(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
This would be nice until people exploited it.
“Oh, this team is a premade and will beat us” one person leaves
“okay, safe!”
Is that such a bad thing? People hate getting matched up against premades when they’re solo-queuing as well.
By implementing this change, I think a lot more people will be willing to solo queue which in turn will make it less likely that you get matched up against premades or have a leaver on your team.
What do you guys think about this suggestion?
I know there is some resistance to the idea of punishing leavers, but at least Anet could make it so that the remaining team doesn’t have to suffer for it. The idea is simple, if someone leaves your team BEFORE THE MATCH STARTS, then your rating won’t go down if you lose.
Problem is: If everyone else plays on level of their real rating and they win because 1 player is playing a bit better… then their rating will also go up…
meaning it should not be that uncommon to have players that have a rating higher than their real skill.
Also it could be the other way round.
Well, this problem only occurs if those people consistently get teammates who are underranked (ie play at a higher level).
The bigger problem, as others have pointed out, is that there just doesn’t seem to be enough people playing for the law of numbers to work out.
For those of you who are much more knowledgeable that I am about how ELO works, please tell me if I am right.
Basically, it will always put you on a team that has a 50/50 chance of winning. Your performance is only 20% of the win or loss…80% is based on the performance of the other team members.
The law of averages means that the teams you are assigned to, will always tend to perform at their rating level: and have 50% wins and 50% losses.
So your rating remains the same, and you never rise?
To actually rise fast you would have to suddenly CARRY your team every match and start winning 90% of the time.
I just can’t see that happening.
You don’t need to carry your team to beat 50/50 odds, you just need to play at a level above your current MMR. If we maintain your assumptions that, on average, everyone else plays at the level of their MMR, then your team should consistently win so long as you are playing at a level above your own MMR. Ofc, this is pure theory.
In practice, it seems to me that one person making the right decisions can make a huge difference in games. Furthermore, the advantage a team gets tends to snowball over the course of the game. Stated differently, your small “extra” contribution will contribute more than 20% because it will benefit your teammates, too, who will then be able to contribute more.
In my view, the deciding factor in SoloQ is less about your 1v1 or 1vX skills and more about playing intelligently (that is, knowing when and where to move to a different point or to commit to a fight, etc.). In other words, Playing strategically at a level above your MMR is going to make a bigger difference than having superior 1v1-skills (although both are obviously important).
The premise of the OP’s initial post vastly overstates the amount of eles in tpvp. I’ve yet to see any decent team run 3-5 eles. To be sure – I don’t play tpvp in the top top level, but I do watch the top PvPer’s streams, so I get to see their compositions and the compositions of their opponents. (And 99% of the people posting about eles being OP aren’t highly ranked, either).
Moreover, most of the top teams don’t even run the “OP Bunker Ele” 4 cantrip build. Vexeus for example runs valk/zerker. Phantaram runs valk/zerker w/ only 1 cantrip. They both disintigrate when ganked by 2+ decent players, or they flee the point and let the other team have it.
The eles that have insane survivability via 4 cantrips and clerics ammy do very low damage — certainly not enough to force any decent bunker off a point. Sure, they can RtL away from some classes if they’re about to die, but that still means they lose the point and failed as a bunker.
It is certainly true that RtL gives eles the ability to move around the battlefield quickly, thus letting them disengage from a fight to help out in another fight, but a ~1.3k distance dash on a 20-seconod cooldown makes a difference of only a few seconds compared to many other classes. Thief, ranger, and greatsword warrior (lol I know) can zip around the map when out of combat just as quickly, or faster depending on terrain. Even the slow-as-heck mesmer w/ staff can phase retreat + blink to cover a greater distance (albeit at a slightly higher cooldown).
(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
Condi-HGH beats out every other class at being able to stack a large amount of high-damage conditions in an area. However, you sacrifice a good amount for the amount of aoe damage you can put out. Namely, you have 0 CC, limited mobility, and limited survivability (although you’re far more durable than a glass cannon).
It seems like HGH Engis seem especially strong right now because they are a compelling counter to the current ele/ranger-heavy meta. HGH engies may seem less powerful once the metas change. For example, I’ve found that teams who can maintain high retaliation uptime do very well against HGH engies. One grenade attack into a group of three people will proc 9 ticks of retaliation. Pistol 2, 3, and 4 will also proc multiple ticks of retaliation.
The majority of posts about Ele being OP vastly exaggerate what a good ele can do. There is one specific Ele build that is slightly OP for tpvp w/ organized teams – that is the 0/0/10/30/30 build with clerics. This is the build that gives you 4 cantrips (the extra one from the armor of earth trait) and bunkers extremely well. The thing that is OP about this build is that it is also very mobile. This isn’t to say that bunker ele has no counters — it dies to high-pressure damage or conditions (HGH engy or condition necro), but then again so does every other bunker build.
My problem with the “ele is OP” posts is that people start conflating this one OP build with every other ele build. Suddenly people are talking about how this unkillable bunker ele is also giving perma fury/swiftness to their team with Zephyr’s Boon or that it’s doing high burst damage w/ arcane wave+blast. My fear is that A.net will nerf eles globally rather than target this specific bunker build.
Another common fallacy with the “Ele is OP” posts is that people refuse to change their builds. The most common example is this: A shantasm or even typical shatter mesmer build can defeat an ele 1v1 IF you are willing to forgo illusion of life. But people automatically dismiss this build as “not viable for tpvp.” This argument is misconceived — the fact that the build trades team support for enough 1v1 staying power to chase off an ele doesn’t diminish its viability. You are simply changing the mesmer’s role from team support to more of a bunker-buster.
Then we get the typical Ride-the-lightning complaints, which typicaly involve someone saying “I beat up the ele and he runs away, only to return and heal to full and we repeat this process all match.” I find this argument unpersuasive because, it seems to me, if you’re controlling the point then you’re winning. It doesn’t matter whether you control it by stomping the ele or by running him off repeatedly. In either case, your team is getting the points from the CP.
Anyway, I think the most important thing when talking about Ele balance is to really narrow down the specific OP build. That way we can come up with solutions that target that specific build without destroying all the other ele builds. I personally like others’ suggestions about increasing the ele’s base healing values on trident and cleansing wave while REDUCING the healing coefficient. This improves the viabilty of ele DPS builds while drastically reducing the sustain on Ele bunkers, which rely almost completely on spamming those two skills (namely, constantly cleansing wave via dodge roll, water attune, and dagger 5) to stay alive.
<Player looking for a team>
Ingame name: ResJudicator.7916
Class: Ele & Mesmer (mains), Thief & Engy (alternates)
Region: NA, East Coast
Practice Times: 8pm EST – Whenever
Experience: I enjoy tPvPing but I mostly solo-queue so I’ve been bouncing around the leaderboard.
About me: I’m a mature player with years of competitive gaming experience. That said, I currently work a demanding job (I’m an attorney), so I am looking for a casual, friendly team.