Matches Worth PvPing For

The scene: Alderaan Civil War.

As the teams stand on their factions' ships, waiting for the pre-match timer to count down, I play "count the healers", because it tends to give me a pretty good idea of what sort of game is about to come. Two to three is pretty much the ideal number of healers in an eight-man warzone. If I'm the only one, it's likely going to be painful for me. If there are four or more, it's probably also going to be painful for everyone involved, but in a different way.

I spot another Combat Medic and a Sage healer. The second Sage in the group is a damage dealer based on his set bonus, so all seems well. It makes sense for all of us to go to mid together and support the group.

A Shadow peels off to cap grass. The enemy captures snow, but no cap has happened on our side yet. They sent someone to intercept the Shadow then. She doesn't call for help, but I can see her health going down in big chunks, so I peel off from the main group and run over to the grass turret as quickly as I can.

I mentally mouth a slo-mo "nooo" in my head as I approach the turret and see the Shadow going down before I can reach her. However, I do manage to make it there in time to prevent the enemy Assassin from capping. We spar for a bit, and eventually the Shadow respawns, comes back, and we kill the Assassin together. I feel proud of my timely intervention, even though there was no open call for help.

I return to mid, which still hasn't been capped. The situation seems to be a pretty annoying stalemate, with both teams pushing each other back and forth across the middle. People do die occasionally, but not fast enough for either side to gain a clear advantage. The ships' health bars keep ticking down slowly, but at the moment the Imps are winning since they capped their turret before we got ours. We need mid.

Eventually I spot an opportunity as the flow of battle has pushed the Imps away from the turret again and I start capping. A Sorcerer casts Force Storm above my head, but nothing happens. I don't entirely understand how it works, but sometimes there are situations where the angle of the turret appears to shield me from AoE being cast from the other side somehow if I stand in just the right spot. Whenever this happens, I always wonder if the other guy is going to report me for supposedly hacking the game or something. ("Why didn't my AoE interrupt her?!") Either way, we got mid now and someone types something like "YEEEAAAH" in chat. I don't want to pat myself on the back too much, but I feel like the woman of the match already.

"1 grass," the Shadow calls this time. Again I decide to peel off to help her. We fight off the first attacker, but more are arriving quickly. "2 grass," I type into ops chat, and soon afterwards: "3 grass". We fight valiantly, but nobody else is coming to help from mid and eventually we go down. I feel a little bit of PvP rage welling up inside me. "Why didn't you come to help?!", I want to write into the chat. Or: "Does nobody read the chat?!" Of course, I don't actually do it because it would be pointless and I always find it annoying when other people give in to the temptation. The lesson that people should have supported grass should be pretty self-evident, and if people aren't actually reading the chat, they won't start doing so just to see me rant.

As I res and return to grass in an attempt to take it back, I consider composing a sad tweet about this match. Something like: "That moment when you're totally awesome in a PvP match but someone else causes you to lose. ;_;" Sounds a bit conceited though... The match is not lost yet, but we are falling behind again.

A few more Republic players have shown up to try and take the turret back, but it's not nearly enough. It all feels rather half-hearted. I run in circles trying to stay alive for a while and feel quite dispirited when I finally get overwhelmed by a flurry of lightsabers. However, as I die, I notice that while I was the last member of my team to go down, there are still three Imps at grass. That means that they must be under strength somewhere else... Dare I hope that my team has thought to exploit this?

As I res on the ship once again, I turn right from the landing zone and see that a blue line is indicating someone capping over at snow. Yesss! Someone from my team has gone over there instead and taken that turret. My heroic sacrifice (or something) at grass was enough of a distraction to buy them the time needed.

After that, we manage to hold mid and snow until the end and win.