Competitive Mindset

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

@Broady.2358 said:

In that case, I think a lot of people at higher ranks dont care about leaderboard positions at all, and are happy to sit in plat. There are a lot of veteran players who have found the playstyle they enjoy, and are reluctant to swap builds or classes just to counter some new gimmick. And if a build is specialized enough, it might not be possible to adapt it to a big shift in the meta or some cheesy class rework.

Not sure what you're getting at here but if those players who have found a playstyle they like and are reluctant to swap builds or classes then they cannot complain about players running meta builds.I'm hoping to talk about a change of mindset in Ranked PvP when dealing with top tier builds and actively working to counter them instead of complaining about the players using assets available to them.

They can certainly complain if meta builds are poorly designed or imbalanced. As i said earlier, there have been a lot of builds over the years that have no place in a competitive game, and they were nerfed or removed for good reasons.

[Tycura.1982]

PMA that stands for positive mental attitude

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

@"Broady.2358" said:I wanted to talk about having a competitive mindset when it comes to Ranked PvP. The whole objective of Ranked is to win, plain and simple. We use the best builds and classes to gain the biggest advantage over the opposing team.

I don't find that this is often the case. Usually players find specific combinations that work well for them, and then work on improving that and learning what works better against certain matchups. People can do well with off-meta builds and especially meta variants.

It's metagaming and doing everything you can outside of the game is what a lot of top "competitive" players usually stoop to for that advantage, which only has a little to do with the builds they play.

A competitive mindset should look at what your opponents are using and reroll to counter. Here is an example... As I stated above I've been running condi Thief but, if my team is kind of squishy and has maybe a Mesmer or another Thief I will reroll to my Revenant. This gives me a better chance of winning.

This is a good example of metagaming. Class-swapping.

If you want Gw2 to actually be competitive then the focus should be on the game itself, rather than presenting ways people can make the game easier for themselves outside of it.

The build someone is playing doesn't really count because the focus is still on the game, and any build can be played optimally or sub-optimally. Things like Class-Swapping are much worse for competition, because it presents advantages that everyone can't reap the full benefits of. It would depend on whether someone even knows it's there or not, because there's no real indicator that it is. There's a ton of factors beyond that like DuoQ's forcing favorable matchups and hardware advantages.

Like if i'm able to rock, paper, scissors-style out class-swap somebody because i'm playing on a Cloud Gaming service or I have it dl'd to an SSD, that has zero to do with my Guild Wars 2 skills. On the other hand, if I want to play builds that other people say are best, that is absolutely fine.

[rng.1024]

Solid advice:

Always listen to those better than you, never to your peers.

Why?

Because far too often, and many should recognize this, you hear someone say "you don't belong at this rating" - well okay then, I guess you don't either.

Just focus on climbing and leave those behind then you won't have to deal with them again.

If they complain about your rotations, here's what to do - forget far exists. No matter your profession or role, the only question you need to ask is should I go close or mid, which usually is obvious and if not atleast you'll be close to both nodes. This is always a good play.