Guild Wars 2

Ever since the start of this game this has been a pretty rampant problem that I’m sure anyone who has experience in Tpvp not running with a full team knows too well. In this post I’m going to go over the two causes of unfair matchups due to numbers and try and propose some potential fixes. Yes this is a QQ post, whingers gonna whinge, flame on.

No-Shows
Basically this happens when someone queues up for a tourney, then logs off ending up with the match being a 4v5 etc. One of the major causes of this was queue times, with the new 1 map setup the numbers of leavers has reduced, but this isn’t the core problem. It all boils down to how teams are formed during queue – the roster system.

The Roster system is a flawed mechanic specifically designed for a team of 5. I have not checked post patch whether in solo queue as roster leader you still have the ability to kick people from roster and if you have the ability to leave without disbanding the entire roster so if someone could clarfiy for me it would be much appreciated, but the fact that a randomly assigned person from the roster had that ability was illogical to say the least. EDIT – Just checked and this is still the case :|

The matchmaking system as it currently stands will first judge your MMR, search for other people in queue and then match them together in a roster and only then will it search for other full rosters to compete against. I don’t understand why the roster is necessary, once the roster has been made a person can log off and it won’t kick them from the roster. What is wrong with finding 10 players with similar MMR, randomly assorting them between two teams at the start of the match. If you are running with a group, but not 5, why can you not simply create a roster, submit that, that goes into the 10 players assigned to the match but are kept together when being sorted into a team.

A potential fix for the No-show problem would be an afk check, similar to in League of Legends, it was impossible before due to having 8 teams and causing an already long queue to grow exponentially, but in these 1 round matchups which have more players in queue and shorter queue times it should solve a lot of these cases.

Leavers and AFKs
This has always existed in Tpvp but I’ve noticed this has become a very common phenoma especially post-patch and I believe it is because of the influx of people from hot join. In hot join, if you’re not playing well, the enemy team has a tough team comp or if something annoys you, people just leave the lobby and that’s perfectly understandable cause people can just rejoin mid match. In Tpvp, the root of the problem stems from the fact that there is no negative consequence to leaving or afking mid match.

There is no report system, there is no tracking of stats of how many times are person leaves or afks and it is not even against ToS so there is really no solid reason why a person should not do it at the moment. You’ll be playing mid match, suddenly realise you only have 4 on your roster and you might as well have a forfeit button unless you are a very solid group of players against bad opponents.

Please implement a system which causes players who quit mid-game to actually receive some negative impact, whether it be a temporary ban from queueing in Tpvp etc. Of course this needs to be monitored and have data collection set up so that it doesn’t happen after one or two incidents because disconnects do happen or real life events intervene, but there needs to be something to discourage it. Also, a reporting system for those who afk or leave would help, yes it could be abused by people who just think a person played bad and want to get back at them so of course it will need proper maintenance.

TLDR – The roster system is flawed and encourages unbalanced matchups and there is no negative consequences to leaving or afking a Tpvp match. Any comments, clarifications or opinions are welcome.

Patch being released on the 26th.

Just so you know, that video was made before Fractals were even implemented and shows the imbalance of that Ele build at the time rather than the accessories used. You’re quoting the build used from the 2nd of February this year to prove its imbalance through a video made in October of last year (notice the video description).

Trap rangers are currently considered a very strong build and Beastmastery rangers can be very effective duelists due to the amount of pet damage in combination to the huge amounts of regen available to them if the opponent doesn’t focus the pet down. These 2 rangers builds are strong in 1v1 scenarios, a skilled ranger will win most of these duels, and traps/entangle can provide good teamfight aoe and control, but they are far from being so overpowered that they are uncounterable. Power rangers, even the red one, still are very weak though. The amount of damage they provide in comparison to running a tanky spec is not worth their glassy nature and often are free kills.

The thing you need to know about pets are though, they are hilariously unreliable until you have a lot of experience with them. The pathing for pets is still quite horrible and can be kited reasonably easily and the f2 skills have a long delay, require the pet to run all the way to an enemy if you have them targetted and frequently don’t go off. That’s not to say, pets are useless. I run drakehound/wolf and the interrupts and cc they provide as well as decent damage output can make or break a fight for me. They just take a while to get use to and could use some AI improvements and are vulnerable to aoe.

Mobility, specifically with your weapon set would be horrible, with Sword or GS rangers have access to leaps which can help and WH for speedbuff so it is possible for a ranger to have pretty good mobility but it requires the use of certain weapons.

The current meta trap ranger build is usually the link below with the occassional trait moved around. Copy and paste the url if it doesn’t work.
http://www.intothemists.com/calc/index.php?build=-FV-FkBF0FFz-v2ZEF-0;9k2D;2TT44;117A28A;4K-k6aZk6jwmAjwmA2VQ

The only situation where lightning reflexes is bad is when running away from a zerg. If you’re already in combat, and were able to be stunned, no matter which way the skill went you were going to die. It’s an extremely useful skill for bow rangers or just try to make some distance from an opponent, examples would be say if a warr bullrushes and you get hit by it, just hit lightning reflexes and not only do you break the stun, but you evade the following burst without having to use a dodge and you gain vigor, same goes for thieves or any other burst/stun situations.

A good skill for duking an opponent, catches a lot of people off guard when a ranger suddenly rolls backs behind them.

If you purely just want a skill than breaks stuns so you can run away from a zerg without rolling back into them, trait signets. Either use it pre-emptively, or just avoid situations where you need to be running away while breaking stuns.

Unfortunately you will not be able to get them. Just keep winning and you’ll eventually start to get chests again but there is no way to get the chests you didn’t get even though you won. It sucks, its a problem that has been around for months but there is nothing we can do about it unfortunately.

Read the second half of the paragraph.

If you continue to play in your new server region, you should begin earning tournament rewards again once you’ve earned more tournament reward chests than the amount you earned in your original server region.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Tournament-chests-and-transferring-between-server-regions. Feel free to use the search button before making a topic to ask a question that has already been answered.

Seeing how this was your first time, were you using the portals to get inside the bubbles or were you just trying to walk through? If you were trying to walk through you are insta killed, and intended mechanic.

I have noticed the rare bug where using the portal will still end up with me being downed but not frequently enough that it is a real problem. Never noticed any specific problems with the longbow, unless you are trying to attack from outside the bubble because the bubble reflects projectiles.

Anyway, this is far from a ranger specific problem, if you are entering the bubbles correctly using the portals aorund the sides of the room and are still seeing these bugs make a thread in the Game Bugs Forum and provide as much evidence (screenshots or video) as possible in the report.

•Returned the Corrupted Short Bow to its former majesty.

You forgot to fix the Pvp Frozen Bow (the pvp shortbow which uses the same skin).

pigtaro.2749:

Pls dun qq in forum about exploit without any pics or vids to back it up. No matter how many “i also see it” will not make any difference… it is just words against words. Report to anet or their guild leader if you have proof.

Innocent til proven guilty.

This is quoted from the Code of Conduct:

•Do not engage in personal attacks against forum members or in character assassination. Posts that attack another member, that single out a player for ridicule, or that accuse someone of inappropriate in-game actions will be removed without notice.

That means that any post that implies another person to be exploiting, specifically screenshots or videos provided as evidence of someone exploiting will be removed and the poster infracted. Any evidence should be sent to Anet at exploits@arena.net

If people come onto forums asking to reduce the number of exploiting and encouraging a fair game by all servers I don’t see a problem with it, I’m not sure why you keep demanding vids to be posted here, those who may or may not have committed know what is happening, they don’t need anything proved to you or the other people reading this thread not involved in the event. Straight accusations, however, should not be conducted in this thread but reported using the in game feature and sending any evidence to the email link I provided above.

Kuldred.2436:

Wispy, I invite you and anyone else for that matter, to go register at yaksbend.com and read our public forums concerning WvW. We do not tolerate cheating, hacks, exploits, whatever. You will find post after post of our commanders preaching to anyone that will listen, that this is not how we roll, and this is not the reputation that we want. We want to keep the play real, win or lose.

If you can provide a screenshot of anyone on Yaks Bend exploiting, cheating, or hacking, I can guarantee you they will be dealt with quickly.

We pride ourselves on being competitive, having a never-say-die attitude, great community, and a zero tolerance policy on cheating, or even something that would be considered ‘shady’. (ie, going into another servers voice chat and relaying to our commanders what they are doing.)

We can’t control everyone, and we do our best to let everyone know that this is not tolerated. If a Yak’s Bend player is seen cheating, we would actually welcome and encourage you to send us screenshots, preferably to yaksbend.com, so we can take action. I fully understand that getting screenshots can be difficult, but you have to understand that we can’t take action unless we have indisputable proof. Because, as has been pointed out already, as unlikely as you feel it is because of your extensive sweeps, there exists the possibility that someone has found an effective legit hidey-hole.

Having spent hours running with just about every commander on Yaks, I would find it extremely difficult to believe any of them would instruct anyone to utilize a portal created by a mesmer that knowingly exploited/hacked thier way into a building. As far as they knew, it was legit.

Just my 2 cents, take it for what it’s worth.

I know Yak’s Bend as a whole does not condone exploiting, and if they knew the mesmer was exploiting I don’t think they would be taking the portals. It is for that reason why I made those posts, because most likely no one, or very few people would be taking the portals if they knew they came from an exploiter. There would be no point in me putting those posts on a forum where the server commiting them doesn’t care.

I’ll try to take some screenshots if it happens again today, but they possibility of being able to screenshot an exploiter is well… very low. We’ve spent hours searching for them before so forgive me if I am unable to find him.

My view is probably a little too negative on the forums, probably because one of these exploiters even made an account on DB for the sole purpose of taunting and misleading our server. You could be standing next to him in SM, knowing he is the mesmer exploiting above you, and yet you can do absolutely nothing about it because he doesn’t care.

Keep in mind that for all this time, we knew a mesmer was inside inner SM. We knew that some of them are exploiting, one was in lord room wall trying to hide then Wp’d out once found, one was abusing hiding in the wall on the 2nd floor. You can see the npcs move around and yet no enemy visible. I am here, telling you with a straight face, we had 10-20 people patrolling SM inner. We were honestly waiting for the exploiting mesmer(s) to portal Yak’s in. This is all happening 2-4 hours after SM has been flipped over the past two days.

Do not mistake my post for acusing yak’s to be an exploiting server, I’m not saying that. Yesterday, Yak’s was portalled into SM inner so long after being flipped that the walls were upgraded, the doors and workers were upgraded and the WP was halfway done. Today, it took another 2 hours, and that entire time, everyone in EBG knew there was a mesmer in SM inner. We saw mesmers exploiting, we were constantly trying to fight a frankly needless fight against exploiters and then you think that we must have missed that mesmer? We looked in every legitimate spot and quite a few not legitimate. These mesmers that are offering portals hours after SM was flipped are exploiting. Stop taking their portals because I don’t believe you to be a server that encourages such behavior.

Just going to throw this out to Yaks Bend, all servers have exploiters, that’s unavoidable. But do you honestly believe that after what happened yesterday, and the amount of times you have been portalled into inner SM that DB has not been checking over and over and over every single place with Stonemist? Do you honestly believe that the mesmer has been going unavoided for hours on end? We literally have been keeping 10-20 people in SM inner constantly searching and waiting for the mesmer to portal you in.

I’m not here with any evidence of the mesmer himself wall exploiting, it’s the wrong place for it. But can you be so naive to think that he is legitimate? Please, stop accepting his portals hours after we have flipped SM. There is honestly no place we haven’t checked, we have found several exploiting in the walls, but I’m not here to report that mesmer. I am here asking you, as a server, stop accepting the portals of an exploiter.

Been a long time since BP has had a 100% pie.

Thanks for your reply dovgan, I never meant all of AR was part of the problem, but there have been multiple attempts of this over a couple days now of the entire AR force which are in EB at the time all aware of what is happening and taking part in it, therein lies my problem. A collective agreement to openly exploit multiple times.

I never said it was a good strategy, they have failed it 5 times now (and those are only the attempts I have personally been online to see, not sure how many I am offline for and miss) and my screenshots aren’t the best quality, I am playing on a laptop so the culling issue hits me pretty hard, you don’t even see a single golem in the images I posted but between trying to fight off a zerg and the culling/loading issues caused from being between two zergs on a laptop the 5 that were present aren’t even shown in the screenshots.

There was a lot more AR there than the SSs show, commanders present for every attempt and obvious organisation shown when portal bombing inside the keep; but as far as I recall I don’t remember seeing many if any people from your guild taking part in the most recent attempt. I can’t speak for yesterday, I can’t recall.

jkctmc.8754:

Reread what I typed. Read it a few times, even ten if you have to. I was not basing it off older data, just showing that is the KIND OF DATA they’re releasing to us, and for whatever reason the most recent data was removed.

Read it over, and over, and over……

KIND OF DATA, that was released a few days after game release is about as relevant to current population as my favourite taste of milkshakes. This is raw data, pulled from the game engine, the devs said nothing about it and have nothing to do with it. If you insist on using that data though, Borlis pass BACK THEN had higher peaks for queue times but were much more concentrated burts in comparison to Anvil Rock, (which seems to be the only server you care about and think everything said in this topic revovles around AR and more specifically around you) which had lower queue times but lasted longer. To average them out the queue times for both servers over the length of the data is very similar, to say that ‘the devs said borlis was the only server with no wvw population problems’ is ludicrous given this data. These graphs are completely kitten irrelavent to the past couple weeks of wvw, it does not support your argument, stop bringing it up.

Unless us holding Hills for three hours during prime-time at server reset, against all odds, even taking down a lot of trebs, catapults, and whatever else we did is any indication of how bad we suck, well I guess we suck. I mean seriously are you not reading the thread? Facts are facts, you are able to gain a point advantage because you can occupy multiple maps at once, WE CAN NOT. That isn’t meant to insult you, and I don’t know how in the hell you can see it as an insult. It’s just a fact.

I gave AR and GoM compliments and every post from borlis has been the same, I said terrific fights not terrible fights, please take your own advice and learn to read. If you want to talk about numbers here is a screenshot of what wvw currently looks like http://i.imgur.com/NOVa0.jpg. So much for facts. And if you take a look at Navilan’s screenshot and look at the buffs we even had outmanned at the time.

And cap is something like 200 siege on a map. I doubt 11 Rams are putting you at cap. I’d like to see these screenshots though, because you’re probably being trolled by a smaller guild that you guys pissed off. No one on Anvil Rock is doing this, and it is absolutely absurd that when you’re winning, you come at us with such accusations.

It was an example, and not the only place in the map where random seige was being placed to assist us in hitting the cap. I never accused Anvil Rock of doing this and I never accused you with doing it (when you read the forums you seem to replace Anvil Rock with jkctmc and take it as a personal insult) but do not think you can speak for an entire server and think you know what everyone is doing and what they will do. You can only speak for yourself. As for a screenshot gallery of all the rams, I won’t bother. I don’t have to prove anything to you, reports have been sent to Anet and honestly they are the only ones that matter. Here is one of the screenshots of a ram clearly built out of sight so to avoid being seen http://i.imgur.com/R0oVV.jpg.

What I said before about the exploiting into Lowlands Keep was specifically directed at those who commited it, don’t try and defend against something you don’t know about or weren’t even online to see. It has nothing to do with you.

Wait so you have been basing this off of data from 2 months ago? As far as the JQ guild that transferred they have really simply kept to themselves, not a bad thing, but to base our improvement on them is insulting, the alliance and everyone who wvw’s has worked very hard over the past few weeks to get it to where it is now, please for once recognise that.

Of course BP has had transfers, every server who is winning their wvw matchup will always get transfers, but the numbers you think we have is quite silly. We have really high numbers on reset day, queues on a couple maps, but throughout the week we are still very vulnerable to peak and off peak hours. If BP was the massive behemoth of a server that the WvW threads seem to make it out to be, there would be more action in the AR and GoM BLs but atm that only happens in peak hours.

I’m trying to be respectful here but you have done nothing but insult BP or disregard any comment we make. For a few weeks we were constantly bouncing between this and the bottom tier, we know what it is like to be outnumbered and don’t think it will be some revelation to us and praise you for your struggle these weeks. Fact is, both GoM and AR have put up a terrific fight, especially GoM who has seen a severe population drop; both when they have more and less numbers and to have such close scores in wvw for a change has been really refreshing, but I can also say that most of BP is looking forward to moving up a tier, the atmosphere here has become competitive to a fault and the negativity towards each other is quite ridiculous.

As a side note, congratulations to those who have been spamming siege to make us hit the cap, we have been at the cap for a couple hours now and have been forced into trying to hit gates down. I should take some screenshots, you’ll find some rams in the darndest places.

Dovgan.8605:

BP complaining about bypassing terrain is funny considering that there have been picture posted from previous matches of BP doing exactly that.

Which pictures? They either show a small group of individuals who exploited into hills which none of the commanders and major guild support, or a tower which did not find the mesmer which then just portaled everyone up. I’m not saying BP does not hav exploiters, and to think AR and GoM or any server doesn’t either is naive. For example a certain guild from AR a couple days ago exploited into the Lord room in hills in BP borderland but you don’t see posts about it because the actions of a few don’t represent the many.

The point I am trying to make here is that what has been happening today at BP lowlands keep is a pre-meditated sanctioned exploit from the entirety of the AR server that was on at the time, it wasn’t just a couple people no one likes. AR even spent the time to build golems for it, this widespread abuse of land exploitation from a server is different to what has been happening the past couple weeks and I am saddened to see it. I would like to see what a person from AR who was online at the time has to say about it because I am curious how they were all convinced into exploiting.

This didn’t even happen once, it was attempted 4 times today. I know many from AR don’t exploit or hack so please tell those who did to stop.

On a side note, the past 2 days we have been getting people spamming useless seige (11 rams in lowlands keep lord room yesterday) to make our server hit the seige cap, if anyone knows who is doing this or asked them to do it, tell them to stop. Winning is not that important that things like these are necessary is it?

The pie chat at this point of time is representative of two phenomena:
1. GoM just happens to be putting up the least resistance of the two servers at the current point in time hence making it more ideal for both Bp and AR look to control that map.
2. Second place is the more strategically beneficial target for both the first and third (AR has only very recently claimed second due to this focus on GOM). For borlis, GOM was the closest server in points, so it made more sense for us to begin focusing them as you almost overtook in points yesterday. For Anvil it also makes more sense as they are again closer in points and hence overtook you faster as seen in game now with AR in second.

There is no secret truce and there is still fighting between our two servers, there was no logical reason for us to purposely form an alliance on a server that wasn’t even in first place let alone winning by a large margin. Also this has only been happening for what, a few hours? We have all seen large fluctuations in the chart with each of our servers having a minute influence compared to the other two throughout this week, possibly due to population or organisation or a myriad of other reasons of which I will not assume to be the culprit.

As I type this borlis owns half of AR borderland while AR is focusing on GoM’s presence in eternal, its just the way the fight shifts as it has been all week, it’ll equalise out overtime.

I don’t usually like posting in the WvW threads as they usually turning into either boasting or flaming threads, but I don’t like all the rumors of the mass server transfers to BP this week. Sure we picked up a few, not many and not these huge guilds some of the people in this thread seem to believe. I’m sure you had some server transfers to your server as well.

But the thing you have to know about borlis is that, our population throughout the week is heavily based upon the performance of the first day. That’s while you’ll see such heavy activity from some of the larger guilds such as CORE, KREW, SBZY, GOAT etc (sorry if I missed any, not intentional) on the first day and not as much later because we know that if we can show to our server that we have a strong chance this week, and that the scoreboard reflects it, more will join wvw. Compare 2 weeks ago to last week, we had a very strong position after the first day and had good numbers throughout the week. Last week we did not organise as well on the first day and AR and GoM stepped up their game and our lower score discouraged a lot from joining.

I hope you understand the point I am trying to get across here, the major guilds and the commanders work very hard on borlis to get the population needed to be competitive in wvw through the week, not some mystical guilds that transferred that your friend heard from a friend that he dreamt about.

That aside, this has been a very enjoyable week, let’s try and get through it without this thread being locked as the general sportsmanship in wvw has been very good thus far. Just an ending note, @Godfather do not mistake your guild to be the entirety of Anvil Rock; do not take our tactics to be personal vendettas against you or your guild and honestly you do have good numbers at certain times of the day, we all suffer from the same problems.

After the latest update I was trying the new mini dungeon in Dredgehaunt Cliffs, we made it to the Veteran Fleshgrazer fight and we got him down to very low hp, around 1% or so and then this Determined buff popped up and he became invulnerable to damage. Tried messing with the torches, lamps and traps but nothing worked so we let him reset but the buff stayed even after that.

Came back again today to see if it was fixed but seeing how it is seemingly still bugged I thought I should report it.

Also, this is kinda off topic but if a red sees this you spelt ‘Aditional Update Notes’ wrong, should be ‘Additional’.

I do feel like a system for Monthly achievements where there was a number, lets say 10 for an example, total possible achievements. These 10 were to be made up of 5 PvE and 5 PvP achievements. In order to get the Monthly Achievement you would only be required to get 5 out of 10 achievements, meaning those who only pvp or pve both have a chance to get it without being forced into the other.

As for the map completion, as said it isn’t a necessity but the idea of having the title ‘Been there, Done That’ without even stepping into the WvW maps seems a bit silly and you don’t even need to pvp for it just to walk into all the locations as your server locates them. Now if they made the sPvP maps necessary that would be different.

The 500 badges required for the legendary don’t actually require pvp at all, you can farm them purely through doing the jump puzzles located in each of the maps but you do run the risk of having to defend yourself. It is possible to get both this and the 100%map without even attacking another person, however difficult that might be, but I do agree that Monthly Achievements shouldn’t force you to pvp, even though it is quite an easy achievement to fill, some people don’t enjoy it, were told they wouldn’t have to do it, and are now being made to.

Very well thought out arguments and I’ll try to keep my reply to a worthwhile standard in turn.

I too main a Ranger and have a lot of experience with all weapons but the off hand dagger and I must agree that since launch I have felt pigeon-holed into a Shortbow or left being mediocre. About skill fluidity, specifically about the SB, I never understood the idea behind skill 2 as in order to maximise its effectiveness you had to be as close as possible to the target which when using a bow seems to be counterintuitive. It really should be replaced with a more reliable single target attack or even replaced with a skill that isn’t so situational as a response to the recent skill 1 nerfs as Anet have stated they want to move us away from spamming 1. Also for the 3 skill on the SB for that to actually work you need the Sun, Moon and stars to be perfectly aligned with a 4mile north-westerly breeze and to be standing on a perfectly flat surface.

The same can be said about the entire idea behind having to be behind the target in order to gain bleed stacks. As hard as it is to stack bleeds now even in a perfect situation it is just not possible in high level pvp. Sure it is a good idea for pve to give that extra skill management factor, but in PvP and WvW that just simply never happens. In sPvP in particular the only way to get behind a person (other than being unnoticed) is to be up close and constantly flanking or running through them which again seems to go against the whole idea of the SB being a ranged weapon.

The lack of a reliable 2nd main hand weapon is an issue, I really love the idea of the sword but was implemented poorly and I feel like you addressed the major issues and gave good recommendations for it. Axe attack speed is just too slow or damage too low to be considered effective at dps and I won’t even touch on the GS.

Just too many of the Ranger’s mechanics are either unreliable or don’t flow with the idea of the weapon at the moment, the Shortbow can’t decide between being a range or quasi-melee weapon, the longbow has a nice idea behind it but is too stagnant to be effective in this game and with the amount of mobility and gap closing options available it is very easily countered. Pets are a big elephant in the room and require too much discussion for me to put in a post but I think you addressed many of their problems well. At the moment it seems we are purposely made weaker to make up for the fact that we have extra dps/survivability/utility in the pet based on spec but in the current meta they are either too unreliable for utility and the immobilize on attack makes them very easy to kite. In their current state I would much rather be without the pet, but they do have some potential to be great.

As for utilities I’ll just mention a couple things. First about Signet of the Hunt, why does it only give a 10% move speed bonus and frankly a useless active in comparison to the Thief’s Signet of Shadows which gives 25% move speed and a 6sec AoE blind active. The second being the lack of immobilize break (except for a heavily traited Protect Me) which I find to be an extreme weakness to the class in comparison to other guardians where on my current build I have 4. All it would require is Lightning Reflexes to break Stun and Immobilize and it would be fine.

I have a lot of experience with Guardian as well but I really can’t say I notice any huge instances where the design of the weapons don’t flow well, the Greatsword for example with a Leap, AoE pull, and AoE spin flows extremely well together, their support capabilities are also very well implemented. It just saddens me to not see the same fluidity of Ranger mechanics. Your post was a good read and I hope Anet gets around to seeing it as well. Sorry if I mentioned too much about the Ranger specifically but I find that class to be the most obvious example of a lack fluid skill integration.