macskull

*shrug* I've got CoH running from my Program Files folder on my Win7x64 install and it's working fine. Then again, I just copied the directory from my old XP install and re-imported the registry values. Maybe that has something to do with it.

See, I somewhat agree with you here. However, under the old ruleset, the build you had wasn't nearly as important as the person behind the keyboard - some people even set out to prove this; for example, Silent Method racked up a huge number of kills in kickballs on his AR/Fire Blaster, hardly a good PvP combination. If you tried to do something like that these days you'd just be laughed off. In most circumstances I'd rather take someone who knew what they were doing on, say, a TA/Dark than random newbie number 1 on their purpled Fire/EM. The people who say certain builds were unbeatable were probably the ones who didn't take the time to figure out potential counters to those builds - sure, a Fire/EM was tough to beat, but everything had its counter, whether it be through a different build or just good inspiration usage. If you wanted to humble a Fire/EM in the arena, a good Spines/Regen was always a solid choice.

The only place where build mattered just as much as skill (and not even as a complete rule, only a general one) was high-end arena matches, such as the test ladder. Someone likened it to a KHTF - if you're trying to set a speed record for a KHTF you're going to bring a specific combination of powersets to ensure you get the job done. When you're fighting against a group of 8 people just as skilled as your group of 8, you need to be at your best game and bring your best characters to ensure you'll remain competitive. In zones or random KBs, anything could work so long as the person playing it was competent.

One of the unfortunate side effects of trying to make everything the same is that if a powerset has even a small advantage over its peers, people will flock to it because of that advantage. This is not an issue with the mechanics of the game, or even really the players, but rather an issue with the competitive nature of PvP in general - people want to win and so they'll do what they have to to ensure that happens.

Based on what we've been told publicly, and via PMs to various developers, there are several given reasons for the I13 PvP changes:

* Reduce the damage and survivability gaps between the ATs
* Reduce the discrepancy between a skilled player and a new player
* Eliminate FotM builds and teams
* Force conflict resolution via travel suppression and heal decay (that is, if someone starts a fight, someone needs to die)
* Provide a balanced platform for general PvP and base raid/CoP rewards

I think anyone who believes they've succeeded here is fooling themselves. Their intentions were good, but the implementation wasn't. Unfortunately, PvPers tried to tell them that during the I13 closed and open betas but the feedback was seemingly ignored, so many people just gave up and either quit or rerolled into builds that were best for the new system (so much for eliminating FotMs, eh?). For the record, even the experienced PvPers knew things weren't perfect under the old system - hell, you can still find a few old stickied threads in the PvP boards where they took the time to list issues with the PvP system, as well as solutions that would best benefit everyone. Some of those issues were addressed as asked for with the I13 changes, some were addressed but not at all in an expected manner, and some were left alone and have been continued to be ignored.

At any rate, the consequences of the PvP changes mean in their efforts to narrow the skill gap and eliminate FotMs, they've made even less builds really viable and have even managed to eliminate at least two entire powersets from serious competition. Oh, sure, you can say, my Sonic shields add 3% resistance - big deal, that won't even keep your target alive through an extra attack. Sure, you can cage a target for 4 seconds, but unless you're spot-on with your spiking, 4 seconds won't be enough to remove a key target from a fight. Instead, you could've rolled a Cold or Therm and spent that time debuffing, indirectly contributing more damage to your team.

What's disappointing to me is that the developers didn't seem to care about what the changes did to the PvP population, as long as they had their perceived balance. Adding PvP IOs in I14 did little more than give a small reward to the PvPers who were still left, as I don't know a single PvEer who now PvPs thanks to that addition (well, some of them do arena farms for the IOs now but we can't really count that). My question is this - if the changes were a success, where are the new ladders on the live servers and on test? Where are the new players these changes were supposed to entice into PvPing? You can claim balance all you want, but if there aren't any people around to experience that supposed balance, it's not really a success, is it?

Just responding to this because it's the only point worth even bothering with - you're obviously stuck on some belabored idea that everything's better now so I'm not even going to try and argue. Problem is you're wrong - if the new PvP is that much better, where are all the people it was supposed to bring in, and why have the whiners not stopped whining?

The part I quoted (that some of the changes were made to limit the skill spread) is true and I can copy and paste PMs to prove it, though I'd rather not at the moment. In short, one of the biggest reasons the PvP changes were made is because a team of seasoned PvPers would steamroll a team of newbies (which should happen by any kind of sane logic).

Silit RPs hard, son.

Also, now that Freedom has a new PvPEC rep (is this true?) does this mean we will be seeing this 5v5 start up? I've gotten lazy and need a push to get my Rad/Therm and Mind/Emp IOd and accoladed.

The PvPers weren't the ones who made the changes. As such they have no choice but to start using the builds that are better - supposedly the changes were to eliminate the complaints about this power or that power or this strategy or that build, and to essentially make all powersets and ATs the same, but we know that didn't happen. There are less viable builds now thanks to DR, DPA changes, free base resists, the mez changes, and travel suppression. People go with the "cookie cutter" builds that do the most damage because when everything's supposedly the same, anything that gives even a small advantage is a necessity to stay competitive.

People "got" that the rules changed. They also "got" that the new rules dumbed down the PvP experience in an attempt to level the playing field (it helped, but a seasoned PvPer will still roll a newbie any day) by removing the speed and skill aspects of the game. People that didn't like that left, and who can blame them? The people that are still around are disgruntled for obvious reasons, but we've made do the best we can - by rerolling our characters into builds that are useful for the new ruleset.

Same goes for the old system, it's just that there's more broken stuff now than there was under the old system (KB being ridiculously OP, mez often being a death sentence, AoEs being worthless, Flares being better than Blaze, Ice Blast being worthless, buffs being largely lopped off by DR, offensive toggle dropping... need I go on?)

Support toons and buffers need to be stacked? What? Many external buffs get hit by DR under only one application, let alone stacked - the only real exceptions here are damage buffs, and def/res buffs to melee ATs (who don't need those buffs in the first place) and squishies running defense-based shields. My Therm sure is glad that his shields add a whopping 3% resists to his teammates. Don't get me wrong - I'm really quite happy to waste endurance to make people look pretty. People stopped playing their support toons (or just respec'd them into damage builds) because damage is all that really matters anymore. Def/res buffs do not make a meaningful contribution to squishy survivability thanks to DR - you'd be better off spamming attacks during the time you'd normally be buffing since you'll be able to damage spam a target until they can't heal anymore.

People don't spend billions on the tp/repel resist IOs in and of themselves - not for PvP combat, at any rate. The people who're really chasing after those IOs want the def and res, and they cost that much because they only drop off player kills. The PvPers seeking those IOs are usually looking to fill off set bonuses from the PvP sets, or they're just that desperate to avoid being teleported (repel's not a big deal for any competent player except a Stalker, and WP, Regen, EA, and Elec Stalkers don't even have to worry about it). Kins are worthless - before I13 people brought them to matches or zones for SB and IR, but with travels suppression there's no point. Sure, you can use Transference or Siphon Speed, but endurance drains and -spd are very weak and you'd be better off just using your attacks instead.

What other "mitigation and control" techniques? Only other ones I can think of are disruption - taunting, webnading, or perma-suppressing someone via Rad/Storm/Dark/etc toggles. As of right now, mez and KB are the best mitigation/control/disruption techniques, bar none. A good team will mez their spike target and that target will be dead before the mez wears off, or hit their target with Levitate/Lift/Power Push/Force Bolt and the target will be dead before they can get back up. If you're a control class in PvP right now you're either running disruption with the occasional mez/kb (hello, Controllers) or running ranged DPS with the occasional mez/kb (hello, Dominators). Where's the skill?

Please, tell me: what team combinations are you thinking of? At any rate, it doesn't really matter, because I13 removed the necessity of rolling FotMs or relying on certain team makeups, right? Right? Guys... anyone?

Heals and resistance buffs are important in PvP because a well-built PvP character will hit you, and you need that additional survivability. Now resistance buffs get DRd so a squishy will never have more than 40-45% resistance, and if a spike team just keeps up a skill-less damage spam, the spike target will die unless they can phase or get lucky and get away (good luck with that against a competent spike team considering how travel suppression now works). You seem to miss the point that between DR on buffs and heal decay, it really is more effective to focus on damage and just kill the other team before they kill you. Of course, having one or two people with heals will help a target survive maybe a few seconds longer - but I was doing an 8v8 KB on Freedom the other night on my Therm, and there was one situation where we were able to keep a spike target alive thanks to our heals, whereas in the zone/heal decay on scenario he would have died multiple times over.

Emphasized the part that that made me laugh the loudest - DR, heal decay, travel suppression, and free resistance did exactly the opposite. Never mind that thanks to the DPA and mez changes, most characters play very differently than they do in PvE. I13 wasn't about making sure AT roles were needed, it was about making all the ATs feel the same in terms of damage and survivability (which failed spectacularly, btw). Hell, Castle even commented on that and said regarding AT normalization "it didn't feel wrong to me so I went with it." In short, most buffs aside from damage buffs are now worthless, Sonic and Kin have no place whatsoever in a team PvP lineup and FF isn't much better off (it's there for Force Bubble and Force Bolt mostly).

PvPers are an adaptive type - as rules and powers change, they adapt by going to whatever is best at the moment, and you'll notice PvPers have made a shift toward damage dealing. This leaves two possibilities - either the people who write the code got it wrong, or the people who actually use that code every day almost all their in-game time got it wrong. I'm going to venture out on a limb and say it wasn't the players, and I'm betting most of those players would agree with me.


Somewhat right, somewhat wrong. Devs didn't create FotM builds. Players create FotM builds because those builds are the ones that are the best at doing what is called for. Before I13 you had varied FotMs, and even some builds that weren't FotM but were still very useful. Now you've got only a few FotMs, focused mostly around damage dealing because that's all that really matters. The developers did make PvP about damage - you can even see it in the original I13 PvP changes post, where Castle mentions a bit about messing with AT damage scales to bring the damage of the ATs in line with one another. They ensured PvP would be all about damage by raising, not lowering, the PvP damage of powers relative to their PvE damage (look at holds and immobilizes for the best examples of this). They ensured PvP would be all about damage by making heals less and less effective as more damage was tossed at a target. They ensured PvP would be all about damage by using travel suppression to enforce the fiteklubber "once someone starts a fight, it shouldn't end until someone dies" mentality.

Don't be dense - teaming in a PvP environment is still very much preferred to soloing. However, the reasons for it have shifted from teammates providing buffs, heals, and disruption to teammates providing extra damage for spikes, KB, and the occasional spot heal.

All-Scrapper teams, or to a lesser extent, some Repeat Offenders teams (like the all-Rad teams), do things like that all the time. You should see them sometime, they're some of the most ridiculously overpowered teams you can think of. Hell, one of the main reasons DR was implemented in the first place was to reduce the effect of buff stacking. I'm not sure of your interpretation of that but to me it sure sounds like someone's spitting in the face of anyone who enjoyed playing buffer toons.

No, because it's not as fun as I12 PvP. It really is that simple.

The kind of PvPers who would write those guides have left the game because they were sick of having what they loved stomped all over. No one bothers these days because experiences from the I13 beta tell us it's not worth trying to get major mechanics changes implemented. You don't need a guide to be at least decent in PvP 2.0 - just use W, A, S, D, and mash attacks as they're recharged, using self-heals and phase as they're needed. It really is that simple, unfortunately. Most of the prominent post-I13 PvPers were around and were good before I13, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

I'm also not sure what point you're trying to make about people coming to the boards and whining, asking about changes. The same people that whined about stuff being broken before still come to the boards and whine about stuff. Only thing that's changed is what's being whined about, and there's often more of it.

Let me fix that for you: "When we, the PvP community, manage to convince the devs to screw their heads on right again, and come up with a system that fixes the problems the old system has while bringing back the speed, team dynamics, and value of skill that the old system had, PvP will find its flair again."

This was a bit long-winded, but I'm kind of sick of people saying "OMG THIS PvP IS SO MUCH BETTER AND THE ONLY REASON PEOPLE DON'T LIKE IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD."

This is incorrect, the -res from Sonic Attacks stacks from the same powers. Given a Sonic/Sonic Defender, for example, the only power with -res that won't stack with itself is Sonic Siphon (since it's impossible for Disruption Field to stack with itself since it's a toggle).

If he's only 26, roll a different PvP toon. Fire/SS and Inv/SS (and kinda-sorta Shield/SS) work well. Neither WP nor EM are all that wonderful anymore (except for Stalkers) so I'd just make something else.

A good pre-I13 PvPer will still be able to wreck you, just like good post-I13 PvPers routinely do. They left because the game wasn't fun anymore for them and because the devs decided they'd rather nerf skill than fix what was really wrong with the game.

If you were good before I13, you're still good now. If you weren't good before I13, you probably get an open-zone kill here and there and have a huge head because of it (yes I'm talking to you). You feel the need to have everything handed to you and feel that the only ruleset that should be respected is your own, and you get raged and come post on the forums when people break those rules, which in turn on makes those of us who can PvP laugh at you even more. Worse still, you constantly compare PvP in this game to genocide or other illegal activities, which makes me wonder why you haven't sought professional help yet.

Seriously, if you lose in a no-insp duel on an SS/Fire with Aid Self against a Blaster with no Hibernate or Phase, you are really terrible and what you have to say has zero weight with the rest of us. Sorry.

Most of the better PvPers on Justice have either left the game or mostly PvP on Freedom. Sometimes they'll come back to Justice if there's enough people in the zone but if we're lucky Justice RV might have the population of Freedom RV on a bad day once a week.

Might be a bit harder to tell what defensive set a melee AT is using but other than that it's a simple matter of looking at your buff bar to see what powers are affecting you, as those icons don't change.

and

Oh snap, apparently I'm anti-PuG for suggesting people *gasp* get to know people.

He plays on Justice, apparently all the Freedom PvPers are bad.

Incorrect on almost all your points (except the last one). The MA is more efficient because you can tailor NPC groups to your specific character's strengths, even by using canon NPCs. You can mix-and-match characters using relatively weaker canon NPCs to make the kills easier and take less time. You can do funny things with spawns in MA missions that you can't do with normal missions - lots more mobs in the same area, for example.

The people who've been farming in PI or Grandville are the ones who've been chasing after purples since those are just about the only things you can't get with MA tickets. If someone's running missions in PI or GV with the sole intent of PLing, I'd laugh at them for not running an MA mission where they could be leveling many times faster (it's not really possible to get a 5-hour 50 being PL'd through standard content, but you'd better believe it's been done in less than that through MA missions).