Guild Wars 2

Blood/Air Blood/Leeching Leeching/Hydro are all good combos

Allison The Strange.4519:

Not to be disrespectful or anything but this isn’t exactly ground breaking… Minus the mix/matched stat sets I’ve been running the exact same setup in pvp except I use SotW for the stability and damage spike and sometimes take staff over sword/x, depends on if I need the mobility and projectile blocking or not

But overall its a great build, I enjoy it greatly in pvp… You just gotta time that enlargement trait properly or it will kick your out of CA and completely empty it like it did in the video at 2:03…

With that said your a really good ranger, hope I don’t run into you lol

Also saw in the description about the tiger or bristleback… In pvp I always go BB cause tiger dies so easy… in constant 1v1 or 1v2 tiger may fair better and provides more consistent damage via lower cooldown non reflectable F2’s that also plays to your traits.

No idea what division you’re in, but I have NEVER seen any kind of variation of this build in PvP.

Furajir.3815:

Pvt Frosty.6973:

Managed to finish off 2 more videos

Let me know what you think!

Build for the videos?

I was switching around alot, and in the process of moving from one build to another.

First build

Second Build

Thanks, means alot. A surprising amount of time goes into editing even the simplest things so any comment on production quality is appreciated ^^

Hey guys,

it’s me with another video!

I know the season is over and all that, but I wanted to finish this up ^^

I didn’t have much time during the season unfortunately, as we were busy organizing a new challenger PvP-Team (sad to see that we may be a bit too late. Will have to just wait and see in the upcoming weeks.) and on top of that, playing ranked queue was more to the point of farming Pips and/or Challenger Points than to actually get competitive matches.

At the start of the season, I was a little doubtful whether it the updated matchmaking algorithm will lead to any close matches at all. And unfortunately it turned out as I had hoped it would not. There were a few close and competitive games towards the end of the season, but the majority was not fun nor competitive at all. Unfortunately

Either way, I hope you enjoy the vid. I felt like those clips were pretty representative of my overall experience in Ruby and Diamond earlier on in the season!

Frosty

Videos:

New!
25.. April 2016 Legend Queues – Ruby and Diamond
New!

Old:
20. March 2016 Legend Queues – Sapphire
19. March 2016 Legend Queues – Emerald
26. February 2016 Legend Queues – Starting out in Amber
21. November 2015: Druid PvP – SoloQ, the Bristleback and me!
04. October 2015: PvP Ep. 3 – BETA Druid Duels!
02 August 2015: PvP Ep 3: Highlight Reel

Managed to finish off 2 more videos

Let me know what you think!

Hey Aro,

my team is currently looking for a mesmer to join our team.

We can set up a trial today if you like

I’ll whisper you in game

Frosty

Aaaand still looking

Still looking

Hey guys,

we are currently looking for a competent mesmer to join our team. We’re going to be playing the next pro-league qualifiers, so you should be experienced, already play at a high level and be mature enough to play on a competitive team (no whining, handle criticism, be willing to work on yourself).

If you’re interested and want to join,

whisper Pvt Frosty.6973 and we’ll get you on ts to sort out a trial

Cheers, Frosty

I know quite a few of them represent other guilds. Also, I don’t know what you play but especially when you 5 man queue, you most often meet other 5 man queues, that could be why you never see them?

As to when FFF play, I don’t know, I think they haven’t played in a few days. We haven’t met them yet anyhow, but we just about met every other team in the top 10 several times (last I checked my team was third).

Sardath.8524:

Pakkazull.6894:

They also need to implement division drops, and arguably remove the pip safeguards in the lower tiers (unless they only want ruby, diamond and legend to be competitive).

This would be fair, but a lot of players will rage at this. There are low skilled/casual players who need a sense of progression and some average players who deserve a form of progression. After all, you have to cater to all the playerbase. I think it’s ok letting them have 3 divisions, and the higher skilled players the other 3.

Actually the system is quite fine the way it is right now. A player wanting to get the legendary backpack will need to get to ruby in all four seasons, thats why the safeguards are all there up until ruby. Once ruby, the safeguards drop drastically (yea personally I think it would be cool if diamond-legendary safeguards were removed but you cannot have everything).

I think that is what anet intended though, legendary prestige to be the real “competition” for the true PvP players. And it could be, takes about 2-3 weeks to reach legendary, which maybe is a bit much? will have to see by the end of the season how people felt.

Yea one reason is most likely going to be decay, another reason however is the type of games you played and the type of games.

These points you get on the guild leaderboard are how league-points should have been distributed for individuals and they also offer insight into how mmr gain and loss actually works, especially to those people that complain that their loss streak will ruin their mmr.

While your team most likely was affected by decay (a positive w/l will always result in you being higher than where you started, just by how much is the question). The team above you has lost 24 games and only won a very few, but most likely they were lost against opponents of much higher mmr ratings (especially at the start of the season) and as such, they barely lost points for their losses

Similarly, with about 18 wins and 9 losses my team managed to get higher than another team that had 30 wins and 6 losses (both teams being active), most likely because that other team played together in lower divisions, against lower mmr-opponents, while by the time we started playing, one of our players was diamond and we were getting opponents with higher mmr.

jessiestiles.9437:

Not at the start of the season when he was having difficulty. It was much more like this season. At about week 3 everyone turned to using celestial bunker builds.

IIRC he was complaining after week 3

Before week 3 was another issue that had nothing to do with carrying, so if he complained before that it would have been related to the fact that he and the other pros played together from amber all the way to legendary, because of the matchmaking

silentnight warrior.2714:

Let me see if i get this right….

Last season, when matchmaking would try to put teams equaly skilled against each other Helseth could not carry.

This season, when matchmaking put goods against bads, Helseth with his high MMR, so he is placed in the good team, he can carry against bads….

Seems legit…

Not quite, though there may be some truth to what you’re saying.

Last season carrying was hard because of the meta and how it played. It was extremely “noob-friendly” (slow paced, low overall damage etc.)

Carrying this season is easier, because mistakes are more fatal which you can capitalise on.

Also, I do not think Helseths statement is based on the initial games you play, more on the games from the recent days (where he would be playing with but also against really good players)

Aereniel.7356:

As for the complaint regarding season one, the gist of the criticism is that season one was not a ladder in any sense of the word. There was no skill progression and tiers did not represent player skill in any way. You played with and against your own rating in every bracket, and climbing was simply a matter of spamming games. We had legends with 1200 MMR and legends with 3000 MMR. Season one was just a PvP reward track, nothing more. Season two features only marginal improvement, by the way, but that’s a topic for another thread.

More importantly, the meta during season 1 was a tank meta, which is the reason behind his complaint. Killing tanks takes ages, snowballing your team was much harder to do back then than it is in the current meta

Just going to echo eurantien here. It’s a purely brilliant carrying tool for soloQ.

For more coordinated games though, it’s alot more difficult to pull off.
I’ve had scrims where S&R really wasn’t worth taking and I’d wished I brought a different utility, but I’ve also been able to fully turn the momentum of a game with it. So I would argue it is worth taking, just for that potential alone.

Beliyal.7085:

Laserbolt.6731:

I think ANet has the right idea in moving people up and out of division faster; they just urgently need a way to identify decent players caught with an artificially low MMR and up their MMR as well and move them further up the divisions as well.

It might help to match low MMR teams against low MMR teams. This doesn’t affect high MMR teams or how fast they will leave the division. By matching low vs low, you’ll eventually get to see which players had low MMR artificially, and which didn’t. Those who are actually decent players will prevail against someone of their own skill and they will move on. It’s been ten days of Season 2 and we still get absolute slaughters as “matches,” despite people saying things will smooth out. When?

The issue with these slaughters (500-100 matches) is that they are exceptionally common in Season 2 and they are the reason so many people had their MMR drop drastically. I mean, it happened sometimes before as well, but the rate at which it happens in this Season is staggering.

This is what happened last season though. People with low mmr played people with low mmr and high mmr people played high mmr people. and the truly good people would be in legendary along with the not so good people.

You are right though. Slaughters should not happen, that should be the goal of the system. Get someone to the position in the league they belong so they can play matches with equally skilled players. This system actually does it better than last seasons. There are just alot of players that will be disappointed because they won’t get as high as they did last season and because this system actually has a highly unbalanced system for the first 2 weeks. They did already admit to this and are looking into it for season 3. (personally I think they should introduce an idea of placement matches, during those you are matched with people of your own mmr range (15/10 games?). after that, you get put into either amber or emerald and from that point onwards its anyone of your division in your team and in the opponents

Watch videos, streams etc. One of the best tips I can give is play the class you want to play in pve, level it a bit, get a feel for the abilities. Helped me when I first stated the game!

bumping _

Hey guys,

we are a newly formed team looking to get into the competitive scene and we’re currently looking for a competent necro to join our roster.

We are looking for 2-3 practice days a week, though we will figure out a practice schedule once we fill the last slot

You should be experienced in your class and in PvP itself, be interested to play competitively and be mature enough to handle and give criticism.

Anyway, if you think you are the player we are looking for or you want to know more hit me up at Frosty the Chosen (or Pvt Frosty.6973) and we’ll put you on trial!

Frosty

Hey man,

we’re currently looking for a necro for our PvP team If you’re interested, we could trial you later today ?

I’ll contact you later today when I get home from work

Check out our post on the Reddit Forum

Hey guys!

I’ve been enjoying this season quite alot more than the last one I must say, though I haven’t had the time to play quite as much as I’d liked, it’s still been a blast!

I’ve had this Idea of capturing my queue experiences in the different divisions and once matches get more interesting I plan on focusing at one or two games at a time, analysing them, pointing out tactics and mechanics as well as mistakes and good plays from me and everyone involved.

I would see it as a way for myself to improve my gameplay, but ideally also to help the newer members of our community or to spark some discussion

The first division was rather short-lived unfortunately, so I didn’t capture all that much footage. Hopefully the next divisions will offer better material

Let me know if this would be something you’d be interested in!

Frosty

Legend Queues – Starting out in Amber

Hey guys! New video is up! Let me know what you think!

Anything you’d want to see done differently/better?

Thanks!

Frosty

Wilting strike still does not trigger off of Smokescale and Tiger F2’s

Are you german by any chance?

yea hit me up with an invite!

Yo I think you were in 2 of my games yesterday? You were on the other team and it was 2 back to back pretty close matches? What’s your char name?

I will, when its ready to be released

No API, I collected it

I actually have the data (to some extent) collected, really busy with rl right now, but will look to publish it ASAP (still need to deal with outliers etc)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Pyriall.1683:

It’s another terrible attempt at updating skills. There wasn’t anything wrong with the skill as it was previously. This version is over the top.

Well, except the monstrous cooldown.

Transfusion has been doing something similar since June, even affecting more allies on a shorter cooldown, but nobody complains about that.

Thats because of the “pet ressing”. The necro transfusion trait is awesome, but still takes at least twice as long to res its target which gives alot more time for opponents to react.

Quick Heads up, I wrote a super long reply, but gw2.com kittened up and told me “something went wrong” so I lost it all. This is more of a summary.

Well, looks like you’re on EU, which would be important to mention.

Other than that, how do you think you did in that game? What did you do well, where could you have done better?

Theres always 3 aspects to consider (not in order of importance): the build you are playing (and whether it fulfills the requirements of the role you intend to take in your team), your in-game decision-making and your mechanical skills.

Your build

I cannot really comment, you definitely get plus points for working out your own variation of a build, that synergizes well within itself. Though I have a few personal issues, like I would be pretty uncomfortable with only 1 stunbreak on a 30s cooldown and only 1/4 uptime of stability. So I would prefer at least one of the following changes, if not both:
slickshoes over bulwark and perfectly weighted over adaptive armor, and I would then probably switch to paladins amulet to retain the bruiser-ish playstyle. Then again, it might work without so I’d be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt to see if it keeps up with the requirements for the role you intend to take, which I cannot really seem to make out anyway because of the following second point.

Your in-game decision making

Right at the start you go far, arrive late, and proceed to die pretty quickly 1v2 on the node. This was, in my eyes a pretty You won’t decap the point 1v2 ever, so you should instead have either, retreated and taken the fight mid, or, which I would have done, kite the 1v2 around the point to keep them busy as long as possible. For this you need to know all the unlikely jump spots (mine is especially good for this since you have range and both of them dont). When you respawn,, your team has 2 points, yet you go far again and stay there for the rest of the game. The only reason this really payed off is because your team won both other node-fights at the time, and the enemy team was pretty bad at properly rotating away. This meta is a lot more snowbally, and extending the fight to 3 nodes when you already have 2, especially on a non-stealth-gyro marauder engi is just asking to get snowballed on. Luckily your team did good, but I would have instead watched the respawn and caught them going mid or close.

Your mechanics

I cannot say too much about your mechanics. Every fight you fought was outnumbered in your favor (safe for the first 1v2, which honestly didnt last very long). There is no show of tactical mechanics, it was more of a dps and cc spamfest attributable to the fact you were outnumbering which does not really tell me about your mechanical ability. What I can say, is you never dodged the glint elite, which would be pretty crucial to watch out for since you only have 1 stunbreak and little access to stability.

So overall, difficult to tell, the match was not hard for you, your team did most of the work for you. That happens to everyone, but its a difficult game to judge ability from, because it was not a game in which your ability was really tested. Further to note is that your opponents also arent very good, especially the warrior. The only name I recognize is Goku, who is an okay-ish pvp-player.

Anyways, I could go into way more depth, but I need to study. If you have any other footage, where you actually “carried” your team by good mechanical plays or good in-game decisionmaking, I’d be very happy to take a look and alter some of the conclusions I arrived at.

I guess if you or anyone disagree with what I said, be sure to point it out, I’m not perfect either

Also, obviously, with the patch theres like 90% thief/ necro/ druid players out there. so not wonder they get stacked still ^^

Thats especially the case for thief players, i see them everywhere, its like they’ve all come out of hibernation, sniffing the sweet spring air and wondering,

NA only? Wheres the love for EU here:(

Hey guys,
I figured with the season ending I would love to know how everyone else did this season, what they did to get there, et cetera.
Now I know this season was not perfect, and many legitimately felt like they got screwed over. However, this is intended just to offer some non-biased statistics on Season 1 of the leagues.
I would love if everyone took a few minutes to answer the questions:D that would be awesome!
Link to Questionnaire: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1NUHShmYr2dQrnWhztBEk1xmuiJHB3nBP0Y0rtU0C_wU/viewform?usp=send_form
Once enough data is collected, I’ll try release some infographics!
Anyways, cheers!
Frosty P.S. you can edit your answers at a later point in time if you are not currently able to log into GW2

Aphix.9846:

Pvt Frosty.6973:

Aphix.9846:

http://i.imgur.com/yPYancp.jpg

Only solo queued necro, got there a little while ago, this is the screenshot after I got legend

Primordial Legend = Legend x2 (not Legend x1)

P.S. even captured a bit of Ziltoid being Ziltoid in my attachment. Good times

Huh ? Clearly not. Primordial Legend is just division 6.

Far as I understand it requires crossing 6 divisions. Getting to division 6 would only mean crossing 5 since you already started in division 1.

If not, then I wonder how I got it, since I got legend 1 like 3 or so weeks ago but only on legend 2 this weekend

Aphix.9846:

http://i.imgur.com/yPYancp.jpg

Only solo queued necro, got there a little while ago, this is the screenshot after I got legend

Primordial Legend = Legend x2 (not Legend x1)

P.S. even captured a bit of Ziltoid being Ziltoid in my attachment. Good times

Gaile Gray.6029:

A

• Radiant Revival: This trait’s functionality has been altered to provide Infused Light for the revenant, instead of the downed target. This trait now grants the revenant 10% bonus revival speed.

Why not just give Infused Light to the downed AFTER the successful res? I feel that would be much more in line with other rez traits. and still be pretty strong.

Either way, I like the hotfix and I like that not too much was changed. Be interesting to see how this changes other classes viability.

I wish warhorn was truly viable

Already out of ruby. Climbs been fun.

SoloQ and DuoQ winrate way higher than TripleQ-PremadeQs. W2B better Friends xD

Many Builds used, always druid though. Just too good of a traitline.

uh well, I guess kudos to you for being this brave.

I’ll try give you some Feedback. I play Ranger(Druid) too, currently Diamond.

I’ll Focus on your build choice/playstyle.

I can only guess at your build from the footage
– This is my guess: Build here
– I will not discuss your trait choices at length with you in this post.

1. Work on your build. and THINK about the role you want to be playing. It seems you’re looking to Play a power druid who does not contest nodes, but aids fights with high damage pressure (do note: this build is extremely suboptimal, the better your opponents, the worse you will find yourself doing. If you want to know why this is, I will post a Video about it next week.). So why did you take the skills you did? Let’s take a look:
   Survival Skills:
   Good choice for personal survival, Heal/Lightning Reflexes/Entangle are all good
   Glyph of the Tides:
   Why did you choose this? What use is this glyph to you (untraited) in your role? A knockback? To peel? There are far better skills to either cc your enemy or peel them off of you. I would suggest you Switch this to either signet of Stone or Quickening Zephyr.
   Sick Em!:
   Again, may I ask why? Sick em increases your pets dmg and movespeed for a short Duration. It is untraited and you do not Play beastmastery, so why increase damage from pets whose damage is already rather low in the first place? Or did you want it for the reveal? I the current meta, barely anyone uses stealth, and rev/engi are way better at revealing enemies anyway. I suggest swapping this to either signet of Stone or Quickening Zephyr (whichever one you didnt choose above).
   Quickening Zephyr and Signet of Stone
   Now you may ask, why these 2? Because you need a second stunbreak which coincidentally benefits from being a survival skill (traited) and you also need more survivability (signet of Stone)
   Traits
   Personally I would suggest to swap lead the wind for Remorseless. Autoattacking happens rather rarely in PvP, even less so at max range. And because its only a 5 on 5, the piercing has comparably Little Impact.
   I would also swap Natural Stride for Celestial Shadow, which is an insanely strong skill to peel with (removing the need for the knockback from glyph of the tides).
   Weapons
   Get a second weapon. I would recommend staff.
2. Awareness. Knowledge about the mechanics of the other classes (you do not necessarily have to Play other classes, to know what they do). Know who you fight, and know what you can expect from your enemies. That way you know what to dodge or what to look for to interrupt, when an enemy is vulnerable and when you should play defensively. You were lucky that your Team had a pretty good handle on your Opponent.
3. If you are familiar at all with Starcraft (I am not lol), there is a term called APM, Actions per Minute i believe. This applies here too. Ranger and druid are a VERY versatile class. your pets and your celestial avatar were barely used in the Video. LEARN to use them and learn WHEN to use them, they are very strong.
4. Last but not least, but hopefully this comes with experience, know the maps you play on, being quicker on nodes.

That should be enough to think about for now.

I’ve seen some really strong warriors beasting it up as well as thieves absolutely kittening our team/carrying mine. Obviously it sucks that they have a harder time than other classes right now, but such is meta (how long has ranger been super subpar in the pvp meta?)

Honestly, I don’t know, but I feel like with all the frustrated kittenstorming going on I wanted to see if there are others out there who feel similarly?

Yea I agree, some classes need toning down (holy bunker mesmer, accept my prayers), but I still feel the matches I’ve had since the leagues came have been really fun!

Due to the bunkery nature of the current meta, it really puts more pressure on map awareness aswell as coordination with your other teammates.

I’m currently close to ruby, and I’m having some amazingly tactical games. Comebacks, massive throws, clutch lord-kills/-defs, sneaky decaps and focus kills in teamfights.

I dunno, might be the people I play with, might be the bracket I’m in, might just be me loving it for the sake of finally having something to do.

I just wanted to make this voice heard, see if there’s any others out there.

edit: I’ve played as all kinds of parties pretty evenly (solo/duo/3/4/full premade) and honestly, the best games have been solo/duo :/

Euthymias.7984:

That was pretty nice to see it in action like that.
Is your second pet the Electric Wyvern? Ive yet to get it, so I dont know how good it is in PvP compared to Smokescale or a Wolf. The Fire one was a little too slow for my liking, though…

[I also notice that this was before the nerf to Tides, where you could have kept its effect going even after dropping out of CA. Shame that we cant do anything without interrupting it now =/ ]

Hey, thanks!

Yea sometimes I was using the Electric-Wyvern, I really like it thematically (would love the Firewyvern to have that fire-field on demand, similar to the Electric one instead of having to wait like 5 seconds for it to appear).

From an honest point of view though, it is really subpar compared to, say even wolf. 2 of its 4 attacks are really slow and very low impact, probably the worst of any pet. The aoe quadrouple (I think it is) knockback is nice at times, though we cannot control for it, 4 stacks of stability strip on a downed body secures a stomp/res rather often.

The biggest issue though is that the knockup and knockback from the Electric-Wyvern does not work with the trait Ancient Seeds, so cc’d targets dont actually get immobilized.

Anyway, maybe theyll get a little fix, then I’ll be sure to use em ALL the time. ^^

And yea man, I was really bummed out that you cannot leave CA with Tides still active anymore^^ I pretty much use CA mostly for the benefits of going in and out of it now^^

Sol.4310:

I had to LOL, nicely done.

Thanks! Glad you liked it

New Vid is up!

Lemme know what you think

hey man, I’m in a pretty similar boat to you, so if you want, we could just start something new? at this point anythings better than playing solo really ^^

Now that AF generation was changed, could we kindly have that staff 1 change you did reverted to how it used to be?

Hey guys, I’m a long-time PvP-player whos so far played mostly solo at a very high level (or so I’d think :p ).

Anyway, I love to be competitive with anything I do, so I’m looking for a guild or a team of players to join for when leagues hit. (would love to try for some tourneys too if that comes to pass).

Ideally you are:

• good at this game/experienced
• english speaking
• over 18
• mature

Would also not mind starting a team from scrap, so if you are reading this and you are looking too. Would love to aim to practice for a couple hours a few days a week? Would love to do some tryouts.

Frosty (Pvt Frosty.6973)