Ivarian.9018

Ranking in PVP is so RNG and disconnected from actual player performance that wintrading is maybe the only reliable option for top leaderboard players to stay in the top ranks. This is certainly why Anet is not punishing it.

Yes this post is obviously a troll same Treb is in fact.

You can try to find any benefit to using treb but if I am in the ennemy team, the second I see you going treb, I know it is 4 v 5 on the field, Treb is no threat, and I'll go for a 3 cap immediately. My only worry with this thread is having somebody taking it seriously ending up in my team.

> @"Aihao.5824" said:

> i hope they would fix this bunkermeta, rly fed up with this kitten. i have to play properly with minimum of mistakes, while bunkeridiot does his faceroll and does more damage than me.

> If i want some roam/dps i sacrifice damage and survivability, bunkers has both of that. I'd like to add some punishing mechs versus them, such a dumb kitten here, game lost sustain, its no reason to choose between berserker or marauder, who cares, if there's no changes with ur damage. Pvp now is a torture, its about more ppl to leave this game mode, ur auto dmg is around 200-300, kitten ridiculous

Completely true and it is not said enough. **The current state of the game balance caters to braindead bunker / cheese builds that give such an advantage that you can predict the outcome of a match just looking at both team comps 90% of the time**. The 10 other % is RNG based because of a completely idiotic MMS.

It is not PvP anymore, just Build vs Build. Player input is negligible. I can only say Bravo to the PVP team and ask them, if they are decent players only, if they are honestly enjoying their own game and would recommend anybody to play PvP semi-seriously ?

You take 1 Nec + 1 rev +1 tempest + 2 rando vs 2 thief s+ 1 ranger + 2 rando. Well, do you think you will enjoy that match if you are in the second team?

It happens to me yesterday evening in a ranked match with a message saying that the connection was lost. 5 minutes before it happened to one of my teammate then me. Maybe some server issue or overloaded Internet.

What I do is not trying to reconnect immediately because the match is lost anyway and maybe my team will not lose points from that match.

> @"shadowpass.4236" said:

> Forcing solo que down the throats of other players won't change anything except kitten them off.

Well, the contrary is also true.

I am not advocating for removing DuoQ but Anet must enforce game parity in ranked where Duo can only plays against another Duo.

In 2V2, the advantage of DuoQ vs SoloQ is such that mixing both Q style in an individual based leaderboard has little meaning.

There are many reasons why the MMS is not suited today to match equally skilled teams being Solo or Duo. Let's not debate about it but the fact is it doesn't work and Solo Queing is becoming the antithesis of competitive PVP.

I played on a new alt account recently. I was placed silver 2 and climbed to gold 3 which is my usual rating. I did not climbed that fast as I would have expected. I got maybe a 60% winning rate and surprisingly I did not get many matches with throwers or AFK (which I started to encounter around gold 2). But what really makes me question the MMS is that out of the 40% matches I lost, most of them were 100s / 500 while my team did try their best.

What i want to point out here is that I was playing on an alt with a much lower rank that my true rank meaning that these matches we lost 100 / 500 were lost from the start no matter what the team could have done as extra efforts or coordination. In my opinion, the MMS is not suitable for the current population and is feeding the game with impossible to win / lose matches to favor queue time over quality game.

**I'd rather wait a little longer for quality matches rather than waste 10 minutes playing a complete unfair match. While this balance patch is a good sign of some attention being brought into PVP, the main issue of PVP today is the matchmaking which exacerbates balance issue perception and with the slower pace of PVP gameplay incoming, it is going to be even more frustrating.**

It would be interesting to see the stats of the number of matches played in unranked compared with ranked. I am not particularly waiting for the patch but I did 9 placement matches out of 10 that's all and I don't bother finishing it, unranked just seems to offer more quality matches than ranked this season. Less toxicity, less AFK and better matchmaking overall I noticed (maybe chance or less match manipulation).

> @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> Yea I completely agree with this. And I didn't argue against your opinion or op, I just questioned your challenge to sindrener because I don't really understand what this would be supposed to show? That queues are worse during off-hours than during peak times, so there are less people who can be matched against so the match maker has to increase rating deviation, so you also get a lot more plebs as team mates and/or better players as opponents? Everybody could predict that without a legendary player showcasing it.

> I also don't really see the point in blaming someone for playing only at times where it's a bit more unlikely to get complete [insert negative term of choice] as team mates. It only makes sense to do that.

Sindrener made only sarcastic comments on this thread which is about the exasperation of a part of the PVP community who sees the fun factor of competing in PVP ruined by other players behavior. It reflects that the community that makes PVP fun for **everybody** i.e. players who want to invest time and have fun in an action combat MMO oriented competitive environment is decreasing to a level where the fun factor lies on casual players who don't care and strategist players using the current state of PVP to their advantage (it has always been but the advantage gained is much more noticeable today). Well, I can see where it leads if things don't change and I don't think anybody will like it.

So let me summarize : OP and certainly most of the players participating in this thread are the players we want to keep playing in PVP. Being condescending to these players is being short-sighted.

Deleted...Message posted twice.

> @"Draconious.2751" said:

> I could see smothering auras being changed slightly to make fire weaver more vulnerable to condis and thus the sustain worse.

If condi removal is nerfed from the fire trait line, there will be not much for it compared with playing water. The condi removal aspect of the fire weaver allows him to fight high condi pressure builds like Mirage and Necro. I will even say that fire weaver is one of their counter today. Let's not forget that a fire weaver must be in close range to apply its burns and is therefore exposed to condi bursting himself when he does not have any sustain to compensate except some evades.

DuoQ must be removed from ranked! Simple. I even don't see why it has been introduced in the first place except as a poor attempt to revitalize the PVP game mode. The only thing it introduces is a winning factor too complex for the MMS to handle properly. Today, duoQ provides more consistent wins in Ranked and I believe that it is almost compulsory to play some matches in duoQ to stay or climb above plat 1.

The argument that the MMS puts always a duoQ against another duoQ is false. One of the last ranked game I played this week end had 2 duoQ against 1 duoQ for example.

+1 for a teamQ PVP game mode! Maybe a sort of automatic tournament game mode where the game will launch a tournament as soon as x teamQ are ready. A Swiss based tournament mode will come handy there (hint, hint).

> @"Zawn.9647" said:

> > @"Regon Phoenix.8215" said:

> > > @"Vithzerai.3291" said:

> > > Skills and traits have varied multipiliers and scaling, so just nerfing everything by a flat percentage isn't very feasable - some things will be out of proportion.

> > > And that aside, just nerfing healing won't be enough to stop everything from just surviving indefinitely if you nerf damage so hard.

> >

> > Did i said to reduce some multipliers?

> > Just a blanket reduction on damage done. Everyone will be scaled completely equally in reductions, thus the current classes would work the same and stack the same, but their damage and healing would be way lower.

> > Also, why "nerfing healing won't be enough to stop everything from just surviving indefinitely"? Currently immortal builds are immortals because of massive amounts of self-healing they can produce. Scale down all healing and their survival will scale down as much as damage of other classes.

> > It seems you have massive problems with math, so i will help you out:

> >

> > **Scenario 1** (about classes who can 1-shot nearly anyone)

> > Class A does 8k damage per sec.

> > Class B does 4k healing per sec.

> > This means that class A does 100% more damage than class B does healing. Technically, class B loses 4K HP per sec, so a class with 20k HP dies in 5 sec (however, in reality it is closer to 1 sec).

> > After nerf, class A: 8000 x 20% = 1.6k damage per sec

> > After nerf, class B: 4000 x 15% = 0.6k healing

> > So, after blanket nerf class A does 166% more damage than class B does healing. However, 1-shoting becomes impossible and glass cannons will be forced to play more tactically instead of relying on one trick, because to kill anyone with 20k HP would take up at least 20 sec.

> > Basic math shows that it would solve issue with 1-shot classes and make the game WAY MORE focused on tactical and skillful play.

> > **Scenario 2** (about immortal builds)

> > Class A does 4k damage per sec.

> > Class B does 5k healing per sec.

> > This means that class B does 25% more healing than class A does damage, so class B is technically unkillable by class A no matter what.

> > After nerf, class A: 4000 x 20% = 0.8k damage per sec

> > After nerf, class B: 5000 x 15% = 0.75k healing

> > So, after blanket nerf class A does 6% more damage than class B does healing. This would allow class A to kill class B and would solve the problem with immortal classes, but it would not completely delete viability of such classes, because for class A to kill class B (assume it have 20k HP once again) it would take up to 400 sec.

> > Oh, look, math solves everything once again.

>

> best solution... i dont agree with the numbers itself, but its a matter of tweaking. (400s to kill someone is really close to immortal to me)

Drastically reducing damage and healing will just see kitting play (i.e. mobility or sniper builds) becoming predominant and low mobility classes will become useless.

> @"Arheundel.6451" said:

> > @"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

> > > @"Arheundel.6451" said:

> > > > @"Grimjack.8130" said:

> > > > > @"Megametzler.5729" said:

> > > > > > @"Grimjack.8130" said:

> > > > > > Twin Strike is really good, Fracturing Strike is REALLY good, and Stone Tide is really good too.

> > > > >

> > > > > The problem is that other classes have powercrept away. So while they are good in a core/HoT context, they are lackluster in PoF.

> > > > >

> > > > > Not too much. No need to overbuff ele. But some small adjustments in ranges, projectile speeds and QoL (casting backwards, some CDs...) would be great.

> > > >

> > > > Don't try to change my words when I say they are good skills. They aren't good in whatever context you're trying to put them in, I'm telling you they are straight up, good skills. You can't tell that because you don't see the same synergy that others do.

> > > >

> > > > Twin Strike is a key in the loop of both Fire and Water Weaver, that pushes your offensive capability to the max even when you're resustaining. Very few Weavers take advantage of where this skill is located and how to use it optimally, even popular Weaver youtubers completely skip over this skill.

> > > > Fracturing Strike is a two part hard hitting skill that has great synergy with Fresh Air, and its even a great skill in the rare Lightning Rod Scepter builds that people sometimes play. (also vuln.)

> > > > Stone Tide hits a ton, guaranteeing your Fresh Air proc when used on someone CCed or in the downstate, and stacks great Vulnerability dramatically buffing you and your teams downcleave or removes Aegis so harder hitting skills will land (Shatterstone).

> > > >

> > > >

> > >

> > > ...this whole post is just..cringe worthy

> >

> > Nice job explaining why it's cringe-worthy. I for the most part agree with Grimjack.

>

> The elementalist class is the only one without any in-built defensive mechanic and any resemblance of minimal sustain comes from raw stats alone, for this reason ele, the class is forced to always rely on bunker amulets to avoid being oneshotted on the spot, it's the same reason why scepter builds are just yolo builds for solo ranked low levels or group ganking in wvw.

>

> Secondly the skills he mentions if used by a full zerk ele do as much dmg as a demolisher ranger with lb AA, the latter will only have 3-4x more sustain and impact in game....from the 1200 ranger comfort.

>

> Maybe you and Grimjack want to reach the AT finals playing this amazing weaver burst build..or at the very least anywhere near plat 2

As a fellow Weaver PVP player, I disagree with that. You will rely less and less on your amulet for sustain the more you are able to optimize your built-in sustain mechanics and anticipate enemy moves. Take weakness and evades for example, they are built-in mechanics that can boost your sustain and let you maximize your damage. Of course, there are teams comp that require to use a bunker amulet sometimes because the enemy team condi or damage potential will be too high for your built-in mechanics alone.

Yes the same happened to me last week-end. I lost almost all my matches on Saturday. Was gold 3 down to Silver 3. Until this season, I have slowly increased my rank for the past 4 seasons I have been playing PVP. I was aiming at plat this season..

I played maybe 15 ranked matches on Saturday, I won 2 or 3. And since then, as I don't have time to play much, I play 1 or 2 matches in the evening with a 50% win rate... Indeed you better have a positive mind when the game decides that you are not any better than the average newcomer when you have over 2k matches behind you.

P.S.: I am not too serious about my rank, I prefer to play a good match, fair & balanced with good 1v1 fights rather than looking for winning matches only and dodging bad games.

I'll be careful about categorizing "Fight on points" and "Don't plus me" as misconceptions only.

While these principles should not be followed blindly in all situations, I see them being reminded more often in situations when they make sense rather than when they don't.

Myself, I will use the "Fight on points" when the team is being trolled by the enemy team into a team fight in the middle of nowhere when they have 2 or 3 points capped, it happens maybe not in Plat but i see it regularly in gold division.

I use "Don't plus me" when I am pushing far to decap, get into a 1v1 eventually and remove some pressure on the other nodes.

> @"Gundam Style.8495" said:

> * 4 v 5 matches due to leaver or dc. sol: end the game if the player reaches the max dc time. these games are not competitive, and no one should earn or lose points.

I agree. I am experimenting regular disconnection (like 1 game out of 15 approx.) when loading a pvp map while waiting in the PVP lobby and trying to connect to the map as fast as possible after a dc never work. I have to wait until the game stop trying to connect me to the map to be able to connect again and appear in the PVP lobby. I have strong gaming ethic and knowing that I am wasting the time of other gamers is really annoying me. For those times, yes, I think that it will be better if the game gets canceled if all players do not connect or at least if the option is proposed to the concerned team.

A big issue I have with this map is how often the camera view gets obscured by trees. It happens on Pier point and whenever you get in a fight below the trees on the middle-west side of the map (after red base).

I would not say that Ele has only one build. Maybe because the best known Ele build for PVP is considered as mediocre but there are quite a lot of different viable Ele builds playing in that category :) This is not sarcasm. Ele is mediocre in the hand of the average player but I believe that it has the capability to shine when played very well.

> @"whoknocks.4935" said:

> Tell me what you think of this build i am currently running while roaming.

>

> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQJAsdncMAt4i94CG5CM5iFWA7eLHmHzFJx8XFgIBcACAA-j1xHQBPVJIAOBAJS9H3oHAePAAVs/gSV+FAIBYmaeAw5Zemn5ZemHNPzz8MPzz8MPzz8MPSBUlWL-w

>

> Going full celestial is nice and all, but the damage is meh, so i am currently using full marshal trinkets and back as you can see, i lose toughness to gain lot of healing power, power and condi stats.

>

> The choice of focus off hand over dagger is because i love stun my enemy and get their boons with sigil of absorption which has no icd, dagger offhand maybe gives more damage but lose the utilities and you become so weak to ranged pressure, magnetic aura and focus air4 saved me lot of times against rangers.

>

> I tried a variant air water weaver using lighting rod, it works but the attunement swap become clunkier as you said in your post...

>

> so what you think? air water weaver is not viable at all?

If you want to play with Water trait line that is fine and it is a safer option than going with a more offensive build. Therefore, I have slightly adjusted your build to deal more damage but still having reasonable sustain (a bit less healing power, more condi damage & might generation and more condi cleanse). I have replaced focus with dagger (focus provides some good cc and damage mitigation and is better suited for offensive build in my opinion). You have the option to replace Woven Stride with Element of Rage for more damage and crit chance to the detriment of sustain and mobility.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQJAsYncMAt4i94CG5CM5iFWA7eLHmLzFJx8XFgIBcACAA-jVyHQBPVJ4AeAAuRPgSVCBgTAgK2fIpKdSk6PLRZQAgEgZqMFAnn5Zemn5Ze08MPzz8MPzz8MPzz8IFQVatA-w

The build provided by SoulSlavocracy.4902 is fine as well but because it lacks toughness and healing power it will require more skill to land your hits and burst combo and not ending up chaining evades, dodges and heals only.

> @"whoknocks.4935" said:

> Another thing... just theorycrafting im trying out a water air weaver lighting rod build, why everyone take arcane in every build? It doesn't feel that crucial or must have trait to survive or just for a 15 attunement recharge, so far water air combo works best for me... can you enlight me?

> Going arcane air weaver i lose too much sustain and healing from the water because im.not running a zerk mara heavy build, i still have some healing power stats..

In fact Arcane synergies so well with all areas of Weaver playstyle (evade, sustain, fast execution of skills combo) that not using it potentially reduces the overall efficiency of Weaver by a lot and in my opinion no other trait line can really do better on the versatility side for Weaver.

In term of sustain, using Water over Arcane is going to offer more healing, maybe more condition cleanse but it is not going to be a dramatic increase compared to Arcane traited 3 2 1. On the other hand, you are going to lose all the boons generation coming from Elemental Attunement and Elemental Contingency (Fury, Might, Protection, Swiftness (perma swiftness and might stacking by switching Air to Fire to Air...)) and the skills provided by Evasive Arcana on dodge (dealing or providing blind, fire, cripple or healing wave) plus the 15% reduction of attunment recharge time. Arcane reveals itself when you chain skills and atunments. For example, chaining an offensive combo over the following attunements: Air/Water then Fire then Earth and back to Air will keep providing/stacking boons. The following healing combo will be quite effective with Arcane (healing wave, regeneration and protection): switching to Water, dodge for healing wave, water 2 (for some healing, evade & water field), switching to Earth, earth 2 for blast finisher in water field (+ some protection boon uptime).

With Water, specialization, you will have to go into Water regularly to benefit from the specialization traits and you will lose pressure capability and pressuring your opponent is much more important as a melee Weaver than high healing capability. Indeed, if you can force the other player to play defensively rather than offensively, it will reduce the amount of damage to heal. If you stick to healing only, well your opponents is left with one option only, a very easy one: CC and damage.

Well, I was like you, trying to be a better roamer by engaging in duels in WvW maps as much as I could and trying to figure out the most efficient weaver build as a roamer after playing PVE only. Needless to say that I was constantly beaten to the point I was disgusted playing WvW and decided to play some PVP instead when i am not a PVP guy at all. While it can be very frustrating to learn Weaver in PVP, I can only confirm what Zhaid said, it is a very good school to improve your skill level, rotations mechanics and understanding what gear synergies well with what playstyle.

An example: when trying roaming in WvW initially I used to play a Sw/D FA build with high healing power and toughness and the more I was being beaten, the more I would put in healing power... Today, I would switch that to Sw/F LR build with good precision and ferocity for a high burst dueling playstyle. Not saying it is the best build for roaming but it will score me at least some kills :)

Yesterday I was playing some unranked games and noticed that I was looking at the number of players selecting Djinn's Dominion as a good indicator of the number of new PVP players in both teams. Unfortunately, I don't feel anybody would want to play in this map other than for the achievement or to try it for few games only.

I feel sorry that Anet devoted time on developing a bland map rather than on developing other features that could revitalize the PVP mode.

> @"eksn.7264" said:

> Of course it's not the ONLY factor. Everyone knows matchmaking gives you a fair share of "predetermined outcome" games. Across a few games, you might be stuck in a bad luck loop, but if you TRULY belonged in plat, there's no chance you'd stay in gold a whole season. People just need to accept that they don't play well enough to climb.

>

>

Talking about players who belong in plat does not really answer the question of how difficult it is to climb out of gold. It is not impossible of course and obviously players who ended up in plat managed to get there somehow. What I believe is that the current state of PVP plays against a good representation of rank vs skill where players are held back / carried in gold more than what they would be if all area of PVP were healthier in a fairness perspective (balance, queue, population, etc.).

After, it is more of a statement than anything. PVP is the way it is and trying to climb out of gold can be frustrating even for plat level players I'm sure (which I am not :D).

The argument that personal skill is the only determining factor to climb up ranks is interesting.

Let’s follow that logic:

In a 5v5 situation, it means that plat level players starting in gold division for example are going to carry 4 other players each match they win. Among these 4 other players, we can safely consider that some of them will end up at a higher rank than their true skill level. Then, when one of these players will play his next match, if only personal skill matter, he will make his team fail!

From this very simplified example, we can say that in order to climb up ranks, your personal skill (or I would rather say your “strength” level reflected by your build and skill) must surpass your current rank PLUS the handicap of playing with players of “strength” level below their rank or they will bring you down with them.

In a situation where class balance and PVP population is healthy, the handicap on players to climb up while they improve their game and skill through experience is relatively small. In a situation where class balance and PVP population is bad, the handicap to the “strength” level required to climb up becomes a limiting factor making rank progression a frustrating experience for players trying to improve their game and expecting their rank to go up .

I am sure that the MMS algorithm has some mechanisms to circumvent this handicap factor but I tend to believe that the current situation of PVP in GW2 has exceeded the capacity of the MMS to put up fair matches a majority of the time.

> @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:

> Some interesting data:

>

> 29.7% of the players who placed in the top half of gold (1350-1499) finished the season in plat or higher. Highest Finish: 1843

> 7.5% of the players who placed in the bottom half of gold (1200-1349) finished the season in plat or higher. Highest Finish: 1802

> 1.1% of the players who placed below gold (0-1199) finished the season in plat or higher. Highest Finish: 1680

> Lowest placement to hit plat: 686

Well, as I read these stats, it says that for the majority of the players (70% at least if you are gold), it is difficult to climb much higher than your initial placement. And I doubt we can say that the initial placement shows a good reflection of your level.

It would be interesting to have the same stats for players ending below the division they have been placed in at start.

Myself, I have been placed gold 2 at start, had a losing streak and spent the rest of the season to climb back to gold with the feeling that I was fighting against the MMS more than fighting against players of my level. Like if you must be able to carry the match by yourself if you want to increase your rating. And I am not at that level nor my class is.