Synaesthetix

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Just get it out there ASAP we desperately need more Ice/En.

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This cannot be stressed enough.

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But then how can you agree with Hobo that the game doesnt require skill? Arent what you just mentioned skill?

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Look over what I said carefully - I said that there's no skill involved in doing as HJ suggested, in getting a cookie-cutter FotM build then using TS to better organise zerging tactics - not that there's no skill involved in PvP. Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but I'm with you on this one. (Decide for yourself whether that's good or bad. )

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NB is one of the few scrapper I have fought that actually runs when he hears those two comming up.

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*grins*

I consider myself in good company then. Interestingly enough, I was "told off" for doing precisely that shortly after I dropped an Ice/En in a 1v1 with my Claws/SR... one man's "skill" is another man's "omgz u run liek a gurl", I guess.

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IMO 3 things are essential for PvPing well.

Game knowlegde

Reflexes, or movement

Imagination

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Perfectly put. I'd add one more though - a good sense of sportsmanship.

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You think I'm making this up? I've met them in Siren's.

Not only did they not have Thaw or ID, they had taken them and respecced out of those powers.

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Here to back this up, as I've seen those players too - it beggars belief, it really does, but it happens all the same. Also, note the Sonic Corruptor without any shields (or Clarity in his 40 build, but we can ignore that for Sirens), but with the entire medicine pool ftw. \o/

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We are comming to union now as villain, so in about a month I figure we are ready to clear sirens and warburg, just to show villains are by no means underpowered

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I don't think anyone on Union believes villains are underpowered - certainly, LoUD do our level best to clear up that misconception, along with certain other notable players. The only problems we face are that, one - we're more often than not heavily outnumbered; two - there's a distinct lack of support toons, and those that exist are heavily lacking in any kind of "support" (see above). There's a surfeit of Stalkers, and scarce few of them (proportionally) know how to work as part of a team. I look forward to seeing the PDs in the Union PvP zones, though.

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No, that takes better understanding of the game by your logics.

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Not exactly - you might have a perfect understanding of how the game works, but that doesn't necessarily translate to knowing how other players will use their builds against you. Knowing how the game works AND knowing how other builds work in a PvP setting, and then applying that into making numerous builds that all work to a high level (or that just fulfil the intended purpose) is what is required - as well as an ability to translate that into results in PvP. You can have all the natural reflexes and reactions in the world, but with a poor game-knowledge, that won't translate well to PvP; the opposite is also true. I'd argue that both are needed to be truly skilled at PvP, but that's my take on it.

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I personally think stalkers are more like raptors from jurassic park.

At least that's what goes in my head as I'm bouncing round sirens with the rest of the 'pack'

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Good stalkers are like raptors; bad stalkers are like headless chickens.

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Skill?

What is that exactly? It's not hard to find out what powers work best and when. Is that it?

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You know Hobo, you're damn right - it takes absolutely no skill to find out what the "best" build is, and no skill at all to co-ordinate attacks through TS.

The real skill is in taking underused/underpowered/non-FotM powersets, making them PvP-viable (and then some), and in being fully aware of your teammates in any situation, with or without TS, even in PuGs if necessary.

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Show me a balanced villain team that could deal with 8 controllers. You're having a giraffe.

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6 Rob/DM MMs and 2 Rob/FF MMs.



(It's perfectly balanced, every teammate has an equal number of robots.)

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leave me out of it

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If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Now go level up some more villains before I Full-Auto you to death again.

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mmm, maybe scaling toggle knocking effectiveness with level? Like how mez protection improves per level. Might balance things out a bit in the lower end game, while not nerfing toggle dropping completely in the high end game.

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That would be a great solution, and it's one I've advocated before. I still think that the top values should be reduced and/or certain toggles in specific sets should have (scaling?) resistance to being dropped.

Much like Filth, I'd rather have small changes at both ends than larger changes at one to the exclusion of the other. Getting a more balanced system, as opposed to "x beats y at point 1, but y beats x at point 2" will encourage more people to PvP - or at least, hopefully reduce the numbers of discouraged people.

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edit: i think what needs to be changed is the reduction of animation times of toggle activations like energy toggles instead of standing in a stupid pose for ages

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And definitely this, rooting animations for toggles are a big no-no for PvP.

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But that Tank or Scrap is pretty much impossible to kill for a solo blaster in the 32+ game.

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As has been said, many times, many ways - PvP in CoH isn't balanced for the solo player.

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I'm tired of being one Dominator in a team of seven Stalkers Vs a bunch of ice/en blappers and a few scrappers*.

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*and pet Empaths

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1. They're pretty much perma-able in a team, using the proper buffs. 2. I don't think i've ever seen a Tank, Scrapper, Brute or Stalker running around Warburg without these powers up, so the fact that these are not perma-able is kinda irrelavent. They players using these powers usually won't go into a fight without them up.

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I must be doing something wrong then, because I only ever start Elude when the alternative is imminent death (less than 1/4 health, and the cookie-cutter Ice/En has just pumped Aim, Build Up...). I don't like starting fights on a timer if I can help it, and I don't really see the point in only fighting when you're running your uber power... *shrugs*

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So, because some sets can't handle certain abilities those abilities should be nerfed? I don't know about you, but I actually prefer boosting innefective powers instead of powers that work properly. Give Dark Armour some inherent resistance to toggle knocking instead for example.

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That's one way to go about it, but - and it's easy to forget - Tanks, Scrappers, and Brutes aren't the only ATs that rely on toggles for protection. Arguably, certain Defender, Corruptor, Dominator and 'troller builds rely more on their toggles (not Combat Jumping ), and can be taken out with considerably greater ease by Blasters. Patching things up piecemeal might solve the problem somewhat, but it still leaves room for errors, and keeps this problem in the system.

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Well by that reasoning we should just remove all AT's from the game then. Blasters and stalker will rule the low to mid end of the game, but Tanks and especially Scrappers greatly benefit from the higher end game. Try going up against a good scrapper in Warburg, and pray he doesn't one shot you with a crit Eagle's Claw, Head splitter etc...

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Because there are problems with the system, we should just forget about them and write it off as a bad job? Sorry, I don't buy into that mindset, and I hope the Devs don't either (and they appear not to). I'm not saying I have all or even any of the answers, but we can at least start by correcting known disparities and see where we go from there.

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Do I think that it should be reigned in? Yes, a bit. Especially as /energy and /elec have sleeps/stuns on their toggle knockers. Maybe reduce the duration, or the chance to drop two toggles?

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Which is pretty much where I stand - I'd reduce the 100% chance on the first to a lower percentage, and definitely remove the extra toggle-dropping chance, possibly giving Ice and Fire a higher chance to drop toggles than En and Elec.

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Tanks and Scrappers have a lot of toggles, sure a good /em or /en blaster could take those toggles down in an attack chain or two, but what's stopping said scrappers from using things like web grenades, or, you know, actually hitting hard and fast whilst kiteing? And as for tanks, a lot of those secondaries can hit hard, not to mention there's usefull things like knockback/up, stun etc...

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How exactly do web grenades prevent toggle-dropping? The majority of Scrappers have to be in melee range to attack, ergo they'll still have to be in the same range as the majority of Blaster toggle-dropping attacks - stopping Blasters from Flying/Jumping won't stop their ability to use melee attacks, and Blasters by definition, are better at kiting (in theory) than most Scrappers. Don't get me wrong, I understand what tactics you're trying to explain to use - but they don't prevent the problem, merely act as a hit-and-miss method of mitigation.

Again, I come back to my point that Web Grenade, to use your example, is only available for the last 20% of the game, and one PvP zone; certain useful Tanker attacks (by your definition, which I agree with) don't appear until the last few tiers of the secondary, which excludes them from over half the game, and 2-3 PvP zones - this does nothing to address the problem for the rest of the game, and is pretty unacceptable as a system.

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(PS, Ice is the toggle knocking sux in PvP as it's got basically no damage to back it up, nice slows though).

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Ice also has the least endurance-intensive toggle-droppers IIRC, in addition to the slows - though that might come as cold (haha) comfort to /Ice Blasters.

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Toggle dropping won't help you against an Eluded scrapper, instant healing, unstoppable, Granite armour etc... . And those are exactly the kinds of powers you'll encounter a lot in the 38+ game.

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Elude, IH, Unstoppable - firstly, none of those are perma-able, so the issue of toggle-dropping still remains for the majority of playtime in PvP. Secondly, there are toggle-reliant builds that do not have an "uber" power to reduce the effect of toggle-dropping - think Ice Armour for Tanks, Fiery Aura for Tanks and Brutes, and Dark Armour for Scrappers and Brutes - arguably, the latter two powersets are the ones who suffer the most from toggle-dropping (as status protection is spread across multiple toggles in those sets). In any event, having a system in place which massively favours a specific AT across a certain range (where two of the in-game PvP zones occur within that range) is unacceptable from a design PoV.

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To nerf toggle dropping, you're nerfing the blasters that rely on it much more than */nrg or */elec blaster.

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And when I see those other blasters in the PvP zones, I'll let them know you were standing up for the pair of them. Devices doesn't rely on toggle-dropping - or rather, toggle-dropping in Devices is an end in itself; /Fire and /Ice aren't awful either, just not as awesome as /En or /Elec - that said, I wouldn't necessarily be against boosting /Fire and /Ice's toggle-dropping capacity to the detriment of /En and /Elec - but I still think the system needs to be heavily trimmed back from where it currently stands, 100% 'chances' to drop toggles is way out of whack.

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There are still numerous ways to bork this. Like making gauntlet duration dependent on the damage caused. Because, as I have said on occasion, I dont do damage.

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Seeing as it doesn't work that way in PvE, I seriously doubt they'd go to the effort of rebuilding it that way for PvP. FWIW, the better Tanks I've seen in PvP are the ones that play a similar role to that which they play in PvE, in that they protect the squishies, with damage as support to the main attack - not the other way around.

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Besides I don't think gauntlet is going to help me much, with my awesome tanker who can get off 1 attack in 5 secs time even BEFORE being -recharged. And of course the total inability to kill anything.

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That still means that every "5 secs" that 5 villains in melee range are focusing on you and not the Defender behind you who's buffing you - even a non tanky like me can see the strategic benefit of that scenario.

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MM buff revealed. Somewhere on the US forum there's a linkage to some kind of damage sharing between you and your minions. bah, it's teh suckage.

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Depends how it's implemented - if it's along the lines of BlackestNight's thoughts, it could be very effective, especially in PvP:

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Personally, I'd rather have it be some kind of auto power that starts splitting damage done to the MM by however many Henches you have out. Basically, with 6 Henches, the MM now has roughly 83% resistance to all, taking only 1/6th of the normal damage and the Henches divide all the damage equally (meaning that they only took 1/6 of the damage too). This only affects damage done to the MM so it's not like the bots are splitting everything among them all the time.

Basically, the MM, himself, becomes the most Tank-like character in the game with a full compliment of 6 Henches. Once Henches start falling, that damage starts getting split up less and the MM becomes quite a bit squishier.

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Yay. I have a terrible feeling that then both my tank AND blaster are getting useless in PVP.

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1) Tanks are getting Gauntlet for PvP in I7, which should make them much more useful/annoying (depending on which side of the battle you're on).

2) Blasters are far from useless in PvP - in fact, I've stopped playing my En/En simply because toggle-dropping makes him feel way overpowered.

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the only thing that breaks granite atm is poison gas trap and dark scrapper self resurrection (aside from a crap load of holds)

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Or a Dominator in Domination, which is slightly less than a crapload of holds.

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One question, i know what GW is, but what is RF?

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RF (Rising Force) Online. Nice graphics, shame about the gameplay by all accounts.

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I think that is meant to be pill boxes:

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I think Filth was being facetious.

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Im in a PvP clan in RF at the mo and even they siad that PvP is pointless in this game and has no place.

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As opposed to PvP in RF, which is by all accounts Zerg-by-numbers (with potions).

I'm personally hoping that the better/more serious PvPers will end up moving onto RV, I know I will be - as soon as I finish off levelling up enough toons to give myself hero and villain options in there. Then again, I go into WB as well.

I'm not going to hold my breath for an active RV until a couple of months has elapsed, if only because I doubt there'll be much in the way of "competition" - a boatload of level 50 heroes vs a handful of sub-50 villains can only be amusing for so long before it turns into weariness, then abject boredom... especially seeing as the main tactics for villains in PvP PuGs tend to run along the lines of "stalkers run around the map individually, AS indiscriminately, run away, hide in villain base for 30 mins afk, then ask 'whose bounty 4 heroes?!!??'". A crippling deficit of support characters doesn't help much either, but that's another discussion.

Personally, I'm not phased by level 32/38 powers - a good PvPer will always adapt and learn to deal with other powersets, and good PvP teams will do the same. Case in point, I was fighting a /Regen Stalker (and friends) in Warburg - I dropped him to 1/3rd health, he popped MoG, so I shouted over /team for the Mind/ troller to come finish him off... The biggest problem that people face in WB is that it's mostly a soloer's PvP zone at the moment - which means that you're less likely to be able to deal with "uber" 32/38 powers being thrown at you. If there were more teaming going on, those powers would be degrees less useful.

My only real reservations about RV is the fact that it's going to have more going on that just PvP. Hopefully, all the glitter will serve to add to the PvP (much like the bounty system in Sirens) instead of detracting from it.

Of course, if it ends up being a ghost town, I'll probably just end up watching Bilharzia trying to spawn and solo States.

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You are not a buff bot!

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You've not seen X in action, have you?

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Also, the noise it makes is really annoying.

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Okay, I'm sold.

Ah well, I guess I'll try it anyway - 45 secs of knockdown might actually be useful for an Illusion set which lacks control, plus I'll have fun dropping on the cookie-cutter Blappers in WB who insist on fighting only on the beach where they can run to safety. Failing that being reason enough to keep it, I can probably jiggle my build around a bit more to sort out my horrendous end issues (Sonic Dispersion, Acrobatics, Disruption Field, Sup. Invis...) - thanks Xan.