Casual Observation

[Mezmera]

I wanted to share my experience from the well intentioned and thought out pvp event this past weekend.  

 

Going in I knew my Dark/TA blaster would be the viable character to use but for giggles I wanted to see where a dom stood so I included that as well.  On Freedom I used to arena against some quite talented players playing an unorthodox dom.  I'd fight a range of things from typically blasters to defenders, corruptors, controllers, stalkers, scrappers, and masterminds.  Aside from having to play it cagey against things like psi blast and thermals I could do quite well.

 

I concede I'm nowhere near as practiced as everyone that entered having not pvp'd for a number of reasons, mostly those to follow below.  If I'm speaking to some issues that the pvp community wants addressed and haven't been listened to then hopefully this adds to the perspective of someone that'd be interested to getting into it.  But I doubt I'll have little interest knowing these issues will gatekeep pvp to certain cookie cutter characters and limit the variety that I think that's what they were trying to achieve on Live when they revamped the whole thing.  

 

First issue: Blasters, in what world do you buff an already easy to use pvp AT with various buffs in their secondary's, defiance and whatnot and not reduce their base hp to less than all the other squishies but instead raise their hp cap....  How good they are is evidenced by how many blasters were carried into the tourney.  

 

Second: Certain AT self buffs and debuffs.  I fought all kinds of things from Thermals to Cold's back on Live after the revamp, from what I recall in no way did their -recharge debuffs last near as long as what I got blasted with.  That has changed since Live.  Nature is new, what a tank it is.  Defender values are far too strong in pvp.  On a control character I'd imagine if a Domination hold lasted half as long as these debuffs or buffs there'd be major issues.  

 

Third:  Speaking of the mez system, how is it the AT's that aren't supposed to have great control get better value from their control?  Control had already been kneecapped with the mez changes, for good reason since it used to be fighting a dominator or controller would be an automatic win once they eat you out of breakfrees, but why is it that control gets far less value from slotting their hold when there's things like procs where a defender can detonate a hold onto your face?  

 

I'm not sure how much this helps to guide any decisions but these are some things I can see need addressed from what has changed since Live to the hot mess it is at the moment.   What were already some of the worst offenders and easier to exploit abilities have only been pronounced since Live when there used to be at least some viable variety.  How things like the placate proc in psi blasters is still a thing as it always has been makes it seem to me that the community which has some of the devs ears is more interested in having their exploitable characters than having good balance.  

 

Hope this was insightful.  I did have a bit of fun on my Dark blaster when I got to use it, but I do wish other "ranged" characters felt more viable than certain blasters and nature/colds.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Mezmera

[Glacier Peak]

Damage is king, the community is self policed, and fun is subjective. 

[Mezmera]

12 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Damage is king, the community is self policed, and fun is subjective. 

 

Yes fun is subjective.  Dwindling pvp numbers are hard data.  

 

That's what this take was designed to help describe as someone that played and enjoyed pvp pre and post revamp on Live to the iteration it is now.   

 

Yes damage is king especially when added to hp buffs, mez shields, absorb shields, etc.   They police themselves quite fine but hopefully they aren't so complacent they don't see the lack of balance doesn't attract newcomers.  

Edited June 22, 2021 by Mezmera

[Glacier Peak]

49 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

Yes fun is subjective.  Dwindling pvp numbers are hard data.  

 

That's what this take was designed to help describe as someone that played and enjoyed pvp pre and post revamp on Live to the iteration it is now.   

 

Yes damage is king especially when added to hp buffs, mez shields, absorb shields, etc.   They police themselves quite fine but hopefully they aren't so complacent they don't see the lack of balance doesn't attract newcomers.  

Oh I misunderstood the topic of this post. I thought you were asking for casual observations about PvP.

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, Glacier Peak said:

Oh I misunderstood the topic of this post. I thought you were asking for casual observations about PvP.

 

Nope just my casual foray back into pvp and giving my observation about how things have progressed through the ages of the game to where we are now.  More of an identifier to maybe help them boost the number of people that would like to get their feet wet into this arena of the game.  

 

It's one thing to be well practiced and suited already which these players clearly were.  But having wide balance issues already glaring, for anyone new to coh pvp that may want to bring their favorite character that is suboptimal for pvp to this arena it's already going to be a huge turnoff.  

[M3z]

1v1 and small teams has always just been ranged fight club in the current meta(blasters/defenders). As said above damage is king, the game boils down to how many procs can you pump as fast as possible, at 8v8s at least there is a heal component added to the equation. The only debuffs strong enough to make a huge impact to even stand a slight chance is defender poison.

 

If you want any semblance of variety you can't get passed all of the mechanics being reduced to nothing from DR. You cannot get passed the mez system taking away the tools of controllers/doms/MMs neutering most of the powersets. Damage procs double/triple/quadruple damage of attacks which reduces the importance of base damage to almost nothing (this makes melee even worse as they are not able to get many consecutive attacks off).

 

Too much bickering to come to a consensus on any of that though so don't hold your breath.

 

The least they could do is reduce blaster HP to 1606 but still wouldn't increase variety by that much, most ATs/powersets in the game are just bad in every environment in the game right now (8v8, 1v1, small team, zones etc)

[America's Angel]

6 hours ago, Mezmera said:

First issue: Blasters, in what world do you buff an already easy to use pvp AT with various buffs in their secondary's, defiance and whatnot and not reduce their base hp to less than all the other squishies but instead raise their hp cap....  How good they are is evidenced by how many blasters were carried into the tourney.  

 

Reducing blaster HP is one thing the PvP community has expressed some interest in testing. Blasters are exceptionally tanky considering the damage they do.

 

6 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Second: Certain AT self buffs and debuffs.  I fought all kinds of things from Thermals to Cold's back on Live after the revamp, from what I recall in no way did their -recharge debuffs last near as long as what I got blasted with.  That has changed since Live.  Nature is new, what a tank it is.  Defender values are far too strong in pvp.  On a control character I'd imagine if a Domination hold lasted half as long as these debuffs or buffs there'd be major issues.  

 

It's possible to get very high slow resists in PvP. Especially on a TA.

20% from the Winter's gift proc.

5x15% from Winter IOs

40% from Eagle Eye

 

This would put you on 135%.  To get 100% slow resist you need 125% pre-DR. So I think this is more a case of you slotting your character incorrectly. I know on my ill/cold I wasn't able to slow any of the other /TA blasters I fought.

 

6 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Third:  Speaking of the mez system, how is it the AT's that aren't supposed to have great control get better value from their control?  Control had already been kneecapped with the mez changes, for good reason since it used to be fighting a dominator or controller would be an automatic win once they eat you out of breakfrees, but why is it that control gets far less value from slotting their hold when there's things like procs where a defender can detonate a hold onto your face?  

 

Controllers/Dominators still have the longest holds. And as the meta for 1v1 is for players to skip acrobatics, those holds are essentially even longer, now.

 

I think the issue with Controllers is much simpler - they don't do a lot of damage, and they are squishy.

 

5 hours ago, Mezmera said:

 

Yes fun is subjective.  Dwindling pvp numbers are hard data.  

 

That's what this take was designed to help describe as someone that played and enjoyed pvp pre and post revamp on Live to the iteration it is now.   

 

Yes damage is king especially when added to hp buffs, mez shields, absorb shields, etc.   They police themselves quite fine but hopefully they aren't so complacent they don't see the lack of balance doesn't attract newcomers.  

 

Dwindling numbers are due to the game's population decreasing. CoH is an old game, and the novelty of it being back has worn off for many. We're seeing player dropoff in PvE, too.

 

In general, though, what keeps new players from trying out PvP is the PvE timesink attached to it. Specifically - levelling & earning influence to slot out characters. The best way to somewhat resolve this would be to add PvP-only versions of every IO that can be bought for free.

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, America's Angel said:

It's possible to get very high slow resists in PvP. Especially on a TA.

20% from the Winter's gift proc.

5x15% from Winter IOs

40% from Eagle Eye

 

This would put you on 135%.  To get 100% slow resist you need 125% pre-DR. So I think this is more a case of you slotting your character incorrectly. I know on my ill/cold I wasn't able to slow any of the other /TA blasters I fought.

 

I know the TA has slow resist.  Yet another point for blasters.  I didn't fight the Cold on my TA.

 

Any generalization I'm making is from the perspective of seeing how much more suboptimal some AT's are now compared to how they were last on live.   

 

On the dom it does feel like the Cold Defender -recharge debuffs were adjusted up from when it was last on live.  Which the point was that some of these debuffs/buffs are far too strong at the values they are at when I know how nasty a dom's Total Focus was back on live, so in comparison why is it the stun from Total Focus that got a fix (which it should have) and the Cold with less sophistication in it's debuff deployment gets to have far greater affect than any control was ever allowed.  

 

Originally I had just stated to bring the Dark/TA because I knew it was the thing to bring.  When I got to play it I did pretty well, mostly any issues on this one it was me seeing what pool powers I picked trying to be different which were ineffectual to just respec'ing out of those afterwards.  

 

As far as the dwindling numbers, yeah priorities and real life stuff plays into things too, plus overall population.  I was looking forward to playing all areas of the game when it came back but seeing how far things have regressed in pvp since last playing on live to now it became what's even the point?  

 

I'm relating this to why so few newcomers venture into this arena to give you all more bodies to play with.

[America's Angel]

30 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

 

I know the TA has slow resist.  Yet another point for blasters.  I didn't fight the Cold on my TA.

 

Any generalization I'm making is from the perspective of seeing how much more suboptimal some AT's are now compared to how they were last on live.   

 

On the dom it does feel like the Cold Defender -recharge debuffs were adjusted up from when it was last on live.  Which the point was that some of these debuffs/buffs are far too strong at the values they are at when I know how nasty a dom's Total Focus was back on live, so in comparison why is it the stun from Total Focus that got a fix (which it should have) and the Cold with less sophistication in it's debuff deployment gets to have far greater affect than any control was ever allowed.  

 

Originally I had just stated to bring the Dark/TA because I knew it was the thing to bring.  When I got to play it I did pretty well, mostly any issues on this one it was me seeing what pool powers I picked trying to be different which were ineffectual to just respec'ing out of those afterwards.  
 

As far as the dwindling numbers, yeah priorities and real life stuff plays into things too, plus overall population.  I was looking forward to playing all areas of the game when it came back but seeing how far things have regressed in pvp since last playing on live to now it became what's even the point?  

 

I'm relating this to why so few newcomers venture into this arena to give you all more bodies to play with.

 

-recharge debuffs haven't been changed. You just weren't using the right IOs to counter /colds.

 

Your dominator should still be able to get:
5 x 15% (Winter IOs)

5 x 10% (Winter IOs)

1 x 20% (Winters Gift)

 

For a total of 145%. Well above the pre-DR 125% you need to cap slow res. 

 

Obviously no-one slots that much as it would be a huge slot investment. But using unslotters vs colds (or even a separate build) you should be able to effectively negate/massively reduce the impact of slows by using SOME of the above IOs in your build.  If you're choosing not to do this, that's on you, but it's not accurate to say that slows are currently over-performing in PvP. Not when players have the option to completely negate them with IOs.

 

If anything, slows are underperforming. /cold is a pretty poor set for 1v1s right now. It was much better on live when the winter IOs were less common in builds.