PvP and Why It Sucks (As a level 50 Marauder)

50 Assassin valor 46 re-rolling Marauder, trust me bro i've seen Marauders do some crazy things - me jelly, really.. don't complain about your class.

It's a heavily edited highlights video, and as such says nothing about the class overall. Which any half reasonable person should be able to see.

Question for you: How would a video of class X look (where X is any class), if you had 10% expertise, were fighting randoms, hugged the expertsise buffs, and only showed clips where you popped adrenal+trinket and was lucky?


Now, sentinels/marauders are not close to as bad as some people make them out to be, but there is an advantage in this game for ranged vs sentinels/marauders. Simply look at the abilities sentinels/marauders have to close distance, and their cooldowns, and the abilities for ranged to gain distance and their cooldowns. The end result you'll see is that any e.g. sorceress that actually bothers to get range won't ever be catched outside a 3 minute cooldown (call on the force+transendence), which will give a few seconds of uptime. (Force leap (15s)=knockback(20s), Force Camo (45s)=force stun (50s), Force leap(15s up again) = Force Sprint (30s)). I will only be able to do damage if you waste your cooldowns on something else and i focus everyone i have to stick to you.

If the average opposing team would have consisted of one of each advanced class there would be 5 melee and 3 ranged, and that would have been fine. Now the average imperial team i come across has 6 ranged and 2 melee, and most of the ranged sorceresses. Again if resolve was actually useful the massive stacking of slightly too many individual knockbacks, stuns and roots would be manageable, but resolve isn't nearly as good as it has to be. And if you're the only melee the tab target + nuke champions will infallably target you, and then pop the first thing they can come up with, which is a stun, which still doesn't mess up the kiting of the target we're on because resolve is too weak.

Sentinels excel at two things:

#1 Killing bad players, especially when supported by a healer. This is due to our neverending resources andactual ramp up time to be able to use Zen/Transendence. This gives some really nice screenshots of high damage.

#2 Highlight reels of 1vX when popping every cooldown we have in a single fight.


Note that i said that sentinels/marauders are not as bad as some people make them out to be. But anyone denying that an equally geared and well played ranged have the upper hand is in denial. The balance issue isn't huge, but is compounded by the fact that 75% of imperial players at least seems to play ranged classes.

@OP complaining about squishiness:

Sents and Maras have the three most effective defensive abilities in the game. I don't know the Mara equivalents, but Guarded by the Force, Saber Ward, Rebuke are extremely strong.

I've been directed here by GM for sharing PvP experience so here we go.

I am a Sith Assassin. I am new to this game obviously just like the whole game is so it is probably understandable that I do not know very much about the other classes. I gonna tell this from my POV.

First failure: I know that not only Assassin, but we are very critical strike dependant.
Why is this bad ? Simply because for example of the Critical Multiplier. A critical strike becomes way better than a hit so the critical chance becomes too important. This is especially annoying since for example Operatives can get 22% passive extra critical strike chance from talents for their main dmg abilities.
Compared to how frustrating the Assassin dmg is, like 3x3500 Maul crits followed by 15 700 hits etc., Operatives have a much more steady DPS because of the ~50% critical strike chance.

Second failure: When I play a Warzone I am playing to win it. For example in Voidstar what I do is. As an Assassin, sneak to the doors and while my friends lure the enemy away, I am waiting for the right moment to place the bomb. Most of the times, from the 6 objectives I take at least 4/6 on a regular basis. Now this is I think a very good teamplay and this is how Voidstar should be played, yet I don't get any reward for playing to win the game. I most of the times get my 0-1 medal.

This is I think far from fair rewarding compared to the mindless "mid farm" 9-10 medal gainings. I don't say it is bad to controll places like middle or beat the enemy by power but also I should get my rewards for winning us the Warzone. There are times when you can't just kill the enemies because they are just keep respawning so then I become a very important part of the Warzone with ninja placing a bomb when the defenders just don't pay attention for that 8 seconds.
This applies for Huttball too and so does for Civil War. You go straight for the objectives and if you don't stop at the end and farm middle for at least 5 min, you will be the "worst" player in the Warzone.

Third failure: Huttball random wind jumper. Huttball brings a new way to PvP, I understand the need of ramps, bridges, firewalls and even the random wind jumper. But do not make it as random as it is now. Like it is ok to throw me to random sides of the ramps but at least throw me up all the time!
It is not ok that the ball handler gets thrown up and I get just thrown back down 3 times in a row. It can be really a win or loss situation depending on where I land. With the sprint, passes and other cool abilities, you can not waste 20 seconds by trying your luck and fail.
I shouldn't use it and run around to the ramp ? No, that would make the wind jumper nonsense. Because if it's better to not use it, then why would it be there at all ? To fool new players ? This should be changed I think.

Fourth failure: Champion bags. I don't want to really go in details here, there are tons of other topics about this. In a nutshell, it is far from an acceptable system that one person gets full epic PvP gear in a week and the other with a month of Warzone farm.

Fifth failure: Way too strong healers. I don't think I am a bad PvPer at all and when a healer just backpedals and spamming one ability (I ain't sure but the same animation over and over again is probably because he uses the same ability) but I still can't kill him, there is something wrong.
I have ~35 binds which I use too vs his one button. If I play good and I am vs a bad player, I kinda think I should be able to beat him without any problem.

That's all for now I think, and also I think it's bad that we don't have a 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 arena. Other things I won't mention because many of my wishes are already in the "near future" plans at the community news.

Lets start:

*The random bag is simply a badly done system.

*People that have the ball in hutball should not be able to get pulled / jump / force speed their way past things. To balance it the person with the ball should move abit faster then what (s)he do right now.

*The entire system for how warzones handle "points" need to be remade. Right now its more about who can whack more people then "who can win the objective". There need to be greater rewards for doing the objective / working as a team then running around in zerg or ignoring the goal of the map. For example having people that make throws get extra points if you score. Have the person that score get a reward. Have people get more points for attacking people that attack the ball carrier / heal the ball carrier.

*The entire pvp planet need to be remade from the ground up INCLUDING the map / area itself. There need to be choke points. There need to be "capture" objectives, there need to be greater rewards for killing players. All the Doodad objects that are ugly as hell (the robots) need to be removed. Either make them part of the world (as in you have to destroy them by fighting them or just change them to bunkers / communication centers / Medical bays.

While some wont agree i also think there should be npc's that help guard areas and depending on the factions look they should be stronger / weaker. If its balanced then they are overall weak. Im not talking about a zerg or swarm of npc's. But simply add some to "slow" the progression of the attacks. With the help of choke points it would add a more intense combat scenario.

Like i said earlier. Kills should mater the most over there (or if you support someone killing someone else (as a tank / healer)) on the pvp planet. However that dont mean that objectives should not be important. Once you kill someone you should get a buff (and if you support by guarding / healing you will get another buff) said buff should give you a reward when you leave the area in some way. The more objectives you helped with at your stay the larger the reward boost will be. This will also create longer pvp scenario's as people will want to stay for a longer time on the planet to pvp to gain even larger boosts.

And the last thing...

*All abilities / classes should be 100% mirrored. If one roots you when you use it both should do it (or the other way around). If one is instant with no travel time then the other one should be the same.

Just my 2 cent

*puts on a fire resistance shield* :>

Marauders have an amazing 20% healing debuff that lasts for 15 seconds and is only on a 12 second CD, a 15 sec CD 30m leap that is immensely useful in PvP, and one of the best interrupts in the game that costs only 1 Rage and is on only an 8 second CD, a really solid accuracy debuff, several really solid defensive abilities such as Saber Ward, Cloak of Pain, and, in a pinch, Undying Rage; not to mention a few truly incredible party buffs that use 30 stacks of Fury, which is quickly generated in big fights and can be instantly granted once every 3 minutes with the Frenzy ability....

The class is not one for button mashers, that's for sure. It's got strengths and weaknesses, just like everyone else... but if you're not making a significant contribution to your team and personally dealing out a whole lot of hurt, then you're doing it wrong.

As to the PvP issues with the game in general... are you really going to complain about stealthers being able to stealth away out of combat right before you're about to kill them? Because you realize that is a feature of stealthers in most MMOs, and is certainly not exclusive to this one. You also do realize that you're complaining about that... and you play a class that can also do the same thing...? Come on, dude....

I am gonna see if I might be able to get a stream going later on.

Hopefully teaching people something, and hopefullly not ending up getting the class nerfed.

good post and you are right

you'll be disapointed

Good post not sure if I agree with all of it but the main point that I am very concerned about is the risk/reward for open world PvP their needs to be a incentive for people to PvP in open world maps. You can have fun PvPing in the open world but there is not enough players doing it.