The_Masque

This is what you will see if you are attacked

NOTE- You have not taken damage, but the hit rolls has already popped up on your screen as well as the icon is now in your buff bar.

This is a break down of why things are where they are-

It is very important to set up your screen appropriately for PvP the next few pictures will show how I set up my screen on my blaster and why it is set up that way.


First- it really helps if you monitor incoming damage and to hit rolls. The reason for this will become clear soon, but to do so just make a new tab and place it at the bottom of your screen like so:

PvP Boot Camp2- Week 4
Offensive Play- Locking/Spiking

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves I think we need to talk about some of the terminology you will hear us using.

Locking- Stating that you are “Locked” means that you are targeted on the player who was called to be attacked.

Spiking- When a “spike” is called for everyone on the team who is locked will start to attack the target. The idea here is to force a huge damage packet to hit a single target in a very short time period, thereby eliminating the target and decreasing the chance that the opposing team’s healer(s) will be able to save the target.

Attack Chain- Just as in PvE players develop a chain of attacks that work best for them. For this event your attack chain will vary due to the make-up of your team which may vary match to match.

Closing- You want to reduce the distance between yourself and the spike target so you are able to get off as much of your attack chain as possible.

Planting- This is a term which describes players who may fire off multiple attacks without moving at all. Planting=stalker bait.

Dropping-Really this term is used two ways.

We talk about dropping a target, that means we are changing to a new target, usually because the current one is evading or getting heals. “Proc Star is target” “Target is getting heals… drop target…Philly is target”

Another way the term has been used is to describe the jump “suppression” that occurs after you attack. When you attack you will notice a few things that occur, if you attack while in mid air, your character starts its animation for the attack, at this point, you lose the ability to steer your character until you hit the ground, you basically fall where ever your momentum was taking you. Also if you attack mid air you immediately start to fall rather then continuing to gain height had you not attacked. So you “drop” when you attack. There are ways around this however they are pretty gimmicky and not that useful for team PvP.

Setup- Sometimes teams will use a mez, usually a stun or TK to halt a targets movement so that the attackers can “close” and “spike” the target without him/her being able to evade or hit a survival power PFF, phase, hiber, or a respite)

The disco lazer room is awesome.

Sounds good Just-

If you are not able to make it tonight do not sweat it man. I will type up what we are voting on and you can still cast your vote and such.

Build is done... how expensive do you want it to be?

Siph-

You are certainly welcome to join any of the Kickballs we are running along side of the PvP classes, however, you probably wouldn't be able to actually join the event when we start forming up teams, this is really more of a training and informing type of event then an actual league.

Rad/psi is still great in PvP, TK is OP, animation times are no different between different animations of the same power. Psi/em is awesome. Sleep purple proc is still broken. PvP IO Procs seem to fire off a lot more then 33%. New incarnate powers really need to be removed from PvP.... ok you are all caught up, come play, and bring Pang.

Hey Wb! <.< >.> what I play on Protector too!

whats the matter lin.

It has been suggested that we start a new thread each week for that meeting. I will be working on a post for this weeks class on locking and spiking.

Quick recap of our last meeting:


We talked about the evasion routes on some of the various Arena maps we will be using for this event.


Atlas Park:

There are two main evasion routes on the Atlas map. You can circle the outer ring of the map, remembering to hug the inner wall it is much harder to target you if you are next to the wall then next to the war wall(outside blue barrier). You can also make loops around City Hall, however due to the small size of this obstruction and the large number of people chasing you, you will most likely still be locked and targeted.

We briefly talked about getting "sandboxed" in the various pools around the atlas map. If you are standing in an area where there are 4 walls, and you get hit with entangling arrow you will have -jump and you will be trapped in that small area and become an easy spike target. The counter to this is to use the arena temp power Jaunt Initializer to tp out of that trap.

Perez Park:

Perez is small map and has almost no evasion routes, you can jump up into the trees and try to break line of sight as people 'ground' themselves by shooting at you. You can duck behind the little theater but be careful of the one sandbox that lays just behind it. There are 2 paths behind the trees on the right side (facing the water) however the one closest to dry land is a dead end.

Cargo Ship

This is another small map. There are many places you can break line of sight (LoS) you can duck between crates and run around them hoping to lose people who are tracking you. There is one room at one end of the map, you can try to duck into there and jump up to avoid being detected, however putting yourself in a corner is almost always a bad idea. There are those rafters you can jump up on or jump up and stand between them. All and all, a very hard map to evade on so if you don't die, thank your emp.


Graveyard:

Medium to small size map, pretty much wide open. The only evasion route is to go up and run along the top path ducking behind rocks and such, again you are hoping that the people chasing you will "ground' themselves by shooting and not be able to get up there.

Skyway City:

This map is medium sized, there is a large central building that you will be using as a evasion route, just circle the building. There is also a smaller square building to the south of the map you can also circle however its much easier to cut you off due to its small size.

Steel Canyon:

This is the largest map we introduced. There are numerous paths you can use to evade, the tricky part is remembering where you are and which way to turn. There many dead end paths that people will travel down and find themselves running face first into a bluewall. There are also some small building that are good to drop to the ground and run around as they give pretty decent cover from people above you.


We also talked about "survival" powers:


Phase Shift- you can phase for up to 30 secs and there will be a no-phase period (120 seconds) after those 30 seconds were you are not able to click phase or hibernate even if they are recharged. If phased you can still be attacked by players who also are also phased.

Hibernate- Similar to phase shift, 30 seconds of "safe" time with a 2 min no-phase period after.

The 30 seconds of "phase" time is for both hiber and phase shift, so if you hiber and pop out at 15 seconds you can immediately go into phase shift for another 15 seconds.

Personal Force Field- Gives +resist and +defense. Very useful as it recharges very quickly and allows you to keep evading while still being able to receive heals from your healer.

Inspirations:

My strong suggestion would be for everyone to carry a full tray of greens. The only exception to this would be stalkers as you can attack and then immediately evade to get back into hide. For stalkers I would consider bringing all reds or almost all reds and a few greens.


New Stuff (for next week):

Pvp binds/macros:

If you do not have a mic or do not wish to talk on vent please set up a targeting bind, I use:

/bind k, team >>$target<<

This will aannounce in team chat who you are currently locked on and targeting. I set it to my "k" key as I always think "k"ill.

Inspirations- I know most of us are used to clicking on insp with our mouse or via f1-f5 however, you will find that there is a slight lag when doing so. So most people set up a macro/bind to pop greens.

/macro Grn, inspexecname respite
/bind g, inspexecname respite

This will allow you to pop a green no mater where it is in your tray with a single key stroke.

Potentially the most important macro/bind of them all:

/macro hib, powexectoggleon Hibernate
/macro pff, powexectoggleon personal force field
/macro phs, powexectoggleon phase shift

This will toggle *ON* these powers but will not let you toggle them off, this is very useful because in the heat of battle people often double click their phase/hiber/pff power and end up wasting it. To click them off you need to physically click the power icon to break out of these powers.

Agreed that has to be wrong.

Hey guys-

Just thought I would drop in to throw my 2cents into this mix. The key element that people seem to be disagreeing with here is what *type* of pvp is the OP looking for.


Currently in CoXPvP there are 4 basic types of PvP available to the player base:

1) Zone- this is typically the most commonly tried and experienced PvP play. Players need to build for self sufficiency for zone play- typically this means some type of self heal, if that comes from aid self, hoarfrost, hibernate. As far as travel powers for zone fly is actually viable (lolwut?!) especially now that temp powers are bugged and no temp fly powers work in zone (note: I didn't not say fly was optimal as -fly will still wreck you). PvPers in Zone excel at PvPing for long extended periods of time without using insp (I mean seriously who zones just get insp!) so their builds need to have adequate acc/damage/end/heal(regen).

2)Duelist- Some PvPers would rather fight 1 on 1 sometimes in zone and sometimes in arena. These builds are also typically very self sufficient.

3) Team PvP- Typically this is a group of players who organize into very specific roles (damage, heals, disruption, and set up) builds for team pvp are built very specifically for this type of play. You will typically see almost no self heal powers on squishies as you will have dedicated healers on your team and you go into each match with a fresh stock of insp. It is *true* that there is less diversity in team based PvP as far as AT/power sets but this is by design. It is better to have 5 psi/ems rather then 3 psi/ems and 2 fire/ems because the fire attacks will show damage sooner then the psi damage this will give the spike target away to the opposing team's healers and most likely lead to a save rather then a kill.

4) Gladiators- lolgladiators.

(RIP- Base Raids)

IMO- no one type of PvP is better then the others or more skillful as some people believe. I have seen a team of zone players get wrecked in PvP leagues, however I have seen zone players 2v2 and soundly beat league players as well. Duelists excel at duels and may under perform when teamed.

The arguments people are having about what powers are best for a pvp character is meaningless without considering what type of PvP the player is building for.

For blasters- temp invuln +pff is great for team arena and mu mastery is amazing for zone or duels.

You won't see that many (if any) scrappers or brutes in team pvp but they excel in zone play- survivability and self sufficiency again come into play.


As far as the criticism of Boot Camp builds- I can only speak for the boot camp on Victory I am currently running but builds are specifically designed to be an introducer type of character to PvP. The learning curve is very steep and for players who have never experienced DR/HD/TS it can be a bit overwhelming and they may not wish to invest 10's of billions on a character that they may never play. So yes we designed builds that meet the needs of team pvp play- acc/recharge/hp/evasion powers while trying to build them as inexpensively as possible.



To the OP- as Kara said, if you want to learn the basic mechanics of the PvP game you are more then welcome to join us on Victory for our PvP Boot Camp. Contact me in game @masque or via the boards for more information. Also if you want specific build/strategy advice about zone or dueling PvP you may also contact myself or any of the vet PvPers who have responded to you.