Guild Wars 2

Lexiceta.4156:

No, the person that plays the most games in not necessarily better, but neither is a high MMR an indication of skill. The current system is not about winning and increasing MMR it is about points, the two are not mutually exclusive. Trouble with a MMR based leaderboard is the seasons and the reset of MMRs, it takes weeks for MMRs to settle down and you the matching is bad now wait till you see it with everyone at 0.

How is high mmr not an indication of skill? Do you think Magnus Carlsen just lucked out in his world chess championship games? The only purpose of an MMR algorithm is to define skill level relative to other players. The reason it’s sucked in GW2 is because solo queue and team queue share both a queue and a ladder. Every game that is premade vs solo players corrupts the ladder to some varying effect in terms of MMR (because you can’t measure odds of communication against just having decent ppl in a party together). This is why you need 2 ladders, one for solo queue MMR and one for team queue MMR (casted to actual teams, not individuals, since the overall skill level of a party differs based on who is in the party).

It is my understanding that the current system gives everyone an MMR, but decides team MMR by shooting the collective MMR of each individual in the party into a formula that spits out a weighted average. The reason this doesn’t work in the long run is because you can’t tell how much of an effect that communication actually has on the odds/outcome of the game. And because different people play differently with each other, the system can’t assign a popper MMR. For example; what if someone gets carried to a high MMR by doing team queue with his really skilled friends? Then he joins a new group of players and his MMR parameter corrupts the weighted average his team will get (because his MMR is not indicative to his actual skill level).

Lexiceta.4156:

The top players are those with the highest mmr.

So person who plays the most games is more skilled than person with a high mmr?
MMR ladder is only flawed because of mixed queues. If the ladder was based off of teams for team queue and individual players for solo queue, there wouldn’t be a problem.
And by teams I mean guilds, meaning draw up a ladder that ranks guilds based on mmr reached by the players who rep it during ranked, then you can click the guild to see which ppl in it have the most games played repping it in team queue. Then set a conditional to where you have to be in a guild with someone if you want to queue the ranked match as a duo+. You could add tons of conditionals to control potential abuse of a system like this. But with mixed queues sharing a ladder, it’s much harder to deal with exploitation of the ladder.

If I’m on thief, you know you’re getting fed.

The only times I play ranger;

• 1) other team has 2+ mesmers
• 2) my team is lacking in the fashion department and I need to carry our aesthetic game.

The fire bringer

I mean you’re basically just sorting by # of wins with this point system anyways. Why not sort by mmr and let the ppl that care about points the option to sort by wins. I went out of town with my gf after grinding points for like a week and fell from rank 700ish back down to 90%. It’s kinda dumb. Looks like the cap for points is like +3 per game, how about making this scale to the amount of points on the other team? Eg; if you queue into someone with 100 points and win, you get their points – your points /2 or something?

Exedore.6320:

Up until December 2014, leaderboards were based on rating, with a decay filter applied. They had problems, notably:

1. There was (maybe still is) a flaw in the rating calculation or the parameters, as evidenced by someone that was 2-11 being rank1 for a few days. Similarly, you had people who were 11-0 or 10-1 making it to the top of the leaderboards, often with troll names like “fix leaderboard”.
2. The decay was too extreme on the leaderboards and did not affect actual rating. As a result, players who went inactive for a couple days would drop hundreds of spots on the boards. But when they would play one game, they would suddenly jump up a few hundred. Ironically, the decay was intended to filter the 11 game troll accounts off the top of the leaderboard.

This kind of sounds like a player population issue, where you’d only have a few players queuing at non-prime time hours and the rating spread of each match maxing out to accommodate the queue timers. Decay should kick in after a week or two of inactivity (like LoL’s old S2 elo system). I think with rating you already do have games played being a factor, since rating is built up in such linearity (and by winning). You’ll eventually reach this point where it takes a certain number of games to push the rating threshold.

The problem with Gw2 has always been player population, there simply hasn’t been enough ppl queueing ranked at all hours to create matchups within reasonable MMR spreads. So the highest MMR guy looses to some low MMR scrub on an unlucky game at 3:00am and gets his rating tanked before he can push the threshold to make games played matter. Meanwhile, some low MMR scrub just got propelled to the top of the ladder, which will cause his new teamates to loose and propel some other noob. It’s just a cycle. When morning hits and everyone loggs back in, the ladder has been shuffled and no one is where they should be.

Like, I’m currently 95% on the ladder and I queued into Noob Engi (who is ranked #1 in north america) like 3 times after midnight tonight.

Saiyan.1704:

Is this another way to show highest mmr?
Whats stopping a guy from not playing once he hits a high index like16 – 1? This is your classic Old Leaderboard system where playing a few lucky games will yield you top rank. Once there, all they have to do is go afk.

Make a system where 100 w/ 0 l = 500w/430l
You have to cater high mmr players with players who has high amounts of games played. I tried making a post about that here

It’s going to take a lot of math and ingenuity to find the right equation where MMR = High amounts of games played. I think this is a route that we need to look into… but i’m no mathematician so i cant offer anything more than an idea and a simplistic outline.

I think you’re confusing w/l ratio with MMR. Parsing through the ladder data and re organizing it with points/total games doesn’t truly reflect MMR (more of a reflection on “deserved” w/l ratio).
There isn’t a whole lot Acandis can do to actually create a better leaderboard using data from a bad one, mathematically or otherwise, because he’s fundamentally working with bad data. The games played issue isn’t even a problem you’re going to approach with mathematical formulas, it should be a conditional in the MMR algorithm itself (rating decay “if statement”).
The problem we face with this current leaderboard is that loosing games seems to have little to no negative impact on “ranked points” value, meaning you can just spam games and as long as you get lucky and win a few you’ll climb the ladder. This is bad because it defeats the purpose of actually having ranked points in the first place; you’re essentially just sorting by total weighted wins, which basically means the “top player” is whoever can log the most hours in game.
Everyone has just been asking for a ratings ladder from the begining, idk why they don’t just do that and show ppl ratings. They could have 1 ladder for solo and 1 for team queue tied to guilds.
They have some “psuedo code” (python syntax) for their MMR algorithm and how they (used to?) sort the ladder that can be found here.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Zodian.6597:

Josh Davis.6015:

Thanks for writing up your concerns so succinctly.

This test season is intended to test an algorithm that’s tailored towards ranking players higher for better W/L ratios, in addition to using points gained from playing (meaning games played does not become valueless). The algorithm we’re using this time around is completely different than what was previously tested, and they both have different purposes. We’re already having internal discussions on how we can adjust this season’s algorithm to better suit the goals we stated on Thursday – rewarding players who play well, not just play. These discussions will continue into the next week, and now we have an entire weekend’s worth of data that we can look at and extrapolate on.

Are they even using a rating algorithm anymore?
It kinda sounds like it’s just a ladder point algorithm, which would be a step backwards imo.

They still use a matchmaking algorithm based on MMR. Which actually works well imo. Really well, I think it is very well written and coded in general. Honestly most solo queue matches are well balanced and fair.

The problem is that the system has killed team forming. You used to be get very good eu players pugging up and queueing in team queue because everybody wanted to get high on the leaderboards. Now, nobody respects the leaderboard and so nobody cares about trying in gw2 and forming a roster.

Almost all teams came out of people pugging and making friends. By pugging they realised who players they gelled with and who was a similar level. So they could then gather up a player base of dudes who they could form a team with. Many many many teams formed in this way. Most people started out pugging seriously on ts and that is how they proved themselves AND how they found others who didnt rage/they got on with etc.

The failure of the leaderboard is currently killing the formation of teams. I know it sounds counter intuitive but it is what many of us have observed.

No new teams pop up anymore whereas in september/october there were teams popping up everywhere. Every day there would be some new teams of people try harding gw2 pvp.

This was because Grouch and Anet did great work building up the competitive scene. That scene is now AT BEST stagnant because there is no way for new teams to form currently. Which is a massive shame. Anet do so much so well, but the leaderboards are one of the things currently killing all that.

You can still pug up in a premade but you wont get any games good enough to know how good the people you are playing with really are anymore.

imo

I think having an unregulated solo vs premade queue will always cause problems for the ladder. Maybe they could just try splitting the MMRs to where you have like a team/guild mmr for when you queue with 2+ ppl in your guild, and that could be displayed on a team ladder. Then they could have like a solo rating for when you queue alone/duo. Maybe they already have this, but it’s just tied to the player when it needs to be tied to the guild? Eg; you have solo ladder that displays names, then team ladder that displays guild names. This might promote team forming if rewards were offered to players who have played in at least 25% of the top guild’s ranked games.
Either way, the one thing that seems to be clear to everyone is that points = bad, ratings = good. This has been the mentality from the get go, even back when we had the QP ladder. Does anyone even mind having games played be completely thrown out as a variable in the algorithm? Like if you played 1 game and it was against abjured and you won, don’t you deserve to be ranked pretty high?

Josh Davis.6015:

Thanks for writing up your concerns so succinctly.

This test season is intended to test an algorithm that’s tailored towards ranking players higher for better W/L ratios, in addition to using points gained from playing (meaning games played does not become valueless). The algorithm we’re using this time around is completely different than what was previously tested, and they both have different purposes. We’re already having internal discussions on how we can adjust this season’s algorithm to better suit the goals we stated on Thursday – rewarding players who play well, not just play. These discussions will continue into the next week, and now we have an entire weekend’s worth of data that we can look at and extrapolate on.

Are they even using a rating algorithm anymore?
It kinda sounds like it’s just a ladder point algorithm, which would be a step backwards imo.

Hlord.5940:

serous answer for mesmer:
you are pretty much need to go glass cannon to do any significant of damage.
no real burst like other class, not counting shatter but that still require three illusion which are easily destroy.

lolwut? gs 2 + gs3 + f1 on top of someone is basically on par with a thief backstab. Idk why people still think mesmer burst comes from sword2 and 3 clone shattering.
gs2 – gs3 – f1 – swap – other weapon set burst (sword 2, staff 5, ect…) + a few interrupts usually results in death against most classes. The problem with mesmer is that it’s burst is much harder to get off, it’s like playing thief but having to land 5 different skills instead of 3. And it sucks at fighting on point because it doesn’t have reliable damage mitigation, eg; thief dagger/pistol 3 or 5 for blinds. It’s a great class for pub stomping against noobs that don’t know how to target you, but against anyone with a brain it’s sort of outclassed vs thief. Theif can also cover a map better since portal is bound to 1 point.

How to make this map fun in 5 steps.

• Step 1) totally disable wep skills while under water.
• Step 2) move mid point to the top of boat and make random chunks of the side railings on the deck of the boat destructible environment (split the railing into like 10 variables, generate 5 random numbers at the start of each match for which variables get the destructible = true boolean). This creates a king of the hill effect, but counters mindless spamming of knockbacks (like on skyhammer). The parts that are able to break must be randomized each match so that you don’t just have ppl running over and smashing the same place each time (that’s no fun).
  This makes the boat the focal point of the map, since ranged players could snipe the players in the water as they try to board the ship. It would be like an actual pirate fight theme.
• Step 3) Nerf the amount of points for holding the side nodes, put destructible trampolines on the side nodes (that can only be used by the team that controls that node) that can launch players from the side nodes onto the deck of the ship. Flying around as a pirate feels cool, trying to hold a pirate ship while other pirates are flying at you feels b@d@ss. -put the repair bundles for trampolines near the cannon and under the island where the old mid node used to be.
• Step 4) Players that control the ship have access to a trampoline at one end of the ship that can launch them towards the cannon. This makes “abandoning ship” feel cooler, and counters zerging in a way that still allows for counter play. Eg; 1 player sitting mid, sees enemy team about to zerg mid, jumps ship and cannons them all (but they can jump after him once they’ve neutralized && capped the ship node).
• Step 5) the “toggle nomalized character models in sPvP” option in settings panel renders everyone on this map in the pirate outfit.

So now that stability is changing (no longer blanket), can we expect diminishing returns to finally be added to all hard control skills? I can see a lot of problems with chain stun/knockdowns in 1v2+ situations. It’s already pretty hard to pull off a 1v2 due to the downed state mechanic’s stomp – rez timing ratios. Un-regulated CC vs. a regulated stability seems like it would just give more power the a zerg mentality and make stomping in team fights virtually impossible for many classes. At least add it for sPvP?

Diminishing returns = 1st stun CC’s for full time, 2nd stun CC’s for 75% as long, 3rd 50% as long, ect… down to 1%, all on a 30 second or so timer. So if you’ve been stunned/knocked down 5 times within 30 seconds, all other stuns/knockdowns will just work more like an interrupt.

cagiepoo.8162:

Would you like some fries with that as well?

Yes please.

Would it be possible to copy/paste the glider physics into the magic carpet and add a conditional so it just works in the Heart of Mists? (almost basically working already -see screens) If not for everyone, maybe just for my character?
and while you’re at it, I’d also like permanent custom particle effects for my eyes and the ability to turn into a bottle. Thanks in advance -Nick.

/15 char
/15 char
/15 char

ICEing.9237:

Essence Snow.3194:

sirsquishy.8531:

3. 1TB HDD? Really? 3TB+ at a min for a new built system today.

You wasted 1200 on that build, easily.

Return it, and just build it yourself. Or buy the parts and have a shop build it for ya. But you are over spending by 60% easily.

As much as iI don’t like saying it..I agree…. return it.

What would be an alternate option? Since I don’t know how to build my own

Honestly, if you really want to get your moneys worth; return it, order these parts, and find a local computer shack or hardware store to throw it together for around $200. If you need a monitor, check neweg’s email deals for an IPS backlit 1920×1080 monitor that will work for you. Save yourself a couple hundred bucks, support a local computer shack, and end up with a machine that’ll give you about double the FPS in more graphically demanding titles.
Ultimately, what you game on is your decision. And if you’re happy, then I’m happy for you. I think the community as a collective just doesn’t want to see one of its own get taken for a ride by a retailer that inflates labor costs.

The parts I’ve listed are similar to the ibuypower build, but I slightly downgraded the CPU in order to get a mobo that supports ddr3 ram. That saved about $200, so I added in another gtx970 to run in SLI for $300. I also upgraded the SSD and HDD to be a bit faster. This setup nets you an overall performance increase that you will actually notice during the tasks I assume you will be doing (gaming, surfing the web, boot time, ect..).

fixed the link to my origional part list. I didn’t have the monitor in mine. They system itself is around the $1600 mark.

tovadaun.6304:

For all of you that are harping that he got took for what he got. Price it out yourselves. Roughing the prices of the parts, there is about $2000.00 in parts listed. Not including case, keyboard, mouse, PSU, etc. Add in labor and shipping and he got a pretty good deal and didn’t have to do the screwdriver time himself. SO, unless you can part out an equivalent machine for less, you need to give him some space. Check the prices on Newegg or some other REPUTABLE parts dealer.

done includes case and OS. Not trying to make OP feel bad about his purchase, it will accommodate his needs. Just don’t try and tell me that’s a $2000+ machine lol. I’m a computer science major, not an apple consumer.

On the power supply, if you’re not comfortable building the computer yourself, don’t try to change out a PSU on your own. Good cable management is really most of what you’re paying for when buying a pre-built machine. They wouldn’t ship a build with a PSU that couldn’t run it, and until you plan on upgrading to a part with higher power draw, there’s really no need for a PSU replacement. Better to keep those cables nice and organized, rather than taking a shot a replacing the PSU and causing a spaghetti mess that kittens your airflow.

ICEing.9237:

Really? That much saved in price? I thought going pre built I was going in maybe an extra $400 but I didn’t really mind to save myself from learning to build one and ordering all the parts individually.

Oh well
I’ll still keep the PC.

Do you think this can play other games like battlefield 4 max settings?

Yeah you should be good for most 1080p gaming. here is an fps count for BF4 that includes your gpu (970).
And that price is more of a quick estimate, because I don’t know exactly which parts they used for some of the components. But it’s basically a $400 cpu, $350 gpu, $200 mobo, 240gb in SSD averages under $100 right now, 1tb hdd (32mb cache) averages around $60. Add in a generic used $10 optical drive from your local computer shack, 16gb DDR4 ram ($300, could have easily spent $75 on ddr3 and noticed no performance difference in gaming), add generic $40 case, bronze certified 700w psu ($60), cooling ($40-$100), $200 monitor. It’s hard to crunch numbers that will add up to $2350, unless all that extra stuff you don’t really need (multiple optical drives, liquid cooling, sound card, network card) add up to some ungodly amount of money, which they shouldn’t. The hardest thing for me about this build is the ram, people have tested ddr4 against ddr3 in gaming and found 0 difference in performance. It just doesn’t seem worth it to spend so much on it.

ICEing.9237:

For all who are interested in the specs:

Expansion -
Processor 1 x Intel® Core™ i7 5820K Processor (6x 3.30GHz/15MB L3 Cache) – Intel Core™ i7 5820K
iBUYPOWER PowerDrive -
Processor Cooling 1 x Asetek 510LC Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-2011] – ARC Silent High Performance Fan Upgrade
Memory 1 × 16 GB [4 GB X4] DDR4-2400 Memory Module – Corsair or Major Brand
Video Card 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 – 4GB – EVGA Superclocked – Single Card

1 x Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 — 4x PCIe x16, 6x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0
Power Supply 1 × 700 Watt – Standard – *Free Upgrade to 800W Standard
Primary Hard Drive 1 × 240 GB Kingston V300 SATA-3 SSD — Read: 450MB/s Write: 450MB/s – Single Drive
Data Hard Drive 1 × 1 TB HARD DRIVE — 32M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s – Single Drive
Optical Drive 1 x LG 12x Blu-ray Reader, DVD±R/±RW Burner Combo Drive – Black.
2nd Optical Drive -
Media Card Reader / Writer 1 × 12-In-1 External USB Media Card Reader/Writer (SDHC supported)
Meter Display -
Sound Card 1 × 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Network Card 1 x Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
USB Expansion Card -
Operating System 1 x Windows 8.1 + Office 365 Trial [Free 30-Day !!!] 64-bit
Monitor 1 × 32″ 1920×1080 Sceptre E325BV-FMDU — LED MHL TV, 3 HDMI Ports, 1 MHL Port, Built-in Surround Sound Speakers
2nd Monitor -
Monitor Cable 1 × 30 ft. DVI to HDMI Cable (Resolution up to 1080P)

Oh god, he went pre-built guys…
lol kidding, that’s a pretty overkill machine for gw2. DDR4 ram and the monitor is the only thing I would have changed to save a few bucks. Not the best HDD, but you’ve got an SSD in there too so who cares. Just make sure you install GW2 on the SSD. And to be honest with you, like the other’s are saying, you could probably part pick this (without the overkill ram, ibuypower case/cooling) for like under $1400 (not to make you feel bad, you should just know what you’re getting into when you buy pre-built). There are plenty of tutorials online that can help you get started with your first build if it’s worth saving the money for you! It’s pretty straightforward, just a matter of putting things into their slots.

Threads like these frustrate me. You need exclusivity in a PvP to bolster competition and facilitate an environment where people have something over the horizon to reach for. If you just give everything to everyone, your players are just going to get bored and quit. Seeing good players wearing this armor around in the mist is going to give the casuals something to aim for. Maybe they know that they won’t get it in a month or even a year, but it’s something that could keep them interested in the game for an extended period of time. (think like glad mounts in WoW or ranked summoner icons in LoL).

Furthermore, I don’t think you understand the amount of resources required for drawing/modeling an armor set into a video game. Design and texturing takes artistic skill, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of people or time to actually put a single item together in a 3d modeling software and render it into the game (I used to play around with 3d modeling/printing software a bit when I was in high school, made some pretty l33t swords). So stop crying like they pulled 1/2 of the entire art team off of living world for a year to create 2 armor sets.

Blu’s fundraiser has been funded 100% already! https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-blu-get-to-gamescom

Looks like Colin Johanson himself (GW2 game director) donated like $500. Props to Colin.

TheRyftLord.5820:

I don’t think I would have even bought the game if it had open world pvp. It’d just end up frustrating people who play for other reasons.

OR.. you would have bought it and then convinced all your friends to come play with you so you’d feel safer in the scary open PvP world. Ultimate marketing scheme? I think yes.

laokoko.7403:

What I think wvw should look like <==

Create a system called alliance. An alliance is made up of guilds. And each week alliance will fight other alliance to create a AvAvA.

And your alliance will be ranked and move up and down and match to other alliance.

Now you brought back GvG and finally have meaning pvp, because really most people dont’ care their server ranking, but they might care about their alliance ranking.

I still don’t think that’s very meaningful tbh.. Alliances would be cool, but there’s a big difference between winning a WvW matchup and strategically controlling a part of the actual world that other players interface with and explore in real time. Alliances would just be the biggest guilds on each server playing against the biggest guilds on another server, which is basically what wvw is anyways.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Zodian.6597:

Srsly though, this is how the game should have been designed in the first place (in hindsight).

No it shouldn’t. Open world (non consensual) PvP is despicable. It’s just for sadistic people who want to gank, bully and harass others. You will have fun at the expense of others. This is not what Guild Wars 2 is about, this game is about cooperation and helping eachother out.

If this is going to be in a seperate server then fine, but it’s definitely not how this game should have been designed.

What? Did you even read the rest? World PvP can be done right, that’s not even what I was talking about with that statement. I was talking about the aspect of Guilds and quantifiable geopolitical influence + adversity.

If you don’t post this thread to your facebook wall, how will all your RL friends know you’re not a noob?
So here’s a fun little game design/social experiment the dev team could tackel this week:

• Create a new server (not tied to WvW or EoTM) on NA and EU
• Integrate WvW map mechanics into the cities/forts/villages throughout Tyria. (suggestions on how to do this included below)
• Tie objectives to Guilds rather than servers (eg; “blahblah” guild captures The black citadel).
• turn on world PvP. (Skills do damage to all players outside guild/party). -make a toggle to turn the damage to other players off if you can do it in less than 30 minutes. If not then skipit. It’s not that important for this to work.
• turn on triple exp boost for dynamic events and hearts (to leverage incentive of leveling in open world PvP)
• Capping objectives for the guild yields Guild exp for the guild + normal exp/gold/ascended mats for individuals.
• If a guild captures all the objectives within a zone at same time, the bosses get that invincibility buff and the guild gains control of the zone for 24 hours and receives all gold from NPC transactions + matched guild exp for all exp earned by people playing dynamic events and hearts within the zone during this time period. (people will flock to the locked out zones to level and avoid zergs).
• Add political coloring to maps to show regional influence of guilds.
• Lions arch is safe zone, all Guards attack players they see pvping. -don’t change anything about guards, just put that into their script and give them a respawn timer +downed state.
• See how many players guest transfer to the server. If >15% of player population are using the server after 1 month, lock guest-transfers out of capturing (eg; you have to fully transfer to the server in order to cap objectives).
• Rake in that xfer $$$
  *************

WvW mechanics integration
Literally just have an intern go through each zone and put a non-hostile boss NPC at the top of each village that players can take down in groups. Copy/paste the EoTM code so that after killing him, players stand in a circle (like in wvw or EOTM) and it will claim the objective -but for the guild that has the most players standing within the circle rather than the server that does. If there aren’t 2+ people in the same guild, the objective goes neutral.
If the town has a vista or jumping puzzle; have the intern put the boss up there to discourage zerging and confuse the hell out of people. For main cities; wall off the boss in a “throne room” (just have another intern recreate the Iron Throne from King’s Landing in your game engine using nothing but black lion chests -this will take days, so go ahead and just copy/paste the hall of monuments room into the ground below each city and render it in different shades -no one will notice. Oh and don’t tell the intern. Also, just instance it so you can throw up some random wall texture somewhere for players to beat on without having to worry about overlapping polygons in the existing maps) that only members within the controlling guild can enter. Make the walls like SM and put backdoor entrances around main cities for guildies to get into it to defend (think like all the portals in divinities reach).

• Add a world chat for trash talking, and enjoy the ride.

Final Note
Srsly though, this is how the game should have been designed in the first place (in hindsight). It puts more emphasis on guilds and less on servers (wvw). Which fosters growth of guild patriotism and subcultures. Having a meaningful guild system gives people the opportunity to be a part of organised content in a way that’s prestigious to them. It means more people repping the guilds they worked hard to get into and less people running around with guild tags like “Take Notes Kids Im Going in Dry” or “Ez Pz Lemin Skweezy”. The game is called guild wars and I’m currently in 3 guilds; Meth (guild I made to troll then lost leadership of -but put a bunch of crap into the guild bank that I’m hoping to get back one day), Mist League (used for communication on a project that ended about a year ago), and Bad@ss Diarrhea Bombers; a guild me and some rl friends made to troll, but that I now use to keep tabs on who’s still logging in. Guilds just aren’t as meaningful as they could be.

Also, this took me like an hour to type, so please share it. My self esteem will be seriously hurt if it doesn’t get at least 100k views by the end of the week and I will be forced to throw a tantrum in heart of the mists map chat.

flow.6043:

Another thing I wanted to mention about your build:
You just might be the last necro in PvP who uses Signet of the Undeath.

Oh really? I’ve always just auto picked it up haha. Is it pretty bad now?
Also, I thought about swapping out Master of Terror with Near to Death, and changing the runes to ogre or something. that way I’d 5/6s optimal fury up-time outside DS with Furious Demise being 5s duration and DS on 6s cooldown. That might give more sustained damage, but trades off some control. I’m gonna give it a shot.

flow.6043:

2. Terror and 375 condi damage just to make Reaper’s Mark and Doom hit a little harder?
With a soldier amulet you’d be doing waaaay more damage with Deathly Perception. 64% crit chance in DS (not to mention the extra ferocity and life force) vs 14% or the occasional 34% on what is a power build for the most part. Imo a no-brainer.

But this infers that I’d be just be life blast spamming, no? There’s a lot more burst in fear bombing immobed targets into your well while auto attacking with daggers. I’m sure the sustained piercing DPS of shroud spaming in a team fight is higher, but you’re not going to be playing the utility of the class to its optimal level if you limit yourself to the mere 5 skills available to you in DS. Idk, I’ve tried a few 30 sr builds in my day, but not since ferocity changes, I’ll give yours a try.

@the wvw stuff, that’s just a little joke lol. Sorry if it offended you. Back in the day, the individual skill level difference between wvw and spvp players was an incredible gap, and sPvP players would often hop into wvw and just steamroll through players like it was Dyansty Warriors. Eg; Zoose
Of course it’s all different now, the game types are much less segregated and most of the really high skill level tPvP players that could pull this type of thing off quit a long time ago.

So for those of you that don’t know me, quick introduction, I used to work for a gaming news website esportsgaming.net as an associate editor where I tried to promote the hell out of GW2 sPvP whenever I could. I did a little video series for the site on class guides with competitive players from both NA and EU for about a year or so. Anyways, out of all the builds I’d tried during this time period (people would literally email me builds or pm me in game things like “hey this is OP, try it!” and I would), this is the build that keeps me coming back to sPvP in gw2. It was originally crafted up by the legendary d/d necro Khalifa back near the start of the game. Here’s my current iteration of it.

I’ve been having a lot of success with it in sPvP recently, frequently coming out on top in 1v3+ situations in custom games. It is the ultimate pub stomper with 2 condi transfers and huge aoe control. People I play against keep asking for it so here it is!

Lordrosicky.5813:

Seiishizo.7162:

there isn’t a single team searching for a necro… i think that says enough

The game has been out for 2 years I think. In this peroid necro has been in the best comp for 1 month out of 24 months. The one time necro was really powerful anet actually did a hotfix to stop it being broken. Ele/warrior/thief/guard have been OP for most of 24 months.

Those are the facts.

This simply isn’t true. Warrior was complete garbage for a LONG time in spvp (gg quickness nerf). Ele was godmode for the first year or so, then cantrips got nerfed and it became garbage for awhile too. Guardian and thief are the only 2 classes that haven’t been iced out of the meta at least once. Mesmer got iced out when ranger got popular, engineer wasn’t popular at all until five guage and ostrich eggs started theorycrafting OP builds like HGH and 100nades; which made the class more accessible in competitive play (before then you’d have to master one of Teldo’s crazy kitten 4 kit bunker builds just to stay alive).
As for Necro, it has been on both sides of the spectrum. I remember a time when necro was considered inferior to engi/ranger as a condition dps, and last year dhuumfire made it godmode for like 4 months.
Power necro is the kitten right now anyways. Just get with it man. Don’t you play thief anyways?

Justin ODell.9517:

Thorn.7963:

Could you at least tell us WHY you did this change? It seems so pointless.

To bring PvP in line with how the rest of the game works.

I’m willing to bet you that my lvl 2 characters have more hours played on them than a majority the lvl 80 characters in pve. I am a god in PvP. What you need to understand Justin, is that these PvE players are mere peasants in our elitist sPvP world. How can they bow down to my magnificence if I’m naked from from dropping all of my pve starter gear on launch day a year and a half ago due to wanting to troll lions arch??

Allieeee, you were incredibly helpful during PAX! You go the extra mile in everything you do and I’m sure you will be greatly missed by your colleagues at Anet as well as the GW2 community because of that fact. I’m excited for you and your career though! Don’t be a stranger! -Nick

nGumball.1283:

The new changes to town clothes are the like the following:
1. they will be converted into outfits as in a one piece look you have on your gear
2. those can be used in combat

Positives:
Now, you can wear the clothes, using them in more situations for better use of them.
Negatives:
For a reason or another, the system where town clothes could be mixed and matched is gone since town clothes are considered as one piece outfits atm. The only thing announced to be viable doing is opo up or off your ’’hat’’, coming with the outfit.

So will these “outfits” be distributed as tonics? Cas some devs were saying something about tonics and I’m pretty sure you can’t use tonics in sPvP..
Thanks for the info tho, that does clarify a lot.

Will I be able to use my mad king outfit in PvP after April 15th? This is literally all I care about in life right now. I’m so confused, some people are saying “yah usable in combat” then others are talking about this weird tonic thing.

Let’s be real for a second, GW2 armor skins are pretty effing bland compared to most RPG’s (no offense to art team, still love you guys, but it’s the truth). The ability to finally use town clothes in combat would really be a huge incentive to actually play the game for many people (I’m less inclined to logg into a game when my characters look generic/boring). This would also add significant value to town clothes across the board; boosting sales and making gw2 cosmetic sales more profitable than the RNG crap everyone hates.

The Arguement: “People won’t know what class is what!” -This logic is kittened. You don’t look at armor to identify what class you’re dealing with in PvP; that’s not even intuitive since there are only 3 armor sets to begin with. There are obvious tells we use to identify class in sPvP and I’ll point out a few right now to deflate this argument.

• Rangers: have a pet (pretty obvious). Also spam evade skills.
• Necros: have death shroud/minions, marks, wells -lots of unique/obvious plague-like animations.
• Eles: 90% of them open fights with RTL or air atunement (pretty much only class that has any lightnight animation). If that isn’t enough, they have particle rings around their wrists that identify their attunement.
• Engineers: have either giant packs on their backs or turrets or are spam drinking potions. They are also usually wielding a pistol/shield (only class that can wield that combo) -if they are using a rifle or p/p in PvP, you probably don’t need to know what class they are playing to beat them in a 1v1 anyways because their using troll builds (jk lol). Also spam evade cas perma vigor.
• Thief: blink around and in and out of stealth, will usually be spamming same skill over and over.
• Guardians: have giant blue shields on their offhand @ the start of every fight, and nearly all their animations are light blue + spam giant symbols all over the ground.
• Mesmer: Clones, the color purple.
• Warrior: Signet icons on HP bar, ‘leap’/‘charge’ animations, LB explosions, or banners on the ground.

TLDR; make town clothes usable in combat=more town clothes sales=more town clothes creation=1. More customization options for players & 2. Less reliance on RNG cs packs to generate financial revenue for the studio. Not being able to tell what class is which based on armor is an unreasonable argument that lacks foundation. Make MK outfit usable in PvP, Anet. It just makes sense.

PS: If the living world/lore team is seriously worried about people running around in sun glasses and Santa outfits because it would “break the immersion of the game”, forcing players to conform to a single art style and limiting the customization of their character doesn’t facilitate a world in which players can feel truly invested in, and thus breaks immersion for fashion divas like myself. Loosen up, the sandbox mmo genre is all the rage right now anyways.

PSS: You guys are located in Bellevue, which is like the most hipster city in WA. You should be all about that non-conformist swag.

Town clothes really just need to be wearable in combat. End of story.

d/d power necro (with lich form) -something like this

• jump in/out of death shroud to stack fury+condi cleanse+enfeebling blood.
• Pop lich form in 1v2+ situations OR teamfights OR 1v1s that you really want to win.
• dagger imob->well->death shroud fear+5->auto attack =trolololol

s/f dps meditations guardian -or this

• torch 4->scepter imob->scepter aoe on top them-> focus 4, 5->sword 2 into them->f1 and sword 3.

traps ranger -or this

• Go far node, stack traps on ground, wait till someone comes, let them trigger traps, put down another set of traps on top of them, profit.

eviscerate warrior OR killshot warrior on cheez maps -#1 warrior montage NA

• My build is terible, but basically you just stack hella power and use a mainhand axe with a sigil of inteligence (100% crit on wep swap), the just stack adrenaline and swap for critical eviscerates.

these = my personal faves

SkiTz.4590:

GW2 , after 1.5 years, just scrapped their entire pvp system. what does that say?

ESO isn’t even shipping with sPvP so I guess I don’t know what that says. Let me give it to you straight; very few testers have been impressed with the rate at which Zenimax works (they voice this disatisfaction in droves through the alpha forums, much like people are doing today on the GW sPvP forums), and by comparison I’m pretty sure more kitten has been added to GW2 than ESO since I started testing the game in August.

This is one of those games that you know is going to kitten off a lot of ppl, but will be good for the industry as a whole. While ES fans and seasoned MMO vets will probably hate this game, those console gamers that have found the time to dink around in skyrim a bit between playing other games like Call of Duty/Battlefield just might love it.

Elder Scrolls online is not a great MMO, and it’s certainly not the next great ES game, but it is a fine ‘gateway game’ that will bring console gamers into the MMO genre; which is OBVIOUSLY the #1 genre to be in, right?

Frenk.5917:

Ugruk.4069:

Hehehe 2 weeks, you wish it was THAT soon :P

If it is more than 2 weeks, they will lose too many players due to Elder Scrolls online. I am one of those players

lol you must have not gotten into the beta… Poor soul, you haven’t the faintest idea of the hell you are about to about to walk into!
Spoiler Alert: ESO = complete trash. Endured 7 months of horrible testing and bickering on the alpha forums (ES fanboys vs MMO diehards) to be able to say that! #DoYouEvenNDALiftBro??

Good to have you back Allie!

Thieves>mesmers>necros>eles
you really just don’t want to let any glass cannon free cast on your team. In Korean elementary schools they teach you the phrase “higher burst should go down first” to help the younger future esports stars learn this concept.

Narcarsis.5739:

Dagins.5163:

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

What… do people even play this game?

All the good ppl left
See how lost we are without guidance from pros?? lmao

Aldizi.5671:

This is only talking about SPVP

2) Merge Solo que and Team que into competitive Que. Where you have a seen rank not just a time played rank a rank that fluctuates up and down depending on how well you do in ques. I’m going to break this down. for you . Player “A” struts a Private Rank Player “B” struts a Private 1 Star Rank Both players que they get matched up against each other player “A” wins he maybe goes up a rank Player “A” goes up a rank and he like wow i want to be know as the best GW2 player Alive so Player entices his buddies to create a team His team is filled with Private 1 Star players so at first they get matched up against pugs which they slaughter and get his team feeling good but then he proceeds to the General Ranks where kitten gets real and Player “a” is like o kitten theirs only other teams playing at this rank. Might not be so wise to got go que solo from here on out i’m gonna form strats with my team so i can be “5 star general rank” Which basically tells the world im a fugging bad kitten and now gives that player access to the 5 star general armory locker of unique weapon skins with amazing effects only acquired in pvp and can be ported over to pve as well. The same way pvers should be able to port over Legendary weapon skins as well.

you lost me here bro. As a community we spent MONTHS trying get devs to separate the queues, now you want to merge them back together?? You’re self fulfilling your whole community feedback → developers running in circles prophecy. I expect you’re reasoning behind this is that there was simply more teams when we had merged queues on NA, more people competing; therefore separating queues is what caused everyone to leave. This is wrong, I’ve talked extensively to nearly every single competitive team on NA that quit during that time period and solo queue is the only reason a lot of the individual players from these teams still log in today.

I know you’re a long term player Aldizi, you’ve been here with us since the beginning. But merging the queues is just a terrible design concept that is what ultimately CAUSED gw2 pvp to fall off in the first place with free/paid tournies. A better solution is to scrap the hotjoin servers in custom games and just let ppl queue up "normal games’ with friends for different specific maps; like a checkbox where you can mark the maps you wanna play, and not mark the bad maps like skyhammer.

lordkrall.7241:

Arganthium.5638:

It’s possible, ANet just supposedly doesn’t have the “resources”.

I would love to see a single game that have 100% balance while still having more than 1 class/weapon/skillset.

Starcraft 1 got pretty kitten close. The game became mostly about APM/micro and was boring for anyone that wasn’t korean @ competitive levels. Ironically, Arenanet was founded by people who actually played a major role in creating SC1 (and almost every other successful part of Blizzard pre-WoW). It’s actually a pretty interesting story, I encourage you to check out Mike O’Brien, Patrick Wyatt, and Jeff Strain sometime (the 3 founders of Anet). They pretty much made blizz what it is today then left to start their own studio that would end up competing with them.

Were you wearing gear?

Good post OP, I admire the time, effort, and research that was put into this. If I had to add anything it would be buffs to bring back power necro (old d/d khalifa playstyle). Oh and maybe sigils applied to 2h weps have their effects doubled.
Again, great post. Hopefully we can get some reds over here to “collaboratively develop” and we can start getting the game’s balance back on track.

Solo, no. Duo, yes.

Thiefs get the majority of their mobility from ports anyways (SB5, shadow step, steal, ect…). The signet is only there to help newer players with positioning really. I think this is less true in pve/wvw though, where people like to use the signet as a sort of “mount” to help running across long distances then swap it out once they arrive at a fight.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Zodian, those tips, at best, will merit him hotjoin hero status.

You’re right, a decent build and tactics will only get you so far. Playing thief @ competitive level requires a lot of intuition, awareness, positioning, and ect… But these are things that you develop naturally through playing. I’d say just keep an eye on target hp bars; try and really be aware of what buffs/debuffs are on them and incorporate that into your play (don’t use 3 if they are already blinded, don’t use 4 if they are already cc’d or have stab, don’t go for backstabs if they have prot, swap targets if they pop immunity spells like distortion/zerkers stance/elixir r, steal to apply poison if you see they have regen, ect…). This is something that I really neglected to do when I was starting pvp just out of laziness, but it’s what will allow you to come out on top in 1v2+ scenarios on any class.

Oh and don’t use d/p in big teamfights, just find a safe spot and AA +cluster bomb with SB and keep poison field down. Unless targets are really spread out (like enough to where you can gib someone without getting hit by an AOE), you should never jump head first into a team fight (at least if you’re just starting out on thief). #positioning