f13.net

I thought I'd make a thread to discuss the pvp aspects of the game.  I have a rank 6 mage, two rank 3 clerics, and am working on a rogue.  I've learned a lot about builds, strategy, and the ups and downs of PvP and would love to discuss/debate anything. 

What is your take on cleric survivability and on the role of the duracell cleric in warfronts, whether you play that build or looking at it from the outside. I have a r6 cleric(hit r6 last night) and every other class in the 40s, so i only have the a healer perspective for the most part, but understand a little bit about why the other classes complain, how they work, etc.

What PvP options are there is Rifts?

World PvP (server depending, not just for rule set but for players who actually want to world pvp even though they are on a pvp enabled server..)
Played out warfronts/battlegrounds
PVP rifts coming soon, which actually sound fun but too little too late imo (it's a rift where the longer you keep your rift open the more reward you get, and the faster you close an enemy's rift the more reward you get and less they get).

Why would it be too little too late? the game is doing well as far as i know.

<opinion alert!>

There are really 3 roles in the WF's.  DPS, Heals, and utility (buffers, debuffers, etc).  Clerics are wonderful at healing (I like sent/warden) and can do massive ae dps on a well-played cabalist, but their melee really lacks the tools to compete with warriors.  A warrior will have 2 charges, stun, snare, heal debuffs, and high spike damage to take down their target quickly.  Clerics, even shamicar and senticars just don't have the tools or spike damage to handle higher rank targets quickly.  While they are masters of 1v1, they do so only by attrition.  In the WF's, you really only have a small window of time to drop a target on a cleric before getting zerged.  With so few escape tools, melee clerics are tough to have fun on without being in group with good peels/support. 

My favorite pvp build was something paladin/reaver. I built it around stuns and interrupts (and the classes were very different than), with lots of instants to keep on the move. My goal was to be mostly an annoyance, plaguing around a bunch of dots and harassing casters. Worked way better than I expected, partly due to the survivability of the tank build. Probably totally different now, but it was a lot of fun back when.

Sorry, yeah, the game is doing very well (it seems) but it's too little too late for my interests and not in general is what I meant.

Doing very well?  I'm not sure about that.  We'll see after all of the 6 month subscriptions run out in October. 

My friend's list is a ghost town and leveling a new toon, the areas < 50 are all mostly empty.  Consolidation of servers is helping keep things alive, but too many evenings events are failing due to a lack of participation on the 3 servers I play on. 

The game is doing well but will get hit hard by SWTOR and GW2.  I think a lot of people were / are looking at Rift as a stepping stone MMO.  I have (3) 50's one thats rank 6, a rank 5 and a rank 2 so much of my play has been alt leveling / gearing. 

PvP is very strange in this game.  It really seems the luck of shard and WF draw if your side will dominate or not.  Since I started playing less than a month ago, I've done a lot of PvP -- since the barrier to entry was low -- and I've read the boards and done a bit of research.  PvP in Rift seems not really that different than WoW -- gear, gear, premades, gear, some strats, gear.  And like WoW it has a lot of the same problems, which makes me wonder "why bother?" and if it will be sustainable.

I still PvP far more than I PvE (thank you bleak Gloamwood and unbearable Scarlet Gorge) but it's a strange game.  We genuinely lose WAY MORE games than we win on our WF.   And regardless of the reasons for that, I don't cognitively understand how that will remain.  Surely one side will give up and then as fewer people play, the wins will escalate pushing out more players?

I'm still new, so feel free to correct and educate.  

Defiant definitely dominate on my server / battlegroup.  They typically swarm the PvP daily locations and seem to be much more PvP focused then Guardians.  Warfront wise they win I would estimate +80%.  Its also the faction to play if you want to make money since prices for most stuff sells for double what guardians pay and it sells much better.  If I put up 10 things on auction defiant side Ill sell 9 or all 10 usually, guardian side I would be lucky to sell 3.   All of this has given me little reason to play my guardian.  I get ganked a lot trying to do dailes which is just a waste of time and money for healer cost.  When I finally finish that I lose repeatedly in warfronts for less favor and in between warfronts if I farm with mining / foraging everything I sell(if it sells) is for about half of what I get defiant side. 

i see the same problem on Sunrest. the battlegroup i am in is probably 90% defiant wins. Gathering resources inbetween games is near pointless. I make about as much just vendoring everything. Yesterday i lost about 5 port scions in a row and finally spent the rest of my time trying to figure out why we were getting sloshed. i inspected everyone on my side and found that about 60% of my side had no pvp gear whatsoever. I found one guy in rank 5/6 gear, not finished, but close. 3 or 4 other guys with rank 2-4 gear and maybe a weapon out of expert dungeons. I took a 30 minute break and found about the same thing in the next whitefall i ran. For some reason the guardian side seems like fresh 50s to pvp for whatever reason. Victories are few and far between. Saw a couple of the same groups on the enemy side occasionally, but the problem seemed to be more of a gear issue on our side.

I don't have a hard opinion on if gear should or should not be dominant, but it is what it is. If your team is rolling around in blues no amount of tactics seems to be real helpful. World pvp is also a problem, but lack of organization/caring on the guardian side seems to be the main culprit there. I think i'm going to start shard hopping until i can find a decent balance, or at least find a place where we have more of a fighting chance. Right now on Sunrest it feels like i'm a high school team trying to compete with college teams in pvp.

In this game spec counts more than gear.  The thing is the people with good gear also have good specs and viceversa.

Spec isn't my issue. I have 2 mobile healing specs, both with a mix of warden/sentinel/templar. I just hit rank 6 and have the weapon so far. My own survivability isn't too bad, but trying to heal guys in greens/blues/the occasional expert purple is horrible. Their survivability is noticeably bad. Comparing that to the enemy damage output(and i can tell by how hard they hit me) and i see a huge imbalance on most maps. Specs may play a role, but gear means more than anything for what i am talking about...sustainability. These guys don't have much of a chance to change tactics and try something else when they are getting gibbed left and right. When i have a guy slathered with all heals available to me and he gets whacked out before anything can tick, it's noticeable. On the rare occasion when we do have a couple of rank 6 guys(especially warriors) running on our side, the battle suddenly evens out. When the enemy team isn't playing guardian pinball and getting guild perk heal after guild perk heal and has their own defense to worry about things change. With the introduction of the next level of raid weapons this is probably going to get worse before it gets better.

Yep, gear is a HUGE factor. I played as a healer cleric (typically sent/warden/templar) myself, and there was a great survivability leap once I was able to buy rank2/3 gear -- suddenly I could tank melee attackers and some casters, while before that (in blue / T1 dungeon gear) I was 3-shot even by the worst keyboard turners in existence as long as they had raid or r5+ gear. I can only imagine that with access to r5+ gear my survivability would've gotten even better.

edit: in retrospect, being able to get to the tier3 templar talents helped more... however, that's still tied to the rank grind

All this makes me wonder why they even bother opening BG's to levels <50.  It really is a twink-fest, since everyone is limited in spec.  And honestly, it does seem to be only about gear.  For while there may be some FOTM, specs are easily searched and sharred.  I think gear and organization/caring is the key.   

I'm genuinely not complaining, since I would like to try PvP at 50. But I can't see how that will be possible if 1) I have to grind favor now in always losing BG's to buy entry level gear at 50, or 2) I'm expected to grind favor and rank at 50 in green gear.  EIther way it's unpleasant.

And yeah, it's about sustainability. How do they expect Guards (if they are always weaker) to stick around?  I just can't help thinking if our win to lose ratio is accurately near 1:8 or higher, how attrition won't rise. 

Better non-QQ leaning question: is Trion monitoring PvP stats?  And is there any evidence they provide any balance/nerfs? 

the 8 to 1 loss ratio i posted was just what i experienced the last couple of weeks on the cluster involving the Sunrest cluster. This is probably not indicative of all clusters or any one side, but it does show a problem for that cluster. I spent a couple of hours every day during the week and probably 8-12 hours over each weekend. It goes somewhat better early in the mornings on the weekend and got significantly worse after about 10a.m. through primetime.

As to this being a PITA for new guys, yea, i would probably shut the game off quickly if i was a fresh 50 having to go up against r6 parachamps and r6 groups of 5. To make it a bit worse you have some of them running around with relic weapons now that are better than anything you will ever touch as a pure pvp player. That is kind of the icing on the cake. If you are a raider in the guild who likes to own noobs and have the time to kill, then i'm sure this setting plays out perfectly. For new blood i'm pretty sure this is going to kill the game for them. Everyone wants at least a chance, but when the guy you are fighting has 40% valor and weapons with twice your damage output i don't really see that as the case.

For a while there they had premades out of the pug que, and i can honestly say that was a lot of fun while it lasted and actually seemed pretty balanced. Even losses for those 3 days didn't get to me because most were competitive matches. It is quite another thing to get farmed in Port Scion for 20 minutes and come out with 400 favor. I'm not sure if that is exactly what i got in the last one, but regardless, it was a painful loss and the reward for trying to fight was pretty pitiful.

I started to PVP, but I have nearly BiS everything from the PVE end of things.  Having zero Valor is terrible.  Still, playing a ranged character I can do lots of damage, I just die if anyone attacks me directly.

Rank 2/3 gear will be an overall downgrade.  I'll wait for the new PVP armor system to come on and look at whats available.

As a quest-geared character, I have zero interest in getting pwned repeatedly in pvp. Gear imbalance isn't the kind of pvp I like, even the newer shooters are putting in gear imbalance. So...fuckitol.

Even at rank 6, warriors will kill you in 2-3 GCD's.  Allowing raid weapons into the wf's was the STUPIDEST idea that Trion ever had. 

Draegan, most people in the WF's are terrible.  I'm an average to above average pvp player and I am quite successful on my mage.  I just had to learn a) how to properly spec for pvp, 2) how to recognize good and bad situations, and c) know when to run.  I play often with someone that has your identical situation (all raid gear and no valor) and they do very well.  You just have to know how to take advantage of your tools and spec for your playstyle.  I've been playing my marksman quite a lot lately and find that pre-kiting is a way of life.  Keep the warrior premade trains at 25-30m and you'll be unstoppable. 

Some tips:

- Do the pvp dailies (they are pve quests)
- Do the daily wf
- get the pvp sigil and a few pvp lessers in it. 
- look at your spec carefully
- play until frustration gets the better of you
- as ranged, stick to codex.  Whitefall can be fun but the rate of favor/prestige is slow. BG and PS are zergfests that favor warriors/AE.
- Save your favor for rank 5-6 gear

Hope that helps.

This is all known already.  Valor is the sticking point.  I can still get top 3 damage unless the WF is a shitfest.

Just pointing out that having no valor makes living in the PVP world tough.  I'm only doing Codex since the best trinket in the game is the one from the rep vender.  (Best until the one in HK drops)

I've played in R2/3 gear and in full R6 gear.  The difference in survivability (as a mage) is too small to notice.  I imagine it's the same for a rogue. I rely FAR more heavily on cooldowns to survive than I do valor gear. 

As for the "This is all known already" line, I was just trying to help. 

Good lord is PvP at 50 unfun compared to the leveling brackets.

Granted my not so leet pvp skills are fairly rusty as I've been pve'ing lately, but the change from the leveling warfronts to now is rough.

I found out why costumes are a bad idea and why Blizzard is right in their idea that you should be able to tell what someone is at a glance. The guy in the white dress that bashed my face in was a bit of surprise. I know I can tell rogues, warriors and casters apart by their energy bars. For mages and casters I need to check buffs.

PvP should not dictate PvE rules. Costumes disabled when your PvP flag is enabled. Period, end of story, please stop PvP QQ that fucks with my dress-up. Thanks.

Also, separate out PvP/E ability effects, too, so PvP imbalances stop fucking with the PvE game. Trion really screwed that whole thing up pretty badly imo.

I like costumes being active in pvp.  It makes my opponents have to think. 

I can tell in about 2s what class everyone is by merely targeting them.  My PvP rule of thumb: Kill anything with a bow or a mana bar first!

Picking out clerics is my problem.

In rank 1 gear the two seconds as I roll up to something is two seconds too long. Most of my fights tend to be "Where'd he go? Where'd who go?"

The new weekend version of Whitefall seems to me to be much improved over the normal version.  At least now you have a chance to come back from being behind, and some incentive to try to (as opposed to just sitting in a corner and waiting for the clock to run down after the other team scores first and turtles up).  The payout for winning or losing also seems considerably better.  Too bad it's only a weekend version, maybe if enough people bitch they will swap it in as a permanent replacement.

Being able to tell what class someone is doesn't tell you jack shit about what they can do in this game.  You still need to pay attention to their buffs and abilities.

funny story.   

My main is a Rogue only at 33 (27 days in) and I got tired of the bracket, so I rolled a helpful cleric.  In the 10-19 bracket it was the same rolfstomp story.  So, Wed I rolled a cleric on the Defiant side, same shard.  Leveled to 10 by Fri...  and exact same shit.

Guard curbstomping and farming us galore.

But not to worry.  I can get my revenge by going back to my lvl 10 Guard cleric... but then the EXACT SAME SHIT occurred.

how can this happen?   I literally would play 2-3 consecutive BG's, lose each, switch sides, lose again.  I tried this consistently Fri and Sat night.   It's very bizarre.  Each side I join gets mauled 20:500, 150:500.   It's making me crazy.  We're maybe 1:5 wins to loses on whatever side I switch to.  :uhrr:

(http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Humor/Cats/CatAndMirror.jpg)

Weird...   :why_so_serious:

roflpvp

The problem isn't really guardians vs defiants, it's solo queuers vs organized people.  Even two people working together (who don't count as a premade) can easily turn the tide of a warfront.

yup I gathered it's not one side that always prevails.  Apologies if that's coming across.  It's just a very weird experience.

Latest update had a whole bunch of PVP ONLY balance fixes for skills.  Isn't this what people have been asking for?

I would be excited about this had it not been for the fact that Trion released PvP Rifts which people have been exploiting.  In a single day exploiters have earned as much valor as it took me 3 months to obtain.   The nerf to healing also took pvp in the wrong direction.  I'm pretty much done with Rift and just spinning my wheels waiting for SWTOR to release.

How were pvp rifts exploitable? fuck, i always miss all the good bugs.

On some servers the two sides been cooperating to maximize rewards for both sides. It's like in PlanetSide how people used to trade captures in the caves to get the BFR cert faster.

I'd be happier if they didn't need to "fix" pve skills for pvp...  :dead_horse:  :grin:

But I'm also spinning wheels for TOR, though I'm happy with the probably release window, it should be about perfect for actually getting some project knocked off the list, wood in the garage and everything locked down for winter, then..catass ahoy!

If you somehow got organized with the enemy, say on vent or something, you could trade-off by popping a rift, picking up the stones, walking 5 feet and clicking off the buff to drop the stone and letting the enemy pick it up.  200 prestige/favor for everyone in the picking-up group.  Do that for the 15min duration of the rift, then the other side opens it rinse/repeat.  It was roughly ~20k prestige every 30minutes (15 mins really, but the other side got a turn where you made 0 while they picked up the stones.)

This is all hypothetical of course.

On an unrelated note, my alt hit rank 4, yay!

I am playing on a PvP server and am currently level 35. Does the game have much open world PvP? Do you ever reach a stage where players are fighting over objectives in the world?

I've been doing the warfronts quite a lot but I think what I really want is a game like Rift (or Warhammer) which doesn't have warfronts or anything like them at all.

Depends on your server, but for the most part world pvp is dead in most mmo.

For open world, I think your best bets are coming up with GW2 and Prime

There is always a lot of world pvp around the pvp daily areas. 

I'm not on a PvP server, but I recently reached the Iron Pine Peaks zone for the first time and wondered how that area is doing from an open world PvP perspective. The Chancel of Labors has Defiant and Guardian camps literally on the opposite side of the building from each other. Then a little farther out, there is White Fall and Sanctuary, Defiant and Guardian outposts that are separated by a single short bridge.  I would think those would be PvP hot spots on a PvP server.

http://community.riftgame.com/en/2011/08/31/pvp-gear-improvements-%E2%80%93-now-with-a-touch-of-vengeance/ (http://community.riftgame.com/en/2011/08/31/pvp-gear-improvements-%E2%80%93-now-with-a-touch-of-vengeance/)

New PvP stat for gear.

I'm studiously ignoring PvP in this WoW clone... so no comment on whether this will "fix" PvP.  My magic eight ball, however, says: outlook not so good.

This is really the most important part:

I won't remove the fact that you have to repeat playing the same 4 BG's a million times before you get competitive gear.  By competitive, I mean on equal footing with all of the people that cheated to get their pvp gear.   :why_so_serious:

They're trying.  I'll give them that. 

The amount of people who abused PVP Rifts is so much smaller than the community at large that is PVPing.

The minority that did abuse pvp rifts had a notable impact on deterring new 50's and low rank players from participating for at least a week or two.  It was obvious from the change in queue times, which I noted playing as both defiant and guardian on two different clusters. 

For me personally, it was a nice excuse to walk away from the game.  I was bored to tears with the repetitive dungeon grind and after running GSB and RoS a few times, I had no interest in looking for a raiding guild.  PvP was the only reason to log on and that got ruined when I started seeing fully geared rank 8's a few days after the patch. 

Every single person in my guild that may have allegedly "abused" pvp rifts had their favor, prestige, tokens, gear, etc rolled back to pre-pvp-rift levels, and most got hit for a little extra.  I probably got about 80k prestige out of the 5-8 pvp rifts we traded stone drops with the defiants on, and they took away 140k prestige, all of my marks, most of my favor, my R3/4 crystal, and at least 2 pieces of R4 gear, one of which was replaced with the r2 variant.

So yeah, I don't think there are that many people running around with 'cheated' gear, I only did it for 2 nights, a few rifts each night, and nowhere near the level some of these guys were doing.  Apparently the first hotfix was because there were people who figured out how to simultaneously open 3 pvp rifts at once in a zone, and were going from R1-R8 in a day.  With only 1 pvp rift it was possible to get between 10-20k prestige/20mins if you picked up/dropped the crystals fast enough to keep the max spawn rate.  3 of those at once, with a few "enemy" alts to play crystal ferry, and you're looking at ~100-200k prestige per hour, or R6-R8 in <5hours.

If they're nailing people who got <100k prestige total out of the "abuse", I'm pretty sure the folks who pulled in >500k/1M got fucked long before the little guys.  Hell, they even hit one of my friends alts for like 100k prestige, and he only 'abused' on his main.  I wouldn't be shocked to find out a lot of folks got rolled back 20-60k and never did anything other than legitimate pvp rifts, it seemed very poorly done - but that's how 90% of any CS interactions with Trion feel, so meh.

I quit when I got repeatedly rolled on two different clusters by fully geared, rank 8 premades just days after the patch.  I never waited around to see that Trion did anything about it.  

Thanks for the update, Nerf.  It gives me more respect for the Trion team.  

I've made my way to Iron Pine peaks and it is good fun. You have PvP Rifts, and often run into the other side just doing quests.

I'm too low to be there really, but some of the Guardian characters have been pretty cool and left my defiant character alone. If only they knew what a heartless bastard I am when I get the chance for an easy kill  ;D

It seems to me like it was brilliantly done.

Rift is full of the same bull shit every MMO seems to do to screw over PvPers starting with Gear.  PvE for gear vs PvP for gear is about 20x more grind for PvPers.  Then when you finally get that "high end" pvp gear the PvE gear is still better.  Mix with this the premades vs pugs problem which still exists, gj on that fix morons.  Then add in doing PvE quests for PvP points where the daily area is for a rogue what a playground is for a pedophile.  Moving to warfronts its still better for healers to DPS for maximum favor so most games even if you get 5 healers 1 actually heals and the other 4 play DPS cle....MAGE.  Addition of valor was nothing short of stupid f'ing stupid and healers STILL benefit from this more then anyone else.  Not sure why every MMO has to shit on PvPers or at the least blend their combined brain power to come up with a warm cup of dumb. 

Thanks to the recent patch, I resubbed to this game, and based on all of your guys advice, I rolled a defiant because I didn't want to play on the eternally losing side in pvp. Well thanks a lot assholes. I finally get a free weekend to play, and the defiants have literally not won a single warfront the entire time.

Transfer to Briarcliff, Threesprings, Harrow, Silkweb, Gnarlwood, Byriel they own the cluster on the Defiant side.

Which brings me to an actual gripe, why the hell did they not cluster all the PvP servers together?  My PvE server (Threesprings), which I didn't realize had forum members on it until recently, is clustered with;

Briarcliff (PvP)
Byriel (PvE)
Gnarlwood (PvE)
Harrow (PvP-RP)
Silkweb (PvE)
Snarebrush (PvE)

Suprisingly enough, on the two PvP servers the Defiant dominate, and that translates to the WF's as well.  I'm willing to bet 90% of the players I see in the WF's are from Briarcliff every day.  Wouldn't creating clusters of the PvP players and PvE players make more sense?  I'm on the Guardian side, and most likely going to transfer out of the cluster to one that's at least slightly competitive.  Just seems like shitty planning to me.

Library of the Runemasters (new WF), or whatever is the name, with 100% Prestige/Favor potions basically made everyone into R8 over the past weekend. Not a bad thing, if you ask me. And if you missed it, next weekend will be the same.

So I've been playing with a 30ASN 16 NB and 20 RS build in pvp and I'm looooooving it.  I can actually can do damage and kill people.  Much better damage and kill ability than any Slip-Away stealth build.

Survivability is your escapability.  No stealthing but shifting and blinking all over the place.

Ive been playing Marksman more lately, having fun staying at range.  Respecd quite a few times trying to get down that perfect balance of surv and Dmg. 

I play a MM build as well, and it's a lot of fun.  If I have an average team, I'll go melee.  If my team sucks, I'll go MM.

My pvp gear is *far* too crap for me to consider anything but marksman really. I only have the initial first 4 items and don't get much time to play so I'm not going to hit a high prestige rank unfortunately. Getting in close just isn't an option when anyone nearby will shred you in seconds.

Reason 1 of a thousand why I don't bother with pvp.

Carebear

Other than slightly more hps the higher rank pvp gear doesn't give more survivability.

True, but it does open up the synergy crystals and adding in the world pvp trinket and sigil can add 150 valor.

Once more, with feeling.

Actually no, those come from order of the eye rep which is tied entirely to order of the eye rep which comes from world pvp dailies and pvp rifts only.  After rank 2 the only ways to get more valor are order of the eye rep and the port scion head enchant.

The Unseen is the Defiant version.

Fuck, they just nerfed the massive prestige/favor/exp everyone was getting from the pvp accolades.

Apparently people were sitting in WF's allowing other people to go "on rampages" and each team would take turns wracking up the xp.

Meh. I managed to hit rank 2 but the sight of 90000 prestige needed just to hit rank 3 really puts me off doing anymore. How insane does the grind get at later levels?

It's bad.  Only made better by the event weekends.  Fortunately, I only had to do it against rank 6 people.  I can't imagine starting now with a bunch of rank 8's out there.

Sounds like fun.

I don't think I'll even make 50 for the solo dungeons, let alone bother with pvp.

I'd rather build a new tower in minecraft.

I'm sitting at rank 3 slowly progression, and since I have HK gear I do quite well with only the stock 50 valor now thanks to the Rogue changes. 

If you pvp during weekends only you can make steady progression at a rate that feels "right".  If you pvp during weekends and have the prestige/favor pots it goes very fast.

With TOR beta down spent the past 5 days back in Rift using up my favor and prestige pots of f*cking goodness.  Got from 1200 points into rank 7 to 310K, just 140K short now from rank 8.  Prett dam nice favor, prestige and attunement xp with these suckers.  Too bad the bonus weekend was whitefall but games still went prety quick.  I am gonna roll major face when I get the rank 8 daggers and finalize that set. 

1.6 can suck me.  Just took a 3400 dmg hit from a mage.  I would accept that if I were rank 2 but as a fully geared rank 8 rogue thats nothing short of retarded.  AGE OF THE MAGE!!

Your thread seems to have made a few friends on the Rift Forums.  My main is a mage and this isn't enough to make me want to resub.  Once they introduced ranks 7 & 8 the game's replay value in pvp vanished.

Yeah I did it more for laughs.  People thought rogues were bad when we got buffed, its nothing to what mages are now.

1.7 is changing things up. Spreading out the prestige ranks from 8 to 40. Removing the PvP souls and folding them into a new Planar Attunement tree. Rank requirements are gone from PvP armor. Physical mitigation is being dropped for the tank specs.

A combination of Star Wars and the new ranked matches has seen a drop in player numbers and an corresponding increase in que times. To address this, they are testing out a new "Mercenary" system, ie no defiant/guardian in the WFs.