Kinslayer_

That sounds like a bad idea to me if i'm honest.

Teh good thing about Warburg is the fact it's a free for all. Yes, teams do form but they're normally pick up teams meaning PvP there is still accessible to the casual PvP player who is not in a PvP specific SG.

Encouraging SG's to field regular teams is just going to see it drive the more casual PvP'ers out, which is the last thing PvP needs right now.

Now, this isn't a rant or anything but a genuine discussion to see if it's just my perception(prompted by some comments made about aid self).

We all know that when PvP first came along, it was dreadfully unbalanced and now it is getting a bit better. However, one thing that bothers me is that it seems the Dev's learend from their mistakes BEFORE CoV and as a result, a lot of the 'uber' powers just aren't available.

While I applaud the fact that they've learned and made CoV builds a lot more even in terms of PvP, the problem comes when those villains go up against heroes. The simple fact is that, particularly in terms of patron powers, there are very few of those 'standout' powers that make some builds in CoH so useful. I know for a fact that when I got Focussed Accuracy on my scrapper, it completely changed the way I built him for PvP but there's noting in the CoV side that has a similar effect. Let's recap and list a few here:

Focussed Accuracy
Power Boost
Hibernate
Quick Recover
Force Of Nature
Conserve Power

When I try to think of CoV powers that can single handedly change a build, they really are few and far between.

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but as the vast majority of people do not have /energy blasters

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Stop talking nonsense Stalk, are you actually trying to insinuate that there are some people out there without ice/energy blappers, spine/regen scrappers, spine/SR scrappers or storm defenders. How dare you suggest there is still some originality in the game where PvP is concerned

Anyway, back to the OP, no Aid Self is not overpowered. For some builds it's the only thing that gives us a chance in PvP. What needs looking at is Power Boost amongst other things.

Most SG/VG's have a shelf life. Of the original SG's created on or shortly after the launch of CoH, very few of them have lasted beyond a year. By this, I don't mean the ones everyone created when they got to lvl 10 and started spam broadcast recruitment but the ones that were built up properly.

Some have carried on going but i'd guess those that have probably have very few of the founding members left. When my SG was basically dying due to us all moving over to CoV we offered it to new leaders as well.

There 's no point keeping something if it's only got a handful of members and it made more sense for those who were still playing to move in with one of our coalition SG's as one active SG rather than 2 inactive ones.

Given that all those who were still around made the jump, should I have just let the old SG collapse? No way. The amount of salvage and prestige we'd put in was too much to just let it fold so we handed it over to some new players to give their SG a good start.

Just letting dead SG's crumble away seems a waste to me in these days of prestige earning.

There's already a channel on Union that is used for salvage trading. It's called 'Union Leaders' and has a leader from most of the SG/VG's in game on there and has been running for close to a year now.

Last time I looked, it was over 100 members and salvage trading is done on there quite regularly. There's a link below if you'd like details on how to be invited.

Union Leaders

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Chilling embrace applies instantly and lasts a while, with a bit moving around you can keep 17 foes with it.

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And while you are moving around, those 7 strays are firing off one attack each at the original object of their aggro, the squishy AoE magnet blaster.

My view on this is that you can hold aggro OK without taunt but you can't gather aggro unless you're the player that triggered it.

Then you're down to the question of why on earth not to take it in the first place? Tanks jobs are aggro management and taunt is one of the most effective tools for it. If you skip taunt, chances are you're putting an extra attack in or something else to fill out a role that is not the tanks and they're ill suited

It's like an empath taking absorb pain instead of aid other. They both a heal a target in trouble but one is so blindingly, obviously designed for it that it's madness

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My point being that without the ability to AS, stalkers are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard

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Not true at all!

The best stalkers I know for PvP are actually the ones that rarely, if ever, bother with AS. Maybe in BB they can kill at will and even in Sirens they can pick off the less experienced pleyers for easy rep but once you start heading to Warburg and RV, that's where the truley skilled stalkers show their worth.

It often amuses me when you see stalkers racking up kills in Sirens and boasting how good they are at PvP then heading to the higher zones and crying about how badly they've been nerfed.

AS has long activation and is interruptable, making it pretty easy to counter if that is the players only tactic. The damage of criticals from hide followed up by placate though are another kettle of fish altogether and skilled players can still rack up stupid kills using these.

Just take a look at Max Powerz stalker, Gutts, in 3vP. Most of the people there have 'anti-AS' powers worked into their build but it still didn't stop him out killing nearly everyone in in his matches.

If this is simply for a screenshot, why not just copy your character to test then roll the others on there?

You can then get them all exactly as you want, rather than another persons interpretation of them?

TAKE. TAUNT. NOW!

Joking aside, unless you really can't manage the aggro, taunt should be taken as early as possible if you want to be a team tank.

Taunting AoE's like chilling embrace and blazing aura along with the punchvoke/gauntlet will enable you to hold aggro most of the time but when you have scattering mobs making a beeline for the ranged squishies you are left with three choices

- Hope the squishy can take the aggro
- Chase the aggro down, risking your current aggro scattering if you move out of range as the mobs are attacked
- Taunt the mob to bring him to you while standing safely in the middle of your already gathered aggro.

Spot the preferred option

People will argue they can herd and tank without taunt and I agree an experienced player can do this without taunt but give him the same build with taunt and he'll do it even better so the earlier you get it, the better you're fulfilling your team role.

Unless you're a fire tank, no one expects you to be doing the killing(even fire tanks aren't expected to do it since the burn change).

So, impressing them with how quickly you can kill something or how you have aid other to help heal them is pointless if you can't pull those odd few mobs off the blaster who's nowhere the bulk of the enemy

Getting Kills You Shouldn't
This one was a while back now and in Sirens. Search showed no villains in there so me and a stalker friend went to do some badging. As soon as we enter, we see why it's quiet as there are 9 heroes camping the villain base.

Seems like, despite the numbers, they were a bit PvP noobish and were all from the same SG. When they see us, the name calling begins as we're called cowards, etc. for not rushing in 9 on 2. After a bit of thought, we buff up and pop some purples and reds, having identified the empath and rad with them and go charging in. Taking them by surprise, we drop the rad and empath before they can do much and also get the troller into the bargain. Running out of the hospital hell for leather, we then take down 3 blasters who stupidly have no mez protection or BF's, before buying it and making the other blaster leg it. Straight back out and the scrappers next(thank god he wasn't a regen), taking him down just as the first three we killed come rushing back for more killing with the 'brave' blaster alongside. Blaster, empath and troller are taken down and run back out the hospital to polish off the tank who had been ignored up to this point.

By now, we're both flat out of insps and expecting a beating when they come back. No chance, rather than regroup, they all come hurtling to the villain base nicely spread out due to the different times they died and different speed travel powers and are simply AS'd and scourged in their ones and twos. Racked up about 20 rep points in about 30 minutes and a nice little pile of bounty before they thought to regroup and when we saw 7 of them heading in together(blaster and rad had left after the initial rout), we just went to cashout and the pair of us started chatting over broadcast.

'So Scar, that's a couple of SO's we picked up there. Which one you going for?'
'Hmm, decisions, decisions. Maybe we should go back out there and get another couple off them?'

Of course, we then got a bit too full of ourselves and tried to rout them again but it was less than successful with no insps and them being ready this time. Was quite funny seeing how that small victory for them suddenly turned us back into 'noobs' over broadcast when the kill ratio was something like 20-9 in our favour when we were outnumbered 9 to 2 or 7 to 2 for the entire fight

NOTE: The only reason this was possible was due to our proximity to the hospital meaning we had little downtime while they had huge distances to travel. With the 1HP change, any advantage you may have as a defender to try and turn things round is gone so that would have been a frustrating gank session. Good way to make things 'fun' by the Dev's there.

OK, think i'll stick three range in my snipe attack tonight in place of the damage and see if that helps at all.

Much better now. A bit of a stumble on The Vindicator mission but once you get that crucial first kill, it's all plain sailing.

Debuff mainly. My damage output at present is pretty good but not enough to really put away a non squishy so the build is all about the slows.

Frostwork and the shield give me some team buff but are an afterthought, rather than a playstyle. With no heal and so many debuffs, trying to squeeze it for buffs seemed pointless when I could of just rolled a kin or another thermal.

Can't take Mace as I've already taken Scirroco, purely for power sink. The rate Ice chews through end is quite high already so not going for Power Sink would have meant dropping damage and recharges for end reductions.

One on one, I can see the advantages but in prolonged zone battles, I'd be good for one target then off hiding unless I had a pocket kinetic.

I've picked up power sink and the patron armour so far but even the armour has put a big dent in end consumption so I'll definitely need a rethink towards the tail end of the build once I get my last 5 levels.

The Unexpected Attack
Don't know how I forgot this one as it provided me with some chuckles when I found it on my Corruptor. Above the Hero entrance to SC you can actually stand on the War Wall with stealth and not get droned.

In comes an unsuspecting squishy feeling safe in their supposed immortality zone. 2 Corruptors, 2 Build Up/Aims and 2 snipes later they're eating dirt having been shot in the back and the corruptors can step back without them having a clue what hit them, ready to get them on the way back out of the hospital

As Phil mentioned, Aid Self is very useful. Beyond that, just look at some of the standard PvP mantra's such as 2 ACC in everything, SS coupled with Combat jump(3 jump enhances) and hurdle(3 jump enhances) for maximum unsurpressed mobility.

With fitness(for stamina), Speed(for SS, hasten not really needed on an SR but you need SS so no point skipping it) and leaping for Combat Jump(could skip this pool entirely or add SJ for more mobility), you're also left with an additional pool if you need it.

Presence pool would give you some fear attacks which there's not much resistance to, Fighting will give you tough to make you a little more hardy, TP foe can be useful and leadership will give you a bit more protection against stalkers.

A quick glane in the scrapper forum will show you some PvP Claw/* and */SR discussions for PvP so you can merge some of those for a more rounded build.

Best bet will be to post your build though so people can see where you may be going wrong.

Back to the OP, another one to add from a session last night.

Would Sir Like Some 'Whine' With That?
Me and a friend are happily poodling around Warburg last night getting nukes for a Recluse run. The zone is fairly quiet when we stumble across my favourite... A scrapper. We kill him and just before he dies he exerts his magnificent use of the English language'

'dn't want 2 fite'

Fair enough, we weren't there to fight either so would have been wary of him from then on but probably not executed the 'attack on sight' policy. Then he goes and blows it by following that up with foul language and abuse(even that is spelt all wrong though). This was during peak evening play time in the PvP zones.

Worse thing is, by the time we dropped our hostages off and returned, we stumble across the same scrapper and he's conveniently cleared most of a hostage mob for us. Wouldn't normally have stole a hostage in this way but his earlier abuse made him fair game so attacked. Now the abuse get's even worse.

Several minutes later, the pair of us leave Warburg having got our 3 codes for the nukes very quickly thanks to one abusive scrapper.

Remember, everyone in a PvP zone will attack on sight. Once they've attacked and you've retaliated they won't stop half way through bnecuase you ask, you may just be trying to trick them. However, once that's over, if you ask nicely, most will agree not to attack you again. Swearing and being abusive will just guarantee a hostile response and a petition backed up by logs.

The Side Switchers
Can be a good or bad thing here. The zone is heavily in one sides favour and numbers are making a huge impact. It's time to switch sides. Only problem, you get the real PvP'ers who are there for fun and skillful battles and will switch to the other side to even the playing field. Then there are the 'glory boys' who do the exact opposite and switch to the side that's winning.

The Bait
One of my personal favourites. I'm squishy, my slows are annoying so people want to take me down, I have no self heal. How do I make myself useful? Cannon fodder

Nothing better than getting that scrapper to come chasing after me and running round the corner into a massacre. Why aren't these used more as setting up sacrificial lambs seems under utilised(though the hospital rez makes people less likely to risk themselves nowadays, way to make zones more 'fun' Cryptic)

I would say it is. You're not there to PvP, you're not there to get rep or bounty, your sole intention is to Mob TP as many people as possible without actually attacking them.

The way I see it is if you're heavily outnumbered and being base camped, it's probably not petitionable. If you're TP'ing them into a mob then attacking them and actually trying to kill them yourself with the NPC's aiding you, it's also not petitionable as you're actually making an attempt to do it for the rep rather than to inflict debt.

Not that i'd use any of these tactics. TP foe is for TP'ing people to you for killing, end of. I have no respect for drone/mob TP'ers.

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Intentionally causing debt is griefing in my book!


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And, unsurprisingly, in the GM's book as well.

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Well not in the Dev's opionion I'm afraid if its in a pvp zone

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Yes it is. Using mobs to soften up or help swing a battle is acceptable. What you describe as in you did not attack the player and TP'd him with the epxress intention of getting him debt IS griefing.

Or they could just give you an SG TF like we get on CoV in the form of the silver mantis SF.

Thank you for broadcasting to the entire community when you plan to do this.

I need some rep points on my villains who have been neglecting PvP in favour of getting to 50 so knowing so many of you will now be in what place at what time, I'll be happy to top my rep up.

Anyone else think the OP has not thought through what exactly happens in a PvP zone and that it may be worth keeping non PvP visits there secret and oustide of peak time?

We've all heard the noob trash talk, the bad losers, the indignation from people getting attacked in PvP zones, so, how about a nice little thread for some of the funniest things you've heard/seen in PvP. I'll kick it off

No Honour Among Thieves
Attack two scrappers with my corruptor who are fighting in Warburg and get told. 'stop attacking us, we're duelling' so, I reply 'OK' and back off to let them finish. They both then turn round and gank me. Two faced of them or just naive of me? Either way i've learnt my lesson now.

On a personal note to any badgers etc who get the hump for being attacked, things like this have happened to me several times now. If I attack you, don't take it personally but i've honourably left people badge hunting before only for them to attack when they get the chance. I don't care what you're doing and what your intentions are, leaving you alive is a risk i'm no longer going to take.

Actually playing your AT how it should be played? Cheating!
Fighting a scrapper with my corruptor and lay the slows on him while staying out of range and attacking. Keeping up a non stop chain of attacks and debuffs when the scrapper says 'stop running and fight me'. Of course, how silly of me not to go toe to toe melee against a regen scrapper with my squishy.

Stalkers are the suxxor
Of course, the age old favourite I chuckle everytime I see. 'Stalkers can't fight fair and can only win by using hide. Of course, nothing to do with you standing still long enough to let them AS you is it!

The ego has landed... With their excuses
My personal favourite though is when you come up against some of the big heads in the zones. There they are with their highly original FOTM spine/regen' wailing on some unfortunate squishy and putting him in the ground. In comes me and debuffs them and drops them before they realise they've been blindsided only to be met with 'I wasn't ready, you couldn't beat me if I knew you were going to attack'.

Of course not, a spine/regen would tear me apart WHICH IS EXACTLY WHY I WAITED UNTIL YOUR GUARD WAS DOWN. Not my fault you dropped the ball and got caught by a rookie mistake.

Grudging respect
Much kudos to the perpetrators here. There I am engaging in my favourite past time of crippling regens self heals and dispensing of them in a one on one. This particular regen though seems to be getting his heals off just in time as he also has aid self and neither of us are making headway with a complete stalemate.

Then we see two speech bubbles appear. 'Nice of them to soften each other up curly' 'Sure is Mo'... Both get AS'd by the two stalkers who we didn't realise had been watching us for a while and waiting for us to burn insps

Cheeky little oiks but was amusing

The bully boys
We've all seen them, those so desperate to get another rep point and not look bad that they 'challenge' people they know are not as good as them while avoiding those who are better or mercilessly hunt down the easy kill. Every time a PvP event comes up, they try to recruit the BEST players rather than the players they may be friends with. How good they look is everything, chances are they'll be the first to leave a zone though when the real big boys show up.

The Schizophrenics... Double standards for all
These are the ones who really bring me a warm glow when I get a rep point off them. Those who are on the back foot, outnumbered, out gunned or even just up against the wrong build that is their achilles heel. They criticise the oppositions honour, claiming they don't gank, fight with dignity etc and generally exude an air of holiness... Next night they're in the zone with their 5 friends ganking the poor PvP newcomer to hell.

My own sick satisfaction
I don't know why, I really don't, but for some reason I get a some real sick sense of glee from dropping fliers with snow storm. Nothing in PvP gives me as much pleasure as seeing the flying blaster or PA dropper hovering over the baying mob of meat head builds(tanks, scrappers, brutes, stalkers) picking his shots and safe in the sky from his inherent squishiness. Then you drop the sucker in the middle of that mob and watch then all turn from the high HP target they were fighting to the suddenly vulnerable easy meat that has dropped in on them like mana from heaven


So, what are the other amusing comments or just plain 'shake your head in disbelief comments'

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Stryker has the right idea dont say anything... too many people big themselfs up or like to argue why they lost.. simple they are a bad losers.

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Amen to that. There are too many egos out there who feel they have to try and justify a loss.

In homage to that, think i'll start a thread in here on 'Funny things in PvP'

Slight Update. Looks like my Ice/Ice won't be able to hit 45 in time so i'll have to take my fire/therm.

Was actually quite heartbreaking last night to see how long it took me to get 4 bars just for lvl 44 after getting 3 levels in one sitting Friday night

I'll grab the nukes and Shivans on Kin tonight then play Exo like mad just to see if I can make it but not sure 5-6 hours of play time will see me get a whole 9 bars in time(espcially as everyone seems to have taken a little break after the wekeends XP burnout)

OK, seeing as everyone else is chipping in, here's my two cents on why it failed.

Team Leaders - The one thing that shocked me was exactly how little info there was on the Hamidon channel. Babel, as raid leader, should have been organising and informing the team leaders of what to do(I assume there were two channels, one for general and one for team leaders). However, at LEAST one of those leaders should have then been keeping the rest of the raid team updated on developments. Thinking people are going to wait around in The Hive when they have no idea of what's going on and none of the team leaders can be bothered to update them is a sure way to get people thinking 'I'm not standing here for another hour when we don't even know what's going on. I'm off'.

During the last raid, Jiaozy was telling the team leaders what was going on and we were relaying that info to the general channel, even if it was just an update every 10 minutes along the lines of 'holding phase ongoing'. I pretty much kept up a continual stream of info based on what Jiaozy was telling us to keep every member of the raid team informed. Jiaozy also removed broadcast and tells from his channels so the only info he was getting was from the raid channels, anything on the other channels that may have been relevant, the team leaders filtered out and passed onto him ove rthe leader channel so he wasn't bogged down in junk and spam. Do not expect people to sit around with no idea of what's going on until they are called for like some sort of obedient pup.

Targetting
I've heard that singularities were used for people to target Hamidon through. My only question there is WHAT! Using an AI NPC, when there are mitos around and they've just as much chance of attacking them as Hami is a bad idea.

I know Hami fades from sight due to the lag at certain points but there's always someone who can see/target him. As soon as a power recharges, looks who's firing into the blob and target through them(if none of the designated raid targeters have a lock), not blindly through an AI bot that could be attacking anything.

The thought of how many crucial holds were wasted here is frightening and, IMO, this seems to be the single biggest cause of failure.

Too Many Chiefs
At the end of the day, this was Babels raid and all the calls were his to make, NO ONE ELSES, unless input was specifically asked for by previous raid/team leaders. Unless you had been a raid or team leader in the past, how much you had read on Hammi raids or how many successful ones you had been on in the past didn't mean squat, especially if you had never done one before but were suddenly full of your opinions on how it should be done. I refer you to my initial taunt team requirements before I had to withdraw from the raid.

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Must be willing to listen and follow orders.

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One of the biggest problems with Hami raids on Union is that there are a lot of people out there who think they know how things should and shouldn't be done. They may know the numbers in the game back to front, may have exhausted every bit of content in the game and have a list of lvl 50's as long as my arm but, here is the killer... NONE OF THIS MEANS A THING.

At the end of the day, if I had been on the raid, the only people who's opinions or instructions/orders would have held any weight for me would have been Jersey's, Jiaozy's, Babels and my taunt team members from the last two successful raids. Thankfully, I also know none of those would have issued orders outside their teams but would have passed any suggestions or actions to Babel as he was the leader and all decisions were his to make.

Hamidon is about being a team player. It's about knowing when to follow orders, when to communicate with the other raid members and keep them updated and, more importantly, motivated.

As for the future of Hami raids on Union? IMO, we'll never get to where Defiant are unless there's a major change in the way they are done.

People run Hami raids on here as 'the last big challenge'. Every successful raid, we've had a different raid and team leaders. When I put my taunt team together, I deliberately took as many members of the previous raid teams as possible but from what I've seen of the other core teams, very few had done Hami raids before. This meant when things went wrong, they were making decisions on second hand info. I only managed to get 3 previous taunt team members on my team, making four of us and was a little concerned about that. I would prefer two or three new members and 5-6 experienced ones so new people are learning without endangering the raid.

To see other teams led by people who'd never even been in a 'core' team for a Hami raid and where the rest of the team was made up of people in the same situation was quite a big concern.

I'm all for bringing new people into the key Hami roles as we need to get the knowledge shared around more but, as Defiant have shown, you still have to have a backbone of players who KNOW what they're doing, rather than have READ what they should be doing in the main roles.

The other reason I don't think we'll succeed? Ego. From what I understand on the Defiant raids, it's the fact that everyone listens to Xanthus and does what the hell they are told. From the reports I heard last night, that wasn't the case with people trying to issue their own orders.

Were I to put a raid farming team together, I would have Jersey(raid leader), Jiaozy(taunt team leader), Double(rad team leader), and Stagefright(PA drop leader). I would then fill 3 of the spots in each team with previous raiders and the others with new raiders. One member of each team would also be nominated as deputy to eventually lead the team in future raids. After 2-3 raids, I'd then look at promoting one or two deputies up for each raid, the leaders stepping down and new deputies picked to keep the continuity, rinse and repeat.

Hey presto, 8-10 raids down the road and you've suddenly got a dozen or so people who are all capable of leading a raid and KNOW how to react in them, rather than think they know.

Of course, this probably won't happen as the people who've been mentioned have all been there, done that, put up with the grief, aggravation, boredom, hard work needed to pull it off and probably have no desire to do it again.

Babel, Kudos to you for having the balls to organise one. Running a Hamidon raid is one of the few challenges I have left in the game but you'll sure as hell not see me anywhere near one in the near future as I've seen what a thankless task it is.

I'm gutted for you that it didn't succeed but don't feel too down as plenty of other people have failed.

Becuase if the scrapper does go down, all your eggs are in one basket. Same if his taunt misses at all.

A team of taunters, especially tanks who's taunt auto hits, covers all bases.

Worth remembering a lot of those early raids failed abysmally and this isn't a 'new' tactic but a tried and tested US one with a few modifications for our smaller server populations.