As far as I know, the matchmaker uses wins and losses to calculate your rating using a slightly modified glicko 2 system.
The reason for matches that have highly-ranked players in the same match as new players is usually low population times. If this happened a few days ago, it could be that the population spread was very messed up due to time of day/time of year (e.g. maybe more casuals are trying PvP while only three players from the top 500 are in the queue).
Anomalies can also happen, such as when a new player gets lucky with his teammates three or four times in a row and gets a horribly inflated rating.
Actually I think this could work. There are a lot of games where you queue up for as many or as few different maps as you’d like.
Of course, it increases your chances of getting a wider range of MMRs in your match if you only queue for one or two maps. But I think most people would queue for at least three or four different maps if given a choice.
A lot of friends still “sync” in solo queue but they’re just as likely to end up on opposite teams as the same, possibly even more likely to be on opposite teams. It’s not “coincidence” that they landed in the same game, but it was definitely a coincidence that they landed in the same team.
If a “total rank” parameter gets added, the higher your rank becomes, the lower the ranks of your teammates will be. Also, any top player who creates a second account will automatically be placed with higher-ranked teammates than normal, just because his “rank” is low. Are you sure that’s what you want?
The second idea is a little better. However, I would feel awful about condemning anyone to 20 ranks of pure hotjoins. Perhaps there could be a warning message when newer players attempt to join a ranked match. Or there could be a goal-based requirement to enter solo arenas (e.g. finsh 10 downed players in a hotjoin, rez 10 downed allies, cleanse 100 conditions, etc.)
I like the build. A couple of thoughts:
—movement speed bonuses don’t stack past 33%. You really don’t want to use power shoes and speedy kits at the same time, because it’s no faster than just speedy kits.
—the shield trait won’t give a toughness bonus while you’re using a kit. You might decide you want to use the trait just for the reduced cooldown, but consider that you won’t get much use out of the extra toughness. Protective shield is a really good trait.
—with healing turret and elixir gun, you’ll probably have the regen boon up pretty much permanently. You might want to consider runes of the forge or melandru instead of dwayna.
—you should definitely at least try the build with cleric’s or settler’s amulet. Remember that you can customize your jewel, so you could use cleric’s amulet with soldier’s jewel or at least put a cleric’s jewel in your soldier’s amulet. You might like the way settler’s plays as well, it’s an insane armor rating.
Good luck!
…
This has derailed pretty severely. Feel free to pm me if you want to continue the discussion. I’d recommend mods to close the thread down, as it was of dubious value at the start, then hardcore necro’d, then hardcore derailed.
Best of luck in high end tPvP.
Actually there could be some interesting meta shifts in high-end PvP in the near future. People are really calling for nerfs to some of the traits/skills that make SD builds fare poorly at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see heavy burst make a big comeback over the current bruiser comps.
There’s simply no correlation between the two.
The only way you would believe that is if you feel that decisions that have been made are down to gross incompetence time after time. It just doesn’t make sense.
The introduction of bloodlust stacks was NEVER WANTED by the WvW community. It makes a winning server with greater coverage do it all even better. There’s absolutely no logical reason to implement it UNLESS you want to make WvW unbalanced even more so, concurrently breaking GvG, forcing people who want (a degree of) balance into ANet’s PvP.
That’s just one example.
Yeah, everyone gets upset when Facebook changes their format, too. Bloodlust was added because of feedback asking for more meaningful solo player/small group contributions for WvW.
If I read you right, you’re saying that Anet introduced bloodlust to intentionally cause imbalance in WvW to intentionally shut down the GvG scene so that players would have no choice but to go to PvP. That’s a pretty hardcore conspiracy theory. Isn’t it much more likely that they were responding to the mountains of feedback asking for small group content in WvW?
I challenge you to find a dev post or blog that uses the word “esports”
Oh there out there all right (See I can do it too).
The “burden of proof” concept is integral to formal logic. Basically, if someone makes a claim (“Anet is obsessed with esports”) then the person making the claim is expected to be able to back it up. A second person may question the claim (“Has Anet really said or done anything related to esports in the last few months?”) So yes, you can “do it too,” it just doesn’t make any sense when you do it, because I didn’t make a claim—you did.
Edit: also, I asked if there was a post or blog in the last five months that used the word esports. There were several articles mentioning esports before and at launch, mostly third-party interviews in which the word was used.
Well, after trying everything, it looks like it’s either nades/bombs, S/D, or some gimmicky build that is difficult to pull off in the all-so-common xv1 scenarios. =(
Well, so far, people have suggested elixirs, turrets, and every kit except flamethrower. It sounds like you don’t like any of them, so I guess the only possible combination left is a gadget-based build.
Based on what I can tell from what you’re looking for, I’d recommend a somewhat tanky gadget-control static discharge build. SD is useful for more than just 1-hit KO builds. Give it a try before you label it a “gimmick.” It simply adds damage to a build, nothing more. Gadgets lack damage on their own, so SD is a perfect fit for them.
Try:
Zerker amulet
Healing turret
Rocket boots
PBR
Toolkit
Supply crate
0/10/20/20/20 (hair trigger, protective shield or stabilized armor, power shoes, protection injection, backpack regenerator, static discharge, speedy gadgets)
Rifle with sigil of energy
Runes of the ogre
You could also put 10 from inventions into tools for speedy kits and more damage, but you might like 100 toughness and healing and AMR better. It’s not a difficult build: keep your opponent locked down with rifle 2 and 5, PBR, and magnet until he uses stability or you run out of cooldowns, then kite/block him until you’re ready again. Land a couple of SD shots each time he’s on his back. In teamfights, pull a priority target and lock him down. In duels, stay mobile and use SD for sustained damage.
forum’s obsession with esports.
The forums obsession? lol
Idc about e-sports but at least the ANet troll at a GvG match and Sacrx’ NDA leak made ANet look at themselves a little closer. I actually like were the game is going as a result.
PvP however doesn’t get as much love as a result.
It’s a non sequitur fallacy to believe that Anet was “holding back” GvG because they were obsessed with esports. There’s simply no correlation between the two. It’s the same fallacy to believe that PvP is getting fewer resources because of the new jumping puzzle fight club place thingy.
The forums are obsessed with esports. WvW/GvG/PvP threads are constantly using it. The devs, on the other hand, say things like: “We want to keep working on mechanic X,” or, when pressed really hard to talk about esports, “We want to keep improving the game and see it become better and better.”
I challenge you to find a dev post or blog that uses the word “esports” in the last 5 months. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any for at least a year, but it’s possible that it happened before the Pax tourney, I’m not sure.
Have you tried toolkit/elixir gun bunker? Or any of the static discharge variants?
What is with the thread necro. This needs to stop.
Yes it does. The forums are for some reason obsessed with “esports” and seem to think saying that word every other post shames the devs into going back in time and delaying release by a few months to fix the launch issues. The devs are not obsessed with esports and apart from a few minor invitationals have not pushed e-sports at all.
So two things need to stop: outdated necros of threads that were marginally relevant when posted, and the forum’s obsession with esports.
Awesome! Yes, pvp is a great place to train for 1v1s in WvW. You’ll get as much real experience with small fights in a few hours of solo queues as you would in months of WvW.
Fun concept. You’ll likely want to change several things as you play with it and gain experience in the game.
A couple of purely mathematical observations—+5% damage is always better than +5% crit chance when under +50% crit damage. Also, healing turret is always better than elixir H without traits.
It will come at about the same time as the next LS installment, and the next episode of the average tv show, and the next time congress is in session.
That is, after Christmas/new year’s. It’s not unreasonable at all.
Swapping weapons usually works for me any time I get stuck. It has never, ever happened to me in PvP, and only a couple times in wvw.
IP is better nearly all the time. Shrapnel is better in PvE (or for soloing camps). Even in a zerg, IP is better because it will nearly always do more damage than shrapnel will before it’s removed. Burning will occasionally be wasted on an already-burning target, but not often enough to outweigh its effectiveness. IP will pretty much always proc on your first grenade throw. For solo/small group roaming, IP is miles ahead of shrapnel because it adds a huge amount of damage to our attrition attacks, like the elixir gun auto.
In some situations, shrapnel might be better than forceful explosions. You will likely never hit a longbow ranger or a necro with a bomb in a 1v1. Warriors will stand in your bombs no matter what size they are.
Engineer! Because it’s super theorycraftable and flexible.
Winning fights is ten times more important than holding on to a point for a few extra seconds. If the enemy team zergs your home point, just type the number into team chat (“3” or “3 home”) and then try to get out. You don’t help your team by dying and taking 15 seconds to respawn. If they have 3 people on your homepoint, your four teammates should easily be able to control both other points vs. the remaining two players.
If we see a “role” parameter added, perhaps it could be an amulet check? The matchmaker could try to not form a team with all cleric/settler/soldier amulets, or all rabid/carrion amulets, or all zerker amulets. Not sure how that would work out practically.
its ok really. sPvP needs an easy profession for casual players to play and warrior does best at that.
the more skilled players can play the other professions.
I agree with you, but the gap is a bit too big at the moment. Also, the casual builds shouldn’t be downright stronger than the advanced builds—they should be equal, nothing more.
If you’re zerg diving, you’re running heavy defensive traits and either a bomb kit, tool kit, or ft. the bombs have a delay and make it difficult to effectively tag, and the wrench has a very short range. the ft will kill you if you’re zerg diving with it, even with regen and backpack regen up.
the other reasons why we don’t zerg dive effectively are our lack of a stunbreak with stability. we can run elixir b’s toolbelt all day, but you don’t know when or if a stun is coming and it has a long cast time/throw animation. our stun break options in a zerg diver’s build are speed shoes, regenerating mist, rumble, utility goggles, or elixir s. all of which have CDs above 40s, and aren’t particularly useful as you just get stunned again. except elixir s, where you make yourself no use to your group for 3s (4s?).
and running defensively enough to tank in a zerg dive on an engi really screws up your damage output. to the point where you’re better off rerolling to a guard to see what it feels like to actually zerg dive and be a help =/
Sorry, I miscommunicated a bit. I meant that getting more loot bags is not a concern in a competitive build. It would be like using magic find gear in a wvw build (back when magic find was on gear). It really doesn’t affect the engineer’s effectiveness or role, which is what this thread is about. If you’re concerned about getting loot, that’s fine, it’s a valid concern I guess. It’s just not really relevant.
I’m not an expert zerg diver, so I can’t comment there. I personally think engineers are better at zerg kiting than zerg diving. Nades and supply crates really mess up a backline.
its fine. warriors were like paper dolls before the required changes to healing signet.
long bow combustion shot always had this large range since release. why complain now?it is working nicely, not broken.
you do not fix what is not broken.
Defending a specific profession is never useful. There are a lot of great suggestions here, and literally everyone in the game knows that healing signet needs to be different. Not necessarily less powerful, just different. When using a skill to max effectiveness means doing nothing with it, there’s a problem.
I’m glad you like warriors. They have nice animations, exciting weaponskill combinations, intuitive playstyle (maybe too intuitive). I like engineers. But if these forums just become everyone lobbying for their favorite profession to be really strong, they cease to become useful balance feedback.
Healing signet is a bit much, but the real problem is that there’s not really ever a reason to use the active. It’s lowering the skill floor for warriors to a really, really simple level. When skill floor disparity becomes so immense, the simple builds look really overpowered at the casual level.
In other words, it’s literally impossible to mess up. Just do nothing and you’re using it to its maximum potential.
You can perform any role… poorly. retal kitten s you both at range and melee, and if you go for a zerg diving role you won’t have any skills that deal enough damage to tag you bags effectively.
Go roam or scout =D
Retal now requires you to have some regen in your build to account for the damage you will unavoidably take; it’s not going to instant-kill you (you might lose a chunk of health at once though). The devs had to decide whether to make it a small amount of unavoidable extra damage or a situational boon to be applied strategically. They chose to make it a small amount of unavoidable extra damage. Flamethrower isn’t really hit any harder than grenades by it.
I don’t think bag-tagging has anything whatsoever to do with an engineer’s role in wvw, which is what the OP was about. I’m sure they do just fine at tagging if that’s what you’re looking for in a build.
I usually notice that more of the higher-ranked solo queue players are on somewhat later in the NA primetime window, like maybe 10pm-12am EST. I haven’t done many solo queues in the last few weeks though so I could be wrong.
The main difference is that in solo arenas, your teammates will usually expect you to play to win and will call you out if you do anything just to get more glory points, such as standing in a point that someone else is already capturing.
The player skill level might be a little higher, but within three or four matches the matchmaker will have you playing with people near your skill level whenever possible (exception: very low concurrency time periods in the NA region).
I’d advise you to give it a try—it has a lot of advantages over hotjoins such as no autobalance, fewer afk players, less zerging, less joining/leaving mid-match, more playing to win, more strategy, and more meaningful plays. If you try one and feel you weren’t ready, just practice a bit more and then come back.
PvP is pretty fun, but the forums are in bad shape.
I’d recommend downloading the game and playing a few rounds. If you don’t enjoy them, there’s your answer. Some of the replies in this thread are likely from people who haven’t played any more PvP than you have in the last 3 months, which is pretty weird honestly.
I disagree with the bolded portion in particular. Here’s why:
If we balance in such a way that a skill bar of Gadgets ‘effectively replaces a weapon swap,’ where does that leave Kits?
They are weapon swaps.
If a bar of Gadgets is more or less equivalent to a weapon swap in terms of power…nobody will use them, because they can just take weapon swaps.
Why use three skills when one will do?In my opinion, each Turret, and each Gadget, should be even with any given Kit in the hands of an average, no greater and no worse, user. My rationale for this is that the effectiveness of Kits is more skill-dependent than Turrets or Gadgets; looking at simple numbers is the quickest way to screw it all up.
Hmm. I have a couple of issues with that goal:
1. Kits aren’t really a “weapon swap.” The kits are officially divided into “weapon kits” (EG, FT, TK) and “device kits” (GK, BK, MK). The “weapon kits” don’t really stand on their own well as a “weapon” and are usually extra utility. The “device kits” are nothing like weapons and are used to provide damage in a build that otherwise lacks it (GK, BK) or healing. None of the kits are really much like a weaponswap.
2. Drawing a direct comparison (these two skills combined are as effective as these six skills combined) is near impossible. If you use rifle turret instead of bomb kit in a bomb/nade PvP build, it will be awful, because the bomb/nade build depends on the heavy area control synergy of the two kits working together.
There’s no way to re-design rifle turret to make it “as good as” the bomb kit. It does something different. A better approach would be to make rifle turret do something that works well in the context of a good build, just like bombs/nades work in a good build. It’s already very close to doing that.
They are going to get the opening that’s just how it goes.
Not necessarily! Thief goes stealth to open, you can blast your smoke field a few times for a longer stealth. Then open on THEM from stealth. That…usually surprises them, heheh.
Occasionally, they’ll shadow refuge on you because they don’t know how to react to the fact that you’re still in stealth while they’re not. When that happens, dump some bombs or grenades into the SR and then shield 4 them out if you have it.
But that’s for somewhat scripted scenarios like set duels. I’ll assume you’re talking about WvW and dagger/x builds since you’re getting burst hard—for average engineer builds, the best strategy is to keep cc on them (rifle builds do well with this) or to bait them into getting behind you so you can land a lot of bombs/nades (condition builds do well with this). Turrets are good vs. thieves as well.
I sort of feel like engineer is trying to be a mix of everything
I agree, but I feel that it succeeds.
However, it is true that most of our 0-1 kit builds lag a bit behind our 2-3 kit builds at high levels. I think the way to reverse that is for gadgets and turrets to be relatively weak BUT with low cooldowns, so that a bar of gadgets could effectively replace a weapon swap.
There is a third option: a build might have enough condition removal, but still need to rely on dodging/blocking/evading/blinding to survive and not just attempt to remove everything.
Unfortunately, the forums breed a lot of misconceptions, especially concerning strategy/gameplay. I feel it might be a big contributor on why most players in hotjoin/solo queue/wvw are…not very good. Relying on condition removal to beat a condition spec is like relying on toughness to beat a glass cannon. Of course, toughness is helpful, but you’re only going to withstand so many heartseekers before you go down. Condition removal is the same way: it’s going to slow down the condition damage you take but it will never keep you alive indefinitely. Toughness will slow down the damage you take but never remove it.
Get your toolkit for Pry bar to add 5 stacks of confusion..
Also you have a nice pull (even works when opponent using shield stance..cool..) and a nice block..
All pulls break blocks, as do ground controls like line of warding, etc.
As the above poster said, perplexity runes only exist in WvW.
I see that you’re a warrior, which means I think you can figure out how to beat a perplexity engineer. Perplexity runes are still dumb and maybe a bit OP, but I’m sure you’ll be able to think of something.
Caed, from the time stamp it looks like you posted this between 5:00am and 6:00am Sunday morning EST. Have you considered making an account on the EU servers? That’s an honest suggestion. Not only is the playerbase very likely less dumb/more skilled overall, it would probably solve the off-hours NA population problem.
Well, I suppose. The team queue population is small enough that you’d just have to be careful to not do very good in team queues, though. Nothing says fun like facing an e-sports level team with two solo players and a group of three WvW buddies.
I wouldn’t want to solo queue a team arena from an MMR very far within the top 1000.
I was really hoping to see some more lists…maybe I should edit the ele trait off my list, it seems to be hanging people up quite a bit…
Empatic bond. If the ranger doesn’t have it, the match essentially become 5v4.5
Ah I can’t believe I forgot empathic bond. Yes, that’s probably in the top five, as rangers wouldn’t really function without it (just like grenade engineers wouldn’t function without grenadier).
The 10 best traits in the game are the one’s that make meta builds so effective.
They’re going to be in frequent flux.
Also more context is needed. You can’t judge traits by themselves.
Well yes, but that’s what makes it useful. For example, the top utility skill in the game was voted Stand Your Ground by a significant margin, and I think that’s a good assessment. It helped me understand teamfights a little better.
I think it is possible to judge the traits by themselves.
couldn’t agree more, seems as patch’s come something gets easier to play and alot stronger, like before necros were op they were kinda like engineers since they wernt easy to pull off but a few skilled people made it work, same with warriors since they were rarely used back in the day unless it was zergs but even so back then i still seen a few getting around that once again were making it work, but now everyone has a spare necro or warrior.
so yea that gap is getting bigger all the time, and lets hope they dont screw with the high end we could be next.
Exactly—we don’t want an easy button for engineers. It would ruin the great dynamic we already have.
You still think PoV is good after the nerf/fix?
Mine is completely my own opinion, of course. But yes, I do. I’m curious to see where it ranks on other peoples’ lists.
10. Elemental Attunement
…affect the outcomes of matches that muchWhat?
Is this a joke?
Five seconds of regen or protection can be usefull, but it can’t reverse the game.
Hmm, I thought it was a pretty important trait for elementalists. It’s just my own opinion, of course. What’s your top ten list?
But game is still about circles. You can win every single fight, but if your enemy control circles, you WILL lose the match.
I don’t think that it’s possible to lose every single fight and keep control of 2 out of 3 circles throughout the entire match.
There was a thread a while back asking for the top 10 utilities across all professions. It was insightful and really helped to clarify the metagame at the time and the dynamics of the average teamfight.
I’d like to know: which 10 traits are the absolute most influential in deciding PvP matches? Here’s my list:
1. Cleansing Ire
2. Pure of voice
3. Grenadier
4. Incendiary powder
5. Terror
6. Spirits Unbound
7. Fast Hands
8. Burst Mastery
9. Sure-footed
10. Elemental Attunement
I left off traits like Prismatic Understanding because while it is the backbone of a great troll build, it doesn’t really affect the outcomes of matches that much.
Conquest is not about standing in circles, bunkering, spamming aoe, or any of the things that people say it is. It’s about controlling the map by winning fights. The best conquest tactic is to play the game exactly how the OP describes—don’t stand in aoe. Even pure bunkers can’t stand in wells/bombs/etc for more than a few seconds. Those few points aren’t worth losing the fight.
If your team is losing fights, it may appear that the game is about “standing in circles,” as the enemy will still have people standing in circles while your team, alas, has no one standing at all.
Quite the interesting suggestion, I am very curious to hear an example?
An example is “evasive powder keg,” an unavoidable engineer minor trait. It deals very low damage and just means that engineers can’t dodge in stealth (or the trait reveals them).
Reserve mines is similar.
Another is the thief trait that gives stealth at 25% health—a lot of thieves would like to disable it because if they’re in an attack animation as they get hit, it’s an instant revealed debuff.
I hadn’t thought of mob skipping in PvE, but that makes sense for warriors and eles.
It’s not that those traits are bad or useless, it’s just that in some situations they do more harm than good. It would be nice to get the option to turn them off.
Lyssa could either remove conditions or give boons…it’s kind of cool that it rewards those weaker/shorter CD elites, but it’s definitely over the top a bit.
And energy sigils should just give 6-9 seconds of vigor. It’s a bit too much to have vigor and energy sigils and other forms of endurance regen. Unmodified dodging is once per ten seconds; perma vigor is twice per ten seconds; perma vigor with energy sigils is 3 times per ten seconds…
It’s like exponentially increasing rewards. Anyone who has played traditional MMOs with % based dodge mechanics will know what I mean. If you take your dodge rate from 80% to 90%, you’ve lowered you incoming damage by 50%.
- Your MMR is on or near the default MMR. When you are near the default you are more likely to be paired with new players. It could be that your MMR dropped, or raised, just enough to put you near the peak of the curve on one day. The more you play the less your MMR deviation should fluctuate, so you should start to see less variance.
And this is exactly why there should be an entry barrier.
It’s not really that simple. New players have to start somewhere, whether they’re rank 3 or rank 15. Honestly, I don’t think time spent in hotjoin is any indicator of how competent someone trying solo arena for the first time will be.
The tutorials should absolutely be re-designed. There could also be hotjoin rooms with only low-ranking players allowed, and new players could be directed there first. I don’t think it’s good to prohibit new players from doing ranked matches entirely. There are occasionally competent WvW players who come try PvP, as well as second accounts and NA/EU transfers. There could maybe be a restriction of a few ranks, but I wouldn’t want to see <r20s banned from arenas like some people have been suggesting.
There are currently a few minor traits across the professions—in very important traitlines—that unfortunately just do more harm than good in some PvP situations. Would it be possible to give the ability to disable a minor trait you don’t want?
I’d love to see an option to disable any unwanted minor traits, but I doubt that will happen. There are a few on other professions that do more harm than good as well.
Remember, if you maintain permanent burning on a warrior, his health will stand still! Must be OP.
In all seriousness: burning is very strong. It fits with the fast-paced design philosophy of the game. Easy to remove, deals a lot of damage to you if you can’t. It was also meant as a dot for non-condition specs, such as guardians. I think that’s why it has such a high base damage and relatively low scaling with condition damage.
It was a business decision. It simply took too much time/money/human resources to patrol the matchups thread.
They either had to change their code of conduct to lower standards (and risk lawsuits), or continue to “lose money,” or end the matchup forum.
How about this solution: the matchup thread remains, but every post costs $.50 to cover the extra moderators’ salaries?