While some people prefer to team up with others and take down powerful bosses in endgame content, others are keen to see how well they do in PvP. Fortunately, Black Desert Mobile has plenty of both in store for its players, and you’ll be able to switch between game modes at your own leisure. In our guide to BDM’s classes, we briefly discussed how each of their abilities might be useful in PvP encounters, but now it’s time to go deeper.

Before we delve into all of the PvP details, it is essential to understand how combat works in the first place. Even if you don’t like testing your mettle against other people, we advise you play the Arena every day in order to reap those bountiful chests. As you might have expected, being successful in these battles will be much more advantageous for you than not. You can get silver, weapon and armor stones, magic crystals, and even skillbooks.

Set-up Your Character for PvP

Before you get all excited about killing other players in the Arena, you should first make sure that your character is properly set up for PvP purposes. To begin with, make sure that all your skills are appropriately levelled. For more information on how you can do that, you can check out our guide to quick in-game progression. Then, you should head over to your skill screen and unlock Skill Set 2. Your first set should be optimized for world PvE, while the second will be dedicated to PvP purposes.

Once you’ve done this, you should go through all of your abilities and see which ones might have any superior use when fighting other players. What you should look for are CCs (crowd control effects), Knock-back and Knock-up effects, as well as Super Armor or Invincibility. While the latter ensures you are either incredibly strong or downright invulnerable for the casting period, crowd control will give you the upper hand in terms of deciding the fate of the battle. Regardless of how much stronger your opponent might be, they won’t be able to do anything if they’re stunned, frozen, or knocked-back.

Another thing you should really keep an eye on is whether your skill set is suitable for fast-paced combat. You want low-cooldown, high-damage spells and actions that have little to no casting delay. Basically, what we’re aiming for is to deal the most amount of damage in the least amount of time, while also being able to control our opponent with various status effects. For example, we don’t really want Arcane Bolts on our Witch, since we won’t be sitting still for long enough to cast them. We’re also not keen on the Dagger Stab ability, since close-range fighting puts us at a disadvantage. We have both on our back-bar, just in case, but we don’t expect we’ll be using them.

How to Warm Up

Before you get down to the business of Arena fighting, we thoroughly recommend you warm up and get accustomed to 1v1 battles in the Friends Arena. The latter is an amazing mechanic put forward by the devs at Pearl Abyss, since it allows us to test builds, skill combinations, and other PvP interactions in a no-risk environment. You can invite anyone in your friends list and basically go at one another without any restrictions. When you die, you can revive instantly at no cost.

Give it a good half hour of casting and dodging. Depending on what class you play, you might want to settle on different combat approaches. If you’re a Giant or a Warrior, you ought to practice moving, chasing, and catching up to your opponents, while Rangers and Witches should be experts at hit-and-run tactics. There’s no shame in kiting your opponent all around the arena – in fact, it’s indicated. Remember, you must always play to your strengths and, sometimes, that just means overcoming the enemy through superior mobility.

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The format is a bit different during live matches, as you have a limited amount of time to spar with one another. Once the time is up, the player with the most HP is the one who wins the engagement. In theory, you don’t even have to kill your enemy (especially when they’re much stronger than you). All you have to do is run around and damage them, little by little, to ensure they have less health than you do when the timer is up.

Wreck Your Opponents with BlueStacks

In the first part of our article, we mentioned that CC effects are really useful when fighting against other players. There are five major types of CC:

1. Stun, as the one inflicted by the Witches’ Storm of Magic. Usually lasts for no more than a second, so it’s more of a combo breaker.
2. Daze and Freeze, as in the Witches’ Frigid Fog. The latter can last up to 3 seconds, giving you plenty of time to set up some damage-dealing combos.
3. Knockback, which pushes you back for an average distance. Depending on level, you can get roughly as much time as you would with Daze or Freeze.

4. Bound, Knock-down, and Knock-up, as in the Witches’ Whirlwind.
5. Grab, as in the Valkyrie’s Punishment, which basically picks up an opponent and slams them to the ground to force them into a Bound state.

Crowd control effects can be chained together to increase the total duration of your stuns. What you have to remember, though, is that the same effect cannot be prolonged if you try to inflict an identical one over it. The only way to maximize your CC potential is to constantly switch in-between each type that is available to you.

Since PvP is just one of those mechanics that takes practice, all you have to do is get in and rehearse in the Friends Arena until you can beat your opponent without losing more than 20% of your HP. Being quick on your toes gives you an immense advantage, so if you play Black Desert Mobile on PC, BlueStacks’ Keymapping Tool will really pay off. The latter allows you to bind all abilities and actions to keyboard shortcuts, so you no longer have to worry about tapping in the right place or missing your combo.

Since you’ll be ranked up against others based on your CP, you can use a neat little trick to win quickly: take off all your gear, with the exception of your weapons, and allows yourself to be ranked against lower-levelled players. The sheer strength of your abilities might be enough for a quick knock-out, but if they get on top of you fast, you’ll be really squishy, so this is quite a double-edged sword.

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