Sometimes the best defense is just a great defense. This week I’m going to be going over some general defense tactics that can be employed in Cyrodiil. These are mostly going to be random knowledge tips and a few ways to use the mechanics of Cyrodiil to your advantage.  So let’s check out our ESO PVP Defense Strategy.
Forward Camp Placement—We’ve talked about this in a past article, but I just want to reiterate how massively important this is. Place your camp in the most advantageous location and make sure it’s always available for your defenders to respawn at. Leave a few people to guard it if it keeps getting burned. No Forward Camp means you lose the keep. It’s that simple.
Anti-siege—Another topic we’ve addressed before, but it warrants a mention here. You can stop a large group of people from even entering your keep if you are on point with your anti-siege. Remember to focus target and prioritize the highest damage dealing siege first (Normal Ballistae are always the first you should take down).
Walls—Ok, here’s the new stuff. As far as keeps go, there are two walls that an enemy will have to penetrate before they are able to capture a keep. We can use these walls to our advantage when trying to defend. You should be using each wall that an enemy is attacking as a position to kill them, slow their progress, or in any way hinder them from moving further into the keep.
Wall Mechanics—An outer wall of a keep will half crumble at 50%. Therefore, if you’re anti-sieging directly on top of the wall that is being sieged and it drops below 50% you will lose your siege. This is really funny to watch. Don’t be that guy. Once an outer wall drops to 0% people can walk over it and smash your face. To make it so that they can no longer hop right over your wall you must repair it to 25%. This should always be top priority whenever they have gotten inside your keep. ALWAYS take EVERY opportunity to push the enemy out of your keep. This serves you in two major ways. First and most obviously, it keeps them out of your keep. You can’t capture a keep from the outside. Secondly, this is one of the most demoralizing things you can do. Look at it this way. A group has been working for an hour to knock down your outer and inner walls. Then you wipe them and repair the outer to 25%. Then by the time they breach the outer again you’ve already repaired the inner to 100% (They can no longer reenter the inner keep once it has been repaired to 90%). There have been more than a few occasions when that has happened to me. I usually just stare at the inner postern mournfully for a few moments and then alt F4. Cyrodiil is a very long form of PvP. Use this to your advantage. If you can make people mad or discouraged you’ll dwindle your enemy’s numbers and be able to claim victory for your alliance.
OIL FREAKING POTS—Ok so, once again we’re rehashing old themes, but this is the difference maker. Manning an oil pot makes you suuuper powerful. Everything dies (Unless they use the Support skill line ability Purge and have enough healers). Placing these at the optimum points in a keep will allow you to defend yourself when you are egregiously outnumbered. Partner this up with caltrops or an oil catapult and it’s a certified death zone. High traffic areas are the best for these. Put them on outer wall breaches, inner postern breaches, and near a flag you’re defending.
Prioritizing Your Defense—Someday sometime there will be some situation where you will be unable to defend all of your keeps with the amount of players you have online. At this moment you will have to make a choice to allocate your team to save one keep over another. The question is, which keep should you save? The answer to that is fairly simple, keep as many keeps that you can keep as close to your other keeps keep keeps keeps. What I mean by that is, keep the keeps that are closest to your home keeps. Always try to maintain your transit lines. Allowing an enemy alliance to steal Alessia while you defend Blue Road Keep (BRK) to the last man (Or woman) is a mistake. You can’t quick travel to BRK for free if you don’t control Alessia. Keeping this in mind will make your opponents work harder for every inch they take.
When The Best Defense Is a Good Offense—If you have free respawn at keep then be as reckless as you want. Push out and go slaughter that zerg (The upcoming AOE damage cap removal will make this much more viable in the future). Kamikaze that siege line with your two-hander, you cute little stamina build. BUT once your keep is flagged and you are only able to respawn at a Forward Camp you had better wise up. Being wasteful with FC respawns can drain your defense of Alliance Points and once you run out of AP then you’re out of FCs. That means you’ve just lost that keep. Don’t be that guy. I hate that guy. I don’t heal that guy and I sure as blazes don’t spend a soul gem on that lousy son of a… *** The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, DeltiasGaming.com. Thank you and goodnight. ***