Being a noob myself for 4 years, I haven't seen any up to date guides for PvP, so here it is.

What's this about

If you want to try PvP but feel overwhelmed by build options and hopeless with the skill gap. This is somewhere to start.

It will make you useful, and being able to have fun.

Depend on the path chosen, this will not necessarily improve your skills, because the whole idea of theocrafting is to beat your opponents by builds not skills.

Why one bar builds

You like refreshing multiple buffs on 10 sec timer, 20 sec and 30 sec and !!@#$% in addition to keeping HoT(s) while in combat, being surrounded and pushed to a corner, both resources down to minimum and health is being depleted quickly if you don't do something?

Or you like to be always prepared (as there is nothing to prepare), whether you're running, casually walking, or on horseback?

The limits. What you can and cannot build

With Oakensoul, you get all important buffs minus Minor Resolve, and you're left with 5 abilities and one ultimate.

For most builds, at least two of the abilities must cover HoT (healing over time) and burst healing. Usually it's Vigor and a class healing.

So you're left with at most 3 offensive abilities, and 10 gear pieces in total, e.g.:

- 2 of 5-pieces sets and monster shoulder
- 1 of 5 pieces set, a monster helm set, 1 of 3 pieces PvP set (weapon+jewellery)
- 1 of 5 pieces set, a monster helm set, 1 of 2 pieces arena weapon set, 1 trainee item (+ health)

No backbar set - no Wretched Vitality, and Rally Cry is usually unsuitable depending on how you build

The defense

First you have to decide how you want to survive. The less tanky your build is, the higher skill it'd require, and you can't get extra healing or passive mitigation from backbar.

With a typical 33k resist, including Minor Resolve sourced from Vigor or scribing, the real resist is 27k - 20k after debuff and pen, you'd need HoT all the time and practicing blocking-cancellation a lot. As ranged, you'd need Streak or bow Vault to keep distance. As brawler, DK is the only option for U49. Even for ranged, 33k is likely the minimum.

Or you push resist to 40k to 50k range. There aren't many options: Trial by Fire, Aetherial Ascension, or Mark of the Pariah if you have very good healing. That way you'd only need to keep Minor Resolve, while HoT is use as a complement to burst healing. But using such sets means you lose 5 gear slots for offensive capability.

Mixed sets like Hexos' Ward is another option: 6K shield every 6 seconds plus cric stats. Crits are more useful for healing than damage though due to the popularity of rally cry.

If your health is high but weapon/spell damage isn't, you'd need health scaled burst heal - Polar Wind from Warden winter line, Blood of the Green Dragon from DK draconic power. Shield can help but you'd still need very strong healing to stay above the execution range.

The offense

What can you do with 3 offensive abilities and one weapon? Can't do everything. Here are some examples:

- DK: Core of Flame (delayed burst, sustain), Disintegrating Dragonfire (AoE major breach, DoT), Molten Whip (burst), with the Pyrabrand proc set
- MagSorc: Streak, Haunting Curse and Crystal Frag. This was pre-subclass and survability was notably weak as it needs all 3 sorc class lines with no way to sustain repeated streaking.
- Maarselok: Toppling Charge or Streak, soul magic scribing and Unleashed Terror set for debuffs, heavy attack with Maarselok proc set
- oblivion damage builds: lighting staff HA, Knight Slayer set, Sload's Semblance set, etc.
- bash builds: Deadlands Demolisher set, 1h Shield Charge, Pierce Armor or wield soul for breach, Power Slam or Shield Throw as burst

Unlike 2 bars, your abilities will be very limited, and thus highly dependent on proc sets for damage and scribing for filling buffs and debuffs, e.g. Major Evasion, Major Breach, Minor Expedition, etc. You'll likely be missing stuff that every 2 bars players have, e.g. elem sus, mobility or purge. It's a trade off that cannot be avoided.

Your damage output will likely be lower than 2 bars players using similar builds, as you can't afford buff abilities like Hurricane or Shatterspike Mantle. On the plus side, there is no defensive or healing backbar to fall back to, and the only manual buff is Minor Resolve, so you'd spend most of time attacking. If you're cornered and the frontbar healing isn't enough behind blocking, you'd be dead. Simple as that. It streamlines the whole gameplay.

Resource management

If you can afford to lose one more ability slot, DK Core of Flame provides virtually unlimited resources.

If not, pick Jewels of Misrule or cheap bi-recovery drinks, take Druid's Resurgence from scribing, and take one or two class lines offering sustain passives: Storm Calling for +141, Animal Companions for 20%, Herald of the Tome for 18% and Shadow for 15%. Percentage based is better before using tri-stat potions. But once you get major intellectual etc from the potion, flat number increase is better as they get multiplied fully, whereas percentage boosts are lumped together, i.e. 20% animation companion passive + 15% minor buff from oak ring + 30% potion = 165% of base number, while Storm Calling gives you (base number +141) * (100%+15%+30%)

One bar build without Oakensoul ring

If not using Oakensoul, you get to choose another mythic like Shattered Paths Signet for status effect builds, and keep the backbar for passives from slotted abilities and rarely-used utilities (e.g. purge or major expedition). To source major buffs passively from backbar:

- Major Prophecy/Savagery from DK Inferno from NB Grim Focus - cost one class line
- Major Brutality/Sorcery from Arcanist Tome-Bearer's Inspiration - cost one class line
- Major Resolve from Mighty Chudan - cost 2 pieces monster set

Major Prophecy and/or Brutality can also come from scribing, if such skills can be in your offensive rotation. The main issue is Major Resolve - unless your passive resist is already above 40k, losing or not being able to refresh major resolve even for a few seconds would put you in a very dangerous spot - remember you'd likely have lost minor resolve around the same time, that's 9k resist in total.

Min-max guide

To actually beat people or at least be useful, you need to min-max stats. There is quite a broad topic and requires experiments and creativity, so I will only give some simple examples.

For example, you're building a max resist or max health tank with base spell/weapon damage and no cric damage:

- Where does your healing come from? Typical healing is damage scaled and your damage stat is small, so you need health scaled healing (like Polar Wind) or fixed number like Critical Surge.
- Your damage stat is low, but there are damage types that don't scale with it - oblivion damages scale with enemy's health pool, major/minor defile scale with their healing ability (= damage stat usually), major cowardice reduces their damage stats by fixed number, and the impacts of crowd control scale with their stamina pool and stamina recovery.
- You have zero penetration, but 2H Onslaught and DK Corrosive Armor let you ignore all resistances.
- If your crit chance is zero, Mechanical Acuity set can raise it to 100, then you can focus on crit damage and all other stats.

Tools

Build Editor - https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData
Scribing Simulator - https://eso-hub.com/en/scribing-simulator (the damage/healing numbers are likely wrong)
Potion/poison Calculator - https://esolog.uesp.net/viewPotions.php

Combat Metrics addon - https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1360-CombatMetrics.html Enable PVP recording and you can see what other people are doing.

Verify your build

A simple way of verifying your one bar build is to be a tank in normal DLC dungeons, solo a DLC world boss or an IC boss underground. Stand within the red zone, take all attacks on your face, no blocking and no dodging - your health, passive resistance, shield and healing and recovery should be more than sufficient to counter them with ease. Why? Because when some NB ganks you from 28 meters away while you're fighting another, you don't get the chance to dodge or block. And when you're blocking 5 Power Lashes from a DK in Corrosive Armor, you need good mitigation, healing and sustain to keep health above execution range. If you can't survive a dumb world boss, you won't survive real players long enough to even react.

If your build is designed for damage pressure instead of burst power, you should also be able to keep dealing damage at the same time without running out of resources, otherwise you'd be doomed whenever you're cornered.

For burst power, mobs in normal Blackrose Prison are good test targets - don't hit the archers first. Delete melee enemies while the archers and monsters hit you from the back constantly. They're not big attacks compared to PvP and your HoT and passive migitation should be more than enough to absorb all those.