So what do You think of PVP.. or what's left.

lolPvP.

X actually liked the new changes, he liked pvp 2.0 better than pvp 1.0. I dont think I'll ever understand that, after spending so much time perfecting strategy on my rad/psy. Now it's whoever can mash buttons faster and whoever has the better build. =/

The only thing I can say is...



This should help.

Corrs, Stalkers, and Doms are still all very good in PvP. Hero vs Vill is fairly balanced at the moment.

Holy dead horse kicking Batman!.....Twisted you are a little late on this subject man. Best to leave it alone.

However here is a quick recap of pvp

PvP birth (I4)....wow how cool
PvP childhood.(I5)..wow how fun
PvP adolescence(I6 ED)....I say I hate you But I'm going to stay because I have nowhere else to go
PvP adulthood(I7-I12 Vills/zone).....zmog I love you
PvP senior citizen(I13+)......suddenly you find yourself alone because all your friends are gone, things are slower, and its hard to teach an old dog new tricks

I have a much different position on this than I had a year ago (I was in the stop your whining, suck it up, adapt and overcome camp) because the devs actually accomplished what they set out to do....level the playing field. Great players will still be great. Great ATs will still be good. However the days of Legends have past. Anyone with a couple billion Influence can goto arena set Flares to auto and complete now.

I hate to say it I actually miss Elf's 600 Point crit shark attack. I miss Althaea's AS for 1500. I miss the repel and KB of Brynn's hurricane. I miss break free actually breaking me free. I miss getting detoggled by Shinobi's Rad/Psi when I ran out of insps. I miss Kickn' Cowgirl nervous on vent for her first 2v2. I miss Kat's test emp 'Rapin' Face'. I miss Wombicus, Haunt, Hush, Ego, Psyrene, B, and Evo from my test team. I miss Oz playing Red Cross Woman before Thermal was cool. I miss War Council even though they wrecked me every day. I miss my Aim + Build Up + Blaze for 850. I miss when slows actually slowed, debuffs actually debuffed, and buffs actually buffed. I miss when you walked into arena/zone with what you made not what the devs thought you needed. I miss when every match started with glhf/all in and ended with gg/gf.

*sigh* good times.

Here is to hoping devs let us have a little of our former glory sometime in the near future. One can always hope.

/signed

I was waiting for you Oz. You have a way with words

I'm sorry, which part was wrong?

You post was quite short, and the summary of PvP in your sig seems to include little to no sense what so ever...

Let's face it, the Devs of this game aren't allowed to step in and say " Hey, PvP this way cause that's how it's designed."

I think it's more likely that we got it wrong.... than they did. I'm sure to you and many others however, that's not the case... beacuse the people who play the game are always much more knowledgeable about what needs to be done than the people that design it right??

If Castle made the changes and was happy with them... it should of been a "Oh? How does it work?" moment... Instead of a "Why doesn't this work anymore!?" moment... this is probably the attitude that lead you to yor current opinion of PvP no?

One attitude leads to new ideas, new perspectives, possible new builds, new guides, training recruiting, fun, and all that stuff while the other attitude leads to moar QQ, FoTM dependancy, (moreso than before I12) Ragequitting, and profound and constructive comments like:

Do feel free to quote my earlier post if I stated something so off th wall... I don't mind being wrong. I'm just curious as to which part you found to be so far from the truth.

Well said Ashes, couldn't have put it any better.

The PvPers weren't the ones who made the changes. As such they have no choice but to start using the builds that are better - supposedly the changes were to eliminate the complaints about this power or that power or this strategy or that build, and to essentially make all powersets and ATs the same, but we know that didn't happen. There are less viable builds now thanks to DR, DPA changes, free base resists, the mez changes, and travel suppression. People go with the "cookie cutter" builds that do the most damage because when everything's supposedly the same, anything that gives even a small advantage is a necessity to stay competitive.

People "got" that the rules changed. They also "got" that the new rules dumbed down the PvP experience in an attempt to level the playing field (it helped, but a seasoned PvPer will still roll a newbie any day) by removing the speed and skill aspects of the game. People that didn't like that left, and who can blame them? The people that are still around are disgruntled for obvious reasons, but we've made do the best we can - by rerolling our characters into builds that are useful for the new ruleset.

Same goes for the old system, it's just that there's more broken stuff now than there was under the old system (KB being ridiculously OP, mez often being a death sentence, AoEs being worthless, Flares being better than Blaze, Ice Blast being worthless, buffs being largely lopped off by DR, offensive toggle dropping... need I go on?)

Support toons and buffers need to be stacked? What? Many external buffs get hit by DR under only one application, let alone stacked - the only real exceptions here are damage buffs, and def/res buffs to melee ATs (who don't need those buffs in the first place) and squishies running defense-based shields. My Therm sure is glad that his shields add a whopping 3% resists to his teammates. Don't get me wrong - I'm really quite happy to waste endurance to make people look pretty. People stopped playing their support toons (or just respec'd them into damage builds) because damage is all that really matters anymore. Def/res buffs do not make a meaningful contribution to squishy survivability thanks to DR - you'd be better off spamming attacks during the time you'd normally be buffing since you'll be able to damage spam a target until they can't heal anymore.

People don't spend billions on the tp/repel resist IOs in and of themselves - not for PvP combat, at any rate. The people who're really chasing after those IOs want the def and res, and they cost that much because they only drop off player kills. The PvPers seeking those IOs are usually looking to fill off set bonuses from the PvP sets, or they're just that desperate to avoid being teleported (repel's not a big deal for any competent player except a Stalker, and WP, Regen, EA, and Elec Stalkers don't even have to worry about it). Kins are worthless - before I13 people brought them to matches or zones for SB and IR, but with travels suppression there's no point. Sure, you can use Transference or Siphon Speed, but endurance drains and -spd are very weak and you'd be better off just using your attacks instead.

What other "mitigation and control" techniques? Only other ones I can think of are disruption - taunting, webnading, or perma-suppressing someone via Rad/Storm/Dark/etc toggles. As of right now, mez and KB are the best mitigation/control/disruption techniques, bar none. A good team will mez their spike target and that target will be dead before the mez wears off, or hit their target with Levitate/Lift/Power Push/Force Bolt and the target will be dead before they can get back up. If you're a control class in PvP right now you're either running disruption with the occasional mez/kb (hello, Controllers) or running ranged DPS with the occasional mez/kb (hello, Dominators). Where's the skill?

Please, tell me: what team combinations are you thinking of? At any rate, it doesn't really matter, because I13 removed the necessity of rolling FotMs or relying on certain team makeups, right? Right? Guys... anyone?

Heals and resistance buffs are important in PvP because a well-built PvP character will hit you, and you need that additional survivability. Now resistance buffs get DRd so a squishy will never have more than 40-45% resistance, and if a spike team just keeps up a skill-less damage spam, the spike target will die unless they can phase or get lucky and get away (good luck with that against a competent spike team considering how travel suppression now works). You seem to miss the point that between DR on buffs and heal decay, it really is more effective to focus on damage and just kill the other team before they kill you. Of course, having one or two people with heals will help a target survive maybe a few seconds longer - but I was doing an 8v8 KB on Freedom the other night on my Therm, and there was one situation where we were able to keep a spike target alive thanks to our heals, whereas in the zone/heal decay on scenario he would have died multiple times over.

Emphasized the part that that made me laugh the loudest - DR, heal decay, travel suppression, and free resistance did exactly the opposite. Never mind that thanks to the DPA and mez changes, most characters play very differently than they do in PvE. I13 wasn't about making sure AT roles were needed, it was about making all the ATs feel the same in terms of damage and survivability (which failed spectacularly, btw). Hell, Castle even commented on that and said regarding AT normalization "it didn't feel wrong to me so I went with it." In short, most buffs aside from damage buffs are now worthless, Sonic and Kin have no place whatsoever in a team PvP lineup and FF isn't much better off (it's there for Force Bubble and Force Bolt mostly).

PvPers are an adaptive type - as rules and powers change, they adapt by going to whatever is best at the moment, and you'll notice PvPers have made a shift toward damage dealing. This leaves two possibilities - either the people who write the code got it wrong, or the people who actually use that code every day almost all their in-game time got it wrong. I'm going to venture out on a limb and say it wasn't the players, and I'm betting most of those players would agree with me.


Somewhat right, somewhat wrong. Devs didn't create FotM builds. Players create FotM builds because those builds are the ones that are the best at doing what is called for. Before I13 you had varied FotMs, and even some builds that weren't FotM but were still very useful. Now you've got only a few FotMs, focused mostly around damage dealing because that's all that really matters. The developers did make PvP about damage - you can even see it in the original I13 PvP changes post, where Castle mentions a bit about messing with AT damage scales to bring the damage of the ATs in line with one another. They ensured PvP would be all about damage by raising, not lowering, the PvP damage of powers relative to their PvE damage (look at holds and immobilizes for the best examples of this). They ensured PvP would be all about damage by making heals less and less effective as more damage was tossed at a target. They ensured PvP would be all about damage by using travel suppression to enforce the fiteklubber "once someone starts a fight, it shouldn't end until someone dies" mentality.

Don't be dense - teaming in a PvP environment is still very much preferred to soloing. However, the reasons for it have shifted from teammates providing buffs, heals, and disruption to teammates providing extra damage for spikes, KB, and the occasional spot heal.

All-Scrapper teams, or to a lesser extent, some Repeat Offenders teams (like the all-Rad teams), do things like that all the time. You should see them sometime, they're some of the most ridiculously overpowered teams you can think of. Hell, one of the main reasons DR was implemented in the first place was to reduce the effect of buff stacking. I'm not sure of your interpretation of that but to me it sure sounds like someone's spitting in the face of anyone who enjoyed playing buffer toons.

No, because it's not as fun as I12 PvP. It really is that simple.

The kind of PvPers who would write those guides have left the game because they were sick of having what they loved stomped all over. No one bothers these days because experiences from the I13 beta tell us it's not worth trying to get major mechanics changes implemented. You don't need a guide to be at least decent in PvP 2.0 - just use W, A, S, D, and mash attacks as they're recharged, using self-heals and phase as they're needed. It really is that simple, unfortunately. Most of the prominent post-I13 PvPers were around and were good before I13, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

I'm also not sure what point you're trying to make about people coming to the boards and whining, asking about changes. The same people that whined about stuff being broken before still come to the boards and whine about stuff. Only thing that's changed is what's being whined about, and there's often more of it.

Let me fix that for you: "When we, the PvP community, manage to convince the devs to screw their heads on right again, and come up with a system that fixes the problems the old system has while bringing back the speed, team dynamics, and value of skill that the old system had, PvP will find its flair again."

This was a bit long-winded, but I'm kind of sick of people saying "OMG THIS PvP IS SO MUCH BETTER AND THE ONLY REASON PEOPLE DON'T LIKE IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD."

@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."

Forgive me, but this is borderline dumb and quite obviously an emotional opinion. PvPers had no choice but to roll FoTM cookie cuter builds because all the AT's were supposedly made the same in PvP? The Devs wanted to make all ATs the same???? No. The choice was either step back... look around and figure out how to make the new system work as intended... or look at the numbers and roll whatever would let you do what you were doing before the changes were introduced. You argue that when everything is supposedly the same... every small advantage helps, but the small advatage support toons now offer is worthless? Please. You argue in circles. Most of your opinion and attempts at logic has been formed by CoX forum "wannabe facts" simply because they've been repeated so much for a almost a year. Your logic (and many others') says that the Devs just up and one day said... "Hey, Let's ruin PvP so we can and lose money... YeAh!!!"

Dude. Peope Go with cookie cutter builds because it's the easiest way to please their PvP egos. Of course no one will admit it. They use numbers, mids, percentages, etc... and become very skilled in making cookie cutter builds so they can be above the rest... or like I said... so they can have little to no dependancy on other ATs.

Was that a Castle quote? Did he say he was duming down PvP? Or was that what the PvP community just thought and expressed on the forums so it made it true?? Does a good build = a good player? How do you know if you're good if you have to reroll a toon to whatever FoTM rises to the top?? Oh wait that's right PvPers had no choice right?

Yeah, I feel ya.... and how much is that unique IO that adds 3% resist to all selling for right now? Oh that's different right? It's perfectly fine to farm and grind for IO sets that will add 3.75% defense... 3.25% resist to a single damage type right? LOL but to get that extra from another toon is worthless? Right? I am starting to become overwhelmed by your logic. I wonder why my /Sonic troller does well on teams?? Oh, maybe because it has liquefy, sonic siphon and sonic disruption.... and resist shields for that /SR scrapper that keeps getting wrecked. (just for example) The role of support toons changed in I13 to make all support needed in some way or fashion. The role they are now required to fill is not only misunderstood, but also underrated... simply because before I13 only the staple powers of most sets were wanted, and after I13 many have the option to provide themselves with those same buffs. Maybe some of the people that quit playing with their support toons did so because they did not like the fact that spamming 1 or 2 powers was no longer enough to be considered good/effective. Maybe it was because they couldn't count to 8. I don't disagree that damage is an effective means of mitigating damage in PvP. I just think it is better left to the ATs degined to do it... and in part they should use this to protect their squishy teammates... I know, yeah right.

Your focus, as I pointed out in my first post seems to be about comparisions of what support toons did before and what they did after.... instead whether they are still the best at supporting a team.... but I'm certain you consider blasters better at protecting squishies right.... they're so good at it with all that damage.


I've found that my stalker buddies are mighty grateful when I tell tham that $target is no loger at the perception cap (-percept) but I'm sure we skip those powers... I have a great time trapping running blasters and scrappers and tankers in the wading pools in RV (-Jump) I pair with a Dom who also took flight/tp and we ground folks (-fly) and send them to teammates below quite easily. If I'm playing a control AT, I'm there to basically to the same job I do in PvE. When a spike $target is called, I focus on the opponents that are preventing that spike from happening... I may use tp foe, I may cage them, Heck with my Grav/ dom I can mitigate 10+ heroes at once with wormhole and D-shift. The specific techniques you seem to be in the dark about differ from set to set. I have no desire to pick my brain and list every single one I've tried or would try.

If you have to ask.... then I know you haven't thought about it yourself. Those darn numbers can be so convincing that one shouldn't even have to bother thinking I know... Again I have little desire to go all list form. Perhaps a constuctive thread could be made on the topic. I've witnessed 2 taunting shiled/brutes, a /TA MM, a /sonic, and myself a /Traps Corr stand up to much more than we were suppose to before, the combianion was quite wicked and pissed many l33t pvpers right out of zone... because we were "boring" ( Boring is what you call it when a team decides NOT to split up and hop around all over the place I found out) Yeah so we took extra resists added with -damage debuffs added with everything needed to drop flyers, turn damage into poop, kill regen and taunt heavy hitters off the squishies. If I remember correctly 2 of those teammates were quite new to PvP too. I haven't seen such a makeup since that day... I gave up waiting for such to become a norm. I still have hopes though.

YMMV. Just like in PvE some people can't cope without Healers there to give them the green stuff. I can understand to a certain extent how I13 ruined the game for these peoples.

I'm getting tired of typing so I'll just ask a silly question: If damage rules all in PvP... why wasn't it being used to stop your teammate from being spiked... I mean thats the best mitigation out there atm right? Hmm, perhaps a useless /kin that can drops damage by 25% would of helped too?

It's sad that such a divide can be found within an already small PvP commuinty. Not everyone switches to what's best at the moment. Not everyone thinks they know more than te devs do. I completely missed the memo that stated my controller was to have the same feel as a Scrapper in terms of damage and survivabilty, and it's seems quite obvious to me that usefulness in PvP should not be pre-determined. As I mentioned before: Just as FoTM builds are often played by bad players.... Good players don't always have to sit in FoTM builds.

/agree to disagee


Sure. My father got a brand new top of the line computer as a gift for X-Mas last year. Since then He's used it only to play spider solitaire and hearts... Does that make it a crappy PC, or would you say he hasn't realized it's potential yet?

LOL now that I do agree with. I guess my point was that the changes to PvP were made after LOTs of complaining... which seems quite silly now considering theres been like ten times as much after the changes were made. Some people deal with shat... some people dwell on it. Me, well I never missed a step.

Ditto about the length... can't get in-game atm and have little to do.

Beleive me I don't waste time with "Better or Worse" in a game like this... I PvPed from issues 4 - 12 with the same smile and enjoyemnt that I get today from PvPing. My overall point has less to do with bad players and more to do with good players that simply got it wrong, dragged the rest of us along for the ride, jumped ship when that didn't work... and then turned ther backs on those of us who still find it fun.

Beautiful. Simply a beautiful tribute to the good old pvp 1.0. To expand on what you said, I really miss the people that just made you say 'wow'. People that played so well in different areas accomplishing different feats. Then practicing to play a match to your strengths while trying to hinder your opponent's strengths. You don't really get that anymore, because, as said, it's really just damage. There is no ice troller destroying your recharge. No rad or stormie neutering your tohit. No Stalker lurking around that has the potential to one shot you. No Dom that will wreck your face if you can't knock him out of permadom. And no Emp'd blasters that were basically impossible to win against on anything other than an emp'd blaster or dom. Then there were those few numbered MMs that I despised fighting above all else.

I started pvping with an EM/Elec brute and a Rad/Psi defender. Since i13 I have never had the same experiences with my new pvp toons as I did with my old pvp toons. I remember winning my first competition against Neo's mind/ice permadom and a fire/em blaster using my brute and x's ice/storm. I remember spending months practicing against x's ice/storm with my rad/psi and finally beating him for the first time. I think one of my favorite parts of pre-i13 pvp was that I was almost always the underdog. Always going up against people who had more experience.

All of the above then had no relevence to current pvp. Striving to be able to fight on par with the top pvpers became impossible when nearly all of them left. What was good before was no longer good. What strategies were thought up became pointless. What victories you accomplished were no longer as significant. A PvPEC win just became a free month of game time to me, nothing more.

The dynamic and exhilarating pvp and the sheer awesomeness of being successful at it left Coh with i13.

****, I hate ******* long posts.

Ditto'd