I've been trying to get into BDO PvP (again) for 2 weeks and I wanted to take it more seriously this time, but I just don't understand it. How exactly does PvP work in BDO?

With this question I don't want to know how the combat system works, or combos, or stats and the CC states, but what exactly is the core of PvP itself. So what are the dynamics and strategy of PvP in BDO when two (or more) players fight each other? Maybe the question “How do I win a PvP fight in BDO?” is a better one.

Let me explain this in more detail on another MMORPG PvP before someone writes “skill issue”. I have a lot of experience in PvP MMORPGs, especially in Blade & Soul, which has the same basic concept in terms of combat system as BDO - Street Fighter inspired

Besides combos, movement, protection, class knowledge and muscle memory, the core challenge in B&S's PvP was to counter CC's of the opponent. Therefore you had 6 different CC abilities/states (stun, daze, knockdown, knockback/wallbang, frost prison, grabbel/grabbed) and 5 different CC counters (F-Roll, Ground counter, 1-getup, kick, grab counter) and an escape ability (like V in BDO).

The equal number of CC's and CC counter abilities in B&N's PvP meant that you had to be smarter and more strategic in how you used your CC's and CC counters befor its on cooldown. It was basically an action-reaction game through CC and CC-counter abilities. Skills were basically traded. In addition, there were combos, movement, protection, class knowledge and muscle memory, etc.

Here again as a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAUTpKH538w

I had actually thought that BDO's PvP would be similar, but after spending days studying PvP and watching several hours of PvP guide videos, I'm not so sure anymore. The BDO PvP guides are all about combos, movement, protection, stats or CC types. It's all about the skill and combat system itself, but how it all works when used in a PvP fight is somehow never explained in essence.

I have watched all these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M12eaw-F4XU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ttXBAQFG3M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GsV3iHCUu0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KtOPu7RYHg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT9KWnSC7Yk

BDO's PvP is strange. Unlike any other PvP in MMORPG, there hardly seems to me to be any deeper strategy on the interaction layer of PvP. At least I don't recognize it. Sure, for combos, movement, protection, class knowledge, CC's and muscle memory you need a lot of experience, skill and practice in BDO, but that primarily refers to the use of the combat and ability system itself in general, which mostly applies to PvE combat as well. I don't recognize the core dynamics in PvP though. Compared to B&S, BDO for example has 8 CC's (stiffness, knockback, stun, bound, knockdown, floating, grab, freezing), but only one escape ability (V ability) with a very high cooldown. Otherwise there are no active counter abilities or trading of skills in the pvp interaction, which gives PvP its real strategic and dynamic level, where you make important decisions in combat based on the behavior and decisions of the opponent. This is what i meant with strategic-interaction Level in PvP. But at the moment it seems more like the combat and skill system alone can't technically do that when I compare it to a combat and skill system like B&S.

The challenge in BDO's PvP is simply to use your movement, protection and damage combos as seamlessly and sensibly as possible and to hope that a CC hits by chance (or that you have a grap and your opponent has already used V).

However, this is something you can do even without a PvP opponent, e.g. on a training dummy. I've never experienced a PvP game where the opponent's behavior and decisions didn't matter as much as here in BDO. It simply doesn't matter what your opponent does, the main thing is that you use your protection and damage combos as seamlessly and sensibly as possible. Without this layer, it would just be a use of mechanics. Which in my perception ultimately leads to you focusing on mastering your protection combos, damage combos, rotation and your class in general, instead of mastering PvP interation through smart and strategic coutner or trade decisions, hoping that a CC randomly hits the opponent and one combo him. The opponent can press Escape (v) once, but otherwise that's it. Right? As a result, the winner is usually the one who hits the first CC.

Am I missing something? Would be very nice if an experienced PvP player could explain the essence of PvP in BDO to me, in case I'm wrong or at least confirm what I've written.

At least I hope I'm wrong, because I really want to get into BDO's PvP.

The biggest issues are

 class balance

Mobility creep

Fps= dps ( bit less now due to changes but its still a thing)

Fps = faster animations and get up times yes you get up out of ccs faster  lol thanks PA

Resistances (you have a chance to CC someone in thier protection gaps)- because classes that already are giga fast and zoom around you / are hard to pin down  they throw on resist so even if you should CC them you don't  LOL the devs said they would remove it its still in the game  .....

I want to say grabs but given how fast classes currently are they need to exist as they are right now or those classes would never be cced.

Speaking of cc they should make all cc have no protection on it to have risk and not be fully protected even when ccing someone common risk reward but no just PA things.

What else hmm idk pvp is a lot of bad it can be fun but it's been a  giga flawed experience for a while.

The basis is moving around in protected movement trying to cc opponent to then combo and kill them yes. 

However do to some factors i just listed its a mixed bag. Some classes have protected ccs some don't. Some have grabs some don't some are stupid fast some aren't. Some are extremely protected while some are sitting ducks.

2 even classes often times the Victor is dying in super armors not from being cced.

Super armor damage trading is a lot of what the game is now and if your class can't trade damage it's automatically knocked out of the meta for dueling by a pretty big margin.

Large scale  is kinda what you expect big aoe big damage  or ranged are pretty dominant 

Capped gear fighting is most common now due to PA changing the wars to much most guilds stopped doing nodewars due to bad system changes. A good ammount of players also quit game it is what it is but pvp is not in a great place atm. Open world you either go on arsha or you kinda just get lucky like needle in haystack lucky and have someone attack you for no reason and get a fight that way. There's no reason to flag and going red you can break and down grade gear so it's not worth risk.

I mean, sure, these are all issues that have a bad impact on the PvP experience. Desyncs, power scaling, one shot meta, resists, class imbalance, and performance in general are certainly among them.

But I could see past all of that if I really felt that PvP in BDO had a strategic level as described above, which consists of making better decisions in combat based on the behavior and decisions of the opponent. This is what i meant with strategic-interaction Level in PvP. But at the moment it seems more like the combat and skill system alone can't technically do that when I compare it to a combat and skill system like B&S.

The challenge in BDO's PvP is simply to use your movement, protection and damage combos as seamlessly and sensibly as possible and to hope that a CC hits by chance (or that you have a grap and your opponent has already used V).

However, this is something you can do even without a PvP opponent, e.g. on a training dummy. I've never experienced a PvP game where the opponent's behavior and decisions didn't matter as much as here in BDO. It simply doesn't matter what your opponent does, the main thing is that you use your protection and damage combos as seamlessly and sensibly as possible.

At like low and mid level of PvP, you basically focus on yourself and try to do the most seamless SA rotations, trade SAs into CCs, trade FGs against SAs and try to jump behind the FGs of your enemies with a CC, or hit them with a CC when they are unprotected. Thats the basis of trading in PvP, bringing yourself into a better position than the opponent, and avoid grabs with your iframes.
Its fairly basic at that level, but there is still strategy in saving up your iframes against the grabs, or hard hitting skills, spacing and positioning yourself in such a way that CCs and damage cannot hit you, and use your abilities in such a way that you can pressure your opponent. If youre in a mirror matchup for example, you want to avoid the hard hitting skills from the opponent, but exploit the gaps that are left, so you see when someone is better at that class than the other person.

At higher level PvP, its a lot less about you, and much more about the opponent. Good PvPers will count cooldowns of relevant skills of the opponent (e.g. maegu spin / blockjump, grabs, witchard teleports) and try to bait those, and then capitalise on it when the oppoent does not have their strongest tools available. In these cases, in a team fight good players will tend to also call out things like "no grab on X" "witch used second tp, collapse" and similar things to make sure that temporary advantages are known to the teammates. At that level, you would play a lot more strategically, waiting for your opponent to do something that you can exploit. You might be able to get some insight on this type of fighting watching the streamer Armin sometimes, since you will notice he can call out every skill of other classes, and follow the movement of all players (not saying hes the best or the only one, but he is definitely an example of this type of play).

Thank you very much. This is the kind of answer I was waiting and hoping for.

I would say of myself that I am still at this base level of PvP. But even there, due to the large number of possible FG's, SA's, IFrames and low cooldowns, I feel like everyone can just spam this abilities, except for a few classes. only grabs, E buffs and V's i could say with my current pvp experience that i can play around it, trade skills and need to reacte with right

decisions. I've tried 7 classes, for example, and with all of them it's easy to rotate FG's, SA's and Iframes almost seamlessly while managing your stamina and doing damage. Of course with one class it's more difficult than with the other, but overall it's quite possible. But if I can spam those skills, then trading skills decisions are more irrelevant. Would you agree that you can spam such important skills?

That sounds more interesting and exactly what I was looking for. I'll have a look at Armin. But I already know that it requires a lot of class knowledge and an eye for recognizing which skills have been used, with this given speed and inaccurate visual representation of animations. That must be very hard.

It depends on the class but yes, especially the newer classes (post corsair) have extremely easy protected rotations, while doing CCs and Damage for free. This is why there are so many calls for nerfs, and even community outcry for a large removal of SAs in PvP (December 2023), that PA initially said they were planning to work on, but didnt happen. On other classes, staying in SA is much more difficult and you have to choose the right skills at the right time to optimise your play (ninja, awa dk, maewha, warrior). If you want a challenge, just play one of those classes, and not the classes that can basically play themselves (maegu, deadeye, dosa etc).

It does need a lot of knowledge, and more importantly, practice. Players like that are BA rats, aka they spend hours upon hours playing duels in battle arena against others to improve their play and learn the weaknesses of other classes. They often also play different classes to at least a mid level to learn how they can act, and what strategies they might employ. Its something that will take a bunch of time to really get good at, but if you want to play in the upper leagues, you need to learn that.

Fella joined the game 6 years too late.

If you're on EU times, I'd be glad to have a chat. These concepts are more easily explained over voice with a stream of examples or similar, exactly because as you said it's not as clear cut as "rock paper scissors CC types".

The closest to that is:

FG beats damage

Movement beats FG

SA beats Movement

Damage beats SA

Grab beats SA/FG

Iframe beats all

Cooldowns and resources beats Iframe/Grab, and on older classes, SA/FG

And don't forget about stamina!