The dragonhunter elite specialization has proven to have a very solid impact in many areas of the game……
WUT ????
Are you serious ?
Which areas ? Puzzle jump ? Trading ?
Go back to your cave, Dragonhunter as been used (and dominating) in SPVP at least since HoT launch even with the nerfs it got.
Now on the topic, it seems like a general good approach of changes and Diamond Skin was the worst trait ever implemented (terrible because of its opness), I’m glad it will get reworked. Hopefully we will get today more specific details about the changes
Non-existant in the pro league. Although I do agree with the nerfs just saying that in fact DH is not particularly strong the higher the level of play gets but a lot of things the class is based upon is garbage and needs to be fixed before they could get other boosts.
Ive had 2 in the past 2 days where 1 person switched characters 3 times during a match and another rage quit after he was asked to cap a empty point when he was standing right next to it.
I lost a pip each time but its part of the game.
It shouldn’t be part of the game. It makes zero sense. They are basically telling us they believed that people not grouped together were somehow conspiring to have people drop out of matches to avoid pip losses even though the person dropping will get pip losses. Who the hell would do that? Guys, I don’t know any of you people but I’m going to eat extra pip loss and dishonor to save you all from pip loss lol. Only people grouped with the person disconnected should get the pip loss just like it used to be. At the very least they should have the guts to explain why people are getting punished for other people’s disconnects so we could get a laugh out of it.
I don’t like the weasel words you people use like may and slightly. We all know what needs to be adjusted and it better be adjusted and fairly significantly. Scrappers, Tempests, Chronos, and Heralds all need to be nerfed and I wouldn’t use the words may or slightly with any of them. Conversely while Warriors and Thieves need buffs don’t get carried away.
Not enough information. Is your team fighting on the contested node with 3 or 4? If your team has four and can’t win a node versus 3 you aren’t wnning the match anyway. If your side is the three where is the other person on your team? Also, if the enemy owns two points and are the team with 4 on the contested node simple math will tell you one of other points is open. The only way imo that you should not help in a team fight when you own zero nodes is if you can free cap a point. Going somewhere and dueling on a node the other team’s color is just not a good idea when your side controls zero points generally. You will almost always run into some kind of bs high sustain class that will block you forever. When you have zero points I am a believer in picking a point and zerging it with all five guys unless its obvious they have a point open for easy cap. A lot of this stuff does not have clear cut answers you have to look at the minimap and react on the fly.
I don’t see anything wrong with +1 or -1 division spread im matches. You have almost certainly won matches where you had all rubies on your side and the other team had a sapphire. The fix for true smurfing is coming soon. Queue times would be extreme if it had to be all of one divison in a match.
So to stop pro teams exploiting by queuing with newbs….you basically ruin it for the huge majority of people who want to play with friends. You took a sledge hammer to crack a nut. Awful.
There’s always unranked.
People who play mmo games like progression.
It isn’t fair for honest players if matchmaking exploiters and MMR tankers keep them from progressing to their intended tier. Let’s say you have an 91st percentile ruby, which is appropriate for that level, and four other rubies within that range. Then you have two legendaries (top .1%) a diamond (top 1.5%) and two ambers (lowest 35%) Might sound fair at first until you realize that the skill at the top percentages far outclass those at the 90th percentile. Two legendaries, a diamond, and two ambers would equal 19 ranks whereas the rubies would equal 20. Theoretically the rubies are favored but in practice, especially with smurfs but even with true ambers the legendaries would be favored since skill outpaces percentages at the top so the legnedaries are up to 9% higher percentile wise but about twice as skilled. At least it should be the case if league reflected skill.
“People who play mmo games like progression.”
Because the progression is a reflection of our improved skills.
That’s really not true at all. Five players in the 90th percentile would beat two 1% percentiles and three true nobs the vast majority of the time. Ive seen it happen plenty solo queing in low pop hours when some of the pros actually have the guts to solo or duo. Down state and the importance of knowing basic rotations and secret “knowledge you get only by playing a lot” trumps the greater twitch skills of a couple people when they are saddled with complete beginners or people that play like it at least lol.
The changes are great a lot of people don’t understand them or don’t think leagues should be competitive and think that if you “put in the time” you should be able to get into ruby or diamond through grinding. Average MMR matchmaking was the biggest fraud ever foisted on us. Why in the world should veteran players who know what they are doing have to play with people that don’t know the basics even up to like Diamond there are tons of people that don’t know basics rotations and strategies. Basically average MMR matchmaking carried them until they could lose tiers. They even said it int the inital post that for higher MMR players there matches in amber aren’t much different then ruby and beyond. That’s ridiculous for leagues they wan’t to be competitive. And not just for higher people I consider myself ok I was around 90th percentile in the old MMR based leaderboard which is good not great or anything. My matches were the same competitivewise (mostly blow outs in either direction) in amber as they are in ruby and diamond. I just want to feel like I am progressing and if I hit a wall where I can’t progree more Ill either get better or just 50/50 and plateu.
The biggest complaint next season will be from all the brain dead bads that can’t grind there way past the first couple of league. Leagues were never meant to be grinded through. They are meant as gauge of your skill level. I might make it to legendary this season but if next season I can only to get to ruby as long as I feel like I’m not playing with complete nimords half the time and I don’t feel like 50% of people are exploiting a flawed system I’ll be perfectly fine with it.
If you’ve been paying attention they really don’t care about what the player base thinks in general although they listen to handful of pros a little bit.
It is generally better to work middle and home though from the start. Why would you suggest far and home instead to start? I am a firm believer in working with what you have and if for some reason you end up with home and far you should work with that but why would suggest home and far from the start. Far is hard to hold because its close to there spawn they can wear you down with attrition a lot. This meta is filled with bunker types to act like you aren’t going to deal with one at far is pretty delusional. Most random teams seem to have at least 3 of the follwing elementalist, Herald, or chronobunker. Sure you should adapt to what happens mid match but my experience is the easiest way to win most of the time is holding home and middle.
The matchmaking has always stunk if you have a long record as even a decent player MMR wise you will be asked by the matchmaking to carry complete noobs for long stretches of matches. And you can’t carry in this game either really (downstate and the importance of good rotations by other teammates ensure that) most of the people on your side either know what they are doing (win) or they don’t (loss). The only way around it is to smurf or run a full group and possibly even smurf with that sadly lol. We need a hard MMR reset before next season and a cap on league difference for grouping purpoes. Also, its proably not even that your friend lost out of 13 out 14 that annoyed him most I bet the vast majority of them were drubbings where he played no differently then when he was winning matches fairly easily. Nothing makes me want to throw my computer out the window more then losing like 5 in a row by an average score of like 500-250. That usually happens after winning about 5 in a row by large margins.
Not really that difficult if your willing to grind away simple math will tell you it requires a slight over 50% win ratio over which as kittenoloing can still be achieved if you put the time in.
And then when you will come crying on the forum ..I’ll say :“told you so..now suffer”
I asked for reasonable changes..but my guts tell me that OP changes are on their way and a new wave of monsters will reach our shores..be prepared
What’s your point exactly there is always a chance that something will not be balanced. I know lets leave everything in the kittenty state it is now because something in the future might also be op.
The whole system is a joke. The sad thing is whatever the fixes end up being they will be totally inadequate. The main excuses will be we can’t have casual players stuck in the first couple of leagues and people need to be able to group with there friends. I can honestly say the average level of play I have experience has not budged any at all from league 1 to 60% through Diamond where I am currently am. Nor has the competitiveness of the matches increased which are 50% blow outs in either direction win or loss in my experience. I have won 3 pips against what I would consider trash players and lost multiple pips against what I would consider much better competition. The whole thing is utterly broken because of alt accounts and smurfing and MMRs not being reset.
I think a longer season and everyone’s MMR resetting would be just as good, although I guess some people would eat some buttkickings for awhile, but this idea isn’t bad. Regardless a MMR reset needs to happen so bottom feeders and exploiters can’t get to diamond and above. Its frustrating to see people that don’t know the basics in Diamond and above it invalidates the whole thing.
lol vlad i really dont know what you are complaining about. The scores maybe but your in the division area of one another. It makes sense, the question is whether or not someone didnt really belong in there and has a rank they really shouldnt.
I mostly feel bad for that amber guy, seriously who did he make mad that when he solo ques he has to face people in ruby/diamond/legendary division right out the box?
ever heard of smurfs?
actually no
Of course you have never heard of smurfs every post by you makes it clear your a simpleton. You do have some kind of bizarre naive semi charm though you almost cant believe someone can be so trusting and dumb. Smurfing doofus is someone running with a low alt account to get easier matches and advance faster. Im sure in your little world that never happens. Too bad in the real world its rampant genius. You understand now Dawg lol.
One big mistake is that the op assumes every amber/low division player is a smurf. I think most of them are actually random players from the hotm or friends that haven’t played much yet. Punishing people for playing with people from lower divisions is bad because it discourages teamplay as many people seem to care a lot about pips and would simply stop queuing with less experienced players in fear of losing progress.
If you want to discourage smurfing there has to be some sort of barrier before you can go ranked. Afaik this is already the case for gw2 as you need to be rank 20. However, I do not know how long it takes to get there but my impression on EU is that most low division players are not smurfs but simply belong where they are.
Personally, I think that losing more than 1 pip as a solo player for losing vs a team of 3+ people is more of an issue, because especially in the current meta game team composition, rotations and therefore communication matter a lot more than mechanical skill (at least once you have reached a certain level of play)
tl dr; smurfing is not the problem, game needs to more solo friendly/needs solo queue
You would be 100% wrong when they are grouped with diamond or higher players. Trust me on this pal. Smurfing is a gigantic problem. The level of play is ridiculous in Diamond and Legendary the vast majority of the time because its filled with players that in a good system would have a hard time getting past about division 3. These exploits were shouted all over the place at the beginning of leagues and many many people took advantage of them and continue to take advantage of them. I expect major revisions to how leagues work by the next season whether they will do the job is another story altogether. They have to know this system does not work properly.
Its not just rank its the kittenty matchmaking and the quality of players im forced to play with. The vast majority of the matches are like 500-300 w-l and Im not playing any different in the buttkickings then when I win easily. I expect to be matched with people that know the basics the vast majority of the time not people that ping Svanir and Chiefien at the start of every Nifhel match which sadly happens even with diamond and legendary players. Last these league where put here for COMPETITIVE players if winning is not you main goal why are you playing when you can just do hotjoin, arena, or unranked. Its almost ridiculous to ask that question. How about because this is suppossed to be for competitive players. kitten I feel like everyone has taken stoopid pills.
Too bad most of the time the problem is the thief because even played correctly its still probably the worst class in the game and you are not helping your team playing it 9 times out of 10 unless you are one of the best players in the world. Too many bunker builds that still do good damage (so they not only stall thief but kill him), random powerful aoe, and spamming cc for teefs in todays game sadly. What is a thief going to do agasint a well played elementalist or revenant. Which is like 50% of the current classes in match or even DH, Reaper, or Chrono? Fail miserably unless they are way better players then the guy playing those other classes. And sorry peeps 90% of you are not as good as you think you are. Most of the time you facing people at least as good as your or at most slightly worse.
Seriously this garbage needs serious revision before the next league season. The league you are in has nothing to do with skill level for the most part. I see the same mistakes I saw in the first two leagues with Diamond and even Legendary players. Can you please put something in that measure actual freaking skill. I get 10 minute queues when I solo and then get put with key board turnes, 90% auto attackers, and never dodgers and they are all diamond are higher. I don’t know what the answer is but I suspect it should involve total MMR wipe and tier loss after the first two leagues. That way bad people cant farm other bad people to Diamond and even legendary. Also, some kind of maximum gap in leagues between people grouping together. This is awful joke.
I mean I was in there with all other solos on my team and two of them were freaking horrible. And we lose 500-300, a small miracle it wasnt worse, and I get walloped with a 2 pip loss. I mean either this system is complete kitten or two of the people on my side were letting there kittened little brother play there accounts. This whole system is littered with fail.
Because there would be abuse if a loss of a 4v5 match results in no pip loss. Imagine teams having one player leaving matches whenever they were predicting a loss but staying for clear wins.
Imagine that we are talking about solo players. Why should solo players lose a pip for someone else disconnects. are you telling me that solo players were colluding to avoid losses get out of here with that bullkitten I never saw that happen ever. Yes if someone in your group disconnects I agree you lose a pip but solo players? Its stoopid and that wasnt the case when leagues started.
1)reset MMR
2)you can only group with people your league level or 1 league above or below and be put into matches with people your league level or 1 league above or below. So if you were ruby for example you could only play with sapphire, ruby, and Diamond level players. If you were amber you could only play with with Amber and Emerald level players. It could be a little stricter like just your league and 1 above but I worry about queueus.
Just the fact that you think its ok that you grinded your way somewhere is a gigantic problem. The league your in generally does not indicate skill at all. I see the same mistakes in ruby as I see in amber. As a matter of fact your average ruby player could be worse then amber because unless you really exploit its a hard glass ceiling for most bads ruby they can’t get past it. They can grind there but can’t get past it. I’ve never had more players scoring zero points in a match then since I got into ruby. Leagues are a gigantic fail. They need to reset MMR before next leagues and they also need to put in a gradient cap meaning there can only be 1 league difference in a match. No more amber people with ruby and above. You can only group with the league right below and above you. and be put into matches with those same limitations. They do some things like that and there is a chance next leagues could be meaningful.
Grats on being able to play spvp 25-30 hours a week and that could be a generous understatment as I probably under counted your average queue time and length of match.
Because of all the exploits A-net failed to prevent ranking and the punishing of higher mmr solo player leagues are meaningless. I can honestly say the level of play in Ruby is no higher then the level of play in Amber. It’s a joke really the same people you saw going far point or to Svanir instead of keep in Nifhel or rushing the Lord in Foefire right from the start in Amber are doing it in Ruby. I was just in match in Ruby that did not involve any full groups and my team had two people that couldn’t score one point. How in the world could they possibly progress through 3 leagues if this was meaningful at all. It’s not a rare occurance it happens all the time. You would think that by the 4th league the majority of the players would have the basics down. They do not. It’s complete garbage fail system. A-net should be embarrassed by it quite frankly.
The highest score is meangingless 9 times of 10 its the person that capped and decapped the most points who has the most points. That may or may not be valuable. Often its kitten play meaning they go from point to point in a small zerg capping and then leaving points. Some of the worst played games have very high scores on both teams. There are plenty of games were there are people with higher scores on the losing team then anyone on the winning team and the games are sometime pretty one sided. Carrying is a myth mostly perpetrated by so called pros that run in full premades which is pretty funny.
Unless you are sitting on a point all game as an excuse to score low score means something. This is litterally the number 1 excuse for players that say score doesn’t matter. OH I sat on a point all game thats why I have 10 points. Woopdeedoo.
My opinion its not the score system that is flawed its the point system as not only what you are doing is lame and isn’t really pvp it afking at best.
It also depends on the map. If you kill like 4 animals and are good with stealing that 100 points and that is going to make your score higher. If you also decapped and held points as well as spiked numerous players you contributed a ton.
All a high score mostly means is you capped or decapped a lot of points. That’s literally it. You rarely kill enough players for that fatten up your score significantly. And you should literally almost never kill 4 monsters on Nifhel. The monsters are to steal wins at the end or emergency catch ups. You have proved you don’t know what your talking about. Score is pretty much meaningless unless you put up a score under about 40 in a competitve match. I win all the time with modest point scores across the board on my team and it doesn’t involve sitting on points for no reason. In a well played game you shouldn’t be kittening around the map capping and decapping you should be controlling 2 points most of the time and rarely have them go more then neutral. I can see you kittening around the map right now in a little zerg in my minds eye and think you are just the best. Taking points and then moving onto the next one and then it gets capped right behind you. Or you give up points to go kill Svanir even though a point generates more points then a monster in short order. Points are meaningless buddy and for you to say they do marks you as pretty uniformed. Keeping killing Svanir at the start of Nifhel and Ill keep taking keep and making your life miserable.
I que sometimes with a friend whos playing thief. Hes dangerous 1v1 and can eat revs and necros for breakfast. Also good at +1 to jump in, burst someone in 2sec and go somewhere else. Ppl have no idea how strong DD is. Underrated class atm and thats olny bc majority of thief community sux.
Almost no thieves play like this. Let me give you a rough outline how the average thief in spvp plays. Start the match by going to far to engage in pointless 1v1 and lose horribly to start match. Engage in as many meangingless 1v1s as possible during the match often on points the other team color that are guarded by people they can’t kill. Get involved in meaningless fights in the middle of the map off point. Get involved in big team fights and get zapped by random aoe. Cause everyone to rage with there incompetance. +1 one on side points and intelligent reading of the map to cap side points left open almost NEVER happens.
I had somebody in a small group accidently queue for conquest. We took the queue figuring what the heck. I was shocked to lose a pip after the match. How in the world can two different game modes share the same leagues. I swear to god a-net does close to nothing right. Those two game modes are not alike at all.
It’s a dirty little secret but a not insignificant portion of the player base is actually smarter then the devs in charge of developing the game. That’s why these types of why not questions are futile. You came up with a better way of doing it then they did. For some reason they think there way is better even though its clearly not.
Contrary to popular belief over-nerfing is always perferable to under-nerfing. You can always prop classes you nerfed back up if its too much. Everything is being ruined right now by these handful of op builds.
I don’t how the pvp devs can’t look at stuff like this and not be totally embarrassed and be like we have to fix this as soon as possible. I understand to a degree saying originally we need a few months to gather data but this is obviously an emergency the sane reasonable response is to adjust the original strategy and make major balance changes sooner rather then let the patient die on the operating table. I honestly would be so embarrassed if I failed at my job like this although I would probably be fired.
I mean, we tried. Both reddit and forums are packed with constructive criticism and legitimate complaints, ANet hasn’t replied to a single one. There’s nothing else to do but sit back and watch their esports dream fail.
can’t be a fail. colin sayd over 400k unique viewers last time which = a win. anet might just be the charlie sheen of mmos. u wonder what they are doing? winning
People like Colin and Grouch are part of the problem whether you think they are nice guys or not. They would have been fired by now at a lot of MMORPG companies imo. Firings used to happen a lot in this indusrty. I guess pve generates so much money for this game there cluelessness on pvp doesn’t matter.
I think they should increase it to like 90 seconds – 2 minutes and eliminate automatic pip losses on wins but really you can’t tell me that on matches that are like 8-10 minutes long if you go ld for more then a minute or two you aren’t killing your team because you are and we don’t care that your dog unplugged your computer or whatever your excuse is.
Come on buddi the holidays are just around the corner can’t expect them to have the times to make difficult balance changes they are too busy doing secret santa, drinking eggnog, and singing Christmas carols. In February everything will be awesome. You just have to accept 6 long weeks of crap. Don’t be unreasonable buddi.
Balance itself is an iterative process and our work will be ongoing. We’re taking a hard look at the ways players are experiencing content across the game (raids, fractals, open world, PvP, and WvW) and we’ll be making adjustments accordingly.
That means => separating sPvP from PvE and WvW?
And maybe WvW from PvE too? (If it’s the case, I might give a try to WvW !)
Anyway if you really meant by “we’ll be making adjustments accordingly” what it really means… all I can say is that looks good and might promising !
Our next major balance update will be released at the end of January, and after the new year we plan on sharing the high-level details of those changes, giving you an opportunity to provide feedback to our design team.
Well.. end of January is normal, I’d say ! We can let you have some holidays, can’t we?
Good holidays and I hope you’ll do the rights choices concerning the balances.
I can have my pause of the game in peace now, I guess x)
Yeah the expansion hasn’t been out since Late October. I mean a couple of balance changes in three months is totally reasonable. Wouldn’t want to infringe on there holidays! I don’t understand the whole idea of being totally satisfied with a couple of scraps. That type of attitude imo does nothing to pressure these companies into doing what’s right. We have very little leverage to begin with but sucking up is the worst strategy.
At least you could spell privileged right before you play that card. But don’t get me wrong regardless of what you meant I find it hilarious that that would upset people. I just ignore people I think are ignorant I certainly wouldn’t let them upset me.
Just retreat into your safe space and put your hands into you ears and go lalala or retreat onto the campus of the nearest liberal arts college and everything will be alright. Remember kids even though we have the first amendment you should never have to listen to anything you disagree with or that offends you anywhere at any time. Social Justice nutters of the world unite!.
A balance patch after the season is not a positive development. There should be a mini one mid season to take care of the more problematic bs. These people are not even embarrased there so called pro league is basically made up of a couple classes/builds for the most part. There balancing failures are there to see by everyone and they just shrug there shoulders and tell us 2 months lol. If they adjusted things in a timely matter that would be a positive development because it would show they have learned. Its the same old bs with A-net fiddling while Rome burns.
Its complete bs in a game filled with compelte bs. Its just complete coincidence all the pro league teams are filled with this and revenants. The devs should be ashamed of themselves. No clue why they just don’t balance the more egregious aspects of HoT while its still early in the season. Much better games like LoL change the meta mid season all the time it’s no excuse you see something egregious the thing to do is to fix it pronto not say la de da can’t do nothing now its mid season! These people are a disgrace and the sad thing is they won’t even come to these boards to explain themselves because they are complete cowards.
if your skill level is around, say, rubi, the higher the division, the better players you are going to be paired with, and you won’t be forced to go out of role to help your failing teammates.
Once you reach a division that matches your skill level, you are going to start suffering again.
Thats not how it should be (you should never struggle) what should happen is you start winning only half your games and you won’t advance when you hit your skill level. What happens in the first two leagues is you can easily have 5 to 6 games losing streaks that have nothing to do with your skill level if you solo queue. I am perfectly fine with winning roughly half my games if they are competitive. In theory if these leagues worked correctly you should always find your level and win roughly 50%. The second league if you solo is ridiculously broken imo.
If winning isn’t a large portion of what you consider fun please don’t queue for rated thanks. There are other avenues for I want to do whatever I want type players ie unranked and hotjoin. And yes Warriors suck.
