You’re probably coming from a background of playing PvE in ESO, where if you’ve gotten through trials and the more challenging dungeons, you’re used to rotations, watching for consistent mechanics, and memorizing fights. PvP is very different as you’re fighting against other players who all have their own play styles, skill levels, builds, and goals.
You’ll find all different types of players, and no one player can be amazing at every type of play: Gankers,1vpotatoers,1vXers, bombers, small group tower humpers,small group bombers, large group min/maxers, strategists, theory crafters, group leaders and shot callers. These all take different types of knowledge, skill, and physical play capabilities. If you’re not great at one style, you can still have fun playing it and/or you can try another style.
The advice and recommendations on this site are oriented towards new players who have a lot to learn about PvP in Cyrodiil, and is biased towards group play as I have been leading groups (mostly min/max) since the start of the game. If you have any questions, please join Discord (link at the top of the page) and many of us will be happy to help!
There two major types of groups, PuGs and guild groups.
PuG stands for Pick Up Group. Sometimes, anyone who is not part of *your* group is called a PuG. It can be used as a derogatory term by groups who consider themselves elite, though factually, any group that is not pre-organized is a PuG. PuGs are generally open to anyone, though some will require that you join in for voice communications. You never know what you’re going to get with a PuG, so you’ll have a better time if you come in with no expectations.
Guild groups can be of any size up to a full 12 person group (the limit used to be 24). These groups are usually restricted to guild members or allied friends only as they will follow a composition. Sometimes they will be open to random people in order to find new potential members, though that is the exception and not the rule. For an idea of how they build, see the Framework sheet for basics, and the Builds sheet for more hard core details.
When joining a group you are expected to follow the directions of the leader. If you don’t follow the leader’s directions, you will probably be kicked from the group. You may not like the directions, and you may not believe that the leader’s decisions are the best or most appropriate ones, though you still need to follow them. If you don’t want to follow the leader of the group, then leave the group.
Defensive statistics are important, though too many people focus on staying alive and ultimately lose fights as they can’t do enough damage. In any style of play, from solo to groups of any size, a goal should be set on your performance. If everyone builds glass cannon, you’ll get some great kills and then get blown up. If everyone builds tanky, you won’t get many kills though you’ll be able to live through a lot. There’s a balance to be found based on your goals, and communicating with the people you’re playing with will help everyone to increase your success rate / win rate in fights.
The first and most important concept of defence, is that you need to pay attention. Don’t just blindly follow along with others. Watch what’s coming at you, where you’re going, judge where siege is likely to hit, what opponents are around, what buffs you have active and which ones you should cast or recast in different time frames. Awareness is what makes the difference between life and death.
The way defensive stats work: 32,000 resist mitigates 50% of incoming damage (you take half of the damage that you should per attacker’s tool tip). Your resist minus your attacker’s penetration will result in a number. Each 660 Resist in that number mitigates 1% of incoming damage up to a maximum possible mitigation of 50%.
Everyone should be running a skill/buff that gives major defensive stats, and a skill for added mitigation if they have one.
Keep moving. If you stop moving, you’re a bigger target. Remember that most of your opponents (and allies) see things with about one second of difference in position, so if you’re constantly weaving around others it’ll be more challenging to target you.
If there is only one significant group of opposition, don’t ignore individuals. They may be able to set up siege, or single-target burst down one of your squishy allies. They may complain about you zerging them down, but you’ll regret leaving them alive if they gank your back line or burn your siege.
If you’re not in a group with consistent Major Expedition, keep Race Against Time (or wings on a warden) up while moving. If you can’t be snared, you’re less likely to be single targeted by those whose reaction times (to hit moving targets on their screens) are lower.
Healing is not only the healers’ responsibility. Echoing Vigor is probably one of the most important skills for everyone to run. It hits 6 players and lasts 16 seconds. If you’re around a lot of other players, casting Echoing Vigor every few casts can help your team stay alive through enormous opposition. The less that dedicated healers have to heal you all at once, the longer they can keep everyone alive.
Your opponents may have players (mostly) dedicated to spamming cc, or you might just get hit by a few snares and slows cast by the massive numbers of opponents around you. This is why most organized groups use the Snow Treaders mythic boots as it provides snare immunity, and they have a dedicated Retreating Maneuvers “speeder” role to provide both Major and Minor Expedition to compensate for not being able to sprint while in combat while wearing that mythic.
Keep Immovable potions on your quick access list. When running through a breach, or when you see opponents coming in to bomb you, use one and you won’t be pulled or stunned making you an easy kill.
Learn about your opponents if they are regular organised groups. Their leaders will have relatively consistent play styles, so if you can predict what they’ll do most of the time, living through their bombs, countering them and winning fights will be easier.
Offensive tactics first involve knowing how likely you are to win a fight. Some players and groups have higher likelihoods of success than others for a variety of reasons (experience, coordination, balance, composition, leadership, experience, min/maxed builds, etc) and knowing that you are outclassed can save a lot of frustration and change the tactics that you’re should use in order to try and win an engagement.
Every player should be min/maxed for their role and responsibilities. For offensive players that means that they should be able to do the most damage without being 1-shot or dying in in the first few seconds of a fight.
Every major patch the min/max for each class/spec may change, so always pay attention to the theory crafters (if you don’t want to do it yourself). For stamina builds, you will probably stack the most weapon damage and maximum stamina with sufficient crit. For magicka builds, it will be the most spell damage and maximum magicka with sufficient crit. You’ll need a reasonable amount of resource regeneration, and to choose the right skill on your bars. If you are in a good PvP guild I’m sure that there are people who can help advise you. Some high end guilds even have required builds for certain roles and responsibilities. If you’re new to the game and want a quick recommendation, look at the Framework for basic build styles, and the Builds sheet for more detailed info on group builds. It is important to note that many people (myself included) have their preferences and biases, and any information, advice, or build details you get from any source should be analyzed to ensure that it fits your own goals and objectives.
Coordinating your damage so that it all hits at the same time makes it much more difficult for opposing healers to keep their players up.
Debuffs that reduce healing mean you’ll have to do less damage in order to kill an opponent that is receiving incoming heals or have HoTs on them. Look at sources for both Major and Minor Defile when considering how to build and what coordination or composition you want with other players.
Get siege on your opponents. If there are multiple players sieging, try to target the same opponents or areas. If you see two groups about to engage, try to hit the location of the most opposing players as they engage (as so that their healers can’t keep up with the damage that your siege does and the damage that the opposing group is doing).
People with a high enough PvP rank should be using the skills available from it, most notably detonation. This puts a bomb on you that detonates after a few seconds and damages all enemies that are close enough. Most organized groups all run that skill at the same time to coordinate the explosions. If you have 12 people all running that skill, even if they each only do a small amount of damage each, that will easily kill most opponents. When you see a group of opponents running at you with blue glowing lights and big red circles around them (they’ve all cast Proxy Detonation), hold block and/or run away for a few seconds until they detonate, and then turn around to do your damage. If you take the damage from all those detonations, you will probably die. Proxy Det will take a few seconds to re-arm, so you’ll have time to kill them before it explodes again.
Tab target and/or assign an icon to a player with higher importance (such as a speeder, healers or the group leader – if known). Tab targeting makes things easier if you try to single target a player in order to disrupt the group. Some groups fall apart when the leader dies, others will obsess about getting their healers back up (if they run low on burst healers), and others won’t care and just continue to play and recover as normal or run to drop a camp for their dead.
Plan to snare, immobilise, and hard cc (crowd control) your opponents. An opponent who is feared for a few seconds is not doing damage or healing. An opponent who is immobilised or knocked back is not moving with their group. There are a lot of ways to separate opponents from their groups. Wardens can use their circle to teleport them. DKs can grab one with chains or anyone can use Silver Leash. NBs can use their uncapped area fear, and cause a few to be separated if they don’t break free quick enough. Those that become separated need to be targeted and taken down quickly.
Be quick and accurate with Negates. Players can’t cast in a Negate. Once they’re in, they won’t be able to anything other than run towards you and hope that whatever they cast previously (such as their warden sleet or destro ultimate) does damage while getting out of the negate – or retreat.
Prepare and practice baiting. If a few players are able to get close enough that your opponents believe that they have a good chance to get kills, they’ll likely charge and pop their ultimates. The baiting players should have immovable potions ready, and it helps a lot having someone to heal them from range.
When running in a group, your ultimates (at least some of them) have to go off at the same time. To do enough damage to wipe another group, consider how long your opponents will be in range of your damage, how much healing they’re likely to have, and how mobile they will be. You also have to consider how much damage they’re going to do to your own group, as you have to be alive in order to do damage! This is why many groups run high survivability builds that do low damage, and rely on numbers (or with very few glass cannons) to output enough damage to kill their opponents.
If you don’t kill all of your opponents in the first engagement, try not to let them resurrect. There may be a templar in Kagrenac’s Hope (faster resurrecting speed) trying to get them back up, or a Necro player using their ultimate to resurrect up to three players at once. If it looks like they won’t be able to recover, some will likely stay to delay you, while a few of them will run away to get a camp up. It’s your (leader’s) choice on how you deal with this – be it to kill the ones left, chase the runners, or let them go so that they can form up again and you can have another good fight!
If your opponents spread out to avoid a bomb (as they should), try to go after the squishiest players. Ignore the tank with 50k health and kill the healers and bombers first! Always leave tanks for last. They’re the ones standing holding block being mostly useless other than keeping people busy while others (who can actually do damage) do damage.
Against a good guild group, your approach needs to much more cautious. If they are “retreating” against anything less than 2-3 times their number, they aren’t retreating, they are baiting you into a choke to bomb you. Do not follow into the choke. Let other players make them use all of their ultimates or bait them out if you can, and then hit them when they are unable to fight back. See the Group page for more info on fighting groups.
How to take a keep seems pretty simple: Knock down walls, kill guards, stack the flags until they flip, then you get your offence tick. If there is no opposition, then this is called PvDoor (Player vs. Door). Note that keep, resource, and outpost flags flip faster with up to 6 players on them. Town flags like Imperial City districts don’t flip faster after the first player is on the flag. If there are more than 6 players on a flag, move away and get ready just in case they’re going to be bombed (or let them be bombed and make more AP per the AP page’s tips and tricks).
To take a hotly contested keep, the first task is to get the keep flagged. To do this one wall needs to take damage while at or below 50%. If that wall is not hit by siege for a period of time (about a minute), the keep may unflag and allow your opponents to resurrect at the keep. Once the keep is flagged, someone needs to keep hitting the same wall. Without the ability to resurrect locally, opponents will be less likely to charge out and try to kill you. Remember that players’ camp cooldowns are 5 minutes, so if you do kill someone at a flagged keep, they will only be able to take a camp every 5 minutes. Just as you are sieging a breach, your opponents who are defending will be sieging the same place in the hopes of hitting you as you run in.
There are many buffs that give benefits to your allies, and debuffs that add hindrances to your opponents. Read all of the passives of all of your skill lines, and ensure that you are keeping your needed buffs up at all times.
A simple example that is Choking Talons. Most DKs use the morph that adds more damage, while the Choking morph reduces opponent damage by applying a debuff. If your group is going to charge into an opposing group of 20+ players, having a DK go in a few seconds early and cast Choking Talons a few times before you hit them can make a difference to their counter damage.
The timing on your own buffs is also very important. Keeping your Major Evasion buff up from Elude, Shuffle, Quick Cloak, or Spectre’s Eye will mitigate 20% area damage – the damage that will likely kill you most often! When I lead groups, I’ll often call for “long buffs”, meaning that I’m giving people a few seconds to apply everything that they want before a push. I’ll sometimes call “long buffs” as we disengage or if the engagement is delayed by a few seconds to ensure that my team’s buffs are all up for as long as possible without them needing to spend casting time reapplying them. Don’t rely on someone calling for buffs, it is your own responsibility to keep them up as close to 100% of the time while in combat as possible.
There are some sets that provide buffs to your allies such as Spell Power Cure, Rallying Cry, and others. These are described in the Healing page. Having such a set on a player who can provide the associated buff to as many players in your group as possible can greatly increase the performance of your group. When a group ensures that they have one of each buff set with the best and most efficient coverage of all possible buffs, that’s called a min/max group.
Every player needs to be aware of where their opponents are located, where damage is coming from, the existence of red circles on the ground (indicative of AoE or siege), where to position in order not to get hit, where their healers are, and where both good and bad siege is located.
People dropping siege can make or break a fight. Siege needs some space, and has a projectile time (before it hits), so locating your friendly siege is very important. The player(s) running siege also need to be protected (they can’t just stand out in the open and expect not to be attacked.
When running siege, you should get on the siege to fire when it’s ready, then immediately get off and maintain awareness of your surroundings while casting buffs, HoTs, and anything else. There’s a line “HoTs between shots” that applies to siege! If counter siege is aimed at you, get out of the circle it’s going to hit, then go back in and fire your siege while taking advantage of your own HoTs and area heals from allies to keep your health topped up.
Line of sight is a very important principle. An area of effect projectile spell will not hit you if it can’t see you, though a single target projectile will still hit you if it starts travelling before you move out of sight. If you move behind a tree, rock, wall, or other terrain then your opponents won’t be able to target you until they see you again. Some players build explicitly for recovery times when they use line of sight and are often called “rock humpers” or “tower humpers”.
When in and group and in stealth, don’t use any skills! There are some that can be safely used in stealth, so be certain that you’ve tested each of your skills slotted before going out to fight. If there is a group of people in stealth near you, you should stealth as well so as not to reveal them, or move away from them unless they want to use you as bait!
If there is a large train of players (grouped up tightly) moving towards you, then move away! If you stay directly in front of them, it doesn’t matter how tanky or survivable you are, you’re not likely to live through it. It is better to use some stamina in a dodge roll or block while moving perpendicular so you don’t drain all of your (or your healers’) resources staying alive in the face of high damage.
If someone is moving towards you with a proxy detonation on them, move away until the proxy explodes and then attack. If you can’t move away, blocking the detonation is usually your best option, though be wary of some ultimates that can’t be blocked.
Crowd control is one of the most critical and under rated mechanisms in the game. There are two types of crowd control, hard and soft. Hard usually causes a loss of control of your character (such as being feared or knocked up/down), while soft usually causes you to be unable to move, but you can still cast spells or use skills (being snared).
Lets consider a NB’s fear skill. It hits unlimited targets in range, and puts them out of the fight for between 1 and 2 seconds (one or two casts of skills). One player casting fear doesn’t do any damage or healing, but it negates the activities of any in-reange opposing players for the same amount of time (or more) it took to cast the fear.
Snares are critical to taking out groups when they’re not running the Snow Treaders mythic (that provides snare immunity). A few people casting snares will cause some opponents to get stuck for a second or two, fall behind the moving group, and lose the protections that being in said group (all balled up) provides them. They’ll be much easier to kill. A strung out group can be focused down one by one, whereas a balled group needs to be hit by much higher amounts of damage.
Having your NBs cast fear regularly, your DKs talons, your archers Bombard, your ice staff users blockade and the use of ultimates that knock up (Meteor), or snare (Warden sleet or ice destro staff ultimate) in the right place can all cause your opponents to get out of position, panic, or use up their critical stamina resources getting out of them. A player with no stamina can’t block or escape, and can be killed much more easily.
There are two types of siege, those meant to hit walls and doors, and those meant to hit players (anti-personnel siege). “Stone” ballista and trebuchets do more damage to walls and doors than anti-personnel siege. Please use the right siege for the right target.
When running siege, you should get on the siege to fire when it’s ready, then immediately get off of it and maintain awareness of your surroundings. If counter siege is aimed at you, get out of the circle it’s going to hit, then go back in and fire your siege. If you’re running multiple siege (as you usually should be), then between firing renew any defensive buffs that you have!
Trebuchets do double the damage of ballista. You can shoot a ballista twice for every shot of a treb. Both will do the same amount of damage over time to a wall or door, though if you have twice the wait for reload, a normal player can run more trebs than ballista. One player can easily run three siege if they’re well placed, and some can run four if they’re perfect!
When sieging a keep or outpost, don’t just hop onto any open siege you see. Most experienced players will set up multiple siege and rotate between them. We feel very useless when running three siege and random people hop on two of them. We know that we can run more, we’re just not able to! If you don’t have any siege, then buy some! Don’t steal siege unless you see the siege owner run away / move off to do something else.
When sieging a door with a ram, drop ballista right in front of the door and surrounding it so that the people on the ram can fire the ballista. Position yourself with your back to the door in the corner, as some oils being poured won’t hit you in that spot. Be wary of negates being dropped on rams, as you won’t be able to cast (heal) and you’ll need to get out of the negate in order to stay alive (under oils). Keeping as many HoTs (such as radiating regeneration, echoing vigor) and ground heals (such as healing springs and class skills) as possible on you can proc a Healer’s Earthgore if you get low on health. This will also remove ground effects (such as negate).
Siege shield can save your allies and your ram (or any siege for that matter) a lot of damage. It is especially useful on rams as there will often be oil poured down onto them.
When placing siege down after the first one, try to place them in a triangular form at minimum distance from each other. If your siege line is too spread out, you make it easier for gankers to take out the people on the edges.
If your siege is on the edge or back of the line – or near a set of stairs that someone can come up to it, get a caltrops on it. That will prevent sneaky nightblades from burning them and lower the likelihood of them ganking you. If you have caltrops and the person on that siege doesn’t, then cast yours to help them out.
Scattershots increase the damage that players take from all sources, Meatbags apply a healing debuff on opponents, and oil catapults slow them and sap stamina. They’re are very useful when hitting a choke (such as a breach in the wall), though you won’t usually need more than one of each.
Make sure that you know the timing for each type of siege at different ranges. You can go to a safe keep and siege to your heart’s content in order to test and get a feel for distance and timing.
Siege repair kits cost less than buying new siege. If you have a siege low on hit points, repair it in between firing. You can also take it down, and when you’re in a safe place put it down again, repair it up, and pack it up.
Some positioning with a trebuchet on the outer second floor can hit the inner ground floor of a keep. If you find these areas, you can use a (cold) fire trebuchet to help take out the inner guards in advance, and/or help your allies kill any opponents in the area of the front flag.
Placing anti-player siege (such as cold fire ballistas) on the third floor above the front door, and on the third floor of the corners of keeps can make or break a keep take. Trebs and catapaults of all types can be placed on outer walls to hit the top of the inner. Use that siege to hit the opposing players on top of the inner keep who are pouring oils down on your allies. Use that siege to coordinate a hit if there’s a large (ball) group running around inside killing your allies.
If you can get upstairs above one of the posterns, you can often place an oil that will drop down and hit the defenders of the back flag. One oil pour can make the difference!
More siege hitting more often is best, as good groups will tend to move a lot. If all of the randoms/pugs/individuals drop a fire ballista when there’s an opposing group fighting nearby, the opposing group’s chances of winning drops significantly.
Use oils. Use as many oils as you can. Place them as close together as you can above where opponents will be located, and use them as much as you can. When defending the outer, put them above where opponents will be coming in.
When defending the inner, place them above the breach, on the corner at the top of the stairs (above transit and scroll platforms), half way up the stairs (above the front flag), and on both sides above the posterns facing inwards so that opposing players who want to come from the back flag and go up stairs have to walk through them. If a postern wall is opened, one oil facing outwards (above the stairs) and a few more facing inwards is usually a good choice.
Put up as much counter siege as possible, and coordinate hitting the same targets. If you see someone else’s siege hitting something (a valid target), wait for their siege to reload and fire at the same time as they do so that your likelihood of killing the target (more damage at the same time) is higher!
When the front door to the inner is opening, place siege on the back flag facing the front. You can get at least three ballistas or one catapault on the back flag, and a few more between the back and front flags. You can even get two more ballistas on the top above the postern doors that are capable of firing down to the front flag. The more siege hitting the same area, the less likely opponents are going to live through walking in that area.
If you can maintain a killing zone on the flags, even if you don’t push out on the opponents there, that gives the rest of your faction time to send support and help you defend a keep.
The decision whether to repair the outer breach if the opposing group is already inside is sometimes a challenging one. On one hand, that prevents other opponents (or those who have died and taken a camp) from getting in. On the other hand if it looks like you’re going to lose the keep very quickly, leaving it open will allow your own reinforcements to get in if they show up too late. If it looks like you’re going to lose the keep, setting up a stone ballista outside to hit the breach as soon as it is taken can give you an extra few seconds where your opponents can’t repair, such that your reinforcements might be able to get inside and start the fight to take back the keep.
There are many more topics to cover on PvP. Read through the rest of the pages for more, or just get out there, start fighting, and have fun!
Having fun is the goal of playing a video game. If you’re not having fun and getting frustrated, you’re welcome to look us up on Discord and ask questions. Use the link at the top of the page and we’ll be happy to help!