The announcement by Mike O which concludes that Legendary Armor might make it by Living Story 5 has me very distressed honestly.
Now I definitely want the raid wing to come out before the Armor is ready, have one of the gift requirements disabled.
K thanks.
In EU this system isnt even necessary because most everybody always plays their hardest and almost nobody ever tries to game the system/Leaderboards.
It’s always wise never to speak in absolutes on things like this. NA does definitely have the worse issues with this, so addressing it now stops it from happening down the road.
It also discourages playing on alt accounts, to the point where it would be unfavorable to your overall attempts to secure the highest rating.
Either way, this was a good decision.
Content is something that you can play. You can’t “play” armor sets. They are almost universally released with content that allows you to obtain them, but the sets themselves are not, and never will be, content in and of themselves.
I mean it’s fine that you make up your own definitions for words, but I’m not sure why you seem to think you have the authority to dictate them to other people.
Content – “the things that are held or included in something”.
It would seem to me this includes armor skins and all kinds of other things. Now, can we quit this silly semantic exercise and get back to real substantive conversation?
I am almost certain the discussion about what dictates Content could take a few dozen pages, but let’s not bog down this thread with it.
How about this, I am almost certain they are waiting for both the final Raid Wing and Legendary Armor to be done together so they can merge them. For raiders here, although Legendary Armor is an excellent driver behind raiding would it have been a better idea if A-Net had released the Raid Wing with say the Precursor Armor available but you couldn’t craft the Legendary Armor as they disabled a key component UNTIL the Legendary Armor was actually finished?
Aka, give us the Raid Wing early and release the Armor a bit later?
Just to be clear, I am not saying we can live without another raid wing for a while, we still need content.
Personally, the more raids they add the more time we as raiders will spend getting our clears for the week in. I can always sell the infusions from Forsaken Thicket in the TP for a lot of gold which is a great source of income.
IMO, for solo queuers only, I recommend Mesmer, Warrior and Engineer. I find these professions have a bit more impact and are fairly flexible on any team comp.
If you duo queue, play decent combos which is literally any mix (even Rev) and do your thing.
But what should we do in situations when one (so called “carry”) is tanking 2 or 3 enemy players, and the rest of the team still manages to die and not take a single cap?
Well at that point lose the game, queue up and win the next one?
Let’s be honest, if you can consistently create advantages for your team because you are a player better than the rank you are currently at, you will start rising in rating. You will start having slightly more competent teammates than the previous rank, and if you rinse and repeat, your teammates are more likely to capitalize on you being a baws at far holding down the support and Necro (somehow).
I do expect that in bronze you will have teammates more susceptible to losing a 4v3 at mid or some other matchup, but not every single game in bronze is like that. Simple math really, 4 bronzes beat 3 bronzes.
The idea of “elo hell” applies when: player of skill level that could be (for example) Bronze or Silver finds it impossible to climb out of Bronze.
Wrong.
Has this been what was being explained the whole time? No no no no NO! Holy crap people we need to fix this.
Elo Hell is NOT applied when a bronze/silver player is having issues getting out of bronze. Because if he’s bronze he’s reached his current peak and thus in order to get out of bronze, needs to start playing at a Silver or higher level. If he’s silver, he’s going to spend more time given the ratings are similar.
Elo Hell, a hilarious term that came from as far as I know League of Legends, describes the scenario where an extremely good player (say Plat or Legend) is unable to climb out of a lower rating due to factors outside his/her control. League had a nature around it for ‘snowballing’ to occur rapidly, or the expectation of the good player of his teammates was way off causing a loss.
We thankfully do not have that issue. Legend players are not being trapped down in Silver for dozens of games. That would have been what Elo Hell would have meant here. The fact that Helseth was able to get out of Bronze is testament to this case.
Describing Elo Hell as anything else is inappropriate. If you want to say that the system not allowing a bronze player to leave bronze is not good, I will disagree ultimately with that.
Well you see “RNG Blessed me” is very misleading. Have you ever though that you might have played better (did the right things, rotated better) on the games you won? (Not discrediting you for having better teammates) Again, without proper documentation through videos, this will be very hard to prove.
I play good in nearly all my matches.
Nope, gonna stop you right there. The moment where you assume you played good in a loss is the moment you won’t improve any longer. Even Helseth on stream will reflect at the end of a game on where he messed up especially during a loss.
Nobody plays perfectly every game, there’s something somewhere that you can improve upon. And when you find the personal issues and fix them, you become a better player, you raise your chances of winning more games, and get into higher and higher ratings.
It’s much easier to improve if you start laying out where you messed up every game. I am willing to bet you’ve made more mistakes than you realize, something as simple as a mistaken rotation you thought was a good idea which seemed like it turned the game around might have been your teammates carrying you instead.
Helseth did not prove Elo Hell can be beaten. He proved that ESL players can beat it.
Helseth did not prove that Elo Hell can be beaten. He proved that Elo Hell can be beaten.
K.
I have to say, the logical leaps and disconnects some of these players make is Legendary Tier. Too bad that level of skill doesn’t carry in-game.
I think you guys threw out your insults too quick but then again I may be wrong when I say you misconstrued what was said.
Helseth didn’t prove that Elo hell can be beaten (for every day players), he proved that he can beat it (at an ESL level of play). I think that’s what was said. Not what you guys said. I could be wrong though.
Again, I consider myself an everyday player before, (almost 7k games now) and clearly this ELO hell can be beaten with casual players such as myself, especially if you duo Q.
I’ve personally addressed the duo-queue with a separate discussion/thread of mine, but beyond that I sincerely mean what I said. Despite the rare and noticed MM issues that the devs are working on for Season 6, which are a very low % of games, MM right now is affixing the appropriate rating and it is very accurate.
I do not know the extent of which players will accept that they might not be as good as they think they are, compared to what evidence needs to come out suggesting it to be the case. But, from what I have gathered about Matchmaking in general this season after an appropriate amount of games, I can definitely say the ratings are fairly accurate. I don’t gloat from a standpoint of a Legendary player, I am not that good, but as someone who made a stupid mistake one day losing a lot of rating and thus spent time getting that rating back to get back to my proper rating.
Ultimately, I am sick and tired of these players not realizing the reality of their position, making attempts to improve, and eventually coming forth with this knowledge. Despite the low population, Matchmaking in normal instances is making fair matches that you are responsible for. No one wins every match.
Let D/D thief do the decap into a cap. Go 5v4 elsewhere and win the fights, sending 2 back to fight the thief if he/she is lingering.
The key is that D/D is absolutely atrocious for teamfights, their evade spam can be interrupted so much by multiple opponents. Their sole purpose in life is ‘breaking’ the meta of letting the usual “1v1 professions” who also can do their weight in teamfights, lose that 1v1 always.
The moment you +1 a D/D, they are toast essentially. And they should be only +1ed when it is safe for your other points to do so.
Helseth did not prove Elo Hell can be beaten. He proved that ESL players can beat it.
Helseth did not prove that Elo Hell can be beaten. He proved that Elo Hell can be beaten.
K.
I have to say, the logical leaps and disconnects some of these players make is Legendary Tier. Too bad that level of skill doesn’t carry in-game.
I’m guessing that it’s taking forever because they are afraid that when they do release it alot of raiders will just stop raiding because they have their armor and don’t really care about the rest.
They should have given a preview of other classes by now and at least a recipe to make the precursors for other tiers.
“We remain hard at work, and release is still some months off.
We know you’ll have a lot more questions about legendary armor, but we’ll save those for closer to launch. For now, enjoy this sneak peek, and we’ll keep you updated as work progresses on the other sets." Paul, Oct 20, 2016
It’s been some months off.. how about an update please?
As a raider, I believe Forsaken Thicket won’t be so easily left behind, partially because I can do it weekly for shards to purchase the Ghostly Infusion which at this point is highly sought out and provides an alternative to doing Fractals. Plus I’ve still not gotten all the unique skins from there.
…Plus we just like doing the raid, it’s engaging. I return back to normal Heart of Thorns and I do remember back in the day those maps were rather difficult, now I feel extremely competent so much that they feel a bit weak now.
I really, really do think we are due for a Preview of something though, let’s hope for this coming Tuesday with some form of announcement.
My prediction? February 7th is when a really major patch hits.
There are a few Matchmaking issues that the Devs are aware of and are responding to, hopefully by next season.
However, for the vast majority of matchmaking, the preface that the system will help push players to their proper rating over matches (however long or short) is working. I expect S6 to be slightly better without that oversight of a ‘Substitution MM’ issue.
I wouldn’t mind if the next series of Raids had a different reward than more Legendary Armor. We can place Legendary Armor acquisition in a different area (*Cough*WvW*Cough*).
I think it’s extremely good that there’s already unique skins behind Raids only, such as White Mantle Weaponry. Not every raid needs to have a Legendary tied to it until we have Legendary items in general available in multiple areas. Skins should remain unique to content, as to preserve the horizontal progression this game is working on.
The raid will likely loosely tie into the background of the main story. If we aren’t up to that point yet, then it will cause unnecessary spoilers. I suspect that would be a more likely reason as to why the raid wing isn’t out yet (assuming it is actually finished ofc)
I expect an off-connection at the very most. I am agreeing with the folks here that they are likely trying to tie up Legendary Armor and the new Raid together in a nice package.
I did not expect the Lunar Festival to come so quickly however, my anticipated dates for when Arenanet makes patches are sort of in a confusion now.
Maybe they need 3 more weeks rather than next week to release the next Living Story. We are probably going to get another fractal too with that release.
If they time a Living Story, Fractal, Raid Wing, Legendary Armor AND a Legendary Weapon which they seem to do on a per LS basis in a single patch, that’s pretty big.
Can confirm Spirit of Nature can be used as a massive safety net in W2.
I wouldn’t say the skill ceiling for Warrior is low, it’s around average as the Warriors who play the best can’t afford any mistakes ever. Using stances at a bad time, missing too many bursts, and so forth are things a Warrior can easily do and will cost him the game.
They have a lot in so few buttons, and since so much is put into a few keys they have to have the insight to know the best times to use said skills. Whereas something like Scrapper has a lot of tools across a lot of skills, they can mix and match a bit and are allowed to make a mistake here and there because they have a backup.
You could nerf the range of Arc Divider from 450 to 360.
That’s pretty much it for bringing Warriors back a bit, hitting their sustain makes them irrelevant again.
It’s pretty technical to go after Longbow condi-clear, however overall the condition berserker is bulkier and less damaging imo than the Power Variant. I think it’s perfectly OK for the Warrior to be one of the best 1v1 professions, as neither build excels too well at Support or Mobility (Power has an edge in that catagory slightly with GS).
Furthermore, this meta is a particular one, there’s a lot of ‘paper, rock scissors’ involved, we aren’t seeing these daily ‘This Profession is OP’ threads for nothing, it is a direct result of compositions being outclassed by the other side. While we need to continue to look for toxic unfun builds to discourage (D/D Thief) and encourage skillful play instead, I believe we might have a better time working on Matchmaking to filter not just on skill, but professions as well to make balanced comps.
First, gratz on the Sloth kill! As you mentioned, once the first kill happens the fight does become easier as everyone ‘knows what worked’ and thus kills the boss with less mistakes.
That in mind, going through your self-analysis I hope I might be able to interject some more assistance to help smooth out your sloth kills for better progression to Trio and obvious Matthias (He will be a treat for you guys).
So, you seem to have found a fairly decent way with handling Epis and slublings, communicating with your friendly slubling on waiting to eat until after epis are called is a good method, but training your necros on increased awareness around when and where the mushroom is spawning is probably the easiest method, if you can get your necros doing epidemics without callouts and avoiding your friendly slubling that mechanic is cake.
You are correct that Condi PS is terrific for the encounter, but a word of advice, the Warrior needs to be careful about where his firefields are being placed. It’s very easy to lay fields down on the path where your next slubling is going, and it will hurt a bit, not necessarily kill but it’s avoidable damage. It’s all about the angles honestly.
Poison is a particularly nasty mechanic, you can use dodge rolls to ‘evade’ the green goo ticks per second but if possible make sure the healer is alert and heals AFTER the drop, for a brief few seconds said poison person would be double dipping.
Warrior Defiant Stance is a safe method, eventually when your warriors get more confident, have them run the Berserker Heal for more Bursts and DPS. Furthermore if they drop a Longbow Berserk Burst before heading out, popping that heal sustains them in the green since it heals on damage done.
How about this one: Kralkatorrik was defeated by Destiny’s Edge because Logan decided to reject returning to Queen Jenna, Snaff/Glint are saved, but Jenna perished.
Let’s also correlate what we know about Elder Dragons thus far then, Zhaitan is still alive so I presume at some point he and the others will start producing minions with Kralkatorrik’s Magic. Plus Glint being alive and Snaff surviving means the group might still be together, though I imagine Logan would drift away in self-loathing…
Honestly though, I haven’t enough time right this second to jot down a synopsis of how things would play out for us, but I do presume we would be dealing with a much stronger set of Elder Dragons, and maybe even a ‘darker’ Logan. Hell, maybe Logan joins up with Scarlet for ‘reasons’, acting as a serious foil to her schemes. Like I said, lots of paths just from this one change.
My SPvP Balance Wish List:
- Posting something “not-constructive” to your teammates in ranked play costs you 1 rating per post.
There we go.
A different question: in what way do you believe a leaderboard for solo to be representative if you still have to rely on 4 other teammates in your matches?
Overall the leaderboards are just artificial, there is no #1 player due to all the different roles and professions you can take in this game. There will never be fairness in Solo nor duo.
The only way to get a representative leaderboard is to have a 5v5 que. But until that point it’s really nice to be able to find players, form a duo with them and start to teach yourself the basics of teamplay until you go for 5v5.the think is that you are the only constant in your solo matches, if mm works fine coff coff you get the same amount of players better than you and worse than you, and the same for rival teams and in large numbers the sistem can get an idea of your “skill”
this if system works fine, and devs dont mess with them every 3 month to adjust their last missadjusment etc etcYou skipped over the part where ‘professions and roles’ mess with a pure solo queue setup. Matchmaking cannot account for what players excel at and give them ‘balanced’ team comps. We even see this now, and it is an outstanding factor that will make solo-queue only leaderboards a pip-dream.
an you skiped the ironic of mm working fine
a part of mm working fine if have solid roles, they(anet) said no but HoT bring it, a proper mm reserve slots for them and fill these spaces with players of that role in both teams , other issue is the performance of player in a class, that can be calculated so, giving diferent rating for class, if i have x mmr and i take the desision of playing a class never played i dont have to count as a player of x skill, my skill now is much lowerthe mmr had to be some sort of your basic skill(pvp mechanics knowledge)+your class skill
It’s very clear Matchmaking is not taking roles into account whatsoever. They’ve only specifically mentioned that profession has a slight adjustment, but things like the professions which are best at support, professions that +1, bruisers, damage, etc…These are clearly not calculated. That’s what I mean when I say roles as opposed to professions, and because roles aren’t distinguished, we get the ultimate irony in that even the devs agreed: The Leaderboard doesn’t show skill in a traditional sense, only your skill in winning the game which can place an unfortunately skilled player in a bad spot on the leaderboard.
A different question: in what way do you believe a leaderboard for solo to be representative if you still have to rely on 4 other teammates in your matches?
Overall the leaderboards are just artificial, there is no #1 player due to all the different roles and professions you can take in this game. There will never be fairness in Solo nor duo.
The only way to get a representative leaderboard is to have a 5v5 que. But until that point it’s really nice to be able to find players, form a duo with them and start to teach yourself the basics of teamplay until you go for 5v5.the think is that you are the only constant in your solo matches, if mm works fine coff coff you get the same amount of players better than you and worse than you, and the same for rival teams and in large numbers the sistem can get an idea of your “skill”
this if system works fine, and devs dont mess with them every 3 month to adjust their last missadjusment etc etc
You skipped over the part where ‘professions and roles’ mess with a pure solo queue setup. Matchmaking cannot account for what players excel at and give them ‘balanced’ team comps. We even see this now, and it is an outstanding factor that will make solo-queue only leaderboards a pip-dream.
I think there’s still a bit of merit in having Duo Queues take a slightly higher risk than the Solo Queue on that leaderboard.
At the very least, as I mentioned, the solo/duo queue leaderboard shows a sort of ‘resume’ for teams, and can foster growth in that aspect through potential 5-mans starting out in Duos.
That feel when someone tells you challenging content involves purposing handicapping yourself to make the content challenging.
It came off a bit like that though, I suppose what I had an issue with was that you were ‘getting 1 shot’, blaming balance, and that alone happening in a game would cause you to rageafk the rest of the game regardless of the score.
Just curious what profession are you playing that’s getting you insta-gibbed? If I had to guess either Necro or Thief are the main suspects. There might be more factors involved.
But yea it super came out as ‘kitten I just got one-shot at the start of the game, you all are bad I’m out afk’.
I literally spend most of my games afk with my team QQ’ing about reporting me etc. Maybe if you did something about balancing PvP in general and fixed the match making, I’d be more interested in playing properly! Until such a time, afk ftw! \o/
Man Anet cannot get around to SPvP Ranked Suspensions soon enough.
If gw2 PvP wants to attract and keep new players or just have any kind of relevance, they need to get down and dirty. There can be no shortcuts.
You say this, but then almost flawlessly use:
Lack of population is not a good enough reason not to fix problems.
As a point. You do understand that as less players play a game-mode like SPvP, the queue times get longer, players get frustrated and have less fun, thus leave and circle ensues.
I can’t understand why you think we should decimate SPvP in it’s already low population attempting to support SoloQ which can never be fairly balanced on a leaderboard scale, and Team Queue which requires players on an individual level to group up with other individuals in Unranked or Quickplay rather than taking incremental steps with Duo Queue as a first step.
Solo queue had balanced matches. That alone is reason enough.
Solo Queue has never had balanced matches, if you wanted to make balanced matches you would have to go steps further than just removing duo-queue and forcing everyone to play everyone else in the game on the same exact profession. OR you would force queuers to play certain professions based on a role they select upon queuing so as to artifically force balanced compositions, and not the triple thief double engineer combinations we see on a single side.
That’s the extent you would have to go in order to get close to balancing out a solo queue only leaderboard, and I don’t want to pretend that’s the intent of a game-mode that focuses on making teams and doing premade 5v5s for E-SPARTS where every commercial is a kitten Graphics Card one.
Please don’t.
If DH gets nerfed, said FOTM (Flavor of the Month) players would shift to Warrior. Actually some of them have…
If gw2 PvP wants to attract and keep new players or just have any kind of relevance, they need to get down and dirty. There can be no shortcuts.
You say this, but then almost flawlessly use:
Lack of population is not a good enough reason not to fix problems.
As a point. You do understand that as less players play a game-mode like SPvP, the queue times get longer, players get frustrated and have less fun, thus leave and circle ensues.
I can’t understand why you think we should decimate SPvP in it’s already low population attempting to support SoloQ which can never be fairly balanced on a leaderboard scale, and Team Queue which requires players on an individual level to group up with other individuals in Unranked or Quickplay rather than taking incremental steps with Duo Queue as a first step.
I used to be in the camp that thought the possibility of raids getting an easier mode was good. But after actually raiding, and getting kills (with less than a few hrs of work for a first time training session).
I don’t think raids need a story mode or easier difficulty. They are in the sweet spot atm, and lowering the difficulty would neuter the encounters given how easy they are with just a little practice.
Half of the T4 bosses are more dangerous (in pug group) than VG, Gorseval, and Escort/Trio. And that’s saying something.
Especially one you consider thai t4 NM fractal is longer than most single boss raids. If you can’t focus for 7 mins to get your first kill, then the issue, is not with the encounter.
Frost you can’t say those things! Makes you elitist, clearly you don’t understand how difficult the encounters are, you aren’t like the rest of players now! /s
1/we will not see team q in a long time because low population and adding more qs will substract population from others qs not only for “not having teams”
2/“less intrusive” but intrusive, if anet wants to make a pseudocompetive ranking system there will be no intrusions or dont try to make this pseudocompetitive leagues with individual ranking
1) I’m not adding queues, Solo/Duo stay merged until there is enough ‘Teams’ out there. Right now Team Queue doesn’t exist because of the low pop, starting from Solo/Duo ladder will only serve to attract more players to the mode provided they continue to improve the system as it is.
2) News Flash, even if it was Solo-only, the ranking system wouldn’t be balanced strictly because as someone mentioned, professions and role true balance aren’t a thing and Matchmaking can’t get down to the level that corresponds to whether a player is the best. Example, how do you decide the world’s best Warrior or the world’s best Thief are better than one another? Two utterly different roles, yet somehow the Solo Queue metric has to make one of them better than the other.
I’m going to make this statement real clear, not matter what the outcome whether Solo/Duo Queue stays or goes Solo Queue, that leaderboard has less bearing than the Team Queue Leaderboard just because the game is built around 5v5.
I’m looking for Solo/Duo to stick around as is, to become the foundation for building Teams in a Team-Based Conquest which in the future carries the real Leaderboard. All the current leaderboard shows is the players who most excel at winning games with other randoms, who may or may not be partied with only 1 other person. That is all.
That doesn’t mean that the solo/duo queue leaderboard is pointless, being in the top 250 of that leaderboard shows prowess in the gamemode given varied factors and makes you a quality choice for a pick on a team. But solo/duo queue, either or, will never be representative of how you win in a team setting, only an individualistic.
My examination is therefore looking to make the Solo/Duo Queue Leaderboard more concrete for players, whether they solo or duo, make their way to the top and find other players to actually make teams with.
duoQ needs to go and have pure soloQ only. also anet need to make seperate leaderboard for the 5 man teamQ. they have done it with the guild leaderboard but sadly in NA. ESL players abused it.
absolute +1 to this, this game format may only work on pure randoms or pure teams puting hybrids (duo trio quad) only hurts system and “competition”
Duo is the least intrusive, and can only help create a road for team queue to develop.
We don’t have a team queue because there aren’t enough teams.
And let’s not even pretend that ESL players who “abuse” duo-queue suddenly won’t be at the top of the leaderboards in solo-only. Joe-McNoRotation in Gold suddenly won’t become top 250 if it was solo-only. Removing Duo-Queue effectively ensures we won’t see Team Queue come back in a very long time given the bigger walls it forces on solo queuers in finding other players.
Depends. If you want actual in game competition with a meaningful leaderboard then it must be solo queue only. With duo queue there is little point in the leaderboard or rating system as it doesnt really reflect skill.
If duo queue stays then they should get rid of this rating system because it is worthless.
I want you to explain very clearly how Duo Queue suddenly invalidates the rating system we have. I’m fairly certain those on the Leaderboard are night and day above those who aren’t. The only thing that’s troubling about the Duo Queue is that there’s no downside to it as of yet, if Duo Queues were given an appropriate handicap such as facing higher rated opponents or earning less rating for wins and losing more rating for losses, things look far nicer.
Otherwise, I don’t want to speak on profession balance here, nor do I want to go specifically too far into Team Queue discussion but allude to it from a solo/duo queue perspective.
This post is already pretty ranting, so I’ll make my next point fast. Under the understanding that Duo Queue is a necessary evil to SPvP being healthy, we can always adjust how Duo Queues are treated so that there are slight disadvantages when you decide to trust your teammate.
Right now I am very positive there’s no difference between how a duo-queue gets treated versus a solo queue gets treated in how Rating is lost/gained.
That’s not really a good idea, and it promotes what we are seeing this season across all time-zones a duo-queue mentality to get to the top. There’s a very simple fix for this that was implemented back in another well-known MOBA a long time ago that I believe can address this.
For Season 6, create an artificial inflation of the duo-queue’s average Rating together AFTER the match’s conclusion. This might be a bit difficult to explain but let’s say we got a duo queue from a 1900 and a 2000. Between the both of them, they average 1950. Matchmaking gives them a game based upon their ratings, whatever.
Here’s where it gets interesting, Win or Lose, they both get treated as an inflated rating, so for a number let’s say they are inflated by 100. JUST for the duo queuers, they have 2050 rating, and presuming the game balanced them properly, winning the game earns them less than normal while losing the game hurts their rating badly.
That’s one way to challenge duo-queuers, another method would be inflating their rating BEFORE the game so they end up facing much higher ranked players. See if their teamwork outclasses more skillful competition. That’s another possibility we can go with.
Regardless, I agree right now that duo-queues are strong. But if you want SPvP to actually become something in the future, and have Team Queue return, we need Duo-Queue to help facilitate the potential of future teams being created.
We don’t need a bunch of ranked solo queuers trying to form teams with 4 others and creating a volatile SPvP team environment that will likely fail in the end. We can always address the Duo-Queue Advantages with rating disadvantages.
Thank you.
I feel like I am going to be decimated by the incoming comments already, but I implore you to hear me out beforehand.
We are close to a month into the first season of this new PvP system, and I think it’s fair to say that the majority of players have dozens of games under their belt and thus have at one time or another seen duo queues in action or have participated in them. For better or worse, the ratings have stabilized more or less and now we are in the middle of the season where players are ripping into each other trying to perform better and get higher. Cool, but outside the general complaints about balance or bad players ‘ruinin ma gaems’ one very fair complaint about this season is the “abuse of duo queue over solo queue”.
Specifically, I want to go over three main advantages I acknowledge about what duo queue has over solo queue. These are arguments that I believe grant an indisputable edge and should be mentioned before I make my case. So in no particular order:
- Duo Queuing enables bluntly “One less bad player” mentality, if each player in a game, ally or enemy, contributes 10% to how the game works out, playing in a duo queue means the duo queue has 20% control, the duo queue knows one of their teammates ’isn’t crappy’ or else they wouldn’t be duo queuing.
- Duo Queuing enables a communication/teamwork edge, meaning that the two players know how the other plays and very likely are in direct comms with another. As a solo queuer I’ve seen only one attempt at another teammate asking for everyone to join his TS in the pre-match, which was pretty crazy but serves to show the importance of immediately communication rather than typing. They are faster to react to developments innately.
- Duo Queuing enables the potential of flexibility, and creating a strategy/synergy based on professions and builds. Further elaborating, the duo queue has more control over the team composition, and creating a profession combination that can be devastating to their opponents. Mesmer/Thief Duo Queue? That’s simultaneous +1s on two points constantly, that’s kind of broken to think about and extremely hard to pull off in lower divisions with text. That’s just an example, there are other combos that can work.
So all these points made, you think I did a very good job of disproving my case here. But here’s the thing, and this is pretty important. Despite the advantages, the biggest reason by far for keeping duo and solo queue the same is because without duo queue, the creation of future teams through competitive aspirations becomes so much more difficult.
Hold on, you might be asking where that ties into any of the duo queue imbalances. Let me get to that in a bit, but for now think about how our ranked queue has worked in the past and currently right now. We used to have everything merged more or less, we’ve been rolling back steadily because the match quality was many times awful, and as the above points have been mentioned, anything above a solo queue gains substantial advantages. But, there’s a reason why these game-modes are in 5v5 rather than 1v1 arenas. Ultimately the intended route for an aspiring SPvP player who wants to eventually become the best is to start off in solo queue, find a good ally and queue up with them, and eventually fill out their roster steadily and play Team-Queue and get good.
Duo-Queue is the least intrusive option to ranked Solo-Queue play while creating a path for teams to be formed and go into Ranked Team Queue.
Duo-Queue players can find one other set of Duo-Queue players, plus a Solo Queue Player and make a team, the work and time to creating a team is cut in HALF compared to a Solo Queuer, finding 4 other Solo Queuers who are like-minded. Actually I would even say the success-rate for a team to be formed and compete competitively from 5 solo-queue players is far less than one using a mix. There’s a lot of gambling between training in unranked and a ranked environment, you haven’t played with your allies in team queue yet and fleshed out what strengths and weaknesses exist.
Right now, there isn’t a team queue, there aren’t enough teams yet out there to warrant the creation. In actuality I believe there aren’t enough players yet in SPvP that will allow Team Queue to come back for some time without impacting the queue times. That being said, there’s a massive merit to keeping Duo Queue and Solo Queue together, it creates a potential for teamwork and eventual Team creation. Not to mention it’s likely fun to play with a friend.
Showing everyone’s rating will be very helpful for me.
When I start playing with players who have 200 ratings less than me, then I know it’s probably time to stop playing. I don’t want to have to carry those people. It’s annoying having to add everyone in the game to check each time. And the friends/guild leaderboard doesn’t always update fast enough.
Had folks like this person in LoL way long ago, we had report options in that game that handed out suspensions after enough reports for afking for such a reason.
It’s probably better that for now rating and even badges are hidden from the match view, but I could see the implementation if SPvP grows a lot more, and hopefully some actual ranked suspensions after reporting as well.
@alemfi
Fair point, but the Mace block has an interesting interaction with the Shield Mastery where ranged projectiles get ‘reflected’ for its duration without triggering the counterblow. This changes if they do a projectile in close range, but I wanted to make this known as it is an extra flair to the skill in question. That’s why I said it could ‘block’ in melee but that was a mistaken explanation.
Basically this. Only reason mace is being used is because of the skill being complained about, the rest of the weapon is pretty lackluster.
Except the block, and the instant daze.
The only thing “lackluster” about mace is the auto.
It has a block that forcibly counters if hit in melee range, and a minor CC, which help the Warrior float around trying to get their telegraphed 300 range grinder off. If it helps, try not being in a close proximity to a Berserking Warrior, though you could work it down slowly while kiting so that while it is out-of-Berserk you have less health to blow up.
You guys are getting off topic. This thread is about warriors.
Good point!
Back on topic, Warrior Sustain is fine, the health pool and sustain make up for the lack of any tricks other professions have.
9 comments in… no white knights, wha is happeninginging!!!
Watching a thread complain about a non-issue.
“Every attack should have a chance to be dodged.” – The Thief spamming Impacting Disruption.
Well seeing how Headshot has a big Precast and Animation….
Nah, what people look for is the sound and slow-moving projectile.
I can imagine the thief rage given it is yet another tool guardians get to shut down thieves, but let’s be real, if DH weren’t around, Thief would be broken beyond belief.
And this is honestly why the ability is not broken at all. The only one it truly affects is Thief and since Guardians can basically stand afk and watch a Thief almost kill themselves while attacking them, it doesn’t really matter. Not to mention perma evade (yes I know of the vulnerable frames, still a small grap to hit in like dodging the spear and way more often), stealth (always been of the opinion, even before the game released, that stealth is a mechanic that can never be truly balanced) and insane damage (hello vault) are increably dumb too.
I believe the thief mobility between points is why it succeeds so well. DH acts as a foil and restriction of sorts to what points a thief can attack and rotate to.
This current meta we have right now is interesting as although things below a pro-level are complaining about ‘pubstomping’ professions, at the pro-level the comps are likely to shift because of the capability DH has right now. When a DH gets played, then someone will have to counter that DH presence…and so the comps shift.
Oh well, as a Warrior if I get pulled I can immediately throw up a block or pop endure pain to negate the trap stacking and find a vulnerability in the DH rotation.
We already have something related to this called a Rank 20 Restriction.
Honestly that could probably be higher, but the problem is that there isn’t enough tutorials on particular maps about rotations, how nodes behave for caps, etc.
It’s impossible to teach builds as those change constantly with every patch. I think it would be more helpful for hints to come in during the first 20 ranks like ‘All enemies spotted, use your minimap to find an available open capture point’.
love people mentioning the 0.1 sec travel time of spear, hahaha
there is no way to dodge it except on prediction
Pretty much, amid all the shenanigans you have to observe during a fight, the quarter second tether attack is literally on the average human reaction time.
So unless you are literally superhuman, you aren’t going to recognize the tether as it is getting shot, you are going to predict it instead.
I am not particularly complaining about DH though, as a Warrior I have tools to deal with them mono to mono or in a group fight. I can imagine the thief rage given it is yet another tool guardians get to shut down thieves, but let’s be real, if DH weren’t around, Thief would be broken beyond belief.
Warriors honestly have a difficult time staying alive in t4s without support healing or taking defense for Adrenal health.
Don’t listen to this person.
Really please do explain how warriors have a great time sustaining in T4 fractals without support.
Two options: don’t get hit, or play with a druid. If you want to argue that a necro is better at not getting hit because they can range DPS, so can a condi warrior and a condi warrior will bring more team buffing while doing it.
I’ve been seeing this “warriors should use Defense in fractals and raids” cancer a lot lately. It really makes me said to see that Druids have lowered the skill cap of the game so badly that when faced with playing without a druid people have to play completely trash builds to compensate for it.
Somehow we managed to do original fractal 80s back when everything one shot you in full berserker builds without gimping our comps and no healer. I think that people can easily play faceroll fractals now without a healer if they take the time to learn to play.
You should have prob read my entire post, the don’t get hit part is perfectly viable but unlikely with a random pick up group and the instabilities especially social awkwardness along with always having a druid or some form of support. Secondly I never even mentioned anything about condi necro because the op was asking between condi warrior and power necro. The main reason I mention using defense or having some sort of support is that your every day non hand picked fractal group is hardly if ever optimized and if you end up with a lot of overlapping and ppl placing general bad stuff in melee range defense is a nice option to literally stay alive though others poor play.
Even if you have some form of weird comp with no group support, maybe 4 thieves and yourself as the one Warrior, a Warrior is perfectly capable of sustaining themselves, especially Condition Warrior which is extremely capable of flexing in and out of melee range. Running Defense on a Power Warrior let alone a Condition Warrior means you gives up some important traitline like Tactics, Discipline, or Strength, which are massive hits to you and/or your groups DPS.
The general rule of thumb is that the longer mobs stay alive in fractals, the more chances someone is going to mess up and get downed. This has not changed since the Dungeon Meta and only certain key roles in Raids does this paradigm change slightly. The only mechanic I can consider from an instability that will mess up your group would be the Bomb and if someone refuses to run outside the melee range of the boss and drops it multiple times during the encounter, that’s not on you to change your build to accommodate their poor play, it is on them to listen/get better or get kicked.
Never make things worse for the group when people are playing poorly.
Warriors honestly have a difficult time staying alive in t4s without support healing or taking defense for Adrenal health.
Don’t listen to this person.
Really please do explain how warriors have a great time sustaining in T4 fractals without support.
For general purposes Healing Signet is all you need. Top level Warriors will use Blood Reckoning for the extra DPS and simply not leave themselves vulnerable to taking any big hits. But for pug purposes, Healing Signet is fine in either Condi or Power Warriors for T4s.
The only issue I can see with this is in a 1v1 situation where me and the warrior down each other at the same time. In that situation, it would be an automatic win for the Warrior every time.
Outside of that, I don’t see a problem with your suggestions OP. It’s true, Warrior downstate 2 skill is insanely weak. You can currently get a safe stomp on a warrior by simply body blocking, reflects, stability, blind, stealth, or invuln. It has more counters than any other downstate 2 skill I believe, unless Rev’s is also a projectile.
Anyways, point being is that it is insanely easy to secure a stomp on a Warrior. This reworked Vengeance skill would take away the rng aspect of it, which is always a good thing, and also reduce the amount of time you have to deal with the Warrior when he pops Vengeance. I like it.
My thought is that the reworked has a few good matchups, such as Necro or Guardian potentially. But Stomps have a long channel, a Warrior will only have one shot at the stomp, a thief will probably win even if it goes to Vengeance as the Warrior 1 skill does so little damage in down-state, and the Thief simply needs to use his skills to avoid getting cleaved or stomped for a few seconds.
ALTHOUGH, I will say that if the Warrior traits for the revamped Veng Trait, the minor trait’s purpose in giving the Warrior more time effectively guarantees a victory in all the downstate 1v1s. That’s a neat little thing to think about if a Warrior has to choose between that capability and Warrior’s Sprint. We are also considering the fact there are two downed opponents on a point in an SPvP game, we haven’t factored in a rotation from a teammate or enemy yet. Both players being downed and fighting in downstate isn’t a common occurrence.
I’m looking at the bigger picture of increasing the depth of Warrior while at the same time removing a much despised RNG element no one likes.
You won’t find a group willing to bring a Power Necro for a DPS role over the counterparts. Condi Necro will be taken regardless of the lower DPS to Power because it can maintain an adequate number for damage and infinitely more utility than the Power Variant.
That’s a fair stance. Elementalists, thieves and mesmers have their best downed abilities at delaying the inevitable as soon as they get downed. And although elementalist’s vapor form is the best for positioning yourself for a good rally or forcing enemies off the node, I believe thief is probably the worst offender for what you describe as not only can the thief teleport away during your first stop, it’s insanely likely the thief will stealth on your second attempt.
These are the classes most would rather just cleave down, especially thief, but I can see the fear with wanting to make Warrior not have the same issue.
The only thing I can say for certain is that Warrior is uniquely different from these other professions as his only delay tactic to stopping a stomp for the cooldown for Vengeance to come up, is a 1 second projectile stun with a major tell. The projectile part of this attack makes it one of the most defended against attacks in the game, literally anything can stop it and you can still safely stomp the warrior with plenty of time left.
Under that notion, I think the Warrior case is quite different, it can’t do the same things Elementalists, Thieves and Mesmers can. And especially since Warrior has all these flaws during downstate compared to the potent abilities you see from the three professions you described, do I want Warriors to have a more consistent downstate ability they can rely on always if they somehow managed to stay in downstate for that long.
Warriors are the weakest of the professions who can’t truly delay their downstate such as Guardians and Necromancers, and their 3 ability is cripplingly awful as of right now.
Your suggestion takes a warrior who is at 1% health coming up with recharged skills blowing everything to chop someone down who is at a disadvantage and getting easy rally. Even if the warrior doesn’t actually attack anyone, if some one gets a kill he rallies. Like what’s hard to understand how hard-preventing a stomp for an extra 6 seconds isn’t going to turn out well. People are already carried by downed state as is.
Vengeance is wonky in its nature. I don’t really think there is a balance to it as it can indeed be very disappointing or very upsetting. Making it always useful is nice and all but look at just how rediculous it would be in comparison to everyone else’s 3 skill if it was. I don’t think anyone’s 3 skill gives them an extra 6 seconds of life while also making them a serious threat.
If they actually feel the need to rebalance vengeance then they should just scrap it for a new skill that can be balanced.
Thank you for properly responding. It is very important that you lay your counter-arguments clear, not everyone is posting arbitrary nonsense. There are particular reasons why I make the new Vengeance in such a manner.
Now, let’s propose your first statement that said Warrior undergoing Veng is going to attempt to pop everything at 1% to survive. The cooldowns he pops at this stage will carry into his next respawn, current balancing has many of the common utilities at 30+ second cooldowns MEANING there’s a gambit to the Warrior trying to Stance-dance hoping for a rally.
This would be in the Warrior’s favor IF said Warrior could mitigate the damage from the revamped Vengeance I suggested. That’s not true. If you want some basic math a Warrior with 20k life in my system untraited Vengeances and rallies to 10k, and takes 2000 loss in health every second after the first second. Endure Pain won’t stop this, Berserker Stance won’t stop this, there is no mechanic in this game that would stop this health degen while the Vengeance debuff is on the Warrior. Furthermore all healing is reduced by 50%, Sustain in this state is reduced by a flat 50% ALONE unless the Warrior gets a credit for a rally.
I was being generous with 6 seconds, that implies the Warrior is in combat taking no heat after the first second. That 2000 damage per second per my example of a 20k health Warrior is on top of any damage the enemy team decides to do to the Vengeance Warrior.
The Warrior will last less than a second popping the revamped skill under all the pressure in say a 4v4, downed state health is triple the maximum health after all if you weren’t aware. Ultimately, the only point both you and I agree on is that Vengeance as it currently is, is broken beyond belief.
If you want, I can elaborate more on the perks of my proposition in keeping in the same spirit as the current Vengeance, as right now Warrior has the weakest 1 and 2 downed state skills in the game.
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