I have four level 55 toons. Two are healers, the others are DPS.
With the exception of my “main”, I leveled those almost entirely through PVP. Hell, I haven’t even finished my Imperial Agent storyline and he’s healing HM Scum & Villainy.
The point is that I have pretty good experience with healing PVP. But something happened this weekend that really made me realize I forgot how rubbish it is to be a lowbie PVP healer early in that toon’s progression.
PvP isn’t pretty, easy or forgiving. This facet of SWTOR is for players who relish taking on live oppenents rather than scripted events. It’s not for everyone, but this Combat Log serves a ramp up for SWTOR PvP.
A new frontier is rapidly approaching for the PvP community in SWTOR. There is ‘Naked’ PvP and 4 tiers of Warzones headed this way. What does this all add up to? Keep reading for my thoughts.
PvP isn’t pretty, easy or forgiving. This facet of SWTOR is for players who relish taking on live oppenents rather than scripted events. It’s not for everyone, but this Combat Log serves a ramp up for SWTOR PvP.
Last week I wrote about banding together when venturing into PvP Warzones. This week I’ll go over improving your performance in Warzones.
I tweeted last week about playing Warzones in SWTOR. The comment was “If you can’t tell who the rookie is, it’s you.” With that mind set, I held my head high and carried the rookie tag with pride. Needless to say I took many blaster bolts to the cranium.
There is hope though, fellow rookie Warzone adventurers! It is safe to say my skills have improved and there is a definite PvP future in my playtime. Keep reading for all the gory details of my Warzone experience.
As part of BioWare’s regular Meet the Developers feature, players were able to ask Rob Hinkle, Sr. Systems Designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, a few questions. A few of the questions that were asked was regarding future PvP updates. Rob’s answers revealed nothing definite per say, but they did hint at a few reasons for SWTOR’s PvPers to keep a careful watch on the forums and in-game updates. Keep reading to see the corresponding question and answer.
After Tuesday’s strong reactions to the announced Resolve and PvP-centric class changes coming to Game Update 1.4, BioWare’s community team took the time to clarify some of the changes in two dev tracker replies. The first clarification we received was in this thread: 1.4 Nerfing classes for PVP reasons, impacts PVE:
Originally posted by AllisonBerryman (Source)
I talked to Senior Designer Austin Peckenpaugh and Senior PvP Designer Rob Hinkle about the concerns that developers allow changes made that primarily affect either PvP or PvE to negatively affect the other part of the game.While it’s true that some changes may be motivated by design requirements in one gameplay mode, we never make a change without confidence that it’s fun and appropriate in all gameplay modes. We think it’s natural for players to think of the game as two different sub-games and to dislike changes made for a sub-game they don’t participate in, but that mindset couldn’t be further from the case for us. We only ever look at the game as a complete package, and it’s always our goal to deliver one cohesive and coherent gameplay experience. If, during our playtesting, we find that one experience suffers at the cost of another, we revisit our design goals and our options and reassess our approach.
Overload and Force Wave, for example, now reach 15 meters in front of you. This is almost twice the previous range. The extra reach is quite a bit of fun and quite useful all around. Similarly, although stuns that now have a 10-meter range are irrefutably worse, we’ve taken measures to correct for this loss by adding a few new tools and skills to the affected classes. From our internal playtesting and feedback, we’re confident that the new experience is more fun. Ultimately, we want you guys to be able to tell us what is and isn’t fun, so we’re looking forward to players actually testing these changes in-game on the PTS and giving us good, constructive feedback that is based on playing with the changes.
It’s interesting to see BioWare’s stance on balancing changes for PvP and consequently affecting PvE as well. Unfortunately, many Inquisitor/Consular players weren’t looking for new abilities altogether, and instead, wanted to see their PvE utility remain consistent. Keep reading for the second dev tracker reply.
Yesterday, Austin Peckenpaugh, Senior Designer on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, gave us a developer blog update with some important info regarding class changes and PvP mechanic changes that will be happening in Game Update 1.4.
We’ll be seeing some changes to Trooper/BH and Inquisitor/Consular crowd control abilities, a new interrupt for Mercenaries and Commandos, a new self-healing ability for Sorcerers and Sages, some adjustments to in-combat stealth abilities, and the following changes to the Resolve system:
We’ve also made adjustments to the Resolve system in Game Update 1.4. We’ve adjusted the gain logic of Resolve such that simultaneous and overlapping control effects no longer linearly add together their Resolve gain values. Instead, using a crowd control ability on an already controlled target now applies reasonable Resolve gain values by comparing the incoming control effect to the greatest of existing control effects.
As a result of these Resolve changes, unorganized teams will no longer pay huge penalties for overlapping control effects at critical moments. For example, it can frustrate players when pickup groups accidentally make a Marauder immune to Control because two or more teammates tried to stun him at once. The resulting unstoppable wrecking ball that the attacker transforms into made for a pretty poor experience for players trying to escape him. Additionally, we don’t like it when a Huttball ball carrier gets “fed” full Resolve by a disorganized pickup group trying to stop him from scoring by simultaneously landing multiple Control effects.
Check out the full Developer Blog for all the details. If you’re interesting in community opinions, also make sure and check out the feedback discussion thread on the official forums.
Massively posted a two-part specific class guide to Huttball that offers tips and discuses strategies individual classes often use to succeed while playing a match in the Warzone. Players might think their particular class isn’t very useful in Huttball, but in reality, every class has a niche of sorts. Here is what the author says:
Admittedly, certain classes do have more utilities that make them a better fit for the game, but I believe every class has its role in this particular arena. And more importantly, I believe that every class can have fun and feel useful. However, some players need a bit of training.
The article goes on to explain specific strategies and abilities that players of various specs can think about using. It also describes the areas where each class will excel at in a Huttball match. In all likelihood, this advice is probably more suited toward newer players, but even experienced Huttball fans may learn a thing or two.
Yesterday, Allison Berryman took the time to seek out Rob Hinkle, Senior PvP Designer, and get a few questions from the PvP community answered that were originally asked in this forum thread. Some of the information revealed pertains to Ancient Hypergates, Ranked Warzones, Season 1, and 8-man team queues in non-ranked Warzones.
Originally posted by AllisonBerryman (Source)
Hey everyone! I don’t have answers to all the questions in the OP and throughout the thread, but I’ll keep them coming as I’m able to. Here are a couple I got answers for after talking to Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer).Ancient Hypergates will be available in the Ranked Warzones queue as soon as it’s in-game; no wait for it to get added.
Regarding queuing as an 8-player team for non-ranked Warzones: We won’t say “never,” but we don’t have plans for this right now. We want to try to keep the regular Warzones competitive in their own right, and allowing full pre-mades to potentially match with a full PUG could be problematic. We’d want to avoid situations like that.
For Ranked Warzones and queuing with less than 8 players: This is something we have plans for, but we haven’t announced a timeframe for it (it won’t be available in 1.4).
About Season 1: Right now, we have a little more work that needs to be done overall before we’re ready to officially kick it off, and I can tell you that it won’t be launched as part of 1.4. We’ll keep you updated! The PvP game won’t be neglected – we do have Ancient Hypergates on the way as well as new PvP gear, and we have a lot more in store for you!
The good news: at least the PvP community has received some answers, and may be getting more in the future. The bad news? Most of them aren’t that encouraging, and from the looks of it– Game Update 1.4 won’t be very focused on PvP fixes and updates to current in-game content.
With the addition of Ranked Warzones, many PvP players are becoming frustrated about the current scoring system in Voidstar when it comes to matches that end in a draw. The scoring system currently randomly awards a winning team when this happens, ignoring all other aspects of the match as far as kills and successful defenses go. The system has been around since beta, and players understandably want something less random.
A thread was created yesterday in the PvP forums where players discussed their frustration over the current scoring system, and suggested some ideas for fixes. A BioWare Customer Service representative stopped by and issued an update, announcing a change coming to Voidstar’s scoring system:
Originally posted by AllisonBerryman (Source)
Hey everyone! I just talked with Rob Hinkle on the PvP team about this, and he let me know that:1) Yes, right now, if neither team breaches the first set of doors, the winner is determined randomly (in case anyone wasn’t sure).
2) We have a change coming that will determine the winner in this case by taking each team’s number of kills into account.
Thanks for posting to let us know your thoughts on this topic!
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