Spiritchaser

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Want more PvPers?

Minigames, that is all you need.

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Don't get me wrong, I think that's almost a requirement eventually.

Cross server, "equal" force minigames would be pretty key in the long run

For now? I'm thinking of this as a very good step in the right direction with less overhead.

Might have something to do with the 1.4 base acc. That'd be pretty damn good for a realistic PvP attack.

edit: though maybe it'd still be ok. I wonder if it's working as intended or is just a miss...

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While I'm usually in favour of having most goods available through Merits/Tickets/whatever, PvP drops are meant to be had through PvP. You can just set up a farm if you dislike PvP or just join one of the Leagues and have fun with it.

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Keep in mind that not all servers have such leagues, and certainly not at all hours.

If PvP is going to become effectively limited to only a few servers (arguably what has already happened now) then "just join a league" makes sense. The arena is reasonably frequented some servers, and zones, at least on freedom and virtue do seem active.

But this isn't generally true.

If PvP is to become more universally available to players on all servers, it's in zone popularity needs to be bolstered across as many servers as possible. Putting rewards into zones is a way to do that.

I just did this myself two days. I'm still not finished the build, but this one change, 3 SHOs the two -def set damage IO procs and the purple proc fundimentally changed the build (well really the purple proc)

Before I had to hope HE would wear them down before I died, which didn't happen against skilled players.

Now I'm an actual threat to their health.

Still havn't had much of a chance to use my new toys... there just hasn't been much going on, but if ever there was a build that could be made or broken by slotting the bejezuz out of one power...

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On the flip side, against AVs in the endgage, a lot of controller tools are irrelevant.

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Please elaborate.

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Well, purple triangles are a big deal. If you build for hard control, most controllers are going to be less relevant than they'd like to be against these guys... I think a lot of people estimate the impact of a controller on an AV fight as somewhat low. Generally this is wrong, but there it is.

The fact that you can shut down the AV 1/3 of the time (when the PTODs drop) may not be interesting to them. The potential use of Immobs and sleeps might seem limited to most, and...

well...

We're talking about earth, one of the few sets that actually CAN still control an AV through a very tough taunting stoney, especially if you throw some shields on him and have a set with a heal...

Those unique res IOs are so very very inexpensive after all...

No really, and I'm not just saying this because I mostly play self interested villains...
Or because I'm greedy...
Or because I want more people to shoot at...

It's really a finely balanced mixture of all three.
And I know some of this has been said before, I just haven't seen it recently.

Here's the plan: We have PvP IOs. Right now they have a chance to drop off every PvP kill. That's great, there's nothing wrong with that, but I think there's a better way.

We already have merit systems in the game. We even have a PvP merit style system. it's functioning smoothly, though anemically, in Siren's call. Lets expand the system.

I'm all for new PvP zones, zone revamps and all manner of such things whereby we get capture the flag, king of the hill and so on, but here are some very simple changes that could fill those pvp zones and arenas with all kinds of players NOW.

It's based on the simple truth: PvP IOS are GOOD. People want them.

Allow players to purchase them, or at least random rolls for them with PvP merits. Call it bounty, call it whatever you want.

Bounty for killing players (instead of a random drop chance) This could potentially vary with rep delta or some such.
Extra bounty for killing designated players in Sirens.
Bounty for capturning a pillbox in RV (maybe only from the PvE turrets to prevent excessive gaming)
Bounty for killing AVs in RV
Bounty for rescuing scientists in warburg
Bounty for winning a rated arena match with a given minimum duration (repeated match rewards decay over time if fought against an identical team)
Substantial bounty for winning a weekly arena tourney...
Bounty for defeating turrets in bloody bay, for having a faction WIN in Sirens or RV...

Is it going to see some abuse? yes some, there will be farmers, but making the system LESS farmable than AE is a pretty trivial task no?

How easy would this be to do? I'm sure it would be time consuming, but I'm also pretty sure it'd be a whole lot LESS time consuming than I13 was.

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Do what the rest of us have been doing and move to Freedom.

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It's a bit sad, I may have to do this as well...
Certainly any new pvp characters are going to have to be there.

Thing is, my current PvP project is my rad/thermal, he's all leveled, but while there's no-one to fight, I WILL be leveling something, so that's something new.

I figure I might as well make whatever looks most likely to work well...

In any case, thanks for the advice so far!

Sure, but... buildup is only up for a short while as well...

power boosted tactics is not an adequate option?

very cool, thanks

I'm looking for another leveling project to switch off with during frequent periods of extreme deadness in RV. Doms look like they're about to get more interesting and I though I might try one of those. I've never pvp'd on a dom before so I'm not that sure what matters.

My current earth electric might possibly be ok for pvp, but going for a new from scratch, I'm thinking about either energy for pb, massive damage, and a ranged attack with 1.4 base acc, or maybe psi for DS and some reasonable damage.

As for the primary, I'm thinking of grav, mind or earth as maybe viable.

The way I see it, earth gives some really good dropped location effects, some decent -def, and stoney might even help some.

Mind gives you TK, and a confuse, and a knock

Grav gives you a knock and an intangible. Sing can't hurt either...

As usual, the odd duel, kickballs and zone only, I'm no test server pilot and I never will be. I've seen some discussion on some of these, but most of it seems to be pre dom change
I'd love to hear any comparative comments!

I don't think it's even just AoE damage that EM comes up short on. EM used to be very good at ST control, now it loses out to stone, and maybe even to SS, while falling FAR behind of AoE control.

EM is now fair for ST damage, and fair for ST control, and fairly abysmal for both AoE control and AoE damage.

There's enough of a gap that I might even suggest that WH get a boost to its stun chance. Footstomp gets an 80% chance to knock, WH gets a 30% chance for a mag 2 stun.

So Footstomp is the tier 9 power of SS? It deserves to be better? I don't think this kind of an argument holds too much water when game wide powers are considered or even just examining the powers from the SS and EM sets.

The real question to me involves how the power gets used. Right now it's at least somewhat chainable. With a tight group, you'd be able to do more damage with the current version over time, if this was your only AoE.

Only in the later game, with more recharge would this be a dps winner for small teams.

On large teams however, a large, gate crashing AoE would make a heck of an addition to EM.

There's currently a new version of whirling hands on beta, but only for dominators.

Would it be so horribly wrong to allow brutes to test it as well?

for those who are unfamiliar the changes , they are substantial, and are as follows:

<ul type="square">[*]Whirling Hands: Increased this power’s damage scale from 1 to 1.1, increased its recharge from 14 seconds to 20 seconds, increased its endurance cost from 14.4 to 18.51, and increased its radius from 10 feet to 15 feet.[/list]

So... a longer recharge, and a much larger area. A little more endurance and a little more damage.

This has always been a great looking power, but it's been one with a very small AoE.

I'm not saying it's guaranteed to be better, but can we try it out?

Much appreciated, but only if you get the chance!

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I've been greedily awaiting the chance to IO out a Mind/NRG. Permadom for under 25 million? Why yes, I think so.

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Hey you aren't supposed to feel the need/desire to perma dom anymore

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Need? No.

Desire? who do you think you're kidding...

I could probably perma a couple of Ill/rads or ill/kins with the sum total of everything my blue siders own.

There's enough spare inf down the back of the couch in the SG lounge to do a couple of earth thermals.

edit: also, Earth does rather a good job of controlling everything else... something ill/ isn't exactly famous for.

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Earth/TA. Lock thread.

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I'm actually going to go with earth/thermal

Yup thermal

Stoney taunts, and with thermal shields and those obscenely inexpensive unique IO res procs you can keep him alive forever against anything (well there might be one or two things out there, but not much)

That means you can control something that other sets can't

Purple triangles.

I'd guess that Earth/Sonic with meds could probably pull the same trick too.

meh, brutes have toggles to pay for and fury to worry about. I don't think it's at all simple.

As for the iconic role... Hey why not?

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What we have to realize when rationalizing the hiccups in these changes is that:
people won't sit there and calculate - well I'm doing 10% more dps now even when not attacking for 3 second gaps then I was in issue 13. They just won't.
They WILL - spam powers in non-optimized ways until they run out of end at the third spawn and then start [censored] that they are end pigs.


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In fairness, brute players have been spamming attacks... and running out of end, and [censored] about it, for years.

As far as I can tell, it hasn't stopped them from playing brutes.

It's amazing how well you can put up with endurance issues if you hide them under a large enough pile of bodies.

Forgive me for my ignorance, but would this really be worth the loss of buildup in an earth/electric? It seems to me that the latter would be the better choice...

That would be awesome!

I may not be the best at PvP, but at least I'll be able to understand the math behind my ignominious defeats!

Arcana had a list of factors in Beta, but I'm pretty sure many have changed since then

Does anyone have an up to date list of DR factors? or just test and see?

I wonder what level of elusivity would actually be correct?

30% was generally considered too much, 10% too little...

I wonder if they gave us around 15% (depending on the set) and made it enhanceable?

Having Def IOs grant elusivity in any meaningful amount could work, but it would also be counter to any design goal to make elusivity protect intrinsically defended characters in preference to those who are granted def buffs... if there is in fact any such goal...

Thanks all for the opinions and suggestions. Looks like I'll be keeping it in the build for now.