Spizzie

At PAX East I remember Posi talking about PvP being looked at sometime soon. Something about it on the slate, but not being an immediate priority (because GR is immediate priority)? So it's possible that they'll fix some of the bugs.

Not to single you out, Eps, but the more people who create posts like those on that thread, the less seriously they'll tale the PvP community. I admire your intentions, I just think that we should take a different route. The "my powers don't work, I'm slow, etc" drum has been beaten ad nauseum. I express my "i13 is a bug" feelings here, but I'm going to put together a fairly nice, constructive post for THAT thread.

Again, I don't mean to single you out; I just see what might be a golden opportunity, and I don't want to create an environment over there where they see an i13/PvP post and immediately dismiss it as an upset or disgruntled PvP'er who is pestering them, thus closing our possible window of opportunity.

Rumor has it that i13 is a bug. They jus haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.

Square_One brings up a good point; Peacebringers are actually a pretty good PvP AT. You can go all-human, and be a combination between a Rad Blaster and a Regen Scrapper, albeit less survivability than a Regen Scrapper and less damage than a Rad Blaster. Still, you'll be competitive.

Or you can go tri-form (which I suggest) and spend most of your time in Nova. You'll drop out of Nova and into human and Dwarf to use the heals, and then go back into Nova and have super range and very high damage. Procs are king in PvP, and since PB's attacks do -defense, you can slot a lot of procs in their attacks (Shield Breaker, Lady Grey, Achilles). Really, PB's are a pretty good PvP AT overall. A well built PB can be a lot better than any Regen Scrapper in PvP.

But you might only be interested in playing a Warshade.

I don't mean to be rude or blunt, but Warshades are the absolute worst AT for PvP. Their powers completely rely on other targets being in melée range, and unless you're fiteklubbing a MM, you'll never be able to maximize (or even come close) their damage and survivability potential.

However, they are a total blast to play in PvE. (as I've learned recently, just got my own WS to 43 last night).

Or you could wait for Kinetic Melee! With those 18-second animations, it should do killer damage.

But seriously, the optimal Scrapper is going to be Fire/Regin (for max damage), possibly MA/Regin if you like some stuns. Super Reflexes can be quite survivable if done right, but I'd suggest Regen as it's kind of like an i13 PvP starter kit for zones. The reason that Willpower isn't too good is because it doesn't have a heal and instead has a PBAoE Regen Aura that toggles off with every little mez, as well as requiring enemies in melee range (which likely won't happen often). Now, you'll have a lot of HP which is great, and you'll have some resists, but it won't ever compare to Regen. Regen's going to have more "OH ####" tools, as well as having at least 10% resists anyway due to global resist bonuses.

Good Defender primaries, like mac said, are Cold, Rad, and Storm. Although if you're teaming, Empathy is certainly useful. I personally like Cold the most, but that's just me. It's somewhat of a swiss army knife and its debuffs, while slow to recharge, are quite incapacitating. Rad is pretty swiss-army-ish, too. Personal preference will dictate what you choose, but Rad often is considered better.

Or if you're interested in rolling a Blaster, go with Psi, Fire, Sonic, or Rad (in that order, in my opinion) and have either EM or Dev as your secondary. EM is superior to Devices because of Build Up and Boost Range, but Devices has some nice tools like Webnade and Targeting Drone.

I'm assuming that you're only considering heroes as of right now.

/cue Dahjee telling you that you should roll a Sonic/AR Defender.

The OP is crazy lucky. I could never just bang my face on a keyboard and come up with whole words, much less grammatically correct sentences. Yet this person seems to do it on every post. Remarkable.

Wow, you just don't get it. It shouldn't be that hard for a team (and not even a FULL team, half a team will do) to spike a single target before he or she hibernates.

If your team is running around, chasing a squishy and it takes 10 minutes to force him/her into Hibernate, you have other things to worry about than "HiberQuit".

I liked this thread a lot more when Xanatos was making it a Planet Earth-lite.

That was before I truly realized the potential of a downie troll.

Pretty much exactly what Supermax said. If you go with Blaze Mastery, you'll need Leadership. It's never a bad thing to have Assault, either, so it's not like you'll be "wasting" a power selection to get to Tactics.

You'll be more offensive than defensive with the Leadership/Blaze approach, but you'd already be defensive enough with Regin. Also, if you're not going to get the Concealment Pool (which I suggest you do, if you can), then get the temp phase. Either get it from Warbug or buy the recipe from WW. It'll help you to get away and it'll help you to get kills.

Lastly, you should consider getting Confront, as it gives a -75% range debuff to the target. You'll be glad you got it.

/Edit I see you went with the Concealment/Weapons approach. Good choice.

If a PvP'er doesn't want to compete in high-end Arena PvP because they aren't good enough, nobody is going to make them. If they don't want to, they can just go in Zones or Arena and fight players of equal skill.

So why ruin high-end PvP? Because some PvE'er walked into an arena match or a zone and got farmed, and then didn't bother asking around how to be competetive? So instead of PvE'ers taking some time to get good or better at PvP, the devs created an entirely new system that was dumbed down to their level. Yet, it's harder now to learn new PvP than it was pre-i13. New PvP'ers at least new how their powers worked. Now they walk into a zone and their powers don't work the same and sometimes (like if they play a Troller), their entire AT doesn't work the same.

You think people who were really good at PvP just were granted their skills by the CoH gods?They learned to PvP just like anyone learns to PvE. And if someone else wanted to be that good, they could learn too and there has always been plenty of willing teachers.

If your theory about them wanting to ruin high-end PvP is so solid, then why not ruin high-end PvE. There are players out there in PvE that are far better than newbies; yet those newbies might one day learn and become good at PvE as well. It just takes patience, a little time, effort, and most importantly, the willingness to learn. The same held true for PvP. Except now, it's harder to get into and learn. And there are now less options (MUCH less) to PvP with. So PvP'ers are stuck giving the same advice. Unlike you, who wants to give bad advice so that you might change the landscape of PvP and have a bunch of gimp toons running around. THEN, it would be diverse. Oh yea, it would. But all those teleporting DB/DA Brutes and flying AR/Traps Corruptors would get torn to pieces when someone with a Fire/EM or Psi/EM Blaster walked in.

I understand that you WANT PvP to be diverse; I do too. But not warning a new player that his/her poorly-built-for-PvP build will get farmed is a lie of omission, and it's pretty unfair to them.

You're pathetically arrogant. There's 2 reasons why nobody can disprove you:

1. We're on a forum about a game. We're not actually in-game right now. And like I've been saying, your argument sounds nice on paper (or text/forum). But it doesn't produce results. And you've yet to prove that it does produce results. So let's flip it: how about you prove that you're right? This whole "prove I'm wrong or else I'm right" idea that you're spewing out is a simple logical fallacy. Argumentum ad ignorantiam. Many are willing to prove you wrong in-game.

2. You don't want to be proven wrong. You could say "the Saints didn't win the Superbowl" and even if I showed you the game you still wouldn't think you were wrong. People can't be corrected if they don't want to be.

It's hard for me to comprehend what was said in that last Dahjee post. The whole problem with your argument is that it sounds good on paper, but in-game it does NOT hold up. At all. So maybe somebody can "prove you wrong" in-game, but forum posts with all smoke and no fire can't be proven wrong until they're put to the test.

The problem is that somebody who hasn't or doesn't PvP much will read your arrogant theories and expect them to show results in-game. And that simply won't happen.

Your idea sounds good on paper. But it won't have good results in-game. You can build your nice, diverse, different team with Khelds, Tankers, Blasters, Trollers, and MM's and a competent team of Psy/EM (or even Fire/EM) Blasters, a Rad, and a couple Emps will wreck it. I hope you can build a creative[ish] team that'll compete with the big boy team builds, but I just highly doubt it.

The argument that je_saist presents crushes exactly what CoX brings to the table: diversity. The different AT's bring something else to the game, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and for the most part, that's a GOOD thing for PvP.

Blasters should be glass cannons. They pack a lot of punch and can't take it. That's what the entire Archetype is designed for. Yet in i13 PvP, Blasters are the most damaging and are running around with 40% resists (that get DR'd down to 30ish).

Controllers should be a control/support AT that does average damage but can totally disrupt and ruin your day. Now they're nothing more than support toons, what with mez being broken. Sure their mezzes are more powerful than your typical mez (other than from a Dom), but they still aren't nearly as powerful as they should be.

Limited/broken mez mechanics, global resists, diminishing returns, travel suppression, heal decay, and damage that is totally based on activation times have made damage the most important thing in PvP. Sure, Emps are very useful and some disruption toons can be useful, but they still need damage on their team in the worst way. That's not unlike PvE, but it's amplified in PvP.

My point is that i13 PvP has taken away from CoH/CoV the dynamic that made it interesting, strategic, and diverse.

Of course, most people who PvP know this.

Just 2 days ago, I was on a team (about level 16-17 team) with 2 Scrappers, 3 Blasters, a Troller (/Cold Domination) and 2 Defenders (1 was Cold/ the other was Traps/). *I was one of the 3 Blasters.

The leader was a 42 month Vet. *He saw our team and this is how the conversation went:

Him: we need a healer. Who wants to quit?
Me: Oh lord, this sounds like that thread all over again. Not every team needs a "healer".
Him: -we- need a healer lol
Me: We have 2 Cold Doms and a Traps. We'll be nearly softcapped at level 16. We do not need a healer.
Him: lol whatever we'll see

Well we get into the mission and our team is a buzzsaw. *We are routinely handling 2 spawns of mobs set for +3, x8. *Nobody has died. *The Troller was holding mobs down (she was Plant/) while the Defenders were doing some damage and keeping everyone very safe. *Meanwhile, the 2 Scrappers and 3 Blasters were shredding whole spawns. * Nobody died for 3 missions until the Cold/ Defender quit. *Then the only death we had was the leader (go figure).

After 42 months you'd think that he'd realize that most teams don't need healers. *Or he'd at least learn to recognize what type of team -does- need a healer.*

Just a little story. *Also it's a good example of why, even at the early levels, Cold Domination is such a great, and underrated, set.

It's worth noting that if you ever plan to zone PvP, Stealth is vastly more important. *You'll have CJ anyway because you need SJ for PvP.

If you're a Stalker in a PvP zone and you don't have both the +Stealth IO and Stealth, you're going to get torn to bits. *Even if you're not a Stalker, you'll want some +Stealth so that teams of Dominators, Blasters, Scrappers, and Corruptots won't target you from far away and damage spike you before you can react.

In PvE, however, it's not nearly as good as CJ.