SWTOR How to PvP Guide

PvP is Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Player versus Player mode. It’s a type of quest where you team up with other players and fight the other team for points and objectives. It can be a lot of fun, and every match is a little different.

How to Queue up for PvP

To queue up for a match press the icon of three-little-people near your mini-map, choose the PvP tab, then press Join Queue under either PvP Warzones or PvP Arenas – this will put you in the PvP queue, and once enough people have queued up, it will start a match and you’ll be able to teleport into the PvP map. You only have a short time to accept a match, so don’t walk away from your computer while you’re queued.

The first time you accept a match, look for a terminal where you load in and accept the PvP dailies and weekly quests.

Unlike many other types of content, there’s no such thing as story mode PvP – everyone in the same level bracket gets thrown together in matches, whether you are brand new to the game, or are a PvP-killing machine. This means there’s no minimum bar to entry – so feel free to jump into PvP as soon as you want! There’s no real penalty for being bad, and both your team and the other team will have new or inexperienced players, so don’t feel you’re dragging your team down in anyway if you are new. Just by entering the queue, you’re helping the queue to ‘pop’, and everyone gets to play a match faster the more people are queueing up. Low-level PvP is an especially good place to get your feet wet, as it’s kind of expected that lower-level characters don’t know how to play well, because they just started playing.

You can start PvPing at as low as level 10, and there’s no limit on how many matches free-to-play or preferred players can play. You can queue up for matches alone and get grouped up with random players, or group up with up to three friends.

The matchmaker will place you in a matchmaking bracket with players of a similar level. That means if you’re on a low level character, you’ll never get matched up with someone who’s max level.

  • Levels 10-45 (nicknamed ‘lowbies’)
  • Levels 46-79 (nicknamed ‘midbies’)
  • Level 80

Warzones vs Arenas

PvP matches themselves are a lot of fun. You’ll get thrown into a team of either four or eight players, and be pitted against enemy players in either a deathmatch or an objectives match where you need to conquer or defend objectives.

You can choose to queue up for Warzones, for Arenas, or for both at the same time.

Arenas: 4 vs 4 matches are called Arenas, and just require you to kill the other team before your team dies.

Warzones: 8vs8 matches are the objectives matches where you can help either by killing other players, or by defending objectives your team has captured, and as you understand how the matches work you can help capture the objectives to bring your team to victory.

While Arenas take a lot of skill to master and get good at, there’s not much to learn for their rules except that you need to defeat the other team. Warzones are more interesting when it comes to their objectives, and each warzone type has different objectives and layouts. Here’s the quick and dirty version:

  • In Huttball, your team needs to pass and carry the ball forward into the enemy’s endzone.
  • In Voidstar, you need to either attack or defend the doors.
  • In Alderaan, Yavin and Novare Coast, you need to capture and defend turrets.
  • In Odessan Warzone, you need to capture and defend a randomized set of rotating objective points.
  • In Ancient Hypergates, you need to capture and defend a pylon, while killing the enemy team.

I’ve put together a huge set of guides covering every single warzone type you might encounter, with tons of tips and tricks for each one.

Gear

Gearing up for PvP is slightly different than gearing up for all other types of content. In this guide, we’ll be going over how to create a gear set that is optimized for PvP, the Accuracy stat, and how to gear up in PvP for each class.

In the past, there used to be separate gear for PvP and all other types of content – you would not want to wear your normal gear into PvP matches. This is no longer true, and you can just wear your normal gear into PvP, but if you are really enjoying playing PvP you may want to make a separate PvP-focused set.

Check out the SWTOR PvP Gear Guide for more information if you want to make a PvP-optimized set!

SWTOR PvP Gear

Class

Before you step foot into PvP you’ll want to get a very good idea of all your combat abilities.

If you like to attack other players, better known as DPS, you’ll want to be familiar with your ability priority system, which means picking abilities that will do the most damage at the time of using them. if you don’t know your ability priority well, sometimes known as your Rotation, we have a beginner’s guide for every class on swtorista.com!

If you’re playing as a tank, you’ll want to know your taunts, guards and defensive. tanks will constantly want to be taunting enemies that are attacking your teammates, and guarding teammates who are in trouble. guard only works within 15 meters, so tanks need to be mindful about switching their guard when it stops working.

Healers will want to know exactly what their different healing abilities do, whether they are single-target or multi-target, how to activate them, and whether or not you can use them while moving or not.

All players getting into PvP will also want to know where their emergency abilities are – abilities that help you get away fast, stun enemies, or heal you, or shield you. I highly recommend to open up your abilities list and read every ability so you know exactly what it does, and keybind it if it seems useful. We have a fantastic set of 48 guides about the basics of playing every class! See the SWTOR Basic Class Guides.

SWTOR Basic Class Guides

You may also want to look through your ability tree – some types of abilities can be more useful in PvP than they are while playing normally.

Resolve

Resolve is a special a mechanic that only exists in PvP. it affects how much you or an enemy can be stunned. you can see your resolve are circling around your character portrait it’s a black bar that will partially fill up every time you get stunned pulled or pushed. you can also see it pop up over characters heads near their nameplate and health bar. If either you, a teammate, or an enemy is stunned, pulled or pushed too many times, their white bar will fill up and they will be “white barred”, and will no longer be able to be stunned for a short period of time.

Roots allow a player attack but not move, and Slows do not fill up the resolve bar.

A good time to use a stun in PvP is to finish off an enemy – for example if they’re very low on health, that way they can’t heal themselves before you kill them. Another good time is if they’re caught in an acid or fire pit.

Each type of warzone match has a different location and different objectives. you can get a quick overview of the objectives on the loading screen before you load into a warzone.

Settings

Graphics: PvP can be very intensive on your computer especially matches that have 16 players in them so make sure to turn down your graphics enough that your computer won’t stutter.

Zoom: While you’re in your settings you should also set your camera distance to a hundred percent so you can see more of the map when you zoom out.

Enable Focus Target: Focus target lets you target an enemy or teammate and always have their health bar and portrait on your screen even if they aren’t nearby. That way you can keep an eye on them and see if they’re in trouble.

Nameplates: You also want to enable all name plates for friends and enemies – enabling enemy nameplates helps you see them better when they are far away, and enabling friends’ nameplates helps you call out quickly to specific people when you have questions. If you are having a lot of lag though, turn off all nameplat

Enable Background Audio: If you want to be able to hear the queue sound when you successfully get a match even if you are tabbed out, make sure Background Audio in the Sound Settings is clicked – you will have to wait until the next time you start up the game for it to take effect though.

Warzone Medpacs and Adrenals

There are two types of PvP only items: warzone med packs and warzone adrenals the med packs heal 30% of your health and the adrenals give you a 15% damage reduction, and they’re pretty cheap, so use them often!

PvP Checklist

If you’d like to prepare before you queue up, here’s the checklist I use to feel more prepared once I’m in a match!

  1. Make sure I have the right User Interface and locked my quickbars
  2. Pick up PvP Dailies / Weeklies (you can do this in the beginning of the match too)
  3. Apply XP Boost or Valor Boost if I want one
  4. Check and make sure I have in my inventory and are on my bars:
    1. Warzone Medpacs (10 or more)
    2. Warzone Adrenals (10 or more)
    3. Grenades (10 or more Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenade)
  5. Make sure I am in the right role/discipline/combat style
  6. Check my ability tree and make any changes I want to use for pvp
  7. Make sure I am wearing the correct gear and Tactical
  8. For all my characters, I make sure I have on my bars and am familiar with my mechanical abilities:
    • My interrupt
    • My stunbreaker
    • My health regeneration ability, in case I get out of combat, so I can heal up
    • My cleanse if I have one, to break free when I am stuck to the ground
    • Any movement abilities I have and how they work
    • Any defensive abilities I have like shields
    • Any healing abilities I have, even if I’m not a healer
    • Any pushes or pulls I have
    • At least a basic idea of my rotation / abilities to attack with, in order on my bars
    • Know which abilities I can use while moving, and know which I have to stand still for
    • As a tank I also…
      • Make sure I know where my two taunts are so I can use them often
      • Make my guard ability easy to find and use
    • As a healer I also….
      • Make sure I have learned the basics about how my healing abilities interact and are on my bars
    • As a stealth character I also…
      • Make sure my stealth ability is easy to use and access
      • Make sure my stealth-out-of-combat ability is easy to use and access

Valor

Your Valor rank signifies how much you’ve played Player vs Player content in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the higher your valor rank, the more player-vs-player rewards you have access to. Read more in our Valor Guide!

SWTOR Valor Guide & Rewards

PvP Seasons

PvP Seasons are a new type of rewards track being added to Star Wars: The Old Republic with update 7.2, that allows you to earn unique rewards just for playing PvP matches. This new system is available to free-to-play, preferred and subscribed players at level 10 and up, and each season is only available for a limited time. Learn more in our PvP Seasons Guide.

SWTOR PvP Seasons Guide and Rewards

Have fun PvPing!