Matched Warfronts - BROKEN!

[Zehla]

My poor, aching Cleric is Rank 6. After the pummeling nerf to Warden, that leaves me with Senticar (which, with my current bad gear, DESTROYS my mana utterly) or one of two DPS specs I have. This is fine, and it works for the most part...if I'm actually matched properly.

If it were possible to look at the matching history of a character, you would quickly see that my Cleric has -NEVER- been placed properly, ever. I am always against P40 teams. I can't heal through their damage, and I can't put a scratch on them - I could essentially just sit at the graveyard and hop in place and have the same usefulness in any given Warfront as I would if I actually tried. I can't keep anyone alive because my gear doesn't allow my heals to be impressive, and my dps is a joke against 12k health warriors who then promptly cleave my face off into oblivion.

PLEASE Trion, fix this, or remove it. When I leveled my main, before there were Ranked Warfronts, I never had this problem. I could even hold my own. But now, it's just an absolute joke. Getting my Cleric to P40 is a complete nightmare because of this issue. I don't know why I keep getting tossed into warfronts faaaaaaaaaar out of my league, but whatever is glitching, other people on my server are experiencing the same problem, and it's very irritating. I actually get farmed less doing open world pvp dailies, lol. I don't mind a challenge, but literally being useless is a bit extreme.

[Misun]

This is an unfortunate result of people leaving the game.

Not enough people play anymore, for consistent ranked matches...and more are leaving as each day passes.

Quite a few folks have gone back to WoW.

[Violacea]

There are less matched warfronts because someone thought it would be a good idea to narrow the brackets. Someone suggested it before it happened and what's happening now is what I said would happen if they did.

1. Less ranked games, because the conditions are more strict. So you get more randy-any-rank games. See threads about this.

2. More pain for those outside the common bell-curve. Of course the r40's put in low rank games don't come here to express disdain. But on the other side you have easier chance for low ranks to get tossed in a more strict, higher rank tailored game. A 'ranked game' doesn't require 100% of the players to fall into that rank. So it will find outlying ranks if it has to fill for the moment. Which means stuff like what the OP says happens. At least if the OP had previously got tossed into a rank 25 - 40 game there is a chance for less overall pain. If more trimmed brackets made for less ranked games, I'd say it's a fair shot that some ranked games had a good handful of players ranked in the rank that was shaved off the bottom.

I don't see what was wrong with the ranking numbers before. It's 50/50, part of me thinks it sucks cause the outcome I outlined wasn't intended to be cool sounding. But part of me enjoys the satisfaction of seeing my predictions come true a lot in this game. Makes me wish more every-day I could just eat a banana in their studios and toss ideas around and argue with devs to produce good brain storms.

[Zaros]

An actual matched Warfront is notoriously hard to come by, what you should really be viewing it as is "There's probably some P40s in here, but there's definitely less than there would be if this wasn't mixed into the system algorithm."

And some advice for ranking up:
Play a support role, stay in the back. As a Cleric, even your low level meager healing is still better than most classes at R40, so find a good player and keep him alive. Don't be Rambo, follow the team. If your team is being wiped out constantly, that's not your fault at all for being low ranked, because even as a P40 I get decimated when I get a bad team.

It only gets better from where you are now, but yes, the gear system sucks. I wish ranking up was more streamlined in Rift, so we wouldn't lose as many players like you at the beginning of their PvP career.

[Flimble]

There are less matched warfronts because someone thought it would be a good idea to narrow the brackets. Someone suggested it before it happened and what's happening now is what I said would happen if they did.

1. Less ranked games, because the conditions are more strict. So you get more randy-any-rank games. See threads about this.

Not really, the answer has already been given, there are far fewer people playing the game, especially on the PvP side, when I briefly logged in my mage this morning I was in a 10-30 ranked WF, it was the first ranked match for ages, given I barely see ranked WF at all (on any of my toons whether they are r25 or r40) it means there are not even enough people for a 20 wide band like 10-30, how wide do you expect brackets to be? 10-40? given 10-30 in itself is pretty useless.

Of course the r40's put in low rank games don't come here to express disdain.

Yes we do, plenty of people have expressed their boredom in being put in the same WF as low ranks, most have now either left or barely log in / simply waiting for GW2 and can no longer can be bothered to argue given it is clear the PvP side is basically dead.

[dcndnts]

prior to 1.8 i got maybe 1 unranked warfront a week.
immediately following the release of 1.8 i got a ranked warfront maybe once a day.

Unless everybody quit on patch day i find it hard to believe that "This is an unfortunate result of people leaving the game."

They borked the system and don't even realize it.

[Sabryn]

I had quite a few matched games last weekend, at one point I had 3 in a row. Still I'd say the chances of actually getting a matched game is a bit lower than it should be. I often see teams <r20 against an overwhelming force of r40s that doesn't even have to try to win.

[Jawsnap]

I've had 1 ranked WF match all weekend, and I'm literally in WF after WF after WF, all day. Because I'm sad like that. :/

[Naesraen]

My poor, aching Cleric is Rank 6. After the pummeling nerf to Warden, that leaves me with Senticar (which, with my current bad gear, DESTROYS my mana utterly) or one of two DPS specs I have. This is fine, and it works for the most part...if I'm actually matched properly.

And on the Senticar, which I've been using as well since 1.8 hit: learn to love Aggressive Renewal and drinking. As long as you are out of combat for 4 or 5 seconds (ie, not hitting someone or being hit) you can drink - I'm going through 5-6 drinks per warfront, and it makes an enormous difference. If you're not dead, of course; but you can't have everything .