yorkey.4215

Wait can't you just unselect the other modes on the vault screen and have the dailies all be PVP? Y'all just missing this?

I think the best meta roles will be: 1. wintrading 2. alt-duo-ing 3. que dodging

With the declining PVP population, the problems caused by allowing duo-queuing in ranked is more evident than ever. For the uninitiated, here are the issues it causes: 1. Duos inherently handicap the matchmaker when trying to create balanced matches. Where a more balanced match would have existed by splitting two good players onto each team, it forces the matchmaker to put them together on one team. This would not be as much of a problem if the population weren't so low that the matchmaker can rarely find another good duo to balance out the teams. So when two 1700+ rating players duo queue together and the queue has gone on for 5, 6, 7 minutes+, the matchmaker can do nothing but put them together with three 1400 rating players against a team of five 1400 rating players (just an example, but generally what happens). Yes, if you're one of those people crying about going against MAT winners in your gold match that ended up 500-0, this is exactly what happened. 2. What's worse, even semi-good players will start queue dodging when they know a duo of good players is queuing. Say we have a plat 1500 player - he knows that a duo of 1700 streamers are queuing. The 1500 player will more often than not choose not to queue at the same time because the odds are he'll be placed against said 1700 duo and have no chance of winning. He would be MUCH more likely to queue if it were solo-queue only because he then knows the two 1700 players would be on separate teams and he'd have a chance to make an impact on either team. This throws the match quality further off for everyone. 3. Even more nefarious, there are some players who will abuse duo queue to get favorable games. The matchmaker looks at a duo and takes the AVERAGE of their rating when putting together teams. So two top players can take advantage of this by having one player get on an alt account that is much lower rated and so they get better players on their team. Some will even go out of their way to abuse this by throwing games on the alt account to keep its rating low, so that they can keep boosting their main account. All of these things absolutely happen with every ranked season, and anyone denying this is an absolute liar. And yes, I've been around long enough to know the history of how duo-queue was allowed to stay because top players wanted to play with their friends. Anet should pay attention though because the things above lead to a vicious cycle that causes the experience to become ever worse for the general population. Again, none of these problems would be so bad or exploitable if the population was even somewhat higher. But CMC or whoever, the population is so low now that you really have to re-evaluate.

Your post shows you don't know PVP well enough. You can have two legend level players duoing with one on a bronze alt, queuing off hours, and dodging other top players all at once, and you STILL WOULDN'T come close to a 112-8 record without wintrading. There is a certain degree of variability in shadow realm games that makes this almost mathematically impossible if you have 5 players (or bots) on each team playing legitimately. Trust me, from a P2 player who has played many seasons.

Rune of the Engineer and Sigil of Exposure might both be good options. The 7% damage modifier likely outweighs the power on Adventurer. The build lacks some endurance regen without Adventurer, but it may be manageable. As for sigils, the builds ability to crit is heavily reliant on former crits (firearms bleed traits, no scope) and Intelligence keeps this consistent. The power offered by Carrion is made relevant this way too (35%+ crit chance), allowing you to take on/stalemate cleanse heavy classes 1v1. Exposure does help your conditions stick, but I consider this more important when you're setting up big, bursty stacks. This build tends to have low, consistent stacks of conditions. If you do want to cover your conditions, Elixir Gun's Fumigate is a relatively low cd, on-demand, pulsing cover condi ability that applies both vulnerability and poison. Any additional vulnerability from Exposure would not help cover then. Thanks, your choices make sense. I want to add you in game to chat further. I've been testing and really feel Nades seem better than Flamethrower if you take the Explosives line.

Why not Rune of the Engineer? About the same condi dmg but with some toughness and the +7% damage modifier. Also sigil of exposure for another cover condi seems better than intelligence (you're gonna crit once in 10 seconds without it if you're trying to proc Incendiary Powder).