What's going on with the PVP difficulty!?

Unknown

This thread is crystalizing my feelings a bit. I played tons of City of Heroes - I'm use to nerfs, I was on the CoV test server when the biggest nerf ever happened, so I adjust easily and dont' complain much.

Lately I've been murdered by really bad cascades. I've lost fights that I shouldn't lose, or burned through Health packs at a stupid rate, and it didn't hit me why until reading this thread. Where I'm a bit frustrated though is I in theory LOVE the changes...I hate how GSBW was so flimsy that she was practically unusable, I love that with boosted characters, you are no longer ALWAYS fighting against the same people - at least week to week.

But together it has become HORRIBLE. Characters have so much health now that you can't kil lthem fast enough before they get off their 'big move', I don't think I've fought XF without getting his by SS, collecting all the black, there is eventually a nasty cascade, doing AP denial, eventually there is a cascade, just trying to kill him, the health pool is so large that it just doesn't happen. It's gone from a chance of getting the big attack off, to defending because you know they are going to get it off.

It hurts so much that I've struggled to play much this season, just like others have stated, I'm not even at 3k yet for the season. I haven't hit 500 on a single PvP event. I thought it was just a combination of burn-out from the Ultron event, them onlyh aving what seems like one event at a time for PvP, and all the **** I've got going on IRL, but reading this, maybe subconsciously, I am losing interest because its become such a grind fest, and 'skill' is slowly falling out of importance.
- Unreall

JVReal

I've felt like the AI gets a few more lucky cascades, and "randomly" places the special tiles in hard to reach places where there are no matches anywhere near it. I've also had it 'randomly' destroy all my randomly dispersed strike tiles within 2 turns due to small cascades, or having just the right TU for the team I picked...

But overall, I'm enjoying the PVP. Longer matches increase the need for strategy, for AP conservation, for purposeful moves, a gameplan, and defense.

That aside, it is far from perfect. It needs some adjustments. I shouldn't be able to be hit by 3 different people while I'm in the middle of a battle... is there a limit to the number of instances of me that are out there? If not, can there be? Maybe after being beat by the same person twice they get no points for the win? Perhaps a fixed point loss like 5 points, but a gain for the other player as usual? You won't change the climb, just the decline. There has to be losses in points to keep it an actual player vs player where there are consequences for losses, but not so extreme. If you take away loss points, then it's just a PVP version of PVE and you just grind away and the person who grinds most wins again like PVE.

Perhaps they can also make shielding free but unbreakable until the last hour. You have to then strategically decide when to shield because its more than a monetary commitment, its now a time commitment, then remove cooldowns.

Try to incorporate actual PVP with people who are online and skipping fights, there's a Transformers game that is out there right now that scans to see if any live players are there and pits you against them first if they are there and there is a timer, you have to move within the time or it makes the default move for you. But then it's not you against an AI, but a player against player. Those should be worth more points than normal, higher risk because you are in control completely and not against an AI. Just some thoughts.

Unknown

I think the problem for some of us - anyone with a work or school schedule that limits play time, for example - is that there have been a series of changes over the past year that have all conspired to severely limit our ability to compete in PVP, because they've all been along a "Play on D3's schedule, not yours" theme. True healing limited the number of matches we could do, the Shield countdown limited the number of hops we could make, the increased hit points further limited the number of matches we could do in one go by increasing the damage we took, the elimination of tanking took away our ability to limit our opponents, etc.

As a result, I've just about given up competing seriously in PVP. I used to regularly get top 5 in PVP, even won a few. Now I can barely get top 25. I just can't compete given that I can only play more than a handful of matches at any time other than the evenings, and in the evenings I'm still pretty limited now that the average match eats ~1.5 health packs. PVP is this chore I do because most of the prize structure is oriented around it. But I don't enjoy it, it's my least favorite part of the game, and D3 has made it clear they really don't care.