At least not now that there are so few campaigns, giving me nowhere to go without competing with just about everyone. I may have the skill, but I refuse to play a FotM, always-blocking, animation-cancelling build. And you know what? I do just fine without exploiting every single gameplay mechanic to my advantage. I ran from 0 AP to ~150 on the leader board on Sunday. I just don't have the time to keep that up long enough for it to matter.

But that's okay. I don't feel entitled to Emperor. It's only supposed to be for the best of the best, and while I feel I have the ability to do it, I just don't have the time to dedicate to it. So be it. I'm cool with that.

But I had a thought. Perhaps there could be some other limited perks for players who make it into the top 25 / 50 or so. That still takes a lot of dedication and I see no reason why it shouldn't be deserving of some sort reward. Maybe some sort of "Imperial Court" or something. Perhaps with its own title and skill tree. The while-active stat bonuses would have to be maybe 1/5 to 1/4 as good as the Emperor ones, and the "former" bonuses could be about the same. This is just a thought off the top of my head, so it hasn't been thought out as well as it could. Constructive feedback is appreciated.

Despite whatever else might keep me from topping the leader board, I think it's very possible I might just burn out on PVP long before then. I find the large sieges to be a lot of fun, but I see just as much downtime between fights, and I pretty much only encounter about three or so cookie cutter builds. Well, I probably encounter a lot more people who don't fit those builds, but nearly everyone who doesn't conform to these builds is pretty much a pushover and presents no threat, so I hardly remember it.

So what are these builds? First off, it's always magicka classes. People in dresses. I can tell by looking at the progress on my kill achievements. I have roughly 2-3 times as many kills on races with magicka bonuses. I guess I can't complain, seeing as I rolled a Breton templar on day one. I always played bretons and I wanted to be a healer. I gave no thought to PVP and had no clue what balance favored. Just a lucky guess.

So anyway, the first type you see is sorcerers with destro staves / shields and maybe the occasional resto staff. They're quite often vampires. Against groups, they're one of the two classes that seem to be able to withstand an assault from ten other players while spamming bats and Impulse. One-on-one, they surprise you with a knockdown, debuff you with something like Weakness to Elements / other sorcerer instant casts, and then proceed to spam Force Shock. All the while, their block is up and the best you can hope to accomplish is to burn down their stamina and put them on the true defensive (as opposed to offensive with a shield up). Once you manage that, they'll Bolt Escape their way halfway across Cyrodiil. Good luck catching them when you're stuck in combat for the next five minutes and can't mount up, despite not being in an actual fight the entire time.

Then there's DKs. They play just about the same with groups present; spampire AoE. Alone, you're going to see similar tactics to sorcs but with about 5000 uses of Flame Lash. Again, they'll be able to withstand just about anything you throw at them for what seems like an eternity, but if you wither them down, at least they have to stand and fight.

Breaking that mold is Nightblades. This is a build I can respect a bit more. Usually, they have a bow. They can pop out of stealth and down you in all of three seconds if they're good. It also probably doesn't help that I'm currently VR2 with only one impenetrable set piece and ~2600 HP in Cyrodiil. Then there's the dual wielding NBs that rely heavily upon rotating Shadowy Disguise / Concealed Weapon. Good nightblades hit harder single-target than anything else I've encountered. That said, the ones with bows can be taken out pretty easily if you survive their initial bursts. They just usually don't work alone.

No matter the class, it seems like anyone that presents a challenge is using Immovable. Please explain to me why this ability doesn't require heavy armor to be equipped. I don't see why players should have the single best aspect of the heavy armor tree without even wearing heavy armor (yes, even tanks are wearing dresses). I'd say it should require at least four pieces of heavy armor equipped in order to use it.

So while all of this might seem like a lot of complaining, and I'm sure I'll get a lot of "learn to play" posts, I still very much enjoy PVP. I may never reap the rewards of emperor unless I conform to these builds and find more time to play. Even if I devoted all of my free time to it, there will always be that one guy who plays 20 hours a day. But that's perfectly fine and I still have fun with it. It just would be nice to see some reward for my efforts.

There's just balance issues that are glaringly obvious and it's kind of grating after a while. I'm really not sure what to do about that besides changing Immovable and perhaps finding a way to combat the animation cancelling blockers. I guess the no-cooldowns nature of this game lends itself to extremely narrow and exploitable builds.

Speaking of grating, it doesn't help that the most vocal of players in Cyrodiil, and often the ones high up on the leader board, are constantly being rude and disrespectful in zone chat. They were doing this in my campaign when we had control of 2/3 of the map, all imperial keeps, and a solid 7000 point lead. There was absolutely no reason for it. It's no wonder so many people see PVP players as childish.

So that's quite the wall of text. In conclusion, I love and hate PVP, and I just wish there was more incentive for everyone other than the (quite often) man-child who gets crowned emperor.

P.S., for the record, I can and do beat players using these builds. I come out on top more often than not in 1v1. In fact, I'm built to hard counter vampires.