macskull

You might do well to add some mention of diminishing returns (DR) to your guide - lots of new PvPers wonder either in broadcast or on the forums why their defense or resistance is much lower than it is in PvE, for example.

Just gonna pick at this a bit in regards to specific types of inspirations. Also note that the inspiration loadout (remember, you can carry 20 at level 50) will vary depending on what you're fighting, what kinds of teammates you have, and the character you're playing. For example, if I'm on my Blaster, I'll probably bring along mostly reds and greens, and maybe a few oranges if I went with Cold Mastery. On my Stalker I'll probably bring a tray full of reds with maybe a few greens and blues.

* Yellows are nice and can be used in a pinch to help see stealthed targets or hit targets with lots of defense, but in most cases ally buffs will cover those weaknesses (Clear Mind, O2 Boost, Enforced Morale, and Clarity all give perception, and Forge, Fortitude, and several other buffs grant tohit bonuses). While they're nice to have, they're not going to be at the top of the list.

* Oranges are more useful for melee ATs or squishies who have defense-based epic/patron shields, as the free PvP base resistance plus slotted APP/PPP shield will generally get you very close to the DR cap on resistance. Oranges do still give teleport protection but given how TP Foe works now, it's not a big deal. I'd probably only bring along oranges if I were on a Tanker, Scrapper, or Brute, and even then I'd probably rather have reds.

* Purples are kind of like oranges - they're useful for melee ATs. The DR cap on defense on a squishy is something around 20%, which isn't much when compared to the DR cap on tohit buffs and accuracy. They might be nice to save you from someone who's not well-slotted or buffed, but if you're relying on them to stay alive on a regular basis, you'll be disappointed.

* Reds are probably the best to bring if you're playing on something with a self-heal or some teammate support. Why? In PvP 2.0, damage is king and it's not badly affected by DR until you start to stack a lot of it. For example, my Blaster might bring three columns of reds and two of greens.

* Blues are nice if you have endurance issues or are fighting an endurance drainer like a Kin or Therm.

* Break Frees are, unfortunately, worthless. They don't free you from mez effects and will only make a mez last a fraction of a second less, which usually doesn't make a difference. They might be worthwhile for knockback protection but generally that'll be covered through your own build.

* Greens are important if you don't have a self-heal or don't have reliable support teammates. Unfortunately, using one to heal yourself will trigger travel suppression, so it's your call whether you think you can safely escape without a heal or if you'll need to use one and deal with the opponents catching up to you.

You assume that more kills and deaths equates to better PvP. The I13 changes of heal decay and travel suppression tried to enforce this assumption, and look what happened. We don't need the game dumbed down even further because people can't figure out how to get kills on a player in the 90 seconds out of every 2 minutes that they can't use a phase-type power.

DR on regen and recovery helped to effectively "nerf" hibernate, I think. Because you're not gaining back HP or endurance as fast, you're essentially having to spend more time in Hibernate (might not be significantly more, but it's more nonetheless) which means there'll be more opportunity for an enemy team to cluster around you, waiting for you to break out. In most cases that means death for the person coming out of Hibernate, unless they're lucky or have teammates who are in the right place at the right time - watching an entire hero huddle get hit by Dimension Shift by the Dom on my team, enabling me to come out of Hibernate safely, is quite funny.

The only time where Hibernate becomes annoying is when the player uses another phase power in conjunction with it, and can exit Hibernate with zero risk without any outside assistance (assuming the 30-second phase period hasn't expired).

Another thing to take note of: the defense debuff is only really useful in the lower levels where characters might not be slotted well. Excepting a few mob types (Cimerorans being notable here), hitting enemies in the PvE game isn't much of an issue between a character's own acc/tohit slotting and all the tohit buffs being thrown around by various teammates. As such, Freezing Rain becomes more useful as an AoE slow and knockdown patch, but especially as a sizable resistance debuff.

If that random mission door or TF/SF contact was the only location in the zone to access literally hundreds of thousands of story arcs, and there weren't more than a few people there, I'd definitely say something is wrong. Or, to put it another way - if every mission in a zone were tied to one mission door, or if every TF or SF were tied to one contact, you'd damn well better expect there to be a decent amount of activity at that location. Anything else is indicative of a problem. If players could pick their own contact locations and mission entrances, you'd have a point.

And those players who perhaps aren't interested in the 1-50 game and instead derive their enjoyment from IOing their 50s, running raids or level 50 TFs/SFs, or PvPing? Is their preferred method of play any less valid than those who play "normally?" I played enough characters to 50 the "normal" way to play through all the content I was interested in. After playing around with several characters at 50, anything that isn't playing at its full potential (i.e. 50 and IOd out) seems slow and clunky to me. I PL because the first 49 levels are just an annoying hurdle for me to be able to slot purple IOs and start doing serious PvP - I may shelf a character for a while after it hits 50 until I can get its build finalized, but in reality my characters don't really start becoming really useful to me until they get there. That type of playstyle is just as legitimate as someone that chooses to take 200 hours to get to 50 (although I could reverse that point of view - I don't know why someone would spend that kind of time leveling a character and then only dig them out once in a blue moon while they're leveling something else).

Bwahahaha

Nope, the debuff stacks on itself (just like Rad's -def stacks, Dark's -tohit stacks, Ice and Psi's slows stack, etc.). Given enough recharge slotting and maybe even a little from set bonuses, Shriek->Scream->Shriek->Shout is your best bet.

Hm... Indomitable Will gives something like 30% defense debuff resistance in PvP only, and Elude gives another 33-34% in both PvE and PvP. However, I'm pretty sure DR will cut that number about in half and there's quite a bit of -def flying around in PvP so you'll just have to hope the Elusivity from Foresight carries you unless you've got support backing you up.

Obviously, PvE combat in a PvP zone was at the very bottom of the list of things that were important in making the changes. As a side effect, getting the kill badges for the AVs and heroes in RV became a lot more difficult after I13 to the point where no one I know has even tried to get the badges and I can count the number of teams forming to get them on one hand (I'm not exaggerating, and those changes were made almost a year ago). This is one of the reasons NPCs were often a worse threat than enemy players for a while after I13 - NPC mezzes were using their standard durations, but without mez protection that meant your melee ATs were getting held or stunned for 15-20 seconds.

Most of us would be happy if they just reverted out diminishing returns (the option exists in the arena, but there's no option to turn off the 40% base resistance most squishies get so everything's running around with capped resistances), but that'd be an admission of a mistake, which unfortunately seems unlikely. I really hate being negative about a game I like, but there's been very little to quell my concerns on the PvP front, at least.

If you build for crazy insane ranged defense, you can make a Night Widow passable, but they have low HP, no real resistances to speak of, no defense debuff resistance, and no self-heal to fall back on. Better off rolling some kind of Stalker or Brute if you insist on going melee.

You'll notice that I put the word useless in quotations in my post. I don't think any AT is useless in the formal definition of the word, but I do think that some ATs are far more useful than others for the majority of PvE situations. A good tank is nice (but far from a necessity) on the STF and makes the last mission much easier. In the low-to-mid level game a Defender's preferable to a Controller because they're contributing more in the buff/debuff department at a time when most people aren't slotted well if at all, and Controllers might not have their AoE controls yet (or they won't be well-slotted). Tankers might also be preferable in those situations because of their higher HP, better defenses, and aggro control abilities. However, once you get into the upper levels, usually in the 40+ game, Controllers have their AoE controls well slotted and an AoE from their epic pool, which means most of the time they'll be doing scale 1.1 damage to their targets, which doesn't factor in any damage buffs or resistance debuffs they're putting out. Against hard single targets, Tankers might be preferable to ensure aggro doesn't get loose, but on many higher-level teams buffs and debuffs are plentiful and the squishies simply aren't getting hit (or not taking as much damage, or getting it healed or regen'd back).

There's nothing wrong with Defenders or Tankers, and I'd take one on my team played by a competent player over something else played by someone I don't know, but they are unfortunately redundant in the late game. Tankers I can understand - they give up damage for superior hit points, aggro control, and defenses, but Defenders not so much: they have a crappy inherent, the lowest damage of any heroside AT (excepting Controllers not using Containment), low hit points, and get their blasts later, all in the name of having marginally stronger buffs and debuffs.