Guild Wars 2

Carried by Master Bayt, confirmed.

If you’re running minion mancer, there’s your problem.

D/P Thief can’t really fight DH well. You need some sort of evade in your weapon set or you can’t dodge all of the important kitten. Staff is much stronger in the current meta. My favorite way to pressure DHs is to Vault on their backside when they use Shield of Courage. Use Weakening Charge on your Steal to apply Weakness for a little bit of wiggle room. Weakening Charge can also be used to break the focus block because it hits three times. When you use Bandit’s Defense, a good DH will follow up with Spear of Justice, so be prepared to dodge that. Debilitating Arc is stronger than Vault in this match up unless you’re sure he won’t dodge the Vault, but be careful because the end of Arc isn’t an evade frame, so you’ll take damage if you use it wrong inside Test of Faith. Dust Strike isn’t worth it. The third part of the Staff auto attack is a reflect, but it’s hard to plan that. Use it if it’s up, but don’t rely on it. Steal to interrupt the Wings.

Also, the passive trap is a bunch of Aegises, not the heal.

TL;DR – Staff is the strongest overall Thief build at the moment. D/P doesn’t have enough evades or passive tankiness to take on a Trapper DH.

Me
Scooma.5630
Oh Lola.7539

APeX played in Pro League, but they finally realized they couldn’t be like water and stopped trying. With APeX up for relegation, they may not try again until warrior is OP again.

Nope. Just sign up and show up

Bump.

ESL has been in control of the EU 2v2s for a while. In terms of 5v5s, I don’t know enough of the EU scene well enough to get people to join. Doesn’t ESL have weekly 5v5s or did those end when Pro League launched?

Now that the first Pro League season is over, we’ll be bringing back our weekly events. We’re rebranding AspectGG as Never Lucky in the spirit of Pro League. Anyway, the 2v2s will be on Thursdays at 8:30 PM EST starting next week. The 5v5s will be held on Saturdays at 4 PM EST starting either this weekend or next, depending on how quickly we can gather interest. One last thing is that we’ll be moving TeamSpeak servers from ts.aspect.gg to nl.teamspeak3.com

https://battlefy.com/team-never-lucky

Well, primordial does mean first…

Anetpls. How else am I going to test my Killshot warrior?

I had plenty of matches that were worse stomps than this in solo queue. The game tends to snowball, people get demoralized, and shut outs happen. The pip gain I was talking about was actually from the first season, and was not immediately updated when leagues started, so sorry about that. Regardless, this post is stupid and pointless.

First of all, as I said, it doesn’t matter how bad you beat them by. It matters how many points you score. You get the same number of pips for winning 500-500 as you would for winning 649-0. Second, there is going to be a broad range of skill levels at all divisions. I don’t mean to be a kitteny kitten or a kitten, but you would probably get pooped on by a lot of people too. Lastly, I’m not sure why it wasn’t a more fair match up with solo queuers, but often it comes down to comp. It’s possible it was predicted to be a 50/50 winrate, but they had a poor comp or just incompatible players. There are many factors that are hard to predict.

It doesn’t matter how much you beat them by. It matters how much you score. If you are expected to win or have a decent chance to win, you’ll only get one pip for a win. That’s 5 legendaries vs 5 legendaries. MMR could have a large difference, but I see no reason to think that you should get more than one pip from the screenshot. If anything, judging by the score, your MMR might have given you an advantage in win chance. I see nothing wrong here.

Bump. It’s tomorrow.

After a rather long break following the release of Heart of Thorns, AspectGG is returning with a weekly 3v3 tournament. Due to the hybrid bunker builds prevalent with the new elite specs, we decided that a 3v3 tournament would be more balanced than a 2v2 tournament, allowing for more cleave pressure.

All the information is on the Battlefy page, but here’s a quick rundown. The matches Bo3 on the midpoint of Foefire, except the finals which are Bo5. Each team can only have one bunker amulet, and there is no class stacking. It will take place Thursdays at 8:30 PM EST with brackets being published ten minutes prior at 8:20 PM EST.

http://battlefy.com/aspectgg/aspectgg-3v3-weekly-1/5693de1b645ddf4f00900bd2/info

You have to hit Rank 20 to do Ranked PvP. You really think they’re putting that much effort into it?

I can confirm that it’s a bug. I’ve tested it in my arena.

A new bug was added with HoT that caused your stomp to not go through despite completing the channel if you changed targets while Allow Skill Retargeting is checked. Basically the game counts the stomp as a skill, and when you click on someone else it targets them with the stomp. However, they aren’t down, so nothing happens.

Then don’t require players to grind matches that won’t pop for their rewards.

I don’t know the exact date of the cup, but the top 5 would be determined when the season ends on January 25th, 2016.

1) Amber → Emerald
2) Emerald → Sapphire
3) Sapphire → Ruby
4) Ruby → Diamond
5) Diamond → Legendary
6) Legendary 1 → Legendary 2

You have to finish Legendary once.

The system is broken in requiring grind even from the best players to get the backpiece. You need three matches per day for one of those achievements, which can take 4-5 hours for players in Diamond. Obviously there are fewer fair matches for top players, but even when solo queuing? It’s a little ridiculous when someone gets a two hour queue solo queuing, and then the game says “I can’t give you a match” and kicks him out of queue.

I believe it bugs if you change target while stomping. Make sure to keep your stomp target selected. It’s weird.

@Xanctus

I do agree that the system is pretty broken. You should be able to climb the Leagues faster and without the grind if you’re good enough. As it stands, top players HAVE to grind matches against weaker players if they want rewards. And people really have to remember, they still play the game for fun. It’s not a job.

Dude. It’s a broken system. I don’t want to PvP too much because I’m scared of hitting Diamond. It doesn’t take abuse to get to that rank too quickly. That’s obviously going to cause frustration among top players. When rewards require them to grind, then they’re punished for doing it too well, it’s a broken system, and the fault doesn’t lie with them.

@Morwath

I do believe that Chaith already responded to this one, but you ignored it. Noscoc named those teams to make fun of them, and the rosters of those teams is not full Abjured. They’re mixes of other teams in that guild. For example, my PvE guild has like 6 different teams. There are several people who are on multiple of them. I think that’s natural when it allows 10 teams.

In regard to Sunfish, would you care to give examples or are you just going to BM people randomly? Sunfish can be a kitten at times. He really can. And here’s something you need to understand. Most of the Pro League players? We still play for enjoyment. There isn’t enough money in it yet for it to be a job. It’s still something we do for fun. Of course, it’s nice to be rewarded for being good, but it’s still for fun.

@Xanctus

Even if Pro League teams are matched with the highest MMR players currently queuing, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good match. Those Pro League players are top level with mechanics and coordination, so it’s not always possible to create a balanced match. The matchmaking probably has an accurate view of who will win, but in this snowball of a meta people still lose pips. If it wasn’t a three point meta where 500-0s kept happening, I don’t think it would be as much of an issue.

@dank

As I said earlier in this thread, I don’t know the case for the PZ teams, but The Mist Initiative teams were all different players. The Mist Initiative has players from literally every Pro League team in it. Maybe PZ was making new teams to have artificially low MMR, but I can’t judge that as I’m not in the guild. Before leagues were even launched, PZ was queuing like crazy. Before Pro League started, they were kind of a joke, losing to solo queuers and every other team. However, all their queuing and practice paid off, and I consider them the strongest Pro League team at the moment. They play that much because the effort does show. I think you need to stop assuming people’s motives.

For reference, here were the scrims that I know of that happened last night. PZ scrimmed Abjured and Spookie. Spookie also scrimmed Ez Pz. Apex scrimmed Ez Pz and Final Form. Bear had homework to do or we would have scrimmed Zero Counterplay, Spookie, and Apex. If teams are on that are worth our time, we’ll almost always scrim them to guarantee that we keep hitting each other instead of relying on somewhat RNG queue pops with a timer between each match. These teams aren’t avoiding tough matches. They’re getting all the practice they can.

@dank

If my team queues together, and PZ queues with one Amber, it would still match us together. The issue is that there aren’t enough teams that can compete queuing at the same time. The top 5 or so teams can take games off each other, but below that? It’s pretty common for only one of those five to be queuing at any point in time and two or four to be scrimming each other.

@dank

I don’t solo queue at all. I pretty much only do Ranked when my team practices. Do you know why? Even with this minimal PvPing, I’m at mid Ruby. The instant high MMR players hit Diamond, queue times spike to over an hour. Faov, Steel, and Bear are already running into this on my team. Pro League players quickly hitting a wall of long queue times was the natural outcome, not because they were abusing the system.

@Thiefz

1) Those teams aren’t actually taking up slots for the tournament. They’ll just skip the ineligible teams and take the top teams that are eligible. I’ve talked to Grouch about this. Also, I don’t know the case for the PZ teams, but The Mist Initiative teams are all formed from different players. They have 5 full Pro League teams and 5 that are mash-ups of players in the guild. I think the best solution would be to implement decay and only show the highest rated team from that guild on the leaderboard. Those fixes are on ArenaNet, though.

2) Amber players don’t deflate their MMR. It deflates their league. The matchmaking will still match them with high MMR players, just not ones in as high a division. Since the league really is just grind at the higher MMR, it’s not giving them easier matches, just quicker pops. For reference, Sunfish would try to solo queue and the queue would auto cancel at two hours. He literally couldn’t get a match.

3) No Pro League players did this. They didn’t need to.

Bunker Chronomancer really is an upgrade in essentially every way over the Banner Bunker Warrior. It’s literally the tankiest thing this game has ever seen.

If he only plays Warrior, then the MMR will balance out where he can perform competently on Warrior. No need to point fingers.

I mean, you can get Llamas from community tournaments. I currently have all of the llamas from the Go4s and other events.

What?! The issue here is power creep. We need a lot of nerfs, not buffs…

I want my shiny Legendary icon and my shiny Legendary backpiece

I love how people are considering queuing as a team “exploiting” if you’re better than them.

Stalagta and his fabulous hair!

I hear those Never Lucky guys are really cool people.

I mean, you can win with any comp if you’re enough better than your opponents. Just because they won last night doesn’t mean they won’t lose to a similar comp if the next time the people play it better, even if they don’t play as well as The Abjured. Professionals should play what it takes to win. That’s my take on the matter.

I mean, you do need it to get the backpiece, so there’s that.

It works just like Blurred Frenzy, so things like Shocking Aura still work. The issue is that, unlike Blurred Frenzy, that doesn’t stop the rest of the skill. What about making the wells channeled skills?

Continuum Split already doesn’t have point contribution. I think that should extend to Well of Precognition, especially when it comes to capping buffs on Temple of the Silent Storm.

@OPN Reaper is solid, but it’s just easier to focus down than a condition Revenant, so it’s riskier to play.

@muscarine How would Dragonhunter be why Thief was dead at top tier if nobody at top tier runs Dragonhunter.

One of the requirements for playing in Pro League was that you had to use their anti-cheat program called ESL Wire. They sent it out to players to download about five days before Pro League started, giving players plenty of time to test it before it had to be used. However, that’s where the problems started. We were told that there was an issue with the program and Windows 8, so we didn’t need to use it until it was fixed.

Fast forward to the second week of Pro League. We hadn’t heard any update from them in regards to ESL Wire. Just to be safe, I asked in advance if ESL Wire has been fixed and if it would be required. (Note: I had to ask. If I had not asked, we would have had zero warning.) They told us yes. This was about 6.5 hours before the tournament was due to start. Most of my team members were at school or work. We installed the program just before the tournament started and had no time to troubleshoot. We had issues with it, and they forced us to use a substitute.

Here is the direct quote from the ESL Admin:

“ESL Wire: we added it to the Pro League, but I understand there are some issues with using Windows 8. Since we haven’t used it before in the Go4’s, it won’t be required at the moment”

There was no more communication about ESL Wire until I had to specifically ask about it. When we had issues, their response was essentially to fix it or they would DQ us. There was no attempt to troubleshoot the issue, they just said to restart and try again.

“Seems like it’s a technical issue on the player’s end. Teams were given a lot of notice to prepare and have this program installed and running.”

We were not given proper notice that we had to use the program and did not have time to troubleshoot.

On an entirely different note, ESL Wire was causing crashes and lag for many players, completely disallowing Caden from re-entering his match with us after DCs.

TL;DR – ESL did not properly communicate with teams as to whether or not ESL Wire was required until there was not an adequate to troubleshoot buggy software. I leave you with my favorite quote from them:

“I downloaded it on my laptop tonight and it downloaded fine”

It works for me so it must work for you… Thanks for the troubleshooting…

There’s always going to be a chance that teams are going to be knocked out before they deserved to be. However, as long as the seeding is unbiased and fair, that gets put on the team. If these teams had all been competing and proven how good they were, they would have been given a corresponding seed. My only complaint there would be that seeding methods weren’t announced sooner.

I mean, Hatuey’s not a nobody. He’s not currently top tier, but he’s definitely been on some solid teams. I don’t know why I typed this out, but it just makes me laugh that people are insinuating he’s bad.

The real error here is just doubting the success people could have with multiple Minstrel Amulets. That is the reason people are opposed to it, my team included. Coordinated bunker comps are much tougher to beat than you realize, having not played at top tier, and on top of that are not fun to play against even when you win. Remember when Radioactive ran the Mercy Warrior with the Power Necro? You’d likely end up in a situation like that. The comp would include damage, sure, but it would be based around abusing game mechanics, not skillful play.