As a Guardian I have had very few issues taking out Gran Faust and Divine Avenger users. Exploiting their slowness and poor recovery time is easy. The problem is Recons. They are COMPLETELY invisible and can already be in the attacking animation before they are visible to you. Those are the only people using this line of weapon that bother me.

I agree with IronBrofist

i crafted new 3* gear and started running T2 and i like it alot more. it is alot more balanced. reguardless of weapon or armor, no one can 1-shot or
2-shot.

I find piercing sword lines to be every bit as imbalanced. Without fail they cause damage before they swing. It gets obnoxious to have some one rush in and smack you twice, you wonder what happened, and then they swing there sword twice after the fact. At which point they have dashed behind u, u die, and then they swing their sword again after the fact. ANd recon seems even more powerful with a sword that does damage before the atack, imo

I don't even think the best weapon to use in Lockdown is a GF. I have a much rougher time with Twisted Snarbles and Flourish's because they move with more speed. GF or DA tends to be a very slow swing.

The pierce lines are the most broken swords in t3 pvp right now. Their hit and damage occur prior to the actual swing. Anytime someone has a 5* pierce sword (at least when i've played) they always lead in damage. In fact, i'd say they are the only thing in PvP that are simply out and out broken.

PS Yes, ur teammates attacks should brake your freeze, it makes no sense that it doesn't. It has to be a bug.

build or buy some T2 equipment. It's a lot more competitive. I have a T1 setup too, but not a lot of people do T1 games.

Eeyup T3 sucks, tier 2 is alot more balanced and fun..

the reason why piercing swords are powerful imo cause

1. you probably dont have any resist against it
2.they deal damage before the animation
3.there fast

i think you should do tier2 pvp though, its alot more fun without any 1hit ko'ers or 2hitko'ers, and its actually really intense or competative

Lockdown boils down to who has the best latency.

Fixed. Goddamn lag.

This is precisely why beta-PvP was not released.

The conclusion I draw from PvP is that when we're in the clockworks, we're doing a heck of a lot more damage to the mobs than the mobs are doing to us.

i.e.

When you take a weapon that's designed to beat the snot out mobs with hundreds of hit points, and then use it against players with only a few hit points, you're going to get a lot of one or two hit kills (especially when a player has no resistance to that damage type). Nerfing the swords in lockdown but not in the clockworks may/may not be a problem -- I don't know, I'm not a programmer.

Grand fausts are/were the dominant sword of lockdown because a lot of people in Tier 3 are/were stuck in the mentality that the Vog Cub set was the premiere set. Vog has no resist to shadow (without a UV), so all the Vog users are/were getting trounced.

The best set for Tier 3 might be a couple of heart pendants and an armor set that gives you a little bit of resist to all the major damage types (normal/shadow/pierce/elemental, plus shock). I.e. get enough hit points and resist so they can't one-hit you with anything.

Personally I love seeing Vog cub users get slaughtered..so tired of seeing half the game population wearing the same thing. A sentenza makes very short work of them.

Anyways, a Twisted Barble will still take you down in three shots even if you have some pierce resist. I play with armor that gives me half-full resist on everything and I always go down against three swings from it.

Zingman , I doubt that's true regarding HP discussion. The reason enemies have a hard time to kill us is because we have vitapods in addition to whatever we have while in clockworks. There are no vitapods in PVP, though it's rarely brought up in these discussions. I think it's a possible welcome addition.

And people have already said the big weakness of heavy swords: the big lag time after the swing. If dodged or shielded, it's a big opening.

I wear no shadow or piercing defense, and I have never been killed in one hit with any sword, even Gran Faust, and have never successfully killed anyone in less than three hits with Barbarous Thorn Blade (unless they were already damaged, of course). Now, don't get me wrong, I get killed by DA in two hits despite my elemental defense, but it's a fairly simple matter to dash away with the Striker boost while they're swinging, and then circle around behind them and cut them down. Also, Guardians are the ones I have the least trouble beating, even using Barbarous Thorn Blade. Swing, swing, dash, swing, swing, dash.

Slow weapons in general, regardless of how powerful they are, can easily be countered by a careful approach. Don't get close until you know they're stuck in the recovery animation, or, better yet.. use guns and never get close period. Blast them to smithereens if they go attacking someone else. If they're strikers, then they can chase after you easily sure, but they also have less health to blast through if you can avoid their initial attack and counterattack them. Or, just use a really fast-attacking weapon. Fast weapons in Lockdown have the major disadvantage of hitting again while the victim still has the temporary damage immunity from the first hit you made, but they also have the advantage of being able to interrupt any and every attack the opponent throws. It doesn't matter how much damage he can do if you keep pressing the attack with a cutter and he can never once finish an attack animation.

With recons using heavy weapons, it's a double-edged sword. Sure, they're more easily able to get in that first attack, but that just means if you know there's a recon guy on the enemy team who's carrying a big weapon, go into panic mode as soon as you get that about-to-get-debuffed warning, and note both that Recon is the only class with an attack speed PENALTY on swords and that big heavy swords are really the only weapons in the game where an attack speed penalty is noticeable to begin with. Whenever a recon attacks with a heavy sword, he is going to be standing still and defenseless for a LONG TIME, so if he doesn't finish you off with that first attack, or have ample support from his teammates, then he is DEAD.

As for the Fausts and also Nightblades and other shadow weapons in general... pretty soon we're all going to have built up skelly suits just for PvPing with and that will negate all of the advantage they currently have. Then, everyone will start using some other type of damage, and we'll use different armor, and this sort of back-and-forth constant adaptation game will continue forever. It's part of the fun and strategy of Lockdown, I think. Of course, keep in mind that a Guardian's shield doesn't care what kind of damage you can do and a Recon's debuff doesn't care what kind of armor you have, so playing as or with the right classes effectively can negate any damage type bonuses anyone has.

One word - metagaming. Build Shadow defense armor to counter the Shadow weapons. Then everyone will use Piercing or Elemental weapons, so everyone will switch armor again. It'll go in a circle like that, it's part of how competitive play works.

Striker can't attack and dash at the same time, though. So, if he's got a really BIG weapon and dashing towards you, then do the following:

If you're also a striker... dash around or away from him. If he started dashing before you did, then he's going to stop dashing before you do. He can't catch you unless you run straight into him. And if he stops to attack, just circle around and smack him before he recovers from the attack animation.

If you're a guardian, well... him getting close to you faster isn't going to make your shield any less effective.

If you're recon, then go invisible, move in a direction you think he won't expect, and watch him go running right past you. Then, get the drop on him as soon as he stops moving. You can stay invisible a lot longer than he can stay dashing around.

If your weapon is faster than his weapon... just attack him the moment he gets close enough to attack and don't let up until he starts running away.

Honestly, I don't think there's much you really CAN do in Lockdown if you have a bad connection :(

Well... maybe you could be a guardian, and focus mainly on supporting your teammates and dropping bombs? Area denial via bombs doesn't require you to keep up with exactly where the enemy is, just to plant bombs where you think they might eventually go or you just don't want them to even try to go, while you can use your shield to protect and (slowly) recover the health of your teammates?

On the other hand, it also seems to me like the people with really really bad connections are just as difficult to hit as it is for them to hit other people. I saw someone the other day who was lagging all over and complaining about not being able to hit people, but at the same time it wasn't registering it when I went up and tried to poke him in the face with my rigadoon. :P

I celebrate when I see an enemy team covered in vogcub-wearing, GF-wielding strikers. It makes for an easy match, all you gotta do is introduce them to Mr. shivermist and you get littered with dead bodies around you :P

Also, tanking their hits as a guardian then striking back in their post-attack delay usually kills them :P

The only thing I don't like about PvP (besides the piercing sword bug) is the auto-aim. I'm not someone who blames it everytime they die but I believe PvP would become far more about skill and less about button mashing if it were removed....

newbs that keep running around in the locker room changing classes are VERY annoying.

You haven't bumped into a guardian named Lewiss yet then ;)

(that is my IGN btw, just incase you wondering) :P

Stun scares me far more than Freeze. When I'm frozen, all I have to do is place my cursor at the approaching enemies, and start my Dread Venom Striker's combo the moment they start swinging. When they hit me, I become unfrozen, turn around, and start hitting them. You wouldn't believe how often that works. With Stun, all my swings are super slow and easy to interrupt, and I can't keep up with the enemy's movement. They can just dodge my slow first swing, kite around, and hit me in the side. And of course we all do horrible things from time to time. I once charged the same point three times, only to get immediately killed all three times by the same guy.

@randomthing

I should hope you can beat me now, since I just told you how. And if thats not enough, try the direction changing trick with the Gran Faust or Divine Avenger combo. That gets me far more often than I'd like. Of course, I don't carry just Gran Faust. You should also be prepared for Dread Venom Striker and Barbarous Thorn Blade, along with my aforementioned Argent Peacemaker (to stop you from charging your bomb). Just be warned that I will switch between the three swords frequently and often for no reason other than whim. I'll keep an eye out for you when I play. My IGN is the same as my forum name. Just remember my advice on beating me.

See, now that's using your brain, john1111. One cookie for you.

I think a way to stop the huge amount of power that these swords have would be to have some games have colored wild monsters. this way there wouldn't be as much one on one, so taking advantage would be a lot harder. I guess if we had all the lockdowns like this it would be too close to clockworks, but iff we had just a couple it would work out fine