I need help

d10is13

I'm getting more and more frustrated with pvp. I'm missing some crucial information, and I don't know what it is. No amount of googling is helping me.

I have a stam DK, and a mag sorc. Both chars basically do 0 damage, and die in under 2 seconds. and this is not me running into packs of 4 people, this is 1v1. One guy will be at 15% hp. I'll start spamming executes on them, and they just keep gaining health. I'll hit them with maybe 10 executes. Then I Run out of resources. They turn around and kill me in 1-2 spells. While I have a shield on.

So here's some questions I have
1) Is Impenetrable armor like the single most important thing? I get hit by light attacks for 8k sometimes. That seems absurd.
2) Why do my shields not seem to do anything? Theoretically I should be able to spam shields as someone is attacking me and never die until I run out of resources. However, that's not the case. Every swing of an enemy completely wipes out my shield and does more than half my HP in damage.
3) How is it that some people are able to cast like 5 skills in under a second. For instance. I often get hit with Take Flight, and 3x flame lashes, along with valkyn skoria, and sloans, in under 1 second. I understand valkyn and sloans are a proc, but sloans will have hit me 4x in that <1 second, and how the hell do you hit with 3x flame lashes in that time? This is also giving the benefit of the doubt, I think it's more like .3 seconds in reality.
4) When I use potions, it basically doesn't heal me at all. I'm using CP160 Essence of Immovability potions. I feel like I'd be better off using speed buff potions. Again, is there something I'm doing wrong here?
5) Being a stam DK, I can only use reflective scales maybe 3x before I'm completely out of magicka, and I can dodge roll 4x before I Run out of stamina. I see people spamming both, like non-stop, 8+ times. How is this possible?
6) Everyone moves WAY faster than me. Even if I put on lightning form on my sorc and gain major expedition, I can't catch up to anyone. How does this work?
7) Almost every single game I end up in a 4v4v3, where my team is the 3. The law of percentages would say that more than half the time I would be on the team with 4. But I've never once been on a team of 4 against a team of 3.

Any other help you can give me is great. I want to enjoy BGs, but it just seems impossible at the moment.

Jimmy_The_Fixer

I'll take a few of these

1. Impen is important, some people like to play around with exceptions but for now keep it simple and run 7/7 impen.
2. Sorcs have their shields based on max magicka, shields are super dependent on max mag so that stat need to be very high. Also, shields need to be recasted constantly, even if it seems like your shields only took a little damage.
4. Potions don't heal much unless you're an argonian. You're mostly using them for the resource return and special effects like immovable and speed.
5. Magicka based DKs can manage very high uptime on wings, you can only cast them a few times since your not spec'd into spellcasting. Managing stamina with dodge rolling is a difficult balance, it's tough and requires hands-on experience to be comfortable with. Notably, medium armor reduces dodge roll cost significantly.

Thogard

What server / platform?

Prabooo

3) Lag kills

TarrNokk

I know this feeling @d10is13 from my beginner days in BGs.
You will learn how to behave and how things work. No easy to tell with few words.

For me the basics for magsorc are:
SUSTAIN (no magicka=no dmg)
Shieldstacking
Moveability (streak)

I tested a lot of sets and their combinations, it took a lot of time to find the best fitting my playstyle and I still try out others.

Don't invest too many points into spelldamage, its more important to have as much sustain to cast spells without looking on magbar. I recommend mundus stone Atronach .
You really don't need that much spelldamage (~2k dmg) to kill others, you just need the right timing to produce BURST damage.
Burst damage is when haunting curse and mages wrath explode right in time when you stun your opponent.

Put enough safety on your gear like Wizard's Riposte or Wyrd Tree in combination with max magicka e.g. Necropotence in combination with Shadowrend .

Lookout for your stats, you need stamina for break free.
35k mag
25k health
15k stam

You will be able to go with 20+ kills/0 deaths out of a deathmatch
but you can end a deathmatch as well with only 2 kills and 5+ deaths. It depends on your opponent and your "team".

Datolite

3) You are probably getting that unfo from the death recap, which doesn't necessarily take the most recent damage, but is an algorithm of most recent and most prominent. Sloads doesn't hit that many times in 1 second, but it's showing you that you took a lot of damage from it so you can plan to mitigate it next time.

Also, as someone already pointed out: lag. Some players have their burst combo down to split second timing (or are running macros like little punks) and use the game's latency to make all those hit at once.

TarrNokk

Agree: lag, maybe macros AND Animation Cancelling, where AC is the most reason when you receive loads of damage in short time.

MurderMostFoul

You may be passed this already, but the super basics to BG success are:

1. Run 7/7 Impen until you get very comfortable
2. All gear should be 160CP and purple or better
3. Make sure your running full sets that complement your build, typically 5/5/2
4. Keep your buffs up during combat
5. Stay near teammates

If your doing this, the only thing left to do is tweak you build (try different sets/skills) and practice. It is brutal, and even the best players can get insta-melted when focused on, but keep at it and you'll get better.

TarrNokk

Yes mate, we forget the most basics which are fundamental requirement for xperienced players.

Myux

it always feels like that when youre starting a new pvp game, keep that in mind. everyone feels like that. just get a feel for if you can find yourself having fun with it, and if so, push on thru the tough spot. eventually you'll hit a point where you actually kinda get it and itll get better from there. try to just get a grasp of the basics before you jump into pvp, though. if you wanna head over to the wayrest undaunted enclave and watch people duel and ask some questions there might be some people willing to help out. when you head to the enclave and go thru the gate right before it, head to the right. on the path right outside the walls, thats where most people do casual dueling.

Diddly_D_Potatoes

@Myux from some reason I feel the need to drink Dr Pepper