PvP Struggles

DJCampbell12

When I first started doing PvP, it was only for daily Battlegrounds or for specific tasks/gear out in Cyrodil. Now, I've been trying to dive in more and enjoy the PvP experience.

I AM STRUGGLING

I'm asking for a bit of (non-toxic) help in figuring out where I'm lacking and where I need to focus my time and start a discussion on what works for you in PvP personally.

I've got a couple different characters that I've tried playing with. I have followed guided builds and tried my own on each of them. Nothing is seeming to work. So, I'm needing to take a step back and figure out a better use of my time while playing.
I can't figure out if its issues with my weapons and armor, skills rotation, CP allocation, or just connection/lag. No matter what I try, it seems I can't figure out why I'm being destroyed in every fight. I even have problems just surviving in fights when I'm not trying to practice damage. I do alright when I'm with a small group but am undoubtedly the weakest link. You can't always find a good, enjoyable group to play with either so I want to get better solo.
My biggest frustration seems to be that in comparison with people that come through, get a stun on me, and by the time I Breakfree and that animation is done, the other player has gotten a heavy attack, and 2-3 skills, for 5k+ damage a piece. While on the other hand, if I get the jump on someone, I get a light attack and one skill before they've dodge rolled out and are healing back to full health with CC immunity. It's even worse when its a tank setup that doesn't even have to breakfree from me and I can't get their health down through their self-heals.
I can't imagine that all the times that it seems like lag that it actually is, and that no one else is as affected by it like me.

A little about my setup: I am CP 450. My gear is all epic quality with select enchantments on each. For my main character, Magicka Templar, I am a Breton, I wear light armor Law of Julianos, Light of Cyrodil, and heavy Mother Ciannatt/Icebreaker (I've also tried Valkyn Skoria for damage instead of damage shield) Majority of them with Divines Trait, but a couple impenetrables. Atronach mundus stone. Attributes: 54 M 10 H 0 S. Dual wield and shock staff.

Should I focus my time purely on getting my CP up? Should I instead spend the time and money getting materials to improve my gear? Yes, I know that both of these will obviously help, but I've so far refused to believe that I can't at least compete in PvP without being fully maxed out from the start. Should I work on trusting my skills rotation more, as in, not waiting for the visual animations and prehitting my skills? Should I get all new gear? Respec my attribute points? Learn to trust blocking more than rolling and move to S&B?

I'd like to hear thoughts.
Keep the "Just get out of our queues already and stop holding up the real players" or "just get gud", "get better" comments out of here.

Kharner

A couple things:
1. If you are just doing BG's then CP has no bearing on that anyways since CP is disabled.
2. PVP in this game is extremely fast paced, even at the highest levels the goal is to burst someone down in 2-3 global cooldowns, the trick is lining that up to be able to do so.
3. It takes a long time to finally feel comfortable with pvp in this game for most people. Knowing when to block/roll just comes with experience, and just playing a ton of pvp. Don't feel bad for being "bad" you are just new and learning.
4. Watch some videos on people running mag templars to get some ideas on how to build, what skills to use, and just get general sense of how they play. This actually helps a lot. Watching top tier players gives you a good idea of what you should be doing in moment to moment play.

Jameson18

What kind of crafting and gear access do you have?

What platform?

Vizirith

So light armor is basically unusable except for magblades. Go 5 heavy 2 light. Recommend this build: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/578455/blackwood-meta-magplar-pvp-build

However pariah is very expensive right now, so maybe you can try something else. Maybe fortified brass or daedric trickery, both crafted.

Julianos is not that good and light of cyrodiil relies on spamming jabs for the dmg reduction.

jaws343

My first advice: Stop trying to PVP on already established/leveled characters when you are just starting out.

Start a brand new character, with some crafted gear, level to 10, and then start PVPing in low level BGs and sub 50 cyrodil. Do not level outside of PVP instances and only run PVP on this new character.

The reason for this is it helps you actually learn to PVP and learn how your class works in PVP by forcing you to use skills that may not be optimal, and gear that may not be optimal. All while putting you in with a group of players who may also be newer to PVP. Sure, you will run into experienced players, but you will more often than not have more equal in skill opponents.

A good example of this is with Mag Sorcs. Leveling a mag sorc in PVP means you don't have access to your primary defense, shields, until you are much higher level. Forcing you to learn to survive without them.

Second advice: Do this with at least one of each class. This really helps learn how each class plays, their weaknesses and strengths. And aides a lot when fighting against them.

I remember when I first went into Cyrodil on my main and got wrecked before I could even do anything. Spent the next 6 months leveling different classes to level 50 in PVP and then deleting and starting a new class and repeating that until I had leveled one of each class in PVP.

Kartalin

First thing I would say is that in Cyrodiil make sure you’re playing in non cp. it’s plenty competitive and fun while also allowing you to level your cp rank.

I agree with Vizirith above, Kuroyuki’s build is legit. I’m using a variation of it with dual wield instead of 2h to run quick cloak for major evasion. It’s likely you don’t have dw or 2h leveled on your magplar so you could use destro though it wouldn’t be as strong.

One thing you should focus on just starting out is maintaining your buff uptime. This is essential to success. Making sure you light attack weave is also important for gaining ultimate and sustaining resources. Understanding what your active skills and passive abilities do for you is also just as important, as is learning how to leverage them.

Some things just come with experience — when to LOS and recover, when to turn and burn. So there’s going to be growing pains. Take these in stride and learn from them.

DTAmoral

Honestly since you are CP 450 its going to be really hard to be competitive in the CP camps. I would highly suggest you look into maybe becoming a healer. Templars have a great rep for healing, you bring a ton of value to your group as a utility toon, you can run like Barrier / Nova for your ults, Barrier for when getting pushed, and Novas for anyone with Harmony.

Becoming a healer at lower CP is what helped me find my love for PvP. Even being 450 if you set yourself up as a small scale healer, max players will have a difficult time killing you, and most any group would want you with them cause you're a healer.

I now have 8 diff toons and my main toon is a Negate / Healer Sorc. I spam streak, restraining prison, and time stop, all while negating, and healing.

shrekt4303

Go pariah and stage 3 vamp. Slot your heals on the backbar and damage on the front and swap as needed. Toppling charge+jab+crescent sweep is your damage. Could run a resto or sword and board on the backbar. Support is very strong in group pvp so you could go that route. Fengrush was running a sword and board healplar in bgs last week and it carried his matches

geonsocal

it's not you OP...I mean sure you can improve your builds and rotations, but, there's no way at cp450 you are going to be able to fight someone with 1,000 or so cp...just not gonna happen...

what you can do though: build for survivability, then sustain...as you gather more cp you can begin to worry about dealing damage...

so you can still earn a good bit of AP, focus on aoe heals and damage skills, particularly heals over time and damage over time abilities...

also, whenever you reach a keep, try to repair a door or wall (just need to do it once) so you can get on the defensive "tick" list...lots of free AP there...

use siege whenever possible and learn how to use your allies to help your survive and kill enemies...

understand and accept: with that cp 450 over your head - you are going to be targeted a bunch...you can use that though to your advantage - a whole lot...enemies will be extremely over confident trying to attack you...

also wouldn't hurt using block, roll dodge and keeping walls, rocks and whatever else you can find between yourself and enemies as much as possible...

seriously, you can really mess some folks up if you can figure out how to tank up and use your allies...

Joy_Division

DJCampbell12 wrote: »

When I first started doing PvP, it was only for daily Battlegrounds or for specific tasks/gear out in Cyrodil. Now, I've been trying to dive in more and enjoy the PvP experience.

I AM STRUGGLING

I'm asking for a bit of (non-toxic) help in figuring out where I'm lacking and where I need to focus my time and start a discussion on what works for you in PvP personally.

I've got a couple different characters that I've tried playing with. I have followed guided builds and tried my own on each of them. Nothing is seeming to work. So, I'm needing to take a step back and figure out a better use of my time while playing.
I can't figure out if its issues with my weapons and armor, skills rotation, CP allocation, or just connection/lag. No matter what I try, it seems I can't figure out why I'm being destroyed in every fight. I even have problems just surviving in fights when I'm not trying to practice damage. I do alright when I'm with a small group but am undoubtedly the weakest link. You can't always find a good, enjoyable group to play with either so I want to get better solo.
My biggest frustration seems to be that in comparison with people that come through, get a stun on me, and by the time I Breakfree and that animation is done, the other player has gotten a heavy attack, and 2-3 skills, for 5k+ damage a piece. While on the other hand, if I get the jump on someone, I get a light attack and one skill before they've dodge rolled out and are healing back to full health with CC immunity. It's even worse when its a tank setup that doesn't even have to breakfree from me and I can't get their health down through their self-heals.
I can't imagine that all the times that it seems like lag that it actually is, and that no one else is as affected by it like me.

A little about my setup: I am CP 450. My gear is all epic quality with select enchantments on each. For my main character, Magicka Templar, I am a Breton, I wear light armor Law of Julianos, Light of Cyrodil, and heavy Mother Ciannatt/Icebreaker (I've also tried Valkyn Skoria for damage instead of damage shield) Majority of them with Divines Trait, but a couple impenetrables. Atronach mundus stone. Attributes: 54 M 10 H 0 S. Dual wield and shock staff.

Should I focus my time purely on getting my CP up? Should I instead spend the time and money getting materials to improve my gear? Yes, I know that both of these will obviously help, but I've so far refused to believe that I can't at least compete in PvP without being fully maxed out from the start. Should I work on trusting my skills rotation more, as in, not waiting for the visual animations and prehitting my skills? Should I get all new gear? Respec my attribute points? Learn to trust blocking more than rolling and move to S&B?

I'd like to hear thoughts.
Keep the "Just get out of our queues already and stop holding up the real players" or "just get gud", "get better" comments out of here.

What you describe is typical of a new player's experience.

Your gear, weapon choices, and traits strike me more of a PvE damage build than a PvP all around build. Divines, DW +
Lightning, Julianos offer nothing in the way of defense and you're mostly counting on that 15% reduction to damage while jabbing not to die, which isn't much. This is most likely why you die so quick after getting stunned. I generally think it is best to build / learn to survive than worry about damage.

As a templar, it's probably best to have one bar + weapon devoted to defense and one bar + weapon devoted to offense. The defense weapon is either a resto staff (if you use this, you run Regeneration; I'd go with Radiating since odds are Allies are going to be around you and you want to ensure you get a heal when you cast it), or Ice staff (which you will block with and slot either Elemental drain or Ice Wall, or sword and shield (which you will block with). Your defense bar also always has these 3 skills: Honor the Dead (recommend this morph unless you are 100% dedicated healer), one of the Ritual morphs (I think Extended is better for less experienced players), and Channeled Focus.

I also think templars should dedicated one set to defense. People all of a sudden rediscovered Pariah this patch and the price is insane. It's good, but you don't need to drop a fortune as I've used Impregnable, Robes of the Hist, Transmutation (if you use Extended Ritual), and they all work well enough. No divines on a templar. Impen is the best value. I do like sturdy on a shield if I use one. My advice is not to try to use a PVE defensive monster set. The shields you're getting are cut in half (or maybe 60% now, I forget), and a little damage shield isn't going to save you from a combo. I'd recommend either a Mythic (try Wild Hunt first) + stat helm (I like Dominhaus) or a monster set that doesn't have some sort of a tooltip (because of the nerf, like Bloodspawn for defense or Balrogh for offense). If you have a set dedicated to defense and keep your channel + Extended buffs up, someone else is absolutely going to be the weakest link.

Offense on a Magplar is easy Vs. inexperienced players, hard Vs. players who know what they are doing. If people melt or stand still when you jab, they're pretty much screwed. If they react to you and are tanky, you best have a font of patience or the class is going to frustrate you. (Lightning) Staff works ok, but if you're not draining the target you're way better off going either 2H or 2 swords because your raw damage will be noticeably higher. Topple + Jabs is your bread and butter (dont waste a slot of Javelin). Radiant Glory is good enough to slot, but if you use this when a decent player has over 25% health, you are wasting your time. I'd experiment between Sunfire, Purifying Light, and Solar Barrage. You're going to need some other source of damage Vs. good players and all these skills are pretty meh, so I'd only use one and check your combat logs if you play on PC (recommend combat metrics; be sure to turn "light" mode in cyrodiil off) to see which is giving the best value.

Arbiter7070

First, your gear combination is not good. Your monster helm selection is not good either. You need to be MUCH tankier on a magplar. You need to be tanky on any class that's not a nightblade or sorc. A good idea when starting out is to pair an offensive set with a defensive set. I'm not telling you to run this but here's an example, Stuhns or Spinners plus Pariah. That's a very basic magplar set up but it will make you incredibly tanky and still able to deal good damage. With this set up you should probably run malacath or ring of the wild hunt if you want mobility over more damage. Mobility is really good on a Magplar with mistform. But here's the reality, you're going to get WRECKED at first in this game. It took me until 700 CP to actually feel confident. And it wasn't the CP level that did it. It was just hundreds of hours in Battlegrounds, Cyrodiil and Duels. Learning PVP in this game is trial by fire. You need to learn how to read, react, defend yourself and time up your burst combo's. Burst is king in PVP. You need to be able to capitalize on an opponents errors, either with their skill usage, positioning or their mismanaging of resources. You need to have an internal idea of how much resources you opponent has expended, whether they have their ultimate or not, and being aware of their burst combo as well. There are many factors that go into PVP and these are just a small few. But the first thing you need to do is give yourself a chance by running a defensive set. You can't learn if you're constantly dying to people's burst. You must learn to dodge, block, animation cancel (You can block animation cancel your heal on a magplar).

DJCampbell12

Kharner wrote: »

1. If you are just doing BG's then CP has no bearing on that anyways since CP is disabled.

I've definitely done better in Battlegrounds, at least to the point of getting kills and surviving a bit more. I forget this sometimes, but I still do poorly and get really frustrated. Probably because I can't use the excuse of "Oh they're just much higher level than me so that's why they just pooped on me"

Jameson18 wrote: »

What kind of crafting and gear access do you have?

What platform?

I have 6 traits in almost all clothing and blacksmithing armor, but I also have a lot of master crafter guild mates. I have all DLCs as well.
I'm on Xbox. (I would play PC if there were cross save with all the time and money I've invested in console)

DTAmoral wrote: »

Honestly since you are CP 450 its going to be really hard to be competitive in the CP camps. I would highly suggest you look into maybe becoming a healer.

I have thought about moving to a healer. The only thing that has stopped me is that our regular group already has a good, well-built healer. It wouldn't be bad for me to level up the healing side though for my second bar with a resto staff perhaps...

shrekt4303 wrote: »

Go pariah and stage 3 vamp.

I ran a vamp for a while but really struggled with the lack of health recovery/ healing. I ran out of magicka a lot quicker and with resource management already a bit of a struggle, it hurt more than it helped. I definitely plan on grabbing Pariah, I saw a lot of online builds with it lately. I'm working on farming for it now. It's too expensive to buy at the moment.

geonsocal wrote: »

it's not you OP...I mean sure you can improve your builds and rotations, but, there's no way at cp450 you are going to be able to fight someone with 1,000 or so cp...just not gonna happen...

what you can do though: build for survivability, then sustain...as you gather more cp you can begin to worry about dealing damage...

so you can still earn a good bit of AP, focus on aoe heals and damage skills, particularly heals over time and damage over time abilities...

also, whenever you reach a keep, try to repair a door or wall (just need to do it once) so you can get on the defensive "tick" list...lots of free AP there...

use siege whenever possible and learn how to use your allies to help your survive and kill enemies...

understand and accept: with that cp 450 over your head - you are going to be targeted a bunch...you can use that though to your advantage - a whole lot...enemies will be extremely over confident trying to attack you...

also wouldn't hurt using block, roll dodge and keeping walls, rocks and whatever else you can find between yourself and enemies as much as possible...

seriously, you can really mess some folks up if you can figure out how to tank up and use your allies...

From reading your messages and a lot of the rest, it looks like I really just need to practice surviving.
Gaining AP hasn't been a problem. I've definetly realized my weaknesses from early on and know that I need to follow the crowds and do the "small stuff" so to speak.
I'm going to try that method and definitely work on tanking up and trying to kite those overconfident players into some mistakes and perhaps find some advantages. Thanks!

DJCampbell12

Joy_Division wrote: »

What you describe is typical of a new player's experience.

Your gear, weapon choices, and traits strike me more of a PvE damage build than a PvP all around build. Divines, DW +
Lightning, Julianos offer nothing in the way of defense and you're mostly counting on that 15% reduction to damage while jabbing not to die, which isn't much. This is most likely why you die so quick after getting stunned. I generally think it is best to build / learn to survive than worry about damage.

As a templar, it's probably best to have one bar + weapon devoted to defense and one bar + weapon devoted to offense. The defense weapon is either a resto staff (if you use this, you run Regeneration; I'd go with Radiating since odds are Allies are going to be around you and you want to ensure you get a heal when you cast it), or Ice staff (which you will block with and slot either Elemental drain or Ice Wall, or sword and shield (which you will block with). Your defense bar also always has these 3 skills: Honor the Dead (recommend this morph unless you are 100% dedicated healer), one of the Ritual morphs (I think Extended is better for less experienced players), and Channeled Focus.

I also think templars should dedicated one set to defense. People all of a sudden rediscovered Pariah this patch and the price is insane. It's good, but you don't need to drop a fortune as I've used Impregnable, Robes of the Hist, Transmutation (if you use Extended Ritual), and they all work well enough. No divines on a templar. Impen is the best value. I do like sturdy on a shield if I use one. My advice is not to try to use a PVE defensive monster set. The shields you're getting are cut in half (or maybe 60% now, I forget), and a little damage shield isn't going to save you from a combo. I'd recommend either a Mythic (try Wild Hunt first) + stat helm (I like Dominhaus) or a monster set that doesn't have some sort of a tooltip (because of the nerf, like Bloodspawn for defense or Balrogh for offense). If you have a set dedicated to defense and keep your channel + Extended buffs up, someone else is absolutely going to be the weakest link.

Offense on a Magplar is easy Vs. inexperienced players, hard Vs. players who know what they are doing. If people melt or stand still when you jab, they're pretty much screwed. If they react to you and are tanky, you best have a font of patience or the class is going to frustrate you. (Lightning) Staff works ok, but if you're not draining the target you're way better off going either 2H or 2 swords because your raw damage will be noticeably higher. Topple + Jabs is your bread and butter (dont waste a slot of Javelin). Radiant Glory is good enough to slot, but if you use this when a decent player has over 25% health, you are wasting your time. I'd experiment between Sunfire, Purifying Light, and Solar Barrage. You're going to need some other source of damage Vs. good players and all these skills are pretty meh, so I'd only use one and check your combat logs if you play on PC (recommend combat metrics; be sure to turn "light" mode in cyrodiil off) to see which is giving the best value.

Some others have also mentioned focusing on survivability. I'm going to make that my priority. You're definitely right about not having the defense in my gear. My logic in that is the better resource management with my mundus stone and divines, and the magicka perks of the gear/light armor. I used to constantly be out of Magicka
You're also right on the Pariah set being extremely popular and overpriced this patch. Someone was trying to sell a green cuirass of pariah for 45K. I am working on getting this myself.
I'm going to be 100% honest with you, I didn't know that the damage shield is cut in half in PvP. Makes me feel dumb for that.
I was using Javelin actually, I enjoyed the knockback to give myself a bit of space. Why do you recommend not using that?
Radiant glory has been my finishing move lately. I try to get a mix of vampires bane, purifying light, (toppling charge to close the distance or get a stun) puncturing sweep, and radiant oppression as the finisher. I'll throw in a Sweep ultimate if I can too. That's my regular rotation but I just can't get the damage up enough even after getting all the way through that. Most of the times, I can't even get through that rotation without having to escape and heal already. By the time I heal, I'm out of magicka.

Your comment was packed full of information and I'll definitely be referring back to it by the way.

DJCampbell12

Arbiter7070 wrote: »

First, your gear combination is not good. Your monster helm selection is not good either. You need to be MUCH tankier on a magplar. You need to be tanky on any class that's not a nightblade or sorc. A good idea when starting out is to pair an offensive set with a defensive set. I'm not telling you to run this but here's an example, Stuhns or Spinners plus Pariah. That's a very basic magplar set up but it will make you incredibly tanky and still able to deal good damage. With this set up you should probably run malacath or ring of the wild hunt if you want mobility over more damage. Mobility is really good on a Magplar with mistform. But here's the reality, you're going to get WRECKED at first in this game. It took me until 700 CP to actually feel confident. And it wasn't the CP level that did it. It was just hundreds of hours in Battlegrounds, Cyrodiil and Duels. Learning PVP in this game is trial by fire. You need to learn how to read, react, defend yourself and time up your burst combo's. Burst is king in PVP. You need to be able to capitalize on an opponents errors, either with their skill usage, positioning or their mismanaging of resources. You need to have an internal idea of how much resources you opponent has expended, whether they have their ultimate or not, and being aware of their burst combo as well. There are many factors that go into PVP and these are just a small few. But the first thing you need to do is give yourself a chance by running a defensive set. You can't learn if you're constantly dying to people's burst. You must learn to dodge, block, animation cancel (You can block animation cancel your heal on a magplar).

I agree with everything you said. It's good to hear from another player about what kind of benchmark they were at when they felt a difference. For you it was 700. Hopefully by then I'll have a full set of gear that I like too.
As I have played more and more, I have felt a little bit more comfortable with guaging my enemies, their resources, and the current fight. It just takes more experience and a lot of trail and failure.
Ashamed to admit that I didn't know about the block animation cancel. There's a lot of those tricks I don't know about... I need to figure out how to learn those.

Arbiter7070

DJCampbell12 wrote: »

Arbiter7070 wrote: »

First, your gear combination is not good. Your monster helm selection is not good either. You need to be MUCH tankier on a magplar. You need to be tanky on any class that's not a nightblade or sorc. A good idea when starting out is to pair an offensive set with a defensive set. I'm not telling you to run this but here's an example, Stuhns or Spinners plus Pariah. That's a very basic magplar set up but it will make you incredibly tanky and still able to deal good damage. With this set up you should probably run malacath or ring of the wild hunt if you want mobility over more damage. Mobility is really good on a Magplar with mistform. But here's the reality, you're going to get WRECKED at first in this game. It took me until 700 CP to actually feel confident. And it wasn't the CP level that did it. It was just hundreds of hours in Battlegrounds, Cyrodiil and Duels. Learning PVP in this game is trial by fire. You need to learn how to read, react, defend yourself and time up your burst combo's. Burst is king in PVP. You need to be able to capitalize on an opponents errors, either with their skill usage, positioning or their mismanaging of resources. You need to have an internal idea of how much resources you opponent has expended, whether they have their ultimate or not, and being aware of their burst combo as well. There are many factors that go into PVP and these are just a small few. But the first thing you need to do is give yourself a chance by running a defensive set. You can't learn if you're constantly dying to people's burst. You must learn to dodge, block, animation cancel (You can block animation cancel your heal on a magplar).

I agree with everything you said. It's good to hear from another player about what kind of benchmark they were at when they felt a difference. For you it was 700. Hopefully by then I'll have a full set of gear that I like too.
As I have played more and more, I have felt a little bit more comfortable with guaging my enemies, their resources, and the current fight. It just takes more experience and a lot of trail and failure.
Ashamed to admit that I didn't know about the block animation cancel. There's a lot of those tricks I don't know about... I need to figure out how to learn those.

Yep just get yourself a good setup. Pariah is a good start for you, and from there you can start experimenting with things. Currently on my magplar im running spectres eye for 100% major evasion uptime. Don't worry that you didn't know about the animation cancel. Not many know those little tricks starting out. But the key to do it is immediately pull up your block right after the heal animation starts and you will cancel the whole thing and get the whole heal all while blocking and mitigating a ton of damage at the same time. For your backbar make sure you run either sword and board, ice staff or resto staff for better heals. But starting out its good to go sword and board or frost staff for the block mitigation they provide.

This game has brutal PVP and a lot of veteran extremely skilled players. It honestly discourages a lot of new players to get into it. But you seem to have the mentality of wanting to learn. Just dont get discourage. It will come in time I promise. As soon as you get a good gear set up to increase your survivability, you'll be much better in no time!

geonsocal

I'm going to try that method and definitely work on tanking up and trying to kite those overconfident players into some mistakes and perhaps find some advantages. 

make sure you have some fun emotes ready - my cp is getting up there now on both servers, but, I started a second group of pvp toons on the second server i few years ago, so I kind of new how to fight, and had sooooooo much fun using enemy players aggression to kill them...

shoot, no pressure on you at all, you're supposed to lose fighting someone with double/triple your cp...

seriously, practice not dying for a while (health draughts and purging help a lot with that)...pop in and out of doors, position yourself on the edge of zergs, with the mindset of drawing an enemy in to your zerg...run off and hide when it looks like your side will lose...just practice staying alive for a while...

taunt enemies mercilessly, just make sure you keep up your buffs and are ready to heal and block and roll dodge towards allies...

practice moving in and out of stealth...

initially it bugged me that I was getting targeted all the time, once I got over that and started using it to my advantage, I had a whole bunch more fun...

divnyi

Hey, as other players mentioned here, your gear setup is far from ideal. I myself tried to make pure crit setups work.. and I failed, I don't think it is possible to make a good pure crit build in PvP with todays mechanics. Mind you, I have lots of experience with PvP and building characters for PvP.

Best alternative I can propose is crit build with Acuity + Draugrkin. Mind you, it is not very easy to pilot, health is low and you need to rely on positioning, fast block+heals and elusive mist escapes. But it M E L T S enemies.

Brrrofski

You've had a lot of great advice here so I'm not going to add much.

I will say though, don't beat yourself up. This game has a steep learning curve for PvP, and honestly, the meta and how high damage is right now, it's a difficult time to learn.

I would suggest you focus more on battlegrounds for now. Firstly, as you have less CP than most and also, you will get into smaller fights which will help you understand what is happening on a smaller scale.

Look at your death recaps and figure out why you die. A big problem for a lot of newerr players is stamina management. They roll too much, or block too much and drain their stam. So pay attention to what hits hard and doesn't, so you know wheb to dodge, when to block and when to just eat the damage.

Lastly, learn the other classes. Be that levelling them up, looking at skills online or asking your group. If you have mates that PvP, duel them on their different classes. Get them to explain what their thought process is. To kill people, everyone has a burst combination. They do certain skills in a certain order. Learning the more common used ones goes a long way.

A player does a certain thing to you, chances are they'll do one of a few things that you can negate if you know how that class is played. Mag DK fossilises you, then a leap and whips is coming. So try to break free in time, block their leap as it's probably coming next, then hit a heal while you role to avoid the whips.

Not saying that everyone has the same combo, but majority of people do. So that can help a lot.

fred4

Joy_Division wrote: »

DJCampbell12 wrote: »

When I first started doing PvP, it was only for daily Battlegrounds or for specific tasks/gear out in Cyrodil. Now, I've been trying to dive in more and enjoy the PvP experience.

I AM STRUGGLING

I'm asking for a bit of (non-toxic) help in figuring out where I'm lacking and where I need to focus my time and start a discussion on what works for you in PvP personally.

I've got a couple different characters that I've tried playing with. I have followed guided builds and tried my own on each of them. Nothing is seeming to work. So, I'm needing to take a step back and figure out a better use of my time while playing.
I can't figure out if its issues with my weapons and armor, skills rotation, CP allocation, or just connection/lag. No matter what I try, it seems I can't figure out why I'm being destroyed in every fight. I even have problems just surviving in fights when I'm not trying to practice damage. I do alright when I'm with a small group but am undoubtedly the weakest link. You can't always find a good, enjoyable group to play with either so I want to get better solo.
My biggest frustration seems to be that in comparison with people that come through, get a stun on me, and by the time I Breakfree and that animation is done, the other player has gotten a heavy attack, and 2-3 skills, for 5k+ damage a piece. While on the other hand, if I get the jump on someone, I get a light attack and one skill before they've dodge rolled out and are healing back to full health with CC immunity. It's even worse when its a tank setup that doesn't even have to breakfree from me and I can't get their health down through their self-heals.
I can't imagine that all the times that it seems like lag that it actually is, and that no one else is as affected by it like me.

A little about my setup: I am CP 450. My gear is all epic quality with select enchantments on each. For my main character, Magicka Templar, I am a Breton, I wear light armor Law of Julianos, Light of Cyrodil, and heavy Mother Ciannatt/Icebreaker (I've also tried Valkyn Skoria for damage instead of damage shield) Majority of them with Divines Trait, but a couple impenetrables. Atronach mundus stone. Attributes: 54 M 10 H 0 S. Dual wield and shock staff.

Should I focus my time purely on getting my CP up? Should I instead spend the time and money getting materials to improve my gear? Yes, I know that both of these will obviously help, but I've so far refused to believe that I can't at least compete in PvP without being fully maxed out from the start. Should I work on trusting my skills rotation more, as in, not waiting for the visual animations and prehitting my skills? Should I get all new gear? Respec my attribute points? Learn to trust blocking more than rolling and move to S&B?

I'd like to hear thoughts.
Keep the "Just get out of our queues already and stop holding up the real players" or "just get gud", "get better" comments out of here.

What you describe is typical of a new player's experience.

I can only agree with this and would add that the best practice is probably duelling people at your own or slightly better level to begin with.

Your gear, weapon choices, and traits strike me more of a PvE damage build than a PvP all around build. Divines, DW +
Lightning, Julianos offer nothing in the way of defense and you're mostly counting on that 15% reduction to damage while jabbing not to die, which isn't much. This is most likely why you die so quick after getting stunned.

I agree. I do not like Cyrodiil's Light. I think it can work, but only when you run a very specific build that makes the most of it. That build is an old one, called the Phalanx build, which uses Meditate (Psijic) and Mist Form. Cyrodiil's Light not only applies while jabbing, but also when you meditate and, in old patches at least, during Mist Form. Furthermore people try to interrupt your meditation and that activates the sustain feature of Cyrodiil's Light. If you're not running a variation of that specific build, I would not recommend Cyrodiil's Light.

I generally think it is best to build / learn to survive than worry about damage.

I think this is true from a build point of view, especially for templar and with the insane damage this patch. However from a playstyle point of view, the class needs to be played very aggressively when on the attack, e.g. Toppling Charge, good positioning and be relentless with Jabs. Do not take Joy Division's advice to mean that you should learn to actively defend. Yes, you have to do that, but if you are only defending you burn far more resources than when you use cheaper attacking skills (this is true in general). The attacker will outsustain you. Attack is the best defense, if you can make it work. Templar can't block while casting Jabs and it is a clunky skill. This is why, when you add up the 4 hits, they do an insane amount of damage, compared to other spammables - especially on a stamplar, but also on magplar. It's landing all those hits without the game flaking out with lag and positional desyncs or the other player just plain outmaneuvering you, that's the problem. I like (some) Swift jewelry and/or Wild Hunt for that reason. You want to be at the correct distance from the target, not too close, not too far.

As a templar, it's probably best to have one bar + weapon devoted to defense and one bar + weapon devoted to offense.

I agree. This is also true in general. That approach plays well. The weapon choice, though is a toughie. I've liked resto staff in the past, because magplar lacks ongoing healing. In PvE hitting stuff with Puncturing Sweeps heals you a ton. In PvP it does not. Especially when the target is tanky. A resto staff gives you ongoing healing options, such as Radiating Regeneration or the ultimate. On the other hand (a) you need to find room to fit a resto heal (you want Honor the Dead either way too) and (b) a blocking weapon feels tankier. I automatically block cast Honor the Dead when I'm low health and, well, that works. Using 1H + Shield gives you access to Spell Wall, very good, and it has a mobility passive while blocking. It feels better than an ice staff. Using an ice staff gives you better damage options. You can light attack from range and get the full value of an enchant (1H+S = enchants count for half). You can possibly use a Vateshran destro on the back bar. Having all defensive skills on the back bar, but one offensive skill, such as Elemental Drain, plays well. You heal up, you cast your one offensive skill, then you bar swap and attack. Note however - and this is why I do not like the ice staff all that much: It's light attacks are slow. If you cast them from distance and bar swap, the ice staff light attack may only land after your bar swap and, in that case, your backbar enchant won't activate.

The biggest problem magplar has and has always had is an overreliance on block casting Honor the Dead. You can get stuck on your back bar that way and run out of magicka and die. Most people's solution is to go tanky and the obvious set that everyone is falling back on, this patch, is Pariah (I can feel a nerf incoming). In addition I think that Malubeth is a good monster helm for templar. It's proc increases healing by 16%. Playing magplar solo is also an issue. It's not that kind of class. The traditional solution is Mist Form. In fact you may try being a stage 3 vamp to combine Pariah, Undeath and Mist Form. If you are not a vamp, then Race Against Time is a must.

I am working on my own magplar at present. I have not decided what I will do this patch yet. However for my own playstyle I prefer a relatively non-tanky light armor approach. Building tanky has worked for me in the past, but I had a duelling session with a friend some time ago and the conclusion, for me personally, was quite stark. Building magplar to play like a stamina class is better for me. What do I mean by that? I mean building for dodge rolls. This may have something to do with me not playing vampires. I rely on Race Against Time and dodge rolls. In the past that has meant Eternal Vigor + Amber Plasm + Restoring Focus, e.g. crazy stamina sustain for a magicka class. I find magplar extremely fun an dynamic with that setup, not least due to Toppling Charge being such a good gap closer that you actually want to use as well. I build with 5 light armor. You want the penetration and, to a degree, the crit. Templar is a crit class. I find Living Dark pretty important with this setup for the heals, but also for the hard snare it applies to targets. Better to jab them.

The alternative is to build tankier. In general what happens when you build tankier is that your defensive rotation shrinks and your offensive rotation gets more elaborate. You will need Degeneration. You may need Elemental Drain. You may need Purifying Light. Then you Jab. If you are in light armor, you will probably have more defensive skill(s) instead, certainly something like Living Dark.

Playing a fast templar is nice, though, and kind of necessary absent Mist Form. Something I really like about templar is Restoring Focus - the stamina morph - even on magplar. I can sprint without worrying about stamina. I don't run it down. This is another thing that makes it so dynamic. On my stam DK I run down stamina when I sprint and it's actually a problem.

Wild Hunt is always good in PvP. Malacath is not something that I particularly recommend on templar. I would rather find crit somewhere. I am currently experimenting with Pale Order. Now Pale Order is not a PvP set. It doesn't really work in PvP. However it plays into the magplar theme of healing from attacking. If you split your blue CP between damage and defense, you can get Sweeps up to healing for 44% of damage (with more CP than you have, admittedly). Plus Pale Order (only solo or duo, obviously). Plus Reaving Blows. This is not a recommendation, but experiemental. You have to try and do something to be able to stay on attack longer. Healing from attacking is not actually the greatest, passive heals or healing from taking damage (warden's Living Trellis, cough) is better. However health regen is nerfed, so the Eternal Vigor / Amper Plasm / gold food route won't work any longer.

Sets to consider include Pariah, Malubeth, Heartland Conqueror, Spinners, Lich, Overwhelming Surge, Auroran's Thunder, Amber Plasm / Eternal Vigor (still, for the stam regen). Others too, no doubt. I'm going to look into Draugrkin's Grip. Primary weapon should be Sharpened Maul, Sharpened Lightning Staff or some combination of Nirnhoned / Sharpened 1H swords / maces. Heartland Conqueror is an interesting set to double bar for increased penetration on the front bar (Sharpened) and increased healing on the back bar (Powered).

Now in terms of skills, some are indispensible:

Back bar: The rune. Like I said, I recommend the stamina rune, albeit you have to find magicka sustain elsewhere, such as Atro mundus.

Back bar: Extended Ritual. For my playstyle I find this pretty situational, because I move so much and don't get much benefit from the ground-based heal. However it is the templar signature skill for purging sorc curses, DK DOTs, and so on. You can (at the very least) stalemate duels with this skill.

Back bar: Race Against Time or Mist Form. Can't get around these.

Back bar: Honor the Dead. You typically block-cast this.

Front bar: Puncturing Sweeps. I mean, there are ranged templars and what not, but presumably you are using Sweeps.

Front bar: Crescent Sweep. Just too good. And cheap.

Front bar: Toppling Charge. Well. Other CCs are possible, but this is an easy skill to like. May also allow you to wear the Stuhn set.

fred4

DJCampbell12 wrote: »

A little about my setup: I am CP 450. My gear is all epic quality with select enchantments on each.

Epic (purple) is fine. In fact, since the meta is always changing, I almost never gold out my armor. However I buy gold jewelry from the Cyrodiil weekend vendor when I can and always use gold weapons (though not shields and possibly not gold off-hand DW weapons).

"Select" enchantments? Since you are splitting your attributes between magicka and health, which may well be the correct choice this patch, enchants should be prismatic (at least the big pieces, but I typically do it on all) where financially viable. You will gain extra off-stat (stamina on your magplar), which tends to be valuable in PvP, and you may be able to shift some attribute points from health to magicka.

For my main character, Magicka Templar, I am a Breton, I wear light armor Law of Julianos, Light of Cyrodil, and heavy Mother Ciannatt/Icebreaker (I've also tried Valkyn Skoria for damage instead of damage shield)

As others have said, Julianos is a no and armor type should be some mixture of light and heavy (and medium), although I personally agree with 5x light. Instead of Julianos -> Amber Plasm is an easy swap for the all important stam regen. Instead of Light of Cyrodiil -> Pariah. But that's only one option - see above or complete PvP builds others are recommending to you.

The shielding monster helms? I don't know. Shields are halved in PvP. Probably a no. Malubeth. Bloodspawn. 2x resistance pieces. 1x Skoria for the penetration. Zaan, if you want to go offensive (but need high spell damage). Or wear what everyone wears, these days: Balorgh.

Majority of them with Divines Trait

Noooooooo.

Atronach mundus stone.

Good.

Dual wield and shock staff.

This is really your biggest issue. You need a defensive weapon. Dual wield or shock staff (or 2H) front bar, but not both. Back bar: Resto or ice or 1H+S.

Should I focus my time purely on getting my CP up?

No. Do what is fun. Play in no CP campaign, probably.

Should I instead spend the time and money getting materials to improve my gear?

Only weapons, if not already gold. Traits need to change. Prismatic enchants are somewhat optional, given the price. Maybe play in IC to get some Tel Var, although IC is probably the toughest place to play.

Yes, I know that both of these will obviously help, but I've so far refused to believe that I can't at least compete in PvP without being fully maxed out from the start.

That is correct. Experience and muscle memory count for the most. Duel people. That will involve some CP mismatches of necessity, but what can you do.

Should I work on trusting my skills rotation more, as in, not waiting for the visual animations and prehitting my skills?

YES!

Should I get all new gear?

Unfortunately, yes. But do not make everything gold. That would be a waste. Only weapons.

Respec my attribute points?

Probably not really. I suppose your target is 30K health in CP PvP, these days. More red CP will help long term...

Learn to trust blocking more than rolling and move to S&B?

Yes and no. S&B yes (or other defensive back bar weapon). Block-casting Honor the Dead, typically yes. Don't overdo it, though, or your stamina will be gone. This comes with experience. Dodge rolling is also good. You need both while not overdoing either. You might practice Honor the Dead into a dodge roll, which you can fit into a single second. In general:

Light attack -> Skill -> other action

can be done in a single second (aka GCD aka global cooldown). Other action can be:

Dodge roll
Bar swap
Bash

Some players also briefly block after a skill or partially block cast a skill, then dodge roll. I've seen it in logs and I do it myself occasionally. If you're not fitting all of that into single second, this may explain how other players seem to accomplish more than you.

The choice between blocking or rolling comes down to to your build and playstyle. Light armor now has rolling cost reduction. Rolling builds (me) tend to have / need stam regen. Heavy armor, on the other hand, is more suited to blocking. Such builds may have less stam regen, but perhaps favor a higher stamina pool. They may use Bewitched Sugar Skulls instead of a drink. Stamina regen is cut off while blocking, but being attacked in heavy armor restores resources.

There is said to be a blocking bug at the moment, where it consumes inordinate amounts of stamina...

divnyi

fred4 wrote: »

There is said to be a blocking bug at the moment, where it consumes inordinate amounts of stamina...

I thought it was fixed like a week ago or so?

To add up, people sometimes tap block after attack not to actually block things, but to cancel animation of the skill.

Joy_Division

DJCampbell12 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

What you describe is typical of a new player's experience.

Your gear, weapon choices, and traits strike me more of a PvE damage build than a PvP all around build. Divines, DW +
Lightning, Julianos offer nothing in the way of defense and you're mostly counting on that 15% reduction to damage while jabbing not to die, which isn't much. This is most likely why you die so quick after getting stunned. I generally think it is best to build / learn to survive than worry about damage.

As a templar, it's probably best to have one bar + weapon devoted to defense and one bar + weapon devoted to offense. The defense weapon is either a resto staff (if you use this, you run Regeneration; I'd go with Radiating since odds are Allies are going to be around you and you want to ensure you get a heal when you cast it), or Ice staff (which you will block with and slot either Elemental drain or Ice Wall, or sword and shield (which you will block with). Your defense bar also always has these 3 skills: Honor the Dead (recommend this morph unless you are 100% dedicated healer), one of the Ritual morphs (I think Extended is better for less experienced players), and Channeled Focus.

I also think templars should dedicated one set to defense. People all of a sudden rediscovered Pariah this patch and the price is insane. It's good, but you don't need to drop a fortune as I've used Impregnable, Robes of the Hist, Transmutation (if you use Extended Ritual), and they all work well enough. No divines on a templar. Impen is the best value. I do like sturdy on a shield if I use one. My advice is not to try to use a PVE defensive monster set. The shields you're getting are cut in half (or maybe 60% now, I forget), and a little damage shield isn't going to save you from a combo. I'd recommend either a Mythic (try Wild Hunt first) + stat helm (I like Dominhaus) or a monster set that doesn't have some sort of a tooltip (because of the nerf, like Bloodspawn for defense or Balrogh for offense). If you have a set dedicated to defense and keep your channel + Extended buffs up, someone else is absolutely going to be the weakest link.

Offense on a Magplar is easy Vs. inexperienced players, hard Vs. players who know what they are doing. If people melt or stand still when you jab, they're pretty much screwed. If they react to you and are tanky, you best have a font of patience or the class is going to frustrate you. (Lightning) Staff works ok, but if you're not draining the target you're way better off going either 2H or 2 swords because your raw damage will be noticeably higher. Topple + Jabs is your bread and butter (dont waste a slot of Javelin). Radiant Glory is good enough to slot, but if you use this when a decent player has over 25% health, you are wasting your time. I'd experiment between Sunfire, Purifying Light, and Solar Barrage. You're going to need some other source of damage Vs. good players and all these skills are pretty meh, so I'd only use one and check your combat logs if you play on PC (recommend combat metrics; be sure to turn "light" mode in cyrodiil off) to see which is giving the best value.

Some others have also mentioned focusing on survivability. I'm going to make that my priority. You're definitely right about not having the defense in my gear. My logic in that is the better resource management with my mundus stone and divines, and the magicka perks of the gear/light armor. I used to constantly be out of Magicka
You're also right on the Pariah set being extremely popular and overpriced this patch. Someone was trying to sell a green cuirass of pariah for 45K. I am working on getting this myself.
I'm going to be 100% honest with you, I didn't know that the damage shield is cut in half in PvP. Makes me feel dumb for that.
I was using Javelin actually, I enjoyed the knockback to give myself a bit of space. Why do you recommend not using that?
Radiant glory has been my finishing move lately. I try to get a mix of vampires bane, purifying light, (toppling charge to close the distance or get a stun) puncturing sweep, and radiant oppression as the finisher. I'll throw in a Sweep ultimate if I can too. That's my regular rotation but I just can't get the damage up enough even after getting all the way through that. Most of the times, I can't even get through that rotation without having to escape and heal already. By the time I heal, I'm out of magicka.

Your comment was packed full of information and I'll definitely be referring back to it by the way.

Don't feel dumb, ZOS (and the gaming industry in general) doesn't bother giving directions or explaining how their game work.
Be careful looking at old templar guides on Youtube as many of them advocated having a high health recovery, which just this past patch has also been cut in half. Unfortunately part of having a good PvP build is to be on top of every patch that usually brings major changes.

I don;t think Javelin is a good choice for a Magplar because the stun you want to use is Toppling Charge. You don;t want to knock opponents away from you. you want them stunned at your feet so you can immediately start jabbing. Also Toppling puts opponents off balance, which you can follow up with a heavy attack to get a huge resource return. Since the game only allows 10 abilities for you to slot, Javelin has an opportunity cost because of redundancy, slotting it means depriving you of something useful. I've fought Templars for over seven years and Id say 90% of them that used javelin felt like mediocre players who'd use Javelin and didn't have any plan on how to follow it up.

As I said offensive on a Magplar can be tough because PvP is all about (delayed) burst damage and Magplar is the worst class in doing that in the game (its strength is constant damage). You've got the right idea, but the game changes faster than ZOS updates their skills. Purifying Light is supposed to be its delayed burst skill, but it pales in comparison to what the other classes have. Sometimes you just got to take a break from your rotation and heavy attack your opponent (ideally when they are off balance). I've had a lot of stalemates in which neither I nor my opponent could kill each other. I often just walk away from these fights after a minute or so; almost always if some other player joins in (out of respect for a worthy opponent).

shrekt4303

Javelin is good on a support to keep enemies away.

divnyi

Joy_Division wrote: »

I don;t think Javelin is a good choice for a Magplar because the stun you want to use is Toppling Charge. You don;t want to knock opponents away from you. you want them stunned at your feet so you can immediately start jabbing. Also Toppling puts opponents off balance, which you can follow up with a heavy attack to get a huge resource return. Since the game only allows 10 abilities for you to slot, Javelin has a huge opportunity cost because of it's redundancy and is depriving you of something useful. I've fought Templars for over seven years and Id say 90% of them that used javelin felt like mediocre players who'd use Javelin and didn't have any plan on how to follow it up.

It is great skill if you have ranged spammable. I run both jabs and ranged spammable and it allows to have best DPS in every range. You kite melee players and you go in the melee vs ranged enemies. Javelin stun animation is pretty long and you can control opponent position, which is valuable too.

Kartalin

Javelin was great when you could still knock players to the ground from oil ledges at outposts and inner keeps. Honestly the best case use for that, and it doesn't do that anymore, so....

geonsocal

Kartalin wrote: »

Javelin was great when you could still knock players to the ground from oil ledges at outposts and inner keeps. Honestly the best case use for that, and it doesn't do that anymore, so....

+ 1,000,000,000

KennyAr

PVP above 50 is all about gears to me. So you need to first farm a set of top gears and avoid PVP at all before that.

PVP = gear, gear, and gear.

fred4

KennyAr wrote: »

PVP above 50 is all about gears to me. So you need to first farm a set of top gears and avoid PVP at all before that.

PVP = gear, gear, and gear.

I agree in so far as I wouldn't PvP without a proper PvP build. That said, I think PvP is 70% about experience. Maybe more.

Casul

When I was teaching noobies in my guild I would recommend running 7 heavy early on so you can see how enemies are playing and not get insta killed. Then as you become more familiar strip away the defense for more offense. But this patch has such high damage I am not sure how I would advise anyone.

KennyAr

fred4 wrote: »

KennyAr wrote: »

PVP above 50 is all about gears to me. So you need to first farm a set of top gears and avoid PVP at all before that.

PVP = gear, gear, and gear.

I agree in so far as I wouldn't PvP without a proper PvP build. That said, I think PvP is 70% about experience. Maybe more.

I can't argue with that. I think what the OP lacks is a good set of gear to begin with, which I think is essential for lvl50 pvp.

KennyAr

DJCampbell12 wrote: »

I'm asking for a bit of (non-toxic) help in figuring out where I'm lacking and where I need to focus my time and start a discussion on what works for you in PvP personally.

Join the under lvl50 battleground first. You need to move all the times in Pvp, the more so if your char is a magicka one. It's better to start with either a warden or an orc, because their attack is unpredictable so that you bear a good chance to kill someone even as a noob. lol.
Always circle around quick such that other won't be able to target you. Sometimes you can run into the crowds to avoid being targeted in a many vs many fight. Just don't stop moving.
If you can't target and move fast enough, using a gap closer skill such as the Critical Charge under the 2H skill line.
Warden is very good at ganking the mages, so choose a magicka char to attack. Usually, suberranean assault --> critical charge (such that your suberranean assault lands on them) followed by executioner, then it's done. lol.