Best Answers

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  FluffyReachWitch

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  A quick way to get started is to watch zone chat and see if anyone's recruiting for groups. You'll have tons of time and opportunity to learn the basics of siege and defense.
  
  Always stop by the bounty boards at your gate for quests like "kill enemy players". When your group fights, it'll count toward the quest.
  
  Pick up the elder scroll capture quest from your grand warlord and hang onto it. When your side gets the scroll into your temple or keep, you complete the quest no matter your location in Cyrodiil, if you're online. You just have to revisit the warlord to get your reward.
  
  Check your mail sometimes. Rewards for the Worthy get sent roughly every 20K AP. (Maybe 25K. I forget.) The mail contains item rewards that you can deconstruct or use for PvP.
  
  And if you're questing, watch the map and try to avoid the front or the areas directly between contested keeps and outposts. You'll avoid enemy groups more often that way.

  #2

  March 2017

  Answer ✓

  5
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  davey1107

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  Welcome to pvp! May your life be long and your blade bloody. (Yuck...dunmer sayings...so gross). Anyway, some tips:
  
  Learning pvp
  
  Running with a group on voice chat is hands down the best way to learn. Not only will you survive more, people tend to discuss game play and strategies that will help you learn. It's very easy to pop into a busy campaign and put up a zone chat "lfg, magplar, prefer voice chat".
  
  But it's even more helpful (and fun) if you find a regular group to run with. You might look for a pvp guild on your server and try that out. I belonged to a pvp guild once, and it was cool to be able to jump into a group with people I knew any time.
  
  
  Pve in Cyrodiil
  
  Note that scouting and capturing resources isn't considered pve...it's still pvp even though you'll be fighting npcs. Anything that earns AP is classified as pvp. The only reason this is important is because you might try to look it up and not find what you're looking for. Anyway, some of the things to do in Cyrodiil include:
  
  - the five missions from the boards are a great source of AP. When I'm actively pvp-ing, I always carry all of them, just in case an opportunity arises. Note that if you get a crummy quest...like capturing a keep waaaaay at the edge of the map that your team never goes for...you can abandon the quest and pick it up again. Usually the RNG will generate other options, but sometimes it'll get stuck and force you to keep a specific quest. But that's one tip.
  
  And if you're running with a group, remember to share the quest with them if you're about to capture the required keep/resource. If you get "kill enemy players," offer to share it...people want this over like "kill dragon knights". Scouting is the only one that can't be shared. And feel free to ask your group. You're about to breach the outer wall of Ash. "Hey, does anyone have this capture to share?" If someone does, players are usually happy to share. (Make sure to abandon any other version of that quest you're holding).
  
  - delves and dolmens are pve content. There's a sky shard in each delve (16 total in each faction's zone when you include overland shards), and each delve has 2-5 bosses you have to kill for a delve complete.
  
  - each of the towns generate repeatable pve quests. They're very easy, and designed to blow time between pvp battles. But there's an achievement that lists the ten or so quests in each town. They're boring...stuff like "walk over there and kill a bear." But they reward decent xp.
  
  - Imperial City has its own pve quests, with multiple quests in each district. There are also sky shards, one in each district and seven down in the sewers.
  
  
  Assault and Support skills
  
  There are some decent skills in the assault and support lines. Of note, vigor is a great heal for stam characters...especially nightblades. Caltrops is fun and rocks...it might be even better in pvp. For magic toons, Magic detonation can be helpful. It really helps magplars up their dps.
  
  Siege shield is a somewhat specialized ability, but what the heck? Skill points are plentiful. Keep defense is a big way to earn AP. I have a slot on my bar that I'll bring in shield when I'm in a keep that's falling under attack. The damage mitigation is nice...but I really use it for the increased weapon distance. I also have the reach passives, so my range attacks get +5 meters and +4 meters. Enemies don't expect this, so I get a lot of AP finding the players who build their siege inside this range. Oops.
  
  Barrier is often overlooked, but sometimes I run this ultimate on my back bar. Usually if I'm ganking in a 2-4 person group. If we get into a tough spot, this throws a mega shield and heal on everyone. Sometimes it feels like a wasted slot, but it's saved my butt more than any other ultimate.
  
  
  Earning AP
  
  As a rule, I like to run my stam toons up to at least assault/support rank 6 for vigor and caltrops, and magic to a minimum of rank 7 for detonation. That's 188,000 AP total for six, and 308,000 for seven. (And don't complain, they used to be 1,400,000 and 2,500,000, lol.) The best AP generators, for me, are:
  
  Keep defense: defense pays way more than offense. Learn to identify big battles where your team can win. This isn't always easy...pvp-ers can be, I'm sorry, stupid, lol. It's really hard to convince your team to stop an assault that might win them 6k AP to go defend and earn 30k. But big, long successful defense is a mega-source of AP. I've occasionally gotten 100k defense ticks after a battle...40k opportunities can come along a couple of times on a busy night.
  
  Defense ganking: in any big battle, there's a gold mine of AP to be earned by killing off the attackers. Earning max AP from up on a wall means learning how to identify and execute a weak player. Don't drain resources by attacking everyone Willy-Nilly, which is what everyone does. Attack strategically.
  
  Let's say I'm playing a bow stam build and enemies are attacking an outpost I'm in. I'll go into sneak from just out of sight. Then look over the wall. The players in front are usually high level, many tanks or healers...not good targets. The weaker players will hang further back, often on siege. I'll find a single target and focus on them. Maybe even R3 highlight them. I then buff with major brutality for 20% more damage. I then activate mage light. Why? The Might of the Guild passive stacks another 20% damage onto my next attack within five seconds. I then unleash two snipes and a poison inject. The first snipe will get sneak bonus, 144% damage...if it crits it can hit for 15k. The first hits will tell me how squishy a player is and whether I should keep up the attack. Playing your magplar? In this case, be a little more of a healer. Buff your team. Keep the siege shields up so everyone can hit further. But watch for an enemy to get hurt and vulnerable. When I see someone at 35% health, I quickly doom them, magelight, radiant destruct.
  
  Sneak. Get into position. Watch. Wait. Identify. Slaughter. Laugh. The benefits to defending this way are: 1. You're participating in a defense for that big final AP tick, 2. Just tossing out abilities all over like people do can slow the attacking team, but actually taking out people is far more helpful, 3. I usually get around 1.5k AP for a kill like this, which beats the 125 AP you get from piling on with everyone else.
  
  Defense siege: as a noob, or even an experienced player, ain't no shame in sieging your way to higher ranks. Learn the difference in siege engines, though. And where/when to place them. I carry meatbag catapults for mid-range groups of players, fire and ice trebuchets for long range, and a full compliment of cold harbor siege (won by closing Cyrodiil dolmens or bought in guild stores...just make sure to buy your faction's siege). I also carry siege repair so I don't lose my cold harbors as much.
  
  Support your team by getting into a relatively safe position and siege where it helps the most. If a Zerg shows up and starts on the outer wall, I know they're probably going to get through. So I might go into the inner keep and set up siege that can still reach them. I can run 2-3 trebuchet and I won't have to relocate if they break the outer wall. If it's a smaller group, running 2-3 siege on the outer wall might be better...a cold harbor ballista and two meat bags, for example. Out in overland battles, siege can sometimes be helpful. If twenty people in front of you hit a twenty person counterforce, maybe throw up a cheap meat bag and get hits in this way. (Overland siege is risky. You'll die a lot, but such is life and war.)
  
  Resource capture: if it's a quiet night, my friend and I will go randomly capture resources. Often we match this with the repeatable quests for a little extra AP.
  
  Resource ganking: there's a defense bonus for resources too. A profitable game is to go somewhat deep into enemy territory. Preferably with a small group, maybe to a resource you have the quest for. Take it, then get into the tower or a strategic position and wait a bit. Your enemies will get PISSED someone took their farm, lol, and it never takes long before one or two get the idea to take it back. If a Zerg turns up, leave. If it's a smaller group you can handle, wait for the opportunity. Let them run into the middle of the quartet, thinking they'll slaughter them and win the flag. Then hit them hard as @&*£#%\ under a Khajiit's @*#%$& on a hot day in Rawlkha. Ha.
  
  The funny thing is, let's say it's you and one friend and two players come along and you kill them on the flag. You'll get like 1.2k AP for enemy 1 and 1.2k AP for enemy two, but then all this AP flows into the resource defense bucket, which you'll split with your friend for several more thousand AP. I've earned 80k on occasion by lucking into a good position where the enemy gets obsessed with sending single players to the resource over and over and over.
  
  Wall repairs: at 50-60 AP per repair, this is a slow grind. But some of my toons are just not fun to play pvp with, and some need a little AP boost regardless. A toon can get to vigor through spending about 150,000 gold on repair kits and doing nothing but repairing walls. (Some players I've advised hate pvp, so this is what they do). Carry lots of repair kits. If things slow down, go to one of your keeps. The ones way out on the edge are usually better. Most keeps have 2k-3k AP in repairs sitting around. It's utterly boring, but sometimes ill button mash while folding laundry or dusting or whatever. (More so on my first two toons, who earned a couple million to get their abilities unlocked).
  
  
  Hopefully this helps. I cut and paste from some general pvp tips I use for new players. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

  #3

  March 2017

  Answer ✓

  5