I’ve only done TBL a few times because I hate the system and I have no interest in the top players, I don’t wanna call anyone out, but I know some people who aren’t very good but have been in the top 10 pretty often. I have watch one of the top 10 play Corsair Dragoon and do a long range hook and then sit there doing nothing for the duration of it. (It wasn’t on a valuable target either, some chump)
I’ve inspected the gear and builds of the “best players” and they are exactly what I’ve come to hate in PvP, players who focus so much on damage than it’s all they do, incapable of holding their own, the type of player who wants others to heal them and when they don’t have someone else supporting them their performance is in the dirt. Oh yea sure you got a +16-30 weapon and solid CC and/OR DPS skill, but that’s all they do, it’s so binary, if you do anything that prevents them from doing the thing they built their character around (Which ultimately just adds up to “BIG DPS”) they become entirely useless.
When the top players don’t feel like they’re worth beating and the system is luck based (especially to this extreme) it just demotivates me entirely from participating, even if I did find TBL players worth fighting, I’d rather just challenge them to duels in towns, where I don’t get stuck in a 3v1 because my allies get one shot by a “PvE weapon” and don’t know how to play around these players (and also don’t invest much into their gear)
I’ve never actually been in that situation in ToS, the matches I did do were actually not that bad, but I have spectate a lot of TBL, I’ve seen some pretty bad ones, I’m not interested in any of that.
For the record though there was also TW before Crystal Mine, and sure I can accept you not calling that PvP since it’s so focus on numbers over any skill, gear or intelligence, but when you actually do manage to split a couple people off of the 30 man raid they’ve got going it’s not that bad, it’s inconvenient to rebuff and warp back via camp, but like you could call it PvP and not be wrong.
As for Langhort and Fencers, they aren’t meta but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good, you can’t be so focused on damage, yea Langhort damage is bad, and honestly as good as it would be the silence too hard to land to ever be a main selling point to the class, but it is a controllable block that isn’t as clunky as the sub weapon block, that alone gives it value. Fencers give a ■■■■ ton of evasion and they have some pretty good defensive skills like their own block and the disarming skill. Nobody uses a Fencer at all, let alone correctly but that’s because most players have that PvE mindset of DPS being the only thing that matters, when it’s actually the least important thing in most PvP. There is a minimum amount of damage that you need to kill an opponent, and it will vary depending on the opponent, but once you have it anything extra doesn’t matter at all, a good player doesn’t need to hit 100k on someone to kill them, what is better than having extra damage, is having tools that protect you or remove enemy protection or even damage.
I’m a pretty patient person. I used to play an MMO that did it all right, it was destroyed by new classes and skills making the entire game much easier down to the point where you right click someone and they die. but that was 10+ years ago. I know nothing is ever going to be as good as it was back then but just watching others in ToS, seeing the game grow and improve, while trying to half ass my way to decent gear in the event that it does get good, is enough for me. I don’t need to PvP atm, that said I was spamming Gem Feud for a while, but I’m at like 10k coins and can’t spend em so now I don’t bother, when they fix the bugs on Chortasmata and the shop I’ll do it again.
