Everyone on this list is gonna get exactly what they deserve as soon as I find them alone. - People I Hate

There are plenty of people in this game who hate PvP side.

Lets try to check the most frequent reasons, and see if it is hard to fix.

You are using PvE-geared character in PvP

This is the bread-and-butter of PvP hate.

I don’t PvE often, and until recently, I didn’t even have dedicated PvE character (yup, all my 9 chars were PvP-geared).

But I made one now. Got a random duel offer from someone in Craglorn, and I died to first combo like a complete newbie. He wasn’t even a good PvPer. And I played PvP for.. idk, several years already.

Lesson of the day: using PvE gear in PvP feels really bad.

Easy/Average fix

Get yourself some PvP gear, PvP food and PvP mundus.

If you don’t want to change stats and gear too much, at least have alternative food with MaxHP & regens.

Depending on the build, it might be as easy as to buy something from strores + craft something (lots of meta gear fall into this category), but might also involve some arena weapon farming, or monster set farming, or mythic farming.

Worst-to-grind builds contain dungeon weapons or solo-arena weapons in them.
You can try to avoid them at first.

You don’t have enough hitpoints to survive a burst

In PvE, you need DPS to kill bosses.

In PvP, you need burst to kill players.

In reverse, you need maxHP and armor and mitigations to survive burst.

Surviving DPS is easier, since you can heal, and any interruptions in DPS rotation will reset your HP to max numbers. And even if you needed to survive good DPS, you would still use the same tools anyway - have more toughness to create another GCD where you are not dead.

Easy fix

Control your amount of hitpoints with food, enchants and stat redistribution at altars.

Build at least 27-28k HP with ~1-4 heavy pieces.

For players new at PvP, I recommend to go with 30-32k range in 4-5 heavy. You won’t be invincible in this setup, this is just a basic amount that allows you not to die immediately, but you can still do a lot of damage in this HP range if you gear with damage sets.

Going higher, you won’t be able to kill.

You can go with approx ~25k if you are very good at PvP and you know what you are doing.

I do not advice to go lower, as 21-24k range is a possible 2 GCD kill from a nightblade (kill in while you are still in stun). Only exception if you are gankblade and you max out your burst.

You don’t have enough heals

Rookie mistake: go to PvP without any heal spell.

Advanced mistake: go to PvP with heal spells and not using them as soon as you start taking damage.

Veteran mistake: go to PvP with Resolving Vigor and forget about it’s short duration, not casting it again after 4s.

Easy fix

Slot in heals. Slot in shields, if your max magica is high enough.

In PvE, you slot in DoTs to improve DPS. Ground-based dots is BnB, since it allows to damage multiple enemies at once. You don’t do this in PvP: ground dots are useless since it is easy to avoid them, targeted DoTs are rarely worth the time (with few exception, like DK dots and stinging slashes) and can be cleansed.

In PvP, you slot in HoTs to survive damage instead. You try to layer as many strong hots as your build can give you, and prebuff before fight. Player-buff HoTs are better than ground-based HoTs, but ground based can be used too, because unlike ground based DoTs, you can choose to stand inside them.

It is very beneficial to run AoE heals in group PvP. Cross-heals stack. This is the BnB of “ball groups”.

You break CC incorrectly

There are 2 types of crowd control in this game: immobilize and stun. Each of them have independent immunity timer: 4s for immobilize, 7s for stun.

Using stun-break when you are immobilized will perform bash and you will stand still on the same place. Using dodge in stun will not do anything. Both are insanely lethal.

It is vital to break from stun as soon as it is placed on you, followed by heals.

In almost all situations (bar several exceptions), you want to roll-dodge from immobilizes too.

Hard to fix

No easy solution here. This is L2P issue.

Installing addons that notify you on the state of crowd-control may help.

You don’t have enough sustain

You can get out with using no sustain on mundus and jewelry in PvE.

Heck, you can sometimes even skip sustain on food, because good groups would run group-sustain sets on healers.

You don’t get those sources of sustain in PvP. You don’t get orbs in PvP. And you get much, much more resource spend in PvP.

Stuns, roots - breaking them eat through stamina.

Heals - they cost much more than spammable. Especially spammable heals.

Easy/Average fix

The most cost-effective sustain source is mundus.

But that might not be enough. Go for the jewelry enchants or sustain food:

You might also want to run tri-stat potions, or two-stat with immovable.

You don’t put enough pressure

Remember I mentioned that heals cost more than damage?

Whoever puts opponent in defensive position is winning sustain game.

Hard fix

Find openings while you are defending to set up delayed burst. Go counter-offensive if situation allows you.

You don’t know your burst combos

DPS does not kill. Burst kills.

You need to learn the ways to set up delayed damage combos, so that they burst in 1-2 GCD frame.

Easy fix

Check youtube vids on your class. They will contain burst combo skills in their setups.

Practice a bit on a dummy or overland monsters.

It is not “PvE rotation” level stuff, PvP combos are much easier… with some rare exceptions ;)

You aren’t using your ultimate to kill

Continuation of the previous point.

PvP players very rarely use ultimate as an active defense. Only ones that are used a lot are offensive/defensive combo: goliath, vampire scion, leap.

PvP players use ultimate to burst. You should do that too.

Easy fix

Slot in PvP-viable ultimates that do good damage. Dawnbreaker of smiting, Onslaught, Ballista/Barrage – available to all classes, but lots of class ultimates can be better.

Do note that you can use any ultimate, no matter if you are stam or mag. Damage scales on maximum of your stam+weapon damage or magica+spell damage. You will lose crit bonus damage, but it’s not like crit matters in PvP today, unless dedicated build with Acuity.

You don’t break LoS

It might come as suprise for someone, but you should break line-of-sight, as if you playing some shooter and taking cover behind obstacles as soon as someone starts shootig you.

Wondered why pro players like 3-floor towers and resource towers in cyro? Right, because you can very easily make it so only 1-2 players can damage you, while 7 others can’t target you.

Average/Hard to fix

L2P issue.

Use pillars to run around them. Use height differences. Fight in places that play to your favour. Think strategically.

You are blocking/rolling too much

Block costs a whole lot. Unless your build reduces the cost to 400-800 range, you should only block for 1-2s when it really matters.

Rolls cost a whole lot AND more for each cast. It means that if you roll just because you felt like it, and then enemy got you rooted, you have no other choice but to incrementally spend more.

Average fix

Do not cling on damage evasion. Use shields, heals, LoS.

You aren’t blocking/rolling enough

Block costs a whole lot, but it doesn’t mean you should never use it.

If your choice is to go through enemy burst blockng+healing, survive and waste a bunch of resources, or to die on spot, you should block.

Heal+roll will perform the same role vs single-target skills, but it will not work vs AoE burst (blastbones, subterranean, meteor).

Hard to fix

Learn to identify enemy burst combos.

Use what it takes to interrupt them or make them less effective.

You don’t have enough movement speed

Source of Major Expedition (not bow+dodge, but on skill) is almost mandatory in PvP.

In fact, going higher than that is almost always profitable, as it allows to break LoS faster, escape from fight you can’t win and catch players that escape from you.

Average fix

Find the spot for Major Expedition. Always slot in Streak on sorc.

You can use Ring of Wild Hunt and 3x swift jewelry traits to go further than that.

You break your team formation

Number of players matter.

Yoloing without team support will get you killed in 1v2 / 1v3 / 1v4.

Average/Hard fix

Slow down. Don’t rush. Look on the situation first. Don’t chase kills too deep.

Follow your team when everyone escape.
Follow your team when everyone attacks.
Follow your team.

Try to find your team if outnumbered (but don’t bring enemies on those poor NBs, that will kill both of you).

You don’t notice when opponent use active defences

Burst can be countered by active defences (blocking, dodging, defensive ultis, heal stacks, immovable pots).

Your burst too. Right, even if you did everything correctly, opponent can still survive.

Hard to fix

Have an alternative gameplan in your mind. Do something that improves your position in the future. Put on dots. Recast your buffs. Do heavy attack.

If your burst is already spent, have a gameplan on how to set up another one.

You don’t have ways to catch nightblades

People that cry about cloak just never spammed bombard in nightblade direction :)

All direct AoE damage skills bring opponent out of invisibility.

You can also use skills that remove stealth. They should be buffed next patch, right now they are not very effective, as they proc each 1s, which often allows NB to escape from range.

Variable fix

This is build-dependant. Some builds have good AoEs out of the box, some might be ok without the means to catch NB.

You expect that you can never die if you do everything correctly

In PvE, death is result of bad mechanics knowledge or low stats.

In PvP, death is result of outplay by other players. Sometimes you die because of sheer numbers of people burst you, or even throw all ultimates on you.

Mindset fix

Take it easy.

Try to analyze what went wrong ofc, but more than that, just have fun.

Unless your KDA is very low, no need to worry.