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Deacon's AvA Recommendations

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DeaconGrim
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  • ESO: @Rudyard
Posted On: 01/24/2015 at 11:39 AM

1. Survivability. The first rule of AvA is survivability.  With the exception of highly stealthy builds that consume a LOT of potions, glass cannons do not last long in Cyrodiil.  With the removal, for now, of forward camps, suvivability is all the more important, as you will either need to wait for someone to resurrect you or ride back several minutes to the battlefield when you die.  There are four contributing factors to survivability in AvA; healing; high or boosted defense; evasion; and one of the most overlooked - constantly moving to make yourself hard to target. I'll deal with these each in order below:

A. Healing. Everyone one wants to damage deal or tank, but healing is absolutely critical.  If you want to be part of a group that rolls around the battlefield surviving enemy assaults, at least 30% of your group should be dedicated to healing.  So if you have a group of 10, at least 3 people in that group should be primarily casting heals in combat; if you've got 20, then 6 group members should be dedicated to healing primarily.  If you don't have many dedicated healers, you can use hybrid healers (folks who partially dd or tank and partially heal).  But if you do, I suggest doubling the number.  So if you have a group of 10 and no dedicated healers, then 6 group members should be templars or other classes with resto staff as their off-hand weapon. 

There are two types of group healing and you need both: burst heals and HOT (heal over time) heals.

          HOT Heals:

                   Resto Staff:  Rapid Regeneration/Mutagen, Healing Springs/Illustrious Healing,

                   Templar:  Purifying Ritual/Extended Ritual,

                   Nightblade:  Funnel Health.

          Burst Heals:  

                    Resto Staff:  Combat Prayer/Blessing of Restoration

                    Templar:  Honor the Dead/Breath of Life (the best AvA heal in game, imo), Ritual of Rebirth/Lingering Ritual, Repentance, Practiced Incantation/Remembrance

                    Nightblade:  Sap Essence

Additionally there are healing related buffs that do things like increasing health regeneration or increase the healing received:

                    Templar:  Radiant Aura, Restoring Focus, 

                    Fighter's Guild: Ring of Preservation,

                    Undaunted: Sanguine Altar/Overflowing Altar.

 

The most common heals in AvA are Rapid Regeneration, Healing Springs, Breath of Life, and Sap Essence, but each of the above are useful.  As a healer, you want to keep up both the HOT's and use the burst heals when the health bars start to really go down.  There is a dance between managing your magicka pool and keeping up the party health that you can only acquire through experience - just get out there and find your rhythm.

B. Defense  Shields are your friend, as are buffs that increase Armor and Spell Resistance. It's very helpful to your group's survivability to keep several forms of the following up in combat:

                    Resto Staff: Combat Prayer/Blessing of Restoration, Healing Ward/Ward Ally,

                    Dragon Knight: Igneous Shield/Fragmented Shield,

                    Nightblade: Veil of Blades,

                    Fighter's Guild: Ring of Preservation/Turn Undead,

                    Undaunted: Spiked Bone Shield/Bone Surge,

                    Alliance War Support: Reviving Barrier/Replenishing Barrier.

Additionally, there are individual shields (or in the case of a sorc, specific to them and their pets) that decrease the need for healing (Templar's Blazing Shield, anyone?).

 

C. Evasion. Evasion did not seem to receive a lot of attention from the AvA crowd until Stamina builds got buffed in the fall.  Evasion comes from two primary sources:  skills, and dodging.

                     Medium Armor: Elude/Shuffle (Elude is the better morph for evasion

                     Nightblade: Mirage/Double Take

                     Templar: Searing Light/Blinding Flashes (this skill and morphs are about to be replaced by a ranged execute for templars)

                     Dual Wield: Heated Blades/Ember Explosion

  

D. Stay Mobile.  Moving around helps alot in both 1v1 and large group combat. In 1v1 or small group combat, keep moving around and particularly keep moving behind your target making it hard for him to keep you targeted, hard for templars to stun-lock you with their spears, etc.  In large group combat, move up to attack range and quickly move back, move laterally along the line of you allies keeps yourself from getting mass targetted by a bunch of enemies.

 

2. Timing

A. Timing of a seige. Sometimes you just need to force the issue and start a seige when nothing else is occurring on the map. Often, however, that is not the case. If you have a little patience, the enemy will engage either you or the third faction and a window of opportunity occurs to hit them in another location while their forces are engaged at their original seige.  Too many times people zerg to the next nearest keep.  If the enemy is pushing the majority of their forces to one or two areas, there are likely unguarded keeps behind them. Prep both the inner and outer walls (hit the inners with trebuchets while the outers are still up) to around 52% before you flag the keep, so that when it does flags, there is a greater chance of your raid getting on the flags before any defenders can reach the keep.

 

Another fun thing to do, which we've done once or twice in Blood and Steel AvA, is to seige multiple enemy keeps when they are pushing your faction aggressively.  One night DC kept pushing Chalman and Kingscrest hard. So we went all the way west, deep in DC territory, and flagged all three of their scroll keeps at once - Rayles, Warden, and Glademist. Though we were a small 9 person raid, we almost took Warden and Glademist and DC lost Chalman, Bleakers, and Aleswell in their panicked response to our triple-seige of their scroll keeps.  DC was gun-shy for the rest of the night. They re-took Aleswell eventually, but we did not see the aggressiveness they had previously showed at KC and Chalman.

 

B. Timing of engaging an enemy group. Think about what you would do in an enemy's situation on the battlefield. If they are charging a choke point or friendly zerg, or if they are charging a flag, they are likely going to spend their ultimates and a lot of their resources in the first 5-8 seconds. If the situation allows it, hit them, ranged or mass charge, after they have exhausted those ultimates and resource pools.  Also, think about when enemies are least likely to be watching their back. Hitting the back side of a seiging group as they charge into the inner keep can sometimes cut them in half and you can kill 1/3 to 1/2 of the group before the others realize what is going on and they are then engaged with the guards.

 

C. Timing of resources. This one is tricker and takes experience.  When you get engaged in a prolonged 1v1 (I've had some last more than 10 minutes), who ultimately wins usually comes down to who manages their resources (mana/stamina/health) best. it's not just about the health bar.  Against most enemies, it is essential to try to strategically drain your enemy's stamina pool and then crowd-control (cc) or stun-lock them when you think that stamina pool is low.  If you can cc or stun-lock you enemy for 3 seconds and they dont' have stamina to break it, then the duel suddenly turns into an easy kill.  how do you get them to drain their stamina? Make them block or dodge roll or in the case of a stamina-build opponent, heal through their weapon skill attacks and when it looks like they've spammed a lot at once, try to cc/stun lock them.  Again, this is something you develop a feel for with experience.

 

3. Stay together. Good, AP generating groups know how to stay together. They ride together and in the midst of combat they stay close on the Crown except for when the group leader yells for party members to disperse.  I've grouped up with several very successful raids in the past month and I've seen them heavily use survivability and staying together to great success, often destroying groups up to 4 times their size in an outpost/keep defense and up to twice their size in the field. Staying on the crown, keeping moving, keeping the heals and shields up can yield amazing results.

 

 

 

Last Edited on: 01/24/2015 at 11:46 AM
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Seaimpin de na Iomproidh Gorm
tnliverpool
Seaimpin de na Iomproidh Gorm
  • ESO: @tnliverpool
Replied On: 01/24/2015 at 01:53 PM PST
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Really nice and thorough write up Deacon!

I can attest that survival and resource management is often the name of the game.  Well done again Deacon!  Perhaps we can start getting some large GSCH groups together out in Cyrodiil.

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Coaxochdas
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Replied On: 01/24/2015 at 03:25 PM PST

thanks-- will peruse

 

strangely,  people told me several times  DO NOT USE RAPID REGENERATION (as they tell one not to use Purge  and not to use Alliance shield anymore)   has this changed or been fixed?

 

thank you

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ElizabethInAustin
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Replied On: 01/25/2015 at 08:15 AM PST
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Glad to see you are emphasizing the need for healers. As one who primarily heals in aVa, I agree 100% we need to establish more dedicated healers when we make runs.   Perhaps we should let be known upfront who we are so people know where to find us and also to help a bit when we run against a group that consistently jumps on healers.  

And yeah, what is the deal with Rapid Regen? Never heard about this.

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Laoch de na Ulchabhan Dubh
verve
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Replied On: 01/25/2015 at 08:19 AM PST
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I cut/pasted the "Templar" parts to help me get AvA heals usefull.

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Seaimpin de na Iomproidh Corcra
DeaconGrim
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  • ESO: @Rudyard
Replied On: 01/25/2015 at 02:45 PM PST

I have not heard of any bug related to Rapid Regen like there is with the purge and wall of elements.  I can think of only two scenarios where someone would not want you using Rapid Regen:

1) they are stealthed and trying to stay hidden. If you use Rapid Regen, the heal beam between you and them reveals their location to enemies.

2) Rapid Regen is used to cover lots of people and get AP from those other people's kills. That's one reason you often see people casting it repeatedly in a group, unfortunately.

 

It also is  a long-ticking HOT, so it is something that is good to keep up on party members.

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Dirkdaring
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Replied On: 01/25/2015 at 03:01 PM PST
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  Most exp pvp RvR groups /players  always  focus healers first  it`s the same in every game normally you focus healers then squishy dps, and save tanks for last. 

 

 there are things you can do to up  your surivablity.  like set up 1 bar for defense and other bar for dps or support . etc stay mobile , do not over extend, always  watch your flank,  use ablities like shield charge, bolt etc  as a oh sht button . like  you see you are getting cut off  from group , but notice someone in your backline , charge them to get back to a safe spot .

 don`t back pedal or keyboard turn . resource management  also while its nice to be 2400 in primary stat  but 1300  in off you are going to run out to fast.  don`t leave your healers/backline support unguarded , always have 1 or 2 tank/dps etc back by healers to help if they get jumped by sneaky nightblade types .

  like 2250 magika , and 1850 + stam even tho you are magika based the 150 more magika isn`t that important  compared to having a good amout of stam . since stam is needed for block, dodge, breakfree etc .  having a more balanced build stats wise i think is better .

 

 like on dirk , i use a 5 med 2 light armor set up , all armor  is magnus and tourg pact  with 1h + shield i`m at 5 mag, 4 tourg pact   even in medium armor etc with rings, etc i`m at 128 spell power, 120 mag recovery, 102 stam recovery , 180 wep power,  2200 magika , 1965 stam .   point is , you don`t need to be hard cap etc , a more balanced build is better over all due to resources control .

 

  This is a great mini series from the history channel   and shows how effective small group tactics can be against a larger force  a great series to watch  for RvR leaders as well as non leaders to give insight into RvR / AvA  strats  each is like 10 min long .

 

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMNaULHLH9c

 

 enjoy .   the strat and tactics  will almost always work the only real  change is the layout of the map . but  the map layout in ESO allows for effective  tactics just most  don`t use them . :D

 

 

 



» Edited on: 2015-01-25 15:06:59

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ElizabethInAustin
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Replied On: 01/26/2015 at 10:31 AM PST
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@Deacon My understanding when in stealth throwing any heals, buffs etc can reveal your location. Is that correct?

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Caomhnoir de na Ulchabhan Gorm
Doreth
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Replied On: 01/26/2015 at 01:27 PM PST

yes a lot of them can.  but they have to be player specific, a ground heal wont pup your stealth..  and well rapid regen wont pop you out exactly, but the bean will show them where you are about...  I've seen a few other skills that can have a split second effect that can give away your location

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Caomhnoir de na Ulchabhan Gorm
Doreth
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Replied On: 01/26/2015 at 04:09 PM PST

to add to all that deacon has put up here... think what ppl sometimes forget is that no matter how you play, dps, heals, tank..  is the fact that no matter how you play, there are skills that will be beneficial to your group.. some of those skills are key for any group....

 

i'll take my Templar for example:  I would consider myself a tank....  the beauty of a Templar though are there heals...  I use my shields to survive..  they are self shields only (compared to the group shield of the DK)  but I throw out at least 1 breath of life to every shield I put up... doing so that keeps me alive, but breath of life also heals 2 others in the group with a large amount of heals.  I also put down other heals but these 2 skills alone is a great example of a tank not only tanking but healing....

now I've seen Templar take on a more offensive role where they will heal and and deal high dps...

 

and well another example I can give is my stam WW DK,  my ww dk helps everyone get more ult for 1 bonus..  he is built to deal a high amount of dps.  but I also have Igneous Shield that will give a shield to those around me ( I belive that's the one that give bonus to healing, btu you can correct me if im mixing up my morph)

 

anyway don't want to blabber along here but all this just to say in ava remember its a team that wins the day, not single players.  so build your toon with that in mind....



» Edited on: 2015-01-26 16:18:11

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Rainingblood
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Replied On: 03/03/2015 at 08:19 AM PST
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Great post Deacon. I love running with you in AvA. You are a great leader.

In 99.9% of pugs, most people are not willing to be flexible and change up their loadout to be more group-focused. I play a Templar with a well-rounded build, but I can switch to a group healing build or tanking build depending on group comp. I think that being flexible is huge, but in a guild group, having predesignated rolls is absolutely necessary to be most effective.

And to comment/agree on what Dirk said, because I feel they are the reason groups fail ALL the time and are a sign of inexperienced group play, and they are over extending, backpedaling, and not looking around

Stick close, listen to the leader, play your role, be aware. If you can do those things, you will be successful and will be a better pvper than 80% of the players in Cyrodiil.

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verve
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Replied On: 12/29/2015 at 11:21 AM PST
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Bumping this excellent post so those interested in the new AvA event can look at their builds and tactics.

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