Thank you for your answers. 

And Thanks Helegens for the chat offer, but communication would be difficult with my language. I'm using a translator here in the forum, otherwise I couldn't understand anything.

However, Assuming I eventually get to the level where I get a perceived understanding of trading skills. To do this, I seem to need knowledge about all classes and about my own class (like in every other class and ability based pvp game). Then I still have the problem that I can only read the animations of the opponents with great difficulty without icons. Without them, I can't tell whether my opponent is currently in SA, FG or Iframe in order to react. 

For me, this is not so much because I don't know which animation has which effect. I now know most of the important effects of my class abilities, even without icons. But if I came up against my own class, I wouldn't visually recognize the animations. So Visually, I can see the animations and effects of my character very clearly, but not those of the other players around me.

I've never had anything like that in a PvP game. In all other games the visual animations, effects and indicators are very clear, in BDO they are very blurry on a graphical level. I can't tell if my opponent is in SA, FG or Iframe to react to it. 

In battle arena and practice arena of solare, the protection indications are included above your opponents.

But, yes, learning to read your opponent is a major part of the game's skill expression, including reading their intentions, preferably before they even start using skills.

To speak to animations; many pvpers later disable animation effects entirely. We only read our opponents' character movements, and have better visibility with all the flashy/blurry effects gone.

This is something you can do easily in the game settings, though, it isn't necessarily recommended for new players.

BDOs combat has been shuffled around, meddled with and reworked so many times that it's become kind of a mess. The devs have never been able to settle on one philosophy they want to stick behind regarding the combat. I wasn't much of a BnS player back then but BnS combat was designed at its core more for 1v1 and 3v3 pvp so it's a lot more strategic and interactive. BDO has always had to take medium and large scale pvp into account when designing the classes and skills in comparison so I can see why it confuses you.

Pre-awakening BDO pvp back in 2016 actually used to be a lot closer to BnS when it came to pacing, readability, visual clarity and combos despite its imperfections.

I have already dealt with the settings a bit. I actually mean that I can hardly read the movement animations of my opponents, even if I turn down the effects of the opponents or even turn them off

BnS Combat is a masterpiece to this day. Even with all the complexity it had, it was at the same time very clearly structured and therefore understandable.

I just hope that BDO's Combat will eventually become understandable for me, even if it's not so clearly structured.

There are 3 layers to the onion to peel.

Layer 1 - Personal Knowledge [~0-100hrs]

You know how to rotate FG/SA/Iframe to stay constantly protected and know what keybindings are ccs. You just face-roll this rotation until something sticks. You know what are the keybindings for movement so that you can chase/retreat.

You've never even read every separate skill your class has. You have no idea what most classes do when.

Layer 2 - General Knowledge [~500+hrs]

You have read all of the skills and know exactly what they do. You know how to manage the most important resource in the game [stamina]. You understand positioning and are following the fight objective.

You still have no idea what other classes do but at least you know a couple of catches and can dodge a grab.

Layer 3 - No-Lifer knowledge [~2000+hrs]

Good job, now play the 50 other specs and gain the muscle memory for each of them as well so that you understand what other players are doing in the game.

Unfortunately, the onion comes with really tough packaging which is thinking prowess to be able to utilize all of these layers actively in 1v1s>3v3s>RBF>NW etc. No shame in being hardstuck at a layer, there are many players that have achieved high ranks with only knowing their own class extensively.

[]

PS. learn from better players [not mediocre@pvp 'most watched' content creators], dig in your own class discord extensively, and record your gameplay to review what went wrong and what went right.

Interesting. I know most of the skills of my class, I have learned and internalized a fixed and complete movement protaction. I can also do two dmg combos (depending on whether I start with a hard or soft CC). I also have my stamina under control for the most part, except when abilities that affect my stamina hit.

I can also play around the cooldowns of E buffs, grabs and V's. But unfortunately I don't have the positioning down yet. So according to your description, I'm somewhere between the first and second layer.

What do you think? Does BDO's PvP have a layer after the 3rd, like in many other PvP games, that rewards the player who makes better and smarter decisions based on the opponent's decisions (skill trading)?

Because the basis is layer 1 and this consists of rotating your protaction and movement combos without gaps. If you take this skill to layer 3, do you consciously trade these skills based on your opponent's behavior and decisions, or do you unconsciously continue the protaction combo rotation no matter what your opponent does?

In other words: After Layer 3, what can I do with all the class knowledge in your opinion?

No, sorry to be harsh, but you are somewhere in the middle of Layer 1. It's not like we don't gain knowledge from all layers as we get along, but you're directly describing the limitations between the first and second layer. Everything I've bolded above indicates that, as once you start to properly break through L2:

- there are no longer fixed movement/protections/dmg combos - you are able to utilize each skill in any situation non-linearly;

- there is no more struggle with stamina [because of skill - match/NW circumstances are a different matter];

- you are always standing at the right spot [unless you get out-outplayed];

- your cd management is so good that you never have a chance to cc with no cc skills off cooldown or a tough situation without a good movement skill still ready. you never miss a secondary cc [unless cringe resist]. you never miss a kill in a CC>CC;

And all of these need to come from the technical understanding of your class, not just mechanical reflexes, you need to be able to think about the decisions of all of these factors at the same time you're pvping in the game.

There is ofc an infinite amount of layers to go into just as any onion, but these are the base ones that define your personal interaction as a player towards/from other players. Beyond this, inside of BDO you need to dig towards:

- Optimizing the game to run well

BDO's default optimization is horrid and a lot of people trying to follow aCanadianDude's Guide simply skip steps and don't get the full Juice. This game runs w/ capped 240FPS in Lowest Optimized and 160-180 in Remastered in AoS on my Partners's old PC w/ an 8700k and a 1080ti - that's ~8yr old hardware - it just requires an insane amount of work to utilize hardware properly. For lazy bums that don't want to know what's going on, you can always use a service that a lot of bdo streamers are sponsored by.

- Optimizing your internet to be connected to BDO servers as best as possible

If lazy, then Exitlag/WTFast [or w.e gives you the best results in the trial period]. If not, learn what those do, trace the connection from you to the BDO servers and optimize it as much as possible.

- Optimizing your UI

The default UI is not conducive to playing the game even just for enjoyment. What I recommend is removing EVERYTHING bar the map and starting to add elements that you feel that you need [and can't get used to opening through menus and shortcuts]. This is conducive both to running the game better [as the UI is a resource hog] and paying attention to what's happening more instead of looking at things you might need sometimes. Also, crop mode is a cheat early on to learn to pay attention to the wider [pun intended] picture of what's happening in PVP - however after a while you'll probably go back to the close angle since you'll learn how to do that via the minimap so that you can focus on other player's animations better.

- Learning how stats work differently in the Normal Game, AoS, RbF, NW Tiers, Siege etc

Again - sorry that this is becoming a trope - the internal game systems don't really describe well what the internal cogs that push the game are, its an UI/UX problem for which maybe they'll hire a better designer one day and it will get rehauled to look like Garmoth(TM) BDOLytics(TM) and other adjacent content. Read Guides, bleed your eyes out however much you want to invest into knowing in this game. If you're interested in IRL BDO lore, learn about bignshiny's work.

- Learning class roles in every separate piece of content

Roles aren't fixed across all content and tbh, the best way to learn is to just play the content as much as possible and see where you fit as a player because BDO classes are really diverse in what they can do. A rule of thumb tho is, if you can take dmg [gauntlets,axes,shields..] you want the attention to be on you - if you can't take dmg [casters,bows,"go random bs"..] you don't want the attention.

- Learning movement & engagement strategy

If you want to go into the rabbit hole, for Aos/small-scale read NBA/Court Sports strategy, for Large-scale read pedestrian movement mechanics and Art of War [not necessarily Zu, just the concept. Book of Five Rings much better]. Apply understanding to BDo.

A TL:DR TL:DR would be, players collapse and expand around set objectives - and as long as they are coordinated in executing these set movements together, the rounds will move much more effectively. They are pretty self-explanatory in what they mean. One of the main drivers of Cho was/is the fact that when the MC would say >go<, everyone goes.

This is why the stopgap wall after >gold rank in AoS is Voicechat, because the combat is so fast, you have to make your calls predictionary when you see an opportunity, as opposed to after doing a catch (and pinging). 

- Learning game theory & thought strategy

Game theory is self-explanatory, it also helps in making silver gamba decisions in the rest of the casino riddled with slot machines ... i mean ... minigames. Thought strategy is disgusting, i will not recommend anything specifically nor recommend going into the field, but basically, the material is warmongering Nato/USSR plans and books from those hellburners on how to efficiently sacrifice pieces of the whole so that you can win the battle, along with how to manage the people that need to be sacrificed so that they do it without question.

- Managing psych

Idk, read Aurelius or Nietzche or Siddhartha, w.e the ** keeps your heart rate down, breathing stable, thoughts empty [to be filled with BDO strategy], and keep on getting motivated to play more games because your win rate will always fluctuate between 51-61% regardless of your performance.

- Theorycrafting
Do your own theories of what I did here on what works better for being better in BDO PvP.

No, you should be consciously doing already it at the end of L1, at least for CCs, and staying protected. In Layer 2, you should already be trading against other player decisions - even if you don't know [exactly] if they are in frontal guard or SA (this is why it's helpful to play Practice without protection icons). In Layer 3, you actually KNOW exactly what skill they are casting every time - this is a tough bar to clear tho [set your expectations low], there are probably about ~100 ppl in the world, with >10 that are actually able to think about all of that information at the moment they are playing - for everyone else, it's just an unconscious reflex. <This is why I recommended watching Armin, because he talks about his class, other classes, the decisions they are making, the decisions that he's about to risk - all at the same time. Just pure mastery of L1 - your own class reflexively - can get you into T100 and other good content as long as you play enough.

You will queue for an Arena of Solare game and:

- Proceed to get desynced 3-5 rounds in a row, do +200k damage, still lose

- Get matched vs a Zerk/Nova/Deadeye [or stroker] with no grabz on your team, do +200k damage, still lose

- Teammate drops out during first wait period and game still starts, play 2v3, do +200k damage, mby u win?

- Your game crashes in the last round after you're already wining 3v1 [3:0 final score], do +200k damage, still lose points

- You get toxic/unresponsive or players that don't belong in their rank, do +200k damage, mby u win?

> Que again.

I also hope this. theres not currentlyt very much consistency with class balance

the way it should work

1. movement even fast classes should be readable ( thier current speeds the servers cannot keep up with)
2. any type of  hard CC should be unprotected always  there should be no hard CC + protection in the game
3. resistances should not work in PVP.
4. Grabs should be limitted to 1 per class and should not be range grabs!!!!!  if the fast classes are more readable we can consider making every class have a grab  since iframes are the counters  and everyone has an iframe as far as im aware.
5. We need Damage numbers per role.  Range, Assassin, Tank , Mage need to have thier damage and armor values match more closely to one another based on thier roles. Currently this balance is horrible!

TLDR:

BDO PvP is No Skill, just knock down your enemy, and slobber on your keyboard for the easy kill.