#1 - April 22, 2015, 4:12 p.m.
(Before you armory me, I'm literally 1900 in 3's right now because I can't find anyone to play with. I've been 2400 multiple times before playing with random people.)
...To start over on a new account with a new name and no achievements. Then, using your own skill and game knowledge, climb the arena ladder to Gladiator without hitting up your other rank one friends. You have to only play with people you meet in-game, or through group finder, like the rest of us.
I would bet high money that none of you would get glad even within two whole seasons.
For a random, fameless player such as myself without a glad title, it is EXTREMELY difficult to find solid partners that are willing to work together to overcome teams and learn more about the game together with you. After one or two losses, the random Rsham you have, who unsurprisingly died by the Jungle train, will randomly leave the skype in an either polite or impolite way, saying something along the lines of "This isn't working, good luck." They'll then delete you, and you'll never see them again. These people automatically assume you're the deciding factor in their losses, and leave in fear that they will lose more rating.
After this scenario above, you have lost:
- Rating from the losses
- A healer partner
- Morale for pushing, since you've been losing and NOW you don't have a partner.
The fact that people leave, and automatically assume others are bad at these lower ratings is detrimental to the wellbeing of the community as a whole. Teams end up spending more time looking for partners than they do actually playing the game.
On top of this, the state of arena at the moment is saddening. A whole lot of people dislike the current meta and playstyle the game offers, leading to subscriptions being canceled and less players to find and play with. Almost my entire friends list has disappeared this season.
Now, let's look at the benefits someone with a Rank One title has:
- Active, willing, skilled partners to play with at any time
- More time to actually play the game, opening more windows for learning and strategy generating
These benefits practically guarantee you a super high rating every season, as long as you're -somewhat- good at your class. When you clump together and partner up with the other rank ones (which I don't blame you at all for), you easily dominate the game against all the pugged, title-less players who are playing with people they just met that day. As long as they understand the basic concepts of CC, burst and positioning, there isn't much else to improve on for themselves. It's almost unfair.
Now, to take this a step further, I'd like to call some of you out on the pilots and carries that you sell to make money off of this game.
Yes, you and your team are good at this game. Yes, you deserve some form of compensation for the brainpower and teamwork you're able to put out. This is what tournaments are for. The GCD tourneys are literally giving thousands of dollars to the winners. Go win that, go prove you're amazing in a legitimate way. They do them every week. You shouldn't be filling empty spots in the Glad/R1 range with your fake accounts, easily beating lower-rated people with your other already-rank-one partners, pushing them down even more. This cuts off opportunity for the hopefuls like me, and the fact that you're making huge sums of money off of it is absolutely disgusting.
TL;DR: Gaining rating is too hard for newer players because of the partner system, rank one players saturate the glad range using different accounts, rank ones partner together making all glad titles except for their first extremely easy to achieve.