exists in tournament matches, and it is based on your rating (a hidden value), not your Rank.

The rating is hidden? why?

There will be leaderboards showing where you rate versus others; but your actual number will not be shown. They said they want to avoid people gaming the system. They probably don’t want people learning what specific actions raise or lower the number and by how much.

Oni.5429:

Why does arenanet think that the pvpers would not buy special skins for cash if it would allow them to be used in pvp (similiar to what some already did with some of the pve skins like the grinning shield)?

Just add a ton of new skins in the shop and pvpers will buy it, look at league of legends for example.

That’s a good idea. Do something to increase the funds for PvP development.

I’ve been a software manager (I am an older guy). And the PvP side of this game has all the hallmarks that ArenaNet upper management made a decision to really limit the effort/investment on the PvP side of this game. (I.e. the Spirit map bug on rezzing, the limited scope of the PvP improvements and balance).

That puts the PvP developers and testers in a really tough position. No matter what they are able to do in their limited time, they will be yelled at by angry PvP community members. When you look at how many FTE (fulltime equivalent employees) assigned to PvP development, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have just two FTEs… and a 1/2 FTE manager/designer.

The big thing must be that this game will make most of its money from the Black Lion Trading company and a PvE focus.

Absolutism.9128:

Well…. I guess its back to League of Legends.

Bah. League of Legends doesn’t feel anything like this game, even if it is well done for what it is.. It seems more like SC2.

Thanks. So I need to join free tournaments to get a rating., I guess. And I will have to join as a solo since I have no team.

OK, I understand now.

So now I just click on the tournament master and get in queue to play, and it will find me a team of similar “rank” then?

So, to be matched with people of your “rank”, you just hit the Play Now button, is that right?

Whenever I have clicked that button in the past few weeks, I usually end up in a 3-person “match”. Small. Or more likely, 5 people dueling who tell me to please leave them alone.

gwawer.9805:

I’m surprised no one’s belittled my mention of binging on health–destroying fast food. What a show of class.

?? You want people to cheer you on to weighing 800 pounds?

gwawer.9805:

So tomorrow’s the big patch. Are you going to do anything to celebrate?

As for me I’m going to order two buckets of fried chicken and McDonald’s or Taco Bell, get my ice cubes ready and a 24 pack of Coke. I’m going to be eating all that while checking out the new and improved Guild wars two. I’ll be staying up till probably 5 AM in the morning just snacking and playing.

I live right by Taco Bell and it’s open 24 hours so I can get more food too.

Man…I gotta ask…how’s your weight? Do you know what your blood pressure is?

I work in a medical field and observe too many guys in their teens and 20s who are obese and heading for a heart attack.

Just sayin’ in a friendly way. Be careful.

Make the points awarded proportional to the amount of their health that you took away.

Any hope on this?

Perhaps with the shrinking player base they worried that many of the current players would retreat into custom arenas with their friends, and hotjoin would be empty for people who play at odd times and cannot join an organized group.

Just wondering if there is a non-sword build that does really well in hotjoin.

I built a full glass rifle/dual axe warrior and have been enjoying it in hotjoin.

Hotjoin is all I can do right now anyway, due to my work schedule.

I don’t think anyone survives long when attacked by three people anyway; why prolong the inevitable for a few more seconds? You could down one but can’t finish them with the other two there.

Burst gloriously while you have the chance. I find I am scoring just as high, or higher, than when I had a much more defensive build with less DPS.

RedF,

Yes, how to best do that? How do you choose what to do when you know nothing?

In hotjoin, things happen fast. You are not learning; you are confused. Should you not be practicing moves at first? Later you apply them at the right time?

My thinking is that I must first work in the training area to get the feel of it, and then very soon go into hotjoins and try it against real players.

Of course I will be ineffective at first, but I will begin to get the “feel” of the basic moves.

The idea would be to just try something like the Sword 2-3-4 and add another attack…then escape to a distance. Over and over, until it becomes natural and fluid without thinking. (of course I will die a lot, since I am not yet at the stage of being able to react to multiple other players who might jump me).

Then add another combo. Then mix it up

When you first play a new song as a musician, you don’t worry about making mistakes; you know you are practicing and many, many mistakes are normal at first. You are just training your fingers.

I am trying a warrior for the first time (for sPvP, not WvWvW).

There is a lot to learn, of course.

But some things are more important to learn first and second. As a professional musician, I know there are things you just have to practice first to get the “muscle memory” in place.

What rotations are the bread and butter that I should be trying first (even though I get owned)?

After I have those down, what comes next?

Laserbolt.6731:

Hotjoin messes with your mind. This is why people get frustrated, I think.

You really can’t tell how much you are contributing to a win or a loss. You can’t tell if you are getting better over time : one match you are on top, the next match you are at the bottom. It’s random. I have completed about 1200 matches, and I have played all 8 professions, to learn how they all work.

You think you are fighting well and suddenly you drop. Two ranged people were focus firing on you. You never had a chance.

There’s little time to think in the confusion. Luck is everything. You can be triple focused at any minute and there is no time to react to everything that is coming at you.

I try to join matches with about 8 people total. At least it’s more about you and less about the mass confusion.

I try to just remind myself that when I am on top it’s good luck, and when I am on the bottom, it is poor luck. If I actually try to pay attention to the score, I get very frustrated, because half the time I don’t appear to be doing very well and I wonder how I screwed up. But it’s actually pretty random and is not actually due primarily to my skill.

That’s what messes with your mind. The randomness of it all.

Hotjoin messes with your mind. This is why people get frustrated, I think.

You really can’t tell how much you are contributing to a win or a loss. You can’t tell if you are getting better over time : one match you are right near or on top, the next match you are near the bottom. It’s random. I completed about 1200 matches, and I have played all 8 professions, to learn how they all work.

You think you are fighting well and suddenly you drop. Two ranged people were focus firing on you. You never had a chance.

There’s little time to think in the confusion. Luck is everything. You can be triple focused at any minute and there is no time to react to everything that is coming at you.

I try to join matches with about 8 people total. At least it’s more about you and less about the mass confusion.

I try to just remind myself that when I am on top it’s good luck, and when I am on the bottom, it is poor luck. If I actually try to pay attention to the score, I get very frustrated, because half the time I don’t appear to be doing very well and I wonder how I screwed up. But it’s actually pretty random and is not actually due primarily to my skill.

That’s what messes with your mind. The randomness of it all.

I hope they change the scoring in hotjoin, as they said they were planning to do a couple of months ago in an interview.

But I am concerned that they don’t have enough PvP developers to do the work of creating two scoring systems: tournament and hotjoin.

Let me get this comment out of the way first: the one who plays better. Yeah. We get it. Let’s move to the topic question…

Let’s talk about which build has the advantage in a 1v1 fight: the Beastmaster or the trap ranger?

What are their two strategies?

Ideally, you should get points only when you do something directly useful to winning the match. No points for fighting in the road; only for fighting at a point. And if it is something a group did, the amount of points you get should be proportional to your percentage contribution of the total effort.

Is it somewhere on the PvP tab? I don’t notice anything.

MAYBE only award kill points to the person who landed the most damage on the player who was killed.

It’s probably a lot harder to prevent zerging than we think, since it is easiest to gather points simply by hanging at the edges of a big powerful group, just soaking up the skirmish kill points.

If you award a huge bonus for the win, then when you are on an unbalanced team, losing side, you get nothing even though it was not your fault that the team you were assigned to sucked.

jportell, sorry. I tried that. You don;t get the highest score in the 260 range with 10-point caps

About a month ago the ArenaNet PvP guys said they were going to change the scoring in sPvP hot joins to stop the zerging that goes on now.

I missed the first 20 minutes of their online panel discussion yesterday, so perhaps they talked about it. But I didn’t hear them say a thing about it for the part of the interview I heard.

Perhaps they have given up on that idea?

What sort of score WOULD really cause people to stop zerging in hot join? And does ArenaNet have the “sensors” in the game to really reward points for the non-zerg fights?

How do you seriously unreward zerging?

Rocklin.4106:

there are no “Hard caps”, or “caps” at all in gw2 for stats, so its up to you when you consider the healing amount “worth it”.

SotW heals you for 62 + 6% of your total heal or 125 + 25% of your total heal on your Pet.

You could have found that out with a simple Google search
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_the_Wild

Was it really necessary to call the guy lazy? This forum is for asking these sorts of questions.

Thanks for the test results. It is valuable to know that it is not worth giving up other stats for raising condition damage another 10 pts per tick on an opponent with 20,000 or more health, for example.

I don’t think you can make a character in this game that can utterly destroy another class in the way you can in a gear grind-based game such as WoW or Rift.

You can be significantly more powerful, but not so powerful that your skill no longer matters. Because the cost of that power is a weakness somewhere else.

Thieves have a burst advantage, but they are also limited in tournament PvP where other people know what they are doing and where the match is about capping and holding points, not just road-killing in uncontested areas.

Anyone else have anything that works, to share?

I have found that the black leopard and the wolf make a great pair of pets for a fast-damage build and approach. And that I need to switch them enough to not miss opportunity.

Some people are just better than most at figuring out a build and taking it to the limit, and I am sure there are a few out there who have taken the Ranger to another level in PvP.

I know many here would be grateful to learn from you, if you want to help out new Rangers, now that the class is being brought up to par in the last and the next update.

Thanks for any tips.

tOss.9024:

I’m not sure how your master degree fits in the post lol..

tOss and Xom…

Look up “NP complete problems” on Google.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421370/NP-complete-problem

edamber.1549:

I would say condition thief. I run a P/D and shortbow with caltrops and can cap points insanely fast. Almost never die nowdays, had a 4 hour sPVP session last week with like 1 death. It’s SOOO much better than buirst builds.

I wonder what your average point score was in that session.

I finds that when I am placed on a weak team where the other side is zerging and getting scores like 290, 280,250. . .

…that by running around capping I get only about 7 caps or so before it’s over, for about 100 points.

I hope that when they revise the scoring for sPvP (as they said they are going to do) that they make the scoring less for zerg-related activity and more for defending and taking points, and killing trebuches.

What is your experience as to which class and build can, with skillful play, get the most points salvageable in sPvP when they land on an underdog team that is scattered and being zerg-stomped?

mouse.1689:

Ultimately, a game like this one can’t survive without a healthy population. The tactics which most egregiously punish noobs should be scaled back even if they’re not a problem at high levels of play, because they’re roadblocks to the creation of a large, healthy community.

That said, the classes that rely on these tactics should be compensated in a way that keeps them competitive at all levels of play.

Excellent point. I agree.

Numot.3965:

For an example of a game balanced around the unskilled: Candy Land, it doesn’t matter how often you’ve played, it is random if you win.

Well, that’s taking it to an extreme. People just don’t want to get stomped constantly such that they feel they are terrible and are making no progress.

A scoring system that accurately reflected a player becoming steadily more competent, even in small increments, would be great in that regard.

Kline,

Good points on the warrior.

I have a masters level degree in computer science and in trying to solve hugely complex problems with potentially millions of combinations of factors.

This game’s PvP system feels like that. There are SO many possible interactions among the class attacks, defensive moves, timing factors, and debuffs… that it will never be balanced for all players.

It’s what they call a “combinatorial explosion”.

For one thing, new players and experienced players are playing two different games. New players don’t know how to counter Hundred Blades. Experienced teams now often don’t even bother to bring a warrior to tPvP because the warrior is shut down by players who understand how to counter the warrior.

Balance the game for experienced players, and the noobs get smashed.

In that respect, ArenaNet is absolutely correct to FIRST: get ranked matches working. Let people play against people with the same limited knowledge and skills.

That, and their plans to revamp the sPvP points system to reward a different sort of play style.

That may be all they will be able to ever achieve, as far as leveling the playing field.

Re: the TANKCAT build…it will not be as strong in sPvP, since it relies on confusion from the prybar attack (toolkit buton 3), and confusion in sPvP is only 50% of what it is in w3 or PvE.

I play sPvP.

Changed my engineer to this build to try it out.

The prybar confusion does not seem all that powerful in sPvP for me. I pop Elixir B and have my retaliation and hit with the prybar and wait for them to destroy themselves, as you say. But it does not seem to happen.

I see warriors hitting themselves for 215 points with my confusion. Takes a lot of those to whittle away 28000 hit points.

FOUND THE PROBLEM

From the Guild Wars Wiki:

“Confusion deals different damage in PvE/WvWvW than in sPvP.

In PvE and WvWvW, its damage is given by:

10 + (1.5 * Level) + (0.15 * Condition Damage) per stack per skill use

In sPvP, its damage is half as much, or:

65 + (0.075 * Condition Damage) per stack per skill use"

Eddie.9143:

bounce brah, unless you’re in a tourny die on the node. otherwise high tail it outta there! it’s all about the points dude! you’re playing wrong if you’re not getting 200+ a match

200 a match in sPvP is dependent on getting into a strong zerg, of course. Put you on a weak team with no zerg and there will be no 200+, regardless of how right you do it.

Now, young males like to brag they will get 200+ even if they are on a weak, losing team…but that’s younger males for you. We all know how that goes.

For PvE I found bombs are better and faster at killing mobs than anything else. You will level pretty fast with bombs. And they are great for multiple mobs. Just weave around inside their group, dropping bombs. They will not really be able to hit you for some reason.

This is a great pistol/shield PvP build I found on this forum, and use. Let conditions do the damage.

http://en.gw2codex.com/build/7868-pvp-engineer-condition-spam-bus

I am having pretty good luck with a pistol/shield condition build…but I can’t seem to be able to keep enough distance from warriors 1v1 long enough in sPvP to avoid the big smack down/destroy moves. I run, but they seem to run faster and eventually close enough for the big stun and finish.

My R elixir gives swiftness for a while but it’s a CD. Doesn’t last forever.

I guess the answer is improve my timing on shield and use it for when they close, eh?

This is a good thread!

I think you were smart to run.

Same here. Guild Wars 2 crashes my computer and leaves it in an unstable state…probably because it sets the graphics card to a mode and the card is left there when the game goes away.

The result is that I have to power down my computer completely so that the graphics card can reinitialize when I turn the power back on again. Doing a restart does not fix the graphic card on my machine; I have to power off completely.

It takes my Windows machine 12 minutes to reboot due to the many drivers I have on it.

This sucks. Big time.

Karast.1927:

The thing with the turret damage is, you can easily get the same damage from other utility skills. Like PBR, or bomb kit, or grenade kit.

Even with rocket and rifle turrets out and firing with me hip-shotting. I notice I still do more damage with the 1 skill from bomb kit in the build your currently using.

You can also swap in traits to get protection, more power, and a heal on each bomb.

I am not trying to be negative or go against your build, because I have tried to use turrets a lot myself, and I’ve just found them to be to easily countered.

I had tried a bomber, but that’s pure melee. Have to get into the swirl of the zerg. And I found grenades too slow to catch people unless they were standing still or in a tight group.

Casia.4281:

what I am seeing here is you figured out rifle is way better then pistol.
and conditions are terrible.

This thread has nothing to do with turrets.

You said vul on crit. odd choice.
Go for the eyes, rifle mod, and hair trigger should be your rifle traits.

Ps, net turret is actually decent.

You may be right. But the turrets do add damage, like totems in that other game.