Guild Wars 2

The average Queue times this season for me are between 1-2 minutes rather than 4-5 of previous seasons. So it does feel active. The season has been pretty good for me.

Guardian and Ele seem to be the main classes people are complaining about fighting against.

This season is pretty great, speaking as an average game across just slightly over 50 games in two weeks. Climbed 300 MMR points with a 63% win ratio after being placed too low going from silver to gold. There is also the added bonus of being able to look up people claiming to be more than they are / hot kitten and see where they really stand in the game. Top kek.

Multiple people can partake in a kill. Only 1 is involved in a death. Still need to look at math for possible ranges.

Edit: there are 24 deaths. If the average amount of people involved in a kill was between 2 & 3 than you can get 60 kills with 24 deaths.

Everyone will have a different anecdotal experience, some due to different levels of confirmation bias, however from my experience progressing out of bottom silver kitten gold, the matches do get better. I have slightly over a 60% win ratio, so in general I was placed lower than where I should have been, so I was able to cover for a lot of my teams mistakes. However, on the other side, I was playing a necromancer, so I did have to rely on my teams rotations not being total potatoes.

Take this…. with a grain of salt.

jcbroe.4329:

alemfi.5107:

blitzkrieg.2451:

LughLongArm.5460:

SOTW should not give Unblockable, kinda liked the design they went with that Unblockable for ranger is only on pet. SOTW should be instant cast and stun break, that’s it.

It shouldn’t , but it really doesn’t matter even if it does. It’s not gamebreaking because you lose so much to even have it as it’s such a bad trait / signet to begin with.

That’s the point to be made there. That’s just how bad it is, that even with that unblockable bug , it’s STILL not appealing. I agree with you though.

Judging by your tone, these words are probably a wasted effort, but regardless I’ll still reply. Before you dismiss a skill, you should consider its applications. With the passive of SoTW you can run more damaging weapon sets and/or rune sets because you get two procs of astral force generation. Add in the fact that a signifcant portion of classes use blocks for survival (guardian f3, warrior shield 5, mesmer shield 4, scrapper hammer 2 & 4 + gyro utility, etc.), you can either trigger their other survival passives sooner than they were expecting, or flat out kill them at critical moments with the 8 seconds of unblockable.

Btw, ROM runs signet of the wild while queuing ranked. If you don’t know who that is, or if you’d like to pretend that that has no significance to it, go ahead.

Could people stop saying “well ROM does this” as a justification for doing something?

ROM changes his build literally EVERY time he streams, and will run an entirely different build in an actual competitive tournament, because he’ll need his build to be viable both for his own team composition (so no longbow like he has run this season), and against enemy players (Druid literally can’t survive this meta without Signet of Renewal unless the enemy team doesn’t have any condi).

Also, yes, he’s an amazing player, but that isn’t synonymous with pinnacle of knowledge. He didn’t even used to be a ranger main, and still lacks a lot of the class knowledge and in depth expertise that a lot of other people DO have.

Just…. stop. It’s hyperbolic to just go “well x person does this and uses this” and it’s incredibly dismissive, especially when there’s actually a good conversation happening about the topic.

Did you even read the first paragraph? I gave my explanations for why the skill is useful particularly if given the unblockable attributes.

blitzkrieg.2451:

LughLongArm.5460:

SOTW should not give Unblockable, kinda liked the design they went with that Unblockable for ranger is only on pet. SOTW should be instant cast and stun break, that’s it.

It shouldn’t , but it really doesn’t matter even if it does. It’s not gamebreaking because you lose so much to even have it as it’s such a bad trait / signet to begin with.

That’s the point to be made there. That’s just how bad it is, that even with that unblockable bug , it’s STILL not appealing. I agree with you though.

Judging by your tone, these words are probably a wasted effort, but regardless I’ll still reply. Before you dismiss a skill, you should consider its applications. With the passive of SoTW you can run more damaging weapon sets and/or rune sets because you get two procs of astral force generation. Add in the fact that a signifcant portion of classes use blocks for survival (guardian f3, warrior shield 5, mesmer shield 4, scrapper hammer 2 & 4 + gyro utility, etc.), you can either trigger their other survival passives sooner than they were expecting, or flat out kill them at critical moments with the 8 seconds of unblockable.

Btw, ROM runs signet of the wild while queuing ranked. If you don’t know who that is, or if you’d like to pretend that that has no significance to it, go ahead.

I’m curious if anet knows about this, or if it is “intended” behavior.

Ouch. That does hurt. I assume you got hit with dishonor as well? They probably should adjust their dishonor mechanic for honest disconnections, particularly if you manage to come back in and WIN the game

Personal anecdote. I got placed below my correct division at bottom of silver. I knew it as below where I should be b/c I see consistently winning in areas I was involved in. I don’t play that many games, however, I am steadily climbing and just about to enter gold 1. The matches have been trending to more even matches. System seems to be doing its job, for the most part.

Fun Fact: there was actually a point in time where the match maker would actually create matches that were more favored to the blue team. I think this was fixed shortly after the APIs were made available showing the discrepancy.

Ayrilana.1396:

More or less the same. WvW is just more consistent whereas PvP can range from being quicker to being longer depending on various factors.

The only way PVP is longer is if you have ridiculous queue times. WvW, you only get a tier (500) every 15+ minutes (195 cap + 10% potion + ???). PVP, you get more than a reward tier every time you win unranked/ranked matches, and most of a tier even if you lose (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Reward_Track). Each game is going to be less than 15 minutes.

Edit: realized I made a mistake with the wvw tick calculations being every 5 minutes, not 15.

Wargameur.6950:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Wargameur.6950:

Come on ? no perfectly horrible ratio to show off ?

I wonder where those horrible forum stories come from….

They’re not posting here for fear of toxic members of the community pointing and laughing. Seriously, if you lost 75% of your games and couldn’t get out of emerald, would you show it off in a thread full of legends?

The purpose was to get a sample of different people. I guess some people are showing off. But I don’t mind people still in low divisions. That’s what is interesting, see different profiles of people playing sPvP. There are not that much legend people in the lobby.

You might be better off creating an anonymous feedback poll. granted, this could be fudged around with lack of proof/evidence, but not everyone posted screens anyways.
My last poll regarding the opinions on the new maps only got around 67 reponses, but it showed some interesting distributions when viewing them as charts.

oh… do they not show up? sorry I’m not that familiar with survey monkey… so far there are 32 responses, one sec, let me look how to provide them

Edit2: Okay, so it looks like the link does update in real time, however I’m thinking to remove the link for now until a few days later, to not let the results skew the votes, potentially.

kdaddy.5431:

i disagree, Capricorn map is too big. It allows for mesmers to have a huge impact on the team game and hurts people who dont have high mobility.

Coliseum allows for different styles of game play. Its a small map which means teams can play it safe and control 2 points and go for buffs which is great in this current meta of constant 4 vs 4 and 5 vs 5.

Killing someone on coliseum means that someone can quickly get a decap since the other cap point is close. There is actual strategy and even though i would like some of the pillars and stands to be changed because they can be trolly .

Capricorn is all about zerg fights. Winning the big battle means your team can run off to the next point together. Literally you can watch and see if someone tries to sneak past since they open area shows all. Especially since the bell is a huge aspect of games, capping home and winning the mid fight means you control the whole map since it takes a long time for a player to get to a cap point and because you have to separate for the bell.

The big difference between the 2 is the buffs on coliseum, the 20% increase in life, damage,condi and the help of the npc can change a game. So if you lose the mid fight and simply take your time and regroup and win the buffs you can take back all 3 points again. Its quick and yet you can play different styles.

I dare you to be slow of Capricorn and think you have a chance.

I actually feel that mesmer’s have LESS of an impact on capricorn than other maps (as a solo player) the size of capricorn means you can’t just leave a port on an empty (side) point and then fight on a different point (mid), and then port back to contest as soon as you see someone arrives on your point on the minimap. In addition, the blinks allow tremendous advantage on the Coliseum match as I mentioned earlier, not only for the buffs but giving additional path access from sides to mid.

I appreciate that you brought up that “Killing someone on coliseum means that someone can quickly get a decap since the other cap point is close.” as I think that is an interesting element to the Coliseum map, where all the points are relatively close to equally accessible relative to each other.

woops, I just realized I forgot to explain why I added Elimination as an option. From what I recall, around the time that Courtyard was still mixed in the unranked queue, it seemed like people were confused between the difference between TDM and Elimination formats. I used the term “elimination” based on a google query for “pvp modes” which lead to this sites definition: http://zmr.enmasse.com/game-info/gameplay/competitive-pvp-modes#elimination

Created a surveymonkey link to gauge gw2 pvp forum consensus on opinions on the new maps:

survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9RSN768
results*: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-KSPH78SX/

My own opinions are that while I thought Revenge on the Capricorn was a decent enough map, missing the novelty of being able to fight on a ship, but appreciating the unique element of a mid-point being about as close to spawn as home point is, the map was overall enjoyable enough (though slightly burnt out due to the achievements)

When it comes to the Eternal Coliseum however… I am generally not a fan at all. The aesthetics look underwhelming, and as far as the mechanics go, they aren’t particularly interesting. Most games I play, if I’m on my mes, I just start heading over around 10 seconds until they are ready, blink, and cap it in half a second and then head back. There’s rarely a feeling of contesting the side objective.

Honestly, I feel like Eternal Coliseum … being essentially like a gladiator arena, could be re-purposed and redesigned to be a decent team deathmatch style map. I feel there has been a resurgence in interest in 2v2/3v3 tournaments, showcasing courtyard, and believe that if anet gave the mode some support/love, it could actually receive some good community reaction.

My thoughts, thanks for listening, and I’d love to see yours.

Was going to wait til I got back home, but I remembered there was this api.

Probably a fairly average experience (55.5 repeating win ratio).
I started and stopped after the first weekend of the start of the season due to some horrendous matchmaking (out of 13 games, I only managed to win 2), only made the real push for Diamond/wings in the last 3 weeks.

While climbing, I noticed there were quite a lot of noticeably bad players in Ruby. One particular standout was a Dragonhunter, plinking away at range as if they were roleplaying a bearbow ranger, only thing it was missing was a spirit weapon.

Longest streaks were 6 losses versus 6 or 7 wins. Was not the biggest fan of this season, constantly felt like an uphill battle. Last season, it felt like after making good solid plays/wins, you could see the actual effect on the match, allowing the tide to turn etc. This season, it often felt like despite playing extremely well, your team decides to get themselves killed in Dragon Hunter traps or some such, making your effort seem wasted, or constantly having to be playing at 110% to actually win the match.

Most games were soloq, with a few duoQs. Played on Berserker, Reaper, and Chrono.

well, the current match making is encouraging 50-50 matches… so you’ll basically just ppl that grind matches in legend now… regardless of how skilled they are.

from the wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Courtyard

Regarding Courtyard, just curious about the wiki entry, as I don’t ever recall a separate mode being “added” officially. I’ll be honest, I HATED when the map got selected while playiyng in unranked. It was like…. let’s jam courtyard into the unranked queue, where when that 1/10 vote happens, everyone (else) gets angry and has to swap builds, or the 5/10 occurs, because a premade feels like stomping on pugs. The map also had a huge problem where pugs would continuously trickle in after respawning, leading to a snowball for whichever team gets early momentum. Still… seems such a shame that it’s basically only available in custom arenas.

Just curious what people would think about adding the ability to specifically queue for “team deathmatch” style maps.

I apparently am perpetually at “0 win streak”

Thank you for continuing to promote this.

Can’t participate personally due to conflicting work hours, however wishing you the best of luck.

Just curious, have you considered composing posting pvp highlight reels for these weekly tournaments? Feel like that would help promote it quite a bit.

Just realized there were highlight reels, after going out of my way to search youtube.

Bumping up this post, over the weekend 311 people have now voted on the poll, however not too much feedback was given in the thread.

About 17% of you have expressed dissatisfaction with the map, let’s hear why!

For me, after playing for a while over the weekend, the map is a bit on the larger side leading to a lot of unorganized groups to trickle into fights and die.

Aktium.9506:

It seems like the self stun is what is interfering with the application of the conditions from the sixth bonus from the Krait runes. If you have stability on it works 100% of the time.

After hearing that it is indeed not applying I was thinking the self stun might be the factor. Good to hear confirmation about it. I guess your character is implicitly casting the ability and the self stun bugs it out.

Krait Rune has an internal cooldown of 45 seconds, which is greater than the cd of Head Butt.

You are probably seeing Krait Rune Whiff (it should work around 50% of the time, if you are using it almost off cooldown)

We should go back even further to 30-30-10! /s

It’s not going to happen, particularly because of elite specializations.

The simplest method that this could be done having the 3 slots, where we have 2x Major Specs, and 1x Minor, which doesn’t even fully match the functionality from before (people could do 6-4-4 or even 4-4-2-2-2 if they wanted to).

With Elite specs it’d have to be redesigned.

My personal thoughts are that the spawning area should be adjusted, for example, the second exit from the spawn has no real purpose, and some people mentioned taking fall damage from jumping/dodge-rolling out.

Bell point is reasonably fair.

Differs from other maps with possibly the most accessible mid point.

Generally speaking, quite a good job on anet’s part! With this, and being able to queue outside of the mists again. (Still on the wish list alternative pvp modes..)

Straw Poll Time!

http://www.strawpoll.me/10923753

Also, feel free to expand your thoughts!

After a 20% damage nerf I feel like alternatives for damage are worth looking into. How does Force compare/other damage sigils? Leeching/Blood/Fire?

Assuming you always proc air (no might, no vuln) it’s about 700 damage with a demolisher amulet every 3 seconds.

That means it’s about 200 dps increase.

- For force to compare, it would mean you need to do 4000/s damage to match the 200 dps increase from air, however considering how air is single target, force can get you more damage if you have a lot of aoe or cleave.
- Sigil of Fire gives me about 550 damage per proc cd is 5 seconds, so it is 110 dps increase aoe.
- Leeching is just shy of 1000 damage, non scaling, every 10 seconds. you also heal for just shy of 1000. so it is about a 200 health swing every ten seconds, without investment into power.
- Sigil of Blood is giving me 650 damage with a 450 health heal every 5 seconds. this means about a 220 health point swing every second.

Thoughts? Or other player tests that contradict the numbers that I tested?

LouWolfskin.3492:

How about turning the old class-line: Soul Reaping, Discipline, Trickery, Illusions, Arcane, Virtues, Tools, Beast Mastery and Invocation, into Elite Specs themselves.

Quite a few of the stronger builds need the Elite Spec and old mechanic line.
Done, make the old line Elite, gives a way to rebalance the core classes and op-dual-class (sorry, it is what it is) builds are gone.

Sure, you’d still have the problem of earth/water bunker on Tempest, but that’s a different problem all together with Regen cleansing conditions, traits that allow for extra auras, buffs on auras and so on.

If anything, with a new expansion core lines should always get a good looking at if they need some reworking since old mechanics will quite often play into this all.

Quoting because this is something that I had wondered myself about.

Finishing Blow being the 3rd part of the chain of the dare devil elite, to stomp the enemy.

I feel like I’ve missed quite a few stomps because of this, but I’m not 100% sure.

Josh Davis.6015:

Trigr.6481:

---

Balancing SPvP individually——-

- This is probably the single most important change that the SPvP community needs whether you realize it or not. Not only does this make sense, but since SPvP is already isolated, not one change you make here effects the rest of the game. The way it currently works the devs expect us as players to think about the rest of the game before giving changes to a specific game type, however this way of thinking will never create good balance and the reason why is the majority of changes people suggest are obviously only made and will work for Spvp. WvW and PvE are very different in terms of balance and changes for one often conflict with the other two making the change almost meaningless to begin with.

The Lesh Prince recently developed some tech that makes skill-splitting more feasible than it was previously – you’ll see some PvP (and PvE) splits in the next balance update. It’s important to understand that changes will still need to be global, but we’ll definitely have a bit more flexibility moving forward.

Keeping parity between modes when possible is important to us – but when it’s not feasible we’ll look at splits.

edit: that clickbait though

It worked! Now while we have you attention * lists hundreds of subjective improvements that haven’t been fully thought out yet *. /s

Seriously though, what would you think about potentially increasing the value of shards of glory by allowing them to be used to purchase arena tokens for custom arenas?

You do realize you could just edit your response instead of triple posting right? Anyways regarding the exact topic. So you are saying you should take the “Match Making Rank” component…. out of “Ranked Match Making”…

What we have now is definitely flawed, particularly in how they group up both people who are winning together, and those are losing together, PARTICULARLY the latter, because it just creates a feedback loop of losing/ill feelings. If POSSIBLE, the match maker should avoid putting together players that have recently been on a losing team together, if there are similar mmr candidates that they could be paired with instead.

This might just be a player population problem though.

From Observation:
The Best Balanced Team Comp: Tempest, Chronomancer, Berserker, Herald, Druid and/or Scrapper
A-S Classes Individually: Dare Devil, Reaper
B-A: Dragon Hunter, Vanilla Meta Battle Specs
C: Nothing that has been optimized is so far behind that it is a “C Class”, in my opinion.

Edit:
As far as the rest of your question, for the finals, Astral vs. Rank 55 is a must watch series. The rest can probably be skipped, unless you want to watch Helseth “1v2, and win”.

Condi-based Berserker builds are really strong right now.

What are you looking to play? Solo? Team?

Character Name:
Kat Shadowpaw (Thief)

Does MMR Hell Exist
To an extent*. I got placed with really bad players on both sides (allies and enemies), and during my first six games, no matter how many times I won my fights, 1v1, 1v2, it wasn’t enough for my allies to win, and so I changed my build to one that is less survivable, but made a stronger impact (offense) against the enemy team, and was able to start winning 1v3s. Allies started being able to win their 4v2s and have been able to maintain a 65% win-ratio over 114 games since.

Current Division
Diamond

Where do I think I belong
Probably Diamond at the end of the season (not this season, just in general), through regular play. If I were to push for it, I should get Legendary. As it is now, I think progression is potentially a little bit too easy. Around Diamond they should lower the tier requirements (probably down to 5) and remove the win streak bonus pips.

Self-Bonus Question:

How do I think the player base end distribution should end up at by the end of the season (and after at least 10-15 games, to filter out people who don’t make it out of amber and then quit):

Legendary: 5%
Diamond: 15%
Ruby: 50%
Sapphire: 15%
Emerald: 10%
Amber: 0%

Chaith.8256:

Automated tournaments sound like a perfect thing to schedule for a 5-roster of players looking to have more competition than leagues allow, which is very little.

Seems like it would be easy to facilitate a tournament signup from the ‘TEAM’ tab in the guild menu, and have a sequence of queue pops for a daily tournament, starting at 8pm in a central time zone of each region.

Have the brackets & team progress displayed on the UI, fully contained in-game.

Gem or skin rewards based on placement would be amazing.

Perhaps I got distracted by the rest of the OP’s content in his post, but after the presentation of the idea of automated tournaments in this manner, it does sound fun/feasible. I remember participating in pugquest, got second place, was fun. I’m just curious though, would this really be able to build the competitive scene more than just regularly scheduled community organized tournaments? It will remove burden from the community sure, but assuming we did have these regular tournaments again, would it have a net benefit between automated vs. community tournaments?

Wolfey.3407:

They need to add more to the reward list….
Season Tickets…
Shards of Glory…
After you get the back piece they really serve no value.

Your only other option is a Llama with very small cosmetic differences each tier.

I know I reported on a ton of options they could have done for a reward table but I guess we will wait and see if they will do anything about it… if not next season will be the same as this season for me.Ranked PvP just for fun and when i’m really bored

I don’t see how expanding the options on what you can spend your season tickets on is relevant to the topic. As you mentioned, there is the llama which is already a (finite) ticket sink. Would expanding the options you can sink your tickets into be nice? sure. But they don’t take up inventory space, and a sink exists already.

Dirame.8521:

… isn’t a game changer.
…but not a game changer
….not going to do anything to make the game more interesting

Your Opinion. Your Opinion. Your Opinion. Player Interest needs to be from the ground. I’ve introduced quite a few people to pvp, and some of the first things that occur after they’ve set up a build are “do I have to stay in the mists?” Queuing outside of the mists was in the game before, it shouldn’t be THAT much more work. Just don’t allow it in PVE if the devs are afraid of people dismissing queues and giving themselves dishonor.

Build templates are admittedly not NEEDED. but they can’t be that difficult. Just change the weapon area that they use from using a weapon in you inventory to just a “skin” selector, temp equip a dummy weapon with that weapon and boom. Probably should have limits for the number of builds, (3-5 per character I think would be good).

Your specialization changes are just what you subjectively think would make the game better. Stronghold tourneys are fine, I think the mode needs more exposure. Automated tournaments requires infrastructure.

Honestly, I’m willing to put up with supporting streamers on twitch, but Anet makes it REALLY difficult with the queues.

I don’t agree with needing to separate out elite specializations from the rest of the specializations (no longer called traits). They made their decision to keep it easier to balance in new elite specializations. Separating it out right now, but keeping 3 specialization lines would just be increasing power creep.

Personally I’m surprised to see that nothing was mentioned about:
- Build Templates
- Queuing up outside the mists (AT LEAST it should be allowed in custom arenas)
- and a personal plug about using shards of glory to maintain custom arenas…

Tatori.7938:

Snip

Thank you for writing this Tatori. A few of my friends who refused to do pvp before they saw people wearing the back piece have started to give it a shot now. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the current league system except for the current lack of a player base and the need to break up losing teams (keeping groups that are winning together is fine). With the way the current league system is designed, it is biased to allowing people to progress. The main issue is that it doesn’t stabilize to provide fair matches after it has initially separated out those who have the ability to progress faster.

Arcadio.6875:

Just give me to option of getting a lifetime subscription.

alemfi.5107:

It shouldn’t be so accessible that everyone can have their own private arenas (like everyone has their own guild bank)

Don’t know if you were serious or not, but there is likely reason that anet had given it such a steep gold cost, so not everyone could own their own personal arena (likely some form of server cost/impact). I think there needs to be an ongoing commitment to keeping an arena up, but it really ought to be something that makes more sense than gold. Shards of glory IMO is a good solution as it requires ppl to progress through reward tracks, and increases the value of shards which are right now in a huge surplus.

I didn’t go into actual figures because I feel like Anet will have metrics already, but I’m curious what the community thinks is acceptable in terms of how many days it’d take an individual player to buy an arena token (if this ever becomes a thing) through normal pvp game play. 1 token a day? 1 token/3 days? 5 days? It shouldn’t be so accessible that everyone can have their own private arenas (like everyone has their own guild bank), but I think if a committed small group wanted to, they should be able to fund an arena through regular play.

For that purpose I also created a straw poll asking about how many shards of glory you get per day:
http://www.strawpoll.me/10603938

I am personally sitting on 4 stacks of shards, but the numbers you guys are citing would use that up in 4 days.

Why is it even a timer in the first place? and not the next played game/two games? They could restrict it to be within a 24 hr period. As far as I know, there is no activation cost,

Are…. are you mistaking the auto proc fear from runes of the nightmare to be coming from shambling horrors?

That math is off, since shards will gain value as they are used up.

Also while I’m making suggestions, please allow us to queue up while inside of custom arenas. Let streamers entertain viewers while waiting for pvp queue.

Rather than Gold, something hard for pvp players to earn, how about we use Shards of Glory to fund Custom Areas/Tokens.

Give those suckers some use/a sink to give them value.

Anyone have any ideas on why this might be a bad idea?

Edit: How many Shards of Glory do you get a Day? How many days should it take for an average player to buy an arena token with shards?
http://www.strawpoll.me/10603938

Kako.1930:

How do you get 12min-1hour long dishonor? I’ve only ever gotten a 2 or 3 minute one. /confused

It gets longer the more you get dishonor. clears up after a few days. I got a 15 minute one just now because yesterday, I decided to decline a match to queue up with a friend who just signed on.

Won game. Got Personal Score. Still got dishonor. Still Lost pip.

They’ve already explained their current matchmaking algorithm before, this is nothing new. they first find a team for you based on your mmr, then find the next team who’s group mmr is closest to your groups mmr, as opposed to the shuffled/interweaved matchmaking from season 1 and before. Can we stop creating new threads complaining about getting the short end of the stick?

Adding relevant links:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-May-17-2016/first#post6169672
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pvp-league-season-two-changes/

Anet should really clarify what they changed from season 2 to season, 3 because it sounds like based on the number of forum complaints they might not have been enough. The difference appears to be that season 2 matched you with opponents based on pip range ONLY, without any concern for the opponents skill. Season 3 then takes this and matches you against a team of similar skill as well.

So good job. you are skilled enough to make the matchmaker match you against a group that is already legendary; or you queued up at a time where they were the only team whose pip range is near yours, but not close enough to be mixed into that team.

@sanctuary: To be honest, it feels like you are contradicting yourself. Just curious, would you place yourself as a good, average, or below average player? This season is mathematically geared for faster progression compared to season 1, with the exception for those that are stuck on losing streaks. Season 1 basically aimed for 50:50 matches and was actually the season that caused me to take a break from gw2 until now. I LIKED season 1’s matchmaking, but it was a huge grind, and the meta builds at the time were terribly unfun to play against (nearly endless resistance uptime condi revenants, bunker mesmers, and the occasional bunker aura-tempest).

Back to the math of it all though:
Season 1: Matches based on MMR, shuffled players between teams to give nearly equal win chance. So “50:50” chance of winning every match, unless your skill is higher than your current mmr/you are a skilled outlier. Bonus Pips gained if beating a team with a higher chance to win than yours, extra pips LOST if losing a team you should be able to beat. In such a system, your net gain should actually be near zero, except for when you are climbing out of your range, because your current mmr matchups are not caught up to your skill.

Season 2: Didn’t play, so I’m not qualified to comment.

Season 3: Teams formed by finding team members near your mmr/division, then it finds the next assembled team who’s mmr range is closest to yours. No shuffling occurs. Higher MMR team is LIKELY to win, further raising their mmr, lower teams mmr further goes down. Since players likely have the same mmr if they requeue, they will likely play with the same people, either getting more and more frustrated at their allies, or knowing how each other play and synergizing. Likely to snowball win streaks to progress divisions faster. These games in general are not balanced, but should allow for those that are “winners” to progress faster. As I said, I think this is fine at the START, to separate players into their appropriate divisions, but then it should begin forming matches with equal likely hood for both teams to win.