Facebook Chronicles of Blood PvP Guide

PvP Guide
Credits to LoRD_KYRaN

Hi everyone. This here is a general guide to PvP with some tips and tricks to help smooth things for those just new to PvP.

Well, PvP is a strategic minefield. You have to be careful with a lot of things from the powers you choose, the items you equip and most importantly, how you find your targets.

First up are the general tips that those who already PvP might find useful in getting a few extra kills.

– The most important thing to do, IMHO, is to have Blood Diamonds equipped at all times. Yes, BD’s not Rubies or pearls. Why? The key here is that in PvP, bait isn’t used up, only bloodlust. So your BD’s will not be used up. However, they still confer two very important bonuses, which are:

i) The most effective Bloodshield – Might be a bit of an expensive Bloodshield but well worth it. If your down by 20-30 damage at round 4, using it as a Bloodshield should be sufficient to give you the win, unless you miss, he hits a critical or other really bad luck stuff triggers.

ii) 5% critical chance increase – Self explanatory I feel. 5% can make a big difference in damage. This is active even on defense. If your opponents are using rubies or pearls, the 5% increase confers a significant bonus.

– Servants – use them! They can make a huge difference, especially at early levels where this isn’t too much difference between you and your opponent. At higher levels when you have Frenzy’s hitting for 100+ etc, 40 damage from a servant isn’t all that useful. But at lower levels, using your servant can be the difference between a win and a loss.

– Don’t test your luck! Nearly 90% of my losses are due to me tempting fate. Down by 100, servant + Bloodshield isn’t going to be enough. It is much better to just use a power. You can avoid unnecessary loses. Being gung ho and expecting a miracle isn’t always smart.

– Be aware, vigilant. PvP is not like PvE; you can’t shut your eyes, speed attack and expect them to drop like flies. Use single round attacks and keep an eye on the damage difference. Most importantly, before you use a power or servant, check and see if your opponent has activated Void or Trample. You don’t want to waste a power cause of laziness/carelessness.

– Battle Charger. If you don’t have it, get it. Very good and highly important. If you’re low leveled, work to get it as fast as possible as not many have it yet so it would give you a distinctive edge.

– The Wiki. Elaine runs a wonderful Wiki which is really, really important! I’ve planned my whole character build around it. It’s invaluable especially for PvP-ers cos we don’t really know much of what happens in the PvE world. The Wiki helps a lot in that aspect. Whenever a new region is released, I keep checking the Wiki to find out all the latest info. There just might be a very good accessory, power etc that would be worth me farming for. Also, the Wiki will tell you how much Rage/Con/Const equipments need. That helps you plan your stat allocation so as to be able to use your weapon of choice whenever you reach it. It’s quite sad to be 3 levels away and then only see you need 8 more of a stat to equip the weapon. The Wiki can be found here: http://wiki.chronicles-of-blood.com/index.php/Main_Page

Picking your targets

Always try to aim for those 3-5 levels higher than you. Why? Because they give 6 VP which is the highest amount you can receive. 6 VP a win is double what you would receive from an enemy your level. To find those players, add a lot of people and then go through your coven looking for them. You can also find them in the Hierarchy lists.

Now sure beating them is hard. You might find yourself losing once or twice. But losing once against an opponent that gives you 6 VP will still net you more VP’s than winning 6 times against an opponent giving you 3 VP’s.

These are the numbers to illustrate it.

Wins Losses VPs
6 Wins @ 3 VP each 18 0 18
6 Wins @ 6 VP each 36 0 36
5 Wins, 1 Loss 30 -1 29
4 Wins, 2 Losses 24 -2 22
3 Wins, 3 Losses 18 -3 15

Now, from here you can see that if you can beat the higher levels easily you VPs will rocket sky-high very fast. But even if you can’t beat them 6 out of 6 times, beating them 4, 5 times will still give you extra VP’s than the amount of VP’s you get from 6 wins against same leveled players. So mostly it’s worth the risk. And if you pick your targets properly, you’ll find yourself winning a majority of your battles.

To select your targets, you should look a lot at your build. When you see someone who is a healer and your running a Necrosis heavy build, go crazy. Most likely, they will be extremely susceptible to your build. This is especially useful when using the Hierarchy list and coven to find targets as by clicking on their name, it takes you to their profile so you will know what equipments etc they are using. Another thing that you should implement when using the coven and Hierarchy list is to go through every page of it for targets 3 levels higher than you. Take them out and once your done with them, go search for those 4 levels higher and finally 5 levels higher. This maximizes your chances of success cos logically, those that are only 3 levels higher *should* be easier to beat than those 5 levels higher. And since you can open each players profile in a new window, that’s what you should do and move from one to the next. Just make sure that you have healed in between if your life is low. You don’t want to end giving them an easy Deathblow.

When you happen to find a really good target, you want constant access to them. You wouldn’t want to lose an easy prey. So you need to bookmark them of sorts. 2 ways you can do this. One is to add them to your black book. You’ll see the option under their big avatar when you attack them. But your black book can only hold a couple of names. Once it’s full and you have a good target, what I like to do is mouse-over their avatar and see their profile name. Then I add them. Once they accept, update your coven and they are permanently there. This has the dual benefit of increasing your coven damage and making sure you never lose them. You can farm them every single day and even if they delete you, they are still in your coven. So you can still farm them as much as you want. I would recommend holding back and maybe hitting them twice only before they accept your friend request. Hitting them 6 times a day might make them think twice bout accepting you as a friend causing you to lose a juicy target.

Selecting Powers

Parts of this section are taken from Chan Yoong Hay’s excellent power Guide.

First, the list of PvP based powers (best to worst):
Diablerie
Frenzy
Lightning Strike
Immolation
Glamour (disputable)
Earthmend + Blessings from the Elders

Straight up, Diablerie is the King of PvP! No Diablerie = cannon fodder. Well, mostly. If I see anyone without Diablerie in my 7VP range, I’m targeting them. Why is it soo important?

– [Bloodward always reduces taken from Vampiric creatures and players.] Bloodward- Bloodward serves to reduce damage taken from Vampiric creatures, which is all PvP’ers, by 5% per level. At level 5, that’s a 25% reduction! Doesn’t matter what damage type it is, all PvP damage taken is reduced. Affects everything, most importantly being berserk. If you are going to get hit by a 100 damage level 5 berserk, Bloodward 5 would reduce it to 75 damage. So the more Bloodwards you can get the better.

– [Bloodbane always increases damage against Vampiric creatures and players.] Bloodbane- The offensive version of Bloodward. Increases all damage you deal to Vampiric opponents, i.e. other players, by 5% a level. So Diablerie 5 equates to a 25% increase in damage.

– Taken together, Diablerie causes a 10% difference in damage per level. You take 5% less damage while simultaneously dealing out 5% more damage. So that’s 10% right there. At level 5, that’s a 50% difference in damage.

– [Transfers Blood from opponent.] Use: Empowered Lifeleech- The final reason. It’s both a Nuke and a healer. What it does is deal X amount of damage to your opponent and then heals you for X amount of damage. A very useful skill to keep till your life is a little low to help bring it up. The best part is that it is the only healing skill that can’t be blocked by necrosis. By far an extremely powerful feat, one of the best in the game, IMHO.

So if you want to PvP seriously, you need to level Diablerie up as fast as possible. Most important skill to have.

Now, what should your pair it with? Ideally, you would want to pair it with a power that has a really strong, damage dealing proc, has good synergy with the PvP Crimson set and is easily obtainable. Enter Frenzy. Great proc, berserk deals massive damage every time it procs, works wonderfully with all the modifiers provided by the Crimson set and isn’t that hard to farm. Raptors and Sabretooth Tigers drop it and the quest gives you one every 24 hours so you can farm it yourself, at least till level 4. Level 5 might be difficult if you are a non-donator or can’t spend soo much time in R2 but honestly, level 4 Berserk is very good already.

The other secondary skills that work well are Lightning Strike and Immolation, both those items have many PvE combos’ which shouldn’t take that long to obtain. But they still pale in comparison to Frenzy. Although at higher levels with their respective synergies, they aren’t bad to combo with Diablerie. They can do some decent damage.

The other power you can get from PvP, Glamour, is a bit more eclectic. It’s feat allows you to escape from battle. Unlike normal retreat, this escape ends the battle so if you have done more damage, then you win. People normally use this to hit-and-run, they attack someone, probably 5 levels higher, use a servant or power and escape straight away. They don’t take any damage but since their servant/power has damaged the enemy, they win the battle. I find it cheap, especially since it’s so very easy to beat players even 5 levels higher, all it takes is a good setup. But it’s a valid tactic so to each his own. Its proc is Stun so it can be utilized to create a stun lock build. That’s a setup where your stuns keep coming out so your opinion can’t make a single attack from round 2 to round 5. Done properly, it can be quite powerful but it’s not easy to achieve.

Earthmend + Blessings + the Oath set is a super healing build. The principle behind it is to heal much more then the enemy damages so at the end of every battle, you take very little damage or even increase your blood. That way, you don’t have to spend a fortune using the quick heal option. However, both PvP sets, Crimson Death and Black Death have Necrosis and Frenzy has the feat Pestilence which stops healing so it’s not a very wise choice.

That’s it for the main powers. Check the wiki and read Chan Yoong Hay’s power guide to learn more about these powers and others.

Weapons

This is one of the most commonly asked questions on the boards. ‘What equipment should I get for my level for PvP?’ Most commonly asked around level 28, when 9 Ring Sword looks good to stack with Crimson Death, WoED looks strong with Nightfall and Lifeleech 2 and Buffy not only has a leveled up Hail of Bullets but Trauma 2 to boot.

And what’s the general answer? WoED. Well, back when I was level 28, I was would have been very happy to hear this. Cause that meant more easy targets for my Buffy to splatter. Heads up, Buffy > WoED & 9 Ring Sword. As all PvP weapons pwn their non-PvP counterparts. And that includes SPAZ 15 whose counterpart is the Lifestealer. Reasoning:

– Ballistic procs – From my experience, the ballistic procs trigger extremely often. Trauma hits every other battle and Hail of Bullets average 2, 3 trigger a battle. It’s a lot and it makes a heck of a difference. The damage dealt is quite good as well. And seeing as all the weapons after the SPAZ 15 have Bloodbane, your looking at a 10% boost (Steyr, Buffy) and a 15% boost (GAR) to ALL damage you deal! Not just your weapons mind you, but Berserk and everything else. None of the crafting weapons or loot weapons give such good bonuses for PvP.

– Besides, it is much easier to obtain the VP weapons. A lot of people give the excuse that farming for VP’s is hard. That’s nonsense. Dedicated farming of 6VP targets will give you more VP’s than you know what to do with. Most of the strongest Crafted weapons of a region require very rare, bound crafting materials. In the amount of time it takes to farm them, you could buy the weapon and potentially earn a couple thousand VP, surpassing the cost of the weapon.

Armor

That’s pretty easy now. Just buy the Crimson set. Except for the Panzer, I don’t recommend it at all. Too weak, Spellweaver’s Robe is better at level 39. And you don’t actually need to keep buying the new chest armor. I used Werewolf Fur Coat from level 17 to 39 and then bought Spellweaver’s Robe which I’m still using till now, level 54. All you need is the Bloodward 2/3 to stack with your Diablerie for as much reduction as possible. And Frostbite 3 on Spellweaver’s Robes does a heck of a lot of damage. But even so, if you are trying to choose between armor with Bloodward 2 and Bloodward 3, such as Armor of the Blood Lord and the Juggernaut Chestplate, then I highly suggest you use the other abilities of the armors as a tie-breaker. This is because if you already have Diablerie 5 and Battle Charger, the amount of damage reduced by subsequent Bloodward/Resilience/Blur etc becomes less than the 5% it is supposed to do.

Taking AoBL and Juggs as examples:

Diablerie 5 + Battle Charger + AoBL Bloodward 3 + AoBL Resilience 1:
Damage received = 0.75 * 0.9 * 0.85 * 0.95
= 0.5450625

Diablerie 5 + Battle Charger + Juggs Bloodward 2:
Damage received = 0.75 * 0.9 * 09
= 0.6075

So the difference in damage reduced = 0.6075 – 0.5450625

= 0.0624375

So it’s quite obvious that even though AoBL has 1 Bloodward higher and Resilience 1, it is still reduces less than 10% more than Juggs. So do not just look at the Bloodwards, see if the other abilities match your set and pick the one that would give you the most benefit.

Accessories

This is pretty much all up to you. If you have Crimson set, then use the accessory and the 2nd accessory should be something that complements your vamp. Fang necklace, Nightshades, Pendant of Molten Fury if you’re using Immo etc.

Servants

The PvP servants are very strong. Voidspawn is a life saver at lower levels as people rely on powers a lot then. It’s the defensive servant of choice. Nosferatsu can dish out quite a lot of damage and his Cruelty adds 5% damage to physical attacks. Gothic Girl is your biggest friend though. GG increases PvP loot drops a lot; you’ll get Diablerie 5 very fast with her around. She also increases your chance of Slayer proc-ing by 3% which does help quite a bit.

Other useful links:
The CoB Wiki
Chan Yoong Hay’s Equipment and Power Recommendations Guide + Advanced Mechanics
Rob Fink’s Unoffical Guide for new Players