DoomNexus.5324

The 10 placement games indeed are just regular games, the only difference is that gw2 adds "volatility" to the point system for your first couple matches that drops with each match. So if you loose your first 3 matches you're probably losing around 250 points or something whereas if you lose your last 3 matches you're only losing about 80 or something.. You can see the actual numbers on gw2efficiency if you've done your placements.

It's a double edged sword really.. The purpose is to give players a chance to reach their respective mmr they belong in quicker like everyone's starting with (1200 + last played season elo) / 2 and then adding the gain or loss (which is influenced by volatility too). So if you are winning a lot in your first couple matches you're immediately plat2 or 3 but if you are losing a lot you are immediately in silver1 or something.. But like you've pointed out, there are a lot of afk'er and some dc'ing a lot, coming back and dc'ing again or dc'ing too far into the match so that it still counts.. Guess everyone knows those kind of matches unfortunately..

If you are unlucky with your mates then this can reeaally hurt your mmr and for that reason I wouldn't mind removing the volatility honestly. For example in my last active season I've lost my very first match due to someone randomly going afk which cost me like -98 points I think.. That's insane and if I had won this match I'd have been placed in plat 3.. so yea, just the one or two first matches can really ruin your placement which isn't particularly unlikely to happen just by bad luck either.

PS: before you make a background check on me too, yea I've been taking a break for several seasons now. Just wanted to hop in pvp again and checked out the forums after that but as far as I can tell pvp balance, playerbase and diversion is still in quite a bad state.. couple players left a bitter taste in my mouth already so there's that.. bye again I guess

Burn is still way overtuned.. I'm just sitting there getting rid of 10 stacks burn, cleanse, get another 10 stacks immediately, cleanse, get another 10 stacks, run out of cleanses and die because each stack ticks with like 3k and I get like 50k damage within 5 seconds or something. Not to mention all the other conditions that get spamed atm. But while they are kind of annoying they are also decently manageable now imho.

I am pretty much dominating 3v3 except for rounds with burn guards or something like that.. can't do shit against those builds.

Other than that I can't really complain tbh.. didn't play conquest lately tho.

> "Instead of asking a nerf of FB why not buff other classes that are left behind?"

NO!!!

Don't start this powercreep again!.. Anet has balanced with this mindset for years and you see how small the pvp community is.. Probably can't even recover anymore..

Nobody likes his main class to be nerfed, I get that, but do not fucking continue powercreeping everything.. Anet almost manages to get a decent balance to pvp, we don't need to buff other classes to be on par with 1 dominating one.. bring the must-pick class down in line with the rest, not the other way around.. This obviously doesn't focus FB in particular, it's my general opinion for the "flavor of the month"-class (or in case of GW2 it's rather a "flavor of the year"-class tbh)

Of course. As long as it's not a huge mess with 10 different but same game modes I think it's always beneficial to have diversity.

Obviously the biggest argument against it would be low population.. Which has been the main reason for Anet to not do anything for sPvP for years now. But honestly why should the population rise by a significant degree if nothing changes? Mini-/off season aside.. everything that's available is still 5v5 conquest and a seriously neglected stronghold mode.. I'd love to see some rework for stronghold because I think the mode could actually pretty cool but the current implementation sucks.. Anyway I digress..

For me definitely yes, bring in 3v3 (or 2v2 I don't care) as a permanent option. Also for god sake split full team queue and solo/duo queue (but keep both, don't ditch the full team queue pls).

Very nice to see a 3v3 mode getting introduced! Love to see the changes in the past couple months (those I am aware of at least).

It's really unfortunate you already pretty much lost me. Hopefully I'll one day return to the game when sPvP is fun again. Still really hope full team Q will come back some day tho - regardless of 2v2 3v3 4v4 5v5 or XvX. Doesn't really make a lot of sense anymore for me otherwise (even tho I'm pretty much solo because everyone left the game a long, long, looooooooooong time before I did but still..).

Keep it up guys, you're doing a great job! Probably not easy to clean up the mess your predecessors made over several years.

PS: updates are still getting posted in my discord server otherwise I wouldn't care about GW2 anymore tbh and would definitely not go to the forums or even post here.

Very interesting changes and very glad to finally see such a shift (after years and years of buffing and fucking everything up just so the casual plebs won't quit because "aww my main class has a 0.1% damage output reduction, it's completely dead now Q_Q").

I just really really hope it's not already way too late and PvP/WvW players will return or new PvP players will come (me included - I don't want to return to a dead game mode)

99 out of 100 times I'd rezz my team mate. Not only do you prevent the enemy team from getting 5 points for the kill, you also prevent fighting outnumbered and therefore keep the opponents momentum/snowball potential low(er) but you can also potentially kill the guy on the point, recapturing it and snowball yourself.

So unless 1) you are confident you wouldn't be able to rezz him because you either can't outheal the cleave or you are too squishy to survive the rezz or 2) he is a REALLY bad player and constantly dies/feeds into teamfights, I would argue to never leave a mate alone to die for said reasons above.

Unnerf lead attack pls so it also stacks while out of combat #MakeDPThiefGreatAgain

> @"Skyronight.6370" said:

> > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > Making raids harder would just make the KP requirements worse. If mistakes are punished more, then raid group formers will be even more paranoid of failure and wasting their time, so they'll jack the requirements up even more. Making raids more difficult won't garner more interest in raids, it'll discourage players from even trying. This isn't how incentives work. You don't fix the problem by making all the reasons the problem exists even worse.

>

> But the elitism comes from that KP requirement because newer players are not even given a chance. If raids were made harder, everyone would be given a chance and then once they fail mechanics and start dying they can simply get kicked out. Its harder to get into the raids than completing the raid.

Elitism ppl without any clue who keep joining raids and trying to leech, fucking up the raid and wasting everyone else's time. We once had a guy in the group for Matthias who didn't know shit.. We even tried to explain him what he has to do 2 times really slowly and he even said he understands that but then he fucked up again.. like.. uncarryable hard.

It's just a waste of time and the biggest problem is, that in a group of 10, if say everybody's a random you'll have some who just don't have the time for this.. if you fail 2 times because of a pug doesn't know the mechanics and your group would need to teach him then they just leave because, well, they got other things to do as well. And then you have to search for another guy who replaces the dude who just left which also takes time and so on.. It's just a waiting game at this point.

2 things I want to mention in this context which might help to work around the problem for you:

1) KP requirements pretty much only exist in public groups because of said problems. Join a raiding guild or watch out for a couple guys you can raid with and form or join a raid group. I myself can only really raid because of 2 friends who take me with them because I also only have ~25 LI or so.

2) Not every lfg-group does have an entry requirement, just wait for those popping up or join some training raids, nobody asks for KP/LI there, but then again you're likely to fail the raid since they most of the time don't really know the mechanics.. also it's a lot more time intensive since the raid leaders explain everything first (most of the time)

Also.. just because you and a lot of other ppl think they aren't hard... GW2 is for casuals (I think they are easy too btw but we aren't the target audience tbh) so there is a shitload of ppl out there who already struggle with the current difficulty.. Unfortunately Anet targets those apparently and everything gets dumbed down..

The only thing I see the players themselves can do (but collectively, which is extremely unlikely) is stop being such elitists and stop the flame and toxicity. Ofc not nearly everybody does that but if you have 1 or 2 guys every other match it's more than enough to kill every motivation a new(er - at least to sPvP) player has.

I've played in every division from silver 2 up to plat 2 and especially in gold the salt is real. Most ppl consider gold as elo hell and I honestly think it's because of the toxicity, not because ppl are bad. I mean.. you'll always get some retards but it won't change in plat, the only two things that change are 1) you have WAY less salt in the matches and 2) ppl actually most of the time tryhard.

Two of my friends started around june or july (?) and pretty much solely for sPvP. They were ranked into silver2/3 and played their way to gold 1 and left again. And I can confirm their reasoning, I've played a couple times with them on an alt account and ppl ALWAYS go afk like immediately when they lose the mid fight, it's really obnoxious. If the team is 250:150 behind there's pretty much a 95% chance that at least one straight up goes afk because "dUdE wE cAn'T wIn tHaT, l2P iT's YoUr FaUlT".

But honestly I can't even blame the community for being toxic when Anet cares so little. Anet's lack of interest and care for the game mode is the root of all problems here tbh. The balance sucks and has been pretty bad for ages and nobody cares. Admittedly GW2 doesn't have the worst balance found in MMORPGs on a class-to-class level but everything's just way over the top and you can easily create a build that excels in one specific thing and even tho it's not 100% viable it will fucking annoy everybody who has to play against it, that's bullshit.

The matchmaking and queuing system is not really good and Anet's excuse is always that the population is too low to allow changes. But guess what.. When you have a shitty system everybody's quitting.. maybe the system needs dire changes and people will eventually come back and repopulate the queues. But no, Anet is just SO fucking afraid of losing players it's obnoxious. If we can believe a lot of reports on the forum, reddit, from the community in general - Anet doesn't do shit against wintraders, afk-ers, known hackers, etc... How is the game supposed to be healthy if you're not willing to cut away the cancer that plagues everybody else? Just because Anet need this minority populating the game as well, but at what cost?..

Just look at literally every online shooter. If the developer can't handle the hacker-problem and abuser, the game will crash extremely fast.

Simple.

Just make power D/P daredevil at least somewhat viable again by unnerfing lead attack and giving Swipe at least 900 range or completely throw it off the board again and give em Steal back. You probably won't see any other thief build anymore. #MakeDPGreatAgain

Oh wait.. but then thief has access to stealth again right? Naa fuck it, thief could as well be just removed from the game, ppl will always complain no matter what.

(btw I hate damaging conditions in general in sPvP, I'm 100% behind you guys, Anet should nerf the shit out of condi thief)

> @"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

> Give me one reason why they should. Stunbreaks, utility, and defensives should be instacast where applicable, but something used for offense (gap closing attack, etc) should not.

Give me one reason why they should not? Because you can't react based on visuals then? There are certain rotations on every spec.. just like you can predict that 99% of the time a warrior with greatsword will cast 100 Blades after he knocks you down with Bulls Charge or something and after he used all his stun breaks he pops off Rampage and immediately boulders or seismic leaps at you.

Also adding cast time to instant offense skills is probably not going to do much for you. When are those situations where you get jumped on realistically? Probably while you are involved in a team fight. When the dude's sneaking up on you or comes from a weird angle/above or something, you wouldn't even notice whether his skill is instant or if he sat there behind the boulder or pillar for half a second before leaping at you.

Did you for example really notice the cast time nerf of Rev's Shackling Wave? I don't honestly if I fight against Rev. Rev's usually just engage in a (team) fight where they can have an easy target that's probably already exhausted its kit and therefore can't do shit against them. That's probably also the reason why everybody percieved Rev as broken af pre-nerfs honestly*. Now, the day the Shackling Wave cast time nerf came I stopped playing Rev because the additional 0.5s threw me off SOO MUCH. Especially since Rev relies on dodging a lot I just kept canceling SW and it felt so clunky and slow playing it.

I would agree with giving insta casts a cast time if the majority of skills had them since I think it would be a complete guessing game at this point. But I honestly can't think about another insta cast gap closer than Thief Steal, Guard Sword#2 (or 3?) and Guard Judge's Intervention if I'm honest. And imo that's not even worth arguing about. Steal is like the single most useful tool a thief can bring to any fight, mainly for the boon rip/share and instant daze. Giving steal even 1/4s cooldown would completely kill thief tbh, not that thieves are in a very good spot anyway. Just like mesmer thief can be as bad as you want it, it will still be percieved as a cancerous class because of the playstyle no matter what.

And as for guardian sword teleport.... It's the most obvious engage ever. 99% of all guards with sword will spam that skill button while running towards you until they are in reach, it's unbelievably predictable. And this is probably the only case where you could actually counterplay it so I don't really think it's necessary to nerf that either.

It's also not like those skills are heavy bursts or anything, steal for example barely does damage and even this only when you use the Mug trait, otherwise it's literally no damage at all.

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > @"Fueki.4753" said:

> > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > Actually PvPers in this game, according to an Anet dev, only represent about 10% of the population.

> >

> > How many of these 10% actually play the mode for the PvP part though?

> > They probably also included people like me, who do one match per day to try and do the dailies for rewards.

> >

>

> > @"Fueki.4753" said:

> > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > Actually PvPers in this game, according to an Anet dev, only represent about 10% of the population.

> >

> > How many of these 10% actually play the mode for the PvP part though?

> > They probably also included people like me, who do one match per day to try and do the dailies for rewards.

> >

>

> I think they were talking about 10% of people who were predominantly PvP.

I'm actually really surprised by 10% tbh. Expected a much smaller percentage. I mean.. sPvP is a 5v5 only game mode, not like WvW where you have entire guilds zerging around or PvE with raid guilds and stuff.

Especially if it's true that 10% predominantly play sPvP.

I mean.. I guess nobody really expects an MMO to have 50% pvp players right? At least I don't.. so 10% is actually a lot from my point of view. Even if it includes casuals it's not as bad as I thought tbh.

But.. could as well just prove that GW2 in general isn't that popular anymore? Even tho it's still on pretty much every top3 / top5 list and definitely one of the best mmos - if not even the best out there.

> @"Teratus.2859" said:

> Thief.

>

> I hate stealth mechanics in pvp modes, totally kills the fun of it when someone can ambush you out of nowhere and has almost a guaranteed chance of fleeing when you gain the upper hand.

That's pretty much mesmer tbh. Since when are thieves using stealth in sPvP again? D/P and rifle nerfs killed stealth builds on thief (in sPvP -WvW still has some). S/D doesn't use stealth at all (Cloak and Dagger is very occasionally, you wouldn't want to spend the amount of initiative to troll and if he does he's probably an easy kill tbh) and if someone's brave enough to play something like S/P or Staff then there's also pretty much 0 stealth access. Haven't seen a rifle deadeye in a pretty long time in sPvP let alone a power d/p build.

As a side note: I don't include condi thief since this is just full cancer, won't even start arguing about that. But condi in general in pvp imo.

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > @"UNOwen.7132" said:

> > > @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > > Be nice if the geniuses at anet developed and implemented a rank system for pvp where people can't wreck ur rank by afk'ing and match manipulating like oh I donno a ranking on individual perfomance. Maybe they should fix the issues in the modes they have first lol games a joke right now.

> >

> > Yes, because ranking on individual performance is totally doable. I mean, even in games like league, where stats say a lot more than they do in sPvP, riot investigated it and came to the conclusion "yeah it would be so insanely inaccurate youre more likely to be right just by flipping coins", but somehow its gonna work in sPvP. Of course it isnt, ranking by "individual performance" is a stupid idea that is literally impossible.

>

> How is ranking a player on their own performance inacurate? How is being awarded points for decap,fullcap, revives,assists and kills inaccurate? At least if ur matched up with a player that has the same score average u kno they got their rank by actually doing something in their previous matches as those arnt just handed out to people carried by their team. Every fps I've played tracks those things(....)

Because then everybody would just go for max rating all the time no matter what. Most of the time it's better to just leave the node (unless you're a bunker or sidenoder and confident you can hold the point) but ppl would stop rotating properly because they get better rating when they can hold on to the point, maybe even get kills from defending but rather die because they simply can't 1v3 with scourge or something idk. Since you've already mentioned FPS games, that's also the reason why Valve for example doesn't publish the stuff they factor in for rating - NOTHING in csgo regarding the mmr is visible. Almost the same in Star Craft II (where you can see your mmr but nothing else).

Also how would you weigh those things? Is 1 kill worth 5 offense points or is 1 defense point worth 2 kills or what? Either way, no matter how you make those coefficients up, you'll always have some classes that won't get a lot of rating this way. There is a lot of other relevant stuff aside from stats and I'd even argue that stats (let alone top stats as some ppl suggested in the past lul) is almost entirely irrelevant. Maybe it was the one guy who rotated far to split the team after everybody was brainlessly feeding into mid and enabled the team to take over again, maybe it was the one guy foolishly holding far against 3 ppl for just the one second long enough that his team was able to retake close and regrouped on mid and snowballed from there on, or maybe it was the one guy who managed to just run around and attract the enemy team's attention for long enough to stop the enemy team's momentum. In those scenarios they'd have contributed next to nothing based on your said stats but this might have just turned the game 180°. And at least I'd feel like this would be more than unfair if this particular guy single handedly stopping the enemy team's momentum or enabling your team to snowball gets less rating than the stupid ass warrior dude who brainlessly runs around thinking it was death match and just happened to pull of the most kills, even tho this resulted in your own team being outnumbered on the rest of the map and the enemy team even starting to snowball.

It's the same with those guys in counter strike who just stand around somewhere until everyone on their team is dead and then sneaking up on enemies, managing to kill 1 or 2 ppl each round but ultimately throwing the game because if he would have hold the angle on mid they'd have probably won the rounds, even tho he might get killed without a kill in the round. Those ppl are usually also the ones force buying every round (sometimes even requesting drops if they are broke) and keeping the entire team's money management out of sync. I would **hate** to see this guy getting less rating loss than me just because he had 20:15 at the end of the match whereas I only have 10:15 or something, even tho he was the non-teamplay-oriented guy who is mainly responsible for our loss. Stats don't mean shit in games.

@topic: I don't think we need new modes NOW tbh and I also don't mind Capture. Actually I prefer Capture over every death match mode they could come up with.

Also Anet isn't really known for bringing new content fast so even if they'd start a new mode they probably wouldn't publish it for the next 3 years+.

Since Anet also stated in the past multiple times that 10v10 won't happen (at least not ranked) I wouldn't count on that thread cause anything other than a lot of hate between those ppl who direly await new content and those who cry for relatively "minor" adjustments like balance patches and maybe an overhaul to the rating and queueing system (because the rating system really needs an overhaul, just not like @"Psycoprophet.8107" suggested imho, because of my reasons above).

I certainly woulnd't mind a new pvp mode or honestly even a reworked 10v10, GvG (finally) or reworked Stronghold - even if they don't make it as ranked queue. For me at least it would be enough if Anet just made a UI lobby where you can enter your squad or guild to signal others "Hey, we are looking for a 10v10, if you want fight us" and then other groups can accept the challenge and the match starts. Maybe give reward track points and stuff, doesn't need to have shinies and certainly not pips but yea..

Considering we are still not able to close the map vote window after all these years ehhh, I don't think we will even get something like this before 2022 either, even if they'd start today.

Honestly, PvP is just beyond repair imo. Anet just can't keep update cycles short and even trivial stuff like a close button is apparently way too complex in GW2 to make it into a hotfix or in a regular update on a side note.

> @"Fueki.4753" said:

> > @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> > > @"Fueki.4753" said:

> > > Obviously not.

> > > The PvP player base already is a joke size.

> > > What we need is not more modes that just shrink the player by dividing it across more modes.

> > > We need proper balance, better matchmaking and downsides to duo-queueing.

> >

> > so you didn't read the op but only the thread title... lol.

>

> It's not some simple fixes that PvP needs, it's massive changes to the balance, which Arenanet has proven again and again not to do.

> After years of neglect, I doubt it'll ever revitalize.

I agree 100%, tho I still voted with yes since I think we shouldn't treat the forums like a priority list. Not every suggestion should be implemented immediately.

While I also think we need a massive overhaul to a lot of things regarding sPvP (not only balance but also match making, the rating system, queues, etc) I also think that reworking the other existing - yet not played - game modes should be somewhere on Anet's implementation list.

And making more game modes viable would certainly not hurt the playerbase, it would probably lure in those ppl who don't want to play conquest. Anet's top priority should without a question still be to make PvP in general more enjoyable but yea.

Nope, unfortunately Anet decided it was a good idea to completely ban full team queue. You can only queue in a ranked match either solo or with 1 other buddy.

Mixed queue (solo players against full team and stuff) was cancer in the earlier days, true, but instead of splitting the queues Anet just banned everything else than solo/duo (there have been some hiccups with solo only for a while or solo with rating limited duo and stuff but yea)..

You can only play unranked with more than 1 friend unfortunately (which should work just like queueing solo, one starts the queue and everyone else simply needs to accept).

Sorry to disappoint you and your group.

Easy pick: Mesmer. Not because they are particularily broken but I just hate the clones and illusions and their ability to break targeting, especially when they go invisible too.

It's just pure cancer to fight them imo, no matter if 1v1 or in a team fight.

While I think I'm actually not too bad at figuring out quickly who the actual player character is, the necessity to do this is just bullshit imo.

And I dislike clones not only for the visual clutter I think it's also the most important utility that enables mesmer to sprial out of control if there's some broken trait or anything. Mobility is also extremely good, especially in-fight.

While I'm not a big fan of TDM for GW2 I'd love to see some changes to Stronghold since I think the game mode in theory is pretty nice. Not that I'd like to play it ranked but yea, I even very occasionally still play it nowadays.

> @"djemben.6924" said:

> Remember: there are already ways to farm keys outside of buying them! ... a fact that is being largely ignored by those claiming profit losses would be a major factor.

True but is there another method to actually farm keys than the weekly story mission key? I honestly don't know, if there is please correct me.

If not then the answer is easy: Since the key is heavily time gated and you can only do it once per week, there's nothing you can grind for and keep until you need it. It also requires you to permanently keep a character slot free so you can restart the mission every week.

Now the problem with a cash shop-y reward track in comparison to the existing farm method is I'd assume Anet would need to rotate the rewards just like black lion chest content, just to keep the stuff at least somewhat valuable so ppl keep on spending money or gold on keys. And if this is the case then the whole system could easily be exploited by just saving the daily pvp potions until something actually valuable is in the rotation. And if there wouldn't be a rotation then the stuff you'd get would probably become worthless pretty damn fast. So without any changes to the actual underlaying reward track system (and other systems like for example you need pvp potions for guild halls and stuff) it would only result in a lose-lose situation.

Also on a side note:

> @"djemben.6924" said:

> (...) but will gladly pick up the outfit or weapon skin using gold-gem exchange if needed. Keys are such a waste of money / gold

You do realize that by exchanging gold for gems you are actively keeping the exchange rate low, right? So everyone who's converting gold to gem actually makes gold less valuable in comparison and therefore even less ppl can afford the cash shop stuff via ingame gold, therefore ppl have a bigger incentive to actually pay real money.

So even tho you are not using real money or spend the gems on keys you are still supporting Anet earning money.

Also, yes of course, keys are a big waste of money but it's the same reason why casinos, lottery or basically any form of gambling are as popular as they are. Even tho the vast majority just makes losses, the hope you are the 1% actually making profit of it or getting the stuff you want keeps a lot of ppl going.

That's the entire point of gambling, same with ecto gambling ingame. It's just psychology. People have a distorted reality. If you have a 1 in a billion chance to win the lottery everyone's like "**I** will be the ONE!!" but when you have like a 1 in 10000 chance to get cancer because of smoking or something everyone's like "Naah dude, I'll be fine, whatever".

> I am merely asking a question: Would a Black Lion Reward Track be viable?

Only Anet can answer that tbh but as far as I can see, I'd assume it would have a pretty bad impact on several levels aspects of the game. I don't have evidence, it's just an educated guess so I won't go into detail here.

But as I said, as long as Anet doesn't comment on this (and I'm 99,9% sure they won't) we don't know and I would assume this will never come.

> @"Icemanfrost.5428" said:

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > Honestly if someone is mocking, even if it's just saying "Boom" after a burst kill or something I'm instantly blocking the person. I just find it extremely annoying, it's just distracting and therefore imo unsportsmanlike behavior. Some people even call this toxic already but I don't think it's toxic, just annoying.

> >

> > And I was in a pvp guild as well but left because I had issues with the guild leader. It was for plat 2+ only, don't know if anyone was mocking around there or even if there were any rules in this regard.

> > You might have just been in the wrong guild maybe, I mean every guild has their own rules and chances are there's a pvp guild out there where you can mock around without breaking the rules. That being said I think PvP guilds are pretty unnecessary. Of course the social aspect is still there but the sPvP content is just too little and too confined to justify a dedicated guild imo. I mean.. The only two things that are relevant are ranked and ATs. Ranked is limited to duo Q and ATs are - relatively speaking - extremely infrequent. So as long as there isn't a huge overhaul to the tournament system there is just no need to form a dedicated public pvp guild imo. And I doubt that Swiss would actually change anything, chances are these tournaments are also time gated with several hours waiting time in between and if this is really the case then it's just as worthless as ATs imo. But well... we don't know yet.

>

> That's too sensitive."Instantly blocking them"

Why? I just don't like getting mocked, why should I just tolerate it if I can easily shut it down without any hard feelings. The other person can happily continue and I don't have to endure it, I see this as a win-win.

It's like a fly buzzing around my face all the time. I'm not offended but it but I'd still prefer the fly either away from me or dead nonetheless.

> I've had people do the same thing to me. There are times when I said it to people and they came back from losing to actually winning.

For me this has literally nothing to do with winning or losing, it's just bad sportmanship imo. I also don't care if the mocking person is on my or the other team or if the mocked person is me or someone else, I just don't want to have it in my chat since I simply find it distracting.

> We're playing a video game and you are taking it way too personally. It's not like I am personally insulting them with cuss words. I am just being expressive with my joy.

I'm not taking it personally at all, if I would I'd start arguing but that would require me to actually care. And while it's not insulting, it's spiteful nonetheless.

> Now if you are losing a match and I say "Boom!" after I downed you will it hurt or damage your long term? No it will not. Will it be slightly annoying and irate you if you're losing a match? for sure. But let's keep things in perspective. You won't be damaged after the match from my words. It won't hit you like acid and there will be no long mental pain.

No of course not. Like I said eariler it has nothing to do with winning or losing or me getting butthurt because I'm taking it personally or anything. I think I don't have to repeat myself again.

> @"Whitworth.7259" said:

> I have a work friend and sometimes we'll play a few games together but he's always insisting on playing ranked. Im usually around plat1 and he's never been out of silver. He's a nice guy but when we play together my rating always tanks and I can't bring myself to say no. I don't want to come across as arrogant so just play anyway then soloq back up through gold over the next week.

For this reason I've just made a f2p account. You obviously don't have access to elite specs but there are quite a few really good core builds out there. Should be more than viable enough if you're plat against silver players.

Playing core builds only was also a good way of getting used to other classes/specs/playstyles for me.

Honestly if someone is mocking, even if it's just saying "Boom" after a burst kill or something I'm instantly blocking the person. I just find it extremely annoying, it's just distracting and therefore imo unsportsmanlike behavior. Some people even call this toxic already but I don't think it's toxic, just annoying.

And I was in a pvp guild as well but left because I had issues with the guild leader. It was for plat 2+ only, don't know if anyone was mocking around there or even if there were any rules in this regard.

You might have just been in the wrong guild maybe, I mean every guild has their own rules and chances are there's a pvp guild out there where you can mock around without breaking the rules. That being said I think PvP guilds are pretty unnecessary. Of course the social aspect is still there but the sPvP content is just too little and too confined to justify a dedicated guild imo. I mean.. The only two things that are relevant are ranked and ATs. Ranked is limited to duo Q and ATs are - relatively speaking - extremely infrequent. So as long as there isn't a huge overhaul to the tournament system there is just no need to form a dedicated public pvp guild imo. And I doubt that Swiss would actually change anything, chances are these tournaments are also time gated with several hours waiting time in between and if this is really the case then it's just as worthless as ATs imo. But well... we don't know yet.

> @"Yannir.4132" said:

> > @"Saharo Gravewind.5120" said:

> > As FB I don't initiate fights against Spellbreakers, they usually come to me while I'm capping home waiting for my team to respawn. I try to hold off until help comes, but is it better to just give up the cap and try to run? Regardless of what class I'm on I find that like 50% of the time help doesn't come, so I might as well have a class that can actually kill Spellbreakers since they appear so often.

>

> In that sitution I'd just give the cap up and go directly to your respawning allies.

> People probably see you fighting that Spellbreaker on point and think you are okay there when you are not, and go for another node instead(if they aren't just auto-running to mid). Giving up the node is a signal to your teammates to do something about it.

Exactly what I was thinking. Of course you might get some retards as team mates who then flame you for leaving the node but ehh..

In this case I'd suggest holding on to the point (ideally capped but if it gets decapped it's not too bad either. just don't let them cap it) and leave as soon as you (are either afraid of dying or) see your team mates coming out of the spawn. Because Xv1-ing a spellbreaker is in general a pretty bad idea especially considering you've probably just completely lost map control (since your mates were on cooldown and the enemy probably captures mid and far by now and you are already defending close alone), since the entire point of a side noder is to waste as much time from as many enemies as possible.

If you really want that point defended/capped you could also ping your node, most of the time people will then come by.

Just don't spam the pings as it starts to get annoying pretty quickly imo and a lot of people (me including) are getting pissed when someone's constantly pinging stuff.

And as for p/p thief: You can still play it but it doesn't work in every matchup. If your enemy team has a lot of range dps or projectile blocks/reflects you will perform pretty poorly. However, if you can sneak up and gank into a team fight you can actually melt everyone pretty fast, especially scourges and firebrands. Just be aware of any panic reflects and stuff.

And if you decide to play thief I'd actually recommend primarily using shortbow against spellbreaker since you can maintain quite some distance and dodge stuff like Bull's Charge, Shield Bash and the.. ehh Greatsword#3 pretty well while you can also can deal a lot of damage with shortbow#2. People tend to underestimate how well you can perform with shortbow since it often gets narrowed down to just shortbow#5 for mobility.

6. Stay close to a point if your team fights there so you can support each other, but don't just blindly stand in the node circle as you'll be an easy target for AoE.

7. Rather let the enemy decap/cap the node instead of blindly rushing to the point and dying over and over again, especially if you know you can't win the fight alone and nobody on the minimap seems to rotate towards you. Also don't blame your team then, rotate accordingly and help somewhere else, you may snowball away and retake the point easily.

8. You don't need a tripple cap, 2 points are enough to take and keep the lead, if your team manages to keep the third point neutral even better. But don't spread out across the map after you've capped the second point or something. Stay within your half of the map and just defend, THEY have to take action to reclaim nodes, not you.

9. If you're getting snowballed, don't simply give up. You can even come back from 400:200 games and still win. If your team has been killed on mid twice before it won't work on the third try either. Rather try to split the opponent's attention and try to outnumber them at some point. You may be able to snowball yourself.

10. Improve your map awareness and general awareness about your current situation. If your mates rotate away from the team fight don't just stay and die, rotate away as well. Or if you 1v1 or something be aware of if you're getting +1'ed soon (like if you are on far and your team just got killed on mid, you're gonna have a bad time soon if you just stick to far)

11. If you have someone in your team who's flaming just block the player. I find it really distracting if someone spams the team chat and especially if they are insulting or something, everyone gets involved and the team play suffers from it.

12. Play according to your role. So for example if you play Sw/Sw Shiro/Glint Rev you shouldn't be the first one to engage into a mid fight or as a Scourge you shouldn't go decapping far. This is especially true if you are doing someone else's job by doing that. So in the example of the far decapping scourge - who might be too impatient for the thief to decap - he is actually hurting more than it is worth. By rotating to far he forces someone from the enemy team to also follow to far (maybe even 2) and by doing that blocks the node for the thief.

13. In addition to point 11: Let your team mates do their job as they think is good. Just because the thief doesn't immediately rotate to far doesn't mean he is lazy or has bad map awareness. Maybe there's a side noder camping on far and he can't decap. Or maybe your sidenoder is just straight afk-ing on close, not because he's actually afk but because the enemy thief/mesmer/whatever is constantly around and decapping as soon as the node is unattended for a couple of seconds.

14. In addition to the previous 2 points: Don't assume the worst from your team mates and if you actually notice something they could improve on you can also give them kind advices instead of flaming them. More often than not a lot of people are willing to accept your suggestion if you treat them like an actual human being and not a degenerated monkey.

15. - 100. Just don't be a dick. Also it's a game and you will always have some retards in your matches, you just have to get over it and rather take a break inb4 toxicity consumes you.

My wild guess would be that the same sex conversation options were only a bug since I didn't notice anything similar in the game or PoF somewhere else - other than Kasmeer and Marjory of course - (although I have to admit I couldn't care less about story and NPC interactions and stuff so I'd have missed it with like 100% certainty) and some random fix to something else fixed an "issue" with spawning the correct model. Like it now spawns the originally intended male model if the NPC is looking for a woman or the other way around.

Honestly.. You can never be sure about something not being bugged. Just remember the change to thief's heartseeker where the leap range got decreased when you angled the camera down. This has been a known and widely used mechanism when playing d/p thief (it was actually thought of as being an actual feature) yet Anet figured that they had to fix this bug after like.. 7 years of persisting.

Or maybe even since you said "but the last three times I've done it this month I noticed that none of the npcs asked for same-gender partners", maybe there aren't ALWAYS same gender options (why would they all be gay, it's at least as unlikely as nobody being gay) and it just happened that you simply got 3 hetero only options in a row. Unless Anet specifically gives a statement about the intended behaviour or changes to the implementation, or we have A LOT more data points we shouldn't just assume Anet had put in work to remove same-sex interactions.

Like I said, it could also be just a random change to something unrelated which caused the previously intended behaviour to bug out, or it was previously bugged and now an unrelated fix also fixed this issue. Really creepy side effects can occur in software. We simply don't know.

How about splitting the queues into solo only, mixed (4+1 and 2+3 only) and full team only?

Oh no wait.. the population is too low right? Guess we then have to wait for enough people to leave so the population gets low enough to not even sustain solo queue with reasonable matchmaking/queue times even during peak hours anymore and Anet can finally shut the whole game mode down.