Funnily enough I mostly played power necro when climbing to legend last season. The build I played is pretty janky, but it was a fun change of pace and ended up being a bit better than I expected.
Depending on the amount of condi builds on the enemy team I would swap in plague signet, and if the enemy comp was super condi heavy I would swap SR for curses to get the extra plague signet proc as well.
Not trying to say power necro is top tier or anything but it was good enough to win games with and pretty fun to play.
What was your win/loss %?
Did you solo or group que?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t put much stock in “legend”.
I find almost ANY build can be successful in an organized team where you bring the right mix of builds/professions/communication.
If you were able to succeed in strictly solo que with that build, that’s great, but how many games did it take?
IMO, necros are far too weak at the start of the match. Most of their defenses and traits aren’t even usable without life force. This would be fine if they were a 1v2 juggernaut with full life force to offset the weakness, but, even with full life force, it’s a defense that doesn’t scale versus multiple people.
If you want my suggestion, there are 2 tweaks that could help diminish the delta in survivablity SLIGHTLY between necros and others at the start of a match.
First, you could revert the Blighter Boon nerf which would allow teammate boons to help generate life force. Every other class can synchronize things like immob, traps, etc to create “OP” type combos, yet a necro going through the trouble of getting a boon sharing teammate and staying close to him was too OP???
Second, Lich gave necros a 180 second cooldown elite that they could pop at the beginning of matches in case they were zerged. It didn’t help all the time, but it at least gave some classes reason to run. Now, after all the nerfs, it’s a joke. Nobody runs and even some classes stand toe-to-toe with it 1v1. How is it OP to have a 180 second cooldown actually help you defend SLIGHTLY and SOMETIMES against a zerg???
How about just asking them to play sPvP period? It’s clear that they barely do it (or don’t really take it seriously). Otherwise, they wouldn’t have needed a poll from the player base to tell them the obvious.
Lots of people quit the game that try Necro in PvP first.
It’s a cloth wearing class with no life force at the start of a match and generates no pressure at range. The only way to build LF is to fight though so you can’t just wait out cooldowns. Thus, you are forced to either go into melee range without life force or do no damage from afar. It also means that a large percentage of your traits and abilities are useless at the start which frustrates people.
Unless you have a team built around a necro, you hurt your team either way. If you fight, you get focused. If you cc yourself and hide, you build no life force and force your team to be undermanned at the start.
In addition, all your defenses do not scale against more than one enemy. You also have limited mobility and almost no stability.
It’s just not a friendly profession for new players. If they made you a juggernaut with full life force to offset the huge weakness without it, then maybe people would stick it out and keep playing. Currently, you have to just get an organized group and know your one role as a boon corrupter.
Relatively speaking, people really WEREN’T complaining last season about balance.
There were very few threads on OP things. Ele’s needed a slight tone down in group utility, but otherwise it was a season where almost no profession was stacked to the level of this season and the first two fails.
As usual, Anet overthinks things and just when they had the game as balanced as reasonably possible, they go overboard buffing/nerfing. Now you have a totally corrupted season with constant games of 40-50% DHs.
Add in Druids and you get an even more ridiculous season where it’s far easier to get legend with some professions versus others.
The people in denial of the obvious just need to que 10 games and see for themselves.
Do not forget about Scrapper’s pre-game buffing, detonating two gyros, which is meta, will give the Necro(s) 11% x2 = 22% Life Force alone.
Good point, but you’re actually supporting the topic of the thread.
If the necro is balanced with zero life force at the beginning of a match, then your “exploit” is OP and should be removed. If a necro isn’t balanced unless they have 22% LF at the start of the match, then every necro team needs to have Scrapper who does this for them.
Let’s cut to the chase….The real question is what theory is Anet using to balance necros. Are they assuming Necros are balanced only with a coordinated team that can peel, rez and give life force pre-match to help them survive the initial focus zerg? Or…are they saying a necro with all that help is OP?
Are necros balanced playing solo que or must they only group to be balanced?
You can’t even play on a duel server as a necro.
Even though the game isn’t EXPLICITLY designed for duels, it highlights an obvious design problem if a certain profession is virtually extinct on those type servers.
No matter what traits, runes, sigils, etc…there is virtually nothing that prevents Necros from being the focus target…there is no opportunity to do duels…no build that is a viable bunker…no build that is better than any other profession other than boon corruption.
It’s clearly weaker than almost any other profession if you play solo. In an organized group, you can make it work with peels, rezzes, and covering other things that are weak.
Playing it solo makes it much harder than any other profession with same skill.
In the history of MMOs, no class has ever been created weaker at the start of a match than a necro.
Virtually all of their defenses, traits, etc are not usable at the start of a match. Not only that…the only defenses they have are related to being a sponge which doesn’t scale like all other defenses. They also have no mobility or stealth to even kite or escape the damage. They even nerfed the very little stability necros had once they took the time to build some life force.
If they were hell bent on keeping things this way for lore purposes, then the necro need to be able to beat more than 2-3 players easily with full life force just to compensate for being so weak without life force. However, with full life they aren’t even equal to many others.
You’re supposed to be scared of a being in melee of a Reaper, but, even with full life force, virtually no melee build is scared to go in melee range of a reaper. Those that are scared can easily kite or escape.
As a result, they created total misery for necros, especially at the start of every match. The only option is to run with an OP spec as a heal/rez bot like a scrapper to constantly keep them up. For a solo player, it’s total misery compared to playing other professions.
We probably wouldn’t run a premade-only arena at the same time as there’s not enough 5-mans actively q’ing during a season to make the queue times reasonable.
Maybe it’s just me using common sense, but doesn’t this tell you something???
It’s also funny that you used the word “arena” in your reply.
Why design a 5 man conquest type league for ranking players if you can’t get enough 5 man premades? Why not design an arena style for 2-3 man groups? Why is the number 5 sacred for conquest? Why is conquest sacred?
What more evidence is necessary for something to change? Don’t you have enough information that shows getting 5 people premades to play conquest doesn’t work???
Whoever thought mixing premades and solo players would force more people into premades didn’t think things through. It may have empirically increased the number of PuG premades, but it doesn’t improve the game. In fact, it’s made things worse because the algorithm can’t account for the large delta in quality of premades now.
Again, it just seems like common sense. You want people to play 5v5 conquest, but you have tons of evidence showing that there aren’t enough people interested in grouping with 5 others (WoW also had tons of evidence for many years you could leverage too).
Instead of fixing that aspect, you decide to mix premades with solo players. This has created misery for solo players…super easy wins for experienced/synergized profession premades on TS…and made matchmaking impossible for an algorithm to handle.
You can keep fighting logic and shuffling matchmaking algorithms from each season all you want. As we’ve see for 4 seasons now, it’s not materially improving anything.
Instead of reducing the number of cheese builds where you can insta burst ridiculous damage…they’ve only been adding to it. In fact, they seem to love insta-burst while also being immune/perma evade/or coming from stealth too.
Nothing runs off more new players than these cheese builds. Even if it’s “technically” balanced at high levels, who wants to put up with that while they are learning the game.
This DH thing is baffling because they had a whole month of seeing the impact in unranked, yet did nothing before the season started and nothing since.
The problem goes both ways.
There’s no way for their algorithm to know whether the premade is on TS, have lots of experience, and are using complementary professions/builds.
Those factors trounce any other advantage you could possible imagine, so matching premades with solo players ends up corrupting the game one way or the other.
Either the premade is just a PuG where the algorithm assumes they should be better as a group…or…the premade is a super coordinated and experienced such that ANY combination of solo players have little to no chance.
The simple solution is what they had for several years – separate ques for solo versus premades. It makes total sense because there isn’t a viable way to matchmake a premade against solo players when you don’t know many of the variables that make a premade better/worse.
Right now…it’s just a algorithm/guestimate of average premade statistics.
This means a coordinated, experienced premade with complementary builds can exploit the system to progress on the backs and misery of solo players.
If they want to make it miserable for solo players such that they all decide to go premade, fine…just admit that. IMO, it’s a losing proposition when there is a better option —- just separate the two ques LIKE WHAT’S ALREADY BEEN DONE IN THE PAST.
Some people may complain about que times, but that’s Anet’s fault for not making the game attractive to new players. There are so many cheesy builds/professions that do tons of damage while being totally immune that it runs off people FAST (i.e. Rev, Thief, DH, Mesmers)!
Nevertheless, even if you had to wait longer for a que time, isn’t it worth it to have a fair match? Doesn’t it actually take longer to have a quick que time, but suffer through a mismatch? Not to mention you que again and risk the same thing happening over and over and over???
We’ve been talking about personal score a bit. I’m personally of the opinion that it isn’t representative of a player’s effort in a given match, and it also can be incredibly misleading and potentially lead to bad gameplay habits (5-capping home).
If you were to redesign personal score, what would you do? Does it track different types of stats? Would you want your personal stats displayed to other players?
Once again, the answer to your problem is just using common sense.
Just like the obvious problem you guys just addressed with matchmaking for Season 5, the solution isn’t that tough.
You’re already tracking things like damage, boons removed from teammates, and tons of other stats where you award virtually meaningless medals at the end. Why not just incorporate those same things into the personal score???
Right now…it makes you guys look silly. You award medals at the end of matches for various statistics, but they have little impact on your score which is what’s shown to everybody throughout the match and at the end.
Make up your mind…Either those statistics are meaningless or they aren’t. If they are meaningful, then simply incorporate them into the personal score.
The more things you incorporate into the score…the less likely someone can exploit just one metric to skew things. Common sense 101
The problem (that we’re solving for S5) is that we’re currently searching for players close to your division to match you against. This means that the pool of players that we can pull from to create a match is much smaller than if we were using the entire pool of players. A player may have a high-enough MMR to put them in the top 100, but if they’re in Sapphire they’re only going to get matched with players that are in or around Sapphire. Season 5 will use the entire pool of players for creating matches – this should help the system create more balanced matches and improve queue times.
I can’t understand why it’s taken 5 seasons to understand and fix this obvious issue. Nevertheless, kudos on finally addressing a huge problem with only matching people near the same progression (which has almost nothing to do with skill).
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like you guys understand even more obvious issues that will make Season 5 only marginally better than the failures that preceded it.
The first obvious issue is matching premades with solo players. Stop pretending that an algorithm can tell…
1. If premades have optimized profession comps and complementary players builds
2. If they have TS or not,
3. If they have experience playing together
Any of those 3 factors will override the limits of what an algorithm can address, so it’s sheer folly and making you guys look foolish thinking it can.
It’s time to admit the obvious and go back to solo and team ques ASSUMING you really are interested in fair matchmaking and making the game popular/fun to play for solo players.
The second obvious problem relates to a matchmaking algorithm that pays no attention to profession/builds in a conquest only type competition. Again, it’s sheer folly that you guys pretend that an algorithm solves this problem. Your algorithm may say a matchup is “fair” based on skill, but it gets sabotaged when you divide them up into totally mismatched groups of professions/builds.
How are these things so hard to notice/fix??? They aren’t even debatable.
You guys had 3 seasons of major failures that by your own actions required “fixing”. Yet… the “fix” for Season 4 was to go back to Season 1. Wow!
Please just address the obvious and stop thinking algorithms solve your problems. Use common sense.
Every game…even in the higher ruby bracket (at present) features nothing but DHs.
There is a minimum of 3 and usually 5 per game. It’s a total cluster….
You think that’s bad? There’s a bug with Spectral Walk when you teleport to juke somebody, it actually takes your opponent with you if they are using certain abilities (i.e. Rev and Guardian).
It has a ridiculously long 50 second cooldown to use this ability and then it totally kills you and helps your opponent. Happened twice in one game with me.
If anything tells you how seriously Anet pays attention to PvP (or lack thereof), this should say it all. They didn’t even update the title.
Combined with their decision to just say “screw it” with matchmaking and go back to what they failed with in Season 1…should say it all.
Pretty lazy and lame solution. There’s a reason changes had to be made from Season 1 to Season 2.
Instead of coming up with a better solution, the answer is to go back to what has already PROVEN to be unacceptable by Anet’s own actions.
I wouldn’t be so quick to give props.
To me…it looks like they must have really bad Mesmers internally at Anet. The amount of buffs seems disproportional to what was needed by a large margin.
We shall see, but if I was projecting anything that went too far based on just a preliminary assessment, I’d go with Mesmers.
On another note, is Sigil of Air extinct now compared to Fire? They weren’t that different before and now Air got nerfed 20%, so it seems pretty weird to make that large a change in a vacuum.
Literally just happened…
Before match…guy stated he was going “left”…everybody was like “huh?”
Then…after first team fight…another guy logs off and comes back as a thief…giving us 3 thieves.
Final score was 500-22…awesome matchmaking…two of us were legend and had to play with these guys.
How is it possible for obviously new people to be matched with legend/high mmr players??? It just makes it miserable for both parties.
Lol that screenshot just proves that anyone can grind their way through leagues.
I agree. This post does the opposite of what the OP intended. If it takes you that many games to get to diamond, then you really aren’t “diamond” level in terms of skill…you just grinded it hardcore, which SHOULD be a less than optimal experience.
As bad as the matchmaking may be, the real issue here is that the OP needs to get better if he wants the progression to be “easier”.
The real problem isn’t with how hard it is to get to diamond. The real problem is how easy it is for an ele running stronghold or coordinated premades on TS to exploit the inherent flaws with matchmaking and imbalances on certain maps.
Forget about whether this is OP or not…it’s just dumb design…what sane person would design such a playstyle. Who internally tested this and said “yeah..this is good design!”
There are MUCH better ways to make thieves viable. Many new players who encounter shenanigans like this immediately think “wtf” and just quit.
There is an even bigger “exploit” this season.
They kept Stronghold as an option, without balancing ele’s group support. It’s even worse than if they had let Spirit Watch in the rotation when eles had all the orb running advantages there too.
I’m not sure who is responsible for balancing eles and the maps at Anet, but it’s been one thing after another with this particular profession for the life of the game. They were ALSO the profession that forced rules about stacking professions with Conquest mode on ALL maps too.
On top of that, a guild premade can easily win Stronghold even easier and faster than playing conquest. There’s absolutely nothing in Anet’s treasured “matchmaking algorithm” that is accounting for eles in Stronghold and a full guild premade on TS.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see these obvious things which makes it all the more head-scratching.
This map shows just how little Anet actually plays of their game or cares.
If you can’t see how OP eles are on this map after just playing a little bit, then nothing will make sense to you. How they allowed the season to start without fixing this is head-scratching.
It shouldn’t be that surprising though. For some reason, Anet has had quite a fascination with eles almost always being in the meta and/or OP. If they were out for just 1 season, they got made OP the next. Whereas Rangers, Necros, Thieves are the complete opposite.
I don’t think it’s intentional favoritism, but they clearly gave too much unique group “strengths” to the ele profession…while making them just as viable as any other class when not spec’d for group support.
You can’t have one profession so much better than the others at group support, AND give them the option to spec on the fly for non-support too and be just as viable. Plus, give them an exclusive map (used to be two maps) where they are far and away the best.
Such a head scratcher what they were thinking.
Should a good player win 50% of their games?
See the above answer but reverse the thought process.Should solo players face premades with teamspeak and optimal build/profession synergy?
Yes if there are insufficient players. No if there is. We don’t have the figures but Anet do so I’m guessing they’ve done their maths and realised that splitting the queues will probably significantly increase queue times and cause more people to leave compared to business as usual.Question for you – do you think more/new players will play GW2 if they split? or will it simply make the solo queuers happy while causing grief to players who want to queue as a team?
Personally, I’m not bothered by facing premades and to be honest, I don’t even check at the end of the game to see who’s partied together. It generally doesn’t affect the outcome because there are hardly any super coordinated teams out there. I win just as many against premades as I lose against them.
Obviously, once in a while you’ll get a blowout game and lose to a premade but that happens just as frequent as against a team of solo queuers – nothing new outside the ordinary.
Not only does it sound like you agree with Anet (although they change their mind each season), but it appears as if Tic Tac Toe would be your favorite game using that “logic”.
You claim that new/bad players will love winning 50%. Under that logic, people should love playing Tic Tac Toe for hours, and they should even have a Tic Tac Toe leaderboards, rewards, etc.
The other problem is that your post is littered with things just pulled out of your rear.
“you’ll get a blowout game and lose to a premade but that happens just as frequent as against a team of solo queuers”
You’re seriously saying that a bunch of solo players blowout opposing teams just as often as the coordinated and experienced premades?
You say you don’t even check who is premades after the match, but somehow know you win just as much as you lose against premades. You argue with yourself in the same sentence!
As for your question to me, I already gave the solution. It’s actually the solution Anet chose in the first place – separate solo and premade ques make TOTAL 100% SENSE.
The ONLY drawback is potentially longer que times, but ask yourself how much time is wasted if you play a full game blowout. How meaningful are the leaderboards if only the coordinated premades can exploit the system and reliably run together a string of victories.
Your delusional if you think being solo is the same as being in a premade with this system. The two need to be separated or else you risk alienating one or the other. THAT’s what impacts new players and makes them leave. Any new/bad players that stick around just because they win 50% of games are in the small minority – like you.
I have a perfect 50/50 win loss ratio. That’s what people are talking about when they say 50/50.
I keep talking about common sense over algorithms in this thread, but maybe it’s simpler to just ask common sense questions…
Should a bad player win 50% of their games?
Should a good player lose 50% of their games?
Should solo players face premades with teamspeak and optimal build/profession synergy?
If you agree with Anet on these questions, than this season makes perfect sense to you.
If you have common sense and logic, you realize it’s sheer folly.
Instead of worrying about getting players within “15 pips” of each other – which is almost meaningless – why not try to get a fair mix of professions on each team and strictly put premades against premades. No solo’s mixed in.
Despite your precious “+/- 15 pip” range, there are tons of blowouts. Why would that be???
It’s usually because of 2 factors.
1. There was an experienced premade on one team and an inexperienced or no premade on the other. NOTHING is more influential to success than a coordinated premade. Just watch the pros play. There’s no way to know which premade is experienced or no. Thus, it’s best to keep them in their own que so that at least people know what to expect and suffer the consequences if your team is not on teamspeak/experienced. Now, it’s just forcing misery on to non-premades and allowing organized groups to exploit Anet’s matchmaking.
2. Factor in professions when forming “fair” teams. Necros are absolute garbage at the beginning of a match. Even the very best teams can barely keep one up at the start (just watch the recent pro league). Thus, if you put 3 Necros or 3 Thieves on one team, you are totally sabotaging whatever minor benefit you gained by ensuring all the players are within 15 pips.
I’m actually surprised to have to even say these obvious things, but the Anet’s obsession with algorithms over common sense is why they constantly have to change the formulas each season.
I think its you who doesn’t understand. What is a premade? Is two people together a premade? Is three?
I would be hard pressed to think of a competitive game that doesnt have duo, trio and solo all mixed together. These forums love to blame premades for their losses even when it has nothing to do with it.
Please tell me what can influence a game more than a coordinated team…with experience playing together…synergized builds…and teamspeak???
Since you appear to be a little slow in understanding, I’ll give you what’s NOT the answer…A formula.
Why? Because it’s impossible to know ahead of time if the premade is on teamspeak and/or experienced. Thus, any “formula” you use has to account for full premades of totally bad players, not synergized, and not on teamspeak too.
The only way to make a fair game against coordinated team on teamspeak with experience and synergized profession comps/builds is to put them up against OTHER premades with the same advantages.
This is what the former team que versus solo que did MUCH better.
Casual and unsophisticated premades were in that que too, but they didn’t succeed – as it should be compared to experienced premades. However, at least they didn’t let the full premade coordinated teams exploit the solo players like can be easily done now.
They had to earn it against other people who KNEW they should bring a coordinated team into that que or accept the consequences. Right now, everyone is forced into one que under a matchmaking algorithm they’ve already had to change 3 times now. Doesn’t that say it all?
Anet got too obsessed with statistics and forgot about common sense.
Every season, they play with the formula and think that’s going to solve the problem.
The problem is right in front of their face…You can’t reliably mix solo players with premades. Period…End of story!
The only way it would be possible is to KNOW things that are impossible to know (i.e. do they have teamspeak, experience working together, synergized builds, practiced strategies, etc).
Some premades are a joke and can get steam-rolled by a bunch of quality solo quers.
Some premades are gaming the system. They know that the only way to reliably string together wins is get a coordinated team and farm the fact that the game will match them against less coordinated solo players.
Let me make this as perfectly clear since common sense seems to have escaped Anet…An experienced, coordinated, full-premade communicating with voice chat trumps ANY formula you can concoct….especially when your formula ALSO has to account for a full premade that DOESN’T have experience, coordination, and voice chat.
Why is this so hard to understand and admit??? You can’t solve this by changing formulas every season.
Right now the necro GS is wasted programming.
The fact that several patches have come since it’s introduction and NOTHING has been done to fix the GS tells you Anet either sees it as fine or doesn’t want to do anything about it.
Don’t hold your breath…Look how long Necro Axe was worthless with little to no changes for many years that made any difference. I would expect the same with the GS.
Even before it’s release, people in beta told them how clunky it was and how GS5 had so many flaws. It was obvious after just a few hours playing, but they rolled with it as-is anyway.
It’s a shame to waste that programming because the graphics and theme side of it were worthwhile.
Forget about whether it’s technically balanced or OP for a moment…isn’t it just ridiculous game design either way.
It’s a classic case of designers going way too far with adhering to profession/class themes versus realizing how absurd something is to actually play.
If THAT’S truly what’s necessary to make thieves balanced, then it evidences how many mistakes were made in other areas.
When you say “outlier” skills, it typically means OVER-performing things. However, things can be outliers in UNDER-performing ways too (i.e. spirit builds for rangers, corruption or minion builds for necros, banner warriors, etc.)
Are both types of “outliers” being addressed or just the over-performing ones?
Frankly, several professions have lots of wasted programming because several specs are under-performing more than one aspect grossly over-performing. Regardless…If you just fix one without the other, you could create more problems than you solve and create another merry-go-round situation.
This is a very primitive rebuttal by Countless. IMO, both Anet and Countless are wrong. One thinks it’s important to consider everything and the other thinks it’s impossible, but they are both exaggerating.
Each profession is given tons of different options in terms of traits/gear/weapons/amulets/runes/etc. They are also given options in all three game modes for who they team up with and how those people spec too. There is very little crossover in builds unless you don’t care about optimizing your performance.
Even in hotjoin, you will see only a few builds suitable for PvP…same is true for PvE…so they’ve already created ‘defacto’ balance by making certain skills/traits/etc totally irrelevant in certain game modes.
Despite the exaggerations by both parties, you can absolutely make changes strictly for PvP since some traits/gear are 100% obvious not meant for things like PvE. Plus, they’ve already made hard code changes to separate game modes when a big problem exist. Thus, Anet requesting people to worry about other game modes when proposing changes is sheer folly and unnecessary.
Looking at Countless argument, he seems to equally think the 3 are interlinked by implying that any “filtering” will corrupt a suggestion. It’s just not true and/or not un-fixable if a major problem exists. Few people are going to make a PvP suggestion that materially impacts PvE, so filtering it through a PvE lens won’t be poor result that Countless implies.
They did nothing to make minion viable in PvP.
They did nothing to make corruption viable in PvP.
They did nothing to help with mobility in PvP and cut stability in RS by almost half. (This was just as big a nerf as the gutting of chill damage/duration).
A power build brings no boon corruption nor any other team utility worth taking over other professions.
Assuming equal skill, what advantages would there be to bringing a Necro over other professions? Maybe 1 build in niche scenarios against certain comps makes sense…that’s it.
At least you are asking for help. Many new people just quit the game after encountering some of the cheezy stuff Anet hasn’t fixed yet.
There are also certain cheeze builds by Revs, Thieves, and Mez where the damage is insane, and they still have mobility on top of being ‘un-hittable’ for large % of time. These things can be dealt with better as you gain more experience, but it can be REALLY frustrating for new players.
With Mez it’s even more frustrating because on top of all of that they can Moa and make you lose control of your character for a ridiculous amount of time.
Your best bet is to spec/equip for anti-condis and play a Necro. Even then you need to time your xfer perfectly and will need to practice a lot in duels.
Most professions are at a weakness right now because none were given the same tools as a Mez – tons of stealth, high damage AI, great mobility, low cooldown utilities, lots of blocks/invuln, longest CC, and both burst/condi damage. You won’t get an answer in a forum on how to deal with all that. You just need to practice.
This game would be so much more popular if they would get rid of the cheeze that runs new people off.
Something will definitely be done about the Mesmer cheeze before the season starts. There’s no way all those nerfs to other professions make sense without also doing something about Mesmers.
It’s puzzling how they could do all the things they did to other professions, yet do nothing to the obvious problems with Mesmers.
I solo que’d all the way to legendary and maybe lost 10 games total. It got a little tougher in diamond, and I noticed I had to play at my very best to win the games. Some games I had to carry the team or make a clutch play to win…and that’s how it should be to get to legendary.
If it were super easy and everybody could do it, then nobody would care about earning the title.
All-in-all, it’s still not too difficult to get legendary if you put in the time and play well, so there’s really nobody to blame but yourself.
Here is a clear case of Anet over-thinking things that are obvious.
If they can’t even see the logic of putting a brand new player BELOW the average MMR, then I’m not sure why I’m commenting…it’s probably pointless to use common sense and rational thought processes in this discussion.
Almost NOBODY new to PvP will be even an average player. Not only do they have to learn their character’s abilities and synergies…they have to learn all the strategies related to capture the flag and the different maps.
If this were a simple game like Checkers, then MAYBE you could get away with that lazy argument of new players being average. Otherwise…To say that new players “belong” in the average pool is just insulting your own game’s complexity and/or embarrassing the logic of your decisions.
Forget about logic…from a financial standpoint, what is more likely to make someone quit the game?
a) A new player getting steam rolled and feeling useless to his team while being matched with much more experienced players who are also miserable?….or
b) An outlier new player with excellent skill still having to prove themselves with a little slower progression?
Most other games force you to level a character before even competing with experienced players in PvP. It’s great that GW2 doesn’t make you do that. However, denying that there is any learning curve justifying a lower than average MMR for new player is sheer folly.
You have to applaud Anet for taking action on this.
However, bunker mesmers and condi revenants are clearly corrupting PvP even more than an isolated issue on just one map.
Why can’t those things be addressed instead of waiting until the season is over. Is there any doubt about bunker mesmers? Why make people suffer through an entire season and have corrupted results when obvious tweaks can be made right now???
The problem is that you can solo que…get matched up against a 4 man guild premade on TS…lose the match…AND…lose a pip.
That’s just ridiculous and will not sustain a viable PvP playerbase. Nobody is going to put up with that and keep playing for very long.
For over a year people played with weird MMR match making. They still played.
For over a year soloQ people we’re put against premades..they still play.
For over a year highly casual players have had hotjoin exploited and side swapped to death…they still play.
Since the beginning the rewards in PvP have been terrible..they still play.
Since the beginning the buff/nerf train has frustrated players..they still play.Gw2 seems to have a unique client base. They get a product which contradicts official statements by the company, they play it..they complain about it..yet here they still are. heck the company even has 200k to throw at a tournament.
Using your warped logic, people still play MMOs like Rift or Swotr, so I guess things don’t matter because a small percentage “still play” (using your words).
This game has the best combat mechanics which makes it an even greater shame that it’s underperformed in terms of popularity. It should be the #1 MMO for PvP if that was ever handled properly. However, years of slow balancing, no worthwhile rewards, and meaningless leaderboards has sabotaged the popularity of the game.
At this point, I’m probably talking over your head because you don’t see those things as a problem worth fixing.
According to your logic, as long as “people still play”, you think the game has reached the pinnacle popularity.
The problem is that you can solo que…get matched up against a 4 man guild premade on TS…lose the match…AND…lose a pip.
That’s just ridiculous and will not sustain a viable PvP playerbase. Nobody is going to put up with that and keep playing for very long.
For some reason, they didn’t reset MMR, but reset everybody to the same tier – Amber.
That’s just crazy!
It penalizes good players and guarantees exploits we already see with 4 man premade with 1 scrub/pug.
I don’t understand Anet’s obsession with having meaningless leaderboards for virtually the entire life of the game. It’s a complete joke.
Quitting game will only change dev’s mind, I believe.
This is why you have to have another back-up MMO to simply ditch the game when you feel awful for any recent stupid update. And return back when it give you rational reason to play.
What you literally have to do is ditching the game but only complain in this forum until they do something lol
I think Anet WANTS to do the right thing, but as we saw just a few months ago…there are clear bugs in matchmaking that they haven’t discovered internally for some reason.
They also made a really bad decision removing solo que. You can’t properly balance solo versus premade players when the MOST influential factor – whether the premade has teamspeak – is untrackable by the matchmaking.
They should have kept solo que if FAIRNESS was a priority. However, I think someone internally convinced them that an “algorithm” could solve the problems with too few people playing PvP to allow for both solo and team ques.
The real solution would have been to balance the game more often in PvP, so that players knew it was a priority and properly supported. Then it would have become popular enough to support solo and team que.
I had a match yesterday against an Apex Prime premade, and we were all solo que’rs.
Why does Anet even say they have “matchmaking” if this is possible?
Forget about the vastly different MMR…how can a 4-5 man premade with TS be matched with a bunch of solo-quers???
Matchmaking is either broke or severely flawed in design if this type of match is possible.
The game lasted just a couple minutes and was pointless for both sides. Mind you…it was during primetime when everybody is queing so there wasn’t a long wait or lack of players.
What properly designed system would create this match? Is there any player that would enjoy this match versus waiting a little longer in que for matchmaking?
Once they get rid of the cheese that’s running off new players…like DHs…I predict that Tempest will actually get the most “attention” among players at the highest skill cap.
People are just now realizing how powerful a Tempest can be in the right hands with the right build. There are really no counters to auras and you can even use glass cannon builds that have tons of survivability if you pick traits/runes/sigils properly.
Hint…Rune of Surging and other things that give boon duration/auras will be much like might stacking celes in reverse. Auras will allow you to go mostly glass cannon build, and still have tons of uptime on shocking aura and other defensive boons. It will get the ire of players in due course. Almost unbeatable in 1v1 sustain scenarios and very powerful in point defense, tons of mobility, and group healing/boons too.
It will take awhile though before it trickles down to the masses and most aren’t good enough to utilize Tempest to its potential, so who knows when this prediction will come true…but I guarantee an ele will still be on the top tier teams.
Why don’t you just pay for it if you think it will suddenly give you the skill to win???
Stop being cheap. Either buy the expansion to get new things or stop playing/whining.
I personally do best on the non-elite specs, but it doesn’t matter. Some people just want an excuse to whine, complain, make excuses for not being good.
Take videos of your PvP matches and count how many times GS5 actually works or helps you. It’s a waste of programming and kills the weapon for PvP.
I made the suggestion in Beta that since the programming was challenging per Anet, they should just make it a root with swiftness instead.
This would have made the GS PvP viable because you could use the immobilize similar to the dagger and also have swiftness like with the WH offhand. The tradeoff is that you would be blowing a cooldown if you used GS5 when just 1 of the 2 things were necessary. Thus, dagger/wh would still be viable too. It would come down to playstyle and strategy versus bad programming.
Couple of ironic things…
1. The guardians saying that it’s a bad spec that dies easily are the sames ones playing DH.
2. I would agree that DH can be dealt with in a duel situation once you know you what you are facing, but the problem lies in synergy with another DH or lockdown class that makes the damage unavoidable. Plus, the point capture nature of PvP is also something that makes AOE type damage something that can’t be too big or else it becomes way too OP.
You are starting to see tons of double DHs teaming up and instantly gibbing people in everything from hotjoins, to WvW and sPvP to exploit the synergy.
They nerfed Blighter’s Boon immediately due to even less oppressive synergy with Herald, so I would expect a similar nerf soon.
Overall though, I wouldn’t get on Anet too much about it, since it’s still early after release and synergy exploits are understandably something that could have been missed. I’m fairly confident they will address this soon because it’s fairly obvious to everyone at this point.
Cooldowns probably need a much needed look because you can’t allow almost 100% lockdown/deaths to happen very often if you want people (especially new players) to keep playing.
It’s pretty weird that they would nerf a GM trait because it was OP when teamed with another player spamming boons.
If that’s the case, then we are going to see LOTS more nerfs incoming because you can take 2 professions and build tons of OP synergies if you really want to.
What’s pretty ironic is that they see a Necro in RS for a really long time due to a team mate’s specific profession/build, but they fail to look at the total picture. If this team mate is acting more as a buff bot, it’s also sacrificing in other areas to make the Necro super strong. It’s actually a big nerf to them and their spec choice too!
Also, do they look at how long other classes can survive being hit by many targets via invuln, evades, block, immunities AND the ability to escape via stealth/ports/blinks/etc. Heck, a mesmer can do all those things WITHOUT help from a buff bot AND they are the only profession that also has AI on top of those things and can do tons of damage while totally stealthed/invuln.
Now mesmers have AOE, on top of AI, stealth, 100% scaling defenses like invuln/evades. What if you pair a lockdown profession/build with their wells and survivability too. Is that going to get nerfed?
That’s just one example…Combine a lockdown team mate with a DH and their traps…Is that going to get nerfed too?
If a reaper with a buff bot teammate is OP, then expect to see many more synergy nerfs in the near future…assuming Anet is being consistent…
This is a bug with the new runes.
The Necro trait Blood Bond does not proc when you reach 4 bleeds on a target if 2 of those bleeds came from the Rune of Evasion.
You probably need to check other Runes too and see if they are properly proc’ing traits.