Small scale PvP? When?

Grandchamp1989

Hi friends

Today I've tried to get any resemblence of some fun PvP battle but it hasn't been fun for me.

Every single battleground I've gone for has been about chasing the chaos ball. I don't care for it one bit - I wanna fight in small scale PvP, not try to avoid fights by running with chaos balls or relics or flags or whatever.

Feeling discouraged I went to IC for maybe some fights.. Got zerged down by 7-8 blue trying to find a fight against maybe 1 or 2 people.
Didn't got to Cyro since the zerging would likely be twice or triple the numbers.

I want to improve my PvP skills and I learn very little from running away from fights with the chaos balls or having 10 people hit on me at the same it.

So my question is...

Why is it so hard to get any resemblance of a "fair" fight, in a true PvP style where the goal actually is to end your opponent?

If I don't feel like fighting 10 people alone or run after relics and chaos balls it seems I'm out of luck?

In a PvP game why is there not any 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 deathmatches I can que for?

Sorry for being a bit discouraged, I just miss team death match... I remember it being so much fun.

Pevey

There is always a lot of dueling going on in certain places. One is the undaunted enclave outside stormhaven. This is on PC NA, other servers may have different informal hubs for dueling.

divnyi

Don't we all? People were asking to remove this stupid 3-side thing from BGs and give a separate Deathmatch queue for ages.
ZOS ran "deathmatch test" where they forced everyone to play deathmatch only - which made PvPers happy, got bunch of negative feedback from PvErs and objective lovers and switched back to no option.

PC EU dueling spot is Bergama in Alikr desert.

xFocused

Never understood why Battlegrounds is still a 3 faction system. Make it two teams and just have a deathmatch only queue. Small scale, no crazy objectives, no getting teamed up on by the other two teams...

Merforum

Unfortunately the DMers on the forums convinced ZOS that DM was popular and they tested it and IT WAS NOT. But even though you guys created this mess for yourselves, I think ZOS should keep the queues they have now and add another DM only queue. Then everyone will be happy. I'd even say that the random queus should get rid of the silly leaderboards and put the leaderboard only on the DM only queue make you all even more happy. If the pop grew at that point allow 2,3,4,8 per team.

gariondavey

Merforum wrote: »

Unfortunately the DMers on the forums convinced ZOS that DM was popular and they tested it and IT WAS NOT. But even though you guys created this mess for yourselves, I think ZOS should keep the queues they have now and add another DM only queue. Then everyone will be happy. I'd even say that the random queus should get rid of the silly leaderboards and put the leaderboard only on the DM only queue make you all even more happy. If the pop grew at that point allow 2,3,4,8 per team.

Sorry but this is wrong.
But yes that would have been the right course of action.

Merforum

gariondavey wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

Unfortunately the DMers on the forums convinced ZOS that DM was popular and they tested it and IT WAS NOT. But even though you guys created this mess for yourselves, I think ZOS should keep the queues they have now and add another DM only queue. Then everyone will be happy. I'd even say that the random queus should get rid of the silly leaderboards and put the leaderboard only on the DM only queue make you all even more happy. If the pop grew at that point allow 2,3,4,8 per team.

Sorry but this is wrong.
But yes that would have been the right course of action.

Can't you see I'm looking out for you in the solution. A little self-reflection as to why we got here might help people to not make the same mistake. If instead of spinning the fake narrative about DM being popular (BTW who cares anyway), you all just focused on getting a DM only or specific queue ADDED, it might have happened long ago. But instead you drove away all but 30 DMer just to have fun for 6 months and get back to same spot we started. You have to ask yourself if winning arguments on forums but making the game worse is a logical strategy.

divnyi

@Merforum nobody shared the stats on DM queue vs objectives queue. IDK where do you get your info from.
Do you think DMers didn't push for separate queues? Blame ZOS, not DMers.

Ppl go for this "not enough ppl" argument about splitting queues. But if ZOS implemented 3v3 there would be much shorter queues. If it was also DM Ranked, I can see lots of PvPers sitting there and trying to get highest ranks.

Nothing happens ofc, because ZOS doesn't care for BG population. Nothing happened for this game mode for years.

Merforum

divnyi wrote: »

@Merforum nobody shared the stats on DM queue vs objectives queue. IDK where do you get your info from.
Do you think DMers didn't push for separate queues? Blame ZOS, not DMers.

Ppl go for this "not enough ppl" argument about splitting queues. But if ZOS implemented 3v3 there would be much shorter queues. If it was also DM Ranked, I can see lots of PvPers sitting there and trying to get highest ranks.

Nothing happens ofc, because ZOS doesn't care for BG population. Nothing happened for this game mode for years.

You can NOT say ZOS doesn't care or listen to you all because why did they even bother to do a DM only test. And more importantly why was it not ADDED instead of replacing the rando queue. Specifically because they BELIEVED all the DMers who said DM was popular and queues would be too long with both. BTW THE TEST TELLS US DM WAS SO LOW POP AS TO BE UNSUSTAINABLE. What other stat do you need.

BTW I said it for 2 years for you all to be careful what you asked for. And you all were giddy when it was DM ONLY. There are 2 scenarios from ZOS's point of view they believed you all and it turned out to be wrong OR the PUNK'D all of us with the silly test. But like I said if we would focus more on solutions that help everyone rather than petty squabbles about which pop is more the forum would be better and if ZOS takes any suggestions seriously the game will be better.

So like I said I think a great next step should be to optionally remove leaderboard from rando. ADD a DM only queue with leaderboard. If Pop is low for DM only, reduce player count, to maybe 4v4 instead. Maybe have smaller maps. Maybe shorten to 10 min. Maybe add some cool stuff like fighting as werewolf behemoths or with cyro hammer skills. ETC. BTW I would want this to help everyone enjoy the game more, but also selfishly to be able to do rando BGs again without having DMers ruining it as much. WIN WIN.

divnyi

@Merforum I am a developer myself and I understand what kind of work you need to do to change queue from all objectives to DM and back. If that's what you mean by "care" then it's clearly not nearly enough.

Did you play BGs back in the days? It is not true that they were low pop. At least at PC EU they were all good.
Even if there was some population drop, those were PvErs queueing in for random dailies for exp. Nothing of value was lost.
Also we didn't get any numbers from devs. We only know their decision. Which can be made based on other parameters than just population.

We don't need "leaderboards". We need ranked. Even their card game will have ranked, while their actual PvP has no ranked. Should we call their card game true PvP then?

xDeusEJRx

Merforum wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

@Merforum nobody shared the stats on DM queue vs objectives queue. IDK where do you get your info from.
Do you think DMers didn't push for separate queues? Blame ZOS, not DMers.

Ppl go for this "not enough ppl" argument about splitting queues. But if ZOS implemented 3v3 there would be much shorter queues. If it was also DM Ranked, I can see lots of PvPers sitting there and trying to get highest ranks.

Nothing happens ofc, because ZOS doesn't care for BG population. Nothing happened for this game mode for years.

You can NOT say ZOS doesn't care or listen to you all because why did they even bother to do a DM only test. And more importantly why was it not ADDED instead of replacing the rando queue. Specifically because they BELIEVED all the DMers who said DM was popular and queues would be too long with both. BTW THE TEST TELLS US DM WAS SO LOW POP AS TO BE UNSUSTAINABLE. What other stat do you need.

BTW I said it for 2 years for you all to be careful what you asked for. And you all were giddy when it was DM ONLY. There are 2 scenarios from ZOS's point of view they believed you all and it turned out to be wrong OR the PUNK'D all of us with the silly test. But like I said if we would focus more on solutions that help everyone rather than petty squabbles about which pop is more the forum would be better and if ZOS takes any suggestions seriously the game will be better.

While I do agree with your statements about improving BGs, saying TDM only caused BG pop to drop so low to be unsustainable is blatantly wrong. ZOS themselves said that the tests did not significantly impact the participation in BGs or population throughout it.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/586410/upcoming-changes-to-battleground-queues/p19

Meaning that if the BG population was bad during, it was probably low to begin with anyways. The only reason they chose to not add in multiple queue options (TDM and non-tdm), as they said is they think it would splinter BGs more and lead to worse queues.
Which IMO is wrong, the reason battlegrounds cant grow is because of the clashing of these two groups of players, and it's clear on both sides people are dodging BGS because they don't enjoy how bg's are setup for both the TDM test and normal BG queue system.
The best choice of options would be to just properly add in the queues and then decide if it will impact the population as ZOS seem to want to believe. I doubt it would, though

Merforum

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

@Merforum nobody shared the stats on DM queue vs objectives queue. IDK where do you get your info from.
Do you think DMers didn't push for separate queues? Blame ZOS, not DMers.

Ppl go for this "not enough ppl" argument about splitting queues. But if ZOS implemented 3v3 there would be much shorter queues. If it was also DM Ranked, I can see lots of PvPers sitting there and trying to get highest ranks.

Nothing happens ofc, because ZOS doesn't care for BG population. Nothing happened for this game mode for years.

You can NOT say ZOS doesn't care or listen to you all because why did they even bother to do a DM only test. And more importantly why was it not ADDED instead of replacing the rando queue. Specifically because they BELIEVED all the DMers who said DM was popular and queues would be too long with both. BTW THE TEST TELLS US DM WAS SO LOW POP AS TO BE UNSUSTAINABLE. What other stat do you need.

BTW I said it for 2 years for you all to be careful what you asked for. And you all were giddy when it was DM ONLY. There are 2 scenarios from ZOS's point of view they believed you all and it turned out to be wrong OR the PUNK'D all of us with the silly test. But like I said if we would focus more on solutions that help everyone rather than petty squabbles about which pop is more the forum would be better and if ZOS takes any suggestions seriously the game will be better.

While I do agree with your statements about improving BGs, saying TDM only caused BG pop to drop so low to be unsustainable is blatantly wrong. ZOS themselves said that the tests did not significantly impact the participation in BGs or population throughout it.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/586410/upcoming-changes-to-battleground-queues/p19

Meaning that if the BG population was bad during, it was probably low to begin with anyways. The only reason they chose to not add in multiple queue options (TDM and non-tdm), as they said is they think it would splinter BGs more and lead to worse queues.
Which IMO is wrong, the reason battlegrounds cant grow is because of the clashing of these two groups of players, and it's clear on both sides people are dodging BGS because they don't enjoy how bg's are setup for both the TDM test and normal BG queue system.
The best choice of options would be to just properly add in the queues and then decide if it will impact the population as ZOS seem to want to believe. I doubt it would, though

You know full well Gina said "First, it’s valuable to note the general feedback on this test was quite polarizing. While there were certainly a lot of players that liked only having Deathmatch available, there were just as many that didn’t enjoy it. A frequent complaint we saw, though, was the disappointment that we removed something that is ultimately at the core of our game: the freedom of choice. And in the case of this test, the data appeared to back that up as well. Although we initially saw a very slight bump in participation, it QUICKLY DECLINED and has left Battleground populations in a fairly UNHEALTHY STATE."

This was the deathmatch ONLY test result - UNHEALTHY STATE. THAT IS THE RESULT. Then they tried to TRICK a bunch of people by making a FAKE random queue that only always filled the DM only queue. "freedom of choice my butt". After that ALSO FAILED, is when Gina said "no significant affect on participation or POPULATION". You are being disingenuous by hiding the CONTEXT of what actually happened. DM ONLY destroyed BG POP and FAKE rando didn't help that.

EXACTLY what I said at the time, https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7424675/#Comment_7424675
But I also always said the solution was to keep the random queue with no change and ADD the DM only queue THAT DOES NOT BACKFILL. [snip]

You are right DMer and non-DMers with NEVER see eye to eye, putting them together in any way will ruin the game for each of them. They need to separate the queues. I believe a random queue will explode if no DMers are in it. And equally a DM only will explode too. And ZOS wouldn't have to make any changes to the rando but could focus on making the DM only much more fun for DMers. Like different #s of people 2v2v2 or 6v6 or 4v4 or whatever, make smaller maps, etc. Add leaderboard or ranked, don't care about that but some people seem to think this would be good and are 2 different things and ZOS should give it to them if it isn't too much trouble.

[Edited for Baiting]

divnyi

@Merforum the trick is, DMers still play now, even with the *** queues.
Don't do objectives and kill everything they see, but it's still the best smallscale PvP we have.

Doesn't mean people will not accumulate hate for objective modes and close ESO at some point because it doesn't bring joy anymore.

A frequent complaint we saw, though, was the disappointment that we removed something that is ultimately at the core of our game: the freedom of choice

Ironic, and they took away the ability to choose DM we once had.

Merforum

divnyi wrote: »

@Merforum the trick is, DMers still play now, even with the *** queues.
Don't do objectives and kill everything they see, but it's still the best smallscale PvP we have.

Doesn't mean people will not accumulate hate for objective modes and close ESO at some point because it doesn't bring joy anymore.

A frequent complaint we saw, though, was the disappointment that we removed something that is ultimately at the core of our game: the freedom of choice

Ironic, and they took away the ability to choose DM we once had.

Yeah, BGs hasn't had freedom of choice since before I even tried it about 3 years ago, except solo or group. I do believe with minimum effort they could add a DM only queue that does NOT backfill for a real test. And if my theory is correct the random queue will grow without DMers in it. Although I think they should add the 10 transmute 1 time4 daily reward to BG rando, to grow pop and reduce fake tank/healers.

Then they can watch the DM only queue, and allow different #s of people 2 or 3 or 4 groups, 1 or more people per group, really anything until they get the right balance. Also I think ZOS should implement GROUP DUEL, where if you challenge someone to a duel and both of you are in a group the whole group fights against the other group. But I think you can do this in cyro or IC right now, can't you make a faction group and have your friends in another faction make a group and log in to cyro and find a deserted location and do group fights and stuff like that already?

geonsocal

if you go to cyro, check out the outpost action, or maybe alessia bridge...

there's normally people there whom are looking for 1 v 1's or small scale...

xDeusEJRx

Merforum wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

@Merforum nobody shared the stats on DM queue vs objectives queue. IDK where do you get your info from.
Do you think DMers didn't push for separate queues? Blame ZOS, not DMers.

Ppl go for this "not enough ppl" argument about splitting queues. But if ZOS implemented 3v3 there would be much shorter queues. If it was also DM Ranked, I can see lots of PvPers sitting there and trying to get highest ranks.

Nothing happens ofc, because ZOS doesn't care for BG population. Nothing happened for this game mode for years.

You can NOT say ZOS doesn't care or listen to you all because why did they even bother to do a DM only test. And more importantly why was it not ADDED instead of replacing the rando queue. Specifically because they BELIEVED all the DMers who said DM was popular and queues would be too long with both. BTW THE TEST TELLS US DM WAS SO LOW POP AS TO BE UNSUSTAINABLE. What other stat do you need.

BTW I said it for 2 years for you all to be careful what you asked for. And you all were giddy when it was DM ONLY. There are 2 scenarios from ZOS's point of view they believed you all and it turned out to be wrong OR the PUNK'D all of us with the silly test. But like I said if we would focus more on solutions that help everyone rather than petty squabbles about which pop is more the forum would be better and if ZOS takes any suggestions seriously the game will be better.

While I do agree with your statements about improving BGs, saying TDM only caused BG pop to drop so low to be unsustainable is blatantly wrong. ZOS themselves said that the tests did not significantly impact the participation in BGs or population throughout it.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/586410/upcoming-changes-to-battleground-queues/p19

Meaning that if the BG population was bad during, it was probably low to begin with anyways. The only reason they chose to not add in multiple queue options (TDM and non-tdm), as they said is they think it would splinter BGs more and lead to worse queues.
Which IMO is wrong, the reason battlegrounds cant grow is because of the clashing of these two groups of players, and it's clear on both sides people are dodging BGS because they don't enjoy how bg's are setup for both the TDM test and normal BG queue system.
The best choice of options would be to just properly add in the queues and then decide if it will impact the population as ZOS seem to want to believe. I doubt it would, though

You know full well Gina said "First, it’s valuable to note the general feedback on this test was quite polarizing. While there were certainly a lot of players that liked only having Deathmatch available, there were just as many that didn’t enjoy it. A frequent complaint we saw, though, was the disappointment that we removed something that is ultimately at the core of our game: the freedom of choice. And in the case of this test, the data appeared to back that up as well. Although we initially saw a very slight bump in participation, it QUICKLY DECLINED and has left Battleground populations in a fairly UNHEALTHY STATE."

This was the deathmatch ONLY test result - UNHEALTHY STATE. THAT IS THE RESULT. Then they tried to TRICK a bunch of people by making a FAKE random queue that only always filled the DM only queue. "freedom of choice my butt". After that ALSO FAILED, is when Gina said "no significant affect on participation or POPULATION". You are being disingenuous by hiding the CONTEXT of what actually happened. DM ONLY destroyed BG POP and FAKE rando didn't help that.

EXACTLY what I said at the time, https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7424675/#Comment_7424675
But I also always said the solution was to keep the random queue with no change and ADD the DM only queue THAT DOES NOT BACKFILL. [snip]

You are right DMer and non-DMers with NEVER see eye to eye, putting them together in any way will ruin the game for each of them. They need to separate the queues. I believe a random queue will explode if no DMers are in it. And equally a DM only will explode too. And ZOS wouldn't have to make any changes to the rando but could focus on making the DM only much more fun for DMers. Like different #s of people 2v2v2 or 6v6 or 4v4 or whatever, make smaller maps, etc. Add leaderboard or ranked, don't care about that but some people seem to think this would be good and are 2 different things and ZOS should give it to them if it isn't too much trouble.

[Edited for Baiting]

She did say that yes, but that was like 1 month of the TDM test? How exactly can you judge the state of BG after about 1 month of testing at that point? Gina's second post was after MULTIPLE months of data testing. And what was ZOS's verdict after multiple months? The TDM test did not significantly impact population. Just because there's an initial dip doesn't disregard what Gina says. It's same as flames of ambition, the people who didn't like no proc, left for Ic and BGs then the population stagnated, not like we had a continual drop off. But there was still a significant enough population of people who liked no proc for zos to implement it permanently. Just because that saw a loss of players doesn't mean it isn't a popular way to play. These are similar precedents.
So it's not as if people DIDN'T want to play TDM as you are trying to make it seem, cause if that was the case it wouldn't have had an constant player rate as Gina stated. It's clear there's a significant enough population that like TDM, but it's obviously not gonna grow beyond that population because ZOS doesn't want to give people proper queueing.

Meanwhile with current queues it's not sunshine and rainbows is it? People still hate BGs as much as they did in TDM only, and people are griefing games once again like they used to.

ResidentContrarian

divnyi wrote: »

Don't we all? People were asking to remove this stupid 3-side thing from BGs and give a separate Deathmatch queue for ages.
ZOS ran "deathmatch test" where they forced everyone to play deathmatch only - which made PvPers happy, got bunch of negative feedback from PvErs and objective lovers and switched back to no option.

PC EU dueling spot is Bergama in Alikr desert.

It wasn't liked because everyone ran builds that caused stalemates since they knew what they were getting into, and that 4x tanky-healers getting killing blows is a better deathmatch tactic than anything else.

No one really died in the upper BGs in the deathmatches, causing either those players to leave and/or wait until they could match against "fresh" BG players and baptize them.

Players that think forced BGs were good, simply don't understand that they are only good when there is a huge difference in the power between builds and/or player experience. I know for a fact not a single player would call games that were completely stalemated with 0 deaths "fun". They talkin' bout when they were able to stomp players they thought were in the same bracket with their premades, but weren't.

Making new players play a mode that required them to have end-game gear to stand any chance at winning, due to how bad the game is balanced esp. with some of these mythics, is not exactly a good idea and it's not surprising the population died quickly.

divnyi

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

No one really died in the upper BGs in the deathmatches, causing either those players to leave and/or wait until they could match against "fresh" BG players and baptize them.

Excuse me but "objectives" meta is literally 50k permablock tanks, to stand on flags and bash enemys at relics, and survive endlessly on chaosball.

I don't buy this thing about "worst gameplay", it is not a thing. I've been queueing into relic/ball games as permablock when the queue option was present, I know what I'm talking about.

Besides, it's just not true about 0-kills during DM-only. We are not in procset meta. We are not in CP.
Players died. 2-5 deaths if every side is highest MMR equal size premades.
Lot, lot more in soloQ.

The7thLettter

High MMR DM on NA only queues were some of the best fights I have ever had in this game. Yes there were some stalemate fights, but for the most part in my experience, timing bursts with teammates and eventually popping opponents was super rewarding.

N3rD162

I mean if u get together a good 4-5man group you can wipe 20+ man groups with some coordination. It's sad that solo open world pvp kinda sucks but smallscaling is probably as strong as it has ever been rn. Shame the population isn't great rn tho.

CharlieFreak

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

Hi friends

Today I've tried to get any resemblence of some fun PvP battle but it hasn't been fun for me.

Every single battleground I've gone for has been about chasing the chaos ball. I don't care for it one bit - I wanna fight in small scale PvP, not try to avoid fights by running with chaos balls or relics or flags or whatever.

Feeling discouraged I went to IC for maybe some fights.. Got zerged down by 7-8 blue trying to find a fight against maybe 1 or 2 people.
Didn't got to Cyro since the zerging would likely be twice or triple the numbers.

I want to improve my PvP skills and I learn very little from running away from fights with the chaos balls or having 10 people hit on me at the same it.

So my question is...

Why is it so hard to get any resemblance of a "fair" fight, in a true PvP style where the goal actually is to end your opponent?

If I don't feel like fighting 10 people alone or run after relics and chaos balls it seems I'm out of luck?

In a PvP game why is there not any 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 deathmatches I can que for?

Sorry for being a bit discouraged, I just miss team death match... I remember it being so much fun.

Imp City used to be good for small scale fights. There was a good community of PvPers there. You're right that now it's often large guild groups coming in and zerging the districts and boss farming. I don't see it much from DC, usually AD is the one in there steamrolling everyone with a big zerg. It can vary, I suppose.

fred4

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

Why is it so hard to get any resemblance of a "fair" fight, in a true PvP style where the goal actually is to end your opponent?

That is the beauty and the pain of open world as a solo player.

You want duels. I'm not sure whether I'd send you straight to Bergama on PC EU, though. The people, there, tend to be very good and may run builds optimised for duelling, rather than open world. Having your behind handed to you repeatedly can get discouraging. I'd recommend starting with friends in that case. Also, the Bergama wayshrine established itself as a duelling spot, because the desert is flat and featureless. You're encouraged to not use the terrain, which is different to how open world fights usually go. Duelling will give you repeated encounters with the same people, though. Having that consistency helps greatly in figuring out your build and fighting style.

IC is simply busier these days than in days of yore, e.g. ever since it became it's own campaign. If you restrict yourself to the outer rims of the districts, rather than the flags, you increase the likelihood of running into other solo players, but it's not guaranteed. I find the great majority of open world fights are unbalanced, be that in terms of numbers or skill, or both. That's simply a fact of life. You steamroll someone or they steamroll you. The interesting fights are a minority. If you want to play solo, there are a couple of ways around that:

1. Be a cloaking nightblade or a streaking sorc. If you know IC well, there are ways for a sorc to streak to protected areas, e.g. they can escape even if the zerg following them is persistent. Basically these classes allow you to disengage when you run into fights you feel you can't win. Sorc is probably more straightforward. Cloak is the better disengagement method, if you can make it work. For that you will need a lot of speed or Shadow Image. There's more of a learning curve and it can be defeated by various methods of detection.
2. Group up with at least one other (good) player. Two is a whole lot better than one. You can also just watch the IC map, go from the sewers directly to where your faction is turning a flag, then follow them around.
3. If in trouble, head for the nearest building and jam yourself inbetween the stairs and the wall. This will usually result in a boring endless fight, but if you've never experienced that, do it and get a feel for how much damage you mitigate via line of sight.
4. Build tanky and block or use all Well Fitted and dodge roll a lot. This really depends on your experience and playstyle preference.
5. Build for speed and/or mitigation. Race Against Time, Shuffle, Mist Form, maybe Forward Momentum. One of those is a must. RAT tends to be essential for nightblades unless, perhaps, you use Shadow Image. The only class to which this probably does not apply is sorc, on account of Streak.
6. Build for high healing. It's tough to hold out against even just two good players in open field, without line of sight, but it can be done on a spec that trades damage away for healing and sustain, for example on a templar combining Living Dark, Radiating Regen, Echoing Vigor and Extended Ritual.

fred4

Addendum: If you solo play at the outer rim of the IC districts, as I recommended, you're basically nightblade fodder or you are one yourself. If you're doing mobs, remember that that's not your primary concern. Keep your buffs up. Be ready to dodge roll. You'll have to figure out how your build deals with nightblades. Do you need more health to survive the initial burst? How will you hang on and recover while they hammer you for a few seconds? You can be patient and block, preferably with 1H+S, before you try to turn the table. On the other hand, if you are a nightblade yourself, you may want to practice dodge rolling and immediate counter-attack, probably by duelling. Also: Don't blow your ultimate on mobs. Use mobs to generate ultimate, then keep it in reserve to fight players.

ATomiX69

Why bother changing now when youve been zergsurfing and Xv1ing for years.
Just embrace it.

HowlKimchi

You can look for fights in cyro. Fighting outnumbered is fun. You WILL die in the end though, and imo that's fine.