PVP walkthrough for new players as of June 2015

Zheg · June 2015

To our console friends, I'll begin by reaffirming that the vitriol we PC players have right now is directed solely at ZOS and how they outright ignored PC for 4+ months; we have nothing against you, and welcome more players and potentially more funding for content.

Since there are probably many new players, here's a pretty basic run down of good things to know when it comes to the current pvp state:

Sieging

Stone based siege do more damage than other siege, but you must spend AP instead of gold to purchase them. Don't be stingy and buy them!
Rams do enhanced damage to gates. You must have 3 or more players in the vicinity of the ram for it to do any damage. The more players you have on it (up to 6) the more damage it will do. Once a ram is placed on the ground, it will take on a mind of its own and start rolling to the nearby gate as long as a player is near it (it goes faster if there are more players).
Trebuchets take longer to load but do higher damage on impact than ballistas.
Fire based siege is preferable to use against enemy players, or as counter siege if an enemy is attacking your keep/outpost. If you are hit with this, you will want to use a purge immediately after.
Oil must fall at least 9 meters before doing damage, and is best used on top of walls where enemy players will be standing under or running through. Oil hurts a LOT if it isn't purged off.
Meatbag catapults will debuff the healing capacity of the players you hit, this can be purged off.
When sieging a keep or outpost, NEVER aim at the door to postern walls, you will not do any damage. You can hit the stairs in front of the door, or the wall adjacent to the door.
You can only damage walls/gates with siege, your player attacks won't work.
You have a good chance of receive cold harbor siege (better versions of regular siege) from the final chest upon a cyrodiil dolmen completion.
When using siege, stand in the middle of your siege so it's harder for enemy players to target you. You don't need to stand on your siege the entire time, if you see an enemy treb about to go splat on your face, probably a good idea to move off it temporarily.

Map Objectives

Resources - there are three resources for each keep (Lumbermill [aka LM], Farm, and Mine). If all three resources are controlled by the enemy, your alliance cannot use the transitus network to travel to the keep, but you CAN respawn there (aka bloodport) if you die to enemy alliance npcs or an enemy player (as long as it hasn't been bursted). Dying to a wolf doesn't work for blood ports. Controlling the lumbermill of a keep you're attacking will reduce the defense of gates. Controlling the Farm reduces the HP of the keep npcs. Controlling the Mine reduces the defense of the walls.
Scrolls - Each alliance has 2 scrolls, and they each have a color band (look at the middle of the scroll). Your alliance must own it's own scroll of a particular color (i.e. Orange) if you want to be able to pick up an enemy's scroll of matching color. If you own your orange scroll, you can't pick up an enemy scroll unless it's also orange. If you flip a keep that already has an enemy scroll placed there that doesn't match the scroll, that's fine, but you can't move it until your alliance gets its own scroll back. The scrolls each provide small buffs, but the buffs are more or less useless and more often than not the scrolls are just used to farm players. You can always see the location of a scroll on the map, even if it's being moved. You will drop a scroll if you log out or enter a delve. You cannot pick up a scroll if you're being damaged (it's a good idea to place caltrops on your scrolls if an enemy is trying to pick it up).
Outpost - these only have one level of defense (gate or either of the two postern walls) and are quicker to take and a little harder to defend than a keep. You can use the transitus to travel TO an outpost, but you cannot use the transitus to travel FROM an outpost. There are no archer guards at the top level at outposts.
Keeps - these have two levels of defense (outer and inner). The outer can be breached at a postern house, wall, or gate. The inner can be breached at a gate, or postern wall. At inner, there are npc archers at the top level that hit hard, it's usually a good idea to take these out. BEWARE the grate at the top level of inner - any kind of knockback will cause you to fall through most likely to your death.
Flipping Objectives - to flip a keep/resource/outpost, the number of friendly players standing in the vicinity of a flag must outnumber the enemy players standing in the vicinity of the flag for a period of time. The more friendly players you have on the flag, the faster it will flip. Outposts and keeps must have both flags flipped for the objective itself to flip to that alliance's control.

Defending Objectives Under Siege

When a Keep or Outpost has a wall or gate below 50% health and has been recently attacked with siege, it will become "burst" and have a little explosion icon on the map that indicates your alliance can no longer teleport to it.
When a wall or gate is completely broken (0% health), players refer to that as the 'breach' and it will allow enemy players to go through it
Repairing - if you repair an outer wall to 25%, it will form a barrier that will prevent enemy players from going through it. Inner walls must be repaired to 90% before they reappear. You cannot repair a wall or gate that has been recently attacked with siege. Repairing gates awards more AP than walls (70 vs about 30). I'd recommend using gold to buy repair items, don't waste your AP.
It's always a good idea to leave caltrops on the breach in case enemy players are trying to stealth in.

Attacking Objectives

One of the most important aspects of attacking a keep or outpost is the 'push' once the wall/gate is down. Good players will group up, cast rapid manuevers, and not attack until they've arrived where they want to. If the objective is well defended, it's also good to have someone in the group cast Barrier before running through. Your group should be healing and purging as you run, if you attack, you cancel the effects of rapid manuevers, and can be rooted/separated from your group. If enemies are dropping oils on the breach, it's best to time your 'push' after you see them drop the oil and before they have a chance to recharge.
Most of the time it's prudent to run upstairs and clear threats away before trying to flip flags, lest you get oil dumped on you and wipe.

AP

This is awarded for killing players, turning in pvp quests, and completing map objectives.
O (offense) ticks - when you take a map objective (resource/keep) you get a very small amount of AP. If enemy players were killed in the process, the AP for the O tick greatly increases, and will be spread amongst all friendly players in range of the objective when it flips to your alliance. It's wise to not chase kills before you get the tick lest you miss it.
D (defense) ticks - when you defend a map objective and enemy players are killed, all friendly players in the vicinity of the objective will get a D tick (also divided among whoever is present) so long as no one else has died within 60 seconds of the last death (*Edited* might be 90, but 60 sounds right). You probably don't want to go run off for kills/to flip another resource before the tick goes off. You may get D ticks at all obvious map objectives, but you can also get D ticks at the gate to your scrolls if your alliance is in the unfortunate position of being attacked there.
If you kill any boss inside of a cyrodiil delve, you will get a buff that increases your AP gains that will last for an hour. Beware going into delves in large groups all at once as you run the risk of fighting the loading screen boss.
You can buy gear from npc vendors using AP. Ravager set pieces and Cyrodiil's Light rings are the most valuable from the pieces you can purchase directly. There are many valuable sets you can get as random drops from the RNG bags (and many crappy sets as well).

Troll Stuff/Exploits/Things to be Wary of

Water surrounding cyrodiil and the rivers that have bridges in the SE portion of the map have slaughterfish and will om nom nom you to death quickly.
NB and DK can exploit into outposts by targeting guards. Do not do this, and shame those in your alliance that you see doing this. ZOS is an absolute joke when it comes to dealing with exploiters, but that doesn't mean players should abide it. Sometimes, if a player is going through a door and a NB has tried to Ambush them, they can teleport inside with the player. Most of the time this is on accident (though not always...), as I know I run like hell to get out if it happens when I play my NB so I don't get zerged. DK's can use Dragon Leap to go from outer wall of a keep to the inner wall in certain spots. If you see a bunch grouped up on the edge, probably best to not walk up to the edge so they can target you and leap to you. Devs have ignored this forever, so don't expect them to do anything about it. DK's can also leap onto the tower at resources if someone is standing on the 2nd level in certain spots (NB can ambush onto the tower in certain spots, but fewer than DK).
Though ZOS will edit/close any thread that mentions this, many players have collected a plethora of anecdotal evidence that indicates certain players will purposefully use skills/whatever in such a way that it intentionally lags out the server. One component of this seems to be meteor spamming, so if it sounds like artillery fire and none of your skills are going off, send a thank you note to ZOS and the players that are purposefully causing the lag. When this happens, usually whoever has more numbers there will win by capping flags/etc. - you don't want to use any skill with cast times as they'll get stuck. Light attacks are the best to use.
At Glade/Arrius/Faregyl, beware enemy groups that make it to inner, go upstairs, and begin sieging the stairs. They are technically damaging the roof, and once it breaks, the stairway breaks and you have to have a good running start to be able to make it up there. This group can have the keep be under constant siege because the roof is broken, but it's very difficult for friendly players to make it up to the top of the stairs to kill them.
Be wary when flipping an enemy resource. If a large group is waiting in the resource tower, they can set up siege/oil and farm those who go through the door after your alliance has flipped the flag. Some players will want to siege down the tower before a resource is flipped so they have no where to hide. As a DC player, it's unfortunate, but this typically happens at Glade and Ales and DC players are dumb enough to get farmed over and over inflating the egos of the group trolling them. If this happens, just leave the resource. The troll group will leave the tower when the AP flow stops.
There is likely an exploit floating around where you will be attacked by 3 wrecking blows or 3 snipes, etc., in sometimes less than a second. Feel free to /sigh, and vent in your TS channel, but don't expect ZOS to do anything about it. There are legitimate openers that will down most players in less than a second though - if you cast a skill like Snipe and then use a skill like Ambush as the arrow flies, you hit all at once and most players die before being able to react. This isn't so much an exploit as it is a trolly ganker style, but it does bring in the AP bacon pretty quick...
Sorcs will bolt away for miles if they're about to die, so if they start doing it and you don't have a good chance of catching them, just let them run off. ZOS has allowed this since launch, so it's here to stay most likely. There are more stam builds that allow players to almost infinitely dodge roll, but you can still attack them if timed right, or if using a magicka melee skill like Concealed Weapon.
Stacking damage shields is and has been the meta in PVP for a long time now. Accept it, and run them yourself. Sorcs reap the benefits more than anyone right now with the way magicka scales for hardened ward AND for their dps.
Some players will exploit map terrain to get on top of the mile gates to put oil there; it's an exploit, don't do it.

Misc Info

If all 6 inner keeps are controlled by one faction and there is no current emperor, or the emperor is of another faction, whoever has the highest AP (rank 1 on leaderboards) for that alliance will be crowned emperor. They will remain emperor until all 6 keeps (at the same time) are no longer under that alliance's control.
The top 2% (within your alliance) of leaderboards at the end of campaign get gold-tier rewards.
The top 10% (within your alliance) of leaderboards at the end of the campaign get purple-tier rewards.
7 day campaigns give 1 item as a reward, 2 week campaigns give 3 items, and month long campaigns give 5.
ZOS doesn't tell you what % you are on leaderboards, so a good way to check is to have an alt home at the campaign, get a small single AP tick (repair a wall once or something), wait the few minutes until it registers on the leaderboards, and see what position your alt is in. It's likely close to the total number of players homed at that campaign, and you can do math to figure out what position you need to be for 2% or 10%.
The time to kill is VERY low in the current meta, so run glass cannon builds at your own risk, and forego dmg shields at your own risk.
Be mindful of when to use dodge/CC break based on your stam levels and regen. If you know you're only stunned for 1 second, maybe don't waste all of your stam breaking free.
Many players run nirnhoned pieces because of the insane spell resist it allows you to have. ZOS is probably changing this, but they've had so many bugs with nirnhoned over the past 6+ months, and they're so slow at any kind of pvp change that I would anticipate this remaining the meta for a while.
Proximity Detonation/Inevitable Detonation were added in as zerg buster skills, but that doesn't mean they aren't good against single targets so be wary. Most zergs can clump up and outheal any prox det or siege on them. The meta heavily favors whoever has more numbers (sorry DC!) and whoever is currently dominating (emperor, emperor health bonus, keep bonus).
Your alliance will get an added boost if you control your 'home' keeps. For DC, this is rayles, warden, glade, ash, ales, and dragonclaw.
Ayleid well bonuses should be activated with other people present so everyone gets the 10% hp buff. Because of ZOS logic, AD has about 10 on their section of the map, EP has 0, and DC has 1 (yes, seriously, AD has that many).
If you heal a friendly player in combat and they've killed someone recently, you get a small chunk of AP.
LM = lumbermill, UA = under attack, burst = a wall or door is at <50% health.
When calling out enemy player locations, say which alliance and about how many. Call out in /zone enemy positions when you see groups, directions they're running in, enemies sieging a keep (and at what % the wall/gate is at), and which side of a keep you and your friends may have sieged down so friendlies know where to locate the breach and reinforce you.
There is a bug with charge animations where sometimes you will get stuck and can't move at all. If this happens you either need an enemy player/npc close enough to use a charge skill to move again, or you need to be out of combat and use the /stuck to respawn.
There are many bugs that cause you to not use doors, or not use skills. Most of the time you can fix it by weapon swapping and/or dodge rolling. Sometimes there is a bug where you can't weapon swap, and dodge roll usually fixes it. These have been around for a while now, so just learn to live with it.

I'm sure I'm forgetting things, and some of the numbers might have been off, so feel free to correct me. I think this is a pretty comprehensive guide to useful tips for any new pvp players though, so enjoy, and if you're a DC NA PC player, head into a campaign and help balance the lopsided numbers until/if ZOS ever addresses it.

Soulac · June 2015

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Ps:
Def tick cooldown is 60s as far as I know.

Legedric · June 2015

You cannot use skills like cloak (invis) or mist form while carrying a scroll or you will drop it

Not true.

I always use vampire mist form and maneuvers to speed up my scroll run and I am almost as fast as someone riding on a horse next to me...

The 2% and 10% leaderboard limits are counting for YOUR faction, so you have to be within the top 2% of DC to get a reward, not overall leaderboards. Just to avoid confusion

Great guide, even for "older" PC players

IxSTALKERxI · June 2015

Legedric wrote: »

You cannot use skills like cloak (invis) or mist form while carrying a scroll or you will drop it

Not true.

I always use vampire mist form and maneuvers to speed up my scroll run and I am almost as fast as someone riding on a horse next to me...

You can also use cloak (invis) while carrying a scroll. They changed this a couple of months ago. You remain visible though. Only way to drop a scroll now is logging out, die or entering a delve / leaving cyrodiil.

Armitas · June 2015

Wow that was an impressive and comprehensive list.

Cogo · June 2015

Enter Cyro and do the start quest there
Buy sieges and repair kits for gold
Read the alliance war skills and all your available skills
Buy patience and anti lag potions in the crown store
Go to war
Die
Go to war again
Die
If you are still staying...you will start to learn.
Join public groups.....

Cogo · June 2015

Soulac wrote: »

Ps:
Def tick cooldown is 60s as far as I know.

Okay, that just rocks!

Come face me on Azura Mr Soul!

Lava_Croft · June 2015

On rams: You can get higher DPS on doors by just using regular siege equipment. The 6 people required to fill a ram can do more damage by operating trebuchets and ballistas.

This one was for you, Orka.

Zheg · June 2015

Updated with the corrections/suggestions, thanks.

To @Lava_Croft , if placed correctly, you can put down two ballista flanking the gate before placing the ram, and 2 people 'counted' for the ram can man those ballista while still being on the ram. Many pugs don't like to put down siege, but will put in the effort to walk over and stand on your ram with you. But yes, as you indicate, a ram alone will usually go somewhat slow as the only siege, trebs/ballista should always go up whether ramming or attacking a wall.

Pchela · June 2015

DC please take note that Chalman is not one of your home keeps.

Lava_Croft · June 2015

Zheg wrote: »

Updated with the corrections/suggestions, thanks.

To @Lava_Croft , if placed correctly, you can put down two ballista flanking the gate before placing the ram, and 2 people 'counted' for the ram can man those ballista while still being on the ram. Many pugs don't like to put down siege, but will put in the effort to walk over and stand on your ram with you. But yes, as you indicate, a ram alone will usually go somewhat slow as the only siege, trebs/ballista should always go up whether ramming or attacking a wall.

A ram is always slower than having those same people all use trebuchets or ballistas instead of a ram.

Zheg · June 2015

Pchela wrote: »

DC please take note that Chalman is not one of your home keeps.

If ever there was a time for the LOL button to make it's comeback, it would be today.

Dreyloch · June 2015

Someone should sticky this. Good for all players.

Legedric · June 2015

Dreyloch wrote: »

Someone should sticky this. Good for all players.

Too bad ZOS doesn't stick useful user generated threads at all...

DeanTheCat · June 2015

Excellent guide on mechanics of Cyrodiil. It's nice to see someone writing a guide on how to effectively siege keeps. I have seen so many newbies using Firebolt Balistas on postern doors.

Also, one thing you might want to expand on are the prefixes to each keep.

AD home keeps are called "Castles".
DC home keeps are called "Forts"
EP home keeps are called "Keeps"

Always prioritise control your home keeps before capturing any other keep. You only get the offensive keep bonuses if your alliance controls all 6 of their home keeps.

Shameless self promotion: Check out my guide to staying alive in Cyrodiil (Mainly targeted at new players)
Link to the guide is in my signature.

Cogo · June 2015

Dreyloch wrote: »

Someone should sticky this. Good for all players.

Actually yeah. Remove all our jibberjabber and keep the first post...as sticky in the alliance war section?

Kartalin · June 2015

Zheg wrote: »

To @Lava_Croft , if placed correctly, you can put down two ballista flanking the gate before placing the ram, and 2 people 'counted' for the ram can man those ballista while still being on the ram. Many pugs don't like to put down siege, but will put in the effort to walk over and stand on your ram with you. But yes, as you indicate, a ram alone will usually go somewhat slow as the only siege, trebs/ballista should always go up whether ramming or attacking a wall.

Depending on where you're at, you can't always get a second ballista next to the ram. But with enough room you can actually place a third ballista behind where the ram will be. It has a much smaller margin of error, but it has been done. The ballista on either side of the ram have to be set up first of course before the third goes in, and the issue is that sometimes those two can't be placed wide enough to get a third in behind. It can't be done everywhere, but can definitely be done on outposts.

Bouvin · June 2015

EP, please take note Drakelowe is not one of your home keeps.

Rylana · June 2015

Bouvin wrote: »

EP, please take note Drakelowe is not one of your home keeps.

It actually is.

Soulac · June 2015

Rylana wrote: »

Bouvin wrote: »

EP, please take note Drakelowe is not one of your home keeps.

It actually is.

Yap!
Drakelowe = EP
Dragonclaw = DC
Brindle = AD

Kartalin · June 2015

Also:

Nikel = AD
Sejanus = EP
Bleakers = DC

The gates and bridges separate each factions' area.

jrkhan · June 2015

Overall, the information is good - appreciate the detail.

You've inserted a few opinions in the exploits section that are somewhat debatable. E.g. Getting hit by 3 wrecking blows, might just be lag. Assuming it's an exploit is probably just going to frustrate new players. There are subtle clues when lag is occurring, and it helps to be able to recognize them rather than accuse the other player of hacking.

One tip:
If you take a bunch of burst damage, and you are able to move around, but can't cast any abilities, it means you've been killed and your client hasn't registered yet. People often describe it as "having their resources instantly drained" and make accusations that their attacker is hacking. Don't be that guy.

Note:
If you are killed by a single attack + camo hunter proc, only the proc will show on your recap. No one was hacking, it's just an issue with the recap screen.

Personally, I don't believe using gap closers to enter keeps is an exploit. It should be somewhat trivial for ZoS to find a way to prevent this (e.g. If a player was outside an area, and the target is inside a walled area with no breach, do not port to them)
I think it adds flare to keep seiges - do not have a false sense of security inside keeps.
I think there are non technical reasons why this feature has been left in, even if it was initially unintended. (Promotes more dynamic seiges)

Zheg · June 2015

jrkhan wrote: »

Overall, the information is good - appreciate the detail.

You've inserted a few opinions in the exploits section that are somewhat debatable. E.g. Getting hit by 3 wrecking blows, might just be lag. Assuming it's an exploit is probably just going to frustrate new players. There are subtle clues when lag is occurring, and it helps to be able to recognize them rather than accuse the other player of hacking.

One tip:
If you take a bunch of burst damage, and you are able to move around, but can't cast any abilities, it means you've been killed and your client hasn't registered yet. People often describe it as "having their resources instantly drained" and make accusations that their attacker is hacking. Don't be that guy.

Note:
If you are killed by a single attack + camo hunter proc, only the proc will show on your recap. No one was hacking, it's just an issue with the recap screen.

Personally, I don't believe using gap closers to enter keeps is an exploit. It should be somewhat trivial for ZoS to find a way to prevent this (e.g. If a player was outside an area, and the target is inside a walled area with no breach, do not port to them)
I think it adds flare to keep seiges - do not have a false sense of security inside keeps.
I think there are non technical reasons why this feature has been left in, even if it was initially unintended. (Promotes more dynamic seiges)

While lag in cyrodiil is nothing new, it's happened often enough and to enough people that aren't experiencing lag where all evidence seems to indicate players have indeed found a way to get abilities with cast times to fire off multiple times in less than a second. Sure, sometimes it's lag, but the cases I'm referencing are not due to lag.

As to the last part of your post, @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_BrianWheeler this is EXACTLY why you can't peace out on the forums for months on end and ignore everything. Players (not just this one) think that chaining/ambushing themselves through an unsieged door at an outpost is just fine and dandy and isn't an exploit. Now new players are going to see the lack of ZOS action/comment, realize they can get away with whatever exploits they want without repercussions, and the game just further devolves from there. When I called someone out in DC in /zone for doing this exploit, they said they were just using an ability from their skill line and it's a 'feature' (the word ZOS likes to use when they realize something is broken and they can't fix it so they just accept that it's going to be that way from now on). Gina, I'm making assumption that you simply aren't allowed to comment on things sometimes, hence your silence on pvp issues, vet levels, and a plethora of other items. Brian, as head of the pvp team, you have no excuse for allowing this kind of stuff to fester for months and not at least have an official comment on it.

jrkhan · June 2015

There's plenty of evidence that clouds often look like animals, but we're just making patterns out of randomness.
I've never seen a single screen shot with time stamps of this occurring. The few threads on this forum with timestamps have all been within normal game limits.

I'm not saying it's not happening, just that there's no reason to rule out lag or just lack of understanding of game mechanics.

On the other issue..
What about cases where a player can literally run and jump in to a resource tower?
While I agree ambush through a door is definately borderline and a "creative use of game mechanics", using a gap closer to reach a visible player or literally running and jumping in to a tower seems like.. how I'd expect gameplay to work. Why should a gap closer in which the player is leaping/teleporting not work over a gap? E.g.some charges don't allow this behavior - crit rush/invasion. Coding amush/leap to work like other existing abilities does not imply there is a technical barrier to implement it, if it was in fact unintended. Just because you don't think it's how it should work, doesn't make it an exploit.

Makkir · June 2015

Careful OP....I sense a slot trot towards a NERF SORC thread!

Zheg · June 2015

@jrkhan again, yes, it could be lag, but it seems unlikely when it's the same player and it happens to other people nearby and there's no other lag to be found. As to leaping, it can certainly be fun, and I think this is one of the more benign exploits, so long as it's not a group of 6 or 7 that are able to completely stop counter siege and defense. My bigger gripe is intentionally trying to chain/ambush through outpost doors to flip it without one siege being placed. That's a bunch of crap and the devs should never have been silent on this for as long as they have been.

@Makkir sorcs need to be balanced, not 'nerfed'. If you nerf hardened ward, then they're just paper and drop in a second. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to be able to get insane dmg and def by stacking one stat. ZOS will probably have to increase the base strength of hardened ward but make it scale on hp or something. ZOS already said they had fixes in the works for stam sorcs (lol... back in march...) so we'll see what the class looks like overall after the next major update. Either way, I'd like to avoid a sorc nerf/buff tangent discussion on this particular thread, there are a ton of those out there that could be necro'd.

King Bozo · June 2015

Well all of those pvp suggestions are great. I play pc and hit the xbox one today. I could walk into almost every keep today without siege. Nobody repairs lmao. This is were pvp is at in the console world lol.