Guild Wars 2

PierPiero.9142:

try flamethrower with scrapper and sage amulet , with a sigil of intelligence … scrapper, invention alchemy and you will se how it is strong now. You don’t spam a lot of condi as with p/p but you have good damage with hammer and perma burning… try it for fun . In my opinion this change of ft is a good buff for engi in general -

I’ve actually tried undead amulet plus the condi/tough/precision one. But just not the same and I miss having the vitality from Marauder or Paladin. Inteligence is fine but I like having sig of blood for a health buff and air/earth depending on power/condi. Overall its a nerf for my play style.

guildabd.6529:

I feel stuff dies much faster now just by camping flamethrower in power build. Its a buff nevertheless.

I PvP, camping flame thrower is not an option. The damage that could be done while blasting a water field ( for example) Did significat damage to a close combatant and granted healing, especially along with the trait that blasts heal damage. It cannot provide the needed pressure in a power build that was vital to the usefulness of this kit.

I used flame thrower as a damage burst weapon with frequent blast and CC. It’s hosed for my power build now and bombs can’t replace its functionality. My build relied heavily on this.

Flame thrower was not an AA weapon, the AA was conditionally useful against targets with projectile reflect whom were kiting, and to attack someone through a wall. The brilliance of this kit was the blast access and huge group damage you could do with flame blast. The air blast was great for a CC and decap.

here’s a question, even if you get 3 stacks of burn to last the full duration listed, does it make up for the lost instant damage, assuming your running a power amulet and rune?

scorekeeper.6524:

He doesn’t get it Phineas. I play Ranger when I want to farm SW. I use SB and Staff and have a condition build with a little bit of mobility. It’s not meta but it works for me. Now is it logical that I pop my head over to the Ranger forums and tell those who are discussing the state of Ranger that “Hey guys, Ranger works for me, here’s my build, the class doesn’t need any changes. If you’re unhappy go play another class.” ?

You’re absolutely right in your analysis. Engie used to be a well used class, but then has been nerfed continually so that other classes achieve better results in less time. We’re asking “Why?” and “Can we please have our original class utility back?” But no, we’re told by Mr. White Knight “Go play another class.” We here are not Johnny-Come-Latelys, we’ve played this class enough to know when we are getting the short end of the stick in nearly all content.

@shion- What rank are you? Just curious, since I’d be surprised to see that in the Legendary tier. If you are Legendary or Plat with that build, you have my congratulations.

I believe Phineas meant that since the Scrapper line was very powerful when released, to stay effective with the powerspikes given to other classes we Engis had to take that line. No one is forcing you to choose anything in any content if you are playing for yourself. However, if you raid, do fractals, dungeons, or PvP you are expected to pick not just a viable build (which are many) but an optimal build (which are few)

I was rank 181 in January. Think that’s the highest I made it. Have been in platinum 4 different times over my games and cycling down through lower gold. Currently just below platinum if I recall its hard to keep up.

Pretty much where I end up has nothing to do with my play so really whether my build is viable or not could not be determined by whether I happened to be top 250 or mid silver, as that is no indication of skill or build effectiveness.

Some people tell me I’m outstanding, others that I should uninstall. I really don’t think where in the constant cycling I end up at the end of the season will have anything to do with my build viability. Your welcome to play with me if you like, that’s really the only way to tell.

Shaogin.2679:

I’m really curious about all the logic flying around here. What conditions exactly must a player go through to prove that you will eventually end up in the division you belong? Apparently seeing a player start in bronze and climb to legend isn’t good enough. So what would it take to show you guys that it is possible, or are you guys dead set on denying ant evidence that doesn’t support your claims?

I have contrary evidence, I have circulated from gold to top 250 leaderboard to low gold to platinum to mid gold to platinum now down in gold. I am ending up nowhere, because my outcome is far more dependent on the random team I get than my own play. I’ve had far harder games in low gold for instance than when above rank 250. There is no settling for me so far just endless streaky cycling.

The theory that games are influenced overly by random chance is not debunked by someone making it from bronze to legendary. The argument you are making that you will eventually settle is irrelevant if that can’t happen in the time a season of play takes place, and is disproven by a simple counter example of people not settling. Which you’ve been given several of I see.

I could do the logical fallacy for you but I think your error in logic is likely self evident at this point.

what debuf? We now do more damage when we land with rocket boots!

Have even had some of my opponent engineers ask me for the build after the match and give it a shot. Somewhat unfortunate because I’m use to assuming other engis are meta or pistol….

I don’t have any trouble going against scrappers of equal skill with this build…. we are not forced into gyro. I am more effective with this….

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUh2tY1VwWLQ7FLTGVY/0dhF9fn37t4zcABAA-TJBFAB/XG4+9HA4BAQwFAAA

LUST.7241:

Phineas Poe.3018:

I disagree. Wearing a Marauder amulet, a Tornado proc of Elixir X can literally wipe teams with proper positioning and timing.

I don’t think it needs to be touched at all. Elite skills is the one area where engineer is absolutely stacked. While most classes are left with only one real choice, the Mortar Kit, Elixir X, and Sneak Gyro are all quite dominant at what they’re designed to do.

Running Marauder in this meta is such a risky move…especially when the biggest benefit is an elite that is based on RNG, timing, and positioning. Couple that with the limited time you have and its cooldown?

You’d feel more confident running different runes, sigils, or amulets if, at least, your elite can be more effective without needing those things (like almost every other meta elite other classes have).

The RNG option of Elixir X over Gyro or Mortar would actually be quite the handicap. Not saying all these suggestions are perfect but an RNG Elite that also depends on “timing” should at least be comparable to the non RNG elites that can completely turn a fight around (like other classes have).

Its the RNG of this skill that really makes or breaks it. And the suggestions really don’t add anything to make these options OP (just makes them more reliable). Least make the options worthy.

Sure there isn’t RNG with Tossing the Elixir, but you are only hitting a max of 3 targets and for less time than the cooldown + cast-time can justify. Signet of Humility (Mesmer) is 6s, .25s more casttime, 60s more cooldown…but has a pretty useful Passive. in case you don’t have the opportune time to cast it.

I’m not against leaving Elixir X alone, but given the meta, it’s pretty outdated.

This elite is pretty much worth it for Moa alone. If it has that as a toolbelt….. you have to balance that with the effectiveness of the skill.

AngryBear.8741:

megilandil.7506:

its the base of ELO system, your reward depends of diference whith oponents, the chances of wining and others only are adjustments to aply this system to teams

I understand that but my opinion is that it is absurd. It is absurd to try to create balanced matches where people have different expectations to win. I admit that I am maybe stupid, but I don’t see how that makes sense to anyone.

This was my original point (I was the someone you were refering to above). However you take the average between the duo queue, the chance for your team to win is no different if your the better or the worse of the duo because your on the same team.

But that what be a sort of self evident flaw in logic for how you would apply this algorithm. I mean glaringly so right?

Why should anyone’s odds on a team be better than another member of their team if you can only win or lose as a team. It is obvious that everyone on one team has the same chance to beat the other team…. because they are a team.

Thus you either all did better or worse than you should have and should have your ratings adjusted with volatility in mind. But if I loose more because of volatility then it follows I should have gained more.

This seems far worse than the substitution hole. It seems to obvious for this to be wrong….

BlaqueFyre.5678:

shion.2084:

Evan,
How is it possible that in a duo Queue playing several games consecutively, I can lose more rating on losses than my partner and gain less when we both win? As I understand the algorithm that should not be possible. If I’m more volatile I should both gain and lose more?

Simple your Duo Queue partner is lower Mmr than you…. not to also factor in any volatility differences.

Yes but shouldn’t my probability to win a match be based on my teams average MMR vs. my opposing team’s average MMR? We all have the same chance to win, my chance to win on a team is no greater than my partners????

Evan,
How is it possible that in a duo Queue playing several games consecutively, I can lose more rating on losses than my partner and gain less when we both win? As I understand the algorithm that should not be possible. If I’m more volatile I should both gain and lose more?

How valuable is quickness to you really? How do you make use of it? I always thought of it as an AA buffer really, but how often is that what you are using to damage?

Wolfric.9380:

I agree. I know it from myself. With rank 20 i had been a rooky not being able to handle rezzes well and barley knowing most maps. I learned what tempe buffs mean later. I say you need at least 500 games to be ready for ranked. Of course it´s possible to lower the floor and say let them struggle in bronze but it severly impacts ranked quality.
And the 10 placement matches are the worst thin they did in S5. It outmaneuvers MMR by a few random matches….

Nope you should totally come in with a 1200 MMR mid season and play with legitimate folks whom have all settled after 100 games at 1200. Just to spice things up!

I think a while back some group/player used some odd code behavior where objects would get left behind to fill an entire map with objects (I believe it was the Assura Rata Sun). Though that was more just amusement than actually. But a small act of civil disobedience. They did subsequently fix the infinite duplicate object bug. Anyone remember that?

I Duo Q’d with someone who was 100 MMR lower than me. We compared changes to Rating after each match. When we lost I lost 2 pts more. When we won, I won less then he did. I did not think this would be the case, I thought the adjustment would be based on the teams average MMR. So even though I might have been more volatitle than my partner I’d then expect that if I lost more I would gain more. The outcome of the rating was puzzling because it would seem to indicate that my individual Rating was being factored in to compare to the other teams rating, not the average rating of the team I was on.

To exactly answer your question you can look up my thread on the rise and fall of a PvP player. I have not settled anywhere. I go from lower gold to platinum and back over and over again. I reached as high as rank 181 in early January and as low as lower teir gold. There is no settling, which implies obvious things about the systems ability to predict the actual outcome of a match based on supposedly being able to rate indivdual players.

What annoys me most about this skill is its supposed to apply cripple to opponets, so you try to use it when they turn to flee, but they can run faster than the kitten thing travels. So annoying.

My build is different than most, you can check my past posts, but this season I’m running FT, EG, Elix B, Mortar, and Elix H for heal. I run Hoelbrack and paladins. The idea is I keep might running in the 18 – 25 range. Sigils are Air and Blood.

I am squishier than the meta engi, but do more damage and am effective over a variety of ranges.

My tips would be, sometimes you need to concede point to get the kill and take it back.

Don’t face tank a Warrior. Keep pressure on the real mesmer (ie. leave point and assualt do not try to hold point while it runs around you). For a theif, let it come to you and use the AOE this build has along with its CC. You shouldn’t have to give up point for a theif.

For a guard, if you can pre-anticipate its teleport into you lay fields down in preparation. Standing inside the circle of swords is feasible, a great time to apply shock shield and lay down your fire field. A guard you should be able to have enough moving room to stay on point and deal with it just learn when to use your dodge rolls and stay off the really bad stuff.

The shock shield is incredibly incredibly useful not only because of the block but because of the vuln it applies. Let people open up into it and wait till it ends then retaliate.

FT is a very underrated weapon. With it and EG and mortar you have 4 blasts in a fire field. The blast on FT is so frequent you can actually blast the FT fire field twice if you use it before doing your mortar elite.

Learn your fields and blasts, you are your own super combo machine.

The FT group CC and blind are very under rated and can clear point and buy breathing room. Its’ great for clearing a stomper.

By dropping the EG light field you can tripple blast retaliation with this build (Acid Bomb, FT, and Mortar toolbelt). Doing this to point going in when you have tanky alies there, not only keeps a nice heal up, applies might to your allies, but also gives them all retaliation.

With my build as an engineer, when fighting on a small point in a group mele, your AOE can basically cover. Try to break the rhythm of the fight and realize that you should never be on it too long. You want to be in and out and you have great options for sitting just off point (and your enemy fields) and applying great pressure. For instance with FT your AA can apply burn and hit 3 folks, you can drop fire field, you can push them all off point. You can then drop lighitng field. You can mortar for poison to reduce their healing, you have a blind on mortar, and a healing field. With the helaing field you can do your hammer 3 and do area healing, you have 4 blast finishers.

Because I blast finish so much I take the attribute that does healing on blast finishers. Just a nice added bonus. I can pretty much reset with my blasts and a water field without needing to resort to my elix H.

For the inventions trait first tier I like the smoke bomb more than the free heal recharge.

My philosophies differ than most engis though, and my play style is more old school ADD engineer style from pre-HOT. Very in and out. However my boon support, condi clears, might advantage to alies and the impact of my fields are quite useful to a group especially on smaller point. I also do very well in 1 v 1’s with this build and find it more effective to kill things than with the meta.

If I’m pinned down I’m totally DEAD. life is constant movement.

My thoughts on the randomness of match making are included here …. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/A-tale-of-Rise-and-Fall-in-PvP-ranking/first#post6464063

If your bad you’ll likely tank your team near platinum. If you are good, it doesn’t matter so much as getting lucky and not having someone that’s bad.

Incidentally going from mid gold to platinum, to rank 181, to low gold to mid gold I made platinum this weekend. Very seldom can I make any sort of a noticable difference to my games unless I play poorly. Awesome play, good play, winning 1 v 2’s in a match a few times…. ususally makes no difference what so ever.

I was losing games where I was running metaphorical circles around my opponents. Zilch I could do about it. I’m glad you’ve hit good randomness, but let me impart this truth which moderates both of us.

It is true that when people fail they tend to blame others or the system, however when they succeed they have a tendancy to attribute this to their own skill.

You’ve pointed out the first part, be careful about the second.

3 necros on their team… slotting an extra condi cleanse…

draxynnic.3719:

By the law of averages, if you play enough games the luck-based games should cancel out and the fraction where you do make the difference should settle you to where you should be. But it certainly is frustrating to get a loss streak from a series of games where you had no realistic opportunity to change the outcome.

I’m not sure that having an attempted 50% chance will guarantee over a non infinite number of games that they’ll cancel out. Go flip a coin twice and tell me if you got one head and one tail for instance.

But ignoring that it would only cancel out if your Rating changed the same for the wins and losses when adding the net effect of the changes.

Consider this… what if your a very high Rating, you are more likely to be in games where the average rating of the team is lower than you, correct? This means that a loss will hurt you more than a win will gain you.

I know for a fact that when I was 1630 ish rank, and I experiment duo’d with a 15XX player, that my losses were two points more than his, and my gains were less for matches we were both in.

So as you do better you risk more and gain less BECAUSE your MMR is higher than that of the team you are fighting it seems.

A rather significant flaw, my penalty or gain should be based on how my team was ranked against their team, why does my loss or gain amount differ from my teammates? And if it does, then why in gods green earth would I want to play games if I beat the odds and managed to climb.

Crinn.7864:

Evan Lesh.3295:

MOAR DATA: ~3% of matches have substitutes which could* cause the original problem in this thread. We are testing fixes now.

The asterisk after “could” is suspicious.

The astrix just means that there are substitutes in 3% of matches, but just the possibility of a substitute won’t mean you will get an imbalance, it could find a good substitute equivalent to the original intended player. So there’s a 3% chance a substitution happens on average, and only if one does is it possible to get an imbalance, but not guaranteed. Entirely appropriate * I think

The more top stats I get the worse my team likely did

So I did alright in my placement matches and started near the upper tier of gold. I played relatively sparingly and made my way up to rank 181 (early January). Christmas time kept me from playing much.

I will confess that in most of my matches my specific play did not really make a significant difference. Having a bad player on my team at this level meant I lost. If I played really well or well, and there was a bad player, I lost. Sometimes if we were all good I actually felt I was the tipping point. but having a bad player far outweighed having someone I ’d noticed was a brilliant player.

On my way up I noticed that my matches were pretty much random win or loss. The random factors were things like the crud player, the oops we got 3 theives and when you play (affected who you were playing with). Both of these pretty much overrided the I played 10% better this game factor.

I did notice that in games were I was grabbing three or more top stats…. we typically lost. In the 250 and above area I basically won and lost about evenly and at least folks seemed to reasonably be counted on to do somewhat sane thing (though some would insist on far despite the rest of the groups class make up).

At rank 181 I had a choice. I knew things were very random and IF I wanted to stay there I could not trust my skill would make a significant difference. BUT I wanted the reward for finishing the reward track. SO I decided not to end this season in top 250 by continuing to play.

Sure enough I hit a bad game and it dropped me 34 points. I then proceeded to lose like 15 games pretty much strait and decended to lower half of gold. Litterally I was playing no differently, and by the time I was in lower gold I was consistently grabbing top rewards, winning 1 v 2’s and basically making clown shoes of most of my opponents, and it just didn’t matter.

Now I have since been on a relative winning streak except I’m not seeing any +34’s to my rating and the climb is quite slow, further troubled by the fact that I am litterally at the mercy of randomized match making to decide in all but 15% of the cases whether I win or lose (I estimate). And it puts some real oddballs out there.

It was actually harder and more frustrating for me in lower gold then in 250+ rank because of the randomness of my team. I anticipate that due to the randomness of match making I won’t make it back to 250.

IF you want to stay in the upper 250 take a bunch of alt accoutns, play your 10 matches, focus on the accounts that win and play the absolute minimum you can to stay in the upper ranks. DO NOT take your chances on the randomness for best results.

I believe generally because people at higher rank play less, you are on average (if High) likely to be playing against lower MMR folks and are risking more than you gain. Litterally the people you need to be beating aren’t playing.

The worst part of all this is I wanted to play ranked and when I was worried about my rating I actually played LESS PVP and was discouraged from wanting to do it because of the bad match making. Which is really twisted when you think about it. Maybe I need 2 accounts, one I play for rank on and one so I can actually… you know play the sheer randomness that assigning individuals a rating based on how their team does is.

Anyway my thoughts so far.

How do you see the death breakdown?

I’ve never used any of my mystic coins since beta…. so what do folks need them for? They aren’t used in first gen legendaries… but show up in the mystic tribute…. what else are they good for?

Yeah but then everyone would queue with a less used class, and swap to the stacking class they wanted to play. Because you’d queue faster if you were a less popular class and class stacking restricitions were implemented. You’d also have to remove class swapping.

Faux Play.6104:

shion.2084:

Zenith.6403:

shion.2084:

It is exactly because this sort of thing happens that I’d argue that a lot of your ranking is up to dumb luck of the draw. You can’t argue that the rankings are an accurate determination of skill, and explain how the same player can end up completely different on two accounts.

Statistically speaking a sample of 10 is indeed dumb luck of the draw. Especially early on when rating volatility is greater. Try playing at least 30-50 games before making judgment.

Agreed, and if your the average average guy it might work out eventually… or the season might end, or you might keep hitting 1200 and getting whacked with new players by bad draw luck before things average out in the long run. You just never know.

A new player isn’t going to play a sustained number of matches at 1200. Their volatility will be high. If they are good (someone’s alt) they will move up, if they are new to the game they will rapidly fall. Only if that is where they belong will they stay there. Only Anet has the data, but you can’t say you are more likely to get an experienced player’s alt or a brand new player coming in at a 1200 rating for their first match.

Agreed, but I’m arguing what if there are a steady stream of new players being introduced. It’s not the same new player, its a different one each time… or the same… but you get what I mean.

Zenith.6403:

shion.2084:

It is exactly because this sort of thing happens that I’d argue that a lot of your ranking is up to dumb luck of the draw. You can’t argue that the rankings are an accurate determination of skill, and explain how the same player can end up completely different on two accounts.

Statistically speaking a sample of 10 is indeed dumb luck of the draw. Especially early on when rating volatility is greater. Try playing at least 30-50 games before making judgment.

Agreed, and if your the average average guy it might work out eventually… or the season might end, or you might keep hitting 1200 and getting whacked with new players by bad draw luck before things average out in the long run. You just never know.

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Faux Play.6104:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

The problem with algorithms that seem logically reasonable but don’t account for practical reality failings.

If you want to design, code and implement a better algorithm be my guest. But judging from your complete lack of awareness of even the most simple key concepts of ratings and matchmaking you’d get nowhere. ANet didn’t come up with these algorithms, they’ve been industry standard for years, been adapted to multiple team sports and have been improved upon and updated over the years.

But I’m so glad that we have people like you, through your unmatched genius to point out flaws in these systems that the Ph.D’s and statisticians somehow failed to spot. I’m sure Mark Glickman would love to hear your analysis.

I’m sure the Glickman algorithm is fine if you are running all 5 members of your team. I don’t think he’d support it in this instance. I mean just think about it.

Like I literally just said, it can and has been used and adapted to other team based games/sports like LoL, CS:GO, the NFL, etc.

EDIT: Please don’t attack the tone of my argument, use the fallacy fallacy and then do the thing you literally just said didn’t want to happen to you.

And I argue with the adaption. I maintain its reasonable for its intended original purpose of Chess or Go. If the team composition remains mostly consistent such as an NFL team, then you could treat that as one “person” as well. However to apply it to an ever changing grouping of 5 folks whom need not play the class their rating was based on etc. is obviously going to be fraught with problems. Then you add in class stacking. then, then…. you’ll see that these derivations from the original purpose although minor seeming will result in well…. unpredictability.

The fallacy fallacy would be to argue you were wrong in your assertion because you made an ad hominem. I simply indicated that you argued against the wrong point (straw man) and that your ad hominem is not relevant.

So are you arguing that if someone can be competitive at multiple classes they don’t deserver to be ranked higher than someone that is one dimensional?

I’m actually arguing that their skill will likely be different in each of those classes, and the match making should be based on the class their playing to have more accurate results.

I just switched to Rev at the end of blow out games to get the achievements. So I have like a 95% winrate on it with whatever MMR came from that. The system probably thinks I’m a god at rev, it has no other way to tell at the moment. Let’s just say thank god it doesn’t.

I’m not sure that helps the argument that Gliko is a good choice when these player variables exist

They exist, did you miss the part where I said it’s separate? It’s not used in the calculation at all, they just track it.

I wasn’t arguing if they exist or not, I was conceeding they do…. I don’t even know what you believe you are responding to.

I’ve explained why the Gliko is not appropriate to make reasonable matches in a situation where players can play classes that are not the ones they were rated for. I don’t think that anyone would argue the prediction is at all reliably accurate in these circumstances. Eg. I have played all season as an ele. I want my engi acheive so I swap classes, Gliko places me based on my skill rating I’d received as an ele.

I mean this is only a fringe example of why it doesn’t work. It also can’t work out that certain class compositions cause entirely different predicted results. etc. etc.

In your NFL scenario if the entire starting lineup was wiped out by plague, the odds makers wouldn’t give you the same odds on the game. And the Gliko prediciton would be off as well. Whenever you entirely assemble a completely new team, the synergies against a completely different opponent will be incredibly hard to predict. If it were the same 5 people playing on the team, it would be more reasonable to apply.

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Faux Play.6104:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

The problem with algorithms that seem logically reasonable but don’t account for practical reality failings.

If you want to design, code and implement a better algorithm be my guest. But judging from your complete lack of awareness of even the most simple key concepts of ratings and matchmaking you’d get nowhere. ANet didn’t come up with these algorithms, they’ve been industry standard for years, been adapted to multiple team sports and have been improved upon and updated over the years.

But I’m so glad that we have people like you, through your unmatched genius to point out flaws in these systems that the Ph.D’s and statisticians somehow failed to spot. I’m sure Mark Glickman would love to hear your analysis.

I’m sure the Glickman algorithm is fine if you are running all 5 members of your team. I don’t think he’d support it in this instance. I mean just think about it.

Like I literally just said, it can and has been used and adapted to other team based games/sports like LoL, CS:GO, the NFL, etc.

EDIT: Please don’t attack the tone of my argument, use the fallacy fallacy and then do the thing you literally just said didn’t want to happen to you.

And I argue with the adaption. I maintain its reasonable for its intended original purpose of Chess or Go. If the team composition remains mostly consistent such as an NFL team, then you could treat that as one “person” as well. However to apply it to an ever changing grouping of 5 folks whom need not play the class their rating was based on etc. is obviously going to be fraught with problems. Then you add in class stacking. then, then…. you’ll see that these derivations from the original purpose although minor seeming will result in well…. unpredictability.

The fallacy fallacy would be to argue you were wrong in your assertion because you made an ad hominem. I simply indicated that you argued against the wrong point (straw man) and that your ad hominem is not relevant.

So are you arguing that if someone can be competitive at multiple classes they don’t deserver to be ranked higher than someone that is one dimensional?

I’m actually arguing that their skill will likely be different in each of those classes, and the match making should be based on the class their playing to have more accurate results.

I just switched to Rev at the end of blow out games to get the achievements. So I have like a 95% winrate on it with whatever MMR came from that. The system probably thinks I’m a god at rev, it has no other way to tell at the moment. Let’s just say thank god it doesn’t.

I’m not sure that helps the argument that Gliko is a good choice when these player variables exist

Faux Play.6104:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

The problem with algorithms that seem logically reasonable but don’t account for practical reality failings.

If you want to design, code and implement a better algorithm be my guest. But judging from your complete lack of awareness of even the most simple key concepts of ratings and matchmaking you’d get nowhere. ANet didn’t come up with these algorithms, they’ve been industry standard for years, been adapted to multiple team sports and have been improved upon and updated over the years.

But I’m so glad that we have people like you, through your unmatched genius to point out flaws in these systems that the Ph.D’s and statisticians somehow failed to spot. I’m sure Mark Glickman would love to hear your analysis.

I’m sure the Glickman algorithm is fine if you are running all 5 members of your team. I don’t think he’d support it in this instance. I mean just think about it.

Like I literally just said, it can and has been used and adapted to other team based games/sports like LoL, CS:GO, the NFL, etc.

EDIT: Please don’t attack the tone of my argument, use the fallacy fallacy and then do the thing you literally just said didn’t want to happen to you.

And I argue with the adaption. I maintain its reasonable for its intended original purpose of Chess or Go. If the team composition remains mostly consistent such as an NFL team, then you could treat that as one “person” as well. However to apply it to an ever changing grouping of 5 folks whom need not play the class their rating was based on etc. is obviously going to be fraught with problems. Then you add in class stacking. then, then…. you’ll see that these derivations from the original purpose although minor seeming will result in well…. unpredictability.

The fallacy fallacy would be to argue you were wrong in your assertion because you made an ad hominem. I simply indicated that you argued against the wrong point (straw man) and that your ad hominem is not relevant.

So are you arguing that if someone can be competitive at multiple classes they don’t deserver to be ranked higher than someone that is one dimensional?

I’m actually arguing that their skill will likely be different in each of those classes, and the match making should be based on the class their playing to have more accurate results.

pyrocyborg.4162:

shion.2084:

oooh, oooh. the fact that losing a game 498 to 500 sees me lose the exact same amount of skill rating as losing it 100 to 500.

Or worse… you end up losing less in that close match than when your team is getting rampaged…

Somehow that doesn’t seem to frustrate me quite as much… odd that.

Faux Play.6104:

The system may not get you to the perfect spot your first match but after enough matches you will get there. The placement and soft reset provide enough volatility for people that have significantly improved over a season the opportunity to quickly jump their rating. Someone that deserves to be in gold will be able to win their way out of bronze. Yes you have bronze tier players on your team but so does the other team, and since you should be significantly better on average you will be able to win enough matches to get out of that division. Yes you will get some bad teammates you can’t overcome, but since there are no gates to your MMR, the bad players will continue to fall and the good players will rise.

The problem is your speaking of the average average situation. In a system like this with enough players you’ll hit a good number of outliers whom simply get enough bad match ups for long enough that their MMR will settle, and that if they did get to the 1200 mark again would randomly draw the new player card on their team.

It might help if people with highly random MMR’s were more likely to face highly random folks, this way having slowly worked your way up from 900 to the 1200 range wouldn’t put you into the “did I get a new player lottery” So basically including the confidence level in the match making.

And yes, you all played forever you’d probably get there….. but that doesn’t happen. And might not be able to if you look at a lack of class stacking understanding from the algorithm and playing classes for acheivements that folks haven’t been rated with. You can build pendantic cases where you’d simply never get there.

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

The problem with algorithms that seem logically reasonable but don’t account for practical reality failings.

If you want to design, code and implement a better algorithm be my guest. But judging from your complete lack of awareness of even the most simple key concepts of ratings and matchmaking you’d get nowhere. ANet didn’t come up with these algorithms, they’ve been industry standard for years, been adapted to multiple team sports and have been improved upon and updated over the years.

But I’m so glad that we have people like you, through your unmatched genius to point out flaws in these systems that the Ph.D’s and statisticians somehow failed to spot. I’m sure Mark Glickman would love to hear your analysis.

I’m sure the Glickman algorithm is fine if you are running all 5 members of your team. I don’t think he’d support it in this instance. I mean just think about it.

Like I literally just said, it can and has been used and adapted to other team based games/sports like LoL, CS:GO, the NFL, etc.

EDIT: Please don’t attack the tone of my argument, use the fallacy fallacy and then do the thing you literally just said didn’t want to happen to you.

And I argue with the adaption. I maintain its reasonable for its intended original purpose of Chess or Go. If the team composition remains mostly consistent such as an NFL team, then you could treat that as one “person” as well. However to apply it to an ever changing grouping of 5 folks whom need not play the class their rating was based on etc. is obviously going to be fraught with problems. Then you add in class stacking. then, then…. you’ll see that these derivations from the original purpose although minor seeming will result in well…. unpredictability.

The fallacy fallacy would be to argue you were wrong in your assertion because you made an ad hominem. I simply indicated that you argued against the wrong point (straw man) and that your ad hominem is not relevant.

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

The problem with algorithms that seem logically reasonable but don’t account for practical reality failings.

If you want to design, code and implement a better algorithm be my guest. But judging from your complete lack of awareness of even the most simple key concepts of ratings and matchmaking you’d get nowhere. ANet didn’t come up with these algorithms, they’ve been industry standard for years, been adapted to multiple team sports and have been improved upon and updated over the years.

But I’m so glad that we have people like you, through your unmatched genius to point out flaws in these systems that the Ph.D’s and statisticians somehow failed to spot. I’m sure Mark Glickman would love to hear your analysis.

I’m sure the Glickman algorithm is fine if you are running all 5 members of your team. I don’t think he’d support it in this instance. I mean just think about it.

You make a straw man argument. I am not saying that Gliko is not a good rating system, just that the application here is not the intended use case.

Incidentally your need to resort to Ad Hominems doesn’t improve anyone’s already questionable opinion of you.

oooh, oooh. the fact that losing a game 498 to 500 sees me lose the exact same amount of skill rating as losing it 100 to 500.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

burn DHs are easy to kill if you see them coming and could figure out the traits they ran/sacrificed.

Remember to dodge their spear or break it if they attach it to you and then only dodge/reflect the torch throw as the passive burn will be on cooldown for a while and their pressure is suddenly gone. also note that they will have less stunbreaks and stab than the normal power DH so locking them down or putting them on heavy focus fire will melt them fast.

Wait… what breaks a spear?

“far superstar”. Trademarked incidentally

So what do you do Benny when your three mid that are outnumbered get wiped and your contesting far?

I find often that even if you win the far cap it might be a detriment if you get rolled mid. Its the overall team outcome and not the individual contesting that’s often the problem.

Azukas.1426:

I went 4-6 on my main account placements and got bottom of silver. Horrible teammates and literally had 2-3 thieves a game who all refused to switch. Since then I’m sitting on an 80% win rate and pushing into T2 gold.

On my alt EU account w/out HoT I went 6-4 and placed Mid Gold. Now 2 of those loses were due to people leaving the game so I would have prolly placed Plat on a non HoT account playing with across the ocean lag.

The problem with this season is the placement matches. The rest is awesome and I enjoy playing the season so far.

Clearly all those whom argue your ranking is an accurate reflection of your skill would simply tell you that EU is clearly much easier to play in than NA

It is exactly because this sort of thing happens that I’d argue that a lot of your ranking is up to dumb luck of the draw. You can’t argue that the rankings are an accurate determination of skill, and explain how the same player can end up completely different on two accounts.

I’m sure that with theoretically infinite games you’ll eventually end up where your supposed to be, but that thinking is flawed in that the season would end before that ever happened. The problem with algorithms that seem logically reasonable but don’t account for practical reality failings.

vove.2768:

So I cannot raise my ranking because opponents I fight are supposed to be idiots in contrary to opponents in higher divisions? I think this makes no sense at all.

I had proposed this problem to Lesh in another thread. That by bringing new players at an average MMR of 1200, if there was a steady influx of new players, it would be pretty random when you’d ever be able to break above the range that those players could be placed in and randomly tank you.

I suspect that getting through gold will be easier than getting through silver because of the randomness of player quality and the fact that you individually can’t make that much difference, so its sort of up to the gods of luck. Now those whom sailed through will say the system is fine and all their skill. And those whom have significant trouble will attribute it all to the fact that their teammates were poor. The answer will lie somewhere in the middle.

Also the problem is not the opponents you fight, its the folks you have fighting with you

I think the idea is roughly half the time you’ll be in matches against teams that average a higher MMR than you, and half the time you’ll be in the team with the higher MMR. Kind of luck of the draw that part I suspect but works out in the magical infinite matches scenario is I guess what they are thiking.

My understanding was your individual MMR didn’t matter, but it was your teams average relative to your opponents… ie. you’d all go up or down the same amount.

This is actually why I asked the OP if the person they teamed with went up or down the same amount. Sort of interested. That along with knowing if the other person had a substantially different skill rating would answer the question.

Nonsense. Since your also teamed with utterly random bronze tier players its much harder to win, then if your teamed with folks you can moderately rely on to be competent

lol, lets setup noobs for failure with high skill builds, knowing their noobs and they’ll choose them as their default???? Seriously?

With the complaints that an average noob jcomes in with 1200, and tanks matches as it is, why on earth would you make it worse by giving them a build that they wouldn’t know how to play. That’s just mean.

I think the adjustment is based on whether you were in a match you were predicted to win or predicted to lose. So if your teams MMR was on average higher and you lose, you may lose more points, and if your team is higher and you win, then you gain less.

Out of interest, did the person you queue with gain and lose the same amount? My understanding is that its based on the team average so this should be the case I suspect.

I always ask if someone is going to try and be a “far superstar” off the bat when waiting for a match to start. With PUGs that almost never works out well.

And at the very least, if you do have the heavies mid to sustain it for a short while, you need to tell them their job is simply to kite mid. Plus the number of fricken times someone races over there and gives them five points….. Then we lose mid too….

Establishing who is taking home, 4 are going mid, and that I will provide group swift to the guards and necros is normally about the extent of my chat. That and a helpful reminder to please call a target mid. With the threat that I suck at it and if noone does I’ll start doing it

Heh you look at the stats and see, I kid you not, that I accounted for 63% of the teams defense and all my kills were solo. And this was actually far.

I have no idea if I am where I should be. I alternate matches where I cream people and where I’m utterly outclassed. There seems to be no settling for me and who I get thrown with seems very random. I have the occasional well matched game, but they are the exception not the rule. Meaning I have no idea whether I’m actually in the right place MMR wise, which probably makes sense given the loose coupling of my personal play and whether my team actually wins.

Most frustrating is when I have a bloody terrific game personally, and my rating goes down because we lost. I’m talking about where you steal far, and someone comes to take it back, you kill him. Then two come just after and you kill both of them. Then they waste three on you, you run them around in circles for 3 min while keeping it from being capped…. and your somehow down 200 points. Much angrifying. In your head your doing the math and figuring… there are four teammates who are not here and thus could simply stand on a bloody point and have won this game.

So essentially what frustrates me most is the disconnect between when I have my above average for me performances, and then have to watch as I’m demoted points.