How to make AP!

Crown

I updated the page at https://darkelves.com/making-ap a while back, and with the latest round of insanity over in this thread, I decided to post this in a new one for discussion rather than continue on the "emperor" topic thaxt seems to have degenerated into mud slinging by people who aren't able to think outside the box.

First I’d like to go over a bit about how Alliance Points (AP) work: They come primarily from killing opponents. Each individual is worth a certain amount of AP. That amount usually ranges from 1500 to 1,800 though it can vary from almost nothing up to 2250 based on a few factors. See this spreadsheet for more details.

• The level of the person who died (lower level = less AP)
• How long since the person died (shorter = less AP with full AP value returning after 5 minutes of no deaths)
• The alliance rank of the person being killed (0.5% per alliance rank)
• (25% more AP for killing an AR50 Grand Overlord than an AR1 Volunteer)
• The campaign buffs that you have (small % for home keeps, and more for each enemy keep owned)
• The personal buff that you have (20% for killing a delve boss)

When you’re solo, if you’re the only person to damage an opponent, you usually (see down below for possible considerations) get all the AP.

If you are part of a group, then for every member of the group (even if they didn’t participate in the killing or healing), as long as they are in range, the AP will be split with the members of the group See the spreadsheet linked above for more details. There is a balance to be found for making AP, and I’ve always preferred groups of 6 to 12 – as beyond that the AP is too diluted.

In order to get AP from a kill you (or your group) has to do damage to the person who died. Simply tagging them (such as with caltrops) isn’t usually enough, as the amount of AP you get scales with the percentage of damage that you do to the target. In most engagements, people will be healed while they fight, so a person with 20k health may in fact need 50k damage to be killed (as the person has received 30k healing over the course of the fight). Damage to shields is also included in this, so if you want a significant portion of the AP gains you usually have to do a lot of damage.

Healing other players used to give a lot of AP, though that has been reduced in the current patch. Simply casting heals on people won’t net you any AP unless those people have taken damage while in combat and the person you heal (or their group) kills a target worth AP. If a large group is spamming AoE abilities and taking down opponents, then you’re probably not going to be able to heal them enough to count for enough AP to be worth spending the time.

Bizarrely, people who take fall damage can be healed for a little bit of AP even while not in combat and that AP is not usually shared with the group.

When players (both sides) die in range of a keep, resource, or outpost (or behind a scroll gate), the total amount of AP that they gave up with their deaths (average tends to be about 1600 for their first death, then less each subsequent one if they die within 5 minutes of respawn) gets added to “the tick pool”. If a keep/resource/outpost is taken there is an offensive tick (O-Tick). If there has been no death within a certain amount of time (ranges from 45 seconds to 3 minutes depending on where you are) then there is a defensive tick (D-Tick). When a tick happens, the total tick pool gets divided up between all of the players within range (who are members of the alliance that owns the keep/resource/outpost). Most ticks range from a few hundred to a few thousand, though prolonged fights can generate ticks in the tens of thousands. The largest tick I’ve ever seen was for 118k AP at Bleakers. Long long ago, there was a 70k tick called “The Tickening”. It took place at Sej in late 2014 after a fight that lasted well over 8 hours. Opponents would send people in to die every minute while they regrouped just to ensure that there would be no D-tick.

You can also make AP by turning in quests that are given at your starting gate, though other than the kill enemies quests they tend to be more opportunistic – rather than something you should strive to do.

Repairing walls and doors also makes you AP, though the amount that you spend on repair kits will be more than what you get by using them. If you are repairing, try to get the major mending buff as it applies extra “healing” to repairs as well, saving you on the cost of repair kits. The extra AP from repairing a wall while you have major mending is proportional to the extra repair amount that you do.

You can increase your AP gains by 20% for one hour by killing a boss in a delve. Note that it may take a few minutes to get to a delve, clear the trash, and kill the boss – then get back to your group or fight location. You should never leave a good fight or a potential tick to get the buff, as the amount of AP you’ll lose out on may very well be more than 20% of what you’ll make in the next hour. Always save your AP buff renewals for times when your group is on break, or you know there will be a lull in fighting for a few minutes. If you are not in a group, or want to take a change that you won’t get stuck in a long load screen, you can allow the delve NPCs to kill you then respawn at the wayshrine. This is usually a faster way to get out of a delve unless you’re far from your own faction’s control with nowhere to transit to.

Now that you understand how AP works, it is very important to understand that there are very different play styles. Playing for AP farming is very different from playing for map control, winning fights, taking keeps/resources/outposts/villages, or any other play style. When you play for AP, the most important thing is how much AP you will make. If you can make 10k more AP per hour by repeatedly bombing, dying, and running back than you can by waiting and ganking (but never dying), then you choose the first method. Every player has to figure this out for themselves – what is the best method for making AP based on their skills, build, and preferred style of play.

When looking at the map and deciding where you want to make AP, you need to consider where your opponents will be, where will they be coming from (running back after being killed), who else will be there (other factions and your own faction), the likelihood of how long you’ll live, how many kills you’ll get, what percentage of AP you’ll get for those kills if shared with other people, what the terrain will be like, and a lot of other things. When you see popular streamers going for emperor, they usually don’t understand AP farming and just try to play their 1vX (I call it 1vPotato as they don’t fight skilled players, they only look for easy kills) style as usual. That style will make good AP most of the time, though a true AP farmer is easily capable of making more.

One of the easiest ways I used to make AP (that tended to drive other people crazy as they couldn’t figure it out) was to run two people, one a tank (yes, I know I’ve said that there are no tanks in PvP) and the other a magicka nightblade with a fire staff. The tank would lure people to the edge of cliffs (you can find a LOT of them in Cyrodiil), and the nightblade would knock them off with a flame reach. The important thing to note there is that the two players would not be grouped, and the tank would not do any damage to the opponents, so the nightblade would get all of the AP. This works just as well with other classes, though takes better timing and positioning as a nightblade is able to stealth easily while multiple opponents charge at the tank (who would stand there and block at the edge of the cliff). My favourite spots for this are just inside the Chalman gate along the wall towards Bleakers, up the hill north of Bleakers where you can knock people off on both sides along a ledge, and on the big rock on the east side of the front of Ash.

In order to understand a lot of the ways AP works, a person has to spend many hours testing every skill. Over time and different patches, AP gains have changed based on damage, healing, synergies, buff application, debuff removal, and debuff application. The results of the below have changed over time, and I will not share past and current test results – though this has always been a very important series of tests at each major patch that relate to the creation of new strategies on how I’ve made (or helped others make) a lot of AP when solo/duo. Here are a few tests that you could perform to see how each skill that you have available impact AP gains. In the past (when I really cared about AP farming) I maintained excel sheets for each skill in every tree available for any character on which I’ve wanted to make AP:

1. Do damage to a target that someone else of your alliance kills. What percentage of the the damage needed to kill them did you do, and what percentage of the AP did you get? If shields were applied to the target, does the total damage to kill them include shield damage?
2. Do damage to a target that someone of another alliance kills (If you’re AD, damage an EP player that a DC player then kills). What percentage of the the damage needed to kill them did you do, and what percentage of the AP from their death did you get? If shields were applied to the target, does the total damage to kill them include shield damage?
3. Cast or use a skill that enables a synergy that someone else of your alliance uses before they kill a target. Does using the synergy equate to a percentage of the the damage needed to kill the target, or of healing on the friendly player, and what percentage of the AP did you get?
4. Apply a debuff to a target that someone else of your alliance kills. Does the debuff equate to a percentage of the the damage needed to kill them, and how much of the total AP from their death did you get?
5. Apply a debuff to a target that someone of another alliance kills (If you’re AD, apply a debuff to an EP player that a DC player then kills). Does the debuff equate to a percentage of the the damage needed to kill them, and what percentage of the total AP from their death did you get?
6. Heal someone else of your alliance who then kills a target. What percentage of the damage that they took did you heal or what percentage of their total health did you heal (two separate tests) and how much of the total AP did you get? If you shielded instead of healed, how does that affect the numbers?
7. Apply a buff to someone else of your alliance who then kills a target. Does the buff equate to a percentage of the healing done, and what percentage of their AP did you get?
8. Remove a debuff from someone else of your alliance who then kills a target. Does the debuff removal equate to a percentage of the healing done, and what percentage of their AP did you get?

Then, for each of the above, you also have to consider (and find out) for the beneficial activities (healing, shielding, synergies, buffing, or removing a debuff from a non-grouped same-faction player), how long after you apply them will the link from you to the other player last. It may be solely for the kill in question, it may be for a period of time (perhaps until they exit combat), or it may be for a particular range (from one end of the Alessia bridge to the other).

You also have to consider which skills, abilities, synergies, buffs, and debuff removals can apply to people who are not in your group, and when they are performed, do you gain a percentage of the player on whom you cast, or are you treated (for the purposes of AP gains) as an equal member of that player’s group. If that latter, then a new series of tests need to be performed per the paragraph above related to how long will the link from you to the other group last. Another very important consideration for situations where multiple conditions apply, and you gain links to multiple groups who both participate in a kill. In that case, is it possible that you can double-dip in the AP gains and be considered as a full member of multiple groups gaining AP for both?

The last consideration is related to guards. Are there skills or abilities that you can use that affect guards at a keep or a resource? If you use the right ones, and guards do damage to opposing players, might that damage be considered as coming from you for the purposes of AP calculations?

So now you have a lot of information to think about. You could just go out and kill people for AP, or you could start testing things, and see if you can find a:

IxStalkerxI wrote:

Niche stupid ways of getting a flow of kills or high credit for kills whilst staying alive.

@IxSTALKERxI That's an amazing description.

Good luck out there!

Stridig

Don't kill me. I'm never worth any AP.

Satiar

In VE we call that particular strat "the Cliffs of Failure".

Crown

@Satiar I've spent so many hours on those cliffs up at Bleakers, I didn't know they had a name. One day I'm going to make a nice 4 foot by 5 foor painting of Cyrodiil with areas labelled. The Cliffs of Failure will be noted!

Satiar

Crown wrote: »

@Satiar I've spent so many hours on those cliffs up at Bleakers, I didn't know they had a name. One day I'm going to make a nice 4 foot by 5 foor painting of Cyrodiil with areas labelled. The Cliffs of Failure will be noted!

They're also outside Brindle!

Crown

@Satiar I don't like the cliffs outside Brindle. They're to close to a keep and resource, so you're more likely to get swords on the map when you knock people off depending on where you're standing and how much you can move. The bleakers cliffs you can move back and forth a lot, and get outside the kill counter range for swords to appear.

Another consideration, Brindle is one of the AD keeps most of the time, so DC/EP won't have a close respawn and coming back will be too long a run. Around Bleakers, Chalman and Aleswell are reasonable run times, so opponents will be worth AP again when they get back, and won't be discouraged that it's too far.

Much of the "knock them off the cliff" farm is based on the fact that the PvE players will keep coming back to try and get their kill on an AR50, so keeping it reasonable / feasible (at least in their minds) is important!

Crown

KisoValley wrote: »

Think it's quite obvious to everyone this thread was meant to be a flame bait.

@KisoValley The Emperor thread as well as this one are meant to educate people how the emperor and the AP systems work. The fact that most of my posts pull out so much drama is of secondary value for entertainment (and rarely the primary intent). This may be the teacher in me speaking (taught in real life for many years), but I truly do hope that some people have benefited from the knowledge that I put out there.

If you'd like the back-story, early this year (January 2016) I decided to quit the game. The lag had gotten to the point where PvP was unplayable in prime time, there were too many broken mechanics that removed skill from the game, and a group of us moved over to playing Paragon together. At the same time, my wife and I were looking to move to a new city, buy a new house to renovate, and I had started a new job - so real life was going to take over the time that I had previously given to video games.

About 2 weeks after the last official raid where I was leading, at the request of some guild members and friends, I decided to make public most of the AP farming strategies I used, so logged in for a morning of making videos. Some of the Asian PvE guilds who had members wanting the "Kill a Grand Overlord" achievement were made aware of my being online and my rule of "show a few killing blows on any of my toons and I'll give you a free kill on Crown (the AR50)". I allowed them to stream snipe to see where I was with the intent make it very easy to find me, and to capture video from some of my favourite spots. It went well, I made a lot of AP for about two or three hours, and chatted with a few friends throughout. It was a fun and productive morning.

That same morning, Sypher, Drishtan, Durruthy and a few others were doing an emp grind, and got upset that I was making AP so quickly. Note that I was not intending to go for emp, was not trying for top spot, and they were aware that I was going to work and would not be competing with them. I even had a conversation with Sypher in whispers towards the end of the run discussing how when I got home from work later that day I'd be happy to go on stream with him and show him and his viewers some of what I did. I was unaware that he had started a witch hunt and spent the better part of the day riling his viewers up.

When I got home that afternoon, after a few games of Paragon, Slaxis told me that Sypher and Fengrush were ranting on stream about this, so I joined Sypher's TS and we had a discussion. I was, at that point, still unaware of the vitriol that had consumed his stream for the better part of the day, and agreed to post videos from the morning (which I was going to do anyway along with a write up of AP farming processes). Later that evening I watched the morning's stream, and was astounded at what I saw and read. Any respect that I had had previously for him was lost, and replaced with contempt.

The insanity on Sypher's stream and attitude in general made me decide not to release all the details and videos to the general public. I did not want to help those who were unable to respect themselves and others, and wouldn't appreciate the effort that went into creating AP farming strategies. Behaving like entitled and spoiled brats demanding rather than respectfully asking for something does not make me want to help these people. I put the videos and write-ups on a private page for people in Resilient (social guild with about 200 mostly inactive members in memory of guilds where I've played previously, though almost all of them are inactive these days). Anyone could invite friends in where we usually helped answer PvP questions for new players and helped people to find active PvP guilds to play with - whereas they subsequently left the guild for said more active guilds.

I've recently shown a few people, notably Aurora (who got emp last month), Drishtan (who got emp this past month and was there that morning) and about a dozen others how to farm as I used to. I also added information to the AP section of https://darkelves.com and posted this thread with the intent to educate people on how AP works and give them the building blocks on how I came up with strategies and tests to find the best way to make AP (that is not a boring gank one to the next and without running a large group). I'm not giving away easy answers, but if people want to put in the effort they can figure out a lot of things for themselves.

I'd also be happy to show other people who ask politely and are capable of respecting both themselves and others in-game. Keep in mind that the more people (especially your opponents) who know and understand what you're doing, the less likely they are to fall for strategic ways to kill them. When I quit playing and had no intention to come back, I didn't really care. Now, making all of the strategies (of which some no longer work due to changes in the game and/or how skills/sets work) public negates their effectiveness, and who knows - one day I or someone I am friends with may want to farm 250k+ AP per hour again ;-)

Many people have proven that over a million AP / day is possible, and even easy if you're using the right strategy, group composition, and play style with skilled players. You don't have to be a good ganker, a good 1vX'er, a good 1vPotatoer, or run specific sizes or types of groups to make a lot of AP. You just have to understand how the AP system works and use it most efficiently to gain as much benefit from other peoples' work, folly, or greed as you can!

I'm honestly surprised and astounded that people are still upset over this, with almost a year having passed. Having seen what happened this past week, the stream watching community is apparently just as toxic now as it was a year ago.

jeo329

I find you only get AP for healing if they kill someone for example if you take a keep and afterwards someone jumps off a keep wall and you heal the fall damage you get AP but when I spawn in controlled area going sewers and heal group after they jump off the wall I get none as we just entered pvp

Crown

jeo329 wrote: »

I find you only get AP for healing if they kill someone for example if you take a keep and afterwards someone jumps off a keep wall and you heal the fall damage you get AP but when I spawn in controlled area going sewers and heal group after they jump off the wall I get none as we just entered pvp

I've not recently paid too much attention to the AP from healing fall damage as it's not a significant number. It makes sense that players would have to have recently been in combat. The timer for some other "links" to shared group AP varies from three minutes to fifteen minutes, so it may be that they have to have been in combat within that time frame for it to count.

Thanks for that info!

If someone wants to test this, get a friend to jump off a wall repeatedly and see how long they continue to give you healing AP. I believe that we tested that two years ago, and you could only get about 50 ish AP from each player every 30 seconds ish.

Qbiken

Will bookmark this for the future, great guide. I´ve always had trouble to earn AP. Takes me about 2-3 days to get rank 5. I mostly play solo. But now with this post I will analyse my PvP a bit more and see how to improve my AP-gain.

Earendal

I find that the best way to make AP is to farm noobs. Is that the secret?

Pallio

1.spam heals
2.spam AOE

The end.

KisoValley

Crown wrote: »

KisoValley wrote: »

Think it's quite obvious to everyone this thread was meant to be a flame bait.

@KisoValley The Emperor thread as well as this one are meant to educate people how the emperor and the AP systems work. The fact that most of my posts pull out so much drama is of secondary value for entertainment (and rarely the primary intent). This may be the teacher in me speaking (taught in real life for many years), but I truly do hope that some people have benefited from the knowledge that I put out there.

If you'd like the back-story, early this year (January 2016) I decided to quit the game. The lag had gotten to the point where PvP was unplayable in prime time, there were too many broken mechanics that removed skill from the game, and a group of us moved over to playing Paragon together. At the same time, my wife and I were looking to move to a new city, buy a new house to renovate, and I had started a new job - so real life was going to take over the time that I had previously given to video games.

About 2 weeks after the last official raid where I was leading, at the request of some guild members and friends, I decided to make public most of the AP farming strategies I used, so logged in for a morning of making videos. Some of the Asian PvE guilds who had members wanting the "Kill a Grand Overlord" achievement were made aware of my being online and my rule of "show a few killing blows on any of my toons and I'll give you a free kill on Crown (the AR50)". I allowed them to stream snipe to see where I was with the intent make it very easy to find me, and to capture video from some of my favourite spots. It went well, I made a lot of AP for about two or three hours, and chatted with a few friends throughout. It was a fun and productive morning.

That same morning, Sypher, Drishtan, Durruthy and a few others were doing an emp grind, and got upset that I was making AP so quickly. Note that I was not intending to go for emp, was not trying for top spot, and they were aware that I was going to work and would not be competing with them. I even had a conversation with Sypher in whispers towards the end of the run discussing how when I got home from work later that day I'd be happy to go on stream with him and show him and his viewers some of what I did. I was unaware that he had started a witch hunt and spent the better part of the day riling his viewers up.

When I got home that afternoon, after a few games of Paragon, Slaxis told me that Sypher and Fengrush were ranting on stream about this, so I joined Sypher's TS and we had a discussion. I was, at that point, still unaware of the vitriol that had consumed his stream for the better part of the day, and agreed to post videos from the morning (which I was going to do anyway along with a write up of AP farming processes). Later that evening I watched the morning's stream, and was astounded at what I saw and read. Any respect that I had had previously for him was lost, and replaced with contempt.

The insanity on Sypher's stream and attitude in general made me decide not to release all the details and videos to the general public. I did not want to help those who were unable to respect themselves and others, and wouldn't appreciate the effort that went into creating AP farming strategies. Behaving like entitled and spoiled brats demanding rather than respectfully asking for something does not make me want to help these people. I put the videos and write-ups on a private page for people in Resilient (social guild with about 200 mostly inactive members in memory of guilds where I've played previously, though almost all of them are inactive these days). Anyone could invite friends in where we usually helped answer PvP questions for new players and helped people to find active PvP guilds to play with - whereas they subsequently left the guild for said more active guilds.

I've recently shown a few people, notably Aurora (who got emp last month), Drishtan (who got emp this past month and was there that morning) and about a dozen others how to farm as I used to. I also added information to the AP section of https://darkelves.com and posted this thread with the intent to educate people on how AP works and give them the building blocks on how I came up with strategies and tests to find the best way to make AP (that is not a boring gank one to the next and without running a large group). I'm not giving away easy answers, but if people want to put in the effort they can figure out a lot of things for themselves.

I'd also be happy to show other people who ask politely and are capable of respecting both themselves and others in-game. Keep in mind that the more people (especially your opponents) who know and understand what you're doing, the less likely they are to fall for strategic ways to kill them. When I quit playing and had no intention to come back, I didn't really care. Now, making all of the strategies (of which some no longer work due to changes in the game and/or how skills/sets work) public negates their effectiveness, and who knows - one day I or someone I am friends with may want to farm 250k+ AP per hour again ;-)

Many people have proven that over a million AP / day is possible, and even easy if you're using the right strategy, group composition, and play style with skilled players. You don't have to be a good ganker, a good 1vX'er, a good 1vPotatoer, or run specific sizes or types of groups to make a lot of AP. You just have to understand how the AP system works and use it most efficiently to gain as much benefit from other peoples' work, folly, or greed as you can!

I'm honestly surprised and astounded that people are still upset over this, with almost a year having passed. Having seen what happened this past week, the stream watching community is apparently just as toxic now as it was a year ago.

I'm a teacher myself. So comments like that don't really fly past my head like it does others. As for being surprised people are upset over that incident, IIRC YOU mentioned Sypher in the post. He didn't mention you. That is when it all blew up on that thread.

jcasini222ub17_ESO

I like guides like this, always nice to have out in the community.

I had one thought however, if someone applied some of these strategies while in BWB they may still lag behind others in generating AP. This guide seems more geared toward vet level play. While in BWB the usual populations and, of course, the ranks of most players make AP gains less. Sometimes outright fighting or attempting to set up a tower farm or bridge farm may produce more AP. Most high AP players I encountered when a daily BWB player were always in the action.

So if someone reading this thought "o hey I can do this in BWB and shoot to the top" they might be disappointed.

I've returned recently and once again enjoy being a trollish orc healbot

Just some food for thought.

Crown

@jcasini222ub17_ESO It's been a long time since I've played in BWB. One of these days I'll convince friends to all make new toons and we'll spend a few nights there!

IxSTALKERxI

Am I the only one who admire's crowns ability to shamelessly plug discord or his website in every second post he makes? lol

Crown

@IxSTALKERxI Get your numbers right - it's every third post. If you consider my signature, then it's every single post.

zuto40

i didnt know AR ranks affected ap

SRASinister

zuto40 wrote: »

i didnt know AR ranks affected ap

Lol me either. I guess now we know to target glow glow's zerg more often considering the total stars they have with 2 Grand Overlords and the people with other stars.