So as it turns out, there's a great way to avoid getting kicked out for deserter. If you enter a conversation in the spawn area, the deserter debuff won't kick you out. So last Voidstar match I saw a few people sitting there with a conversation bubble up over their head as we lost terribly.
This is the most frustrating part of PvP. People in it not to play and have fun, but purely to exploit and get gear at the expense of everyone else.
edit: And does anyone else frequently hit an AOE, only to get knockbacked as soon as they hit it resulting in their AOE not activating where they want, but somewhere totally useless instead? This happens to me all the time.
Oh, and stunned people can't be knocked back.
And your CC break is still on cooldown after you die.
And frequently people will be hit with a knockback from one angle, and go in a completely different angle than you would expect.
Man huttball is frustrating.
SniperGuy on
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't mind playing huttball again.
Hell it was only recently that I had Voidstar pop after a dozen or more straight queues of Alderaan turret defense which is getting a bit dull at this point.
Snipers can put down a ball carrier in said angry mob of death before the ball carrier realizes he's under fire, so fierce is their Ambush burst.
That said, PvP in SWTOR blows, because no brackets mean that random level 15 duder gets crushed by a geared 50 over and over and over
also: PvP rewards are way too easy to get. Way, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too easy, and they have too much PvE utility. Gear shouldn't matter at all in PvP, in my opinion, because balance is absolutely core in PvP, and DIKU grinding immediately kills the idea of balance in a PvP encounter. Somebody is going to have the edge, be it slight or canyonesque.
Snipers can put down a ball carrier in said angry mob of death before the ball carrier realizes he's under fire, so fierce is their Ambush burst.
That said, PvP in SWTOR blows, because no brackets mean that random level 15 duder gets crushed by a geared 50 over and over and over
also: PvP rewards are way too easy to get. Way, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too easy, and they have too much PvE utility. Gear shouldn't matter at all in PvP, in my opinion, because balance is absolutely core in PvP, and DIKU grinding immediately kills the idea of balance in a PvP encounter. Somebody is going to have the edge, be it slight or canyonesque.
This is not true. I routinely win matches where my team has level 12-15 dudes and the imperials have nobody below 25 and have 50s. And me and my guildmates 90% of the time dominate the game and we're in our high 30s/low 40s now, and have been doing so since the 20s. There are many abilities that make PvPing better on your class, but none of them trumps playing to the objectives and not just blindly trying to kill people.
I can't speak to how much expertise will matter, but I routinely have people on my team who are already 50 and in a lot of the purple pvp gear with set bonuses, and they're still terrible.
Had a great time doing pre-mades with RC tonight. I know I got dropped a few times, mostly because I was helping my wife format her laptop (VAIO can suck my dick...) and the kick timer is pretty damn short (which is fair).
I found a great way to play Operative in Huttball though. Stealth, and just follow Call (whose PA name escapes me) around. Once he has the ball and the entire other team mobs on him, come out of stealth and just hammer healing darts into him.
We had a game where I got 95k healing by just following him around. One goal run, we just slowly walked to the goal line, me healing Call, and the two other RC (Galik the sniper, and Somend [?] the merc) just ran around us killing fools. It was pretty hilariously fun.
Coincidentally, the next few rounds had opposing Operatives and Scoundrels that waited just for me to pop up and start healing Call, then they'd pop out and murder me.
Snipers can put down a ball carrier in said angry mob of death before the ball carrier realizes he's under fire, so fierce is their Ambush burst.
That said, PvP in SWTOR blows, because no brackets mean that random level 15 duder gets crushed by a geared 50 over and over and over
also: PvP rewards are way too easy to get. Way, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too easy, and they have too much PvE utility. Gear shouldn't matter at all in PvP, in my opinion, because balance is absolutely core in PvP, and DIKU grinding immediately kills the idea of balance in a PvP encounter. Somebody is going to have the edge, be it slight or canyonesque.
This is not true. I routinely win matches where my team has level 12-15 dudes and the imperials have nobody below 25 and have 50s. And me and my guildmates 90% of the time dominate the game and we're in our high 30s/low 40s now, and have been doing so since the 20s. There are many abilities that make PvPing better on your class, but none of them trumps playing to the objectives and not just blindly trying to kill people.
I can't speak to how much expertise will matter, but I routinely have people on my team who are already 50 and in a lot of the purple pvp gear with set bonuses, and they're still terrible.
The problem is that if those 50s know what they're doing, and you know what you're doing, you're not going to win.
This is not particularly fair. Especially if the 50s have a ton of Expertise.
Snipers can put down a ball carrier in said angry mob of death before the ball carrier realizes he's under fire, so fierce is their Ambush burst.
That said, PvP in SWTOR blows, because no brackets mean that random level 15 duder gets crushed by a geared 50 over and over and over
also: PvP rewards are way too easy to get. Way, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too easy, and they have too much PvE utility. Gear shouldn't matter at all in PvP, in my opinion, because balance is absolutely core in PvP, and DIKU grinding immediately kills the idea of balance in a PvP encounter. Somebody is going to have the edge, be it slight or canyonesque.
This is not true. I routinely win matches where my team has level 12-15 dudes and the imperials have nobody below 25 and have 50s. And me and my guildmates 90% of the time dominate the game and we're in our high 30s/low 40s now, and have been doing so since the 20s. There are many abilities that make PvPing better on your class, but none of them trumps playing to the objectives and not just blindly trying to kill people.
I can't speak to how much expertise will matter, but I routinely have people on my team who are already 50 and in a lot of the purple pvp gear with set bonuses, and they're still terrible.
The problem is that if those 50s know what they're doing, and you know what you're doing, you're not going to win.
This is not particularly fair. Especially if the 50s have a ton of Expertise.
Yeah, if the other team randomly gets all 50s and my team doesn't, and they all know how to coordinate and are good, sure. The problem is, I have control over that as far as I can. When my guild is all 50 and we queue 4 of us together, the worst we can run into is another 4 man premade. Sure, when the stars align and we run into a team that is just made of 2 four man premade coordinated badasses and our team has us 4 50s and then 4 level 10s, we'll lose. But that's just not going to happen much.
I'm pretty sure at 50 a great deal of my PvP will come from open world havoc on Ilum, because that sounds like it'll be a good time. I really only warzone for giggles and the daily anyway.
Also, fun fact. If you're over level 40, you can get someone else in their 30s(or 20s or teens) to share the lower level warzone dailies with you and you can do them all. I picked up the level 39 one today, dinged 40, picked up the 49 one, shared the 39 one with my buddy who was 45 already, and we won a game and both got like 40k exp and 12kish credits combined. Not a big deal, but whatever.
Consular healin' in pvp seems so very CD restricted, I wish they'd lower or remove some of them. I WANT TO BUBBLE/HOT ERE'BODY
You can force armor your whole group if you're talented into the thing that makes force armor's CD 1.5, equal to the GCD, which any sage healer would be. Now if you want to HoT more people at once, you either have to play a different class, or wait until you get Salvation and cackle while you lay it down and it heals your entire group every second on top of the up front heal. That spell is so awesome.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited December 2011
All being 50 does is give you a bit more versatility and a slight statistical edge in PVP. Both of which are fairly easily overcome. Knowing your class, keeping up on the mods and gear upgrades, and at least being at levels 15/20 pretty much equalizes you to everyone else.
Shit, i've taken multiple 50's out at the mid-range levels before. Had a particularly hilarious situation where a group of three of them rushed my point in Alderaan while I was alone and the team was DMing at center. The team ignored me entirely as I shouted that we were about to a lose a point. I ended up taking them all down with only a sliver of health left at thirty. The entire enemy team avoided the point after that for the rest of the match.
What's problematic is full premades made entirely of 50's. Typically you only get maybe two 50's, tops, in most matches, since the game seems to sort them out to individual instances. Not so with a premade of them.
The problem quickly exacerbates itself as the premade garners wins, which lets them all get good gear. Which then lets them win easier. Which lets them get more good PVP gear. So and so forth, until they're a bunch of cocks to stop because your entire team typically would have trouble picking their nose without somehow impaling their brain. Nevermind conducting a coordinated defense or attack.
Coincidentally, the guilds that do this tend to be cocks themselves. Some of the personalities i've met in them since release are absolutely atrocious. Which, given that they're essentially gaming the system for easy marks and wins, isn't that unbelievable.
Though thankfully on my server, they often seem to lack actual skill, relying on rolling around in a massive blob of pain and death to win the match. Doesn't stop them from shit-talking like they're the best thing since sliced bread, though.
The problem with Huttball, in particular, is that it's entirely dependent on the team working together, and not being idiots. Warhammer Online suffered from this same problem in alot of their maps.
Two people working together can end the match in two to three minutes if both of them have enough of their mid to late game skills, and know what they're doing. I've done this before in beta and at release using a Jugg/Marauder or Jugg/Sorc combo.
The Jugg nabs the ball, throws guard on the other player, then the other player positions himself so the Jugg can leap to the player, usually putting them right next to the goal after a short bit of walking. Meanwhile, the entire enemy team is still stuck far behind the Jugg or other player, meaning that they're mostly too far away to pick the ball back up when it resets (A third player is good for making sure you can score a second easy point.), and too far away to stop the two runners with any real effectiveness.
Unfortunately, in the case of PUG's, which are mostly what you're going to see going up against each other, it's not so much a case of "Who is the most skilled.", but rather "Who has the fewer number of players who are insufferable cock-ups". Which is why Huttball tends to be a frustrating mess alot of the time.
Odds are, if there's a bunch of classes refusing to give their class buff at the start of the match, then you're in for a rough ride. That's a basic aspect of cooperation that, when all of the buffs are stacked, gives you a massive edge.
Being high level and getting all your abilities makes a massive difference in Huttball, moreso than the other two. In Huttball being level 50 means I can queue with my guildies "Guardian, Sage, Sage, Scoundrel), pick up the ball, get the whole enemy team wondering why I'm standing around in the middle getting healed and popping shield walls while they try to kill me in vain, then quickly set up and execute a Force Leap/Rescue/Rescue/Guardian Leap that gets me from the middle to a scored point before the other team even knows what the hell just happened. You can't do that until 42(Rescue) and 50(Guardian Leap).
I see this argument a lot in-game; someone complains about the balance issues created by the lack of brackets, and the apologists tell them that they should just out-skill and out-coordinate their superior opponents.
Yeah, except that point relies on one completely faulty premise: that the 50's you are playing against are largely bad enough to where you can skill your way past them at any level. In my experience that is not the case even half of the time. It's not you and your group of upstart level 15s taking down some group of geared-but-unksilled level 50s, it's more like you and your group of upstart level 15s going up against an organized group of geared-AND-skilled level 50s. And skill being roughly equal? The higher level player has a dramatic advantage.
It's kind of baffling to me that Bioware (I assume) pays people to work on the PvP in this game, and that nobody foresaw how problematic a lack of level brackets would be, and how inadequate a solution stat bolster is.
(Also keep in mind I say all of this as a person who has largely benefited from the current system, as I am fairly ahead of the leveling curve.)
Went up against a very frustrating 50 premade of two sorcs and bh yesterday in huttball. The three of them rushed 4 goals and then spent the rest of the match trolling my team by running around midfield /dancing as we couldn't break their tank + heals.
I was the highest on my team as a 40 and while I could shut down 1 sorc with cc, the rest of the team just had no concept or ability to stop the other two. Watching said sorc proceed to kite 4 dudes around the entire edge of the map was hilarious though.
All being 50 does is give you a bit more versatility and a slight statistical edge in PVP. Both of which are fairly easily overcome. Knowing your class, keeping up on the mods and gear upgrades, and at least being at levels 15/20 pretty much equalizes you to everyone else.
This is simply factually incorrect. Expertise, a stat that you can only get on PvP gear, is only available at 50. You can get a tiny fractional amount on a weapon before that, but it's a tiny amount. In a warzone, if you're level 20, and they're level 50 and have a full set of PvP gear? I don't care how well you play, they're going to beat you if they're anywhere near competent.
The easy fix for this would be to put 50s into their own warzones. Which may happen, if there are enough 50s around. But they really should restrict it.
They don't have a slight statistical edge, they have access to an entire stat that you don't have access to. A good stat.
PVP at low levels is awful now because of all the level 50 people, I dont even have a stun on my alt and im facing people with every ability unlocked in addition to the expertise stat
My Medic Commando, at level 10, is a pretty worthless healer.
At level 30 or higher, I have access to some very important talents, giving me considerably more utility and throughput regardless of "stat normalization"
At level 40, each class gets access to their "big deal" top-tier talent, which usually creates a significant change in how the class plays. Medics get a powerful instant heal that costs no ammo, significantly increasing their burst healing, efficiency, and mobility.
At level 50 you have your full spec prepared, giving you considerably more options, powers, and potential than somebody with access to only 1-10 points.
I sympathize with the desire to make PvP accessible and ensure that people get to play when they want, but the game would be better with some kind of bracket. It doesn't need to be as restrictive as WoW's 10 level range, but something like "10-39 / 40-50" would be great.
I sympathize with the desire to make PvP accessible and ensure that people get to play when they want, but the game would be better with some kind of bracket. It doesn't need to be as restrictive as WoW's 10 level range, but something like "10-39 / 40-50" would be great.
Yeah, I think that's the long term solution. There should be enough people rolling alts (this game just begs you to) to keep a solid stream of 10-39 (or 44, or whatever) players at least active. Hopefully they continue to queue for PVP.
To be fair, I think the current system is supposed to make an effort to match levels, but I'm not sure how many warzones are active at a given time. 2 or 3? Since it's server specific, it's probably not a ton.
If there's one positive thing to say about Huttball, it lets you do something when there's an imbalance between factions in the queue.
No no, there are tons of reasons not to do this. I'm level 50. I do not want impatient level 20s hijacking my warzone to farm XP and commendations while idling in the corner.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
All being 50 does is give you a bit more versatility and a slight statistical edge in PVP. Both of which are fairly easily overcome. Knowing your class, keeping up on the mods and gear upgrades, and at least being at levels 15/20 pretty much equalizes you to everyone else.
This is simply factually incorrect. Expertise, a stat that you can only get on PvP gear, is only available at 50. You can get a tiny fractional amount on a weapon before that, but it's a tiny amount. In a warzone, if you're level 20, and they're level 50 and have a full set of PvP gear? I don't care how well you play, they're going to beat you if they're anywhere near competent.
The easy fix for this would be to put 50s into their own warzones. Which may happen, if there are enough 50s around. But they really should restrict it.
They don't have a slight statistical edge, they have access to an entire stat that you don't have access to. A good stat.
Bioware has said that the PVP gear is only supposed to make you something like 20/25 percent better then a normal player in the past.
Now, if that's not happening, then something needs to be done about that. Because that tied into their whole "equalized classes" thing too. That being said, i've been able to kill plenty of geared 50's before using an ataru specced Marauder. You just need to use your entire skill-set. Going in and spamming your normal attack rotation will get your ass wasted, since, hey, they've earned way more skills then you have. Versatility has its benefits.
It doesn't matter how good you are. If someone is putting a skill on you that lowers your accuracy by a full 90 percent, that gear is only good for defensive purposes. Likewise, if you're melee, and they're popping slows and screams at range on you, so that you have to pop your anti-immobilization skill, you're still hosed anyways once they start choking you and get more rage/focus back up.
Alternatively, if you're approaching having an end-game Marauder. Burning your blood rage to give you ninety nine percent damage resistance (On top of your current resistance.) while you have a healer on you pretty much makes you a god-like engine of destruction. All in all, I can get up to almost about two minutes of nigh invincibility in a fight before all of my skills are on cool down. Which is more then enough time to finish most fights.
That's not even getting into some of the neat maneuvering tricks you can pull off with your semi-stealth, or the fact that saber ward is a bitch. Marauder stealth is basically, on most of the maps, a free ticket to getting the health power-up and starting the fight all over again with a heavy advantage. Or the fact that the alternative spec most Marauders go into means they have their 20/30 percent dam resistance boosting skill almost constantly on cooldown.
Maybe it's different for some of the other classes, but for my Marauder, a 50 just represents a change in how to approach the target. I have to work harder for it by using skills I normally keep in reserve. It's most definitely not a no-win situation though.
Archonex on
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited December 2011
God, I love some of the geometry placements in the warzones. Jumping into a group of guys on Alderaan Warzone just to the west of the centre turret near the downstairs route, beat on them until I got focused down pretty hard. Was getting healed but was still dropping so I ran away behind some cover and proceeded to see all three guys that were focusing on me pause and then try running to get LOS again. But now it was too late because my healer got the necessary breathing room to heal me again and I was able to just Jump back in and everything died.
Did some PvP today. To begin with, I wasn't impressed. My commando got her ass handed multiple times and my keybindings were all a mess. Also I tried to do 2 things at all: healer and Dps and my mind simply couldn't focus on doing both at the same time. There is so much happening on the screen for me to pay attention to both areas.
Furthermore, I felt the Commando energy management system restricted me way too much for me to be effective. I tried my Sorc and it went much better, CC and energy-wise. Still disliked the way a team could dominate the entire match and how some people were just finding a place and staying there the entire duration.
In the end I did it myself because if 1/3 of your team has decided it isn't worth fighting for, there is nothing you can do about it. Might as well save yourself the frustration and gain some medals for doing other stuff (camping a defense point, healing yourself, etc).
There's a level 50 I keep getting queued with on my server named Tidus. He thinks he's hot shit and is geared in pvp gear. He's fucking stupid and we lose more games with him in them than we win. Conversely, we just got done utterly dominating back to back games where we had one 50 and the other side had 4.
Then we had a Huttball game where the other side had 2 4 man guild premades manage to get in the same game. That game ended quickly with them on the winning side. Point is, the normalization does more good than bad, and I get good queue times all the time, and I win some and lose some, some close, and some by a wide margin, both ways. It's way fucking better than WoW's bullshit tiers where if you're not in the top few levels of the tier it's not even worth queueing.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited December 2011
Yeah, being 50 and being in PVP gear is in no way a guaranteed win. As PVP gear stands now, it's alot like how it was in vanilla WoW. It gives you an edge. It doesn't guarantee victory.
Now, if they keep escalating PVP gear tiers without diversifying the system a bit, like how WoW did with constantly advancing tiers of gear, I can see an obnoxious gear grind appearing maybe a year down the line due to content expansions. But hopefully they've got plans for that given how fleshed out their system is so far.
I wish they'd port over Mourkain Temple though. Just give it some red lighting and say it's an ancient sith artifact killing the holder. That scenario was awesome.
Yeah, murderball is generally a good game type. The equivalent in RIFT that I currently can't remember the name of was quite good as well. They already have the basic mechanics in from huttball, they just need to make holding the ball give points, and have the ball hurt you.
Yeah, murderball is generally a good game type. The equivalent in RIFT that I currently can't remember the name of was quite good as well. They already have the basic mechanics in from huttball, they just need to make holding the ball give points, and have the ball hurt you.
The Rift version was fucking amazing.
The only problem with Mourkain was the way the level was designed. It funneled everyone into a clusterfuck at the start. And it was way too easy to turtle.
Rift's open "bowl" level design was really inventive for being so simple, since turtling was hard as hell to do in there. Good teams spent half their time turtling, half moving to a new location.
Stephen Reid posted a few days ago on the forums. He confirmed that in the PVP lake on Ilum vehicles like AT-AT style walkers are soon to be pilotable (They were in beta, as videos show.), social armor is going to eventually scale to every armor class, and more. If I could dig up the dev tracker post, i'd do it.
In short, a metric shit-ton of fluff content is coming along with the new PVE stuff. And the Ilum warzone is looking to get awesome soon too. It's basically sounding like everything the open PVP zone from WotLK was supposed to be, with a helping of Warhammer Online's keep and objective system polished to a golden sheen.
Stephen Reid posted a few days ago on the forums. He confirmed that in the PVP lake on Ilum vehicles like AT-AT style walkers are soon to be pilotable (They were in beta, as videos show.), social armor is going to eventually scale to every armor class, and more. If I could dig up the dev tracker post, i'd do it.
If these two things happen, I will be extremely pleased.
I couldn't believe there were no vehicle piloting / turret segments planetside with the wealth of vehicles available.
Now they just need to take the voidstar point defense warzone, put in on hoth with npc walkers attacking, and i'd squeal like a little girl.
So I have the option of getting a belt with 77 willpower and 10 power, or a belt with 66 willpower and 34 Power. But I have no idea what the better item is, or which would really be preferrable. Anyone know? I'm a Sage.
Sure, I can grapple that leap-happy guardian in Huttball, knock him back into an acid pit or fire grate, and with the right skills, root him there in the same ability to make sure he burns, and do a fair aproximation of his happy hoppy routine as well with Jet Charge.
But if he's standing in front of that hazard in a way that would bring a grin to his face were the tables turned? The things I can do to take advantage of that is jack shit, and Jack's left the building.
Posts
This is the most frustrating part of PvP. People in it not to play and have fun, but purely to exploit and get gear at the expense of everyone else.
edit: And does anyone else frequently hit an AOE, only to get knockbacked as soon as they hit it resulting in their AOE not activating where they want, but somewhere totally useless instead? This happens to me all the time.
Oh, and stunned people can't be knocked back.
And your CC break is still on cooldown after you die.
And frequently people will be hit with a knockback from one angle, and go in a completely different angle than you would expect.
Man huttball is frustrating.
Hell it was only recently that I had Voidstar pop after a dozen or more straight queues of Alderaan turret defense which is getting a bit dull at this point.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
They are litterally damage turrets extremly reliant on cover with little to no utility.
Thankfully, it's so bad people ignore me and I do all the damages pewpew.
That said, PvP in SWTOR blows, because no brackets mean that random level 15 duder gets crushed by a geared 50 over and over and over
also: PvP rewards are way too easy to get. Way, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too easy, and they have too much PvE utility. Gear shouldn't matter at all in PvP, in my opinion, because balance is absolutely core in PvP, and DIKU grinding immediately kills the idea of balance in a PvP encounter. Somebody is going to have the edge, be it slight or canyonesque.
-Callias
This is not true. I routinely win matches where my team has level 12-15 dudes and the imperials have nobody below 25 and have 50s. And me and my guildmates 90% of the time dominate the game and we're in our high 30s/low 40s now, and have been doing so since the 20s. There are many abilities that make PvPing better on your class, but none of them trumps playing to the objectives and not just blindly trying to kill people.
I can't speak to how much expertise will matter, but I routinely have people on my team who are already 50 and in a lot of the purple pvp gear with set bonuses, and they're still terrible.
I found a great way to play Operative in Huttball though. Stealth, and just follow Call (whose PA name escapes me) around. Once he has the ball and the entire other team mobs on him, come out of stealth and just hammer healing darts into him.
We had a game where I got 95k healing by just following him around. One goal run, we just slowly walked to the goal line, me healing Call, and the two other RC (Galik the sniper, and Somend [?] the merc) just ran around us killing fools. It was pretty hilariously fun.
Coincidentally, the next few rounds had opposing Operatives and Scoundrels that waited just for me to pop up and start healing Call, then they'd pop out and murder me.
The problem is that if those 50s know what they're doing, and you know what you're doing, you're not going to win.
This is not particularly fair. Especially if the 50s have a ton of Expertise.
Bnet tag: Nermals#11601
Yeah, if the other team randomly gets all 50s and my team doesn't, and they all know how to coordinate and are good, sure. The problem is, I have control over that as far as I can. When my guild is all 50 and we queue 4 of us together, the worst we can run into is another 4 man premade. Sure, when the stars align and we run into a team that is just made of 2 four man premade coordinated badasses and our team has us 4 50s and then 4 level 10s, we'll lose. But that's just not going to happen much.
I'm pretty sure at 50 a great deal of my PvP will come from open world havoc on Ilum, because that sounds like it'll be a good time. I really only warzone for giggles and the daily anyway.
Also, fun fact. If you're over level 40, you can get someone else in their 30s(or 20s or teens) to share the lower level warzone dailies with you and you can do them all. I picked up the level 39 one today, dinged 40, picked up the 49 one, shared the 39 one with my buddy who was 45 already, and we won a game and both got like 40k exp and 12kish credits combined. Not a big deal, but whatever.
You can force armor your whole group if you're talented into the thing that makes force armor's CD 1.5, equal to the GCD, which any sage healer would be. Now if you want to HoT more people at once, you either have to play a different class, or wait until you get Salvation and cackle while you lay it down and it heals your entire group every second on top of the up front heal. That spell is so awesome.
Shit, i've taken multiple 50's out at the mid-range levels before. Had a particularly hilarious situation where a group of three of them rushed my point in Alderaan while I was alone and the team was DMing at center. The team ignored me entirely as I shouted that we were about to a lose a point. I ended up taking them all down with only a sliver of health left at thirty. The entire enemy team avoided the point after that for the rest of the match.
What's problematic is full premades made entirely of 50's. Typically you only get maybe two 50's, tops, in most matches, since the game seems to sort them out to individual instances. Not so with a premade of them.
The problem quickly exacerbates itself as the premade garners wins, which lets them all get good gear. Which then lets them win easier. Which lets them get more good PVP gear. So and so forth, until they're a bunch of cocks to stop because your entire team typically would have trouble picking their nose without somehow impaling their brain. Nevermind conducting a coordinated defense or attack.
Coincidentally, the guilds that do this tend to be cocks themselves. Some of the personalities i've met in them since release are absolutely atrocious. Which, given that they're essentially gaming the system for easy marks and wins, isn't that unbelievable.
Though thankfully on my server, they often seem to lack actual skill, relying on rolling around in a massive blob of pain and death to win the match. Doesn't stop them from shit-talking like they're the best thing since sliced bread, though.
The problem with Huttball, in particular, is that it's entirely dependent on the team working together, and not being idiots. Warhammer Online suffered from this same problem in alot of their maps.
Two people working together can end the match in two to three minutes if both of them have enough of their mid to late game skills, and know what they're doing. I've done this before in beta and at release using a Jugg/Marauder or Jugg/Sorc combo.
The Jugg nabs the ball, throws guard on the other player, then the other player positions himself so the Jugg can leap to the player, usually putting them right next to the goal after a short bit of walking. Meanwhile, the entire enemy team is still stuck far behind the Jugg or other player, meaning that they're mostly too far away to pick the ball back up when it resets (A third player is good for making sure you can score a second easy point.), and too far away to stop the two runners with any real effectiveness.
Unfortunately, in the case of PUG's, which are mostly what you're going to see going up against each other, it's not so much a case of "Who is the most skilled.", but rather "Who has the fewer number of players who are insufferable cock-ups". Which is why Huttball tends to be a frustrating mess alot of the time.
Odds are, if there's a bunch of classes refusing to give their class buff at the start of the match, then you're in for a rough ride. That's a basic aspect of cooperation that, when all of the buffs are stacked, gives you a massive edge.
Yeah, except that point relies on one completely faulty premise: that the 50's you are playing against are largely bad enough to where you can skill your way past them at any level. In my experience that is not the case even half of the time. It's not you and your group of upstart level 15s taking down some group of geared-but-unksilled level 50s, it's more like you and your group of upstart level 15s going up against an organized group of geared-AND-skilled level 50s. And skill being roughly equal? The higher level player has a dramatic advantage.
It's kind of baffling to me that Bioware (I assume) pays people to work on the PvP in this game, and that nobody foresaw how problematic a lack of level brackets would be, and how inadequate a solution stat bolster is.
(Also keep in mind I say all of this as a person who has largely benefited from the current system, as I am fairly ahead of the leveling curve.)
I was the highest on my team as a 40 and while I could shut down 1 sorc with cc, the rest of the team just had no concept or ability to stop the other two. Watching said sorc proceed to kite 4 dudes around the entire edge of the map was hilarious though.
This is simply factually incorrect. Expertise, a stat that you can only get on PvP gear, is only available at 50. You can get a tiny fractional amount on a weapon before that, but it's a tiny amount. In a warzone, if you're level 20, and they're level 50 and have a full set of PvP gear? I don't care how well you play, they're going to beat you if they're anywhere near competent.
The easy fix for this would be to put 50s into their own warzones. Which may happen, if there are enough 50s around. But they really should restrict it.
They don't have a slight statistical edge, they have access to an entire stat that you don't have access to. A good stat.
PVP at low levels is awful now because of all the level 50 people, I dont even have a stun on my alt and im facing people with every ability unlocked in addition to the expertise stat
My Medic Commando, at level 10, is a pretty worthless healer.
At level 30 or higher, I have access to some very important talents, giving me considerably more utility and throughput regardless of "stat normalization"
At level 40, each class gets access to their "big deal" top-tier talent, which usually creates a significant change in how the class plays. Medics get a powerful instant heal that costs no ammo, significantly increasing their burst healing, efficiency, and mobility.
At level 50 you have your full spec prepared, giving you considerably more options, powers, and potential than somebody with access to only 1-10 points.
I sympathize with the desire to make PvP accessible and ensure that people get to play when they want, but the game would be better with some kind of bracket. It doesn't need to be as restrictive as WoW's 10 level range, but something like "10-39 / 40-50" would be great.
Yeah, I think that's the long term solution. There should be enough people rolling alts (this game just begs you to) to keep a solid stream of 10-39 (or 44, or whatever) players at least active. Hopefully they continue to queue for PVP.
"Also queue for higher level bracket(s)"
If wait time is really your biggest concern
If there's one positive thing to say about Huttball, it lets you do something when there's an imbalance between factions in the queue.
No no, there are tons of reasons not to do this. I'm level 50. I do not want impatient level 20s hijacking my warzone to farm XP and commendations while idling in the corner.
Bioware has said that the PVP gear is only supposed to make you something like 20/25 percent better then a normal player in the past.
Now, if that's not happening, then something needs to be done about that. Because that tied into their whole "equalized classes" thing too. That being said, i've been able to kill plenty of geared 50's before using an ataru specced Marauder. You just need to use your entire skill-set. Going in and spamming your normal attack rotation will get your ass wasted, since, hey, they've earned way more skills then you have. Versatility has its benefits.
It doesn't matter how good you are. If someone is putting a skill on you that lowers your accuracy by a full 90 percent, that gear is only good for defensive purposes. Likewise, if you're melee, and they're popping slows and screams at range on you, so that you have to pop your anti-immobilization skill, you're still hosed anyways once they start choking you and get more rage/focus back up.
Alternatively, if you're approaching having an end-game Marauder. Burning your blood rage to give you ninety nine percent damage resistance (On top of your current resistance.) while you have a healer on you pretty much makes you a god-like engine of destruction. All in all, I can get up to almost about two minutes of nigh invincibility in a fight before all of my skills are on cool down. Which is more then enough time to finish most fights.
That's not even getting into some of the neat maneuvering tricks you can pull off with your semi-stealth, or the fact that saber ward is a bitch. Marauder stealth is basically, on most of the maps, a free ticket to getting the health power-up and starting the fight all over again with a heavy advantage. Or the fact that the alternative spec most Marauders go into means they have their 20/30 percent dam resistance boosting skill almost constantly on cooldown.
Maybe it's different for some of the other classes, but for my Marauder, a 50 just represents a change in how to approach the target. I have to work harder for it by using skills I normally keep in reserve. It's most definitely not a no-win situation though.
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Furthermore, I felt the Commando energy management system restricted me way too much for me to be effective. I tried my Sorc and it went much better, CC and energy-wise. Still disliked the way a team could dominate the entire match and how some people were just finding a place and staying there the entire duration.
In the end I did it myself because if 1/3 of your team has decided it isn't worth fighting for, there is nothing you can do about it. Might as well save yourself the frustration and gain some medals for doing other stuff (camping a defense point, healing yourself, etc).
Then we had a Huttball game where the other side had 2 4 man guild premades manage to get in the same game. That game ended quickly with them on the winning side. Point is, the normalization does more good than bad, and I get good queue times all the time, and I win some and lose some, some close, and some by a wide margin, both ways. It's way fucking better than WoW's bullshit tiers where if you're not in the top few levels of the tier it's not even worth queueing.
Now, if they keep escalating PVP gear tiers without diversifying the system a bit, like how WoW did with constantly advancing tiers of gear, I can see an obnoxious gear grind appearing maybe a year down the line due to content expansions. But hopefully they've got plans for that given how fleshed out their system is so far.
I mean, we could be playing release WAR in the forty bracket.
Jesus christ...I had almost forgotten...ALMOST, then you had to bring it up...40 bracket PvP...on my Shaman...ugggggg.
I wish they'd port over Mourkain Temple though. Just give it some red lighting and say it's an ancient sith artifact killing the holder. That scenario was awesome.
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The Rift version was fucking amazing.
The only problem with Mourkain was the way the level was designed. It funneled everyone into a clusterfuck at the start. And it was way too easy to turtle.
Rift's open "bowl" level design was really inventive for being so simple, since turtling was hard as hell to do in there. Good teams spent half their time turtling, half moving to a new location.
Stephen Reid posted a few days ago on the forums. He confirmed that in the PVP lake on Ilum vehicles like AT-AT style walkers are soon to be pilotable (They were in beta, as videos show.), social armor is going to eventually scale to every armor class, and more. If I could dig up the dev tracker post, i'd do it.
In short, a metric shit-ton of fluff content is coming along with the new PVE stuff. And the Ilum warzone is looking to get awesome soon too. It's basically sounding like everything the open PVP zone from WotLK was supposed to be, with a helping of Warhammer Online's keep and objective system polished to a golden sheen.
If these two things happen, I will be extremely pleased.
I couldn't believe there were no vehicle piloting / turret segments planetside with the wealth of vehicles available.
Now they just need to take the voidstar point defense warzone, put in on hoth with npc walkers attacking, and i'd squeal like a little girl.
TOO MANY
FUCKING ROOTS
Really. A knockback AND a 5-6 second root in one?
A knockback.
Sure, I can grapple that leap-happy guardian in Huttball, knock him back into an acid pit or fire grate, and with the right skills, root him there in the same ability to make sure he burns, and do a fair aproximation of his happy hoppy routine as well with Jet Charge.
But if he's standing in front of that hazard in a way that would bring a grin to his face were the tables turned? The things I can do to take advantage of that is jack shit, and Jack's left the building.