what kind of weapons do you enjoy using?

would you rather be able to brawl or stay mobile and fight from distance?

how much gold do you have to invest in gear sets, do you have any of your armor/weapon crafting leveled?

grinding for a decent set should only take around 8 to 10 hours or so...both overland or dungeon - may not be perfect traits (assuming you don't have access to transmutation) or epic quality - but, still serviceable for battlegrounds or cyrodiil...

a lot of the decent overland sets can be had for 40k or less...although - sometimes guild store shopping feels more like grinding than actually going through dungeons...

prices on just about everything seem to be dropping...

what are you using now?

What faction ? Pm me ill help you out.

howdy @frakko ...

happy Friday to you...

i am most definitely not a top tier player - I play solo in cyrodiil and primarily enjoy zerg surfing...for what I enjoy i am pretty successful - which for me means killing a lot more folks than dying myself...

death in pvp is pretty enivitable though...

I've learned over time that it's more useful to build my characters for small scale action (imperial city mostly), because to me that's the most demanding...

most of my characters are geared towards not dying a lot

have done some battlegrounds, but, I just really enjoy the open nature of cyrodiil...

so, please take my comments in that context...

draugr hulk is good, bunches of stamina, and should definitely help you hit harder and keep up your stamina pool...

shacklebreaker is also an excellent set...it is a 6 trait set, so, it might take awhile to be able to craft...if you belong to a guild, you should be able to pick up the 5 pieces for around 20k or so, which is the approximate cost of mats (including glyphs)...

going 5 heavy and 2 medium armor pieces is definitely on point...

the monster set is going to be a bit more challenging to come by...

2 heavy pieces of alessian order for stam recovery (pvp set, should be fairly easy to come by in guild stores though) should be okay for replacing the monster sets...or, some 2 piece bonus which grants weapon damage...

trait wise, even in heavy armor, not a bad idea to wear 2 or 3 pieces of impenetrable gear (which sounds like you already have)...i try to have at least 1.5k or greater critical resistance, the cp passive can help make up the difference ...

personally I also prefer going with infused on my large pieces of gear (head, chest, legs), and use divines on the other pieces...

for weapons, I tend to go with precise to help boost my own crit chances, but, sharpened and infused traits can also be very effective...

glyph wise - health or stamina on the armor should help...you can really get creative on your weapon glyphs - usually though you can't go wrong with poison or foulness...

if it's possible, now that you're over cp160 and you'll be able to use this gear for awhile, try to get everything in epic quality...

either epic food, or dubious camoran should work fine - thankfully both are pretty cheap to buy...

hopefully some much better build folks will take a look at this thread and help out...personally, I've never checked out other folks builds...

I like to try to figure that part out on my own - which to be honest has led to some serious crash and burn scenarios in regards to my character set ups over the last couple of years

so, starting off with a guide build is probably a pretty smart idea...

I see that in alcast's guide they have a SnB and 2H setup...

from the beginning when I first started pvping - I've always viewed my setups in terms of fighting in melee situations and ranged situations, and, being prepared for both...

my stam dk uses SnB and a bow...in battlegrounds using 2 melee weapons works fine - in cyrodiil though, except for occasional small scale action - i fight mostly around zergs, so having a ranged weapon available is essential to me...

always a blast to be able to kill folks in siege situations - not sure why people think they're safe just cuz they're up on a wall

my apologies for rambling, hopefully something in what I wrote will be useful...

have fun, and, please let us know (we're very fortunate to have a great community) if you have any more specific questions...

totally with you on not being too much in to the merchant game...i usually just want to head out to cyrodiil and go battle

every once in a while i'll get a little burnt out though and do some farming and questing...

surprisingly enough - pvp gear does sell okay (I list them anywhere from 650 gold to 3,000)...same for a lot of the overland sets...

stuff accumulates pretty fast and inventory management can be quite the challenge at times...

basically I use the guild traders to help keep my inventory reasonably uncluttered...

there are some great no fee trading guilds listed in the guild recruitment section of the forums...

however, if you're just starting out with the crafting stuff may just be better to decon most of it (including those white glyphs that are everywhere - enchanting is an incredibly useful skill line - just takes forever to level though)...

Never made it past 8-10 hours to grind for a set...

Maybe per day for a week!