Best Ding in a While

I overestimated my guildies' interest in generating Conquest points on Imp side this week... which meant that I buckled down over the weekend and put in extra effort myself to make sure that we'd still hit our large yield target. As part of this I dusted off my old DvL Merc, who'd been sitting at level 79 for ages, and did some PvP on her, even though I finished the PvP season a few weeks ago.

PvPing at level 79 can feel a bit like cheating, considering how much more powerful you are compared to most other characters in the bracket, but since you can't halt your XP gains, it's a fleeting pleasure that I'm simply happy to enjoy while it lasts. Even without any augments and with gear that had never been the best even back when 75 was the level cap, my Merc was rocking the damage charts hard, and the matchmaking algorithm blessed me with a winning streak to boot. There was one match where I was startled to find upon consulting the scoreboard at the end that we'd apparently been a man down the entire time but had still come away victorious somehow.

With only a tiny sliver of my XP bar left to go, I knew that my next match was going to be my last one in the midbie bracket, and since my warzone weekly mission was on 9 out of 12, I really wanted one more win in order to complete it before levelling up. I still would've been able to finish the quest at level 80, but then I would've had to sort myself out with level 80 gear before queueing again, which would've meant extra effort.

I got into a Voidstar that started with both teams severely under strength and my team on attack during the first round. I wouldn't swear by it, but it certainly felt like we were a man down again at least to begin with, which made it difficult to make any headway for a long time. However, we did eventually manage to breach the first door and cross the bridge, with the round ending at the second door - a situation that isn't really a clear indication of an impending win or loss, as matches that end there can very much still go either way.

As we started the defence round, it quickly became apparent that the rest of my team (which had filled out by then) seemed decent enough at watching the doors, however there was zero communication going on. I just kept running back and forth between both sides as I noticed our opponents changing their angle of attack repeatedly.

At one point I ended up fighting on the left side with only one other person against about four enemies. The other guy died and I soon followed, realising too late that nobody else had moved over and I had been the last person standing. I typed "left" into the chat but it was too late. Waiting inside the respawn area, I saw one person still try to reinforce from the right but they didn't make it over in time to prevent the enemy team from planting the bomb.

I got out of the respawn just as the door was blown off and hurled myself right back into the fray in an attempt to stall the enemy forces. They enjoyed taking me down but sadly I barely slowed them and soon found myself in the respawn again, this time on the other side of the bridge. However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the rest of my team did not do a great job at halting the enemy advance at this point, and one of the bridges was activated mere seconds later.

I typed "bridge open" into the chat in an attempt to get those who were still brawling wherever to pay attention to the objectives, and then ran forward to shoot the first enemy that came into my range, to make sure that I was in combat and couldn't be CCed by one of the enemy's stealthers.

I frantically shot two attackers going for the right door, but then saw a stealther appear at the left door as well, so I quickly whirled around and interrupted them too. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold both sides by myself for long, but by god I was going to try (while hoping that nobody had a stun or root up because that definitely would have screwed me over in that moment).

After what can't have been more than thirty seconds but what felt like an eternity of me having to cover both doors by myself, a friendly arrived and started defending the left door, freeing me up to fully focus on the right one. Eventually the rest of the team trickled in as well and we established a more solid defence.

Finally, it was over, my quest ticked over and I dinged 80. The final scoreboard showed me as having the most kills and damage taken out of everyone (the enemy clearly hated me), most damage and healing on my team (apparently we had a proper healer at one point who had left), and third highest objective points to boot.

It's rare that I get to rock the numbers like that in a warzone (I'm not usually focused on them and happy to spend a match just standing guard for example), nor do I generally feel like I did the bulk of the work, but in this one I feel confident in saying that I carried a heavy load for my team, especially with that solo defence of the two doors across the bridge. Too bad there are no more MVP votes to earn, so I'll never know whether any of my team mates appreciated it... but it sure was a great and memorable way to hit max level.