First off i just want to say the level 10? - 40 bracket pvp was awesome fun. You fought someone and they actually started taking damage and you actually started taking damage and before long you both got low, a bit of craziness happened and then someone died. Great fun. Standard, simple, pvp.

The higher bracket? You do a rotation on someone, the entire rotation does nothing, you have 3 enemies focusing you and they are doing absolutely nothing. You switch targets onto someone down about half life who your team is on, and they end up going full and nothing happens. You try to focus healers doing rotation after rotation and nothing happens. 3min later and maybe just maybe one person died, to stunlock. Accidentally. Probably.

Wut?

It seems to be about the rampant healing when mixed with DCD's, utility and self heals. Whichever team has more healers wins. Have to focus the healers. Whoevers healers go down first will lose the fight as now only 1 team is invincible. If you're having a fun 1v1 on a side objective and a healer comes along, the other side just instantly loses that fight and objective. Need to time your burst because of healers. It's all about the healers.

Healers healers healers.

Some say as mentioned above "learn to time burst" but what you are actually saying (im not sure if you're aware of it or not) is you either need to stunlock, or afk for half the match to save cd's for a specific few seconds of each minute of each fight of each person of each warzone, usually meaning waiting on others stunlocking because your stun is on cd.

Both of those are just a chore and the most unhealthy pvp balance i've ever seen.

When doing 5 full proper rotations as a Marauder (highest damage, not much else on offer because of it) in a 4v4 and everyone (including myself) literally still being full heath, you know there is a balance problem.

Others have said it's for the level 70 boosters because they don't know how to play and i hope that isn't true. You know capitalism has gone too far when a company makes it so no-one dies in pvp (under the right circumstances, usually the majority of the time with even adequate players) because "if no1 dies, everybody is happy!"

Gaming companies should not be designing severely unhealthy gameplay for more income.

Not to mention you won't get far in pvp catering to casuals. They aren't who are going to stick around for it in the longer term and will want every class and their dog nerfed into the ground and still be unhappy and can't handle it when they lose and will go back to their PvE safety bubble.

Or does it say more about the general population of today as we know it - most people not being able to handle losing in pvp so much so that devs need to make it so no-one dies just to keep people playing/happy?

If it's not that then why else is higher level pvp so broken? Why is it such a tedious, unfun chore, especially after being introduced to an awesome, simple and fun version of it in the lower bracket?

Can the vets that have been around shed some light on things? Am i wrong? Did i get the problem of healers + dcd's/utlities/selfhealing wrong? and needing to rely on "burst windows" and "stunlocking"? Do i just need to "git gud"? Which im sure either way will be posted in this thread.

Thanks for your time.

P.S Seriously considering just making new characters over and over again just to play lower level warzone, could probably even have multiple accounts with the same class to spam warzones without needing to sub, not sure why i should be giving them money when i'm reduced to having to do that to play some decent and balanced pvp.

First off i just want to say the level 10? - 40 bracket pvp was awesome fun. You fought someone and they actually started taking damage and you actually started taking damage and before long you both got low, a bit of craziness happened and then someone died. Great fun. Standard, simple, pvp.

 

The higher bracket? You do a rotation on someone, the entire rotation does nothing, you have 3 enemies focusing you and they are doing absolutely nothing. You switch targets onto someone down about half life who your team is on, and they end up going full and nothing happens. You try to focus healers doing rotation after rotation and nothing happens. 3min later and maybe just maybe one person died, to stunlock. Accidentally. Probably.

 

Wut?

 

It seems to be about the rampant healing when mixed with DCD's, utility and self heals. Whichever team has more healers wins. Have to focus the healers. Whoevers healers go down first will lose the fight as now only 1 team is invincible. If you're having a fun 1v1 on a side objective and a healer comes along, the other side just instantly loses that fight and objective. Need to time your burst because of healers. It's all about the healers.

 

Healers healers healers.

 

Some say as mentioned above "learn to time burst" but what you are actually saying (im not sure if you're aware of it or not) is you either need to stunlock, or afk for half the match to save cd's for a specific few seconds of each minute of each fight of each person of each warzone, usually meaning waiting on others stunlocking because your stun is on cd.

 

Both of those are just a chore and the most unhealthy pvp balance i've ever seen.

 

When doing 5 full proper rotations as a Marauder (highest damage, not much else on offer because of it) in a 4v4 and everyone (including myself) literally still being full heath, you know there is a balance problem.

 

Others have said it's for the level 70 boosters because they don't know how to play and i hope that isn't true. You know capitalism has gone too far when a company makes it so no-one dies in pvp (under the right circumstances, usually the majority of the time with even adequate players) because "if no1 dies, everybody is happy!"

 

Gaming companies should not be designing severely unhealthy gameplay for more income.

 

Not to mention you won't get far in pvp catering to casuals. They aren't who are going to stick around for it in the longer term and will want every class and their dog nerfed into the ground and still be unhappy and can't handle it when they lose and will go back to their PvE safety bubble.

 

Or does it say more about the general population of today as we know it - most people not being able to handle losing in pvp so much so that devs need to make it so no-one dies just to keep people playing/happy?

 

If it's not that then why else is higher level pvp so broken? Why is it such a tedious, unfun chore, especially after being introduced to an awesome, simple and fun version of it in the lower bracket?

 

Can the vets that have been around shed some light on things? Am i wrong? Did i get the problem of healers + dcd's/utlities/selfhealing wrong? and needing to rely on "burst windows" and "stunlocking"? Do i just need to "git gud"? Which im sure either way will be posted in this thread.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

P.S Seriously considering just making new characters over and over again just to play lower level warzone, could probably even have multiple accounts with the same class to spam warzones without needing to sub, not sure why i should be giving them money when i'm reduced to having to do that to play some decent and balanced pvp.

By design or not, PVP at level cap has always been this way, even back in 2012 after the game launched. I remember playing a ton of PVP that year, and healers were less common then compared to now.

Whichever team had a healer (or sometimes even two) won the WZ. The same problems you've described above also existed, though not to as extreme an outcome, if my memory is right - basically, TTK for most classes was lower due to fewer effective DCDs (especially self healing ones), and healers weren't *as* powerful as they appear to be now.

That said, if you queue with some friends or guildmates, PVP at level cap is much more enjoyable, because you are coordinating efforts between various classes and roles (up to 4 can queue together). Aside from that, playing "lowbie" or "midbie" can be a way around the problems you've outlined if that's what you prefer, though I'd argue "midbie" has many of the same issues.

Tedious chore: You spend your entire career in your chosen class chasing the stats to support that particular class. One gear grind after another -- and there are plenty, and they are tedious -- finally gets you to end game.

Then you learn to go to yet the NEXT gear grind, you must pretty much forget everything you just did and grind 600 points in a completely different stat or you won't even be able to enter the zones that are necessary for you to... keep grinding.

That is a true chore.

That's why I quit EQ2.

We have it easy here.

I am currently playing "midbie" these problems i was talking about are there and i'm not surprised only gets worse at end bracket. I kinda haven't played since making this thread though, because as great as end game PvE is - i need PvP as well if for nothing else than to let off steam once in awhile and/or have some fun and a break from raiding/end game content and face something smarter and more challenging than AI.

It's crazy if it's been like this since launch. I've been looking into it and apparently "skank" tanks make things worse, able to be a tank to disengage for healers while still doing a DPS's damage. Guarding and force pushing off healers, etc, while still able to work the enemy team down.

That probably makes things even worse when it comes to nobody dies or nothing happens for minutes on end.

It seems like whichever team has more healers and/or skanks (best of both tanking/disengage for healers as well as DPS) are going to win.

Why is even healing and tanking in pvp a thing? Every class has DPS spec as an option, what happened to the good ol pvp where it was more than just PvHealers? We don't need the holy trinity against eachother, that's for dungeons/raids/pve bosses -.-

This is MMO, deaths should happen less than in FPS or MOBA, though I do agree they sometimes happen too less. But you can't just expect people to rush in with a DPS and fight until death without healings and tanks, it would mean that 1v2 hasn't the slightest chance, and neither would 7v8. And if you happen to guard a node and are attacked by 3 people, you will have no chance to get help in time before you lose it.

DPS only is a good idea for TDM-only PVP, and I do like messing with the idea of such a mode existing. But objective PVP will simply not work without the trinity.

You fought someone and they actually started taking damage and you actually started taking damage and before long you both got low, a bit of craziness happened and then someone died. Great fun. Standard, simple, pvp.

Sounds like a first date.

This is MMO, deaths should happen less than in FPS or MOBA, though I do agree they sometimes happen too less. But you can't just expect people to rush in with a DPS and fight until death without healings and tanks, it would mean that 1v2 hasn't the slightest chance, and neither would 7v8. And if you happen to guard a node and are attacked by 3 people, you will have no chance to get help in time before you lose it.

 

DPS only is a good idea for TDM-only PVP, and I do like messing with the idea of such a mode existing. But objective PVP will simply not work without the trinity.

I didn't say you should die in one shot like an FPS or in 5 seconds like a MOBA. That's basically saying even though its one extreme, i'd rather it than the other extreme - there is plenty of middleground.

If you happen to guard an objective and 3 people come along, there is a good chance you won't be holding that node for long either way, that a healer won't make it in time. And if one of those 3 is a healer? then you still lose.

I've been thinking about it more and i came to realize something else. These are all the defensive/survival options we have in the game:

-Defensive, mobility, utility, self healing and cc skills

-Able to self heal to full after every fight and/or getting out of combat

-Able to actually tank in pvp for perhaps the first time ("guarding" "taunting" etc to reduce damage from healers, using force push and other stuff to disengage and protect further)

-Stimpack consumables giving 1min cd of 35% health and 15% damage reduction

-Dedicated healers

Put all that together and no wonder half the time no-one dies and nothing happens and pvp becomes a chore.

Pick just 2 of those and you probably have nicely balanced pvp. Maybe 3. But all 5? Jesus.

P.S TDM (Team Deathmatch?) would be amazing and i can guarantee what most pvp players are after when they play pvp. Imagine a battlefront with mmo style combat depth and skill, and imagine seeing all these awesome lightsaber skills and blaster fire etc over a big TDM style battleground.

That, is pvp.

Sounds like a first date.

You should probably avoid dating if this is how your dates turn out.

I've been thinking about it more and i came to realize something else. These are all the defensive/survival options we have in the game:

 

-Defensive, mobility, utility, self healing and cc skills

-Able to self heal to full after every fight and/or getting out of combat

-Able to actually tank in pvp for perhaps the first time ("guarding" "taunting" etc to reduce damage from healers, using force push and other stuff to disengage and protect further)

-Stimpack consumables giving 1min cd of 35% health and 15% damage reduction

-Dedicated healers

 

Put all that together and no wonder half the time no-one dies and nothing happens and pvp becomes a chore.

 

Pick just 2 of those and you probably have nicely balanced pvp. Maybe 3. But all 5? Jesus.

The problem is some of these things require having specific players in your team or being a specific class. If we would, for example, pick "Dedicated healers", "Able to actually tank in pvp" and "Defensive, mobility, utility, self healing and cc skills" that would mean that in a group without enough healers and no tanks you are dependant on your DCDs or 130k worth of damage will kill you. 2 DPS can deal 130k in 6 seconds. So that is how fast people will die when having no healers once without DCDs.

We need the system built in a way that the whole team focusing off targets one by one can be countered even if (besides the basic need of a healer) not all possible defensives are possible, and we also need all PVE roles to have worth in PVP. So healing must be there, and tanking must be there. Self-defense must exist to an extent for cases that the healers/tanks aren't there and for the ability to survive Master Mode solo content, though I agree like most people that some of the self-defenses are a bit OP when totaled for classes (merc...), and medpacks and adrenals are a poor replacement for those who lack in self-defense (which is poor because it works just as well for those who have good defenses). Wouldn't mind the effectiveness of the adrenals and medpacks adjusted to the survival capability of the user, but it is too complicated for BioWare, and totally removing them will essentially mean that weaker classes will die even faster, and they already die fast enough.

The problem is some of these things require having specific players in your team or being a specific class. If we would, for example, pick "Dedicated healers", "Able to actually tank in pvp" and "Defensive, mobility, utility, self healing and cc skills" that would mean that in a group without enough healers and no tanks you are dependant on your DCDs or 130k worth of damage will kill you. 2 DPS can deal 130k in 6 seconds. So that is how fast people will die when having no healers once without DCDs.

 

We need the system built in a way that the whole team focusing off targets one by one can be countered even if (besides the basic need of a healer) not all possible defensives are possible, and we also need all PVE roles to have worth in PVP. So healing must be there, and tanking must be there. Self-defense must exist to an extent for cases that the healers/tanks aren't there and for the ability to survive Master Mode solo content, though I agree like most people that some of the self-defenses are a bit OP when totaled for classes (merc...), and medpacks and adrenals are a poor replacement for those who lack in self-defense (which is poor because it works just as well for those who have good defenses). Wouldn't mind the effectiveness of the adrenals and medpacks adjusted to the survival capability of the user, but it is too complicated for BioWare, and totally removing them will essentially mean that weaker classes will die even faster, and they already die fast enough.

Only 2 of those 5 options requires specific classes - Tank for the tanking option and Healer for the healing option. I did say 2 maybe 3 of those things would probably do for balanced pvp, so why not just the other 3 options then?

Everybody keeps their defensive, mobility, utility, self heal and cc cd's. Keep the ability to heal after every fight or when you're able to drop combat and keep stim healing and damage reduction on top.

Time to kill still a little too low? Reduce damage in pvp by (e.g) 15%.

This also solves the extreme imbalance of "team with the most healers wins"....

There won't be any more 3min wet noodle fights until one of the healers finally manages to get stunlocked and actually die accidentally, leading to a mass extinction of the rest of the team in the next 20 seconds as well, and if you pace out all those cd's and stimpacks and know when to be in the thick of it and when to be a little more defensive while waiting a bit for cd's again - you can still last a very good amount of time.

Combat then actually feels impactful and so fun and rewarding and there is now room for progression - needing good use of cd's and their rotations, positioning etc. Instead of just jumping in and doing whatever to no effect cause healers makes both teams invincible anyway.

Otherwise nothing happens, there is a low skill ceiling from being invincible because healers and makes the pvp very unfulfilling and tedious.

I feel like the current healing/healers job is just purely to baby more casual players and newbs who can't keep themselves alive more than 5 seconds. Who play pvp here like CoD, jump in and can't understand why they die so quickly and scream for this and that to be nerfed and how the community is toxic and etc etc.

Players who can't do more than just jump into the middle of the enemy team, freak out and pop everything instantly or otherwise leave themselves with no cd's and in a bad position.

Great for them, but everybody else? The decent players? The actual pvp'rs? The people that sub/play for pvp? Guaranteed for once the majority would be all the latter mentioned, in pvp.

Even if the former are loudest on the forums.

And isn't that companies' top priority these days, to keep the majority market happy for max potential profits?

The sad truth of this game is that its most fun element is lowbie pvp.

Yup THIS so much THIS!!!

Lowbie is by far the most fun! When my toons reached 40 I stopped quing for PVP, for......reasons.....

Issues with long times to kill in the max level bracket are primarily due to a lack of matchmaking and Guard being overpowered.

You get too many healers and tanks in some matches because of the lack of matchmaking, and a healer with 50% of his or her damage being intercepted is basically able to free cast and keep the tank out of any real danger. My experience with Regs as a healer is that when I'm guarded most of the time I'm probably not going to die and neither is anyone else at the node I'm healing at. If I die, or the tank dies, usually the one that shuffled off the mortal coil can make it back from respawn before the other does the same. The end result is that attacking teams find it very difficult to capture nodes defended by healer-tank pairs.

While tank-healer pairs aren't invulnerable and there are tactics that can be used to counter guard, these take time and as such largely do not do as well outside of an arena setting. In objective based maps simply surviving another second or two can be enough to prevent caps and hold nodes until reinforcements can make it there. The TTK on healer-tank pairs is long enough that taking a node from one is probably not going to happen unless they are on a team with bad DPS. Yavin is the only exception and that is only because of the 4 second cap mod.

This problem is worsened by DPS classes now having access to every DCD, some of which are quite strong or can even self heal for a large amount, and classes with stealth now having their stealth-out escapes. You also have a lot more CC at max level and CC can often function like a DCD. All of that adds up to people dying a lot less than they did in the lowbie bracket.

Yup THIS so much THIS!!!

 

Lowbie is by far the most fun! When my toons reached 40 I stopped quing for PVP, for......reasons.....

I think that high levels should take more damage, close to how it happens in lowbies, or make defensive abilities less effective. The problem is how much has been accumulated over the years. back in 2.0 it wasn't like this, honestly and high level was actually much more fun than it is now and still very competitive.

Issues with long times to kill in the max level bracket are primarily due to a lack of matchmaking and Guard being overpowered.

 

You get too many healers and tanks in some matches because of the lack of matchmaking, and a healer with 50% of his or her damage being intercepted is basically able to free cast and keep the tank out of any real danger. My experience with Regs as a healer is that when I'm guarded most of the time I'm probably not going to die and neither is anyone else at the node I'm healing at. If I die, or the tank dies, usually the one that shuffled off the mortal coil can make it back from respawn before the other does the same. The end result is that attacking teams find it very difficult to capture nodes defended by healer-tank pairs.

 

While tank-healer pairs aren't invulnerable and there are tactics that can be used to counter guard, these take time and as such largely do not do as well outside of an arena setting. In objective based maps simply surviving another second or two can be enough to prevent caps and hold nodes until reinforcements can make it there. The TTK on healer-tank pairs is long enough that taking a node from one is probably not going to happen unless they are on a team with bad DPS. Yavin is the only exception and that is only because of the 4 second cap mod.

 

This problem is worsened by DPS classes now having access to every DCD, some of which are quite strong or can even self heal for a large amount, and classes with stealth now having their stealth-out escapes. You also have a lot more CC at max level and CC can often function like a DCD. All of that adds up to people dying a lot less than they did in the lowbie bracket.

Interesting, thanks for the input.

Guard definitely does sound pretty OP and the biggest contributing factor, but on top a tank still has the rest of tank stuff like disengage for healers via force push, taunt for damage reduction and whatever else. You go for healers with tanks around - you do nothing, you go for the tank - you definitely do nothing.

If you have imbalanced tank/healer amounts or they are better or worse on one side, the game was decided before it began.

I came to figure it was a combo of healing/tanking, which is my in my last post i suggested removing both of these roles for pvp, removing those 2 out of the 5 defensive options. The great thing about this is the fact that every class has a DPS spec so nobody misses out.

It as mentioned in my last post would remove the whole "whichever team has the most healers/tanks wins" which would be awesome in and of itself, and it would stop the rest of the team of the first healer to go down getting wiped in the next 20 seconds and would make pvp fun, impactful and meaningful again.

#makepvpgreatagain

And it's not a hard concept to grasp. (Fixing this issue one way or another)

I only briefly played on release and just came back for like 2 weeks though - and if i can spot these serious problems in 2 weeks then i guess we can guarantee SWTOR crew are already well aware of their pvp balance (and/or lackthereof) and solutions like these to easily fix it, so i guess they prefer it this way regardless of these major issues.

Regardless of whether it's healthy or not, imbalances pvp or not, makes pvp a tedious chore or not.

Smh.

I'm guessing - Pleasing the vocal, casual, minority (in pvp) playerbase > Having properly balanced, fun and healthy pvp.

Gl with that i guess. i'm glad im not invested in the game and i bet so is many more people. Regardless of how awesome the Star Wars theme is and how awesome they made the combat, depth and generally rest of the game. Sadly.

It seems to be about the rampant healing when mixed with DCD's, utility and self heals. Whichever team has more healers wins. Have to focus the healers. Whoevers healers go down first will lose the fight as now only 1 team is invincible. If you're having a fun 1v1 on a side objective and a healer comes along, the other side just instantly loses that fight and objective. Need to time your burst because of healers. It's all about the healers.

......

I am currently playing "midbie" these problems i was talking about are there and i'm not surprised only gets worse at end bracket.

You almost got it, but then you derailed the way most people do when analyzing this issue. It's not the healers, its the 5.x DCDs that is the real problem. Mercs gained 3 lives, and are BS so there are many mercs on each team. This threw the healer balance way off, because it got easier on the healers. So instead of fixing the problem, they quite stupidly massively nerfed healers. And guess what, problem not solved and since healers are nearly un-playable more of them became mercs. The problem got worse. Unless they fix the OP DCDs introduced in 5.x, there will never be a change to healers that would fix the issue. Healing in PvP you need to be able to keep yourself alive and actually heal others too. Current nerf levels prohibit much of that, any more would just mean no healers play at all and Mercs would be even more the "gods", problem will get even worse because then only mercs would be last ones standing - as the other classes would no longer receive healing.

But you mention that you are using midbie which means there could be another issue too. The level range for midbie is terrible. There are so many levels in there that someone with half their spells/utilities are fighting others with most of theirs. That may seem fine but when you get an entire team at level 69 versus an entire team of 43's, life is rough. They really should break midbies into another bracket, or normalize it so that every player only has the spells utilities comperable of the lowest level player on either side (the rest greyed out), with appropriate bolster tweaks of course.

You almost got it, but then you derailed the way most people do when analyzing this issue. It's not the healers, its the 5.x DCDs that is the real problem. Mercs gained 3 lives, and are BS so there are many mercs on each team. This threw the healer balance way off, because it got easier on the healers. So instead of fixing the problem, they quite stupidly massively nerfed healers. And guess what, problem not solved and since healers are nearly un-playable more of them became mercs. The problem got worse. Unless they fix the OP DCDs introduced in 5.x, there will never be a change to healers that would fix the issue. Healing in PvP you need to be able to keep yourself alive and actually heal others too. Current nerf levels prohibit much of that, any more would just mean no healers play at all and Mercs would be even more the "gods", problem will get even worse because then only mercs would be last ones standing - as the other classes would no longer receive healing.

 

But you mention that you are using midbie which means there could be another issue too. The level range for midbie is terrible. There are so many levels in there that someone with half their spells/utilities are fighting others with most of theirs. That may seem fine but when you get an entire team at level 69 versus an entire team of 43's, life is rough. They really should break midbies into another bracket, or normalize it so that every player only has the spells utilities comperable of the lowest level player on either side (the rest greyed out), with appropriate bolster tweaks of course.

Defensives by themselves aren't OP and i mean, when a pvp match is all about marking healers and focusing healers and bursting healers and timing and prioritising cc stunlock for healers and tanks keeping healers alive insanely longer and teams getting wiped when their healer(s) go down and healers healers healers, i don't think a couple extra dcd's on some random dps class means much of anything, in context of this problem.

Currently.

Defensives by themselves aren't OP and i mean, when a pvp match is all about marking healers and focusing healers and bursting healers and timing and prioritising cc stunlock for healers and tanks keeping healers alive insanely longer and teams getting wiped when their healer(s) go down and healers healers healers, i don't think a couple extra dcd's on some random dps class means much of anything, in context of this problem.

 

Currently.

Dude, some of these DCDs we are talking about ARE heals. This is why we say they have 3 lives, not because their armor goes up. So when you are trying to talk about healers, these DCDs are the culprit, not the actual healer class. The more they nerf (or eliminate) actual healers, the worse this problem will get.

At least now the other non-merc classes can get some heals to compete with the free DCD heals of the merc. You want to take that away then all that will be left are mercs, while all the other classes just die easily. And yes, this is a bit overly simplified, but it is to illustrate the point. Just start watching these players who you are not able to hurt, if they are mercs/commandos then keep in mind you wont be able to kill them for a long time even if there are no healers there.