To make pvp better, a look into skills, rewards and game mechanics needs to happen. Here are a few of my ideas that I really wish would be considered.
#1 Purge. This skill is too costly, overpowered and over used in some cases. It needs to be changed to a buff that reduces DOT damage. The cheaper morph could do just the major (10%) and the more expensive cost doing major and minor. Reduce cost of both morphs to be more in line with other buffs. Or the more expensive morph could do magicka steal or something. The buff should last 8-10s. This would keep people from becoming "purge spammers," which create lots of lag and makes groups immune to cc's.
#2 CC's. CC's should be a status affect that must be broken by the player. Snow treaders, immovable pots, etc that give you immunity make using CC's in many cases, worthless. The slippery cp thing is ok because it only happens once every 21s. The 2s immunity on skills from race against time, etc should be made into the minor DOT reduction that lasts 8-12s. Snow Treaders could be changed to be immune to snares only and reduced sprint speed by 50%. Earthgore should heal a bigger area as an AOE HOT, but NOT remove ground based DOT's, negate, etc. Earthgore is just too overpowered in groups where they can run multiple people using it and nobody ever dies because it's always clearing the area.
#3 Skills. There are a few skills that aren't used very often.
-Guard should be used to give a buff for 10% reduction as an AOE to ranged attacks. I mean it's a "support" skill, but is rarely used and doesn't really help most group playstyles.
-Revealing flare changed to something that is more usable. To reveal stealthed players, most people just use an AOE. Instead of revealing flare, maybe have a buff for minor evasion for grouped players and potentially a heal function when hit with aoe for the other morph?
-Steel tornado could be changed to scale higher damage per target to help kill players stacking. An additional 10% damage per enemy hit would help keep players from stacking as much against smaller stamina groups. Bow's volley and carve could also be changed to add this kind of damage. Wall of elements, "elemental blockade" would be another good morph to add this type of additional damage to. There's a lot of players on maps stacking to take keeps and there needs to be more of a deterrent to being too close!
-Wrecking blow could do splash damage to 2 other targets similar to reverse slice.
-Cauterize should either be a HOT around the caster OR remove DOTs a dot every so often like the netch on Warden.
-Ash cloud and other "AOE" skills need to be 6m or more to hit more targets. 5m is just too small for any AOE. Proc sets, same thing. Winterborn, etc are not big enough, but also, the damage should be scaled down some too. I mean, pillar of nirn is 2.5m. Should either be AOE with 6m and less damage OR single target and more damage. Some of the sets and aoe skills are so small that they don't really hit multiple targets and underperform as single target. Need to include the AOE sizes on all skills and sets. Seems like too many sets/skills look like they might be usable, but then you find out that it doesn't affect, but a tiny area. Even 5m is kinda small, IMO. Viscous death should be 6m, but scale down the damage 20%.
-Reflective scale should reflect 2 projectiles over 8s time. Reflective plate should add minor armor buff. Dragon fire scale should reflect and add a fire damage DOT to person hit with reflected projectile. There needs to be a counter to magicka sorc's and bow/destro ranged attackers.
-Conjured Ward change to last 10s but make the cap to 40% of your health. Hardened ward adds 1650 armor resistance for duration. Empowered ward grants minor intellect and empowerment for 4s. Having to spam shields is a major pain on the hands AND it's overpowered in pvp, this caps it some and then makes it more user friendly. Damage shields shouldn't be reduced in pvp after this change.
-Annulment to last 8s and be capped at 40% of your health. Dampen magicka morph should make it increase armor by 1320 for duration. Harness magicka should restore magicka.
-Ferocious leap should do a fire DOT instead of a shield.
-Barrier should be capped at 40% of your health.
-Lights champion ult should become an AOE that affects 6m around caster.
-Shadowy disguise removes 2 negative affects and increases crit chance by 10% for 6s. Any DOTS remaining after using the skill will bring them out of stealth, requiring them to reapply the skill again to go invisible. Currently, too many nb's can move around without any hinderance at all, making them almost untouchable without lots of ground based aoe's and having to slot a skill just for 1 class seems ridiculous (inner light).
-Reduce damage of Grim focus by 25%, but make it take 3 light attacks to trigger. This skill hits harder than many ults do. The change makes it less burst, but still keeps the sustain.
-Incapacitating strike increase damage by 15%, but make the cost 90 ultimate. This doesn't do enough damage for a single target ultimate, but it's so cheap it can almost be used in a rotation. lol.
-Riccochet skull should hit up to 3 targets on all castes.
-Blastbones shouldn't be able to be targeted. It makes them too easy to kill and very difficult to combo with.
There are more changes to skills and such, but I think this would be a good start.
#4 Rewards. Winning campaigns is what cyrodiil is supposed to be about, but it really doesn't pay out nearly enough to motivate people to play the map. End of campaign reward for 1st place should be 100k on a 30 day campaign and getting to tier 3 should be required to get it. Each tier should be 50k ap to rank up tiers for a total of 150k ap made to tier 3. Also, make a slider for rewards of the worthy. Some people might like the mail every 10k ap or whatever it is, but if you pvp regularly, the mail is a major hassle. Make it to where you can get even gold rewards from the rewards of the worthy AND cold fire or other siege, but at a much longer interval. Maybe every 200k ap at the high end and an option for purple gear and soul gems at every 75k ap? The mail for this feels like worthless junk with every player getting them as much as they do.
Guild ap/gold should be a thing. Right now, there is VERY little reason to run a guild in pvp. It's more of a hassle with very little reward. Keeps claimed by a pvp guilds should generate either AP or gold over time kept AND get defense ticks added. I'd prefer AP and then there should be options from the vendor to modify things in the keep. Increase number of guards, maybe have guards that can run oil/siege, a back flag keep champion/general, upgrade doors/walls even more, higher corner towers (4 story!), add guild flags to walls and such etc. Lots of options! As it is, guild and groups are dissolving and the map is turning into a massive blob of one side vs the other at the same keep, instead of spread out fights across many keeps, which means LAG!!!!
Top 5% of players should per side should get a random trial/arena weapons (normal) and top 2% should get them in perfected.
#5 Proc sets. I actually like the removal of them, BUT too many sets that I don't think I'd consider some of what was removed for testing as a "proc." I understand it was to test performance. What I would like to see, proc helms and weapons come back, but the 5 pc sets that do damage, such as caluurions, should be removed, EXCEPT viscous death because I think that is a vital set to both solo (bombers) and group play. I don't count things like clever alchemist or briarheart as a "proc" because the actual proc itself doesn't do damage, even if something is being "proc'd" so to speak. To me, that is the best of both worlds. AOE HOT sets like winters are fine by me, it's the tanky players running all proc damage that are difficult to kill, but still do lots of damage that isn't fun.
#5 PVP population swings. Each bar of population difference should change the guards on the map, the points earned by the faction and ap gained. So if one faction is locked, they get 10% less per bar over the lowest population, so if one side is 1 bar, they get 30% less AP, 30% less pts for the alliance war and their guards do 30% less damage. The 1 bar side gets 30% more guard damage, 30% more alliance points and 30% more ap. There needs to be a way to incentivize closer to equal populations. Low pop bonus is too much in a big swing for ap. It needs to be more gradual in nature and affect more than just ap.