Guild Wars 2

I hope it’s another backpiece purely BECAUSE it will make a lot of people uninterested in repeating the grind. A lot of people are PvPing that probably shouldn’t be, and wouldn’t be if not for the backpiece.

Allow people to get this one and keep pumping out new backpieces. Only the people that actually want to PvP will bother, as it should’ve been with this one.

We need to take steps to remove the people from sPvP that aren’t there for the PvP, but for the backpiece.

CoraxRnR.5742:

Even your pretentious talking doesn’t change a kittening thing about the fact that the odds aren’t even while they easily could’ve been.

Anet does this by design. They thought it would be a good idea to intentionally teamstack one team and give the 5 strongest players to one team, while giving the 5 weakest the other. They merely find players within a 15 pip range as a placebo to give them impression of close matchmaking, since players can’t see MMR, which the teams are actually based off of.

This is the system that Anet designed – one that is inherently biased and non-competitive. This was intentional.

It’s why GW2 PvP is dying at alarming speeds.

LughLongArm.5460:

bLind.6278:

LughLongArm.5460:

bLind.6278:

They’re fine. Disrupt their ability to get their elite skills off and you win 100% of your fights against them. Warriors are EXTREMELY susceptible to CC due to an almost complete lack of stability. They get 3 pulses of a single stack of stability while in Berserker – burn one and then stun. Congrats you win.

If you can’t do that, use dazes while they’re in Berserk. Completely stops their ability to do damage. I’ve been killed multiple times in under 4 seconds on my warrior in the last couple of days by people that waited for me to go zerk, hit me with a daze and then hard-bursted. Granted, neither Endure Pain or Resistance ever seem to do anything in these situations, but still.

TL:DR – warrior isn’t a free kill anymore, you have to actually counterplay it like you had to pre-HoT. It’s not hard. Warriors still telegraph 100% of what they do and are incredibly predictable.

I think warriors with balance and last stand, got the logest stability uptime in the game.

And if they have last stand they have no Condi clear. If they have balanced stance they probably don’t have Shattering Throw, meaning their damage is reduced.

Honestly, guys, let’s be realistic. No warrior is running around with 6 utility skills. Stop acting like they are. If you’re getting stomped on by non-meta warriors running balanced stance, and Last Stand, it’s because you’re garbage.

Rather i’m stomped or not a non topic, you saied warriors has almost no stability which is very wrong. No even complaining about warrior, jsut making a point.

You’re not incorrect that warriors do have access to stability. However, in virtually every viable build right now, their access is limited due to the requirement of having a second Endure Pain, Berskerer Stance and then a relatively open 3rd skill that you can float where you want with obvious downsides.

Necro’s also have access to an ability that does extremely high damage and has no cooldown if used on an opponent under 50%, but that doesn’t mean the class needs to be balanced around that ability (or that weapon), especially when it’s incredibly rarely used, and to poor effect when it is.

I’m sorry to say that it wont get better, for you. Anet’s algorithm intentionally stacks weaker players (arbitrarily determined, no offense) against significantly stronger players.

Unless you start queuing with other players with significantly higher win ratios than your own, your own ratio will remain low.

You have virtually zero chance of solo queuing your way out of your MMR because the system will continue to give you the other 4 weakest players out of the 9 you’re matched with in roughly 80% of your games.

LughLongArm.5460:

bLind.6278:

They’re fine. Disrupt their ability to get their elite skills off and you win 100% of your fights against them. Warriors are EXTREMELY susceptible to CC due to an almost complete lack of stability. They get 3 pulses of a single stack of stability while in Berserker – burn one and then stun. Congrats you win.

If you can’t do that, use dazes while they’re in Berserk. Completely stops their ability to do damage. I’ve been killed multiple times in under 4 seconds on my warrior in the last couple of days by people that waited for me to go zerk, hit me with a daze and then hard-bursted. Granted, neither Endure Pain or Resistance ever seem to do anything in these situations, but still.

TL:DR – warrior isn’t a free kill anymore, you have to actually counterplay it like you had to pre-HoT. It’s not hard. Warriors still telegraph 100% of what they do and are incredibly predictable.

I think warriors with balance and last stand, got the logest stability uptime in the game.

And if they have last stand they have no Condi clear. If they have balanced stance they probably don’t have Shattering Throw, meaning their damage is reduced.

Honestly, guys, let’s be realistic. No warrior is running around with 6 utility skills. Stop acting like they are. If you’re getting stomped on by non-meta warriors running balanced stance, and Last Stand, it’s because you’re garbage.

They’re fine. Disrupt their ability to get their elite skills off and you win 100% of your fights against them. Warriors are EXTREMELY susceptible to CC due to an almost complete lack of stability. They get 3 pulses of a single stack of stability while in Berserker – burn one and then stun. Congrats you win.

If you can’t do that, use dazes while they’re in Berserk. Completely stops their ability to do damage. I’ve been killed multiple times in under 4 seconds on my warrior in the last couple of days by people that waited for me to go zerk, hit me with a daze and then hard-bursted. Granted, neither Endure Pain or Resistance ever seem to do anything in these situations, but still.

TL:DR – warrior isn’t a free kill anymore, you have to actually counterplay it like you had to pre-HoT. It’s not hard. Warriors still telegraph 100% of what they do and are incredibly predictable.

The problem isn’t the healing, it’s the passive defensive abilities that prevent damage long enough for a player to completely regen over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, healing is definitely over the top, but I don’t think it’s because of healing, but instead because of blind spam, block spam, evade spam, invul spam, etc.

No class should be able to cycle through multiple defensive tools that completely negate damage the way they do in GW2. They allow classes to top themselves off with far too much ease. If you want passive defenses, reduce healing. If you want burst healing, reduce passive defenses. Having both just makes certain classes frustrating to play against.

Pyriall.5027:

Seiroxena.6350:

morrolan.9608:

Pyriall.5027:

In any situation where there is a winner and a loser this is going to happen.

If matchmaking was fair and balanced players would be matched into matches against those of a similar level where they have an even chance of winning. Clearly if such long losing sequences are happening this is not the case with the system. I would say given the population issues that the best system is the S1 system.

This.

I’m having a 10 loss streak since today and lost 2 tiers in Ruby. MMR is awfull and so is ANET at fixing things.

It’s the safety nets. If you’re having that tough of a time then you don’t belong in that division.

This may be true on some level, but not really in GW2 given how each MMR is to some extent separated from one-another. Low MMR legendary exists in a completely different world than high MMR legendary. A play that wins 95% of their games on the way to Legendary will likely never face a player that wins 40% of their games to Legendary, and a player that wins 60% of their games should ideally never play with either.

Don’t get me wrong – Ruby is currently an absolute hellhole thanks to the complete lack of skill necessary to get there. Putting together a handful of winstreaks throughout the season only takes volume, not skill. Pure luck will eventually get a character to Ruby.

The problem is when the following happens:

Player A is roughly a “3” on a scale of 1-10 in skill, but has been carried to Ruby through luck or volume due to the lack of tier loss. Player B is roughly a “6,” and player C is an “8.”

All three are in Ruby, where there are no more safety nets, and due to a relative lack of people within their individual pip ranges, the acceptable MMR spread widens. What this means is that the 3, the 6 and the 8 all end up in the same game.

However, on pure happenstance, the game also matches two 4’s, one 5, and two more 6’s, a 7 and an 8 in the game. After team placement, the teams are as follows:

3, 4, 4, 5, 6 against 6, 6, 7, 8, 8. The matchmaking algorithm weights the team like this intentionally (for some reason) to intentionally benefit the better players that have higher MMR, so as to increase their arbitrary ranking. Now, Player B, who is a 6 and is arguably better than average, can either be randomly placed on either team. However, looking at the skill levels, it’s pretty easy to see which team will win from the very beginning. That means that despite Player B being above average, he will undoubted lose this game purely based on what team the system randomly places him on.

In reality, most games are sorted closer to 4, 4, kitten against 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, but the same problem exists – the average player within that game can either randomly win or lose, while the lower MMR player will almost certainly lose the majority of their games purely by design, and the higher MMR player will win most of their games, again by design.

Evidence of this has flooded this forum since the beginning of the season. Ithilwen is likely on the low-end of the skill spectrum (no offense), which increases his chances of being placed on the losing team, as 1’s and 2’s simply don’t get placed on the higher teams. Meanwhile, people with extremely high MMR’s will almost always be placed on the HIGHER level team. This is only problematic at the extremes, as the 1’s and 2’s and 9’s and 10’s are at the edges of the bell curve. However, the 3’s and 8’s will still see substantial failures or successes purely based on chance.

People are assuming that the current system attempts to push you towards a 50% win/loss ratio, where this is simply untrue. It will push the AVERAGE player towards 50/50. The 4’s, the 5’s and the 6’s will see close to 50% ratios, but the extremes will see the extreme ratios, because the system is designed to place them on specific teams.

Tell me – how does a person reasonably raise their MMR if 75% or more of their games have them on the team that is supposed to lose? How do you string together wins to increase your MMR when your ENTIRE TEAM is worse than the other teams WORST PLAYER?

Unfortunately, Anet didn’t want to make the teams even this season, in ANY respect. In season 1, the average would be the same on each team, even if one team had four 9’s and a 1 against 5 7’s. In season 3, one team is loaded up with the 5 best players by design, and the game is often decided before it even begins. Sure, the games may not be the 500-100 blowouts of Season 2 (just kidding, they still usually are), but that doesn’t make them competitive.

Anet erroneously believes that the score at the end of the game is indicative of how close a match is, or how enjoyable it was. I’ve seen numerous games end this season at 500-400, or 500-350 that were in reality a MASSIVE blowout that was decided extremely early on. Remember, a 500-250 game can be achieved by a team holding two points all game and merely allowing the other team to hold their lone point uncontested all game – and that’s without taking points from kills or lords into account.

The largest blowouts ALWAYS occur on maps where the primary method of scoring is capture points (Kyhlo, Foefire), where the closer maps are almost always on Niflhel or Temple, which have point-burst mechanics to close gaps.

A better team on the right map will almost always steamroll their opponents into a humiliating defeat. A better team on a more ebb-and-flow friendly map will still typically win but with a smaller margin – NOT because it was a better game, but because the map mechanics allow for points to be scored through alternate means. You don’t have to kill a player to get 25 points from Svanir.

This season offers games no more competitive than those in season 2, just with less “blowouts” purely on a score basis. This season offers teams no more evenly matched than season 1 or 2, and instead favors one side by design.

I’m sorry, but literally every aspect of the season 3 algorithm has been an utter failure. The absolute average player sits on a 50/50 win ratio and makes no progress. The high-end player wins 90% of his games because the teams are stacked in his favor, meaning he progresses extremely quickly. The low-end player loses the majority of his games to players that clearly outclass him with little possibility of netting consecutive wins, let alone streaks.

And the 4’s and the 6’s? They just have zero control over their fates. The 6’s will usually win, but will still have too many games where they can do nothing. The 4’s will usually lose, but will still have the occasional game where they go up against the 1’s and 2’s and absolutely dominate – but still can’t progress in the long run.

This rant is going nowhere, and nobody that needs to listen will.

As someone who has mained both Necro and Warrior over the last 3 years, I’d say Necro is by far the easiest, and then warrior. Necro is easier because it has a significantly lower skill-ceiling in all game modes to be elite, and a fairly low skill-floor to be effective.

Warrior’s skill floor is slightly lower, meaning it’s easier to play at a very basic level, but quickly ramps up in terms of skill needed regardless of game mode you play. Being an elite warrior requires significant expertise in the game, not only of your own class, but of other classes in PvP and good knowledge of bosses/monsters in PvE. You eventually need to be able to recognize and react to players and monsters based on the animation of their attack and then decide to evade that attack or take it. Many other classes do not need to make this distinction. Warrior is given a slightly larger health pool because of it, however.

I can’t speak on the rest of the classes because I don’t have intimate knowledge of them. I enjoy the themes and playstyles of both necro and warrior, and the simplicity of them is just a fortunate by-product for me.

Instead of looking at what would be easy to get into, try to find something that he would enjoy playing at higher skill levels. Much of the game becomes second-nature after awhile, and your friend will learn whatever class he chooses well enough. Find something he likes the aesthetics of, the theme of, and the playstyle of. Every class plays very differently from one-another, and there is no jack-of-all-trades. Remember, at the end of the day, you’re staring at your character for hours a day and potentially thousands of hours over time – find something you like to look at.

egzius.9031:

You’ve done a right step in PVP.

You obviously don’t PvP. The absolute vast majority of PvP’ers believe the current system to be a complete failure. From a purely mechanical/theoretical standpoint it’s a complete failure that is largely dependent on RNG and luck.

You absolutely don’t want Anet installing similar mechanics into PvE or WvW. Imagine if fractal bosses could randomly wipe your entire team on a dice roll. Imagine if WvW matched servers up randomly instead of through the current mechanism of high+low against high+low against high+low. Imagine Blackgate and TC against IoJ and Anvil Rock. It’s okay at the end, because BG and TC are supposed to win, so the loser shouldn’t feel bad.

No, my friend. PvE in it’s current state has it’s issues, but competitiveness is certainly not one of them. If you want to address anything in PvE, I’d look at drop consistency, but that’s an entirely different bag of nonsense to get into.

Lol

15characters

Stand The Wall.6987:

seems like it could only pair people within the same division; sapphire with sapphire, legendary with legendary. longer q times but better matches maybe. cant have one without the other in a low population game like gw2.

Pips are in no way indicative of skill. Neither are ranks.

They literally don’t indicate it whatsoever when the first three ranks can easily be farmed through, regardless of skill.

I’d like a dev response to this, because nothing I’ve ever done has seemed to give me consistently better teammates. Quite the opposite, actually.

Winning 60% of my games earlier in the season didn’t make my team any better. Losing 14 in a row only made my opponents better, not worse. My team got worse, though.

I had a 60% win ratio before my current 12 game loss streak. A streak where my teammates literally argue with me over defending home point (when it’s our only point.)

My teammates are CONSISTENTLY losing points 4v1. I don’t know what to think about this game anymore. I immediately assume that literally every single player that I see in the game is a complete kittening moron that struggles to breathe on their own. 100% of the playerbase. It’s just the experiences I’ve had, directly because of Anet’s system.

The root of toxicity in PvP? It’s the developers making systems like this that foster absolute hatred towards other people.

Jesus christ when will you people realize that PIPS are literally meaningless. Your MMR is the basis of your queue, and it finds people within your pip range that are also within that MMR.

It then stacks one team by design, making it so that the WORST player on the best team is equal MMR to the BEST player on the other team, and then making EVERYONE else on the higher team better than that.

Then it basically just gives you a 50/50 chance per game to get the good team. Literally zero part of that is competitive. None whatsoever.

Combine that with the ridiculously poorly designed PvP in this game and you have this absolute abortion.

I’m on a 12 game losing streak where I have literally 1v4’d multiple occasions and still lost. I’ve held points 1v3 for minutes at a time while my team manages to lose BOTH off-points 4v2.

Literally NOTHING about this game is competitive. NOTHING. Nothing in sPvP right now for the average, non pro-league player is even remotely enjoyable. Winning and losing is dependent entirely on whether or not the teammates that you have know how to defend points, rotate, or do damage. Hint: the VAST majority don’t.

I was at a 60% win loss ratio before this streak of games. Before I went twelve straight games (so far) of getting teammates so incompetent that they literally argued that sitting on a point and defending it was a bad idea.

I honestly don’t even know what to say about the PvP in this game anymore. The current matchmaking system doesn’t take skill into account almost whatsoever after a certain point. If you’re not winning 85% of your games or more, you’re just randomly given the worst teammates in the world. If you didn’t make it to Diamond within the first week, you’re stuck in this kittening nightmare that Ruby has become because the vast majority of players in it absolutely do not deserve to be there, since the vast majority of them still don’t grasp absolute basic game mechanics.

This is the system that Anet designed. This is the system that after two seasons, they thought was best.

I have no faith that any of the developers will ever do anything to improve upon the current system in place, despite OVERWHELMING negative feedback. Anet has once again shown me that they don’t have any intention of making an enjoyable experience for the player a priority.

/rant

Anet has created the single worst gaming experience I’ve had in over 25 years of gaming. Over 15 years of competitive PvP. I have literally NEVER seen a more poorly designed game, a more poorly designed competitive system – in my ENTIRE life.

I hope Anet is ashamed. I’m ashamed for them.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I’m tired of constantly encountering disgusting players with obnoxious comments for whatever reason in spvp. Can Anet plz make it so that there is no map chat in pvp matches as well as make the enemy team (and possibly your team) names hidden? So whispering isn’t possible.

If the PvE kittenters that are literally only here for the legendary wings would go the kitten back to sitting in LA and waiting on their next raid, it wouldn’t be as toxic, because 99% of the worst players in the game wouldn’t be in sPvP.

God I hope not. Anet can’t balance anything in PvP, new maps would just further the absolute mess that sPvP is.

Drussthelegend.2630:

Because some of us liked to be ranked based on skill.

Let me know when they implement a system that does that.

JayAction.9056:

Silberfederling.9302:

I have to ask you op:
- are your refering to a certain play style? (Condi\power)
-are you aware that warrior players are flamed into using condi bug builds? (Anecdotal, but i was attacked for running power in Saphire, Team mate went AFK)

I would honestly suggest you look at the core Problem.
From where i stand it is solo q.
My premade Team was able to take down 3 warrior stacks and 2 warrior stacks. Why? Because the class has mostly secondary defences that can be forced or can be denied. From personal experience i can tell you that a Team build to fight condi meta negates condi wars, as well as condi mes and nec. The easy way of taking them down is to focus them every time their IP runs out.
Shield mace longbow is atrociously slow, this is why i (absolute scrapper noob) am able to trash them til kingdom come on my engi.
On a final note, the passive defenses are really unsatisfying, but as it stands they are nessesary. We are never invulnerable. We can get hit. Every thing that required a hit has to be blocked or dodged. Warriors waste an entirety traitline and two utility skills for survival. Ask arround how it feels to play with out defense traitline IP and Berserker stance. I tell you how, cool, until the aoe CC and conditions drop.
Warriors apply high burn dmg, with a bugged weapon, but as a whole i find it hard to agree that this class is op.
With regards to your intial low skill ceiling remark.
Trust me, it is out right pathetic if you fight condi bandwagon “warrs”. If you know the class, i presume i do after 4,3k hours (aparently we have to do this now to show how important we are) you destroy these pathetic bug abusing condi trainers. I Start every match with a breakdown of “how to kill the condi war”, which blows my mind, as this uuuhh so easy to play class seems to escape a lot of people.
I do not intend to insult you, but i personally am tired of this witch hunt that goes on since summer 2014. first war is too strong, its op nerf it, OK war you are scrap reroll or get cancer, warr is too strong nerf it, nooooo war pls go die.
This kitten has to stop.
Learn the class, or if you can not be bothered, at least learn the counters and spare this forum at least for one weak with this warrior hunt.

You have 4 invulns; double endure pain, berserk stance, and shield stance. The last two are invulns to specific damage types, and if you are good at the class you can easily rotate through them to take very minimal damage.

You almost 100-0d me with that wall of text though, almost.

Warriors have literally zero invulns. Zero. If you mained the class, you’d know that. Not only are you a bad player, you’re a liar too. Congrats.

Warriors are fine. Condis in general are over the top.

Btw, a single interrupt on a warrior can kill him if you have condi pressure on him from a necro.

The system actively discourages even teams by design. So no. Literally nothing competitive about the entire system atm.

As a warrior, I have EXTREMELY limited ability to safe-stomp (one stack of stability IF I’m in Berserker, which means I’ll be doing kitten damage post-stomp,) so most of the time I just focus on trying to cleave, lay down fire fields on the corpse to damage anyone trying to revive, and CC people off the revive.

I’ve seen too many thieves never stomp for my liking when they have the easiest stomps in the game.

Most of the time, a couple of people cleaving will get the job done. No need to stomp unless it’s urgent.

I’ve been one-shot through Endure Pain AND Resistance on my warrior from a guardian. Granted, if I survive, I’ll probably win, but still. You guys have it rough right now, but still not as bad as wars had it the first two seasons.

Play to your strengths and bait people into your traps.

Shovel Face.4512:

Cynz.9437:

They admitted that matchmaking builds one team that has high chance to win vs team that has way lesser chance to win. They basically make you lose on purpose so people with higher MMR can move up which results in a lot of losses or huge winstreaks depending on side. You basically never have even matches. Garbage design is garbage.

This game been out for 4 years, i just don’t understand why they refuse to make algorithm that tries to make teams that both have 50% win chance.

I find it hilarious that you think a system where games are truly 50/50 is realistic. If you flip a coin 630 times do you really think it’s gonna 315 heads and 315 tails exactly? Heck no, there is a variation in everything.

You have a better shot at 50/50 if there’s only two sides. Anet basically throws two coins, one with heads and tails, the other with two heads. Anet is literally stacking teams by design every game. 50/50 does not exist in the current iteration of matchmaking.

Matchmaking is definitely not good when the best method to play to actually progress is to 2-5 queue. Solo queue is an absolute crapshoot, and you stand to lose games purely by whether or not you’re on the team that Anet’s algorithm stacked.

My last 30 games or so have gone back to how it was in s2 – massive stomps most of the time. Usually 500-250 or less, occasionally 500-50 or less. Once I was out of Emerald on day 2, I rarely saw close matches anymore.

Veteran of the Mists, because I imagine many people that bothered to put in the work for it quit after they got shafted on the reward with 5 mithril and a green for ~75 hours of work.

ellesee.8297:

Those who PvP for achievements and rewards will always lag behind those who PvP to PvP.

Those who PvP for achievements will always pull down those who PvP to PvP.

Anet really needs to stop encouraging players to branch out into sPvP. It has only made the experience for the vast majority of the PvP community TERRIBLE, especially when taking the laughably short-sighted MMR system into account.

In probably 90% of my losses I can directly attribute the loss of the game to easily visible mistakes made by my team. I’m fortunate that I still have a 60% win ratio, but the sad that is that it probably should be around 85% if not for being matched with players that literally lack any basic understanding of pvp. People that leave points (often before even capping them), people that repeatedly run to a contested point with no allies and 3+ enemies, people that fight in the middle of nowhere, people that refuse to follow any sort of instruction, etc.

Most mistakes are fairly small, but these players are making them repeatedly throughout the game. DOZENS of times or more.

The biggest issue is that the skill level of my team varies WILDLY on a game-to-game basis. In one game, my team might actually not have any idea how the capture points even work. In the next, my team rotates, +1’s, decaps when appropriate, teamfights well, etc. I honestly don’t understand how the disparity can be so substantial if there is any form of MMR in this game at all.

I feel for the people with high MMR, still. I get the struggle that the OP is talking about. Rank atm is literally meaningless and is only representative of how lucky you’ve been with streaks. Each MMR is largely separated from one-another, so the lowly kittenters should theoretically never be placed in a match with high-MMR players, which means they’ll eventually grind to Diamond/Leg on the coat-tails of Anet’s terrible matchmaking system.

baylock.1703:

Yes this is priority nb 1 problem in PvP let’s focus everything on it.

It may not be high priority, but it should be an easy fix. Either remove the pip loss or give a win for the tie.

I’m seeing a lot of people running the obvious meta builds, but what else are people running? I’ve seen a few Gunflame warriors, and a lot of GS wars, so I’m curious what everyone is doing.

I’ve been running the standard macebow, occasionally mixing in s+t/lb if I feel like I need to carry harder, but I’m jonesing for some power gameplay. Might start screwing around with gunflame again after I get through this tier I’m in.

Fivedawgs.4267:

trunks.5249:

Fivedawgs.4267:

That’s how competitve ladder works.

what game have you been playing what about this is competitve? competitive is when you are with people your own skill level in this case its just flat out not true what so every you are its dumb luck when you get a team that knows what to do and how to do it. have you not seen the forums

League of legends, check their algorithm.

And bolded statement, that’s what the system does, unless you can prove otherwise we have to abide by it.

And disregard what I said above, if you started in amber because we have no idea how Anet handles new players.

They’ve literally told us that they deliberately stack one team, therefore completely destroying any true competition on a game-by-game basis.

There is literally zero matchmaking in this game. Just more lies.

I’ve never experienced a more frustrating targeting system in my 20+ years of gaming. Blows me away.

Get 5 people together and play that way. If you do, anet will ALWAYS queue you against 4-5 solo players so you’ll always have a kittening MASSIVE advantage.

My first main was necro, and I loved the class but hated that it was worthless in PvE, so I switched to warrior with HoT. Ironically, warrior was kitten in PvP until April, which is my main focus, but I’m finally enjoying it again currently.

I still like necro, though, I just don’t see the point of playing multiple characters when it’s so hard to finish gearing a single character in ascended and whatnot. If I ever have a different main after my warrior, it will probably be another heavy armor class just so I don’t have to farm for 8 months for another set of gear.

Took me 4 days to do the Balthazar quest for the first Dusk collection. I’m now done with that collection and haven’t even bothered with the next step. Not like I have 30 Deldrimoor Steel ingots laying around, anyway.

Maybe next year after I’m done with the PvP backpiece and ascended gear. Just not enough time in a day to do more than that.

Evan Lesh.3295:

The grace period is adjustable, and is there to account for restarting the game and hopping back in. We can change the grace period to be longer if we see that it is not long enough to account for the majority of people reentering the game.

The dishonor also applies immediately, so if you d/c and come back to play early, you’ll have worked off some of the timeout by the end of the match.

Well, you have to also remember right now that load times are awful because of the tons of players in each world server. It used to take me ~15s to load into the PvP lobby, it’s been upwards of 1:30 in the last couple of days at primetime. That’s a problem that obviously isn’t being accounted for.

I’m already through Emerald in around 40 games, despite being absolutely kittened over in about 20 games in the last two tiers of Emerald with rampantly terrible teammates.

My issue isn’t progression-based, but that progression is stymied because the system intentionally favors one team, and stacks the other with terrible players. I mean, you can grind through it, but it’s definitely frustrating.

Also, close games still don’t exist. So, there’s that.

Well, anyone want a half-decent warrior for a premade? NA servers.

So me getting through Emerald in two days or whatever, does that mean I have a higher MMR or what?

From what I understand of the system, it mainly focuses on your MMR, and then finds people within your pip range and makes the teams based on that (favoring one side, because Anet reasons.)

This means that kittenty Sapphire players with low MMR’s that just grinding to Diamond/Leg could theoretically never face good players who were diamon/leg, because their MMR wouldn’t match up. It basically makes the rank identifier literally meaningless, because each player is facing people within his MMR range the entire time, meaning kittenty players will once again grind to leg against other kittenty players that have also grinded enough.

Essentially, getting leg only means you played enough games, not that you’re “good.”

Imagine my regret when I realized I needed to basically grind out into Diamond this season and next because I didn’t play the first two seasons.

Capital kittenty.

Sunshine.5014:

StickerHappy.8052:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

League placement qualifiers was a much-needed addition to the league system.

No more “three stooges” at the beginning where everyone (good bad and in between) is clawing all over each-other trying to get out of amber.

Its not often I say this…. but someone over there at Anet is paying attention…. and he deserves a pat on the back for this one.

There are still many things to address about the league system…
…but this was definitely a step in the right direction.

Thanks.

Now you get legends/diamonds who grinded last season who are terribad in sapphire.

there shouldve been MMR reset and everyone started at amber with 0 MMR.

but still better than last season so there’s that.

Or better yet, they should implement my full Pre-season suggestion (in the signature). I mentioned using MMR to do the placement, instead of league division (which could be farmed by grinders)

They should’ve went to a straight Elo system where hitting a certain Elo equates to your rank instead of this current hybrid pip/glicko monstrosity that doesn’t work whatsoever. Could’ve made it where them intentionally teamstacking like they do currently wouldn’t basically just equate to giving one team a huge middle-finger every game, where they’d get bigger rewards for beating a better team. Instead of single pips, they could’ve made each rank 250, had each pip be worth 10 or so, and weight some matches to allow you to win 2-3 pips on an upset or lose 2-3 if you get upset.

Instead, we get a system that isn’t competitive, intuitive, or fun.

I’ve learned that it’s usually better to get that 3 loss streak for the bonus pip when you’re in one of those cycles. For some reason it usually almost always results in a 2nd consecutive win, and then gives me at least a semi-decent game for the 3rd.

Of course, this won’t really work after you get to Ruby, but still. I started the season like 18-4, I’m 24-18 now. Only thing that’s changed is that my teammates suddenly enjoy fighting off point, afking, losing 3v1’s, and playing deathmatch.

Topher.5631:

Honestly, I don’t mind the longer que time if the matches are good / close ones (which they have been for me, anyways). If we were to reduce the que times, I can only guess that the match quality would be alot worse.

One way to remedy long que times is to let us que outside of HoTM, but that is another conversation

Had a 5m queue during prime time in high Emerald today. Game ended like 500-33.

Match quality sucks almost regardless of queue time. In my experience, it only gets worse as the queues get longer, because it’s widening the range of players it will accept into the game.

I had some br thief rage at me in broken english earlier today after he died versus a downed guardian with two teammates also downed IMMEDIATELY right next to him, before he rage-afk’d.

Was blaming us (who both were downed after being low from carrying a 3v3 teamfight) for him dying to the guardian, somehow. Literally a half-hp thief with two teammates who had above 80% downed health right next to him that dies, costs us the match. Was absolutely rage-inducing.

Pretty sure I got a 24 hour ban from telling him how much of a kittening idiot he was, too.

FrownyClown.8402:

JTGuevara.9018:

Hahaha! I love it!

It goes to show, there is an anti-warrior bias from some players. They were SO getting used to warriors being a free kill, now they might actually have to -gasp- work for it a bit.

Condi warrior is easily the strongest 1v1 class at the moment. I dont usually cry for nerfs, but I pretty much rage quit last night because of them. A warrior and thief combo on far is pretty nasty.

We’re still fairly easily handled in teamfights, but we’re excellent point holders now. You should be able to outplay the vast majority of warriors, though, unless you’ve got pretty high MMR and they actually know how to cycle defensive abilities.

My biggest problems come from Guardians. It’s difficult to sustain through their initial burst/turtle when we don’t have reliable access to stability. If they catch you on the ring of one of their traps, you’re dead before you can even use EP. Ironic that our biggest counter this season is so far out of the meta.

SteepledHat.1345:

Was this fixed before the PvP league started?

Lol. You act like the dev team cares that much. We get a full season of absurd condi clear, now. Make the most of it.

Either way, I’ve seen it only clear 3 when I had more condis, and I’ve seen it clear 6. Seems like the first SE only clears 3 sometimes, but subsequent ones will cleanse more, probably because the first field is still down and it double-dips.

Human is the only way to go. Armor looks pretty terrible on the other races most of the time.

Tier 3 cultural, Aetherblade, Winter Scarf are all glorious on human female, though. Human male can be pretty good so long as you don’t choose the more… feminine body shapes. Just makes everything look awkwardly proportioned in heavy armor.

Ideally you play to your opponents. The fact that there’s no build saving actually helps us, since many of our builds have small variations that make big impacts on gameplay. I stopped skipping CI in favor of RR (and honestly don’t miss it much, stuns aren’t nearly as bad as condis in this meta), and instead just change around my utilities depending on what I’m facing. If there are Guardians (and I’m lower MMR so they’re kittening everywhere), I make sure I have Signet of Might. If there aren’t, I’ll usually run Shattering Blow.

However, I’ve also noticed that your MMR determines way too much of your actual build. For example, being lower MMR (I only played 6 days total last season in ranked, and have maybe 350 games total between ranked and unranked), I’ve found that running S+T/LB has a substantially bigger impact on fights than M+S/LB, because there is so much more offensive pressure, and my teammates can’t reliably press buttons or something and rarely do any meaningful damage.

If you have a competent team, M+S/LB is lightyears better because it still has decent pressure but also locks down targets so well, but can’t burst hard enough reliably to kill in teamfights if the other team has any form of support.

As for your M+S/S+T build, I can’t imagine it being effective without a good team that can apply pressure on their own. You should never lose a duel, ever, but you’re also not going to have the same teamfight presence as a LB war. I’d still put your build above S+T/LB because of how good mace+shield is if your team isn’t kittened, though.

Regardless of what weapons you run, I can’t imagine running anything other than CI with how many classes passively dole out tons of condis. Clearing them is just too easy with CI+LB.