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PVP Primer (for dumbies like me)
xrazamax
Posts: 974 Arc User
So, I thought I would dip my toe in the world of PVP and noticed it I didn't entirely suck at it. However, I noticed that PVP between random people and people who knew what they were doing was like night and day, so my question for you PVPers is this: What are the insider tips to being good at PVP?
In the most general terms, how does one be sucessful at PVP and adapt to the current PVP meta-game? Is there some power you NEED to take and is Constitution a must have? Any strategies newbies need to know about to avoid getting farmed like a row of potatos?
I'd apperciate any tips you guys have for me
Edit: Annnd I just realized I misspelled "dummies" which is fitting in a way...
In the most general terms, how does one be sucessful at PVP and adapt to the current PVP meta-game? Is there some power you NEED to take and is Constitution a must have? Any strategies newbies need to know about to avoid getting farmed like a row of potatos?
I'd apperciate any tips you guys have for me
Edit: Annnd I just realized I misspelled "dummies" which is fitting in a way...
Post edited by xrazamax on
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Anyway onto the topic at hand.
Constitution is certainly a must if you are just starting out in PvP, to be able to do well in PvP without it is a lot about expirence of knowing how to time your attacks. For example vixy has an alt called squishykipz that has 5k hp, I currently play on a pure theme build that only has 20 CON but I use growth and greater health breastplate so I can get to 7.1k HP seeing as I need some health for regeneration to heal. ;D
Basically you don't exactly NEED any powers but certain powers make your life a lot easier in PvP and so are probably good to start out using.
Ego surge - Mainly about the advantage which is based off CON to be used for a burst of sudden DPS.
Masterful dodge - Basically a must have for anyone right now, certainly one of the most overpowered abilities right now.
Conviction - The best heal for healing yourself as well as something to proc MSA if you're using int.
Molecular Self Assembly - Based off of int allows you to gain energy out of combat as well as technically have a free heal every 3 seconds or so from conviction.
The best 2 specs to use as 3 of the SS's are INT and CON. INT because of the cooldown and how it affects energy cost + energy gained from MSA. CON because it has no diminishing returns, allows you not to get one shot while being able to heal stupid amounts or get away easy and also gives the best of burst DPS because of ego surge.
To be honest I think PvP is a lot about movement, you don't really see it when you are tanky and cheesy although if you start to play something much squishier like eve / me / squishykipz and various others then you want to be using LOS (line of sight) as much as you can. You will want to know where the nearest prop or pillar to hide behind is so as soon as you see someone target you they wont be able to hit you due to the line of sight being blocked.
I want to work on some video's about this sort of thing really, especially seeing as the wiki is now down. Even though some of the info was out of date it was still very useful for me.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Teleport and Athletics and flight are great tp's for PvP. The first one, gives stealth and allows you to move quickly without being noticed and the other two for moving while attacking or healing.
As a general tip, don't wait for your hp to go to 10% or bellow to heal, use conviction whenever you can. Even if you are at 70% of your hp people will prefer you as a target in bash over others with full hp.
Also, if you are going for a ranged toon with charge powers, you might find the following trick useful:
Begin charging a power and immediately press the teleport button, without leaving the power charge button. When the power is almost ready, leave teleport and stop pressing the power charge button. This is a wonderful technique for force cascade builds.
Good luck!
Okay I just tried this and my reaction was as follows:
Whaaaaat.....!?!
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...Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.......
One question I just remembered though was about gear. Do you need to have something for stealth perception or does INT take care of that? And are pieces like Armadillo or Cyber Suit viable?
It's not a do or die matter though, it helps alot but it's not as crucial as some of the features mentioned above.
General dueling rules means you aren't really suppose to use teleport in duels although it's perfectly fine in hero games. Teleport is great for getting away from a 'gank' this is when a group of players suddenly jump on you to try and go for the kill, teleport removes all snares so yeah... Very useful for that.
If you want a toon that flies above everyone in BASH or other hero games you will probably want a 100ft attack and teleport will make your life much easier. Also probably the best flight for doing this specific style of play is rocket boots, this is where you'll need teleport as rocket boots take a while to build up speed. Also with this you'll pretty much need ascension so when people remove your TP you can you ascension to rise back into the sky again straight away.
Superspeed and superjump are also both viable TP's for PvP. Basically just don't use tunnelling. <.< Like brou does in BASH sometimes lol
Or if you always play the squishy like me with atleast 300 in just use it constantly and keep refreshing that energy. I think I used conviction more for energy and it's 15% of your health shield type thing more than anything seeing as the heal was only around 600 non crit for me.
*Cough* exploit *cough*.
Something like this also, with powers such as ebon ruin they will root you while you charge. If you jump and move in a direction you can charge it while moving as you'll continue to move the way you jump, this also means some knocks / holds / roots wont truly keep you still as you'll still be moving with the momentum of the jump.
EDIT: Oh I almost forgot to mention the MD unbreakable rotation people do now.
Basically when you go to attack a player look at which of these 2 buffs they currently have up, if they have MD up then good, you know the time they have MD up for don't attack and as soon as it's down you can hit them and hope their recharge speed isn't enough to cast unbreakable right away. If unbreakable is up you can break through it even at rank 3 but you'll need a good burst to do so, it will make things like 2gm fairly pointless.
If you get enough recharge speed yourself you too can do this rotation by simply getting these 2 powers and using them as soon as they come off cooldown, it really helps against pretty much anything.
Edit of edit: Yes those are viable but not really the best especially due to diminishing returns.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Also, I'd say get a maintain like tgm and attack them while md is up...they will take a lot of damage. The hard part to counter is heals+AD cycling as imp said... I just use teddy bear gun so I can't give you any advice on that...to counter it, you'll need 2-3 cheesy powers. When you get those, your build will be abit different than what you wanted.
Ow! I almost forgot to add that you can always use swinging...the only tp that never stops! Seriously...even roots can't stop it( can I say how or is this an exploit 100%?).
And Sters mentioned using Conviction as often as possible. This is one of the most important things right here if you have Conviction. Since I use offensive passives, I don't really heal that much with it, but it still really helps if you use it every time it comes off of cooldown. When I duel people with Aura of Primal Majesty, they can probably easily get over a 3k heal with Conviction on a critical. If they have Ebon Ruin, they can half my healing, making my Conviction heal for only 800 on a critical. Though some of those who can heal that much with it hardly ever use it. When I'm helping them test builds I even need to ask them if they have the power. Sometimes I'm getting only 400 health from it every ~2.6 seconds, but that's better than something like 3-6k over the whole course of a duel.
Good luck, and have fun.
Other than that, try to stay positive here and in game while dealing with PvP.
You will soon begin seeing a pattern; same builds, same powers, same people, same jokes, same conversations etc. Try to stay away from all those...or you'll soon get bored.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
No one even uses 2gm anymore... -_-
Besides it's one of the most easily countered abilities in the game. It's cheese level is nothing in comparison to force geyers and ebon ruin, as well as various others.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
New question though: What are some sutible passives for PVP? I was wondering if Invun works considering everyone loves to hit me with that spike damage.
Also, thanks guys for all the advice so far! I'm sorry if some of these question seem incredibly noobish, but I really haven't PVP'd at all before - in CO or other MMOs! I'm having fun though!
Pulse Beam Rifle can also be pretty good, but its damage is lacking for my taste if not used with an offensive passive, but that's just my bias towards offensive passives most likely. It'll also be hard to break through Unbreakable with maintains, but I suppose it'd be okay to wittle down their health through MD, and pretty good while no actives are up.
For good maintained DPS mixed with great manoeuvrability PBR is probably one of the best although it as with other maintains like it (lightning arc, 2gm) recently due to the unbreakable fix everyone rotates unbreakable and MD. MD is basically strong against anything, it even gives DOT resistance, although unbreakable needs enough of a burst to break through it which means your PBR would have to be pretty darn hard hitting to break through. On the other hand if people don't use this rotation if you hit them while no AD is up you should deal a pretty decent amount of DPS.
Pretty much any passive can be made to work and I don't really want to be telling you what passive to play with. If I did that foxi would come and be sarcastic with me. D=
But to give you a hint of what is good for what:
AOPM doesn't actually give anything directly, although it will take presence to a good amount before hitting DR and the same for DEX giving you a nice crit chance and a nice heal bonus without needed that in your gear. One of the biggest people use it is because of the stats which work of super stats. INT works great with AOPM as it will allow you to get 30% more from all the stats you don't have as super stats and 20% from your secondary super stats also the hold strength / armour pen can be buffed a lot by this. Strength is one most people use however (STR / CON / INT) and it's considered one of the 'cheesiest' super stat choices. The reason people choose it is because the more CON they slot the more defence they get AND the more crit severity they get. The reason this is even more overpowered? CON has no diminishing returns. -_-
If you are going to go melee WOTW is probably one of the best to get unless you are using ego blades or PA.
Most offensive passives work well if you just pick the one that benefits the powers you are using. Night warrior is a pretty good one for PvP, and I'm not talking about SS here. You can use NW with a ranged build and take of SS if you want, it's armour pen / damage boost to everything / dodge boost is worth it IMO.
As for tank passives. LR / defiant / invuln are all viable choices, I use regen on my characters theme purely for theme reasons I wouldn't really recommend it if you want to be a tank.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Haha, Luci doesn't know much about PvP...last year she made us all laugh by making false and unsupported claims about some game mechanics, when we showed her how naive her thinking was, she couldn't take it, so she begun tagging infernos to death...haha, funny times.
I would suggest you drop pulse beam rifle, although it's a nice power and I've used it alot too, it lacks in damage sometimes. If you want to keep it and energy isn't a problem for you, perhaps you could use it along with shoulder launcer or minigun to deal awesome dps. Otherwise, I would swap it for experimental blaster tap spamming. It's just the most awesome power in the world! And has some cool effects like turning people into teddies too! I'll edit a more serious video of turning people into teddies, 'coz it's awesome...
Also, by turning them into teddies, you don't have to worry about their defenses, they will die with 10k hp sooner or later ;-p
Edit: keep invulnerability, it really helps alot to counter DOTs and maintains.
yeah, I love pulse beam rifle, but I think I'm going to limit it to pve
As I said it's a viable attack and used with pestilence has been a common build before.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
I know that cereal ... *snaps finger* FRUIT LOOPS!