Guild Wars 2

@ Detharos.3157

Nobody’s arguing that the ranking system itself shouldn’t be looked at to allow for more mobility between tiers. Completely resetting the rankings does not need to go hand in hand with changing the math behind the rankings. All this will do is hurt WvW balance for several weeks only to get us back into machups very similar to where we are right now.

I doubt it will create much of a wall for the second week because if it stays close, servers that score blowouts will skip past T4 and servers that get owned in higher tiers will drop to T5 or lower.

Unblockable fear mark for necros is op against shelter. It makes sense maybe for normal block abilities like weapon and shield blocks but it should not work against shelter.

Detharos.3157:

@mrstealth

I’m not worried at all about SF, but the fact is they are the straw that is breaking the camel’s back. Not you tier 4+ servers. You guys come and leave for a week, but we are stuck with an imbalanced match up for another 3 months after we’ve been putting up with it and are just about sick of it at this point, for the past 3 months spare the odd week or so. And yeah, I’m quite familiar with the history. Also note that Ferguson’s population steadily grew from the Christmas boom. Also keep in mind that Ferguson’s Crossing’s scores during the DR era were often reflective of it playing PvDoor vulture while DR and Kaineng were at eachother’s throats.

Week 43 – 27-03 November
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/6#NA
Early signs of the troubles to come.

Week 44 – 03-10 November
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/7#NA

Week 45 – 10-17 November
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/8#NA

Week 46 – 17-24 November
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/9#NA

Week 47 – 24-01 December
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/10#NA
A rare change in pace! Is this the new era of balanced matchups for Ferguson’s Crossing?

Nope.

Being stuck in never-ending unbalanced matches is simply the plight of the weakest servers. If you have two servers that are weaker than every other server, they will remain at the bottom and get beaten by whoever happens to be the third server in t8. Destroying balance for all servers will do little to alleviate this problem.

And about SF, they will get about 0 points next week against Kaineng and EB. They could easily fall to T5 or lower, especially if the new rankings system allows for more volatility.

My character does not approve of the amount of sillyness in this thread, but I do. I feel so conflicted.

I was in BG borderland a good chunk of the weekend and we basically never saw FA in there at all. If you are defending your home borderland, you should expect to be getting attacked by both of the invading servers.

Actinotus.6410:

As stated on the MoS site:

“ANet has not announced the math yet so the site will use the old formula and the ‘next matchup table’ may be innacurate.”

So SF/EB/K in T1 won’t happen (sorry guys).

I would be very surprised if we aren’t informed of the new formulas in the next day or two. It would have made sense for them to do it last week when they announced the reset.

The math does not matter. Whichever servers win by the largest margins will be the new T1 if they are truly resetting the ranking points. The math will only come into play in subsequent weeks when severs have different amounts of ranking points. So yes, we will see SF/EB/K in T1 or something similarly absurd.

To fight at the front you need to be able to absorb a lot of punishment first and foremost. This means getting gear with high toughness: knight’s, cleric or P/V/T gear. I prefer knights because it gives you solid damage and a good crit rate.

30 points in Valor for altruistic healing is pretty much required for front line zerg fighting. Monk’s focus can work but it is better for solo and small group situations.

You need a reliable source of condition removal. This means either going 30 points in the Honor for pure of voice or 20 points into the Virtues for absolute resolution.

As for utilities, I use sig of judgement (never activate), reduced CD wall of reflection and save yourselves.

I recommend staff as a secondary weapon for big fights for midrange aoe damage and empower to heal up when you are forced to retreat back into your zerg.

I take shelter over signet of resolve for my healing skill. The 2 second block is more valuable than the extra healing in a big fight and it has shorter CD.

Cosmic.6047:

There is no disconnection. With all the transfers & last minute transfers many tiers
are totally lopsided ( 3 tiers where the leading server has more points than the other 2 combined ). Does the reset make the next few weeks more volatile yes but servers are going to find there right spot more quickly because the history got wiped. Many servers are stuck in a tier where they don’t belong because of the history in the rating system. Is it unfortunate for some ? Yes. But it’s good for most.

I’m not sure what matchups you are looking at, but the NA matchups this week are about as close to balanced as they are going to get. A couple servers here and there might be off by a tier, but its a good ranking list. So please, identify these “many servers” that are stuck in the wrong tier. Maybe the EU side is really messed up but the NA side is in a good spot right now and the reset will destroy balance for several weeks only to bring us back to where we are now.

Thanks for writing this up so I didn’t have to. Everything you say is spot on. Anet is really dropping the ball with this reset and will have a lot of bored and angry WvWers on their hands.

Tomkatt.1684:

The Show Must Go On.3415:

To all: How do you cope with conditions besides Purging Flames? Are you using SoR, Purity, other means? I thought I’d give a try to Lyssa runes if I invested 15 or less in Radiance, but it is worth it in your opinion? The condition purge + extra boons (hence extra healing) on Renewed Focus are appealing to me.

Meditations build covers the conditions issue. With AH you just have to hope you heal through it via boons and your main heal. Spamming all your virtues and hitting Renewed Focus can make a big difference.

Also, dunno about Lyssa runes. I’d recommend soldier runes if you absolutely need a bunch of toughness and vitality, or Soldier crests if you would prefer to balance toughness and vitality with additional damage. IMO, knight’s gear with some carrion gear and soldier crests are pretty pimp.

Knight’s gear good. Carrion gear bad. Condition damage is not good for guardians.

Knight’s equipment provides the best balance of tankyness and damage.

maloki.3527:

Please guys, remember that the current match up ratings on mos, does NOT account for the new way of calculating it.
So it might not be as messed up by the end of he week as you think.

A new way of calculating rankings is not likely to have much if any effect on the matchups for next week because everyone is starting from square 1. Whichever server wins by the largest margins this week will end up #1 next week, it is as simple as that. It doesn’t mater if that means gaining 10 ranking points or 1000 ranking points. In subsequent weeks, when servers actually have different amounts of ranking points, it will make a difference.

Torch is terrible. Sword is decent for small fights and 1v1. I’d go sword/focus or sword/shield if you insist on using sword.

DancingPenguins.9875:

It does make sense to reset because the rating system never made sense. The assumptions behind the system is faulty.

It wasn’t perfect, but it has gotten us to halfway decent match ups for this week. Next week Emery Bay is #1, and it is quite possible that not a single server that should be in T1 or T2 will actually be in T1 or T2. Its going to be a painful month for WvW players.

Increasing the level cap would do a lot more harm than good.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

fishergrip.4082:

A month or two is not quick in my book. This reset will destroy WvW.

I think you need to change your signature to “Old Maid of the Coast”

But on topic…

Dream matchup would be evenly balanced populations TCvYBvSBI (with Choo transferring to SBI)

They don’t allow names longer than 19 characters.

WRod.3856:

MarMaster.6241:

Is the only chance to get to the “new, improved formula T1” after this match, to really dominate your foes?
Leading to Sorrow’s Furnace, Kaineng, Ehmry Bay being the first to hit “new math T1”?

Yes. But it will quickly even out.

A month or two is not quick in my book. This reset will destroy WvW.

SoR’s NA force was equal to if not a bit stronger than BG even before they got a bunch of transfers from SBI. We were able to hang with BG and SoR okay during NA primetime hours back when we faced them at the same time. With SoR out and FA in to provide some meaningful resistance, I’d expect a much more even matchup during NA primetime hours. During off hours BG will probably own the entire map.

Haven’t checked the monthly but it sounds like it includes dungeon running again, so no monthly for me. Dungeons/fracs for the loss.

I guess its possible that there is something messed up going on with the queues. It is odd for a map to have a queue and not be able to gather a decent sized force even within the portal keep when it is being spawn camped.

Jayne.9251:

Don’t care. As long as its challenging and offers as near equal footing for all three teams.

Prepare to be disappointed. For 2-3 months.

I see our players all over the place, they just aren’t organized. I highly doubt there is some conspiracy or bug causing us to have fewer players. A scattered force gets gobbled up by an organized zerg and disappears, leaving the illusion that we have fewer people.

Hi Camman.2984, welcome to GW2.

The guardian excels at large-scale battles, which are plentiful in WvW and also very important for helping your team capture major objectives like towers and keeps. Guardian shines as a front-line/mid range fighter that takes and deals a beating. When I play my guardian I feel that I’m among the most valuable fighters on the field in the fights that matter most. Guardians can be very valuable in smaller group fights as well, due to great group buffs, decent group healing options and condition cleansing.

Now the bad part. Guardians have poor mobility compared to most classes, which makes them poor at roaming solo. You also rely on having party members around to maximize the effectiveness of certain abilities. Guardians are considered to have among the worst ranged weapon options in the game. When it comes to wall sieges, scepter is pretty much our only decent option and its not that good.

A few of my thoughts.

It seems that you really want to focus on using 1 handed weapons. In WvW, our 2 handed weapons tend to perform better in large fights because they do more AOE damage instead of single target damage, so you might want to consider switching out sword/torch for greatsword or hammer.

IMO torch is our worst weapon, so I wouldn’t base a build around it. I’d definitely use sword/focus over sword/torch.

If you want to use both wall of reflection and sanctuary as utilities, you should consider going 20 points into the virtues tree to pick up master of consecrations and consecrated ground. These two traits make sanctuary much more useful, as it becomes almost instant cast, lasts 12 seconds, is ground targetable and has reduced cooldown.

Many consider it somewhat mandatory to go to 30 points in the toughness trait tree to get altruistic healing or monk’s focus. They are both very strong self healing traits that are hard to live without if you want to do a lot of tanking.

As for gear, I prefer knights armor and trinkets with ruby jewels.

SoR is simply better organized and their average player is likely better geared, higher level and more experienced than our average player. They run in tight zergs with a purpose, while our players often go around in more scattered zergs, go off and do their own thing or stand around trying to figure out what to do/do random stuff in the portal keep.

SoR is simply a T1 server stuck in T2.

WvW is the easiest place to get credit for the dailies. Yaks and sentries are rofl easy way to get events done. Take 1 camp and you have your vets done. Dodge once in a zerg fight and you evade 20 attacks.

I can agree that the crafting one is stupid, but at least it is ultra easy to make 10 leather squares, planks, ingots etc.

zhonnika.1784:

Friday’s reset will be as millenium shows it, give or take. We can’t yet predict the matchups for the reset on Feb 8, so it’s sort of pointless at this point.

We can’t predict them with great accuracy, but we can make some ballparks based on the likely matchups for next week. I’d expect to see something like this after the reset week plays out:

T1
Kaineng
Blackgate
Ehmry Bay

T2
Yak’s Bend
Jade Quarry
Darkhaven

T3
Sorrow’s Furnace
Borlis Pass
Anvil Rock

T4
Sanctum of Rall
Crystal Desert
Henge of Denravi

T5
Northern Shiverpeaks
Tarnished Coast
Gate of Madness

T6
Devona’s Rest
Dragonbrand
Sea of Sorrows

T7
Stormbluff Isle
Ferguson’s Crossing
Isle of Janthir

T8
Maguuma
Eredon Terrace
Fort Aspenwood

pot.6805:

Thank you for doing this reset. Now servers with hugely inflated ratings have to prove themselves.

I’m not sure why so many people think this reset will “prove” anything. I guarantee you the T1 level servers—JQ, SoR, SoS and Blackgate—will obliterate everyone else. The only question mark right now is Kaineng.

It seems to me the only ones who really want this reset are low Tier servers who are, ironically, in the most balanced matchups right now outside of Tier 1 and people who are just fed up with facing the same servers over and over again in general. I agree that the system could be looked at to allow for more movement of servers up and down between tiers, but this not the right way to go about it. All this will do is make absurdly unbalanced matchups for a couple months, only to put us right back into the matchups we are already going to be in within the next week or two.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Here’s why we think this is a good thing.

As Habib alluded to in his post, we are also revising the math behind the ratings formula. Habib will be explaining the math in a later post, but for now, I can give everyone a glimpse into why we are updating the rating formula and resetting the ratings.

Over the last couple of months we’ve seen that when worlds experience dramatic changes in their ability to field a consistent fighting force for whatever reason, it can take quite a while for them to work their way through the ratings until they end up in a match that suits them better. In a lot of cases, some worlds took multiple matches to work their way through a single tier even after a series of blowouts. We really dont like that, so one of the goals for updating the math behind the ratings is to try and reduce how often we experience the repeated blowouts that can come from that sort of situation and get those teams through the rankings quicker.

We also expect that the large population changes that impacted a number of worlds and helped create a number of those type of blowouts should be much less common now that we are well past the launch period and free transfers are no longer available.

So, not only does world choice have quite a bit more meaning now that paid transfers are online, we also want to adjust how the ratings are calculated. If we redo the calculations involved with the ratings, then it’s much better to just reset the ratings and let the new formula do it’s thing instead of trying to carry the old data over from the old system and have those numbers pollute the new ratings.

In essence this gives every world a chance to start fresh now that everyone is on their ‘real’ team and will help protect against worlds in a state of flux being involved in consecutive blowouts for weeks on end in the future. For us, that means it is actually the perfect time to update the rating system and address some of the issues we’ve noticed with it since launch then reset the ratings.

If it helps, think of the last few months as the preseason games that determined the initial seedings for the season opener (to use a really generic sports metaphor that is in no way indicative of future plans).

Finally, matches are going to remain a week long. We feel that the 24 hour matches are not representative of what we consider ‘standard’ gameplay, and actually create a lot of incorrect data in the system because people play the game much differently when it’s a 24 hour match compared to a 7 day one.

I know many of you are concerned about what all this means and it might seem scary from the outside, but from our perspective this really is a great time to reset the ratings and improve how the math behind all of this works so we can benefit from more competitive matches in the future.

Hopefully this helps some of you feel a little better about why we’re doing this. We really think this is going to be better for the game in the long run, even if it may be a bit bumpy until we have a couple matches completed post-reset.

The problem here is that servers are already very close to where they should be in the rankings, at least on the NA side of things. All this will do is set back getting into balanced match ups by several weeks and cause the game to lose some WvW players due to massive blowouts across the board.

Your “preseason initial seedings” analogy makes no sense because there are no seedings: unless I’m mistaken, all the top servers are essentially seeded against one another, which will extend how long it takes to achieve balance. If you actually did seed servers so that the top 8 servers are all in different tiers to start out after the reset along with the mid 8 and bottom 8 it might at least put servers somewhere close to where they should be after the first week. Either way, this will lead to volatile rankings and many more unbalanced matchups than we would experience otherwise.

This seems like a knee-jerk reaction to address complaints stemming from a few servers that have had mass exoduses and a few that have had large influxes of bandwagon transfers. Yes it can take a few weeks for weakened servers to drop down and for bandwagon servers to rise up, but this is not nearly as bad as forcing every server to endure terrible matchups for as long if not longer than that. We are very close to achieving the most balanced match-ups we can and this will be a major setback.

Basically Anet wants nobody to have fun in WvW for a couple months.

Isaac.6041:

Just let it play out. It will be great to face some new opponents. With the current ratings the matchups are nearly the same every week.

Balanced matchups > facing new servers. This will cause great imbalances for a long time.

The reset is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a while.

This is unbelievably stupid. Kaineng is almost already up to where they should be next week Stombluff is falling fast, things are getting worked out on their own. This will totally screw up the matchups for months to come, allowing tier 8 servers to be tier 1 and super strong servers to be in low tiers. Makes absolutely no sense at all.

FA, please win by a lot so that we don’t have to have the ultra bandwagon Kaineng in T2 just yet. They don’t deserve to leapfrog an entire tier.

Armor does not have diminishing returns.

There is no “strongest class” because each is strong at different things.

Strongest aoe? Ele
Best tank? Guardian
Best solo roamer? Ele/Thief
Strongest single target ranged damage? Ranger
Most important tactically? Mesmer
Great for zerg fights? Necro
Melee dps? Warrior/Theif
Group buffs? Guard/Engie

Find a roll that you enjoy and choose your class based on that.

I prefer greatsword and staff for WvW. Greatsword is solid for damage dealing, has our only leap move which is vital for WvW mobility and the pull is very useful, especially for killing stealthed thieves.

Staff is our only weapon-based source of swiftness and it can do solid damage in zerg fights at mid range and procs effects like mad. Also nice source of healing with altruistic healing. The ability of staff to attack at 600 range in a wide arc through objects and not being a projectile-based attack is very useful. It is an underrated weapon.

I would not recommend any of the 1hand weapons for large WvW battles in the field. Scepter is mostly for single target damage, so it is best used solo in small groups or during sieges. Sword is basically a dueling weapon, I wouldn’t carry it around unless you are roaming solo or maybe in a small group. I’ve never liked mace because the attack chain is very cumbersome and the mobile nature of WvW makes it hard to get full benefit of symbols.

As for offhands, shield is solid for grouping, focus good for solo and torch is… torch.

Hammer is a solid alternative to Greatsword that offers more control and less mobility. Damage on hammer can beat GS if you get lucky with crits and landing hits but GS is more consistent as hammer is fairly cumbersome. Since guardians already have very poor mobility, I prefer GS. A 600 range leap might not seem like much but it can save your life.

From what it sounds like laurels can be used to buy infusions but not the actual ascended gear itself, so no you probably can’t get ascended stuff simply by dong daily achievements.

Never dying to thieves.

That would be so overpowered its not even funny. Staff is already very good the way it is.

More ascended gear to further stat creep on wvw. Plz stop stat creep on wvw.

Do some crafting. If you sit down and max one craft, you’ll gain 10 levels and only takes an hour or so.

If you lose to a thief on a guard you are either:
1. bad
2. out some of your cooldowns
3. facing a condition/kite thief (not too much of a prob if you pack wall of reflection)

Burst damage thieves are very easy to beat as a guard. It goes something like this:

Thief appears trying to do crazy burst, first hit is blocked by aegis. Pop shelter thief wastes burst while you block and heal any damage you took. If disabled, pop virtue of courage and resolve if necessary to survive burst and then heal up. At this point thief has used its burst and you should well over 50%. All you have to do now is dps until thief runs away or dies.

Guards are better than wars as it is. Any decent guard will never lose to a war in a 1v1.

Wall of reflection is among the best skills in the game for WvW. Traited you get 12 seconds of reflection on a 32 second CD. It is useful in many situations.

On the front lines it invaluable for warding off ranged attacks and letting you push and stand your ground against enemy zergs.

As was stated earlier, it can do solid damage when thrown up inside a gate that is being pounded by ranged attacks.

In small fights and 1v1s it can shut down ranged classes for a while. I’ve won many 2v1s because of this skill. It also helps guards counter being kited.

It is very useful for taking over supply camps solo, as it reflects the initial bolas the guards throw and keeps scouts out of the fight for a while.

Not a terrible skill for running away or blocking ranged attacks to protect a downed ally for a rez.

It will never leave my bar.

Viable? More like the best 1v1 class in the game. The skill ceiling isn’t that high, don’t kid yourselves. Cycle attunements, spam abilities off CD, win. If you want high skill cap play an engineer.

Yes the d/d ele is currently the best roamer class for WvW in the game. It is getting annoyingly popular as well, with d/d eles coming out of the woodwork in wvw these days. D/D ele is not particularly hard to play. You pretty much just cycle attunements spam abilities and use certain utility skills as necessary. I think the main issue with D/D eles is not that their skills are overpowered so much as the fact that they get 4 attunements, each on separate CDs with 60% reduced swap time. The attune swap mechanic is the problem. When you can attune swap every few seconds you basically always have a powerful skill to use at all times and you are never that far away from gaining access to something you really need like ride the lightning. A normal class has to wait 15 seconds to swap back and forth between just 2 weap sets. Ele can swap to a new set of skills every couple seconds and return to the original set in less than 10 seconds.

It is very rare for TC to have a queue on more than EB and sometimes TC BL even during primetime and queues typically pop in 3 mins or less.

There’s not a black and white answer. It depends on the type of fights you tend to get into and how you want to build your char. AH has higher healing potential in a large group, but it comes in smaller amounts at a time. Monk’s typically heals more than AH in small fights and 1v1 situations and heals in larger chunks. Monk’s requires you to take meditations for utilities, which is a dealbreaker for me, since I don’t like having my healing died to utilities which I prefer to use tactically instead of when I need heals. Meditation skills are outshined by other utilities imo since we have other good condition removal options.