01/05/2019

An Arena Story

It seems that little Tessal the Mercenary is just having one amazing adventure after another at the moment. Monday night I decided to do a couple of PvP matches for Conquest points, since she was very close to hitting her personal target from all those flashpoints and just needed a little push to get over the line. I got into an arena. When I loaded in, there were three people on the enemy team and I was alone on mine, but soon more people started to load in. It went something like this:

Friendly 1 joined the ops group.
Friendly 2 joined the ops group.
Friendly 3 joined the ops group.
Friendly 1 left the ops group.
Friendly 2 left the ops group.
Friendly 4 joined the ops group.
Friendly 3 left the ops group.
Friendly 5 joined the ops group.
Friendly 6 joined the ops group.
Friendly 4 left the ops group.
Friendly 7 joined the ops group.
Friendly 6 left the ops group.
Friendly 5 left the ops group.
Friendly 8 joined the ops group.

I don't even remember the exact point at which the match started, but I do know that it was just me and Friendly 5 against their full team of four at that point, and unsurprisingly we got obliterated, which is when he quit too. But hey, at least I managed to get four medals before I died.

As I was waiting for the second round to start, now in a mighty team of three with Friendly 7 and Friendly 8, I typed in ops chat: "People must really hate arenas, considering how many joined and left without even doing a single thing." Friendly 7 found this amusing.

We were still a man down when the next round started, but this time the two remaining players on my team didn't leave. I decided to just aim to keep us alive for as long as possible in order to at least gain a few more medals. Soon I found myself thinking that I was doing surprisingly well at this.

Then I noticed that Friendly 7, an Assassin, had already racked up six medals. She was keeping me alive with Guard and taunts. Friendly 8, an Operative, was also helping to keep me alive, throwing me some off-heals even though she was dps-specced, while also still doing some damage on the side.

Suddenly someone on the enemy team dropped dead. How did that even...? Then we got another one of them. The match had been going on for long enough by that point that it went to acid, and we were the last ones standing. I laughed and thought that I didn't even care anymore if we lost after that, because that comeback alone had been worth it.

We didn't lose though. The final round was even tougher than the first (there were still only three of us and they had to some degree caught on to what we were doing), and it went to acid again, but we won again. I finished with fourteen medals.

And this is why I never, ever quit a match just because it looks like we're losing.

3 comments :

  1. I'm very proud to say, that i never left a warzone. I play the game on a daily basis, but i'm not a huge pvp enthusiast. It might takes weeks or month before i see a warzone. My main is stuck on valour rank 73 since one year. When i queue, i stay till the end.

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  2. The main reason I stay away from small team PvP like arenas is the sheer number of skills/abilities that SWTOR makes you use. My old fingers just don't have that kind of dexterity in them any more (particularly since I broke one a while back and it healed somewhat crooked). And in arena style PvP much more so than open combat PvP like warzones, they make you constantly use every ability at your disposal.

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    Replies
    1. I prefer the 8v8 warzones too, but I don't mind the occasional casual arena. I agree though that it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to know what all the abilities do (including those of your opponents) and when to use what. I'm better at the more strategic, objective-based thinking required in 8v8. :)

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