Feast, all luck.

[Ricebowl]

I knew solo rated would be very RNG depending on who you get but I think I miss my chance to place in the top 100 because I didn't start at 3am when the season started. I would like to look for a team to play with but sadly my FC doesn't support the Feast and no one is willing to team up and can't seem to find teams recruiting on this forum or PvPreborn.

If you can't break top 100 and are stuck in the 650's constantly, the problem is between the keyboard and chair. After 50-100 matches, assuming, you have finally understood all of the strategies for your class, very little of it is RNG.

It's like poker players who complain that they literally never get good hands as the reason why they lose constantly. No, the reason is because they're not as good as they think they are.

[MixZ]

But as poker player I can still win with a bad hand as I am with the players at the table and reading their movements, calls, and play to win the pot. Plus in poker, all the cards in my hand are in my direct control. Even you have to admit, that there are some players who are unwilling to be good team mates as they prefer to be the hero in the group. I never once said I was good but I knew the odds at the start of this season and I am progressing. I am still learning like many others and having fun and I know all it takes is a good night to break that 650 wall I keep hitting. In the end, there really isn't much SE can do as most of these type of arena style PvP content is truly meant for teams to compete with each other. It is what it is and as my life prevents me from team related content (Savage progression for example) on a consistent schedule, I'll just keep working at it and see what happens in future seasons.

[Titor]

If you can't break top 100 and are stuck in the 650's constantly, the problem is between the keyboard and chair. After 50-100 matches, assuming, you have finally understood all of the strategies for your class, very little of it is RNG.

No, I disagree. At that ranking you can still get placed with untiered players, who could be new and terrible. I myself had a hard time breaking out of that bracket, but it gets a bit better when you hit gold. It can very well be RNG.

[Ryuko]

After grinding up to 900, hitting my qualifier, and then dropping back down to 650-ish in a single day... Here are my suggestions based on what I was able to do to improve myself as a player and my odds in the arena (almost back to where I was at before the weekend, haha):

1) If you're going for a real grind, don't try to do it during the weekend. This is when new PvPers are going to be playing, and it will be a very mixed bag of participants. Unless you are Gold or higher, you can and will get matched with unranked people. (It's +/- two ranks, so even Gold players will get mixed with Bronze players, and you can't derank from Bronze... so being Bronze doesn't really mean much except that you've won 8-ish games in ranked.) Playing during the weekend, I think, increases RNG of your teammates and opponents. If you do decide to try to grind out your rank during the weekend, stop doing it if you are hitting a losing streak. I made the mistake of continuing to play, getting matched with or against the same people, and having a lot of trouble.

2) Actually put time and thought into your PvP gear. I'm still not 100% sure on the stat caps or even the accuracy requirements, but you can figure out what you need by checking out the gear of the top ranked people on your datacenter (there seems to be a magic number for acc, but I'm not going to give that away :P). Mix your PvP sets with your prioritized stats, while ensuring that you still have the accuracy you need. For most DPS classes, this would be crit/det. Just look at the highest ranked players and you'll see what I mean.

3) Take the time to remind people of seemingly simple things at the start of the fight... such as the importance of securing the adrenaline boxes (so the other team doesn't land a clutch LB) AND the timing of all boxes. Just because someone has reached Bronze or even Silver doesn't mean they know about all these little small tricks. You'd be surprised how many games I've lost at the end because the other team was able to secure the adrenaline boxes.

4) Spend time learning a little bit about each job so you know when people can burst and when they can't. If you're not coordinated with your DPS partner on your burst, and the healer on the other team is pretty good, it will be really hard to down someone unless they actually mess up their positioning and LoS the healer. As a summoner, I generally tell people... "Remember, if I have aetherflow stacks, I have burst." It's always better to be coordinated in your kills. Raw numbers mean nothing if they aren't effective.

5) Make mental notes of the strengths and weaknesses of both your teammates and enemies. For example, I know a really high ranked healer on my datacenter who is one of the best healers I've seen, but they tend to LoS their teammates way more than other healers... so I know if I am against them to just force them to pillar, bind them there, then burst their teammate down (if I can). Also make a note of who does or doesn't follow marks (so you know to just follow their lead if they refuse). Yeah, it's bad sportsmanship for them to ignore marks, but if you HAVE to play with them... might as well be coordinated, right? There are some high ranked people on my datacenter who outright ignore marks, and they got to that rank somehow, right? They must be doing something right.

As far as the rest of the stuff... that's just good gameplay, but those are my five suggestions for improving your game odds. It's frustrating when you get teammates who can't or won't listen, so if you are employing all of the above suggestions and still losing... take a break, blow off some steam, maybe queue 8v8 for a while... and try to queue another time.

[Ciri_Wolf]

Nowhere near as bad as League of Legends. This is literally every single team oriented game. At lest the matches are not 25 mins + like league.

[Fodemhouse]

I can tell you I´ve been on 2 different ranked pvp games: LoL and GW2, and FFXIV is doing a better job on match and rank people... Really...

The main problem is the QUEUE TIME... OMG, 15 min waiting everytime... on 4x4, on 8x8 I already spent almost 1 hour wihtout calling...

Cross Datacenters is a must on pvp...

[SaveTheSunF1R3x]

Number 2

Sorry i don't currently have the link to his thread. Hopefully someone else will post it for you.

[Ryuko]

Sorry i don't currently have the link to his thread. Hopefully someone else will post it for you.

Thanks for the picture! I'd love to find that thread if it's still around. As far as I can tell, most people aren't going up to 570-ish acc (waaaaay lower). I guess they are okay with blind causing their acc to not be perfect, on the 'rare' occasion it happens... which I'm okay with, considering blind is one of the few CCs SE still lets me have. :S

[Ricebowl]

No, I disagree. At that ranking you can still get placed with untiered players, who could be new and terrible. I myself had a hard time breaking out of that bracket, but it gets a bit better when you hit gold. It can very well be RNG.

There is some truth to this, but overall, my point stands that there is no "ELO hell" in this game just like there is no "ELO hell" in League or any other ELO-based team game. There is only denial. Those top 10 players obviously don't complain about crappy teammates all day.

There will always be upswings and downswings over short periods of time, but once you have hundreds of games down, you are where you *should* be.

[NessaWyvern]

(there seems to be a magic number for acc, but I'm not going to give that away :P).

My BF who plays drg says it's around 380 minimum for melee dps. He doesn't miss with that unless he gets flashed. Ranged dps has a lower acc cap apparently. (The number was figured out with experimentation, so the cap may be a little higher or lower than this.)
Some Ilvls sync better than others too.