I say exploit not because it's broken or whatever people claim it to be.... i say exploit because it is to good for any kind of situation outside of 1v1 combat. Almost every single magicka build in game is using it. Were playing an AvA game... of course large groups are going to be present. There is now no comparison between stamina and magicka in AoE situations now because of magicka detonation and VD.

It's not that VD is an exploit... it's the fact it was implemented and became the "end all be all" of pvp. VD is now being exploited by guilds / groups and solo players to climb the leader-boards (in pvp) faster then anyone who is not and if your not doing the same.. you really have no chance at Emperor (its just the truth).

PvP consists of someone jumping on you with proxi + (Insert Ult/combo here) and you die. Healing your allies / re-positioning doesn't exist anymore... your put down to 100-0 instantly with very slim counter-play (not saying it's impossible but majority of my guilds deaths are because of this combo and were not stacked at all). You don't even need to be in a large group. You could be with 2 other people and that would be your down fall because of magicka det and VD combo's. I guess the scaling changes coming in DB will help but it still wont change much.

If i could have my way, i would remove Vicious Death and Magicka Detonation then bring back dynamic ultimate regeneration. I would also increase the amount of damage ground based ult's do and siege damage based on the number of targets hit like magicka detonation. You could also remove AoE cap's...

Negate, Standard, Veil of Blades, Nova's should be those ball group killers if buffed and used properly. It should not be magicka detonation and VD 1 shot crap. It should be coordinated ultimate bombing with small scale groups. Small scale groups could also take on larger groups if dynamic ult gen was a thing. Small groups will always be trying to bite off more then they can chew against larger ones but thats where dynamic ult gen helps out so much. This VD proxi meta is an issue imo.

Large numbers will always have an advantage. Which is why in open world they will always win. However once you get to a keep, 20/20 siege makes it fair game. Forward Camps also help defending or assaulting when out maned. Bottle necking your opponents is also a great strategy (we need more houses/walls inbetween heavy traffic area's between keeps imo).

I'm very disappointed with the pvp dev team and the direction they took with VD and magicka det. We would be so much better off without them. Players would actually have to use smart positioning and flanking to pull feats off... not jump in to 10+ people like some suicide bomber and profit from it.

Just my 2 cents.


Here's a video i'd like people to see. This is something that really isn't possible anymore with the current meta and changes we have received in the latest patches. This is close to the kind of pvp i would like to see but in reality we just don't have it anymore.

The one thing that ruins this kind of pvp is magicka det (magicka det in the video is a lot different compared to now, scaling is much lower) and vd. Without these two things, a guild vs guild fight would actually be interesting since purge/barrier/rapids is capped to 6 people. That gives opportunity to look for people to single target down while the fight starts. The fight then would effectually be brought down to only a few people left.

What you'll see in this video is what i imagined i'd get to do in this game. Sadly it's nothing like that today... i envy the fights and movement showcased in this video.