Bracing myself for another flaming....

I like a lot of people dabble in pvp but dont consider myself a hardcore PvPer. I enjoy duelling in the arena occasionally and sometime hop into a zone for a bit of a scrap.

Ive took a bit of a break from pvp for a short while and seeing teh difference in the way people pvp now to say a year ago is surprising. People used to get flamed for using insps and god powers for instance and nowadays your considered a n00b if you dont use them.

Im all for using everything in the game allows you to have in order to fight, and the old method of flaming anyone who did was always a little harsh imo. However there comes a point where it just gets boring. What i mean is powers like Telekenesis, Phase shift, hibernate and so on. Its not like im going to accuse anyone of cheating for using these powers, as i said im all for using the game mechanics to your advantage, but i have to say its flippin boring fighting someone who phase shifts every time they get in trouble or uses telekenesis. After all theres no point pvping if you cant actually kill your opponent. Ok you could argue that they cant phase shift if they are stunned or held, but then thats what breakfrees are for isnt it?

So i guess what the point of my thread is, that like a large amount of people i know, i tend to just not bother duelling or fighting people i know use these powers as there isnt really much point. One example of this is a stalker i duelled once, EM/sr his entire duel consisted of Elude-drop-CAB-phaseshift-hide-elude and so on. had i been on my claws/regen it wouldnt have been so bad as it can hit through elude at will but whats the point of duelling something that is basically untouchable?

So i guess using anything the game allows you to use is as likely to put people off fighting you as it is to save your behind.

So what can be done to make things better?

by the player: bear in mind that there are only a limited number of people to fight, and if you bore them all by using phase shift or hibernate, eventually nobody will bother fighting you they will just stick to people who enjoy a fight that can go either way.

By the Devs: Increase the cost of using these powers, maybe have an end crash for using phase shift, so that it can be used as a getaway power rather then just a way of recovering hp whilst not being touchable. Make the End cost of Telekenesis higher or put a time limit and longer recharge on it. Hibernate, maybe just increase the recharge on it.

This is where i expect a flaming from certain individuals.

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Im all for using everything in the game allows you to have in order to fight, and the old method of flaming anyone who did was always a little harsh imo. However there comes a point where it just gets boring. What i mean is powers like Telekenesis, Phase shift, hibernate and so on. Its not like im going to accuse anyone of cheating for using these powers, as i said im all for using the game mechanics to your advantage, but i have to say its flippin boring fighting someone who phase shifts every time they get in trouble or uses telekenesis. After all theres no point pvping if you cant actually kill your opponent. Ok you could argue that they cant phase shift if they are stunned or held, but then thats what breakfrees are for isnt it?

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I agree with you and am glad that you also share the opinion that no-one should begrudge anyone from using Insps or any tactic (bar TP droning outside of team battles in my opinion).

I use Telekinesis in Pvp, I find it invaluable along with phase-shifting. I do not consider it cheating because of the following:

I appreciate its frustrating, but speaking as an Empath who dares to stick her neck into PvP zones - I have less than a handful of offensive powers, 75% of my powers are for the benefit of other heroes... If I 'test the water' and find you either a) too hard to put down or b) too powerful to go toe to toe against then i will keep you at bay or become a ghost and make sure you cannot find me.
If you do catch me off guard you cannot blame someone who has less than a handful of offensive powers to go 'toe to toe' with someone who has two full rows full of offensive powers at their disposal and live. Of course they are going to (as you appreciate) use every trick in the book to stay alive.

Some ATs are far weaker than others, thats just the way they were designed - for complementing each other in PvE.
I thoroughly respect the squishies that dare enter PvP zones and do not begrudge them any tactic.

I appreciate it must be frustrating if you want to hand somebody their backside in PvP and they keep on eluding you, but as they say... "Alls fair in Love and War"

[Additional]: Telekinesis is one of the highest end-drains in the game - Its a nightmare believe me!. Nerfing it further for PvP or indeed the concept of consistently judging and nerfing powers purely for PvP benefit ignoring PvE would be catastrophic for balanced gameplay in my opinion.

I agree with you mother. The use of TK or Phase shift in your case is acceptable simply because as you said, an empath doesnt have much in the way of offence and so defence is you forte. My argument is against people who play, stalkers, blasters, brutes, tanks or scrappers or even in a lot of cases dom's and corr's who are quite capable of surviving a good fight even if it is purely on an offensive scale, who use phase shift or tk purely as a way of becoming effectively invincible. In zonal pvp which is where i usually bump into you mother, i dont blame you for using phase shift, your an empath and as such i'd be a coward to pick on with other lovely people to beat up around. Its arena duels where these powers grind my gears. Why enter a fight knowing your opponent is going to phaseshift or hit hibernate everytime their hp gets below 50%, theres no point whatsoever, and beleive me when i say, almost every person i know feels the same way and simply earmarks the players they know who use these tactics and simply refuse to duel against them.

I would advise you to disable the temp-powers ability when setting up the Arena Duels.
Regarding Zone battles... If I were you I would use tactics to your advantage - Surprise them!, make it look as if you are going for the kill to panic them to trigger their phase shift... then track them silently until the phase-shift timer expires, then really go in for the kill... unless they have taken another form of phase-shift available they will be waiting for the power to recharge and be vunerable.

Ps: I wouldn't bother with that tactic for me (being my advice) Mumsy has an emergency contingency backup plan for that ole chestnut.

Any experience of PvP for me has been a mixed bag. Some good, some bad, some dull.

It's always funny when a supah-stwong Scrapper flees the scene with phase shift, or hides in a group of Longbow and then mocks when I use a CaB....only to then spam a few greens moments later.

Of course I'm [censored] because I can't defeat a scrapper. But what does that make the scrapper that can't defeat me? Hmm.

Also: HISS!! I'll get you Mother! You and your little ones too!

Huh? Scrappers overpowered in pvp? imo its the most underpowered AT hero side khelds aside

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Huh? Scrappers overpowered in pvp? imo its the most underpowered AT hero side khelds aside

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He didn't say they were overpowered, he said they were supah-stwong. Totally different thing altogether.

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Huh? Scrappers overpowered in pvp? imo its the most underpowered AT hero side khelds aside

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He didn't say they were overpowered, he said they were supah-stwong. Totally different thing altogether.

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Exactly. Overpowered would suggest that they didn't need Phase Shift, SS or a blaster friend when things don't go their (regen) way.

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and beleive me when i say, almost every person i know feels the same way and simply earmarks the players they know who use these tactics and simply refuse to duel against them.

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No wonder i cant get a duel.

erm...not intending to flame, but can i point out a couple of things:

1) I have played a number of players who have used TK on my toons, with a varying degree of success, depending on the player. To claim it is overpowered though is a little 'harsh'. To use TK effectively in a pvp zone requires some skill, and I think it is a great concept for the 'defender' AT (or mind troller).

Remember - if it is really getting on your nerves, just pop some break frees (3 or 4 iirc) and go punish the TK'er!

2) PvP in this game (I must have only said this a thousand times over the years!) has been designed around a TEAM concept - ie, you get the balance and fun out of it primarily when you are teamed.

Can you really see a defender standing around and laughing whilst tk'ing your tank/scrapper etc..when you are teamed? Even teamed with just one other person, will allow that person to help you remove yourself from your predicament

I don't have TK on any of my toons beofre you ask, but I absolutely believe it must not be tampered with!

Heat exhaustion on the other hand....lol

There are ways to overcome pretty much everything in PvP. Can't believe still to this day people cry about TK..Even respectable PvPers have moaned at me in the past for using TK.. Kinetics isn't exactly a RARE power set? ID anyone?

To be fair, last time I was a kinetic in a PvP match with team mates getting TK'd. I couldn't buff fast enough before I or the person getting TK'd was defeated.

I cant remember the last time I seen a kin red side, pvp or otherwise :S

I know a few in my sg alone

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I know a few in my sg alone

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Then tell them to do something useful! Like ID'ing my MM

Just my opinion, i dont understand why using the game mechanics to build the best PvP toon you can create is a bad thing, i have spent alot of time and influence on my blaster to try to eradicate its weaknesses, and i dont understand why i should be frowned upon for using phase/hibernate when it increases my survivability 10 fold.

I can understand how it can cause frustration sometimes, but surely these options are open for everyone to use?

Hopefully i managed to explain what i mean

Only thing that's frustrating is stalkers in zone who hide till their phaseshift is up, and then use on attack and phase. It's like why did you even bother attacking, go hide somewhere and pretend to pvp instead.

lol@stalkers in pvp these days

TBH I think that PvP is a process of evolution. It's gotten consistently faster and faster still and really it's a case that the very strong powers survive, the weak ones don't. And while it's plausible to counter just about anything, there are a selection of that are difficult to and without suprise these come to the fore and become very common in use.

From an outside perspective I think you can definitely say PvP has changed and is even more refined over the last months.

It's unfortunatley rock, paper, scissors, and as things progress there are less rocks, less bits of paper and less scissors around and I think this is the cause of frustration as you just get a really really big gap between casual pvpers who PvP occasionally and the guys that are really keen on it and would like to PvP above anything else.

I can sympathise with the frustration. I'd certainly like to do more PvP but quite often it's very hard for it to be even a learning process where you can learn about your attack chains, learn some alternatives, learn how to survive longer or mitigate damage, or to move better and play tactically when a lot of fights are over very very quickly.
Conversely though I'm not sure that getting beaten up a lot of times might not be one of the better ways to learn. I was in a casual (mismatched) 2 v 2 in which my teammate quit out after a minute or so. For some frustrated sutbborn reason, I thought [censored] to this and stayed in determined I'd try and at least take down both, very good, players just once each time. I didn't (I got one, and almost the other) and came out at the wrong end of a really bad score , but in the following fights I've had I think I've found myself doing much better. I have a better attack chain and I'm much more aware of mitigating incoming damage and also knowing much better when it's emergency time and I need to get really evasive or heal up or take other measure etc to stay standing.

Of course the keen people spend a lot of time looking at powers, sets, builds and IOs etc, refining their characters constantly and that's great, but it obviously will always lead to frustration because there just won't be any competition across that divide.

I think you can look at match ups and pretty easily say when a particular fight isn't even going to be a fight .

Edit: Spag pretty much makes a point that better says what I kind of think.

There's no problem at all with dedicating time and effort to put everything into a toon to eradicate it's weaknesses. And yeah that's frustrating for others to fight against, but also I reckon it's frustrating ultimately for Spag etc, because there are less people that dedicate such effort to refining their toons so much, or have less opportunity to finance such, and therefore not so much challenge or participants for him etc to battle against at that level.

While it's frustrating for some to face a refined toon of that magnitude it must be pretty frustrating the other way to find a fight at that level and have it be challenging or competitive?

Just my observation tbh. Don't ask me how that woulod be fixed .

Yeah I agree with Mighty that its annoying for both parties.

I would say that if there was a bigger server population or a larger pool of players interested in pvp then there would be a broader range of experience and amount of inf spent on each toon. Therefore smoothing the annoyance factor.

I agree with what Spag says beleieve it or not, the problem is that There are not so many die hard pvp'ers out there and apart from those few, he will struggle to find opponents at his level. I have duelled his blaster on my wp/tank, Probably not the best choice of toons to fight a blaster with but hey ho lol.

I think what my point is really is that although its great to be an elite pvp and nigh on indestructible but it kind of lacks sportsmanship. Which is the one thing about how old school pvp that i think has been lost. If im dueling an opponent who i know is considerably weaker i wont go full pelt at them as killing someone repeatedly knowing that theres pretty much nothing that they can do about it is kind of boring. Maybe its because i dont take pvp seriously enough to care about rep points, or maybe its something else. What im saying is that although you can build a toon thats awesome and could go up against the best of the best, in the sake of sportsmanship it would probably be better to hold back a little bit if you know that your oponent is weaker, theres no shame in winning 10-9 instead of 10-0, and your opponent is more likely to duel you again knowing that they arent just going to get their behind handed to them for ten minutes.

"Hibernate, maybe just increase the recharge on it."

Im sorry, next time a stalker AS's me i wont use Hibernate as im meant to die? ...

Better yet, this quote shows were going to nerf a PvE power for PvP... jesus.

ITS GOT A HUGE RECHARGE ALREADY... v.v

Very constructive, thanks.

TBH if you are on a blaster and a stalker AS's you there inst much thats going to save your hide anyway, not unless you run round in pvp zones with your finger poised on the hibernate button and have impressive reflexes, as most blasters will go down after the classic stalker two shot anyway.

Me thinks you are somewhat missing the point.

Only Energy stalkers can move faster than me. Otherwise I can heal myself with Transferance on my Kinetic defender. Not much difference to popping a few green insp.