Guild Wars 2

You don’t need a guide. You need to watch the mini map. You look at the points you have, whether or not they’re contested, count enemies, and rotate help with apparporiate numbers. That’s rotating.

Rushing far because you can’t take mid is a whole different thing. And if you think you can leave your team and go far solo and be a benefit to your team then you need to think again. Virtually everyone I see going far is ignoring their teammates and leaving them short handed in a team fight and likely setting them up for failure and getting your team snowballed off the map. Running their solo after losing a team fight just spreads your team out at a time when they need to regroup. Seriously. People are kittening terrible at pushing far. If you really want to win, learn to team fight. Learn to create advantages in fights first, then rotating will get obvious and easy.

sexuallegend.2153:

Matchmaking isn’t anywhere near perfect, would be much better if class stacking did not exist. The term “skill” rating should be accurately changed to “win” rating since win/loss ratio is literally the only metric that your skill is based on for the leaderboards. What is the point of getting 5 top stats every game? Imagine a system where getting literally every top stat the game has to offer and losing results in no lost pips. Imagine being stuck with pve players, carrying them to a close loss and being credited for your work? That would be an accurate representation of the word skill.

All we get right now are pretentious top ranked players employing condescending tones due to their “win” rating. While most of the PVP regulars are stuck playing games with the skill equivalent of npc’s. Calling them out has often resulted in my posts being removed, yet I haven’t seen many of their condescending posts even edited. Watch my video below and 2 minutes in you see me 1v2 against two meta users: a DH and a Warrior. Both are quite easy classes to use and both are quite capable of literally shredding players with their invulns, dazes, traps and conditions. Both are low risk high reward classes yet I was not matched in skill. Taking on two metas repeatedly requires skill and this is what is missing from the leaderboards.

Anyone can claim the players in my video are terrible, but before season 5, I probably had some of the highest possible MMR. I literally started playing shirtless at some point. The reason I am the best isn’t because of winning however, the reason I am the best is because I can defeat any two players. This skill cannot be applied in the current season. There isn’t one pro in the entire world that can consistently carry a team of 4 npc’s. So before the trash prententiousness comes into MY thread, before you even consider talking, just know that I could beat two copies of you. That is all

This.

Win rating. Not skill rating.

Find a way to score contribution in Solo Q.

Emdrix.6124:

People need to stop blaming matchmaking. Im far from being a pro player and I have 3 accounts in the top 250 full solo Q. If you re stuck in some scrub tier division that’s probably where you belong. You just need to be slightly above average to make it. The matchmaking works as intented.

Sometimes I get destroyed aswell or get 4v5s but that happens to everyone, you just need to win more than you lose, stop blaming matchmaking .

If you lose its YOUR fault, You were not able to carry hard enough. That’s about it. Sure some matches are uncarriable but most of them are if you are in a lower division.
If you cannot carry then that’s where you belong. because carrying means being significantly better than everyone in that division.

And btw on this account I had to climb to reach top 250 because the placement matches were a total mess, so I did get unlucky on this account unlike my other 2 but still climbed.

This is not a brag thread I’m literally just slightly above average and still made it solo Q on 3 accounts. for pro players this would be even easier. I believe Magic Toker has 3 or more? accounts in the top 10-20.

Im probably never gonna reach legend and in fine with that. People need to accept that and stop blaming matchmaking.

All of this just makes you sound like you have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no way to qualify or back up any of your ‘statements’.

So many people trying tell everyone else what is what when they have no idea how they get where they are themselves. Unless you were there or are provided context of some kind, you’re just making kitten up to be an kitten. Do better.

sophiewhite.3149:

you guys need to realize this is how you grow a healthy pvp population. all games do it. you get pve and wvw players to go to pvp most leave when they get their shiny but some stay the ones that stay grow the population.

No it’s not. You don’t drop people into a game with different reasons for being there. That’s how you get people arguing and frustrated. Incentivizing PvP is what PvP rewards should be for. Not a carrot on a long stick for players who aren’t actually interested in PvP, in an effort by the devs to pad queue times.

Jojo.6140:

hackks.3687:

I would win a lot more if my teammates were pros and could carry me.

ftfy

no but seriously, MMR of both teams facing each other is in the same range. So even if you get bad teammates, the enemy team should be bad aswell. So if you cant win against them, you are on the same skill-lvl as them and thus belong in the divison youre currently in.

Id suggest to improve own playstyle instead of blaming others. Its really amazing how much rage people ive seen the last few days in pvp.

Are we forgetting all the times I’ve carried you? We’ve played together. I’ve even farmed you when playing against you.

Gtfoh

Locuz.2651:

hackks.3687:

You didn’t read. I am NOT where I belong. I am winning more than losing. I would win a lot more if my teammates weren’t gifting the other team points. This is not fast. This is kittened up.

I know it’s nice when faulty systems support your deluded sense of self, but it doesn’t change the realities that the system is faulty.

You are forgetting the direct opposite happens aswell. Players on the opposing team are gifting your team points aswell. So in the end things even themselves out.

I forgot? Were you there?

This is what I’m talking about. You just made up something that doesn’t even exist or apply. Take your trolling elsewhere.

Locuz.2651:

hackks.3687:

4 wins – 3 losses – 5 wins – 2 losses – 4 wins – 4 losses

I’m winning more than losing, I have a positive win rating. But with play like that it’s taking FOREVER to move up.

That means youre relatively close to where you belong in terms of rating.

Not everyone is meant to reach legendary. U know that right?

You didn’t read. I am NOT where I belong. I am winning more than losing. I would win a lot more if my teammates weren’t gifting the other team points. This is not fast. This is kittened up.

I know it’s nice when faulty systems support your deluded sense of self, but it doesn’t change the realities that the system is faulty.

Locuz.2651:

hackks.3687:

Why do you keep apply some abstract hypothetical context to his argument. That’s not what is happening. You weren’t there so stop making kitten up about what people should be doing.

Ive had unlucky streaks. Ive played at bronze with my troll zerker amu vanilla power necro.

There is no way a good player stays at lower divisions for a long time. Since all but a handfull of games are stupidly easy to carry if youre somewhat decent and play a build that allows you to carry <- that includes plenty of builds that are not fotm.

U know what. Ive seen ppl complain about their teams in those games ive been in. Both with and against me. Hell i even saw guys from the forum who complained about the system in game, sucking hard… and making a post no less than an hour later about this issue youre having.

Its comical.

4 wins – 3 losses – 5 wins – 2 losses – 4 wins – 4 losses

I’m winning more than losing, I have a positive win rating. But with results like that thanks too awesome teammates needing to be carried every match, it’s taking FOREVER to move up. I had lousy placement matches, got dropped to Bronze 1, and now I’m climbing out of 9 rings of hell.

All your contrarian bullkitten isn’t apt or helpful.

yanniell.1236:

No matter how you put it, it’s a fact that dualQ’rs have an advantage against soloQ’rs. When a team made entire of soloQ’rs faces a team with one or more dualQ’rs, they should win more points and lose less than the other team, otherwise, the leaderboard means absolute nothing when it comes to show player mmr/skill.

I have no problem dual queuers. There’s very little advantage there if any.

I have a distinct problem with not being able to separate my rating from players at the bottom because I’m only rated on the team’s outcome.

I lost because I had 2 Deer ranked players on my team who were learning the game and didn’t want to learn in Unranked because rewards were better in Ranked. They were free kills everytime they left the spawn. I had them on my team in following match too. Same result.

I can dominate play all I want. I win 1v2 and even 1v3. But I can’t hold two capture points at the same time.

I’ve got 16k matches played and I’m struggling to get out of bronze because I can’t get any rating separation from players like these.

“Skill rating” my kitten

Locuz.2651:

Azukas.1426:

Some games you just can’t carry no matter what you do. I recently had 3 of them.

Now,are all complaints legit about the system? No, but where there is smoke there is fire.

Sure, so u lose those 3 and win the rest? I dont see the problem.

People complain to hide their own incompetence. It happens every season in every game i played. Blaming yourself hurts your ego and thats not what people want.

Apperantly all rating systems in all games suck:

Starcraft: https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/10189289103
Overwatch: https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/17612332120
League: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3575586
Wow: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17605341160
Dota2: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/23vdp4/why_dota_2_solo_ranked_sucks/

Why do you keep apply some abstract hypothetical context to his argument. That’s not what is happening. You weren’t there so stop making kitten up about what people should be doing.

If it’s not including individual contribution, then it’s not “my” rating. It’s rating some amalgamation of the match making. There’s no getting around that. It’s a solo Q. You have to account for individual contribution.

Fluffball.8307:

You can pull it off a lot easier on non-Foefire maps. Temple has a nearly direct line of sight between the two and mid doesn’t cut off reinforcements at all.

Temple is the only map where Mid is not the strongest capture point. That’s primarily because of Line of Site but also because of control of Stillness.

It can’t be MY skill rating if it only counts the TEAM outcomes. Plain and simple. You can’t have a solo que that disregards the individual performance. Otherwise it’s not measuring me but the luck of my match making draws.

Tied to this is the inability to create rating separation from the less skilled players causing us to lose.

Playing side points is actually just a tactic for opening up mid point for capture. If you don’t play for mid after taking one or both sides then you risk leaving your team stranded on islands they can’t support each other from. All it takes is a quick head count from your opponent to know which point to overwhelm with a simple majority and break your two cap hold.

It also concedes the middle of the map which is arguably the most beneficial of the three capture points on any map since it provides site lines to most of the map and the option to choose a side point of your choosing with short rotations for teammates to rotate support back and forth.

When to use it: When the other team has stacked slow moving bunkers on mid and stalled the cap, that’s when you try for sides to drag them off mid, separating the tanks which reduces their effectiveness making them easier to kill, and thereby opening up mid for easier capture.

If you’re not using it to play for mid though then you’re just dividing your forces wrecklessly.

Exedore.6320:

1a. Not exactly. Top stats are too easy to game and a single one isn’t reflective of good performance. Having multiple top stats or a high percentile in them all is more realistic.

1b. You can just give raw points; it breaks the Glicko2 system, which has to be zero-sum. Read up on the CS:GO MVP system. It’s a workable solution for recognizing a player much stronger than their team.

2. This is pure opinion. Placement matches work for the most part and if you’re poorly placed (seems that DCs are causing a lot of it), you should quickly move up or down to your proper rating.

3. See 1a and 1b.

4. Nothing is wrong with bunker or condi in theory. The problem is that power creep has taken these to the extreme. Condition builds apply multiple types and numerous stacks far too quickly. Bunker builds are generally too forgiving either from passives or abilities just being too strong.

This

Specially the part about CS:GO’s MVP system.

You can’t exclude individual contribution from a solo que game and then call it a skill rating

If you basically started at Legendary how can it “feel prestigious to earn it”?

This system is abysmal if you don’t ace your placement matches. Nothing but casuals looking to farm pips regardless of win/lose. Not even remotely competitive play.

But hey, at least 250 players get to have fun…

It really couldn’t be any less informative.

Why won’t you just show us everyone’s stats?

I can’t think of a single competitive game that denies key information to players.

Then again you just blocked teams from playing together in your team game, so who knows why the kitten you people do the things you do.

I’ve played more than 16k matches in this game and came into this season with a positive w/l ratio, but I can’t seem to buy a win because my teammates don’t seem to understand conquest, and aren’t really concerned about winning since they get the pips and rewards anyways.

I’m not sure how you foster a “competitive environment” when you hand out the rewards simply for participation.

I couldn’t agree more. I was excited about the changes, yet all they seemed to do is remove the numbers. Sure they added some icons that don’t really mean anything to anyone, but they somehow managed to convey even less information than before.

ANET: We need to see everyone’s information to correctly kitten the outcome of a match and learn from it. I don’t care as much about my numbers as I do everyone else that was in the match. Every other game knows this and provides it. Stop being a bunch of millennial kitten and put it in the game already.

As I remember it, PvP, or “SPvP” as it was called at the time, was basically released unfinished. They had no idea what it was going to do, and to some extent were relying on the player base to develop the game mode for them. Things were going great until the first feature patch, and there’s been a steady decline ever since. It’s not really surprising that things never developed as they’d hoped when they were basically winging it from the start.

Only one way to find out: Go ahead and prove it.

Personal Score

We have never been quite happy with how personal score attempted to portray a player’s contribution in a match, so we’ve reworked the personal score system as you currently know it in favor of raw statistics. All stats have been condensed into more meaningful categories: Damage Dealt; Healing Given; Kills; Deaths; Revives; and two game-mode specific stats, Offense and Defense, which track effort toward gaining team score. Top stats are now team based, and you’ll be able to view who got which awards the end of a match.

This change alone makes next season worth checking out. I’m highly skeptical of any “skill rating” until they prove the matchmaking is in fact working. But at least there’ll be a real scoreboard for once.

Also, blocking teams from queuing together in a team game seems pretty silly.

Pretty good sign that ANET is incentivizing PvP in all the wrong ways

There’s entirely too much work to do at this point to make PvP in this game successful. They’d need to redesign the bulk of the animations to be obvious in their functionality and intent to those playing and spectating. Not the particle effect explosion we have now with endless aoe skills laid on top of one another and masking the instant cast nonsense. People want to see the action and we haven’t seen it in this game for years.

The structuring of the ladder is also entirely wrong. It should not be seasonal, placement in it should not be tied to the seasonal rewards, and it should not be based on farming matches. And it most definitely should not prevent people from falling back down the ladder – this might be the worst of it as it actually effects the matchmaking (which is to say, the “playing experience”) egregiously. This is possibly the biggest hindrance to seasonal PvP at this point, as it straight up changed the entire feel of the game once you reach Ruby tier 1 and hit the pile up of terrible players who are stuck and unable to fall back down the ladder to where they belong.

Not to mention that they’ve ignored the calls from players to fix the personal scoring so that it actually follows the logic of winning the match. Something we’ve harped on since release. It’s now, what, year four since release and I’m still explaining to people in Ruby and Diamond that their personal score will not win them the match.

The PvP in this game is not logically planned or executed. It’s a mess. It’s not even really PvP at this point. It’s a PvP game mode in a very casual game for casual people who don’t necessarily want to test themselves against others and work to improve but would rather farm the shiny’s out of endless loot boxes.

These just aren’t problems you can fix in the game at this point IMO. You’d basically be remaking the game. And if you’re going to do that you might as well just make a new game.

Amulets are not the problem. Broken class design is.

5v5 is too many players for TDM. 3v3 should be max roster size. And, yes, I would play that.

We’ve seen the GvG TDM and it’s a mess. Smaller teams work better.

An audio cue that the match is beginning would be appreciated

Evan Lesh.3295:

What about Ranked do you enjoy more than Unranked during off-season?

Is it that you prefer climbing a ladder all the time? Or are there other particular reasons.

- The Map Selection for starters. That’s the biggest reason honestly. No one likes playing Skyhammer and Spirit Watch. Doesn’t matter what you do to them. The mechanics are too easily abused.

- Fewer new/casual players in the queue. There are players who play Unranked specifically to avoid the people in ranked. Not so coincidentally, the inverse is true as well. You’re forcing players who are trying to avoid one another to play together.

- Finally, what else is there to do? There’s no other facet of PvP to fall back on during offseason. Just a worse version of the Ranked queue we’d rather have. PvP is not exactly an expansive game mode. Turning off ranked is like turning the game off for many of us. It just doesn’t make sense to turn off Ranked or limit the ladder to seasons. There’s surely a better way.

+1

Dishonor on Decline is ridiculous given the length of queue times

Not losing Divisions is the primary reason we have this MMR Hell experience. The ladder placement should be fluid, players with artificially high ratings need to lose divisions to correct their ladder placement.

You can accommodate this by removing the division grinding requirements from the Achievements.

We understood you. It’s just a ridiculous request. What’s to stop people from blocking teams they don’t want to face? It amounts to nothing more than sanctioned match manipulation and has no place in a “competitive” game mode.

Limiting particle effects should not effect a player’s ability to play the game.

The game has to function fully at the lowest spec requirement.

Hammerguard.9834:

Players will no longer have blue and brown highlights in PvP if they are in your party or guild.

That doesn’t explain the necessity for increasing visual clutter and blurring the lines between teammates and AI summons.

It doesn’t explain anything in fact except that they did it. Which I’m clearly taking issue with… so…

I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about. I was referring to the fact that my Gyro’s get lost in team fights and minions and clone spam.

All this change did was contribute to the visual clutter? why did we need that?

you are drastically oversimplifying the tactical advantage of porting a downed player out of a bad position to a position of relative safety out of line of sight.

this is not skillful. stop saying it is

Why did this happen? It just makes it harder to keep track of your summons/pets.

Please revert.

No it’s not OK. There’s too many stupid teleports in the game making positioning virtually unnecessary. Specially when they ignore geography and line of sight.

Positioning is supposed to be a key component to tactics/strats/making plays. It’s also one of the key reasons why PvP is kittening horrible to spectate in this game.

It doesn’t need a teleport. It should act like the Engi’s Function Gyro – send the pet to the body as an additional rezzer.

Rotating is easy.

1.) Find your teammates on the map who are engaged on a captured point.
2.) Rotate to them

When to leave a fight? You don’t until you’ve secured a numbers advantage for your team. Otherwise you just helped them all die and the team that just killed them is going to come kill you now.

Rotating is ENTIRELY about maintaining personnel numbers and creating advantages either with numbers or with class match-ups.

Thief is not a great far point pusher in this meta. You’d be far better off sending a DH, Rev, Scrapper, or Druid. Thief would be better decapping empty points and +1ing small fights.

Wow.

This whole thread is incredibly misguided. Even some of the folks I thought actually had a clue.

First, 1-3-1 gets countered by 0-4-1. You’re sending 3 against 4 in a key engagement that can set the tone for the match. Rotating someone in late from home is not going to alleviate this. The only time this strat works is if the other team pushes sides to start, or fails to capitalize on the giant mistake you made at mid. Regardless, it’s more to do with the other team failing than the 1-3-1 working.

When coordinated teams play it the far push operates more like a zone read handoff in football. You go and see who’s there and communicate info so that the team can decide which strat to flex to.

Side note: IMO in a pug, there’s no reason not to send 5 to mid at the start to win any engagements, gather intel, and rotate out from there. We don’t have comms and anything else is just a guessing game, but hey try to convince a team of pugs to do that.

But I digress…

That being said, against uncoordinated or less experienced teams, pushing far point can be like asking them to change strategies, which may not be something they know how to do you yet. Disrupting an opposing strategy is a prime goal for any team trying to win anything ever. However, you need to be mindful of how it effects the rest of the map and your teammates and whether or not the other team has decided to just give you the point and beat on your 4 hapless teammates with their 5.

In short, Conquest is always a numbers game and that’s what makes rotating so important. In large part, when teams spread across 3 capture points they get locked into small stalemates or bad fights and then everyone stops rotating. This is what I like to call “pug death”. Nothing will kill your chances of winning faster.

Facts are facts:
- You have to win fights to win the points.
- You have to keep your teammates on the map to win fights
- You have to work together
- You have to pay attention to the whole map

Rev is doing too much. Period.

Reaper chill stacking is too much. Period.

Aoe condition proc are cancer and far too large a radius. Period.

Did removing amulets change anything? Sure doesn’t feel like it. That should tell you something about class design right now.

Engi is not applying Reveal. It doesn’t prevent you re-entering stealth. It just removes stealth, which is only valuable when the Thief kittened up and is trying to save his hide by stealthing right in front of everyone. L2P

Excellent post OP. 100% agree

Data is irrelevant without proper context. Which is why their “1%” comment was merely marketing ploy rather than logical representation. It presumes that full solo vs full premade is the actual and only issue represented by that complaint. However, the greater point being made by the player base and their complaints is that there is a perception of gross discrepancies in the match making, which isn’t limited to a full premade vs full solo q matches.

OP, you’re assuming they know how to read the data in the first place. If that were the case I’d like to think that we wouldn’t be on the same forum merry-go-round years after implementation.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This is a problem of rating confidence. New players start with an MMR very close to the average of the player base, but their rating is much less confident than someone who has average MMR and 1000 games played. There are three avenues I see that can be taken:

• Care more about games played than we already do. This functionality was actually added recently and replaced rank consideration, but it’s not a very accurate indication of skill.
• Care more about rating deviation. This number is meant to track with rating confidence, and is higher for new players. We could use this for matchmaking, but it’s already being considered in the ratings formula…
• Let the rating system handle itself. Rating deviation is meant to move players quickly to a more accurate rating. Since this player had only played 2 games, you can be sure that his rating deviation is high and his rating dropped dramatically after that game. You may never see that player again.

I prefer the last route as we let the Glicko algorithm do what it does best. We can’t avoid every single bad match up. As you said in your post, it could have been an alternate account. There is no way for the system to know how good a player they are unless they play, and that means a some guesses have to be made along the way.

I would argue that “number of matches played” is your greatest ‘indicator of skill’ for PvP match making. There is so much that has to be understood about the game – classes, maps, mechanics, roles, tactics, etc – before you can begin to play the game with any level of sophistication. For quite some time, game knowledge has been acknowledged as the distinct difference between players considered “good” and those who are not.

It may also be worth noting that as you learn the game and become more sophisticated in your play you gradually change the way you view and play the game. Which means you’re no longer playing it the same way as those newer players who might not have learned things yet, like: to avoid chasing down a Mob kill at the start of the match, or standing on an uncontested node while you’re team struggles to win a 4v5 for a second capture point elsewhere on the map. Which is one of the key frustrations with match making. Different expectations for players with different levels of experience.

Which is why I think your preferred method is not only not ideal for anything other than faster queue times (with the downside of poor match quality) rather than basing it on accumulated experience but also forces the more experienced players to endure the “sorting process” alongside the new or less experienced players who might land on your team at any given moment.

This notion that people could simply log in and be “good at the game” without any prior experience is beyond fictitious. That player doesn’t exist in GW2 and we should stop trying to make matches with them in mind.

Let’s just make it clear and spell it out in no uncertain terms for ANet:

5v2-1-1-1 is not in any way acceptable.

Your options are:

5v5
5v4+1 with 1 being a higher rated player
5v3+2 with higher cumulative rating

There should never ever be more than a single solo player facing a full 5 man team. Period.

Better yet. Just make it 5v5. If you have to incentivize to increase team pop, then increase the pip count for winning to attract more teams to the queue.

Chaith.8256:

You’re applying old matchmaking with a new streak mechanic, not taking into account that decent players will breeze through early divisions on streaks with the new PIP based matchmaking.

The less time that strong players linger in low divisions, the better, streaks will place players where they should be, faster, initially.

What about the decent duo and solo queuers who will still be subjected to facing full teams, except now those teams won’t be some ez mark PvE guild, they’ll be a team of similarly skilled players with a designed comp, roles, and communication.

These streaks will punish solo queuers. Decent or otherwise.

Evan Lesh.3295:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Sekai.2987:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

From what I understood, you will lose 1 pip whether you lose 0-500 or 499-500 in a match. In other words, in a PuG party once you’re down by ~100 points its a GG for your team since there would be no benefit of making the match close anymore.

if thats true then its a bad change, last season i often saw in teamchat things like:
“guys even if we lose , lets score as much as possible so maybe we wont lose a pip”

and i think that was a good thing , i remember how when i faced proleagues players and i knew its unlikely that i win, but at least i can try to score as much points as possible to not lose a pip, or maybe even gain one , even if i lose

and if that is not possible anymore then i am sure ALOT of players will just stay in the base once the score hit 300-100, saying things like “well we lost anyway, doesnt matter how many points we score”

I see your point here, and I don’t disagree with it; however my concern is with how that did work in S1. It was entirely dependent upon your personal score whether you gained, lost, or broke even. It tended to encourage a lot more yolo play as opposed to actual teamwork. We need a little bit of a happy medium to encourage teamwork, and encourage the losing team to keep fighting instead of just rolling over.

Maybe I don’t understand your post, but personal score is not a factor in the league system (season 1 or 2).

Then what exactly is the point of having it? There seems to be more drawback than benefit to keeping this awkward arbitrary scoring system that is apparently completely irrelevant. All it seems to do is misdirect players as to how the game is played, and more importantly, won.

Can we please just have a regular scoreboard that shows everyone’s stats? Can we please be given the metrics to analyze our performance relative to our competition so we can kitten and improve?