Authors: Mip, Lord Nippler

Introduction

We have made this guide for players interested in getting started building and running effective PvP groups because people often ask us about PvP group builds. But we are not going to show our guild’s current builds, but rather something more interesting: we will explain the thought process of how you can design an optimized group composition and builds for groups of approximately six to twelve players. Specific builds change every patch but the general approach remains the same.

Overall Approach

The most important point is that everything in the composition and in the builds is geared towards group cooperation. Skills and sets are selected to maximize group performance, not individual performance. When you decide which sets to use, and which skills to slot, you should always prioritize those that provide something to the group, even if this means less individual performance. In the end you will gain more that way.

Basic Roles

The functions that need to be fulfilled in a group are dealing damage to the enemy, healing which means neutralizing enemy damage, and supporting the group for example by providing buffs. Each player has a priority function being a damage dealer, a healer or a support, but no one performs only one function exclusively. Every build includes several secondary functions: for example, every player in the group contributes to healing, and almost everyone performs support functions. The reason for this is that in different phases of combat different combinations of skills are needed.

The basic functioning principle of the group is the combination of three mechanisms. Firstly, dealing damage with AoE bursts, which are much more effective in killing many enemies than single target skills would be. Secondly, using a combination of HoTs, which is by far the most important component of healing, and burst healing to counter peak incoming damage. Thirdly, buffing the group and debuffing the enemy.

In a fully minmaxed ball group there will be precisely defined roles with exact builds down to every trait and glyph, but it is also possible to build an organized group with roles that are defined in a more general and not as strict way. However in the second case we recommend having core requirements that have to be fulfilled every time, which can include classes and sets, like for example having at least one Warden (Minor Toughness, Major Resolve) and one DK (Major and Minor Brutality, Major Sorcery), and having Spell Power Cure (Major Courage) and Transmutation (crit resist).

Main Factors

Optimizing a group’s composition and builds involves balancing the following factors: damage output, control capabilities, mobility, sustain and tankiness. Tankiness is the sum of healing output, maximum health levels and resistances. Based on these objectives classes, skills including ultimates and synergies, and sets that need to be part of the composition, as well as the distribution of attribute points and champion points can be selected. Because no group can include all desirable skills and buffs, the selection is a process of prioritization.

When considering the overall balance between offensive and defensive factors there are two ways to look at it. Obviously damage and killing the enemy is the ultimate objective of the group and in way, the first priority. But it can be tempting to overemphasize damage, and survival is a necessary condition for being able to do damage, and seen this way, healing and everything else that contributes to survivability is even more important than damage. When damage is well synchronized and focused on the same location damage will not be lacking.

Skills Selection

As mentioned in the beginning, group utility should usually be preferred to individual utility. As an example of a skill, let’s consider the difference of using either Rapid Regeneration or Radiant Regeneration:

• for a solo player Rapid Regeneration is the obvious choice as it heals them with around double the hps of Radiating
• if a group of three players use Radiating, the resulting hps is almost one and a half times the hps the single player achieves with Rapid

The same goes for the selection of skills that provide buffs: they should buff the group. Examples include Major Brutality provided by Igneous Weapons on a Dragonknight, Minor Toughness provided through the healing of a Warden, or Minor Sorcery provided by a Templar using a Dawn’s Wrath ability. A type of skills that is highly useful are skills that provide damage synergies, but these also require skilful coordination in synchronizing the time and the location of the damage.

Sets Selection

Similar to preferring skills that buff or support the group, you should also prefer sets with group utility. For example having one Spell Power Cure backbar set and one Powerful Assault backbar set, which both buff the group, instead of two Clever Alchemist back bar sets, which buff the individual player, will result in overall better performance of the group:

• Clever Alchemist : 650 SD/WD (~45% uptime) for one player
• Spell Power Cure + Powerful Assault: 430+ 307 = 737 SD/WD (100% uptime) for six to twelve players

Some examples of current typical PvP group sets: Robes of Transmutation, Spell Power Cure, Powerful Assault, Worm’s Raiment, Hircine’s Veneer, Gossamer, Meritorious Service, Symphony of Blades, Saxhleel Champion, Claw of Yolnahkriin, Rallying Cry (patch 7.4)

Some other examples of sets that are not group play specific, but also used in PvP groups: Vicious Death, Dark Convergence, Plaguebreak, Earthgore

Movement Basics

While this guide is mainly about the composition and builds which are static aspects of the group, we would like to point out how the movement relates to them: because every role depends on every other role, the group must move together but this does not mean that the group has to stack continuously. Depending on the stages of a fight, the group will stack tightly or spread, but not beyond the reach of heals and buffs. The ideal relative position of each player within the group depends on their role and among other the reach of their skills and buffs. For example, damage dealers will push together to stack their damage in a damage point designated by the leader, while supports and healers spread around them.

Example Composition

We would like to provide a basic example of what a group out of six players could look like:

1. DD - Warden
2. DD - NB-Bomber
3. DD / Support - MagDK
4. Support - StamSorc
5. Heal - Templar
6. Heal - Necro

Obviously every role needs to have good stats, sustain and secondary functions such as off-heals and buffs.

Additional Tools

Finally, we would like to mention some of the tools that are needed to plan and run such groups:

• The first one is voice communications which we consider mandatory for an organized group, not only for the leader, but for all members of the group to provide critical information to each other during fights
• For planning the composition and builds we recommend using a build design site like uesp.net before testing the builds in-game
• As an addon to use during group runs, we recommend RdK Group Tool
• For evaluating and improving the performance of a composition using encounterlog (esologs.com) to log fights is extremely useful

Final Thoughts

As mentioned in the beginning, everything in this guide is geared towards coordinated group play, and the type of builds that we recommend are not suited to solo play. We strongly believe that Cyrodiil offers many ways to play, especially also group play, and we feel that while there is a huge amount of information available about individual builds, there is much less material out there about how to create a fun and effective group composition. This is why we have written this guide.

We hope to have provided some food for thought for those who enjoy, as we do, building and running optimized PvP groups! We look forward to your comments