how do I sync in RA to be competitive with those sync'rs out there?

I played 7 rounds this AM and lost 5 1st rounders - snivel
I even lost to the same team twice too. I played R.
well... who knows... mayB this is random (yeah right)

round----My Team----------Opponent
1--------R,D,R,A------------Mo,E,A,A
2--------R,R,W,W-----------Mo,Mo,A,E
3--------R,A,Me,N----------E,E,N,N
4--------R,W,D,E-----------Mo,Rt,A,N
5--------R,R,R,W-----------Mo,E,A,A
6--------R,ME,W,D---------Mo,W,W,N
7--------R,N,R,E------------Mo,N,N,R

sometimes the problem is not on the outside, but within oneself.

A lot of guilds still sync. I would suggest finding one of them and letting them teach you.

It's not hard to do and makes Glad farming pretty easy. Oh, and technically it's not bannable

Didn't syncing get nerfed?

If by "nerfed", you mean that they made it so that the queue pulls from all districts....then yes.

If you mean that it's not possible to do anymore, then LOLLOLOLOL. It's still very easy to do.

Umm yes, those outcomes are random. Syncing does not happen that often, especially if you play in American districts. I've gotten over 200 glad points from RA, and have faced syncer teams about 5 times over the course of a year.

You did not run into sync teams. Most of those teams you listed did not have "optimal" builds. You just ran into better teams. Players need to get better at the game, rather then blame their losses on phantom syncers.

Tbh, I run into a sync'd team 1 out of every 5-10 matches. It's just that the majority of sync'd teams in RA are either terrible or they only get 2-3 of their intended syncers into the match (which screws them if they're trying to run a RtL spike or something).

I would sincerely doubt that the OP ran into that many sync'd teams, but it does happen pretty often albeit not as often as it used to.

And I still think those numbers are inflated.

I've been accused of being in a sync team about a dozen times. And not a single time was I actually syncing. The number of false positives caused by people like the OP makes syncing seem much worse then it is.

Well, by 5-10, I mean the ones I can 100% identify as sync'd (which you're right, it's probably a little inflated. It's probably 1 out of 15-20). When 3-4 guys use RtL on you, you know it's a sync. Or when you have a team of 2 Frontliners, 1 midliner, and 1 backliner (and they're actually playing their roles that way), then I'm pretty sure I've got a sync'd team.

For a while I ran into a lot of Dual R/A frontlines with a VoR mid and a decent WoH or ZB backliner. It'd be pretty awesome to get that w/o syncing. And btw, I was one of the groups that sync'd that same team.

When I enter RA and two or more people on the enemy group have the same tag and cape, I'm generally pretty sure it's a sync.

Yeah I gotta admit, the number of "syncers" is so inflated. If I play on my monk in RA I am generally accused of syncing if I have any decent kind of a team. I'm assuming it's because generally when a person monks, that team is going to win. It's stupid as hell, people just use the term to hide their own terrible lack of skill.

Ugh, it's just like the people who complain about never getting a monk. If you want a monk, roll a monk or stfu.

Tell that to the four man Stonesoul Strike team I faced the other day. No, it wasn't teams. I've bumped into three obvious syncs (cape/tag) this week and I don't play all that much RA.

The "nerf" has made it such that you don't see quite as many sync teams, but you definitely see them.

There's a lot of truth in this. First rule of RA: unless you're bad, most losses aren't your fault. Sometimes you lose to Build Wars. If you have three melee and a monk, and they have two VoR mesmers, a necro and a monk, you will lose if they're even remotely competent. Sometimes you are saddled with incompetents. You can tell that YOU are not the incompetent player if you frequently (not always) carry bad teams to a win or two before scrubbing out/leaving after win.

Second rule of RA: some losses are your fault. Learning to tell the difference is critical to both your peace of mind and your ability to improve if you choose to play down there.

Play monk. get good at it. beat them.

Seriously if teams are still syncing they must be pretty desperate ( they're baddd)

Since when did a reasonably balanced team denote syncing?

Eh...syncing happens, not often I believe but I've seen it once or twice. The other thing is that most players just pluck a build from PvX, which means that with luck they'll get a synergetic team without even trying. 3 decent players and a good one can win with ease in RA usually.

Saturday I went RA for a few hours, had one good team right off the bat which was perfectly balanced and worked well together, an easy 10 wins consecutively, the other hour I spent sighing at n00b teammates.
My first team could have looked like a sync to a casual observer, never met each other but worked great together although good enough for TA

I'm guessing part of it is in the eye of the beholder.

The fun part about syncs is disrupting them .

Just watch what happens when you land IN a sync team...

Learn from this man's quote

Here we go with the "Im pretty sure if it's this it's a sync team" bs again. lol Speculation is a wonderful thing isn't it? You can make it fact just by "being pretty sure" lolololol

Oh it does happen. I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm saying it doesn't happen as often as people think. And it didn't happen to the OP.

But I still have never actually run into a stonesoul/shove spike team in RA myself. Or a team with people from the same guild except for about 4 or 5 times. And I've played RA a LOT. Most of these horror stories people tell about syncing happening all the time... just I don't believe it because I'm not seeing it. It is like people are playing a different RA then I am (PS prior to the "nerf" that made it harder, I would only play in American districts, where syncing didn't happen that often. If you want to play against "better" opponents by playing in the international districts, then don't get mad that you run into syncers).


But it is pretty clear that the OP did not run into a sync team. If he feels like he "must" have a monk to win in RA, play as the monk (PS, you don't need a monk. I've won 15 matches in a row, (5 in TA) without a monk without syncing, It's pretty easy to steam roll bad teams if you have blinders/dazers).

Yeah I agree with Hawofstorms. I've been playing RA for years now and have hardly ever seen sync teams. To me it's no big deal. You get it over quickly and you go play another one. I've never seen so many whinners because they lost 1 stupid match to a sync team. Don't even try to tell me it happens constantly because I won't believe it. I have 100's of gladiator points so it's not like they are completely preventing you from winning.

I agree. The OP is bad. You can infer this from attitude.

If you want something done in RA, you have to do it yourself. Unfortunately, two things have to happen to win - you have to live and they have to die. This makes Monk less than ideal if all you want is glad points.

This is true if you're willing to limit what you play. The only reason I generally go to RA any more is to practice frontline. The play directly translates to other formats and I get rusty at hitting things quickly, so I need the odd bit of practice.

On frontline, you do need a monk to win in bunches. You cannot limit yourself to Mo secondary, stuff the bar with condition and hex rip, and emerge with a working bar. So you cannot reactively clean yourself. Active suppression leaves something to be desired. You can run Dwayna or Melandru on a derv, but this only solves one shutdown method (and not indefinitely). Distracting Blow and Exhausting Assault are fast enough and low enough recharge to suppress nasty hexes, but can't beat Blinding Surge. DChop only beats BSurge if you're lucky or they're bad.

Various caster classes with self-heals seem to be the way to go at the moment if you want glad points. The buffs of the last eight months have made casters easier to keep alive, more able to influence the outcome of the match and capable of dealing stupid amounts of damage.

There is the flip side on this coin also. Me and my fiancee get accused of synching even while we don't sync. We're in same guild, so people automatically assumes us as synchers. Yes, while we play GW we usually do same things at the same time, incl. RA, but we don't use cancel tricks, no different districts trick since the update or any other tricks that would give us higher possibility to land in the same match.

Inevitably tho, we have now started to put effort into trying NOT to get in a same team by random chance by entering at the different times, even tho it slightly hinders our game play. But "noob synchers" gets bit old after a while.

I do understand that synching is a problem and I have come across sync teams myself but what else can I do but to get my butt kicked and go again? I would imagine they know they synched, so there's no purpose for me to start to call them "noob synchers".

With this I just want to point out that same cape + tag doesn't automatically mean synchers. There is probably loads of people synching with their allies/friends who have completely different capes and tags and don't get all the noob calling, while me and my fiancee put up with it almost every time the random generator rolls us into the same team.

this nerf not solved the synching "problem" but ruined the spirit of "random arena".

fwiw, i just finished playing 38 rounds (no more than 6 wins in a row - bleh) and i ran into full guild (cape and tag) teams, 8 of those rounds. (3 seperate guilds, btw)

now, either we accept the (improbable) idea that these guild members got randomly teamed in reasonably ideal teams, (one guild failed horribly - beat them both times i faced them) or we accept that there are a fair amount of blatant sync teams in RA.

i don't automatically assume that every team that's better set up than mine is a synced team. i manage to lose quite legitimately on a regular basis. however, when the cape and guild tag match, i will assume it's a synced team.

anywho, that's my $0.02

stale


EDIT: my beloved wife pointed out to me just now that the times i choose to play (the wee small hours of the morning) may have an impact on the amount of full guild groups. her thinking goes something like "international players are more likely to sync. at 3 am local, i'm more likely to play against international players. therefore i face a higher number of guild groups."

no clue if there's anything to that, but it is something for me to ponder....

stale bongwater

Its RANDOM! I mean come on, if your team doesn't have a sin with 3 monk spells and a warrior/necro with life transfer and life siphon then clearly you synced in.

lol Reverend Dr. have we played together before in RA? )

dont sync, syncing is bad an unsportsmanlike

It's not always fun... or wasn't. When syncing was the rule in asian districts it has happened to me and/or guidies to be reported for leeching by the other 3 syncers so that you couldn't disrupt their sync the next time around.

Print screen and report them via the website and they'd get banned for abusing the report feature.

Getting kicked out of the game for 24-72 hours way worse then me being kicked out of PvP for 10 minutes.

I don't get it how when I play warrior I can't get monk for up to 10 rounds in a row, and then I'm so pissed, reroll to monk and instantly get a monk in my team, and daul heal teams repeat so often that I alt+F4 GW and don't play it for few days.. It's not a myth, it's happening to me for years and surprises me every time.

IMO everyone should play Mending Warriors with Healing Hands...you have damage and heal...what else can you possibly need.

I'm sure 6 out of 7 of his opposing teams have monks while he got none is "random" too.

Yes... yes it is. Get better at the game (and math).

Stop bitching.

Just because none of his teams had a monk and the majority of teams he played against had monks doesn't mean those teams were synced.

I've only come across one sync team (they said they didn't which is whatever). You could tell they were synced by the way they bodyblocked and just the builds they played (balanced team - WoH monk, hammer warrior, curses necromancer, and a Burning Arrow ranger).

I didn't say anything, you're the shortfuse here.(and 85% of his RA teams got no monk is not really what I call random)

oh, opps, sorry, I just "bitched" again.

As someone who has studied college level mathematics (though haven't done statistics in like 7 years, so this might not be the most eloquent thing), that's not statistically significant. It is perfectly random.

Edit: Without getting into a z-test for statistical significance, here are 3 reasons off the topic of my head why the data here is likely "random" in the mathematical meaning of the word.

1) Selective Sampling This is the biggest problem with this data. The reason he created a thread like this, is because he ran into these teams. Every time somebody gets good luck in RA, they don't post a thread on guru saying "look, I got on these perfectly balanced teams in RA several times." The fact that he perceived a pattern is the reason he posted. The data itself is tainted.

2) Too small of a sample size Pick up a coin. Flip it two times. Now, imagine the coin came up heads both times. It "should" have come up heads once and tails once (50/50), but common experience will tell you, it isn't uncommon for a coin to come up heads twice in a row. However, that isn't the question. The question is can you prove the coin is somehow defective/a trick coin with 2 sides that are heads by flipping the coin twice?. Can you prove the coin isn't random if it only shows up as heads 3 times? 4? Just because a coin is flipped and it comes up heads (or tails) a few times in a row, does not prove its a trick coin. To actually prove it isn't random, you need more flips. The seven teams the original poster ran into is not enough.

3) The odds of getting a monk are higher then you think So, 4 people on the opposing team, and one of them is a monk. There are 10 professions. Assuming every profession is played the same amount in RA (not true, there are more warriors and sins, and fewer paragons, mesmers, and dervishes. Monks are probably played MORE often then 10% of the time though), that means there is a 10% chance any random person is a monk. So, 4 people on the other team. There is a 10% chance player 1 is a monk. Of the remaining 90% of the time when player 1 is not a monk, there is a 10% chance player 2 is a monk (9%). Of the remaining 81% when player 1 and player 2 are not monks, there is a 10% chance player 3 is a monk (8.1%). Of the remaining 72.9%, there is a 10% chance player 4 is a monk (7.29 of the total).

Therefore, (10+9+8.1+7.29) there is a 34.39% chance that any particular team in RA will have at least one monk (or, any other profession for that matter).

If that confuses you, think of it this way, there are 4 players picking out of 10 professions. That's a 4 in 10 chance. The reason the odds are actually a little less then 40% though are because there is a chance for overlap (ie, 2 players can both be necros and pick the same thing).

Not sure if statistics backs this up, but intuitively the chance that a team you're facing has a monk should also be higher than the chance that your random draw has a monk, because a monk team is likely to be more successful and continue playing & winning (and you may face them multiple times). Plus there may be other people like me who only play a single game with a random team if it doesn't have a healer, and generally 10 in a row in teams that do have one, so much more of the time I'm playing with a monk.

The odds that you will pull a monk are 27.1% if you are not a monk (given the assumptions). This means that you should expect to face monks more often than you get one. It should take three to four tries to pull a monk on average, and long strings without pulling one will happen.

The discrepancy between your odds and the opponents' odds only rises as the proportion of Monks in RA increases beyond the "naive" 10% frequency estimate. If the frequency of monks were 15%, their odds are 51.585% and yours are 40.65%.

The after-match ragers don't affect outcomes much (the system fills those slots unless players leave right before timer ends and most players stay), but the expected higher success rate of teams with Monks will affect the outcome and bias the odds of facing a Monk upward.

In short, taking three or four matches to find a monk is par for the course, and facing a Monk almost every match is also typical. Going seven without drawing a Monk happens. Maybe not daily, but certainly weekly.

If you play well, you will help good teams get additional wins and carry mediocre teams to the win against mediocre teams. If you play poorly, you will cripple your team and find it nearly impossible to win five consecutively. It's really not hard to assess your impact. When I have a good build and I'm playing it well, the effects are observable. Same goes for bad play and builds.

"how do I sync in RA to be competitive with those sync'rs out there?"

Right or wrong the easy way is to down load vent or teamspeak. 3, 2, 1 go! Its just that simple.