Reclue Victory: Freedom

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

Multimedia Genius Submission

lol

We always got kills with full-auto and Blizzard. Virtuous Vanguard - Ever Victorious!

But, really... the PvP on all levels in i13+ pales in comparision to that of i12-. That goes for both skill levels, and population.

First thing comes to mind for me is the average IQ level was alot higher, meaning you really had to use some type of strategy to beat most peeps. Now.. i'll use just now for instance as an example of what i mean, i was in rv on my tanker calling targets out. We were accosting this dom, when he hibernated, so i sometimes like puting quiksand and burn down, right about the time their are about to bust out to hinder an escape. So this stalker, who was obviously a AE stalker(judging by his noobish play all night) ran over and tried to AS me because i was standing still. But the logic in that escaped me, i was a full hp tank, with burn, and quick sand down and a crowd of my teammates around me, all huddling the dom.

Why AS me? why not AS the defenders? Or the blasters? or the trollers, or at the very least test your might on the scraps, or how about realizing youve been discovered and also realize burn, and quick sand is down so AS won't work, i just kept seeing him stoop over trying. But a solo stalker is of no concern to most anyway, let alone a tank. So next i noticed he fell into the same pattern i noticed all night, all the stalkers i encountered had brain lock when AS failed for what ever reason. I'd see them,.. put burn, or quick sand down and they would just stand their looking dumb, or just run away all together. No plan B, no tactics, and most of all not knowing their enemy. Incase you we're wondering about the stalker i mentioned, i just turned and killed him while he sat their frozen. Almost like it is mandatory to use AS to get kills.

But regarding the old pvp, it wasn't perfect but it made sence, like take holds for instance, you had an amount of protection, and the amount was linear depending on your class, your buffs, Breakfree usage, and if someone achieved higher than your protection you were held. Made sense, now it could have used a bit of tweaking for pvp, maybe give Breakfree's a longer duration, and cut down on how many applications of hold protection a single buffer could apply to one target. Now a stalker can hold a WP tank while he's running SoW, and keep dropping his rttc, effectively keeping his regen limited at best, that's silly, and takes away the roles of doms and trollers.

Speaking of roles, most buffer classes on teams these days, are the main attackers, that's nonsense imo, the hardest kill i had all day was this pain corr, between the heals, and the passive, and active resist that squishies get they are by far Tank Mages now.

Pvp had it's flaws, but i think with the help of that pvp wish list, everyone helped build, we would have been in a far better place than we are now. I13 was a bust and we said this would happen in beta, but we didn't get any responses to our imput, and now the devs are seeing we we're all right.

I just hope, they use GR to fix this, and at the very least give us a pre i13 zone, or i fear ppl will run to CO just to prove a point. In my three years of play, this was the first 2x xp weekend freedom wasn't locked. I remeber in the old days leaving my toon on and fearing logging off, because i knew i wouldnt get back in. But not this weakend, so i'm like is it the server stability? or did our number dwindle extreemly?

Multimedia Genius Submission

And I'm sure that quite a lot of people would be grateful for this, except that this new PvP is considerably harder to get into than pre-i13 PvP. When someone who has never walked into a PvP zone before has all of their defenses/resists nearly halved, do far less damage to squishies than they figured they would, get mezzed even with mez protection, have their greens heal less the more they use them, and have their travel powers cease to work when they make any sort of action other than movement, it's hard for the new PvP'ers to get into PvP. You know that PvP is going to be hard to learn when Ice doesn't slow an enemy any more than Fire does and Fire doesn't do as much damage as Archery.

Well, I was gonna type up a huge rant about just how wrong that statement is, but I'm just gonna say it's full of wrong instead.

I love asking people what they have been smoking lately. So Warhamster, what have you been smoking lately?

The rush to RV on Freedom is called server transfers. The current numbers are comparable to pre I13 but don't forget the dip in population during the transitional state. Also, the increased number of fight clubbers in RV does not count. Overall the PvP population for CoX has decreased. Please start looking at things beyond our server.

Sorry but some ATs can still get 2-3 shotted.

Sunstorm on PvP...
PvP is foreign to new players. They are already fighting at a great disadvantage due to lack of experience and now let's add the following to that equation... Suppression, DR, Heal Decay, Mez Res only, removal of -Max Run Speed, Phase Combat, build inexperience and lack of appropriate information on Mid's to plan a toon properly. Yeah real new player friendly, fun and forgiving. There are way more unforgiving mechanics currently.

Now on to my favorite question that has gone unanswered since I13. Please explain in detail how Suppression, DR, Heal Decay, Mez Res only and removal of -Max Run Speed have helped to make PvP more viable and fun for all ATs and builds?

Good Luck!

Originally Posted by Black_Barrier Guess it's hard to click while actively trying to keep the drool away from the keyboard...

Sure, I'll take a stab at this.

Travel Suppression was added for two reasons at least:

i)Melee was having a rough time kiting efficiently when people were attacking them from 40-80 feet away. With TS, a 'forced engagement' occurs.

ii)With everyone sporting Swift/Hurdle/Super Leap/Superspeed, it was pretty impossible to catch up with a good PvPer (webnades and such aside), which was frustrating to new people. Now everyone stops and everyone has to fight.

Heal Decay:

Devs didn't like the Emps APing/HO to counter spikes, found it was too much a factor in Arena and cut the legs from under Heal-sporting classes.
If you don't worry about someone healing, you can just spam holds/damage/more damage and eventually they'll die.

Diminishing Returns:

Goes back to too many stacked buffs/ToHit/etc on players during team matches. Lower returns on buffs means buffer classes aren't needed...so anyone can play their favourite toon and get kills

Mez Res:

This is one of the worst changes they've made so far, needless to say the least. Not sure where the Devs stood on holds, but they either didn't like that Break Frees countered them so easily or they didn't like that Sonics/Emps/Etc cound stack enough protection to make incoming holds useless. Again, getting held constantly forces an engagement, which is what the Devs wanted...

As for RV Freedom, it was pretty hopping last night, and the kickballs were fantastic too, lots of people around.

I'm sure server transfers do play into this. However all I can go from is the population of RV on the 2 servers I play on, Freedom and Pinnacle, and both are regularly 2-3x's the turnout what they were prior to i13 so shrug. I can say with certainty that the current numbers in RV are not comparable to pre i13, not even close. I can speak with authority on this matter because, literally, all I do is RV PvP in this game, close to every night, for 3 years now. While the overall PvP population for CoX may have decreased due to the arena player losses, that’s not what this discussion is about. This is about zone population now vs then.

Perhaps I should have clarified my original statement regarding 2 shotting new players. 2 shotting a Scrapper was ridiculous and happened all the time. Based on server ticks the scrapper had 2-3 seconds reaction time to pop greens/heal or he was dead, even after the ET nerf. Or the funniest thing ever was the uber gimp BU, AS, lunge kill with activation times so fast the squishy target literally could not heal through it to live. Thankfully the only way to 2 shot someone now is a BU AS followed by a placated attack, and that’s ONLY if the target has no hp bonuses from accolades or IOs. That is significantly more time involved that the instantly down target insanity that existed before.

You certainly are right about one thing, there are way more unforgiving mechanics, however they are not current, but go back to pre i13. All the new rules you mentioned are irrelevant when compared to the wall new players ran into when instantly dying. Wondering in to RV with a dominator to see what this PvP thing is? You see a blaster, and 2 pretty flashes later 3 attacks from 120 feet away come flying your way and you drop dead, with no reaction time at all. The player is wondering "what just happened? I didn't even have time to press a button." Same goes for a stalker as discussed above. Heck, even an experienced squishy player in RV knew it was time to run when they saw those nasty little flashes. Now, any AT can have a bit of a scrap, trade blows, and perhaps still die to that blaster (likely), but they got in some attacks. The new rules don’t come into effect for a new player until they are willing to stay in the zone long enough to understand they even exist. A lower damage scale and high base resist now allows a new player time to experience what PvP is all about, competition and the excitement that comes with that. While that time may be short, he'll at least get a taste of it now.

This is an easy one, as I've had this conversation recently. Thanks for the 'good luck' comment, now lets have a big boy conversation.


**DR:

Why is DR such an issue for people. To you honestly believe that SO'd toons can compete with a fully IO'd equivalent in the current RV environment? If you do, you need to get more game time in. So the overall effect was reduced through DR, all it does is take down the advantage a few notches. It doesn't change the fact that there is STILL a massive gap between the SO'd and IO'd builds effectiveness. Personally I've noticed this grumbling only from people who have no understanding of how easy it is to make billions in just weeks on the black market.

**Mez:

The changes to mez finally fixed the retarded feast or famine feel that dominators went through with holds. A high recharge/hp/acc build was ether in domination and eating people with no buffs/break frees or offering nothing at all to the team when facing stacked clear mind. At least a troller brought debuffs/buffs to the table as well, doms literally had nothing to offer when faced with that situation.

**Removal of -Max Run Speed

All editions going back for years now have put the emphasis on combat jump for its unsuppressed movement, and super jump for ease of fighting mobility and escape. The vast majority of serious players have had super speed in their build really only to counter webnades and other -jump powers, not for traveling around the map. Super speed suffers from suppression far more than any other travel power at the moment, so why is it any big surprise that they are keeping away from a heavy dose of -Max Run Speed? Its already the worst travel power in the game for basic pvp escape (not including the webnade issue where it is the standard requirement) Why make it potentially worthless in all other situations as well? The advantage of -movement in this game has always been to mess up SJ/CJ anyway, so why is this even an issue?

**Suppression and heal decay:

I12's skilless organized zone heal spam is no longer possible in the current environment. Now after 3-4 heals, the target needs to phase, or if that is down, actually use strategy like (heaven forbid) LoS breaks to provide the healer, who now actually has to count down in his head the end of the heal suppression time, instead of mashing 1 button over and over, enough time for the heals to go back to being effective. My dom uses evasion strategies all the time around buildings. My therm finds this far more enjoyable than the past heal spam, as I actually have to THINK to keep track of which toons are on heal suppression and if I should actually heal a few hundred points of damage which would start suppression, or just wait and see if they turn out to be a real spike target or not, instead of just reacting to damage and pressing one button.

movement suppression makes sence in a zone environment. Without it in i12, on my worst nights with the stalker, I may have died 1-3 times, after raking in dozens of kills. Best nights I could go for 4-5 hours with a massive kill count and no deaths at all. No heal suppression, stealth IO, and invis = virtually impossible to kill stalkers, even for large groups of players after the player. All this back in the day with 10 sec hide as well. Under the new system, even with a lower 8 sec hide refresh, a few attacks landing is all it takes to slow you enough for a group to close in and finish you off, which IMO is how it should be. Do we have to get into how great blasters were with PFF at surviving? Have 3+ people gunning for you while running solo? You ether have phase up or you should be dead, simple as that. Thankfully this game is more forgiving that every other MMO out there regarding pickup play and survival, however it was to the toon of stupidity the way i12 allowed certain toons a close to unkillable status.

In RV pre i13 I was also able to heal over 6000 points of damage in under 10 seconds with standard green inspirs. (it always blows me away that people don’t use hotkeys for all 5 inspiration slots) I could then easily escape with capped jump movement that was never suppressed, find a pillbox, die in around 10 seconds, drop to my base, load up on greens, and be back in zone in 45 seconds (including load times) with another full tray. It may have been FUN for me, but it certainly wasn’t for the poor slubs that worked so hard to kill me then were shut down.

Take care mage!

Did that scrapper not have his toggles on? Was he just standing there, begging to be attacked? Honestly, a scrapper, 2-shotted? Simple Stalker avoidance formula is to KEEP MOVING. Honestly I have never seen a scrapper 2 shotted unless it was a regen scrapper double bu->ASed. I don't know where you were but the scraps must've not been very good if it happened all the time...

Again, the squishy shouldn't have been standing there. He shoulda been running around, that makes it next to impossible to AS. Only thing a stalk could do then was BU->next strongest attack they had, which wouldn't have killed them even followed by another melee.
The only 2-shotting happening now is by a Stalker in Bloody Bay, when squishies don't have their epic shield. They have access to so much resist now it's crazy. A Sonic/ Defender shouldn't be able to get 107% resist to all (un-DRed in mids) which calculates to around 48% to all in-game.

I will say those flashes freak anybody new to pvp out. However Psy Blasters now still do that. Just the other day I was in the arena in a fun Kickball match on my Sonic/Thermal Corr when a psy blaster comes out of nowhere. I hear 3 quick pings and my health just went from full to red. 2 more pings later no more than 2 seconds later I'm dead even after a Healing Aura. And all this time I couldn't even find the little devil.


SO'ed toons in RV....Yea, I do believe that they can compete now. Why? Because ALL of my pvp toons are SOed. (Except for my blaster on Champion, but he never see's any action now. They all moved to Freedom and I don't want to spend the money transferring him) My toons all do well, not great, but good enough to get a kill off of most people if I plan the attack right. Of course DR made the gap smaller between IOed and SOed builds, however I don't think its very fair at all to those billionare builds. They spent the time to get the cash, training, and the perfect IOs, and now it doesn't do nearly as much...Well, new players have so much craziness to deal with nowadays it seems as though its the same gap.

Mind telling me how Billions in weeks works? If it's so easy why have so many players still not been able to do it? I myself only know a taste of how that works, but that kinda work requires tons of money to start off with.

Personally I hated being on a squishy and being attacked my trollers or doms and being perma held while they ate through my health. However, Emps actually had a purpose in Zones then with CM and the non-heal decay. If someone gets spikes they heal it. If the spiker doesn't like the healing they should just kill the squishy emp. They can't heal themselves as well as they can others. What drives me up the wall now is being on a Tanker or Scrapper or Stalker or Brute with a Mez Protection shield and being HELD with 1 attack! Yes, it only lasts 1-2 seconds. But that de-toggles any "offensive" toggles. For WP, thats RttC, Sheilds its AAO, and any/all damage auras.

Something has to be done with the Mez system, but its current state is ridiculous.

because Super Speed is a faster escape then SJ. because you will most likely have a -jump power put on you more often than you think. because you shouldn't be suppressed for being attacked by a person you may not want to fight. The whole reason for suppressing movement is dumb, if you attack someone and they don't want to fight or are trying to escape from being killed its not like they're somehow able to kill you. They'll come back later when they are ready and suppress themselves when they want to fight.

Why are you not attacking the healer, like I said previously, the Healer can't heal themselves as well as another person, and if its like that, 2 on 1, your probably gonna die anyways in a current enviroment so why complain, there are no fair fights in PvP, before and after I13.

Really? A full team of players can't attack a stalker to break his hide refresh timer? That's sad. Unless your only talking about the ones that tried to attack a squishy in a big group. Who all most likely poped their Tier 9 beforehand, so of course they are going to get away, it's their T9, their most powerful protection, their 180 or so seconds of next to invincible mode so they can take on 1 person so they could have a chance to kill him. And you said right there you've killed stalkers easy, 1-3 deaths on a BAD night. So why 3 lines later are you saying it's nearly impossible to kill them?


you must have a great connection to be back in 45 seconds. anyways, if you have to rely on that kinda green poping to survive, you must not be that great. Those "poor slubs" must be the good ones being able to do that much to you before you "cheat" your way into a kill. Skilled players don't need insps, but are virtually forced to use them because noobs who pop them faster than you can count. Now, popping greens still happens like that, however not in such a ridiculous fashion because after 4 or so they won't do a thing. Now of course, they just run back to their base when the greens stop working. Fun fun, isn't it?

Yes, the heal supression on greens I think is fine. However it shouldn't be forced onto Empathy / Thermal / Pain Dom / Regeneration / WillPower users...

Wow this post is WAY to long...