Do not remove hard stuns from PvP (GU38 discussion)

I would not underestimate Clutch in arenas. :>

This, i don't know why people think legends players can't do arenas lol, I usually find it the opposite. I learned how to use all the weapons through legends, I recommend that's where people start before jumping in arenas.

THIS.
You can pretty much tell how good someone will be in arenas by how good they are in legends.

The first blow to Pvp was T4 Pve Gear drop; being used in pvp.
The second blow to Pvp was the hard stuns; implemented to fix the t4 issue.

With the gear roll back, reverting it back to it's once formal glory just makes sense...

You all que pvp? how many people is there? How many people are in the pvp chats? The new system is overly frustrating & gives clear advantages to those with-out lag issues, It was doomed to falter. It's time to put the emphasis back on attacking...

Besides, I miss someone spamming block and me getting a block break on my 2nd time around after a break out from the first; Good times, Good times.

You either didn't read what I had to say at all or you have a very serious problem with comprehensive reading.

Counters were just as dangerous then as they are now. The more you got countered the less you could attack, and the more your opponents got free licks in on you; just as it is now. The only difference was that you could break out of being blocked provided you had the power to breakout. One could even make the argument that counters were more deadly then, especially block counters because it would rapidly drain the power of your opponent, and without power you've already lost.

Say what you will; faster connections are better.

This is the part you had to have misunderstood completely. The way the game is set up, the server has to anticipate what you are doing before you do it. Sometimes the server messes up and anticipates a block instead of a lunge, or a block breaker instead of a block, or whatever combination you can think of, therefore resulting in the wrong person getting credit for the counter and immunity. That is in fact the very essence of luck.

No I read everything you said, it just doesn't make any sense. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about & it's obvious from what you're saying that you aren't either a current active PvPer nor do you have an understanding of how PvP works right now.

I mean just take your logic:

1. You claim those with the best net win, not with the best skill
2. I have won many tournaments with an absolutely awful latency and connection
3. Completely ignore this and still claim net wins

1. Claim combat is now luck based
2. There are highlight videos, FNL Tour videos and SOE Live videos all showing me and others countering consistently
3. Old combat system made reactionary play (which is far more skillful) far less rewarding and instead, made block breaks only possible through a guessing game
4. Still claim combat is luck based

You were just proven wrong yet completely ignore it.

No, counters weren't even as close to being as dangerous as they are now. There's a reason bane was ridiculously overpowered for the longest time in legends, it's because DoTs are the most power efficient form of damage. Counters back then provided no relief from DoT nor did someone have to waste a lot of power using it. They would have far more power to use so they could afford to be countered far more often than characters that didn't have these dot abilities (huntress, nightwing etc.). Now however this isn't the case, you can only afford to be countered 2-3 times at most in a legends game because you will be bursted down and punished for your mistake. Mistakes are punished much more heavily than they were before, they provide a relief from damage and also provide you with an opportunity to safely burst your opponent down. How on earth is the small amount of power taken from a breakout anywhere close to being as punishing as this?

If that is "skillful" then this current system is far superior because of how CC works atm. You can lose 2/3s of your bar just from breaking out, I guess this means the old system is less skillful regardless of how you want to look at it?

There's literally hours of footage of me alone consistently countering people with poor internet, there's no "luck" present.

What was "luck" back in the old days was never being able to catch block breaks on reaction. Combine this with how short the blocks were and there was always a decent amount of luck involved with if you were ever going to land it.

Another thing that makes NO sense in your argument is that if counters are all luck based now, that would mean they were even more luck based back in the previous system as reactionary play is possible now.

Don't believe me? There's literally hours of footage of me in the past year consistently countering even with a terrible connection on EU and with awful latency over on US, you can't argue for something that is already completely disproven.

I would go as far as saying that you cannot achieve top level counter mechanic skill without ever playing legends. I've never met a player who focused solely on competitive arenas who had amazing counter mechanic skill, the only people that I've met that really impressed me have all been legends players.

I think there's always going to be those of us who miss the good ol' days because it's easy to forget all the progress we've made when we focus on changes we hated. For example, I remember everyone used DW when I first started because it was far and away the best weapon. Weapons are much more balanced now but we still get caught up on how much we hated the "nerfs" to begin with.

So I believe it's a fallacy to think the old system was perfect or much better than the current one.. but it's just as much of a fallacy to think there was any less skill involved back then. The best players will always be the best afterall. The old system felt really fun (it obviously got me hooked) because it felt simple yet complex at the same time.

On paper, you'd think the old block was really overpowered without the 0.5 second hold time but in actuality there wasn't much benefit to turtling. There was no hard stun for a block counter which meant (1) you got more damage off BBing/interrupting someone and (2) you could recover immediately from a block counter. This encouraged people to go for combos and BBs more. Blocking was fast and easy but also low reward.

Blocking only really became op when they gave it a hard stun and immunity. Then it just became the easiest and safest way to farm immunity so we needed to introduce things like the 0.5 sec hold time and vulnerability window to balance it.

It's true that reactionary BBing was nigh on impossible back then and it is quite skillful now to BB someone on reaction. However, I think there's a TON of skill involved in scoring an anticipatory BB. Correctly anticipating a block and landing a BB involved literally reading your opponent's mind and taking a huge gamble in committing to the BB because BB counter windows were much longer back then. A missed BB was practically a guaranteed interrupt + hard stun against you. I see reactionary vs anticipatory gameplay as the difference between scoring a head shot in a videogame and scoring a head shot on a moving target in real life factoring in lead time, crosswinds, curvature of the earth, whatever. It's so difficult it may as well be luck, but it's not luck. It felt damn satisfying to BB someone back in the day.

It may not seem like it but there was a balance to the old system's core mechanics. That's why older players always dislike things like immunity, hold times or whatever; you wouldn't need it if they just left the core mechanics alone.

I really don't think you're comprehending what I am talking about. Especially the part about the counter system sometimes messing up and giving the wrong person immunity. This has nothing to do with user latency. It is just the way it has to be since this is a real time combat action game at its core. Sometimes the server ,for a lack of better words, glitches and this happens. But that is not the major point of my argument and you are trying to make it that.

The major arguing point is that contrary to your misguided beliefs, counters were in fact just as deadly if not more deadly in the old days. For example a single block breaker in those days hit for at least 60% more damage than they do now because of the shorter hard stun. If that is not punishing, then I don't know what is. I can remember a time when people were scared to block against the really crafty players for fear of being brought from full health down to 25-35% health. If you really are as good as you claim to be you would have thrived in those days.

As for me wanting to be able to break out of being blocked; the only reason I want this is because of screen blocking. We should not be punished with a hard stun for being blocked by someone we are not even attacking. Either this or somehow get the coding right so we can only be blocked by the player or npc we are targeting, but that is probably too difficult and perhaps even impossible; so the simple fix is to allow us to be able to break out of being blocked, but increase the damage caused from counters by at least 50%. I would prefer somewhere around 65-75% however.

Just dropped in to say if I could like this post more than once I would. This is how a lot of players I've spoken to in game and new players that encounter DC's current pvp system feels about immunities. Some of us adapted, others quit the game, and others became more pve oriented, but we all share the sentiment portrayed on the post above.

Counters, old days and now
Wow you could kill a person in one or two counters back in the day, what sort of damage numbers could they pull out? I have not seen a video of older pvp matches where people died in 2 counters before the counter system, so if possible provide such a video if does exist. Not to mention I was very active in pvp and played against the top duelers from my server at the launch of f2p, and no one could kill with 1 counter or 2, but the damage they did with their powers was a bigger difference like how fire could pull large amounts of damage in the past etc.

Block breakers today: Some weapons do hit for lower damage because they nerfed range attack for melee weapons, but ranged weapons like handblasters still hit very hard. Counter damage however is not nerfed, and the hard stun that comes with counters puts a person in a state where they cannot block/roll or attack back, unless they have a trinket or breakout power. In a duel, on average 2 counters without getting countered will allow you to finish the match comfortable when facing 1 opponent. In open world, crits that reach up to 4k+ from counters take a huge part of your health.

A counter today has more punishment than a counter in the past as far as I've seen, played and observed from countless duels/arena matches, tournaments.

Screen blocking
Screen blocking against an aoe attack makes sense. The targets you hit should be able to block you as you are dealing damage to them, even if you don't target them (By that logic of not targetting, you might as well do dw 6 tap hold on the ground next to them and not get blocked, but still deal the damage.)

You could never know 100% when someone was going to block, even if you time it perfectly they might just decide not to block. That is the essence of luck, being lucky enough to predict when someone will block and be lucky enough not to do it when they decide not to.

There wasn't really any solid way of getting around this other than taking less risks, with the current system however counters can be practiced a lot more as they're in control of a skilled players hands a lot more. I'll outline what I mean below.

It isn't a fallacy to think that when you've personally had experience at the very top level in all type of systems. I was considered the top legends player as well as one of if not the top dueler in all of the systems and there was key differences in both.

In the more anticipatory system, once you had learnt weapon combos, patterns, builds and strengths/weaknesses of different legends characters it wasn't really possible to greatly improve. Once you had all of those skills, you couldn't really improve yourself other than to the point of reducing how much you get countered or improving your timing. The differences between the best & great players was a lot smaller back then because once you reached a certain point, there wasn't a lot of improvement to go beyond it.

In the current system however, not only myself but many other players have continued to make great strides in improving not only reactionary gameplay but also at how to use this reactionary gameplay against people. Look at SOE Live last year, no one even came close to me in 1v1 or 2v2 skill inside of legends. If I compare myself to then, I have improved so much since last year that I think if I played myself from that point I wouldn't be surprised if I defeated myself by more than a 2-1 ratio. However despite improving a lot, other people have also done the same and I don't run over the best players anywhere near as easily anymore.

Even now, due to this new system I can see many more areas of my gameplay that I can still improve greatly. Every game I'm picking up on things I can actually make a big difference on, where as previously guessing incorrectly about a block break isn't necessarily something you can make a big difference with. It's always going to be a guess, you're never going to know 100% when someone's going to block so there's always a pretty big luck element regarding it. The improvements to make with this system are completely under the player's control however, that isn't the case with the old system.

However when I reached the top in the old, more anticipatory system I didn't really feel myself improve in the couple of months before the big changes. My timing got cleaner, I stopped getting countered quite as often but nothing significant. It was the same for the other players too, it was much faster and easier to plateau.

This is why this system is inherently more skillful and is harder to learn, not only do you need to know all of the skills you needed before but you also need others. You need to learn how to watch for blocks to catch blockbreaks on reaction while at the same time being aware of screen blocking opportunities and chances to acquire immunity, you need to be able to play fast and aggressive while also making as few mistakes as possible due to how counters are more punishing now and all of this is completely in YOUR control. There's no guessing games involved with it.

The old system block breaks were never worth the reward for risk. This system has an even greater importance on power management due to CC issues currently, though I hope this will get fixed.

I did thrive in those days, as stated I have been one of if not the best in every system. It's from this knowledge and experience that I know that this current system is by far the most skillful.

Plus I don't "claim" to be the best, I have proven it online and off.

At the same time, can you prove you know what you're talking about? Can you prove you're even good? Cause as far as I know you aren't even active let alone a top player.

Counters in arenas currently do a lot of damage anyway, however this isn't the competitive game mode for the game and I'm not referring to this.


Ok I'm going to be generous and say that counters dealt 300% more damage than they do currently:

300 x 3 = 900

That means any counter even if damage was tripled would deal 900 damage. Currently, most characters can do more than 1500 damage in legends even if their burst damage sucks after a counter. Burst characters can deal 3000+ damage, so no the old counters were not even close to being as punishing. Burst characters would be hit hard and to be balanced, they would have to adjust the damage they do on counter specifically for all burst oriented characters. This is a lot of work for essentially no reason + it would make their powers more useless as stealth attacks for the most part could be avoided where as DoT characters would be even more overpowered.

So, even by going five times higher than your estimate the damage would still pale in comparison to what they do now. This isn't even mentioning the fact we get immunity now which helps counter-act DoT damage.

Still think I'm misguided?

All of this was still true in the old system. Like I said, reactionary play is a skill unto itself but so is anticipatory play. In reality, your reflexes are almost always a combination of reaction and anticipation.. being smart and fast as it were. And the reward for blocking was low while the reward for block breaking was high, so it balanced out.

There was screen blocking back then, but when they changed melee taps into AoE attacks it got pretty ridiculous. I still don't really like that change. Also, most duels were pretty much decided if you ate 2 BBs or more, which is about the same as now.. actually, no, WM messes with that but whatever.

You have a preference for the new system, which is fine. It just feels like there are times you disrespect the old system or those who enjoyed it, which doesn't feel right at all.

Martiis, I don't want this to seem rude, but I have seen you on the game once since The PS4 came out. Do you use a different account/name change now? What you described about counters is just wrong.

It wasn't part of the old system though, baiting screen blocks for reactionary block breaks wasn't there and you couldn't rely on switching targets for the BB because you could never be very sure of who exactly will block. Playing fast and aggressive takes far more skill now than it did back then, all because of the reasons I mentioned. Most importantly, everything is under complete control of the player now and how skilled they are. There is no luck involved, my whole gamestyle revolves around not doing anything that I can't control myself.

Totally agree with this.

I am not bringing personal preference into this, I am debating as to why this current system + the changes I outlined are the most beneficial for the competitive game mode (legends) considering the devs want to have a competitive environment (especially when there's thousands of dollars on the line at SOE Live).

I have not disrespected the old game system nor the people who like it at all in this thread.

What I have done is call people out who:

1. Don't even play the game regularly or even at all anymore (and I know this is the case for some of the people trying to argue against me in here)
2. Who try to tell me that I'm wrong regarding something requiring more skill when they don't have the experience, skill or knowledge of the new system especially to make a valid argument, especially against the person who potentially has some of the most skill regarding mechanics in the game

The reason I call them out is because I'm tired of this game taking the wrong turn in every direction, I'm going to stop people from asking for changes on something which they know nothing about.

The reason why I haven't done the same with you is because I know you're a good player and that you do still play.

I've really been thinking about this as well as the new focus of this thread over the past few days.

1.) What people remember about the "old" system was how fluid it felt and imo THAT is what many want to return to PVP.

2.) What I like about the new system is that it MAKES SENSE and is standardized vs the HUGE varying counter windows many weapons had prior to changes made over the past 18 months.

The system prior to immunities imo was not favorable to support roles (mainly healers) as without a tank there was quite literally nothing one could do to survive a focus fire. This was one of the reasons that two healers came into play as "the" preferred setup for 5's early in the game. At least with immunities you can counter play your way out of trouble and a good team can work without having to have 2 healers to support the incoming damage. If the old system without immunities were brought in under WM, increased damage stats, reduced resto %'s in current gear vs older gear, etc--it really would be a huge DPS fest.

In the old system counters occurred on trigger and not contact, therefore players with any lag or if a lag spike happened it was much less impacting on counter timings. The problem with this was that when immunities were introduced it seemed to be layered over the counters and the lag would cause them to trigger sometimes 3-4 seconds late. This delayed immunity was more of an issue and one of the reasons imo why it was not accepted. The other issue being the "god mode" of gaining immunity--which has since been resolved to making it more like a shield covering just 20% of ones HP.

What I would like to see personally is the best of both worlds by:

1.) Applying counters on trigger again instead of contact/damage, at least for BBers as then the block window could be reduced to say 0.3 seconds and it would feel just as responsive. Also the current windows feel delayed vs the animation as the icons don't seem to show up as soon as an animation is enacted, but @ 0.25 seconds after the fact. Removing this would then make players consider their actions much more.

Personally I've used this small delay to my advantage, but tbh it doesn't feel right as in many scenarios I "should" be countered, but due to more intricate knowledge of the windows I come out on top. This imo isn't really skill as many players responded correctly, just the visual is giving my opponent the wrong signals (icons aren't lined up with animations and sounds.) The end result is that a fast responding player has to slow down just to ensure the window is active despite a clear animation sign that the opponent is blocking--this really shouldn't be the case.

2.) Bring back the fluidity of combat and responsiveness of counter play. This ties into my previous point, however to expound on it many changes over the last 8 months have been to standardize combat, however I personally feel that certain weapons should have a higher risk/reward and others lower risk/lesser reward being damage out via counters. Having a standard window is the "right" thing, however the animation adjustments just don't "feel" fluid while playing. It isn't just about being use to the old way and then things changing, it is literally that the new windows/timing just feel way too delayed. Full Auto for instance use to BB with the initial trigger, however now it doesn't occur visually until about the 2-3rd hit. Consider Shield (which is STILL front loaded btw) a much slower BBer should do more damage and the risk should be the anticipated delay in BB vs an instantaneous counter.

3.) Bring back complete cleanses to tank classes. The current debuff heavy focus or even 1 class being able to debuff (as stated in the WIP thread) is fine so long as cleanses aren't just made dormant, but are actually removed and require another application to be active again. This is important as it gives tanks a solid purpose and support role, makes shields/shielding useful again to mitigate damage, and requires more timed interaction with teammates to ensure debuffs will be most effective.

I recall having to watch the tank and communicate with teammates about when cleanses were on cooldown to create a focus fire moment. Now it is just a slow burn with a few seconds of breathing room after a cleanse, but God forbid anyone tries to shield a teammate taking incoming damage as once the cleanse duration ends (@ 3 seconds) that shield is gone. Also debuff grenades debuff ALL classes/roles equally for a FULL 12 seconds in an AOE and are on short cooldowns, yet cleanse soders are STILL on the same cooldowns as normal soders. This was a ninja change that tipped the scales even further towards debuffing instead of ACTUALLY having to use timing and skill when downing an opponent. Healers in particular spend 90% of a match in competitive play debuffed

I hope this is clear as I just got off a 13 hr shift and my mind is a little spent. In short it would be nice to have "some" of the normalization from the new system, but be as fluid as the old system with the trade-off being counter damage when the windows for a particular weapon are tighter.

Just my two cents and my experience on legends pvp since launch. Sorry for WALL O’ TEXT.

There have been numerous attempts at changing the system mostly due to player feedback and a bit to do with the actual servers, and possible connections.

I could probably go and find the 10,000 threads I have made about the counter system. The system itself in theory is GREAT… just the syncing and accuracy is an issue.

1. Yes you had hard stuns ( screen bullet cracks) that you tapped square to reduce the break out timer at the bottom, they weren’t very long though and you there was no immunity. Combat was very fast paced, but if it was 2 vs1 on a node, you were basically toast. AND FAST.
2. Also powers did WAY more dmg and precision was very low on the characters, also characters were all batman themed and very similar, though powers had more functionality. ( i.e. using huntress tazer line would charge an opponent, so her emp stun could do more dmg, and I am sure there was a power debuff in there somewhere.)
3. The they made the change and powers dmg was reduced significantly and precision went up encourage people to use combos and the RPS system more rather than spam powers.
4. The hard counter and immunity was added in around the last laugh era form memory, and everyone complained about the getting knocked on your butt mechanic and eating a TON of dmg and how this slowed everything down, and to be fair at that point it was a MAJOR change and changed the way we pvp’d.
5. Once everyone adapted the immunity part was great and was designed to allow people fighting 2 v1 to have chance and if you were good was awesome, and once people adapted it was fantastic.
6. We did have an issue for about 3 weeks where legends was totally broken… the explanation was that the severs sere ‘sliding” out of sync, and that they had been fixed.
7. Fantastic for about 4 months.
8. Then the dark times started.
9. The dark times aren’t related to the actual mechanics but to the sync between visuals and the combo system and lag that started happening around the time hand of fate came out and Hal Jordan and Sinestro came out, before Home Turf.
10. During the time the “syncing” between what you would see on screen vs what was happening was quite large, can’t break out, broken block breaking windows, triple break outs from stuns, using your entire power bar to break out 4 times only to be block broken, or to be controlled immediately again. etc etc this became the norm and I started becoming less involved in the game as legends was broken for me. And it was my favourite pastime. I used to pay for hours on end… it got worse as time went on.
11. So I made a number of threads, I DMZ my console, I did an Ethernet vs wired connection, I had line technicians come to my house I did port forwarding and nothing worked.
12. Over the next year the syncing windows were a massive issue, sometimes you could long on and it would be bearable, other times, horrible, usually a few weeks either side of an update or a DLC would also affect the severity. I paid for legendary on both EU and US and there was no difference.
13. Then there was a glimmer of hope, they released an update whereby you had to double tap to break out, holding R1 was blocking, but double tapping R1 was break out…. And it fixed the issue for me! I remember it so clearly…. Playing Inner Batcave 2v2 legends, and it being the best and smoothest and most accurate timing of legends I had played in a year. The only issue was you would “randomly “ get ranged block broken in the middle of a match sometimes even up to 30 seconds after blocking… there were videos about this that were posted on the forums and sent to devs.
14. Then 2 days after this change and due to player feedback, the button was reverted to its previous incarnation and the same sync issue were back.
15. Fast forward to SOT, when this dropped for two weeks the system even in PVE was horribly out of whack on EU I literally COULD NOT PLAY even the solo content it was like 2 seconds out of sync….and I took a break and starting playing on the US server. The issues were slightly less severe but still an issue. These issues calmed down but the base issue was still there.
16. Fast forward to now, it’s still the same both in PVP and PVE, whether its legends or arena, PVP or PVP, group or solo.
17. It also seems the longer you stay logged in a session it slowly degrades, but logging doesn’t assist. You need a sever maintenance to reset it.


Current State- Solution

I am on PS4 I now have fibre optic internet, 100MPBs download and 40Mps up load, port forwarded, dmz’d the issue is still there.

It is also weird, that a mate of mine half a country away, has a lesser connection ( 5mbs) and doesn’t have this issue, and I never had this issue until HoF DLC.

My conclusion the mechanics and the way we play are fine in theory I love them.

It’s the execution and server/set up of them, that either requires ongoing maintenance or doesn’t work in its current form and is bugging out and they don’t have the resources to find the root cause, or simply cannot fix it, without breaking a heap of other things.

Therefore the devs are trying to find a work around with this change, good luck to them I hope it works and my legends and I can be friends again.

So much truth!

I think I remember that. Unfortunately, I didn't even get to test it before they reverted the change. Kinda makes me wish block and breakout used separate keys. Maybe Tunso would be willing to experiment with a setup where:

Single Tap R1/Shift = Breakout; and
Hold R1/Shift = Breakout+Block.


@Yallander
I actually really enjoyed healing pvp back in the day. Yes, the damage was non-stop but our heals were waaay more effective. When they decreased our toughness and increased our health, it made soders and healing almost 50% less effective. It's the same reason why soder colas get progressively more useless as new gear comes out--your health goes way up without a corresponding increase in healing output. I think we'll just have to wait to see what they do with the arena revamp before we can comment further.

In regards to counters, a lot of the new blockbreakers have near-instantaneous BBs where you don't have to wait for the damage to land. In fact, they all have cast bars so you don't get the projectile damage if you clip but you still get the BB. It helps a lot in making the BBs feel more responsive. I actually wish MA would get the same treatment.

They could probably increase responsiveness further if you could cancel melee taps with a BB in the same way you can cancel melee taps with block. If that's even possible that is.

As for the delayed icons, I wonder if we even need to be able to clip our BBs to hide the animation anymore. I remember the devs considered making BBs not counter if you clipped them but I was against it. Now that they gave everything a cast bar anyways it doesn't matter as much, plus the near-instant BBs and shorter vulnerability would probably balance it.

Agreed, but this was @ T2--Avatar time frame correct? If so then that was after 3-4 changes to PVP were already in place. Launch PVP was much less forgiving to support roles iirc.

You mean after WM? I haven't tried more than Shield, 1H, or DW with WM tbh as it requires a full SP respect and honestly I don't feel like doing that just to spec into a WM setup.

Agreed, some weapons seem to get "stuck" in melee despite hitting ranged attacks (at least I find this happening.) Staff was the biggest offender from my experience (once again unless they changed something within last 3-4 months as i haven't used it in that long.)

Without a doubt T2 PVP era was the "Golden Age" in the eyes of many and I really enjoyed the setup during that time. Immunity was released around that time as well and the "god mode" was imo the biggest issue with it. It was fun just using 2-3 powers to take a teammate from 5% to full HP for sure, but alas PVE stuff had to ruin it.

What you said is exactly what deadly block does and theres a cry to get rid of it.