My findings in PvP

This forum post is being started so I can share what I've experienced since XP boost was increased for flagging.
The information below is based on my toughest fights, or the ones that annihilated me with 2 hits.

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According to my recent experience in PvP, wielding a shield is the current meta for high level PvPers.
The only exception is the archer archetype, for obvious reasons.
For melee, polearms is the preferred by high level players. Always one handed weapon and shield. Always heavy armor.
For magic users, the trend is the same: all of them were wielding a shield and most of them were using heavy armor.
Considering the PvPers that are tough to beat, none of them used two-handers or dual wielding. Very few were using light armor.
I found a ratio of about 1:10 for ranged/ others in this "tough PvPers" universe.

I would bet that if there was an exhaustive Free for all PvP tournament (Obsidian Trials maybe), the grand winner would be using either magic (moon and fire are strong) or polearms with heavy armor and shield.

I wonder whether skill and gear cap will even out the statistics or not.

 

We've done big battles in the Obsidian Trials with the level/skill cap, tanky melees do the best, and 2h users won a few. Also worth mentioning that when you and I fought in the Fall I was in a water mage build and able to kill you several times without a shield, though I did have a heavy chest on.

 

Sorry Cos, not sure you are in my "toughest fights" list.
So for that reason our fights are outside this survey.

Here I'm trying to understand what is the top meta stuff for PvP and maybe help devs on what to balance.

PS: I think you're not the kind of guy that tries to be the meta, btw.

 

If that's the case you might want to remove the line about killing you with two hits. Perhaps change it to one hit for the time being?

 

Good try buddy

 

RHEC Blood Bay event, I was in Death at the time (shield, probably in light chest for the crit at that point).

 

Girls, girls... you're both pretty.

 

You're an archer, when people who know what they're doing get hit with an arrow, they switch to shield, that doesn't mean it's meta.

 

I agree that heavy seems to be the goto for sure. I have been poking devs on this that they need to do more for casters with the cloth as heavy has way to many perks over cloth all round making it the best for defense and survival. the shield helps a lot too for sure. I can't kill clock work as death with out my shield. but I never use my shield in pvp myself. unless there is an archer lol.

 

Players will use different builds and setups depending on who they are fighting with and against. So like Vesper pointed out, obviously as an archer you are going to see mostly shields.

If you are fighting in groups, players will be more likely to use dps and support builds. The key to balancing pvp is not determining the meta for 1 on 1 combat, it's making sure each build at least has a counter and isn't total god mode. There have been times in the past where certain builds were so powerful, you were stupid not to use them in pvp. That is still the case, but to a MUCH lesser extent. So in my mind there has been some progress in balancing pvp, but until we have some meaningful reason to pvp it will be much harder to determine what needs to be adjusted. There just isn't enough large scale combat going on to see the potential issues.

 

Well, at the risk of inflaming some people, they made it trivial to completely dismiss someone's Shield of Air. I suggested a couple times that they change Torpid Torment to simply block focus transfer for the duration instead of removing the shield.

 

I would love to agree, but shields are effective against almost everything, not limited to arrows. So it's not just a counter against arrows, it's meta.

 

I don't know if anyone could gather actual data from that big PvP event Chris did in the Obsidian Trials, but my perception during my participation was the top guys going heavy + shield and only a handful of less effective archers (myself included) having a hard time trying to deal any relevant damage.
It would be nice to see the winner and runner up for every round and their gear + deck. Not sure it's possible though.

 

I'm pretty sure that shields have no effect on spells.

 

The best defense against a death mage is usually a shield because he can't heal himself if you block his spells. Only Air spells should ignore shields.

 

Do you actually see the word "blocked"? I'll take your word for it but this is the first time I have heard that shields work against any magic.

 

I'm sure shields won't work against some attacks, maybe AOE and DOT?
But the point is, although not absolute defense, it's effective against the major part of dangerous attacks and there's little to no point in not using a shield.

 

Of course there's a point to not using one. Less DPS. They're used when they have to be, and not at all when they aren't. I'll tell you a secret, you're using the easy "meta" build, shields were recently buffed to mitigate that, and guess what? You start pvping, you see shields, that's why. It's like you're doing a survey on fashion, and you only observe when it's raining, and you come the the conclusion that people love using umbrellas.

 

I await the response. What's the counter to shield+heavy?
Archer is the easy meta? Must be the worst meta in the world then