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My pvp experience

AuthorMessage
Survivor
Sep 06, 2010
4
Hi, my name is John Heart, you might know me from third era, and after my third aneurysm from pvp i wanted to share my thoughts, i've played so much i have two maxes, a grand(2100) and a magus(1070)both for pvp so I do have a grounds to criticize this mechanic on. I have done pvp since the first age as well so I have seen every pvp change to date ever since i was 7, I am now currently 16 and even though i didnt do much first age i still was there for the changes from the defender piggle era up until the tweaking of empyrea.

I wanna start with the actual process of getting a match, yes while i do understand not many people do pvp anymore my level 50 grand balance should NEVER have to fight and expect to beat someone over twice my level, the most ever should be 20 to 30 levels away from where i am. This wouldnt even be as big as an issue if there was no way to counter them, armor piercing currently is the strongest jewel in the game since there is no effective way to counter it, when you take away a grand's defense there's little else we can do. Shielding is also ineffective as shrike for some reason still exists.

Connectivity
Suprisingly decent server control not much complaints here, i've done many matches one loss won't kill a person

Toxicity
By far the worst aspect of pvp. The already broken mechanics offset by trolls and arrogant players who honestly believe what they do is groundbreaking. In my entire career I have only spammed lore in one match which i truthfully regret, we're not all perfect, however the problem arises when they act as if they are the king of pvp. That's not what this is about and they need to understand this aspect. A completely broken and unfair match can be offset by their nice attitudes, it has happened before trust me. I've made 75% of my friends this way.

spells
at this moment i have roughly 1000 characters left so i cant make paragraphs about this, however i'll touch up on it even though most of you know why this is broken. Mostly the two topics centered around it are the spam era and the shadow era. Which is worse is up to you as they're both way too effective to affectively stop. the best example i can think of both worlds is burning rampage and shrike

schools
Remember when ice was a feared and competitive top tier school? that was before tartarus, so about 2 or 3 years ago. Fire has sat at the top ever since fire beetle was meta. Myths have an entire school geared towards pvp dominance and dont sit anywhere near the top. Bias aside they are not accurately balanced from health, to items, to spells. Even writing this i forgot death existed with such game changers like beguile

Critical
again i could write an entire document on critical as it has caused me many losses from one lucky lore but i'll leave it at that as you already know it is broken but yet storms only clutch.

boosting
the most fundamental exploit still not properly fixed

only 70 characters left ill wrap it up here, i hope future changes come.

John ❤️

Armiger
Jan 18, 2010
2280
Greetings John.

I actually enjoyed reading your post as you detailed a clear and unbiased view of what seems to be the overall feel of the PvP Community.
Just so you know, you could've made a second post going in on Critical and the other sub-topics you had listed there.

Up to this day, I don't see the need for this "raw" attitude displayed by so many players nowadays.
Many persons stay away from PvP just because of the attitudes of these players and with few PvPer's, then we'll have longer wait time for matches, more unfair matches etc.

What can the game do to address this?
Any ideas?

As for the other issues. I believe there, as you said, exists some good persons in PvP. Not everyone is soaked up into thinking "they're better than everyone just because I've a high rank" No. There are also legitimate players who, aside from all the negatives of PvP are genuinely nice, caring and overall helpful. How many players are like this though? Well...


Mastermind
Aug 01, 2009
306
If I could give you a hug or a kiss or both I would. And not in a weird, gross, way. But in a "you are a genius" kind of way. You wrote my every thought so clearly. Thank You.

Survivor
Sep 06, 2010
4
I appreciate those nice comments and due to them i decided to make an entire nonbiased article on why critical is by far the worst implemented mechanic right after shrike.
Let’s start on before it was changed, it was balanced at SOME extent, i’m not sure if many of you know this but critical is altered depending on your current level, which basically means that a level 50 with, say, 90 block is the same as a max with around 300. It wasn’t shattering as you could block most spells but it still by any means wasn’t considered balanced in any shape form or way, ice could one shot storms and lifes could, and still can, critical a guardian spirit and this annoyed most, if not the entire player base. Their response to this(earth shattering I know) is that their critical system is flawed, so they altered it and made it a bit more, randomized. For those lf you who do indulge in max level pvp the reason most of us chose not to was because we wanting less luck determining a match, such as shadow spells and crit. I am not saying though that this all max level pvp, nor am i insulting them either, but if someone honestly looks me square in my eye and swears on their life that their is no luck involved is a liar. Back to the topic, now that you have some background on why people do low level pvp, seeing why changing critical to be a bit more luck based is extremely disheartening. No luck should ever exist in any type of game based soley around the players skills since it would not only be false advertising but make the game way more frustrating. I have had to go to the hospital three times over this game and i have cancelled my membership and never plan on coming back to this game. I do think they can still change this game around but I truly in my heart believe they never will. There have been many other posts about pvp, I don’t expect mine to change one thing and it’s sad i’m writing this with that mindset. I might do a post on my personally most hated mechanic but for now chao

Survivor
Sep 06, 2010
4
Spells
yes yes, i do understand i talked about this already but i truthfully in my heart believe this breaks this game more than anything else, in my opinion mind you. Let me explain why i believe this

I want you to pretend for a second shadow spells of any kind don’t exist at ALL, no shrike, abominable, no khrulu and just focus on what you have to work with without them
Now with this mindset I can easily tell you that myth is, by far, the least prepared when it comes to pvp, at least from a base standpoint, which is sad seeing as they were meant for pvp.
Now how did i determine this? Well first lets compare myth to the universally worst school, death, from just the pvp aspect. Now with no shadow spells and assuming you have all the spells of that school respectively lets take a look at some of the most annoying spells of each starting with medusa and skeletal dragon. medusa has two counters while dragon has 1, stun blocks and shields for medusa and triage for drake so from a standpoint they look relatively balanced? They aren’t, determining if a spell is broken or not does not come usually from the utility, but whether you can effectively counter. Take this and apply it to spells like shrike and lore master and you start to see why they’re as broken as they are. Granted myths have things like shatter and whatnot but this is only effective at low levels that don’t have dispels and shield stack. Death cuts off all forms of shields and healing with their DoT and antiheal spells which are so potent other schools pick them up. The problem with death arises when we throw in shadow spells but i’m getting way off topic. I could honestly make an entire 5 threads on just myth and why statistically they’re one of the worst schools but once again, i’m plagued so harshly by these character limits that i’ll stop here. Thank you for your time and i’ll be seeing you all soon. John Heart always lives on somewhere in the arena.