The start is hard, but once the mechanics in PvP click... The CC's of Lost Ark PvP explained

The Arena The Arena
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After getting stomped with no clue what’s happening for over 100 games, even uninstalling and almost giving up, it finally clicked.

There are probably countless other new PvPers around who came to this game for equalized PvP but struggle with the overwhelming CC mechanics. I’ve heard from so many people that they just die in CC-lock all the time and don’t understand why their CC’s don’t work on the enemy. For those of you that struggle with the same fate, let me give you a quick rundown on the mechanics.

There are 3 tiers of CC’s in Lost Ark with different mechanics:

Tier 1 CC Stagger aka. Paralysis:
It’s a short interrupt that can still lock you down if it hits frequently enough. Basically every attack in the game does at least stagger. It is divived further into soft and hard stagger. The difference between them is that soft stagger doesn’t interrupt abilities that are being already performed, while hard stagger does. Soft stagger is applied by basic attacks (left mouse) and hard stagger is applied by skills, that’s it. After 4 continues seconds of stagger you become knocked down and immune to stagger for a brief period.

The counters to stagger are T 1-3 immunities which are applied by skills. The immunities are called (T1) Paralysis Immunity, (T2) Push Immunity, (T3) All-Immunity to CC’s.
VISBILITY: (T1) Immunity is visible by a white shine of the character model. Immunity after the 4 seconds of stagger will also be highlighted by a scale above the players head.

Tier 2 CC Push aka. Knock-up, -down and -back:
It lifts the character into the air / knocks them on the ground / pushes them away from the caster. You can be knocked around for a total of 4 times before you gain an automatic immunity for a brief period, or you can use your second space bar skill which becomes usable once you lay on the ground knocked down (and only while you are knocked down). It has a cooldown of 13 seconds, abusing this cooldown is a Key to hit your combos on enemies. However you choose to get up, during the “get up” and for a very brief period after you gain (T3) All-Immunity.

The counters to Push are (T2) Push Immunity, (T3) All-Immunity to CC’s.
VISBILITY: (T2) Immunity is visible by bright yellow borders that surround the character model.

Tier 3 CC aka. Stun, Frozen, Petrified and the rest.
All those names just mean the same thing and the Immunity is the same for all of them. The only counter to these are awakening skills (while casted), space bar and a few buffs (some buffs give only T3 Immunity and no Immunity to the other CC’s).

The counters to Tier 3 CC are (T3) All-Immunity to CC’s.
Visibility: Once hit by an Tier 3 CC you will have bar over your head that will run down from blue to red. The bar only appears after you’ve been hit by T3 CC. You will also see a blue bubble around the character model, which will be always visible when having T3 Immunity. It grants you immunity to another Tier 3 CC’s, and only Tier 3 CC’s, for around 5 seconds. T3 Immunity is also highlighted by a blue bubble around you.

The most important thing to counter all these CC’s are your space bar skills, which grant all immunity and some Tripods that can enhance the CC resistance of your skills. There are some more fine nuances to it, but you don’t need to know that at the start. For now you will make huge progress just by applying

I know it’s alot at first but these are the basic rules of Lost Ark CC in PvP. Once you get a hang of these, you can actually start doing things that work.

You can see the described mechanics in action, and what it can look like once you get a hang of the system here.

This was my best 3v3 match I had so far. I can tell you, the difference between this and how I played two weeks ago is unimaginable.

I hope I was able to help out some fellow PvPers.
Cheers

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people need to read this before making balance suggestion posts about mechanics they don’t understand lol

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If this is all correct, this is the best guide to pvp yet. Explaining the cc mechanic to people who get frustrated at pvp for all the cc is the best. Thanks man.

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Ask me anything PvP related . i love pvp - #21 by OlderBadboy find some answers or help others with info :stuck_out_tongue:

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Explaining how cc works does little to remove the frustration.
After about 50 battles I got the hang of it as well, got to Tier 1 in PvP, and overall performed above average. I know about different cc types and immunities. I definitely had some fun in PvP, otherwise I wouldn’t have played it for 50 games.

Still you get cc-ed so often, like even in your video, almost every few seconds you’re knocked up by something. It’s simply a frustrating gameplay experience for a lot of players. You spend so much time unable to use your character, due to sheer amount and duration of cc effects. This feels especially prominent when facing assassins or martial artists in my opinion, as it feels like they have so many ways to just stick to you, while also ccing you at the same time.

I’ve seen people try to justify this combat system by comparing PvP to some fighting games, I’ve also seen people trying to compare guardian raids to Monster Hunter. I simply do not care, I’m not playing those games, I’m playing Lost Ark. Trying to say how it has an amazing PvP combat system because it’s similar to fighting games isn’t a great argument. It’s an MMORPG not a fighting game.

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then play another game because it is how it is designed

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There we go, took you long enough to come in with an absolutely useless argument called “then play another game”. Congrats. If you have nothing better to say then please don’t bother saying anything at all next time.

Did you even read my entire post? Saying “because it’s how it is designed” doesn’t mean some things cannot change. I simply pointed out why the PvP is frustrating for many players.

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Yeah but thats the same reason why ppl that like this pvp actualy like this pvp which is why we answer you by, it is designed like that

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That’s the thing, it’s very polarizing. You either love the PvP or you hate it, and a lot of people seem to not really like it.
I find myself somewhere in the middle, I’ve learned how it works and had some fun, but I dislike that the focus of it is on landing CCs and CC immunity. The sheer amount of CC is simply frustrating. Others completely hate it as their experience is: go into battle, get cc-ed, die, repeat.

It’s skill based PvP, which I think is the main reason people like it. I’m a fan of skill based PvP as well, though I don’t have a problem with having obvious advantage because you have better gear - it means you spent time and effort getting that gear, so you should be rewarded - this however doesn’t work in games like LA, simply because the players who spend $$$ would have an advantage. You have equalized gear and stats, so it’s always going to be skill based, but they could’ve done a better job of designing a PvP experience that would be accessible for more people.

Right now, you could split the game’s population like this. Before you ask for source - I made it up. It’s hypothetical.

1st - Dedicated crowd who like this PvP system as it is now. ~10%
2nd - People who are PvPers in MMOs, but are just left frustrated with the current system. ~15%
3rd - People who don’t usually play PvP in other games, who likely wouldn’t even touch PvP here or they would just try it once. ~75%

The issue here is, a lot of those people belonging to the 3rd group are going to start playing PvP, because of the rewards. I’m not saying everyone, but a lot of people will probably start playing PvP to get those honing mats. For them, the current PvP is going to be especially annoying. From what I’ve seen people (me included) just straight up dislike the amount of cc, they dislike being stunlocked, knocked up, and being unable to move their character for what seems like an eternity. Not to mention MM putting up players in Tier 1 vs Grade 20. A lot of players will simply try it once and never again.
I don’t see how a design that pushes most of the players away from the PvP is good.

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“wE aReNt PlAyInG A fIgHtInG gAmE, wErE pLaYiNg LoSt ArK” Yup, that’s lost ark bud.

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none of this matters when db and pala are giga broken. how come almost every pala I see deal more damage than actual dps classes and still provide shit ton of party buffs?

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