Fact or Fiction: Lower Tiers are less skilled than Higher Tiers

I've seen comments like 'you must be on T5 for your build to work' or 'if you were playing like this in T1 or T2, you are going to get killed'.There seems to be a conception that higher tier = more skilled than lower tiers.Is this the truth? or is it only a coverage issue?

Oh here we go....

There is no correct answer to this question.

'Fact' would be subjective in this case as there is no objective measure in the game for skill therefore making the term 'fact' in this case a misnomer.

Lol what even is this poll... higher tiers = more people = a larger amount of skilled people. Also many remnants of large guilds that once brought the server up. Its logic, not fact or fiction.

We have been in EU tiers 1-4 in recent months and there are only 2 main differences between higher and lower tier servers:

1 - higher tiers are more blobby2 - higher tiers care more about points

I have no idea what the "skill" is suppose to be. If the "more skillful" is about getting more points when enemy goes to sleep, then in general yes, higher tier servers have more people nightcapping stuff. They also tend to defend objectives, build siege, upgrade and repair more.

If the "skill" should point to the ability to fight, then in general, no, higher tier servers are all about blob vs blob fights where skills of each player have very little meaning. There are also no actual roaming in higher tiers as they easily bring 10-15 players to just flip the camp.

Skillful play has gone out the window long time ago since hot/pof builds carry players anyway.

Arguing about what is "skilled" in WvW is like comparing who is top of the special needs class, go see SC2, DOTA 2, etc for actual skilled PvP.

@FogLeg.9354 said:If the "skill" should point to the ability to fight, then in general, no, higher tier servers are all about blob vs blob fights where skills of each player have very little meaning. There are also no actual roaming in higher tiers as they easily bring 10-15 players to just flip the camp.

I really dont agree. Going up and down in tiers (even if just meeting a server a tier below or a tier above) there is often noticable difference when roaming (I roam in 1-4 mans pretty much every day, currently T1) and saying there is no roaming in high tiers is a straight up lie. As I said above, much of it is simply due to numbers, more blobs for sure but also more smaller guilds and roamers. Some are still just as shitty as always, some sit on siege all day and some classes are most definetly carried by class mechanics rather than skill cough healing signet hark.

Note that I can only reference EU. Dont know how US looks.

Lower tiers are mashed into higher tiers with the linkings so it's redundant now....

Otherwise lower tiers way back when were a lot more skilled in combat due to the fact of low populations and having to learn how to handle yourself against other small groups rather than relying on the 1 spam when you roll over a 15 man group with 40 people...

@sephiroth.4217 said:Lower tiers are mashed into higher tiers with the linkings so it's redundant now....

Otherwise lower tiers way back when were a lot more skilled in combat due to the fact of low populations and having to learn how to handle yourself against other small groups rather than relying on the 1 spam when you roll over a 15 man group with 40 people...

What this guy is saying here!

Where is the option where there are good and bad people across all tiers?

there are good and bad in both. but higher tiers are.more focused on holding defending and has more coverage.

Tiers are a function of population and coverage. No correlation with skill.

Where’s the 3rd option of they’re all stupid?

Higher tier has more people and it feels like more of them have absolutely no clue what to do if there isn’t a commander around to tell them what to do. Lower tiers have less people but it seems a higher number of these people know what to do with themselves and aren’t used to a commander or cross map unified strategies you sometimes see in higher tiers.

All of it is dominated by blobbing and mash button to win builds.

I can't answer the questions with the options provided.

At small scale, there's basically no difference that correlates with tier/ranking anymore, and I'm not sure if there ever was much pf a correlation.

I really never play large scale, and while I'd be tempted to say that I'd expect higher tier servers to have more highlyhighly skilled large scale forces due to greater practice opportunities, the truth is the population disparity isn't as great as it once was. So I have no idea about large scale.

Why are there only 2 options on this poll in which both are definitive?

This is a trick question. There is no skill in WvW.

I've played since launch and T1-T8 old school system and the new. All tiers have great players overall.

I will say this though, the lower the tier the more careful and mindful you have to be about your build and play style. I've seen days where no tag was up on some lower tier servers but roamers were about and they were very competent players. I think my best experience was on AR where a tag was nowhere to be found and very low on the tier, but a call out would come and 10-15 guys who were random roamers having no communication/TS/etc would slowly rip apart a 30+ man group/zerg. Most of the time they wouldn't even talk, you/they just knew what to do. It was weird and fun at the same time.

In terms of zerg composition and organization, fact. Just because higher tiers have a healthier population and can afford to pick and chose.

In terms of individual player skill, fiction AF. There are good and bad players scattered across all tiers, the pool at higher tiers might be bigger but the % ratio remains the same. On top of that lower tiers are generally attuned to fight outnumbered, which in the case of the good players gives them an edge if they move to higher tiers.

I have ~ 5 years worth of WvW roaming with various classes, on all tiers from 8 to 1 (currently) to substantiate my claim.

Shoutout to @IcyFire for the good old 3vZ that were likely the reason why I stuck with this game for so long.

I would wager that on average they are all about the same.

Fact, whenever tier1 is matched against lower tiers our 5 man groups easily destroy their 30 man zergs. Also, when you duel them individually their skill is trash and you can immediately feel it, you can also see them backpeddaling etc....

Also today we don't really have low tier, because the small servers are paired with the most populated ones.

It's an oddly phrased question. The fact is that some of the worst players are in Tier 1 and some of the best in the bottom tier, just like anywhere.

It's more likely that highly-skilled players gravitate towards T1-2 servers, but some prefer to play with friends and don't care which world.

Every server has decent and bad players.... some server have just more people, big servers that only ktrain smaller servers are the worst ones.

But i guess that is also a side effect of a game being bad designed/planned as well.

HIgh tier servers relly more on build gimmicks than anything else, guild relly in the poor balance ANet takes to the game, in favor of PVE players, lower tier servers are players that need to adap every time their sever go up or down... and some just get ktrained most time of the match due how bad WvW design is...

TDLR: there are no skilled players in GW2, they already moved to other games.... or stayed in GW1

@Luranni.9470 said:This is a trick question. There is no skill in WvW.

This would be my answer as well.

Gonna vote for Higher - just judging by the quality of roamers I tend to find on higher vs lower.

In higher tiers, it seems like every roamer is running a dedicated roaming build and is fairly experienced in WvW

On lower tiers, I tend to find lots of low-rank players that seem like they're new to WvW and pvp combat in general - can regularly 1vX them.

However, I do know a lot of good guilds that have transferred down for smaller fights. The zerg fight combat may well be better at lower tiers.