macskull

If you believe it will be revisited as soon as you think, I have this bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

Still waiting on the Cathedral of Pain trial, Items of Power, and base raids to come back - base raids are going on a year now and that's the most recent of the things I've listed.

I forget when exactly it was, but there was a huge event on test (maybe it was the 5th anniversary?) in which there were multiple instances of Pocket D open, and one was flagged for PvP, but since it isn't explicitly a PvP zone or arena, it was using the I12 rules. I heard at the time there was PvP in Pocket D on test, but I thought "meh" and kept on farming because it wouldn't've been worth starting up a copy of the test server just to do the same thing I could do on live. I didn't find out until a few days later that it'd been old-style PvP, and I'm mad I missed it. Of course, the posts pointing out that it'd been old-style and was really fun got modsmacked, go figure.

I really wonder what sort of things could happen if a server were set aside specifically for PvP, or more realistically, what might happen if every few months a "throwback" week was offered, where all PvP zones and arenas reverted to I12 rules with the I13 APP/PPP changes, elusivity, and perhaps the "shields give protection from everything" rule, but not DR, TS, heal decay, mez changes, or base resists. While we might fun such a thing more fun and it might even bring more people into the zones/arena for that time period, unfortunately I don't think the devs have the same view of success as we do - we view something to be successful if it's reasonably balanced by our standards and has a population that makes the activity worthwhile. It seems to me that the devs view something to be a success if it's balanced according to their whims, with what seems to be little regard to the amount of people who participate before and after the changes (ED comes to mind here). Right now, the only server with what could be considered a healthy PvP population is Freedom, and even some times of day it's slow there - sure the other servers have zone and arena population but it's often sporadic and you might see more than ten people in a given zone once or twice a week.

Amusingly, that's part of their given reason for increasing the XP for most mobs in the 5-24 range - they wanted people that weren't getting PL'd to not feel "left out" so they globally increased XP for everyone.

That being said, competent people will still be able to PL, it's just that it will be much slower than I14 and even pre-I14 (since you will no longer be able to have that 7-level spread between lowbie and the mobs, instead you'll have at most 5).

Of course it's your opinion - we're trying to save you the time, effort, and frustration by letting you know you're wrong.

EM's animations take too long and aren't worth it with the low-ish base Brute damage mod. The only EM builds that give me trouble anymore are competent EM Stalkers, and you don't see those often because most Stalkers are Elec/ now. SS provides a constant source of tohit and damage with Rage (you say that Rage's damage bonus isn't high, but in reality Rage provides the same damage bonus as Build Up/Fiery Embrace and it's up all the time except the 10 seconds after a crash), allowing you to effectively negate defense in many cases. That being said, the most effective strategy for a Brute on a team is to contribute a bit of ranged DPS with Hurl/patron attacks while liberally using Taunt and Web Envelope - the amount of hate you'll get by being a disruption tauntbot is unreal.

In terms of Brute defensive sets for general-purpose PvP I'd give the nod to Fire, then Invuln, then maybe WP. Shields can be passable if built and played well (it seems to be a decent Tanker set, though defense debuffs absolutely wreck it).

As far as getting things right goes, I will agree that they got at least a few things right, some stuff was a good attempt at a change that doesn't work quite well, and some stuff just plain sucks.

Nope, wasn't even in I13 beta. I did make a rather long post about things that need fixing back in May or something, it's still buried in the PvP section somewhere.

I'm guessing you didn't spend much time reading over the lists of things that could've used fixing, proposed well before I13 hit (here and here if you're too lazy to look them up yourself). One of the issues on that list was "new players are overwhelmed - consider a 'new player' zone to make learning PvP mechanics easier." Unfortunately, the devs listened too well to that particular point and instead made it a blanket change for all zones.

The biggest issue with the PvP changes was that instead of trying to bring up the low end, they simply decided to drag the good players down to the level of everyone else. People left because it wasn't fun - buffs not buffing, debuffs not buffing, heals not healing, mezzes not mezzing, the speed removed thanks to travel suppression, and billions of inf worth of set bonuses neutered by DR - not because they "couldn't adapt." The idea that people couldn't handle the changes is ridiculous and at best delusional - if something isn't fun for you anymore, you can stop doing it and there's nothing wrong with that. You make the assumption that everyone who liked the old PvP relied on crutch FotM builds and cried when they were taken away. Before I13 my main PvP toons were - get this - a flying Katana/Regen and a flying AR/Dev.

So this means either you haven't PvPd at all since I13 or you're just that bad that you can't see what's broken. At any rate, this statement has probably cost you credibility with most of the competent PvPers left - anyone who says I13 isn't broken is disgustingly out of touch with reality and I now hold your opinion no higher than "random fiteklub under the statue in RV and post youtube videos of it guy."

At any rate, I'm sick of logging in to find zones empty or full of people who'd rather stand around and watch a Scrapper and a Brute hit each other with Brawl under the statue of Atlas. I have lost a few friends due to boredom and quite honestly I'm not sure why I'm still here. PvP is still more fun than PvE, but it's a shadow of what it was and what it should be.

Y'know if you're really sick of seeing all those red blocks, a simple solution is to post intelligently or not at all.

I mean - look at me: I'm a farmer and a PLer and I use MA missions to both those ends. By Alt's standards I'm a blight on this game and on the forums and I should be banned as an exploiter (lol), but those little green bulbs under my name mean that apparently, most of the forumgoing playerbase doesn't agree with her, and I'm actually a nice guy. Imagine that.

Because Thugs, Necro, and Nin are better than Mercs.