Does time of day make a huge impact on the types of players in BGs?

Nyseto · January 2023

So last night I was doing BGs with my friend, both nightblades running selene’s, oakensoul, red mountain. After about 6 or so back to back BGs, he deleted his NB. I don’t know if it’s sweaty basement nerd hour or what but you can’t gank anyone in the tank meta, everyone is glued to each other’s hips in groups, one player can tank an entire team, it’s just one big snooze fest. And it’s not just ganking, it’s brawling as well. I myself have 25k pen on my NB (with Spriggan’s and Stuhn’s) and it’s trash.

I think I’m just done with stamina all together and going to sit from afar from now on holding down heavy attack on a lightning staff necro.

OBJnoob · January 2023

Yes, the bg crowd depends on time of day. If you spend 6 hours grinding bgs, or two days, or two weeks, you will eventually reach a mmr perhaps higher than you wanted where everybody seems to be on tanky meta classes AND they know how to play.

BUT even once you are in high mmr, if you yourself belong there, you will notice some people are better than others. And certain prime times of day (when east coast USA, on Xbox NA for example, gets off work and has a few free hours before bed,) there are more good players. But even if you say, stay home sick from work and play at 11am, the competition will still be decent depending on your mmr.

So sorry if that's confusing but the answer is YES time of day matters. MMR matters more though, I would say, and your friend's problem is probably both.

Ultimately though he/she made the wrong decision to delete their nightblade. Nightblades used to be garbage in bgs because there maybe isn't a whole lot of opportunity to gank in team fights-- but nightblades are so ever-loving-STRONG right now that the good ones excel in bgs as well. I'd say that there are as many good nightblades in bgs as there are wardens and DKs. And while the nbs may not be as helpful at capturing flags and holding chaosballs they are finely tuned for defending relics and, well, just killing people. They might not rack up the highest medal score, but they end up with some of the best KDs. Particularly in game modes that provide incentive to split up for multiple objectives. Deathmatches are pretty rare these days, for better or worse, and it is NOT hard to find 1 or 2 people off somewhere alone.

Of course I admit our experiences may vary due to platform, mmr, or solo/group que.

But ultimately I think you were both just playing the wrong style of nightblade. Oakensoul, Selene's, and red mountain?? Wear some stat based proc sets instead-- have two bars so you can use some of the fine healing nbs have at their disposal-- and stop trying to outright gank people. You have enough damage to kill... You're working too hard and sacrificing things you don't need to sacrifice.