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Sincere PvP questions from someone who has never liked it (please be nice!)
heidid91
Member Posts: 13 Arc User
First off, I'm requesting that none of you "I know everything" players take the stand of "ignorance = stupidity" ... I'm not here to whine, simply to ask a few questions.
Background: I have never enjoyed PvP in any game I've played. I'm a cooperative player much more than a competitive one, and it has never appealed to me. In some part, that is because so often it's a losing game going in for anyone who is new at it. Getting stomped repeatedly (and completely) is not fun, and I'd really rather not bother.
However, with the current setup in Neverwinter of using ADs for currency (for all the good stuff) I have found myself joining matches for this sole purpose. My experience has been somewhat bewildering and very discouraging. Perhaps because I'm playing a CW, I find myself mobbed by 3v1 or even 4v1, and stunned/dazed/immobilized/killed in short order. Why is this fun?
I have a general idea of how the PvP matches are supposed to work...I went ahead & read up on it a bit after my first match ended up being nothing like what I expected. Are there really that many people that queue up somehow as a team? My teams seem to be incoherent, with (in the last one) 2 people randomly just hanging around one base we already controlled (with none of the opposing team in sight), leaving the other 3 of us to get slaughtered at the central node. What possible benefit could these players gain from essentially not participating? I assume that there must be one, or perhaps they simply want the ADs as well, but aren't interested in actually helping. At least I'm trying my best.
Some threads mention gear as being one problem if you get killed easily. I would greatly appreciate someone putting some tips together that list qualities that are PvP-oriented, vs. PvE. I looked up some build suggestions and respec'd my character feats to at least become something useful, but I don't plan to invest real money in this at this point. Has this turned into a "Pay-to-win" scenario, or is there gear available that would be useful?
By the way, please don't fall back on that old "queue up with friends" line. I'm a 39-yo mom who knows absolutely no one among my peers (or anyone else, for that matter) who plays this game. Not everyone fits the same mold, and although I love RPG games I have rarely played with others, simply because there is no one to play with.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with these questions. Because of the AD incentive, I suspect there will be quite a few people queuing up to play PvP that would really rather not. It would be a great benefit to everyone, I suspect, if someone who actually knows what they are doing could put together a guide, or list, or something, to help those who have never participated before. Because if most of these problems are due to inexperienced players, the problems will only get worse.
Thanks in advance! (currently playing a lv 34 CW)
Background: I have never enjoyed PvP in any game I've played. I'm a cooperative player much more than a competitive one, and it has never appealed to me. In some part, that is because so often it's a losing game going in for anyone who is new at it. Getting stomped repeatedly (and completely) is not fun, and I'd really rather not bother.
However, with the current setup in Neverwinter of using ADs for currency (for all the good stuff) I have found myself joining matches for this sole purpose. My experience has been somewhat bewildering and very discouraging. Perhaps because I'm playing a CW, I find myself mobbed by 3v1 or even 4v1, and stunned/dazed/immobilized/killed in short order. Why is this fun?
I have a general idea of how the PvP matches are supposed to work...I went ahead & read up on it a bit after my first match ended up being nothing like what I expected. Are there really that many people that queue up somehow as a team? My teams seem to be incoherent, with (in the last one) 2 people randomly just hanging around one base we already controlled (with none of the opposing team in sight), leaving the other 3 of us to get slaughtered at the central node. What possible benefit could these players gain from essentially not participating? I assume that there must be one, or perhaps they simply want the ADs as well, but aren't interested in actually helping. At least I'm trying my best.
Some threads mention gear as being one problem if you get killed easily. I would greatly appreciate someone putting some tips together that list qualities that are PvP-oriented, vs. PvE. I looked up some build suggestions and respec'd my character feats to at least become something useful, but I don't plan to invest real money in this at this point. Has this turned into a "Pay-to-win" scenario, or is there gear available that would be useful?
By the way, please don't fall back on that old "queue up with friends" line. I'm a 39-yo mom who knows absolutely no one among my peers (or anyone else, for that matter) who plays this game. Not everyone fits the same mold, and although I love RPG games I have rarely played with others, simply because there is no one to play with.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with these questions. Because of the AD incentive, I suspect there will be quite a few people queuing up to play PvP that would really rather not. It would be a great benefit to everyone, I suspect, if someone who actually knows what they are doing could put together a guide, or list, or something, to help those who have never participated before. Because if most of these problems are due to inexperienced players, the problems will only get worse.
Thanks in advance! (currently playing a lv 34 CW)
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
-- William Arthur Ward
-- William Arthur Ward
Post edited by heidid91 on
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Yes, going into a match with folks you don't know can suck, but it can be fun as well. You are going to come across good, bad, and ugly teammates as you continue to play.
As far as gear goes, I would recommend saving your Glory points and getting your classes basic T1 PvP set of purple gear that you can buy at the Trade of Blades store in protector's Enclave. It's basically free (it only requires a time investment) and it is a pretty solid set. You can get your Orb, offhand, chest, boots, gloves and helm this way. Eventually(after you hit level 60) you'll want to spend some AD on purple neck, rings, belt and shirt and pants.
The Rune enchants are also pretty important in terms of gearing up.
There are some pretty good threads in General Discussion regarding PvP tactics. As I come across them, I will post links here. Hopefully that will get you started.,
-- William Arthur Ward
First of all, thanks for the info about your background. It helps. Now, a few responses:
1. PVP can feel like swimming with sharks. There are players who only level via PVP, and they get really good very quickly. Casual players can be on the short end of the sick, to put it lightly.
2. You're playing a class that is targeted early: You're squishy and can turn the tide of a battle if you're not taken down early (CW is my main).
3. Gear helps, but it's a moot point until you're 60. Green and a few blue pieces should be fine. I wouldn't waste enchants until you're 60. Start with Rank 5's, they're easy to come by.
4. Premade teams dominate PVP. They're most often made from guild members. You may want to start looking for a friendly PVE/PVP guild.
5. PVP will make you pro at PVE, especially bosses.
6. Read up on effective builds, feats and powers. There are many guides on these forums. Try here to look through a few.
7. Good luck.
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
I don't use the potions. Save your Glory for the gear. The same vendor who has the potions also has the gear. There are 3 tabs above the potions. Click the one titled equipment to see the gear. You can only use this gear after you hit 60.
I'd figured out the sharks part.
It makes me a bit sad, though, because wizards (or other ranged classes) have always been favorites of mine. I hope at some point they will add a ranger class, which is my other usual choice.
I had figured that guilds were mostly for more serious players, which is why I hadn't really looked into it much. I have a pretty unpredictable play schedule, so I tend to shy away from pre-arranged times/places. All too often I don't know ahead of time when I'll have some free time to play.
I did find the guide you linked to, and the build I have is from one of those lists. It just takes a while to figure out the most effective combination of powers, what order to play them in, etc. Many of the PvP guides I've found don't really say much about lower-level characters, and focus primarily on lvl 60. Which has always somewhat baffled me; I'm a story-oriented player, so when I'm out of story, I start a new character, with a different class, and start over. It somehow never occurred to me that there would be something to do once the story was over. I suspect this is because the vast majority of games I've played have not been online. Once the game (Dragon Age, NWN 1&2, etc) was over, it was just over - nothing more to do, here. I can't even imagine leveling up playing PvP only...seems like it would get boring, really fast.
It's an education, to say the least. I'm glad to find a few friendly responders, at least.
-- William Arthur Ward
Yeah, squishy means you're easy to kill. You don't have much in the way of damage mitigation or hitpoints, but that is part and parcel to the class. You're the best at dealing damage to a lot of targets, so in turn, you're the worst at taking damage.
You can consider building a bit more defensively though. Use shield spell, stack defensive enchantments, choose gear with higher defensive stats, etc.
I exclusively play with pugs (pick up groups that I join as a solo player) because I prefer not having guild drama more than I mind being at a disadvantage. As a solo player, I know that I'm going to get a lot of bad players and a lot of unwinnable games. However, I also know that there's a lot I can do to make the team work better. I make sure I'm not getting caught on my own. I stick with my allies. I adjust my active skills to counter enemy skills. I lure enemies back to where my allies are (who will fight them even if they have no map awareness). I determine which of my teammates are useful and useless and adapt my strategy based on that. For example, if I know my allies won't follow me, then I wait for enemies to engage my allies and then help instead of initiating combat.
Since you're still leveling up, Neverwinter hasn't become pay to win or highly gear centric yet. The tradeoff is that while you're leveling up, the classes aren't balanced. Some classes don't get critical pvp skills until later. Players aren't as familiar with their classes or the game, so they play worse.
Also, there are guilds that will take you and that fit your playstyle. There are plenty of bad guilds that will try to make you farm things for them or take advantage of you in other ways. Don't join any guild that wants you to farm resources. There are hardcore guilds that will demand you have the best gear and best skills. There are also casual guilds with mature members that are family first (meaning they don't care if you have to leave in the middle of a match for family issues and don't demand you keep a schedule). It might be worth looking around for one.
Regardless of the people, mmo pvp is always gear centric and pay to win to a certain extent. Games like chess are balanced, as each side has the same number and type of pieces at the start of the game. In mmos, players can get better gear and enchants, which is like replacing pieces with queens before the game starts. Replace enough, and players without those advantages are helpless. If you don't / can't grind or pay for the good gear, you will never have a fair game.
If you've already played the content you want and you're only grinding AD to get better gear and not because you want to play MMO PVP, then it might be time to roll an alt, play foundry missions, or move on to another game.
Playing like this will make you feel quite useless but it's not nearly as frustrating as getting killed instantly all the time, oh wait you just got stabbed to death by rogue. Reroll melee.
That can be said about any class and imho GFand GWF can do that much much better. All that CW wizard brings actually is single target burst if Ice Knife is up and a bit of CC of which EF is the only one really noticable, most other CCs last fractions of seconds. RoF freeze is particularly worthless.
CWs are terrible for defending a point and are not particularly better at attacking than TRs or GWFs or GFs.
Totally agree with this. Best thing a CW can do before killed by rogue is to entangle that cleric and repel it away so your alive teammates can have a shot of killing it quick.
You've been getting some solid advice here, kudo's to the posters.
Basically pvp is like an arena where there are no ranks but amateur-league and pro-league meet and fight on the same field. And like any amateur in amateur gear, you stand little chance against a pro-team with pro-gear.
At first it will suck, badly. And from personal experience, every post that says any class is OP will seem like the truth, simply because everything is hitting so hard.
But yes, the best suggestion is to try and find people who want to pvp with you. They don't have to be your next-door neighbors, but maybe some of the group you just did a dungeon with wants to. A lot of people only pvp for the daily ad's.
But the next best suggestion is to see if you can have fun with it. I used pvp to level up during questing, to get a few extra xp. Which made it very frustrating when we had a loss due to elite-opponents or dumb-down-teammates. When I started seeing it as practice it became a lot more fun. I still get clobbered from time to time, but once in a while now I get to clobber too
Work through the rough spots, or don't do it at all.
I love pvp on my cw...I think once you figure out which spells you work comfortable with, you'll have a lot of fun too.
I solo pvp more than I guild pvp, and yes, some groups are god awful, in fact in even average groups I find myself fighting on the node because most of the team would rather fight on stairs, etc...so I keep Repel up and use it a lot with Dodge...I might die more than other other casters who camp top, but I get points for the team, and my teams usually win, or come real close, unless we have afkrs. I often come in the top 3, but it's not from kills, so my advice would be don't get caught up in your kill count...or with dying, which a lot of new people seem to do.
Dont think of death as a real bad thing, at 40 we started to notice crazy geared people, but, you can use this to get advantage sometimes, if there are people who just go for kills, and never fight on nodes, and you can play bait/distract them, while your team is capturing nodes...
I think I frustrate the heck out of some melee who chase me around while I dodge/repel/entangle. I know people who prefer Sheild to Repel, but I just can't get the knack of it in pvp...perhaps if I was playing with a pre made group all the time and didn't find myself defending or capturing nodes by myself ( because no one else will do it) I would like shield better
It is an awesome thing tho, when a pug team comes together and plays really great.
And after PvPing on my DC and my CW, I became much better at soloing pve content since I learned to dodge quicker, watch tells better. And yes, Boss fights too when in group.
Oh and also, I find people who take pvp too seriously, very funny..and most likely 16 years olds:)
2) Icy Rays should be in your Tab slot. It used to be Ray of Enfeeblement, but due to the nerf to RoE and things that synergized with it being in the Tab slot, it's no longer optimal, although it is still nice compared to some other abilities. It's also bugged when in the Tab slot anyhow, in that neither Recovery nor the PvP set bonus of cooldown reduction applies.
3) Use your map terrain wisely (Nobody up on that bridge? Oh, time to sit and snipe until a TR notices! Someone sniping you from a column? Repel them off onto the ground.)
4) The only time the Oppressor tree is useful at all, is in PvP. It's also the only time a Chill build is "somewhat" useful.
5) Don't take Shield, Steal Time or anything else with stupidly narrow range and long cooldowns.
6) Do not take Sudden Storm, Chilling Cloud, or Storm Pillar. All three are useless.
7) Do not use Oppressive Force, and that goes for PvE as well.
8) Get Tenebrous (fits any offensive slot, does a % of damage based on your current health), Holy Avenger (weapon slot enchant, Radiant damage = no resist, & it buffs allies near your target) or Lightning (PvP ONLY weapon enchant, does 50% weapon damage on proc, and it arcs into other players in a 70' radius, foiling any stealthed TRs, + triggers EotS, Storm Spell, Nightmare Wizardry), and Briartwine (armor slot, reflects % of damage you take back to the attacker, reflected damage DOES trigger the Lightning enchant) or Soulforged (armor slot, makes you immune to all damage for an X number of seconds if you drop to a certain % of health) enchants.
9) Entangling Force should *always* be on your bar.
10) Repel is optional. If you're the only CW, take Repel, if there is another CW and they are using Repel, take something else such as Chill Strike.
11) Keep as much range as possible. Minimum of 45' between you and any melee, in particular GFs, although I'd just plain advise running far, far away if one of those look in your direction.
13) Conduit of Ice is very, very situational in PvP. Useful SOMETIMES to expose stealthed TRs or keeping a TR visible. Currently the debuff from the final feat in the Thaum tree that applies when you use CoI does not seem to work in PvP. Chill Strike or Ray of Enfeeblement would be a more optimal choice.
14) Lock down Clerics. CWs have every tool in the book to make a Cleric miserable. Use them.
15) Ice Knife will be your primary Daily Power in PvP. Singularity will be for those times in PvP when you may simply be trying to pull a group of people backwards off of a node, down off of a platform (Hotenow), or to the side of a pillar. Don't use it for damage, use it to control groups. People spend more time trying to escape it than fighting back, so use that to your advantage.
16) Magic Missile is your primary At-Will. It doesn't matter which tree, which spec. Many CW feats rely on you stacking Arcane, even the ones that end up benefiting your Chill powers. Easiest and fastest way to stack Arcane is via Magic Missile.
17) Ray of Frost, while weak on damge, builds Action Points really, really quickly. It's also very good at eating up GF block meters. Oh, and it can apply 6 stacks of Chill, which makes Ice Knife and Chill Strike pewpew moar.
18) Have fun.
19) Save your teleports and learn to time them properly. Nothing makes a GWF or TR rage more than when you use a masterful teleport to blink right through one of their heavy hitters.
20) You WILL die, and die often. It's just a fact of being a glass cannon class. Don't let it bug you.
Some great tips, but I disagreed with a couple of points.
Shield is a lifesaver in level 60 PVP. Rogues can one-shot people with Lashing Blade. Shield has saved me so many times from that atrocity. It's also great for bumping people off pillars, ledges and bridges. Steal time, although pretty worthless in PVP, is great in Epic Dungeons, and that's where you'll get some great gear.
CoI is an amazing damage dealer. If I can get it off when Eye of the Storm procs, I can easily get 20k-25k in damage, and I have a pretty moderate GS (10.8k, Rank 5 Enchants).
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
This helps a lot, actually. Yesterday I finally ended up with a group who was working together. we won, 1000 to 993, and I actually enjoyed it. Even if we had lost, I wouldn't have minded so much, because the teamwork made the experience much better. I've had two different matches where we lost with fewer than 50 points by the end of the match, which just left me feeling frustrated. It's not that I expect to win all the time (or even very often) but it was nice to have a reasonably close match. All I can figure is that we ended up playing against another pug (and thanks to perfectindigo for that translation - I had figured out the meaning from context but not the exact translation).
-- William Arthur Ward
I'll add that I play as CW and TR.
There is another glory vendor in Suncoster Market that sells potions only. Only Trade of Blades vendor has gear.
Before level 60 you can have a great time as a CW in pvp, its a really powerful and fun class. One thing it excels at (pre-level 60) is back capping. That means when you go and take the enemy point while people are fighting mid. When you do this you'll often have to fight a rogue, (rogues tend to get back quick, or think they can 1vs1 you easy). To fight a rogue pre-level 60 as a CW is really simple. You have the upper hand unless they really out gear you.
Its hard to give a precise guide because there are many variables, but basically, once you go to backcap, just keep moving around on the point, don't stay still (get off your horse as well!). If you see a rogue they will most likely stealth or teleport when near you. When you see them go invisible, keep moving and blow a dodge (you dodge in case they teleport). As soon as the rogue appears repel then auto attack once or twice, then entangling force and nuke them. Just keep repeating this, many times the rogue will not even be able to touch you. Its good to try and repel off the platform if possible or as far off the point as you can, so try to position for that.
Rogues have a couple of tricks up their sleeve, but they mainly open stealth-teleport-dazing strike-lash until about level 50; then they replace dazing strike with smoke bomb. Some will take a skill that makes them immune to cc- they turn a blackish color and can't be repelled etc. In that case remember they will have had to sacrifice one of teleport, dazing strike, or lash. You'll probably notice this when you think, wtf isn't repel working? Anyway, even if they have this skill don't fret, just keep moving and dodging when they get close-especially if you see the dazing strike or smoke bomb animation you need to dodge. The anti-cc skill will end in a few seconds and by then repel will be ready to blast them into a frustrating chain of getting knocked back/down, picked up, and blasted. Sometimes you will even start feeling sad for the poor players.
Unless the rogue has really good gear you should win 90% of your battles against them, it feels good! At level 60 it changes a lot because the rogue will just sit in stealth and throw knifes at you- and you will die just from that most likely. That reminds me- another important time to dodge is when a rogue throws knives-it greatly reduces the amount of damage they do.
The basic tactic is the same against all classes, you just have to make a mental note of what the animation looks like for the skills of other classes, like the GWFs anti-cc skill, DC chains etc.
Also bring that love of cooperative play to pvp. Give your rogues a free meal by entangling force an enemy cw while your teammate is nearby- its almost a guaranteed kill. Knowing and using the synergies between class skills is as important as knowing the counters to specific classes.