What am I doing wrong. (Build\Combat\Battlegrounds)

Maichail

I've just started playing Battlegrounds again and I'm struggling. I can't remember it being like this. (Last played PvP a couple of years ago).

Think I need a bit of advice on gear\general rotation.

Playing with a Stamden. 2H front bar. 28k health in no-cp Battlegrounds.
Spriggans and Shackebreaker. All heavy. Mostly impen with a couple of well fitted. (Is heavy still the preferred weight?).

I've got two issues.

#1 I'm squishy as hell. (Despite heavy armor and 24k resist).
#2 I can't seem to finish anyone off. (I'm using a two handed mace and running around 11k penetration, 4900 weapon damage).

It used to be. Shalks, Cutting Dive (1 possibly 2), Stampede, Carve, (Dawnbreaker), and Executioner. If I land all of those, you were dead. (Doesn't seem to be the case anymore).

I get anywhere between 500k and 1 Million damage, but end up with a low number of kills, double digit assists, and usually double digits deaths.

What am I doing wrong? I can literally hit someone with executioner repeatedly and they just laugh in my face.

Also, Dark Convergence. What were they thinking. One is OK, but a whole team running it. Nope. It should give you full immunity if you've been hit with it at any point in the last year :-)

I'm level 26 even though I haven't played for ages. Do seem to get paired up with god tier players a lot, not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

xDeusEJRx

Not sure when you stopped playing, but last year they increased the innate tankiness people have from battle spirit by upping mitigation and also made healing less effective overall.
Which may be why you feel squishier and unable to kill people, as your heals are less effective and damage is worth less than it was before the changes.

Your penetration is a decent level, but 4000ish damage now by PVP standards is low, probably need to push that up to at least 5k without a weapon enchant. Though for a level 26, that damage is pretty impressive

Also 24k resistances is rather low too, if you can I'd try pushing up to 29k spell 27k physical for decent tankiness without having to build too much. Perhaps change some of your impen over to reinforced, like reinforced chest and legs to give you more comfortability. Another way to up tankiness is to slot revealing flare from the Support skill line for 10% damage mitigation which will help you feel tankier on the bar it's slotted on as a suggestion so you don't have to adjust your build too much.

gariondavey

Shacklebreaker is really outdated with the additions to max stat in base game with cp 2.0 changes.
Try clever alchemist back bar 1h+s backbar, then either a proc set like plaguebreak front bar, or an offensive set like powerful assault, or a buff/debuff set like kynmarchers or daedric trickery. Probably dw, so you can use your shalks + dawnbreaker to spin2win
You should have at least 30k hp.

gariondavey

Sorry, and obviously with 5 clever back bar and 5 of whatever else you choose front bar, you can slot balorgh/magma incarnate and a mythic of choice (maybe wild hunt or malacath) and 1 trainee

Kartalin

gariondavey wrote: »

Sorry, and obviously with 5 clever back bar and 5 of whatever else you choose front bar, you can slot balorgh/magma incarnate and a mythic of choice (maybe wild hunt or malacath) and 1 trainee

Note that OP is level 26.

—-——

@Maichail : It takes awhile for stamden to unlock a lot of what makes it good so it can be rough going as you level up. At this point I would focus less on getting good and more on just familiarizing yourself with stamden in general. How to line up your burst with Sub assault, kiting, and surviving.

Hopefully you’ve done enough bgs to unlock vigor at least and get it morphed. Likely you have not unlocked things like Momentum, Betty Netch, Bird of prey, shimmering shield, or even dawnbreaker, skills that many stamdens will eventually run. So we make do for the time being as we level the necessary skill lines.

I don’t know where your medium armor is at but maybe you have access to Elude? Slot that and get it morphed to Shuffle. Try changing Carve to the morph that gives a damage shield. Don’t worry about a gap closer, you should slot vigor on your front bar to better maintain its uptime while you get used to o pvping with the character. Sleet storm ult on front and healing thicket on back, and don’t be afraid to use a healing ult to save yourself or teammates.

Hopefully that is helpful. I ran some lowbie bgs on my level 16 stamden this weekend, and it was very different from my max level stamdens. But I was using what I mentioned above as part of my strategy.

Janni

I've only been playing for a little over a year and a half now but even in that time the game has made some MASSIVE changes.

For starters, damage and healing are both sky-high right now. It's not uncommon to see people with 6k spell and weapon damage BEFORE they buff and I've personally gone to 8, 9, 10, even 11k in many cases depending on the group! This adds up to some serious healing!

Also, proc-damage sets now scale based on your weapon and spell damage. The base-line is something like 6 or 6.5k to get the tooltips back to what they were before but with numbers like above it is very easy to get those numbers to skyrocket. Even worse, many sets can now deal critical damage too!

The long and short of it is this.... you need more of EVERYTHING compared to what you were probably used to before. Few people dare to step into cyrodiil without a minimum of 30k hp but if you have good mitigation and heals you can go a little less. Many like to have close to 30k resists as well (some of my own toons even go into the mid 40s) since it's not uncommon for people to get 20-25k penetration at times. And you need to have an absolutely massive burst combo that can blow someone up in only 1 or 2 GDCs. Anything more against a good player on a DK or a templar and they will be back to full health before you get a third attack to go off. It's all just a giant see-saw of death right now and I can't say I like it personally but that's just the way things go right now.

Tigerboy78

So I am also a Stamden 2H/Bow atm. Running Sprig/EV. Balorg helm. I do ok but I know my setup isn't the best. Is Sprig even worth it anymore?

gariondavey

Tigerboy78 wrote: »

So I am also a Stamden 2H/Bow atm. Running Sprig/EV. Balorg helm. I do ok but I know my setup isn't the best. Is Sprig even worth it anymore?

I don't think so. Ev definitely not.
Check out my 2 posts above.

Maichail

When I say level 26, I meant Alliance War level. I'm CP 1500. I've unlocked everything. I can craft everything.

Thanks for the advice. I was always going to swap sets but couldn't work out what was wrong inherently before I started crafting or spending any gold\resources. In particular for any potential jewelry. I've only got enough to craft one set of purple rings\necklace to I need to try and not waste those resources.

Is it still heavy, or do I go with medium and reinforced? To help get the weapon damage up? Trade off with health I guess?

Clever alchemist was always on the list which I can craft in any weight.

Balorgh is mentioned a lot, but considering I use Dawnbreaker a lot which is low cost, I thought there might be other monster sets that are better for that play style.

I was also considering Plaguebreak or Dark Convergence, but I feel dirty just saying that :-)
I think I have most of those sets, just need a few more transmute crystals as I spent a lot recently.

I was also thinking about New Moon Acolyte (Craftable) or Dagons Dominion (I think I've got most of Dagon's from the Cauldren).

I think I'll craft Clever Alchemist, Plague Break, and New Moon Acolyte to start with and have a go.

Just need to confirm if it should be heavy and two medium, all heavy, or some other combination.

MEBengalsFan2001

Maichail wrote: »

When I say level 26, I meant Alliance War level. I'm CP 1500. I've unlocked everything. I can craft everything.

Thanks for the advice. I was always going to swap sets but couldn't work out what was wrong inherently before I started crafting or spending any gold\resources. In particular for any potential jewelry. I've only got enough to craft one set of purple rings\necklace to I need to try and not waste those resources.

Is it still heavy, or do I go with medium and reinforced? To help get the weapon damage up? Trade off with health I guess?

Clever alchemist was always on the list which I can craft in any weight.

Balorgh is mentioned a lot, but considering I use Dawnbreaker a lot which is low cost, I thought there might be other monster sets that are better for that play style.

I was also considering Plaguebreak or Dark Convergence, but I feel dirty just saying that :-)
I think I have most of those sets, just need a few more transmute crystals as I spent a lot recently.

I was also thinking about New Moon Acolyte (Craftable) or Dagons Dominion (I think I've got most of Dagon's from the Cauldren).

I think I'll craft Clever Alchemist, Plague Break, and New Moon Acolyte to start with and have a go.

Just need to confirm if it should be heavy and two medium, all heavy, or some other combination.

A good combination to run that ensure survivability and damage is Ancient Dragon guard and Titanborn. They work well together. When your health is above 50% and below 75%, which it probably is most of the time you get damage bonus from both sets and if your health drops below 50% the damage stats you gain from titanborn is slightly better damage stats than when you are above 75% health and your offensive pen stat increase ensure you can tear down your target rather quickly.

I still use spriggan as I like having higher pen.

malistorr

I don't play BGs but I'm sure a lot of build details are the same in Cyrodiil. Some common ways players are staying alive these days include:

1. Vampire level 3 if you can deal with the increased ability cost and extra fire damage.
2. Mark of the Pariah and/or Buffer of the Swift sets or other defensive sets. (1 at least until you get used to playing again)
3. Heavy armor (at least for the large pieces like chest, pants, and maybe helm) Reinforced on heavy pieces and your favorite combination of impen, nirnhoned, well-fitted, or divines on the rest.
4. If you're a stam toon and feel like you don't kill enough then try at least 3 and maybe as high as 5 pieces of medium armor. Check the medium armor passives, they provide a lot of offensive buffs. And you can always offset the lower armor by making an armor enchant or 2 max health. A lot of people are doing the Glyphs of Prismatic Defense for all the armor but it's expensive. If you're a mag toon then use a few light pieces. And if you have the undaunted passive and want max stats make sure you have a piece of the 3rd armor type to get 6% increase instead of 4% for all max stats.
4. Gaze of Sithis mythic helm.
5. Or if you go with 3 sets (Like 5-piece Pariah or offensive set of choice, 3-piece Agility, and 3-piece Trainee) then Markyn Ring of Majesty Mythic. (Probably not worth it with just 2-sets)
***Build will vary if you're doing CP. I play no CP Cyrodiil so obviously builds are a lot different there. Just giving you ideas.
7. Ring of the Wild Hunt if you need to be really mobile or at least 1-piece of Swift trait jewelry. Maybe even 2 if you're not a race with a speed buff or using skills that give you short bursts of speed.
8. Be a Magplar or Magdk. Both seem to be OP right now and so many players are switching over to these 2 classes because they seem so much better than the rest. Their skills are just better, their healing is better, etc. etc.
9. Make sure you've got the max resources and recovery you need. If you don't have resources to use skills in a fight it probably won't matter much if your weapon or spell damage is high if you can't even use your skills.

tsaescishoeshiner

If you're getting 500k-1 million damage per match, especially in slightly outdated gear after a long break, you're still doing pretty good.

From what I've seen, the meta has really homed in more and more on defensive stalling until combos are ready. Like a sword-and-shield bar with damage shields, heals, and passive buffs like Revealing Flare combined with a really bursty damage/proc bar. %-based damage reductions, like Minor/Major Protection, are really important, especially in CP PvP with the new CP system.

I would drop Cutting Dive for Dizzying Swing—some people might use Cutting, but I see a lot of Dizzying in PvP. It now has a built-in stun. Sub Assault and Dizzying on their own are pretty strong right now.

I would personally skip New Moon Acolyte, only because the damage has been nerfed, and the skill cost increase really adds up. Heartland Conqueror or Clever Alch, like you said already, are popular damage/defense options. I don't think crafted purple jewelry is worth it.

Since you've been gone:

Food has changed, though I'm not sure if that was before or after you stopped playing. Any food that gives recovery, or is classed as a "Drink", now gives less Max Health/Stamina/Magicka than it used to.

Health Recovery is now halved in PvP. Arctic Blast is now an AoE stun. Light attack weaving is very important, but has gone up and down in damage.

Everyone now gets some base Critical Resistance in PvP, and the Impenetrable trait was nerfed (1-3 Infused tri-stat armor glyphs is popular now I think).

Alutora

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

Maichail wrote: »

When I say level 26, I meant Alliance War level. I'm CP 1500. I've unlocked everything. I can craft everything.

Thanks for the advice. I was always going to swap sets but couldn't work out what was wrong inherently before I started crafting or spending any gold\resources. In particular for any potential jewelry. I've only got enough to craft one set of purple rings\necklace to I need to try and not waste those resources.

Is it still heavy, or do I go with medium and reinforced? To help get the weapon damage up? Trade off with health I guess?

Clever alchemist was always on the list which I can craft in any weight.

Balorgh is mentioned a lot, but considering I use Dawnbreaker a lot which is low cost, I thought there might be other monster sets that are better for that play style.

I was also considering Plaguebreak or Dark Convergence, but I feel dirty just saying that :-)
I think I have most of those sets, just need a few more transmute crystals as I spent a lot recently.

I was also thinking about New Moon Acolyte (Craftable) or Dagons Dominion (I think I've got most of Dagon's from the Cauldren).

I think I'll craft Clever Alchemist, Plague Break, and New Moon Acolyte to start with and have a go.

Just need to confirm if it should be heavy and two medium, all heavy, or some other combination.

A good combination to run that ensure survivability and damage is Ancient Dragon guard and Titanborn. They work well together. When your health is above 50% and below 75%, which it probably is most of the time you get damage bonus from both sets and if your health drops below 50% the damage stats you gain from titanborn is slightly better damage stats than when you are above 75% health and your offensive pen stat increase ensure you can tear down your target rather quickly.

I still use spriggan as I like having higher pen.

Titanborn does not work currently. I’ve tested it on two characters already, and I never receive any bonuses based on missing health.