Guild Wars 2

You can avoid getting hit by skullcrack, just as you can avoid getting with condi bomb from mesmer.

Just learn to see the signs and dodge/block/evade/invul it.

The only thing, absolutely ONLY thing condi-wise is too much atm, thats the charge part of skullcrack. And sorry, but even that isnt actually that difficult to dodge and kite.

Everything else is fine. Condi wise.

You are complaining about condi warrior and condi mesmer, but dont see the real issues with those two.
Mesmer → Signet of illusions, too much evade
War → too long cc durations on too short cooldowns

People are really over-estimating the effectiveness of condition duration in pvp.

I posted it before… reducing cooldown of purity sigil is all that is needed.

Its because ruby/diamond t1 is always bottlenecked mid to end of season.

No dropping down means lots of players that shouldnt be there are clustering around ruby/diamond t1.

If you cant breeze through that, you are pretty much stuck there.

Big flaw of safety pips and winstreak mechanic.

The amount of uses could decrease also… for example you get 15 uses in amber, 10 in emerald, 5 in sapphire and then its only 3 for ruby and diamond.

I wrote “And those that enjoy pvp itself”. I did NOT write “those who play to play”, that was YOUR interpretation.

And of course so many people stop playing on reaching legendary, thats because they only play pvp for the rewards. They only started playing pvp for the rewards/achievements.
They will ALWAYS stop, as soon as there’s nothing worthwhile anymore.
And look at the rewards you posted there…. the value is definitely increased… and anet would have to go, increasing the value each time, each season. To keep it “worthwhile” for the reward/achievement hunters to keep on playing.
As soon as they have everything, they would stop… and start making posts here or on reddit, how there need to be more rewards.

Whereas someone interested in pvp for the sake of the competitiveness, for the sake of winning… they will continue to play for only a spot in the high regions of the ladder.

The solution is MIDDLEGROUND. Not catering to ONE side only.

Rewards are already there. Rewardtracks are enough rewards for playing pvp. There is no need to introduce tournament level rewards to ranked. This would only make it more difficult for players to hold those tournaments, since the rewards would always look cheap compared to “legendary rewards”.

However, what is sadly lacking… is “creds”.
Each season should have its own homepage, with detailed statistics on the first 100 (or even 1000) players in the ladder. How often they die per match, how many kills, how much damage, how much healing, how many captures, how many beasts, favourite map, etc.
The top 10 should be able to represent themselves on that homepage, with a small text… a bit of advertising for their twitch/youtube accounts.

No, it means that you still can win without a 5th player.

Just as it means that you can still win without perfect team comp, as long as everybody can play their build/profession.

Which in turn means: skill > comp.

Because your chance to win with perfect comp, but clueless players is very low.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Efforts, skills, hard work should always pay off and it does in real life. What are you talking about?

Efforts? Hard work? Ranked pvp? Are you serious?
Ranked pvp is not eSports. Tournaments are eSports. Go play tournaments for your rewards. But dont expect tournament rewards in ranked pvp. This is hilarious.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

So, you are saying there is two type of people playing:
1) those who play to get a reward
and
2) those who play to be playing

Not really what I wrote, nope. Maybe you should put all that hard work into getting some reading skills, just a friendly suggestion

P.S.: You are already getting something. Think about it.

The topic isnt new, and I dont think I have to go into detail about the pros and cons of safety pips.

They are there for a reason, but they also cause a lot of problems.

So… how about, instead of making them fixed… make them crumbling? If someone falls back to last safety pip over and over… then maybe, that pip should “crumble” after a certain amount of “uses”?
The player should be able of course, to earn it back. So when he again climbs past that safety pip, full use is restored, which is why I would hold the count low… like 5-10 uses until safety pip crumbles.

I think this would make the ladder less “static”, resolving the problem of these “clusters” of players around the saftey pips (especially ruby and diamond t1) that dont actually belong there and only destroy their mmr with all the losses they get trying to climb further.

So, what do you think?

Always expecting rewards is a really unhealthy mentality – in rl.

Always expecting rewards for playing a game… thats even worse, tbh.

The problem is NOT missing rewards. There’s enough rewards already in pvp. If you want more rewards, play tournaments.

The problem is, and always has been, that with the introduction of legendary pvp backpiece, there’s two kinds of players queueing for pvp.

Those that only want the title/achievements/backpiece.

And those that enjoy pvp itself.

These two groups got mixed with the season rewards, and thats what is actually destroying pvp. These two groups are absolutely NOT compatible. Its like mixing RPG-fans with egoshooter fans. Two totally different mentalities.

There is ZERO common ground between those two groups. Not even winning. Grinders dont care if they dont win every match. PvPers absolutely DETEST loosing.

So what you get is an absolutely toxic environment, in which BOTH sides loose any interest in playing the gamemode after reaching legendary. And those few that are resistant enough, they quit because playerpool is too small.

No more extra rewards…. they are the SOURCE of the current problems, they are not the solution. You dont give a child thats already sick because of eating too much candy even more candy.

TwistedTam.8310:

this x10000000.why are players with 600 achievement points q’d up with players with 13-15k ap?obviously the guy has no idea what he’s doing.knowing how to play ur toon doesnt mean u understand pvp.and its unfair that ppl who have been playing for years need to explain the basics of what to and not to do in each match.especially when most of them argue with u/ignore u anyways cause they know better

In my experience, the guy with 600 ap is good… the one with 13k+ ap is very bad.

Why?

Because PvE content doesnt make a good PvP player.

Also, and Im stressing this point… the amount of (un-)ranked matches doesnt say anything about skill. Ive seen enough players with < 200 (un-)ranked matches that are very good pvp players… and players with 5k+ matches playing with tunnelvision/doublecap mode on all the time.

The majority of players dont even know the role they are supposed to fill with their build. Or where to position themselves during fights. When to disengage. When to stay on point in a 1v1. When to leave point and recap later.

And thats not because they dont have enough experience in pve, pve doesnt teach these kind of things.

And its also not because they havent played enough (un-)ranked matches, because you can play thousands of matches and maintain a 40ish winrate without realizing, that dieing 20 times per match is NOT good.
As long as anet doesnt punish typical newbie mistakes like double capping one point, dieing too many times, fighting endlessly on enemy capped point, etc, in a very direct way… for example by adding negative score… the amount of played matches is in no way relevant.

And about multiclass… pick one profession, one build, that you learn to play perfectly in unranked. Not just okayish…. perfect.
Pick a second profession/build for a DIFFERENT ROLE than your main (if you main for example bruiser, go for a roamer or bunker). Learn to play it perfectly again.
Now you have 2 roles you can fill out of 3. And thats more than enough for soloqueue.

The worst mistake you can do… is trying to play a build/profession in ranked, just because of profession achievements or for perfect looking teamroster.

Stop doing that, pick one or two instead and stick to them… and you will quite easily break out of this win-loss-win-loss cycle.

When did this trend start… to only play for special rewards?

In the past, this kind of mentality at least was confined to PvE grinders. But PvP? I play PvP because I want to win, want to improve, want to play the game.
Reward tracks and some silver at the end are just a bonus and make it for me easier to join on some PvE content. Thats it.

Average mmr, big deviation, big volatility → inflated mmr on new accounts played by not-new players.

You can imagine those two (deviation and volatility) as momentum. The bigger those two, the bigger the increase in mmr on a win.

You can exaggerate that even more if you only play your new account outside primetime, and only lets say twice a week for several matches in a row.

The more regularly you play, the smaller the deviation. The more consistent your match results, the smaller the volatility.

Now, accounts with a history, that regularly play pvp matches, have a very lets say “sluggish” mmr. It takes quite a bit more wins to improve mmr, than on an account with less regularly played matches and less pvp history.

Of course, this is a very simplified answer So take it with a grain of salt.

I remember times when simply being a number in a ladder was enough.

Nowadays its all about “gimmegimmegimmegimmegimme”.

Btw… anet tried to get more players into pvp not so long ago… you remember? Legendary backpiece precursor?
Did we get more competition? Uhm, nope. We got an influx of really really bad players treating pvp as pve and trying to grind the living hell out of it. Some of them even make it to legendary. Remember complaining about that?

You cant have it all.

Go play unranked if you want short queues. Or make a custom arena and invite good players for scrimms/private tournaments. Start being creative instead of just making useless forum posts how you feel like you should get more and more and more for playing the game.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

(…)
Team comp is just as important as knowing how to play…. and if you don’t know to/have the ability to swap to something to help make your comp more ideal then you belong in the MMR gutter with the rest of the people like you.

First off, you are wrong.
Ive won a match with 3 DH, 1 Thief… it ended 500-9. The other team swapped to perfect teamcomp.
Ive won matches with 4 Thieves on Stronghold.
Ive won matches without tempest against perfect comps.

It is ALL about skill. It is about winning 1v1, winning teamfights, winning rotations.

I prefer a good thief over a bad tempest any day.

And about “belonging to the mmr gutter trash”… last season, players like you told me the exact same thing.
This season Im on a 20+ win streak only a few matches away from legendary which Ill probably reach before having played more than 100 matches.

Did I improve skillwise? Hell, no, my skill is pretty much already quite good after years of playing pvp.

Is the meta loving me? Nah, not really, my main got nerfed.

Maybe the matchmaker now loving me? Nope, still getting players that do stupid stuff, really bad premades, but at least no more double-home-cappers.

So what has changed? Its quite easy… now Im no longer constantly pitched against really good and organized players. Which makes carrying quite a lot easier. Some morons fighting 2v1 on enemy capped point? Doesnt matter, I can compensate. Someone running for far/lord at beginning of match? Still can win that teamfight on mid 3v4, its okay.

No more impossible-to-win matches.

http://img.pichoster.eu/5a4cc625gw029.jpg
http://img.pichoster.eu/782c423bgw030.jpg

I think the current matchmaking is good. Blowouts are at a reasonable rate, I still get weirdly bad players on my teams… but at least now the enemy team isnt THAT much better so that I can slowly carry to legendary.

Its funny how you conveniently forget that mats for crafting were a few coppers back then, “expensive” mats a few silver.

It took you forever to get 1g because you spent it on equipping characters, which is exactly what new players nowadays are also confronted with, the only change being, everything costs about 10 times as much as back then.

Those 2g you get from dailies are spent so fast, its like having 20 silver back in the beginning.

Ayrilana, your point being? Second best set for lvl80 → exotic berserker armor.
Leatherworking maxed out → 31g+72g = roughly 100g

There are other problems atm (t6 blood mainly), but those are short term and will solve themselves.

And I tried getting into dungeon groups without maxed armor. People look at ap, look at character, and then they kick my smurf account. Or I can stay, but the group is so bad, the end of the dungeon is not reachable, after 2 wipes everybody just leaves.

But still, all of this doesnt change a simple FACT:
T6 Mats →
Cloth: 0.8s
Leather: 20s
Wood: 10s
Ore: 5s

You call this balanced? I dont. I call this a total failure.

Yargesh.4965:

Glenstorm.4059:

I’m out of the loop. What patch changes? What’s happened to leather prices?

Nothing, the OP is living about 9 months behind the rest of us.

I didnt know May 2016 was 9 months ago. Good to know.

Just a flesh wound, you might find it fun to run behind a zerg leeching every fifth kill, standing in circles to get contribution and in general just being totally useless and bored…. I dont care.

All of that however doesnt change the fact that leather prices are totally out of balance, especially t6, and that reverting the patches change would lower the overall demand of all leather, resulting in more adequat prices for all tiers of leather… bringing them in line to their respective tier-counterparts.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

There is dungeon armor and karma armor that can be acquired. Maybe the stats won’t be exactly what a new player wants but both will get him set up with a decent first set of armor.

You dont get dungeon armor without… at least one set of exotic berserker armor. Karma armor is extremely expensive for someone just starting out.

Having to do open pve without a good exotic armor set is painful to the extreme in 75+ maps.

Im always doing a lot of open world pve. Be it HoT maps, or CS events, or FGS events. Im opening bags mainly on lvl80 chars because I have other ways of getting my t2-t5 mats.
And if I can show 10 t6 leather sections after 2 hours of doing CS events… thats actually a good day.

So please, dont talk to me about “how easy to farm leather is”. Because it is not, definitely NOT. The demand in form of recipes for armor crafting, precursor crafting etc. exceeds the supply by A LOT.

I then pity everybody just starting out on GW2.

100g for a set of armor that is only second best? But is absolutely necessary to get started on end content?

Another 100g to max out Leatherworking?

Even “just” changing an ascended set costs something between 60g to 90g, if you are unlucky enough to have to craft your insignias.

But then, you can farm t5/t6 leath…. oh wait, nvm. You have to pray to rng-god to make him drop lots of medium armor.

There is so much wrong with leather and cloth, the whole design of it reeks. There is no sure way to farm it, not like wood and ore. It “drops”… or not.

And on that topic… whose bright idea was it to increase demand for leather drastically on several fronts, while at the same time reducing droprate and salvagerates? Even if you have to do that to shorten supply in a very short time, you have to… absolutely HAVE TO… open the valve gradually as soon as the demand plainly exceeds the supply.

Not just… wait… for the market to maybe… or maybe not… stabilize… or explode…

…. revert the patches change to all insignias.

Leather prices are WAY out of control ever since that change.

HP sponges with irritating repetitive mechanics.

Balanced? Dunno.

But badly designed? Oh yes. Horrible. Just horrible.

Why should it be one or the other?

Why not just let player choose?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Add-option-for-real-soloqueue/first#post6200665

Not bugged, its implemented and works I got 8/14.

Waiting for rest to be unlocked.

Dont you mean rather “comparing apples with peas theory destroyed”?

Theres not three balls in football… think about it….

Comparing conquest mode with football… I weep for you… honestly weep.

Back to watching Sweden loose.

No, thats pip. MMR gets averaged.

Ithilwen, you kinda made my point for me, mate. Just because you queued up with someone good, that doesnt make you magically good.

Take it as an experience that shows you how much more room for you there is to top level.

MMR isnt that far off with older soloqueuer accounts. New accounts are getting way too much boost. And people running in premades often have an inflated mmr thanks to that.

And of course it is better to queue with players you know are competent. Especially if you yourself arent and have a bad mmr because of that.

But winning with those competent players doesnt mean that that player is all of a sudden “skilled” or even that that player “performed better”. Rather the mistakes that before wouldnt get compensated because the teammates were bad themselves, now get compensated.

This is actually why the switch from matchmaking in season1 to season2 was such a huge shock for so many. In season1, bad players had at least one or more good players guaranteed on their team. That player would carry them, making them feel like they are good.
In season2, bad players were guaranteed… players as bad as them or worse. No more compensation of mistakes.

Ithilwen.1529:

I don’t agree. There are 5 on a team. 1 player can carry, but not hard enough to make the kind of difference I’ve just demonstrated.

It’s clear that the matchmaker placed us on the side picked to win, and we did.

You teamed up with someone of way higher mmr.

This is what happens:
Your MMR -> 20
Lettuce MMR -> 100
Team MMR -> 60

So now all of a sudden you get 3 other players not with 20 mmr, but 60 mmr roughly.

Against a team of roughly 40-80 mmr.

You see where I go with this? Lettuce now faces easy enemy team. You get carried by 4.

And this is why I absolutely DETEST getting placed with premades. Dont think the other 3 guys were happy about having to carry.

Also, end of dodge roll… most players think they are still evading, but truth is… at the end of dodge roll… you arent dodging anymore. Thats actually where you place your burst skills against jumpy thieves. End of dodge roll, just when they hit the ground and the dodge animation isnt quite finished yet.

Sorry to write this, but:

before seasons, the “noob factor” was way lower. With start of seasons… and especially with the introduction of pve items only earned through pvp… a LOT of new pvp players were suddenly queueing up.

Thats players that have absolutely NO clue how to rotate, or even how to play conquest maps. On top of that, they only know the PvE aspect of their professions. PvE is a lot more forgiving than PvP. You can mindlessly spam skills and still be successful, though not quite as fast.
PvP however you need to think before acting. You need to place yourself and your skills to best possible effect.

Now, everybody started out a “newbie” somewhere sometime. Its okay.

But…..
a) Gw2 ranked matches are no place to learn how to play conquest pvp.
b) Lots of those PvE Heroes have an inflated ego and think they are entitled to wins. And if they loose, its always someone else’s fault. Be it the matchmaking system, other players making all the mistakes, whatever.
c) And the other PvE players that now “grind” out their achievements, they arent interested in the gamemode at all. They just want to finish as fast as possible their achievements and move back to easier content. They dont want to invest the time needed to learn the ropes.

So… no… pvp has NOT become a popularity contest.
No, you do not per se need friends to carry you.
No, good teams arent matched against bad teams this season. Bad teams are matched against worse teams, good teams are matched against better teams.

Here’s one tip for free from me:
Positioning is key. Watch in videos/streams of good eles how they position themselves before, during and after a fight. Try to emulate that.

You say ele is “extremely vulnerable to interrupt and conditions”. This sentence alone tells me that your positioning is rotten. That you cant disengage.

/edit:
Agemnon, thats because against bad players, with bad players on your team… the faster the kills… the better. Offensive builds fare better than defensive builds against everything but good players. Good players will flat out destroy you if you are playing offensively without being good yourself.

So you would probably opt in for premades. Which would make you a lucky kitten since your queue time would probably be non-existent, according to your theory, because most would opt out of being placed with premades.

But still… Im saying it most likely is less than half of the playerbase that would opt out, changing queueing times not the least bit.

You think its fair to get placed with a premade that only has above average mmr because of that one really high placed newish account they have in there?
I can tell you: it is not. Those below average mmr guys… they are stuck there for a reason.

And you know what the worst is? Because my mmr really is as high as THEIR team mmr… I get downadjusted by a lot if we loose… or get only slight increase if I carry them to a win, while those baddies sitting there in team with that high mmr account… they get a HUGE bonus.
So if I actually carry them… then I actually risk having them closer to my mmr and getting them over and over and over….
If I loose, I loose a pip, my winstreak and my mmr gets kitten on.

So no, its not all sunshine with premades. And since anet is not willing to fix widespread mmr in teams… I dont want to be forced to play with them.

I dont want to be a filler/fodder for teamqueue.

/edit:
To be really precise… I dont mind so much playing against premades, since those usually end up being bad… I do however mind a lot being placed with said premades… which happens to me a lot.

Boon corruption has been a “thing” for years now.

Resistance was added to take added condition spam in account.

Jetwing, your post kinda shows that you dont have a clue about condi builds. You want to scrap expertise, but then add it back as added value to precision? Do you even realize how many “condi on crit” traits etc are there in most condi builds?

I havent died to a condi bomb as fast as to a staff thief yet. If YOU die that fast, then maybe you should start working on your gameplay. If you just sit there and take it, of course you die. If a thief dazes my necro from stealth and then jumps me with dodge+staff… Im dead without lifeforce full. Do you hear me crying about having thief nerfed? No. I know my hardcounters and accept them… I know that I shouldnt run around without lifeforce, and 9/10 I die to low lifeforce because I wasted it before to secure an already secure stomp.
See what I did there?

Just tell me one profession that does not have access to either invul/block/evade frames and/or heavy condition cleanse on traits/skills/etc.

You are comparing apples with peas. Both are round after all.

Conditions can be removed, there is resistance rendering condition dmg useless… and condition builds have to work around evade/block/invul just as powerbuilds have to.

No, its about all profession achievements. Mainly about the daily ones.

And sorry, but… Id rather have 4 good DHs, than a perfect comp of bad players. And players constantly switching arent good, thats just a fact. You will always lack depth if you dont specialize.

To be honest, it sounds like you are focusing too much on what your teammates do wrong, instead of trying to learn how to adjust your gameplay/rotations to win in spite of what mistakes your teammates make.

Its the lauded “what could I have done better to improve winning chances”. A close loss in unranked is as much worth learning wise, as a win.

Dont forget to say “Hello” in mapchat… and when someone says close/home in teamchat, you ask in mapchat “what is that?”

But be warned… you can get players to quit like that ^^

/edit:
Ohhhh… and I forgot my favourite… “We dont need ele. Im a support necro”… this gets players raging so fast :>

I was asked by someone why I didnt have a title. I answered “whats a title?” and he quit the match ^^

That wasnt you by any chance?

Ragion.2831:

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions.

This, so much this, playing too many professions will affect you in PvP quite a lot. When doing the profession achievement, dont actually play the 3 or so classes Anet wants you to play, play your main then switch to a different class at about 400 if the match is not too close

I can absolutely recommend this. You dont need to cap / kill anything to advance this achievement, so just switching at 400 is more than enough. Best map for this is actually khylo… but forest is good for this too.

Then it shouldnt be possible to “barf out” so much power dmg either at once.

No, the problem to the solution is either more vitality amulets… or runes/sigils that can handle conditions better.

Sigil of purity on a 3 second cooldown… thats all you need. Or maybe look at lyssa runeset and adjust it to be more suitable for a wider range of professions.
But tbh, Im in favor of reducing cooldown on sigil of purity.

Furious.1283:

Yasi.9065:

Kylden Ar.3724:

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions. Hit unranked until you feel competent at winning 1v1, or in case of support professions -> not dieing in under 3 minutes per fight.

Then go back to ranked.

Does Unranked do ANYTHING to reset your MMR so you can at least start getting average teams over kitten teams?

No, and why should it. If you improve, your mmr improves. If you dont improve, your mmr doesnt improve.

… which comes to my question and it hasn’t been answered anywhere: How do I improve my MMR?

I feel I’m stuck in my MMR and with the feeling I will never improve.

This whole thread gives you the answer. Drop out of the race for legendary, go back to training school (aka unranked), commit to max. 2 professions, record your matches, correct your mistakes.

When you go back to ranked after that, you will see that you are way more capable of improving your mmr.

There is no way to improve your mmr without improving your skill. Ranked isnt the place to improve, especially when you hit your limit there. You will destroy your mmr by trying to improve your skill.

Got hit by trueshot for 5k… it smarts :< My poor viper nec nearly died to that

But.. tbh… theres a lot of DHs out there, that just arent good. They make stupid decisions, like jumping in first in fights… standing on point against a necro…

And I think, in the past… DH trap build supported that kind of stupid behaviour, it didnt punish it.

Now you get punished for it – as it should be – and you have to play way more cautiously.

There are those DH, that do that… and they can wreck havoc against soloqueuer’s. And then there are those that still run in, tunnelvision on, just to die instantly… those usually are those that end up going to forums and crying because they cant win anymore.

Mind you, Im talking about soloqueue. Trap dh or even support dh is like viper necro. It is very successful against unorganized teams. It is useless against organized teams.

So, my tip:
Start out on DH, play it cautious, and if you see that you still get wrecked because enemy switches to you immediately… as soon as you are dead, switch to another character.
Thats what I do when playing my necro.

Anet doesnt ban it (yet), so there is no reason not to use that advantage to the fullest, especially as a DH.

Tiefsee.3647:

Ross if bad players would cause a quality drop on weekends, won’t that mean the wintlrate on weekends would rise (weaker enemys)?

Besides the first generation of full time gamers grew up and god jobs, that’s why they flood on the weekend as well – and except their lack of time, most of them are well gamers woth good builds

Thing is…. what he describes there with pve builds… I run into a lot of “minion mancers” on weekends. Necros, that run up into fights… go into lich… use skill 4, drop out of lich… I didnt quite realize it until recently when I started playing necro myself in pve… but what they are doing is the EXACT pve build and rotation.

It confused me so much, because doing this is just so stupid.
a) Jagged horrors die fast and
b) you can pull minions up a structure and jump down, resulting in minions running back too slowly to save the necro or
c) you can range nuke that necro without too much trouble.

Not to mention that they absolutely melt against DH. And they waste lich form… why would you do that?!?!

Just thinking of it makes me angry :/

It might be a mix of both tbh. Of course playing against better teams leaves less room for errors… and if you then get saddled with even ONE of those pve necros… or with a thief that thinks his job is to rally enemies in teamfights… you just have to work so hard to compensate… if you even can compensate.

What it kinda shows however, is that there is a wide variety of skill reflected in a quite narrow mmr range.

So in the end… it all comes down to mmr again, and how it just isnt suited for gw2.

Anet leaves it up to you, to risk loosing matches due to playing a profession you arent good at. That would be okay… if rest would compensate for this.

If:
- matchmaking rating would be professionbound (not just influenced….)
- mmr adjustment would compensate for players on your team with less than 100 matches on the profession they played the majority of the match

But tbh, all of this is trying to fix something that shouldnt even be there.

And I mean…. this is horrible when trying to climb up to legendary, because so many players try to multiclass… and only loose matches because of this.

But legendary t1 is an absolute nightmare because of this. So many players reach legendary t1 and start playing for achievements. This frustrates those on those teams that
a) arent legendary yet and
b) want to win.

Whats the result? Of course, after getting those achievements… those achievement hunters wont play anymore… at the same time…those that want to win and want to keep on climbing for prestige… well, they quit also.
If you get placed every single match with someone that has NO CLUE how to play, someone that plays a support tempest like a roamer…. or plays a thief like a bruiser… well, then its no wonder so many loose interest in prestige ranks.

And this situation KILLS pvp. It results in long queue times, it results in lots of toxicity and frustration.

And it is absolutely not needed.

Just restrict those achievements to unranked.

The whole “Year of the bla” achievement thing was a huge mistake, but those profession achievements? They are the absolute worst part of it.

I find it quite amusing how some obviously only read the title.

Not everybody would opt out of getting placed with premades. My prediction is, that most dont care. So it wouldnt really influence queuetimes that much for most.

Most here hate on stronghold, still queuetimes for that gamemode are only long if you queue with full premade. And that even though most players confess to a dislike of stronghold gamemode.

I, however, do care about getting placed with premades. A lot. The vast majority of premades I get placed WITH and AGAINST are crappy guild groups. Its no fun to win against them, its no fun to loose with them.

For me, playing without voicechat crutch… with 5 random players placed together, thats the highest form of a challenge in pvp. Its why I played gw1, it was in the past why I played gw2, and it is only because of that past, that I keep on (stubbornly) hoping for anet to realize their mistake. But my patience has been stretched thin. Too thin, tbh.

Playing with premade gives you already a HUGE advantage, wardspratlin. THATS your reward for playing with friends. What else do you want… a guaranteed win? Sorry mate, but at one point you have to start to get good to win.

That match would have been totally easy, and with your dc we had to work extremely hard to not fall too far behind. It was for approx 3.5 minutes a 4v5 situation, more so… it was the first minutes of the match, which are kinda crucial.

First you took forever to load into map, but then you were there and match started… then you didnt move and after some time you dc’ed… so yeah, our conclusion that you just went afk wasnt that far removed

As to your troubles. It sounds like you are loosing connection to server which causes those long loading times. Did you try crashing the game and re-starting it when your loading screen takes longer than usual?

You could try running a ping/tracert program like pingplotter to see if, when and where your connection gets lost.

Aenaos.8160:

But why.
You can kill the Engi NPC,whom btw until recently I thought was a male Asura,for the
millionth time.
(…)

He isnt?!

Id like a minigolf adventure in hotm please, with top ten list.

Or some form of shoot em up…. or… Sven Bomwollen with moas instead of sheep. :/

Hey,

Ive been observing a certain “trend” during all three seasons.

Everytime I play during weekends, my winrate drops and my matches are so unbelievably more difficult.

Id have thought it would be the other way around, since on weekends there are MORE players, the playerpool is bigger, so there should be more close matches.
Instead I get a lot of blowouts, and those “close” matches I get – close as in the end score is something like 400+ for loosing side – I have to work so f…ing hard, Im absolutely exhausted afterwards.

How do you guys experience pvp on weekends? Close matches? Blowouts? Fun? Horror?

Starbreaker.6507:

Since just before the halfway point of last season I switched over to Ranger as my defacto ‘main’ (previously was guard) and I’ve been running it ever since, so I’m well versed in the meta setup. Sometimes to switch things up I’ll switch off my bunker druid spec to a more offensive (Marks/WS/Druid) one if I see we have another bunker (i.e. ele or someone that wants to stick with bunker druid) on the team.

I know it’s been knocked down a peg this season compared to last, but it’s the one I’ve logged the most time with (besides Guardian), so I still plan to stick with it.

I have been trying to play other professions too, but I can see where switching up professions too much may be a problem and I’m probably doing a disservice to my team since I don’t know the others as well as I do ranger.

I feel competent most of the time, but there are just some games I’m left scratching my head wondering what else I could have done. That may be another part of my issue – recognizing what I didn’t do as much as what I did do.

Maybe it’s back to the salt mines, I mean unranked for me!

Thanks for all the positive responses guys! I’m glad to see not everyone in the PvP community is jaded :P

Here’s one thing that will improve your gameplay by a lot:
Record yourself and re-watch each match directly afterwards. Oftentimes, especially in the beginning, you wont recognize or remember your own mistakes because you only reacted all the time. Recording yourself will help you analyze and find your mistakes.
Stay objective, watch what enemy did, how you reacted, look for wasted skills or dodges, look at minimap to see what enemy team did while you were fighting, look at the time it took you to fight.

I can decide wins in ruby t1 with any kind of pure offensive build.

Why? Because enemy team will log to something defensive. No mediocre ele has enough sustain to survive focus fire of a viper nec or power rev. Or both.

If you want to be able to help out by swapping to better suited profession for comp… then go with two different roles, and there with professions that can be stacked without loosing too much.

Ele + Necro/War
Ele + Eng/Mes/Rev
Eng + Necro/War

Ele is actually atm the best profession to learn “on the side”. Because with ele you have a fallback profession if your teamcomp got too much offense, but at the same time… rotating with ele is absolutely easy. You stick to your team. Thats it. No thinking involved. If they split up, you choose the one group with more necros/revs/dhs. Done.

Rotating your skills on the other hand… is not so easy. I see a lot of eles panik-clicking skills… wasting cooldowns and dieing to that.
Also, you have to know when and what to dodge, where to stand on point etc.

So, yeah…. ele actually makes your team really suffer, if its a bad/mediocre player behind it.

Kylden Ar.3724:

Yasi.9065:

Commit to one, max two different professions. Hit unranked until you feel competent at winning 1v1, or in case of support professions -> not dieing in under 3 minutes per fight.

Then go back to ranked.

Does Unranked do ANYTHING to reset your MMR so you can at least start getting average teams over kitten teams?

No, and why should it. If you improve, your mmr improves. If you dont improve, your mmr doesnt improve.

Mediocre played multiclass will never “change the tide”. Thats where you and about 90% of all players in pvp are absolutely wrong.

I won matches with 4 thieves or 4-5 dhs. Ive lost matches where everybody logged to a perfect setup.

Its all about individual skill. And yes, proper rotations, watching minimap… all part of that “skill”. Profession however, is not.