How dedicated are PVPers?

I do enjoy a little friendly competition now and then, but I am always hesitant to enter into the PVP areas of any CoX zone. I find that most MMO's have themselves a set of rare, expensive, elite items that completely dominate others and are a necessity in any PVP context. CoX isn't as extreme in this manner, but regardless talk about expensive PVP set bonuses and FotM AT arguments let fly in my rather casual gaming.

So my question is this: How much dedication do PVPers put toward making their toons kill other toons? Is any well-built PVE toon able to fend off or occasionally win against someone in zone, or do PVPers spend billions on purple sets and PVP IO's to make it so they are unstoppable by anything but someone of equal dedication?

Also, when I walk into one of these zones, am I going to be ritualistically stalked and murdered by every/the only PVPer in that zone?

Judging by the way you're typing, then yes you will get owned going into PvP with a PvE build and PvE playstyle. I'm not saying those with infinite money and uber builds will kill you much faster than an average PvP build, but even sub par builds will defeat your toon if that player plays a PvP style game. There's a large learning curve in CoX PvP; powers perform differently in PvP environments. The pace of the game is more than doubled in most PvP; so reaction time, skill, and knowledge of powers, game mechanics, surroundings, and other players/roles are more emphasized. Once you understand many of these things, your playstyle will gradually change into more of a PvPer. PvP is the hardest thing to do well in CoH, and you may not need to change your build all that much but your playstyle and skill is really important in successful PvP. To start learning, I'd suggest going to a zone and getting on a team, sticking closely to your team, support the team, and/or attack what the team is attacking. In this regard, it's similar to PvE; but since it's PvP, it's much harder to pull off.

I pvp'd runnin with SOs all the way up until I finally learned to market in i12ish and I did ok
As the poster above me said, it's mostly playstyle (though globs of +hp certainly help)

For casual zone pvp or small arena fights some PVE builds can do suprisingly well. I have an invul/dark tank made for PVE that does really well in zones. And i have a fire/mm blaster that the Pve build is actually more fun to play in pvp than the PVP build.

I see a lot of people on my home server saying the reason they don't pvp is because other players have "more purples" than they do, which is just silly.

Some powerset combos do better than others and yes player skill and basic familiarity with the pvp mechanics( there aren't many) will give an obvious advantage, but a cheap basic io build can do just fine in most settings.

Don't feel that you need to spend 10 billion on your toon before you can pvp. There are many cheaper alternatives that can get you in the fight. everyone dies, just get out there and have fun.

It depends on where you play, if you are on freedom and wander into the zones you are going to find the people who used to play in zones from about every other server when PvP was active. So your PvE build is going to be killed quickly and repeatedly.

If you go to any other server you can bring whatever and do okay. (If you can find anyone in the zones)

You don't really need PvPIOs and purples and really expensive stuff for casual pvp. You do however need to select the right powers and at least put in some sets with +hp and accuracy and a few other things. The amnount you put into the toon also depends on the build. You can make a blaster with capped HP, good acc and good recharge, veeeeerry cheaply.


And with three builds there's really no excuse to be unwilling to make a pvp build.

if you go in knowing you're going to die and get ganked once in a while - it's fun. I have taken my pve farming dom into rv - when there are 20 heroes camping the villian base and the only villian they can see is me (with 4 stalkers on team) - i know I am going to die but if I can hold one long enough for the stalkers to as - so much the better. teaming is more important than build - and like I said having fun. If you get mad about dying then it's either not going to be fun or you need a build that does not die much.

there will always be people who talk in bc about how they are pro and you suck (who oddly enough will not 1v1 with travel powers on..lol) but If you are not affected by what someone you never met says about you in a video game you will be just fine

one thing, which I don't think has been spelled out so far is that in PvP, the mechanics work very deferently than in PvE, just to name one example, is how mez powers operate, durations are much shorter in PvP( slotted the majority are maybe 5 sec if that much), on the other hand ther is no mez protection( which given mez resistance and the short durations is redundant anyway), AND you have a period where your immune to mez after being mezed. And honestly there are many other differences that I won't go into here. But the point is, there are some builds that can be great at both, other AT combinations which you will need to utilize a second build, and some other AT Powerset combinations I wouldn't even bother bringing in PvP. And the sad part for people new to pvp here, there really isn't a good ingame notice letting you know there are differences and what those differences are, you would either have to research here, or on paragon wiki, which is too bad. Many if not all, serious pvpers usually keep up to date with those changes, and have a information advantage over newbies.

with DR, while there are some IO's and IO sets invalauable for PvP, a good PvPer could make a decent if not great pvp toon with the right knowledge just using commons and uncommons, although there are some very good higher end sets for pvp. But DR hits some set bonuses pretty hard, and a good min/maxer will know when to stop working on a set bonus, knowing while the values may be great for pve, but useless in pvp.

Ideally it would be great if both sides played by the same rules, and I'm not saying bringing those same pvp rules to pve( it would result in a disaster even greater than ED)