Guild Wars 2

So just got done with a match, I’m pretty curious about anet’s stance on this.

Pre-Game:
https://puu.sh/uIjam/8c7a316cfc.jpg

Results:
https://puu.sh/uIjOe/fea84fbbc1.jpg

Team Make-up:
https://puu.sh/uIjOI/36cae3065c.jpg

Now, not only is an 1800 ranked player (currently #4) beying matched against a <1500 player (not even present on the leaderboard), but its double duo (with other leaderboard present players) against all solos, I thought this was addressed. Despite winning that match, and it was a decent match, I wouldnt say a good one by any means, this feels abusive to soloqers; you (anet) have still not addressed your failure in providing a fun and healthy environment for your soloq base, which I believe was the whole point of making the queue solo/duo.

Mirrodin.8729:

unlike overwatch, gw2 has builds, also you can not STACK THE SAME HERO which is very important (unless you play arcade which is out of the question since is not competitive), also the downside of constant switch is everytime you do that stuff, your ultime goes to 0% meaning a bad switch or constant mindless switching can do more damage than good for your team in the end, to make it to good implementation, something to balance should be like all the skills are on cd when the switch is done or something like that, just a random idea

“Overwatch seems to do pretty well with it, but they also have some semblance/direction of balance.”
Bolded the last sentence of my post for visibility, you seem to have missed it. Currently, there are so few meta builds available for a class that they might as well be concrete, essentially no different than a hero kit from OW, it’s acceptable to assume that in plat+ the vast majority of players will be running meta, or very slightly tweaked meta. The risks of swapping are known to the person doing it, so if it’s a bad swap, that is a misplay on that person, not the system; it’s pretty vital to be able to distinguish that.

steelheart.7386:

Give me a break what a load. So we are supposed to believe you log out in the middle of matches to change classes based on what you think people are running after watching them play a bit? First of all to do that you would be putting your team at a -1 for upwards of 30-40 seconds. Seriously professions are not “locked” almost every class has only a couple viable builds if that. You have plenty of time at the start of the match to see what the other team is running and change if you feel like you need to. There are good reasons why they made this change.

Yes, obviously in low skill divisions it can be very detrimental, you will have a higher chance to win, numerically, if the enemy team has 3+DH and you are a thief, or you have a Necro on your team with zero support, if you switch to an Ele; as one example. You cannot tell what traits/rune/sigils/utility skills your opponents take before you engage them. Once you find out that OH 2 of the enemy DH are burn and not power you should PROBABLY switch off your druid. Yet another example as to why having the choice to switch, is a good thing.

In other news, it does not take me more than 10 seconds to swap a character, because I don’t have a garbage computer, so your argument that you leave your team -1 for an extended period of time is false.

As for the last part, you completely misunderstand what “profession lock” actually means so I will refrain from commenting further; except to correct you regarding being able to see what the enemy team is running, which is also completely false, you can INFER or GUESS what they are running based on their class icon, but it is not currently possible to inspect enemy team players so I truly have zero idea how you came up with this.

It’s precisely BECAUSE of the past season(s) truly terrible MMs that I make an educated guess that S6 is NOT going to be the magic season that MM is fixed. This is going to be a longer process than republicans agreeing on health care.

There are many ways that one could see his rating on a class advance, giving meaning to top stats, other than pips, at the same time. Gaining points, there are many ways to do this and leaves quite a broad spectrum for possible opportunities to increase your profession SR (in real time, not just at the end of the match), for your team could add to the SR grind, while playing X profession. There really are many ways to implement profession specific mmr and not lock your character.

Saiyan.1704:

Exedore.6320:

Chase.8415:

Did you even read my post?

The issue is I feel trapped into playing one class because of the account based MMR.

Yes. You’re complaining that people don’t want to swap to fix team comps. You assume that’s because they’re not equally skilled at another profession. You also assume that skill differential between professions is huge.

So your argument is already on weak footing. But here’s where your argument falls apart: Let’s say there was profession locking and profession-based MMR and you played something else. Then you get a team with a bad comp. You’re back to the original problem, except now no one can switch to make the comp better. THAT is why people came to their senses and voted “no”.

Our reasoning for a Yes vote has more merit than y’alls reasons for a No… now, here’s the fallacy with your reasoning.

• Every 3 games on average, we’ll have that 1 player swap to a different class. These are not assumptions. It’s basic statistics from my 30 games played this season alone.

• There has been no improvement on players wanting to swap classes in the last 4 seasons that I’ve participated in. It has been the same poor comp, poor matchmaking system since s3.

• On that same thread, Anet said they were going to look into altering matchmaking to take professions queuing into account.

Evan Lesh.3295:

“If we lock characters on queue, *we can do things like use profession-specific MMR, have profession leaderboards, etc.”* ["Etc means there’s more we can do.]

“It’s hard to say what will happen to queue times if we enforce a hard limit on professions. The compromise is to let the profession limit increase over time.

In other words, matchmaking will attempt a non-class stacking solution first. When the queue lengthens, MM will then start to look at stacking professions.

A YES vote

• MMR would have been more accurate per player, per class.
• This leads to improved [healthier] Matchmaking experience overall.
• PvP would have been more competitive with Profession Specific leader boards.
• A big opportunity to alter the Matchmaking algorithm for improvements

A NO vote

• Matchmaking hasn’t, and will not improved.
• MMR accuracy hasn’t, and will not improved.
• There’s no new addition to the PvP scene.
• Little to no opportunities to alter the Matchmaking algorithms for improvements

Regarding your “fallacies”:
1. Removing the option to switch is not a solution to the problem of a garbage MM.
2. There is nothing preventing the implementation of profession leaderboards other than Anet. Profession leaderboards are not mutually exclusive to character lock.

Regarding the second half of your post:
“In other words, matchmaking will attempt a non-class stacking solution first. When the queue lengthens, MM will then start to look at stacking professions.”

Since the queue lengthens, and it will, due to more people playing certain professions than others, the match quality goes down. This means that the idea of a more accurate mmr holds no weight when considering the former. Last season I was in matches where teams (as in both in the match) had rating disparities of over 700. That WILL happen more this season, due to an even lower population. It was VERY common for me to be in games with 200 or 300 rating more than the next person on my team, because I was in plat 3 and/or legendary and there is, very simply, not enough people playing the game mode.

So overall I think your off base on essentially everything, you are seeing the trees before the forest. Anet will continue to work on the MM and match quality, and can take the MUCH needed time to prepare the game mode for such a system (a better one for sure), it’s just a matter of if they will and/or how many years it will take.

I would just like to point out that if the Poll thread wasn’t destroyed it would be very simple to cite a MULTITUDE of posts regarding these exact issues and why Anet’s current development strategy is not going to work. But, conveniently, that’s not possible.

Dev response was that they would “consider” “soft stack prevention” which means there would still be stacked classes, had the poll gone “yes.” That means that Anet has NO INTENTION on preventing the stacking, plain and simple.

In the deleted thread, there were several posts, that identified the consequences of a “No switch” system coupled with negligible frequency of balance patches with historically poor PvP development. One of those consequences would be; queuing dh/war/druid (though now nerfed slightly) when solo, as these classes have the best overall match ups and ambiguous roles; leading to higher winrates and quicker rewards. The ease of use and, due to sophomoric levels of balance, varying impact levels of professions should also be clearly noted.

Now this doesn’t mean that the top 100 is going to be only dh/war/druid. It means that for the MAJORITY of players, you will see those classes stacked more often then not. On the ends of the spectrum you wont see this as much, or to an effective degree as to be negligible. The top players will swap to what is manageable or favored for their comp vs enemy comp. The bottom players will play whatever they want because they are not playing to win. Neither is better or worse, that’s just how it is. Now, the entire center section of the spectrum, is going to find themselves in matches with and against people who “understand” builds, “know” what meta is, etc. They’ve played a few matches before and have an average understanding of the game. What’s the most logical choice for these players? Play something that does high damage with long periods of invulnerability, or “damage off,” sub-consciously or not, without a doubt, that will be their choice. It’s the “right” choice.

And in regards to people saying that swapping mid match is untenable, impossible, the worst…. Overwatch seems to do pretty well with it, but they also have some semblance/direction of balance.

Chase.8415:

Vicky.4563:

Chase.8415:

angrypenguin.1839:

If you are going to main a class that stacking can hurt the team, you really should become decent with a backup.

I am fairly new and main a thief and in the off season I got decent with a Warrior and to a lesser extent a Ranger.

Not every class gets hurt by having 1 or 2 others on the team.

Yeah, so the idea to get good with other classes is to queue ranked with them and lose most of your matches until it evens out then right?

How exactly is this fair to the other 4 members on my team?

There’s a place called unranked. There’s also a place called custom arenas and 1v1 arenas. You can go to those places to practice until you are proficient enough with your new class.

However, If you want to be an kitten to your teammates, that’s your prerogative.

What a great place to learn! I hadn’t thought of this before, thanks.

In case you didn’t catch the sarcasm, unranked matches actually have a separate MMR and I’ve seen completely new players group on my team; it doesn’t matter if I play a new class or not these people I am facing against is like slaying wounded animals.

If they could change unranked to display an estimated rating as if you were playing ranked, that would be amazing as well but I doubt they would do that.

I’m confused why you believe resetting your mmr and grinding it up again when moving to unranked is in ANY WAY different than doing the exact same thing on a new profession in ranked, which is what you vehemently defend in your OP when advocating for “professions specific mmr.”

charchar.2149:

OP so you want to see kittened up 4 thief games ok….

Just for clarity’s sake, REGARDLESS of poll outcome, Anet was not going to introduce class stack prevention in the MM unless you put a gun to their head. That was an idea made up by the player base and ASSUMED (logically so, even bronze players can realize that CLASS STACKING and not CHARACTER SWAPPING is one of the defining pitfalls of ranked) that it would be implemented, they voted YES for something that was not even on the table, because of how UTTERLY POORLY (unless designed that way, I see you anet) the poll was worded. It is the same tactics employed by the GOP, just turn on ANY news stream other than FOX.

steelheart.7386:

Phineas Poe.3018:

I think the vast majority of the people that voted “no” don’t oppose having profession leaderboards, or even profession-based MMR.

The problem is just that the game currently isn’t at a state of balance where you can reliably 1v1 every single profession on every single class. There are hard-counters in this game, and it’s incredibly frustrating when you have, for example, two engineers on your team versus two necromancers … or three guardians on your team versus three warriors. These match-ups happen regularly, and they’re almost always a guaranteed loss.

Disparity in skill level will help you overcome match-ups … to a point. But in Plat 2/3, games are frequently won and lost only by one’s team composition. You can rotate as well as anyone, but a necromancer should never lose to an engineer in any circumstance, or a warrior to a guardian.

Once classes are balanced without hard-counters in mind, we can maybe revisit the topic of profession-based MMR and class-locking.

Until then, I don’t see why we can’t have a profession-based leaderboard in the current system.

But thats not really true. Most people aren’t good enough on there alts for the counter comp to actually work except for probably the top couple percentage point of players or so. You can’t make decisions based on the top 3-5% of players. Thats ludicrous. People have pie in the sky notions about how good they are on alts. Unless you have very close to equal playing time on another class you won’t be nearly as good on it.

Do you have any proof of this or are you just spouting nonsense as fact?

So we should disregard the highest and most complex lvl of play for the people that don’t understand the game, play it casually, and have no REAL investment in the game mode? Now THAT’S ludicrous.

How can you tell which is some one’s main and which is their alt before they switch? Do people exclusively queue on their “Main?” Only switching to alts?

I truly truly hope you understand that profession specific leaderboards are not mutually exclusive (as anet would like you to believe) with CHARACTER LOCK (which is what the poll was ACTUALLY about, Anet could go alonggggggggggggggggggg way by not wording and disguising intentions / polls in ways that they KNOW will be misunderstood, thats just bad kittening taste).

I think it should have stayed unblockable, “Wild” skills were often unblockable in gw1 https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_unblockable_skills

It was not OP, easily LOS’d, gave druid a better match up against DH/War/Mes/Thief (to some extent), and had the dual purpose of safe stomp/res. Versatility shouldn’t be removed, it should be added.

All that change did was relegate the skill to meme builds, and further pigeon hole the meta viable skills. Poor change overall.

Saiyan.1704:

Alphabet.7392:

Thank you to those who actually had a brain and voted NO.

NO ONE stacks dragonhunters/warriors/whatever the kitten in any DECENT division because it is SUBPAR and if you have trouble winning against teams with 2-3 dragonhunters then you shouldn’t have even been allowed to vote on the poll. I’m looking at you, bronze quacks.

This change would’ve completely BONED plat+ because people there are actually COMPETENT enough to play multiple classes to balance out the team comp.

Why the hell should I be forced to lose if the matchmaker decides to match me, as a thief, with 2 other thieves? Why shouldn’t I be able to switch?

Why SHOULDN’T I have an advantage over the people who can only play one class? coughbronzequeencough

I voted Yes because I wanted an additional ladder that lists professions only. Let’s see who is actually best in their profession.

I voted Yes because Anet flat out said they’ll make Matchmaking a lot smarter because it will actually see professions in the player pool it draws from, rather than just a number on a spread sheet. This also means a more accurate MMR per class… as each class will literally have their own rating.

Lastly, I voted Yes because I expect Anet to later fix the obvious issues you just pointed out. These “Yes” are a whole lot more than your one “No”.

Just wish we had more smart people voting here.

I like the idea of profession specific leaderboards, but will they also use build to decide your ranking in the new board? There is a difference in impact and role between say a condi / power thief, similarly with mesmer, dh, war, etc. Would you climb more places for using a non meta build? These are the kind of things to keep in mind when Anet presents you with these kinds of options.

While Anet may believe that adding professions into the algorithm will “smarten” it, I fimrly do not believe so, I believe that had NA had an actual population, S5 MM was about as right as they were going to get it, as demonstrated by EU. I believe that confounding the mm to account for professions would cloud the waters. It would put too much stress in too many directions, but I could be wrong; I just have the past to go on. The disparity between classes regarding balance would only serve to exemplify the issue. That in turn would also tie in to what I said in paragraph 1.

I would expect Anet to fix the issues you talked about as well, but I’d expect them to take far too long, and be too incomplete, if/when the changes actually came. Voting yes subjects yourself to the bare bones of the new system, with all its heaps of problems, right from the get go. At least voting no gives Anet the MUCH needed time to correct those issues BEFORE putting the new system into live play.

Luto.1938:

Join me and we will form up a 5 man. We’ll just throw 5 votes at it every time it pops up. I’m usually on around 9:30 EST. I’ve been after the “Silent Killer” title myself!

Luto Locke is good guy AND a hot dad :O

hackks.3687:

You get 20 gold every time you complete the Byzantium track during the season. Not to mention the Wintersday Gifts you can sell on the TP. As well as the Unidentified Dyes that are in everything. I made a ridiculous amount of gold this past season without even trying to.

It’s ridiculously easy to earn gold in PvP

Now compare that to PvE income and it looks truly pitiful xD

What an impressive balance patch, now imagine being character locked on queue. LULing.

I predict that nothing of any importance will be changed sans “slight nerfs” resembling Revenant staff 5 and sword 2.

skcamow.3527:

ZombieLeach.5862:

Why would anyone want matchmaking to choose their team comp?

Pretty much. It’s fascinating to me to see how the community is almost 50/50 on this thing. I do understand the reasons why some are voting yes but the consequences of a yes vote far outweigh any kind of gain we’d get from a no vote at this point in time.

But I also understand this decision is based heavily on one’s perspective.

Case in point. I main mesmer but I’m a multi-classer. If a yes vote prevailed, I would likely NEVER queue on my main. Reason being the good chance at least one of my ever so popular hard counter DH or power warrior would be on the other team. If there are two DH on the other side, I’m going to have a rough time and from what I’ve seen from past seasons and the current MM code, season 6 isn’t going to change this.

Why would I want to subject myself to playing the odds like that? Players who are playing to win (which I assume most of us are) are not going to willfully choose to subject themselves to these restrictions.

I’d sooo much rather have the opportunity to switch to something that might help my team in that situation and not risk losing based on the initial profession I chose to queue with.

So I can see how folks that don’t multi-class wouldn’t mind profession locking and can also easily understand folks like myself who would rather maintain some level of control over their team comp.

Now, if class stacking was enforced (bleh “soft limit”), I wouldn’t mind profession locking nearly as much. Sadly, this isn’t going to be the case for season 6, so a no vote makes the most sense for me, and this is why so many others are voting the same.

OMG THANK YOU!!!!! This is literally trump v hilary, and anet is the Gov!!! The “Yes Men” (Trump) want “Change” the sky is the limit! While the “No Men” are looking at the fine print and trying to REDUCE the level of negative control Anet (the Gov.) has spanning from matchmaking to class balance; so that players (the population at large) can have some form of positive control (swapping classes so you aren’t hard-countered by 3+ people on the enemy team) making matches more democratic overall.

Personally, I take it a bit further in regards to the neglected balance of classes, that WILL be hyper-focused on, after the first night of people queuing and still going up against stacked teams of the ever feared War/DH. There is NO reason, currently, to believe that there will be an enforcement on 1 class per team, especially if you are character (or will we be allowed to change to a different character of the same class Anet?) locked upon queuing; which is because, the classes are NOT balanced with this kind of system in mind. Not only that, but, there will be 1 balance patch before S6, if I’m not mistaken; which leaves a truly monumental task for the Balance Team to accomplish in a record time. I’m not sold, and I will not be playing in S6.

Divine.3279:

So ArenaNet decided to be great lads and have a poll about whether or not they should remove the ability to class stack in games. To be completely honest, I thought that the Yes side was going to annihilate and be a landslide victory, but its the oppsite. No side is actually winning. So I’ve gathered some thoughts as to why the poll is so close, with either one at almost 50-50

To be honest with you, class locking professions would be amazing. If ArenaNet can actually make it work. First off, they need to remove the ready bar, as people in lower divisions need to understand not to insta-ready and put some time and thought into their team composition and roles. Secondly, give each team the usual 1 minute and 15 seconds (i think) before the match starts to reroll into classes and change some things up in their builds. THEN after the timer is gone, and match starts, deny players from switching classes while the game is still going on. Lock them into the class they’re playing only until the game ends. This system would work tremendously well in my complete honest opinion and would put sPvP in the right direction.

BUT, even though with all those following things said, there is one flaw that players fear with class locking, and that is que times. Also not to mention, there are meta classes that have more population than any other class, and there are players that only have one character and they can’t multi-class any other classes. So this makes que times especially hard. I can’t imagine what legend/platinum que times will look like if this is implemented.

Like I said, this is a great idea in my honest opinion from ArenaNet, but they need to find a way to class lock while not having que times over 10+ minutes. Tell me what you’re thoughts are as well, as this is truly a close debate between the PvP community.

There’s some issues with ur post OP:

Firstly, the poll is NOT about class stacking, at all. The poll is about being able to switch CHARACTERS during pre-game or at queue. Anet has NOT stated that they will be hard limiting 1 class per team, infact with a quick search you can see that it is actually NOT on their to do list.

Secondly, class (better termed CHARACTER) locking is NOT a great thing, because of the LAZY balance in the game, 1 class can have (X) direct hardcounters, enjoy your wins and losses being based COMPLETELY on your assumption of the enemy team’s comp, since there is no pick/ban phase and it is impossible to know the enemy team amulet, trait, weapon, and utility choices before the game begins. With a “yes” win on the poll, I wont be able to even switch to a different character of the same class (with a different build) and with a “no” win on the poll, I STILL WONT be able to make up for any disadvantages the MM threw my way. It’s a cold hard LOSE / LOSE.

As far as queue times are concerned, I’m sure the VAST majority of players will wait an extra minute or 5 or even 10 for ACTUALLY even teams, but that just is not possible in this game, because there is not a large enough population to support it; as evident from S5 where the disparity in rating between players on the same team could and were OFTEN over 700+ points.

Silv.9207:

That will reveal your build, then grant an advantage on the enemy team (focus the core class!). Or discrimination on yours (wtf are you a f2p?)

How is that a bad thing, other than verbal abuse which is NONSENSE and there’s ALREADY a block feature to prevent it.

It’s truly frightening to me that people are voting for either option, without the pretext of a balance patch in such magnitude, the likes gw2 has never seen, that it fixes the disparity between the classes to even a reasonable level. It’s also note worthy to me that, people are voting for an option with an attached personal “hope” for balance changes to accompany, or ANY second “well if they did this too” idea. NO WHERE has it been said that this would be the case. Even forgoing all of that, people expect MM to be any “better” than the current iteration; and let’s just be kittening real for a second, THE POPULATION for S6 will be LOWER than S5, DUE TO ascended vending change, S5 leaderboard fiasco, and a multitude of other things that have driven people from the game. How in the world will matchmaking be better with equal to or, most likely, LESS people than there were in S5? WHY does no one question anet about this? To top it off, anet words the poll in a way that it is EASILY misinterpreted, much like the GOP in US politics, just swinging a new “shiny feature” in front of the masses to distract from the REAL issues.

Wolfric.9380:

This change for yes is a huge oportunity to create a base to work on. Shure custom templates, class leaderboards, and adapting matchmaker is part of it and i am confident devs think of this. Otherwise it would not make sense. A No is realy hindering progress and better matchmaking (from system side, not if platin+ players adapt team comp … which is an absolute minority).

I feel like this ideal needs to be addressed, “create a base to work on,” maybe this is just me being picky but, after 5 years, I’d expect the BASE to have already been worked out. But I’m a realistic person, after 5 years, I’m thoroughly convinced that the Balance Team and the PvP Team, truly have no direction in mind, this is evident due to the pattern of “balance changes” and general PvP changes released over said 5 years.

How people are correlating class mmr/mm to “better” is completely beyond me, do any of you even play this game? Do ANY of you even understand how imbalanced the game mode is? You are going to subject yourselves to some SERIOUS punishment if you naively believe that this system will work in any shape or form. Ignorance is bliss.

Chase.8415:

martin.1653:

Wolfric.9380:

A no on this poll is showing a comunity not looking forward and being selfish …. No means stagnation.
Going for a profession MMR is a base feature to allow moving forward and improve PvP.

Sometimes stagnation is better than shooting yourself in the foot.
Poll is really bad and will not solve anything. If anything, it will introduce mass of other problems that people who votes yes will realise only after it’s implemented (if it gets implemented).
Before they start locking professions they need to deal with many other problems that lead to bad matchups. When those get solved then profession locking will not be question any more as it won’t be needed.
This is just putting bandage on your forehead when you have flu. It’s not really helping, but hey, it looks like progress is being done!

Majority of the game focuses on one class and does not swap even when you feel they should. Therefore if they went with yee, the majority of the game would not notice a difference except having a lot more balanced matches and the ability to having ratings for each profession.

I’m confused how locking professions at queue would improve balance in any way, that means you are letting the MM decide your win/loss based 100% on build. If matchmaking is accurate then you will be playing against equally skilled players, who may or may not happen to be running a DIRECT hardcounter, or X number of the enemy team. That is not balance, that is GAMBLING.

Unless of course you are also one of the people who say profession balance would be “easy” to produce after implementation, which is so incredibly false; it takes how many months for WILD meta shifts and nerf/buff willy nilly? With no proper QA of the changes before being pushed into live play? You REALLY think anet is capable of such a feat as genuinely balanced matches? Have they not shown you enough after 5 seasons and years of incredible UNbalance, that that level of polish escapes them? They cant/wont even fix bugs that could/should have been hotfixed.

I will not be playing s6, for sure. This “addition” to the game (along with several other recent FLOPS of change) has drove me from the game all together. This is after nearly 20k total matches played, and being legend every single season. I’ve taken the hint from the pro scene and jumped ship, there are FOR SURE better pvp games out there, and im having much more FUN, COMPETING, in much more competitive and balanced games.

It is so REJUVINATING to play something other than 3 point koth ad nauseum. The game that currently holds my interest has over 5 game modes, bustling with activity, ranked versions of 4 of those, and oh so many beautiful leaderboards (with distinguishing rewards).

Population and balance matter, GW2 has neither, and the paths that the dev teams are choosing will NEVER bring those 2 things to this game. This is a repeating pattern of slow methodical elimination of a game mode.

I’m confused how ideas like this are even presented when it is WIDELY known how imbalanced classes are. You are setting yourselves up for failure, when you are locking people into playing games with 3, 4 or even 5 hardcounters on the enemy team.

There is currently NO definitive way to determine what the enemy comp is based solely on their class markers. You are going to pigeon hole builds EVEN MORE than they currently are, because of this uncertainty. God rest the souls of those who play non meta, and their teams. If a player is disallowed to switch to a better match up then you are forcing wins/losses based SPECIFICALLY on build choice. That is akin to criminal, cruel and unusual punishment.

I’d argue that this would INCREASE certain class’s representation, as it would be FAR more safe to queue as DH/War than essentially ANY other class, as they are the most flexible in meta/viable build.

I am more blown away by this than the silent slow slaughter of your pro scene. No added “feature” to matchmaking would be able to feasibly compensate for this change; if truly balanced matches are the goal.

Is the direction the Balance Team is heading Paper Rock Scissor or not? You really need to establish this, and you need to do it before patching this change.

It is LITERALLY my birthday, this made me sad, ON MY BIRTHDAY.

Ithilwen.1529:

This map is basically a huge advantage to ranger, dh and war now. The opening of the field of fire was a huge buff to ranged fire.

I can’t help feeling Mesmer and thief got targeted hard.

this design change was not thought through at all.

when do anet devs ever think anything through? they just all congratulate each other and hold hands and then push untested changes into live play, over and over and over and over again. its sickening tbh.

Zietlogik.6208:

Vicariuz.1605:

LULxDxDxDxDxDxDxD

That’s a lot of hotjoin

Not much else to do when ranked/unranked have never been fulfilling in the slightest and once u get legend theres no point to queue. Old farmboards were just as lame and easily as gamed. i do somewhat miss paid tourny matches tho, at least back then u could tell who was good.

side note, all that hotjoin allowed me to play any class any build, might not be esl, but i get queued against them on the reg xD.

atta boi kratos, looking forward to this!

LULxDxDxDxDxDxDxD

apharma.3741:

Vicariuz.1605:

heres a great example, i just went against a double top 25 duo, when i am t3 gold. WHAT THE kitten? then 2 games later, THEY GET PUT ON THE SAME TEAM AGAIN, u can check my match history and lycarous stream.

I have the key to this frustrating lock of yours.

I’ve found the light to illuminate your dark days.

The mystery of what’s causing all your frustrations is about to be revealed.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

You’re NA.

WORRRRRDDDDDD dude bloosh goosh my minddddd

heres a great example, i just went against a double top 25 duo, when i am t3 gold. WHAT THE kitten? then 2 games later, THEY GET PUT ON THE SAME TEAM AGAIN, u can check my match history and lycarous stream.

so what are ur thoughts on some one in my situation

soloq to legend 3 times this season, currently at gold 3 (because it religiously puts people who are allergic to winning on my team OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER the same people, THE SAME LOSSES)

it legitimately doesnt matter that I AM WINING 1V2 AND 1V3 because my team IMMEDIATELY leaves capped points to 3 or 4 man home, and has NO IDEA where they should be on the map to begin with.

asking for them to win ANY 1v1 is like asking for god to descend from heaven.

Why does the match maker continually put the same ppl on the same teams, when history should prove them to not be a compatible match.

I am seriously honestly tired of seeing some of these names ALWAYS on my side of the map.

This is a great move, appreciate the awareness anet.

Tomiyou.3790:

Vicariuz.1605:

decay does not affect ur mmr, it affects ur leaderboard position and volatility.

Volatility?

It’s the variance in ur rating that grows with decay, u win more if u win, u lose more if u lose.

decay does not affect ur mmr, it affects ur leaderboard position and volatility.

duster.7013:

Nah, grow some thicker skin. Salt from the enemy team is a nice bonus. Its your own team, and at that point just mute them.

I don’t respect people who hate “toxicity”, because those players usually are the ones that say gg when they win and complain when they lose.

Ur talking about a completely different issue. Next time try to read more thoroughly.

Exedore.6320:

They have a terrible company communication policy. About the only thing they can talk about is acknowledging bugs. Explaining design goals is a no-no.

Wouldn’t want to see problems before they arise would we. ;^)

rennlc.7346:

Vicariuz.1605:

it quite literally doesnt matter if u hold their hand and tell them or not. the MAJORITY of this player base is INCAPABLE of learning.

According to the theory of diffusion of innovations, only about 16% of people will be opposed to a new innovation. In other words, only about 16% of GW2 players will prove to be incapable of learning new and better strategies. If most people are responding unfavorably to your suggestions, there might be something you can improve with how you make suggestions. For example, asking yourself what can be done to make a message more respectful, how you might respond if someone attempted to help you how you’re offering to, etc.

I have tried many avenues, the fact is: It doesn’t matter how you say it, because overall the number of people who acknowledge/follow along, is so small, as to be negligible. In other words, it’s not worth the effort.

Gwaihir.1745:

Having now played both EU and NA there’s no real difference. Only difference is NA don’t play as much other than that it’s really the same. People need to have played both sides before they throw around the EU mvp meme.

Speaking as some one who has been in legend on both NA and eu, there is a very real difference. EU has, consistently, more competitive matches than NA. Not every single game is a good one, for sure, but overall there are more good matches with both teams rating range of MAYBE 150. In NA you can very easily have a rated range of over 400-500+ points on EACH team.

shadowthejedi.3089:

SlayerSixx.5763:

Vicariuz.1605:

If ur talking about NA, quite literally, only the pro league players are good, EVERY other person is bad.

Idk about EU, but I can attest to how bad players are in NA.

I play the easiest class. Everyone look at me, and think I’m skilled.

I’f you don’t get every top stat every single game below plat, you aren’t good. And that’s NA and EU

Top stats do not matter, ever. Getting top stats does not win you the game.

In regards to smurfing / alting I don’t really see an issue with that, you are allowed to have as many accounts as you want, setting a number of games played to appear on the board is a good change that needed to happen, NA brought this to light.

Now, playing alts and abusing the duo mechanic (along with abusing builds “dd condi dodge” as an example) during off peak hours, and grinding bad players to legendary, is not ok. Do I really truly care if they get legend? no. What I care about is the health of the game, doing things like that, or alt duoing to keep poor players at a rating they dont deserve, is genuinely bad for the game. And you can see that from the actions of NA, actions speak louder than words.

Back on topic though, for the 4th time this season I have soloq to legend (granted on an alt), only to go on a 4-5 loss streak all the way back down to plat1; now, after 350+ games, what is the reason for my WILD swings in rating? 1. Population, I am more often playing with plat1/gold3 players than plat 3/2 players; this is a serious kittening issue. There are simply NOT ENOUGH players in NA to get good matches. Sure you will get close matches, but not good ones. It is a CONSTANT turn over of dying off point, dying 1v1 in a favored match up, double thief, afk at home, 3 or 4 people rotating home for 1 person, (Toker likes to abuse this with condi warrior). Followed by a SCRAMBLE to pick up the pieces. LITERALLY every single game. And the best part about it is if u say ANYTHING other than omg ur a god ur a pro ur the best on NA, people flame the kittening kitten out of u and afk.

SlayerSixx.5763:

I play LoL on the occasion and I have all chat muted. Map chat is the exact same thing, a banter tool. Don’t like it, mute it. If you see a teammate getting caught up in it, tell em to mute it.

giving advice to any one on NA is a worthless venture. losing because ur team is too busy raging at the obvious trolls in map chat could be easily remedied by removing said map chat.

If ur talking about NA, quite literally, only the pro league players are good, EVERY other person is bad.

rennlc.7346:

Vicariuz.1605:

All of that is true, the issue is most of the complaints are about REALLY basic stuff that the MAJORITY of the player base is incapable of understanding. How many times does a person need to be told/read/see these TRULY BASIC principles before it sinks in?

If it’s not said in a way someone wants to listen to, you can tell them something an infinite number of times regardless how of basic it is. How something is said is probably much more important than what it is said.

it quite literally doesnt matter if u hold their hand and tell them or not. the MAJORITY of this player base is INCAPABLE of learning.

1 way to get rid of the ridiculous amounts of salt and stupidity in this garbage game, would be to remove map chat from ranked arena. It serves NO purpose and is a gateway for triggering/trolling/and any otherwise unsportsmanlike conduct.

I’d push for the removal of ALL chat other than team chat, but that’s asking a lot of arena net.

Lordrosicky.5813:

This happens all the time due to duo queue. It means the other top players dont queue because they only duo queue so most sit afk in hotm waiting for their friends to show up so they can farm some rating. As a result every game in plat and above has a good chance of a blow out.

Result = pvp is dying.

I wouldnt say pvp is dying, the NA scene has been in the morgue since before the season started. But EU is hustling and bustling.

All of that is true, the issue is most of the complaints are about REALLY basic stuff that the MAJORITY of the player base is incapable of understanding. How many times does a person need to be told/read/see these TRULY BASIC principles before it sinks in?

Yeah I’m legit kittening TIRED of playing against top 10 duos with gold and silver in my team, either make ur game good and give NA a real population or just end the servers.

Liewec.2896:

anyone got a video of condi evade thief?
nvm, found one
i still prefer my staff acro power thief tbh!

this is not the maygi build, the maygi build is d/d d/d with signet of malice.

It definitely resembles the turret engi, only its not a strong build, its a troll build. It baits bad players REAL hard. I’d say the real counter to this weak build is letting go of ur ego.

But I dont believe you should be able to get to legend by literally spamming dodges and evades, or pushing far off respawn, regardless of how numerically weak the build may be.

For example, another class that likes to fulfill that same role is Mesmer, far pusher wanting to get outnumbered. Look at how mechanical a Mesmer must play to hold a 2v1, now look at this d/d thief. Notice anything? The difference in input is astonishing. If a mesmer were to put as little input into the fight as this d/d thief, he would die within the first 8-10 seconds.

Legiion.7385:

Vicariuz.1605:

Miyu.8137:

Where is warrior? Any build
Where is condi mesmer?
Where is condi necro?
Where is bunker ele?

Any of these are just as brainded as any other you have mentioned.

It’s always the same, I play this class, so any other class is brainless to play.

I advice you to try to play all the builds and then come here talk

warrior and mesmer are like the 2 highest skill cap proffesions in the game. Any necro or ele build is more complex than either of the thief builds AND dh combined.

Lol ur trolling evry condi cancer is braindeath.(War meta and mez meta)
1. Full trapper DH
2.D/D condithief
3.condi war
4.condi mez
5.scrapper
Btw evry class has a braindeath build ^^

and what is ur rating?

Miyu.8137:

Where is warrior? Any build
Where is condi mesmer?
Where is condi necro?
Where is bunker ele?

Any of these are just as brainded as any other you have mentioned.

It’s always the same, I play this class, so any other class is brainless to play.

I advice you to try to play all the builds and then come here talk

warrior and mesmer are like the 2 highest skill cap proffesions in the game. Any necro or ele build is more complex than either of the thief builds AND dh combined.

just kite the god mode and dodge f1s, letting them hit more than 1 f1 is asking for trouble.

One of the better advices I heard was, this game plays much more like a fighting game in pvp than like you remember WoW pvp. It’s true, this game is combo based not skill rotation based (though there are defensive rotations), but in a different way. Instead of a straight up healer topping you off, you have invulnerability frames, evade frames, dodge frames etc; akin to Smash Bros invuln frames.

To get better at PvP, you need to keybind well, whatever they are they need to be good binds. Example, on Mesmer, you are going to need to be able to use every single ability within the span of F5 Chontinuum Split. And not just in any order, you are going to need to use all of those abilities, in combos, while maintaining clone clount. Good keybinds make it easier to play any class more effectively, but especially those with somewhat complex mechanics.

What else makes you better at the game? Learning the maps, and the ways to use the terrain to your advantage, this means using movement abilities and jumping puzzles to create space between you and your target, or close that space. There are many videos on youtube about all the different ways to kite on each map, they are worth the watch.

After you set up your keybinds and learn the maps, it would be a good idea to start dueling people you know. 1v1 you will begin to understand match ups, the crux of every pvp match, is the match ups that are chosen; you want to rotate into favorable match ups, and the only way to do that is to learn the fights. Duel as much as you possibly can, you are going to need the muscle memory and spamming duels with a friend for an even just an hour will help with acknowledging patterns in the fight and reacting appropriately to them.

I’ll provide some helpful links.

Here is the best Mesmer in the world’s guide to keybinds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw9wwjGH6j0
Here are some tips and tricks by him as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qipMu_1-oYk
Here is his twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thelordhelseth

Another great player to learn from is ROM, if u learn the habits of good players and try to emulate that you will perform better. I suggest watching his vods (last broadcast), he does not play Mesmer, but perhaps seeing other classes played well may interest you in them.

Here is his twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/romoncoke

This link provides you with meta builds, I suggest running exactly what is on the site until you become skilled enough to deviate. These are guide-lines, and at a certain level need to be tweaked based upon your enemy teams composition, but over all are the most effective archtypes.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

I’m torn on this, I think placement games can be better, and true dc’s during placement games are THE WORST feeling, but not counting a loss on dc means you play with a friend on an alt, if you are losing your friend dc’s. It WILL be abused.