Hey all. This is superstar poster OctopusDropkick here in an attempt to explain PvP dynamics and why PvP in CO is terrible.

*spins lasciviously to the camera, slips and breaks neck*

Let's begin with the basics. First off, I love PvP. It's why I joined up with Guild Wars when it came out. There is nothing better than putting together a team of eight people and then proceeding to thrash near a hundred opponents over several maps in an attempt to be the only winning team. PvP can be complex and it can be fun. Though complex as it is, there are always simple basic mechanisms in play.

You want to defeat your opponent and you don't want to be defeated. There are approaches for this.

To Defeat an Opponent;

1)The Spike approach. A 'spike' is a sudden burst of damage, an upward explosion upon the steady line of overall damage. The Spike approach is all about killing someone suddenly and as fast as possible before they can react and use anti-spiking measures. There are two things important in a spike;
a) Damage – You want to try to push in as much damage as you possibly can over as short of a period as you can, thus reducing the chances of your damage being reacted to and ensuring a kill.
b) Disabling – Your damage isn't going to get that kill if anti-spike measures are put into play during your sudden burst attack. Likewise, you want the opponent locked down during the spike phase.

2)War of Attrition approach. Here you've decided to go heavy on survivability and endurance. You've skimped on going out as offensively as possible with a disable in place of a different more lasting build. Your goal is to have enough defensive capabilities that you're capable of deflecting most spikes while having a good and steady supply of damage, intending to instead wear through the opponents various defensive mechanisms till they're out of luck and then get that kill.

Now that we have this settled, I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that to be viable in PvP in CO you have to take the first approach. Why is that?

Because there is a very powerful defensive mechanism in play and everyone has access to this mechanism. I'm talking about the teleport travel skill. Let's review this thing.

Teleport; Instantly removes you from play, providing more-or-less invulnerability (if you can activate it). 0 recharge time, 0 energy cost.

That's a pretty strong defensive skill. It's quick and fast, which makes it even a trouble for the Spike Approach if the user is smart. It's on a 0 timer, so it can be used again and again. Why is it on a 0 timer? Let's look at another defensive skill similar to teleport.

Smoke Bomb; Removes you from play, providing more-or-less invulnerability. It's on a 2 minute timer and costs a hefty load of energy.

That's weird. Let's look at the Burrow skill, which also removes you from play and is on a 0 recharge timer. Hey, it looks like it takes nearly four seconds to activate this power – meaning you're open to knockback, disables, stuns, and even damage death during this time. Four seconds seems to be more than enough time to activate a counter ability.

So teleport really seems out of place and incomparable to any other defensive skill out there. By having immediate access to more-or-less invulnerability at all times, you become very hard to kill. It's no surprise that the only viable methods of killing you involves the spike method with a heavy reliance upon the disabling mechanism – because even if you do start to spike someone, they can instantly pull out unless you've locked them down.

So to get kills in PvP, you need to build for as much damage as you can while being sure to pick up the most potent lockdown you can get access to. I'm sure we all see this pattern in CO PvP. I'm also sure we all see a few skills used over and over again, for good reason.

Here are some choice quotes from the PvP forums;

In question about new game approaches following the update, blaen99 seems to agree that there are none, given the current state of things;

Here's a question. What do you want out of a PvP experience?

So here we are. One skill, only one skill, is deciding the fate of the entire PvP game. Not only does this make PvP stale as hell, it hurts people who come into our broken little paradigm who aren't built for PvP in a massive way.

Most of the PvE population pretty much thinks PvP in CO is a pile of poo. I've talked to a lot of them in game (as well as my friends) and their experiences seem to be as thus; They queue up, they enter a game. They proceed to witness a terrible lopsided fight where one team gets nearly 0 kills while the other team pulls in 15. People are turned off by it and the PvP population continues to shrink, making the scene even more ******n stale and boring. Why are the scores going in this direction? A few factors, but the largest is because everyone that builds for PvP is using teleport. Those PvE's who queue up to play with their unique champion in a game that's built around unique builds can't ever get a kill, because teleport is such an amazing defensive skill. If the user of teleport is smart they won't get caught and the War of Attrition approach will never ever even yield 1 kill the entire match.

(Zombie Apoc seems to be the only exception to the rule given the unique approach where people are mostly fighting PvE Monsters and everyone loses in the end.)

So that's the scene folks. PvP in this game is really suffering from this one travel skill. If PvP is to go anywhere in this game, it's going to need to be addressed. A change can be as simple as changing teleport to a 4 second charge skill on the level of burrow, while allowing the user to stay in teleport for as long as they wish. Even something as small as this would go a long way toward fixing the scene here.

But what about the PvE scene? Surely PvE shouldn't ever be inconvenienced by the demands of PvP! (Heh) – Let's be honest here though, it's also an amazing skill in PvE as well. One can even consider it overpowered and imbalanced compared to other active defenses available in the game.

One of the common PvE complaints I hear about this game is that it's too easy. And yeah, it is pretty easy. I really don't think changing teleport and fixing it to be more in line with other PvE defensive mechanisms is going to make the playing experience unbearably difficult. If anything, it'll improve the playing experience for people.

Its not just Teleport.

Teleport decides the metagame.

Jesus Dropkick could you stop complainging over teleport :O?

I am T4 Pvp'r with a defensive build with 3 strong attacks, all of which would I guess qualify as spike abilities. I agree that teleport is an ability that can be bothersome in PvP, but it is not a guaranteed way to survive opr make people OP. When someone teleports you can still attack them if for a few seconds after they disappear. Plan your attacks to spike at half health or below and you can usually kill them even a few seconds after they port. I would not be opposed to a cooldown on teleport, but I think block removal is a bigger problem and is why TP is so commonplace.

excactly!

thats why Cryptic should focus on fixing all the bugs instead of using the time on teleport.

seriously
If you have to chose on thing that got fixed, would it be ?
a) lets say, ehm, WTK
b) teleport

Actually, I change my mind, its not even Teleport thats a problem. +perception FTW!

There are reasons to believe WTK, Catalyst Items, and MiniDrive are not working as intended. I'd rather get a dev to do a brief review of each of those and let us know if that is the case.

I doubt they will review teleport without reviewing all travel powers. To me, it's just asking for too much at this point.

TP does indeed blow a big rod, but thats a lot easier to counter than WTK spam, debuff stacking and PA spiking. I'll just thunderbolt lunge someone to hell and electrocute them for a group-spanking, their defense is negated.

When you're just constantly blowing up from WTK and trying to break someone using LR and Strafe + aversion, you may as well just lay down

There will always be stealth powers in the game that can't be perceived all the time by everybody. It isn't stealth and it isn't perception. It's teleport. It's smoke bomb on a 0 recharge timer with 0 energy that has 0 drawbacks and doesn't cost a power slot, as it's a travel power.