GU 41: PvP Season 3 Feedback

It's working for 1v1s at least. I got a recovery kit and a base item earlier today.

The green arrow means one or more of your stats are being boosted because it is too low. The red arrow means one or more of your stats are being lowered because they are too high. If you look on your stats page you can see most of them. Unfortunately there's stats we don't show on that page, such as crit, that aren't being displayed and also happens to be one of the ones that will be reduced in arena zones. So if you see a red arrow and no red stats on your page, its your critical damage stat being diminished.

We're debating whether we want to show everything because with the current UI, it'd be reeeally messy. But I know there's lots and lots of people that would love to know everything. If we do, it probably would not be this update though.

Even though the advantage for having better gear is low, its still an advantage. Most won't be satisfied with anything less than the best because every advantage counts. However that advantage is easier to overcome now through skill and better tactics.

Thanks very much for the report Spartacus, I really appreciate it! I haven't had time to watch the videos yet but I will after FNL tonight. I'll see if there's anything we can do about Cleanses or Debuffs. I know in a lot of these cases, the debuff isn't landing because another enemy is in between you and the person you have hard targeted. These are deployed by ray casts usually so if they strike another enemy, they'll hit them instead. Not much can be done about that case as that's how it works.

Grounding: I'm more inclined to remove it for now as it's the outliers that have it. Funny story but players were never intended to have grounding which is why it can't be resisted or escaped. But a few abilities with it slipped in without my knowledge and by then they were already out there. So we'll probably remove it from those few who have it. If you guys want it back, we can probably do that but it's a big job to make sure everyone has full access to it.

Berserk: Yes we'll see about toning that one down for PvP, thanks!

Reflect pain is supposed to be less effective in PvP but I'll give it a second look. I may have missed something.

Thanks again for putting this together!

Cool Tunso, thanks for the response.
And yes we are aware of the LOS with the debuff, and we know is part from it. If you check the 1st vid they are testing it in a controlled enviroment and they still have some problems.

I now understand about the grounding. What about if you give that option to the controllers and lasso only (Just throwing some ideas here). This way they can use it, and so with an iconic everyone can have access.

Also, if you need a specific testing, if you let me know 48hrs in advance i can setup 2x 5s balanced teams to test specific stuff.

Just let me know.

The orange barrel always disappears when dropped in shadowlands. Or did you mean on some other map?

Wow. You guys really are trying to level the playing field. Right down to altering crit stats. Seems a bit extreme, but it is what it is. I can see equaling out the stats going into the match, but during....that must have been alot of work to program.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of no one having an extreme advantage over another. Maybe I just didn't realize in all clarity how far into the system this would permeate. This will definitely level the playing field.

Hey Tunso, I wanted to see if I can pick your brain a bit.

Firstly, I just want to point out this is all from my perspective with collective input from people on the USPS side of things. I am a USPS player normally, and I paid a PC sub so that I can test these changes for myself, and so that I can give a feedback. Historically, the PS communities have been horrendously under represented in this part of testing, and because of how passionate I am about PvP, I feel that I should contribute should I get the opportunity. I've been PvPing since Beta, and I have a thorough understanding of the game on a deep level. I also understand cause and effect. Anyways, here we go.

Supers should be emptied upon entries into arenas. I think this could solve a LOT of problems, and should be coupled with some of the changes below. With the current setup, controlling and healing PvP are simply not fun. They're sorely gimped but, I think with a few minor tweaks, it can be fun and worthwhile again.

• Lower the power costs.
• Bump the healers bonus up 10%
• Empty supers upon entry into arenas.

I understand it's common practice to run two controllers on PC side scrimmages but, across EUPC, EUPS, and USPS, we run the 2 Healer, 1 Tank, 1 Troll 1 DPS setup as a standard. With the power costs changing, teams are going to be absolutely crippled from the get go, and controlling will be totally unappealing. Most responses have been "adapt" but, this has a negative affect in that it takes any diversity out of PvP in terms of power sets. The fact is, this confines to 4 different power sets as opposed to all of them.

I can understand high power costs is in place to force healers to burn up a LOT of power but, I think if you couple lower power costs with emptying supers upon entry, you're likely to have the desired effect of power falling off completely sooner than later, AND controlling won't be an extremely undesirable role to play.

Furthermore, the current power cost setups pretty much forces DPS's to only use weapon mastery seeing that it's the only viable solution to high power costs. The DoT changes make it unnecessary to run expensive dots, and really just reduces DPS to Weapon Mastery only. With lower power costs, people will be able to utilize more powers thus putting out more damage AND burning power that healers will be able to use.

Finally, I feel that healers should have their Crit bumped 10% at the very most. The current healer setup is so totally gimped, that healing is not even fun. Supercharges are almost not worth running whatsoever with the current setup, and couples with the current state of power costs, ruins the healing aspect of being a healer.

I understand that these changes were put in place to make sure that deaths do happen, and that winners are determined based moreso on skill than on group setups but, I think the first issue should've been addressed with removing supers upon entry. This would've solved a lot of problems right off the bat in my opinion, and still leaves room for positive changes. Removing supers means more people running premade 5v5s will simply Queue up rather than have to get their supers after each match, and taking 15-20 minutes to get ready for a match.

Aside from these changes, I think you're definitely on to something, but these need to be looked at and adjusted for sure, and removing supers will have a two pronged effect that will in the long run help speed up PvP drastically.

With this new gear, I have a little over 26k health, so my reflect pain could deal roughly 4k back to my attacker. Because the health pool is so high, reflect pain is already less effective. That potential 4k damage isn't that much of a dent.

But then I could see it being a problem if you're facing someone with a much less health pool than you, and if they can put out a lot of damage... hoo boy. I suppose that 4k could be a problem.

I guess I'm trying to ask if you can make it more effective while still being less effective. Please?

What you are asking for is to be able to sustain longer in a match by having 2 healers. This is counter to the intentions of the no resets quick battles. Whether you have 1 controller 2 healers, 2 controllers 1 healer, or all healers, you gotta see that they did this to starve the group of power AND heals.

This opens up the skill more and you aren't relying on being fully healed in an instant.

It's obvious from your posts that power costs were not important to you because you had only 1 controller in your setup, but you are also showing that 2 healers will be the norm then.

They want you to have premades, but they don't want you invincible. You are correct, they want us to adapt to the new changes and find new ways to survive.

This I am in full agreement. If they intend to make arenas more like Legends, then they need to implement this.

Well wasn't the whole issue that nearly all PvP matches were determined 90% of the time because of setup? These changes really only solve the problem of survivability but even then, they are total overkill. I am NOT opposed to making survivability more difficult but, there is such a thing as doing too much, and this is simply one of them. This does not correct the problem that running a certain setup will correct issues where skill triumphs over group setups.

By adjusting the changes in the way I mentioned, it allows all groups to be viable and still solve the problem of survivability. 9 times out of 10 over the past year, the primary problem was supers resetting people, and that's currently been adjusted so supers can no longer reset people.

The thing is, even with the changes above, resets will be impossible because of the sheer damage that everyone will be putting out. 4 people on a 5s team will be hitting like a DPS in support role stance, and the DPS will be hitting harder. It'll balance out AND still allow for different group setups without one having the advantage over the other.

Understandable, but they went overkill. I'm almost positive that they're looking for what's just right in terms of balance, and what's been implemented is NOT that sweet spot.

Just wanted to throw this over here. This is NOT my input, this is from Clutch. He doesn't have sufficient permissions to post over here, so I told him I'd post his message here.

Supercharges weren't the only reset. Healers with enough power or the right setup can heal a group back to full w/o the supercharge. Supercharges were just easier AND even if they wiped everyone's SC upon entry to an arena, gaining enough for a 50% SC is pretty quick. So we are back to square one. The only thing you would accomplish with wipe upon entry is faster queue times, as no one would want to build it before entering it. Plus, the difference from the fnls I saw between PS and PC is that PS seems to rely heavy on the SC while PC relies heavy on trolls. Pretty big difference, but ultimately both do the same thing.

Overkill is an overstatement. To prevent power creep, which was a big issue with all the gear we had since the beginning, we need these things instilled, because as the gear goes up, and it will, eventually the laxed changes you request would be an issue again. It is better to start earlier and make sure it is always relevant and not have to fix it later.

With out the skill tree debuff a healer just healed himself the whole match. His heals equaled my damage out. We still need debuffs for 1v1

If it's like that then get rid of pvp roles. Have a soda and a breakout trinket and go at it.

Agreed just make it legends because all the grinding to get your elemental android coupled with all the farming for fe6's and exos to mod just won't matter anymore.

also they should just allow walk in in pve and boost squishees stats so they can play higher content. (Sarcasm)

I think a second pass should be made between the balance of Ice and Earth Tanks in Arenas.

Right now both get 25% absorption, Ice through Shields and Earth through their mechanics. The problem lies in the fact that Ices shields need to be constantly refreshed with the possibility of ending early while Earths is much more passive and therefore much less power hungry.

Because of this its going to make Earth much more viable as a Tank because of the better survivability and easier use of power. The latter being a very important thing this season.

Please take a look at this:



I think this might be a problem on how the toughness used to cap (since we only had 2.2k toughness). Now with the toughness increase, i wonder it the block caps you at 5k as before, then this should just be adjusted to be in line with the new stats.

@Tunso

Is there anyway that you guys can make it so we start with 0% Super Charge upon entering any Arena match like we do in Legends? Super Charges are a big problem in PvP balance, and we should not be able to start with them readily available.

Also, I agree 100% with Spartacus. Especially on the topic of grounding effects, we need grounding back or inertial flywheel restricted in combat, so that super speed travels at the same speed as other travel powers during combat. Without grounding it gives Superspeed too much of an advantage in PvP because of inertial flywheel. Either would be sufficient fixes, that would balance all movement modes in combat.

@Spartacus

I never thought this day would come, but I actually agree with you.

Let me just start by saying that for a long time I could not understand the changes made to pvp in the past.. until I went to SOE Live and heard Tunso's explanation on how the "holy quadrinity" system was designed to face raid bosses and not necessarily other players. In response to that I will say that some of the toughest and most memorable matches I've had were 5v5s and 8v8s under the old pvp system.. tougher than any raid boss in PvE.. but I realize now that it probably wasn't interesting for spectators because so few deaths were happening. As a healer the last thing I'd call it was boring, but I can roll with the changes. I really am looking forward to the updates, but I do have some concerns.

Debuffs
These are still needed in open world unless you guys have some other solution in the works. The holy quandrinity is nerfed in arenas and duels, but it's in full effect out in open world. Ice tanks, Rage dps, and healers will be at full power in open world and probably unstoppable without the means to debuff them.

In arenas and duels, I've also noticed some bugs with controllers' heal debuffs. I tested it with some friends and found that they simply do not work on tanks whatsoever. Heal debuffs were also either not working on healers or had no effect on the heals from Malediction-Benediction.

Another potential bug is that Sorcery's Soul Siphon is still applying the old counter role debuff to tanks. I was under the impression that counter role debuffs would be totally removed.

Furthermore, I wonder if tanks should be able to self-cleanse debuffs from themselves. I could be okay with that, though I'd hope no other roles would have this ability.

Damage-Based Heals
A Celestial healer with Malediction-Benediction or a Rage tank with Remorseless Recovery can heal 100% of the damage they do, which can be A LOT now. I really feel that these skills should be toned down to heal only 25% of damage done. Here's a vid of Remorseless Recovery in action:



As you can see, I was countered nearly every time and yet by the end of the video I'm still near full health while my opponent is at half health. In a lot of scenarios, 100% healing based on damage will equate to god mode for savvy players.

Toughness and Blocking
This is my understanding of toughness: 71 toughness = 1% damage reduction, so 7100 toughness would theoretically be 100% damage reduction. In order to prevent that from happening, damage reduction is capped at 75%, which would be 5325 toughness. With the new gear putting you over 11,000 toughness, you're always going to be over the cap and blocking does nothing to further mitigate damage.

This means that the only advantage to blocking now is to get counters. Block counters do about 2-3k damage, which is about the same as doing a normal combo and probably less than a WM combo.

The point: blocks don't mean as much because you can just plow through with a WM combo, trade damage, and probably win the trade in damage if you did a WM combo.

If you look at the video above, a big reason why my health didn't go down much is because my damage went through before my opponent's immunity even kicked in. I was trading damage, basically, and didn't care because I knew I'd be healed anyways.

Healer Class Shields
Now that all shields only mitigate 25% damage, there's no reason for healer shields to have a 3-hit limit before expiring. To see this in action, see here:



The video was taken on live, but I've tested it in GU41 as well and it's the same. I realize that healer shields are pretty bomb and last over 15 seconds, but having a 3 hit limit counted at one hit per second is going to make these shields useless when they're already letting 75% damage through.

These shields are even more useless when used in DPS role because they go from having a strength equal to 125% of your resto to only being 60% of your resto. That's a HUGE loss, which is compounded by the 3-hit limit and further compounded by the fact that healer-class DPS shields do not provide usable-while-countered breakouts like all the other classes have.

Class Breakouts
This has been a pet peeve of mine for years (and it's literally the only reason I no longer play a healer class), but there needs to be more balance in usable-while-countered, non-supercharge breakouts, i.e. "pickups," between the classes. All tanks except earth have TWO pickups while all healer classes except nature have NO pickups. Buzz apparently had a discussion with some devs at SOE Live regarding this, and the response was "why do healers need pickups?"

I get it.. in PvE there are definite reasons why tanks and trollers would benefit from breakouts and healers don't necessarily need them in the same way. But this argument neglects the fact that this creates a large imbalance in DPS class access to breakouts. For example, Ice dps have 2 pickups while Celestial dps have none.. in a pvp setting, this is HUGE.

Ideally, I believe that every DPS class should have one non-supercharge, usable-while-countered breakout. I could live with tanks having two and in-role healers having none. Just give a breakout function to healer class shields when used in DPS role and adjust their durations down to 6 seconds with 20 second cooldowns (exactly like distract/shatter/grandeur).

I realize that another solution is simply to take away all usable-while-countered breakouts from PvP, in which case, I'd like to point out that this would suck because hardstuns used to be only 0.5-1 second in duration instead of nearly 3 seconds in duration. Watch this video starting at 2:50 to see what hardstuns used to look like:



The difference between 0.5 and 3 seconds doesn't seem like a lot, but it really does make all the difference. The more time spent on your back means the greater punishment you will take. And even beyond that, it's simply a very un-fun punishment, not because of the damage, but because it's time spent where you can't actively play the game. It's like being put in the penalty box every time you made a mistake on top of losing a large chunk of your life.

Tray Abilities Inflicting Blockbreakers
I'm referring specifically to the latest patch notes:

Fire
• Fireburst, Flame Cascade and Mass Detonation will now trigger a Block Breaker while Volatility is active.
Electricity
• Voltaic Bolt and Arc Lightning will now trigger a Block Breaker when activating the power refund Advanced Mechanic.
Gadgets
• Triggering additional damage with EMP Pulse or Paralyzing Dart using Advanced Mechanics will now inflict a Block Breaker.
Nature
• Briar and Harvest will now trigger a Block Breaker when activating the power refund Advanced Mechanic.

If you don't see the problem with this then please watch this video:



I can do a 2 tap hold into a blocking opponent, clip it with EMP clipped with Distract, and I get an attack that is simultaneously and interrupt AND a blockbreaker. The possibilities are dizzying and frankly I feel this just kind of breaks the system. Also, EMP no longer has a vulnerability window even when it blockbreaks, which is a bug I hope.