Falan.1839

So you busted some people with a massive cheese build that is easy to counter and lives of catching people off guard because they don't except FB to be high dps. Wow.

How to counter this build as SD Prot Engi:

https://clips.twitch.tv/ObliviousArborealLouseCmonBruh

I don't think it hits too hard. Yes, it is sometimes impossible to avoid triggering FC if you have clones, offensive wells or skills you can't cancel anymore in time, but even if you trigger it, the skill is fairly easy to dodge. The tell ist quite obvious, both graphically and acustically and you have enough time to dodge. I'd say it's one of the easiest skills in the game to dodge, so I don't mind it hitting hard.

It's a good start, but could be expanded. Metabattle basically covers the build part pretty well (usually a bit late, but it's probably as good as it gets). So you could focus more on other aspects, for example which matchups are favourable or not favourable for which build in 1v1 etc.

Well, the 50% crit trait only came a few weeks before PoF, so obviously it wasn't much of a factor before... Also for a long time during HoT meta bunker/bruiser specs like Tempest, Druid, Scrapper etc. were a lot stronger than they are now, making burst builds less viable. And I wouldn't call a build with two instant ports bad mobility. Obviously the burst should not be gutted, but something like nerfing Righteous Instincts to 30% crit chance would be good (and much less of a nerf than what has been done to holo).

Engi is gutter tier, that is my first impression at least...

Core Hammer Guard was already one of the strongest burst specs before the patch and was completely overlooked. Also Righteous Instinct is beyond broken, basically turning Valkyrie into a zerker amulet with 900 vit for guard. And even if you manage to somehow dodge the JI burst from 1,2k range behind a wall, the guard is still a veritable threat, while an FA ele is basically food once you survive the burst.

In ATs this might be counterplayed by the better teams, but in Ranked core guards will be a huge factor.

Leadership. The cleanse on elite is neat.

Cancelled my unranked Q after 10 min last night. This doesn't seem like a great idea, especially for unranked where I don't expect great match quality anyway.

No, no, no, no, and still no. Pretty much every player from top 100 could just get a grp with a half decent setup from his fl and shit on the whole ladder once he feels like it, even without discord/TS. Organized teams have a completely different (superior) combat dynamic than random pugs, and teamplay, rotations, splits etc mean A LOT in this game.

5 Man Q would completely invalidate the leaderboard, even duo Q distorted it quite a bit. A separate team Q would not have enough teams to ensure balanced matchups. The current solution with the ATs is close to optimal in my opinion, but for some reason the agenda whiners here just keep going. Probably because they get stomped 2. round in ATs and want to farm Solo Qers again. But hey, let's bring the guild leaderboard back too, which so few decent teams actually cared about that you either had total trash teams on top there or one decent guild making a joke out of it by placing 10 of their teams on there.

Duel with a ranger plussing, lol. Also the conversion build doesn't have enough pressure to kill a bruiser like your weaver build, I'm pretty sure he would have played a different build (like SD) in an actual duel. You just clipped a random scene from ranked and use his name as clickbait.

This is pretty much the meta now, in ATs comps like 1 Druid + 4 Oneshot or very high dps builds (GS Mes, FA Ele, Core Guard, Rev, SD Holo, possibly even Reaper or Deadeye) are already wreaking havoc and also in ranked these specs are pretty prevalent. These comps were already strong before, but overshadowed by the broken FB/Scourge combination before, and now that this is nerfed, they reign supreme. Also half of these specs basically got overlooked in the proposed balance changes, while the remaining bruisers or non oneshotty dps builds get hit badly, which will even shift the meta further towards oneshots.

The number of games is not the issue, the problem is that there are several factors that make camping on a high rating attractive.

One is the high volatility of rating, you can easily jump up and down around a ~150 mmr span during a few days without inconsistencies in your gameplay. So once you are on the higher part of the realistic rating spectrum for you, it makes sense to sit instead of risking a drop by playing more games.

Another fact that you don't appear on the leaderboard before you have minimum games, so you can abuse that mechanic to only pop up on the leaderboard at the very last day, making it very hard for your competitors for your current rank to react.

The third factor is that once you've hit a certain rating, the huge gap between rating gained for wins and rating lost for losses becomes too punishing, especially during off peak times when not many high rated players compete. A mechanic like this is needed to stop the top players who consistently win a lot more games than they lose from "snowballing" the ladder, however the current system is a bit to extreme with gains like +3 or +4 compared to losses of -25 not being uncommon. A divergence like that requires a w/l ratio that is unrealistic even for the best players to stay in your place (let alone climb).

It's not just Mesmer and Thief, there is a lot of oneshot builds that already semi-meta now and were barely regarded in the nerf suggestions. Talking about Core Hammer Guard, FA Weaver, Deadeye and the likes. If they flatout trash the passives and also nerf damage on meta builds like Holo and Spellbreaker, these builds will reign supreme for quite a while.

On first view it looks quite good. Mesmer gets off to easily though. Most other meta specs get hit quite massively in terms of their damage and survivability, while Elusive Mind and Phantasmal Disenchanter are the only nerfs for Mes.

> @"Cal Cohen.3527" said:

> I broke the rules and played spellbreaker, but it seems fair because I have the handicap of being bad at the game. Here's the result so far.

> 

>

>

> Sounds like a fun challenge though, maybe I'll try something next season. I had fun playing janky builds in the past, but I just don't have as much time to play as I used to so I usually stick with the meta stuff.

NA doesn't count...

> @"Exedore.6320" said:

> I'm curious about how many people who vote to keep solo queue have ever been subject to the 1600+ rating restriction.

I am and it makes quite a difference for me. I queued ~90% solo even before the change and often after PT, the result being that when I faced a top duo with 4 zombies in my team I knew from the start it's a loss, while now the zombies are at least equally spread. It's hard to compare rankings due to a lack of enthusiasm for the ladder among many top PvPers (even before the solo/duo change) and wintrading towards the end of the season, but I'd say I probably gained about 100 ranks from the change (from rank 100-200 to rank 20-50).

Okay, so they even managed to fuck it up harder. Anet never ceases to amaze.

Ancient bug, used to happen quite frequently to me in PvP and it was never fixed. Guess it doesn't matter anymore now since everyone plays Holo anyway...

I usually come back to see if it's still winnable, if it has already snowballed too much I dc again.

No, it will just ruin the competition. It's annoying to deal with the monkeys you tend to get on your team, but at least it's the same for everyone. DuoQ is so much of advantage that it basically makes solo Q impossible if you care about your placement. There is no way top tier duoqers somehow result in a balanced match. Either they snowball it or they get paired with silver players to make up for the advantage.

So, overall fewer rewards and less competition because of fewer competition per tournament, and also possible more waiting time? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Surging...

Ah ffs, how often does this have to come up. There were never enough teams to get balanced matches for a 5v5 queues, which resulted in all the decent teams not bothering with it anyway. Anet tried something like this with the guild challenger league, but it was a massive failure. Sure, if you're bad as hell fighting 5 pugs with a full pre can still be challenging (and fun I suppose), but if you're on that level you will be perfectly fine in Unranked. For anything else, ATs are the best solution. Team Q is gone for good and should never come back.