r/swtor • u/Jean-Michael_Rage • 12h ago
Level 80 PvP - Am I missing Something? Discussion
I know... "LEARN TO PLAY YOUR CLASS!!!"
Okay now that is out of the way.
So i have been playing a long time. Never close to being 'awesome' but for sure not a noob. Like for as long as I can remember I usually did 2-3million damage in a given 8v8 (unless I was playing a slinger) and was probably a 55/45 coin flip to win a 1v1 on a given map.
Seemingly after 7.0 everyone's DPS numbers went off the charts. 5million seems to be the average in 8v8 and unless I am playing a Tank, my survivability is nearly nil. Again- I pulling 2-3 milling on average.
Most of the time now, I play an Assassin and just simply guard. However I can't believe how fast my lifebar goes down, even in 1v1. I'd say I lose about 60% of my lifebar after my opening rotation. I can stall , but for sure if someone doesnt come and help I am going down. If they send 2.. it's over before it starts.
I look at the stats at the end of the match, and sure other Peoples DPS total numbers are bigger, but I was expecting to see serious disparity in my 'biggest' hit numbers or something. Many times, I have the biggest hit or in some cases within reach of it.
My Gear is 340 blue (from Hyde and Zeek) and I have purple Augments. along with Vulkks recommended Legendary implants for whatever class i happen to be playing. I have the 336 pvp relics as well.
I know... "LEARN TO PLAY YOUR CLASS!!!" (remember I already said this)
With the exception of when there are the level locked 75 players using tacticals, lowbie and midbie Pvp 'feels' like Pre 7.0 Pvp. Again I am not awesome, but I can kill people regularly, my survivability is where i expect it, and am probably a 60/40 coin flip on a 1v1.
Once I get to Level 80... boom.. i get smashed. It honestly feels like when you play lowbies but don't have items in all your slots so you are just squishy. Once all your slots a filled, you are good again. My DPS number again 2-3mil, I never get to the level of everyone else (cause it feels like I am getting smashed so I fi had more uptime I would be fine).
Is there something I am missing about level 80 pvp? Not sure what I am looking for here. Any 'cursed' Legacy gear I should be aware of?
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u/Murdergram 11h ago
I canât comment on your survivability because that will largely come down to your defensive cooldown usage and CC/kiting.
But comparing your damage to other classes can be deceiving. Some classes are either better at AoE or prioritize cleave when dealing damage. Also they might ignore objectives to exclusively hunt out team fights to farm damage.
If youâre just dealing single target damage and focusing on objectives you probably wonât be leading the pack.
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u/Brilliant_Act1233 9h ago
If youâre maining an assassin as a DPS on the side nodes, I wouldnât expect your damage to be very high. Often youâre going to be hanging out in stealth and capping a node or defending. If itâs done well, the fights shouldnât last long, so there shouldnât be an opportunity to deal massive amounts of damage like the people who are in constant combat and topping the scoreboard at the end of the match.
That being said, thereâs always a lot of room for improvement in PvP since youâre not dealing with scripted events involving NPCs, a lot of performing well is going to boil down to your ability to observe your surroundings, react to them quickly, and stay alive to deal damage.
As others have mentioned, knowing your rotation is valuable. Iâd also like to add that youâll want to be comfortable slipping back into the rotation if youâre interrupted or stunned, and just playing more helps people get comfortable with that.
I think a lot newer or inexperienced players get flustered when theyâre up against someone/people who do a lot of damage as theyâre often not used to seeing their own health at go down in PvE. Keeping your cool is going to help with that too, circling back to the whole rotation thing, it will be noticed by your more experienced opponents if you break rotation when getting attacked and struggle to regain an actual decent damage output or spam cooldowns in a panic. People will know if youâre out of DCDs. You will be focused more if youâre identified as being easy to shut down, especially in arenas.
I think playing as a tank can be a great starting point provided that youâre playing the tank correctly by swapping guard around using taunts effectively. Playing a tank can get you in the habit of keeping eyes on the war zone by tracking where your allies are, enemies are, and most importantly who is being focused/where the damage is going. Whether youâre playing as a tank, dps, or a healer, youâre really going to benefit by knowing who all of the damage is being dealt to.
Once you know whoâs being targeted and when, itâs easier to take advantage of the environment to avoid being killed or at the very least, not die as quickly. You can use walls, crates, stairs, and platforms to block your opponents line of site. One example of how this could be beneficial would be in a 2v1, if youâre quick enough, you can keep the second opponent out of range.
Additionally, getting comfortable with how other classes play is going to help with your own survivability as you can observe and shut down opponents in key parts of their rotation with stuns and interrupts if you know what moments will disrupt their rotations the most.
As others mentioned, knowing the abilities of your class will help as well. Most people with experience in PvP will run different builds than they use for PvE because the priority/needs of your abilities will differ between the two game types. With experience, you may find that your style of play works better for some abilities than others who play your same class, you may also find certain abilities too valuable to give up for anyone using a class.
Iâll also add that it can help to watch how others play their classes, if you identify players that are hard to kill and deal a lot of damage, pay attention to what they do. You can even ask them what skills they picked and their reasoning.
I could go on, but honestly experience is just going to be the best teacher. If youâve researched your class, maximized your stats, just playing and reflecting on what can be improved should a similar situation occur in the future over and over again will lead to improving.
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u/SilverknightLegacy 10h ago
Augments recently changed, and your old purple augments are outclassed by even the cheapest new blue augments, let alone the new purples. In PvP, gear maxes out at 336 or 340 (I forget which exactly, it doesn't matter), and any stats on your gear beyond that get lost to the void. The exception is augments. Those always count in full. So augments are how you "gear for PvP" now. And you'd be amazed much of a difference they can make. So maybe upgrade your augments for some easy improvements to damage and survivability.
Beyond that, it all comes down to "skill." I will define "skill" as it pertains to PvP in SWTOR. Ready?
Skill: rolling with a premade of no-lifers who PvP every day together in discord and whose instincts are so finely honed that even when you catch one of them alone without their wolfpack, he'll still kick your ass so hard it'll make you feel like he's cheating somehow.
If you must solo-queue, then learn how to kite, as someone else already said. Don't be alone. Alone you'll die easily. Go where the mindless horde of pugs goes, and try to turn the tide in their favor. Learn other class's rotations, specifically what their tells are that indicate their bust is coming, so you can time your defensives properly. That's a steep learning curve for players who still mostly look at their hotbars when they PvP. As in any human competitive endeavor, the gap between the 80% and the 20% is WAY bigger than it looks numerically.
I enjoy solo queue PvP in warzones personally. But I'm never under any illusions as to how I'll fare. Some days I'm in the mood to be satisfied with losing a lot of games to hordes of premades trying to queue-sync. On those days, stealthing an objective right at the end and getting the win is worth all the times my ass got kicked. Other days, I don't feel that way, and on those days, I just don't PvP.
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u/Clear-Conclusion63 11h ago
Get purple enhancements for your gear, they give better stats. 336 purple is good enough. But it's not the main issue.
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u/IronChefPhilly 12h ago
Git Gud Scrub!!1!
No you are not alone with this. Any time i am foolish enough to pvp, which is like 3 times in 5 years i always feel like i dont know what im doing.
I donât know if the other players have better gear or if they are using special gaming shit in their rig, or if i truly just suck but it feels like it is a completely separate from the rest of the game
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u/AlwaysMentos 5h ago
I miss the old days in pvp a decade ago. Back then I could fight three people at once with my sin and at least kill two of them lol. I didnât make callouts, I just killed everyone that dared come anywhere near me.
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u/Eli-Kaysar S8 retired champion 29m ago
There's a bunch of factors that I'd like to know, which are "which class and discipline are you playing", "what tactical and skill tree choices are you using" being the most important for you
I assume you're geared decently so I won't bother asking for this. I suspect however that you're struggling against a few class, namely Juggernaut, Madness Sorc and Powertech, isn't that right?
Assassin is decent but it's very middle of the pack in the current meta. You can do plenty of things but you'll often need to try much harder than someone else on a more meta class.
I'd be curious to see you play too if you get a chance, to give you more accurate tips. Are you on EU per chance?
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u/Lostlvr33b 11h ago
From what Iâve seen from the âgit gudâ PVPers is when they say âplay your classâ they mean use your classes strengths from any discipline. For example you can use the juggernautâs/knights tank discipline which give 110% and 50% shield chance automatically and dump the rest of your stats into criticals or alacrity which decreases cooldowns. Now you survivability and damage. I think the term is âskank tankâ. Since youâre playing assassin or shadow you should be able to do something similar.
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u/Better-Inspector-794 10h ago
Are skank tank builds still viable? I though they'd been mostly nerfed out of viability
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u/Lostlvr33b 10h ago
They arenât as powerful as they used to be, but based off my own experience I went from only winning arenas maybe 20% of the time to roughly 50 almost 60%. I donât even use star parse or an optimal rotation. It still wonât overcome premade teams but it still helps a lot for me.
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u/Better-Inspector-794 9h ago
I'll have to try it then lol. I can at least make the premades have to work a little to face roll me lol
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u/KING2BIG 11h ago
this is all mmos your rotation is different and you need to take different gear and talents. Literally you cant go in and play the same way.
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u/Adeptness-Vivid 4h ago
PvP isn't just about gear. Yes, gear matters, but it isn't the be all end all like some people here are making it out to be. There are a lot of small things that long time PvPers do that new people do not, and it's extremely difficult to teach this as a lot of it has become intuitive. It's understanding derived from trial / error and years of dueling. The ability to execute these tactics under duress is what other players mean when they say "skill."
For example: say I'm on Jugg and another Jugg walks up and decides he wants the business. How I go about dispatching him isn't simply doing my rotation on him until he falls over.
It's about control, maximizing my damage output, and superior positioning. I fight in a way that procs additional damage / crits that are baked into the spec. I'm doing this while simultaneously negating the challengers attempts at control through timed use of CC and defensive cooldowns. An example below.
Mad dash has the ability to "no-sell" incoming attacks. Flat out negating damage if timed right. I routinely use this to avoid abilities like raging burst, devastating blast, thundering blast, etc. If I negate an enemies attack, I now have a not so insignificant advantage on him in our engagement. Superior positioning yields similar results, and the more GCDs my opponent loses, the larger my advantage.
Saber Ward also has the ability to defend an attack. I think it's a 100% defense chance the first second it's activated, so timing in a fight plays a huge role.
When an enemy has a damage boosting proc available (like dominate) or cc, I'll intentionally create space or move in such a way that I can either wait it out, control him so that he can't let off an empowered ability, intercede out, or flat out stun him if available.
I can reliably do this in the midst of battle against every spec in the game that I'm fighting. It's this experience and ability that makes the most capable PvPers the best.
There honestly aren't a lot of people that currently play that can do this (less than 20 on Star Forge), but in 4.X and 5.X there were a lot of us. If you're routinely getting destroyed by individual players using similar gear, it's likely they have the experience and ability to do the aforementioned.
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u/EarendilNum Rocking on Darth Malgus 6m ago
casual player here! had the same exp as you mate and from my POV its a mix of augments + awareness of suroundings + rotation + a bit of luck. once I got my gold 77 absorb and shield (on tank) it was a game changer in pvp - 7 absorb and 7 shield is my setup. I run on rakata 344, grit teeth tactical and all reccomended relics on this toon and it's working well and I finally feel comfortable to tank for 1st time in years. leveling up my assassin toon now for 1st time post 5.0 to see changes and it's been fun so far! if you are on DM server shout if you need any help.
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u/Better-Inspector-794 11h ago
I'd be curious to hear an answer to your question as well. I know exactly what you mean, the difference in performance between lowbie and 80 pvp. I play vengeance jugg, 340 hyde/zeek with full implants n pvp 336 relics etc, and I'm not the worst player (havent used a parser in many years and certainly am not a career pvper but I actually try during matches and am open to improvement). I dunno if vengeance jugg is the best choice for pvp but it's the spec I know best, and I feel like I contribute decently and can hold my own more of the time than not.
But theres definitely times when I'm up against others where I just feel like I melt, no matter what I do. I could see how gear scaling could play a part (in pvp the 340 blue zeek gear is gunna get synced down to 336 blue if I recall correctly) and the stat distributions on purple are better n more focused than blue, but the disparity between all the gear qualities is so much narrower now as well, so does that slight difference between the blue zeek mods and the purple 336 pvp gear really make THAT huge a difference? Is the down sync making it a bigger impact than it ought to? Or is it really just cuz I'm a filthy casual lol?