This is actually wrong thinking. Let me tell you how to abuse it. Let’s say Bob is a noob, but not a dumb noob. Season 1 he abused
1. he lost many games before starting to play ranked, so he only playes against weaker oponents
Ranked has its own MMR, so it doesn’t matter what he was doing in unranked. But if he is a bad player, his MMR won’t be high after the first few ranked games.
2. playing with one other teammate, one of them leaving so other doesn’t lose pips when games look bad.
Losing games -> lower MMR
3. had a class with 0 wins XX loses, joins in with that class, switches to the classe he wishes, to manipulate the average mmr of the team
Class MMR isn’t used for matchmaking as far as i know.
4. played together with smurf classes / accounts of actuall good players against low mmr
But as his MMR rises, he will face stronger opponents and then he won’t win anymore if he isn’t good enough, so this way of increasing MMR has its limits (and how many noobs have pro friends who will carry them?).
So what has Bob gained from season 1: an average MMR at best.
Now Season 2 starts and Bob wins every game. Untill he reaches, let’s say Ruby. He now gets harder oponents that he cannot deal with. Now Bob stops playing. By now, Bob has won about 40 games or so, increasing his MMR by a lot. If Bob waits untill Season 3 and nothing changes, he will steamroll to Diamond, because his MMR must as good as most Legend players who lost MMR cuz of the hard competition.
By Season 3 Bob allready has an MMR of a Legendary player and will now only be in team with the best players. Even in Diamond he will still get the best players in team and will get carried, just by doing average.
If Bob is an bad player with average MMR he won’t win all his games, even in amber (at least it is very unlikely). And the higher he gets, the harder it will be to get carried.
I started facing even teams in mid emerald. If two teams have similar MMR, but one has a player whose skill is lower than his MMR would assume, this team will lose.
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Afaik class MMR is tracked, but not used for matchmaking. Probably because players can swap class before/during the match.
“few lost games”
Well yes – but the problem has been that people are getting massive losing streaks 10-15 games not being uncommon. This is going to have a significant impact.
If people truly have an average or above average MMR as many claim, such long losing streaks are very unlikely to happen, because there should be enough players with lower MMR.
So their MMR is lower than they think (even before the start of the season) or there is a bug in the system. But that’s something only a dev could answer …
If you have a decent amout of ranked games, your MMR should be pretty stable and few lost games won’t affect it much. New player’s MMR should drop faster. And if you have an average MMR it means there are about as much ppl with lower MMR as there are with higher MMR so it is very unlikely to get matched only against those better players and it is getting less and less likely the longer the league is going on.
Everyone took a break, because ranked was disabled and MMR from ranked and unranked is separated (as far as i know).
One team is always more favored to win, even if the gap might me really small. The system is deliberately not designed anymore to create matches as fair as possible.
Last season (and outside of the seasons) there were plenty of games were one team was clearly favoured. It is simply not possible to create exactly evenly strong teams, even if the game tries to do so. Some of my last games were more balanced than many games in the past.
Hopped on my alt account (without HOT), on which i had a total of 15 ranked games played, all more than half a year ago. So i assume, the acc has not a high MMR. Played 5 games. Won 5 games. There are not many great players left in amber, so carrying a bad team against other weak players should be possible.
I experienced the opposite. Till the second half of emerald most matches were extremely onesided (both wins and defeats). But now most of my matches in sapphire are fairly balanced and i often see player on the enemy team which were on my team before and vice versa, which is an indicator for similar MMR on both sides.
1. Many solo players have moved out of amber and emerald. A party is not neccessary, nor a guarantee.
2. Class stacking is not a result of premades. In most teams i encountered with 3-4 of one class, those were solo players or in different partys.
It is much easier to win against teams with stacked necros/dh/anything else … than it is to win 4 vs 5.
Score difference doesn’t always represent skill difference. Sometimes just a small mistake can lead to a big score difference (“snowball effect”). So both teams had most likely a pretty similar MMR.
You can have 3 easy to win matches and then a match against a much better team. You have no control over how much effort it will take to win those matches. It would be stupid to intentionally lose.
MMR = match making rating
I think, you can even gain higher MMR from defeats, if you score better than expected. So a lost game doesn’t neccessarily mean a disadvantage for further games. At least that’s how it should be.
Glicko algorythm can’t do that unless it has been heavily modified.
It’s a system used for chess after all, and there’s nothing like a score there AFAIK.
You are probably right and i mixed up MMR and pip gain from season 1. So the first few games can actually influence how fast/easy you will progress at the beginn of the season. But it should settle later on, regardless.
I think, you can even gain higher MMR from defeats, if you score better than expected. So a lost game doesn’t neccessarily mean a disadvantage for further games. At least that’s how it should be.
Then probably all teleports should require LoS …
I’ve tried multiple times with multiple builds to make a full bar of shouts work and I personally just can’t do it unless the enemy team lacks a condi Reaper. […]
So far i don’t have many issues against condi reapers. It can’t fight them on point (1vs1) but if i kite them, i can win. However, most matches i had were very onesided and the enemys usually not the best, so i can’t say how well a full shout build will perform at higher levels.
I’m mostly experimenting with merc amulet and staff + s/t currently, just swapped to lb (and double generosity sigil) for a match against 4 reapers. And i’m testing Lingering Light instead of Ancient Seeds, because the roots just don’t last long enough to do anything in 99% of all cases. LL isn’t great after the nerf, but at least it is never completely wasted and i think, i will stick with it.
And even so i actually expected Guard to be a “kill pet button” in teamfights, it works surprisingly well for me so far. Pets die very rarely.
I don’t think, MMR calculation has changed. If you get matched against higher MMR, you are expected to lose and your MMR won’t be affected (it is still independent from division/pips).
Judging on the reward/rank points it was most likely a defeat. If both teams end up with the same score, the team with higher total personal scores will win.
(Not sure what happens on a real draw though)
For now all those onesided matches and winning/losing streaks are fully intended by the matchmaking system, to split good and bad players faster across the divisions. It should get more balanced after some time.
I prefer full shouts + Celestial Shadow over Glyphes + Verdant Etching. Sure, glyphs offer better team support, at least on paper, but often the heal/cleanse is wasted because of the delay and tiny radius and because you have to move arround to avoid more dmg/condis. With shouts you can take SnR and Celestial Shadow allows stealth rezzing or better disengaging.
Also the glyph as only stunbreak beside Druidic Clarity can be detrimental, if there is a rev with the taunt trait nearby …
It has nothing to do with carrying others. Good players don’t have to carry their team, because they should only get put together with players of similar MMR. Same with low MMR players – they get weaker teammates. And those high MMR teams and low MMR teams can and will get matched against each other now, because they are all in the same division. This causes all those onesided matches and makes it easy for the high MMR players to climb up fast.
If you lose at lot now, your MMR is most likely below average. You will start winning as soon most better players have reached higher divisions.
They won’t stack much bleeds. Smokescale and bristle have slow autoattacks. The might will be more noticeable, but i don’t think many want to give up traited shouts (and you can easily put 25 stacks might on the pets anyways).
Meanwhile bristle still not fixed …
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And how are those things you are talking about a difference between condis and power?
All this requires the active use of skills. If enemys stay in your condi fields and get damaged it is not differnt from standing in dh traps, eles meteor shower or necro wells – which deal direct dmg. Passive = it happens without you doing anything.
If you burst somebody without defensive skills aviable, he will die. The only difference between condi and power burst is, that you don’t have to wait for the stomp in the second case.
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Ranger has no passive condi application outside of the weakness from PW and few condis from pets, which deal usually way less dmg than their direct dmg. Condi builds are in general not more passive than powerbuilds. If you can kill player as a condi ranger/druid (cele wasn’t pure condi) without even knowing, what you are doing, your opponents must be pretty bad.
I beat Eviscerate warriors with non-Tempest fresh air builds, only Mist Form and Lightning Flash for kiting abilities that druid has amazing access to. Kinda unfair how many kiting abilities druid has. I trust in my dodging skills, tho you have remembered that I rely on my energy sigil to provide me the energy you need.
Having 1 stunbreak + 1 pseudo stunbreak (and probably invuln from focus?) is a huge difference to having zero stunbreaks and/or instant defensive abilities. And it is impossibe to avoid every cc, there are too many instant skills and passive or random procs in the game right now. Also keep in mind, that trap ranger has almost zero ranged pressure. So while it is pretty good at running away, actually killing somebody is not always that easy, sometimes even impossible (as long we are talking about decent opponents with decent builds – axe warriors definitely won’t be your major issue).
Tragic Positive and salogel made some very good points.
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He played thief in the earlier pro league games. Where teams were still experimenting and not running optimal comps. He switched to rev for later games (including the finals). Was ist simply because of preference? I doubt it.
I don’t know much about LoL and i don’t care much about this game. I just know, it hasn’t much in common with Guild Wars.
Toker switched to rev during the season (and let’s be honest, there is not much competition for Abjured in NA – he still changed class).
And again, just because balance will never be perfect, it is not a reason, to not constantly try to improve it. The opposite is the case. BECAUSE balance is never perfect, anet should constantly work on it …
What I expect from the balance updates is that there will be a change up in the meta and that new classes will become powerful and others will become weaker, preferably the ones that were OP in the previous meta.
The problem is, that not everyone enjoys multiclassing, and it certainly isn’t fun to see your favourite class being close to unplayable for months or even longer, just because it was strong in the past.
Roles and classes are definitely set in stone in high elo. A bunker thieves is crap compared to a dps or decap thief; or a healer/support/bunker ele is more effective than a dps ele. Granted that some classes can hold two roles at alternately equal standing, most classes do not reciprocate. To sum it up, at least 90% of classes and roles are set in stone.
Uhm, maybe we are talking about different things here. If we only look at a certain (balance) state of the game – then yes, you are right. But the game can change (it did in the past and will so in the future). And so can classes and roles. Just take mesmer as example: It had always a similar role to thief (burst/DPS/mobility). With HOT it became the most op bunker the game had ever seen. Now it is mostly … useless?
2- That’s not balance, that’s preference. We saw a mesmer at the tourney, Marvin ran mesmer because it prefer mesmer or druid or ele. Just like Vermillion ran druids instead of ele because the druids user prefer druids over ele. I.E. […]
Some people will always play subpar builds. Does this mean, it doesn’t matter how strong or weak classes are? Because some players will play them anyways? It was pretty obvious that mesmer or druid weren’t as useful as rev/ele/engi/necro (And still better than some other classes).
On your engi example: If engi would be still good enough to compete at high level tier, then he would probably stick to it. But what if this is not the case? He can switch to an other class, keep loosing games because of weak engi (and get kicked from Abjured :p) or stop playing the game (i think, 1. option is most likely).
Do you really think, nobody plays warrior or thief, because nobody wants to play them? Do you really think, Misha played necro only because he suddenly prefered it over mesmer (which was his main for years, even when it was not meta – still good enough to be sucessfully played at top tier)?
Many player have switched from their main class to a different one – and i doubt, it is only because of personal preference.
4- I agree but Anet has to careful if they are evr going to implement class stacking b3cause we don’t have a large toon player nor a larger player pool to implement something like class stacking.
Uhm, class stacking isn’t something which has to be implemented. It is already in the game. We are talking about a rule AGAINST class stacking. Which currently only exists in tournaments and which wasn’t necessary in the past, because – even if balance was far from perfect – there were enough reasons to play different classes instead of stacking few.
Not sure, if i get your point. Maybe we have just different opinions about what “balance” means.
Just a few notes:
1. Roles and “tiers” of classes are not set in stone, many classes can be used (at least theoretically) for multiple roles and most roles can be divided into “subroles”. Thief and guard for example – while both being able to fullfill a dps role as you have stated – are used for completely different reasons: mobility/decaps/+1 vs teamfighter/aoe dmg/point control.
2. If it is optimal to use a class multiple times in a team, while other classes see (almost) zero use, this is not what i would call “good balance” or class diversitiy.
3. We don’t know, how diverse pro teams would look without a class stacking rule (which already exists for quite a while). All you can see is a forced diversity, but not a diversity created by balance.
4. Yes, “perfect” balance is impossible. But you can and should try to come as close as possible. This is why i see balance more as a process and not as a (final) state of the game. And a rule against class stacking doesn’t benefit this process.
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(Problematic) Class stacking is simply a result of powercreep. In the past usually even the most op builds had drawbacks and if a team would have stacked too many of those classes, their opponents could easily counter them by abusing those weaknesses. So even without any rules to prevent class stacking, most teams consisted of 4 or 5 different classes (an exception was the double ele/double engi composition from CM, which already showed, how dangerous – balancewise – strong “allround-builds” can be.
With the trait changes last year it was suddenly possible to take more and stronger traits than ever, which allowed to cover more weaknesses and create builds which could do basically everything – hello d/d cele ele …Even if other classes are only slightly weaker than the top class – which was imo the case pre HOT, theoretically every class was sort of viable – there is no reason to take them because … well, why would you take something weaker if the strongest class can already cover all your needs?
HOT just added more powercreep, therefore the problems remains/became even worse.
The best solution imo would be (more or less) heavy nerfs to basically everything. Creating equally strong-at-everything classes is not possible – but achieving more diversity through individual strengths, which should always come with certain trade-offs, should be possible – it was in the past.
But of course a rule to prevent stacking is a much easier way to pretend, balance and diversity are fine …
This build hasn’t much in common with pre-nerf bunker mesmer …
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It does work for me. Condis are removed from my pet and myself when using shouts with soldier rune.
You (all of you) should probably clarify about which game mode and build(s) you are talking …
So players should get rewarded for getting carried by others?
(If those low rank players don’t need to be carried by their higher ranked team mates, they are where they belong and should get rewarded like everyone else)
Buff all pets to the same viable level as smokescale, nerf bristleback f2 by increasing CD to 15s and reducing dmg by 15%. Smokescale is fine as is, if you think it’s not well idgaf.
Edit: also give pets some type of perma speed boost so they can’t be kited as easily. That’s the whole reason you rarely see birds/dogs/cats/spiders/etc… Smokescale can just teleport and stick to your target unlike any other pet. If you think pets being kiting isn’t an issue then you don’t belong on ranger forum, go back to your mains section.
Bristle F2 has already 15s CD (12s only traited) and bm already gives pets a permanent 30% movement speed increase. The movement speed is not the main problem (at least for traited pets). It is more that they can’t attack while moving and many attacks have too long casttimes (wyverns are the best example).
Adjusting castimes/animations and cooldown of old pet’s abilities are imo the best (easy) way to improve them without too much efford. Some core issues will remain, because they would need a complete rework, which is not very realistic, but it would bring them at least a little bit closer to bristle/smokescale (Tiger for example – while not as strong as those two pets – is usefull in certain builds (PvE, remorseless builds), other cats are significantly weaker, because their F2 is less usefull – way too long cd for mediocre effects and way too long and bugged casttime on jungle stalker).
really now? can we get some evidence on pro teams not on ly having 2 engineers but owning their game victories to said engineers now ?
if i recall anything what teams usually had was 2 eles
hell if anything i think 2 engineers are all the engineers that play in pro pvp and the only one i ve seen has been five gauge lol , but i do agree putting scrapper in the same stage as dragon hunter is absurd scrapper needs some serious buffing to catch up to DH cheapness
The Abjured won WTS 1 with double engi. Cheese Mode won Go4 Cups with double engi. Just to name the two most famous examples. A few other teams were running 2 engies too back then and many teams had at least one.
Just check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SLrzstIN0s&list=PLDCvogxNKN3mkRmRCNMj96JAfVS7oIytH for example and tell me, how many tournament finals had no engi player. I doubt you will find many (I’m too lazy for an exact research).
If you think, engi was weak in the past or scrapper is weaker than warrior or DH right now, then sorry, but you know nothing about balance.
Apart from that, past performance of a class shouldn’t justify current balance issues and therefore doesn’t matter when it comes to buff or nerf requests (i didn’t brought up engi’s past because i want them to get nerfed, just to correct those false statements).
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Engie is part of the PvP meta for more than 2 years non-stop and was occasionally so strong, that some pro teams were using 2 of them. Calling this pathetic and putting current scrapper on the same stage as guard or warrior when it comes to the need of nerfes, makes it impossible to take you serios.
SotW = Signet of the Wild
Natural Healing is a trait in the bm line, which gives the pet perma health regen (and increased healing power).
I don’t think so. Its about buffing ele aa to make it more reliable cuz of rest of Staff skills that aren’t reliable ala tower defense.
Otherwise why in ele forum and whenever we can we remind how clunky our aa’s are?
As long balance is not split between game modes, you can’t buff (staff or dagger) eles damage without completely breaking PvE balance, where it is already top dps class.
Are you using Enlagement?
This is not a condi issue. This is a problem for every non-staff build. AF gain from damage is per hit (and you have to hit your enemy with a condi build too), not per actual damage dealt and overall much lower than AF gain from healing.
(Aoe) Regen from Healing Spring, shouts or WH, SotW and/or the Natural Healing Trait will help with building AF in a non-staff build.
The new thing with the last patch is how Sic ’Em! works.
Prior last patch, during the Sic ’Em! Buff, your pet just dealt auto attack damage and the Buff got canceled once you command your pet do something else.
Now the buff stays and the pet uses his abilities.
This means, that now, the Bristblacks Spike Shots can deal +40% more damage than prior the last patch.
Sic’Em got changed with HoT, not with the last patch. And the change affects only the F2 skills (so yes, bristleback wouldn’t benefit from it pre HoT, but this thread isn’t about bristle). Skills like the wolf’s leaps could get the 40% dmg buff even before.
This is not a bug. Every weapon skill, which affects the pet, works like this (LB3, Axe3, SB4, Sword1). And the tooltip doesn’t say “when you hit”.
And i can’t confirm the MoC bug. Do you know, under which conditions it happens (definitely not always) or is it just from the wiki (which might be wrong)?
You don’t need MoC, the pet always gains the 50% dmg buff from Hilt Bash (even if it doesn’t hit). And don’t forget about Sic’Em and Opening Strike.
Many pets can hit this hard with a certain build. The ranger has to sacrifice most of his traits and utilitys for an easily avoidable very unreliable single big hit. Works best with drakes which can hit for 25k+ on glassy targets (under perfect conditions). And this is nothing new, it was already possible pre HoT.
CA replaces weapon skills, Berserk not. Different energy gain. Completely different skills, effects and purpose (healing vs dmg). Nothing in common outside of being a “special form”.
And of course signets from different classes are not the same (outside of being called sigents and having a passive and active effect). Different classes, different skills, different cd and so on. Just because skills/traits/froms of different classes are similar in some regards, they don’t have to be the same in everything.
If you want to have 10s cd on berserk mode, ok, maybe there are some good reasons to reduce the cd, but comparing it to CA is not a reasonable argument.
Btw i rarely play druid and don’t care if it gets nerfed or not.
Because berserk mode and Celestial Avatar are two completely different things. They have nothing in common.
And the taunt is not instant on skill activation. You get taunted, if you hit the ranger within 6 seconds after he has used the shout (and if the pet is in range).