first taste of lvl 50 pvp

[toshman]

so i lvled the assassin to 50, i have all orange gear, i had saved 1 million credits and spent it on epic mods and impants and relics. i have 14.8k hp some decent dmg on the weapon.

 

went in to a warzone and WOW....less then 100k dmg and less then 50 commendations per match. wow....after 4 matches i gave up....

 

i get the gear diff, not my first rodeo. but i actually set time aside and said here we go gonna get 5-6 epic bags and after a few games went back to finish the quest line which i enjoyed more.

 

not sure how to go about the gear difference, do i just suck it up and sit in warzones getting 2 shotted?

 

maybe roll a different class? technically this is a tank so maybe a range/caster/healer class ie bounty hunter or sorcy.

 

not complaining, this isn't a l2p thread either, not sure what bioware can do anyways, it happens in all mmo's just seemed the worse in this one.

[Oceanemotion]

well, as far as I have experienced with my assassin, we are very gear dependant.. And you also have to take into account that most other players you fight have 10% dmg reduction/dmg increase from expertise where you dont.. And Assassin is not a bad class at all, I just think it requires abit more skill to play than so many other classes like Mercenary arsenal as an example.. And you need to understand that you wont be bursting people down in 3 seconds like operatives can atm ( though they are getting nerfed ) but your sustained dmg is insane.

 

What spec are you currently? If you are deception I highly recommend going darkness, or darkness/madness spec, you will gain a ton of survival, and the dmg is still very good.. I found it more fun with a darkness/madness hybrid spec with 0 gear than being deception..

 

I will give a link to the build I use atm in pvp, now I have full champ though, so I dont have the issues you have

 

http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/sith_inquisitor/assassin/#::de2f2efef4e3def6e2f2e3fe3fefe2f19

 

with this spec, you get more survival from dark ward, and healing through darkcharge, you need a shield generator though, you get 30% increased force regen, energized shocks which makes your next shock crit, and if you use it with recklessness it does 50% more dmg, and if Chain Shock procs and give you an extra shock dealing 50% dmg its alot of dmg done right there.. You also get deathfield which is a great ability, it does good dmg and heals you for a bit aswell, it takes some time to get used to using it though, atleast it did for me.. You also get higher crit dmg on trash so trash hits for a lot, and your melee crits has a chance to make the next crushing darkness instant and free..

 

other than that you get shorter cooldown on your force speed, and it breaks movement impairing effects, its just too awesome to pass up really.. And 2 seconds longer duration on Force shroud is very awesome aswell. People will have a hard time keeping you off them because of force speed and force shroud, and if they finally get away, you have instant whirl wind, and electrocute

 

You can even go full darkness if you want, you will be suprised at the amount of dmg you can do as tank spec or hybrid spec

 

 

edit: OOOPS, made a huge mistake in the talent spec, instead of 2 points in premonition, take one point out and put it into disjunction

Edited January 27, 2012 by Oceanemotion

[Mrdiguinn]

Honestly what I noticed and I can't prove it without parse but I feel that Sins are one of the classes that are most gear dependant on the game at it's current state.

 

What I can sugest you is to have patience, keep up doing WZ's, don't walk alone, try to get a pocket healer if you can (people might say I'm bad for saying this but honestly, a fresh 50 has the right to walk with pocket healer) and do your Ilum dailys, you'll eventually start to gear Champion, if not BM (you should be 55 or so Valor if you lvled focused on PvP)

 

You'll get there!

[SynapseX]

You gotta just suck it up and be a punching bag for a couple of weeks until you get gear. I couldnt break 75k damage in wz's when I first hit 50 and this was when warzones were open to 10-50's. I was getting owned by level 20's because the bolster buff was putting their stats above mine.

 

Now I usually get the 300k damage medal and 50k protection medals most matches.

[Saberolson]

so i lvled the assassin to 50, i have all orange gear, i had saved 1 million credits and spent it on epic mods and impants and relics. i have 14.8k hp some decent dmg on the weapon.

 

went in to a warzone and WOW....less then 100k dmg and less then 50 commendations per match. wow....after 4 matches i gave up....

 

i get the gear diff, not my first rodeo. but i actually set time aside and said here we go gonna get 5-6 epic bags and after a few games went back to finish the quest line which i enjoyed more.

 

not sure how to go about the gear difference, do i just suck it up and sit in warzones getting 2 shotted?

 

maybe roll a different class? technically this is a tank so maybe a range/caster/healer class ie bounty hunter or sorcy.

 

not complaining, this isn't a l2p thread either, not sure what bioware can do anyways, it happens in all mmo's just seemed the worse in this one.

 

You have to suck it up, and get your *** handed to you until you get some PVP specific gear. Every class goes through the same thing, its not just us.

 

and like someone said above, hybrid darkness/madness or 31/0/10 is the way to go. I went from slamming my head into my keyboard to a constant smile on my face when i switched to full darkness. Hybrd dark is great too(for the reasons mentioned above), but I PVE tank as well so I like full dakrness(the joy of unleashing force lightning with a 3 stack of HD and recklessness popped is almost hard to contain). Medals will double too. Just remember to gaurd folks. Best bet is to use DPS gear with this build.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Saberolson

[Duvent]

Unfortunately the system is likely to be horribly frustrating for a new 50, regardless of class. And even buying the best gear you have available will still put you at a significant disadvantage against Battlemasters, both because the item level of the gear is higher and because of expertise - which a new 50 doesn't even have the option of having much to be competitive.

 

It's like picking a hard flashpoint and running it on the most difficult setting when undergeared. Add to the fact you have a random chance whether or not to get an item from bags and that frequently even if you do win that it doesn't count for the quest, and it can becomes a daunting process to even get your first piece of gear with expertise.

[LordbishopX]

You gotta just suck it up and be a punching bag for a couple of weeks until you get gear. I couldnt break 75k damage in wz's when I first hit 50 and this was when warzones were open to 10-50's. I was getting owned by level 20's because the bolster buff was putting their stats above mine.

 

Now I usually get the 300k damage medal and 50k protection medals most matches.

 

QFT its the basic design of PVP in this game you need to be the hunted before becoming the hunter if you keep at it you will become the hunter soon enough just not over night. I gave up any idea of winning at PVP just grinding for gear period. Its so unbalanced atm if u pug like I do u accept that simple fact and just work on your skills as much as possible.

Edited January 27, 2012 by LordbishopX

[DarthCnox]

Hi. I feel your pain, and prior poster is right, everyone goes through this in some form or another, although some have it easier than others (cough) ops (cough).

 

That in mind, you haven't given us information about your spec. However, I'll make some general observations that might help you get a few more medals and speed your commendation accumulation a bit faster. Faster commendation = faster gear.

 

1. Use your stealth to effectively assist players in Battle. Put another way: kill steal. IMHO, as long as the enemy dies, any crying about kill steals can go to hell. Use your stealth to control your engagements and get into fights you know you will win.

 

2. Use your guard ability. This requires dark charge, and perhaps you speced into surging charge, but for medal collection, guard helps you quickly get the protection points needed for the defender medals. Switch between stances if you need to do abilities from your other saber charge. But for griding out medals, guarding is very helpful.

 

3. Related to 1, find the targets below 30% and assassinate spam. Does good damage, relatively low force cost, and will help you rake up kills.

 

4. Lacerate/dark charge discharge makes a decent aoe. Find clumps of people and jump in and do the discharge and lacerate. then do overcharge to knock them back and away, and then take off. Wait for cooldowns and do it again. This will help you with damage medals.

 

5. Pick up biochem. At lvl 50, you can use the 400 level items, which will easily get you the 2.5k heal medal.

 

6. For getting a solo kill when you have multiple opponents on a target: this is tricky, but if you are fighting 2v2 or 2v1, if your partner gets killed first (which you will try to do because you'll commit to fight, but not so much to open yourself to damage), then you can use your vanish to end the combat, then immediatley come out of combat with an attack and if you finish him off after resetting the combat, I should be considered a solo kill (and another medal).

 

Hope this helps.

[snuff]

so i lvled the assassin to 50, i have all orange gear, i had saved 1 million credits and spent it on epic mods and impants and relics. i have 14.8k hp some decent dmg on the weapon.

 

went in to a warzone and WOW....less then 100k dmg and less then 50 commendations per match. wow....after 4 matches i gave up....

 

i get the gear diff, not my first rodeo. but i actually set time aside and said here we go gonna get 5-6 epic bags and after a few games went back to finish the quest line which i enjoyed more.

 

not sure how to go about the gear difference, do i just suck it up and sit in warzones getting 2 shotted?

 

maybe roll a different class? technically this is a tank so maybe a range/caster/healer class ie bounty hunter or sorcy.

 

not complaining, this isn't a l2p thread either, not sure what bioware can do anyways, it happens in all mmo's just seemed the worse in this one.

 

Hey bud, gear makes a HUGE difference. Not just any gear but PVP gear and then what stats you get on your gear further seperates the pvpers. You have to get your pvp gear for expertise then you have to get the right mods and re-mod the gear as most of the mods suck.

 

As far as tanks go, my baby assasin out dps's what my baby jug did (my jug is 50 in full pvp gear now). I rolled assasin to get the tanky feeling plus a little more dps to make me happier with my class.

[LordbishopX]

Ugh i hate the fact that at 50 it feels like biochem or **** reuseable for all and give biochems a buff longer duration something like that. So bogus that it feels you have to level one skill to be competitive or pay outrageous credits to keep up.

[Sabbathius]

OP,

 

I'm not 50 yet, but I can tell you based on my experience in a similar situation in other games what worked best for me.

 

Instead of going for kills or objectives or whatever you did 10-40, accept the fact that you'll not be taking anyone down, and almost everyone can take you down. Change your mentality, at least temporarily to what I like to call "The Lil' Bastid" mode.

 

Become as annoying as you possibly can. If you see someone going for a turret, you KNOW you can't stop him if you fight. But what you CAN do is stop him from capping. Wait until he's almost capped, and sap him. He probably won't trinket, so do it again when it wears off. The whole time you're shouting for help, which might actually come...once in a blue moon...when pigs fly and bankers are not screwing people.

 

Then, when his resolve is full, again give him a chance to almost cap, and hit him with something, preferably a DoT. He'll attack, and you do your best to run away. Not kill him, just run away. If he turns for the objective, use something like Force Pull->Spike. Use vanish. Use whatever you can.

 

In other words, be a nuisance. In Huttball, pull/push people into acid/fire. You can't beat them with your DPS and their Expertise, but fire and acid don't care what they're wearing.

 

After a while doing this, you'll develop a fan club. A group of people who will drop everything, and I do mean everything, including the ball, JUST to chase you down and kill you the moment they see you. Make people hate you, with the intensity of a thousand suns. Not because you are a great killer or because you cap, but because you are too annoying to be allowed to breathe.

 

This does wonderful things for your team. Spec Darkness, pop all of your defensive cooldowns and jump into the pit. While your 2-3 man fanclub is chasing you around the pit, it gives your team a chance to do some good. You will not get most medals, your damage will be pathetic, but your team will very likely win.

 

Conversely, spec Darkness, pick a healer, and try to keep him alive as long as you can. Use your taunts, use your defenses. Works wonders when it comes to medals.

[toshman]

thanks guys, great advice.

 

gonna try again. YES, that is why in other classes i play a dps / mage class, which usually doesn't deal with armor. so what happens is even when you hit max level ppl with gear just don't have the resists needed.

 

but great advice, going to spec to darkness give this a shot.

[wardemon]

Thank you for this post. I was so excited to hit 50 last night and to have my first post 50 pvp ( could have hit it alot sooner but I have 7 other high lvd'd toons). Well, I got my $##$## handed to me. Im used to being tops or near tops in dmg and kills. I rarely get bested 1v1. So it was quite a humbling experience to get owned time and time again during my first pvp matches last night. WOW is all I could say. SO I googled "swtor first lvl 50 pvp" to see if there was something I was missing. Of course I realized there was a gear difference, but REALLY?

 

Anyway, it is nice to know that maybe I dont just suck all of a sudden and that there will be a period of time I will just have to be target practice. I can accept that

[Draxxar]

Here are a lot of good informations in this thread. But if you play a Assassin in PvP:

 

DON'T use a shield gen! IT just activates against white dmg. The main dmg sources of your opponents are tech and force. A shield gen doesn't block this kind of damage at all.

 

Take two pieces of PvP Tank equip (to get the first set bonus) re-mod dmg mods (crit, surge, power). Rest of PvP equip pick the dmg set.

 

With this equipment you will be a killer with good survivability. Don't be frustrated in the beginning. When you play with lvl 50 a lot of your opponents are already T2 or T3 PVP equipped.

 

Just farm the equipment (T1 PvP is really easy to get) with the daylies. In about a week you are already a lot better and surely no "2 shot free frag".

[SithTheDarkLord]

Having fully modded orange gear with epic mods, level 49 epic implants/earpieces in combination with saving a Champion Bag and 1000/1000 WZ/Merc commendations should be enough too not feel useless in WZ's as a fresh 50. This goes for any class in this game. People are just bad and should learn 2 play.

[Brat]

First couple of days I didn't bother trying to solo anything in WZ's. I simply assisted anyone else that was fighting someone, then I'd restealth and look for the next fight. Pick your fights wisely, don't bother trying to jump into the middle of the big fights around the ball, you'll get insta gibbed. Look around the fringes of the fight.

 

Other thing I would do is stroll the ledges where the ranged guys like to hang out and use my knockback to knock them down into the crowd, this makes them a lot more vulnerable. Also just keeping them interrupted is extremely helpful to the team.

 

There's nothing more enjoyable than interrupting a Tracer Missile spamming Merc who doesn't know how to use any other ability, so he's just standing there with fire coming out of his ***** and not doing anything.

 

Other aspect in Huttball at least that makes us useful to the team, is getting ahead of the ball stealthed and unstealthing at just the right time to get the pass and score. In Huttball at least we can be very useful and not necessarily be pumping out major damage.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Brat

[TehFuZz]

Just thought I'd offer an alternative opinion/suggestion. I'm not by any means saying that what others have said is wrong, in fact it is all very valid, just saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat!

 

When I first hit 50, I was disappointed too. I was a slow burner on my Assassin, work commitments unfortunately meant I didn't get to 50 anywhere near as fast as my guildies & friends. I spend quite a lot of time at work browsing various forums, and as such had watched the countless PVP videos of assassins putting out crazy damage, admittedly every single one of whom was a Battlemaster.

 

I hit a wall after a week, and reluctantly specced to Darkness, just so that my puny little existance was lengthened that bit longer. I say reluctantly only because I'd spent the entirity of my journey to 50 as DEception, and was looking forward to putting my experience to good use. Having to change spec wasn't really something I'd planned for. Also, it meant my options for PVE were restricted, unless I wanted to front the cash to respec left, right and centre.

 

After dragging myself kicking and screaming through a few weeks' dailies and weeklies, I was fortunate enough to have got myself the vast majority of a Champion Stalker's set, except for 1 Rakata relic (from Artifice), my implants (both still Centurion) and my focus (also still centurion).

 

The improvements in my gear made an absolutely massive difference. Whilst 1on1 against battlemasters would still prove tricky because of the gear difference, and they may well have an edge, a lot of them were now beatable. A lot of them quite easily beatable in fact. All I'm suggesting is to give Deception another chance one you've geared up a little, you'll be quite nicely surprised.

 

I've always considered the itemisation & reward system for PVP in SWTOR to be pretty poor. It effectively rewards people for the time spent playing rather than any form of player skill. At least the high end PVE stuff you need to kill hardmode/nightmare bosses to get.... I would love to see some from of rating or ladder based system, whereby top-end PVP gear could be limited to those who truly earned it, such as the Arena & rated Battleground system in <the game who shall not be named>. They did a lot of things wrong, but I kinda liked that. In SWTOR, it takes effectively no skill whatsoever to achieve Battlemaster status and collect all the BM gear, just a lot of free time. I don't mean to say that all people who achieve it are terrible players, far from it in fact, just don't automatically assume that because someone has a weapon with a black colour to its effect that you can't take them on.

Edited February 23, 2012 by TehFuZz

[atorob]

Its gonna be rough until you get some gear and start to re-arange your stats. As a fresh 50 in oranges you should just focus on keeping ppl from capping objectives and using your stuns/force slow to your teams advantage. Make sure you are taunting on cd during fights as well, it helps and will ramp up your medals each match. Its pretty easy to farm gear now with the bag changes, start stacking crit/surge if you play deception and you will notice a big difference in your dmg. Once you learn a good rotation and how to manage your cd's, assassins become pretty lethal, although there are still class that i try to avoid 1v1's with.

[Astarica]

Gear dependent is a copout all classes use. It basicaly means "I can only defeat people wearing worse gear than me." While that might be the plight of some classes, we're not so weak that all we can do is pick off other newbies unless you're Deception spec, which has some serious issues in PvP.

 

Darkness and Madness are quite viable in PvP. Don't expect to beat people better geared than you, but you can certainly put up a reasonable fight. And no Deception's situation never improves much either unless you mean you can survive as a BM Deception versus someone halfway geared in Champion. A BM Marauder, probably the worst 1on1 matchup for Assassins, can defeat a BM Darkness Assassin reliably and he's certainly going to have even less trouble against a BM Deception Assassin (his CD negates your burst, and you're far easier to kill than the Darkness counterpart).

[Azgrey]

I'd also throw out that you can often times find pretty reasonable lvl 50 purples on the GTN. I too would recommend going Darkness for a fresh 50 assassin. It will make your life easier just due to the tools at your disposal. Guard and taunts rack in easy medals. Wither/Discharge AOE for easy damage medals and better survival tools for defending objectives which gets you easy medals. Plus you get a little bit of self healing, the attack rotations are easy, you don't have to worry about positionals and you have a good amount of CC. All in all you can thrive at being a pest until you get enough gear to wade into the 1vs1's and the larger mob fights.

 

You'll take some lumps for about a week before you get enough comms to gear out to 150-200 expertise, assuming you do both daily and weekly quests. At that point you will notice a difference in how long you can sustain damage and how much you can dish out.

[DarthMaulUK]

Ive tried a few things here with my toon and I have started to get some medals. However, with just 45-50 commendations, its going to be a good few decades before I get a bag. Im yet to win a wz today(lost 12 in a row already) and am just stunned at how poor pvp is.

[JamieM]

Ive tried a few things here with my toon and I have started to get some medals. However, with just 45-50 commendations, its going to be a good few decades before I get a bag. Im yet to win a wz today(lost 12 in a row already) and am just stunned at how poor pvp is.

 

PvP is not too bad in this game - however gear makes a big difference. If you are grouping with similarly ungeared players you are more often than not going to lose I'm afraid. My advice - join a guild that PvPs regularly and be the 5th wheel in their group until you gear yourself up from wins. Then start dominating. It's what I did.

[DarthMaulUK]

PvP is not too bad in this game - however gear makes a big difference. If you are grouping with similarly ungeared players you are more often than not going to lose I'm afraid. My advice - join a guild that PvPs regularly and be the 5th wheel in their group until you gear yourself up from wins. Then start dominating. It's what I did.

 

PvP is bad. Theres lots of posts why. I dont mean the whole 'nerf this, nerf that' - I mean Biowares inability to actually make it enjoyable. The dailies, the quitters, the gear all make for an extremely poor experience.

 

The whole gear debate(or rankings in Rift) showed that it doesnt work, unless you have brackets for geared 50s. Im yet to see Bioware learn from other developers mistakes - including WAR

Edited February 24, 2012 by DarthMaulUK

[outsidermatt]

It doesn't take long to get into PvP gear. I started hitting level 50 warzones on Saturday. By Thursday, all of my slots were filled with tier1/2 pvp gear.

 

I didn't have any commendations saved up. I also didn't do the Illum dailies/weeklies, as I decided by the second day that Illum is typical world pvp zerg trash, and I wanted nothing to do with it. 5 days to gear up isn't bad, and had I done Illum or saved up commendations, I probably would have done it in less than 3.

[upzie]

PvP is bad. Theres lots of posts why. I dont mean the whole 'nerf this, nerf that' - I mean Biowares inability to actually make it enjoyable. The dailies, the quitters, the gear all make for an extremely poor experience.

No you mean, that in "your" oppinion its bad, there are plenty of ppl who enjoy it.

 

The whole gear debate(or rankings in Rift) showed that it doesnt work, unless you have brackets for geared 50s. Im yet to see Bioware learn from other developers mistakes - including WAR

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