The Gold Road Chapter – which includes the Scribing system – and Update 42 is now available to test on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/
Non-Vet PvP, Battle Leveling, and You. A hopefully helpful guide.
ottobot
✭✭✭
Hello everyone, The Doctor here. You can find me on PC, NA, DC @ogbot, or as Doctor Somebody in Blackwater Blade. I may have come across some of you before.
I have spent many many hours in non-vet PvP, and learning how it all works has been a battle. I write this in hopes it will clear up any questions, inspire some, or just maybe help some people out. If anything in this post is inaccurate or just plain wrong, please let me know and I will test and edit as necessary. I'm not a writer, nor a mathematician, I just want people to have fun and know whats going on in the world around them. In a world devoid of precious information like ours, every little bit helps, so here I am with a (hopefully) helpful and informative guide to Battle Leveling, more specifically pertaining to Non-Veteran PvP and its current home, Blackwater Blade (BwB).
This campaign allows Battle Leveling, which is something that happens in every campaign, non-vet or otherwise. This is simply a provided buff from the server to level you to what they think a Veteran 14 character might be at to even the playing field, and it can be very confusing what actually works, what doesn't, and why.
Battle Leveling has a massive effect on healing, especially in non-vet PvP. The reason for this being mainly due to having 4000-9000 more health than most Veteran (non-Battle Leveled) PvP characters, who average to be around 20,000 to 25,000 health. This is an 18% to 47% difference that when coupled with the healing decrease of 50%, can be upwards of 75% real world less healing received, simply because we are stuck to base stats that are only increased by Major and Minor de/buffs, and small percentages from passives. Veteran players can disable Battle Leveling and work off of their own actual stats. Battle Leveled characters, especially in BwB cannot turn off Battle Leveling, because you literally cannot compete against Battle Leveled foes, even if you managed to stay in the Campaign at Veteran 1, you would be utterly annihilated without Battle Leveling.
Everyone in BwB, regardless of Level or Attribute Distribution will have the following base stats:
The attributes you select in your character menu mean and do absolutly nothing in BwB. It doesn't matter if you spec all the way into Magicka, your total Magicka in BwB will not be effected whatsoever. These are your base stats. Everything you've focused on and specced into means nothing to Battle Leveling. These stats can only be increased by passives and abilities that change percentages, or provide Major or Minor de/buffs, and this is due to Battle Leveling.
This gives you great opportunity to take advantage of being scaled out of your natural range. Magicka builds can use Stamina abilities with little consequence and great benefit, and vice versa. Non-vet PvP opens up a whole world of builds that would otherwise be considered completely useless. For instance, my Magicka Dragonknight's best heal is Vigor, a Stamina ability. If I were a Veteran 16 character who was not Battle Leveled, I wouldn't have the “free” 17,000 Stamina, so the heal wouldn't scale very well, and it wouldn't be a very good heal at all. Since I am Battle Leveled however, my Stamina is high, my Weapon damage is high, and even though I use primarily Magicka abilities, my Stamina ones still do much better than they would outside of Cyrodiil, or especially if I weren't Battle Leveled.
There are many bonuses from Armor, Sets, and Enchantments that simply do not work while Battle Leveled. Anything that provides a flat number increase, such as +Health/Magicka/Stamina Enchantments and Set bonuses, will be ignored and do not count whatsoever while Battle Leveled.
I'll go over what actually works, and what doesn't.
First, What doesn't work:
While you're Battle Leveled, you will have the exact same amount of armor if you were wearing full Heavy with a Shield as you would if you were buck naked with no gear whatsoever. Even the Heavy Armor passive Resolve that gives you more Armor per piece of Heavy equipped does nothing at all. If you put Magicka enchants on a full set of Infused gear, you will still have the same exact amount of Magicka you would otherwise. Battle Leveling doesn't care about your armor type, its level or quality, or any enchantments. It doesn't care if you're weilding a level 10 Two Handed Sword, or a level 49 Restoration Staff, you will have the exact same amount of Weapon and Spell Damage. It doesn't even care if you're wearing a shield.
There are many set bonuses that are effected in a different way. Let's take Hunding's Rage for example. Unfortunatly, set bonuses do not scale in Battle Leveling, and while Hunding's Rage will give you the Weapon Damage from its 5 piece bonus, at level 48 (which is much higher level than most players in BwB) this is only 182 Weapon Damage. It's not a tiny number, but at lower levels it can be. All Set bonuses and Enchantments will still give the same number they do outside of Cyrodiil, and as your character is scaled up to Veteran 14, these numbers can be small and nearly meaningless. With the base 1381 weapon damage, any skill that provides Major Brutality will give you 276 Weapon Damage. Is Hunding's useless? Not quite, but there are better sets to choose due to...
What does work:
5 Set Bonuses are put into this same category. Any 5 set bonus that provides a Major/Minor Buff (like Hist Bark's Major Evasion) or a Percentage (Like Magnus' 8% chance to negate, or Seducer's 8% cost reduction, Willow's Path gives you 15% regen of all 3 attributes in combat,etc) will work great. Any that provide a scaled number, like Hunding's that we've already heard about, or Ashen Grip's fire proc, or Night Mother's Embrace's Armor Reduction, these bonuses will be scaled to the Armor's level, and thus will not provide very noticeable benefit to a Veteran 14 scaled character if they're working off of level 25 armor.
There are other sets that provide what I like to call “gimmicks” as their 5 set bonus. These sets are some of the better ones to wear in BwB simply because of the utility they provide. Death's Wind is one of my favorites, an AoE knockback stun when below 30% health is truly OP in BwB (especially since they still havent fixed the bug that tends to make effected enemies slide around on the ground unable to do anything. Is this an exploit? No. It's a known bug. Fix it.). Night's Silence removes the stealth speed penalty which is another great one. Look at the sets yourself and find a combination that works with your play style. If it says “does [X] whatever” that number is going to scale with armor level, and not be as useful as you would hope.
If you create your own sets, feel free to leave them white and unenchanted if you plan to only PvP in BwB. The only reason to increase the quality of an item (even weapons) would be to increase the percentage of its trait, which in some cases (mostly Divines and weapon traits) can be useful. As far as Armor and Weapon traits go, most are just as useful inside or outside of Cyrodiil. Some are effected by Battle Leveling and I will go over what works, and what doesn't once again.
Armor:
Weapon:
As far as I know, all of these traits function as they should while Battle Leveled, as they all increase things by a percentage. Nirnhoned should increase your base spell resistance, and Defending your Armor and Spell resistance as well.
I usually will have my 2 pieces of Impenetrable, Divines on everything else (unless I still need Training), Sharpened on my DPS weapon, and I tend to use a Weighted Resto Staff or Destro staff to make my Magicka returning heavy attacks quicker.
Weapon Enchantments suffer from the same non-scaling issue as armor does. This doesn't mean they are all useless however, as the debuffs from these Enchantments are still very real. Chilled still snares. Concussion still reduces damage done for 4 seconds. The DoT from Burning isnt great, but will still do around 1000 damage when it procs. Disease enchants still provide the Defile (im not sure if its major or minor) debuff which reduces healing taken by your target. Enchants like Hardened, or the Magicka/Health/Stamina return ones will still be scaled to a low level and not benefit you much at all. When it comes to Weapon Enchantments, you should take the debuff it applies into acount before the damage it does.
Passives reign supreme while Battle Leveled. Class, Racial, Armor and Weapon passives are very important, because they tend take these scaled stat numbers and increase them by percentages instead of flat numbers. The only way to stack things like Weapon or Spell damage is through these percentage increases. Same with Champion Points. Coming across a player in BwB with a ton of Champion Points is very noticeable.
One thing about passives however is that their usefulness in the long run is essentially backwards, and here's what I mean. This applies to all of them. BwB is for low level characters. Low level Characters aren't going to have the last passives in a tree. While this doesn't mean a whole lot for weapon and armor passives, your Racial passives should definitly be taken into account. For example, Redguard vs Wood Elf. The Wood Elf's last racial passive, that you'll unlock later in the game, decreases stealth detection radius and increases stealth damage, while the Redguard's last passive will return stamina on melee attacks. The first passive you'll unlock as a Woof Elf will give you 21% Stamina Regen, while the Redguard's only gives you 9% - in combat. For a low level Stamina character, Bosmer is going to be ideal, because you'll get better passives earlier. This is not a big deal if you plan to move on past BwB, but for someone like me who pretty much only plays non-vet PvP and builds characters just for it, this info is very useful.
Well, thats it (for now).
I hope this helps, and please if you have any questions ask.
TL;DR: Major and Minor de/buffs and anything that increases something by a percentage works. Anything else (for the most part) does not.
I have spent many many hours in non-vet PvP, and learning how it all works has been a battle. I write this in hopes it will clear up any questions, inspire some, or just maybe help some people out. If anything in this post is inaccurate or just plain wrong, please let me know and I will test and edit as necessary. I'm not a writer, nor a mathematician, I just want people to have fun and know whats going on in the world around them. In a world devoid of precious information like ours, every little bit helps, so here I am with a (hopefully) helpful and informative guide to Battle Leveling, more specifically pertaining to Non-Veteran PvP and its current home, Blackwater Blade (BwB).
This campaign allows Battle Leveling, which is something that happens in every campaign, non-vet or otherwise. This is simply a provided buff from the server to level you to what they think a Veteran 14 character might be at to even the playing field, and it can be very confusing what actually works, what doesn't, and why.
Battle Leveling has a massive effect on healing, especially in non-vet PvP. The reason for this being mainly due to having 4000-9000 more health than most Veteran (non-Battle Leveled) PvP characters, who average to be around 20,000 to 25,000 health. This is an 18% to 47% difference that when coupled with the healing decrease of 50%, can be upwards of 75% real world less healing received, simply because we are stuck to base stats that are only increased by Major and Minor de/buffs, and small percentages from passives. Veteran players can disable Battle Leveling and work off of their own actual stats. Battle Leveled characters, especially in BwB cannot turn off Battle Leveling, because you literally cannot compete against Battle Leveled foes, even if you managed to stay in the Campaign at Veteran 1, you would be utterly annihilated without Battle Leveling.
Everyone in BwB, regardless of Level or Attribute Distribution will have the following base stats:
- 29,474 Health.
- 16,757 Magicka and Stamina.
- 399 Health Recovery.
- 618 Magicka and Stamina Recovery.
- 1381 Spell and Weapon Damage.
- 10% Spell and Weapon Crit.
- 8978 Spell and Physical Resistance.
The attributes you select in your character menu mean and do absolutly nothing in BwB. It doesn't matter if you spec all the way into Magicka, your total Magicka in BwB will not be effected whatsoever. These are your base stats. Everything you've focused on and specced into means nothing to Battle Leveling. These stats can only be increased by passives and abilities that change percentages, or provide Major or Minor de/buffs, and this is due to Battle Leveling.
This gives you great opportunity to take advantage of being scaled out of your natural range. Magicka builds can use Stamina abilities with little consequence and great benefit, and vice versa. Non-vet PvP opens up a whole world of builds that would otherwise be considered completely useless. For instance, my Magicka Dragonknight's best heal is Vigor, a Stamina ability. If I were a Veteran 16 character who was not Battle Leveled, I wouldn't have the “free” 17,000 Stamina, so the heal wouldn't scale very well, and it wouldn't be a very good heal at all. Since I am Battle Leveled however, my Stamina is high, my Weapon damage is high, and even though I use primarily Magicka abilities, my Stamina ones still do much better than they would outside of Cyrodiil, or especially if I weren't Battle Leveled.
There are many bonuses from Armor, Sets, and Enchantments that simply do not work while Battle Leveled. Anything that provides a flat number increase, such as +Health/Magicka/Stamina Enchantments and Set bonuses, will be ignored and do not count whatsoever while Battle Leveled.
I'll go over what actually works, and what doesn't.
First, What doesn't work:
- Any + Health, Magicka, Stamina, Armor, Resist, or Recovery enchants or set bonuses.
- Any Spell or Weapon Damage 2, 3, or 4 set bonuses. (Hunding's 5 piece does apply, but read on.)
While you're Battle Leveled, you will have the exact same amount of armor if you were wearing full Heavy with a Shield as you would if you were buck naked with no gear whatsoever. Even the Heavy Armor passive Resolve that gives you more Armor per piece of Heavy equipped does nothing at all. If you put Magicka enchants on a full set of Infused gear, you will still have the same exact amount of Magicka you would otherwise. Battle Leveling doesn't care about your armor type, its level or quality, or any enchantments. It doesn't care if you're weilding a level 10 Two Handed Sword, or a level 49 Restoration Staff, you will have the exact same amount of Weapon and Spell Damage. It doesn't even care if you're wearing a shield.
There are many set bonuses that are effected in a different way. Let's take Hunding's Rage for example. Unfortunatly, set bonuses do not scale in Battle Leveling, and while Hunding's Rage will give you the Weapon Damage from its 5 piece bonus, at level 48 (which is much higher level than most players in BwB) this is only 182 Weapon Damage. It's not a tiny number, but at lower levels it can be. All Set bonuses and Enchantments will still give the same number they do outside of Cyrodiil, and as your character is scaled up to Veteran 14, these numbers can be small and nearly meaningless. With the base 1381 weapon damage, any skill that provides Major Brutality will give you 276 Weapon Damage. Is Hunding's useless? Not quite, but there are better sets to choose due to...
What does work:
- Major and Minor de/buffs.
- Critical Chance set bonuses (Sort of, I'll touch on this a little more in a second).
- Anything that increases a stat by a percentage (The rare 4% Healing Recieved set bonus works).
- Maybe Weapon or Spell damage jewelry enchants, I have not been able to test them, but definitly,
- Cost Reduction jewelry enchants (and again only sort of, just like the Crit chance ones and here's why;)
5 Set Bonuses are put into this same category. Any 5 set bonus that provides a Major/Minor Buff (like Hist Bark's Major Evasion) or a Percentage (Like Magnus' 8% chance to negate, or Seducer's 8% cost reduction, Willow's Path gives you 15% regen of all 3 attributes in combat,etc) will work great. Any that provide a scaled number, like Hunding's that we've already heard about, or Ashen Grip's fire proc, or Night Mother's Embrace's Armor Reduction, these bonuses will be scaled to the Armor's level, and thus will not provide very noticeable benefit to a Veteran 14 scaled character if they're working off of level 25 armor.
There are other sets that provide what I like to call “gimmicks” as their 5 set bonus. These sets are some of the better ones to wear in BwB simply because of the utility they provide. Death's Wind is one of my favorites, an AoE knockback stun when below 30% health is truly OP in BwB (especially since they still havent fixed the bug that tends to make effected enemies slide around on the ground unable to do anything. Is this an exploit? No. It's a known bug. Fix it.). Night's Silence removes the stealth speed penalty which is another great one. Look at the sets yourself and find a combination that works with your play style. If it says “does [X] whatever” that number is going to scale with armor level, and not be as useful as you would hope.
If you create your own sets, feel free to leave them white and unenchanted if you plan to only PvP in BwB. The only reason to increase the quality of an item (even weapons) would be to increase the percentage of its trait, which in some cases (mostly Divines and weapon traits) can be useful. As far as Armor and Weapon traits go, most are just as useful inside or outside of Cyrodiil. Some are effected by Battle Leveling and I will go over what works, and what doesn't once again.
Armor:
- Divines - Works great. I use it on 3-4 pieces at least. Increasing the quality of 4 pieces gives you another 4% per quality level. Not too shabby.
- Exploration - Still increases experience.
- Impenetrable - I'm not 100% sure if this works or not, but it seems to. I have 2 pieces of Impen to give me a resistance to up to 24% crit on white items. With the way you can('t) stack crit in BwB, its not very common to see people with higher than 20% critical, and if they do their percentage to crit you is still lowered substantially.
- Infused - Useless. Enchant's dont matter.
- Nirnhoned - I don't have this trait, so I can't test it. Might work, might not.
- Reinforced - I have not tested it, but if you have the same armor value Naked vs Full Heavy with a Shield, I can't imagine increasing an items armor value will do anything at all.
- Sturdy - Still reduces durability damage, but I dont think you take durability damage in Cyrodiil, and if you do it's not very much. Would not use.
- Training - Still increases experience gained. Use it if you need to.
- Well Fitted - Pretty sure it still makes you sprint faster.
Weapon:
As far as I know, all of these traits function as they should while Battle Leveled, as they all increase things by a percentage. Nirnhoned should increase your base spell resistance, and Defending your Armor and Spell resistance as well.
I usually will have my 2 pieces of Impenetrable, Divines on everything else (unless I still need Training), Sharpened on my DPS weapon, and I tend to use a Weighted Resto Staff or Destro staff to make my Magicka returning heavy attacks quicker.
Weapon Enchantments suffer from the same non-scaling issue as armor does. This doesn't mean they are all useless however, as the debuffs from these Enchantments are still very real. Chilled still snares. Concussion still reduces damage done for 4 seconds. The DoT from Burning isnt great, but will still do around 1000 damage when it procs. Disease enchants still provide the Defile (im not sure if its major or minor) debuff which reduces healing taken by your target. Enchants like Hardened, or the Magicka/Health/Stamina return ones will still be scaled to a low level and not benefit you much at all. When it comes to Weapon Enchantments, you should take the debuff it applies into acount before the damage it does.
Passives reign supreme while Battle Leveled. Class, Racial, Armor and Weapon passives are very important, because they tend take these scaled stat numbers and increase them by percentages instead of flat numbers. The only way to stack things like Weapon or Spell damage is through these percentage increases. Same with Champion Points. Coming across a player in BwB with a ton of Champion Points is very noticeable.
One thing about passives however is that their usefulness in the long run is essentially backwards, and here's what I mean. This applies to all of them. BwB is for low level characters. Low level Characters aren't going to have the last passives in a tree. While this doesn't mean a whole lot for weapon and armor passives, your Racial passives should definitly be taken into account. For example, Redguard vs Wood Elf. The Wood Elf's last racial passive, that you'll unlock later in the game, decreases stealth detection radius and increases stealth damage, while the Redguard's last passive will return stamina on melee attacks. The first passive you'll unlock as a Woof Elf will give you 21% Stamina Regen, while the Redguard's only gives you 9% - in combat. For a low level Stamina character, Bosmer is going to be ideal, because you'll get better passives earlier. This is not a big deal if you plan to move on past BwB, but for someone like me who pretty much only plays non-vet PvP and builds characters just for it, this info is very useful.
Well, thats it (for now).
I hope this helps, and please if you have any questions ask.
TL;DR: Major and Minor de/buffs and anything that increases something by a percentage works. Anything else (for the most part) does not.
10
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jrkhan✭✭✭Would be nice if in game documentation were half as detailed as your post.
I do not mean to be disparaging, but I've much more politely stated in a half dozen threads that it didn't seem clear from in game documentation exactly what effects battle leveling has - so pardon a small amount of snarkiness.
One point:[*] Impenetrable - I'm not 100% sure if this works or not, but it seems to. I have 2 pieces of Impen to give me a resistance to up to 24% crit on white items. With the way you can('t) stack crit in BwB, its not very common to see people with higher than 20% critical, and if they do their percentage to crit you is still lowered substantially.
You'll want to review the changes made to Impenetrable in 1.6 (not just while battle leveled, but across the board)
It does not decrease your chance to be crit, it decreases the damage done by critical strikes.
I believe this does work in BwB, but the formula for crit damage reduction is also very opaque so I couldn't tell you with any accuracy the amount.
Edited by jrkhan on September 18, 2015 3:39AM0 -
ottobot✭✭✭You'll want to review the changes made to Impenetrable in 1.6 (not just while battle leveled, but across the board)
It does not decrease your chance to be crit, it decreases the damage done by critical strikes.
I believe this does work in BwB, but the formula for crit damage reduction is also very opaque so I couldn't tell you with any accuracy the amount.
I did not know this! Thank you for the information. Still not bad I suppose to have crit damage reduced by nearly a quarter, but definitely not what I thought it was doing.
As for the incredible lack of information across the board about how this game actually works - I hear you. Loud and freakin' clear, which is one of the reasons I made this post. They are getting better about how they word things, (eg, Corrosive Armor now states "ignores target's Physical Resistance" instead of "ignores target's Armor") but there are still so many questions without answers.0 -
SneaK✭✭✭✭✭Great write up, and thanks for taking the time to document all this. One questions/assumption, now that battle leveling is up to V13, wouldn't this apply to any character opting in for battle leveling, not just BB characters?"IMO"Aldmeri DominionBosmer Nightblade AR 32 - Altmer Templar AR 26 - Dunmer Dragonknight AR 18 - Altmer Sorcerer AR 20 - Khajiit Dragonknight AR 18(+3 not worth mentioning, yet)0 -
Asmael✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Armor:- Divines - Works great. I use it on 3-4 pieces at least. Increasing the quality of 4 pieces gives you another 4% per quality level. Not too shabby.
- Exploration - Still increases experience.
- Impenetrable - I'm not 100% sure if this works or not, but it seems to. I have 2 pieces of Impen to give me a resistance to up to 24% crit on white items. With the way you can('t) stack crit in BwB, its not very common to see people with higher than 20% critical, and if they do their percentage to crit you is still lowered substantially.
- Infused - Useless. Enchant's dont matter.
- Nirnhoned - I don't have this trait, so I can't test it. Might work, might not.
- Reinforced - I have not tested it, but if you have the same armor value Naked vs Full Heavy with a Shield, I can't imagine increasing an items armor value will do anything at all.
- Sturdy - Still reduces durability damage, but I dont think you take durability damage in Cyrodiil, and if you do it's not very much. Would not use.
- Training - Still increases experience gained. Use it if you need to.
- Well Fitted - Pretty sure it still makes you sprint faster.
I can't confirm about impenetrable working or not, not something I use much anyway...
Nirnhoned's worked on armor in 1.6, I think the effects are now similar to Reinforced, which does not work, however it must still work on the weapon, since the effects are different.
Well fitted reduces the cost of sprinting, it doesn't increase the sprinting speed.
Basically, you want Divines or Training.
Also:
- Heavy armor's passive, Resolve, does not work.
- Because of how irrelevant armor for equipment is, there's no reason to use it over light or medium armor
You didn't mention that food, drink and potions close to your level are also scaled.
If I think of something else, I'll add it.
PC EU - Zahraji of the Void, aka "Kitty", the fluffiest salmon genocider in town.
Poke @AsmaeI (last letter is uppercase "i") on PC EU or Asmael#9325 on Discord and receive a meow today.0 -
ottobot✭✭✭Well fitted reduces the cost of sprinting, it doesn't increase the sprinting speed.
Basically, you want Divines or Training.
Also:
- Heavy armor's passive, Resolve, does not work.
- Because of how irrelevant armor for equipment is, there's no reason to use it over light or medium armor
You didn't mention that food, drink and potions close to your level are also scaled.
If I think of something else, I'll add it.
You're right about Well Fitted, will edit.
I mentioned the Resolve passive, but thank you for making it a little more noticeable out of my giant wall of text.
I have something about food/drink in the works, will edit as well.
Thanks for your input!
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ottobot✭✭✭Great write up, and thanks for taking the time to document all this. One questions/assumption, now that battle leveling is up to V13, wouldn't this apply to any character opting in for battle leveling, not just BB characters?
It does for sure, the same stats apply to Veteran characters who are battle leveled.
Their stats from Armor (scaled set bonuses, crit bonuses) will be a little better than in BwB though, simply because of higher level armor.
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Paradox✭✭✭✭Rest in peace Blackwater Blade.Ebonheart Pact
@iHateReloads
Tank And Spank - DragonKnightI've quit the game until ZoS stops acting like the community are children, and start actually listening to us.0 -
MrTarkanian48✭✭✭✭This is a great thread. Thank-you for the info.
So what about mundus stones... If you go apprentice for Spell Damage will it get added on top of your base 1381 Spell Damage? Or are you better of going for regen?Wood Elf Stam NB (PVP)
Redguard Stam Sorc (PVP)
Altmer NB (DPS)
Imperial DK (Tank)
Redguard DK (DPS)
Altmer Templar (Healer)
EP - PS40 -
mcurley✭✭✭MrTarkanian48 wrote: »This is a great thread. Thank-you for the info.
So what about mundus stones... If you go apprentice for Spell Damage will it get added on top of your base 1381 Spell Damage? Or are you better of going for regen?
Mundus stones all workFor the Covenant!Svvord - magicka NBLavv - magicka DKPovver - stamina NBPsylint - stamina NBYelruc - magicka Sorc0