It depends on your play style. For XB1 NA, here's what I've noticed:

EP tends to have more teabaggers. If that's how you want to play, go for it. In all fairness, EP is also generally more tactical, and more willing to group. When they PVP, they PVP--and they're very fond of victory twerking on corpses.

AD is mostly questers, objectives, and solos. Good luck trying to find a group. When a PVP guild (or guild alliance) has an AD event in Cyrodil or IC, they dominate the map-- then lose it just as quickly when the organized players get bored and log off.

DC are the underdogs. They don't have that many players generally, since AD & EP tend to be the favored alliances. They are willing to group-- but tend to focus on smaller stuff like resources, or city quests until they get a full zerg together. One of the reasons they team up with AD is #1: they're willing to group, and #2. safety in numbers. AD teams with DC because DC generally doesn't teabag--and they want the reds to suffer. DC's also a bit of a wildcard-- the other Alliances have days and times where if you pay attention, you can predict when they'll show up. DC shows up randomly--and gets stuff done. They do seem to be a bit more prone to night-capping in Cyrodil unless EP shuts them down.

Cross-alliance teamwork is technically frowned upon, especially when it comes to keep flipping. Actively cheating in Cyrodil risks banning your account.

Kordai wrote: »

So when ep is in first, ad has emp and ad and ep aren't fighting like right now... you'd call that what?

There's a bit more nuance to this one. Emp is worth 0 points towards the campaign and can be ignored unless there's a particularly threatening emp group (there rarely is). The 1st place faction generally wants to push whoever results in the 2nd and 3rd place factions' scores being closer together. In the case of a recent power shift, it's a free-for-all until a new dominant faction emerges, but if EP and AD believe that DC would run away with the lead again if left unchecked, it may be correct to push them down further before fighting over 1st between themselves.

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Because what we need is them winning twice in a row after the first one's outcome was incredibly dubious.

Maybe if this happens a few more times ZOS will actually notice? To be fair, we've also had recent campaigns decided in favor of DC and EP thanks to seemingly random low pop eval ticks in the final few hours.

AD 3 bars, EP / DC at 1 bar each. It's 2:00 AM Central time US.

Whole map is yellow. All scrolls taken.

This is GH PC NA, the primary campaign.

Let's see how much more often this happens before the end of the campaign. It's so fun how this annihilates desire to play by the non-AD players and many will just log or go PVE driving the already long vanished population down into the single digits.

EdmondDontes wrote: »

On PC NA there is a great deal of coordination between AD and DC. That's why the green team accusation. It's more than an accusation though. There is a guild on AD and another on DC that go as far as to share a discord and they hop back and forth between raids for coordinating. From 8 am to about 11am eastern, and probably other times too, Team ADC is rampant. They do not fight each other. During this time frame every day, not as obviously on the weekends, but every day during this time frame you can see how obvious this cooperation and coordination is just by watching the map. For 3 or so hours every day there will be essentially no crossed swords between yellow and blue. AD and DC will only fight if one has the others scrolls, and maybe not even then.

They seriously need to add an NPC enemy to cyrodiil that would send dark anchors onto people’s keeps

Thanks everyone for the further replies - I'd already reached tier 3 so I decided to stick with Blackreach at least for the current campaign as I'm also wanting to get the tier one transmute geodes rewards on all 13 char (to equip them with better pvp oriented gear) & I'm levelling up new skills on them specifically for pvp too.

GlorphNoldorin wrote: »

I also play on PC NA- DC and from rural Australia with ping 300-350. I can attest that at the times I play, there is hardly any cohesion in the way DC organizes their gameplay. It has been a long standing complaint for zone chat at how disorganized and few people are on in Oceanic peak times and other parts of the day. There have been few active guilds over the years at these times. For moths at a time I would log on and EP would gate DC, own the map and have twice the players (often just a full 20+ player raid and be only 5 or so DC running around)

At other times, AD would dominate as guild swapped factions, left or new ones formed. And it seems at this time there are some greater numbers on DC dominating off peak. It is the ebb and flow of cyrodil.

It is surely difficult to be competitive on our Oceanic ping, no doubt. I know of some very good players with high ping. It does seem to me that 300 ping isn't always 300 ping, at times the game can be playable but others not and ping often doesnt change much.

Fighting good players who have 100 ping or less...... I dont know if these players realize how disadvantaged oceanic players are........ we can look silly fighting them but if we want to play pvp in ESO its the game.

I tried using Destructive Clench with the Destructive Impact staff from nDSA as it was in a lag build I saw.

I've kept both in my build but ranged abilities usually never seem to hit - either I'm too slow with targeting, other players are quicker to dodge or move out of the way & or it's the lag.

The only reliable things that seem to hit are lightning & resto staffs, armour set procs & the two handed stampede skill.

With the update 33 changes I'm changing all my builds to have 2handed sword & stampede on one of the bars, medium armor & 1 or 2 proc sets.

I'm doing it even on my magicka builds. Some I'm modifying the attributes & armour enchantments a little to get the right amount of stats & adjusting what skills work.

On my magsorc the new build is great in cyro pvp in a group at least & on two others (magplar & magblade) I've been able to kill WB but haven't tested out actual PVP yet. Also I'm using the toppling charge ability on the magplar but don't know if it will be as good in PVP as stampede is.