It was a nice post, I hope others will follow suit.
Good read. Thanks.
"His Imperial Majesty's Minister of Restraints and Leather" -LHF
Two naughty acronym teams / Ascension / Convenient / Artic and the Chillz / Fap / Other teams I can't remember (sorry.. mind is goin')
Nice read Emp, did a history of Arena issues 4-10 (?)
Actually did a history of Arena article...it should be archived in the City Scoop Archives here, pasting it off RedTomax's site. Everyone helped out with this one, from Avid to SuperMax to PositronBot to Ajax...
By Neuronia
There was a time when giants walked Paragon City. Not Devouring Earth monsters or Council Mekmen, but players whose blood raced as fast as the ice blasts they threw from their palms. It was a time of great upheavals, where players could remove themselves from play for entire matches, stack powers to make themselves invincible and rivalries were bitter and unforgiving.
This was a time that belonged to groups with names such as Tribute, HVND, Lion's Den, Sitting Ducks, Lords of the Dead, Freaks of Legend, Hell Raisers, Penance and countless others. This was the Golden Age of Arena PvP.
Scores were...a little higher than they are now:
Freaks vs. JAL (Golden Age)
Test PvP Through the Sands of Time
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
I remember reading that article and I enjoyed it then (Just re-read it and Its still a fun read)
Double post ftws I guess.
For me it started when Sabin and Stryker on Pinnacle got in touch with me while I was on my Emp and asked if I was interested in joining Statesman's Watch (later Integrity).
I was like, why not...my experience at that point was getting rolled by HVND on Champion, so I wasn't too optimistic...
They set up some practices where they'd have a Tanker in the middle and everyone would try to coordinate their damage spikes on the Tanker...then we'd have the Emps run around and try to keep buffs up while being spiked. Soon we picked up Yosef, Syph, tagged up with Projects and added Psyrene, Killobot, vAse and a bunch of others. There were some transitioning people that joined for a few weeks like Mags, Omega and so on. Mags was awesome. He'd get on vent and go "Yosef, you are just terrible. How do you ever get on target?"
We'd just laugh and laugh.
We mostly went with Yosef and vAse on Blaster, with Proj alternating on Blater or Rad/Psi. Syph was on Sonic when he wasn't AFK, Stryker and I on Emp most of the time...Killo would Kin and Psyrene and the others would rotate in as needed.
Our line-up never really changed and we developped some great chemistry after a while. We were never really going to beat Velocity, JAL or PX but we had some great tilts with dUmb and PCJL (BOTH of them ran Storm teams...) and switched places with them for like forever.
Eventually Projects moved on to go to college, Stryker got a new job and our leadership basically collapsed and we dispersed to other teams...myself to Paragon Elite, Awesome Avengers and now dUmb, the others to WoW or other interests.
Was fun, learning how to buff, evade, do all that stuff. 
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
Ahh memories.
I'll throw out a short JAL history too.
JAL was probably the longest-standing PvP SG in the history of the game. They dated back almost as far as Tribute, but they were still around many years after Tribute had disappeared.
It started as a pure PvE SG, before PvP was ever in the game. When PvP became possible, a few people in the SG, led my Psypunk, decided to get into PvP. So unlike the vast majority of PvP SG's, JAL actually changed into one....they didn't start out as one.
Anyway, it took them a very long time to get good. Mainly because they had a very different attitude than other SG's. The attitude was "if you're cool, you can join, and we'll try to teach you", while everybody else's was "If you're not a really good PvP'er, you're not playing for us".
But eventually JAL got to be a respected team. It still got a lot of bad rep because most of the community seemed to hate Psypunk. But the SG was at a point where it could completely dominate any team in the game....except the 2 or 3 top teams. Those were still on a different level. This is the time when I actively played for JAL, as the #1 blaster. This was when Lions Den, FoL, and HVND were the top 3 SG's. I think Velocity was formed right around that time too, and it became really good right off the bat.
Anyway, shortly after that, I saw where this game was going and just got fed up with it. I was putting in hours of my personal time each week to practice....for a game which the developers clearly showed was NOT designed for competition. It stopped being worth it to me, mainly because I realized this game had ZERO future (clearly I was right, btw). At that same time, a bunch of new people joined JAL, including Alarys and her friends, Sorrows and his BFF (forget the name), etc. Immediately the SG attitude began to change, and I was glad I had quit.
Basically JAL became like every other PvP SG. If you were a good PvP'er, you could play. Didn't matter what kind of person you were. To put it bluntly, winning at all costs was put ahead of everything else. So very quickly, JAL had a completely new lineup. The guys that had been playing for years were basically told "you don't get to play anymore". A lot of drama happened, a lot of people got pissed off, and the SG basically became a brand new SG. It was actually kind of strange...they should have probably just made an actual new SG, instead of going with the JAL name. But like ONE person remained from the old JAL team (hellter skellter...I forget his toon name, but he was arguably the best sonic in the game at the time), so whatever.
Anyway, with that lineup, JAL actually became the #1 test team in the game for a few months. Then a bunch more drama happened. The new JAL members, while being superior PvP'ers compared to the old, were definitely total drama queens. Sorrows alone quit and rejoined like 2 or 3 times. Anyway, more drama happened, and the SG decided to just pack it up and move to WoW. Which they did, and surprisingly, none of them ever came back, to even check what's happening. Unlike most CoH players, it seems they were truly able to put CoH completely behind them.
Wow...guess that didn't end up being that short. 
Nice Scoop stories Neuronia. I never saw those before. Thanks for the shout-out regarding the Duel Ladder!
Empire's post is my favorite of all time. I now quit the forums satisfied.
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
All I remember was spamming touch of fear on some loud-talking corruptors and brutes.
Oh, how they squirmed with their mega-burst fotm builds locked out from them. Now touch of fear's terrify is just two seconds long. No more standing there and humbling all that investment and ego with my fear Ctrl+clicked as I make a sandwich downstairs...
[ QUOTE ]
Ahh memories.
I'll throw out a short JAL history too.
JAL was probably the longest-standing PvP SG in the history of the game. They dated back almost as far as Tribute, but they were still around many years after Tribute had disappeared.
It started as a pure PvE SG, before PvP was ever in the game. When PvP became possible, a few people in the SG, led my Psypunk, decided to get into PvP. So unlike the vast majority of PvP SG's, JAL actually changed into one....they didn't start out as one.
Anyway, it took them a very long time to get good. Mainly because they had a very different attitude than other SG's. The attitude was "if you're cool, you can join, and we'll try to teach you", while everybody else's was "If you're not a really good PvP'er, you're not playing for us".
But eventually JAL got to be a respected team. It still got a lot of bad rep because most of the community seemed to hate Psypunk. But the SG was at a point where it could completely dominate any team in the game....except the 2 or 3 top teams. Those were still on a different level. This is the time when I actively played for JAL, as the #1 blaster. This was when Lions Den, FoL, and HVND were the top 3 SG's. I think Velocity was formed right around that time too, and it became really good right off the bat.
Anyway, shortly after that, I saw where this game was going and just got fed up with it. I was putting in hours of my personal time each week to practice....for a game which the developers clearly showed was NOT designed for competition. It stopped being worth it to me, mainly because I realized this game had ZERO future (clearly I was right, btw). At that same time, a bunch of new people joined JAL, including Alarys and her friends, Sorrows and his BFF (forget the name), etc. Immediately the SG attitude began to change, and I was glad I had quit.
Basically JAL became like every other PvP SG. If you were a good PvP'er, you could play. Didn't matter what kind of person you were. To put it bluntly, winning at all costs was put ahead of everything else. So very quickly, JAL had a completely new lineup. The guys that had been playing for years were basically told "you don't get to play anymore". A lot of drama happened, a lot of people got pissed off, and the SG basically became a brand new SG. It was actually kind of strange...they should have probably just made an actual new SG, instead of going with the JAL name. But like ONE person remained from the old JAL team (hellter skellter...I forget his toon name, but he was arguably the best sonic in the game at the time), so whatever.
Anyway, with that lineup, JAL actually became the #1 test team in the game for a few months. Then a bunch more drama happened. The new JAL members, while being superior PvP'ers compared to the old, were definitely total drama queens. Sorrows alone quit and rejoined like 2 or 3 times. Anyway, more drama happened, and the SG decided to just pack it up and move to WoW. Which they did, and surprisingly, none of them ever came back, to even check what's happening. Unlike most CoH players, it seems they were truly able to put CoH completely behind them.
Wow...guess that didn't end up being that short.
[/ QUOTE ]
EEEEEK someone is mad i took their starting spot after being in the sg for like 3 weeks 
[ QUOTE ]
EEEEEK someone is mad i took their starting spot after being in the sg for like 3 weeks
[/ QUOTE ]
LOL I knew with 100% certainty that you'd reply with something like that. But 12 year olds are predictable like that. Oh sorry...are you like 14 now? My bad.
I gotta admit, it's funny that you think you "took" the spot of someone that quit the team. Somehow that doesn't sound too difficult.
Anyway, this isn't about you and me. It's about JAL.
There was alot of drama and pissed off people, i was on the verge of qutting for awhile myself but im glad now that i stayed. The (latter) team was close group and we did turn away people that didnt fit into the group personality wise, even talented ones.
Shenanigans
LotD - JaL - POWT/SMD - SoCo - AJs
Hehe mage...then again, almost every SG in this game turned into a drama fest at least at some point in its existence. Guess that's just part of the CoH style
But whatever....even with all that drama and hate, the game was 50 times better than it is now 
Drama... like the time I got called a bad leader for letting everyone in my SG play and still win?
[ QUOTE ]
Drama... like the time I got called a bad leader for letting everyone in my SG play and still win?
[/ QUOTE ]
That was epic. Can anyone else say they had 3-4 people quit because they won an official and everyone played?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Drama... like the time I got called a bad leader for letting everyone in my SG play and still win?
[/ QUOTE ]
That was epic. Can anyone else say they had 3-4 people quit because they won an official and everyone played?
[/ QUOTE ]
Wait what? Was this with OS or another SG?
What happened if you don't mind sharing?
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
Yeah, i think alot of other groups had their share of drama too. Probably the main reason so many teams split off into new SGs.
Shenanigans
LotD - JaL - POWT/SMD - SoCo - AJs
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
EEEEEK someone is mad i took their starting spot after being in the sg for like 3 weeks
[/ QUOTE ]
LOL I knew with 100% certainty that you'd reply with something like that. But 12 year olds are predictable like that. Oh sorry...are you like 14 now? My bad.
I gotta admit, it's funny that you think you "took" the spot of someone that quit the team. Somehow that doesn't sound too difficult.
Anyway, this isn't about you and me. It's about JAL.
[/ QUOTE ]
you "quit" because i took your spot. OMG INTERNET ADULT WHATS UP
[ QUOTE ]
you "quit" because i took your spot. OMG INTERNET ADULT WHATS UP
[/ QUOTE ]
You're welcome to keep believing that, if it helps you sleep at night. I think the fact that I haven't done it a single time since then, with JAL or any other SG, shows otherwise. Anyway, I'm done arguing with you. You always were ridiculously cocky and ignorant....I'm not gonna somehow change that now by using logic.
[ QUOTE ]
Wait what? Was this with OS or another SG?
What happened if you don't mind sharing?
[/ QUOTE ]
Jimmay hasn't told me about this, so I assume it wasn't OS. I'd like to know too. Sounds like a good story
It was OS lol but I'ma let someone else do that one since I was only in OS for a short time. I'll do up a Renegades thing when I have the time.
Short version:
I had a personal rule that if a player shows up, are ready, able, and willing, I will play them in an official match. It was more about fun for the team then winning at all costs.
So during a certain official match, I played every player on that was able to play (I actually did this every match except those few where a player said they didn't want to play). We won best of 3.
Drama breaks out. I get called a bad leader by certain individuals for letting those same individuals play. All the leaders get called bad leaders for using bad lineups, when we used the standard.
And after all that somehow ownage becomes god's gift to pvp.
It was the PX match for #1.
There was mucho drama all around that . Rogue and Avid were leaders and Rouge was bored of no action so challened everyone on the ladder. Because of leapfrogging and how timing worked out, everyone thought we did it so we would not lose anything if we lost to PX (since they would be #3 when we did the match). Johnny Mercone arranged to do a match with PX the same night they fought dumb so PX would be #2 when they fought us. We will never know if they actually tried to win or not since they did thier officials with no observers.
Anyhoo so there was all this manuvering so PX could be #2 because apparently everyone thought we would lose. I remember Myk especially being very vocal about how scared we were and now it would "mean" something.
Cut to OS v PX. We run our bubbler team for match one and win pretty easy (which was suprising since we had practiced with it for a few weeks and Ownage was pretty good friends with a few on PX). Match two we swithced to dual sonics and were pretty sloppy about who we had target calling so it did not go so hot. Match three we ran team 1 and rolled them again so hooray we win.
except. Team 2 was not so happy...forum wars erupted and people said crappy things to other people. It is an OS tradition that we fight when we win LOL.
I think the best was when we were doing an official with PCJL and were tied 1-1 (lab map, storm team )). Miss and Manheim were fighting on vent during the official they were both in LOL.
The time of the match being the same night may have quite possibly been arranged that way intentionally between Ajax and Johnny, I dunno. However...
lol @ OS being so important that we would actually throw a match so PX could be in 2nd place for your match.
It amazes me how everyone always said PE sucked so bad but then turn around and question whether PX actually beat us fairly.
If the new City of Heroes expansion goes live and brings in a bunch of new faces, it might be nice to have an area that shows how the Vets used to do things. I like hearing stories about herding maps or Vengeance stacked PvP matches. Since PvP is what I used to love and admire about this game, I figured I would start here.
My goal is to list the little nuances and caveats in the old i12 PvP system that people used to gain an advantage. People might hear about the 'double sonic' lineup, but they may not understand how it worked or how you countered it. People might wonder how Stalkers were used in arena PvP before knockback became easier to do. Finally, People might wonder how these lineups were even thought up. (I also have sometime on my hands and talking about the old days of PvP still makes me smile - so at least ill enjoy writing this)
So to that end, I will go into detail The history of dUmb PvP, some of the lineups that we used to run, how they started, and out we determined who to target/when to attack/etc.
[u]dUmb Pre-test: [u]
I joined dUmb shortly before i8. dUmb wasn't a PvP SG, but had a keen interest in doing small PvP battles. Shu returned from a WoW fling to form dUmb's live PvP roster. This consisted of various members of the dUmb coalition, which was the leage, the order of the vigilant, and the walking dead. Infinity had a semi active arena population consisting of 5 groups. JLE, The House of Shadows, Hell's Army, Brotherhood of the dragon, and ABH. Slowly, the live groups started to lose interest and after a very big beating by ABH, we move to test.
[u]dUmb - i9:[u]
To start off - we were a live group that assumed we could come in and run with the big boys. Our first practice was against Velocity and we got rolled hardcore. During the evening, the final score of all matches was probably 200 to 3 in favor of velocity. It was an interesting sensation having your poop pushed in like that. It was disheartening to know we were not very good in the grand scheme of things, but it was nice to have a challenge for once. Vinnie was willing to come to our Teamspeak server and he was able to give us some pointers to start out. We slowly started practicing more and our standard team we decided upon was 5 blasters (One being a devices blaster) 2 emps 1 kin.
This team served two purposes. 1, it allowed us to not be picture perfect in our spikes because our out going damage was so high. 2, allowed for us to not have quick targets, because picking up the target was very tough for us at the start of our ladder tenure. This team would start out calling targets and if we got to a point where we could turn the corner, we would have 2 rogue people trying to solo kill. Most of the blasters were Fire/EM's and Ice/Ems.
[u]dUmb -i10:[u]
The above team (With minor revisions, adding in a sonic, trying double sonic, etc) Really didn't work out well once blaster damage was nerfed to be only 10% unresisted. At the time the new hotness was the double sonic lineup and we couldn't dent capped resists with those cages going off. We also had problems with the Pingu's because their storm team was very disciplined - they would move as a team and kill as a team.
Our team makeups shifted to using storms as the primary players. Our first storm team consisted of 2 fire/storm controllers and 1 earth/storm controller. The blasters were fire/devices and X (Whoever we had to play at the time would fill in this roll). Support would be 2 emps and 1 kin. Our goal was to not die within the first two minutes. We figured if we could not get into too far of a hole within the first two minutes, our debuffs would start to take effect and we could then turn the corner.
We also worked really hard on our movement. The one thing we didnt like was having to turtle together on open maps. Sitting still for 10 minutes didn't seem like a lot of fun and we didn't have the disciplined that the pingu's had. So, to that end, we worked on our Moving turtle. It usually called for the support to each put a storm on follow and cast buffs while following their storm. The blasters would make quick dives away from the team to try and scare someone into phase or hibernate. If someone hibernated, we would immediately gather on them and drop our [censored]. Anyone that came to save the poor bloke was killed first, then the hibernated person second. We used the devices blaster to keep people on the ground so they ran through rain easier. It also helped if we got our favorite outdoor map - Atlas Park - Because people would land in the water pools and couldn't get out. The storms focused on stacking immobs and holds so that we could stack debuffs easier. The kin was usually our farm target (Sorry Syph) followed by their blasters.
It was during this time that we had the Pingu, Statesman's Watch, and dUmb Love triangle; where SW would beat Pingu, dUmb would beat SW, and then Pingu would beat dUmb. This lead to a leapfrog battle royale that lasted months; and is quite possibly the most fun anyone in dUmb had during our tenure on the ladder.
[u]i11[u]
i11 beta introduced a couple changes, including Psi blasters. It was during this time that we migrated to using a Trick arrow defender in concert with Defender storms. The goal was to keep the kinetic's support as annoyed as possible to the point of collapse. It was also during this time dUmb tried several different roster spots for their two X factor positions. Since a storm team needs 3 storms and 3 support, the other two could, in theory, be anything. We tried 2 blasters, 2 tanks, a scrapper and a blaster, 2 additional storms, 2 colds, and a bunch of other things. It was during this time that we started to lose our drive. The ladder was losing teams and we were losing interest.
[u]i12 beta[u]
i12 beta almost killed test PvP. It was 2 months long and no test teams were allowed in to test. During this time, teams were dropping like flies. Our roster really took a beating. We didn't lose people, but we lost a lot of interest. It was hard to get a good mix of 8 people who had the necessary toons to play. It was during this time that we ran our 3 SR scrapper lineup and our 3 taunting tank lineup.
Once i12 beta was finished, we started to get back into the swing of things. We ended up dropping to the bottom of the ladder - it was almost to the point where I almost yanked dUmb off the ladder. After talking it over with Shu and Welldone, we decided that we weren't going to do any officials for 1 month and we were going to get back to the basics of what we did best. We started out on infinity in RV just running our disruption teams again and getting used to playing with each other. Our final team makeups looked like this:
Offensive Storm Team:
3 defender storms
2 blasters (1 must be devices)
2 emps
1 kin
Defensive Storm Team:
3 Controller storms
1 Trick arrow
1 Blaster
2 emps
1 kin
TK Team
3 defender storms (Psi epic)
1 Trick arrow (Psi Epic)
1 Fire/Em Blaster
2 Emps (Either Mind/Emp or Emp defender with psi epic)
1 Kin
We used our TK team against people that ran double sonic lineups
We used our Offensive Storm team against teams that ran Sonic sonic/double kin
and we used our Defensive Storm team against people that did the old 4x4 (4 damage 2 emps 2 kins)
[u]October 8th, 2008 - A day which will live in Infamy[u]
I had off from work this day due to a personal holiday. I spent most of the day copying IOs over to test and getting builds ready for people who were at work. I had just worked out the night before the lineup we were going to run. We had yet to practice it, but a quick warm-up would be all that we would need. The match was against PX for number one. The lineup was:
3 Controller Storms
2 Broadsword/SR scrappers (Weapons master with Webnade and Caltrops)
2 Emps
1 Kin
PX was really good and knew not to use hibernate against our team. In our previous match up, PX went with the 4x4 lineup and did very well. I was planning on that happening again. My goal was to disrupt their support so much that we could get a hold on one of their empaths and then lineup a critical headsplitter spike. On paper, I felt it to be an interesting lineup.
Depending on if we won or lost, we would switch to standard storm lineup, but it would definitely have a trick arrow in it because "you can't win an official with a trick arrow - SilentMethod"
Round three if needed would be comprised of who was still online. I felt this match would have been a very good match for both teams; with PX having the edge on experience and skill and with us having the edge on Spontaneity and Craziness.
But, it wasn't meant to be. i13 beta starts this day and PvP would be changed forever. Gone were the days where it took skill to disrupt movement speed (Everyone was slowed). Gone were the days where it took skill to mez someone (Everyone can mez everyone). And gone were the days where skill and teamwork meant something.
[u]PvP i14. - *Skipping i13 because very little test PvP took place)[u]
The ladder was reformed, had several teams in a 5v5 format. 2 stalker lineups ran the scene now, with other lineups finding it very hard to get kills. Several lineups we tried were:
1 rad/sonic
1 Blaster
1 Stalker
1 Tank
1 Empath
4 Cold defenders
1 Empath
2 Stalkers
1 Thermal
1 Blaster
1 Empath
Going forward, I have had little involvement with the metagame of PvP in i14, so Slax or someone might be able to fill in the rest for our group.
But that's our history. If you're bored and would like to walk down memory lane, post yours