I'm glad you are enjoying Battlegrounds! Be aware that PVP has quite the learning curve, so many of the things I'm talking about here will get better with practixe and experience.

Abilities - thanks to battleleveling, you are actually stronger at level 16 as long as your gear is close to level. The benefits will gradually fall off as you level up - because, yes, your abilities and gear will get more powerful.

Damage - experienced players protect thenselves far better than NPCs. Often, they play defensively or use self-heals before they get into dangerously low health. So in order to do damage, you'll want to either use burst damage or keep the pressure on. Burst damage is using hard hitting skills or comboing skills so they work together. For example, I can time Warden Shalks to hit at the same time as another skill. Enchantments can also be useful - the Glyph of Decrease Health does unresistable Oblivion damage.

So since you are new, some advice.
1. Stick close to your team. Not only does this allow you to defend each other, but you can also benefit in terms of damage. You might not be able to do much against a full health opponent, but if a teammate gets one down to half health or lower, that's a good time to use hard hitting skills to kill them before they can recover.

2. Use self heals proactively. At level 16, you might not have much here, but whereas in PVE you can dip to low health and recover, in PVP by the time you notice you are in execute range its probably to late to save yourself. Keep those self heals ticking so you don't get dangerously low.

3. Manage your resources. No CP PVP is very much about managing your stamina and magicka. Food/drink buffs help. I chugged the tri-pot potions from the daily login rewards like candy. The goal is to be able to move and attack when you need to. Its no fun to get an opponent to 25%, run out of resources, and then watch him get away. This will come with practice.

Battlegrounds, and all of ESO PVP honestly, gets easier with practice and experience. I hope you continue to have fun with it!

Thanks for the replies!

@VaranisArano I appreciate you getting extra simple for me. I was an avid wow player for years and got to Rival a couple times but I can't even look at anything wow related now.. especially after doing a couple solo/public dungeons and a bg yesterday. There are obvious similarities in both games but the differences are still a lot to take in. The combat is a totally different feeling than any other game I've ever played.

For basic advice, I noticed after I morphed a couple abilities that they still level up after being morphed. Each new level is more damage/healing correct?

After running around like a beheaded chicken for the first couple minutes in that bg I started spamming stampede/dizzying swing against anyone that didn't have the circular swirlies plus feeling like a wild mad man zipping across the battlefield. I knocked one pour soul into the lava with it.

Weird question about the werewolf thing.. can I change to a vampire or back to normal later on? Also, I don't think I can fund the regearing process every 4 levels since the eso plus thing has gave me more gold than I've made questing and selling junk.

Is there any talk of Zenimax adding 2v2 arena?

LordTareq wrote: »

You also do a lot, like twice, as much damage if you streamline items & abilities to enhance on another. Getting the right sets in tandem with the right skills is the most important aspect of the game.

https://media.giphy.com/media/5wWf7H89PisM6An8UAU/giphy.gif

Like getting gear sets, potions, and food that increase stamina/weapon damage? (playing a 2handed nord templar.. mained a paladin in wow)

Yes, so as a stamina user with a 2-hander for example, you could opt to exploit weapon damage as much as possible, by selecting armor sets that provide the highest possible weapon damage bonuses (hundings in any case), weapon damage enchants on jewelry, coupled with the Rally ability from the 2-handed skill tree which boosts weapon damage by a further 20% iirc you can get pretty insane damage.
I'm not too familiar with templar skills, but perhaps they have some ability/class passive that boosts weapon damage further?
Obviously, you will be lacking in other area's when you stack weapon damage, either survivability or sustain.

Also, make sure your primary weapon is of an as high quality/level as possible. For armor this matters far less.

wheem_ESO wrote: »

It's not really possible for legitimately new players to fully match the "twinked out" characters that you may sometimes encounter. Those characters will have gold quality weapons (and perhaps armor) that aren't too badly out-leveled, and they'll probably be using full Impenetrable traits, optimized sets, gold or purple enchants, and perhaps be in a premade as well. If you're using whatever random things you find while leveling, you can expect to get completely obliterated by those twink characters, while barely doing any damage to them.

What platform/server are you on? Some of us may be able to make you some crafted gear to help even the playing field a little. It's honestly pretty cheap to make the low/mid level stuff as long as you're not upgrading to gold (which will mean you're still disadvantaged against a lot of the twinks, but it shouldn't be as bad).

Also, it's worth mentioning that there's a pretty distinct split between Magicka-based builds and Stamina-based ones, in case you didn't already know. It might seem as though splitting your attribute points between the two different stats will yield a character somewhat akin to your Paladin in WoW - but it won't. The higher your maximum magicka pool is, the more potent your magicka-based abilities will be, and the same holds true for your stamina pool and stamina-based abilities. If you want to use the 2h weapon skill line, you'll need to forego most magicka abilities; Rushed Ceremony will be an incredibly weak heal on a Stamina Templar.

If you would rather go the Magicka-based route, using a 1h/shield can still be worthwhile, at least on a defensive/survivability bar. You'll also occasionally see Magicka players using dual swords for the +5% damage passive, but that's really not worth it anymore if you ask me.

I'm on the PC/NA server.

I've been putting everything into stamina for now. I think the only thing magicka I have is a dawn's wrath ability that I don't use but have it to level up the skill line. Oh, I also have Rushed Ceremony that I weave in to keep myself topped off. If I get low I can spam it a couple times to get 60-80% of my health back by the time I run out of magicka.

I think I struggle the most right now with light attack and heavy attack weaving between ability use. I've watched like 4-5 videos now and I can't wrap my head around it. How do you know by looking at your damage numbers that you successfully light attack weaved?

joedraper24b14_ESO wrote: »

and it was sooo fun. I have a couple questions.

I am level 16 no cp or anything. Are my abilities significantly weaker than other players at higher levels I was fighting? Or how does the scaling work if there is any? I remember a level 34 in there on my team with a red glowing weapon that seemed to carry our team. I felt like I wasn't doing a significant amount of damage to players vs questing mobs. Was it possible gear sets and just a better build was doing the extra work?

Do abilities get more powerful as I level them even after I morph them?

Ability ranks give small numerical bonuses. Rapid strikes 1 is sliiiightly worse than rapid strikes 4, for example.

Seems like everything else has been answered.