PvP 101: How to be a team player

[Aiden Baail]

Alright so I PvP a lot! Like, a lot! Not as much as Grim Determination or Ascension but I mean, still1

I've decided to write some basic tips and tricks for PvP'ing. These won't really be "how to play your class" things because that's pretty subjective and I only know two classes that well. So here we go!

Communication

This is the single most important part of PvP. You can be a help to the team just by utilizing the fact you got a keyboard and can make words with it in /ops. The most important most simple communication in PvP is the incoming call. If you can, it is best to be as specific as possible with these.

"Inc" "help" or "im dead" aren't good incoming calls. These are the opposite, we call them "Bad incoming calls" in the PvP world.

"Inc east" or "Help west" are better, but still not the greatest.

"3 incoming west, send 1" or "2 inc center, don't send anyone" are optimal calls. You want to be specific about the numbers, and how many to send, especially in PUG where a simple "inc south" call gets you 5 players to help you kill the two guys attacking you, which leaves you exposed.

When can I start camping for Medals?
Civil War: When you have below 100 points, and even if you owned 2/3 of the turrets, you'd still lose.
Novare coast: When you have below 10% shield energy left. I've seen games turn around with 5% shield left, this is a map that has a lot of upsets!
Huttball: When you are down by two or more points with less than two minutes remaining.
Voidstar: Never.
Hypergate: This map is awful, give up as soon as you get queued for it and hope it's over soon.

But seriously, if your PvP plan is to go sit on a node no matter what happens, you as most likely not maximizing your contributions to your team! If you are a healer, ask someone to step in for you so you can go keep your buddies alive. And if people aren't attack a node/turret/door, you probably only need 1-2 people on it.  The most important thing is not to throw your hands up and go afk at what you've got, because that easily causes a chain reaction where everyone ends up camping and the game isn't even half done. That isn't fun for people who actually want to play and aren't grinding gear!

In PvE terms, that's like being the guy who joins in a raid and needs everything that drops on the first boss, then leaves.

"BLARHJGL KILL THE HEALERS U NOOBS"

This one is tricky! Healers are tough to deal with in PvP, and are important to bring down. Marking them helps, but all capsing in ops to kill the healers doesn't. Killing a healer in a quick or mannerly fashion requires some focus fire and knowing how to use your interrupts (I suggest binding it to a key that is within easy reach), but this type of coordination can be difficult in PUGS. I suggest focusing on stunning or keeping healers focused on only themselves if you are trying to kill one alone. You might not bring them down, but you've ruined their ability to help their teammates.

These are just a few things! I'll post some more tomorrow,  I suck at making long posts.

[Kyp]

+1

[Niavaloo]

"BLARHJGL KILL THE HEALERS U NOOBS"
 Killing a healer in a quick or mannerly fashion requires some focus fire and knowing how to use your interrupts   (I suggest binding it to a key that is within easy reach)

^THIS. 

As a PvP healer, I can tell you that being interrupted is the most effective way to bring one down. When  you interrupt a heal, all of the other heals go on cooldown. Maybe it's just a few seconds, but those seconds mean a lot in pvp! It's the difference between life and death! Just damaging a healer isn't enough, a good, geared healer can simply heal through it. What you need to do is stop the heals!

[Xiaoli]

As another PvP Healer... a tip for some heals.. I like to spam FAKE heals.. or Interupt my own heal. Unlike some other games, when a person goes to interrupt you, it goes off whether you are casting or not. Even in dire situations I am able to get a good amount of heals off if I start casting and kill it immediately, most likely blowing a few peoples intertupt cooldown. ALSO.. a good thing is to toss you AoE heal down just before the battle explodes. Once people figure out you're the healer, it will be pretty hard to do much. Stay hidden to provide support for your buddies or grab a pocket tank.

It's very hard to be a team player in games where voice chat isn't used by the whole team. Alot of teams these days are premade and are on vent, and even with the best of chat strategizing, it will always be a few steps behind folks who are verbally communicating. Not to mention.. typing in chat is hard to do in the heat of a battle to keep X person from capping this or unlocking this or scoring this while also calling out for help. If you happen to get stuck babysitting a node, you may want to make Copy and Paste a message for just in case "NEED HELP AT MID, NOW" or X INC SNOW. If I happened to get stuck, I use the X INC X... where I just throw the number in and hit enter and get my back up on the way but I've quit solo pvping because like I said, alot of premades running around. I don't want to play without my friends too. 

PLEASE for the love of Yoda... don't hop on chat and just scream "Help". Firstly no one even knows where you are, why you need help or how big the threat situation  is.


AOES- ARE AWESSSSOME. AoE's can be a game changer. What happens when half your team is either aross the field or stuck in the rez spot and you're down by "X" node and 3 people are trying to cap? BOMB EM. Many a AOEer has saved nodes by blowing up a node with 3-4 people mass-humping it hoping someone will be able to somehow cap.

WATCH OUT FOR SNEAKY MOFOS.  By sneaky, I mean any mofo who can lurk around without being seen. Try to face the nodes you cap while also being aware of your surroundings. Many a sneaky mofo have went and capped things by themselves because Becky Sue guarding the node saw a distraction, was worried about it.. and didn't even know Stealthy McClurkin was up in the corner of the Novare Coast shack capping or up on the gate planting the bomb.

STOP TRYNA BE A BOSS KILLA. If you rack up 50-100 kills, guarding a node, AWESOME but if you got them cause you ran around like a douche just trying to kill everything that moves, you aren't contributing much, in fact you are hurting you team because you could have been needed somewhere but you were off satisfying your own bloodlust.

DON'T POP YOUR BREAK-FREE IMMEDIATLY! (lol.. I couldn't remember what to call it, so I went to some old City of Villians terms.) When I PvP, as I said I go with my friends, so I know my back is pretty well backed up. As a healer sometimes if I can't be taken down, they like to try and CC me. I sit back and yawn and let it build up my resolution. I only break-free if one of my team is about to die right near me, I see someone about to cap and no one else sees it to my knowledge, or if I'm getting waled on to near death while stunned and even then I let it stay on me as long as I can before I break it. Nothing more stupid than getting stunned, popping it only to be stunned again because they were waiting for you to pop it.
(edited it cause for some reason I like to call Novare Coast Civil War, even on vent. XD )
Lol, if Judeim saw this post, he'd write a book for you guys. That's all I have for now. <3 Snack timmme!


ALSO.... *tackles Nia and snuggles cantina lady* HaiiiiiiiiiIiIiIiiiiIiiiii Noeviaaa!

[Bryenn]

One note that I generally live by (Granted I have the luxury of running with friends a lot) But if you are winning and have two nodes, leave at least two on the turret, but if you are losing and only have one node, leave just one defender. Preferably a stealth. A stealther can CC and call for help giving time for another person to come help.  Call incs early. This way you are maximizing your attacking. If a stealther takes you by surprise, at the very least, get a call out. Often times, the delay is more valuable then going for the actual kill.

Also, if you have two nodes and one is contested, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, don't try to be superman and solo cap the other node. Defend. DEFEND, DEFEND, DEFEND.

DPS, don't forget you can help your healers too. Group CC's can do amazing things. Don't have a group CC, buy some seismic grenades. They are made with rank 1, cybertech mats.

Also, on the note of camping for medals: "Goonies never say die." That's a personal play style though. :P

ETA: Sorry, there is quite possibly a mouthful I could say on pvp, but I'll refrain with one more comment. Don't forget that a pure interrupt is not the only way to shut down a healer. Interrupt them, knock them back, stun them. You've now had them waste three GCDs. ALSO, on guarded healers. Pull them away from their tank. Or pull the tank away.

[Bryenn]

"BLARHJGL KILL THE HEALERS U NOOBS"
 Killing a healer in a quick or mannerly fashion requires some focus fire and knowing how to use your interrupts   (I suggest binding it to a key that is within easy reach)

^THIS. 

As a PvP healer, I can tell you that being interrupted is the most effective way to bring one down. When  you interrupt a heal, all of the other heals go on cooldown. Maybe it's just a few seconds, but those seconds mean a lot in pvp! It's the difference between life and death! Just damaging a healer isn't enough, a good, geared healer can simply heal through it. What you need to do is stop the heals!

And actually, only the interrupted heal gets locked out. All your other heals are fine. :) That's why when I'm getting focused, I use my slow, long heal. That way, if I'm interrupted, my short fast one is fine.

[Niavaloo]

There is a text on interrupts, something like it prevents the caster from using a similar spell for however many seconds. So all of my heals get locked out for a bit. Perhaps different interrupts don't have that effect? But I have definitely been locked out =P


But what I hate the most touches on what Aiden said, that healers should be healing their allies.

I have seen it happen SO MANY TIMES that a healer gets stuck to defend... And so many times, people don't come to switch out... Healers are especially vulnerable to stealth attacks because they are squishy, so it's just a bad idea all around! So if a healer calls for that, please do your team a favor. ^^

I've also seen a lot of lost games because no one wants to guard the owned, defended node. Make sure it's guarded at all times and you'll win more games.
And hai Kirian! =D

[Bryenn]

Nope, not in this game. It only prevents the specific ability that is interrupted.  The -only- possibly exception is if you get interrupted immediately and your other heals are still on the GCD. there is nothing but a stun will lock you out of your heals entirely. :)

ETA: I just checked and it says "Interrupts/disrupts the target's current action and prevents it from being used again for four seconds."

Oh and leaps interrupt, but they don't lock you out. :)

[Orell]

Just some general tips I've found:

Rule 1: Never go alone. Unless you massively outgear the enemy, you're never going to win a 2v1 fight, and they're almost never going to have just one person defending a point. If it looks like one person, then there's a stealther or someone hiding or someone running there after respawning.

Rule 2: Never, ever go alone. The enemy isn't going to be surprised or shocked or throw off balance by a single attacker. You might think you're making a distraction, but in reality you're probably just giving them an easy kill.

Rule 3: Never, ever, under any circumstances, go alone. Even if you're a stealther, there's really no circumstance where you'll be able to take a point or objective solo, unless the enemy is completely out of their gourd, in which case you'd probably win by going in a group anyway. The only exception to this is cherry-picking in Huttball, and even then make sure the ballcarrier can reach you.

Rule 4: If you go somewhere alone, because you have a REALLY good reason for it, tell someone who isn't going with you where you're going! This is mainly used for distraction and cherry-picker plays. If you do make up enough of a fuss to draw defenders away from somewhere else, or get into a prime cherry-picking position, your teammates can't do jack about it if they don't know you're there.

Don't get greedy. This most often happens in Novare Coast, but can happen in Civil War too. If you go on the offensive too much, when you don't need to, you can give the enemy all the edge they need to win. If you're winning, make the enemy team do something, don't give them any freebies.

[livia]

Just some general tips I've found:

Rule 1: Never go alone.
Rule 2: Never, ever go alone.
Rule 3: Never, ever, under any circumstances, go alone.
Rule 4: If you go somewhere alone, because you have a REALLY good reason for it, tell someone who isn't going with you where you're going! This is mainly used for distraction and cherry-picker plays. If you do make up enough of a fuss to draw defenders away from somewhere else, or get into a prime cherry-picking position, your teammates can't do jack about it if they don't know you're there.

Going alone actually works more often than I expect it to. If I'm really trying to go off and cap, it's much better to bring someone sneaky to cap while I distract the guards. Mostly I do it as a distraction, though. It is important to let your team know not to follow you if you're just trying to panic the other team into sending help to the less defended node, because otherwise people will follow you instead of taking advantage of the opening you're trying to give them and just make a mess of everything.

Re: healers - reasonably often it's not a bad plan to kill their tank first. This kind of works better if you have someone else pressuring the healer at the same time, but can work without as well, depending on the healer and the tank in question.

I am also not big on farming medals when your team is losing, either. I understand both the impulse to say 'i want to get something out of this disaster at least' and 'this is terrible, i just want it to be over, i give up already' but even so... I'd rather go and screw around and get killed even if it's hopeless, for the most part. It seems so... sad to give up, and doing so makes me crankier than getting killed.

Really the best advice I have is to learn what the various classes can do - knowing what your abilities can do is really, really important - and knowing what your opponents have up  their sleeve is priceless - for example, knowing if you need to wait a few seconds to cc/knockback that jugg/guardian who just jumped to you, or knowing to waste the marauder/sent's big shield-thing by cc-ing them and waiting it out will often be the difference between winning and losing a fight.

[Gargauth]

I approve of most of these messages.

The reason PvP is fun to me is that it is situational, what works this time may not next time.  I follow simple rules to help me no matter what I am playing as.

1. Be aware of your surroundings.
2. Communicate.
3. Play the objectives.
4. Help the team.
5. Know your class.

I could go into detail about each one, but it changes based on where you are, what your role is, who you are fighting and a dozen other things that make small differences. The one thing I will touch on is KNOW YOUR CLASS.

Even if you think you know everything about your class, go read every single ability in both your skills tree and your abilities menu.  So many people are asked to use something they have no idea even exists. Example: asking a marauder to use predation and having them say something like what is that or I'm not spec'd for that. 

Knowing your capabilities and limitations is the most valuable thing you can do to help people out.  If you are fighting a healer and think that oh I'm doing a great job because I am interrupting everything they are doing, but you don't apply a heal reduction that you have, then you are still only doing half as much as you could be.

Lastly, you are not a hero.  You are not a one person army.  Call incoming for help as soon as you can.  You never know if there is stealth coming, or if someone will take a long time to kill and have help coming before you can kill them and get killed yourself.  Also if you see someone call for inc, GO HELP THEM, but don't over commit, leaving a node undefended or with only one defender while sending too many to help a person will sometimes be just as bad as doing nothing.

Enough of this, I have enemies that require my attention, they are always so needy.

[Jovia]

Step 1: Have me on your team!

Step 2: Win!

>.>

You can pretty accurately predict whether you will win or lose a match in the first 30 seconds by looking at your team and the opponent team.

If your opponents have a 4man premade and you don't, you will lose 95% of the time. If they have two 4man's, kersplat.

If you have no healer and they do, kersplat.

If it's huttball and you have few/no Jedi/Sith, kersplat.

If the people on your team have silly names, more often than not, kersplat.

So, what you can do and how well you play is largely determined by factors outside your control.

I went 9 wins from 10 last night with a 3man premade - it's just easy to dominate competition when you have 3 people on mumble who know how to play their class.

When I premade with Flux and Desi, I've gone 20-0 in terms of win/loss.

On the other hand, I've had nights where I've won 1 from 10 - because I was solo queuing, and was up against premades, or kept ending up with the same terrible players on my team :)

Knowing all the ins and outs of your class is probably the best thing you can do to improve your chances of your team functioning well, as well as being map aware, and going to the places you know your team is too tunnel visioned to go/calling out incoming enemies.

[Aiden Baail]

Step 1: Have me on your team!

Step 2: Win!

>.>

You can pretty accurately predict whether you will win or lose a match in the first 30 seconds by looking at your team and the opponent team.

If your opponents have a 4man premade and you don't, you will lose 95% of the time. If they have two 4man's, kersplat.

If you have no healer and they do, kersplat.

If it's huttball and you have few/no Jedi/Sith, kersplat.

If the people on your team have silly names, more often than not, kersplat.

So, what you can do and how well you play is largely determined by factors outside your control.

I went 9 wins from 10 last night with a 3man premade - it's just easy to dominate competition when you have 3 people on mumble who know how to play their class.

When I premade with Flux and Desi, I've gone 20-0 in terms of win/loss.

On the other hand, I've had nights where I've won 1 from 10 - because I was solo queueing, and was up against premades, or kept ending up with the same terrible players on my team :)

Knowing all the ins and outs of your class is probably the best thing you can do to improve your chances of your team functioning well, as well as being map aware, and going to the places you know your team is too tunnel visioned to go/calling out incoming enemies.

Jovia, I lost plenty of games with you on my team, were you holding out on us? 

[Orell]

If you have no healer and they do, kersplat.

I'd just like to point out that this is true in all war zones EXCEPT for Voidstar.

Due to how Voidstar plays, with the offense getting back to teh fight instantly, albeit with a long walk, and the defense having to wait for the gate to open, if your side has zero healers and the other team has 2-3? You have a HUGE advantage, if you know how to play it, because what will happen is that, well, they will rarely die, but they won't kill too fast either.

On offense, you need to overload on one side, then the other on respawn. The opposing team will probably get a lot of kills on you, and you won't get a lot of kills yourself, BUT they'll also become overcommitted to that side, and won't be able to shift to the other side in time for your counter.

On defense, they'll be stuck overloaded on one side or the other, getting a number of kills but not killing you fast enough so that they clear the door before the respawn gate reopens, and they won't have died much so they won't be able to shift their attack as effectively.

Really, this is what gets so weird about Voidstar: Killing the enemy is, for the most part, a bad thing. You don't want the enemy dead, you want them slowed up, tripped up, entangled in fights. Unless you're on offense and trying to plant on a crowded, there's really no advantage given to actually killing the enemy players.

[Bryenn]

Unless neither side gets a door. In which case, the team with more kills wins.