VoxAdActa wrote: »

In Cyrodiil, you're either an unkillable face-melter who can win a 6v1 while being focus-fired by multiple siege engines, or you're a target.

To become the face-melter, you have to start out doing a lengthy grind in PvE for the specific sets and skills that actually do something. Crafted gear is a non-starter. Overland gear is a non-starter. Most dungeon and trial gear won't be sufficient, either. It's gotta be specific gear, which non-PvPers probably don't have handy, because it's not especially useful in PvE.

If you don't do that step, you won't live long enough to learn anything about how to PvP. There's nothing to learn from dying 7 seconds after you meet the enemy, other than "I suck and this is stupid." You also start learning how to have a thick skin here, because the toxicity from both your allies and your enemies is frequently off the charts compared to the laughably tepid toxicity of PvE.

Once you have a workable gear setup, now the actual work begins: learning to PvP. Now you can start the months-long process of figuring out how to not panic when you get into combat, who to attack, when to attack, how to actually kill someone, and how to escape alive. This can only be done by walking face-first in the failure over and over and over again.

It takes so much more dedication to get into PvP than it does for all but the endest of end-game PvE content. And there are a lot more ways to learn PvE content than "die until something clicks, if that ever happens at all."

Can you imagine if PvE was like this? The first time you ever set foot into a dungeon, you die within seconds, and get teabagged and pushuped and have the quest givers yell at you for sucking (Eboric's Projection: "You tried to come in here with only 25k health? What the bleep is wrong with you? Bleeping loser!")?

And then you're told you can only touch the dungeon after grinding 50 hours for the right equipment, and then you can start to learn basic mechanics like when to block and how to do a rotation?

Even putting aside the community's rampant toxicity, the grinding and learning curves alone keep a whole lot of people out of PvP. Unless PvP is something you just love or you have some burning motivation that forces you to endure it (like I have for alliance rank dye colors), you're going to pop in during an event, get shot in the face and laughed at a few times, then bounce back to PvE saying "never again."

AzuraFan wrote: »

I go into PvP areas for endeavors and achievements, and I always do the PvE stuff for that. Eventually I'll get around to doing the questline in IC.

I used to do battlegrounds for the achievements, but like someone said upthread, at one point they were fun because even in PvE gear and stats, you would feel like you were contributing. But at one point something changed. Going in as a PvEer basically meant being slaughtered over and over again, and I'd see some players have an entire team hitting them and they'd never lose health. They were basically unkillable. That should NEVER be possible, but it seems to be. Something has gone off the rails with sets and such.

Anyway, for some players (like me), short of offering me a lot of money in cold, hard cash, I'll never spend much time on PvP. I've done a couple of guild events during this mayhem, only because I need some holiday achievements. Digital goodies (like the golden pursuit rewards) won't do it. Once the achievements I want are done, never again.

There's sometimes an attitude of, "Oh, if the player was just to try PvP, they'd love it!". That will turn out to be true for some players. But definitely not for everyone. Some players will never try. Some have tried and didn't like it. Some, like me, really don't care for it. Give me cash though and sure, I'll go into Cyrodiil or IC and pretend I care. I'll even die over and over again to give players easy kills. Cash only, though. No credit.

fred4 wrote: »

VoxAdActa wrote: »

All of the guides I see for PvP builds recommend 30k+ health, 25k+ resistances, all impen gear, and huge regen numbers.

Gonna have to start with a disclaimer. I don't build that way and I don't play enough class variety anymore to say how everyone's build works. I use a mythic called the "Esoteric Environment Greaves", because this offers the best gank protection from a single item. I play a lot in Imperial City. It's kind of important, there.

Since I brought up IC, let's stay on that topic. Why do nightblades, specifically, hit super hard in that place? Because of Balorgh (March of Sacrifices monster set). NPCs are readily available. It's easy to ultimate farm and get Balorgh to 500. That means they have 11K additional penetration after their ultimate, which is huge. They also have +500 weapon and spell damage. You'll run into super hard-hitting nightblades in Cyrodiil from time to time, but not with the same frequency. A build that feels defensively OK in Cyrodiil may feel vulnerable in IC for this reason.

Some of the ways in which players hit super hard include, in no particular order and with no claim of completeness:

• The Continuous Attack buff, which increases sustain and weapon / spell damage. In other words, make sure to turn a flag every 10 minutes. Budget your sustain with this buff in mind, investing more into weapon and spell damage.
• The vampire "Strike from the Shadows" passive, activated primarily by NB gankers.
• Using Arterial Burst or Blood for Blood as a spammable to hit super hard, while you are at low health. Some nightblades do this, but Blood for Blood also seems to be a favorite among (mag?) wardens, who combine this with Northern Storm and decent movement speed.
• Being a magsorc, because their damage to defense ratio is simply OP / unbalanced. A sorc can afford to stay on the attack for longer because, in a single second, they can either pop a big shield + small heal, or they Streak, stunning everyone in front of them. Having these "oh crap" buttons in their back pocket allows them to pressure other players with direct damage, worrying less about their own health, where another class might (have to) rely on DOT (damage over time) skills to do the same. However I don't really want to argue too much about balance in this thread. I think this mainly gives magsorc an edge in ease of use. Their actual OPness, while real, is perhaps not quite that strong.
• Setting you off balance and activating the Exploiter CP star. This also allows heavy attacks to stun the other player. For example, experienced nightblade players may use this mechanic to deliver Merciless Resolve alongside the heavy attack, while you are stunned, something they can't otherwise do.
• Some builds (templars) may rely on a crafted set called Mechanical Acuity, although it's probably rare these days.
• The Sea Serpent's Coil mythic is good for a +15% damage buff, which is huge, far above what most, if not all other mythics can do. Markyn, for example, is good for a mere 3%. Sea Serpent is arguably still balanced, because the self-snare is a severe drawback. This is, perhaps, reflected in mostly experienced players choosing this mythic. When I see the blue Sea Serpent flame above a players head, I usually give them respect. This mythic also offers a small measure of gank protection.

Getting back to the recommendations of 30k+ health and 25K+ resistances, I view those as minimums where these stats begin to come good. The + sign in the above is very significant. My personal experience is that, if you're merely sitting at those minimums, you either compensate with experience, e.g. line of sighting, dodge rolling, and so on, or you might as well forget that and not care about your health and resistances at all.

Take resistances. If the other player is an arcanist, or they wear some light armor, or they are a flanking nightblade, or they also have Major Breach, such as via Elemental Susceptibility, and some penetration via armor stat lines or an outright penetration set, and they pile Balorgh on top, they reach 25K penetration. They will penetrate all of your armor at 25K. Then why are you wearing that armor at all? Sure, it helps you sometimes, such as when Balorgh isn't fully charged, or against badly specced / inexperienced opponents, but not against experienced players who understand their burst window, the short time where they develop maximum damage and penetration.

This gets at the crux of your questions. Those players who turn and burn 6 opponents, they understand the ebb and flow of their builds, and yours. When they are fully buffed versus when their buffs are running out and they need to line-of-sight to find time and rebuff. When they have procs, such as Balorgh, Vulnerability, Off Balance ready, all the non-flashy stuff that you may not even notice. When they are CC immune and you are not, e.g. when you can be stunned, but they cannot. When you forgot to buff. When you just spent your ultimate, and you can't counterattack, but they have their ultimate ready. That is the moment when they may afford to let their health run low. They watch you. They bait you with their low health. They see your overreaching when you can be stunned and you don't have ultimate ready, but they do. When their Curse or Flames of Oblivion or Shalks or Ulfsild's Contingency are about to go off. That's when you're vulnerable, but they are not, because you don't have the power to counterattack them at that exact moment. It's duelling 101. Duellers and 1vXers have their rhythm worked out, but they also watch you, your rhythm, your mistakes.

This is what it means when people say "there's a learning curve". That said, ESO isn't a truly competitive game. It's still an RPG where people run different builds that may counter each other. There is a strong rock-paper-scissors effect at times, even or especially in a 1v1. When you win easily, or when you can't win. In open world, fights are also rarely fair, e.g. there are uneven numbers. However, the skill gap is also real. Honestly 1vXing is really hard. A successful 1vX is almost invariably a sign of 1 good player against X bad ones, where none of the X are individually good enough to give the 1vXer the slightest trouble. Against better players, or if you're simply not good enough to 1vX yourself, it gets substantially easier playing as a duo, e.g. 2vX. 2 (or more) players focusing a single one is how you kill players, be that in a 2vX or momentarily in an AvA. Also, staying on target. Pick your target and stay on it for at least a few seconds. Tab-target them by all means. Make them burn their stamina and you, or someone else, may kill them.

Now let's talk about health. People can gank you for more than 30K, at least if health and resistances are your main defense. 40K is probably where you start to feel truly safe, but if high health is a main defense, you need heals to match. You need at least one heal that scales with health (and it ain't Green Dragon Blood). If your class has that, great. Consider a high health build. Wardens spring to mind (at least historically), as do sorcs who go the health route instead of the magicka route. Except your (stam) sorc will be weaker than your mag sorc in the current meta. However, if you don't have a health-scaling heal or shield, you IMO want to reduce your incoming damage instead of having high health. This makes your heals work proportionally harder.

My main is a light armor Breton magblade with 25K health. My unbuffed physical resistance is ~8K. I am not a vampire. I do not use CP that reduce my damage other than to get to ~2K crit resist. I am not a ganker. I am a Tel Var farmer, sometime brawler, ganker against weak players, and general opportunist. Yes, it includes brawling, e.g. AvA against good players. I play a very balanced build where I rely on cloak, speed, snare removal, stamina sustain ... and the Esoteric Greaves. In my particular build, that mythic is my only real damage reduction. It protects against burst, e.g. I'm not going to wipe immediately at the beginning of a fight and it's very difficult, but not impossible at my low health, to gank me.

That said, the Greaves are not for everyone nor every build. However, due to me relying heavily on them at present, I will have to speculate as to what other people use. Here goes:

• Stage 3 vampire. It's been nerfed, but the Undeath passive is probably still meta.
• Blocking (without Esoteric Greaves). Meteors are the obvious example where you must block. Good players understand how they are being attacked and only block other people's large / burst attacks, conserving their stamina. That said, if I sense I'm being focused by multiple players, I tend to block-heal, e.g. hold block while casting my burst heal. It's very expensive, but can save your skin. If you're not already running a destro staff, then an ice staff back bar would be my #1 choice for any (brawler) build, due to Elemental Susceptibility being such a strong skill and to avail of the block cost reduction. Blocking without the cost reduction from a blocking weapon sucks. I've personally found the blocking weapons stronger than a resto staff for a very long time. I've never been fond of the resto ultimate, though I believe some players swear by it.
• Pain's Refuge CP. I don't use this, because I value Celerity and Slippery CP more, but it seems to be a staple for many (brawler) players, along with managing your sustain via Sustained by Suffering CP.
• Any and all skills and passives that reduce your damage while not being armor and can, therefore, not be nullified via armor penetration. These include Major and Minor Protection, Major Evasion, and so on.
• Critical resistance, wherever that comes from. Rallying Cry, Impenetrable, blue CP.

That's great, but when I build for that, my offensive stats suck. Low pen, low crit, no crit damage, and low weapon damage. When I'm wearing, for example, Wretched Vitality and Daedric Trickery, where is my damage coming from? How am I supposed to kill anyone, much less anyone with the same defensive stats I have?

The short answer is: You won't. It's called a tank meta for a reason. Despite the fact that insane damage is technically possible, defense and sustain is stronger. It is much stronger than it was years ago. Experienced players on an open world (not duelling or ganking) spec cannot be killed by a single opponent. Better get used to that. The reason 2vXing is so much easier than 1vXing is that only this gives you a short enough TTK (time-to-kill) to be effective ... if you can actually kill the single player. Some open world specs that are not exactly tanks can't even be killed by two good players, especially if they decide to run around an obstacle, or if they're a sorc or nightblade and manage to disengage.

That said, I wouldn't wear Trickery other than on a DK and I wouldn't wear those two sets together, e.g. two defensive / sustain sets. The aim of Trickery and Bloodspawn on a DK is to sustain via ultimates, not to also wear Wretched Vitality. I would pair one of those with an offensive or balanced set. Rallying Cry is an example of a balanced set, because it gives you some crit and weapon damage.

In general, something needs to give. I personally like speed and sustain and the classes that synergise with that (NB, sorc). I am personally not a ganker, aiming to kill carefully selected targets outright before they can even react. I'm a scrappy fighter. I like my escape tools. I (am able to) skimp on health and resistances, but not sustain. I think most brawlers do it differently. They skimp on speed and sustain, but build for some (passive) tankiness. Their damage is bought by their lower sustain and lack of speed. Because you generally take less damage, you gain the time for more elaborate skill combos. You posibly need to compensate for your low raw stats by having more attacking skills. Brawlerblades are an obvious example. It's typical for nightblades to only slot Merciless Resolve or Assassin's Blade, but not both, due to bar space. However on a tanky build, you may have to find the bar space to do exactly that, e.g. to slot both. It's actually the same for me, on my sustain build. I use both Merciless and Impale.

Still, you cannot stand in an open field on a tanky brawler. You'll be slaughtered if you do. If you don't have high mag sustain and Protective Scales on a DK, which few DKs have nowadays, you'll likely be killed by any magsorc or bow player from range, as you burn your stamina on dodge rolls. Only as basically a blocking tank could you just stand there. As a brawler, you need to find line-of-sight, preferably luring the opposing player into a forest or building. In a confined space, your lack of speed and the fact that you're a melee player doesn't matter. Especially if you are a stamina player, you can, then, build to sustain partially from heavy attacks, which you may incorporate into your burst combo for extra damage, but they also sustain you and give you the stamina to breal free when you need to. This is how you buy your damage stats on such a build.

Or is that just the game now? Slow slugfest dogfights where everyone's chipping each other down? That would make sense

Pretty much.

but how are people still melting me in straight-up fights? What's creating the huge numbers I see on the death recap? It's not all proc sets (other than Rushing Agony).

Aside from the duelling aspects, mentioned above, this can be straight up the rock-paper-scissors effect. You met your anti-build and they will annihilate you. It happens. For me, as a super fast cloaking magblade, that would be a sorc with a detection potion and the Sentry set for good measure, and who knows what they're doing. It's a death sentence. Unless you have extensive experience in duelling against different builds, it can be hard to judge another build and knowing how to act.

And how are people doing the thing where, over and over, their health will get down almost to execute range, then it instantly refills to full, without being backed up by a healer or popping any visible healing skill?

Let's rule out cheating, shall we? There is a set called Juggernaut that used to do that, but it's been nerfed and is not very good anymore. If you have doubts, then you need to get OBS and record the footage. Basically I don't believe you. In other words, they did pop a burst heal. You just didn't see it. In some cases the act of killing may heal them some. For example Merciless Resolve does that, or a DK leap.

I'd think a set was doing it, but don't all those sets have long cooldowns?

Yes.

I watched a guy being chased by five other people do that four times in the space of less than 30 seconds, as he melted one attacker after another until he was the last man standing... at full health.

Well, I mean, players aren't NPCs. We have low health, but we heal. If you don't either burst them or severely pressure them with broken DOTs - the Master's dual-wield weapon of the past - they heal up to full, just like that. This is why we're talking about a tank meta as much as anything. Scribing has made it still easier. Major Vitality from Wield Soul. That was a rare buff in the past.

AzuraFan wrote: »

I go into PvP areas for endeavors and achievements, and I always do the PvE stuff for that. Eventually I'll get around to doing the questline in IC.

I used to do battlegrounds for the achievements, but like someone said upthread, at one point they were fun because even in PvE gear and stats, you would feel like you were contributing. But at one point something changed. Going in as a PvEer basically meant being slaughtered over and over again, and I'd see some players have an entire team hitting them and they'd never lose health. They were basically unkillable. That should NEVER be possible, but it seems to be. Something has gone off the rails with sets and such.

Anyway, for some players (like me), short of offering me a lot of money in cold, hard cash, I'll never spend much time on PvP. I've done a couple of guild events during this mayhem, only because I need some holiday achievements. Digital goodies (like the golden pursuit rewards) won't do it. Once the achievements I want are done, never again.

There's sometimes an attitude of, "Oh, if the player was just to try PvP, they'd love it!". That will turn out to be true for some players. But definitely not for everyone. Some players will never try. Some have tried and didn't like it. Some, like me, really don't care for it. Give me cash though and sure, I'll go into Cyrodiil or IC and pretend I care. I'll even die over and over again to give players easy kills. Cash only, though. No credit.

Muizer wrote: »

I'm entirely ok with getting killed by players with more skill. L2P and git gud and all that apply. The gear meta chase is a practically insurmountable obstacle, though. I just don't have that kind of time. I cannot imagine percentage wise many people do.

AvalonRanger wrote: »

Real PVP is not character building boasting competition.
That's not PVP game at all. Dev can't understand this basic creed of PVP game planning more than 10 years.

Just don't push ESO PVP as Golden pursuit. I don't want to play the contents which doesn't have decent QA.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

This is fantastic advice. Thank you so much! You've given me a lot to work with, and I super appreciate it!

majorlginfidel wrote: »

Who is bullying newbies?
Its honestly a "L2P" issue. Everyone has access to sets that are good enough to fight in PvP. Experience is needed, expecting one to just jump in and know it all/have all the gear needed is not the answer. Learning how is the answer.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

Would you invite a PvP player on a vet trial team with their pvp gear and strategies?

People are not entitled to be able to do any content without learning it.

Yes, that’s the point.

Even PvErs don’t jump straight into vet trials. They learn in normals and train their way up. Maybe play around in overland, then learn to solo public dungeons, be able to hold in normal and then vet dungeons, and then work with a group for normal and then vet trials.

But there’s no entry ramp for PvP. A player who wants to dip their toes into PvP is tossed into the same world as the pros. Sure, the under-50 areas exist, but does that mean anyone over Lv 50 should be considered a pro PvPer? (Or that there aren’t pros who live in the U50 and just delete and remake characters with gold gear to stay there)

PvP doesn’t have a way to learn your way up, except by getting killed on repeat. The idea would be for MMR to place new players together… if the population were even big enough to allow for MMR sorting. And that is what makes PvP frustrating for people who are not all-in on PvP.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

Would you invite a PvP player on a vet trial team with their pvp gear and strategies?

People are not entitled to be able to do any content without learning it.

Beautifully said. I would add one change and say access to victory/success should not be an entitlement and earned instead.

I love the implication here that ESO PvE is “endgame trials and nothing else.”

Yes, if you’re doing endgame vet trials, you need to work for it. And how does one get started, may I ask? Oh right. There’s a normal mode. Where you can get your feet wet. And then, once you decide you like it, you research some builds and joint groups and go for vet.

In PvP… you get thrown into vet with just a “lol noob, git gud.” So… where do you go to decide if you even care about PvP enough to git gud?

Gee, I wonder why it’s so difficult to get PvErs into PvP… [\s]

PvP is essentially going into a vet trial, whether you’re prepared or not. But PvE has a learning curve so you can ease into it (and therefore not be scared off immediately). PvP just doesn’t have a “I’m just here casually” mode – and let’s face it: if they did, then PvP trolls would just live there and farm the ‘easy AP’ from new players. We already know there are people who gold low-level gear so they can perpetually dominate the U50 areas.

The idea is that BGs and MMR should make that starter area. But that requires enough players to allow for a decent sorting of MMR (and people to play the objective instead of DM-only). It also doesn’t help that all three PvP modes require different builds depending on your goal and strategy - trying to do an IC sewer gankblade won’t exactly be effective in a Crazy King BG.

There really isn’t an easy answer here. But the one thing I can say is that denigrating new players for being unprepared is one of the best ways to ensure they never come back to PvP and the population continues dwindling further and further.