Getting into PvP as a noob

Brometheus89 · April 2020

Hey all, been playing for the past few weeks casually, really have been wanting to get into PvP since I started. I am only CP 120 or so right now. What I have noticed is that I am basically useless right now. I am playing a stamblade, I die almost instantly seem to do basically no damage. My abilities literally don't phase the health bars of my enemies, its almost comical. I assume this is all down to gear?

Does it get better after 160? How much gear grinding do I have to do to become competitive in PvP? I'm trying to decide if its even worth pursuing as a casual player.

Thanks!

Stanx · April 2020

It will get better at 160 as that's the gear level cap.

You can try battlegrounds, I believe CP doesn't apply there so will be even from 160 onward.

Gear-wise, you should be able to pick up some viable sets quite cheaply from the guildstore once you hit 160.

The people you're fighting against have likely got gear on that has a lot of resistances. You'll want to time your damage to burst as a stamblade, too. Have you looked at a guide online for rotations / skills?

Also you may have more fun playing a different class in PVP.

jadarock · April 2020

As a stamblade main the meta in this game atm is tanky necro warden templar dk . Keep grinding you need 250-300cp minimum + two damage sets and even then you will.come across people you cant even tickle. Good luck

Crixus8000 · April 2020

Get to 160 cp first.

Gear is very important but so is how you build with it and then skill plays a large part too.

I would reccomend having a lot of duels, I found it very useful, try to duel good players though and learn from it. You will die over and over but I think it's a very good way to learn. It can be hard to see what's going on with many players around, but if you focus on 1v1s first you will learn how to counter certain bursts and classes then you will notice yourself doing that in larger fights.

fred4 · April 2020

Play in no CP. Getting to CP160 is important so you can invest into armor that lasts. Prior to that you continuously outlevel your gear, subsequently making it useless. Finding complete sets below CP160 in guild stores would also be problematic.

Getting good gear is not an issue, provided you're a crafter, have gold or a benefactor. Something like New Moon + Eternal Hunt, both crafted sets, would suit a stamblade for example.

If you want some easy success, farm Titanborn on normal, pair it with another damage set, level mages guild, use Equilibrium in stealth to get your health down, then Snipe people. Risky, but also highly effective. Snipe in general is a skill that should lead you to early successes, but you will also be hated and run down.

Nightblade is a tough class to play at a high level, possibly the toughest. While you can build tanky and some people go for that, the traditional nightblade is squishy and relies on movement and stealth for defense. This typically means medium armor, dodge rolling, using Shadow Image and occasional Cloak (you don't have the magicka to sustain it for long). This playstyle allow no room for mistakes. A tanky DK usually has time to recover from accidentally casting the wrong skill or making a poor choice. A squishy nightblade does not. It's very unforgiving.

Nightblade has been nerfed over recent years. Stamblades rewarded highly aggressive gameplay in the past, dispatching targets quickly only to disappear again (e.g. ganking). With their damage blunted and there being a tank meta, this has become more difficult, but I think even at the best of times nightblades probably had to be careful with their target selection.

As a nightblade your survival is ultimately in your own hands. If you get killed, that may be because you don't have your offensive and defensive rotations down - something best learnt by duelling - but you may also be misjudging situations due inexperience, which leads you to overstretching. As a nightblade I typically open with a ganking style move. If that doesn't do enough damage on the target, I'm out of there, resetting the fight for another round. I don't wait for the target to get the upper hand on me.

Please bear in mind that YouTube clips are always cherry picked. At the very least they show you something action-packed (it would be boring otherwise, wouldn't it) and - if not heavily edited - occasions where the protagonist survived for some time. The reality involves a lot of time looking for such fights, fights where your skill really makes a difference and it's not simply one faction overrunning another.

fred4 · April 2020

Brometheus89 wrote: »

My abilities literally don't phase the health bars of my enemies, its almost comical. I assume this is all down to gear?

No. 70% skill and experience, e.g. knowing your burst combos, staying on target, judging when the opponent will try to turn the fight and only defending at that exact point, not too early. At CP120, it's true, you probably have a mishmash of gear and most likely not a proper PvP skill setup either. You want Fighter's Guild, Alchemy, Undaunted, probably Psijic. Once you sort that out, though, you will not magically become a lot better.

Does it get better after 160? How much gear grinding do I have to do to become competitive in PvP? I'm trying to decide if its even worth pursuing as a casual player.

Is it worth pursuing? It won't be the gear grind that stops you. What you need is time for learning the subtleties of the game, learning your build, learning common enemy builds, building muscle memory.

Choosing a nightblade is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it enables soloing and staying out of trouble. It's also the ideal class for snipers, an easy beginner's approach to PvP. However, if you want to be more than a one-trick pony, nightblade has probably the steepest learning curve. One way around that may be using a tanky Dark Cloak melee brawler build, which will allow you to experience an approximation of what some of the other stamina classes feel like.

fred4 · April 2020

I don't want to sound too off-putting. You will have a lot of fun, as long as you enjoy the journey and adjust your expectations accordingly. Start by duelling friends who are of a similar level or, perhaps, a better player who is willing to let you try things out and practice. Play some BGs - you will initially be matched with players that do not have a lot of experience themselves. In Cyrodiil perhaps group up, go on voice chat and move with the group. If nothing else, groups can always use a Bombard spammer or a nightblade to scout, root out enemy forward camps or place one yourself.

Lag is a major issue at primetime when the main campaigns are at or near the population cap. Nightblades tend to rely on precision gameplay and suffer disproportionately. Go to Imperial City when Cyrodiil gets too laggy.