The Katalyst

I have no idea how to build a PvP MM because I never play them, I've never even had an MM. If you provide your powersets and budget I'm sure somebody can give you some direction.

They do, and for the most part they will just drop at whatever level you are, although there are some bugs when higher levels kill much lower levels. It's not a really sound method for farming them or anything, but in 8v8s they do drop sometimes, but I think there is still some kind of timer after you kill someone. Could be wrong about that.

It's viable, sure... If you can I would recommend trying to get it to 50 anyways, as there's no downside to having a 50 in Siren's as long as you built for Siren's. As the other people above me said, all you need is to pick your powers that you want in the Siren's range, which gives you powers up to level 35, and make sure all your powers are filled with level 33 IOs or lower, or PvP IOs/Purples as those still work even while exemp'd at any level.

The other thing you might want to keep in mind is that Siren's is a lot more dead then it used to be, and imo, RV is the only PvP zone left in the game that is fun anymore. I used to be a Siren's zoner primarily, so it kind of sucks that this is the case but I think it's fairly true. The main issue with Siren's is it's lack of activity, and some of the "regulars" there are pretty annoying.

This is true, but sadly few zoners actually take the time to organize such an amazing feat.

As far as arena goes, I think at it's core it's fun and stuff. The problem is obviously the lack of developer support, and imo, also the lack of diversity. I feel like there are things that are pretty much useless in 8v8 now that could have been used pre-i13 to get an edge in certain situations, especially certain kinds of buffers, though this is obviously not news to most people.

If this game's PvP had any amount of developer support behind it, it would probably improve tremendously and would actually draw some new players in potentially, depending on how they approach it... Until that happens, PvP will just continue to stagnate, and I see no real sign of anything drastic happening.

Zone is just a hot mess at this point, it's fun sometimes but playing in zone after doing 8v8s consistently can be pretty disheartening for some people, but if all you play this game for is PvP then it's often your only option.

One thing I would be interested to see in a future organized PvP league/tourny/ladder would be an all Villain format, similar to the separation between Hero/Villain ladders pre-i13, given enough interest to do it.

Speaking of walls of text...

Just Phoenix so far. KGB and Projects would be there also but they got put on HB's core.

That would probably be pretty entertaining.

Now that you mention it, if you watch some of the early, early alpha versions of CoH combat, they tried to implement some kind of mechanic where you could select specific parts of the NPCs or in this case, player's bodies to get different effects... Such as shoot their legs to slow them down or something like that, or shoot them in the head for maximum damage. Obviously this never made it into the final product, though.

I should also add that in some of those videos, the devs said (before CoH was released) that they intended to implement PvP into the game from the beginning, and that there would be a ranking system built into the Arena that actually mattered, which is ironic considering most people believed that this game was never meant to have PvP.

Also with Fraps, most people have to change it from full-size to half-size and turn off sound recording... It makes an extremely big difference in performance. If you've already done that then there's not much else you can do to make it run smoother.

With Fraps, a lot of people have to turn their GFX settings very low to be able to play with it on. I couldn't get WeGame to work with CoH for some reason, but I heard that it's basically better then Fraps.

I watched the first few minutes of the video, it was definitely a good showcase for the Earth/Fire lineup being played extremely well, but I typically get sort of bored watching matches that are that onesided. :P

I think for a lot of people at this stage of the game, it's less about "How can we make the most OP stacked team possible?" and more about "How can I get on a team with my friends and people I want to play with and make it work?"

In the case of several of the teams in this league, that was more or less what happened. I know both Exile and FAP are those kinds of teams, and I'm pretty sure both WARE and Shenanigans are the same as well.

In terms of Exile and FAP, we share a mumble server, and we are all constantly hanging out on Mumble even outside of match or practice times. Camaraderie and team cohesion are more important to me then just making the most stacked roster ever. Despite the fact that I believe Exile is a good team, I wouldn't play with them if I didn't like the team.

I like playing with my team rather then risking doing Kickballs with people that I do not want to play with, even if it means that I would potentially be playing on some kind of crazy stacked KB team for a few rounds.

Also, I firmly believe that teams that are based off of camaraderie rather then stacking are better off at the end of the day. They may start off slow at the beginning, but they are also the teams that are more likely to commit to improving as a team, and will typically be noticeably better by the end of the season... FAP is a good example of that.

He said it, not me.

It's just really big.

Since they just use the beta server for major issue releases now, I think that would help with the issue of long periods of downtime cutting into a test tourny/league/ladder/whatever. I'm not sure if that was part of the issue back then, but if it was then that would help, so long as they continue to only use the beta server for new issues.

Sorry, I've gotten into a bad habit of double posting :/.

Last I heard this was the case, like the cap on Test server was ridiculously low... Certainly not enough to field 3-4 sets of 8v8s every Sunday.

It may have changed, I heard that a while ago, but if it hasn't then even if we wanted to a test server league would be pretty impossible.

EDIT: Nevermind, Philly on the ball.