macskull

Well, if you think ranged is boring compared to melee, I suppose I really can't be surprised that you are bad.

And most people on Justice are really, really bad at PvP (hell, some of them even manage to be bad at PvE, which never ceases to amaze me). Stating that your opinion is shared by most of the bad players doesn't do much to prove your point.

If by "pushed around" you mean "given logical reasons" then you'd be right. Most of the players on Justice refuse to listen to the good players and continue their naive and limited playstyles. I respect Leroy because he doesn't limit himself to fiteklubbing, doesn't complain when his opponents move, use inspirations, or phase/hibernate, and when he's faced up against another good player, he's actually a solid player. He also participates in the various arena tournaments on the server instead of running his mouth in zones and then refusing an arena match like so many of the bad Justice players do. I don't usually insult players - I try to be logical and reasonable, though I've noticed that most of the bad players simply ignore that and insults are usually the most effective method of getting them to shut up or leave the zone.

And I know players who have their 60-month vet badge and are still horrible. The fact that you've been here since the first month means absolutely nothing. It's your knowledge and experiences that matter in this game, and you've demonstrated you're sorely lacking in both those departments.

The reason you're being simplified and thrown into the same group is because you are in the same group. I don't fault people for liking melee duels, but I do fault them for refusing to take their gameplay up to the next level and deliberately handicapping themselves.

Hm. Seems to me in the Goldeneye scenario that the simplest solution would be to take that player by surprise. They can't kill something that kills them before they even know where they are. But oh wait, that's cowardice.

Right, all the people who've been around the longest, have the largest variety of PvP experience, and are constantly asked questions by new players looking to get better at the game are cowards. Damn, you got us there. Honestly, it sounds to me like someone is butthurt that people keep interrupting his fiteklub and he can't do anything about it.

Except you can move too, so to keep your analogy it's more like both players are constantly in Hibernate, except they can attack each other at the same time. If your opponent moves, you move. Since you're both melee characters, you should realize that in order for your opponent to attack you, he needs to be in melee range of you. As soon as he gets into melee range, you're able to attack him as well. If two melee characters get into a "no moving, no inspires" duel, the outcome will be guaranteed from the very beginning simply by who has the better build, even if it's only slightly better. If I'm fighting a melee character on a melee character, I move and use inspirations because it allows me to engage my opponent on my terms instead of on theirs. If they want to reverse that scenario, they need only do the same thing I'm doing. It's not all that complicated, really.

I'd rather survive through a fight to come back and win it on my terms than simply sit there and get beaten on, but that's just me. Now, I get that you're significantly less likely to participate in a duel if you know you can't win (or you're just a moron) and you can't stand the idea that an opponent might actually play it smart and come at you when they've got the upper hand, but that's how it works. If I'm at risk of dying and there's no support around to keep me alive or damage to spike you to get you on the defensive, of course I'm going to do something to stay alive - survival instincts and all that. You can try and "fite wif honer" and stand in the middle of a group of heroes while they spike you and try and take down one, but I rather like my odds of backing off and coming at them again when the situation's better.

You have travel powers too - use them. Quit whining about people who move around, and either do the same thing or get a ranged character. You're correct about the person kiting not dying in a melee duel, and that's kind of the point. I'll take a tie or win over a loss any day. If I frustrate my opponent by constantly moving around and my opponent's not intelligent or flexible enough to move with me, that's their problem, not mine. I won't dumb myself down to their level because they refuse to play up a notch.

The people you've "tried to teach it to" were probably intelligent enough to know that what you were teaching them was stupid. A melee duel isn't complex because it consists of two melee characters standing right next to each other clicking attacks and occasionally a self-heal, and whichever one's capable of putting out more damage wins. It's not complex at all. It's predictable, it's boring, and it's a waste of brain cells. You can give any bad player a well-built melee toon, put them next to another melee toon, and tell them to click buttons. It's not hard to learn and it takes no skill. You're severely overestimating the amount of time, effort, and skill it takes to be "competitive" in a melee duel.

The reason inspirations are useful in PvP is to balance. My build can't outdamage yours? I'm screwed unless I use reds. You're hitting my defense-based build constantly? I'm screwed unless I use oranges and greens. See how that works? Inspires are there to help lessen the rock/paper/scissors aspect between powersets and ATs, and refusal to use them is admitting that you won't fight someone unless you know you've got an advantage against them. If someone wants to use Shivans or Warburg nukes in a duel, go right ahead and let them. I'll just back off until the effects of the nuke wear off, or the Shivan dies.

I'm guessing you've never been in a zone where sides were more or less balanced, either before I13 or after. If you had been, you would've never said that. Relying on yourself is fine, if you're playing a melee character, but here's a shocking revelation for you: most people don't play melee toons. If you're insistent on the fact that team PvP is as simple as pressing buttons until a target dies, you could get some of the Vincent Balmont crew together and have a friendly match or two against some of the players on Justice who are still regarded as good PvPers. Better yet, Ice Knight is hosting a 4v4 tournament sometime this month - sign a team up and see how you do.

Katana's really not better. There are no cases where Katana is better than MA, and as I've said before that "perma 60% melee defense" you're talking about is nonexistent because using Parry or DA as part of your attack chain (read: every other attack at least, to maintain it 3-stacked) lowers your damage output by a ridiculous amount. MA has higher burst damage and better base damage thanks to its longer animations, it's got a stun in its heavy hitter, and it simply has more utility than Katana. I don't recall the last time under any circumstances where I was actually worried about a Katana Scrapper chasing me. Only ones I worry about are Fire, BS, and MA.

Incorrect, you came to the boards and trash-talked the good Fire Brutes (see as an example: Con's SS/Fire). Refusing to play your character well and ignoring all the good advice you've been given by those with tons more experience than you isn't the same thing as not being able to find someone to get advice from.

Having read Dahjee's lolworthy post through your quote of it, I have to chuckle especially... anyone who knows me knows that the majority of my time spent PvPing is spent on support characters.

lol

I don't even think level 14's high enough to get into the lowest-level PvP zone (Bloody Bay's level 15 I think). You're not going to have any luck finding arena matches at your level I'm guessing, and even on Freedom Bloody Bay is empty most of the time. PvP doesn't start to pick up until Siren's Call (level 20 entrance, set to level 30) and really in RV and at level 50 in the arena. However, if you're on a server other than Freedom or maybe Virtue, good luck finding PvP reliably.

Fire is tons better than WP. All WP has going for it is +HP and RttC, which drops when mezzed. Other than that, its resistances and defenses to anything but smash/lethal aren't all that wonderful, while Fire has solid resistance to everything except cold as well as one of the best self-heals in the game.

Right. If we want to return movement slows back to how they were, we could just tell everyone not to use Super Speed... but then we'd be no better than the fiteklubbers.

Never said that. This is one of those "learn to read" things again. I'm just pointing out why the preference that is shared by me as well as the highest level of PvPers is the one that's the most balanced for the widest variety of situations. Failure to understand and realize that is only limiting your own play. But I guess that's okay with you.

You can disagree that it's boring, but you cannot honestly disagree that it's predictable. Knowing the outcome of a fight will either be a tie or determined solely by what sets the combatants are using is most certainly predictable. I can understand if you don't realize that, and that's why I'm trying to give it to you in slow people's terms.

Perception is given by Emps, Pain Doms, and Storms, all of which have more than two or three useful powers. Repel resistance is a joke because all you have to do is stay out of the range of the repel power, or just mez the user and the toggle will drop. TP protection is of limited usefulness (basically, only when one side's camping another side's base and people are droning).

Defense-based melee characters are rare because defense isn't very good. Sure, you can make a bit of a difference with your resistance buffs, even on resist-based melee toons, but hey, it doesn't make much difference anyways. MMs use the same DR curve as squishies so again the +res buffs won't help them much, and trying to reapply buffs to MM pets every 4 minutes is ridiculous (plus the MM will generally be able to take care of his own pets). Why do people spend so much money on their builds? Simple - most people aren't deluded enough to think there will always be support characters in zones, or they build for 1v1 or small-team scenarios, where it's required of a build to be more or less self-sufficient.

Recharge gets DR'd pretty heavily past 40% or so, and many PvP builds will have right around that number because recharge bonuses are cheap and it's beneficial to the build. In the end SB is more useful as an end recovery tool but once again most builds will be capable of that on their own. Travel suppression's not permanent but it's when you are suppressed that you should be getting the most benefit from SB and IR. When you're not suppressed, you're going to be close enough to the movement cap anyways thanks to SS and SJ, and if you don't have SS an application of SB won't even bring you close to what SS would give you in terms of movement speed. If you've got fly or teleport, for example, SB won't help you stay with the action because it won't help you run fast enough. Again, I'm just being realistic here instead of a theorycrafter, so I understand that's hard for you to read into.

Little numbers do not "stack and stack," because DR starts to eat into them. I've been held with and without Sonic Dispersion on, and there's no noticeable difference. Maybe a split second, but hardly enough to effect the outcome of whether I live or die when I'm mez spiked. If more resistance is sought, Sonic Dispersion will add more - but what it adds won't be enough to stop even another attack over the course of a spike so it wouldn't have mattered whether it was running or not.

Wait, are you suggesting you're supposed to hug a target to get endurance or a heal off Transference/Transfusion? lol, any competent PvPer will tell you PvP doesn't work that way. Works fine in PvE when all the mobs are locked down and they're constantly in melee range with you, but when you're moving around all over the place it's just not going to happen reliably. You should know this, since you've been around a long time (although I should point out that saying you've been around since I4 is the PvP equivalent of saying you've got your 63-month vet badge... time played is irrelevant; it's experience that matters and you seem to have little of it).

During the time you've set up those debuffs just to take one target down, the other damage dealers on my team will have you on the defensive if you're not already dead. Given that damage debuffs are resisted by damage resistance, most squishies will resist 40-50% of all the debuffs you're throwing at them, and then they'll open up with Aim or Build Up (and the +dam/+tohit buffs they've got on them). If you're talking small-team, and you've used up that many slots on your team with debuffers, you're not going to be getting a kill because you won't be able to put out enough damage.

Sonic Siphon is a good power. I'm not debating that. Liquefy's not. It's stationary and has a long recharge. Any good PvPer will be able to avoid it easily. Sets that do -res better than Sonic Resonance while providing more of a benefit to the team: Sonic Blast, Paindom, Rad Emission, Trick Arrow, Therm, Storm, Cold... and I may be missing some.

You're wrong again. Of course I wouldn't team with you... I've seen one sonic in the year since I13 went live and all it did was cage a stalker once before faceplanting. If no one's playing sonics, it's not a problem with the players, it's a problem with the system. Again, I know it's hard for you to grasp that it's the system that's broken and not the players, but them's the breaks. Why do people have the "damage is all there is" mentality? I sure don't - but I do know it's significantly more important than it was before I13. The damage changes and mez changes directly support this. Find some evidence that this is not true and I'll believe you. (Hint, you can't.)

If sides are uneven, the side that's down either gets more people or people from the other side switch. That's how it's always worked, that's how it continues to work.

One of the nicest things about the forums is the ignore list, which ensures that I have the last word.

By all means, point these out. In all the posts, I listed one very specific exception to the rule "you don't need a specific build to do well" (which you later admitted to being incorrect about, I notice).

I completely understand that my preference is simply a preference. However, I'm also aware that my preference is the same preference shared by just about everyone who expects anyone to think of them as good and therefore take them seriously both in their play and in their advice and arguments with other players. Nothing will change this. Why don't you get this?

I'm not trying to justify why I have my set of preferences. I am trying to explain to those who disagree with me why that set of preferences, or one similar, allow for at least some semblance of balance. Nothing will change this. Why don't you get this? My reason for "doing what I do to succeed" is simple: I expect my character to perform reasonably similar to how it performs in PvE. I move around freely, I heal, I use inspirations, I use Hibernate if I need to. Under normal circumstances, all of those options are available to me in PvP as well. Taking away those options is only lowering the level of my play to the same level of those who are incapable of utilizing, or refuse to utilize, all the tools available to them. In other words, I'd be dumbing myself down to their level. You can say someone who is good at fiteklubbing is successful, but if success is the ability to stand in melee range with another player and click buttons until someone dies, I don't want to be successful.

Okay, here are some facts for you. Sonics and Kins are worthless and useless, and here's why:

* Clarity/Increase Density no longer grant mez protection
* Sonic shields give a squishy maybe 3-4% extra resistance, not enough to stop even an extra attack
* SB and IR are irrelevant when travel suppression is unresisted
* The large Sonic bubble no longer provides mez protection and provides no meaningful resistance boost for its caster
* DR means Transfusion and Transference don't drain much endurance per use
* Siphon Power and Siphon Speed don't have any appreciable effect on their target, nor their caster
* Sonic Disruption detoggles when you get mezzed, and since there's no mez protection that means it'll happen often

Have you ever watched, or participated in, a melee vs melee duel? I have, both of the fiteklub variety (hey, waitaminute, it's almost like that's how I first started PvP!) and the real variety. Melee vs melee duels under almost any ruleset are boring because you're pitting two nigh-unkillable characters against each other and unless there's inspiration usage the outcome will likely be decided before the fight even starts simply by looking at the participants' powersets.

I reference I12 PvP because it's the closest thing we have to the current system. I could reference WoW, or CO, or Aion, and compare those to our current system, but they wouldn't be good comparisons because the systems are so different. I'm not sure if you can focus on actually reading through what I post to see this, but the comparisons I generally make to I12-style PvP are "here's how this aspect was balanced under the old system, here's how it's unbalanced under the current system, and here's how it could be made to be even more balanced than under the old system." In other words, you'll notice that I realize old-style PvP wasn't perfect and had stuff needing to be fixed, and you'll also notice that I spend my efforts trying to improve the current system instead of trying to improve a system which doesn't exist anymore. Lastly, I'm not sure why you insist I'm "stuck" on I12 or the high-end arena crowd as for the most part I wasn't involved in either. My PvP experience started a few months before I13, and I didn't do anything on the arena ladder until after I13. Isn't it indicative of a problem that even though my experience under the old system was limited, I could still tell you things that were better under that one than under this one? Again, this is one of those "know your facts" things, which I understand is hard for you.