Am I just hopeless at PvP?

[exobook]

I've recently got into Star Wars the Old Republic (as a F2P player) overall I'm enjoying it. Howeve for some reaon I suck at the PvP section of the game.

I'll admit that I'm new to this kind of MMO but it can't be this fair.

Every single time I move to the objective I get stun locked by someone and then swarmed by the enemy and killed before I can do much damage. I'm level 19 and none of my skills allow me to stun people but everyone else seems to have loads of them.

Anyway its really annoying me that this game mode is so unfair. So am I just a bad player or is it the game or is there just a really steep learning curve.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

A little from column A, a little from column B. I don't really focus on PvP much and I pay the price for that in the times when I do, since there is PvP-tuned gear you use warzone commendations to buy. Like in WoW, the more PvP you do the better gear you can get for it. Though your stats are always raised to a rough approximation of Level 49 you don't get the later skills, so you should find some improvements as you level up until you reach 50 when it's time to bend over once again.

Regardless, try to stay with a group when attacking an objective- 'group up' is a common term you may hear that asks people to not immediately rush to an objective upon respawning, but wait for a few others to catch up and form a group to attack as one, preferably with a healer (on that note, if you spot an enemy healer in a group battle, focus on them). Alone, you have almost no chance of capturing an objective. Naturally this tactic assumes your team possesses human-level intelligence, which is why I stay away from PvP unless invited to it by my guild.

 

[LetalisK]

I've recently got into Star Wars the Old Republic

There's your problem. Before their first big patch, their PvP was fucking AWESOME! Shit was pretty balanced. Higher levels still had a bit of an advantage, but level 15s could come in and wipe the floor with 49s if they knew what they were doing. However, they fucked it hard with their first patch(or was it second?). Granted, they could have fixed it since I left, but it was in a horrible place when I left.

Don't get me wrong, you could still be a bad player for all I know, but SWTOR certainly isn't helping.

Unsolicited suggestions: If you want a PvP experience where you can invest a lot of time and get to a place where you can do fairly well even if you're not the best PvPer, go play WoW. If you want a PvP experience where you can jump right in and get better as you play as a function of experience rather than gear, go play Guild Wars 2. SWTOR has nothing redeeming about its PvP.

 

[Playful Pony]

Knowing how far my MMORPG-playing friends outclass me (I only dabble in MMORPGs from time to time), I'd say it's likely they are simply far better than you... I absolutely suck at these games, I cannot do PvP at all. I guess it can be atributed to me never really wanting to get into it, but still... Other players absolutely destroy me within seconds, I guess it is how a platformer-enthusiast would feel playing a multiplayer FPS match for the first time.

 

[LostCrusader]

My experience with SWTOR's pvp has been that you won't have the skills you need to really be competitive until at least lvl 25. The stealth classes seem to be better a bit earlier than others, but the main thing you need to do in pvp (and in most pvp games) is just stick with the group. You and your team will do better if you go around as a gang, rather than splitting up and being taken down one by one.

 

[Paflick]

Like WhiteFangofWar said, it could be a few factors adding up. I think the main problem you have at the moment is that you're level 19 - You don't really have any useful skills for PvP then. Personally, I rarely even touch PvP before level 30, except for the rare one match when I'm bored. As you level, you'll get better skills that will allow you to be competitive, and you can see if you actually suck from there.

Other than that, most of the tips provided do work - Group up, target healers, etc.

SWToR has a great PvP system (In my opinion), and it's what I mainly do in that game besides RP now. It does take some getting used to, though, so don't give up! You'll get there eventually!

 

[exobook]

Unsolicited suggestions: If you want a PvP experience where you can invest a lot of time and get to a place where you can do fairly well even if you're not the best PvPer, go play WoW. If you want a PvP experience where you can jump right in and get better as you play as a function of experience rather than gear, go play Guild Wars 2. SWTOR has nothing redeeming about its PvP.

I'm not really playing this game for the PvP since as a free to play player (ok prefered status)I only get five pvp battles a week.

A little from column A, a little from column B. I don't really focus on PvP much and I pay the price for that in the times when I do, since there is PvP-tuned gear you use warzone commendations to buy. Like in WoW, the more PvP you do the better gear you can get for it. Though your stats are always raised to a rough approximation of Level 49 you don't get the later skills, so you should find some improvements as you level up until you reach 50 when it's time to bend over once again.

yeah but the lowest pvp gear I can find is level 20 and far too expensive for me to afford. I suspect that as a F2P player I'm heavily penalies in this regard.

 

[LetalisK]

SWToR has a great PvP system (In my opinion), and it's what I mainly do in that game besides RP now. It does take some getting used to, though, so don't give up! You'll get there eventually!

Please explain that one to me. I need a good excuse to get back into SWTOR. Last I left it, it unbalanced the 10-49 tier to the point where lower levels didn't have a chance anymore and the 50 tier was almost solely about being lucky enough to get your gear via a random loot generator. Or grinding out the points for the gear over a ridiculously long amount of time.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I've recently got into Star Wars the Old Republic (as a F2P player).

There is your problem (or at very least a factor), F2P for TOR locks you out of quite a bit and throttles your XP gain.

 

[Karoshi]

Most important question:

Do you click on your abilities with a mouse or do you keybind them?

PvP in MMOs is all about knowing your abilites and being able to react quickly. If you use your mouse for 50% of your abilities, you are gonna be a lot slower than them and therefore lose most of the fights.

Apart from that, you are lvl 19 after all. You have a mere fraction of your abilites and your gear isn't the best either. If you wanna enjoy PvP, you should try focusing on the objectives and not on personal kills. Despite being low-level, you can still be plenty helpful if you are at the right time at the right place or manage to stop the enemy from capping your base.

 

[AuronFtw]

No, the PvP in SWTOR is utter garbage. Lower levels have absolutely no chance unless the opposing team is mentally deficient. They don't even try to balance things; without access to skills and skill points and the stats of high end gear, you are useless to your team.

PvP in all MMO's is utter garbage*

Only one that was even remotely decent was Guild Wars (the first one, not the hilarious joke one), and even then mostly because it wasn't a "real" MMO, it was designed for small, tactical team-based PvP with elements of chess and MTG woven in via the skill selection system (limit of 8 including 1 elite) and dual profession system.

The same company couldn't make the lightning strike twice, and opted to try to copy WoW's fuckawful PvP and thus GW2's is shamefully bad. It doesn't have a deathmatch mode, or multi-map tournament play like Heroes' Ascent, nor anything as complex and skillful as the old Guild Battles. The only PvP modes GW2 has is a copypaste of Arathi Basin (a shitty battleground from WoW) and a copypasted, up-scaled Alliance Battles (a shitty battleground from GW1, pretty much the worst one the game had). That plus the class balance being joke on wheels absolutely kills that game's PvP.

Also, yeah, Tor's is bad too, and that's without getting into how much the game kicks you in the nuts for trying to play it without a sub. If you feel the need to star wars MMO for whatever reason, do yourself a favor and pay the $15 - it will make whatever time you spend in the game more productive and less painful. But like other people have said, it's hardly worth playing - and certainly not the PvP content.

 

[exobook]

Most important question:

Do you click on your abilities with a mouse or do you keybind them?

PvP in MMOs is all about knowing your abilites and being able to react quickly. If you use your mouse for 50% of your abilities, you are gonna be a lot slower than them and therefore lose most of the fights.

Apart from that, you are lvl 19 after all. You have a mere fraction of your abilites and your gear isn't the best either. If you wanna enjoy PvP, you should try focusing on the objectives and not on personal kills. Despite being low-level, you can still be plenty helpful if you are at the right time at the right place or manage to stop the enemy from capping your base.

Yes I do use my mouse.

Also I do focus on the objectives but the ones in SWOR are built around taking postions or taking a ball in a blood bowl rip off. This all forces me into attacking the enemy team and then I get stun locked and killed.

Also I have to attack to get medals to unlock rewards after the battle. However for some reason by the time it takes me to unlock one medel (minimun needed to complete to get rewards) the rest of the team usually have 4 or more and I spend the rest of the game playing catch up. That and they don't ever talk even when I ask a question makes the entire mode frustrating. But its one of the few ways of getting good ammounts of xp without grinding silly in PvE

 

[Rylee Fox]

There are 2 major issues in pvp games.

1: The players will do ANYTHING to win. It doesn't matter how much they abuse the game mechanics, abuse bugs/glitches, or even hack/cheat. They WILL do it to make sure they win. They are deathly afraid of losing and act like they'll die in real life if they do.

2: Balance. I have never played an mmo with balanced pvp. There was one that did have balanced pvp for 1 year after it was released, however then it was decided to put all the best gear in the game in the cash shop, and to add new classes with no balance whatsoever. The game is completely broken now and not worth playing.

I've done a lot of pvp in mmos (even when I try to avoid it I'll somehow end up in a big pvp guild.) and it seems to be something I'm good at anyway, but those 2 issues completely ruin it for me.

 

[synobal]

If you want a F2P game with pretty good PVP you should check out Tera, it's F2P features are much more robust, being a paid subscriber only gives you moderate benefits and you can do ANYTHING a paid subscriber can as a F2P player.

Seriously Tera is where it is at, at least as far as F2P games are concerned.

 

[Rblade]

PvP in these kind of games tends to get really difficult. I played WoW for several years and consider myself to be pretty decend at it. But I got slaughthered in PvP. Guys that play PvP really practice alot and it's really nervous and twitchy. It requires great reflexes and the correct application of in some cases dozens of skills on the fly. Reading that how can it be anything but really hard. Don't feel bad if it's not really your thing because I think you are far from alone.

 

[lRookiel]

Lack of experience I'd put it down to.

It's the same story with me and Dark souls, I used to be terrible at PvP. Now I've played it and figured out a playstyle I like, I'm pretty good at it :3

 

[Karoshi]

Most important question:

Do you click on your abilities with a mouse or do you keybind them?

PvP in MMOs is all about knowing your abilites and being able to react quickly. If you use your mouse for 50% of your abilities, you are gonna be a lot slower than them and therefore lose most of the fights.

Apart from that, you are lvl 19 after all. You have a mere fraction of your abilites and your gear isn't the best either. If you wanna enjoy PvP, you should try focusing on the objectives and not on personal kills. Despite being low-level, you can still be plenty helpful if you are at the right time at the right place or manage to stop the enemy from capping your base.

Yes I do use my mouse.

Also I do focus on the objectives but the ones in SWOR are built around taking postions or taking a ball in a blood bowl rip off. This all forces me into attacking the enemy team and then I get stun locked and killed.

Also I have to attack to get medals to unlock rewards after the battle. However for some reason by the time it takes me to unlock one medel (minimun needed to complete to get rewards) the rest of the team usually have 4 or more and I spend the rest of the game playing catch up. That and they don't ever talk even when I ask a question makes the entire mode frustrating. But its one of the few ways of getting good ammounts of xp without grinding silly in PvE

I really recommend binding some abilities to keys like Q E R F G and the like. It's gonna make your life way easier and improve your reaction time. It's one of the most important things in PvP.

It's gonna get better once you are a higher level, but for now you will be mincemeat. Try getting familiar with keybinding and have a closer look at the abilities you already have. Some skills are useless in PvE, but incredibly important in PvP - like slowing abilities or interrupts. Especially against healers or sorcerers interrupts works incredibly well.

 

[Paflick]

Snip

Please explain that one to me. I need a good excuse to get back into SWTOR. Last I left it, it unbalanced the 10-49 tier to the point where lower levels didn't have a chance anymore and the 50 tier was almost solely about being lucky enough to get your gear via a random loot generator. Or grinding out the points for the gear over a ridiculously long amount of time.

Sure thing.

Since 2.0 came out, there have been a few changes that have improved lower level PvP (Not that it's fixed it entirely, mind you, there are still a few things that could be done.)

The first is that they seperated the 10-49 bracket in to two different brackets. I believe it's 10-29 and 30-54. Or something along those lines. It makes it a bit more equal, but the ability discrepancies can still be a crippler.

Something that affects both the low level and 55 queues is the changes to Bolster (The buff that sets you to level 55 stats on the lower levels, basically.) It now provides a baseline expertise to everyone, so while those that have PvP gear will still be better off, it allows the gameplay to be slightly more skill focused than a gear grind.

It may just be me, but I've noticed that the gear grinds don't seem to be as bad this time around either. If you quit before Battlemaster Gear became normal, then things have changed quite a bit. They got rid of the boxes that contained gear, and replaced it all with a commendation system. There's a daily you complete that gives you 100 Warzone and Ranked Warzone commendations (For playing four matches, wins count as two) and a weekly that awards you 300 of each for winning nine warzones. So that seems to make the gear acquisition better, in my opinion.

Overall, if you didn't like the mechanics of the PvP, you probably still won't like it. But personally, I believe it's a bit better. And the game -is- F2P, so you could always jump in and see if it's any better.

Best of luck!

 

[exobook]

It may just be me, but I've noticed that the gear grinds don't seem to be as bad this time around either. If you quit before Battlemaster Gear became normal, then things have changed quite a bit. They got rid of the boxes that contained gear, and replaced it all with a commendation system. There's a daily you complete that gives you 100 Warzone and Ranked Warzone commendations (For playing four matches, wins count as two) and a weekly that awards you 300 of each for winning nine warzones. So that seems to make the gear acquisition better, in my opinion.

Yeah but as a free to play player I'm pretty much screwed by these missions. The daily you've described means I have to spend almost my entire weekly warzone allowance of 5 in one day. And the weekly is impossible for me unless I waste coins on a pass.

And please don't just tell me to subscribe, the offical forums (which I can't post on because I'm a f2p person) are already full of passive aggresive hate of f2p players as it is.