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ResJudicator.7916

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  1. Or you . . . 1) Queue up first b/c queues take forever to pop at higher ratings. 2) Once queue pops, check your contacts. Are a bunch of people you want to avoid currently OUTSIDE of an active PvP game? If yes, decline queue b/c chances are their queue just popped as well, so your odds of getting matched with them is higher. If they're currently in a game, then accept the queue. From the video you posted from your stream, it seems like you have an (unfortunately) unique experience where people specifically throw when they get matched with you, due to some personal animus that they have against you. I think that's awful behavior and totally inexcusable, and that those people should be punished for it. But I also think that your experience is probably not representative. The evidence you've linked actually suggests that people are duo-ing with smurfs on alt accounts. That's why you wind up with a bunch of alt accounts also in the top 50. It's also what the first video you referenced actually showed. And it's so easy to do. A guy with 1600 rating duo-queues with his 1800-rated friend, but the 1800-rated friend uses a 1100-rated alt account. Their average rating is now 1350, so they get to crush a bunch of mid-gold, then high-gold, then low-plat games. Those games are going to be so one-sided because these gold (and some silver) players are actually up against some of the top players in GW2, and once you decisively win a fight you can snowball the rest of the map. At the end of the session, the 1600-rated guy winds up at 1800 from all those wins, while the 1100-rated alt winds up at like 1600. If they really want to try-hard about it, the smurf could always create a second smurf account to reset the rating yet again. And if someone ever wants to de-rank their smurf account, all they have to do is chain-afk a bunch of matches (and maybe it's those people who are stream-sniping you while they derank to troll you). By contrast, just think about how much effort it takes to win-trade consistently at platinum and above. Every time the "thrower" account actually throws a game, he's losing like 15 points, while his "partner" gains 15 points, for a 30-point differential. Then the thrower account has to grind games just to get back to the same rating as his partner so the matchmaker syncs them up against each other.
  2. They should have 3v3 MATs in addition to 5v5 MATs. And offer more rewards for people who actively participate in MATs (i.e. win at least 1 game) to encourage people to play MATs.
  3. Having seen him in some of my games (solo-queued), there's zero doubt in my mind that he could have legitimately achieved rank 1, for all the reasons you've described. The skill differential even in P1/P2 is very noticeable - especially when you factor in map awareness and finding out how to maximize value through smart rotations. That said, I have no clue whether or not he also happened to have wintraded. But I don't think the people accusing him of it have actually pointed to any evidence. Fora 2v2 or 3v3 season, the top players could easily just duo-queue to the top without needing to wintrade. Trying to sync matches for wintrading would probably take longer than just crushing PUG teams.
  4. Removing duo queue is a low-effort step that would do a lot to combat abusive practices in ranked, like using a low-rated smurf account to carry someone up the ladder. We already have ATs with excellent rewards for people who want to play as a team. I wouldn't be opposed to offering more rewards for ATs and spreading the rewards out slightly (but none to afk teams) to further incentivize participation.
  5. From what I've seen, it's from people queue-dodging. Either because they have really bad players on their block list that they want to avoid getting teamed up with, or because they're trying to avoid some really good duo that's currently on. Your theory doesn't check out because of the timeout punishment that kicks in when you reject a queue.
  6. Honestly, if you really wanted to cheat your way to the top, win-trading isn't the way to do it. The easiest way to do it would be to buy a pro player (the "booster") an alt account, tank that account's rating, and then you (the "climber") spams duo-queues with the booster. You'll get matched in low-gold / silver games constantly where the booster (the pro player) can completely carry. When the booster's account gets too high, he can just de-rank it while solo-queuing (so it doesn't hurt you), or switch to another alt account. Then repeat the process. This method just requires two players coordinating (the booster and the climber). By contrast, if you wanted to climb via win-trading, you need to count on getting placed into games where the "thrower" is on the other side. If you only have one booster involved, the odds of queuing against the thrower are pretty low. If you're only queuing against the thrower 50% of the time, you're not going to climb into the top 20. PLUS, the thrower needs to win matches to keep his rating close to yours. Otherwise, you'll never get queued against him. And if you try to solve the problem with multiple throwers, then that's more people you need to pay (and more people who have to keep their rating up to get matched against you). Plus, you'd need to do all this during off-hours. This. Although judging from some of the posts here, I think people are just using "wintrading" to describe (a) legitimate win-trading, in addition to (b) "smurfing", (c) "duo-queue abuse" and (d) "queue-dodging". The reason we shouldn't conflate these issues is that duo-queue abuse and, to some extent quo-dodging, can be easily solved by removing duo-queue. (Removing duo-queue won't completely remove queue-dodging, but it makes it a lot harder because now dodgers have 2x the number of participants to avoid.) Win-trading is trickier to track, but also inefficient and much less common. Also this. But you'll have to queue only during prime-time. It also helps to have a duo-queue partner. A duo can ensure at least 2 players on their team are good (i.e. the duo pair), while a soloqueuer can only count on himself. It's like starting a poker round with 2 Aces instead of 1 Ace. Your odds are significantly better.
  7. The amount of score you gain/lose depends on how your rating compares to the average rating of the other team, as well as how the two team's ratings compare to each other. In an ideal world, both teams would have the same average rating, and the average rating of both teams would be close to your rating. But because the GW2 PvP population is so low, there often aren't enough players to create games that meet those parameters. So sometimes you're in a game when your rating (and your team's rating) is much higher than the other team, so you only get a few points if you win (I've gotten a +2 before). Whereas if you lost that game, you'd take a much bigger hit (e.g. -18)..
  8. I looked up the video. It wasn't about win-trading, though. It was about a guy paying $1,000 to pro players to play on his account during MATs (and one of the pro players doing the same for his GF's account). Still kitten, unacceptable, and obviously something that should have been punished. But it doesn't really support the idea of wintrading being widespread in ranked queue. It also doesn't affect the MAT match quality. The people who were up against Team XYZ (name redacted so I don't get banned) were still playing Team XYZ - it's just that one of the XYZ players was using a different account. I still stand by my view that lopsided matches are due more to (1) high-ranked players queuing on alts b/c they don't want to take a -20 rating hit for failing to carry silver teammates; (2) low PvP population; and (3) Conquest being VERY snowbally. On #2, a silver player in a plat game will likely look like he's throwing just because he's so outmatched and clearly doesn't belong.
  9. Removing duo-queue would be great. MATs are for playing with a coordinated group; Ranked is for playing solo. Duo-queue is weird and just messes with the matchmaking. Also, role-queue was great for OW and vastly improved match quality. No more all-DPS teams where no one wanted to go tank or healer. And the queues now are only bad if you refuse to play anything but DPS, and that's because DPS players are a dime-a-dozen. Queues for flex players pop within a minute or two at all hours. But role-queue won't work for GW2 for obvious reasons. There's too much variation in how you can set up your build. Also, some builds are great at multiple roles b/c of power creep.
  10. I just can't imagine there being enough of a demand for bragging rights from PvErs to make win-trading as prevalent as is claimed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think what is happening more often is just two good players duo-queuing, where one of the good players is on a smurf account. So they wind up with a lower team MMR, which makes the matchup imbalanced (or even more imbalanced than it would have been). Blowout matches are typical even without wintrading just because conquest is so snow-bally. If the other team has better +1rs and you lose a teamfight, there's a good chance your team just gets outnumbered the rest of the match because the average player doesn't read the minimap or think about regrouping. I'd just suggest we remove duo-queuing. And in the unlikely event there is some global win-trading conspiracy going on, eliminating duo-queues will help with that, too.
  11. Dropping duo-queue would help a lot IMO. I suspect most of the "win-trading" isn't actual win-trading. It's just high-ranked players playing on low-rank smurf accounts to help boost another already high-rank player. Alternatively, the duo-queue system should just use the highest-ranked player's rating for calculating the overall group rating, rather than taking the average. For example, if the rank 5 and rank 100 player duo-queue together on their main accounts, it'll take 5+ minutes for the queue to pop, and the matchmaker will then expect them to carry a team of silvers against a team of high gold / low plat. But if the rank 5 player makes a new smurf account with only 1200 rating, then he can queue with the rank 100 player, and their average rating will be much lower. As a result, they'll get faster queues and get more favorable matchups. And to the extent "win-trading" is really the culprit, dropping duo-queues will also make win-trading less efficient and therefore less prevalent.
  12. Obviously harb. There are a number of builds that can beat it 1v1, but that's not what determines a class's usefulness in conquest. Harb brings insane value to a teamfight: pulsing quickness, projectile block, boon corruption, AOE CC, high damage, elixir of ambition. And on top of that, it is decently mobile and can hold its own or at least stall a significant amount of time in most 1v1s. It's not the best sidenoder, but winning the teamfights wins you the game via snowballing (assuming the team knows how to rotate).
  13. Tempest hasn't gotten any stronger in recent patches. But it has projectile block/reflect, which is effective against ranger (OP's "main" class) and harbinger (everyone else's "main" class /s). Hence the current complaints. In particular, earth overload followed by swirling winds / magnetic aura in particular puts out ~10 seconds AOE of blocks/reflects, and can be repeated every ~30 seconds. (Few people take aftershock or rebound, but adding in aftershock could bring you up to ~14 seconds of AOE blocks/reflects every 30 seconds.) That is a ton of projectile denial uptime. I think the best solution here is to add more counterplay, rather than nerfing these skills. Outside of support tempest, Ele in general is in a pretty sad state. Nerfing magnetic aura or swirling winds is going to nerf other ele builds (esp. since most other ele builds use focus). Like FrownyClown suggested above, the way to go is to buff "Unblockable" access. And builds that want to take advantage of Unblockable have to give up something to take it (e.g. a utility slot), just like eles have to make sacrifices to maintain projectile uptime. The idea of having unblockable last for X duration instead of a set # of attacks makes a lot of sense. In the meantime, there is plenty of other counter-play if your build doesn't rely entirely on range: You can focus down the tempest. They constantly have to swap in/out of fire to cleanse condis, and in/out of water to maintain the aoe heal. If they started (or finished) earth overload and swapped back out to fire/water, they can't swap back into earth for ~20s. The typical tempest support builds don't prove AOE stab and also provide very little stab to the ele. CC is very effective (unlike with core guard). You can interrupt the non-earth overloads, which only apply 1 stack of stab. For earth, necro/harb will convert the stab into fear, which will interrupt that overload. Interrupting an overload really fks the tempest over. You can also burst them down during non-earth overloads. Shocking aura doesn't prevent the damage. If you hit them with something big (e.g. boosted maul) and eat the stun, you won that exchange by a mile. You can also easily outrotate them. They're slower than every other meta build by a mile. Finally, let's not forget that other classes have access to strong projectile block as well. Not nearly the uptime as a dedicated support tempest, but still enough to give their team a huge edge over ranged specs: Ele's Swirling Winds: 6 second uptime, 30 second CD. No other effects besides the projectile block. Requires you take focus for your offhand. Untamed's Enveloping Haze: 5 second uptime, 25 second CD. AOE follows pet instead of being locked in place like swirling winds. Deals damage. Chills targets who are disabled. "Free" skill b/c it doesn't take up a utility slot or require a specific weapon. Necro's Corrosive poison cloud: 6 seconds (in PvP) uptime, 30 second CD. Pulses poison and weakness, so also helpful vs. melee spikes, healing, and denying resses. Slightly smaller radius than swirling winds and enveloping haze. Takes up utility slot.
  14. This is true. But I think the intent behind the post is that, if you want the game to feel more challenging/active, you make it so that players have to create/find openings to unleash their combos. The most basic example would be dodging a key attack that leaves the enemy vulnerable for a little bit, then following that up with a CC to expand the window of vulnerability, then going into the combo. Rather than going in that direction, it feels like the devs are moving towards having supports just spam their support rotation, DPS just spam their DPS rotation, etc., and everyone step out of the occasional bad-colored AOE marker to avoid an instawipe.
  15. PvP: I was in legend every season that I played. Positioning and reactivity has steadily been declining in importance. If you read my post more carefully, I was talking about the trajectory of the balancing decisions, not the present state. Just look at how many of the meta classes have insane mobility now, which heavily reduces the impact of positioning. Now it's just about knowing when to camp no-port spots. The massive amount of effects-bloat has also diminished the reactivity, because a lot of the new skills are just optimal to use in almost every situation. Harb ult is a strong opener, a strong panic button, a strong skill to use in the middle of the teamfight, a strong continuation skill after you've landed your condis, a strong defensive skill to peel for a teammate, etc. PvE: The point of this thread isn't that there have never been rotations. The point is that, ideally (at least in my opinion), you should have to do something special to set up a combo - like dodging a key attack, following up with CC, then leading into your combo. In Street Fighter (or any other fighting game), for example, you don't just go through the same combo over and over. Most MMOs, on the other hand, tend to be more about memorizing a long rotation and then repeating it. I enjoyed GW2 because the combat felt more like a dynamic fighting game, and less like a traditional MMO. But GW2 has definitely been trending towards being more like a traditional MMO in terms of encouraging players to just go through their rotations. It's obviously not 100% rotation-based now, but having supports constantly providing perma-boon uptime trivializes a lot of the boss mechanics. At this point, the only mechanics you have to worry about (in 99% of "challenging" content) just require stepping out of the occasional bad-colored lines/circles and jumping over shockwaves. That's the bare minimum of reactivity. I would personally enjoy having a lot more challenge, like having to think about when to use defensive skills to supplement dodges, because the boss has multiple strong attacks that you can't just avoid via walking out of the bad-colored stuff. (Beating Liadri w/ the achivements, for example, was a really fun fight - at least back when it came out. The powercreep may have trivialized it by now.)
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