The Katalyst

If you really think getting kills with no HD/no TS is hard than you clearly did not zone before i13, because I did and people died as much as they do now, but people actually had to work for kills more than they do now.

Also, are you trying to say that people should be forced into an escape power to zone PvP? Because that's what it looks like.

People have been explaining throughout this whole thread why removing TS/HD would not making killing people in zone substantially harder, people would just have to change their tactics from, "How can I keep this guy in TS?" to "How can I keep this guy in range and how can I most effectively defeat him, and if need be how can I limit his ability to recieve support?"

I'm much more in favor of people needing to consider more than how they can keep someone in TS. Keeping people TS'd is very easy and really takes no thought. With TS off, people would have to consider a lot more when trying to kill somebody.

At this point, if you truly believe nobody has made any valid points other than you, than you are not even worth arguing with. All you have done in my eyes is establish over and over again how little experience you have PvPing in this game, how little you understand the PvP system in this game, and that you have no idea what this game was like before i13 mechanics were introduced, particularly TS/HD, and at the same time remain ignorant to the idea that you might not know what you're talking about.

Get mod-smacked Hemm.

Fire/Fire/Fire Blasters do a lot of damage, especially with Reactive. (Had to keep it somewhat on topic.)

Yeah, KM Scrapper is definitely the way to go especially if you already have one. I've seen KM Tanks in zone, they do really bad damage, possibly one of the lowest damage Tank sets in PvP.

Also, OP, if you're not sure about a build and this is your first PvP toon in CoH, I would consider having a PvPer make a build for you so you have some direction, if you can find someone to do it.

This game is balanced around teaming, even in PvE it was originally balanced around teams (You would know this if you played before IOs came out.) Balancing the game for solo players is a bad decision, it's part of what i13 tried to do and look at the mess it put PvP in.

i13 tried to cater to casual players, and, let's face it, bad players who wanted handouts that made them better without having to do any of the work themselves. It should also be noted that it didn't accomplish that.

i13 tried to widen the scope of viable tactics as well as viable powers/powersets/ATs. It made less things viable in general in PvP.

i13 tried to make 1v1 encounters more uniform, which it did well, far too well. Before i13, what inspirations you took to a 1v1 and how you managed them took far more thought than it does now. You bring a tray of greens most of the time, maybe blues if you're fighting draining toons, MAYBE a row of reds occasionally. This is all part of the simplification of PvP down to it being completely about who can do more damage to the other person.

Basically, all of the mechanics i13 introduced put together contributed to the state the PvP is in now. The only reason competitive arena still exists is because of the ability to remove HD and TS from arena, which I want to remind you was done by a developer in his spare time that he was not paid for doing.

Overall, i13 simplified most PvP encounters down to who can do the most damage fastest. There are a few i13 mechanics that could be removed and it would do wonders for this problem: Remove TS, Remove HD, and Remove Global Resists. I'm among the many players who had to shelve toons that were rendered useless in most i13 scenarios.

tl;dr removing TS and HD would be an easy first step that would be accepted by a majority of the PvP playerbase that would mend some of the issues with zone, and would also show the PvP community that all our whining about the two mechanics for 3 years now was not in vain.

removing TS and HD wouldn't fix PvP, not even close, but it's a clearcut solution that most of the playerbase can get onboard with. If you really think that the call to not remove it is anywhere near as big as the support to remove it, and that removing it would cause another i13esque exodus, than you must not talk to many PvPers.

/rant

Also, you do realize most zoners just spam target binds in team chat right? Yeah you don't have a spike countdown or anything like that, but you are still focus firing, and that will yield a similar result in zone even with TS/HD off as spiking does in arena, allbeit less effectively. People willing to go the extra mile and co-ordinate beyond spamming target binds shouldn't be punished, they should be rewarded.

If I thought the rest of the community would go for it, I would advocate a return to the old pre-i13 travel suppresion, which as Mac said made Kins incredibly useful if played well, and also forced people to switch between SJ and CJ a lot of times, which made combat somewhat more active in some cases. In order for this to work, I think slows would probably need to have a bigger effect than they do now, because that would give people an option to still keep people in range even if the attackers get suppressed. That was how the old system worked, things fell into place in such a way that more stuff was useful besides just straight damage. Even if TS was removed it wouldn't change the heavy focus on damage in post i13, unless slows were buffed a little. I just feel like completely removing TS for both attackers and evaders would be the easiest route to go.

Also, I really wish they would remove global resistance so sonics and therms had a reason to take their shield buffs again, and would actually be viable in team PvP again.

If all we're looking at is removing TS and HD and not tweaking the system in any other way, than I would lean more towards removing TS and HD but still offering HD (only in zone) in the form of respites still being affected. I think aura heals and outside heals should have their HD component removed. I would be fine with just removing both TS and HD in zone completely, but I think with the /auctionhouse command we would see a lot of people just buying greens in zone so they would never die unless they were actually hit by a good spike, which doesn't happen in zone by most PUG zone teams.

It's to show you that even without TS and HD, teams can consistantly rack up large amounts of kills in 10 minutes. This would translate over to zone in a lot of ways. Most of the kills in those matches happened quick enough that most zoners wouldn't have time to run 10 feet let alone go back to base. Getting kills without TS and HD is still very viable, I would say even more so in zone than in arena because zone is so much bigger.

I agree with everything you posted, but I wanted to talk about the first paragraph in particular.

Yes, a lot of veteran PvPers have on many occassions tried to help new players, teach them what they know about PvP, tactics, builds. It happens quite often, and a lot of the people you are arguing with in this thread are those very people that are the most giving PvPers in the game. Most PvPers are not elitist or anything like that, I would say that hardcore elitist d-bag portion of the PvP community is actually much smaller than their counterpart. PvPers are competitive, so that may come off that way, but many of us would be more than happy to help new people if they asked for it.

Also, as stated above, we posted screenshots, and I even posted a video. All the screenshots are premade vs. premade, none of them are premade vs. random. That just goes to show you that even good arena teams get plenty of kills and yes, even die themselves. Many of those times are when both teams are playing at the top of their game and are trying to win. Most of these types of PvPers don't play that way in zone, I don't think that domination would ever translate directly over to zone just because most arena PvPers don't PvP seriously in zone.

Also, we do have random vs. random team matches, they are called Kickballs. Those teams are as random as arena gets in this game, and they still include plenty of kills, even in matches where both teams are running 2 emps/healers.

They were updated on the GP site shortly after officials, I forgot that there was a space for that on this thread, thanks for reminding me.

All TS and HD favor is mindless damage spam. Solo players are actually at a severe disadvantage under TS and HD, because if enough people are pew pewing you with ranged attacks you will be perma TS'd until you die or phase. It dumbs down tactics in zone PvP, RV always had basecamping, but TS and HD makes it very hard for anything to prevail over greater numbers. Under the old system without them, an organized core group of players could easily take on a much larger group of mindless zergers.

There's no reason that mindless damage spam should be rewarded more than actual skill or more organized tactics.

Also, as stated above, zone is fairly predictable. You are typically base camping or being base camped, and it only shifts when one side gets greater numbers than the other side because the current system greatly favors what most know as "zerging" as Slan stated above. Also, I can go to RV at almost any time of the day and assume Heroes are being basecamped and am usually right. That seems to be fairly predictable to me.

Your group of friends is a pretty small sample, and is probably a pretty flawed sample to base any facts of the PvP system off of.

Before i13 there was no HD/TS and skilled players managed to get plenty of kills, even though in i13 there was suppression for attacking other players. In arena after i13, with HD/TS disabled, there's literally zero suppression for both attackers and evaders, and there's teams that can rack up 30+ kills on worse teams in 10 minutes. Even when the top contenders in PvP Leagues face off, you get matches where both teams trade kills up to 10-15 kills for both teams. If you think removing HD/TS makes killing people hard, than you obviously have no experience playing with it off.

You are claiming that your opinion has validity because you have played other games. This game's PvP is very, very different from the status quo PvP MMO, it's pretty insane to think that this game's PvP mechanics should be anything like other game's PvP mechanics, and thinking that also points to inexperience with the current PvP system.

You are welcome to your opinion, I just think that your conclusions are based in flawed logic, and a lack of understanding for the PvP system in this game and it's history, and the reasons why it's so bad now.

People are continuously telling you why your opinion is wrong, has no factual base, and even have offered to prove it to you in-game, yet you stand by it. You would make a good politician.

Psy/EM blasters are just easier to use effectively than other damage dealing toons. Fire Blast actually out DPS's Psy Blast on Blasters, Psy just has that 3 attacks hitting at the same time thing, but after that initial asault, psy damage comes in pretty slow.

It's been recently proven that there are lineups that can beat psy/em line ups (Earth/Fire for example, has nothing to do with Stalagmites) and actually beat them pretty bad.

So no, Psy/EM is not the optimal Blaster for any situation, it's just the easiest to use effectively.

Psy/EM Blasters are also pretty mediocre dueling toons, but lolduels post i13.

He only got aggressive because your theory that you strongly believe in apparently of why people want TS/HD removed is incredibly wrong and makes no real logical sense.

I said it in my above post, and I'll say it again; People shying away from PvP has very little to do with elitist PvPer attitudes. It's a copout excuse, all games with PvP have just as much elitist attitudes both within the PvP/Competitive community and PvE community alike. I've never played a game that didn't have these people, nor ever played a game where this group of people was small.

PvPers being a group of trolls, ********, and elitists is extremely exaggerated. People don't like this game's PvP because it forces you to COMPLETELY relearn the game in order to participate in it. This game's PvP is not only counter-intuitive in many ways, it requires you to play very different from how you would play in the rest of this game's content. Obviously, there's no way to create complete parody between PvE and PvP of any game, but this game, especially after i13, has the biggest seperation of PvE vs. PvP builds, skillsets, and community of almost any game I have ever played. The seperation of community is largely a product of the first 2 things I mentioned as well as the developers complete dismissal of any issue related to PvP.

I think he had a right to be aggressive with you because it seems like you are speaking about a subject you don't know much about but are acting like you have any right to be an authority on.

Also yes, I double posted, do something about it.

All TS does is enforce the mob mentality, you have enough people damage spamming the same target, they will go down because you are all moving at the same speed. Actual co-ordination or organization is non-existant in most zone PvP groups. Organized arena groups come into RV all the time and wipe the zone base to base in minutes because they actually understand the concept behind exploiting TS to it's fullest, and also are just generally better than most strictly zone PvPers.

These are the same people that want the system abolished, not neccesarily the zone PvPers. Also, it's a little frustrating in a situation where normally a good player would be able to evade out of harms way but under the restrictions of TS can't because they are slowed for both defending themselves as well as getting attacked or debuffed. Evading under TS is extremely counter intuitive, and really throws any skill out the window.

Heal Decay is just frustrating for any type of healer to play with. I'm sorry, but if you're in a zone and you are QQing about someone not dieing because of their healer, attack their healer. Force them to AP or something and then kill the healer. There's lots of easy solutions to beat strong support in zone without HD. With HD, a spot on a team that might be good for a support toon is often better fit for another mindless damage spamming Blaster instead. HD greatly diminishes a Healer's ability to make a real difference in zone.

The people you are arguing with are some of the best PvPers left in this game. Both the best PvPers and the worst PvPers and all inbetween generally dislike Heal Decay and TS. The argument for why TS and HD are bad mechanics is pretty solid, it's logical, and comes from actual experience from both the pre-i13, post i13, and post i13 minus HD/TS systems, arena and zone alike. The people who dislike TS and HD rarely have any real valid or logical argument.

Like I keep saying, the majority of the outcry to remove these 2 FRUSTRATING mechanics is because they are FRUSTRATING to play with and reduce the FUN for a lot of people that are forced to play with them in zone PvP. There is a component of skill and lack thereof contributing to both sides of the argument. However, the bottom line is that it makes PvPing LESS ENJOYABLE for most people. I play video games to have fun, the competition is just an extra bonus.

Also, on the subject of why PvE'ers don't PvP: It has nothing to do with the elitist attitudes of certain PvPers. That's a copout excuse, all games with PvP have cocky PvPers who think they are better than everyone else. The reason is that in order to PvP you have to relearn how you play the game if you have only PvE'd in this game, and also the way you build toons for PvE vs. PvP is radically different. It's always kind of been this way, but the PvP/PvE portions of this game are entirely seperate, both by community and game mechanics. Most PvE'ers bring their pimped out PvE build into a PvP zone thinking "This build wrecks face in PvE, should do decent in PvP" only to find that their awesome PvE toon is useless in PvP, and promptly give up, rightly so.

Believe it or not, there were a lot of really good PvPers back before i13 who could bring PvE builds into a duel or zone and destroy less skilled players. It just doesn't happen anymore post i13, no matter how good or bad the player is.

You can't blame the player base for the mistakes of bad developing that has never been corrected.

I'm really tired of people making excuses for poor skill and that being a justification of bad developing and terrible game mechanics. The developers know that TS/HD are the least liked mechanic in the current PvP system, by a large majority of PvPers, it should have been removed a long time ago, and it should still be removed if it is being planned.

Bad players are bad, and always will be, but i13 gives bad players the ability to compete with the best. Why should anyone be rewarded for being bad far more than those who take the time to actually become good?

/rant

We weren't planning to pick you up, we thought about doing it in round 5 or 6 but CC got you first. I did give you options of other teams you could go to, and I told you if you went into the supp draft I could not guarantee you anything. I'm sorry it ended up this way, best advice I can give you is to try playing for CC and see how it works out.

Yes I did forget, thanks for reminding me, added you.