Guild Wars 2

Syktek.7912:

That ’worst type’ of burn guard took me to Plat 2 top 250 on my first sPvP season. Sounds more like a L2P issue on your part.

And it also seems like you know nothing about Guardian and are simply spouting off

Congratz on getting to 250, it still takes at least a shadow of tactical thought and some skill to get there. Sadly, this season’s MMR was so out of control for most people, that many undeserving players got to lick 250 before falling down, or even stayed there.
Even today, a few hours ago I fought a merciless legend who played like a low gold tier at best. So in the long run I only see a handful of people in 250 who got it in its full 100% worth. Why is that? Recently I’ve been hearing a lot about players who said "my first season" and "got to 250". While quite an ammount of acquaintances of mine who played for years and pretty much every season, either barely got to 200-250 or got stuck in plat1/low plat2 with a serious 50% win/loss ratio. Thus I hardly believe that those "my first season"’ers didn’t get simply carried with mmr.

It all comes down to how good an evade thief is. If he makes a mistake, it’s over for him, if he does well, he will beat his opponent sooner or later. A bad evade thief will pop all evades and then get shrekt to pieces while the enemy cleanses the first burst. A good one will bait out the condi clenases and then go with a weaker burst but with a higher chance of winning a fight.
Those who think DH can counter thieves really didn’t fought good thieves. A good one will bait traps, bait shield of courage and go for steal on passive fragments of faith. At that point the DH is forced to pop renewed focus. Repeat with tactical stealth, bait again and it’s over. DH is a sitting chicken on point with traps, it is relatively easy to bait them and just pew/pew from distance. But why is that? The more people play meta, the easier it gets to learn the patterns everyone follows by well... playing meta. For example I am always sure that after passive invulnerabilty a scrapper will pop healing turret. I time my stun/interrupt right to get him just as he gets out of invul to smack him. That is because I’ve seen too many of such situations and I won’t let my enemy to heal. The same goes for thieves both ways. If you watch how they fight, you will see those little dead spots in which you can strike. However if your weapons/utilities have direct effects and not aoe, it takes smooth ping and framerate to get a thief between evade frames.

Overall I think it is cheesy to deal significant damage during evade which is superior to counter damage. Why is that? A good thief won’t go for a condi bomb, he will go for baiting and slowly taking down the enemy if it comes to 1v1, disengaging when his target pops cooldowns. This is how it is meant to be played. Based on my fights I’ve figured out that when thief disengages, this is the moment when he is the most vulnerable. Chase them for a short range to force their initiative and evades for escaping. Then you will have a few seconds of rest due to lack or too little evades and initiative. It all comes down to outwitting your opponent and a smooth framerate/good ping to time everything perfectly.

It was already weak. It should be reverted back to 600 yards and give it some extra effect, maybe healing or 1 condi cleanse every 3rd hit.

The good thing is that I’ve got lots of transmutation charges and quite an ammount of gold, that’s always good. Overall it was quite an irritating experience. I don’t really know if I did good or bad due to too many lopsided matches where either my team wrecked the opponent, or the other way around. Easy wins, easy losses. My jimmies were also a bit rustled becuase I got to 250 but didn’t have enough matches to make it count in the system. Was about to get back to 250 but met with a guy who literally threw matches. For the whole duration of the season I was stuck between plat tier 1 and 2, mostly winning/losing one sided massacres. I’ve faced players who (due to their skill) didn’t deserve a place in 250 but got there due to sheer luck of soloq or a good duoq. It left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Mika.2057:

I don’t know know for you but my win ratio seems to really be influenced by the time of the day I play.

This season I played mostly during the day (between 11am and 3pm EST) and that’s when my lose streak were the worse. The few times I played in the evening it was a complete reverse situation, having a win ratio of sometime 7-8/10 matches.

So I guess it has to do with the player pool too. But I get that sometimes it’s frustrating.

All previous seasons it worked like that for me too. This season it doesn’t matter during what hours I play, I have the same win/loss ratio.

From what I see condi damage is a huge gamble. If a team has a decent ele who knows what to do, due to aoe cleansing 2 or 3 condi builds will be completely shut down in team fights and end up being an easy kill. But if there is nobody to efficiently cleanse condis, the team without it will be utterly obliterated in a constant condi spam from at least 2/3 players. Kind of hard to find and implement the golden mean in here, it’s just about what builds some people play. In the end condi damage is a double edged sword.

I remember when revenant’s Glint ultimate made my fps drop But yeah, when I first saw Holosmith’s abilities I was like "goodbye, my framerate".

I do believe that reward farming also has a little touch of "meh" factor during matches. What does that mean? Some people enter ranked just for the rewards and the fight for it is "meh" for them. I am fairly certain that a little change might force these players to think more about fighting than slapping their enemies to not get kicked for afk’ing.
Just don’t receive pips for not winning. Losing pips for a lost match might discourage a lot of people, but if they don’t move further and stay in place with a lost match that would make some players wonder and try to fight more for the reward. You have to earn it and not passively "sloth" your way through a bleeding streak of losses with wins every now and then.
There is one more issue, it is lack of means to spread knowledge in the game. Curren "tutorials" are not enough to introduce players to pvp well. There is no mention of words such as: focus, rotation, node etc... I am sure that giving a good ol’ tip info while loading a mists map could do some good as well as an npc who can tell more about fighting mechanics, for example those I mentioned above and more about combos, cleave damage, aoe damage, kiting, disengaging. If more people learn those, more fights could get interesting and it would pose a greater challange for all of us. It might also lower the numbers of blowout matches while the teams that are "bound" by the system to lose, could put up a better fight and even change the outcome more often.

P.S.
I am still with the idea of pressing the focus button to enter ranked, looks like a lot of players don’t know what focusing means xD

Toan.7326:

Sorry mate but I still get 2k4 3s in WoW with pug tho. WoW starts from 0 to Gladiator, GW2 stats from 1500 to 900. Im not master of PvP but from what you said I think you are not better than me much.

What do you mean by "stats from 1500 to 900"? you mean rank points?

SneakyTouchy.6043:

Some of these threads are turning pungent.

The MMR system is broken, but bad players are degrading the reasons why.

If you’re getting bad team mates, it should mean that your rating is high. If you want to go higher, you have to prove you can carry. That’s what rating should be for. Climbing should result in being matched with worse and worse players.

You are very right, but let’s put weak teammates away for a bit. I can very well try and carry against a team of my level or slightly above, ez pz lmn sqz. But when by the looks of the game I can tell that I, along with one or two more people we carry the rest of the team while the opposing team just waltz in on our faces because they are stacked with all good and well-rounded players, how do we carry it to win? I am cool about it tho, it will happen, always does. The thing is how often it happens, that’s the real problem. And if it comes to the match itself, I don’t feel displeased about not being carried, I don’t need to be carried and I will gladly help lesser teammates, but wouldn’t it be good if the opposing team had some to carry as well? Now about 8 out of 10 matches are kind of: one team has 2-3 people to carry and the second one is 5 decent players (so you win or lose in a huge skill gap). To see who is better at carrying, now that is interesting indeed.

Voicechat would be a great addition. I am a fast typer but sometimes I lose momentum or get struck in a critical moment when giving out info on what happens. Yet communication is cruicial to even the odds. I’ve had a match yesterday that we won because we all communicated, we gave info and suggested what to target or where to rotate. At first we were having our bottom kicked hard but we retaliated once we started to talk with sense instead of spilling salt. I believe that voice chat would greatly boost the possibility to turn the tides of some matches more often.

Abelisk.4527:

That’s why you don’t solo queue. If you have a duo who understands what he/she’s doing then the odds of you winning are much greater.

Let’s say the three pugs on your team feed mid. You and your partner can grab sides and win 1v1s if both of you are good, allowing for the enemy team to rotate out of mid and make it easier for your team to win teamfights.

It works if the enemy team is not stupid and CC’s you to stay on mid. If you aren’t a mobile class you will get chased and forced to burn a few cooldowns before you fight on point which already puts you at a huge disadvantage. It all depends, we can just theorycraft here and there will always be a counter to every possible situation presented. It’s not only about our team but the opposing as well but it’s not really a problem, some play better some are not that good, it’s natural to lose and win. The thing is that matches where the enemy team or your team holds the opposing side by the throat throughout the whole match happens way too often for such gamemode. This is the first game where I see so many helpless situations, even in WoW/Lineage II during lesser or biggers fights there was some way to even the odds a bit to at least not lose in a huge point gap and investigate the mistakes you did. Here? If you get roflstomped you can’t even pinpoint mistakes you made because you tend to end up in outnumbered fights where only you or some other player tries to focus a target while the rest of the team either runs to their death or attacks random targets.

On the side note, it would be amusing to have ranked match button activated by using your keys meant for setting up a target focus

Toan.7326:

https://postimg.org/image/t9kj16xez/

I was blue and only cap bell. I was 1 vs 2. I pinged like crazy but noone cared.
The rest of my team stayed mid for whole time and thief didnt give a kitten on decap.

Ranked PVP how it actually works

It further shows that you are on the mercy of what teammates you get. I wonder why solo is so risky while there are a handful of players who solo into 250. With such volatile and lopsided matches it is hardly to bielieve that anyone can solo out into high 250, but it happens, and I deny to acknowledge that it is just by the sole skill of one person that changes the outcome. Is this some account bound bias for having good players in the team? I’ve never believed that and thought it’s just a QQ excuse... but after this season it really makes me think there is something behind it, this random factor.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Sounds like GW2’s sPvP is not for you.

But for what reason? It is making me wonder as well because this season is the most frustrating one I’ve ever had in any PvP game I’ve played.
Something is off about matchmaking lately, my win ratio fell so horribly that I can’t get past 163x rating no matter how good I play or rotate. Of course I’ve experienced matches, close calls that could have gone better, ain’t gonna be bleedin’ about it. But still, a vast majority of those games that I won and lost were due to stack of inexperienced players in my team or in the enemy team. Just looking at how they use skills, move around the map and it is easily to guess what their level is more or less.
I do not spill salt, when I do I just talk to myself doing an annoyed face in the mirror for giggles, but during these past few days I’ve turned into a salt mine
This rustles my jimmies very hard when I see some of my friends on my friend list who were lower than me for last 3-4 seasons and suddenly in the course of last two weeks they even got to 250 and a bunch of others fell, even to gold (I was in 250 too but I didn’t get a title due to not enough games played). When I go with them for some unranked or 1v1 for fun I do not see much of a change in their real skill if it got worse or better, they can say the same about me. This is really confusing when I see such a big change in rating throughout the ladderboard. I hardly believe that some of those players I know got better in two weeks while being decent for as long as I know them. How did that happen? I’ve never ever had such issues with PvP mode in any other game and every gw2 pvp season until the current one in the last 3 weeks of it.

P.S.
I tried duo and it is kind of working but I do not have all reliable friends online when I can play. Also I tried playing at various hours even at night or early morning when, as some say, you can "farm silvers" but it’s too risky, losing -20 points when I end up in a team consists of silvers against silvers with 2-3 plat/lege players. I start to think that karma got me for something I might have done in the past and Lady Luck flipped a big ol’ bird at me T^T

Currently rank as we know it is not entirely relevant. I’ve seen some good gems stuck in gold or silver. They surprisingly played well but played solo, couldn’t get out of their rank despite the fact that I could call their skill on high gold/low plat kind of level.

I’ve never been more discouraged from PvP than in this game in this season. I am in plat 1 (fell from 2nd tier yesterday) Throughout 2 past years I’ve had a win ratio of about 60% to 65% the more I played and the more I knew about that game my ratio was stable and did the thing. In the past few seasons I had something about 57%-59% in which roughly 6 or 7 matches out of 10 were lost in a manner where games couldn’t get carried due to either overpowered team or clueless teammates. Now this season threw me into, I think, 50% win ratio which I’ve never ever experienced in any game where I played PvP be it MMORPG or FPS or MOBA. I refuse to agree with something as "you just bad", no. I know how to play this, I know my class and I know what others are capable of, I know how to focus and which targets to pick first, how to disengage from combat, to kite, to win most 1v1’s and even if I fail to, I put up a long enough fight to ensure that the enemy loses as much precious time as possible when defending a node. I even share my cooldowns to save others, CC those who focus my teammates. I’ve played PvP aspect of many games for many, many years and GW2 pvp is the first one in which I am so greatly displeased that I myself can’t believe. I can’t return to 250 on solo and I cannot seem to find a reliable duo partner. The most funny thing in all of this? When I tried to get back to 250 some guy already in 250 prevented me from doing that by throwing 2 of our matches. He literally went necro without a wurm doing literally 1v2/3 on mid, spamming the chat that we don’t support him so he dies.

Most of my won matches were one sided massacres where I roflstomped along with my team, most of my lost matches were one sided massacres where I were roflstomped along with my team. Because of that I can’t really tell what my real skill is. Everyday I stray further away from this game mode and whenever someone wants to try it, I tell them my story. This game is just a test of how much luck you have with a little spice of personal skill to even the odds if needed.

Ragnarox.9601:

We already have full support spec. Plus that tome casting times of 2-3 sec does not look promising for competitive pvp and wvw....

Where is that viable full support spec? I didn’t really see it anywhere... oh right, only WvW.
It’s not about the fact that we have a support build in one game mode, it’s about the fact that other classes that have support builds can be supports in all game modes and do so efficiently. With Firebrand we might be viable burst supports in every aspect of the game.
And if it comes to long cast times, nobody forces you to use such skills without stability or inside of a thick battle.

Faux Play.6104:

If the game mode was pure 1v1, I’m sure they would run a different build and still win.

So they would just roll mesmer/thief/druid and it would be either an endless fight, or whoever resets fights better.
1v1 Is not a proper way to test one’s skill. I once had a build that was purely build for 1v1 and I could easily take anyone except mesmers (it was build on retaliation damage and shatters don’t link damage to the mesmer). It is nice because it deals damage where I can play defensively. It especially counters warriors and druids who pop endure pain/signet and go all out on dps. Retal damage goes through damage immunities.
But if I had to go into team fights, that build was not enough to deal with all at once (though it has 2v1 potential).
Conquest is a team mode, it is meant to be played as a team and cheating or not, you can’t evaluate someone’s overall skill on his or her 1v1 capabilities.

Aeolus.3615:

it is not hard...the class name helps as well, still no one know yet, and wasnt there some info where some dev or who ever leaked it sayd that guard wont be a druid but it has some heal like it always had..?

I’ve been checking all this stuff out recently too, besides the main leak it was all just guessing by the look of traits and some teasing. No real evidence on what it will truly be.

Tick.1605:

I think this would be a great idea, like get 1 mill kills, or survive for 5 mins in the arena or something

For survival achiev everyone would run away in a bunker build or kite around as a thief or mes xD

> be me, doing some ranked, being in 250 (in numbers) but not having the title due to lack of max matches required on leaderboard
> play it nice, some duos, some solo during different times. Some blowouts, no biggie, happens
> "neat, I just need one more match won and I’ll have the title and a nice spot on 250"
> soloque, there is a guy who already is in 250
> trolls us after first lost mid fight that wasn’t even a roflstomp.
> he says he is done with our lack of skill because we let him die
> he is a necro
> match lost. Well okay, sometimes it happens I am on a roll anyway so 2 matches to win, I can do it.
> next soloque, the same guy on my team.
> we have no support, he gets focused to oblivion by 4 enemy players
> doesn’t even have a wurm to escape
> cries that nobody helps him while he goes alone to fight mid when the rest plays sides
> we lose again. He says that I suck very bad and he challanges me for 1v1
> I beat him 3 times in a row, not even popping elite
> he then feels sorry and explains that he had a bad day
> "well, now you made my day bad too, preventing me from getting to 250. Don’t you ever do it again on ranked" I said
> since that day I’ve experienced a losing streak on blowout matches that couldn’t be saved from the beginning. I fell to plat 1
> GG

Cynz.9437:

Also, i don’t think that build is OP. Obnoxious? Yes. Hard to deal with if you don’t know how it works or don’t expect it? Yes. But as poster above me said, it was probably mostly because people didn’t expect it and because people you queued against weren’t as good (we all know how dead population is). I don’t think team of decent players would have issues dealing with the build.

I have to agree. Most of us already faced that build once for sure, but if it comes down to solo que about 8 to 10 matches is about who has better stack of good players and who hits first that determines the whole outcome. I’ve had situations when 1v1 such thief wasn’t a problem (DarrgunHurrdurr, I know) but in 2v1 it is mostly a matter of time before I fall, especially when stability gets stolen/corrupted. But that ain’t a big deal, the worst situation is when I am busy fighting (dying) on one node while being 1v2/3 and the rest of the team either runs aimlessly or dies to such condi thief 2v1. Yes, it may sound silly but I had a team where condi thief got two players, a warrior and a reve if I am not mistaken, and that was all in platinum div. While I duo it is better, but my duo partners are not always online so sometimes I have to solo for max matches or not to get decay, and this is where stuff like that happens.

P.S.
Do some of you believe in some sort of account luck for better players in team while soloqueing? I know a DH (presumably non-meta build) who started pvp overall in this season, has more than 1k achievs and went to 89 rank once in few days only soloque’ing (from plat 2), and he claims to play pvp first time. He has some knowledge and knows his drill, but so do I and yet I keep on losing rank on overwhelmed matches on soloq.

I am no programmer but I bet that it is possible to see on which end a DC happened. If it was a DC on player’s fault, there should be all penalties that come with it now. It seems unfair to those who have unstable internet connection, but then in the first place they shouldn’t play ranked. It is to prevent abusing, yet still there are duos that take advantage of it and as soon as they see that a match is not in their favor, the smurf account DC’s to save rating.
However, if DC happens due to server’s fault, there should be no penalty to the team and to the player who gets DC’ed no matter the stage of match if it takes more than 30 seconds of absence. I am quite sure that this is doable

Spoichiche.1290:

It seems like you do not understand what the ranking system is.

First of all, your skill rating has nothing to do with your W/L ratio.

Second of all, the ranking system doesn’t stop after the result of one match. You’re right, you can get bad teammates, you can lose a match that you ’deserved’ to win. In the end, it’s kind of like a coin toss. But, the system is not designed to give you an accurate rating after one match.
The theory is that you are matched with and against the average player around your skill rating. If you are better than the average player of your skill rating, you have a higher probability to win, and will win more than you lose, resulting in your skill rating going up.
Bad luck can happen and make you lose some games, but the more matches you play, the less luck becomes a relevant factor.
If you toss a coin 5 times, you will have a random result that doesn’t necessarily show the 50% probability. But if you toss a coin 50 times, the result will be very close to 50%.

Now, the system is not perfect, and get pretty wonky when the player population is low. But for the most part, it should be pretty accurate, especially at ratings where there is no population issue.

I can’t tell if what you said is a rule or an exception. I was placed in T2 platinum, got to 250 once but didn’t get the recognition (title and leaderboard place) due to match cap at the time (45 was it I guess). But once I hit the cap (60 matches) I needed like 2 matches to get to 250 and since that day that happened 4-5 days ago, I keep on falling and falling down on matches where some of my team mates prefer to do a decap instead of a fullcap while the whole enemy team is busy fighting mid or far/ double caps/ going 1v2 to a capped point... you name it.
I’ve been playing to my furthest skills, doing fakes, rotating to every fight I could to ensure a win, but as soon as I left or some other competent dude in my team, the whole rest just fell apart. I am okay with losing, but being bound to lose with a huge point gap many times in a row or overall is just getting bamboozled by the system.
Now I think I have more than 70 or about 80 matches played, but the curve of my rating is changing rapidly from T2 plat to T1 plat or even T3 gold which is not what should be happening to a player who knows his drill.

P.S.
At first I thought it was stupid, but more and more I keep on believing in some sort of "account luck".

Itz Jay.8941:

Although I do agree maybe 300 pts difference is a bit much and could well be unbalanced, even balanced games can have large score differences.

If you are in a balanced 5v5 and somehow somebody messes up and dies, then the killing team snowball and force a three cap, say the enemy regroups on close but two go into mid. If they end up in an even 3v3 on close and 2v2 on mid and nobody moves 200-300pts can easily fly by when people are try hard surviving.

Large point differences aren’t always down to unbalanced games, IMO its part of the conquest gameplay, at high tier play when games are balanced and everybody survives just forcing and holding the caps alone will win the game. In some ways I would expect large point differences in this situation.

This is why I would like to see team death-match, it provides solid ground for the creation of balanced builds unlike conquest which is all about movement allowing squisher but more mobile classes to be forgiven. Personally I really don’t think you can balance GW2 around fighting three nodes.

This is very true. For me, there were matches that on paper looked like blowouts but as I watched my team play I could safely assume that we knew what we were doing. It’s the moment of that one tiny mistake that made it all go to naught. Then the opposing team played it safely rotating between mid and close with two bunkers on them and we couldn’t do anything due to their cautious gameplay, thus ending a match in lets say a 300+ point gap. I ain’t worried about it, it was winnable and we failed, as simple as that.
However, what we all wish for is a lower margin of blowout. Currently I can’t even tell how good or bad I am in this game due to how MMR pulls my nose around. I crawled out of T2 gold to T2 plat on about 65% close call matches, the rest blowouts, or as some call it, free wins. I was about to return to top 250 but I fell down due to a troll player who was already in 250. He died a lot and shrieked on /team how bad we are for not helping him (he was going by himself on mid as a necro). Now I am barely trying to stay in plat at all, losing blowouts with -17 and winning close calls for +12

Perhaps the overall rating required went up. I was supposed to be in 250 too but it went up a dozen ratings before a loss streak punched me into T1 plat. Maybe now you have to be in T3

It would work if symbols were more like an aura or followed your footsteps like warrior’s torch skill.

Faith and resolve is cruicial for guardians. As I always like to say, their abilities are materialized force of will with a pinch of morals and virtues. By default, guardians possess strong will because without that, they wouldn’t be able to weave magic into their spirit.
Currently, in my RP community, I am roleplaying a hard case of loss of guardian magic due to a loss of confidence because he harmed the one that should have been protected, thus killing her. I still don’t know if my character’s magic will return, but I am making a huge lore writing about it. So in my book there are no weak guardians, there are less skilled and more experienced ones, but they are all strong nevertheless, at least if it comes to the strength of mind and spirit.

Maybe let’s leave the idea of making it a thief/mesmer kind of skill, but! Two options:

1. Give it a stunbreak to escape to an ally
2. Make it heal for 25% of target’s health pool when it is in downed state (but still retaining the heal as it is) - that would be a great ressing tool along with protective reviver.

Naurgalen.2374:

Now, this may be a population problem, but then that makes another point: PvP may need new players and that has far too many problems:

- Free to play players are not meta capable and wont play to be murdered
- PvP is not really intuitive, if you started playing there is no easy access to meta builds, no explanation of how those builds work, no tutorial about the importance of rotations, map awareness etc... in a conquest mode and only a 1% of the player-base willing to help (heck most of the player-base will be totally toxic to them)

You kind of hit the spot but it is not entirely true. Even if we get more players, these new casuals are going to be shred to pieces. At the beginning of HoT we had lots and lots of players for sure, yet it still failed. It was mostly due to OP specs but still... most of the OP part had to be on one team for the other to get shanked in the guts multiple times.
I’ve been there and I saw it, despite numbers the matchmaking didn’t handle it well.
I don’t think it’s only population but really the matchmaking is still a little wonky.
Sadly I do not understand what is to be found in gw2wiki on MMR algorithm, but practice says more than theory. Let’s not focus on situations where there are disconnections or troll players, but normal 5v5. I still wonder why so many times it happens that matches tend to be so one sided? If MMR works as intended, then why the vast majority of games is a one sided bloodshed or the team is handicapped? Where are those balanced numbers? If one team has superior players to the other, why aren’t two/three of them moved into the less skilled team to even the odds? That would still make it somewhat more balanced. Why can’t current MMR achieve that?
I really don’t mind losing 350+/500 or 400+/500 but being forced to lose -350/500 up to 5-7 times in a row despite trying to play during different hours, is making me feel concerned more and more. I wouldn’t be so if it wasn’t for other mmorpgs’ pvp (that are not all that known as GW2) I play and easily handle most of what happens there, than here. I am confident in my skills, but still, this is the first time in my many years of playing PvP game modes, that I feel this game is simply against me.

Alatar.7364:

I would say Druid Shoutbow, if you play it well and the enemy is stupid then you can be 1v3 90% of the match without dying while your team just totally outnumberes the rest.

This is not carrying because there is nothing to carry to if enemy team gets roflstomped and can’t kill a single druid 1v3. It means you got stacked with good versus stack of bad.
Nevertheless, druid shoutbow is a way to go. I tried it a few times and it deals well in most situations. But it all comes down to how your team plays because no matter how hard you try, you won’t carry 3 headless chickens or a disconnected dude/troll as long as the enemy is on your level.

I’ve went through a little frustrating streak. It’s cool, happens, not the first and not the last time. But what I want to know, is there really some sort of a "luck" factor to account? I can’t quite tell but I’ll tell you the facts right now.
So in the morning I went for ranked to get to 250 (3-4 matches and done) but after two won matches I got a troll who made us lost two games. Well, okay... happens, I took a break then to do stuff. I returned in the evening to do some games too, and I’ve ended up with 6-7 lost matches in about more than 300 point gap. In the last 2 or 3 matches I was so unpleased that my fighting skills were kind of affected but that doesn’t matter in the long run. Meanwhile, there is a nice dude in my PvP guild who barely has 1k achievs, got a guardian build from someone who was 13 in rank and is killing it all over the place. However, we both have similar percentage to win. Between lost and won matches he has about 10-11 matches after a win streak, I also tend to have it. Yet he is somewhere in 120 rank while I just fell out of plat T2. How to understand this phenomenon?

choovanski.5462:

Menders engi with proper use of combo finshers is almost imortal. I actually stopped playing scrapper in pvp because it was too boring & easy. Gunflame Warrior is much more fun for me.

I miss risk/reward gameplay pre HoT. Only cele ele was could fight without end.

Ventari Reve is a glorious bunker, it is really worth a shot if you don’t want to roll with damage. Druid is fits both damage and healing role and also a kinda healish bunker guardian on symbols is more or less capable as well.

RabbitUp.8294:

And what’s mesmer giving up to have both great staying power and mobility/resseting fights?
It’s only in the guardian forum that everyone has their mind stuck on weak spots, meanwhile other classes are free to be good at everything.

RabbitUp.8294:

Mesmer doesn’t give up anything to have the things it has. Almost no other class has weak points, except Necro having limited mobility, but Necro still has 2 mini portals.

"what’s mesmer giving up to have both great staying power and mobility/resseting fights?"

"Mesmer doesn’t give up anything to have the things it has."

I think someone shot his own foot :U

What I meant is that we all have to sacrifice slots for utilities and traits. But some traits and utilities are superior to those that others have just by the base concept of it. Which means I would rather use a teleport to escape rather than a block or stab to get roflstomped afterwards. This is just one example.
But the thing is, if we get such free teleports, how different will we be from mesmers or thieves? Soon we will hit power creep on such levels, that all 9 classes will be just different in names and colours of their abilities because everyone will be capable of everything. This is what some of us do not wish for, but might be the only thing to make us more viable.

RabbitUp.8294:

And what’s mesmer giving up to have both great staying power and mobility/resseting fights?

It’s only in the guardian forum that everyone has their mind stuck on weak spots, meanwhile other classes are free to be good at everything.

Of course mesmer has to give what it takes, everyone has to. But it is the value that these utilities carry, they are kitten strong and worth the slot. Not to mention their CD reset. I think the following fact is enough. We do not see high end top guardians in PvP 1 or 3 is rather an exception to the rule. The higher I am in platinum, the fewer guardians I encounter, mostly because they can’t carry as well as other classes. Legendaries are teeming with mesmers, druids, thieves, elementalists or warriors who are either capable of everything at the same time or are just so powerful in one role that it is masterful in what it does (for example warrior’s power damage).
As for me, guardian lacks in meaningful utility that is sometimes just a QoL issue. I am aware that only power creep can set things right, as there is too late for gentle nerfs that would bring any good changes.

Because of what happens currently, all the titles and leaderboard lost any meaning to me.
Those players that are on top are skilled, there is no discussion on this subject. But as long as they don’t face a fair challange to keep on testing them, the community won’t be easily breathtaken by their rank. As I see it on my own example, I am nowhere near to be amazed by any of the top players, if they use tricks to keep their status or, as some people already mentioned, they get stacked with each other to create a wall between high plat and high legend. I’ve thought they are super amazing and I have to git gud. I still have lots of things to learn and I don’t think that with my current internet connection and weak rig, I’ll be able to reach legendary. But still, with all I got I can safely stay on mid platinum level, which is good enough for now.

I’ll give you this. As much as I am not fond of power creep, at this point it might be the only thing to save the MM system. In theory, if new elite specs turn out to be strong (high chance) they will bring back a lot of old players as well as some freshies as well. The point is, with two strong elite specs that cannot be mixed together, we should have a forced meta of at least 2 good builds per class. Thanks to that, people will have more to choose from and if they like it, there will be more of them to play it, thus give a chance for PvP to restore itself.
It’s like a bowl (PvP mode) and cereals (current pvp playerbase). With new expansion milk will pour (new or returning players) and it all should be a quite good breakfast (beginning of pvp in the new expansion) for our matchmaking system. Hope there won’t be too much sugar in it (over power creep of the new elite specs)

I’ve learned that on the course of last few weeks that mid/top plat and legendary are quite a stagnation with a few exceptions of people getting into 250.
Yesterday I had a guy in my team who came to help me on point as I fell and I was downed along with my enemy (we were dang equally skilled, on the same builds). He came with a member of opposing team who started to rub his downed teammate while my dude was cleaving him with auto attack. Didn’t try to res me nor stomp. In that situation it was a common bronze/silver mistake and the best of it? He had Ruthless Legend title, I think I don’t have to explain more.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier “stagnation” is what is happening right now. In the evening when there are more legendary players I’ve started to lose more and more matches to the point I had to stop to not get myself out of T2 of plat. I tried solo, duo, a break to wait a few queues, nothing helped as my team was curb stomped to bits.
I couldn’t blame my team, I knew some of these lads and they were good. But it was the stack of legendaries against mid platinum. No for real… one time my team was 4 plats and one legend against 5 full legends. Why is it happening? Why did the system stacked it like that?
Now another story from pvp that took place recently. We had a neat team, a legend on 41 rank and two other dudes in 250 including me (though I fell past the 250 border now :<). It was Forest of Niflhel and we were in blue. Just as we came out of the entrance to mid, we got 4v3 (or 4, can’t remember) ambushed and our necro got torn to shreds within 2 seconds (yes, two seconds). Overall it was a bloodbath. Nevertheless we tried to fight and it was heading in the right direction until one of our revenants decided not to fight, jumping around for no purpose. We thought that he was a troll and didn’t know how to fight properly as he died a couple of times very easily (he was that 41 rank tho). So we lost it and moved on to another match (I was duo back then). Next game we saw that reve on the opposing team. I thought that we will have it easy but nah, it turned out he is a very good fighter and it appeared that we fought against 3 high ranked players. Aaaaand so we lost again. The point is, I checked this guy along with the other who was boasting on /map and all the evidence showed that the reve on 41 rank might have been a smurf (1.800 AP) while the other one boasting was on the much more higher rank with more AP. So that reve throwed our game on purpose so his dude could win, and once he got on his team, he fought mercilessly against us.

This is an example of stagnation. If we had twice or thrice the playerbase we have now, those situations would happen still, but rarely. So rarely that those people would just stop doing that. But how do we get people back into pvp? There are so many things that we can point out that are bad, but what should we really do to make it better?

RabbitUp.8294:

Mesmer can hold a point better and has access to portal. That been said, if it’s so worrysome, we have split balance for a reason, increase MI’s cooldown to 50s for pvp only.

This is the very concept of mesmer. If we compare a guardian and a mesmer on the same skill level, the mesmer will hold a point much longer than a guard. Why so? Evades and invulnerabilities are stronger than blocks. Blocks can be easily popped with pulsing AoE, corrupted, bypassed by unblockable or CC on the ground like necro marks, ring of warding etc...
Mesmer can reset fights and as I played for about 14 years focused on PvP I can say that a class that can reset a fight is the best skirmisher to fit almost every role besides support. However, that’s the mmorpg trinity, in gw2 it appears that mes can also support but in PvE, so he can do everything much better because of its sheer concept by which this class was created. This profession is strong by default and we can do nothing about it.
Why am I bringing this up? Because what you guys want is another power creep. I am confused myself what is better, it is easier to corrupt than it is to heal, thus Anet will only go more into power creep and never try nerfs on everything because it is too much work. The more possibilities a profession has, the harder it gets to balance it on the spectrum of every other class to make it feel right.
Guardian’s mobility is its weak spot, yet still it is fairly decent and depends on a few things. We are not meant to escape but to be the ones to run away from... too bad we are not like that in practice, besides being great noobstompers

JTGuevara.9018:

You can thank elite specs for this. Elite specs artificially raise your skill. PvP was better before HoT. It’s not even a comparison. You didn’t have all these faceroll mechanics like you do now. Yes, it had problems but balance was better.

Yup, only cele ele was a concern, but that’s all. I left WoW for GW2 pvp and I say, I had a load of fun pvp’ing before HoT. There was pure risk/reward gameplay and I think (probably most of us think the same) that elite specs were one of the main reasons, if not the sole reason for the current state of PvP gamemode. But what can we say? Sometimes I have a feeling that suspending elite specs for pvp for one season just to see how it works out would be a nice experiment to see what is good and what is bad. But it’s too late, it won’t happen as long as elite specs are one of the most prominent elements in the game. Even if it happened, how would it look like? PvE and WvW has specs but PvP? That would make some casuals angry or basically anyone who enjoys not giving too much effort into creative builds or active play.

Alright, I see something here. Let’s talk from DH point of view then. I didn’t play traps since HoT because it didn’t suit my playstyle and a few seasons back I had a reliable build of my own that did the trick, but does not do anymore.
Okay so, provided that I fight on a node against a mes, which is better to destroy illusions, procession of blades or test of faith? I’ve noticed that very often mesmers don’t let me destroy their illusions as they pop it in my face as soon as I target them (with low framerate and 100+ ping it is not so easy to pinpoint the exact moment when they blow up if they are in melee range so evading is more or less a gamble) either full blast or shatter after shatter.

All in all I wonder why I have such a hard time with them now. Previous seasons I didn’t encounter any relevant obstacles that would make me write a thread about it to ask for tips.

Perhaps fault lies on my side, I can’t quite deny it. Sometimes framerate gets wonky or a brainfart happens and I get blasted, but let’s put that aside for now.
As much as I despise the sheer concept at its base, I understand how mesmer works. It’s not about how good you are but when mesmer makes a mistake that leads you to win a fight with them. Blocks are a fine method of not getting hit, obviously it can be countered. However, invulnerability and evades cannot, these two are the best in terms of avoiding damage, and I think that mesmer has a tad bit too much of it. I’ve fought a considerable bunch of these pinkish lads and gals. I would lie if I said it’s a noob class, for it takes skill, thus as much as I feel disdain for this cheeky play style of the class, I have to agree that it takes a lot of experience, if one wishes to play it right.
Still… even though I dodge one or two shatter bombs (sometimes I get hit one by one which is a ruthless strat, who will dodge on one shatter? Still you gonna get stacked with damage), I find it hard to spot an opening, which is okay, this means that the opponent knows how to rotate. But, whenever I defend against shatters (more or less) the sheer ammount of evades and invulnerabilities on top of escape on demand makes it quite unsettling at how mesmer pulls the strings.
Also yes, before you mention it, it is a QQ reaction straight from ranked Nevertheless I know when enough is enough. After whole 2 weeks, after every death by mesmer’s hand I told myself “gotta git gud brah”, but as much as I have no real problems with any of the other 8 classes, mesmers are by far the most dangerous in how they can play you like a toy.
I won’t ask for nerfs, as much as devs’ balance is kinda wonky, they still know better than me. However, I’ll ask you how can I counter mesmers on a meta warrior or guardian (with no damaging traps)?

P.S.
Also I’ve noticed one thing. Shatters deal damage in a “minionish” kind of way. However, shouldn’t at least retaliation link this damage back to mesmer? That would balance a few things without hurting the mesmer class itself (heh).

This is truly sad, yes. I feel extra pain when I look at sentinel outfit, its body piece along with leg part is so nice and so great. That hauberk with tabard mhmm... but then there are those silly looking bird shoulders, gauntlets and that helmet that has this nice shadow effect on the face, but another bird is slapped onto it. Alright, overall it is good, but it looks terrible on my character and all I want is that breastplate with leggings. I’d even pay up and smack those gems just to get these two armor parts.

Nomin.5901:

* Well timed abilities get randomly blocked or blinded by a guardian spamming traps or aegis coming off CD

All of the nuances and counterplay provided in the past has been nullified, because while yes dodging key abilities is still possible, there is so much kitten constantly flying around that you run out of tools to play around them.

These two statements somehow don’t fit together. If there is a lack of counterplay, then how a guardian (or at this point anyone else) can defend himself so well at random?
First, if an attack is blocked then two things happened: It was not well timed OR the opponent just reacted to it and evaded/blocked/blinded it.
Some classes have more than enough ways to deal with what you said. Thieves, mesmers, revenants, druids... they all can escape on demand quite easily if they know when the time is right to disengage. If damage is facetanked then of course you will fall pray to all that is dropped into the fray. I tell ya, disengaging in combat does wonders.

This is trully bizzare for a player who once reached legendary or plat stayed in gold and for you to have such bad experiences. Now as I see how people boast with their 1-250 rank means nothing to me now. I can’t really say for sure how it happens, is it you who didn’t deserve legend/plat in the first place? Or did the system screw you over?
Two seasons ago I got placed in gold and made my way solo to low plat after about 200 matches, I thought that I lack something. The next season I started in high gold but real life stopped me from playing so I left that season. Now, however, I played placement matches and got put into mid platinum. The matches I had were strangely balanced, even if ended up with 500/200-300 (the thing is that opposing team rotated quite well, but my team was eager to cooperate through /team and we managed to win most encounters).
I am almost, almost at 250, and I play solo/duo on a non-meta build. I’ve already met a few people who trash talked on me or the team, who claimed to be in 250 and they were. Once I challanged them for 1v1 I can say that only few out of many were worth the rank. I know I can’t test their rotation skills on map this way, but if someone knows how to efficiently kill, he/she still needs to know something. I feel that current PvP balance is still wonky, but better than in the seasons that passed.
As for tutorials, I once though about a pvpwiki powered by players, that might by something nice and helpful for PvE players who want to get serious with PvP.

As the title states, I experience an inconvenient bug that regards the new arena in HoTM.
It appears that teleport skills that require a target do not work as intended due to “mechanically” not seeing the target.
The attached screenshots show it. It doesn’t seem to work for other classes as well (on target teleports like thief’s too). However other teleports that do not require a target, do work as they should.
It appears that the middle section of the arena (the lower square) seems to be the main problem as the lower contignation appears to be an obstacle.
It hinders a lot of combos. Even though it is not a serious place of duels, it gives an incredible advantage to classes such as mesmers to escape while thieves/guards or others who have target teleports, can’t chase more versatile enemies. I would be grateful if you looked deeper into this issue.

Ah 50 ping... I do not need to know anything more. Good for you, cherish the fact of relatively good framerate and ping ; - ;

Solo que? So you trynna tell us that you can carry with this build? Sounds too good to be true. Smells fishy but if it’s true then it might be worth a shot. But before I get into it, what is your medium framerate and ping while you do ranked, OP?

P.S.
It is unreal for just one reason that I do not find burn guard to be a real threat. If unchecked I will get burned, but cleansing the first batch of burn is enough to deal with them, at least from my experience.

Well... what I have on my mind is not a Firebrand feature, but it would boast support and dps role that guardian does. I think it would be better if symbols that show up during melee attacks, could follow the guardian as he moves. Thus he could maintain his point control on pvp and static support in pve. There are many situations when a symbol is cast and nobody stands in it, be it ally or enemy, or if it is on point in pvp, the enemy can safely walk into it because symbols don’t do much damage on their own.
If all symbols (scepter and staff too) were cast under feet, they could bring much more versatility to guardians (if we had a crippling symbol that would be great to chase down faster classes, but that’s just my little dream xD). It would be really awesome for symbol of swiftness that grants you speed as you run. Isn’t it a great possibility?

Wouldn’t it be better to make two sides of pedestals, left and right, so that they would fit the sides of team’s respawn points?
I’ll tell ya what I think about it. I like to boast sometimes, I more or less enjoy to smash scrubs, but what we have now has a dangerous potential of making things worse across the community. It is a good idea, but it is not it yet. Unless Anet wanted to show how MMR makes blowouts as the losing team is so wrecked they all lie down, after being tremendously overpowered by the winners, then I think they hit a spot on. But the real thing behind all this is that the feel between two competing teams should not be restricted only to winners and losers. It should be about respect of those that we tested our skills with. Both teams participated, but there could be only one. However, the losing team should not be humiliated, but let them stand tall as worthy opponents. Thus, as stated above, I think it would be best if there were pedestals for both teams, to let them boast in their own way. The only difference should be a tag saying "victory" over the team that won, that’s all.

I experienced both sides as a winner and a loser, I didn’t like either. When I won, it was a close call, and it seemed like the opposing team was mercilessly dealt with and it made me feel bizzarely sad as I gazed upon their dead characters, like they were discarded like some unworthy bunch of scrubs (which they were not). The same was when I lost, I didn’t even want to look at the winning team as the loss left such a bitter taste after a lost match of 500 to 40 that I think they didn’t even deserve to boast. What victory it is against a bunch of new players who want to improve? It’s like playing chess with a child that doesn’t know the rules.

P.S.
If it comes to two sets of pedestals, the characters present could face each other’s opponents for some extra heroic factor.

What about a polearm? It is a great candidate if Anet ever decides to add new weapons... IF!

Once condi has been placed on you, you will get damaged even with invulnerability, this is the perk of condi damage, let it stay that way.
In these days of power creep where one player can get you CC’ed by depleting you stab (or constant necro corrupt) I would enjoy only two things on Renewed Focus, and it would be a flawless skill. Many classes have a possibility to pop some butt saving cooldown even if they are CC trained (and with no stab on them), for example a teleport or some invulerabilities like mesmer or passive engi. I think it would be good enough if Renewed Focus could also be popped despite the lack of stability. Just making it break through stun should do the trick.
The second thing is what others already said, make it refresh cooldown as soon as we use it, not after it ends channeling.