Warzones Guide: Info, Tactics and Tips

I was encouraged to make a guide about the Warzones in SWTOR, so I removed the old one replacing it with a more detailed version. The guide I will make contains different small tactics on how to win and how to intercept your enemy from winning.

PVP is a delicate topic, in which you most often hear the phrases about people being newbie’s, bad players, a disgrace for society and whatnot. This is a sum-up of tactics and useful guidelines to be used in the three Warzones, There are of course loads more tactics than what I post here, but I will walk you through some of the most common ones. This is Agent Traxex to all Empire!

Introduction

The Warzones are SWTORs initiative towards PVP. You queue up to these Warzones by clicking on the small icon on your minimap (low left corner). You can choose to queue as a solo player, or a group of players (also called pre-mades). When the server has found a match it will pop a window for you to enter or leave queue. You have little more than a minute to respond. The Warzones each take out a maximum of 15 minutes. They may take less depending on how it turns out. Winning is the obvious best solution, but I will encourage you all to stay even if you figure out that it’s a lost course. The medals change a lost match into giving you reasonable Warzone commendations and Valor gain. Furthermore the Warzone also awards you with credits, experience for gaining levels and increase your legacy pool level. While, of course, a win awards you better, a lost match where you manage to achieve 4+ medals is not that bad really, I encourage you to stay and fight to the bitter end, a true soldier does not recognize defeat!

MVP

When a Warzone is finished you can check out everyone's performance (including yours) and medals on the scoreboard. You will also see, at each of your teammates name there is a golden goblet. The goblet represents MVP (Most valuable player) and you and everyone for that matter gets to vote the player they think was the MVP of the match. I can only encourage that you vote for the person who did an outstanding job, the one that did very well helping your team to win, or the one that tried so hard to change the course of a defeat. Giving someone your vote as the MVP is rewards with additional commendation and valor. It’s your way to say thanks for trying or thanks for successful win. There is always someone which you owe your gratitude, be a nice guy/girl and give it to them.

Huttball

This is the most team orientated Warzone in SWTOR, also the only one where you can participate in PVP against your own faction. This is also the reason why you often see this Warzone popping more often than the others. This Warzone is often hated by people, rightful so, because people forget to act accordingly. This is all about team play, if you don’t participate in this Warzone with team spirit and team play; expect to have random wins and loads of lost matches. In general the mission is simple: get the ball, pass it, take it to the enemy’s goal line.

Tactics
(usable both for winning and for preventing other team from scoring easy goals).

#1

Classes that can charge pick up the ball or receive it from a pass. Their next move is to either charge some idle player standing on a very good location on the ramps, knocking him off and run his touchdown. This is the first thing, always be aware of where you’re standing, what class has the ball and what abilities they have. You’re not necessarily giving covering fire from the ramp above, no, you’re also giving them an opportunity to escape everyone and make the goal. LoS is so very important in Huttball. Don’t just stand there and fire missiles, lightning or whatever arsenal. Charge is a very often used ability to make points in Huttball.



#2

Another way; the ball carrier goes to the pit, someone is standing at the ledge at the goal-line shooting at him, he charges you and you basically just gave them a free point



#3

The ball carrier is not always the important target to kill, although 90% of your teammates will believe so. Now you have the opportunity to be the smart one. Always be aware of enemies standing on your team’s goal-line. A very useful tactics is to run to the pit and pass the ball up to a player on the ledge. That player standing there is ten times more important to get away than the guy carrying the ball.
There are several other tactics, but these are the common ones, also the ones that play out perfectly, when you play stupidly.



Personal tips, for a player as individual. (Huttball orientated)

It’s very notable to keep track of the time in the end, if both team have same amount of touchdowns, say: 2-2, the team that has the ball in their position when the time is up wins.

Class abilities to keep in mind

Constant vigilance is the key in Huttball. This means, always be aware of what is happening around you.

Any given player has a max amount of stuns/cc he can receive. If a player is CCed/stunned he cannot pass the ball. Therefore save your stuns till he is at 40% where he usually thinks “gotta pass soon!” and kill him before he pass.

Depending on what I play, I do different things. One thing that has been huge fun for me, while playing my operative is monitoring the outcome from the ramps in stealth, waiting for the carrier, see where he is going, to finally intercept him by a stun in the fire, I like to call myself goalkeeper when I do this. With other words use the fire, it’s not only there as a “blocker” it also gives you the opportunity to devastate a player.

When you’re on the ramp remember it matters which side you stand, you can LoS easily by swapping from side to side on the ramp. Depending on where the enemy’s ball-carrier is. Always keep this in mind! else you can easily end up being the twat that gave a goal to the opposing team.

When your teammate gets the ball, run 20-30 meters ahead of him be prepared for a pass, hopefully someone else, like you, will run deep for you as well so you can pass. You can very easily run ahead, passing firewalls so your teammate can pass to you, through the fire, by doing that you leave the charging enemies behind, while you continue towards a touchdown! Now this is team play!

I advise you to control your “e-peen” meaning, even though you have a damage orientated spec, but have heals. Sometime you can win the match by simply healing people.

Class abilities to keep in mind

Sith Warrior / Jedi Knight: Charge, in some cases, dual charge – depending on spec. I have seen dual charge specs in Huttball, to make touchdowns even easier.

Powertech / Vanguard: They are harder to identify, but if you, do be aware of their ability to charge and/or pull you to them.

Sith Inquisitor / Jedi Consular: They have the ability to run with 150% speed for a short time, making them exceptional for scoring a goal.
Sith Assassin / Jedi Shasow: If specialized as “tank” they also receive a pull ability.

Stealth classes: They are exceptionally good to use as receiver on the ledge of the goal-line. Though, not many do this at all, who wants to stand there when you can 3 shot people?

The Civil War

This is an Empire vs. Republic Warzone. It’s very straight forward and there is not much to add here. Many of you have seen Warzones very similar to this. The mission in this Warzone is also rather simple, there are three cannons, get two or all 3 and you win.

When the game starts you will see one speeder that will take you to the middle. After you have successfully sliced a cannon and your team controls it, more speeders will arrive. This means that the middle one, the one you use at the start will still take you to the middle, the other two will take you to the represented side they are on - the left one takes you to left cannon and the right one to the right cannon. By using these two added speeders (again they are only available if you own a cannon) you can, after you died, easily assist any of the cannons you own.

#1 Start Tactics. (The common one)

As you can see on the map (bottom), both factions have the same run-time to access the middle cannon and both teams have different fast access to the side-cannons. This often means the team splits up, within the first few seconds both team will own a side-cannon, while the main fight will be for the middle one.

Send 2-3 players to your easy accessible side-cannon. The rest go for middle. The team that wins this fight for the middle usually wins the Warzone. When you participate in this fight always be aware of people trying to cap the cannon, shoot them, anything interrupt it and they have to start over. You can easily see who is capping; a blue light will rise from them.

Depending on class, there are several good positions to take, the sides for easy accessible LoS elements. The top for ranged classes, it’s harder to be engaged by melee classes. Again, it’s very advisable for you classes with heals to actually cast heal, no matter your spec. Heals easily help you to be victor in the middle.

Endgame Tactics

Let’s make the assumption you win the main fight and have capped two cannons, the middle and the one on the side. Then the rest of the game is to protect these, don’t go for a 3rd. Having two make you win the game nice and easily. What is most important now is the announcement of what is incoming. While you defend always observe how many is coming toward the cannon you protect and announce it in the chat (OPS: Traxex: Inc Middle 3+) Then your team can react to it and come to aid. Don’t be like everyone else, take the harsh job sometimes and just stay put and wait the game out at one cannon. You get defending medals for this too, so your loss is not considerable valor/commendation wise. If you don't receive aid immediately, you can just run around, not engaging in combat and interrupt the enemy that tries to cap. That always stalls some time until your team arrives.

#2 Start Tactics (The hard one, preferable for pre-mades that want versatility)

You can also cause distraction. Explore the boundaries of how the game usually plays out (tactics above). You do this by capping both side-cannons, giving them the middle. This will be at that moment, a much harder fight for you, but also gives you the possibility to cap middle much easier than normal. If you cap both sides, it’s much harder to react fast to the announcements of incoming players. But this is probably the easiest way to cap all three, but I wouldn’t advice this tactics for anyone new.

Endgame Tactics

When you successfully cap both, let 2 players stay at each cannons, the rest (especially the pre-made group) runs to cap middle. Let’s assume this works out and you get middle in a matter of minutes so you don’t have to fend off a huge attack on the side. After that, you divide you team up in two groups, defending each of the two exits where your enemy can access the battlefield from, blocking them from getting out. if a stealthy class has the luck to bypass, well then it’s easy to send one two players to retake. Again this tactic does not always work, but I have successfully executed it and it’s a good laugh and a fast win.

#3 Start Tactics. (The somewhat lucky one, much higher success with pre-mades)

Dividing the players up in 3 groups and attacking all 3 cannons from the get go. What you need to do here is to make the group for middle a bit larger than the one for sides, most often the fight in the middle is the most intense and also the one with most players.

Endgame Tactics

Wait it out, defend, and announce incoming as always.



Voidstar

This is the last Warzone, also only Empire vs. Republic. The mission is straightforward, it consists in a defending and an assaulting strategy. Assaulting and access the data at the end. There are 5 mechanisms you have to click to get there. First detonate the main gates. Then deactivate the laser field preventing you from accessing the middle gates. After the laser field is down detonate the next gates to get to the last room...there you need to deactivate another laser field to plant the last bomb to access the data-slice. The other team’s objective is, of course, to prevent the assault form successfully accessing the data-slice. If no one is successful in getting access to the data-slize, then the team with the best progression in their assault will win.

Tactics

This is brute force more than anything, the team who wipes its enemies the fastest, while also successfully heal their own, has a bigger chance to place a bomb progressing toward the data-slice, or the biggest chance to prevent the attackers form doing so. It takes 8 seconds to place a bomb and it takes 3 second to deactivate a bomb. The team that plays best together both in attacking and supporting are successful in winning. It’s advisable to use CC, giving you a higher chance to get the 8 seconds to place a bomb. Again, here you can interrupt players trying to either place or disable a bomb. There are no tricky tactics to give you any advantage in defending or assaulting. This is usually just a huge mayhem where luck (at least for random groups) is a big factor. Stealthy classes can sometime successfully sneak to a gate getting a bomb placed.