City of Heroes PvP

Before I begin, everything and anything I'm about to say might soon become completely irrelevant, as major changes are soon coming to the City of Heroes PvP system. Anything I say below is referring to PvP from Issue 4 to Issue 12.

The most fun I've ever had PvPing has been in City of Heroes. It's also some of the most imbalanced PvP, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun. However, those imbalances are really most glaringly obvious in high end, competitive PvP. I'm talking about zone PvP. The middle ground between Arenas and World PvP. In zone PvP, everyone has a chance to win. A skilled player can take a very sub-optimal powerset combination and make it shine. A lot of avid PvPers disagree with me on that, but hear me out:

Through a combination of usage and general skill, a good PvPer can take an underperforming character and win consistently with it.

Consistently being the key point. Not always, not most of the time, but consistently. Now, the immediate response I tend to get is, "An AR/Dev will NOT beat an Ice/Nrg, it's just not going to happen." Sure, in the Arena 1v1, I agree 110%. But this isn't the Arena, it's a zone. It has NPCs, multiple exits, huge expanses of terrain, with the chance of outside interference at any point, for either side, whether you want it or not, and most fights start with one person ambushing the other. There are too many variables to make blanket statements as to the outcome of a fight. Police Drone M8 and I used to tear a bloody swath through Warburg, wrecking anything in our way. I played an AR/Nrg, he played a Stone/Emp. Not exactly FOTM power builds. I can recall times where we steamrolled Ice/Rad and Ice/Dark corrupters, as an afterthought. If either of us had fought them in the Arena, we'd have been toast. But we outplayed them in the zone, and trashed them repeatedly before they left.

Prime example: I was playing my Invul/SS tanker, King's Rook, in Warburg. Super Strength is a great choice for Siren's Call, or even Bloody Bay, it is not a top performer in Warburg. Energy Melee, even after the nerfs, is still way to strong hit for hit for SS to compete in higher level PvP. Same with Invul. Solid against spikes, but in a sustained fight, every other Tanker primary is liable to outperform it in sustained combat.

I found myself fighting a EM/Stone brute, and an Ice/Dark corrupter, near the villain base. I was losing, and the ice blasts were destroying me. I spotted a pair of Zeus Titans in the distance, +5 to myself and the villains I was fighting. I queued up Hurl, and pegged a Titan, then moonwalked behind a piece of rubble, positioning the Brute in line-of-sight with the Titans. They came running to attack, but hit the Brutes aggro aura first. They turned on him, causing the brute and corrupter to shift focus. I pulled back, let the debuffs fade, then rushed the corrupter, taking her out why the brute was distracted. I then turned and finished the brute off with the help of the NPCs. Got full credit for both kills, and saved my own hide. It was more luck than anything else, but unorthodox and underhanded tactics can level the playing field.

And that's what made PvP in CoH so unique and appealing to me. It wasn't cause I wanted to pull NPCs onto people in PvP, but that I had the option. Ambushes were a possibility, almost anyone had access to stealth powers, giving them greater freedom of movement in a zone where others hunt you. You could stand atop a sky scraper, looking down on others, and leap down to instantly join the fight, or merely steal a kill. You have foes flying, leaping, teleporting, or just plain super speeding around in a mad craze, trading blows and firing at each other.

I scored countless kills in Warburg by resting on ledges, looking down over the zone, waiting for a target to fly by the blind corner, unaware of my presence. I'd target them, leap over them, fire a beanbag into them to stun them and drop their flight toggle, then free fall with them to the ground, where I finish them in melee while their helpless. Done properly, they don't realize it's me till I land next to them on the ground, already attacking them. A prepared player breaks the mez before impact, might even retoggle flight to pull out of the dive. But usually not. I'd hit them with Power Thrust to knock them on their ass, and use my melee attacks to finish them fast. Again, it's underhanded, and doesn't even allow them a chance to fight back, but that's zone PvP for you.

Despite playing AR/Nrg, I was considered the top PvPer in my SG. The SG leader put a bounty out open to anyone who could beat me in the Arena, in part to encourage newer players to PvP with us. We'd do weekly Arena FFAs, with everyone exemplared down to the level of the lowest Drone participating. Even then, I almost always came out on top. Most weeks we'd take a team of Drones into Siren's Call, and dominate the zone for an hour or two, until the villains got tired and called in their own SG mates.

However, the few times I participated in a high end, organized PvP event, I received a hot ass-whipping. It's just how it is.

That being said, one of the other aspects of Zone PvP in COH was that everyone could try their hand at it. They certainly weren't guaranteed, or even likely, to win, but they had a shot.