Guild Wars 2

ways a player can “carry” a team:

- Smart rotations (best case scenario is: you don’t loose the point you’re leaving or keep it neutral and get a cap/decap elsewhere). This happens a lot in the current meta, when bunkers just keep bashing on bunkers, expecting sth to die magically.

- Winning 1v1’s: This is extremely important in the current meta: If you know what you can engage and what MU’s you can win in a decently short amount of time, you are a huge asset to a team.

- Mechanical skill: focusing, dodging, keeping CD’s in mind, positioning, rezzing, interrupting – all the stuff that makes a player good in 1v1’s and teamfights. There is a huge discrepancy with players here that simply don’t know what to look out for and/or what to do exactly in teamfights or 1v1’s.

If you sincerely think there is no way that in the current, absolutely broken MMR system, 1 or more players can set themselves apart from other players in a team and simply do more for the win than others, then sth. is wrong with you…. inside your brain….

Galandil.9641:

This part:

PowerBottom.5796:

It was a huge grind though

clashes with this:

cuz even though I mostly stay above 80% wins

I wonder what you consider “a grind”: 100 games? 200? Do you really have an 80%+ w/l ratio?

If you’ve read my post correctly, it said that I stay mostly above 80%, but sometimes I have loss-streaks (where I loose like 5+ in a row). Overall I’d say I’m somewhere along the lines of 65% wins. This happened mostly during the morning, where I noticed I’m getting lots of weird teams. I’m not gonna say all the losses where my teammates fault, but some of them were just utterly useless.

Also, because it’s possible to loose more pips than you gain and because at least before ruby, the order of your wins is really important, you can easily have a rather high win-ratio and just be unlucky.

“A grind” also didn’t only comment on the number of games, but how I felt playing: It wasn’t fun at all and I just wanted to get diamond.

I’ve gotten into diamond today with ~99% solo-Q, no MMR-tanking and everything above board with a D/D-tempest build. The few games I didn’t solo-Q, I queued with ppl of equal skill, MMR and Division.

It was a huge grind though, cuz even though I mostly stay above 80% wins, there are sometimes really weird time-windows where I get bad teams and subsequently maybe start playing worse myself and get into loosing-streaks.

It probably took me as much time to get into ruby as to get from ruby to diamond and I was close to deinstalling the game several times. :P

nicely done, but you forget that DPS got way higher as well.

because it doesn’t.

Opc.4718:

There are serious balance issues that need to be addressed with stronghold before it becomes anywhere close to competitive. Right now a lot of 5 man people queue stronghold exclusively and do the 5-man lord bum rush strat, killing the treb fast and relying on healers to keep bombers at full health and bursting down the lord in a couple seconds. Unless you have a team with you that can counter comp that strategy, the game is over in less than 3 minutes. Yes the strategy falls apart miserably if you manage to stave off the initial rush, but it’s completely dependent on the builds you have on your team.

The mode is EXTREMELY solo-q unfriendly especially with the frequency with which you get matched against premades due to the low number of players.

That strategy is dumb and bad, only relying on players not defending and running bad comps. Yes, it’s hard if you are solo-Q’ing and ppl don’t listen to anything wrote in chat, but it’s really not a strong strategy. I think the way strondhold works now, doesn’t favour offense anymore at all; defending has more than enough advantages to make it wortwhile:

- Faster reinforcement
- Enemies drop supply on kill
- Hiding behind gates when low and dealing DMG through them is very strong
- NPC’s are decent
- Doorbreakers ball up so heavily, you can easily kill them with a smart comp and the enemy won’t ever have enough healing
- You have a treb which can be useful
- More players don’t add a faster push necessarily, since progress through the gates is tied to the doorbreakers and not the players themselves.

So, you’re saying that with all those advantages you can’t fight a full-on attack? hell no, it’s just because ppl don’t defend in this mode: they try and go atk and run supply when ppl are bumrushing their base, thats just bad play and has nothing to do with balance.

I begin to actually like Stronghold, because many balance-issues that exist in conquest, aren’t as huge in stronghold. For example diamond skin and resistance-uptimes completely negating certain builds aren’t as huge, cuz you can still kil NPC’s, run supply etc.

The bad thing about stronghold are the much longer q-times, that somehow even are longer when you tick both options, instead of just conquest…. -.-°

of course they should, this is a no-brainer….

I’m having similar problems in ruby… have like 5 wins left for diamond and most of the times, I stay above 80% wins, but by whatever reason, I sometimes have those horrible loss-streaks that set me back like 5-10 pips in one bad day.

Often it’s just a combination of bad luck, a bad matchmaking system and getting really annoyed and angry which causes bad play, even if I myself often don’t really notice it (or don’t want to notice it, cuz you know, blaming others is easier).

It’s just really sad to see ppl with lower MMR or that somehow abuse the system, getting into ruby and even diamond much easier and it really is enfuriating sometimes.

Was actually close to deinstalling the game out of rage after one of those loosing streaks. -.-°

it’s just a fact that certain classes or builds don’t work in the current meta and if I see a Necro, Thief or War on my team and the other team runs meta, I already say goodbye to a pip in my mind.

Yes, it’s not ideal that not everyone can run their favourite class, but srsly: It’s ranked and ppl should be able to play at least 2 different builds or maybe just learn a build that works in the current meta. It’s IMHO selfish to just insist on playing a certain build just because you like it or you think it works.

StickerHappy.8052:

Malchior.5732:

PowerBottom.5796:

No Diamond Skin – No Ele in competetive play……

Then fix Ele

Then fix condition spam?

yepp, condition-spam on certain classes is just way too strong, especially on condi-rev and necro. I’d have no Problem with a change of diamond-skin, but seriously: If I can’t survive against conditions even with 4shouts +invigorating torrents + cleansing water + mass amount of other auras + soldier runes, then sth. is wrong with condition-spam on certain classes.

Also, teams can actually really punish an ele for not going stone heart by simply adding some decent spiked physical dmg to totally wreck the ele.

ReaperJr.5967:

Most of the time, we only have swirling winds for aoe reflect. The magnetic aura from earth 4 is technically speaking not considered an ‘actual’ aura and hence cant be shared. No one runs aftershock because we need eye of the storm for stunbreaks.

We might contribute to pushing DH out of the meta but tbh it’s the whole meta countering it. DH just cannot sustain itself well enough in team fights to contribute more than other classes. It’s mostly a low to mid tier pub stomp class.

Actually, D/D Ele does way better against DH than D/F…. I used to go D/F when the opponent had DH’s, but D/F is just so bad. No self-sustain and all the reflects and stuff are more or less useless if the opponent isn’t mentally challenged. Yes, you can get a quicker kill against a DH with a nice reflect, but you would’ve won anyways 5 seconds later. :P

But that’s 1v1’s – DH is not a 1v1 build, so I think tempests really are the least of problems for DH in the current metagame.

well, was fe pips from diamond, then like 10 times in a team with the worst players ever…. multiple necros, thiefs, even a friggin’ warrior…. I win all 1v1’s, get decaps when ppl just bashing onto each other and nothing ever dying….. still.

I go down from 80% wins to barely 50% in the mornings, just cuz I get paired up with horrible players…. :P

I can’t play with those players…..

apharma.3741:

ReaperJr.5967:

Hallelujah. Wonder which bunker the meta will shift to now.

Druid and bunker ele calling it now. Absolutely no reason for anyone to die if those two are on a node. Throw in a second bunker ele if you aren’t bored enough.

druid isn’t a bunker, it’s a 1v1-build…. -..-°

Ele can go from unkillable (if you are dumb and bash on him with condis and no physical dmg) to getting downed within seconds.

Mesmer is still viable.

End of discussion.

venusiano.8246:

AFAIK the system for soloQ is simple: if you are a good player, you are punished with bad team mates hand harder opponents. If you are a bad player, you are rewared with good team mates and easier opponents. Can it be more unfair?

Jepp, that’s why so many extremely bad players can climb up easily in ranks…. And I mean really really bad.

I had to explain to a few players very carefully that it’s not productive if they bash onto 1-2 bunkers when they are themselves bunkers and that 1 bunker can easily leave the point. No focus DMG, horrible builds that are basically useless etc. And they are in ruby…

Aomine.5012:

SteepledHat.1345:

Aomine.5012:

Condition Mallyx is nerfed too yknow.

It was petted roughly. See mesmer for examples on how to nerf.

Mesmer’s nerf is not even remotely comparablable.

Durability rune nerf and 5 ICD of resistance makes the resistance up-time of Mallyx only around 50% or less, while Revenant still has no method of clearing conditions with Mallyx.

Way to kill the build without fixing the spec itself first.

If they want to gut Mallyx, they should at least make heal skills CONVERT some conditions, and make Elite Stance transfer conditions periodically.

durability rune wasn’t a nerf, but a bug-fix and no player in the history of ever will even notice the difference….

Also, the mallyx nerf was pretty huge if you play decently well, since the mallyx doesn’t just counter signet-necro in EZ-mode. Yes, Necro will have to play very good, but I think the MU is now doable. 5 seconds is a long time when you have tons of condis on you and will likely force the rev into defensive skills like pain absorption.

Nova Stiker.8396:

I cannot play in the evening anymore, because my MMR is screwing me over I am getting nothing but full premades.

THIS IS NOT OKAY ARENANET

I’m having more problems in the mornings, where the players are so extremely bad, my head hurts from facepalming so hard.

so? there are plenty of very strong alternatives…. Mesmer will just be a little less bunkery, but likely more utility or dmg.

Tempest didn’t, it had it’s part, but it’s mostly due to bunker-mesmer, scrapper and condi-rev:

- both bunker-mes and rev have tons of stability; negates some of the best effects of DH
-bunker-mes, scrapper and rev have a lot of evades/blocks etc, some even handily triggering the Traps while they don’t do anything to them.
- both bunker-mes and rev have teleports, which negates many effects of the DH as well.
- DH relies on blocks to a certain extent to survive, some of them, like aegis and focus, are designed to counter few, but strong attacks, like thief: well, that doesn’t bother rev as the main dmg-dealer one bit.
- DH likes to stand somewhere safe and spam with his bow during teamfights: Rev is simply gonna jump on you.
- DH is unfavoured in 1v1’s against all the meta classes.
- tempest and scrapper have easy access to strong anti-projectile skills.
- Also, DH is kind of a “wombo-combo”, quickly downing stuff in teamfights to win it: But with all the above mentioned blocks/evades/reflects, it’s much harder. Then add to that the huge rezzing-potential of rev+mesmer and DH just runs out of steam too quickly.

bunker mesmer is still perfectly viable…. -.-°

No Diamond Skin – No Ele in competetive play……

WeedyZeGreedy.8635:

As a person reading patch notes i recently noticed a lot of effort put into reducing visual noise which i think was needed even though it reduced the "coolness " of some abilities a bit.
Your next step though is to implement floating pvp rank symbols next to every player in the game!?
Teq is now a floating sea of colored squares! Besides i don’t care about pvp rank outside of pvp so do you really care more for pvp showoff value over being able to navigate a boss fight properly? This is the worst visual noise so far. Pvp rank belongs in pvp, nowhere else. Remove it from all PvE

Visual noise reduction is mainly for spectating with a nice bonus of reducing high FPS.

The ranks are only visible outside the PvP-match, so I don’t see a contradiction there.

I see tons of problems with the current meta in ways that certain balance-attempts could just make things much worse:

1) A lot of builds are extremely strong, ridiculously strong even, like Reaper and DH, but it just happens that the metabuilds counter them very well. They nerfed resistance on Rev (a good nerf, not too much, not too little), imagine the nerf being a bit bigger and ANet giving in to the forums to nerf diamond skin: booom, 2 condition-reapers per team!

2) Maybe they also nerf the tons of blur/block/evades and stability on mesmer and rev. Boooom: 2 DH-Trappers per team.

The whole reason why most builds work is hinged upon 1 trait that can be looked at as very OP that counters sth. else that would otherwise be very OP.

I have to say though, that the few balance changes that are planned for today are IMHO pretty good: severe enough to make teams have a bit more choices in what to play, but not severe enough to totally shift the meta on it’s head just so the new imba-fotm’s rule for the next 2 months.

gavyne.6847:

Necros don’t counter bunker mesmers, they need to reduce the amount of blur/evades, and prevent caps when certain skills are used as sunfish noted above. Blocks have counter plays, so blocks aren’t an issue, Anet is nerfing the wrong thing tomorrow.

It’s not a hardcounter, since most bunkers are designed not to have hard counters, but it’s probably one of the better ones:

- Bunker-Mesmers aren’t too great against conditions, that’s why many now use temporal enchanter+ null field. -> Necro has tons of condis.
- Bunker-Mesmers heavily rely on boons -> Necro has strong boonstrip.
- Mesmers are susceptible to AoE (Illusions, ppl need to stand in the wells/ null field/ Staff 5: Necro has some of the best AoE in the game, or reaper that is.
- Necro’s are also much better against slow, sustained dmg and not too great against tons of burst and high-dps comps; fits the meta perfectly!
- Mesmer has the shield-block: Necro has tons of unblockable stuff.

The biggest problem with Necros was, that they get countered so incredibly hard by tempest and condi-rev.

Another problem was, that condi-rev kinda did many of the things the necro did, just better: condition-spam, boonstrip, strong against conditions itself etc. -> with a small nerf to rev, ppl might actually have to make a conscious decision if they wanna use necro or rev! ^^’

less resistance on rev → more necros → more boonstrip → less effective bunker mesmer….

That’s the best case scenario at least.

Starfall.6425:

PowerBottom.5796:

double viper rev? they don’t even scratch tempest+chrono….

Yeah have my doubts too, but I’m not good informed with ele.. so I could easily be wrong too.

But because everyone else seems to be on the same page, we could go to point 2):

How best to dismantle Chrono + Tempest with double Rev or any other composition?

If you try and fight 2 bunkers/support with 2 dps, you’re gonna loose. I think it’s even very risky with 1 dps and 1 bunker – they’ll most likely outsustain you. It’s possible with 1 dps and 1 bunker against chrono and staff-tempest probably, but as soon as one of the bunkers packs a bit more DPS, like druid or D/D-Ele (yepp, I think D/D is amazing for smaller skirmishes in the current meta), it’s gonna be pretty rough.

Now with 2 bunkers/supports, it’s pretty much a war of attrition and it’s all about efficiency to wear them down: Minimize their DMG and heal, by for example interrupting air-overload, water overload etc. dodging gravity wells, force the ele or mesmer to use their AoE heals on 1 target only instead of 2 (by focusing 1 or drawing them apart). Using your high-dmg/CC skills in vulnerable windows (like when the ele doesn’t have teleport and the mesmer doesn’t have the blur-well/distortion.
Also, try to avoid as much AoE as possible with good positioning; you need only 1 player on point!

The other side is maximizing your damage and heals: use overloads well so they don’t get interrupted (easiest example, don’t start air/fire overload when the other ele has schocking aura), hit as much as possible with AoE and get the most out of alacrity (hop in the well when it ends to get the alacrity if it’s possible without taking tons of DMG).

It’s a really really complicated MU, just as many 2v2’s are in the current meta; I quite like that actually. But it takes tons of practice.

double viper rev? they don’t even scratch tempest+chrono….

It’s not much, but they covered some big issues. Step in the right direction and at least they did a little sth. before the end of january.

actually very well thought out changes IMHO. Sure, it’s not much, but I like it. Thanks for listenting to the community to make changes mid-season, even though you didn’t plan to.

I don’t think this is a problem of the balance team, it’s probably upper management that isn’t allocating enough ressources to the PvP balance-team and doesn’t think more frequent changes are necessary.

It’s like blaming the overworked burger-flipper in Maccy Dizzle that gets paid minimum wage and works with bad ingredients and you are mad when your burger isn’t up to gordon ramsey’s standards. :P

Starfall.6425:

Evan Lesh.3295:

This will be changed for an upcoming update so that disconnecting will not cause a desertion for party members if they win. The player who abandoned the match will still get a desertion.

If I read OP right his friend DC’d, but was present at the end of the game, meaning he didn’t desert but was away longer then the “save period” for DC’s. How is that still a desertion or “abandoning the match” when he came back?

lost a pip because of that as well today….. my internet crashed and i reconnected back into the game as soon as I could, but still the -1 pip and 10mins deserter…. I mean: I’m cool with being harsh to leavers and if you are very unlucky and your internet crashes for the whole game, thats a fair price to pay for less leavers, but if you are able to connect back to the match, that’s IMHO not abandoning a match.

Maybe theres some middle-ground there, but at least for the teammates, it’s a no-brainer to not make them loose pips.

Killface.1896:

DH is broken for 70% of the players,top players have no problem with it as they are running the counter build and are better at dodging

well, that’s no reason to nerf it; you can’t nerf stuff based on how bad to mediocre players feel about it, this would absolutely ruin the whole game. Bad players don’t think about counters, don’t work on their MU’s, don’t rotate properly etc. – they just whine when they loose against sth. that’s why they are bad. Or they simply don’t play enough to do these things.

Morwath.9817:

…because of exploiters playing in it.

Edit: Removed “NA” from title, both EU & NA deserve same threatment, even if one has less exploiters… it sill has exploiters.

So you’re saying EU has less exploiters?…. I really don’t think so….

Rozbuska.5263:

Imo dodging traps isnt that hard. Main problem for me is that bugged LB5 where you didnt see it most of the time and running into it over and over because of that

stand still after elite trap for a few seconds (or use teleports/stability) – here, your huge problem has been solved…. -.-°

DH is bad in the current meta….. this problem doesn’t exist outside of emerald/sapphire… -.-°

Problem with DH is, that it’s a strong build, BUT at the top-level, where everyone plays meta (bunker-mesmer, bunker-tempest, marauder-engi and condi rev) he gets absolutely hard-countered by almost all of them.

So what’s gonna happen? they will nerf those builds most likely and then, DH is suddenly the most OP build again. :P

But in the current Meta, no1 needs to complain abaout DH’s; they are absolute bottom-tier and basically useless if ppl play the meta-comps.

hotfix: If you Q as 4+ players in a team, the lowest MMR player doesn’t count towards overall MMR….

okay, that’s actually beyond stupid…. why would you loose pips if you won a game with less players?

Crinn.7864:

PowerBottom.5796:

swtor had some preeeeetty big problems as well though…. I remember playing PvP on an underpopulated server without cross-server pvp and the dark side heavily dominating the population: since not all modes are light vs dark only, the dark side was able to PvP and farm gear while the light side couldn’t even muster up one team outside of the prime-pvp times. :P

And server-transfers weren’t even possible!

It was a disgrace how long it took for Bioware to fix this issue with server-transfers, i literally wasn’t able to play the game because no Q’s popped for months until sth. was done.

To be fair most of those issues where because bioware had zero experience with managing server populations since bioware had never done a mmo before. They cleared a lot of it up by 2.0, and imho 2.10 swtor PvP was the best PvP I’ve ever done. Sadly 3.0 happened and the game went downhill from there.

That said I do wish Anet would take a look at things like Huttball and the resolve system.
Huttball is like a esport waiting to happen, since it has good depth of play, but is also extremely easy for a spectator to follow. (it’s like American football, except you kill the quarterback instead of tackling him)
The resolve system was nice because it provided interesting tactical decisions both on the part of the aggressor and the target, but unlike the stability system it discourages spamming CC constantly.

True, Huttball is one of the greatest PvP modes I’ve ever played; only to be topped by GvG from GW1. ^^’

yeah, why not create a blue shell that randomly spawns and fly’s to the winning teams players and instakills them…. -.-°

just a very very bad idea.

Easiest way is to split solo- and team-Q.

plz don’t play ranked if you’re not playing meta…. yes, it has come to this….. #buildshaming

swtor had some preeeeetty big problems as well though…. I remember playing PvP on an underpopulated server without cross-server pvp and the dark side heavily dominating the population: since not all modes are light vs dark only, the dark side was able to PvP and farm gear while the light side couldn’t even muster up one team outside of the prime-pvp times. :P

And server-transfers weren’t even possible!

It was a disgrace how long it took for Bioware to fix this issue with server-transfers, i literally wasn’t able to play the game because no Q’s popped for months until sth. was done.

Best way to address this problem is that if there is a group of 4 or more, the lowest MMR player of the group doesn’t count towards the overall MMR.

There’s even another Problem other than Pro-teams taking a low-MMR noob to tank their MMR and it is that they take a very strong player that just hasn’t massed tons of games yet. Just saw a team with an ESL-caliber player that was like emerald in a team of ruby-diamond totally trashing on a stream, against a team of ruby players that solo-q’d.

sephiroth.4217:

I play bunker builds because of DH… I’d rather not but Traps and Bunkers are the future of PvP.

You can easily play rev and destroy DH’s if you don’t wanna play bunker. Both zerker and viper rev destroy DH’s.

on the higher levels, DH’s aren’t even played anymore, for very good reasons…. they get hardcountered by all the top-builds…

Supreme.3164:

Lol diamond skin really went under the skin of necros so here my suggestions :

1) = Granting stab to yourself also grant 4s resistance 15s CD

2)= Condition damage reduced by 33%, condition duration reduced by 20% ( no CD, no HP reqs)

3)= send 60% of condition damage back to the source while ele is attuned to earth

These would make ele more resilient to condis while not making him unkillable and..you’d still require actually brain to win, “spamm and forget” is not a valid tactic

1) Plz not more resistance…..

2) just another dumb non-skill trait

3) interesting, but wouldn’t work, since ele doesn’t need more DMG (otherwise, ppl would maybe choose some offensive runes, but everyone plays full defensive.) So it would likely just be a 1v1 trait and revert Ele back to a very niche 1v1-roamer.

→ why not make a version that tied to attunements: every attunement grants immunity to a certain type of conditions. Damaging and impairing conditions should be spread out, so we don’t just have 1 attunement where all the dmg is negated. This would both reward skill of the ele and the opposing player.

KrewGorilla.6491:

With the amount of dps from all the classes it isn’t easy to keep ur health above 90% outside of 1v1’s so don’t know why ur saying it’s a stupid trait that takes skill away from the match ups. If it were to get the ele down to 75% then yes it would be dumb but 2k health is very reasonable. “Condi” rev can still beat ele. And that’s a condi build. Mesmer can stack condis. If u run vipers with dagger warhorn on necro u could break diamond skin. U can even take lich just to break diamond skin. So the argument that it takes away skill is terrible. I play both necro and tempest. And trying to keep my health at 90 while 2v1 or 3v1 or anything more than just a 1v1 against condi necro still takes “skill.” I play both and while I’m not the best I know both classes and can say that it not overpowered or unreasonable. But probly still going to get complaints altho I believe this post really is a l2p issue and really doesn’t need to be changed.

I thought so as well (diamond skin not being that good in teamfights), but in the current meta, it is actually way easier than you think and even if you drop beyond 90% and have to disengage, you would’ve probably been killed 10 times already without diamond skin. There are tons of condi-revs, bunker-mesmers, scrappers and eles: If you know how to kite and position yourself, you really take almost no DMG even in bigger teamfights,

Also, what is the alternative of Diamond Skin? Stoneheart! But guess what, Stoneheart isn’t even that great in the current meta: There aren’t as many physical DPS-spikes anymore, almost no thiefs, shatter-mesmers, zerker-herald, warriors etc.

Yes, dmg can and will still be focused somethimes, but then you mostly have the above mentioned classes: condi-rev and mesmer both use very little ferocity and/or precision, even classes with cele-amu (tempest and maybe some bunker-mesmers and scrappers) don’t do as much critical dmg as the big spiked DMG from the previous meta: You’ll simply avoid way less dmg than before if you go stoneheart.

it is an absolutely stupid trait, yes, but unfortunately, if diamond skin wouldn’t exist, Ele probably wouldn’t even be played in this meta: Ele would simply loose horribly against necro’s and condi-rev’s.

But Diamond Skin really should be changed into sth. that rewards good play by both the ele and the opponent, so skill would decide those MU and not what build you run.

lost 2 pips today playing against a team that was just clearly better and had some duoQ’s against full solo-Q…. This is just frustrating…. -.-°

Browrain.7346:

We get it. Bunk mes is boring to fight against. We’re all in agreement there.

It’s neither boring to play with, nor against. It’s difficult, it can be annoying, but it sure isn’t boring. Bunker mes can even be killed in 1v1’s by many builds. How is it more boring than 2 druids or tempest fighting each other where no1 will ever go down, even if one player just plays horrible.

Bunker Mesmer might be the coolest and most interesting bunker we’ve ever had in the game. It needs some slight nerfs, sure, but in it’s core it IMHO just works really well.