Are DOTTZ Gaming PvP Builds Decent?

TheAlphaRaider

So heres what I will tell you about Dottz and most builds, you aren't going to learn to play PVP from a build but it gives you a direction to shoot for. Most of the content creators put out meta or becoming meta builds for 1 v x or small pvp pug groups. Solo builds. Assumes you are going to duel or not rely on others. What you don't get are group comps most of the time. What you need to focus on is stats AND practicality. Your stats should be arrayed in terms of these three things: survivability, sustainability, and damage. Survivability is not just your resistance its your ability to avoid, take, and recover from damage, and it doesnt have to be balanced. You should make survivability work with what you want to do with your class and your rotation. You can avoid damage by line of sight, undetection, roll dodge, and its generally associated with mobility - well-fitted, kitey aspects of a build. You can take more damage by increasing your resistance in multiple ways - your armor types, adding vampire, adding sources of protection, taking a mundus stone -lady or lord, set bonuses like gaze of sithus, and or blocking builds, and also your max health - adding the right enchants, and having the right sets or combination of armor. And dont forget to add some crit resistance or you will pop like a grape to your friendly neighborhood magsorc or nightblade. Sustainability is your ability to maintain your 3 pools of resources which is done through maximizing resource stats through enchantments and adding recovery mechanisms to your build. Recovery comes in forms other than just your traits on your item pieces or enchants on jewelry, there are sustain sets, i.e. wretched vitality, eternal vigor, lich, bright throats. There are max stat sets like draugr hulk, crafty alfiq, plague doctor, necropotence etc. You can get sustain from mundus stones. You can get it from class selection and race selection. Damage is another thing people just fail to comprehend, generally its penetration plus your damage output. Your output isn't just your stat damage but the damage done to a group or individual based on your buffs or debuffs. Think of damage as the climax rather than a stat. You want all of your debuffs and buffs to sync at the same time. Focus on that one point of the battle where that happens and build around it with your procs, your skills, your ultimates. The term turn and burn comes to mind. You will get a feel for the rhythm. You are on the defensive, you run around the corner or you are blocking and keeping your buffs up, then you pop that clever alc and hit that corrosive/soul tether/resto ult/ or whatever and you burn them down when you sense they are have let their resources go low. You put cc on them to make them burn stamina as you go to stam lock them up and burn them down. Whatever your goal is.

This is all just scratching the surface to breaking through to a PVP sage. A few observations/things you need to learn abolut pvp before you copy builds.

1. Groups larger than 4 have diminished skill gain i.e. its harder to identify if you are being carried and adjust your weaknesses. Zerg groups aren't very satisfying to be apart of. I use them when I need tiers and I'm running solo in cyrodiil at the end of a campaign. It's easy to do the easy thing right? like sit in below 50 and gold your gear out and beat up on some new players. There names for those people. Skill is hard earned.

2. Don't lean to hard on procs. Procs should augment your skill. Leaning on them makes you a pawn to the meta proc i.e. dark convergence or name-your-gap-closer-dot-one-button-proc build or vateshrans staff/crimson twightlight. Procs are fun and can have great play experience and even be used skillfully, but if you want to be the millionth person running a stygian/calurrion nightblade or dark convergence/vicious bomber, youre not going to get better.

3. Don't lean to hard on any one class skill, these are pitfalls. Here's a few: Nightblade's invisibility cloak. Yeah pretty much don't be a cloaking nightblade and expect to be really good at any other class. They don't play well in complement with others and they don't teach you to do anything but hit and run, even in a duel.

4. Duel but don't be a dueler. lol. Some duelers are snobby and elitist. They generally hangout in the "Legends" discord. I have been to that discord trying to get advice on builds. They never give you a straight answer and they aren't going to share their build with you. One thing I'll tell you, there is no best player in class in this game in any ranking system that counts. PVP is its own intrinsic reward. BG leaderboards don't measure skill and neither does EMP in cyrodiil. Don't go chasing waterfalls, stick to a friendly guild that likes to share builds and coach you through it.

TheAlphaRaider

and I said all that because I have seen people throw together a build and then ask "why am I still always dying?" or "why do I only have like 20k health?"

LurgidBean

TheAlphaRaider wrote: »

So heres what I will tell you about Dottz and most builds, you aren't going to learn to play PVP from a build but it gives you a direction to shoot for.
SNIP
This is all just scratching the surface to breaking through to a PVP sage.
.

Thank you for taking the time to write all of this out. It is a great, succinct overview of many aspects that someone interested in PvP will want to explore/understand, without getting too bogged down in specifics that can be intimidating for someone first starting PvP and using a content creator build. But also providing enough information and key words to build on. I recently figured out a lot of this during Mayhem, so something like this would have been a super helpful primer.
It'd be worth saving and copy pasting in future general or advice PvP threads for beginners.

noobfury

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I prefer to theory craft my own builds. Doing so kinda made me better at the game. Sure, I often look up what others are using, but pretty much I always say something like: Interesting build, but not for me. I prefer to have X over Y etc. Build is imho something that is highly player - dependant. It is pretty much impossible to copy-paste a build and expect to have great results all of the sudden. The whole "trick" is to figure out what playstyle you like and then reinforce it with a build.

Also... judging by the name... I guess that content creator must incorporate a lot of "Damge Over Timez" in his builds...

I agree with this approach. I think the best way is to study several different builds, take what you like from them and apply it to your own theory crafting. What might be comfortable for some people may not be comfortable for you depending on your play style so simply copying a build could potentially lead to disappointment.

In general I think he gives good commentary which can be helpful in understanding how certain things work.

TheAlphaRaider

LurgidBean wrote: »

TheAlphaRaider wrote: »

So heres what I will tell you about Dottz and most builds, you aren't going to learn to play PVP from a build but it gives you a direction to shoot for.
SNIP
This is all just scratching the surface to breaking through to a PVP sage.
.

Thank you for taking the time to write all of this out. It is a great, succinct overview of many aspects that someone interested in PvP will want to explore/understand, without getting too bogged down in specifics that can be intimidating for someone first starting PvP and using a content creator build. But also providing enough information and key words to build on. I recently figured out a lot of this during Mayhem, so something like this would have been a super helpful primer.
It'd be worth saving and copy pasting in future general or advice PvP threads for beginners.

Thanks, I did copy it and made a document for my own discord channel. I also have a beginner guide that I made for ESO in general. I might repost in the advice channel.