How to find fair games as a solo player in Ranked PvP

[kardinal.3051]

Every game is so massively imbalanced, how do solo players play this game? Games are so incredibly imbalanced and there is so much griefing its sickening

[Eurantien.4632]

You can solo queue into top 10. So unfortunately kind of a skill issue. But being able to know how to rotate well, pick your fights well, judge your team comp and the enemy's team comp and adjust your build/spec/class to fill any or to take advantage of any weaknesses helps. Also, queuing at prime time when other players have brains also makes the game easier imo.

Edited August 12 by Eurantien.4632

[Endo.1652]

22 minutes ago, Eurantien.4632 said:

You can solo queue into top 10. So unfortunately kind of a skill issue. But being able to know how to rotate well, pick your fights well, judge your team comp and the enemy's team comp and adjust your build/spec/class to fill any or to take advantage of any weaknesses helps. Also, queuing at prime time when other players have brains also makes the game easier imo.

I agree with the timing. If there is literally only one plat duo is quing, while the rest is all gold players. Its not a good time to solo q. Youre basically 1v2 when it comes to comparing rating

[Saiyan.1704]

Every single profession in this game has a damage spec that's able to destroy people, or give some form of value to your team.

A good War can hold 1vX on sidenodes., that gives excellent value. A good thief can decap nodes, while also securing kills when +1ing. If you run WB and kill a Silver player, you'll see a forum post about it within the hour. So that's exciting 😄

If you're serious about climbing the leaderboard, you'll need to be on a carry spec.... but actually be good at running the build you're on. If you have more than 4 deaths and don't have more than 10 kills (assuming you're not sidenoding) then you're doing something wrong.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

6 minutes ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

If you have more than 4 deaths and don't have more than 10 kills (assuming you're not sidenoding) then you're doing something wrong.

True but even deeper than this, you need to know when to pivot into handholding depending on your team. If you do your sidenode or roaming job well and don't die, but your teammates are getting sent to spawn constantly, part of securing your rating is knowing when to show up at places your weak links are when they will be attacked.

You can be the best decap+ sidenode +duelest that pulls 3 people, but if your newbie ranger is soft and a willbender or something gets a good taste of that early on, the match is already 4v5 if you don't make pushing that player off the board risky.

[Saiyan.1704]

1 minute ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

True but even deeper than this, you need to know when to pivot into handholding depending on your team. If you do your sidenode or roaming job well and don't die, but your teammates are getting sent to spawn constantly, part of securing your rating is knowing when to show up at places your weak links are when they will be attacked.

I want to double down on this. There's a lot of people in this game who just rushes at far, win (maybe) a couple duels and will assume their team will just win the map. When they see their team getting farmed, they'll then complain how bad their team is. #countless

If you don't know what is killing your team then there's no room to QQ in map chat. It could be a single thief, or off-meta condi class that you have to engage yourself, instead of being a Far-Node Hero the entire game.

[Endo.1652]

2 minutes ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

I want to double down on this. There's a lot of people in this game who just rushes at far, win (maybe) a couple duels and will assume their team will just win the map. When they see their team getting farmed, they'll then complain how bad their team is. #countless

If you don't know what is killing your team then there's no room to QQ in map chat. It could be a single thief, or off-meta condi class that you have to engage yourself, instead of being a Far-Node Hero the entire game.

Sometimes it isnt about matching nodes but matching numbers/matchups. So yeah i agree with both of you. @Azure The Heartless.3261 @Saiyan.1704

Edited August 12 by Endo.1652

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

Play a better game with a dedicated solos mode

[Jagdtiger.2517]

I don't play it anymore, I'm playing League of Legends. I actually enjoy GW2 way more than League when I can get balanced games, but that's so rare in GW2 whereas in League every game is relatively balanced MMR wise.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

6 hours ago, Eurantien.4632 said:

You can solo queue into top 10. 

Even with 400 games played you aren't even solo Q'ing into the Top 10 lol.

Can still play the game at a Top 250 level at least, which is 99% anyway.  

[Jagdtiger.2517]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Even with 400 games played you aren't even solo Q'ing into the Top 10 lol.

Can still play the game at a Top 250 level at least, which is 99% anyway.  

Honestly bro I don't think top 250 is 99%, it's probably more like top 25% or maybe even top 33%. I wouldn't be surprised if there's less than 1,000 active PvP players on the NA server.

[youle.5824]

Tycura just solo queued to rank 10 this Sunday kicking down to 11th the the account I had just solo queued to top 10. He did it while testing condi soul beast builds, I did it while playing spellbreaker for the first time in a while. Solo q to top 10 happens all the time. Eura often solo queued to top 10 I can confirm as well, if forum warriors spent the time they write posts practicing duels they would all have done it by now lmao.

13 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Even with 400 games played you aren't even solo Q'ing into the Top 10 lol.

Can still play the game at a Top 250 level at least, which is 99% anyway.  

 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, youle.5824 said:

Tycura just solo queued to rank 10 this Sunday kicking down to 11th the the account I had just solo queued to top 10. He did it while testing condi soul beast builds, I did it while playing spellbreaker for the first time in a while. Solo q to top 10 happens all the time. Eura often solo queued to top 10 I can confirm as well, if forum warriors spent the time they write posts practicing duels they would all have done it by now lmao.

 

I have no idea who Tycura is--and you realize 'the account I had just solo queued top 10' means your alt, which is already suspect behavior to begin with.  That and you mention duels, so if this Tycura is you're duel buddy then...

Starting at high placements, alt'ing to decay dodge, and more than likely trading a win here and there, sure you can 'solo q to top 10'.  But what Eura said above reads as if any average joe can solo q to top 10 with some hard work and nothing else, while he's at almost 400 games and not Top 10 whilst being one of the better Ranger players.  

Anyway, if 'practicing duels' is a euphamism for finding a throw buddy, then sure...OP, go find a duel partner! 

[Vancho.8750]

20 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

I want to double down on this. There's a lot of people in this game who just rushes at far, win (maybe) a couple duels and will assume their team will just win the map. When they see their team getting farmed, they'll then complain how bad their team is. #countless

If you don't know what is killing your team then there's no room to QQ in map chat. It could be a single thief, or off-meta condi class that you have to engage yourself, instead of being a Far-Node Hero the entire game.

At one point when playing Spite Reaper I changed to Blood Magic with Trooper rune, cause I found that people die way too easy to conditions but also don't do that much damage and yet are way more useful at least tanking hits instead of imploding from conditions, kind pissy Anet nerfed the Martyr trait to make way for Harbinger. One would say why not go for full support, well we are back to most players don't do damage and are ignored by the other team, so you have to go for some bruiser type support that does enough damage but also has enough support to nudge people not dying, I've tried some HealBreaker with hammer worked well enough but still needed some oomph, tried some trap druid kinda worked but still not good enough cause you just pumped allot of big numbers of damage over time but no kill pressure, tried some weird guardian stuff with some damage on kind support builds with DH and FB, some Scrapper shananigans but only the Blood Reaper worked cause it has just enough damage while it does  not have exactly amazing supporting capabilities the condition removal made enough of a difference.

The thing is no amount of tryharding, special builds or whatever will help with Far-Node Heroes or Roamer Heroes , the worst is when you get both in the same game, the moment someone starts typing in chat the game is cooked. The thing is the Hero types are usually not some silver its always some higher rating guy with inflated ego so you would assume they at least know some kitten but nope, its also the people that first people to start AFK and spam "noob team" in chat.

If you just press the play button and queue up just to play the game after playing long enough, you will hit the wall of casual play and bounce around the leaderboard and bellow it on a pendulum. I think at some point you need some Meta gaming to be on the higher ranks, but I think anyone who has played long enough can get the Knight (maybe even Baron these days low pop and all ) titles just casually queueing, but allot of mental fortitude is required to deal with all the Hero, Wierdo and Psycho types to do your 135 games, too many emotional Vampires in the PVP.   

[notamain.2839]

2 hours ago, youle.5824 said:

if forum warriors spent the time they write posts practicing duels they would all have done it by now lmao

Bro, they all hardstuck g3/p1 because top players wintrade with duoQ, not because they spent more time here than in actual pvp...

[Eurantien.4632]

49 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

I have no idea who Tycura is--and you realize 'the account I had just solo queued top 10' means your alt, which is already suspect behavior to begin with.  That and you mention duels, so if this Tycura is you're duel buddy then...

Starting at high placements, alt'ing to decay dodge, and more than likely trading a win here and there, sure you can 'solo q to top 10'.  But what Eura said above reads as if any average joe can solo q to top 10 with some hard work and nothing else, while he's at almost 400 games and not Top 10 whilst being one of the better Ranger players.  

Anyway, if 'practicing duels' is a euphamism for finding a throw buddy, then sure...OP, go find a duel partner! 

I have solo queued to top 10 twice this season already, and will likely do so again. Once I get there I go "what if I decide to play a shortbow longbow build?", or some other trash - and go back down. Or I queue at not prime-time which is a recipe for disaster as well. I don't really care about the rating.

The fact of the matter is, if you try hard, queue at prime time so your teammates are competent enough, play a good enough build, and rotate/pick your fights wisely, then yeah all you need is hard work and nothing else.

Tyc hasn't played in months and he also solo queued top top 10 in his first 90 games. On condi soulbeast which also isn't the pinnacle of ranked carrying.

It's a l2p issue.

[notamain.2839]

21 minutes ago, Eurantien.4632 said:

It's a l2p issue.

Its a loser mentality issue. Always trying to find someone or something to blame, why you cant achieve something others can, instead starting to improve with yourself.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, Eurantien.4632 said:

I have solo queued to top 10 twice this season already, and will likely do so again. Once I get there I go "what if I decide to play a shortbow longbow build?", or some other trash - and go back down. Or I queue at not prime-time which is a recipe for disaster as well. I don't really care about the rating.

Again, over 400 games bro---of course if you grind out that much with high starting placement (since it doesn't reset from season to season) you can temporarily Q to Top 10.  How about staying there? Oh, because 'you don't care about rating'...right? Or is it because staying there requires some alt dodging, wintrading, duo Q, etc. minigame that you 'don't care' to play?

I just don't understand the facetiousness.  

1 hour ago, notamain.2839 said:

Its a loser mentality issue.

Like hiding behind an alt on a forum because your glass ego won't allow us to see who really posts this stupid kitten?

[notamain.2839]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

I have no idea who Tycura is

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Like hiding behind an alt on

Even if i would say, who I am. It wouldnt change anything since you dont know anyone.

And since every top player is a cheater, wintrader and abuser in your eyes, you are free to choose, who you would like to talk to.

Edited August 13 by notamain.2839

[Marxx.5021]

On 8/12/2024 at 5:35 PM, kardinal.3051 said:

Every game is so massively imbalanced, how do solo players play this game? Games are so incredibly imbalanced and there is so much griefing its sickening

PvP is no valid game mode. Don't play it if you have any expectation.

[maxwelgm.4315]

On 8/12/2024 at 6:07 PM, Eurantien.4632 said:

You can solo queue into top 10. So unfortunately kind of a skill issue. But being able to know how to rotate well, pick your fights well, judge your team comp and the enemy's team comp and adjust your build/spec/class to fill any or to take advantage of any weaknesses helps. Also, queuing at prime time when other players have brains also makes the game easier imo.

I don't think most of these points are related to OP's issue. Playing on prime time is the only real recommendation here. Don't see why there would be a need to share personal experiences when the balance of matches is very much a statistical issue to do with with all 10 players that are chosen for a given match and the available total pool of players queueing. That was a small perhaps inadvertent boasting followed by one actually related piece of advice.

A match can be balanced in the top 10 of players just as much as it can be balanced in gold 1 and silver 3 as long as all players have roughly the same skill level. Which brings the OP to their issue that the population might be (might be, Anet will never share this) too low to have good queue times simultaneously to a small MMR range that you can match against. So no matter if you're in the top 10 you'll still get matched to g3 and sometimes even g2/g1 players, which means OP's question really has no proper solution other than "play when most of players of your own rating would be playing" which is very hard to do and probably not possible in most ratings.

So @OP, unfortunately the unbalanced matches might be something we just have to live with unless Anet can somehow improve the algorithm - there's little to do for a player to "find" games, you can just choose when you queue, not the conditions of the queue itself, whereas increasing your rating (or decreasing it for that matter) only changes the average rating of your opponents. The large spread in ratings however ensures that you will be seeing a lot of people far away from said average, even if it's your "real" rank. Because the regular+top players often (as seen here) know each other and again, we likely have a super small population, it's easier to find balanced matches on that bracket by matching playtimes - but this being the only way to "find" fair matches is limited and not much else is up to player control.

[Endo.1652]

I agreed timing of when you queued was important. Scratch that haha. Sometimes you will get matches that jusy stack all odds against you no matter the times you queue. Just kind of have to accept that.

Last night I queued prime time to have 2 duo plat teams vs. me and 4 other solo quers who I never seen before playing the most weird comp ever. While the enemy had an AT team type of comp. (Mind you one of the duos was on alts and I think was possibly silver quing, not totally sure though. But I did recognize one of the alt accounts)

Edited August 13 by Endo.1652

[Eurantien.4632]

Play on EU

[Eurantien.4632]

15 minutes ago, maxwelgm.4315 said:

I don't think most of these points are related to OP's issue. Playing on prime time is the only real recommendation here. Don't see why there would be a need to share personal experiences when the balance of matches is very much a statistical issue to do with with all 10 players that are chosen for a given match and the available total pool of players queueing. That was a small perhaps inadvertent boasting followed by one actually related piece of advice.

A match can be balanced in the top 10 of players just as much as it can be balanced in gold 1 and silver 3 as long as all players have roughly the same skill level. Which brings the OP to their issue that the population might be (might be, Anet will never share this) too low to have good queue times simultaneously to a small MMR range that you can match against. So no matter if you're in the top 10 you'll still get matched to g3 and sometimes even g2/g1 players, which means OP's question really has no proper solution other than "play when most of players of your own rating would be playing" which is very hard to do and probably not possible in most ratings.

So @OP, unfortunately the unbalanced matches might be something we just have to live with unless Anet can somehow improve the algorithm - there's little to do for a player to "find" games, you can just choose when you queue, not the conditions of the queue itself, whereas increasing your rating (or decreasing it for that matter) only changes the average rating of your opponents. The large spread in ratings however ensures that you will be seeing a lot of people far away from said average, even if it's your "real" rank. Because the regular+top players often (as seen here) know each other and again, we likely have a super small population, it's easier to find balanced matches on that bracket by matching playtimes - but this being the only way to "find" fair matches is limited and not much else is up to player control.

Some of them could be. Time of day can help. Time of the season can help. Playing the right build can help. If my team is 2 thieves, a dps virt, and a reaper, and I also go a dps, and they have 2 bunker spellbreakers. That's a recipe for a loss since no one on our team wants to really stand in circles with that comp. OP asked how do solo players play this game? and the answer is, "just fine" most of the time.

A lot of the imbalance of matches comes from player skill and spec choice.

[ccccc.4963]

Youles still placing 5+ accounts on leaderboard.. crazy summer o_o