what do you want for PvP Season 4?

Not to rain on the parade since I never liked immunities but that is not why the were instituted.

Immunities were implemented as bonus/reward to playing the counter system correctly for both PvP and PvE purposes. However, I do agree with you. In many ways immunities exacerbate problems already present in the PvP areas of the game, since it's the aspect of the game that depends the most on the counter system. It appears reasonable that the bonus damage and the imposed CC effect are more than enough of a bonus for landing a counter in PvP. And as you said, removing immunities most certainly would improve combat fluidity on multiple fronts, which it is what it appears every PvPer really wants anyway.

If immunities could be taken out of PvP, teams would actually have to carry shielding powers and learn to use other mitigating tactics as opposed to primarily settling for immunities to provide mitigation. Think it would actually create more meta games as greater differentiation of load-out powers would be involved in fielding successful teams.

Wishlist for PvP:

• No immunities
• No WM
• No AM except the sorcery and earth pets (which barely qualify as AM anyhow)

After all the work that just went into them for gu47 I think you'll see major improvements.

Actually without them, there would be little reward at all for counters as many powers already have a power that can break you out of a hard stun. Not to mention the mitigation you get from a hard stun is pretty piss poor actually. Right now in arenas with full gear its only about 5200 damage absorption, which means very little. Not to mention damage over time would become extremely preferable as it'd continue to deal damage even after someone is countered.

All that aside, it's the only thing that even makes certain powers PvP viable.

/dustsoffsoapboxandhoistshimselfup

What a tale of woe! Yes, Arena is in a troubled state, everything that's been corroborated in this thread bears that out. Major kudos to the tremendous effort by you and your cohorts as Legends appears in a much more stable state, though still suffers from some of the same ills. Your opinion certainly carries more authority than mine. I will not debate you on that, so on many of these matters I willingly differ to you.

With that said, the Arena experiment needs to end and by that I mean all the PvE features that cross pollinate Arena such as AM, WM, and in my estimation Immunity, needs to be stripped back to the most basic 2011 level. That's when Arena PvP was most skill driven and most competitive. Quite the Herculean proposal indeed and what I am ultimately proposing is a much more rigid bifurcation of PvP from PvE, much in the same manner that Legends has been bifurcated from the rest of the game. All these so-called power balances, caps, limiting certain powers, they're well-intending though short-term ad hoc solutions to a systemic problem of having the demands of PvE too closely tied to Arena PvP.

Now, maybe immunities marry better with Legends, sounds like you've done some critical analysis surrounding that and I am curious on your thoughts. It could totally be the case that Arena is better with them too, along with a number of other features. However, it is impossible to know if that is indeed the case because the circumstances are so sullied with extraneous PvE features. The whole operation needs to became separate in many ways like Legends. Let's be clear, Legends has always had much more stability from update to update as compared to Arena due to predominately being separated from PvE mechanics/player-characters. That's one of the main attractions.

In tandem, the accessibility to arena and full PvP gear options need to be wholly attainable by the F2P crowd. It's the only way the ranks will be replenished in any meaningful way. This means gear costs should only be marks that are fully available to the F2P contingent. The F2P should be able to access every level of the PvP gear. However, attaining skill points and the availability of different power sets will be locked away within the pay-for content along with a litany of other things. Once the players are engaged in the game it's up to the developers to convert those players into paying customers.

I am not sure the time table for this sort of work especially given the staff size over at Daybreak. It may be entirely unfeasible but this is ultimately the direction Arenas need to go if it's going to have any sustained longevity outside of the super hardcore players.

Immunity was never about PvE. It was about not penalizing a person for successfully performing a counter. Before I could successfully blockbreak someone and try to perform some form of counter punishment only for another enemy to interrupt me, because I am still vulnerable to interrupt.

This made blocking and blockbreaking slightly weaker as they can be countered by anyone in range to attack you, while attacks vulnerable to block only work in limited areas that are usually very small. Most of the time only one person is in the range to counter someone vulnerable to block compared to vulnerable to interrupt or blockbreak where many times the entire team is in range to counter you.

Yes that was definitely an issue, but unless I am patently misguided (totally possible) there was a large PvE component to it as well as it rounded out the combat mechanics for those types encounters too.

Anyway, the genesis of immunity is neither here nor there for this discussion. It just seems there have always been huge issues surrounding their implementation in PvP, particularly for us play-station players. There always seems to be something messed up and I am trying to offer up a different solution that plays on the features already built into the game.

You appear to disagree on the matter and probably have considerable data to support your point. I am open to all of that and if it's compelling enough, there is no reason why I wouldn't side with you as well. I just haven't seen it and I have experienced long term combat issues related to immunities.

I don't get this reasoning you say there is support for why counter immunity is good, say they should be removed, yet the only explanation is that there are "combat issues". I'm not saying you point might not be valid, but you can't expect anyone to be convinced when you use something so overly vague as your support for your claim.

If you are talking about issues with counter windows or general bugginess with CC then you are focusing on the wrong issue. Saying counter immunity should be removed, because of bugginess with counter windows is like saying Batman in legends should be nerfed, because CC is broken .

It is never a good idea to decide a position on an aspect of the game based on the fact that a different aspect is not working properly. It is better to simply fix the aspect that is not working properly. GU47 is actually slated to fix most, hopefully all of these issues.

To respond to both your posts, PvP is certainly better with immunity. It actually opens up more tactics and viable loadouts. For example, right now my arenas loadout for gadgets consists of two powers that would be utterly useless without immunity, Battle Display and Stealth. Various interruptible and counterable powers may very well not be viable at any point, ever. You wouldn't be able to really safely use any AoE melee combo because if someone remotely in your vicinity blocks, you're screwed. It's the singular reason one skilled player can fight off multiple unskilled players as well. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Take a look at the combat responsiveness thread in testing feedback. DevDirt has been doing AMAZING work on our entire combat system to make everything more responsive. Today he identified an issue that's been present since launch, so the game will run smoother than it ever has. So platform based issues should be minimal.

I honestly sort of dread logging on our live servers after experiencing the combat on test.

On test it's like


But going back to live it's like


And this is coming from someone who has relatively few issues.

Just gonna throw this out there, how do we feel about only being able to counter your intended target? Screen blocking is by and far the most obnoxious thing when I'm dropping bombs on my target who isn't actually countering me yet the player kind of over there is blocking and I'm on my butt after my aoe melee.

Cycling targets for immunity is already a thing, why not take it one step further?

Coming from someone well versed in HB's, I won't miss PD as an aoe BB.

That's sort of the risk/reward of using an AoE attack that's vulnerable to a counter as it deals more damage but risks greater exposure. It's also part of the reason we've got immunity, to enable these attacks being viable.

Brice came up with a good idea regarding AoE block breakers a while ago. It only becomes an AoE when your SuperCharge is full. Granted they have removed all the others, so this one really should be removed as well.

Greater exposure, of course. More damage, hardly. Every melee hold is vulnerable to interrupt regardless of single target or aoe and all have around the same damage capacity.

Aoe's usually split damage so the reward decreases with more targets as the risk increases dramatically. Logically, that is just another thing I find utterly strange and incomprehensible.

A fair clarification request, let me try to do better with my thoughts.

By "malfunction" or "combat issue", I mean to include things that cause combat to under perform or not perform as intended such as immunity being applied to the wrong player, immunity triggering when it is not suppose to, immunity falsely messaging immunity, immunity triggering other parts of combat to not work properly like break-out or any of the other counter mechanics. I will acknowledge that these issues seem lessened now but I do still see these sorts of problems, with the exception of the breakout issue. I don't know what's causing that issue at this time, so I cannot assign that to immunities.

While you can say you are hopeful that things will be right after GU47 and the critiquing non-working features is illogical, immunities have been in the game for over two years and have never worked properly on the play-station platform. That's a long time not to be working properly. If you search "immunity" on the forums or archived forums, the complaints about them not working as intended are constant. So I have may doubts about them ever actually working the way they were intended to work. That's not a slight on the developers, they are noteworthy and have gotten better over time. However, there is probably great reason why they malfunction so often based on the sheer speed and complexity of combat in this game. So when something consistently does not work, it actually may be a fair critique to assert that different solutions at least needs to be entertained.

My whole angle here is that there are plenty of other powers in the game that can be used to counter damage, maybe it's worth exploring that instead of overlaying a systemic fix that brings it's own set of problems? I am wondering a simplification of the system (i.e. removing AM, WM and Immunities) would result in a more consistent experience?.

There were also unintended consequences from immunities. For long periods of time, it became extremely difficult to score kills in Arena. Many matches between unevenly matched teams resulted in draws. That seems like an odd result and it is. The system had become so overburdened by this crutch, that the system really was not able to allow for a winner to be determined. So, if AM and WM are removed from Arena, then it figures the Immunity feature may need to be removed as well. From there, powers can be evaluated more earnestly, in a more stable setting and not tied to the ongoings on PvE.

As far as accessibility for new players, what's more intuitive speccing to use a shield or relying on immunities? The vets will figure out whatever solutions are available so I am less concerned about them. Just trying to look at these considerations differently.

Vulnerable to block

And no, they don't start to split damage immediately. They start to split after 2. So an attack that deals 5k damage, which is definitely not unheard of, will effectively deal 10k damage. That's not taking into account that weapon attacks don't hit every target so some will only split up to a certain point.

Weapon mastery functions differently. It will hit one target for it's full damage, then a certain number of other targets for 20%. And many weapon mastery attacks are AoE. So let's say we've got a weapon mastery attack that can hit for 5k and hit 7 other targets for 20%. That means you effectively deal 12k damage because of that AoE attack, wherein a single target attack only would have done 5k damage.

So they don't have the same damage capacity. Not even close.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that part of the reason you think this is because of how a lot of players have talked about how single target damage is preferable because it doesn't split. Which is correct. However that's not to say that AoE damage doesn't have it's merits either. Particularly in keeping up sustained DPS, which is ultimately what gets you kills in arenas.

All fair contentions, and yes just read DD's post about making some breakthrough fixes today. Great news!

I think this because it's kinda silly that a player can not even be in my line of sight and still land a counter on my melee attacks.

Thank you for further validating my point. We can now discuss effective DPS vs ineffective DPS as it relates to PvP. High damage output doesn't always equate kills and conversely, high kill counts don't always equate high damage. Effective DPS has damage comparable to their amount of kills, running 80k damage out in legends and having little to show for it is ineffective DPS, usually a player with an easily interrupted play style, AoE. Aoe damage is just gravy being that you hit more than one target not necessarily lay waste to your intended target. In my personal opinion, if multiple targets just so happened to be in the line of fire, then everything becomes an aoe. If I got 3 players lined up perfectly then one of those forehead beams from mental should penetrate all the way back.

I think I'm to the point of fleeting ideals, please excuse me.

Aoe combos do both interrupt ranged attacks(aoe) and are vulnerable to block(aoe/screen block). They shouldn't do one and not the other. I run with weapons that have single target weapon mastery combos for arenas(competitive).

I don't think they should do either, interrupt non intended targets and get blocked by non intended targets.

Oh, hit boxes are all over the place in this game. Go in and test out the tap melee hit boxes sometime with two people to see how big they are. Tightening up some of them such as taps could be nice.

I'm not trying to sound rude, but I'm not really sure what you're referring to in your second paragraph. Take it from someone who often times ends up with the lowest DPS out in PvP but the most kills. Having other people to keep up a high sustained DPS counts. A lot. The two work very much in tandem with each other. If you've only got high single target damage the person you're focusing on can kite and the healer on the other team doesn't need to really go into over drive. If you've only got high AoE damage the healer won't need to go into over drive either because of damage splitting.

In addition to that, having things such as what you said penetrate through people to hit multiple targets does actually lessen viable advanced tactics in arenas. Such as this.

GU47 will make the PvP side better, IF all goes as plan. Which we know, probably won't. But the PvE side will be much worse, I won't even touch PvE once GU 47 is released.

Some sexy *** mofos in that video.